Holes: How deep does the plot go? (Spoiler: There are spoilers in this thread)

[realroadcrossin]

Hey, I wanna here your best theories about what the hell is actually going on with these rifts. Just lay 'em out.

Also, I'd put spoiler tags in, but seriously, any thread like this has to necessarily be full of them. Just don't read below this line and seriously stay away from threads that reference Louis Sachar in their titles written at 5 in the morning ever again:

PS: The real Spoiler alert is - I don't know jack about dnd though i've flipped through the book and know all the too well the basic concept of "using numbers to represent things" (see: "video games" "running" and "transporting cocaine" [and you'll never guess the family feud category for those three])

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

I have no real speculation myself, just a series of questions at intriguing plot threads involving the gates directly:

- What was the nature of the original world with the eastern gods in it? If Shojo presumably learned the crayon creation story from Soon, how did Soon learn it? Is it just information that would usually be restricted to high level clerics/paladins anyways?

-Who are the gods, and do they have a past like the Dark One and the elven gods and I guess maybe even technically banjo or giggles? What exactly differentiates the former creation gods in the main pantheons from the latter, "ascended" (or ascending) ones?

-As far as I remember, the only mortal sightings of the snarl discussed in comic were the deaths of Soon's wife and Kraagor. Did something happen when the scribblies' dwarf died that they were forced to cover up? What was the nature of the spell that made the gates, and for that matter the tears in the fabric of reality that initially caused this whole quest? The snarl was created from divine disharmony - what exactly was happening between the gods at that time that could cause their world after a millennium of existence to fall apart?

-I don't have my copy of start of darkness, so a lot of this may interlap with info already in there (though skimming the forum has given me more than a gist of it), but how does the Dark One know what he does about the rifts? Did he ascend to godhood before or after the scribblies found out about and sealed the rifts? Where does the Dark One want to move the rift, and has he noticed like Redcloak has that nothing seems to be coming out of the hole? For that matter, why didn't Xykon send like a telepathically linked zombie or something into the rift to figure out what was going on in there? Is there no way Xykon and Redcloak could perform a similar ritual to the original gate spell to make their own EVIL versions of them?

-What does the IFCC want with the gates, and how does it involve V for about an hour of his life, team evil and the oots feuding, AND nale and crew's shenanigans? Is there something they know about the snarl that the order, the dark one, or maybe even the gods don't know about them? Or did they find out about them for the first time ever from Sabine? Is Nale's real plan to use Xykon and Redcloak to perform the gates ritual, or is he just trying to lure Tarquin to death? Does the IFCC have some ritual of their own they want the linears to perform? Could this mean the return of Hilgya? (hopefully)

-What's the deal the with the world within a world, and how long has it been there? Is it the the original world the gods created, is it the snarl resolving itself creatively? Am I going to need to clear the blast radius of my own mind because of how blown it will be by the truth going on here?

Anyways, yeah, spit me your best theories.

[Chess Tyrant]

SoD spoiler: Nothing much is revealed about the rifts in SoD that you don't already know from reading the comic. The one interesting thing that we do learn is in regards to the Dark One's origins: after achieving divinity (he was originally mortal, and lived after the creation of the new world), he was filled in on the nature of the rifts by other evil gods. He personally examined a rift (before they were sealed by the Order of the Scribble), but might have never seen the Snarl. This means that he doesn't necessarily know any more than the Order - if there is a second layer of cover-up, he's probably not in on it.

-Regarding the Snarl's origins and the world within the world: we never really learn anything other than what's given in Shojo's Crayons of Time exposition. There could well be something else going on, but all the evidence we have is Blackwing's one glance inside the Azure City rift.

-It's probable nobody except the gods, Blackwing and possibly the Order of the Scribble have ever looked inside a rift. Certainly, the villains never saw the planet inside, or they'd be behaving pretty differently. In general, everyone has pretty limited information to work with.

-I heard that the IFCC makes a showing in OtOoPCs. Also, they apparently learned about the rifts from Sabine, while Nale was in Azure City. This suggests that their plans were made reasonably quickly, using only information that Nale was given by Soon: just like the Order, they're working with the Crayons of Time story. It's reasonable to conclude that they want to take over the Gate in the same way Redcloak does, but for slightly different purposes.

-As an aside, Xykon mentions the rituals take weeks to cast - how 45 minutes of V's soul factors into this, I really don't know. It is worth asking whether V has to be dead for the IFCC to take control of him/her - I don't think that was specifically mentioned in their verbal contract. :smalleek:

[JoseB]

-As an aside, Xykon mentions the rituals take weeks to cast - how 45 minutes of V's soul factors into this, I really don't know. It is worth asking whether V has to be dead for the IFCC to take control of him/her - I don't think that was specifically mentioned in their verbal contract. :smalleek:

As I interpret it, I think that what takes weeks is the "preparatory work" on the gates (perhaps performing some kind of ritual every day, or something), and that the actual incantation to give control of the gate to the Dark One takes but a few minutes.

If that is the case, then if the IFCC takes control of V at *exactly* the right time, they would be able to take control of the gate, after Xykon and Redcloak have done all the heavy work "weakening" the hold of the gate itself to the prime material plane. Bellocq would be proud ;)

Incidentally, no -- at no time, during their conversation with Vaarsuvius, did the IFCC mention that they would take control of V's soul after V's death. V *assumes* that this is the case, but we all know what happens when you assume... And the last panel of this comic (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0667.html) strongly indicates (at least, in my opinion) that control will be definitely taken before V is dead.

[factotum]

You probably ought to put "Spoilers" somewhere in the title...people may come into this thread and read one of the later posts before they read the spoiler warning in the OP.

Anyway, nothing about the Snarl or the original world is specific to D&D--the Stickverse is not one of the standard D&D settings. As to your questions:

1) How did Shojo know about the original world--he got this information from the Order of the Scribble, and *they* were presumably told it by one of the Gods, since there's no-one else who was around at the time the original world existed to know any of this stuff. Exactly how they got a God to tell them this information is uncertain, and I'm personally of the opinion that said God could easily have lied for their own reasons--the fact Blackwing saw another world inside the rift implies things are not quite as Shojo stated.

2) Gods...well, the "original" gods apparently existed before the world and brought it into existence, although again, this is information that comes from them and is subject to doubt. There's nothing in the strip telling us where they came from, so it's largely pointless speculating about that.

3) I don't think there's anything odd about the death of Kraagor--certainly Girard was of the clear belief that he died in that final rift, because he said Soon should have died in this place! It's unclear why the rifts decided to open up at this place and time, but without them there wouldn't be much of a story...

4) Certain of the pre-existing Evil gods were friends with the Dark One and passed on the information about the Snarl when one of his clerics blundered into a rift by accident. Again, I'm of the opinion they could well have been lying to cover something up there, but no idea what that could be.

5) All the IFCC know is what Sabine has told them--namely, that the Gates are enormously powerful objects that could decide the future history of the world. (And note we have precisely zero evidence they knew anything about the Snarl before Sabine passed her message along). Why wouldn't they be interested in them?

6) World within a world--if I was to hazard a guess, I'd say this is the original world created by the gods. For some reason they sealed it up inside the new world along with the Eastern Gods, and the Snarl never existed. I have no idea why they did this, though!

[aldeayeah]

Incidentally, no -- at no time, during their conversation with Vaarsuvius, did the IFCC mention that they would take control of V's soul after V's death. V *assumes* that this is the case, but we all know what happens when you assume... And the last panel of this comic (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0667.html) strongly indicates (at least, in my opinion) that control will be definitely taken before V is dead.
Qarth has been helping keep V alive too (Strip #803 (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0803.html)).

I assumed they would take control of him while he was alive from the beginning.

[Forbiddenwar]

One thing I've noted is redcloaks words here:
http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0545.html


"What I find really fascinating is that of all the accounts I've heard of the rifts from before the five gates were ever built describe the snarl reaching out and consuming those nearby.


Now, what accounts is he referring to? Serini's diary likely is one, but there are more, and it's very unlikely that all of the accounts are soon's, yet they reveal the same description of the snarl. Serini had no reason to fabricate her diary to match Soon's story, so we must conclude that the snarl in the past reached out and killed people.

And now it doesn't and a planet lies inside the rift instead of the snarl.

My guess is that the gates have changed the snarl somehow. only Dorukan and Lillian know the particulars of the gate ritual (and possibly redcloak, though I'm not sure how he would know) and hey, perhaps one day they will tell us the audience what the gates "really" do. good thing that they are still around.

Maybe Redcloak can copy the gate without knowing what it does nor how it functions. A good builder can copy a building without knowing why the architect put a beam there or placed the foundation in that configuration.

[realroadcrossin]

Eh, I've got a lot of doubts about the scribblies myself - they obviously had a lot of problems but probably could have all agreed to keep the rifts secret, considering it seems like most people are unaware of their existence, though part of that might be because the scribblies are, in the comic's timeline, relatively recent so the story hasn't had time to spread. And nobody, especially in the Order of the Stick, has been able to talk to any of the original party about their gates, and what we know about them is pretty sparse.

Anyways, here's my crackpot theory about how it all ties together. The world in OOTS is basically a "generic fantasy campaign world", something you'd encounter just thrown together by anybody who had the words "magic", "dungeons" and "goblins" thrown together (and look, that's what the first comics basically were!). We know very little about the first millennium or so of history in this world, but the whole thing about goblins being created to be XP fodder tells you basically what you need to know.
Now add into that the only thing we know about this first world was that the gods couldn't agree on it. I'd argue the key difference between these two worlds could have been the absence of goblins, an easy, renewable mob of "others" to be constantly killing. However, the rifts in the current world was the world showing its inability to stand by these conventions after such a long protracted period of time.

It's a kind of sketchy theory, but I think it's in the right direction. Obviously Rich could have the characters just bump into Girard and reveal that there is no snarl and just retirement condos in there, or something less absurd but just as unpredictable, but almost 1000 strips in and probably past the halfway point we should probably have some idea of what's going on behind the scenes. I'll update the title about spoilers, though.

[factotum]

Now add into that the only thing we know about this first world was that the gods couldn't agree on it.

As I said above, I don't think we can even be sure about that, since that information comes from the gods themselves and it's entirely possible they have something to hide...