Still trapped in an illusion

[Kornaki]

You can see Dorukan's rune trap activating in comic 94. 885-890 was just foreshadowing that such traps exist and can cause one to see an entire lifetime. The upshot of the whole strip is that in their fantasy dream they have learned to work as a team, so when they bust down the door and attack Xykon for real, Belkar doesn't blow his post, Roy has his mageslaying feat to take down Xykon and Redcloak for real, V uses battlefield control spells to manage the zombie and goblin hordes, they recover Haley before the fight because they have learned not to split the party, and Elan knows not to press the self destruct rune.

Durkon comes out of the fantasy with no character growth and so acts exactly the same.

[Ghost Nappa]

You can see Dorukan's rune trap activating in comic 94. 885-890 was just foreshadowing that such traps exist and can cause one to see an entire lifetime. The upshot of the whole strip is that in their fantasy dream they have learned to work as a team, so when they bust down the door and attack Xykon for real, Belkar doesn't blow his post, Roy has his mageslaying feat to take down Xykon and Redcloak for real, V uses battlefield control spells to manage the zombie and goblin hordes, they recover Haley before the fight because they have learned not to split the party, and Elan knows not to press the self destruct rune.

Durkon comes out of the fantasy with no character growth and so acts exactly the same.

I think you can safely say from a Meta-standpoint that there's no way that is going to turn out to be the case.

First off, because the "illusion in an illusion" means that they're at least entertaining the thought that they're in on, and I don't think this is going to retconned into elaborate Inception Parody especially when Comic #94 came out five years before Inception did.

Second, that basically ruins every single plot, twist, and character since and considering that is over 800 strips of plot and characterization, that is simply bad business. Nobody wants to be told that the narrative they've just been watching is a horrible lie. The only way out of that is to watch the horrible ramifications of (http://xkcd.com/693/) being ripped right out of one reality and brought back to another. And we've kind of already had that. (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0889.html)

Third, Dorukan isn't a major illusionist. Or at least from what we know. This is another reason that retconning stuff is bad. If you go back that far...there is no plot. So...how do we know that that's what the runes do?

Fourth, we've seen plenty of events occur from the perspective of non-OotS members (Redcloak and Jirix for example). If only the Order has been hit by these illusion runes, then what does that mean about every event that didn't have the Order right then and there?

[Thokk_Smash]

Nice catch with the runes, but 0/10, would not read. That'd be a wholly unsatisfying ending, which convinces me that the Giant will not go this route.

[eaglewingz]

Fifth, it ruins the joke of the "Hall of Mysterious Runes".

"Hey, have you any idea what these strange symbols are?"
"I think they're just strange symbols of some kind," said Zaphod...
HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy

[JennTora]

I went back and looked at 94. I don't see runes, just sulphuric gas the causes brain damage...

[Thokk_Smash]

I went back and looked at 94. I don't see runes, just sulphuric gas the causes brain damage...

They're on the bottom of one of the panels, instead of the top. It's when the goblin says something like, "The hallway of Easy Encounters"

[Porthos]

You can see Dorukan's rune trap activating in comic 94. 885-890 was just foreshadowing that such traps exist and can cause one to see an entire lifetime. The upshot of the whole strip is that in their fantasy dream they have learned to work as a team, so when they bust down the door and attack Xykon for real, Belkar doesn't blow his post, Roy has his mageslaying feat to take down Xykon and Redcloak for real, V uses battlefield control spells to manage the zombie and goblin hordes, they recover Haley before the fight because they have learned not to split the party, and Elan knows not to press the self destruct rune.

Durkon comes out of the fantasy with no character growth and so acts exactly the same.

I for one get the joke here and applaud it. :smallamused:

[Thokk_Smash]

I for one get the joke here and applaud it. :smallamused:

Eh, I figured it was a joke of some kind, but humor doesn't always translate over the internet. Again, though, good on the OP for connecting those dots.

[Porthos]

Eh, I figured it was a joke of some kind, but humor doesn't always translate over the internet. Again, though, good on the OP for connecting those dots.

*thinks about the phrase 'Don't Explain The Joke'*
*thinks*
*decides to anyway* :smalltongue:

Unless I very much miss my guess it is a slight parody of all of the "Are They Still In A Dream?" threads this board has been seeing ever since they left Girard's Dreamscape.

But even beyond the parody angle, as you say, picking out the detail in #94 is a really good catch. The character analysis was pretty good, as well. The dig at Durkon really was the best bit, in a way.

What can I say? It worked for me.

[martianmister]

So, whole "the gate" thing is not real then? That's a good thing for the world.

[Sylian]

So, whole "the gate" thing is not real then? That's a good thing for the world.No, it is real, since Start of Darkness occurred before strip #94.

[137beth]

Guys? They never got to 94, they were already in an illusion!

See, if it were for real, then strip 54 would have shown us something more rumbleworthy (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0054.html). What the runes Elan, Roy and Haley touched actually did was activate an illusion. Roy got his wish-fulfillment when Haley rolled a natural 20 and he got to beat up someone who looked like Elan.

[Porthos]

Guys? They never got to 94, they were already in an illusion!

See, if it were for real, then strip 54 would have shown us something more rumbleworthy (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0054.html). What the runes Elan, Roy and Haley touched actually did was activate an illusion. Roy got his wish-fulfillment when Haley rolled a natural 20 and he got to beat up someone who looked like Elan.

Nah, that was real. The very next strip, however... (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0054.html) :smallwink:

I mean, do you really think Nale made the appropriate Spellcraft check to decipher what those runes really meant? Sure sign of a fantasy if I ever heard one. :smallamused:

[Kornaki]

The rune trap is set by Dorukan... we already know that he has stuff set up in his mountain specifically for good aligned adventurers, so this could be another one. It recognizes that they will lose the fight for the gate and so prepares them by allowing them to live out this adventure so they are ready to beat Xykon for real in their first try.

The point being that the overarching story about the gates and the snarl could be real and this is Dorukan's way of informing them (along with getting them prepped for battle)

[Thokk_Smash]

The rune trap is set by Dorukan... we already know that he has stuff set up in his mountain specifically for good aligned adventurers, so this could be another one. It recognizes that they will lose the fight for the gate and so prepares them by allowing them to live out this adventure so they are ready to beat Xykon for real in their first try.

The point being that the overarching story about the gates and the snarl could be real and this is Dorukan's way of informing them (along with getting them prepped for battle)

If they're trapped in runes like Girard's, then why haven't one of Xykon's mooks just coup de grace'd them yet? They were in Girard's illusion for a few hours, and they specifically note that the Draketooths could have killed them off easily in that time. And there's been at least a year and a half of in-comic time since Dorukon's Castle and now; gotta be at least an hour of phantasm-time, if they're in one.

[Kornaki]

If they're trapped in runes like Girard's, then why haven't one of Xykon's mooks just coup de grace'd them yet? They were in Girard's illusion for a few hours, and they specifically note that the Draketooths could have killed them off easily in that time. And there's been at least a year and a half of in-comic time since Dorukon's Castle and now; gotta be at least an hour of phantasm-time, if they're in one.

They were in the secret teenager passageway, and their guides either ran off to do Good elsewhere or is trapped in the runes with them, probably dreaming about getting into the Evil Ivy League

[DeliaP]

I have a theory that the illusion actually began in Panel 1 of Strip 1. Nothing that has happened since is real. From the "Favourite Goblin thread":


Sleeping Goblin

My theory on voting for Sleeping Goblin is that he's not actually sleeping at all. That's not V's spell, it's Sleeping Goblin's. He's actually an Epic level Illusionist (he's not really a goblin, he's not even male) and he's trapped the OOTS in an Epic level Illusion.

So everything from Panel 2 onwards for the remaining #908 strips is just an extraordinarily elaborate and mind bogglingly complicated phantasm, as Sleeping Goblin runs the party through all sorts of different scenarios in order to figure out what alignments they have. Sleeping Goblin is even interceding in the illusion from time to time, to keep it going. As O-Chul.

I mean, isn't it just a give away, that immediately after Sleeping Goblin casts his spell the rules change??

[Solse]

It probably won't happen, but if it did, I'd actually consider it a satisfying ending.

[DeliaP]

So, whole "the gate" thing is not real then? That's a good thing for the world.
No, it is real, since Start of Darkness occurred before strip #94.

Hmm... SoD spoiler ahead...


Picture this: once upon a time there was a dark haired teenage boy, who deeply loved his pet dog. Unfortunately he had mental health problems and his parents had let him play a dangerously occult game called "Dungeons and Dragons". His parents realised it was a problem and had taken it away recently so he was mad at them (he'd also recently first read the X-Men comics, and couldn't see what was wrong with Magneto).

When his pet dog died, he was so heartbroken that he retreated into an hallucinatory fantasy, where he had innate magic powers that could bring his beloved pet back. In this fantasy he decided to give himself the name Xykon...


Everything but Panel 1 of SoD is a lie.

[martianmister]

No, it is real, since Start of Darkness occurred before strip #94.

Nope, it's a prequel, occurred after strip #94. Roy and Elan just made that up to give their villains some backstory.

[Newwby]

For the love of Thor I hope the strip doesn't pull a Dallas (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AllJustADream).

[mattie_p]

It's like a shared illusion. Where many people can see it, and it plays out as if on screens around the world, or, perhaps, in book form - hundreds and thousands of people caught up in one mass illusion, discussing it every day!

Nah, couldn't happen. :smallwink:

[Rob Roy]

Hmm... SoD spoiler ahead...


Picture this: once upon a time there was a dark haired teenage boy, who deeply loved his pet dog. Unfortunately he had mental health problems and his parents had let him play a dangerously occult game called "Dungeons and Dragons". His parents realised it was a problem and had taken it away recently so he was mad at them (he'd also recently first read the X-Men comics, and couldn't see what was wrong with Magneto).

When his pet dog died, he was so heartbroken that he retreated into an hallucinatory fantasy, where he had innate magic powers that could bring his beloved pet back. In this fantasy he decided to give himself the name Xykon...


Everything but Panel 1 of SoD is a lie.

Everything that's happened since the Snarl destroyed the first world has been an attempt by Thor's mind to comes to term with being unmade. Nothing has happened since before creation

[Porthos]

Everything that's happened since the Snarl destroyed the first world has been an attempt by Thor's mind to comes to term with being unmade. Nothing has happened since before creation

Actually nothing in the comic has EVER happened. In fact, it's all happened after the events depicted here (http://www.wizards.com/global/images/rpga_hq_polyffs1_picMain_en.gif). The DM simply made him change the names of Fighty Stabsalot to Belkar Bitterleaf and McCleric to Durkon Thundershield after the other player freaked out. :smalltongue:

[Newwby]

Actually it's all just the Snarl attempting to rationalize the threads of logic being woven in to existence around it.

[Finn Solomon]

We're going to have the 'still trapped in a illusion' argument all the way up till the final strip, aren't we?

[Porthos]

We're going to have the 'still trapped in a illusion' argument all the way up till the final strip, aren't we?

We'll see people stop asking if they are still trapped in an illusion once V breaks them out using his Complete and Total Ultimate Arcane Power. :smalltongue:

[TheYell]

I'll believe it if they take another look through the Rift and see the Buddha.

[Emulgator]

Your whole life is an illusion, and I exist only to post that.
You can wake up now.

[Ghost Nappa]

Your whole life is an illusion, and I exist only to post that.
You can wake up now.

See this is why I immediately tried to shut down the OP.

We're getting into Solipsism.


Quick, someone needs to philosophically disprove Solipsism.

[Gift Jeraff]

Actually nothing in the comic has EVER happened. In fact, it's all happened after the events depicted here (http://www.wizards.com/global/images/rpga_hq_polyffs1_picMain_en.gif). The DM simply made him change the names of Fighty Stabsalot to Belkar Bitterleaf and McCleric to Durkon Thundershield after the other player freaked out. :smalltongue:

I hope we get a prequel explaining why Doug and Jim changed their names to Rich and Nale.