Tarquin Doubles Down

[eras10]

Saw 915 and, while we've all been wondering where Ian would come back into this and expecting the answer to be "soon", some of us are confused all over again about what exactly Tarquin is up to. Best summarized example IMO from Person Man:


Wait, I'm confused.


Does Tarquin want OotS to stop Xykon from destroying reality. (So he can continue to exist, and force Elan to accept his support and tacitly accept his authority).

Or does Tarquin want to send OotS off on a fool's errand/side quest so that they're out of his way and/or leads him to Haley's dad (because he wants them dead, or just wants to capture Haley's dad and put down the rebellion that badly, or because he just wants the leader of the possible rebellion and/or OotS out of the picture while he carries out his plans)?

Because the two goals seem incompatible. They have enough time to do one or the other, but not both. Unless they split the party, which seems like a good way to get them all killed. But if Tarquin just wanted them all dead (or all of them but Elan), he could do that right now with his giant army.

Deeply confused.

I should also Hat Tip Crusher, who thought of this first I now see, but was uncertain about it.

Here's my conclusion:


What really hit me was the psion and the Gate-equivalent stuff. We now know that Tarquin can teleport around entire armies and Rich made sure we know Tarquin knows that OOTS can't teleport. What does that mean?

It means that Tarquin can teleport out to Dwarven Lands to seize the final gate. Like, immediately. As soon as OOTS is gone.

By sending OOTS off on a coerced fool's errand, that buys his team valuable time to solo the dwarven gate and crush Xykon with his full adventuring party. He's come to respect OOTS. He'd prefer to seize the gate before having to deal with them barging in in mid-swoop. He is an expert at using deception to deal with threats one at a time; it's his whole M.O.

Red herrings: Invading Reptilia, acting like he was willing to teleport OOTS to .. wherever, next. Actually, the teleport offer might have been a feint to extract the location of the next gate from Roy. Still may go that way. The only weakness is I don't know if Tarquin has a way to know the gate location. But he might. I don't remember what Nale knew.

I could be wrong, of course, but the only reason it makes sense to send OOTS off away from the gate is if he doesn't want them near the gate. Why would he not want that? Because he wants it for himself. Why would he give up just because he lost *one* gate? We *know* he knows there are more of them.

I feel like this answer strongly fits Tarquin's Big-Guns behavior and move, as of the last strip, to tie down OOTS in the desert. As well as his tendency to relentlessly pursue what he's decided he wants.

Plus, I am - I hope Rich reads this -super-mega-pumped already for Team Evil vs. Tarquin's adventure party. I felt mildly cheated (well, dissapointed) out of Villain-on-villain last book. I still want it.

[The Pilgrim]

I think it's more probable that this is Tarquin's punishment to Elan for not accepting his authority (refusing teleport and complaining for the murder of Nale).

Just one of his typical (according to Nale) cruel tests.

After all, Tarquin is not really hampering the Order that much since the heroes would arrive to Kraagor's faster if they expend some days in the Empire then got beamed up there, than by traveling on foot.

Plus Tarquin needs Laurin to teleport them so he can learn the location of the last gate

[TRH]

Or, she can mind-read one of them. That works too, I'd think.

[AKA_Bait]

I'm skeptical. Tarquin's adventuring party was just severely weakened by the loss of Malak and his Psion appears to have already used two high level abilities. I'm in the dark on how psionics works, but I assume that use of something equivalent to a 9th level Gate spell twice carries a not insubstantial opportunity cost. Given both of those things, it seems unlikely that he's looking to rush off as soon as he gets OotS pointed someplace else. Of course, he arrived on the scene here and doesn't necessarily know that Team Evil has come and gone already.

That said, it seems more plausable to me that he wants the OotS distracted so that he can negotiate an alliance with Xykon. After all, he has been courting allies. (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0820.html)

[Chessalavakia]

Might it also be a test?

Will you risk the world and everything in it to save one person that may not even need saving?

[Diadem]

Tarquin is way too genre savvy to try to ally himself with Xykon. He knows that can never lead to anything good for him.

My guess is that this is a punishment for Elan not accepting help. It might even be a ploy to force him to accept help. The next strip could be him saying "Of course, I wouldn't want to come between you and saving the world. So I might be willing to forget about this arrest warrant, if you are going after the next gate right now".

[Psyren]

I'm skeptical. Tarquin's adventuring party was just severely weakened by the loss of Malak and his Psion appears to have already used two high level abilities. I'm in the dark on how psionics works, but I assume that use of something equivalent to a 9th level Gate spell twice carries a not insubstantial opportunity cost.

It does, but not as much as you think. Basically, psions use a points system; each power has a cost and points can be allocated freely rather than being restricted to "slots/level/day" like spells are. Effectively, psions can convert their low-level "slots" to higher ones.

As an example, let's assume Laurin's Wormhole is a 9th-level power, and Laurin is at the minimum level to manifest it (17.) This means that, without even taking her ability scores or items into account, she can make nearly 15 of them per day, though she wouldn't be able to do anything else. And the less wormholes she needs, the more she can do other stuff. Add in the minimum ability score to manifest it (19) and she gets an additional 2 wormholes/day from bonus PP, and her Int is likely even higher than that.

[SincroFashad]

As far as the idea of Tarquin wanting the Order out of the way so he can go solo the next gate goes: He's already stated that evil vs evil is a crapshoot, and he'd be much better off having a bonafide hero doing the work.

I highly doubt he'll throw away that sort of savvyness regardless of the reason.

-Sinc

[eras10]

My guess is that this is a punishment for Elan not accepting help. It might even be a ploy to force him to accept help. The next strip could be him saying "Of course, I wouldn't want to come between you and saving the world. So I might be willing to forget about this arrest warrant, if you are going after the next gate right now".

This would make some sense given Tarquin's personality and goals, but it has a major flaw: it would directly contradict what Tarquin just said, which was "if you, Haley and OOTS, go find and rescue Ian starting right now, he'll probably live".

If he wanted to force Elan to accept help/teleport, he would have said "if you don't want me to release these wanted posters, you'd better accept my help".
In so many words.

But he didn't say that. The deed is done. The hunters are hunting. Someone has to go save Ian, or he's going to die. Tarquin did not set this chain of events in motion by accident.

It no longer makes sense that Tarquin is trying to force OOTS to accept his help getting to the gate, because he just gave them a different goal. So this hypothesis made sense before the last strip, but now it does not.


Next:


As far as the idea of Tarquin wanting the Order out of the way so he can go solo the next gate goes: He's already stated that evil vs evil is a crapshoot, and he'd be much better off having a bonafide hero doing the work.

I highly doubt he'll throw away that sort of savvyness regardless of the reason.


This is a good point. I'm marking it for now, though, as probably part of his deception operation vs. OOTS. I'm fairly sure he doesn't want them to realize he's about to go for the last gate as soon as they leave.

Tarquin wants the gate for himself. That's consistent with his behavior. His claim that he only wants to stop other people from getting it is a classic half-truth. IMO. He might settle for that, but he'll take everything if he can get it. The man does not lack ambition.

[AKA_Bait]

Tarquin is way too genre savvy to try to ally himself with Xykon. He knows that can never lead to anything good for him.


But allying himself with the Dark Elves would be ok? I'd be willing to think that Tarquin might try to do both. First, make some sort of non-agression pact with Team Evil in case they actually do get control of the gates. Second, let Elan and the OotS go after them anyway.


It does, but not as much as you think.

Points well taken. Still, it seems to me that were he to potentially go up against Team Evil, Tarquin would want every advantage he can get, since its a toss up. Not having your spell casters at maximum effectiveness, even if slightly below, just seems more reckless than I'd think he'd go for unless he has a reason not to wait a day.

[Alcibiades]

My guess is that this is a punishment for Elan not accepting help. It might even be a ploy to force him to accept help. The next strip could be him saying "Of course, I wouldn't want to come between you and saving the world. So I might be willing to forget about this arrest warrant, if you are going after the next gate right now".

This is a possibility. The conversation has not come to a full close yet, so we're working with incomplete information. That said, I do think Tarquin's not outright lying about his agenda vis-a-vis the gates. His awareness of story tropes seems to be a genuine character trait of his and I don't think he's deceived anyone through it yet.

With respect to delaying the good guys from stopping Xykon, Tarquin probably believes in heroic timing à la Captain Scoundrél (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0392.html), in other words that the OotS will arrive in the nick of time, regardless of whether or not he keeps them occupied for a few days

[Psyren]

I'm curious as to how Tarquin would know where to go to follow Xykon anyway. Xykon has the coordinates of each gate, but Tarquin doesn't.

I mean, he does have a psion, (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/powers/traceTeleport.htm) so maybe that's how, but still. And it likely has been more than a minute since Xykon left.

[SincroFashad]

Tarquin wants the gate for himself. That's consistent with his behavior. His claim that he only wants to stop other people from getting it is a classic half-truth. IMO. He might settle for that, but he'll take everything if he can get it. The man does not lack ambition.

Does he? He was probably going to destroy this gate, because in his own words: Power I can't access is no power at all.

He very well might want a gate, but wanting and being able to get are two entirely different things. For all of his other faults, I'm pretty sure he knows that he lacks the necessary components to complete the ritual. A ritual, by the way, that he doesn't even have yet.

He has no ritual, no appropriate divine caster, and unless I'm completely misreading psions, he doesn't have an arcane caster either.

-Sinc

[eras10]

He very well might want a gate, but wanting and being able to get are two entirely different things. For all of his other faults, I'm pretty sure he knows that he lacks the necessary components to complete the ritual. A ritual, by the way, that he doesn't even have yet.

He has no ritual, no appropriate divine caster, and unless I'm completely misreading psions, he doesn't have an arcane caster either.

Reasonable points. But how confident are we that Tarquin is confident that he can't, eventually, obtain these things?

I wouldn't have expected Tarquin to try to seize the last gate personally, myself, before the recent strips, especially the last one. But, as I've said, I don't see what he's doing with OOTS than deliberately diverting them from chasing after the last gate.

And the story has recently introduced a way for him to travel across the world with an army, not to mention his adventuring team.
Just sayin'. That's a lot of chess pieces. A lot of power and capability just to be used as denouement scenery.

Let's assume for a second that, yes, he's deliberately delaying OOTS' move to the last gate, but not out to seize the last gate for himself. Why?

For me the "I just don't care if the last gate seize is delayed" is the most plausible alternative. But it feels wrong.

[BobTheDog]

I'm thinking that, since Kilkil mentions the ink is still smudgy on the Wanted poster, this is an attempt to coax Elan into accepting Tarquin's assistance/advice/authority. "I could pull the strings to help your father... If you play by my rules."

[Psyren]

The smudgy ink simply means "we came up with the plan 5 minutes ago." That doesn't mean they don't plan to go through with it.