Will we be seeing...

[Khoran]

...a zombie Roy? I mean, Xykon has shown that he is able to create dead imidiatly after he kills something, so do you think that he would just fly by and animate some dead around the battle field and happen to animate Roy?

[jindra34]

i hope not...

[the_tick_rules]

No way. Roy has too many HD for the low zombie spells, plus i doubt the OOTS will go that dark. Plus we're unsure Roy is dead, maybe he's in negatives.

[Assassinfox]

No way. Roy has too many HD for the low zombie spells, plus i doubt the OOTS will go that dark. Plus we're unsure Roy is dead, maybe he's in negatives.

X Eyes = Dead.

[jindra34]

No way. Roy has too many HD for the low zombie spells, plus i doubt the OOTS will go that dark. Plus we're unsure Roy is dead, maybe he's in negatives.

He is dead... as dead as Eugene, as dead as Shojo, as dead as well ELvis... you get the idea dead, he aint getting up any time soon...

[RMS Oceanic]

Um, he has X's for eyes. When Elan was in negatives, his eyes were just closed. Roy is Dead Dead, much as that pains me.

This said, I agree he won't get caught up in the mass animate spells Redcloak sent out clerics to cast as, as ttr said, he has at least 13HD, far too many. If Redcloak finds and recognises him, however, then it could happen.

But dangit, I hope not!

[Assassinfox]

Maybe Roy will come back as a Swordwraith!

[OmadaZero]

I highly doubt he's going to be made into an undead, as interesting a twist as it might be. It would be a little too dark for my tastes personally. However, I do think that Redcloak has the power to do it due to his ability to create Death Knights, Eyes of Fear and Flame, and Hecuvas. He certainly has the power to raise him, but I think something will stop that from happening.

[jindra34]

I highly doubt he's going to be made into an undead, as interesting a twist as it might be. It would be a little too dark for my tastes personally. However, I do think that Redcloak has the power to do it due to his ability to create Death Knights, Eyes of Fear and Flame, and Hecuvas. He certainly has the power to raise him, but I think something will stop that from happening.

Or upon being raised he contiues where he left off... aka trying to kill Xykon...

[Revlid]

Redcloak will try to raise him, only to inadvertantly break the amulet (or more likely, the MitD will) summoning Celia, who will spirit Roy's body away for resurrection.

Or something.

[SPoD]

No way. Roy has too many HD for the low zombie spells

Hit Dice from class levels don't count for Animate Dead's limit, only monster HD. Roy would be animated as a 2-HD zombie, same as any commoner.

[OmadaZero]

Hit Dice from class levels don't count for Animate Dead's limit, only monster HD. Roy would be animated as a 2-HD zombie, same as any commoner.

Looks like I need to brush up on my spell lore. Good one! However, knowing Redcloak, don't you think he'd want to raise him as something a little more... deadly? I mean, why have just another zombie when you can have an undead minion capable of all the stuff Roy was?

[Brickman]

I could see Redcloak (and only Redcloak, because it only works plotwise if it was intentional) finding his body and animating it for the sole sake of making sure he can't be resurrected, then just throwing him into the endless ranks of undead as another anonymous zombie. I do not expect to see zombie-Roy do anything special, partially because it is just his body but his soul/spirit/mind/whatever the hell counts in DnD is no longer there and partially because it's too cliche and a fairly silly cliche at that. But it'd be an effective way of making sure he can't be revived.

[Lyinginbedmon]

Zombie-body-Roy versus Ghost-spirit-Roy would certainly be an interesting storyline...

EDIT: That poses an interesting idea actually. A spellcaster of sufficient power and ability kills himself and becomes a ghost. He then animates his own corpse as part of his unholy workforce. Feasible? The heck I know, but it's a great plot!

Durkon: "Quick! Kill the cleric!"
Belkar: "With pleasure!" #stabs#
Zombie: "Hurk!" #Ghost casts lightning bolt#
Haley: "Does "Hurk" count as a verbal component?"

[Stevenson]

I could see Redcloak (and only Redcloak, because it only works plotwise if it was intentional) finding his body and animating it for the sole sake of making sure he can't be resurrected, then just throwing him into the endless ranks of undead as another anonymous zombie. I do not expect to see zombie-Roy do anything special, partially because it is just his body but his soul/spirit/mind/whatever the hell counts in DnD is no longer there and partially because it's too cliche and a fairly silly cliche at that. But it'd be an effective way of making sure he can't be revived.

Yes, it would be a very effective way to avoid Roy being revived.

Too effective.

Redcloak may be smarter than Xykon, but he still isn't a metagamer. Also, why would he want to prevent Roy's ressurection? He doesn't think they'll be able to, since I'm fairly certain Redcloak thinks that Xykon's forces will win. He shouldn't feel the need to waste spells (that he might not have prepared-he did all the super undead raising beforehand for a reason, I assume.) for an eventuality that he doesn't believe will be reached.

Clever, redcloak may be, but a metagame thinker he is not.


Besides, when has anyone in this comic been competent enough to have a scheme like that?

Besides, I don't think this story has it in it to go doing stuff like that.

[Lyinginbedmon]

Since any of them realised that there are definitive rules running their lives, and since Redcloak utilised the fact that there are lots of undead that are human skeletons and therefore identical to Xykon, and since a very specific dwarf and shadowdancer pair realised they were in a webcomic without shadows

[mikeejimbo]

He is dead... as dead as Eugene, as dead as Shojo, as dead as well ELvis... you get the idea dead, he aint getting up any time soon...

I disagree. Elvis is simply undercover and running the country as one of the key members of the Council of Foreign Relations. He is of course, also an Illuminatus, since the Illuminati secretly controls the CFR and they chose Elvis because when he was abducted by aliens he was given telepathic control powers.

Naturally, that wasn't Roy that died, it was a Roy clone sent to distract and confuse Xykon. And who made the Roy clone, you ask?

Naturally, Elvis.

[Studoku]

The fourth wall has a very high break DC(I think it's triple figures) so it requires epic levels or circumstance bonuses because it's funny.

[BobTheDog]

That Elvis, always messing around where he's not needed or wanted.

Though I just had a vision... OotS goes into a tavern and meet a famous bard. Sivle!!

[Kreistor]

Hobgoblins make better Zombies and Skeletons than humans, since their Dex score (from racial mods) give them 2 better Dex. But, then, that's one fewer hobgoblin whose corpse isn't desecrated, so the hobs may animate Roy first anyway.

The question is: who saw Roy fall and who can do something about it? I foresee a corpse rescue squad -- Elan, Haley, and Durkon at least, but maybe joined by Belkar.

[13_CBS]

Here's a post I made on another thread (which I deleted after finding out that there was another thread just like it)

So, what if Roy gets turned into an undead creature?

This seems somewhat plausible because of several reasons:

1) Roy's a pretty powerful fighter. A 13thish level character is nothing to sneeze at. Thus, it does not seem unreasonable that an evil creature (probably from Xykon's side) makes Roy into an undead that can retain all of Roy's abilities and hit points (I don't play D&D so I don't know of an undead that can do this), thus getting itself a high level undead creature. If Redcloak or the others find Roy's corpse before the Azurites do, I wouldn't highly doubt that they'd at least try to do SOMETHING to his body.

2) Roy's body seems to have landed outside. Why? If it was inside Azure City, I'd highly doubt we'd be able to see mountains; instead, we'd see walls and/or buildings. The body's not on the wall either, since we'd see battlements and/or combatants going at it. Also, Roy was on a flying dragon at the time, and there was no evidence that he and Xykon were inside AC parameters when Xykon nuked the dragon.

3) It doesn't look like Celia's talisman will be broken anytime soon. It did survive a long fall and a desperate fighter, after all.

So, we combine 3 things: a tempting, potentially powerful corpse + the corpse's availability + no further assisstance from Roy's friends and allies. To add a cherry on top, it'd make a neat plot hook if Roy got turned undead and the rest of the Order tried to save him from damnation (or it'd make some great comedy if Roy ended up retaining everything except for a living body and thus complains about his putrid, rotting body).

Any thoughts? Comments?

P.S: Does anyone notice how hard Roy's head is? It shattered stone! Without exploding!

[Tredrick]

Yes.

Belkar will go to his corpse and loot the sword and other decent magic items, as well as cut a bit off to carry so the MoJ does not trigger. Roy will then be animated. The animated, undead Roy will be destroyed unknowingly by Durkon.

Hinjo will later remove the MoJ from Belkar and the OotS will lament that the body is destroyed and they cannot raise/resurrect him. Belkar then will provide the organ he has (disturbingly) preserved allowing Roy to return.

[Shott]

I still hope that instead of undead, Roy comes back as a warforged or something else cyborg-like. Don't know if it's possible, but that's what I'm hoping for.

[mikeejimbo]

I still hope that instead of undead, Roy comes back as a warforged or something else cyborg-like. Don't know if it's possible, but that's what I'm hoping for.

We have the technology magic. We can rebuild him, make him better than he was before...

[Brickman]

Interesting idea: Maybe, instead of leaving him dead or making some silly quest for diamonds (sure, it works in DnD, but in storytelling that won't fly--what symbolic role do diamonds play?), Redcloak, wanting to make sure they can't ever revive him, animates Roy and then instructs the zombie to go wander off to one of the corners of the earth so they'll never find him. I'm sure he knows at least one undead that doesn't need to eat and is fast, so if he instructs it to flee any combat it could in his mind survive indefinitely and they could never use even a no-body-required resurrection device on Roy. Then the "quest" to get Roy back would be a respectable quest to find his body instead of a silly quest for diamonds.

Of course, I still think he's dead, but I'm liking the idea of Redcloak animating him to get him out of the way more and more.

[Assassinfox]

Interesting idea: Maybe, instead of leaving him dead or making some silly quest for diamonds (sure, it works in DnD, but in storytelling that won't fly--what symbolic role do diamonds play?), Redcloak, wanting to make sure they can't ever revive him, animates Roy and then instructs the zombie to go wander off to one of the corners of the earth so they'll never find him. I'm sure he knows at least one undead that doesn't need to eat and is fast, so if he instructs it to flee any combat it could in his mind survive indefinitely and they could never use even a no-body-required resurrection device on Roy. Then the "quest" to get Roy back would be a respectable quest to find his body instead of a silly quest for diamonds.

Of course, I still think he's dead, but I'm liking the idea of Redcloak animating him to get him out of the way more and more.

Unless Redcloak animates him as an intelligent undead, they could still resurrect him without the body.

[BardicLasher]

We have the technology magic. We can rebuild him, make him better than he was before...

But we don't want to spend a lot of money.

[bluish_wolf]

Interesting idea: Maybe, instead of leaving him dead or making some silly quest for diamonds (sure, it works in DnD, but in storytelling that won't fly--what symbolic role do diamonds play?), Redcloak, wanting to make sure they can't ever revive him, animates Roy and then instructs the zombie to go wander off to one of the corners of the earth so they'll never find him. I'm sure he knows at least one undead that doesn't need to eat and is fast, so if he instructs it to flee any combat it could in his mind survive indefinitely and they could never use even a no-body-required resurrection device on Roy. Then the "quest" to get Roy back would be a respectable quest to find his body instead of a silly quest for diamonds.

Of course, I still think he's dead, but I'm liking the idea of Redcloak animating him to get him out of the way more and more.

You do realize that Resurrection creates a new body entirely, right? The fact that there is an undead Roy running around wouldn't effect it. As long as they have a piece of his hair or some of his blood or something. If they have True Resurrection, they wouldn't even need that.

[mikeejimbo]

But we don't want to spend a lot of money.

That's a good point. Even 25,000 gp worth of diamonds is cheaper than one million gp.

[BardicLasher]

That's a good point. Even 25,000 gp worth of diamonds is cheaper than one million gp.

Let alone SIX Million Gold Pieces.

[mikeejimbo]

Let alone SIX Million Gold Pieces.

Of course, but that's before factoring in the gold/dollar exchange and inflation. :smallwink:

[Mewtarthio]

Yes, it would be a very effective way to avoid Roy being revived.

Too effective.

Redcloak may be smarter than Xykon, but he still isn't a metagamer. Also, why would he want to prevent Roy's ressurection? He doesn't think they'll be able to, since I'm fairly certain Redcloak thinks that Xykon's forces will win. He shouldn't feel the need to waste spells (that he might not have prepared-he did all the super undead raising beforehand for a reason, I assume.) for an eventuality that he doesn't believe will be reached.

Clever, redcloak may be, but a metagame thinker he is not.


Besides, when has anyone in this comic been competent enough to have a scheme like that?

Besides, I don't think this story has it in it to go doing stuff like that.

A) Redcloak ignores the fourth wall like everyone else. I recall him explicitly researching new types of undead in Libris Mortis and the BoVD.

B) Redcloak's smarter than you give him credit for. If Shojo were evil, he'd be able to come up with that kind of plot, so why not Redcloak?

C) Don't tell me you can't see Redcloak twisting Roy's soul into an intelligent undead just to spite him.