Azure City :(

[Orchestration]

OK So really now Azure City is no longer part of the story, we will move onto the next gate and it will be forgotten about.

Is anyone else disgusted by this?

It is a city of good people, they now have no homes, have lost all there belongings and have nowhere to go.

And now all of that is going to be forgotten.

I want to see the city taken back by the good guys and the force of evil pushed back, I just know it is not going to happen though.

If I was playing in this DnD game I would be so pissed at my DM right now :smallmad:

[Cade Shadow]

Azure City will be liberated....just not immediately.

If you spend all of your effort undoing the effects of your villain's failed plan, then you can't make sure that he doesn't succeed on his next. the Azurites have other places to go, family outside the city. they will live.


Aaaand this is fantasy, everything will be rebuilt in no less than six months...unlike real life.

[Miraqariftsky]

Reeeaaally?

I don't think they will be forgotten. Have you perhaps forgotten that Daimyo Kubota and his fellow nobles have a few thousand fighters, samurai and paladins at their beck and call aboard the Azurite Armada?

Well, it can't be technically called an armada because probably not even half the ships that the general population of Azure City escaped on were actual naval vessels. But still, when they do decide to come back, probably when Hinjo has formed a last, desperate stand along with a few survivors and the OotS, there will be a hell of a reckoning.

Yo, besides, this is a comic parody/satire of D&D.

[Kreistor]

"A few thousand"? Family retinues normally number in the tens, not thousands. Care to demonstrate where you got that number?

And they won't be Samurai except in name. All the paladins died in the Throne Room. You're talking about warriors, and though they may be higher level on average, and maybe the nobles have access to magics for support, we are still talking about 20000 hobgoblins, all of which are veterans thanks to this victory. Noble retinues are bodyguards and protectors of houses, not front line soldiers. The have the wrong type of training for taking a city. (Oh, and I'm not forgetting Ninja, but Ninja aren't great fighters and Team Evil has their own Ninja to counter the nobles' Ninja.)

The nobles may have taken enough cash to hire mercenaries to take the city back, but by the time they could get there, Azure City would be stripped bare and dead. There's nothing to recapture now. The money is better spent invested in a new city than tryng to retake a dead one.

The Giant needs Xykon and Redcloak to pause while the OotS recover and have a side adventure or three. If they're L13 now, they need 5-7 more levels by the end of the strip and there are only two more gate. While the OotS are adventuring to power up, Xykon can't be actively headed for the next gate, so he needs them to stay in AC for a whlie, and they need an army at the end to move on Girard's Gate.

So, I find it highly unlikely that any attack on AC will be successful until after Team Evil leaves of their own accord.

[Kurald Galain]

a few thousand fighters, samurai and paladins at their beck and call aboard the Azurite Armada?
I seriously doubt that any paladin worthy of the title would hide away on a boat somewhere while his home city was being invaded by goblins.

[Ancalagon]

OK So really now Azure City is no longer part of the story, we will move onto the next gate and it will be forgotten about.
Hrm... no? OotS is still there, Hinjo is still there, Xykon and Team Evil are still there... how do you come to the conclusion we are done with Azure City? Maybe we are, but you cannot know that.



Is anyone else disgusted by this?
No.



If I was playing in this DnD game I would be so pissed at my DM right now :smallmad:
So, you do not like good (awesome!) storytelling? Well, your choice.

[LordVader]

Well, since the Hobbos are all leaving, the survivors will put out a message to the fleet, they'll come back, and begin the process of rebuilding the city.

[Kreistor]

Uhm... 466?

They're not leaving. They're staying while Redcloak and Xykon study the other gates.

[Surfing HalfOrc]

Well, since the Hobbos are all leaving, the survivors will put out a message to the fleet, they'll come back, and begin the process of rebuilding the city.

They are? I didn't see any hobbos outside of the gates, heading AWAY from the city. Xykon is upset that he didn't get the gate, and is ready to move on to the next, but Redcloak has his own agenda...

Now it's a problem of logistics instead of tactics. Redcloak brought warm (and cold, dead) bodies, but minimal supplies. The hobbos raided for supplies on the way TO the city, and can live on the stores of the city for a week or two, but then what? A city that size needs a LOT of supplies, every day. Redcloak cut the number of hobbos he needs to feed by 1/3rd, but still needs to feed 20,000 soldiers. And with his new concern for the hobbos, he's not going to solve the logistics problem by killing all his hobbos to turn them into zombies and ghouls.

I think Redcloak is going to allow his hobbos to loot all they want, while looking for information that might not exist. Once Redcloak is convinced that there is no information, or he finds the information Shinjo had hidden under his mattress, he will be ready to move on. RC will decide that he doesn't need, nor can he support, another major force, and sends the bulk of his army back home with the sack of Azure City.

Damiyo Kubota will return, and may force the nobles to give Hinjo a vote of No Confidence, and attempt to remove Hinjo as the ruler of Azure City. Hinjo will rally the remaining paladins, and will retain power, but just barely.

The story will also shift to Roy in the afterlife, same as Elan in jail/Elan and Thog returning with Julio Scroundrel. Roy and Miko will meet in the Waiting Room of Celestial, where Miko will come to realise that she was wrong about Roy. Roy will be summoned back by Durkon, and may offer to put in the good word with Hinjo.

I still have no clue where V is, or whether or not RC and Xykon will gank Shojo's junk, or how long it will take. (I wrote it, you read it. Live with it.) But we seem to be within spitting distance of strip #500, which is where I put the end of this partcular story arc.

Those are my best guesses.

[LordVader]

They may be staying. Since Xykon is in charge, unless Redcloak can persuade him to stay, he's going to leave, and Redcloak will have to follow. And it didn't seem like Xykon was too convinced, judging by the last panel.

[David Argall]

Have you perhaps forgotten that Daimyo Kubota and his fellow nobles have a few thousand fighters, samurai and paladins at their beck and call aboard the Azurite Armada?


The accent is on few, as in under 5000 total, and likely well under. Any higher number makes the idea of leaving in the first place a silly idea. They would have been able to stand and fight and win. Now they are outnumber at least 4-1 and don't have a wall to stand behind. No. The Armada is going to stay out of the way of the hobs. They will lose any fight overwhelmingly.

[mohair_ninja]

Azure City is still part of the story, but OotS will leave it as soon as possible (taking Roy's corpse by the way). I hope they move to some less blue place, because I have to admit that I'm tired of azure city, azure sky, azure paladins etc.
Good that's hobbos are orange :smallbiggrin:

[Ithekro]

:smalleek: The hobbo's can always salt the meat they just slaughtered. Salted human might be a good thing for their dietary needs.

(eww)

[Corwin Weber]

:smalleek: The hobbo's can always salt the meat they just slaughtered. Salted human might be a good thing for their dietary needs.

(eww)

It was my understanding that unlike most goblinoids, hobgoblins actually have cannibalism taboos and frequently extend them to other 'people' races.

Goblins will kill you and eat you. Hobgoblins will usually just kill you.

Granted I have no idea if this applies to the OOTS world, but still...

[PlasticSoldier]

They could last for about a month on that


Proof

Assumptions:
1. There are 10,000 human corpses.
2. Hobbos need 2 pounds of meat a day.
3. 20,000 hobbos
4. The meat is prevented from rotting
5. Humans are an average of 120 pounds

Calcuations

A. 10,000*120= 1,200,000 lbs of meat
B. 20,000*2= 40,000 lbs/day
C. 1.2 mil /40,000 equals 30 days

Of course given 30 days the genius redcloak would come up with something Such as fishing or raiding or trading

[CardinalFang]

I'm sure there are at least some agricultural sections of the city which aren't destroyed, like fishing wharfs. And the hobgoblins were self-sustaining in their original camps, so it stands to reason that they could work something out pretty easily.

[Kreistor]

Well, I'm not going to assume hobgoblins are cannibals.

Cities don't produce food. They make goods and items and things, but food grows on farms or in nearby bodies of water.

The hobgoblins may have done some damage to the nearby food production, but it's probably not significant. With 10000 effective defenders, that means more than 20000 overall inhabitants of the city, meaning the region should be capable of sustaining the entire hob army. It does, in the end, hinge on whether Burlew's hobs are murderous and cruel or only moderately worse than average humans. That will determine if they kill their own food production or enslave it.

[SPoD]

Just a note: Hobgoblins eating humans is NOT cannibalism. Hobgoblins eating goblins would be. Redcloak made it clear that humans and (hob)goblins are separate species; cannibalism is eating your own species.

And no, I'm not "disgusted" by the fall of Azure City. The only reason we know that they are "good people" is because we were told it. I don't feel any emotional attachment to a city full of nameless vaguely-defined do-gooders. I feel bad for Hinjo that his city fell, but I don't feel bad for the city itself.

It seems strange to me that some people get upset whenever something bad happens to someone that has the GOOD label on their forehead. They must be terribly disappointed in their daily lives if they keep expecting only good things to happen to good people.

[Murongo]

Presumably they had supply lines all the way up- otherwise they would have starved long before the battle. After all, these are hobgoblins, military discipline guys, not raging barbarian idiotic basic goblins.

[BlueWizard]

If I was playing in this DnD game I would be so pissed at my DM right now :smallmad:

Then you haven't had a DM that made you fear for your PC's life. Too many times in modern D&D, the games are run by uber-powerful PCs with no weaknesses. This will only make our heros stronger, and remember that most of the inhabitants were sent away and saved.

I think this was a great Epic war tale. Americans are too attached to getting what they want in their endings. I thought for sure I had the story figured out, the Azurites would win and save the day. Boy, was I wrong! Surprises make things fun!

[WutAmI]

Just a note: Hobgoblins eating humans is NOT cannibalism. Hobgoblins eating goblins would be. Redcloak made it clear that humans and (hob)goblins are separate species; cannibalism is eating your own species.

And no, I'm not "disgusted" by the fall of Azure City. The only reason we know that they are "good people" is because we were told it. I don't feel any emotional attachment to a city full of nameless vaguely-defined do-gooders. I feel bad for Hinjo that his city fell, but I don't feel bad for the city itself.

It seems strange to me that some people get upset whenever something bad happens to someone that has the GOOD label on their forehead. They must be terribly disappointed in their daily lives if they keep expecting only good things to happen to good people.
as I define it, cannibalism is eating the body of ANY sentient species, just as murder is killing a member of any sentient species.

[TheNovak]

I think this was a great Epic war tale. Americans are too attached to getting what they want in their endings!

As a proud American, I join you in mocking other, lesser Americans who expect happy endings. Nyah-nyah!

Losers!

[Xianio]

Oh please, you gotta grow up guy. Rich isn't writing a childhood story here where the good guys always win and the bad guys always lose. It's a great story and it would be cheese and a half if you could predict the outcome solely upon who's good and who's evil.

If you want a happy ending after everything go read some mother goose, if you want a well told and well thought out story which we can all identify with as it mimics life to a degree you gotta accept that in life good guys don't always win and neither do they in great stories. :)

[SPoD]

as I define it, cannibalism is eating the body of ANY sentient species, just as murder is killing a member of any sentient species.

That's great, but that doesn't necessarily make it so in the comic. Especially since I'm pretty sure from what we've seen that the humans don't consider killing goblins to be murder, they consider it to be pest extermination.

[Spiryt]

Azure Town is burning down,
Burning down, Burning down,

Azure Town is burning down,
My fair goblin.

[Orchestration]

First of all, you are arrogant to assume that I am American, I am not.

Secondly how is the slaughter and displacement of large amounts of people “good story telling”, all it succeeds in doing is depressing me.

I am probably being over emotional but I empathise with the people of Azure City, they have lost everything and they are in all likelihood going to be forgotten. I want to see justice for them.

Some of you say it is better to go start anew, but what happens when the same thing happens again, do you keep falling back until there is nowhere left to run? People need to make a stand and push back the darkness or in the end they will end up with nothing. (Sorry in Paladin RP Mode right now).

If I were a PC in this setting, I would acknowledge that at this point in time there is nothing I could do for Azure City, however there is no damned way I would let my DM forget about it, once the “campaign” was over and the big bad guy was dead, I would have my character try to recruit an army, take back Azure City, rebuild and then take the fight to the Goblins making sure that such a thing would not happen again.

[Basalock]

Azure Town is burning down,
Burning down, Burning down,

Azure Town is burning down,
My fair goblin.

you get a cookie:smallbiggrin:

[slayerx]

It's good storytelling because it's believable and BECAUSE it makes you feel so emotional. Making you feel strong emotion, be it good or bad, for what has happened is a mark of good story telling at work; hell it's even better when those emotions have a wide range of good to bad. In Life, bad things happen to good poeple, it is never the case that the good guys always win; the good guys often get screwed over while the bad guys take their share of victories, and many times good poeple never see justice. The good guys always winning makes the story seem bland and makes it predictable.

[Grasilich]

Have you perhaps forgotten that Daimyo Kubota and his fellow nobles have a few thousand fighters, samurai and paladins at their beck and call aboard the Azurite Armada?

Xykon and Redcloak could probably kill all those guys by themselves. Twice.

[Ar-Sakal]

I am not sad that the fascist state of Azure City was rightfully destroyed by the very people it terrorized with lame and unverified excuses.

Hiding under their pretense of "Lawful Good", AC executed massive genocide campaigns against non-human-elf-dwarven-gnomish-halfling populations with their hypocritical assumptions of right and fair. Their paramilitary forces, also known as Sapphire Guard (hated "blueshirts"!!!) did acts as horrible as the GESTAPO or any other organization of the similar caliber.

All hail the fall of a Dictatorial country!!!!!

The only thing I am sad is that this country's biggest war criminals, AKA as Lord Shojo and Miko Miyazaki, aren't alive to face reckoning. But they will, one day, they will!!!!

(LMAO)

[Darkstar90]

Good story telling isn't always the good guys win, because that would be boring. Fact is, good guys die. My pc's have died because they refused to give up against a Ancient red because he needed to buy time for the group to escape, and he did just that. It's a good story if it makes you involved, makes you want to punch/hug the writer that matters, not that the good guys win and happy huggy time commences. It'd be nice if they always did, but it would have no realism.

[Recursive]

If I were a PC in this setting, I would acknowledge that at this point in time there is nothing I could do for Azure City, however there is no damned way I would let my DM forget about it...
Agreed...but I don't understand why you are assuming that Rich will forget about it.

When a detail as minor as Elan's gender-changing belt can resurface as an important plot point 200 strips later, there is no reason at all to think that Rich will forget the existence of a half-million refugees, led by one of the most sympathetic NPCs of the entire cast. (Or, if the refugees are led by scheming nobles who maneuver Hinjo into exile and disgrace, then it's Hinjo himself who won't forget his obligation to return and protect them.)

You opened this thread not by expressing a hope that Azure City will be remembered, but by asking if anyone else is disgusted at the fact that it will be forgotten. You may want to rethink your assumptions rather than get angry in advance about the way you imagine the story is going to play out...

[Spiryt]

you get a cookie:smallbiggrin:

Yay! Can it be chocolate one?

[Wizzardman]

as I define it, cannibalism is eating the body of ANY sentient species, just as murder is killing a member of any sentient species.
That's great, but most definitions of cannibalism disagree with you. Cannibalism is the eating of others of your species, not the devouring of sentient beings. Otherwise, octupus, bats, and fish could not be considered cannibals, but polar bears [who generally do not eat each other] could be.

As for OotS: I kinda doubt Rich is going to bring up the food consumption of the average hobgoblin into question, let alone whether or not they enjoy a tasty roasted human or not. I don't think the hobgoblins are going to be staying put for more than a couple of weeks, so I imagine they can acquire what food they need from Azure City's storehouses and the local farms. Of course, I could be wrong.

[Milandros]

Now it's a problem of logistics instead of tactics. Redcloak brought warm (and cold, dead) bodies, but minimal supplies. The hobbos raided for supplies on the way TO the city, and can live on the stores of the city for a week or two, but then what?


Other than the large amount of fresh meat lying around, there's hunting, fishing, more raiding, using any human captives as slave labour for farming and, of course, Create Food and Water and Purify Food and Drink clerical spells - the Hobgoblins do seem to have quite a few blue-cloaked clerics aroound.

[comicadv]

You don't know if they won't be saved or forgotten.
As long as there is the internet as the Giant will type anything can happen!