OOTS #1270 - The Discussion Thread

[The Giant]

New comic is up.

[Fyraltari]

Well, that's confirmation that Sunny was indeed the Beholder from 1238 strips ago (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0032.html). RIP, horned bugbear theory, you weren't really credible anymore anyway.

[Hardcore]

Hm, typical way for a rogue acquire stuff. Like monsters...

[Daywalker1983]

For some reason it always makes me anxious when a Main plot could have been solved easily in retrospect.

[Shale]

Well, that's confirmation that Sunny was indeed the Beholder from 1238 strips ago (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0032.html). RIP, horned bugbear theory, you weren't really credible anymore anyway.

Awww, I was still attached to my Celestial With Glasses idea.

[Fyraltari]

Just realized this means Serini wasn't aware that Dorukan was already dead at the time.

Also nice to see the interior do the Dungeon of Dorukan in the new arstyle as well as a bit of the old outfits.

Awww, I was still attached to my Celestial With Glasses idea.

Which one was that?

[Shale]

The one who appeared in strip 664 to warn Roy that V was making bad decisions: https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0664.html

[ZhonLord]

Just realized this means Serini wasn't aware that Dorukan was already dead at the time.

This also means Serini probably assumed the Order destroyed the Gate for no reason as well, maybe even killed dorukan either by accident or intentionally. Which in turn gives more reason for her reluctance to respond to V's sendings.

[Oppolo]

In Dorukons dungeon, recruiting monsters?

Could it be?

The long awaited return?

Getting hype for Trigak(!!)

[Fan67]

What strip does he refer to?

Also great to know that Giant is alive and working! Was worried a lil bit. :mitd:

[Fyraltari]

Is there an in-universe reason for sunny not to be shooting a cone of anti-magic in the second-to-last panel despite not wearing their contact lense? Or is it purely not to obscure the OOTS crew?

The one who appeared in strip 664 to warn Roy that V was making bad decisions: https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0664.html
Oh okay.

This also means Serini probably assumed the Order destroyed the Gate for no reason as well, maybe even killed dorukan either by accident or intentionally. Which in turn gives more reason for her reluctance to respond to V's sendings.
Nah, I feel like it would have come up by now if she thought that.

[Coppercloud]

Nice callback and as always, thank you, Giant!

[Oppolo]

The flumphs were also originally from Dorukan’s dungeon, I wonder if they’ll make an appearance helping out Serini?

[Fyraltari]

The flumphs were also originally from Dorukan’s dungeon, I wonder if they’ll make an appearance helping out Serini?

Only if Serini happens to fall from a great height.

You know this to be true.

[mjasghar]

Thanks Rich

[hroþila]

Sunny was supposed to stick around before the lawyers got involved, it was in the script and all. Jones and Rodriguez ruined everything. And the worst thing is they didn't even have a case

Too realistic

[WanderingMist]

Awww, I was still attached to my Celestial With Glasses idea.

Despite the fact that she appeared in 8 panels?

[Reboot]

For some reason it always makes me anxious when a Main plot could have been solved easily in retrospect.

Eh, it wouldn't have made a difference unless Sunny managed to destroy Xykon's phylactery and/or kill Redcloak as part of the team-up. Elan not hitting the self-destruct rune on the Gate would have made a *much* bigger difference.

[Doug Lampert]

Sunny was supposed to stick around before the lawyers got involved, it was in the script and all. Jones and Rodriguez ruined everything. And the worst thing is they didn't even have a case

Too realistic

They could have just read that script to the end rather than just noticing that the eye-thing was in the next page. That would have given all the information.

[RMS Oceanic]

Long running plot!

But also no knowledge of Dorukan's fate at the time. Interesting.

[yes]

Just realized this means Serini wasn't aware that Dorukan was already dead at the time.

Or that she was in such close proximity to Xykon, who she's so deathly afraid of.

[Zhorn]

Woohoo! Giant's posting again.
Always willing to wait for them to take as much time as they need, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't getting a little anxious about the next release :smallbiggrin:

[danielxcutter]

Concrete evidence that Soon was the only one who gave half a deep-fried tanar’ri turd about the oath, in letter as well as in spirit.

Really it does seem even more likely that it was just an excuse to kick him out of the party. At least, Serini herself might not have intended that but that’s essentially how it turned out.

Yeesh.

[NCat]

its absolutely fascinating to see a view of the early chapters with the newer artstyle, though I wonder if it would be funny for if in the flashback for the dungeon and gang be depicted with the old artstyle, while sunny and serini in the new style x)

[danielxcutter]

Also wait a second, if that was her first impression of the party no wonder she has a dim view of them. They were even more of a disorganized group of random adventurers than they are now.

[Fyraltari]

Or that she was in such close proximity to Xykon, who she's so deathly afraid of.
You htink she was lying to Sunny, why?


Really it does seem even more likely that it was just an excuse to kick him out of the party. At least, Serini herself might not have intended that but that’s essentially how it turned out.

Yeesh.

No? It seems like Dorukan didn't want Serini on the premises either.

[KorvinStarmast]

Or that she was in such close proximity to Xykon, who she's so deathly afraid of. Good point.

Concrete evidence that Soon was the only one who gave half a deep-fried tanar’ri turd about the oath, in letter as well as in spirit. Yep, those chaotic party members are not reliable when it comes to making deals or keeping their word. (See Serini's "fun to lie to paladins (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1227.html)" boasting recently for additional evidence).
About the Strip:
1. In the last few weeks, the Philadelphia Phillies and the Houston Astros were in the World Series. (Astros won 4-2). One of their best hitters (the Phillies) is Bryce Harper - he bats left handed. I suspect that may have informed the side of the plate Sunny was hitting from. (Rich is from Philly). That choice may also have been made for artistic reasons in re faces to the front for the panels.
2. Reach back to strip number 0032 was not a surprise, but I like the presentation (again, really like the art style upgrades).
3. Final panel was mildly amusing, and very on point as regards Haley "and Treasure" (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0013.html). :smallcool:

[Reboot]

Concrete evidence that Soon was the only one who gave half a deep-fried tanar’ri turd about the oath, in letter as well as in spirit.

Really it does seem even more likely that it was just an excuse to kick him out of the party. At least, Serini herself might not have intended that but that’s essentially how it turned out.

Yeesh.

I mean, with the obvious exception of Actual Couple D&L, it doesn't seem the others had any actual contact - note how Serini had no idea Dorukan was dead at that point, even while she was poaching in his dungeon.

[yes]

You htink she was lying to Sunny, why?

Not at all. At the time of the flashback she already had her altercation with Xykon, and Xykon was residing in Dorokon's dungeon. If she thought Dorukon was alive, she didn't realize she was getting so close to Xykon and risking being killed or taken captive.


2. Reach back to strip number 0032 was not a surprise, but I like the presentation (again, really like the art style upgrades).

I really wish he angled it so that we got to see the lawyers in the new art style

[Jay R]

No? It seems like Dorukan didn't want Serini on the premises either.

True, but he wanted Lirian to visit. That's just as much violating the oath.

[Metastachydium]

This also means Serini probably assumed the Order destroyed the Gate for no reason as well, maybe even killed dorukan either by accident or intentionally. Which in turn gives more reason for her reluctance to respond to V's sendings.

Nope. She knows Xykon killed him (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1249.html).


True, but he wanted Lirian to visit. That's just as much violating the oath.

Yes, it is. The fact that Serini had to sneak in is, however, definitive proof that the Oath did not exist merely for the others to get rid of Soon.

[Ivrytwr]

Oh, I do love the callbacks!
Plus baseball.
Hope your break was enjoyable. We missed you Giant!

[Fyraltari]

Not at all. At the time of the flashback she already had her altercation with Xykon, and Xykon was residing in Dorokon's dungeon. If she thought Dorukon was alive, she didn't realize she was getting so close to Xykon and risking being killed or taken captive.
Dude, she tells Sunny she doesn't want Dorukan to notice them in his dungeon, therefore, she didn't know that Dorukan was already dead.

True, but he wanted Lirian to visit. That's just as much violating the oath.
So what? If the Oaths was just an excuse to get rid of Soon, he'd welcome Serini in. It looks like Soon was the only one who made absolutely no exception to the Oath, but they all broadly abided by it.

[Let'sGetKraken]

I'm glad the Giant got a break but I do hope that the plot can start moving again soon.

That said, this was a cute callback and Sunny continues to be adorable.

Edited: let a little too much frustration leak though.

[brian 333]

Haley does not strike me as the one or the other type. Both is the correct answer.

[danielxcutter]

I think it's still telling that none of them took the oath entirely seriously. Though it's possible that Dorukan used that age bonus to his Wisdom score to realize that continuing to completely flaunt the oath was a bit of a jackass thing to do, especially when Soon never broke it. Still, Lirian and Dorukan were still continuing their relationship, Girard setting his message trap to alert Serini, and Serini sneaking into Dorukan's Dungeon do show they didn't really care about the oath that much.

Also maybe Dorukan didn't want Serini on his premises for a reason outside the oath.

[yes]

Dude, she tells Sunny she doesn't want Dorukan to notice them in his dungeon, therefore, she didn't know that Dorukan was already dead.

Yes, that's what I'm saying. I'm confused about where the idea of her lying to sunny came from.

[BriarHobbit]

This was remarkably fun. The plot did not advance, but it is nice to see Elan and Sunny together. They have a good chemistry together.

[elros]

I'm glad the Giant got a break but I do hope that the plot can start moving again soon.

That said, this was a cute callback and Sunny continues to be adorable.

Edited: let a little too much frustration leak though.
I don’t want to be negative, either, but this update was basically filler.
It does remind me of the other baseball references in the series, including the mascot golem.

[danielxcutter]

Actually the "Serini didn't give a crap about the oath" might just provide an easy segway into her talking about the Scribblers.

[Halghare]

1. In the last few weeks, the Philadelphia Phillies and the Houston Astros were in the World Series. (Astros won 4-2). One of their best hitters (the Phillies) is Bryce Harper - he bats left handed. I suspect that may have informed the side of the plate Sunny was hitting from. (Rich is from Philly). That choice may also have been made for artistic reasons in re faces to the front for the panels. "and Treasure" (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0013.html). :smallcool:

"Kind of overdid it on the bat flip" is most likely a reference to Phillies' player Rhys Hoskins spiking the bat (seen here at 0:04) (https://www.mlb.com/news/rhys-hoskins-spikes-bat-nlds-game-3-home-run), which has become something of a meme in baseball circles, apparently?

[Jaxzan Proditor]

That was a fun callback! To think what could have been if the Order had actually called her back. It also puts into perspective how much the art style has grown in 18 years.

[Fyraltari]

Yes, that's what I'm saying. I'm confused about where the idea of her lying to sunny came from.

Okay, re-reading our conversation, I realize I completely misunderstood what you were saying in the first post. My bad. Apologies.

[arimareiji]

Just realized this means Serini wasn't aware that Dorukan was already dead at the time.
I love stories that thread together elements that were going on all along, and the partaker doesn't realize it until well after the fact (if at all). And even stories where it might not've been the intent all along, but it's at least a well-played device to make you think about all the things you didn't know or took for granted. (^_^) <3
~~~


This also means Serini probably assumed the Order destroyed the Gate for no reason as well,
Well, actually (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0118.html)...


maybe even killed dorukan either by accident or intentionally. Which in turn gives more reason for her reluctance to respond to V's sendings.
Interesting points. Someone asserted* earlier that Serini (now) knows Xykon killed Dorukan, but first impressions linger. If one of us were in a store (where our friend worked in a back office) an hour before it blew up and killed everyone therein, and we thought the explosion killed our friend... even if we found out later that someone had killed our friend beforehand, we'd still have a lot of lingering ill will toward whoever set off the explosion.

Also I half-wonder if the Giant might've intended us to re-examine the morality of Elan's decision. Not only was he killing the presumably-monstrous remaining inhabitants for lulz, for all he knew then he might've been killing Dorukan or any other good employees who we never saw.

* - I believe it to be true, but I was too lazy to verify it because it matches what I think I remember, thus "asserted"
~~~


"Kind of overdid it on the bat flip" is most likely a reference to Phillies' player Rhys Hoskins spiking the bat (seen here at 0:04) (https://www.mlb.com/news/rhys-hoskins-spikes-bat-nlds-game-3-home-run), which has become something of a meme in baseball circles, apparently?
Not to mention the interspherical violence. What he did to that poor ball was cold-blooded murder. XD

(Or as I've heard other fans say in similar circumstances, jeez Rhys - that ball had a wife and kids, you know!)

[Riftwolf]

Yes, it is. The fact that Serini had to sneak in is, however, definitive proof that the Oath did not exist merely for the others to get rid of Soon.

Just a random thought; what do we know about the Oath that isn't from Soon?

My thought is what Soon held as an Oath was either a) just a suggestion to the others or b) something the other Scribblers made Soon swear to stop him interfering with the gates. The other Scribblers could maintain some kind of relationship without talking shop, but Soons rigidity made even cordiality impossible.

[Wowlock]

Well, that's confirmation that Sunny was indeed the Beholder from 1238 strips ago (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0032.html). RIP, horned bugbear theory, you weren't really credible anymore anyway.

Now that's some call back.

[Peelee]

Concrete evidence that Soon was the only one who gave half a deep-fried tanar’ri turd about the oath, in letter as well as in spirit.

Really it does seem even more likely that it was just an excuse to kick him out of the party. At least, Serini herself might not have intended that but that’s essentially how it turned out.

Yeesh.

Disbanding a party to kick one person out of it seems like overkill to me.

[hamishspence]

Interesting that, back then, Serini didn't know Xykon Dorukan was dead even some 6 months after he Xykon had killed him and moved in to the Dungeon, but that she does know by the time she first talks to O-Chul and Lien. Perhaps a bit of investigation behind the scenes?

[shmeck]

Well, that's confirmation that Sunny was indeed the Beholder from 1238 strips ago (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0032.html). RIP, horned bugbear theory, you weren't really credible anymore anyway.
nice catch, Fyraltari.. and thanks for making the first post the most helpful for the rest of us!

[Fyraltari]

Interesting that, back then, Serini didn't know Xykon was dead even some 6 months after he moved in to the Dungeon, but that she does know by the time she first talks to O-Chul and Lien. Perhaps a bit of investigation behind the scenes?
Nah, she always knew Xykon was dead. He's just not dead enough for her comfort.

nice catch, Fyraltari.. and thanks for making the first post the most helpful for the rest of us!

Well, It's not really my find. The commentary (I think?) of the last book stated that this one would feature an important ally who had only appeared for one panel so far. People started guessing that was Sunny as soon as they were visible. My own guess was it would be this bugbear (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1204.html), who had already shown up somewhat prominently in a wide shot (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1036.html).

[Metastachydium]

Just a random thought; what do we know about the Oath that isn't from Soon?

My thought is what Soon held as an Oath was either a) just a suggestion to the others or b) something the other Scribblers made Soon swear to stop him interfering with the gates. The other Scribblers could maintain some kind of relationship without talking shop, but Soons rigidity made even cordiality impossible.

Yeah, no. Serini was
1. evidently aware that she had no business being anywhere near Dorukan's and
2. clearly in no contact of any regularity with the wizard, given that she learned about his death more than half a year after the fact.
Further, by his own admission, Girard withheld the coordinates of his Gates from all Scribblers excepting Serini. Those explanations of yours don't quite add up and "there was an Oath, but most Scribblers played loose with it" explains what we've seen so far way better.


Interesting that, back then, Serini didn't know Dorukan was dead even some 6 months after he moved in to the Dungeon, but that she does know by the time she first talks to O-Chul and Lien. Perhaps a bit of investigation behind the scenes?

Well, Dorukan's Gate blowing up (which she would notice sooner than later) had a tendency to prompt such investigations. The Guard did their own as well.

[bunsen_h]

Disbanding a party to kick one person out of it seems like overkill to me.

It's one way to get rid of the annoying roommate whose name is on the lease. Break the lease (or fail to renew it), everyone supposedly goes their separate ways, everyone except the annoying one ends up back on a new lease at the old location.

[Metastachydium]

everyone except the annoying one ends up back on a new lease at the old location.

Which never happened from what we've been shown so far (v. above). That analogy is not applicable.

[danielxcutter]

It still effectively became a way to kick Soon out of their social circles entirely. There was at least minimal and sometimes less minimal contact between the other Scribblers. Girard probably withheld his coordinates from the others because… well, he’s Girard, the Paranoid Jackass. He seems even worse than Ian, actually.

[Fyraltari]

I think there's a really simple explanation as to why Soon took the Oath the most seriously:
Paladin

Also, I think it's telling that despite Serini, Shojo, the Draketooths and Dorukan being alerted to the fall of Lirian's Gate, Xykon could lay siege to Dorukan's Dungeon for months without Serini or the Draketooths meaning any known attempt to help. Dorukan did not ask for help and no one checked regularly enough to notice he might need any.

[hamishspence]

Nah, she always knew Xykon was dead. He's just not dead enough for her comfort.

Sorry, I meant Dorukan.

[Fyraltari]

Interesting that, back then, Serini didn't know Xykon Dorukan was dead even some 6 months after he moved in to the Dungeon, but that she does know by the time she first talks to O-Chul and Lien. Perhaps a bit of investigation behind the scenes?
I sure hope she didn't expect him to die six months after moving in his own dungeon.

Sorry, I meant Dorukan.

I know, I'm just messing with ya. :smalltongue:

[Alexandrite]

Still not into that theory, I guess it's stopped being a theory with this page, because that one line of dialogue doesn't make much of a character. But that's just my opinion. Good comic.

[Metastachydium]

It still effectively became a way to kick Soon out of their social circles entirely. There was at least minimal and sometimes less minimal contact between the other Scribblers.

No contact between Girard and anyone not called Serini; no contact between Serini and Dorukan (she was actively trying to avoid him while scrounging through his place) or Lirian (her entourage was more directly loyal to her, personally, so I don't think Serini raided the Glade for monsters) – it was ultimately just Dorukan and Lirian (for obvious reasons) plus Serini and Girard (for whatever reason; possibly one-sided), so far as social contact goes.


Girard probably withheld his coordinates from the others because… well, he’s Girard, the Paranoid Jackass. He seems even worse than Ian, actually.

Well, Ian did not set up a cult of personality kidnapping infants, so… Understatement of the week, I suppose?


Still not into that theory, I guess it's stopped being a theory with this page, because that one line of dialogue doesn't make much of a character. But that's just my opinion. Good comic.

Eh, it was never going to be anything huge. The Giant was all but telegraphing that he's mostly just trolling the curious lot of us.

[Ruck]

Still not into that theory, I guess it's stopped being a theory with this page, because that one line of dialogue doesn't make much of a character. But that's just my opinion. Good comic.

The exact wording is


Someone who has appeared in exactly one (1) page of the story so far (including all the prequel stories) will become an important ally in the first half of the next book.

Nothing about how many lines of dialogue they had, or how important a character they were (the word "character" isn't even used).


1. In the last few weeks, the Philadelphia Phillies and the Houston Astros were in the World Series. (Astros won 4-2). One of their best hitters (the Phillies) is Bryce Harper - he bats left handed. I suspect that may have informed the side of the plate Sunny was hitting from. (Rich is from Philly). That choice may also have been made for artistic reasons in re faces to the front for the panels.

I didn't even think of that as a reference, possibly because baseball players have a higher percentage of left-handers among them than the general population does. Is Rich left-handed? That's the first thing that came to mind for me. Also, as a left-hander, I appreciate the representation.


"Kind of overdid it on the bat flip" is most likely a reference to Phillies' player Rhys Hoskins spiking the bat (seen here at 0:04) (https://www.mlb.com/news/rhys-hoskins-spikes-bat-nlds-game-3-home-run), which has become something of a meme in baseball circles, apparently?

I didn't even know it was a meme. I just thought it was funny because I know what a bat flip is and nobody ever thinks about the consequences of flipping a sentient bat.

[Fyraltari]

Is Rich left-handed? That's the first thing that came to mind for me.
Doesn't seem like it. (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0864.html)

Also, as a left-hander, I appreciate the representation.
Same. One more reason to like Minrah.

[KorvinStarmast]

"Kind of overdid it on the bat flip" is most likely a reference to Phillies' player Rhys Hoskins spiking the bat (seen here at 0:04) (https://www.mlb.com/news/rhys-hoskins-spikes-bat-nlds-game-3-home-run), which has become something of a meme in baseball circles, apparently? Ah, since I didn't watch any of the games I missed a chance to get that ref. Thanks! :smallsmile:

[Metastachydium]

Also, as a left-hander, I appreciate the representation.

Have some left-handed modrons (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1265.html), then!


Same. One more reason to like Minrah.

Minrah is left-handed? I checked a couple of fight scenes and it seems the hand he fights with varies quite a lot (incidentally, the same holds true for Elan as well). A character consistently shown to be left-handed would be Not-Thad.

[Peelee]

I didn't even think of that as a reference, possibly because baseball players have a higher percentage of left-handers among them than the general population does.

That clearly is due to sinister reasons.

[Fyraltari]

Minrah is left-handed? I checked a couple of fight scenes and it seems the hand he fights with varies quite a lot (incidentally, the same holds true for Elan as well). A character consistently shown to be left-handed would be Not-Thad.

I'm not sure, I think I may just have noticed her holding her hammer left-handed a couple times. But I suspect that the truth is that characters often just hold stuff in the hand that is most convenient for panel composition with little regards to laterality, even in combat. It's not hard to find Roy holding his sword left-handed (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1016.html) too, despite his back-scabbard thing being set up for the right-hand.

With that said, I feel like Minrah uses her left more than other characters do, and lefties tend to use their right more than righties use their left in the real world.

[Ruck]

That clearly is due to sinister reasons.

I did take three years of high school Latin, which proved surprisingly useful in yesterday's Learned League.


With that said, I feel like Minrah uses her left more than other characters do, and lefties tend to use their right more than righties use their left in the real world.

This is one place I feel particularly marginalized, since I'm a lefty who can do hardly anything with my right hand. Nothing is a bummer like going to your "left-handed" friend's house to jam and they all have right-handed guitars.

[Fyraltari]

This is one place I feel particularly marginalized, since I'm a lefty who can do hardly anything with my right hand. Nothing is a bummer like going to your "left-handed" friend's house to jam and they all have right-handed guitars.

Ah, that sucks.

[Carl]

As i recall the oath was that they wouldn't interfere with each others gates. There's nothing in there about not having any contact with each other as far as i remember, (i really should go check the strip but i'm being quick). Also Giriad was the one with the big strong personal beef with Soon, plus he was a paranoiac extraordinaire. It makes sense he'd have little to do with anyone, the fact that he was on good enough terms with Serenni to give hr the real coordinates is interesting in that context, but thats about it.

So Dorukan and Lirrian continuing their relationship isn't against the terms they agreed, for that matter they could in theory of contacted and talked with each other, but everyone except Lirrian and Serenni seem to have parted on such bad terms, (Serenni was the one who suggested the split, and Lirrian stayed out of the arguing as best we can tell, classic true neutral right there), that it's not surprising they had little contact.

Now Serenni poaching Dorukan's monsters, thats absolutely interfering. But it's also decades after the fact, hard to know what's changed and what's stayed the same on her end.

I agree though there's more to the story with the scribblers, we just don't know what it is.

[hamishspence]

As i recall the oath was that they wouldn't interfere with each others gates. There's nothing in there about not having any contact with each other as far as i remember, (i really should go check the strip but i'm being quick).

The "no 'just checking in' visits" line, and "We leave here today and that's it, we're done with each other" lines:

https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0277.html

do suggest that not seeing each other was part of the agreement.

That's why the letter Lirian reads in Start of Darkness, from Dorukan, laments that the agreement was made (though it's also made clear in Don't Split The Party, that the two still had visits despite it.

https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0532.html

[brian 333]

As i recall the oath was that they wouldn't interfere with each others gates. There's nothing in there about not having any contact with each other as far as i remember, (i really should go check the strip but i'm being quick). Also Giriad was the one with the big strong personal beef with Soon, plus he was a paranoiac extraordinaire. It makes sense he'd have little to do with anyone, the fact that he was on good enough terms with Serenni to give hr the real coordinates is interesting in that context, but thats about it.

So Dorukan and Lirrian continuing their relationship isn't against the terms they agreed, for that matter they could in theory of contacted and talked with each other, but everyone except Lirrian and Serenni seem to have parted on such bad terms, (Serenni was the one who suggested the split, and Lirrian stayed out of the arguing as best we can tell, classic true neutral right there), that it's not surprising they had little contact.

Now Serenni poaching Dorukan's monsters, thats absolutely interfering. But it's also decades after the fact, hard to know what's changed and what's stayed the same on her end.

I agree though there's more to the story with the scribblers, we just don't know what it is.

Serini: (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0277.html)
And we agree, no interference in the other four gates. We'll set up some kind of monitoring devinition to tell if someone else's gate is broken, but that's it.
No spying, no "just checking in visits," no nothing.
We leave here today and that's it. We're done with each other.

[Psyren]

For some reason it always makes me anxious when a Main plot could have been solved easily in retrospect.

I mean, could it? The Order from back then would have been as likely to run screaming for the hills if they learned about the plot back then, as they would to become the heroes the world needed. They explored this concept in miniature previously. (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1098.html)

[Grey Watcher]

In Dorukons dungeon, recruiting monsters?

Could it be?

The long awaited return?

Getting hype for Trigak(!!)

I bet he'd (they'd?) look badass in the new art style.


Concrete evidence that Soon was the only one who gave half a deep-fried tanar’ri turd about the oath, in letter as well as in spirit.

Really it does seem even more likely that it was just an excuse to kick him out of the party. At least, Serini herself might not have intended that but that’s essentially how it turned out.

Yeesh.Serini was at least sneaking around, so she seems to have been trying to keep up appearances, if nothing else.


You htink she was lying to Sunny, why?

Lying to kids (which is how Serini sees Sunny) about danger? Seems plausible to me.

[Peelee]

I did take three years of high school Latin, which proved surprisingly useful in yesterday's Learned League.
Four for me, and the most use has been making subtle jokes in nerdy online discussion forums.

This is one place I feel particularly marginalized, since I'm a lefty who can do hardly anything with my right hand. Nothing is a bummer like going to your "left-handed" friend's house to jam and they all have right-handed guitars.
Honestly, playing Hendrix-style is far better than the reverse. I'm right handed but play guitar lefty (there's an actual reason for this, and it is far lamer and nerdier than you can possibly imagine), and man, the lefty guitar and bass selection in any given guitar store sucks hard. They don't even make my ideal guitar in a lefty model.

[hamishspence]

I bet he'd (they'd?) look badass in the new art style.

One of the earliest calendars (I think the 2014 one) had a great picture of Trigak fighting the Order. The Order are still in "old style" art, but Trigak's much more modern-looking.

[Verdruss]

It is really weird to read a webcomic about a fictional fantasy world based on an extensive, complex rule set with years of development and backstories, a webcomic that has been running for decades, plot development, character development, in-jokes, running gags, foreshadowing and flashbacks...

...and the comic I least understand, is a comic about baseball.

[hroþila]

Honestly, playing Hendrix-style is far better than the reverse. I'm right handed but play guitar lefty (there's an actual reason for this, and it is far lamer and nerdier than you can possibly imagine), and man, the lefty guitar and bass selection in any given guitar store sucks hard. They don't even make my ideal guitar in a lefty model.
I'm a lefty too and I remember when I walked into this music store in Madrid feeling all smug and special and different because I was asking for a left-handed tenor banjo and surely they wouldn't have one in a million years but the guy immediately grabbed one from the back of the store and handed it to me without batting an eyelid. A little discrimination would have been welcome, you know?

Of course, it helps that tenor banjos are symmetrical, you only need to switch the armrest (and in this case they hadn't actually changed it so it was in the wrong position). But still.

[Ruck]

Ah, that sucks.

It was always disappointing. I'd like to say it's a big reason why my musically-inclined friends didn't want to collaborate with me, but it's more likely that I'm not very good.

(I have a talent for singing and I think for songwriting, too. I am after all this time a passably mediocre guitarist.)


Four for me, and the most use has been making subtle jokes in nerdy online discussion forums.

I also find there are opportunities to correct people on alumnus / alumna / alumni. Not really that satisfying, but you know what they say about being technically correct.


Honestly, playing Hendrix-style is far better than the reverse. I'm right handed but play guitar lefty (there's an actual reason for this, and it is far lamer and nerdier than you can possibly imagine), and man, the lefty guitar and bass selection in any given guitar store sucks hard. They don't even make my ideal guitar in a lefty model.

Did Hendrix just play a righty flipped (so the strings are upside-down) or did he restring it to be in the correct order? I don't remember.

It is hard to find true lefty guitars. I have one electric, a Danelectro, that I bought off eBay at least ten years ago. I picked up a great acoustic one in 2018, the Taylor Big Baby, but when I moved up here I shipped it and UPS lost it. I haven't been able to find a lefty Big Baby since.

(Also, no reason is too lame or nerdy for me to want to hear.)


I'm a lefty too and I remember when I walked into this music store in Madrid feeling all smug and special and different because I was asking for a left-handed tenor banjo and surely they wouldn't have one in a million years but the guy immediately grabbed one from the back of the store and handed it to me without batting an eyelid. A little discrimination would have been welcome, you know?

Of course, it helps that tenor banjos are symmetrical, you only need to switch the armrest (and in this case they hadn't actually changed it so it was in the wrong position). But still.

The first guitar I had was technically a righty but it was symmetrical (maybe aside from the pick guard, but I don't even remember for sure if had one), so I just strung it backwards. Actually have an acoustic like that now-- not a fancy one, but two brothers I knew and were friends with died in a car accident some years ago, and I spoke a little bit at their memorial, so their parents gave it to me. So I'm certainly not getting rid of it anytime soon, even if I get something new.

A little easier to do that with an acoustic than an electric since it won't have the cutaway, although the action is already higher on an acoustic than an electric, and if you don't reverse the nut, it'll be really high. (I was shocked at just how much easier an electric was to fret the first time I played one.)

[Peelee]

It was always disappointing. I'd like to say it's a big reason why my musically-inclined friends didn't want to collaborate with me, but it's more likely that I'm not very good.

(I have a talent for singing and I think for songwriting, too. I am after all this time a passably mediocre guitarist.)



I also find there are opportunities to correct people on alumnus / alumna / alumni. Not really that satisfying, but you know what they say about being technically correct.



Did Hendrix just play a righty flipped (so the strings are upside-down) or did he restring it to be in the correct order? I don't remember.

It is hard to find true lefty guitars. I have one electric, a Danelectro, that I bought off eBay at least ten years ago. I picked up a great acoustic one in 2018, the Taylor Big Baby, but when I moved up here I shipped it and UPS lost it. I haven't been able to find a lefty Big Baby since.

(Also, no reason is too lame or nerdy for me to want to hear.)



The first guitar I had was technically a righty but it was symmetrical (maybe aside from the pick guard, but I don't even remember for sure if had one), so I just strung it backwards. Actually have an acoustic like that now-- not a fancy one, but two brothers I knew and were friends with died in a car accident some years ago, and I spoke a little bit at their memorial, so their parents gave it to me. So I'm certainly not getting rid of it anytime soon, even if I get something new.

A little easier to do that with an acoustic than an electric since it won't have the cutaway, although the action is already higher on an acoustic than an electric, and if you don't reverse the nut, it'll be really high. (I was shocked at just how much easier an electric was to fret the first time I played one.)

Hendrix played a right handed guitar restrung upside down so he could play it left handed. Doing this also involves changing the nut, but that's pretty trivial. My first guitar was the same, a super cheap strat ripoff done upside down. Blue wood grain and I got a blue ice pick guard, and chrome dome pickups. For a cheap piece of crap it was very sexy. Those pickups were amazing. I currently have an actual lefty Epiphone black SG. I will never understand why the double horn wasn't perfectly symmetrical - the knobs and jack still need to be on the correct side but the horns could have easily been symmetric and looked amazing.

I will never be anywhere near good enough to feel like a Gibson is worth the money and Epiphone doesn't make a Flying V in lefty. Which is a shame since Flying V is the greatest guitar design ever.

[Joebob]

See, this is exactly why i come to these forums: in depth discussion of left handed instruments.

[Peelee]

Because I missed it the first time:
A little easier to do that with an acoustic than an electric since it won't have the cutaway, although the action is already higher on an acoustic than an electric, and if you don't reverse the nut, it'll be really high. (I was shocked at just how much easier an electric was to fret the first time I played one.)

Excuse me, I don't think there's anything wrong with the action on this. (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qdbrIrFxas0)

[brian 333]

Hendrix played a right handed guitar restrung upside down so he could play it left handed. Doing this also involves changing the nut, but that's pretty trivial. My first guitar was the same, a super cheap strat ripoff done upside down. Blue wood grain and I got a blue ice pick guard, and chrome dome pickups. For a cheap piece of crap it was very sexy. Those pickups were amazing. I currently have an actual lefty Epiphone black SG. I will never understand why the double horn wasn't perfectly symmetrical - the knobs and jack still need to be on the correct side but the horns could have easily been symmetric and looked amazing.

I will never be anywhere near good enough to feel like a Gibson is worth the money and Epiphone doesn't make a Flying V in lefty. Which is a shame since Flying V is the greatest guitar design ever.

A leftie musician co-worker used to build custom guitars. He started doing it because he was left handed and couldn't find affordable left-handed guitars in the styles he liked.
Turned out, he was very good at it. And since he had family in Honduras, he could get tropical hardwoods for the price of postage.

While other crew members were spending their hard-earned pay in the bars, he would be in the motel sanding, drilling, fitting, and occasionally play testing. I envied not only his craftsmanship, but his artistry. Each guitar was one-of-a-kind, made for a specific player. For the price of just the electronics and hardware of an expensive electric guitar he could produce whatever style the buyer wanted.

My own musical talent is in listening, and I have horrendous tinnitus, so...

[pearl jam]

It was always disappointing. I'd like to say it's a big reason why my musically-inclined friends didn't want to collaborate with me, but it's more likely that I'm not very good.

(I have a talent for singing and I think for songwriting, too. I am after all this time a passably mediocre guitarist.)
....

A little easier to do that with an acoustic than an electric since it won't have the cutaway, although the action is already higher on an acoustic than an electric, and if you don't reverse the nut, it'll be really high. (I was shocked at just how much easier an electric was to fret the first time I played one.)



Hendrix played a right handed guitar restrung upside down so he could play it left handed. Doing this also involves changing the nut, but that's pretty trivial. My first guitar was the same, a super cheap strat ripoff done upside down. Blue wood grain and I got a blue ice pick guard, and chrome dome pickups. For a cheap piece of crap it was very sexy. Those pickups were amazing. I currently have an actual lefty Epiphone black SG. I will never understand why the double horn wasn't perfectly symmetrical - the knobs and jack still need to be on the correct side but the horns could have easily been symmetric and looked amazing.

I will never be anywhere near good enough to feel like a Gibson is worth the money and Epiphone doesn't make a Flying V in lefty. Which is a shame since Flying V is the greatest guitar design ever.

I can relate to the feeling of mediocrity and not meriting a Gibson. :frown:

I wish I could write my own original songs. I only sing other people's.

Also, although no cutout is more common on acoustic than electric, there are certainly plenty of acoustics with cutouts, too. See: mine
https://i.imgur.com/9WPDPCG.jpg

I have Yamaha and Epiphone Les Paul electrics as well.

[danielxcutter]

Well, Ian did not set up a cult of personality kidnapping infants, so… Understatement of the week, I suppose?

Yes this was the joke :v


The "no 'just checking in' visits" line, and "We leave here today and that's it, we're done with each other" lines:

https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0277.html

do suggest that not seeing each other was part of the agreement.

That's why the letter Lirian reads in Start of Darkness, from Dorukan, laments that the agreement was made (though it's also made clear in Don't Split The Party, that the two still had visits despite it.

https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0532.html

Personally I’m leaning towards them openly breaking the oath more when they were younger, then realized it was kind of a jackass thing to do when Dorukan started getting age bonuses to his Wisdom.


I mean, could it? The Order from back then would have been as likely to run screaming for the hills if they learned about the plot back then, as they would to become the heroes the world needed. They explored this concept in miniature previously. (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1098.html)

I actually agree with this. I think the Order themselves would as well, especially since at that point they really weren’t in the know(that would be at least after meeting Shojo).

I think there’s going to be a Talk about them breaking the Oath though, even if only to lead into the full story behind the Scribblers.

[hamishspence]

Personally I’m leaning towards them openly breaking the oath more when they were younger, then realized it was kind of a jackass thing to do when Dorukan started getting age bonuses to his Wisdom.


Based on the way the letter was written, it was clear that the meetings were still going on - they were just a bit more covert, at the time. Then Lirien was murdered and obviously the meetings stopped.

[LuPuWei]

In Dorukons dungeon, recruiting monsters?

Could it be?

The long awaited return?

Getting hype for Trigak(!!)

V will have some more apologising to do :biggrin:

[Liquor Box]

Dude, she tells Sunny she doesn't want Dorukan to notice them in his dungeon, therefore, she didn't know that Dorukan was already dead.

This has two implications for past discussions.

First, there was much talk about exactly how much Serini knew about the other gates. Some theories were that she was somehow able to monitor everything that happened there. The fact that she didn't know that Xykon had taken control of the gate (quite some time ago) and was experimenting on it, suggests that her information wasn't that complete - perhaps being limited to exactly what happened at the point of their destruction.

Second, one of the main justifications for her kidnapping the paladins (and later attacking the Order) was that they were trespassing in the valley near her dungeon. It is relevant that she was also trespassing in Dorukon's dungeon (and apparently weakening its defences by stealing its monster defenders).

On a more minor note, some people suggested that Serini's defences compared favourably to Dorukon's because her monsters were more mighty. This comic suggests that she took his monsters, so hers were not more mighty.

[ff7hero]

On a more minor note, some people suggested that Serini's defences compared favourably to Dorukon's because her monsters were more mighty. This comic suggests that she took his monsters, so hers were not more mighty.

I don't have a horse in this race, but I feel compelled to point out that Dorukon's Dungeons wasn't necessarily her only source of monsters.

[danielxcutter]

Oh definitely. If only because if all her monsters were from there Dorukan totally would have noticed. Still not exactly a sterling record though.

Also hey, that makes it a very rogue aesthetic if she literally stole her defenses from her friends :smalltongue:

[Metastachydium]

In Dorukons dungeon, recruiting monsters?

Could it be?

The long awaited return?

Getting hype for Trigak(!!)

"Sunny! Stop trying to pick up the dead chimera!"


Also hey, that makes it a very rogue aesthetic if she literally stole her defenses from her friends :smalltongue:

"In retrospect, putting the rookie paladin and Girard's 10 year old grandkid in the same cave as the dire bear and the purple worms might not have exactly been a stellar idea, but how were I supposed to know?"

[danielxcutter]

No no no, it’s wizards that have no sense of right or wrong!

[Metastachydium]

No no no, it’s wizards that have no sense of right or wrong!

I feel that you're being somewhat unfair (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0696.html) there!

[SlashDash]

It's pretty clear why Serini didn't want Dorukan to know she's there - and it's not the oath - it's what she actually says : She's poaching monsters from his dungeon to join her. She's literally robbing him. Obviously he wouldn't like that.


As for the notion that they invented the oath to kick Soon out, it doesn't seem logical. Girard expected Soon to break his oath, that was the whole point of his bet with Serini and the hologram in the desert.

To paraphrase Haley here, Girard had no idea how a Paladin's mentality works, or he wouldn't make that bet. So assuming they made the oath expecting a paladin to be the only one to keep his end seems illogical.

What would be the point of doing it to him if you expect him to break it?


The point of the oath, based at least on what the crayon story showed us, was that the party couldn't stop fighting after Kraggor's death. So they made the oath as a way of splitting up peacefully. It was basically teacher's way of separating children who fight each other.

It is pretty much given that those of them who had no quarrel with each other would still be in touch - like Dorukan and Lirian.

[danielxcutter]

“Girard” and “logical” require interplanar travel to connect, so.

[brian 333]

Serini may have been poaching monsters from Dorukon's dungeon because she knew Dorukon had been defeated. It would have been beneficial to recruit them before Xykon could, at the least, and to remove them as obstacles before adventurers killed them while going after Xykon.
If childlike Sunny didn't know that Papa Dorukon was dead, Serini may have simply lied to him to avoid a grief-stricken child trying to get revenge on his killer

[Metastachydium]

Serini may have been poaching monsters from Dorukon's dungeon because she knew Dorukon had been defeated. It would have been beneficial to recruit them before Xykon could, at the least, and to remove them as obstacles before adventurers killed them while going after Xykon.
If childlike Sunny didn't know that Papa Dorukon was dead, Serini may have simply lied to him to avoid a grief-stricken child trying to get revenge on his killer

Yeah, Dorukan and Serini/Sunny had tea every other week. That's what made the "lie" that Dorukan wouldn't want them "snooping around" in his dungeon believable.

[WanderingMist]

As for the notion that they invented the oath to kick Soon out, it doesn't seem logical. Girard expected Soon to break his oath, that was the whole point of his bet with Serini and the hologram in the desert.

The bet's with his family, not with Serini.

See, this is exactly why i come to these forums: in depth discussion of left handed instruments.

As someone who played a large brass instrument in school, all string instruments have it easy since you can breathe while playing.

[snowblizz]

No no no, it’s wizards that have no sense of right or wrong!

you would say they are morally ambidextrous?

[137beth]

Oh my northern gods the callback to Strip 32 is perfect!
[/late to the party]

[danielxcutter]

you would say they are morally ambidextrous?

That would be having no sense of right and left.

[bunsen_h]

I don't have a horse in this race, but I feel compelled to point out that Dorukon's Dungeons wasn't necessarily her only source of monsters.

We saw her taking delivery (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0277.html) of a bunch of purple worms, so probably not. Assuming the accuracy of the crayon drawing, of course, and that she didn't somehow nick the worms herself but had them delivered by other people.

[Rinazina]

Dear forumites, there is something I am missing.


Serini knows that Xykon killed Dorukan (at least, she does now).
This should have happened 6 months before OOTS entered the dungeon (right? I have this recollection from some of the prequel books?).
However, Serini mentions Dorukan in the last comic. It's like she hasn't discovered it yet?


Am I forgetting some important information, or could this be the hook for a new backstory exposition?

Thanks

[hamishspence]

The last but one panel of this comic is a flashback. In that flashback Serini is not yet aware that Dorukan is dead.

At some point after that, she discovered Xykon killed him. Hence her mentioning that Xykon killed Dorukan and Lirian, here:

https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1249.html

[Metastachydium]

Precisely. It's nothing outlandish, really. I mean, the guy's own employees weren't sure whatever became of him shortly before Xykon moved in (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0071.html).

[arimareiji]

you would say they are morally ambidextrous?

Thanks, it's been a while since I've seen even a moderately-clever malapropist joke outside of a Weird Al video. (^_~)b

[masamune1]

Dear forumites, there is something I am missing.


Serini knows that Xykon killed Dorukan (at least, she does now).
This should have happened 6 months before OOTS entered the dungeon (right? I have this recollection from some of the prequel books?).
However, Serini mentions Dorukan in the last comic. It's like she hasn't discovered it yet?


Am I forgetting some important information, or could this be the hook for a new backstory exposition?

Thanks

Basically, she didn't discover Durokan was dead until at least 6 months after the Order showed up in his dungeon.

It's entirely possible that she discovered it while raiding his dungeon for monsters, in fact.

She presumably thought that all of the goblins and monsters running around worked for Durokan, and only later discovered they served Xykon.

I can imagine her spying on the dungeon, seeing a bunch of monsters running around, and thinking to herself that Durokan has decided to beef up security and that she wants a slice of that action, unaware of the terrible truth until it was much too late.

[Vikenlugaid]

I think it's still telling that none of them took the oath entirely seriously. Though it's possible that Dorukan used that age bonus to his Wisdom score to realize that continuing to completely flaunt the oath was a bit of a jackass thing to do, especially when Soon never broke it. Still, Lirian and Dorukan were still continuing their relationship, Girard setting his message trap to alert Serini, and Serini sneaking into Dorukan's Dungeon do show they didn't really care about the oath that much.

Also maybe Dorukan didn't want Serini on his premises for a reason outside the oath.

Well, the totally jackass thing to do was obviously following the oath to the letter.
Dorukan dating Lirian, Serini sneaking, or Girard sending messages didn't endanger the gates in any way.

While the SG, being so "honorable to the letter", kind of "created" Redcloak.

[KorvinStarmast]

I can imagine her spying on the dungeon, seeing a bunch of monsters running around, and thinking to herself that Durokan has decided to beef up security and that she wants a slice of that action, unaware of the terrible truth until it was much too late. And then having to GTFO once Elan tripped the self destruct button. Which was only a day or so after that strip? She and Sunny either were almost done and left before Elan did the stupid thing, or, she and Sunny heard the rumbling and got the heck out. Which might mean that she has one more thing that annoys here about the Order: they showed her how stupid, collectively, they are with that dumb stunt.

[gatemansgc]

Well, that's confirmation that Sunny was indeed the Beholder from 1238 strips ago (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0032.html). RIP, horned bugbear theory, you weren't really credible anymore anyway.

horned bugbear theory???? that sounds hilarious

[faustin]

No no no, it’s wizards that have no sense of right or wrong!

In a wizard battle, is not a matter of who is right, but who is left.

Disintegrate + gust of wind.

[Rrmcklin]

Well, the totally jackass thing to do was obviously following the oath to the letter.
Dorukan dating Lirian, Serini sneaking, or Girard sending messages didn't endanger the gates in any way.

While the SG, being so "honorable to the letter", kind of "created" Redcloak.

Those things don't actually follow at all from one another.

[brian 333]

Basically, she didn't discover Durokan was dead until at least 6 months after the Order showed up in his dungeon.

Source for this?


It's entirely possible that she discovered it while raiding his dungeon for monsters, in fact.

She presumably thought that all of the goblins and monsters running around worked for Durokan, and only later discovered they served Xykon.

Does this not contradict the first quoted statement?


I can imagine her spying on the dungeon, seeing a bunch of monsters running around, and thinking to herself that Durokan has decided to beef up security and that she wants a slice of that action, unaware of the terrible truth until it was much too late.

Is there information to support this? Or is it simply imagination-based?

Why is it not possible that she knew Dorukon was dead, and took advantage of the situation to recruit more monsters? Serini is known to lie when it suits her, and not telling the child-like Sunny her boss was murdered is a lie of kindness.

[masamune1]

Source for this?

The comic.


Does this not contradict the first quoted statement?


No, it doesn't.


Is there information to support this? Or is it simply imagination-based?

Why is it not possible that she knew Dorukon was dead, and took advantage of the situation to recruit more monsters? Serini is known to lie when it suits her, and not telling the child-like Sunny her boss was murdered is a lie of kindness.


I literally said "I can imagine", so obviously I'm just speculating.

It's possible she was lying, but the obvious interpretation is that she thought Dorukan was still alive as that is how she phrased it.

There wouldn't be much reason for her to lie about this. Sunny would be on-board with rescuing monsters from Xykon after all.

Up to Rich to confirm or deny any of this either way.

[pearl jam]

Source for this?



Does this not contradict the first quoted statement?



Is there information to support this? Or is it simply imagination-based?

Why is it not possible that she knew Dorukon was dead, and took advantage of the situation to recruit more monsters? Serini is known to lie when it suits her, and not telling the child-like Sunny her boss was murdered is a lie of kindness.

I think the intent of their statement is 6 months after (he died when) the Order showed up in his dungeon, but it's a little bit unclear from the way it was written

[danielxcutter]

Anyways the implication is that she didn't learn that Dorukan had croaked at that point. Which means it was relatively recent.

Hmm. That does explain why her caster friends getting murdered by Xykon was such a big thing beyond the obvious. For her, Dorukan at least is a very fresh wound.

[ozmar]

That was a fun callback! To think what could have been if the Order had actually called her back. It also puts into perspective how much the art style has grown in 18 years.

Holy crap! I've been reading this story for 18 years!

This is awesome. Thanks so much, Giant, for this story. I can't wait (but clearly, can and will wait) to see how it resolves, and also kind of hope it never ends.

-Ozmar the Patient

[brian 333]

Anyways the implication is that she didn't learn that Dorukan had croaked at that point. Which means it was relatively recent.


That's the part my question was about. What source do we have to support the idea that Serini didn't know Dorukon had died? Serini was an epic rogue moving around in a dungeon at least nominally under Xykon's control. Play the character yourself: how would you not know about Xykon? She already knew that Lirian's gate had been destroyed. Why would she not check in on her old buddy to talk about it?

At the time of the flashback panel she was talking to Sunny, a child-like being. If Sunny didn't know at that point that Dorukon was dead, what effect would that have had? Perhaps Sunny would have taken it well, or perhaps she would have had a full tantrum right there and went floating off to attack the lich who killed Pop. Why not get her away from the dangerous lich first?

I think Serini knew. That was why she was there: to see what was going on. Opportunism and kindness lead her to recruit the monsters she could before they became minions of Xykon, or dead. Even if that meant telling a lie to a child for her own good.

[Robots]

That's the part my question was about. What source do we have to support the idea that Serini didn't know Dorukon had died?

Well, I think people can infer she didn't know he was dead because she speaks about him in the present tense. "We need to recruit more monsters before Dorukan finds out we're snooping as usual in his dungeon." Also it's not spelled Dorukon.

[danielxcutter]

I mean, if she knew Dorukan was dead and Xykon was near she’d probably be freaking out a bit? Also as mentioned earlier the man’s own employees didn’t know he was dead for a while.

[Ionathus]

Concrete evidence that Soon was the only one who gave half a deep-fried tanar’ri turd about the oath, in letter as well as in spirit.

Really it does seem even more likely that it was just an excuse to kick him out of the party. At least, Serini herself might not have intended that but that’s essentially how it turned out.

Yeesh.

Yeah, I'm sure we'll hear a bit more about Soon's shortcomings in future scenes, but I'm pretty annoyed that even the woman who proposed the "go our separate ways" plan violated it.

I know these were flawed, traumatized people, but it sucks that they all deliberately weakened their defenses by compartmentalizing each gate, and the only one who took that separation seriously is the one who takes the most scorn and criticism from the rest of the party.

To paraphrase Roy: what the hell happened to these people?


its absolutely fascinating to see a view of the early chapters with the newer artstyle, though I wonder if it would be funny for if in the flashback for the dungeon and gang be depicted with the old artstyle, while sunny and serini in the new style x)

I believe rich has said it causes him emotional pain to go back to the old art style in those few moments he needs to. Having read some of my own writing from 10 years ago, I know how embarrassing reviewing your own past work can be!

[bunsen_h]

I mean, if she knew Dorukan was dead and Xykon was near she’d probably be freaking out a bit? Also as mentioned earlier the man’s own employees didn’t know he was dead for a while.

If she knew Xykon was around the place, I can't imagine she'd have gone anywhere near it. She has other resources for getting monsters than nicking Dorukan's, and she wouldn't have risked not only her own life but Sunny's.

EDIT:

I believe rich has said it causes him emotional pain to go back to the old art style in those few moments he needs to. Having read some of my own writing from 10 years ago, I know how embarrassing reviewing your own past work can be!

Sometimes I feel the same way. But a couple of times, I've encountered some bit of writing on-line that I've particularly liked, as it perfectly tweaked my sense of humour or approached a problem in an especially elegant way. And when I looked into it more deeply, discovered that I'd written it myself a decade or two earlier, and had utterly forgotten about.

[Riftwolf]

That's the part my question was about. What source do we have to support the idea that Serini didn't know Dorukon had died? Serini was an epic rogue moving around in a dungeon at least nominally under Xykon's control. Play the character yourself: how would you not know about Xykon? She already knew that Lirian's gate had been destroyed. Why would she not check in on her old buddy to talk about it?

At the time of the flashback panel she was talking to Sunny, a child-like being. If Sunny didn't know at that point that Dorukon was dead, what effect would that have had? Perhaps Sunny would have taken it well, or perhaps she would have had a full tantrum right there and went floating off to attack the lich who killed Pop. Why not get her away from the dangerous lich first?

I think Serini knew. That was why she was there: to see what was going on. Opportunism and kindness lead her to recruit the monsters she could before they became minions of Xykon, or dead. Even if that meant telling a lie to a child for her own good.

From memory, there was a big gap between the deaths of Lirian and Dorukan. She might have had chance to investigate Lirians demise and talk to Dorukan before Xykon showed up at the dungeon. And for all we know, the flashback panel might've been when Serini found out Dorukan was dead. After all, Dorukans gate hadn't fallen yet, and between the Oath (if Serini was serious about it) and the Cloister, the only way for Serini to Gather Information is investigating in person.

[Ruck]

From memory, there was a big gap between the deaths of Lirian and Dorukan.

Indeed. About 26 1/2 years according to Start of Darkness.

[brian 333]

I mean, if she knew Dorukan was dead and Xykon was near she’d probably be freaking out a bit? Also as mentioned earlier the man’s own employees didn’t know he was dead for a while.

This is true and it may be correct. However, she already knew that Lirian's gate was destroyed. Long enough before the depicted scene, in fact, to have discovered that, and how, she died. She would have known enough to check out Xykon fairly soon after her troll buddies put her back together. She is no idiot.

And that leads her to Dorukan's dungeon. By that time, Xykon has laid siege to it for how long? And she somehow missed the part where he ran out and got himself killed.

Her not knowing does not seem right to me. It requires an epic rogue to be oblivious.

Her lying to a creature she is recruiting rings true.

[Peelee]

This is true and it may be correct. However, she already knew that Lirian's gate was destroyed. Long enough before the depicted scene, in fact, to have discovered that, and how, she died. She would have known enough to check out Xykon fairly soon after her troll buddies put her back together. She is no idiot.

And that leads her to Dorukan's dungeon. By that time, Xykon has laid siege to it for how long? And she somehow missed the part where he ran out and got himself killed.

Her not knowing does not seem right to me. It requires an epic rogue to be oblivious.

Her lying to a creature she is recruiting rings true.

All the Scribblers and their allies are alerted when a Gate falls. They are not alerted when a Scribbler dies.

The Gate stood for at least 6 months after Dorukan died. Why would she assume, when there seems to be no problem with the Gate, that it was under control of a lich who slew Dorukan?

[hamishspence]

This is true and it may be correct. However, she already knew that Lirian's gate was destroyed. Long enough before the depicted scene, in fact, to have discovered that, and how, she died. She would have known enough to check out Xykon fairly soon after her troll buddies put her back together. She is no idiot.

And that leads her to Dorukan's dungeon.

The implication here:

https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1227.html

is that Xykon tracked her down after Lirian's death, not vice versa. She may not have known how and why Lirian died, until after Xykon's attack on her - and still may not have known where Xykon was heading next.
Allowing her visit to the castle, with Sunny, to be serendipitous, rather than "She traced Xykon to Dorukan's castle."


For that matter, given that the "alert system" is normally in the building itself (in the Girard case for example)

https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0844.html

and given that she left the dungeon behind and went travelling (strip 1227) - she may not have known about Lirian's death until she returned to the Kraagor dungeon, found that dungeon's "alert system" had one light dim, and guessed Lirian was dead.

[gbaji]

From memory, there was a big gap between the deaths of Lirian and Dorukan. She might have had chance to investigate Lirians demise and talk to Dorukan before Xykon showed up at the dungeon. And for all we know, the flashback panel might've been when Serini found out Dorukan was dead. After all, Dorukans gate hadn't fallen yet, and between the Oath (if Serini was serious about it) and the Cloister, the only way for Serini to Gather Information is investigating in person.

My assumption is that she was there checking out Dorukan's dungeon. At that point in time, two things have happened that she's aware of:

1. Lirian's gate has fallen
2. She's been attacked and nearly killed by Xykon and her diary stolen.

Pretty reasonable to "snoop" around Dorukan's place to see what's up. Whether the whole recruiting monsters bit was just the excuse she used with Sunny to explain what they were doing, or was something she also had going on on the side really doesn't matter that much.

Also, as a couple people have pointed out, the gate monitor thing only monitors the gates. As far as she knew, Dorukan's gate was still very much intact at the time of the flashback. It's entirely plausible that she had only just arrived and didn't know Dorukan was dead. And yeah, I'm also going with her having no clue Xykon was even there at that point in time. Remember. He pretty much kept to the lower levels and had minions dealing with the order to this point in the comic. If I were to guess, the moment she discovered that Dorukan was dead, and Xykon was running the show, she skedaddled.

Recall also, that the Order didn't actually know who Dorukan was at that point (other than the name of the dungeon itself). They thought it was built by Xykon. They knew Xykon was there because the oracle sent them. So could easily be two different groups, with different information at the same time. Serini assumes Dorukan is there because she knows this is his dungeon and knows nothing of Xykon's presense. The Order assumes Xykon is there because that's where the Oracle sent them, and knows nothing of Dorukan.

I did notice something interesting in the flashback scene. Elan, Haley, and Durkon are standing in the same relative positions in the flashback as they are in strip 32 (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0032.html), minus the rest of the order. So could be the same scene (sorta) just from a different angle. Either the other members moved, or we're getting an odd quarter angle shot and the others are more towards the foreground in the original shot (hard to tell). Just found that interesting, since it would place this literally immediately before Sunny appears in the final frame (or immediately between the last two in that strip).

[brian 333]

Timeline:
After Lirian's death Xylon went looking for Serini.
Unspecified time passes.
Xykon finds Serini and takes her diary.
Specified time passes and Dorukan deciphers Serini's code.
Coordinates in hand, he lays siege to Dorukan's dungeon.
Specified time passes before Xykon defeats Dorukan.
Specified time passes before Serini is found poaching critters in Dorukan's employ.

Whether or not Serini knew about Lirian's death before Xykon found her is unknown. However, as soon as she was ambulatory she had to be curious about her own attacker. That would have involved her discovering that her gate alarm had gone off. Knowing that her only missing possession was her diary, she had to add two and two.

This makes keeping track of Xykon imperative. She would be a fool to not do so because her own gate was on the list, and there is a 25% chance that her next visitor will be a skeleton with a goblin sidekick.

Xykon laid siege to the Dungeons of Dorukan for six months. If Serini didn't know about it, it was because she's not a very good rogue. Suddenly the siege ends and Xykon is inside the pyramid. If she doesn't know this she is a very bad rogue and stupid as well.

After Haley gives Sunny a 'will-call', Serini steps out of the shadows and recruits Sunny. With the timeline above, and my interpretation of it beneath it, how can Serini not know that Dorukan is dead? Even excluding the interpretation, how can one explain Serini not knowing?

She knew about Lirian. She had to have had time to learn about Xykon. In my opinion she would have had to be idiotically negligent to not have been aware of the siege and its outcome. She was inside Dorukan's stronghold after the seige succeeded.

Contrast that with a simple expedient lie.

[Peelee]

This makes keeping track of Xykon imperative.

Keeping track of Xykon is not as trivial as you seem to make it out to be.

[Tzardok]

After Haley gives Sunny a 'will-call', Serini steps out of the shadows and recruits Sunny.


I think you misunderstand this thing. Serini already knows Sunny in the flash back in 1270, which takes places (judging from the dialogue) before the "will-call" scene.

[brian 333]

Keeping track of Xykon is not as trivial as you seem to make it out to be.

Just follow the trail of zombies. And jokes aside, you are correct. However, even a poorly built rogue has impressive abilities which lend themselves well to gathering information. I'm not trivializing Xykon's ability to detect an epic rogue who is scouting him. I'm just not trivializing Serini's abilities to avoid detection.

[gbaji]

Whether or not Serini knew about Lirian's death before Xykon found her is unknown. However, as soon as she was ambulatory she had to be curious about her own attacker. That would have involved her discovering that her gate alarm had gone off. Knowing that her only missing possession was her diary, she had to add two and two.

Sure. There are two bits we don't know here:

1. How long it took her to recover, return to Kragor's tomb, and discover that the alarm had gone off. It's not clear to us where the Troll village was, but it didn't look like it was in the frozen north (or even near to it).

2. How long it took her to travel all the way from up north, to the Redmountain Hills. It's not like she has teleportation, so she has to sneak the whole way with Sunny to get there.


Xykon laid siege to the Dungeons of Dorukan for six months. If Serini didn't know about it, it was because she's not a very good rogue. Suddenly the siege ends and Xykon is inside the pyramid. If she doesn't know this she is a very bad rogue and stupid as well.

Or the entire siege occurred in the time period Serini was recovering, then travelling back to the tomb, then deciding what to do about this, maybe communicating with Girard's folks (she seemed to keep touch with them via sending maybe?), then maybe checking in on Lirian's gate location first, finding out information there, and then finally heading to Dorukan's dungeon. That could easily have taken her 6 months or a year, or more. There is no "suddenly the siege ends and Xykon is inside the pyramid" (I thought it was a dungeon, not a pyramid). There is only "she arrives many months after the fact, and begins sneaking into the dungeon". You're assuming she was what? Standing around outside the dungeon watching the siege and battle and result? And then, what? Hung around for more time until the Order arrived in time for the flashback scene? Why make that assumption when a simpler one works (and fits all the "facts" we have)? She just arrived, didn't know what happened, and is in the process if exploring the dungeon to figure out what's going on.


After Haley gives Sunny a 'will-call', Serini steps out of the shadows and recruits Sunny. With the timeline above, and my interpretation of it beneath it, how can Serini not know that Dorukan is dead? Even excluding the interpretation, how can one explain Serini not knowing?

As noted above, she didn't recruit Sunny from the dungeon. Sunny traveled with her to the dungeon to recruit other monsters. That's literally Sunny saying "I'm going to go talk to them", which presumably happened just prior to strip 32.

If Serini just arrived the day before or something, it's entirely possible she wouldn't know. How would she? She arrives and sneaks in. She notices goblins there, who weren't there before (we don't actually know what kinds of creatures were in the dungeon, but presumably there were some maintained there since she was "recruiting" them). She may have suspected something was up, or may not have. Xykon is deep in the dungeon. The Order is much farther up. She would run into them before she ran into anyone specifically that would make her think of Xykon being there.

I guess we can also go with "the dialogue in the strip strongly suggests she didn't know Dorukan was dead at that point". Maybe just go with what was written in the strip and take it as "fact" and fit other things around it, instead of trying really really hard to prove that it just couldn't be true.


She knew about Lirian. She had to have had time to learn about Xykon. In my opinion she would have had to be idiotically negligent to not have been aware of the siege and its outcome. She was inside Dorukan's stronghold after the seige succeeded.

Contrast that with a simple expedient lie.

Or... she just didn't arrive until after the siege was over. That's even simpler. And yes, she was inside Dorukan's dungeon after the siege succeeded. So what? The order was in there too, adventuring around. It's not like Xykon posted guards at the entrance with "Xykon's guards" written on their foreheads or anything.

I'm going to paraphrase O'chul here. Which is more logical? That she's constructing a lie that serves no purpose at all, or that she just doesn't know the truth? It's not like she kept the truth of Dorukan's death from Sunny after the fact. He knows all about the gates and what's going on, right? So we'd have to speculate that she lied to him in the one flashback we see, for what purpose? So that some forum posters will think she really knew about Dorukan's death maybe an hour or so after the flashback sequence would suggest, so that we'd think... what? Sunny didn't know? He does. There's literally zero reason to do this. No value gained. No story impact. Zip. Zero. Nada. It has zero effect on any character action for us to think this, or travel down this path of reasoning.

Meanwhile, again, it makes absolute sense to just assume that she arrived right then, but didn't yet know that Dorukan was dead, or that Xykon had taken up residence. That fits all the facts and makes sense. The theory you are presenting not only doesn't, but actually opens up even more inconsistencies than it attempts to solve (like why on earth would she still be there if she knew Xykon was there?).

[RatElemental]

I already knew our mystery 1 page soon to be ally was going to be Sunny but I still find the obvious bit of retconning necessary to make that happen kind of awkward.

[brian 333]

Sure. There are two bits we don't know here:

1. How long it took her to recover, return to Kragor's tomb, and discover that the alarm had gone off. It's not clear to us where the Troll village was, but it didn't look like it was in the frozen north (or even near to it).

2. How long it took her to travel all the way from up north, to the Redmountain Hills. It's not like she has teleportation, so she has to sneak the whole way with Sunny to get there.

She literally has hundreds of teleportation devices in her stronghold. She would have to be criminally stupid to not have destinations all over the world for her personal convenience.


Or the entire siege occurred in the time period Serini was recovering, then travelling back to the tomb, then deciding what to do about this, maybe communicating with Girard's folks (she seemed to keep touch with them via sending maybe?), then maybe checking in on Lirian's gate location first, finding out information there, and then finally heading to Dorukan's dungeon. That could easily have taken her 6 months or a year, or more. There is no "suddenly the siege ends and Xykon is inside the pyramid" (I thought it was a dungeon, not a pyramid). There is only "she arrives many months after the fact, and begins sneaking into the dungeon". You're assuming she was what? Standing around outside the dungeon watching the siege and battle and result? And then, what? Hung around for more time until the Order arrived in time for the flashback scene.

How long did it take for Xykon to decrypt the code in Serini's diary? A full monsterous regeneration of a max HP/Level rogue would take 2 hours. At less than 1hp per round that's less than a day at 1hp per turn, 5 days at 1hp per hour, or 120 days at 1hp/day.
In short, Serini had a lot of time between the theft of her diary and the attack on Dorukan's dungeon.
The siege itself took six months.


Why make that assumption when a simpler one works (and fits all the "facts" we have)? She just arrived, didn't know what happened, and is in the process if exploring the dungeon to figure out what's going on.

Because I refuse to believe Serini is as incompetent as she would have to be for that scenario to make sense. We are talking about a person who knew intimate details about the goings on in Shojo's throne room while Xykon was there. I don't recall seeing any halflings, or halfling-shaped shadows. Why would someone that good at being a rogue be so bad at it between the attack on her and the attack on Azure City?


As noted above, she didn't recruit Sunny from the dungeon. Sunny traveled with her to the dungeon to recruit other monsters. That's literally Sunny saying "I'm going to go talk to them", which presumably happened just prior to strip 32.

Sunny was an upcoming encounter which was interrupted by the lawyers. What makes you think she came to the dungeon with Serini?


If Serini just arrived the day before or something, it's entirely possible she wouldn't know. How would she? She arrives and sneaks in. She notices goblins there, who weren't there before (we don't actually know what kinds of creatures were in the dungeon, but presumably there were some maintained there since she was "recruiting" them). She may have suspected something was up, or may not have. Xykon is deep in the dungeon. The Order is much farther up. She would run into them before she ran into anyone specifically that would make her think of Xykon being there.

I guess we can also go with "the dialogue in the strip strongly suggests she didn't know Dorukan was dead at that point". Maybe just go with what was written in the strip and take it as "fact" and fit other things around it, instead of trying really really hard to prove that it just couldn't be true.

The dialogue in the strip implies that. But if she doesn't know by that point that Dorukan is dead, well, that's the whole issue I have been wrestling with. It requires an epic rogue to be epically ignorant after being ambushed, left for dead, and learning that at least one of her adventuring buddies is now dead.

Can you at least see the problem I'm having with the 'facts'?




Or... she just didn't arrive until after the siege was over. That's even simpler. And yes, she was inside Dorukan's dungeon after the siege succeeded. So what? The order was in there too, adventuring around. It's not like Xykon posted guards at the entrance with "Xykon's guards" written on their foreheads or anything.

I'm going to paraphrase O'chul here. Which is more logical? That she's constructing a lie that serves no purpose at all, or that she just doesn't know the truth? It's not like she kept the truth of Dorukan's death from Sunny after the fact. He knows all about the gates and what's going on, right? So we'd have to speculate that she lied to him in the one flashback we see, for what purpose? So that some forum posters will think she really knew about Dorukan's death maybe an hour or so after the flashback sequence would suggest, so that we'd think... what? Sunny didn't know? He does. There's literally zero reason to do this. No value gained. No story impact. Zip. Zero. Nada. It has zero effect on any character action for us to think this, or travel down this path of reasoning.

But the lie (if it was one,) did serve a valid purpose. Two in fact. First, cynically, it verified that Sunny did not know Dorukan was dead. Second, it prevented Sunny from possibly doing a suicidal charge to the throne room to confront Xylon for murdering his Popi.

Zip, zero, nada? Who would have thought a throwaway gag from over 1200 strips ago would have story purpose? Because you don't see possibility does not negate its existence.


Meanwhile, again, it makes absolute sense to just assume that she arrived right then, but didn't yet know that Dorukan was dead, or that Xykon had taken up residence. That fits all

the facts and makes sense. The theory you are presenting not only doesn't, but actually opens up even more inconsistencies than it attempts to solve (like why on earth would she still be there if she knew Xykon was there?).

All of that is true. And for it to be true, Serini has to be the most incompetent rogue since Vinny Three-fingers tried to pick the pocket of Bagrem The Hanging Judge.

The reason she would be there? Many reasons. To get more monsters for her dungeon before Xykon recruits or kills them. To rescue them before adventurers kill them trying to get to Xykon. To learn what is going on with Xylon and assess his plan with the gates. To learn enough so she can recruit an epic level adventuring band to destroy Xykon.

The 'facts' do not make sense to me. I don't know what inconsistencies my guesswork opens up. I suppose the only inconsistency I see is that she told a lie to a child-like creature. And avoided causing a scene at a critical time.

[Edric O]

For some reason it always makes me anxious when a Main plot could have been solved easily in retrospect.

It couldn't have been. Sunny is just mistaken. While Xykon was in the Dungeon of Dorukan, there was absolutely no point in "jumping ahead" to Kraagor's Gate. Xykon had no intention of going anywhere else while Dorukan's Gate was still standing. And the chances of the Order successfully enlisting Serini's help back then were less than zero, considering how hard it was to enlist her even now, when the Order is far more competent.

[Edric O]

Also, I think it's telling that despite Serini, Shojo, the Draketooths and Dorukan being alerted to the fall of Lirian's Gate, Xykon could lay siege to Dorukan's Dungeon for months without Serini or the Draketooths meaning any known attempt to help. Dorukan did not ask for help and no one checked regularly enough to notice he might need any.
I suppose this shows that while Serini was okay with snooping around in the other party members' Gate defenses, she did not do it often.

[Dame_Mechanus]

Keeping track of Xykon is not as trivial as you seem to make it out to be.

Keeping track of Xykon is incredibly easy because he always travels with Redcloak, and Redcloak logs every location he visits on MaceBook. He's a lawful cleric, after all.

[hamishspence]

Keeping track of Xykon is incredibly easy because he always travels with Redcloak, and Redcloak logs every location he visits on MaceBook. He's a lawful cleric, after all.

Xykon was off on his own for three years in SoD (from 6 years before Dungeon Crawling Fools, to 3 years before Dungeon Crawling Fools). That's the period when he attacked Serini, got her diary, and decoded it.




The siege itself took six months.



Actually it was over a year. 6 months is the time between Xykon defeating Dorukan, and the Order arriving at the castle.

How long did it take Xykon to decode the diary? Unknown - but he disappeared for 3 years, so if his disappearance involved going straight for Serini very early on in the disappearance, it could have been almost 3 years of decoding - taking place in the backup fortress where he kept the diary - followed by him going straight for Redcloak and discovering him with Right-Eye.



Sunny was an upcoming encounter which was interrupted by the lawyers. What makes you think she came to the dungeon with Serini?



Sunny consistently calls Serini "Mom" and says Serini raised them. That doesn't gel with them having only met 2 years ago with Sunny being the same size as they are now.

[RickDaily12]

Liked the part of the comic where Elan and Sunny play baseball, and the jokes about the Bat and Banjo. But I'll be adding my name to those who found it strange that Serini didn't know Dorukan was dead. From what we've seen of her so far, and what kind of knowledge she's been flaunting, it doesn't really track.

First of all, per SoD, we know that Xykon spent about a three year portion away from Redcloak (6 -> 3 years prior to DCF). Back then, they had no idea where the gates were (because they did not have Serini's Diary), as Redcloak was explaining to Right-Eye about why he'd gotten sick of just sitting around his castle before finally deciding to go looking for him. As Xykon arrives at the end of this arc, stating he knew where the gate at Redmountain Hills was, and having to trace it backwards from Lirian's Gate, he sends his army that way straight away.

6 months before DCF, Redcloak kindly announces to us that they had been sitting outside Dorukan's Dungeon for at least over a year.
So, we know that at this point, Serini's figured out that Xykon killed Lirian. Xykon also nearly killed her, and took her diary. So she knows both of a threat to the Gates, and to the Scribble members.

And while I can't exactly prove a negative, that there's no way Serini could have NOT known something, it seems a bit hard to swallow that Serini wasn't keeping a serious eye on the situation regarding the several Gates, and of Xykon, when she herself admits:

1. She knew that both Lirian and Dorukan were killed by Xykon, and (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1249.html)
2. She also knew who destroyed Soon's Gate, (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0462.html) and exactly whose sword it actually was that had done the deed. (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1228.html)
3. She was also keeping tabs on Girard's Gate to know it was the OotS who destroyed it, (and Dorukan's Gate, as she also indicates "the party with the lich" "running around destroying gates".) (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1254.html)

Think about what she needed to have done to have even known about Point 2. Even Xykon couldn't scry into that room (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0415.html), but she still somehow knows enough about this to argue with the Paladins that she had known that they were the ones responsible for destroying it.

Also, for those pointing out "well, her Gate device only points out when the Gates are destroyed, but not when their defenders are dead", you're correct, but where you lose me, is where we go on to speculate that she wasn't keeping better tabs on Dorukan's Gate when it [I]also had anti-detection magic surrounding that Gate, just like Soon's did; yet Serini had such high-precision knowledge of what was happening to Soon's Gate, as it was happening. It just doesn't seem as likely that she would have missed what was going on at Dorukan's Gate for the full 18 months prior to DCF Xykon had sieged there, and after Dorukan had been killed by Xykon, when she was perfectly aware of the circumstances surrounding Soon's Gate until its moment of destruction. Hell, if anything, her knowledge of Dorukan's Gate at that moment should have been better than Soon's, if say, she had informants in the area- because she was actively recruiting monsters at Dorukan's Castle, but Soon's only guards were Human Paladins!

Again, this is all Serini just blurting out what she knows at the time, and it doesn't really track all that well given the timeline. Serini knows that Xykon killed Lirian and Dorukan. She knows exactly who destroyed each Gate. She knows who is doing it before the Gates actually get destroyed, which means she's either paying regular visits to the Oracle, or, more likely- she has some method of surveilance on each Gate that she has been checking really often. Yes, she doesn't have a device telling her when a Gate guardian is dead the exact moment they died, but her information has otherwise been extremely current. That she knew Dorukan was killed by Xykon, and that the Order blew up his Gate, but somehow didn't know the earlier fact during that gap in events, when her information has otherwise been pinpoint accurate to the exact date of the events is just not consistent of what we've seen of her so far.

Like I said, I can't absolutely prove that Serini did not know something, but given everything else she knew, when she indicates knowing of it- it just doesn't track well to me in a way that makes sense right now.

[Liquor Box]

1. She knew that both Lirian and Dorukan were killed by Xykon, and (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1249.html)
2. She also knew who destroyed Soon's Gate, (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0462.html) and exactly whose sword it actually was that had done the deed. (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1228.html)
3. She was also keeping tabs on Girard's Gate to know it was the OotS who destroyed it, (and Dorukan's Gate, as she also indicates "the party with the lich" [isn't] "running around destroying gates".) (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1254.html)

One of the more popular theories (even before this strip) about how much Serini knew was that the monitoring of the gates informed her on the event surrounding their destruction. That would explain how she knew your second and third points.

Even if Serini had the means to keep track of Xykon (which I doubt), I don't find it at all surprising that she didn't. She had been defeated by him, and he had taken her diary. She then had the choice of dedicating her time and resources to trying to track him, or to bolstering her gate's defences (something she'd neglected until then). Given that she seemed to think that she had no chance of hindering Xykon if she did keep track of him, bolstering her own gate's defence seems to me the more sensibly place to dedicate her energies.

That all assumes she had some way to keep track of Xykon. I can think of nothing obvious. We have seen no abilities, magic items or techniques from her that suggest the ability to track and epic lich (including in the no spell zone of Dorukon's dungeon). Indeed the only information gathering we have seen from her is from gate monitoring and lurking invisibly near her own lair.

[Ruck]

Something else I'd add is that Lirian was killed and her gate destroyed 27 years before the events of the main comic. Decades went by before another Gate was threatened. It's not hard to picture this scenario: With that long with no activity on any of the other Gates, Serini figured it was a one-time thing and stopped worrying about immediate threats to any of the Gates.

Then, perhaps, when Dorukan died and that Gate blew up, she decided to keep a closer eye on the activity among the remaining two beyond her own, which is how she knew the details from Soon's Gate.

Or another possibility-- when Xykon took her diary, she started keeping tabs on the other gates, but she's still only one person, and she may not have known Xykon was going for Dorukan's next (and while his beacon was still lit, didn't have any reason to think he was dead).

And further still-- there may yet be something we do not know that explains all this! That happens quite a bit in this comic.

[danielxcutter]

Also, Serini is still a non-caster. Skill ranks and UMD only goes so far.

[Riftwolf]

She literally has hundreds of teleportation devices in her stronghold. She would have to be criminally stupid to not have destinations all over the world for her personal convenience.



How long did it take for Xykon to decrypt the code in Serini's diary? A full monsterous regeneration of a max HP/Level rogue would take 2 hours. At less than 1hp per round that's less than a day at 1hp per turn, 5 days at 1hp per hour, or 120 days at 1hp/day.
In short, Serini had a lot of time between the theft of her diary and the attack on Dorukan's dungeon.
The siege itself took six months.



Because I refuse to believe Serini is as incompetent as she would have to be for that scenario to make sense. We are talking about a person who knew intimate details about the goings on in Shojo's throne room while Xykon was there. I don't recall seeing any halflings, or halfling-shaped shadows. Why would someone that good at being a rogue be so bad at it between the attack on her and the attack on Azure City?



Sunny was an upcoming encounter which was interrupted by the lawyers. What makes you think she came to the dungeon with Serini?



The dialogue in the strip implies that. But if she doesn't know by that point that Dorukan is dead, well, that's the whole issue I have been wrestling with. It requires an epic rogue to be epically ignorant after being ambushed, left for dead, and learning that at least one of her adventuring buddies is now dead.

Can you at least see the problem I'm having with the 'facts'?





But the lie (if it was one,) did serve a valid purpose. Two in fact. First, cynically, it verified that Sunny did not know Dorukan was dead. Second, it prevented Sunny from possibly doing a suicidal charge to the throne room to confront Xylon for murdering his Popi.

Zip, zero, nada? Who would have thought a throwaway gag from over 1200 strips ago would have story purpose? Because you don't see possibility does not negate its existence.



All of that is true. And for it to be true, Serini has to be the most incompetent rogue since Vinny Three-fingers tried to pick the pocket of Bagrem The Hanging Judge.

The reason she would be there? Many reasons. To get more monsters for her dungeon before Xykon recruits or kills them. To rescue them before adventurers kill them trying to get to Xykon. To learn what is going on with Xylon and assess his plan with the gates. To learn enough so she can recruit an epic level adventuring band to destroy Xykon.

The 'facts' do not make sense to me. I don't know what inconsistencies my guesswork opens up. I suppose the only inconsistency I see is that she told a lie to a child-like creature. And avoided causing a scene at a critical time.

1) A hotel janitor has literally hundreds of keys, it's criminally irresponsible that he doesn't have keys to military bases around the world.

2) Nice use of rules to explain a point. What are the 3.5 rules on psychological trauma?

3) We don't know how she got that information yet. Maybe it was the Oracle.

4) Sunny calls Serini Mum, suggesting a longer relationship than what you're suggesting. If I started calling my new boss mum I can see it causing problems.

5) Serini knew Dorukan was an Epic Wizard and it's well known they're far better equipped to fight Epic Sorcerers than a surprised Epic Rogue. Maybe that trip to the dungeon was when she found out Dorukan was dead.

6) Source on Sunny even knowing Dorukan and referred to him as "Popi" when you're willfully ignoring them referring to Serini as Mom?

[Fyraltari]

Let's not forget that Dorukan invented the Cloister spell.

There's no way short of knowing a completely unrelated Epic mage that Serini could have knowledge of what was going on in his dungeon before going there herself.

[urbanwolf]

There are ways for her to know how Soons gate was destroyed, without scrying.

She could of been spying on Ochul and Lien the whole time they were in the vally. Maybe with a wand of detect thoughts to gleam more info.
She could of woke them up questioned them wiped their memory then woke them up questioned them again then wiped the memory. Repeat over and over until she knows all she wants.

She could have a monster ally that can read minds or special DM power.

[KorvinStarmast]

I'm pretty annoyed that even the woman who proposed the "go our separate ways" plan violated it. She is chaotic (3.5e wise)so why would she keep an oath?

and the only one who took that separation seriously is the one who takes the most scorn and criticism from the rest of the party. The paladin hate is strong in the 3.x community. It is its own trope.
Having read some of my own writing from 10 years ago, I know how embarrassing reviewing your own past work can be! I recently reviewed a monograph I wrote back in the 90's. It has not aged well. :smallfrown:

Her lying to a creature she is recruiting rings true. Yes. She is chaotic and a thief. (Given that Haley's dad was AD&D 1e thief, and Serini is a bit older than him, she began as a Thief. :smallwink: OK, she transitioned to 'rogue' with one of the edition changes before strip 0001. :smallyuk:

All the Scribblers and their allies are alerted when a Gate falls. They are not alerted when a Scribbler dies.
The Gate stood for at least 6 months after Dorukan died. Why would she assume, when there seems to be no problem with the Gate, that it was under control of a lich who slew Dorukan? Saved me the trouble. Thanks.

is that Xykon tracked her down after Lirian's death, not vice versa. She may not have known how and why Lirian died, until after Xykon's attack on her - and still may not have known where Xykon was heading next. Allowing her visit to the castle, with Sunny, to be serendipitous, rather than "She traced Xykon to Dorukan's castle." For that matter, given that the "alert system" is normally in the building itself (in the Girard case for example)

https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0844.html

and given that she left the dungeon behind and went travelling (strip 1227) - she may not have known about Lirian's death until she returned to the Kraagor dungeon, found that dungeon's "alert system" had one light dim, and guessed Lirian was dead. Well reasoned.

My assumption is that she was there checking out Dorukan's dungeon. Durokan's Dungeon also had the collection of all of the 'pre 3.x edition monsters' which might have been what she was trying to recruit monsters from. (Nale's amulet, yadda yadda)

I already knew our mystery 1-page-soon-to-be-ally was going to be Sunny but I still find the obvious bit of retconning necessary to make that happen kind of awkward. It could have been done a bit more gracefully, yes. In my own head, Serini talling Sunny "we need to work on getting those AD&D monsters out of their confinement" would have been a better line, but I'm not writing this book.

I suppose this shows that while Serini was okay with snooping around in the other party members' Gate defenses, she did not do it often. Yeah, and she only robs banks every other Thursday. :smallyuk:

Keeping track of Xykon is incredibly easy because he always travels with Redcloak, and Redcloak logs every location he visits on MaceBook. He's a lawful cleric, after all. OK, I giggled. :smallsmile:

[expectocat]

Is it possible that Serini became aware when she saw that his get had been destroyed?

[Quizatzhaderac]

Think about what she needed to have done to have even known about Point 2. Even Xykon couldn't scry into that room (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0415.html), but she still somehow knows enough about this to argue with the Paladins that she had known that they were the ones responsible for destroying it. How, specifically, you think she got that knowledge? I ask because the ways I imagine she got the information about Soon's gate wouldn't work for Durkon's death.

As I see it, the three main possibilities. 1) She got the information from O-Chul without him knowing, or wiping his memory later. 2) She learned about #663, panel 4 (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0663.html), rather than the direct event, from the nameless scribe Hinjo and O-Chull spoke to afterwards. 3) She spoke with one of the many dead witnesses.

Two possibilities I'm especially willing to dismiss 1) She scryed the scene 2) She made a non-descript "gather information" check. Rich does like to sometimes do such things as jokes, but there was no joke made here.

All of the witnesses to Durkon's death were either members of Team evil, or trapped inside a soul gem.

[Peelee]

How, specifically, you think she got that knowledge? I ask because the ways I imagine she got the information about Soon's gate wouldn't work for Durkon's death.

As I see it, the three main possibilities. 1) She got the information from O-Chul without him knowing, or wiping his memory later. 2) She learned about #663, panel 4 (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0663.html), rather than the direct event, from the nameless scribe Hinjo and O-Chull spoke to afterwards. 3) She spoke with one of the many dead witnesses.

Two possibilities I'm especially willing to dismiss 1) She scryed the scene 2) She made a non-descript "gather information" check. Rich does like to sometimes do such things as jokes, but there was no joke made here.

All of the witnesses to Durkon's death were either members of Team evil, or trapped inside a soul gem.

I can think of at least one major and not-unlikely method you haven't listed, so I'm hesitant to assume any given list is exhaustive.

[gbaji]

She literally has hundreds of teleportation devices in her stronghold. She would have to be criminally stupid to not have destinations all over the world for her personal convenience.

We only know that she has a wand of dimension door.


How long did it take for Xykon to decrypt the code in Serini's diary? A full monsterous regeneration of a max HP/Level rogue would take 2 hours. At less than 1hp per round that's less than a day at 1hp per turn, 5 days at 1hp per hour, or 120 days at 1hp/day.
In short, Serini had a lot of time between the theft of her diary and the attack on Dorukan's dungeon.
The siege itself took six months.

Regeneration takes that long. We don't know how long the procedure to transform her into a half troll/hobbit thing took. Again though, it's somewhat irrelevant. The strip clearly shows her there in the dungeon at that time, apparently there with Sunny to recruit monsters, and apparently not knowing that Dorukan is dead. We can speculate ways this can be true, or we can assume it's false and speculate ways to show that side instead. I tend towards finding things that support the written stuff instead, unless there's something else written that directly and unambiguously contradicts it. I'm not seeing that here.



Because I refuse to believe Serini is as incompetent as she would have to be for that scenario to make sense. We are talking about a person who knew intimate details about the goings on in Shojo's throne room while Xykon was there. I don't recall seeing any halflings, or halfling-shaped shadows. Why would someone that good at being a rogue be so bad at it between the attack on her and the attack on Azure City?

For the love of Pete! I've seen this silly assumption that Serini must have epic scrying, or a massive spy network, or was physically there in the shadows, or some other absolute silliness to explain how she knew the details of O'Chul's actions in the throne room. There is a vastly simpler explanation that does not require adding all that extra stuff into the story:

She dosed them repeatedly with the amnesia and sleep potions. Get it? She had them captured for three days. Do you honestly think the only time she questioned them was the one time we saw (and the one in which their interrogation was interrupted and she had to run off to deal with the Order, and so haven't been dosed again)? Really?

She knows the details of those events because the paladins told her. They just don't remember doing so. Think about how you would use short term amnesia potion to interrogate someone. Then assume that Serini is at least intelligent enough to use it that way. Recall also that the paladins actually want to recruit Serini to their side, and so are more likely to try to share details like this instead of keep them secret.

Note that every single thing she knows is specifically (and exclusively) information she would have known from her own gate monitor, her investigation (she knows Lirian and Dorukan are dead), and things that the paladins themselves know. What she doesn't know? Anything about Vamp Durkon. Anything about the Godsmoot. Details about Girard's gate beyond it being destroyed (by the order, which they presumably reported to the paladins). Why assume a (completely theoretical) massive intelligence network here, when one old lady with some amnesia potion (which we literally see in panel) can explain the same thing?



Sunny was an upcoming encounter which was interrupted by the lawyers. What makes you think she came to the dungeon with Serini?

Because Sunny is with Serini *before* the encounter with the lawyers. And because Sunny is with Serini to recruit monsters, which would be strange if he was just recruited himself. And because literally every single thing we know about Sunny in the strip says that Serini raised him from a child. Why on earth leap to some other explanation?


The dialogue in the strip implies that. But if she doesn't know by that point that Dorukan is dead, well, that's the whole issue I have been wrestling with. It requires an epic rogue to be epically ignorant after being ambushed, left for dead, and learning that at least one of her adventuring buddies is now dead.

No. It requires an epic rogue to not have the frankly absurd world spanning knowledge and abilities you have previously head cannoned her into having. Once you eliminate that assumption, and accept that she's just a semi-retired adventurer and is actually quite out of the loop, and only has the resources she can physically carry with her, then that expectation that she must have been able to know about Dorukan's death prior to actually going there and finding out herself disappears in a puff of smoke.


Can you at least see the problem I'm having with the 'facts'?

Yes. I can. I suspect it's not the same one you see though.



But the lie (if it was one,) did serve a valid purpose. Two in fact. First, cynically, it verified that Sunny did not know Dorukan was dead. Second, it prevented Sunny from possibly doing a suicidal charge to the throne room to confront Xylon for murdering his Popi.

Now I'm just confused by your logic (or lack thereof). If you believe that Sunny didn't travel there with Serini, but was recruited in the dungeon, then that makes zero sense. Sunny would be more likely to know Dorukan was dead, since he would have lived there (again, totally false belief, but just exploring the fact that even then this doesn't make sense). If you also assumed (as you appear to have) that Serini did know Dorukan was dead, what possible reason would she have to lie about it... to Sunny? In your alternative reality, she just met Sunny. Sunny lives in the dungeon. Why on earth lie? "Hello. I just recruited you to join me in my dungeon up north. Oh btw. That guy that runs this dungeon. Ignore what you know. He's really still alive and well. Ok. Let's go!". Er... that makes zero sense.

Um. In either scenario, the whole "Sunny does suicidal charge" makes no sense. If he lived in the dungeon, he would have known already, and probably not cared that much about Dorukan other than as "the guy who runs this place" (not to mention, if they just met, how would Serini know to lie in the first place, or care to do so?). And (back in the real world where Sunny traveled with Serini to the dungeon), Sunny would have known of Dorukan only via Serini's stories of him. Would you go off on a suicidal attack to avenge the death of someone your parents knew 30+ years before you were born? Probably not. It would be "gee. That sucks mom. Sorry to hear about your friend"

Doesn't it make vastly more sense for Serini and Sunny to have both traveled to the dungeon, together, neither of them knowing that Dorukan is dead? There are no absurd inconsistencies if we just assume that what we read is exactly what happened. Why invent new things just to create contradictions in the story? That seems strange.


Zip, zero, nada? Who would have thought a throwaway gag from over 1200 strips ago would have story purpose? Because you don't see possibility does not negate its existence.

Huh? There's no "story purpose" to what you are proposing. There is a lot of story purpose to having it be just what we saw. It's the story of how Serini found out about Dorkuan's death, and perhaps a bit about how she knew the Order may have been involved in the destruction of the first gate (cause now we know she was there, or at least in proximity at the time). And yes, it creates and further explains the callback as to why Sunny was in the dungeon in the first place (was with Serini traveling there).



The reason she would be there? Many reasons. To get more monsters for her dungeon before Xykon recruits or kills them. To rescue them before adventurers kill them trying to get to Xykon. To learn what is going on with Xylon and assess his plan with the gates. To learn enough so she can recruit an epic level adventuring band to destroy Xykon.

Then why not just tell Sunny "we need to recruit as many monsters as possible to free them from Xykon". There's no reason to lie here.

Oddly, I agree with everything else you pointed out. I'm just assuming that it was after this flashback that she learned what happened to Dorukan, and she did do some poking around, and learned some stuff. This could very well be exactly when and where she realized that Lirian's death and gate destruction was not just a one off fluke, but that the same guy who attacked her out of the blue and stole her diary is actively seeking the gates.


The 'facts' do not make sense to me. I don't know what inconsistencies my guesswork opens up. I suppose the only inconsistency I see is that she told a lie to a child-like creature. And avoided causing a scene at a critical time.

Again. Circular logic. There's only a scene to be avoided because you have also speculated that one would have existed. I don't agree. Sunny is childish, but he does seem to understand what they are doing, why they are doing it, and why it's so important. I'm just not clear on why you think that she would feel the need to lie to him about this, since she's told him pretty much everything else (and the "everything else" is a lot worse than some guy having died).

The biggest inconsistency is that your entire chain of assumptions lies on Serini being much more aggressive and actively involved in investigating the gates than is actually shown in the comic. Everything we know about her in the comic is that she's completely content and prepared to just hold up and defend her gate. She's let the others go as they went. But now that hers is the last one, she will act. But even then, just to prevent it from being destroyed. If anything, what we've learned of her is just how much she didn't know about what was really going on, which led her to make perhaps poor decisions.

If we went by your assumption of easy teleportation to every major location of interest in the world, and communication, and ability to find out anything via stealth, then why didn't she warn the Azurites about Xykon's army? I mean, any decent epic rogue could not have missed the massive army heading their way, right? Wouldn't she have tracked Redcloak leaving the dungeon (trivial for an epic rogue), have spied on them recruiting the hobgoblins, and known what they were doing all along? Why not act? Why not skulk around (since you seem to think she had the run of the city, including the Throne room), and learn about Kubuto and stop him before he left with most of the nobles? Heck. She could have singlehandedly solved pretty much the entire thing on her own there, since she's such a powerful epic rogue and is really really determined to ensure the gates aren't destroyed, right? Even if she'd already adopted her "better Xykon than destroyed" position, why not kill Miko as she was headed to the gate to destroy it? Would be easy for her to do, right?

I mean. If you're going to ascribe to her super epic rogue powers, knowledge of everything, and assumed she would always use them in the most intelligent ways possible, and was strongly motivated to directly involve herself like you are assuming, why stop where you have? We could take that much farther, and resolve a lot of other things. Other things that just didn't happen. The irony is that it is your position that creates such a broad inconsistency, with her having to be amazing "super rogue" in some cases, and complete incompetent rogue in others.

Or we can assume that she just doesn't have those resources. She didn't really spy on Azure city. She really only knows what she can get from the monitors and her own poking around. And she really hasn't been that actively involved until it became obvious that hers was the last gate and everyone was coming right to her. Maybe she (shocking thought) actually followed the rules they put in place and just took care of defending her own gate, just like she promised to.

To me. That makes sense.

EDIT. one more bit:


And while I can't exactly prove a negative, that there's no way Serini could have NOT known something, it seems a bit hard to swallow that Serini wasn't keeping a serious eye on the situation regarding the several Gates, and of Xykon, when she herself admits:

1. She knew that both Lirian and Dorukan were killed by Xykon, and (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1249.html)
2. She also knew who destroyed Soon's Gate, (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0462.html) and exactly whose sword it actually was that had done the deed. (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1228.html)
3. She was also keeping tabs on Girard's Gate to know it was the OotS who destroyed it, (and Dorukan's Gate, as she also indicates "the party with the lich" [isn't] "running around destroying gates".) (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1254.html)

Think about what she needed to have done to have even known about Point 2. Even Xykon couldn't scry into that room (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0415.html), but she still somehow knows enough about this to argue with the Paladins that she had known that they were the ones responsible for destroying it.

I'll point out that every single one of those point is information the paladins she had already held captive for 3 days had knowledge of. Also, we have zero information (from her, or otherwise) to indicate she knew any of that (except that Lirian and Dorukan were killed by Xykon perhaps) prior to the scene where we see her talking to those same paladins after she'd already held them captive for 3 days.

Every single piece of that information was there in front of her. And she had 3 days, amnesia potion, and presumably some pretty decent interrogation skills to obtain it. Yes. I've thought about what "she needed to have done" to know about that (especially including point 2). Amnesia potion and time with the paladins. Oh. She had both! Mystery solved...

[brian 333]

Sunny was literally the next encounter the Order was supposed to face in Dorukan's Dungeon after the intellectual property issue with the squiddy-faced brain-eater guy. Sunny worked for Dorukan.

All of the assumptions made based on what you call fact are similarly flawed. They are your speculation based on what you want to believe. Is that not the heinous crime of which I am guilty? But, no, I admit I am speculating.

If I was playing Serini, I would have been curious enough to learn a bit more than is shown. I am glad that you support my previous speculation about repeated interrogations of the paladins. Are you certain that is how she did it? It's not shown in comic, so it's just speculation. So far as we know for a fact, the only time she spoke to the paladins after the dart episode was when they woke up in shackles.

And literally every door in Monster Hollow has a teleportation device. Why would she set up literally hundreds of them, yet forget to set up a few that went to important places she might want to visit? Is she stupid? Or just lazy after having already built so many?

And that is my issue. That's what is bugging me. Any halfway decent rogue has informers, contact info for experts for hire, and even a few handy magic items. But, from what is shown, Serini has chilled at the North Pole while 80% of the defences holding her reality together fall.

She's not that stupid. And, as this comic shows, she has not simply waited on the sidelines. We don't know what she has or has not done, but I utterly reject the notion that she has done nothing. It is out of character for Serini.

[gbaji]

Sunny was literally the next encounter the Order was supposed to face in Dorukan's Dungeon after the intellectual property issue with the squiddy-faced brain-eater guy. Sunny worked for Dorukan.

Yes. And the flashback scene in strip 1270 occurs immediately before the events in that strip (32). I don't think anyone was disputing this. What does it have to do with whether they came to the dungeon together, or who knew Dorukan was dead at that point or not?


All of the assumptions made based on what you call fact are similarly flawed. They are your speculation based on what you want to believe. Is that not the heinous crime of which I am guilty? But, no, I admit I am speculating.

Flawed similar to what? You said "similarly flawed". What are my assumptions similar to, and in which way are they flawed? Heck. Which assumptions are you talking about?

And no. They are not speculations based on what "I want to believe". They are reasonable extrapolations based on what has actually been written into the comic itself. I'm assuming that if Serini says something that indicates strongly that she didn't know Dorukan was dead at that point in time (immediately before strip #32), then the most reasonable interpretation of that is... wait for it.. that she didn't know Dorukan was dead at that time.

My "speculations" are merely responses to other people's speculations designed to dispute or dismiss things stated pretty clearly in the comic, by merely pointing out that there are far simpler explanations which allow them to be true than would allow us to conclude they are false. Are they still speculations? Sure. Some of them are. But the burden of speculation is a lot higher if you're attempting to buck the default assumption within a narrative (declaring that Serini must be lying to Sunny for example), then it is for merely supporting it.


If I was playing Serini, I would have been curious enough to learn a bit more than is shown. I am glad that you support my previous speculation about repeated interrogations of the paladins.

It's odd that you previously speculated this (it seemed obvious to me that they were interrogated multiple times using the amnesia potion the very first time I read that strip, and have been gobsmacked at all the people attempting to come up with Occam's razor bashing explanations for it instead), and yet you still followed up with the statement in this thread that she had intimate knowledge of what Xykon was doing in the throne room of Azure city, as support for an allegation that she must therefore have known that Dorukan was dead prior to the flashback scene (and therefor must have lied to Sunny for some reason). Dunno. I'd think that you'd be pushing the opposite argument if that was what you believed happened instead of rushing down a long series of leaps that only works if you assume one of the differing opinions (that she has epic scrying, or intelligence capabilities, or was physically sneaking around there, spied on the folks on the island, etc).

And I *do* think Serini was curious. Right up until she saw that the lich that curb stomped her was the one involved.



Are you certain that is how she did it? It's not shown in comic, so it's just speculation. So far as we know for a fact, the only time she spoke to the paladins after the dart episode was when they woke up in shackles.

Sure. We only know for sure what was shown in comic panels. But it seems pretty absurd to assume that they just slept for three days. They were darted right here (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1189.html). Oh. I was wrong. ETA was two days, not three. Still seems absurd that she just kept them there for all that time, woke them up and talked with them for like 5 minutes, and then ran off to go ambush the Order, when she absolutely had time for dozens of similar length sessions and could have collected a ton of information from them.

It's speculation, but it's very reasonable speculation. It explains every single thing she knew, and doesn't require anything to support it other than what is literally shown to us right in the scene itself. Every other explanation as to how she knew about O'Chul's actions in the throne room require massive speculation and introduction of completely new and unstated assumptions. Again. Occam's razor applies here (well, the common interpretation anyway).


And literally every door in Monster Hollow has a teleportation device. Why would she set up literally hundreds of them, yet forget to set up a few that went to important places she might want to visit? Is she stupid? Or just lazy after having already built so many?

We don't know exactly how those devices work. Probably pretty short range, and likely from/to specific defined points built into the dungeon itself. It's one thing to hire someone to create something like that for you. It's another entirely to build a global network of such things.

Let's also not forget that she was the one who insisted on the "no visiting" rule. Why would she have put in teleportation points near the other gates? I mean, she could have, but again we're in "wild speculation" territory here IMO.


And that is my issue. That's what is bugging me. Any halfway decent rogue has informers, contact info for experts for hire, and even a few handy magic items. But, from what is shown, Serini has chilled at the North Pole while 80% of the defences holding her reality together fall.

She's retired. She also seems to have shifted her focus away from the hustle and bustle of civilized society and more or less dropped off the grid. Honestly, it seems as though all of the Scribblers more or less retired to their various gate locations and disconnected with the rest of society in order to guard them. She seemed to have at least intended to continue the adventuring life, and presumably did so. But that was still a long time ago. How active are her contacts today? Those are somewhat "use it or lose it" type things.

If she were an actively operating epic rogue, I'd be inclined to agree with you. For someone who appears to have retired a decade or two ago (which is still long after the rest of her original party retired), not so much.


She's not that stupid. And, as this comic shows, she has not simply waited on the sidelines. We don't know what she has or has not done, but I utterly reject the notion that she has done nothing. It is out of character for Serini.

I didn't say she did nothing at all. And hey. It's entirely possible that she involved herself in a bunch of other stuff going on at the other two gates as well that all occurred in the background and we just never knew about it. No way to know unless a strip shows us. But it's also quite possible that she only went to check out Dorukan's dungeon after she was attacked, knowing she was in violation of "the rules", but wanting to take that risk (and maybe poach some monsters while there), just to "see what was going on". And when she found out Dorukan had been killed, and there was a super powerful lich behind it (same one who attacked her), and he was on a mission to capture a gate? She may have retreated at that point to her own gate to defend it (that was the whole part of her plan originally anyway, right?).

Dunno. I'm just following up from what we've seen of her. She's scared of Xykon. She's probably been just hoping that he'll either be destroyed, or capture another gate and never get to her. But when that didn't work out? She had to get involved herself. And that didn't work out for her either. You don't have to be "stupid" to be mistaken, or to be scared. She's behaving like a real person. Flaws and all.

[Liquor Box]

Sunny was literally the next encounter the Order was supposed to face in Dorukan's Dungeon after the intellectual property issue with the squiddy-faced brain-eater guy. Sunny worked for Dorukan.

All of the assumptions made based on what you call fact are similarly flawed. They are your speculation based on what you want to believe. Is that not the heinous crime of which I am guilty? But, no, I admit I am speculating.

If I was playing Serini, I would have been curious enough to learn a bit more than is shown. I am glad that you support my previous speculation about repeated interrogations of the paladins. Are you certain that is how she did it? It's not shown in comic, so it's just speculation. So far as we know for a fact, the only time she spoke to the paladins after the dart episode was when they woke up in shackles.

And literally every door in Monster Hollow has a teleportation device. Why would she set up literally hundreds of them, yet forget to set up a few that went to important places she might want to visit? Is she stupid? Or just lazy after having already built so many?

And that is my issue. That's what is bugging me. Any halfway decent rogue has informers, contact info for experts for hire, and even a few handy magic items. But, from what is shown, Serini has chilled at the North Pole while 80% of the defences holding her reality together fall.

She's not that stupid. And, as this comic shows, she has not simply waited on the sidelines. We don't know what she has or has not done, but I utterly reject the notion that she has done nothing. It is out of character for Serini.

Everyone is speculating. But there is speculation that is consistent with what has been shown in the comic, and speculation that either contradicts what has been shown in the comic or requires some improbable leaps of faith to explain.

People have proposed lots of possible explanations for how Serini could know the things she knows, and not have known about Dorukon's death. I don't think anyone has said that they are certain of how she knows what she does - so they/we are all speculating too. But that speculation is consistent with what we have seen of her, so it would seem a plausible explanation.

I think a lot of people are objecting to your speculation because they think (as do I) that it is not consistent with what we have seen, or requires an improbabl interpretation of aspects of the comic (and in particular the latest strip). So most people (including me) are of the opinion that your speculation is not plausible.

[hamishspence]

Sunny was literally the next encounter the Order was supposed to face in Dorukan's Dungeon after the intellectual property issue with the squiddy-faced brain-eater guy. Sunny worked for Dorukan.

1270 recontextualises 32. In 32, the presumption is that the Order would have fought Sunny next.


In 1270, the idea is that Sunny was to go over and help the Order deal with the Mind Flayer - but before Sunny could do that, the Lawyers dragged the mind flayer off, and Sunny was not needed.

The constant description by Sunny of Serini as "Mom" and Sunny stating that Serini was the one who raised them - is what leads me to conclude that Serini brought Sunny with her on her trip into Dorukan's dungeon.

[danielxcutter]

I wonder if Sunny was primarily raised by Serini when they were a baby? While I subscribe to the "sentient mortals with free will should not really have racial alignment set in stone" school of thought I know Rich does, it's still true that there are enough cultural influences in the world to nudge people towards unpleasant paths. I mean... compare Azure City, which at least had a prominent and highly active order of paladins operating from there, with places like, y'know, Greysky City or the Empire of Blood.(Not that there aren't any bad Azurites, obviously, but as a society I mean.)

[arimareiji]

How, specifically, you think she got that knowledge? I ask because the ways I imagine she got the information about Soon's gate wouldn't work for Durkon's death....

All of the witnesses to Durkon's death were either members of Team evil, or trapped inside a soul gem.

Just making sure, hooray autocorrupt changing Dorukan?

(One of the few instances where I couldn't blame it too much for doing so, since heretofore Durkon was a lot more common and even my human brain gets them confused.)


I can think of at least one major and not-unlikely method you haven't listed, so I'm hesitant to assume any given list is exhaustive.

Personally I still think 1) she brews potions, and 2) a potion of ESP would be ridiculously OP in the hands of a cunning rogue (who also has a cauldron full of amnesia potion) interrogating paladins.

[danielxcutter]

I don't think ESP specifically is a thing in this edition. Detect Thoughts might work at least?

[Fyraltari]

Sunny was literally the next encounter the Order was supposed to face in Dorukan's Dungeon after the intellectual property issue with the squiddy-faced brain-eater guy. Sunny worked for Dorukan.
No, they weren't. They were meant to appear in the next strip, which they didn't because of the lawyers. Sunny is Serini's adopted child.



And literally every door in Monster Hollow has a teleportation device. Why would she set up literally hundreds of them, yet forget to set up a few that went to important places she might want to visit? Is she stupid? Or just lazy after having already built so many?
Kraagor's Tomb is not covered by Cloister. Also, She has no magical ability, she can't set these up herself. Also, Also, she can do whatever she wants at her own Gate, but Dorukan is unlikely to take kindly to her installing a backdoor at his. How much do you think she was willing to bet on the teleportation specialist not noticing a teleport in his own backyards for decades?

Any halfway decent rogue has informers, contact info for experts for hire
Haley doesn't.


She's not that stupid. And, as this comic shows, she has not simply waited on the sidelines. We don't know what she has or has not done, but I utterly reject the notion that she has done nothing. It is out of character for Serini.
The waiting game is has been her entire plan this whole book.

[hamishspence]

Given that the Order were about level 9 or so at that point (according to the Class and Geekery thread)

https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=19392374&postcount=533

, and given that Beholders are CR 13, and given that Xykon said (in the intro to Dungeon Crawling Fools) that the monsters in the dungeon are to be specifically arranged "weakest at the top, strongest at the bottom" (because Xykon wants the Order to get to the bottom and activate the gate to maximise the amount of entertainment he gets) Sunny is a massive outlier in what would be expected to be fought.

Hence it making sense that Sunny wasn't put there by Dorukan or Xykon at all.

EDIT: Turns out Xykon didn't know for certain that the Order could deactivate the seals, allowing him to access the gate, till the fight with Nale.

https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0097.html

Still, TPK at the start of the dungeon is not entertaining enough for Xykon - hence the "have them encounter monsters, weakest to strongest" plan.

[danielxcutter]

Sunny could be a young, not fully grown beholder, going by their number of eyestalks and size. But considering that mind flayers are about CR 9, that does certainly tilt the scales closer to Sunny being an outlier(and therefore probably not from the dungeon).

[Kornaki]

I'm still stuck on a dumb question. Why do you think any of the monsters the order fought worked for Dorukan, and not for Xykon?

[danielxcutter]

Because some of Dorukan's employees literally didn't know he was dead for months.

[Metastachydium]

Still, TPK at the start of the dungeon is not entertaining enough for Xykon - hence the "have them encounter monsters, weakest to strongest" plan.

I think he'd find it friggin' hilarious (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0543.html), actually.


No, they weren't. They were meant to appear in the next strip, which they didn't because of the lawyers. Sunny is Serini's adopted child.

And even beyond that ("Hey, random beholder! I'm your mother now" "K, weird half-troll lady." – just how lifelike does that sound to you, brian?) it's not like all the monsters in there are meant to be Dorukan's staff. The man was Neutral Good, for rot's sake! Why on earth would he have a betentacled aberration that eats brains first, asks questions later on his payroll?


I'm still stuck on a dumb question. Why do you think any of the monsters the order fought worked for Dorukan, and not for Xykon?

Some certainly did. Think of those guarding the seals, for instance. Celia made it clear that Xykon didn't scour and take over every last bit of secret space inside.


Because some of Dorukan's employees literally didn't know he was dead for months.

Also, that. Still, the more easily accessible corridors and rooms belonged to Xykon at that point, so most of what the Order met and fought was likley Xykon's entourage.

[arimareiji]

I don't think ESP specifically is a thing in this edition. Detect Thoughts might work at least?

Fair enough, I was too focused on not having seen a Potion of Detect Thoughts... but I don't think it's too much of a stretch that if the Giant is good with a potion effect as customized as (e.g.) "causes amnesia for the previous 4+1d4 days per dose", he'd also be good with "a spell effect not specifically listed by name at present, but used previously".

[Doug Lampert]

We don't know exactly how those devices work. Probably pretty short range, and likely from/to specific defined points built into the dungeon itself. It's one thing to hire someone to create something like that for you. It's another entirely to build a global network of such things.

I think the overwhelming favorite is permanent teleportation circle.

Teleportation circle is specifically on the permanency list, and is also specifically usable as a spell trap with the note in the spell that no one but a rogue can (edited) use search to spot the trap.

It's basically a perfect match for what we see.

Sure, it could be something else, but why?

Edited: You can't change the destination once you set up such a trap, but there's no range limit or chance of error.

[Breccia]

Hey why didn't the ball stick to the bat? It's tied in the ninth, this is a tense situation, the mimics should have been sweating glue! I demand that this comic strip about beholders playing baseball with puppets adhere to strict rules! (shakes fist)

[Ruck]

Sunny was literally the next encounter the Order was supposed to face in Dorukan's Dungeon after the intellectual property issue with the squiddy-faced brain-eater guy. Sunny worked for Dorukan.

This is an assumption on your part. Nothing in comic #32 indicates this. You seem to be assuming Sunny worked for Dorukan because Sunny was in Dorukan's dungeon. But nothing explicitly says that's so. And, in fact, the current comic explicitly contradicts it, and says that.

As Rich has said before:


But really, the important lesson here is this: Rather than making assumptions that don't fit with the text and then complaining about the text being wrong, why not just choose different assumptions that DO fit with the text?

It seems like many of your complaints stem from making assumptions that don't fit with the text, even when the text has explicitly contradicted those assumptions.


I think a lot of people are objecting to your speculation because they think (as do I) that it is not consistent with what we have seen, or requires an improbable interpretation of aspects of the comic (and in particular the latest strip). So most people (including me) are of the opinion that your speculation is not plausible.

Well said.

[Quizatzhaderac]

I'm thinking about how good Sunny must be at telekensis to hit a baseball.

I guess they have binocular (nonocular?) vision, but the window of time to hit a baseball is super tiny for any creature who's evolution didn't specialize in thrown stuff.


Sure. We only know for sure what was shown in comic panels. But it seems pretty absurd to assume that they just slept for three days. They were darted right here (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1189.html). Oh. I was wrong. ETA was two days, not three. Still seems absurd that she just kept them there for all that time, woke them up and talked with them for like 5 minutes, and then ran off to go ambush the Order, when she absolutely had time for dozens of similar length sessions and could have collected a ton of information from them.
I like the repeated amnesia hypothesis, but the biggest , most universal conceit of fiction is that interesting things happen one right after another.

Rich isn't going to show an hour of Serini stonewalling O-Chul, or eight hours of awkward silence.

Even just having a textbox saying "hours passed" wastes precious space and distracts the user if the passage of time isn't important or unusual.


I'm still stuck on a dumb question. Why do you think any of the monsters the order fought worked for Dorukan, and not for Xykon?Xykon was shown leading the goblins and ogres before the dungeon in the prequel books.

He also raises the dead quite often and I suspect Dorukan was unwilling to raise the dead.

Trigak and the Linear Guild were specifically mentioned as discount mercenaries hired by Xykon.

That pretty much leaves the monsters in the earth, wind, and fire (Ba-dee-ya) vaults as Dorukan originals amongst those the order actually fought.

The monsters/people they didn't fight may have been from Dorukan are: the Ilithid, Fruit Pie the sorcerer, and the women in line for the bathroom.

[gbaji]

I think the overwhelming favorite is permanent teleportation circle.

Teleportation circle is specifically on the permanency list, and is also specifically usable as a spell trap with the note in the spell that no one but a rogue can (edited) use search to spot the trap.

It's basically a perfect match for what we see.

Sure, it could be something else, but why?

Edited: You can't change the destination once you set up such a trap, but there's no range limit or chance of error.

I think it's a variation of teleportation circle, but I actually have a pet theory that the effect is reversed (yeah, this is me totally speculating here). The concept that the trap teleports by default and must be disabled to get into the "real location" does seem the most obvious, but panels 8, 9, and 10 (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1220.html) make me pause a bit. Notice the floor coloration. It's the same on both sides of the trap prior to it being deactivated, but changes color once Haley turns it off. That has always bugged me.

We also know that there is some sort of illusion that allows one to see what appears on the other side of the circle by default. But it's only once Haley "disables" the trap that they can see the different floor colors. Also, only once the trap is disabled and one is on the other side "backstage", can they see what's "really there". They can see back to the entrance, but team evil can't see them. That's a bit strange and bugs me.

What if the teleportation circle is set up the other way around? By default it does nothing, but if you notice it and "deactivate" the trap, you are actually activating it. So Haley actually turned on the teleportation effect, and illusion, so now they can see that the floor on the other side does not match what's near the door (which is what one might expect if teleporting from one set of stone floors to another, but *not* what one would expect if simply walking down a regular stone passageway). Once through, the trap "resets" (actually deactivates), but since they are on the other side now, it's presumably "active" all the time (these also appear to be two way teleportation circles, so we're a bit off the normal scheme anyway). That could explain why they can continue to see the door and entrance (they're seeing through the active teleportation circle/whatever, while the other side cannot.

Dunno. Doesn't explain the hallways and squeezing the dungeons into such tight spaces while the normal explanation does, so I'm on the fence with this. We'd have to further speculate some other effect going on with the stone of the dungeon itself (interdimensional stone maybe), such that each doesn't physically interfere with the others. But honestly, that's the point at which it does pretty much fall into "this is getting more complicated than it's worth" territory.

But yeah. That stone color change still bugs me. It's so obviously deliberately drawn that way, so there must be some relevance to it. But it counters what one would assume would be the operation and visible effects of our hypothetical two way teleportation circles (ish). Same deal with the layout of backstage too. I'm hesitant to suggest it might have just been an art mistake (Rich meant to draw the color difference prior to the disabling of the trap, but got it backwards?), but that would actually be the most direct explanation. Still. Serini has stated that backstage isn't all there is to this place (er, but didn't contradict their assumptions that the teleportation circles moved folks to different dungeons either), so maybe there's more we don't know that will explain this.

BTW. This is what "wild speculation" looks like.

[Doug Lampert]

I think it's a variation of teleportation circle, but I actually have a pet theory that the effect is reversed (yeah, this is me totally speculating here). The concept that the trap teleports by default and must be disabled to get into the "real location" does seem the most obvious, but panels 8, 9, and 10 (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1220.html) make me pause a bit. Notice the floor coloration. It's the same on both sides of the trap prior to it being deactivated, but changes color once Haley turns it off. That has always bugged me.

We also know that there is some sort of illusion that allows one to see what appears on the other side of the circle by default. But it's only once Haley "disables" the trap that they can see the different floor colors. Also, only once the trap is disabled and one is on the other side "backstage", can they see what's "really there". They can see back to the entrance, but team evil can't see them. That's a bit strange and bugs me.

What if the teleportation circle is set up the other way around? By default it does nothing, but if you notice it and "deactivate" the trap, you are actually activating it. So Haley actually turned on the teleportation effect, and illusion, so now they can see that the floor on the other side does not match what's near the door (which is what one might expect if teleporting from one set of stone floors to another, but *not* what one would expect if simply walking down a regular stone passageway). Once through, the trap "resets" (actually deactivates), but since they are on the other side now, it's presumably "active" all the time (these also appear to be two way teleportation circles, so we're a bit off the normal scheme anyway). That could explain why they can continue to see the door and entrance (they're seeing through the active teleportation circle/whatever, while the other side cannot.

Dunno. Doesn't explain the hallways and squeezing the dungeons into such tight spaces while the normal explanation does, so I'm on the fence with this. We'd have to further speculate some other effect going on with the stone of the dungeon itself (interdimensional stone maybe), such that each doesn't physically interfere with the others. But honestly, that's the point at which it does pretty much fall into "this is getting more complicated than it's worth" territory.

But yeah. That stone color change still bugs me. It's so obviously deliberately drawn that way, so there must be some relevance to it. But it counters what one would assume would be the operation and visible effects of our hypothetical two way teleportation circles (ish). Same deal with the layout of backstage too. I'm hesitant to suggest it might have just been an art mistake (Rich meant to draw the color difference prior to the disabling of the trap, but got it backwards?), but that would actually be the most direct explanation. Still. Serini has stated that backstage isn't all there is to this place (er, but didn't contradict their assumptions that the teleportation circles moved folks to different dungeons either), so maybe there's more we don't know that will explain this.

BTW. This is what "wild speculation" looks like.

To my mind the variation from standard is that it teleports light too so you automatically see the other side when it is "on". Otherwise, if Team Evil ever didn't all cross the trap at the same time (and there are four of them, and they spread out) then the guys at the back would see the guys at the front blink out and then reapear if and only if the guys behind followed.

The whole trap would be REALLY REALLY OBVIOUS if it teleports people but not the view, and it doesn't matter what colors the stone is, it would still be really really obvious unless the teleportation trap is like walking down a corridor, including seeing what's in front of you on the other side of the trap.

Doylist: The stone color is for our benefit, so we'll know that there are two different corridors.
Watsonian: The stone right next to the entrance has been changed in color to match where the actual dungeon is, so that the spot to search for traps won't be totally obvious.

The alternative still requires that the trap teleport the view, since when the Order disables it the view changes and they can see each other during the crossing. And it ALSO requires that the trap is inactive until a high level rogue deactivates it, which is actually what activates it. Gosh, can I make OTHER traps that only go off when successfully deactivated by a high level rogue?

So either way we need a teleporting view, but the first way ONLY requires a teleporting view. The second requires teleporting the view, AND that the trap is normally inactive, AND an explanation for how all the dungeons fit, AND a trap that turns on when deactivated and is then undetectable by a high level rogue.

I'll go with the first, Teleportation Circle in Rich's world either teleports the view, or this is a custom variant that teleports the view.

[gbaji]

Oh yeah. I fully admit that it's a stretch. But there are still some oddities going on.

When Roy sticks his head through (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1223.html) we see a short end to a passage there. But we also see Blackwing behind him. So both "sides" of the portal in backstage are showing us the view of the "real" hallway, but not transporting anything (at least that we know of). But when viewed from inside, the floor stones are more greenish in color "where the door is", but are also the same greenish color in the small end passageway as well (floor matches both sides looking backwards towards Blackwing).

Is it possible that there are actually two teleportation effects going on here? The openings have greenish floors, and the teleportation circle takes them to another hallway with greenish floors (and a very short dead end on that is "really" behind them, which is where Roy is poking his head into). When "disabled", the teleportation circle/whatever still operates, but now takes you to backstage, which has a more yellowish floor. Once reactivated, the circles in backstage show you the entryway from one direction, but actually teleports you back to the dead end portion (which is maybe the "real" backside of the dungeon team evil entered). They're connected to that backside now, not the entrance (but you see the entrance in one direction, and the dungeon hallway from another).

The first circle, if not disabled, shows you the entranceway on one side, and the dungeon it's going to teleport you to on the other, so it appears to be a perfectly natural entrance to a dungeon (ignoring the whole "doors are too close" bit, of course).

Dunno. I'm just having a hard time not seeing that they are also teleporting somewhere when they go to the backstage area. And it also still leaves one more nagging issue: How does one get to the actual backside of the yellow corridors in backstage? The circles do appear to be directional to some extent, so perhaps there is some method there to use them to get there. Although to be honest, if I were setting this up, the backside of those yellow hallways would *also* just be dead ends (no reason for them to go anywhere really). It would be too obvious, if someone found the switch overs in the first place, to have one of them lead somewhere else just by disabling it from the other side, for example. That would be the first thing someone would mess around with, just to see what would happen.

I'd hide it somewhere else, where the runes of the enchantment could be totally hidden. If we're assuming some level of illusion or view redirection that is undetectable by magic vision spells, then the passage to the gate could be more or less anywhere in the complex and hidden in a way that would be pretty impossible to find if you didn't already know to look there.

Um. But to wrap this back to the original point, I don't think the fact that Serini apparently hired someone to create these things for her actually points at all to her also having a global network of such things. These seem to have been special made for this specific location, perhaps even taking advantage of some magical properties of the stone itself to aid in the enchantment (since the whole thing does seem to be more than just a standard teleportation circle). They're almost more like some sort of space warp thing to me the way they work, bending locations so that they actually seem to physically touch, making everything otherwise look natural. Again. Just trying to wrap my head around how someone could manage to make what would have to be hundreds of these things. If this kind of magic was so readily available (and permanent), why would anyone in Stick World use flying blimps to move cargo around? Sure. 9th level spells. But if she could get someone to do this, are we saying that in the entire history of the world, no one thought "hey. I could make a killing just setting a handful of these up between locations at cities around the world and charge a nominal fee to use them".

The world builder in me says that this isn't something you could set up so easily just anywhere and there must be something specific at this location that makes it more feasible.

[Liquor Box]

I like the repeated amnesia hypothesis, but the biggest , most universal conceit of fiction is that interesting things happen one right after another.


I don't like the repeated amnesia idea for two reasons.

First, it seemed that she was still finishing the brewing of the potion in 1225 when the paladins first woke up. Her comment about not brewing a whole cauldren just for them suggests that they had not already polished off a cauldren prior.

Second, she does not seem to be probing for information on this occasion.

[brian 333]

I've considered the idea that the actual dungeons are all over the world. That would allow their inhabitants to forage, farm, whatever, without having to rely upon what is available in the North.

[Peelee]

I don't like the repeated amnesia idea for two reasons.

First, it seemed that she was still finishing the brewing of the potion in 1225 when the paladins first woke up. Her comment about not brewing a whole cauldren just for them suggests that they had not already polished off a cauldren prior.

Second, she does not seem to be probing for information on this occasion.

The first point is fairly strong. The only rebuttal I can think of is that she had already used up a first batch doing it repeatedly and is brewing a second batch for the paladins and the Order, but this has some holes in it - most notably that if she was done with the paladins, she could have already made 'em forget and cut them loose. Unless she wanted to do all the people at once.

The second point, however, is very weak. Just because she's not doing them at that point doesn't mean she didn't do it before.

[mashlagoo1982]

Are there rules for what would happen when something travels through the physical back side of a teleport circle? Not the front of the destination location, but the back side of either the destination or point of origin.

[Peelee]

Are there rules for what would happen when something travels through the physical back side of a teleport circle? Not the front of the destination location, but the back side of either the destination or point of origin.

By RAW Teleportation circles are on horizontal surfaces, so there is no "back side". I rather like the idea of them also being able to be cast in small corridors to create the effect we see in the comic.

[mashlagoo1982]

By RAW Teleportation circles are on horizontal surfaces, so there is no "back side". I rather like the idea of them also being able to be cast in small corridors to create the effect we see in the comic.

Does that mean by RAW the effect we are seeing cannot be a permeant Teleport Circle? For it to be so, when disabled there should have been a wall instead of a corridor?

I know the Giant doesn't follow RAW for everything.

[Peelee]

Does that mean by RAW the effect we are seeing cannot be a permeant Teleport Circle?
Yes.

For it to be so, when disabled there should have been a wall instead of a corridor?
No. Walls are not horizontal surfaces.

I know the Giant doesn't follow RAW for everything.
Yes.

[mashlagoo1982]

No. Walls are not horizontal surfaces.


I was more thinking that if a teleport circle could be placed in a vertical orientation, it will still require at least a solid surface.

So for this effect to be occurring, RAW would need to be violated in two ways (orientation and requirement of surface).

Is there any teleport effect that allows for a back side?

[Peelee]

I was more thinking that if a teleport circle could be placed in a vertical orientation, it will still require at least a solid surface.

So for this effect to be occurring, RAW would need to be violated in two ways (orientation and requirement of surface).

Is there any teleport effect that allows for a back side?

No. Teleportation effects teleport, the never have a "barrier" like a portal system. Even teleportation circles are just teleport effects that take place once you step on a specific surface. There is no "side" to a teleportation circle.

Homebrewing a teleportation circle to have the radius be an enclosed surface (eg walls ceiling and floor) would likely have the system either work out exactly as we see in the comic, or exactly as we see in the comic except linen of sight shows the true corridor (eg if there were a red corridor and a blue corridor, youd see a pure red corridor until you stepped through it and were teleported to the blue corridor)

[mashlagoo1982]

No. Teleportation effects teleport, the never have a "barrier" like a portal system. Even teleportation circles are just teleport effects that take place once you step on a specific surface. There is no "side" to a teleportation circle.

Homebrewing a teleportation circle to have the radius be an enclosed surface (eg walls ceiling and floor) would likely have the system either work out exactly as we see in the comic, or exactly as we see in the comic except linen of sight shows the true corridor (eg if there were a red corridor and a blue corridor, youd see a pure red corridor until you stepped through it and were teleported to the blue corridor)

Thanks for the clarification. It seems the effect I am thinking of is closer to a portal, but even that would not work according to RAW.

What I am thinking of can easily be explained with two coins and using the front and back sides to explain why certain scenes are being viewed. It seems such an effect doesn't exist within the Dnd system though.

[Peelee]

Thanks for the clarification. It seems the effect I am thinking of is closer to a portal, but even that would not work according to RAW.

What I am thinking of can easily be explained with two coins and using the front and back sides to explain why certain scenes are being viewed. It seems such an effect doesn't exist within the Dnd system though.

Are you imagining something like a portal without the edges being necessarily on surfaces? Or, to use your coin analogy, like a coin standing up (https://c8.alamy.com/zooms/9/2c69d7c06476484980c8a648a2ed9b54/brpxk8.jpg)?

[mashlagoo1982]

Are you imagining something like a portal without the edges being necessarily on surfaces? Or, to use your coin analogy, like a coin standing up (https://c8.alamy.com/zooms/9/2c69d7c06476484980c8a648a2ed9b54/brpxk8.jpg)?

More like coins standing up. I believe the game Portal still required a solid surface for the portal to appear.

My memory could be off, but I think something similar to a MUCH LARGER effect can be found in Forgotten Realms 3.5 City of the Spider Queen adventure. I don't have the book on me now, but I will hopefully remember to check it out later.

Near the end of the adventure, I believe there were also swap-over like instances similar to what is occurring in the comic.

[Quizatzhaderac]

Also wouldn't RAW, permanent, teleportation circles cost 45K a pair? I'm not sure how much money an epic rogue is supposed to have, but several dozen seems like a lot of money.

There's also the visual effect; if these were teleportation circles and some kind of illusion true seeing or detect magic should be able to uncover that.

Which makes me think that light is actually travelling through the portals.

[Fyraltari]

More like coins standing up. I believe the game Portal still required a solid surface for the portal to appear.
Indeed. Portals that aren't anchored to anything are usually portrayed as spheres (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69EUgdj7lzI).

An example of "swap-overs" would be the teleportation doors in The Matrix 2.

[Peelee]

More like coins standing up.

So the problem with that and why you don't really find it popular in games is the "what happens at the edges" question. With Portal-like portals or the effect we see in the comic here, that's a non-issue - the edges are always on some form of surface so it doesn't matter. With RAW Teleportation circle, it also doesn't matter - if any part of you touches the surface inside the circle, you're teleported.

With the standing coin portal, what happens if you try to place your palm up to the edge from the outside and move it forward? Or from the inside? What happens if you're passing through the portal and part of you happens to graze against the edge? Without the entirety of the edging being on a surface, this becomes ugly immediately, and games which are usually designed for ease of play typically completely ignore this can of worms by simply having the edging always be on surface. As does the effect we see in the comic.

[mashlagoo1982]

So the problem with that and why you don't really find it popular in games is the "what happens at the edges" question. With Portal-like portals or the effect we see in the comic here, that's a non-issue - the edges are always on some form of surface so it doesn't matter. With RAW Teleportation circle, it also doesn't matter - if any part of you touches the surface inside the circle, you're teleported.

With the standing coin portal, what happens if you try to place your palm up to the edge from the outside and move it forward? Or from the inside? What happens if you're passing through the portal and part of you happens to graze against the edge? Without the entirety of the edging being on a surface, this becomes ugly immediately, and games which are usually designed for ease of play typically completely ignore this can of worms by simply having the edging always be on surface. As does the effect we see in the comic.

The edge would have a physical barrier around it like a ring of metal or something like we see in the comic.

Breaking the ring would cause the portal to cease functioning.

[RatElemental]

Most games I've seen with the "standing coin" style of portal just ignore the edge question and have you go through the portal anyway.

If I had to guess the swapovers seem like modified gate spells. For all we know the dungeons are in a pocket dimension, but being intraplanar instead of interplanar might lower the cost to make a permanent one from "absolutely ridiculous" to "something an epic rogue can afford."

[danielxcutter]

As V said, if it was on another plane then Blackwing wouldn't be able to communicate with them through the Telepathic Bond.

[Tzardok]

We have another precedence case for an intraplanar portal-like ability: the Wormhole psionic power used by Laureen. Sadly we don't have RAW for it, as it is apparantly based on a 2e power that was never converted.

[danielxcutter]

Stuff like that is why I personally lean towards her being a Nomad, though in general with how the class works there really isn't much hard proof.

Really I have a feeling that Rich was kinda obscuring the specific class levels of the Legion on purpose. Though Tarquin totally has Swordsage levels, I'm dying on that hill if nothing else.

[Ionathus]

The logistics of Sunny getting from the Dungeon of Dorukan to the North Pole does feel a bit awkward here, but I don't mind. Like some other retcons in this comic, I tend to extend the goodwill that I extend to the first 100 pages to anything that tries to incorporate material from those first ~100.

Maybe if you're currently writing a very tightly-plotted narrative, going back to your early looser continuity is a risky play. But that's outweighed for me by the delight I feel seeing earlier scenes from a different angle.

As-is, it's a fun sidebar for me. If it were an extended rehash of early material, especially if it were obviously written to paper over plot holes (looking at you, Ender's Shadow), I'd feel more yanked out of the story and annoyed as a result. But I think Rich has said he doesn't intend to do that, and wants to let the earlier strips stand on their own for the most part.

[bunsen_h]

Dunno. Doesn't explain the hallways and squeezing the dungeons into such tight spaces while the normal explanation does, so I'm on the fence with this. We'd have to further speculate some other effect going on with the stone of the dungeon itself (interdimensional stone maybe), such that each doesn't physically interfere with the others. But honestly, that's the point at which it does pretty much fall into "this is getting more complicated than it's worth" territory.

My feeling is that it's all done with the "multidimensional stone", with separate sections of dungeon packed independently into a higher-dimensional volume. What the "trap" does is to affect how the sections of dungeon are connected, higher-dimensionally. With the "trap" in one state, walking down hallway A leads you to room B. Toggle the "trap" state, and hallway A goes to room C instead. What I have in mind is something similar to Heinlein's "—And He Built a Crooked House—" (http://homepages.math.uic.edu/~kauffman/CrookedHouse.pdf).

We already know that there's multidimensional stone, whose properties we don't know. It can explain the effects we see without needing to posit another unknown item, i.e. a novel spell or magical effect to create vertical portals.

[danielxcutter]

Also Sunny is still a useful ally due to their variety of eye rays and also I don't think she'd leave them on their own when they can defend themselves.

Edit: I'm 99% sure that "multidimensional stone" just means "prevents dimensional travel through it" due to how teleportation works in D&D. Also, it wouldn't be the first time Rich has fudged the rules for the sake of PWOTTM.

[Ionathus]

Also, it wouldn't be the first time Rich has fudged the rules for the sake of PWOTTM.

Pass WithOut Trace?

People Who Own Turnips?

Paintings Weeping Orange Tears?

[Tzardok]

Paladins Wanting Other Things.

[Peelee]

also sunny is still a useful ally due to their variety of eye rays and also i don't think she'd leave them on their own when they can defend themselves.

Edit: I'm 99% sure that "multidimensional stone" just means "prevents dimensional travel through it" due to how teleportation works in d&d. Also, it wouldn't be the first time rich has fudged the rules for the sake of PWOTTM.

PWOT™?
PWOTTM™?
PWOT™TM™™?

Fear my ability to mark trades.

[Ruck]

The logistics of Sunny getting from the Dungeon of Dorukan to the North Pole does feel a bit awkward here

The same way Serini did. What's awkward about that?

[gbaji]

I've considered the idea that the actual dungeons are all over the world. That would allow their inhabitants to forage, farm, whatever, without having to rely upon what is available in the North.

Except that there doesn't appear to be any exit inside the dungeons (at least from the inside). If the monsters could get out to forage or whatever, then anyone exploring that dungeon should also be able to travel the same route and find themselves "somewhere else" in the world.

It's quite possible that there are other teleportation circles/portals/whatever placed around the world (in or near monster lairs), but that these are one way only, so monsters will find themselves wandering along and "poof" they're in the dungeon. That could explain how the hollow dungeons respawn over time. What's still not really explained is where food/water comes from (but I suppose "magic" could handle that), nor why the monsters never seem to actually leave their respective dungeons through the doorway to the north pole area.


The first point is fairly strong. The only rebuttal I can think of is that she had already used up a first batch doing it repeatedly and is brewing a second batch for the paladins and the Order, but this has some holes in it - most notably that if she was done with the paladins, she could have already made 'em forget and cut them loose. Unless she wanted to do all the people at once.

The second point, however, is very weak. Just because she's not doing them at that point doesn't mean she didn't do it before.

Or we don't assume she's just now finishing up brewing the potion. You've never stirred something after it's done cooking? Although one would assume if the potion was completed, you'd usually take it out of the cauldron and put it in other smaller containers for dosage use and whatnot, so that does lead us to your initial rebuttal probably being more in the correct direction.

We can speculate about the specific details in terms of numbers of batches and specific timeline, but that still leaves us with the highly improbable problem of the paladins taking two days to recover from the sleep potion she hit them with. Either that was pretty amazingly strong stuff, or they should have woken up earlier.

So, everything else aside, we have two paladins who wake up two full days after being hit with sleep potion, with no memory of anything having happened to them in the time between being hit with the potion and them waking up. We're then told that Serini has amnesia potion in the cauldron. I'm not sure there's much else needed to noodle out what's been going on for the previous two days. We have a very clear and very simple explanation for everything we've been shown right in front of us in the comic itself. We should leave any other possible explanation well on the speculation back burner.



Thanks for the clarification. It seems the effect I am thinking of is closer to a portal, but even that would not work according to RAW.

What I am thinking of can easily be explained with two coins and using the front and back sides to explain why certain scenes are being viewed. It seems such an effect doesn't exist within the Dnd system though.

Yeah. It does seem as though these swap overs seem to both work vertically over a space rather than a solid surface, and when active seem to show the view of what's on the other side. Also, does not seem to actually teleport so much as simply move objects seamlessly from one side to the other. Roy does not teleport when he sticks his head through. Half of him is on one side, the other half on the other (which teleport cannot do). Now, we could argue that the circle/portal where they were is inactive, but only has the viewing capabilities functioning (showing the two sides of the portal depending on the view you are on), but I'm reasonably certain that the same thing would happen if Redcloak had stopped halfway through the portal that took them from the entrance to the dungeon, and also looked back. Also, if we do assume the default (that back stage is what is "really" directly down the entryways, and the floor color change is just an art choice to indicate the position of the swap overs), then Roy was also sticking himself through an active portal. When active, the swap over connects the entryway to the dungeon in both directions, and the backside of the dungeon (the dead end) to backstage (also in both directions). The swap over seems to always show the entryway in one direction and the dungeon in the other, regardless of which actual physical "end" you are viewing it from.

It does feel to me like these are not so much teleports as somehow actually bending space to connect different ends of these tunnels together. The illusion would then only actually be on the "sides" one could access from backstage. This would have the advantage that one could not actually detect the fact that what they were seeing down the hallway in front of them (while in the entryway) was actually an illusion, since it's not actually an illusion at all. The illusion exists only on the portal that connects backstage to the dead end, and exists solely so that someone in backstage can see (and spy upon) folks traveling in or out of the dungeons without being noticed at all.

Makes sense, but yeah, requires some pretty specific custom teleportation and/or alteration magic. It's also why I've speculated that it may be using some property of the stone itself to do this (we know that it blocks divination effects, and ethereal stuff, and dimension door at least). Of course, that speculation somewhat invalidates the whole "portals around the world sucking monsters into the hollow" bit I mentioned earlier. Unless she had some of this same stone moved around to other locations to connect them in somehow to make things work. Dunno. I think any of this gets pretty far down the speculation highway no matter which way we go. Maybe it'll be explained at some point. Or we'll be left with "a wizard did it" and move on.

And having speculated about moving stones to make this work, I will point out that the Thaumaturgic Law of Contagion could absolutely work here (But D&D doesn't tend to use such things). The principle is that two things, once part of a single whole, are still magically connected. So you cut a ring of rock out of the hallway just inside the entryway (ring being vertical, so floor, walls, and ceiling), and swap it with another ring cut out where the dungeon is. The law of Contagion says that the stone at the entryway is still connected to the stone that's now at the entrance of the dungeon and vice versa. Then you activate them magically to re-establish the connection that was severed when you cut the stone and moved them apart. So, while the effect is active, the hallway continues right to where it used to before you moved one small section. There's no actual teleportation here, the hallway just now leads to the other side. Same deal with the section you cut out and moved to backstage. Both "ends" are now connected to each other. Just add some illusion magic on the backstage side, and the effect works as shown. Again though, this assumes the introduction of a form of magic that D&D has not historically utilized (but anyone who's read Master of the Five Magics should be familiar with).

[Liquor Box]

The first point is fairly strong. The only rebuttal I can think of is that she had already used up a first batch doing it repeatedly and is brewing a second batch for the paladins and the Order, but this has some holes in it - most notably that if she was done with the paladins, she could have already made 'em forget and cut them loose. Unless she wanted to do all the people at once.

She does say in 1229 that "I didn't go and brew a whole cauldren of amnesia potion for just two of you". If she had already used the first batch on the two of them, then she would indeed have used a whole cauldron on just two of them.


The second point, however, is very weak. Just because she's not doing them at that point doesn't mean she didn't do it before.

I don't think it's a very strong point - but her wanting to verbally spar with them and score points against them doesn't seem to resonate with her having already gone over this same ground in several previous conversations to get info. Also, if she had already got the information she wanted out of them in previous sessions, why re-dose them and talk to them again this time - why not just let them go when she'd finished getting the info.



Or we don't assume she's just now finishing up brewing the potion. You've never stirred something after it's done cooking? Although one would assume if the potion was completed, you'd usually take it out of the cauldron and put it in other smaller containers for dosage use and whatnot, so that does lead us to your initial rebuttal probably being more in the correct direction.

We can speculate about the specific details in terms of numbers of batches and specific timeline, but that still leaves us with the highly improbable problem of the paladins taking two days to recover from the sleep potion she hit them with. Either that was pretty amazingly strong stuff, or they should have woken up earlier.

So, everything else aside, we have two paladins who wake up two full days after being hit with sleep potion, with no memory of anything having happened to them in the time between being hit with the potion and them waking up. We're then told that Serini has amnesia potion in the cauldron. I'm not sure there's much else needed to noodle out what's been going on for the previous two days. We have a very clear and very simple explanation for everything we've been shown right in front of us in the comic itself. We should leave any other possible explanation well on the speculation back burner.


Where do we get that they'd been asleep for two days when they woke up?

In any case, if you are looking for a explanation for why they slept for two days, I can think of two which are simpler that they'd previously been woken up and then given amnesia potion to go back to sleep. The first is that she kept redosing them with sleeping poison until the amnesia potion was ready to keep them docile. The second is simply that the sleeping poison lasted two days.

[Peelee]

She does say in 1229 that "I didn't go and brew a whole cauldren of amnesia potion for just two of you". If she had already used the first batch on the two of them, then she would indeed have used a whole cauldron on just two of them.

I use a smaller pan making food for two people than for a dinner party. I don't cook in the 14 inch skillet for two people but that doesn't mean I didn't use the 6 Incher to make breakfast earlier.

[Doctor West]

We can speculate about the specific details in terms of numbers of batches and specific timeline, but that still leaves us with the highly improbable problem of the paladins taking two days to recover from the sleep potion she hit them with. Either that was pretty amazingly strong stuff, or they should have woken up earlier.

This may be a silly point for me to delurk for, but I feel I should point out the sleep poison was strong enough to get through Paladin saving throws + O-Chul's ridiculous Con score. So either it *was* amazingly strong stuff or she got a really lucky roll.

[Liquor Box]

I use a smaller pan making food for two people than for a dinner party. I don't cook in the 14 inch skillet for two people but that doesn't mean I didn't use the 6 Incher to make breakfast earlier.

Why not make a cauldren from the start - then use it for the repeated paladin doses, and the remainder for the party.

If she had questioned the paladins and put them back to sleep three times, that is six doses, which is as much as she'd need for the Order. So if there were repeated questioning session she'd need a cauldron as much for them as for the Order.

I'm sure there are possible explanations. Perhaps the amnesia potion expires quickly so she had to brew a new small batch each time (like you would cook small portions of food for each meal). So I'm not saying that the repeated amensia potions is not tenable - It just doesn't seem very likely to me.

[Peelee]

Why not make a cauldren from the start - then use it for the repeated paladin doses, and the remainder for the party.

Maybe it doesn't last two days. Maybe she wasn't sure how many people she would need to prep the potion for. Maybe she was cleaning out her big cauldron from making the poison.

If it did happen, there may well be plenty of information we don't know yet that could have affected it. I'm not saying she did, I'm just responding to your reasonings that you think she didn't.

If she had questioned the paladins and put them back to sleep three times, that is six doses, which is as much as she'd need for the Order.

She needs ten doses for everyone, not six. The Order plus Minrah plus Blackwing plus the paladins. And if she did question and dose them prior, we don't know how many times.

[Quizatzhaderac]

PWOT™?
PWOTTM™?
PWOT™TM™™?

Fear my ability to mark trades.People with outrageous trademarks?

[Peelee]

People with outrageous trademarks?

Ok that got a good laugh outta me.

[bunsen_h]

Pass WithOut Trace?

People Who Own Turnips?

Paintings Weeping Orange Tears?

Preventing Waste Of Time?

[danielxcutter]

In case nobody actually got the joke, that was just me saying "plot" in a facetious way, not an acronym.

[brian 333]

In case nobody actually got the joke, that was just me saying "plot" in a facetious way, not an acronym.

Oh, no. It's a thing now. We're gonna do this.

[mashlagoo1982]

I reviewed the adventure module City of the Spider Queen. Nothing really stuck out to me as being applicable to the behavior seen in this comic.

The part I was remembering occurs near the end and involves portals between the material and ethereal plane. The portals being used appear to be standard though.

[bunsen_h]

In case nobody actually got the joke, that was just me saying "plot" in a facetious way, not an acronym.

I was baffled. "PLOTTM" would have been pretty clear; "PWOTTM" not so much.

[alceryes]

So the problem with that and why you don't really find it popular in games is the "what happens at the edges" question. With Portal-like portals or the effect we see in the comic here, that's a non-issue - the edges are always on some form of surface so it doesn't matter. With RAW Teleportation circle, it also doesn't matter - if any part of you touches the surface inside the circle, you're teleported.

With the standing coin portal, what happens if you try to place your palm up to the edge from the outside and move it forward? Or from the inside? What happens if you're passing through the portal and part of you happens to graze against the edge? Without the entirety of the edging being on a surface, this becomes ugly immediately, and games which are usually designed for ease of play typically completely ignore this can of worms by simply having the edging always be on surface. As does the effect we see in the comic.

As far as RAW goes, I don't see how this would be an issue.
You touch any part of it (even the edge) you're teleported, instantaneously.

How it was portrayed in OOTS(?), yeah, that may be an issue. Assuming that the portal is somehow made to fit the exact dimentions of the passageway (imperfections and all) solves some of the issue, but sticking your hand/head in as shown? That's not right.

[arimareiji]

The first point is fairly strong. The only rebuttal I can think of is that she had already used up a first batch doing it repeatedly and is brewing a second batch for the paladins and the Order, but this has some holes in it - most notably that if she was done with the paladins, she could have already made 'em forget and cut them loose. Unless she wanted to do all the people at once.

The second point, however, is very weak. Just because she's not doing them at that point doesn't mean she didn't do it before.

I think I may have a stronger rebuttal: This assumes she's telling paladins the unvarnished truth, under conditions where doing so would be detrimental to her plans.

[gerryq]

I'm glad the Giant got a break but I do hope that the plot can start moving again soon.

That said, this was a cute callback and Sunny continues to be adorable.

Edited: let a little too much frustration leak though.


My theory is that Rich is sitting in front of a big whiteboard, with scribbled scraps of paper all over the floor, trying to get all his ducks in a row for the final showdown.

[brian 333]

How the swapovers perform is simple:

There are two magical planes joined so that there is no intervening space between them. Call them Side A and Side B. From Side A one can see into the space beyond B and walk through because there is no intervening space. One does not teleport. One cannot lose a limb by sticking it through any more than sticking the limb through a curtain.

As one enters Side A a status marker is employed which triggers Side B to reciprocate: otherwise Side B is inert. Passing through Side B without having passed through Side A results in nothing happening. One cannot see or step into Side A if one has not stepped through from there. To observers from Side B, there is no gate, portal, or whatever. The only ones who can see and step into the doorway in Monster Hollow are those who went through Side A. And they cannot see what is beyond that point on Side B.

The Order did not get to Side B. They got to the back side of Side A. When Xykon spoke his sound reached Roy, but when Roy ranted, his sound only reached the end of the tunnel. Roy's sword and his head only went to the space he could have seen if there had been no portal at all.

Simple, right?

[Metastachydium]

5trying to get all his ducks in a row

Duckies are nice! (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1037.html)

[Liquor Box]

I think I may have a stronger rebuttal: This assumes she's telling paladins the unvarnished truth, under conditions where doing so would be detrimental to her plans.

Not really. The point relies simply on her appearing to just be finishing brewing her potion, not on anything she says at all.

What she said about not needing a cauldron for the two of them is an answer to the possible rebuttal to the suggestion that she had previously brewed the potion for the paladins and was now brewing a second batch. I do assume she's telling the truth there because she had no reason to talk about the potion at all at that point - the paladins hadn't asked her about it, not saying anything would not have been detrimental. She just volunteered the comment. So you could assume she was lying, but then it would be reasonable to assume she is lying about any part of her narrative.

Like I said to Peelee, there are rebuttals to my point, and I'm not ruling out the possibility of multiple cycles of questioning/memory wipes, even though I find it doubtful. But I think the rebuttal Peelee got to (that perhaps the potion expires quickly and she made several small dosages previously) remains stronger than your "she was just lying when she didn't need to" rebuttal.

[Ruck]

I was baffled. "PLOTTM" would have been pretty clear; "PWOTTM" not so much.

I was pretty sure I got it (I did), but the combination of all-caps, the misspelling, and the trademark does make it seem like it's supposed to be an acronym for something else.

[gbaji]

Where do we get that they'd been asleep for two days when they woke up?

I get it from this strip (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1189.html). V states that their ETA is two days. The paladins wake up here (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1225.html) (ok, technically we first see them in the last panel of the previous strip). This is after the order has arrived, after they've scouted the ledge, after Durkon attempted to talk to Redcloak, after the Order fled into one of the tunnels, after they found and disabled the swapover, and while they are standing there waiting to ambush team evil.

So yeah. Two days. So either they slept for the entire two days, or they woke up sometime during that two days. And if they did wake up, they should remember it, unless they were fed amnesia potion to forget that. And if she erased their memories such that they didn't remember waking up previously, why wouldn't she have questioned them as well? And if she did, then she would reasonably know all of the things she knew in this conversation without needing anything else.

One logically follows from the other.


In any case, if you are looking for a explanation for why they slept for two days, I can think of two which are simpler that they'd previously been woken up and then given amnesia potion to go back to sleep. The first is that she kept redosing them with sleeping poison until the amnesia potion was ready to keep them docile. The second is simply that the sleeping poison lasted two days.

Sure. Could be. But it's not like she just stumbled upon the paladins here. They were there for quite some time (weeks?), watching team evil. She picked that time to attack them. So, if she had the ability to make amnesia potion, and seemingly had all the time in the world to make it, and picked the time when she chose to capture the paladins, why do it before the amnesia potion was ready to use?

Serini picked the time to capture them. Her stated reason for attacking them is to dose them with amnesia potion and drop them off somewhere else. Doesn't it make far more sense that she did this, took the time to question them a bit (knowing they would remember nothing of it), and *then* discovered that the order is on their way (she could have overheard Lien telling O'Chul this too), so she redosed them (maybe a few times, so she could pump them for info on the order), while making a bigger batch of amnesia potion for them and the order?

That makes absolute complete sense. The idea that she'd arbitrarily capture the paladins 2 days before the amnesia potion she planned to use on them was ready, and then keep dosing them with sleep potions for two days seems strange. Why not just wait two more days to capture them if she wasn't ready?


This may be a silly point for me to delurk for, but I feel I should point out the sleep poison was strong enough to get through Paladin saving throws + O-Chul's ridiculous Con score. So either it *was* amazingly strong stuff or she got a really lucky roll.

I'm not super familiar with the intricacies of potion rules in D&D, but from a quick scan on google, it seems most sleep potions last like 1 minute (presumably intended for use in combat). I'd certainly speculate the ability to make ones with longer durations (an hour or two maybe?). But two days? That seems extreme.

Obviously, there's no way to say for absolute certain how this all went down, but it just seems as though in order for the "dosed repeatedly with amnesia potion and questioned" scenario to work, we just have to assume she could make amnesia potion (which we know she can, unless she was lying about that all along), and merely assume that her sleep poison didn't just knock them out for two full days. In order for the "they slept two full days and that was the first time they talked to her" scenario to work, we have to assume the sleep poison lasts that long (so just as reasonable as assuming it doesn't, I suppose, knowing nothing to the contrary), but then also have to come up with a number of other possibilities for how she knows the things she knows about the paladins, the order, their actions regarding the gates, O'Chul's specific actions regarding his own weapon being used to destroy one of the gates, etc.

Again, assuming we're equally on the fence in terms of the sleep poison duration, then one of those scenarios explains every single thing with no need to add anything other than what's right there shown to the readers to be in Serini's possession. The other requires extrapolating any number of other things, some of which are extremely difficult to nearly insanely impossible for her to have done.

I'm going with the far simpler explanation until some significant evidence in a strip shows otherwise.

[Liquor Box]

I get it from this strip (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1189.html). V states that their ETA is two days. The paladins wake up here (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1225.html) (ok, technically we first see them in the last panel of the previous strip). This is after the order has arrived, after they've scouted the ledge, after Durkon attempted to talk to Redcloak, after the Order fled into one of the tunnels, after they found and disabled the swapover, and while they are standing there waiting to ambush team evil.

Gotcha, thanks


Sure. Could be. But it's not like she just stumbled upon the paladins here. They were there for quite some time (weeks?), watching team evil. She picked that time to attack them. So, if she had the ability to make amnesia potion, and seemingly had all the time in the world to make it, and picked the time when she chose to capture the paladins, why do it before the amnesia potion was ready to use?

Serini picked the time to capture them. Her stated reason for attacking them is to dose them with amnesia potion and drop them off somewhere else. Doesn't it make far more sense that she did this, took the time to question them a bit (knowing they would remember nothing of it), and *then* discovered that the order is on their way (she could have overheard Lien telling O'Chul this too), so she redosed them (maybe a few times, so she could pump them for info on the order), while making a bigger batch of amnesia potion for them and the order?

That makes absolute complete sense. The idea that she'd arbitrarily capture the paladins 2 days before the amnesia potion she planned to use on them was ready, and then keep dosing them with sleep potions for two days seems strange. Why not just wait two more days to capture them if she wasn't ready?

Her reason for capturing them, as implied by what she said, was that they might destroy the gate to keep it from Xykon. Dosing them with amnesia potion was just her solution to that problem. If that was indeed her reason for capturing them, I think it makes more sense for her to capture them as soon as she located to stop them carrying out any such plan straight away - or at least as soon as she was ready too (she may have had to brew the sleeping potion).



In order for the "they slept two full days and that was the first time they talked to her" scenario to work, we have to assume the sleep poison lasts that long (so just as reasonable as assuming it doesn't, I suppose, knowing nothing to the contrary),

Again, assuming we're equally on the fence in terms of the sleep poison duration, then one of those scenarios explains every single thing with no need to add anything other than what's right there shown to the readers to be in Serini's possession. The other requires extrapolating any number of other things, some of which are extremely difficult to nearly insanely impossible for her to have done.

I'm going with the far simpler explanation until some significant evidence in a strip shows otherwise.

You profess here to go with the simpler explanation, but the simpler explanation by far is that the sleeping potion lasts two days.

You say that the two possibilities are equally likely, but they are not on the face of what we have seen in the comic. We see they are given the sleeping poison and then apparently waking up for the first time two days later. Sure you can come up with a complicated explanation for those involving repeated doses of both sleeping poison and amnesia potion, but why postulate such a complicated theory when a sleeping poison that lasts two days explain what happened so much more simply.

I'm not sure you are wrong, but I'd only give your theory 1 chance in 5 of being right.

[arimareiji]

Her comment about not brewing a whole cauldren just for them suggests that they had not already polished off a cauldren prior.


I think I may have a stronger rebuttal: This assumes she's telling paladins the unvarnished truth, under conditions where doing so would be detrimental to her plans.


Not really. The point relies simply on her appearing to just be finishing brewing her potion, not on anything she says at all.

1) You yourself already clarified that her words suggest they hadn't already been dosed with it, which I appreciate.

2) I should have been clearer with my definition of "unvarnished truth", or more aptly its opposite, since not everyone shares it. To me, a "lie" is a deliberate attempt to make someone believe that which the "liar" believes to be untrue - whether it's by overt word or deed, omission thereof, insinuating it, or anything else.

At the very least, suggesting X when the suggester believes (or worse, has solid reason to know) X to be false is less than the unvarnished truth... at least in my book, though not everyone is reading from it.

[Liquor Box]

1) You yourself already clarified that her words suggest they hadn't already been dosed with it, which I appreciate.

True, but the primary point, which Peelee had addressed in his rebuttal was the preceding one:

First, it seemed that she was still finishing the brewing of the potion in 1225 when the paladins first woke up

What her words go to is the obvious counter-point that she may have already brewed a cauldron.


2) I should have been clearer with my definition of "unvarnished truth", or more aptly its opposite, since not everyone shares it. To me, a "lie" is a deliberate attempt to make someone believe that which the "liar" believes to be untrue - whether it's by overt word or deed, omission thereof, insinuating it, or anything else.

At the very least, suggesting X when the suggester believes (or worse, has solid reason to know) X to be false is less than the unvarnished truth... at least in my book, though not everyone is reading from it.

Sure, I don't quibble with that definition.

But her words in 1229 were is response to Lien saying that Serini imprisoning the paladins wouldn't end things. The unvarnished truth seems to have been that Serini knew others were present and had plans to deal with them too (because that is what she tried to do). Whether she chose to reveal this or not, she needn't have said anything about why she might have brewed a whole cauldron of amnesia potion. What is the unvarnished truth you think her statement might have departed from?

[gbaji]

Her reason for capturing them, as implied by what she said, was that they might destroy the gate to keep it from Xykon. Dosing them with amnesia potion was just her solution to that problem. If that was indeed her reason for capturing them, I think it makes more sense for her to capture them as soon as she located to stop them carrying out any such plan straight away - or at least as soon as she was ready too (she may have had to brew the sleeping potion).

You're assuming it took her that long to locate them and/or that she waited to brew the sleep poison but for some reason didn't wait to finish brewing the amnesia potion that she knew she would need? They were sitting there for how long (my count is 4-5 days)? dunno. They weren't going anywhere, and showed no signs of taking any direct action by themselves against Xykon any time soon. Why rush?



You profess here to go with the simpler explanation, but the simpler explanation by far is that the sleeping potion lasts two days.

If the only effect of the two options is just whether she dosed them with sleeping poison to knock them out for two days, or dosed them with sleeping poison to capture them, then repeatedly woke them up questioned them and dosed them with amnesia potion, then yes, assuming the sleeping potion is the simpler one.

But that's not all that's involved. We also have to account for all of the statements she made about the paladins and the order and their actions. Those statements cannot be explained if the two paladins were asleep for the full two days and she didn't question them. Thus, for the "simple" explanation to be true (sleep potion lasted two full days) we must add some additional explanation(s) for her knowledge (especially O'Chul's connection to the destruction of Soon's gate). This requires significant and much more complex assumptions like she had some form of epic scrying on the throne room in Azure city (which Xykon could not scry into due to blocking magic), or that she had some way to overhear the conversation on the island where V teleported the fleet (and later MiTD sent them to), or some other possibly even more contrived way to do this. And actually, those other's almost don't count because she knew not only that his personal weapon was used to destroy Soon's gate (which could have been overheard, maybe, somehow), but also that he intended to do it himself as well (which there is zero way for anyone other than O'Chul, Xykon, Redcloack, and perhaps Miko to know. Are we suggesting she talked to them? Or maybe questioned the spirits of the Ghost Martyrs maybe?

The only possible alternative way she could have known this is if she was somehow physically present in the throne room at the time. Which would require a remarkable amount of "perfect timing", and her choosing to be in such close proximity to someone she's abjectly terrified of, and do nothing while there except... watch? Why? And to be perfectly honest, if she had been there and watching (I raised this earlier), given that Redcloak and Xykon were within a hairs breath of being destroyed by Soon's ghost, why on earth didn't she backstab Miko? The one thing she is willing to take action on is prevent the destruction of the gates, yet she does nothing to prevent just that? We can only conclude that she wasn't there. And if she wasn't, then she could not have known what happened there unless she got that information from one of the people who was.

Which again, leads us back to the most obvious explanation: O'Chul told her. He's one of the short list of people who would know, and he's been her prisoner for two days. So then we ask "How could she have questioned him without him knowing?", and we're literally told the answer: "She's got amnesia potion". Duh.



You say that the two possibilities are equally likely, but they are not on the face of what we have seen in the comic. We see they are given the sleeping poison and then apparently waking up for the first time two days later. Sure you can come up with a complicated explanation for those involving repeated doses of both sleeping poison and amnesia potion, but why postulate such a complicated theory when a sleeping poison that lasts two days explain what happened so much more simply.

I said "equally likely" purely in the context of none of us knowing the particulars about the sleeping potion she used. So it could just as easily be something that lasts for an hour or two, or a couple days.

I'm also not sure why it's "complicated" to assume that something we already know she has could have been used in such a way. It only requires that we *not* assume the sleep poison lasted two full days. What's much more complicated is how we explain all the knowledge Serini has without her having questioned the paladins in the method I describe. How do we explain that she knows about O'Chul's actions in the Azure city gate room? How do we explain her knowing that it was the Order who destroyed Girard's gate? Heck. How did she know Roy's last name?




I'm not sure you are wrong, but I'd only give your theory 1 chance in 5 of being right.


I'm hesitant to place any odds on predictions on this comic. But I still will put it in the "best explanation based on what we have seen so far" category.

[drDunkel]

Serini’s been around snooping for monsters for a good while, right? She’s been with Sunny for how long? My impression from this strip is that she and Sunny’s been together doing these “raids” for some while, as Serini has to (again) tell Sunny that the other people are just adventurers, as if that was some familiar occurrence.

[bunsen_h]

Serini’s been around snooping for monsters for a good while, right? She’s been with Sunny for how long? My impression from this strip is that she and Sunny’s been together doing these “raids” for some while, as Serini has to (again) tell Sunny that the other people are just adventurers, as if that was some familiar occurrence.

Sunny is familiar enough with the concept of "random adventurers" that they're not a surprise to him, but unfamiliar enough to not want to dismiss them out of hand -- Sunny is nice enough (capital-G Good enough?) to want to go out of his way to help them without knowing much about what they might need. I don't have a strong impression about how long Serini and Sunny have been out recruiting.

[dave_smith354]

I was baffled. "PLOTTM" would have been pretty clear; "PWOTTM" not so much.

This may be a cultural thing. If you grew up in the UK this would be an obvious reference to the way little children (ikkle chiwdwen) speak, for other variants of English there are different ways of sounding twee. If English isn't your first language then it wouldn't be obvious at all.

Besides, as mentioned above, "this is a thing now, we're doing this".

[Peelee]

This may be a cultural thing. If you grew up in the UK this would be an obvious reference to the way little children (ikkle chiwdwen) speak, for other variants of English there are different ways of sounding twee. If English isn't your first language then it wouldn't be obvious at all.

Besides, as mentioned above, "this is a thing now, we're doing this".

Nah, that's also how people over here use to emulate kiddy speak. But nothing else in the post was done like that, and it was all caps, and it was made to look trademarked, so all of those made it seem, ya know, not that.

[Fyraltari]

Nah, that's also how people over here use to emulate kiddy speak. But nothing else in the post was done like that, and it was all caps, and it was made to look trademarked, so all of those made it seem, ya know, not that.

Trademarking isn't part of the U.S.'s baby-speak?
I expected more of your corporate culture.

[Ruck]

Trademarking isn't part of the U.S.'s baby-speak?
I expected more of your corporate culture.

You're thinking of Boss Baby-speak.

[snowblizz]

Trademarking isn't part of the U.S.'s baby-speak?
I expected more of your corporate culture.

It's probably stuck in litigation.

[gbaji]

This may be a cultural thing. If you grew up in the UK this would be an obvious reference to the way little children (ikkle chiwdwen) speak, for other variants of English there are different ways of sounding twee. If English isn't your first language then it wouldn't be obvious at all.

Personally, all I heard (to be fair, once it was explained) was:

Wewease... Wodderwick!

[arimareiji]

Personally, all I heard (to be fair, once it was explained) was:

Wewease... Wodderwick!

But he's a wobbah!

[bunsen_h]

But he's a wobbah!

They're called "wogues" now.

[F.Harr]

Well, it's too bad she couldn't get to Trigack before it was too late. Those lawyers are responsible for quite a bit.

[arimareiji]

They're called "wogues" now.

Hm. Now I wonder if the "clueless" woman in the scene who adds "and a pickpocket!" was a first-edition player. (^_~)

(If memory serves, both the descriptive text and the "titles" by level emphasized this role.)

[bunsen_h]

Hm. Now I wonder if the "clueless" woman in the scene who adds "and a pickpocket!" was a first-edition player. (^_~)

I'm strongly tempted to make a religious joke here, but it would almost certainly fall afoul of forum rules.


(If memory serves, both the descriptive text and the "titles" by level emphasized this role.)

A first-level Thief was referred to as a "Rogue (Apprentice)". Fourth-level were "Robbers". "Pickpocket" wasn't one of the "titles".

[hamishspence]

A first-level Thief was referred to as a "Rogue (Apprentice)". Fourth-level were "Robbers". "Pickpocket" wasn't one of the "titles".

True - but I recall the skill that is now called Sleight of Hand, was called Pick Pockets prior to 3e.

[bunsen_h]

True - but I recall the skill that is now called Sleight of Hand, was called Pick Pockets prior to 3e.

It was referred to as picking pockets in 1e. I didn't know it had been changed.

[arimareiji]

A first-level Thief was referred to as a "Rogue (Apprentice)". Fourth-level were "Robbers". "Pickpocket" wasn't one of the "titles".

I mostly had in mind the general emphasis placed in gameplay at the time (for example, it's the top skill listed under a thief's "primary functions") -- but the unique titles associated with picking pockets (cutpurse is virtually a synonym; footpad and filcher are associated but not synonymous) are as or more common than any of the other things commonly associated with "thieves" in contemporary fantasy/-esque stories*. (Lock picking = burglar/robber, mugging = robber/footpad, swindling = sharper/magsman.)

* - Ymmv, but personally I think it's a fair assertion that picking pockets was probably the primary plot device associated with "thieves" in those stories circulating at the time... which had been the fertile ground in which 1st edition and the dungeons written for it sprouted.

[brian 333]

The titles at each level were for roleplaying purposes. It was a way to say, "My character is a level 5 thief," while remaining in character. The titles did not unlock special powers, nor did they dictate any roles. They were pure flavor.

[arimareiji]

The titles at each level were for roleplaying purposes. It was a way to say, "My character is a level 5 thief," while remaining in character. The titles did not unlock special powers, nor did they dictate any roles. They were pure flavor.

Thank you for stating that for the benefit of anyone who didn't know. I mostly found them amusing, even back then.

[Metastachydium]

True - but I recall the skill that is now called Sleight of Hand, was called Pick Pockets prior to 3e.

Interesting fact: it was called Pick Pockets in 3e. In 3.0's demented "only bards and rogues can train Decipher Script" skill system, to be specific. Sleight of Hand only took over in 3.5.