A Perfect Defense!

[brian 333]

This thread (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?285517-Create-A-Gate-The-Power-is-Yours&p=25970421#post25970421) inspired me to come up with what I believe to be the Perfect Defense for a Rift Gate.

First, the so-called 'gates' are not gates at all. A gate can be opened and closed by the user, whereas these seem to be more like boards nailed over a door to prevent it opening. Perhaps a better analogy would be duct tape because the 'gate' is supposed to prevent further fraying of reality, while destroying them appears to do additional damage to the hole they closed.

Defending them is difficult because a dungeon invites adventurers the way stink attracts flies. No matter how well executed your defense, eventually someone will come along to mess with it.

But I do have a plan for the perfect defense:

Build an actual gate. One which can be opened by whoever comes along, perhaps by touching a big red button. The gate would remain open for one minute, then close again. Put it out in the middle of Nowhere, and put no defenses of any kind whatsoever on it.

Instead, place a permanent Magic Mouth that speaks in Tongues on a stele that is inscribed with magically comprehendable writing. People approaching the button can read the tablet and understand what the Magic Mouth says, even if they are blind and deaf. (Braille, or whatever silent language the observer uses.)

The message describes exactly what the gate is, why it was put there, and what it contains. The message also informs the visitor that he will be the first victim of The Snarl should he press the button. Finally, it suggests that if the visitor must press the button, the gate will close, locking him in the Snarl's prison forever. "Good luck, friend. The world will soon forget that you ever existed."

Now, the contingency: instead of building dungeons and whatnot, build a dozen gates so that if one is moved or destroyed, the next in line automatically deploys from an Etheral warehouse and plugs itself in. Have an assembly line ready to replace the ones used up by boneheads and idiots, and then just stay away from the rift forever.

Find the faults and propose corrections, please. (Or do the whole thing better yourself so we can pick on you!

[JNAProductions]

How would this stop someone like Redcloak with his ritual?

This plan really seems to rely on two things:

1) People being good
2) People not being stupid

[Unoriginal]

This thread (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?285517-Create-A-Gate-The-Power-is-Yours&p=25970421#post25970421) inspired me to come up with what I believe to be the Perfect Defense for a Rift Gate.

First, the so-called 'gates' are not gates at all. A gate can be opened and closed by the user, whereas these seem to be more like boards nailed over a door to prevent it opening. Perhaps a better analogy would be duct tape because the 'gate' is supposed to prevent further fraying of reality, while destroying them appears to do additional damage to the hole they closed.

Defending them is difficult because a dungeon invites adventurers the way stink attracts flies. No matter how well executed your defense, eventually someone will come along to mess with it.

But I do have a plan for the perfect defense:

Build an actual gate. One which can be opened by whoever comes along, perhaps by touching a big red button. The gate would remain open for one minute, then close again. Put it out in the middle of Nowhere, and put no defenses of any kind whatsoever on it.

Instead, place a permanent Magic Mouth that speaks in Tongues on a stele that is inscribed with magically comprehendable writing. People approaching the button can read the tablet and understand what the Magic Mouth says, even if they are blind and deaf. (Braille, or whatever silent language the observer uses.)

The message describes exactly what the gate is, why it was put there, and what it contains. The message also informs the visitor that he will be the first victim of The Snarl should he press the button. Finally, it suggests that if the visitor must press the button, the gate will close, locking him in the Snarl's prison forever. "Good luck, friend. The world will soon forget that you ever existed."

Now, the contingency: instead of building dungeons and whatnot, build a dozen gates so that if one is moved or destroyed, the next in line automatically deploys from an Etheral warehouse and plugs itself in. Have an assembly line ready to replace the ones used up by boneheads and idiots, and then just stay away from the rift forever.

Find the faults and propose corrections, please. (Or do the whole thing better yourself so we can pick on you!

1) The Gates are built to keep the Rifts closed on a permanent basis, and placed on top of Lirian's and Dorukan's Rift-closing patchjob. There is no indicator that "temporarily opening the Rift" is an option on the table.

2) Unwitting adventurers are not the problem and never were. None of the Gates had any problem with those, as long as their defenses were up. Remember that Xykon had to deliberaly let the Order get close to the Gate for the emergency self-destruct to become an issue.

The problem comes from actively malevolent people who think they can use the Snarl for power. Xykon and Redcloak in particular needs a working, accessible Gate for their plan(s), so your Perfect Defense is literally giving them everything they need

3) There is no indicator it is *possible* to craft a Gate in advance and have it appears when the first one is destroyed. Dorukan spent his whole life working on the Rift issue, if creating replacement Gates and storing them just in case was an option you'd think the Epic Wizard whose defenses held even months after his death would have created some. Not to mention used one on Lirian's destroyed Gate.

4) There is no indicator that the gods would have tolerated a "solution" that involved "a path to the Snarl is easily openable". Remember that the Order of the Scribble didn't save the world just from the Snarl and mortals who wanted to use the Snarl, they also saved it from the gods.

[Metastachydium]

And making sure this defense is striving to have literally any person with potential nepharious intentions acquire a detailed understanding of what superweapon, exactly, they could try to hijack there by simply virtue of accidentally walking by doesn't help either.

[Grendelkin]

My own plan for a Gate defense runs something like this:

Step 1: Very publically "go mad". Pretend I've gone Halaster Blackcloak when I, in fact, retain as much of my sanity as I've ever had.

Step 1-A: Acquire spells, powers and gizmos as needed to be able to completely cloak myself from attempts to scan or locate me using magic, psionics, incarnum or whatever's going.

Step 2: Unleash a series of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions in a wide area around the location of the Gate. These must be precisely calibrated to rearrange the landscape while not impacting the Gate.

Step 2-A: While the earthquakes etc. are still ongoing, construct layers of earth and stone over the gate, effectively burying it. Before burying it, coat the thing in lead and cast permanent abjurations on it to make sure it can't be magically detected.

Step 3: Use the Origin of Species epic spell to create a species of mind-numbingly dull humanoids. They're not good, they're not evil, they're just blah. They're content to lead dull lives, doing repetitive jobs in a dull place. Have them set up villages and farms on the land over the Gate.

Step 4: Very publically construct a dungeon in one of the new mountain ranges raised during step 2, at perhaps a week's travel from the dull people's homes. Fill dungeon with vicious traps, more vicious beasts, and set up spells to summon, burn, freeze, slice and dice to taste. Appoint the cruelest creatures that will work for coin to serve as dungeon commanders, and tell them that they need to guard the innermost chamber.

Step 5: Ward innermost chamber with every abjuration spell available, then place mirrors of opposition on every available surface. Lock and bolt innermost room and set the most powerful creature you can hire or summon to guard it.

Step 6: Create a private demiplane using the Genesis epic spell, then set up shop as a scholar / healer in the dull people's town. Sit back, relax and watch creatures interested in the Gate pass through, pay the dull people for supplies, then march off to hurl themselves into the hideous meatgrinder you've set up for them. See also step 1-A.

Step 7: Perform maintenance as necessary. If some whackjob lich starts murdering the dull people before going into the dungeon, retreat into previously-prepared demiplane and wait. When he leaves, come back out and restock dull people and meatgrinder for the next chump to come along.

[Tubercular Ox]

Weird philosophical tangent: If a dummy dungeon is trusted to repel all intruders, why is it a dummy dungeon?

If I were going to have dummy dungeons, they would look just like the real dungeon, except the real dungeon has a Microcosm that gives the experience of finding out it's one of the dummy dungeons, then gently deposits the intruders outside and wakes them up so they can cross it off their list and keep looking. And maybe leave clues for the next crowd that this one's been checked. Eventually someone will figure it out, but then the real dungeon will have actual defenses.

[Grendelkin]

Personally, I'd want my main line of defense to be that as few people as possible know where the Gate actually is. I'd want them to completely overlook its location even when they're standing on top of it.
My dungeon isn't there as a line of defense, but as a trap for anyone who wants to get at the Gate -- a trap set at a healthy distance away from the actual thing. Hopefully, it'll kill off whoever's looking for the Gate. If it doesn't, at least it'll make them suffer for their temerity.
And if the intruders are strong enough to survive and beat this meatgrinder I've set up, I'll at least be forewarned. I'll have a little time to ready myself to hit them at their lowest ebb; once they've cleared the dungeon and are limping outside. Opening with Hellball and/or Nailed to the Sky sounds like a good start.

[Errorname]

Your defensive options are constrained by their locations somewhat, the gates cannot be moved. So any defensive option in Azure City would need to account for the existence of the city, and most of the ones in the wilderness have to deal with logistical challenges of actually building the damn things.

[brian 333]

How would this stop someone like Redcloak with his ritual?

This plan really seems to rely on two things:

1) People being good
2) People not being stupid


And making sure this defense is striving to have literally any person with potential nepharious intentions acquire a detailed understanding of what superweapon, exactly, they could try to hijack there by simply virtue of accidentally walking by doesn't help either.

That's the part of the defense where any attempt to destroy or move the gate invokes a replacement gate. Instead of investing in dungeons, invest in a gate factory that slaps a new gate on the rift as soon as the old one is damaged or moved. Teleport the gate Somewhere, and a new one patches the rift in the middle of Nowhere. Now the gate that is Somewhere is just a stack of junk, and the rift is safely patched.

[Unoriginal]

That's the part of the defense where any attempt to destroy or move the gate invokes a replacement gate. Instead of investing in dungeons, invest in a gate factory that slaps a new gate on the rift as soon as the old one is damaged or moved. Teleport the gate Somewhere, and a new one patches the rift in the middle of Nowhere. Now the gate that is Somewhere is just a stack of junk, and the rift is safely patched.

Again, even assuming that a "Gate factory" or "slap[ing] a new gate on the rift", the danger is bad guys having access to an *intact* Gate.

If the Gate is moved, the rift is moved as well, and the gods would destroy the world before that.

[Errorname]

If it gets to the point where all the gate's defenders are dead and there's only static defenses keeping the gate secure, a lot of stuff has already gone wrong. Having final line last resort defenses like Dorukan's encryption or Girard's double bluff are important in case the worst comes to pass, but your job as a gate guardian is partially to make sure it never gets that far.

[brian 333]

Again, even assuming that a "Gate factory" or "slap[ing] a new gate on the rift", the danger is bad guys having access to an *intact* Gate.

If the Gate is moved, the rift is moved as well, and the gods would destroy the world before that.

Dorukon never imagined a gate could be moved, so he never developed a defense against it. With 20/20 hindsight I am aware of that, and I build my gate so that moving it does not move the rift. It just moves the physical gate mechanism. Sixty seconds later a new one forms around the rift, and the bad guys need to come up with a plan B.

[woweedd]

Dorukon never imagined a gate could be moved, so he never developed a defense against it. With 20/20 hindsight I am aware of that, and I build my gate so that moving it does not move the rift. It just moves the physical gate mechanism. Sixty seconds later a new one forms around the rift, and the bad guys need to come up with a plan B.

I'm pretty sure the reason Dorukan didn't think a gate could be moved is because it can't be. Moving the gate means the rift now has nothing containing it and is gonna burst open.

[Errorname]

Dorukon never imagined a gate could be moved, so he never developed a defense against it. With 20/20 hindsight I am aware of that, and I build my gate so that moving it does not move the rift. It just moves the physical gate mechanism. Sixty seconds later a new one forms around the rift, and the bad guys need to come up with a plan B.

Great, so the Dark One has a slightly different logistical problem to work out before putting the plan into place. This might be a slightly more complicated solve, but if you're putting all your effort into the last line of defenses you are going to end up needing the last line of defenses.

[Unoriginal]

Dorukon never imagined a gate could be moved, so he never developed a defense against it. With 20/20 hindsight I am aware of that, and I build my gate so that moving it does not move the rift. It just moves the physical gate mechanism. Sixty seconds later a new one forms around the rift, and the bad guys need to come up with a plan B.

1) How are you buiding the Gate to mobe without the rift?

2) Assuming that everything else is even possible and you have the means to do so: how are you making so that the bad guys don't simply disrupt the "move the Gate" part of your plan?

Remember that you're giving them as many tries as they want, given a new Gate gets plugged in place of the old one each time.

[hroþila]

The gate is not the seal is not the rift (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?212022-What-was-Soon-Holding-(Possibly-Spoilerish)/page3&p=11686931#post11686931). Opening your hypothetical gate 2.0 would not open the rift, unless removing that gate also rips the rift open (which is what happens when a gate explodes)

[Provengreil]

My plan is to use the built in rules of the setting: that heroes and villains exist and the world itself conforms to the resulting storylines.


It would be a bog standard deathtrap location, notable only for its excessive length and fatality levels: Serini's Final Dungeon, basically. However, the first trap sprung is not something the intruders will notice, but in fact a call to adventure sent to the nearest tavern to recruit some adventurers.

[Tubercular Ox]

My plan is to use the built in rules of the setting: that heroes and villains exist and the world itself conforms to the resulting storylines.


It would be a bog standard deathtrap location, notable only for its excessive length and fatality levels: Serini's Final Dungeon, basically. However, the first trap sprung is not something the intruders will notice, but in fact a call to adventure sent to the nearest tavern to recruit some adventurers.

Jebus, yes, now we're getting somewhere. What if you started with Soon's defenses, then added an adventurer outreach program that made Azure City the place for mid- to high-level good aligned adventurers to feel safe? Then make it clear that this safety is contingent on the safety and integrity of the Gate, whether you tell them what the Gate is for or not.

[brian 333]

The gate is not the seal is not the rift (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?212022-What-was-Soon-Holding-(Possibly-Spoilerish)/page3&p=11686931#post11686931). Opening your hypothetical gate 2.0 would not open the rift, unless removing that gate also ING rips the rift open (which is what happens when a gate explodes)

Obviously I am not using the same seal that The Scribble used. Instead of duct tape which does more damage when ripped off, my seal is a zipper that can be reused.

Soon's sapphire was moved around with no harm to the seal, and the rift itself did no go anywhere, so moving the gate is not necessarily harmful to the rift. When my gate is moved, it simply deactivates and is replaced by a new one.

[brian 333]

The gate is not the seal is not the rift (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?212022-What-was-Soon-Holding-(Possibly-Spoilerish)/page3&p=11686931#post11686931). Opening your hypothetical gate 2.0 would not open the rift, unless removing that gate also ING rips the rift open (which is what happens when a gate explodes)

Obviously I am not using the same seal that The Scribble used. Instead of duct tape which does more damage when ripped off, my seal is a zipper that can be reused.

Soon's sapphire was moved around with no harm to the seal, and the rift itself did no go anywhere, so moving the gate is not necessarily harmful to the rift. When my gate is moved, it simply deactivates and is replaced by a new one.

[Unoriginal]

Obviously I am not using the same seal that The Scribble used. Instead of duct tape which does more damage when ripped off, my seal is a zipper that can be reused.

So you're more powerful and knowledgeable than the Epic Druid and Epic Wizard who spent at leas a decade designing those seals and who sunk both of their epic-adventurer-fortune doing it?

AND you also convinced the gods of three pantheons to not destroy the world despite how you put a zipper over the Snarl instead of something that's either closing the rift or destroyed?

[Elanfanforlife]

Obviously I am not using the same seal that The Scribble used. Instead of duct tape which does more damage when ripped off, my seal is a zipper that can be reused.

Soon's sapphire was moved around with no harm to the seal, and the rift itself did no go anywhere, so moving the gate is not necessarily harmful to the rift. When my gate is moved, it simply deactivates and is replaced by a new one.

I think the main problem with your strategy is that we have no proof this is even possible.

[Precure]

Dorukan's gate looks different, it resembles a door opening into purple Snarl Realm. Maybe it can be used as an actual gate.

[Provengreil]

Jebus, yes, now we're getting somewhere. What if you started with Soon's defenses, then added an adventurer outreach program that made Azure City the place for mid- to high-level good aligned adventurers to feel safe? Then make it clear that this safety is contingent on the safety and integrity of the Gate, whether you tell them what the Gate is for or not.

Plausible. Part of the issue with a thought experiment like this is that the gates are centered on the rifts and, as far as the defenders seem to know, cannot be moved. So you gotta play the location you're dealt, which changes a ton of things about what you can or should try to do. Makes it tough to theorycraft without knowing what I can actually safely assume.

[KorvinStarmast]

Makes it tough to theorycraft without knowing what I can actually safely assume. When has that stopped anyone? :smallbiggrin:

[Errorname]

Soon's sapphire was moved around with no harm to the seal, and the rift itself did no go anywhere, so moving the gate is not necessarily harmful to the rift. When my gate is moved, it simply deactivates and is replaced by a new one.

The Sapphire isn't the gate.


So you're more powerful and knowledgeable than the Epic Druid and Epic Wizard who spent at leas a decade designing those seals and who sunk both of their epic-adventurer-fortune doing it?

Especially since Dorukan built a self-destruct into his own gate defences. The possibility of bad guys gaining access to the gate and using that to do evil things was a known risk, and the epic wizard's solution was to make sure the gate could be destroyed before letting it fall into enemy hands.


Plausible. Part of the issue with a thought experiment like this is that the gates are centered on the rifts and, as far as the defenders seem to know, cannot be moved. So you gotta play the location you're dealt, which changes a ton of things about what you can or should try to do. Makes it tough to theorycraft without knowing what I can actually safely assume.

Well, we know the basic locations of all five gates and have a rough sense of the geography. Most of them are in the wilderness with the exception of the Azure City rift, and the Redmountain and North Pole rifts both seem to be located underground.

[Unoriginal]

Especially since Dorukan built a self-destruct into his own gate defences. The possibility of bad guys gaining access to the gate and using that to do evil things was a known risk, and the epic wizard's solution was to make sure the gate could be destroyed before letting it fall into enemy hands.

TBF that was the last layer of a system the bad guys spent months banging their heads against.

[brian 333]

So you're more powerful and knowledgeable than the Epic Druid and Epic Wizard who spent at leas a decade designing those seals and who sunk both of their epic-adventurer-fortune doing it?

AND you also convinced the gods of three pantheons to not destroy the world despite how you put a zipper over the Snarl instead of something that's either closing the rift or destroyed?

I have the benefit of hindsight, so I don't have to be more powerful or more knowledgeable. Sort of like how you can assemble a computer in your home with basic tools because some time ago a bunch of very smart people assembled a huge amount of vacuum tubes and relays and taught us what not to do if we wanted to build a computer.

When all of the rifts were wide open there was no rush by The Gods to destroy the world. Their concern is idiots trying to kill them, not The Snarl snatching random passersby.


I think the main problem with your strategy is that we have no proof this is even possible.

Did The Scribble have proof that sealing the rifts at all was possible before they tried it?


Dorukan's gate looks different, it resembles a door opening into purple Snarl Realm. Maybe it can be used as an actual gate.

That's what I thought too, until The Giant said "The Gate is not the seal."


The Sapphire isn't the gate.

The Sapphire is the gate, the sapphire is not the seal that holds the gate together, but is the key to that seal.

[Provengreil]

When has that stopped anyone? :smallbiggrin:

Well, just look at all the posts I never made!

[Provengreil]

Well, we know the basic locations of all five gates and have a rough sense of the geography. Most of them are in the wilderness with the exception of the Azure City rift, and the Redmountain and North Pole rifts both seem to be located underground.

....you know, you're right. I might not know exactly how I'd defend a gate in schroedinger's geography, but if I change the question to how to defend a given story gate....hm. I'll give it some thought, this thread is fun!

[Anymage]

When all of the rifts were wide open there was no rush by The Gods to destroy the world. Their concern is idiots trying to kill them, not The Snarl snatching random passersby.

The gods have a rough idea when the rifts will fray enough for the world to completely collapse, and have a decent track record for shutting down a world before the snarl breaks out to wreck everything. (My headcanon is that sentients in the world generally find some way to buttress the tears some time between them appearing and total collapse, and one of the biggest variables that keeps the gods from having a perfect calculation is how well the various forms of gates can be maintained before someone or something inevitably mucks it all up.) Idiots trying to weaponize a rift is one of the things weighing the gods' decision now, but even if that weren't a factor the rifts would eventually grow too wide, the world would destabilize, and the best hope for everybody would be the gods taking in all the souls before the snarl could eat everybody.

Y'know, though? I'll go through with the idea that you can create "zipper" gates that can be opened and closed without damage, and that you can have an effect that would replace a gate if the existing one happened to be damaged or removed. A sign saying "doom monster here, entry means death" will be seen as a challenge by adventurers because there's always a PC who wants to press a red button or fight some big monster just because it's there. Moreover, there'll be any number of baddies who'll want to subjugate the doom monster just to use it for their own ends. The zipper will be opened and closed repeatedly. On top of that, someone wanting to harness the snarl or the world within the rift for their own ends might well want to open the hole wider. A magical gate replenishing factory can be smashed up by any serious villain with determination. And that's before the idea of something like Team Evil's plan, where having access to the gate itself is handing them what they want on a silver platter.

Remember also that unlikely unforeseeable events are going to happen. Soon's Gate almost stopped Team Evil for good, until the whole thing was blown up by someone with delusions of grandeur. Girard's Gate had high level casters including Girard's own epic level self, until Girard died from old age and the rest of the defenders all became collateral damage to an epic level spell. Every gate was perfectly defended until it finally wasn't, and the idea that your gate wouldn't be threatened by rare fluke events has to contend with how many rare fluke events have happened to the gates so far.

[Errorname]

When all of the rifts were wide open there was no rush by The Gods to destroy the world. Their concern is idiots trying to kill them, not The Snarl snatching random passersby.

Serini says "I forgot they were a going concern (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1256.html)" and Heimdall outright says they convened a godsmoot during the Order of the Scribble's day (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0998.html). The timescale was less urgent since there wasn't an active team of bad guys planning to attack the gods, but they were still obviously threatened by the open rifts and I'm guessing that Godsmoot was also pretty close.

[brian 333]

The gods have a rough idea when the rifts will fray enough for the world to completely collapse, and have a decent track record for shutting down a world before the snarl breaks out to wreck everything. (My headcanon is that sentients in the world generally find some way to buttress the tears some time between them appearing and total collapse,

I thought Thor said this was the first world that anyone actually patched a rift?

In any case, they were in no hurry to pull the plug in the Scribble"s day even though rifts had been around long enough for the founding of the Holey Brotherhood.

[Errorname]

In any case, they were in no hurry to pull the plug in the Scribble"s day even though rifts had been around long enough for the founding of the Holey Brotherhood.

This is a dubious claim! We don't have the full story, and what few sources we have for the gods during that period indicate that they did in fact convene a Godsmoot on the matter and the Scribblers were operating with the threat of "if we fail, the gods destroy the world" hanging over their heads. They were almost certainly at least preparing the pull the plug back before the rifts were sealed.

Also the Holey Brotherhood are a one-page joke, and it's hard to make any estimate based on that. For all we know they were a handful of dudes who found a rift in the desert and decided it was sacred and were around for like a month before the Scribblers defeated them.

[Kardwill]

Soon's sapphire was moved around

Was it? Unless I'm mistaken, the sapphire Gate, the throne, the throne room and the entire palace were built around the rift. The gate was not moved, it was built at a specific place in Azure City's sky, held up in position by a dedicated building, and stayed there until Miko blew it up. Just as Dorukan's doorway-shaped-cristal Gate was constructed on top of another rift until Elan blew it up. Or Lirian's Cristal-hanging-between-two-Ents Gate, that blew up when the Ents moved. Or Girard's "big cristal with a pyramid built on top of it" Gate, that blew up when Roy hit it with his pigsticker...

When I think about it, those things tend to blow up a lot, don't they?


I think the main problem with your strategy is that we have no proof this is even possible.

Yeah, the "make an infinite gate factory that safely pulls back damaged gates and teleports a new one, without damaging the seal, and faster than the bad guys can destroy them" sounds like a lot of assumptions about what is actually allowed by the in-universe laws.



Well, we know the basic locations of all five gates and have a rough sense of the geography. Most of them are in the wilderness with the exception of the Azure City rift, and the Redmountain and North Pole rifts both seem to be located underground.

The Crayons of Time show the location of each rift to be above ground, though. So, that means that either
- the Crayons are not an accurate depiction (which is possible, since Shojo might not have a detailed account of the other gates)
or
- the Scribblers did some heavy geoengineering to bury some of the gates, probably to conceal/defend them. That would fit with the geography of Dorukan's dungeon (It looks like there's some rough hill/small mountain under the castle), and maybe of Kraagor's grave (some weird shaped canyon overlooked by rough crag hills).
But note that since the "entrance" of Kraagor's actual dungeon is a teleport spell, the gate could be in another place entirely. Although I doubt Serini would put her HQ too far from the actual, physical location of the gate)

[Tubercular Ox]

Was it? Unless I'm mistaken, the sapphire Gate, the throne, the throne room and the entire palace were built around the rift.

Maybe, maybe not. There is one panel (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0277.html) of Soon handing a sapphire to Shojo's father that the forum once had a discussion on. Rich participated (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?212022-What-was-Soon-Holding-(Possibly-Spoilerish)/page3&p=11686931#post11686931).

But a thorough person would read the things people were saying (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?212022-What-was-Soon-Holding-(Possibly-Spoilerish)) before deciding they knew what Rich was trying to say. He was answering questions, not writing a stikipedia entry.

[Kardwill]

Maybe, maybe not. There is one panel (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0277.html) of Soon handing a sapphire to Shojo's father that the forum once had a discussion on. Rich participated (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?212022-What-was-Soon-Holding-(Possibly-Spoilerish)/page3&p=11686931#post11686931).

But a thorough person would read the things people were saying (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?212022-What-was-Soon-Holding-(Possibly-Spoilerish)) before deciding they knew what Rich was trying to say. He was answering questions, not writing a stikipedia entry.

Oh. I never identified that blue blob in Soon's hand as the sapphire.

So the Sapphire is another layer on top of the Gate on top of the Seal on top of the Rift? Sounds needlessly convoluted, but okay ^^

The point stands, though, that the Gate itself can't be moved. You can just add additional security measures on top of it.

[Tubercular Ox]

So the Sapphire is another layer on top of the Gate on top of the Seal on top of the Rift? Sounds needlessly convoluted, but okay ^^


I might get in trouble for saying this, but I think what happened is Rich got caught between, "The gates can't move," and, "Soon handed a sapphire to Shojo's father," and wrote his way out of it on the spot.

Rich said it and I don't think he'd go back on it, but I'm doubtful it has any impact on the rest of the story.

[Doctor West]

Honestly that was my impression as well re: the sapphire.

As for my two cp on the main topic, assuming unlimited resources or the ability to develop an uber-gate with significantly greater capabilities than the Scribbler's spellcasters managed seems to make this a rather pointless thought experiment in my book.

[brian 333]

I might get in trouble for saying this, but I think what happened is Rich got caught between, "The gates can't move," and, "Soon handed a sapphire to Shojo's father," and wrote his way out of it on the spot.

Rich said it and I don't think he'd go back on it, but I'm doubtful it has any impact on the rest of the story.

The way I understand it, what we see is the key, not the lock or the door. That is why Xykon and Redcloak could not just do the ritual on the Redmountain gate. It would not move the rift, it would only move the key to the lock that protects the seal on the rift.

What they want to teleport is the seal, but they could not get to it because it was safely locked away. When the key was destroyed, the lock went with it, the seal ripped open, and the sudden release caused the already frayed edges of the rift to unravel even more.

TE needs to unlock the gate to perform their ritual on what it protects. Unlocking it without destroying it would allow performing the ritual on the real target.

[gbaji]

I might get in trouble for saying this, but I think what happened is Rich got caught between, "The gates can't move," and, "Soon handed a sapphire to Shojo's father," and wrote his way out of it on the spot.

Rich said it and I don't think he'd go back on it, but I'm doubtful it has any impact on the rest of the story.

Yeah. It's possible. Or also possible that Rich always intended the sapphire itself to be some kind of symbol or object of power related to the gate, but not the gate itself. Kinda like the remote control to your garage door. It would have been one of the things that each person built up as part of their own defense of their respective gates. Durokon placed a sigil on his, and then built an entire tower around that to defend his. Lirian attached two Treants, and had an entire forest of guardians, and her anti-magic virus, to defend hers. Girard encased his in a lead pillar with misleading info on it, then surrounded it with a pyramid, defended that with his family, and hid the whole thing in the middle of a desert covered with illusions. We don't actually know what specific object or power is physically present near/on Serini's gate, but she built a pretty massive layer of dungeons and monsters to defend hers.

It would not be off pattern for Soon to have first built a magical sappire to control access to the gate in some way, then build the tower/throneroom around that, then establish his Sappire Guard to defend that as well (including the oaths and ghost martyrs). Each defense did seem to have at least two parts: One that actually made it difficult to approach/find the gate itself, and another to physically/magically defend the gate. Though, to be perfectly fair, the Sapphire didn't seem to actually do much in this regard, other than maybe concealing that there was a gate and rift behind it. Though I suppose the same could be said of Girard's, since the lead sheeting didn't actually prevent physical access either. So yeah. It's still unclear what the Sappire actually did.


Oh. As to the actual subject here. Put me down as "I think that creating some sort of system that allows for automatic replacement of gates would open up a risk of someone hijacking the system and gaining control/access to the gates/rifts anyway". The vulnerable point here is the whole "magic that replaces one gate with another" (or allows for opening/closing of said gate) bits. Assuming that magical research is a thing, then one could simply trick someone else into opening a gate and then observing what happens. Could learn how the replacement gates are magically put in place, and then duplicate it somehow. Now you've got your own gate, built by you, and granting you access to the seal behind it. The mere fact of building something in which "being replaced by another thing connected to the gate" is imbedded within it, would make the system vulnerable.

Also, I'm not sure how this would at all defend against something like TDO's ritual. He's not actually opening the gate, he's just moving it and thus moving the rift contained within. He should be able to do that just as easily with one of these replacable gates as a more permanent one. The threat isn't "can I open this gate and gain control of the rift", but merely "can I move this gate to an outer plane, and then threaten to open/destroy it, so that the rirft now opens onto some other god's home plane?". That threat is still present, but in this system you've made the gates far far more easily accessible.

[hamishspence]

It's still unclear what the Sappire actually did.



It "further sealed and reinforced" the Gate.



The gem reinforces the Gate; the gem is NOT the Gate, and the Gate is not the seal, and the seal is not the rift. The gem is the deadbolt, not the lock, or the door, or the doorway. The "door" is a complex spell that is not actually visible but is what Dorukan and Lirian are casting in the first panel of the second page of #276. The "lock" is the Gate, a tiny magical object that later had a throne crafted around it; it's about the size of a raisin in the case of Azure City. The "doorway" is the rift itself, and it is not really inside the gemstone, it's just that the gem (and Gate) are translucent and we can see through it (because it's a visual medium and it made it easier to understand). The gemstone is an enchanted object that further seals and reinforces the Gate; thus, the "deadbolt."

When Soon hands over the Sapphire to Shojo's father, he is essentially giving the last piece of the Gate's security system over so that it might be put into place. Think of the Sapphire as an additional seal that Soon and his followers came up with. The Sapphire does not NEED to be in the same place as the Gate in order to seal it, because it's magic, but moving it around is risky. There's a chance that it will just fail and the Gate will swing open. Before the panel shown, Soon likely kept it somewhere else safe, but chose as he was dying to consolidate the protections (because that's where he was going to be hanging out as a ghost-martyr). I guess the magic might have been stronger being in the same spot as the Gate, too.

[gbaji]

It "further sealed and reinforced" the Gate.

Right. I got the words. But, practically speaking, what did it actually do? It didn't seem to prevent anyone from being able to break the gem and the gate in one swing of a sword. There were additional magical defenses around the room to prevent scrying and whatnot. So... what did it actually do?

In what way did it reinforce the gate? Was there some actual concern that, in the absence of some additional magic beyond the seal and the gates, the rifts might open up on their own anyway? Did other gates have this? It just seems odd that, if this was actually needed to allow the gate itself to continue its primary function of keeping the rift sealed, that this was something left to the individual scribblers to do, rather than something built by Lirian and Durokon when they originally built the seals and the gates. And if they built this, then why isn't it a component of the gate itself? Did they seal the rifts, then build the gates, and then sometime later go "oh wait. We need to put some additional item/magic on each gate to further reinforce them"? Did this happen before or after they had their break up?

I've just always gotten that, beyond the seals and the gates themselves, each Scribbler was left to their own devices in terms of what they did to defend them. So I could see if the Sapphire was some kind of magic gem that detected anyone intending to open the gate and zapped them, or had some kind of warning system which alerted the legitimate owner of the gem if someone tried to tamper with the gate (that would actually make a lot of sense for its function actually). But it just never set well with me that it was somehow tied into maintaining the integrity of the actual gate itself. To me, all of the stuff the individual Scribblers did to/with their gates should have been about defending them from external threats to the gates, but the phrase "futher sealed and reinforced" suggests it's internally focused.

Then again, the Giant used the term "deadbolt", which is generally something used on something to additionally make it more difficult to open from the outside. Which I suppose makes complete sense, except that the gem itself seems way too easily broken for that to actually function as a deadbolt to the gate at all. It should be nigh indistructable, requiring some kind of artifact level magic weapon to destroy, if its purpose is actually to act as a sort of deadbolt. And if it's somehow tied to or on top of the gate, and acts as an extra layer of protection, one has to wonder how that worked. Did it mean that only the weilder of the sapphire could access the gate (suggested by the Giant's statements that TE would have to find the gem before he'd be able to use the ritual. Er... But then... why in the blazing heck put the darn thing in the same room as the gate? It should be buried deep underground beneath the Sapphire guard headquarters, within a secret vault that only the most highly ranked and trusted Paladins of the Guard even know exists and surrounded by wards that only allow the legitimate commander of the SG to access.


Don't get me wrong. I still rank Soon's gate defense as the best of the bunch, but the sapphire itself actually did absolutely nothing at all to help in its defense.... Er... And I just had this thought. Maybe that's what the Ghost Martyr's were actually tied to? Doesn't quite match the phrasing "futher sealed and reinforced", but would totally match up with it being a (very very strong) defense for the gate (even somewhat "deadbolt" like). I mean, I like that explanation but it doesn't actually match up at all with what Rich said. Then again, I'm not really buying the combination of "an additional seal that Soon and his followers came up with" and "moving it around is risky" because "There's a chance that it will just fail and the Gate will swing open". Um... if that was a real chance, then it was a real chance if they'd never created an "additional seal" in the first place, right? So did all of the other gates have some random chance of swinging open?

I prefer to just leave it as a general "the Sapphire guard made the gem, and it was somehow tied in to their defense of the gate", and leave it at that. The actual statements made by Rich on this subject don't actually seem to make much sense if we examine them further than that. And honestly? I'm fine with just accepting that at the time Rich wrote that, he was still working out the details in terms of what the rifts, seals, and gates were and how they worked, and just not worry about it too much.

[Errorname]

The way I understand it, what we see is the key, not the lock or the door. That is why Xykon and Redcloak could not just do the ritual on the Redmountain gate. It would not move the rift, it would only move the key to the lock that protects the seal on the rift.

The Redmountain gate seems unique in that it was locked behind Dorukan's wards. I don't think Team Evil would have had the same problems with the other gates

[KorvinStarmast]

Re: A Perfect Defense! There is no such thing.
"If we only defend, we lose the war"
(From The Seven Samurai)

[Peelee]

There is no such thing.

Best defense is a good offense. :smalltongue:

[brian 333]

Yeah. It's possible. Or also possible that Rich always intended the sapphire itself to be some kind of symbol or object of power related to the gate, but not the gate itself. Kinda like the remote control to your garage door. It would have been one of the things that each person built up as part of their own defense of their respective gates. Durokon placed a sigil on his, and then built an entire tower around that to defend his. Lirian attached two Treants, and had an entire forest of guardians, and her anti-magic virus, to defend hers. Girard encased his in a lead pillar with misleading info on it, then surrounded it with a pyramid, defended that with his family, and hid the whole thing in the middle of a desert covered with illusions. We don't actually know what specific object or power is physically present near/on Serini's gate, but she built a pretty massive layer of dungeons and monsters to defend hers.

It would not be off pattern for Soon to have first built a magical sappire to control access to the gate in some way, then build the tower/throneroom around that, then establish his Sappire Guard to defend that as well (including the oaths and ghost martyrs). Each defense did seem to have at least two parts: One that actually made it difficult to approach/find the gate itself, and another to physically/magically defend the gate. Though, to be perfectly fair, the Sapphire didn't seem to actually do much in this regard, other than maybe concealing that there was a gate and rift behind it. Though I suppose the same could be said of Girard's, since the lead sheeting didn't actually prevent physical access either. So yeah. It's still unclear what the Sappire actually did.


Oh. As to the actual subject here. Put me down as "I think that creating some sort of system that allows for automatic replacement of gates would open up a risk of someone hijacking the system and gaining control/access to the gates/rifts anyway". The vulnerable point here is the whole "magic that replaces one gate with another" (or allows for opening/closing of said gate) bits. Assuming that magical research is a thing, then one could simply trick someone else into opening a gate and then observing what happens. Could learn how the replacement gates are magically put in place, and then duplicate it somehow. Now you've got your own gate, built by you, and granting you access to the seal behind it. The mere fact of building something in which "being replaced by another thing connected to the gate" is imbedded within it, would make the system vulnerable.

Also, I'm not sure how this would at all defend against something like TDO's ritual. He's not actually opening the gate, he's just moving it and thus moving the rift contained within. He should be able to do that just as easily with one of these replacable gates as a more permanent one. The threat isn't "can I open this gate and gain control of the rift", but merely "can I move this gate to an outer plane, and then threaten to open/destroy it, so that the rirft now opens onto some other god's home plane?". That threat is still present, but in this system you've made the gates far far more easily accessible.

The beauty of my gate is, everyone who comes to study it will at some point open the gate. If they go in they don't come out. If they just look in, the Snarl reaches out and drags them in. Investigating the gate is 100% fatal!


The Redmountain gate seems unique in that it was locked behind Dorukan's wards. I don't think Team Evil would have had the same problems with the other gates

Could it have served the same purpose as Sapphire? The lock that must be unlocked to get to the gate itself?

[Kardwill]

The beauty of my gate is, everyone who comes to study it will at some point open the gate. If they go in they don't come out. If they just look in, the Snarl reaches out and drags them in. Investigating the gate is 100% fatal!

Not if they do it remotely, or have minions or associates doing it for them. Or a god looking over their shoulder and taking notes for the next attempt. A lone, reckless individual might fall in your trap, but an organisation will survive, and gain information about the working and vulnerabilities of your defense.

And the snarl does not appear instantly. There was a span of at least several hours (more likely days) where Laurin could study the open desert rift before the snarl lashed out, and even then, it looked like a short range attack. Miron and most of the guards survived the initial attack (or at least the surprise round).
Azure City's rift has been open for 1 year, without the snarl lashing out, either.

So, all it takes is for some enemy to survive the trap, and then use minions/summons/undeads/prisoners to study the cycle, and ask themselves "Where do these gates come from, and how can I block/hijack that cycle?" I can imagine redcloak having such an experimental/scientific approach (in fact, he DID exactly that, using minions, prisoners and dupes to safely study Dorukan's gate defenses and Soon's rift).

Like most Perfect Plans (tm), it revolves around the enemy doing exactly what you want them to do. Or if you assume you have special unique powers that nobody else can copy/study/dispel.

Doesn't mean your plan of using the Snarl as a guardian is not nasty. It would have a good chance of taking out Xykon if he can't planeshift out of "riftworld", for example (but probably not Redcloak). But the perfect, unbreakable "passive defense" doesn't really exist, because it gives the enemy the opportunity and time to study it and find a weakness to exploit, or a ressource to bring to bear. Especially if the enemy is a god like TDO with centuries to plan out his next move.

But "not so perfect defenses" are good, because they create interesting stories :smallsmile:

[Errorname]

The beauty of my gate is, everyone who comes to study it will at some point open the gate. If they go in they don't come out. If they just look in, the Snarl reaches out and drags them in. Investigating the gate is 100% fatal!

Oh, I badly misinterpreted your proposed layout. I didn't realize you were using the actual gate for the trap, I thought the podium and button was like a decoy or something and the infinite gate glitch facility would be somewhere else.

Because it's a reasonable layout for a decoy, it's cheap and it might kill a couple schmucks before they get anywhere near the real deal, but leaving the actual gate completely undefended with nothing but the hope that you can seal whoever tries to use it in with the Snarl is a massive risk. Several Rifts have been open for months and the Snarl is only just starting to reach out. You are staking everything on your ability to predict the Snarl's behaviour and the foolishness of any potential bad guys to march obediently to the slaughter you have devised.

You have no margin for error here. No fallback for if some enterprising bad guy figures out the mechanics, just one entirely automated line of defense that relies on taunting the god killing abomination. Your 'perfect defense' is a trapped room with a button and a bunch of explosives, it's the simplest booby trap imaginable and probably worse defended than the post-familicide Girard's Pyramid.


Could it have served the same purpose as Sapphire? The lock that must be unlocked to get to the gate itself?

I don't know. I certainly doubt the Sapphire was nearly as robust as Dorukan's wards


But the perfect, unbreakable "passive defense" doesn't really exist, because it gives the enemy the opportunity and time to study it and find a weakness to exploit, or a ressource to bring to bear. Especially if the enemy is a god like TDO with centuries to plan out his next move.

Yeah, this. For any defensive strategy to be viable long term you want active defenders sworn to protect the gate who can adapt to changing circumstances and perform regular upkeep. One of the biggest assets you as an epic level adventurer have to defend your gate is yourself, it's not for nothing that the two gates that came the closest to eliminating Xykon and Redcloak were the ones with active epic level defenders.

[OvisCaedo]

It feels like a lot is hinging on "I would simply build a better gate that works way better than these ones!". It's cheap, automatically mass produced somehow/somewhere, supremely stable so nothing goes wrong with the rift ever from the gate being ripped off and a new one being shunted back into place. They have amazing sensors that will detect anyone trying to mess with one that can't possibly be tricked or shut off. The Snarl will be able to reach through the temporarily opened gate to kill anyone who comes near but can't possibly escape or mess up the mechanism while doing so.

So here's my perfect defense: A better gate that's invincible and immune to all magic!

[Kardwill]

Also the Holey Brotherhood are a one-page joke, and it's hard to make any estimate based on that. For all we know they were a handful of dudes who found a rift in the desert and decided it was sacred and were around for like a month before the Scribblers defeated them.

Yeah, the Holey Brotherhood is clearly an uninspired GM throwing a combat encounter at their players, since he couldn't come up with a proper near-epic level adenture for this week's game ^^

[brian 333]

Oh, I badly misinterpreted your proposed layout. I didn't realize you were using the actual gate for the trap, I thought the podium and button was like a decoy or something and the infinite gate glitch facility would be somewhere else.

Because it's a reasonable layout for a decoy, it's cheap and it might kill a couple schmucks before they get anywhere near the real deal, but leaving the actual gate completely undefended with nothing but the hope that you can seal whoever tries to use it in with the Snarl is a massive risk. Several Rifts have been open for months and the Snarl is only just starting to reach out. You are staking everything on your ability to predict the Snarl's behaviour and the foolishness of any potential bad guys to march obediently to the slaughter you have devised.

You have no margin for error here. No fallback for if some enterprising bad guy figures out the mechanics, just one entirely automated line of defense that relies on taunting the god killing abomination. Your 'perfect defense' is a trapped room with a button and a bunch of explosives, it's the simplest booby trap imaginable and probably worse defended than the post-familicide Girard's Pyramid.



I don't know. I certainly doubt the Sapphire was nearly as robust as Dorukan's wards



Yeah, this. For any defensive strategy to be viable long term you want active defenders sworn to protect the gate who can adapt to changing circumstances and perform regular upkeep. One of the biggest assets you as an epic level adventurer have to defend your gate is yourself, it's not for nothing that the two gates that came the closest to eliminating Xykon and Redcloak were the ones with active epic level defenders.

Say it with me:

"There is no such thing as a perfect defense."

There is always a fail point, and the more complex the defense, the more fail points are available for exploitation. Given time, any setup will eventually allow a persistent enough adversary to beat it.

When it comes to defense, the best that can be done is to buy time.

What I did do in the defense layout I imagined was to make everyone in the world a guardian of my gate. The only 'use' one could make of any rift is to release The Snarl. There is no provision for putting it back inside once it escapes. At that point, all one can hope for is that the gods take them before The Snarl does.

When everyone knows that someone fooling with the gate is gambling everyone's life for no gain to anyone, they might let the idiots get themselves killed, but anyone competent enough to actually succeed? Everyone in the world who wants to see tomorrow will be their enemy.

The Scribbles were a bunch of paranoids. By keeping the rifts secret they gave the bad guys freedom to repeatedly fail without anyone catching on. If the secret of the rifts had been known, every Epic character in Stickworld would have been after TE the minute the first gate was destroyed. There might have even been an Epic cleric willing to team up with Dorukon to fix Lirian's Gate, or raise Lirian so she could do it.

[Errorname]

There is always a fail point, and the more complex the defense, the more fail points are available for exploitation. Given time, any setup will eventually allow a persistent enough adversary to beat it.

Sure, but a more complex defense also requires attackers to find and exploit more points of failure to break through. Your setup has a single unreliable defensive mechanism that falls apart the second someone figures it out. It's a worse defensive strategy than literally every gate we saw in the actual comic.


When it comes to defense, the best that can be done is to buy time.

That's not wrong, but it's so simplified it might as well be.

[gbaji]

When it comes to defense, the best that can be done is to buy time.

I guess, in a very broad way. But the problem with your approach is that it doesn't buy any time for the defense, but buys effectively unlimited time for those trying to penetrate it.

Here's another way to look at this: Imagine you and I are in a competition in which we each must create a puzzle, and then see how long it takes someone to solve it.

You make a really really really difficult puzzle and set it on the table for folks to try to solve.

I make maybe a relatively basic puzzle, but put it in a safe deposit box in the most secure bank in the world, and then hide all evidence that I ever put it there.

Which puzzle will be solved first?

[brian 333]

I completed my post above.

[Errorname]

The Scribbles were a bunch of paranoids. By keeping the rifts secret they gave the bad guys freedom to repeatedly fail without anyone catching on. If the secret of the rifts had been known, every Epic character in Stickworld would have been after TE the minute the first gate was destroyed. There might have even been an Epic cleric willing to team up with Dorukon to fix Lirian's Gate, or raise Lirian so she could do it.

See, I think the actual problem here is that the Scribblers were too paranoid to trust each other. They weren't communicating and weren't able to co-operate or co-ordinate in response to new threats, so the gates weren't as well defended as they could have been, but this secret was kept for good reasons. Like for example, because the Gods want the snarl kept secret and might destroy the world rather than let mortals and outsiders know their greatest weakness, or because if a bunch of high level baddies got it in their heads that they could harness a god killing abomination they'd probably try and do that.

Even if you do think the benefits of being able to openly co-ordinate around gate defense outweigh the negatives, this still doesn't make the proposed gate layout effective. This plan would work better with the sort of actually built up dungeons the Scribblers used, because those are actually made with a mind to having defenders and ensuring that fights happen on favourable terms for the good guys.

[brian 333]

I disagree. Defenses against anything only work so long as there is an active offense supporting it. This is why the defenses have failed four out of five times so far.

Imagine, if you will, that everyone knows that messing with the gates is deadly. Who will mess with them? Crazies, obviously. Most of them would die quickly and be forgotten with my defense.

But let us assume an effective megalomaniac tries to move my version of the gate to target something or other. Okay, great. Now that gate is a pile of junk and the rift is right where it always was.

Let us assume that an effective megalomaniac wants to destroy the gate. Oops, that has already happened. But in the comic, a guy with an unrelated quest happened by and is now pursuing the gate crasher. How much more resistance would have been raised had the gates and their purposes been common knowledge?

Virtually none of the supposed benefits of secrecy ever actually happen, but secrets allow nefarious behavior to go unopposed. If the gates had not been a secret, any three epic characters showing up after Lirian's gate was destroyed could have saved the other four from danger. And that is all the secret of the gates ever achieved.

In your disagreement your strength is imaginary. Puzzles exceedingly hard for Xykon were trivially easy for Nale. So you have to defend against every possibility you can imagine, then fail when faced with a more imaginative foe.

In mine, the danger is apparent, well known, and there is probably a gambling concession over how long it takes idiots to get themselves killed. As soon as someone capable of actually accomplishing anything comes along, everyone knows, and the weeks the effective megalomaniac needs to do whatever it is he wants to do is time enough for all of the epics who want to be alive to stop them. And if a gate key, deadbolt, or whatever gets destroyed, there is time enough to make another.

[Errorname]

I disagree. Defenses against anything only work so long as there is an active offense supporting it. This is why the defenses have failed four out of five times so far.

The Defenses have failed because the story is not about how the Scribblers did everything right and our heroes don't need to do anything, but they have come close.

More to the point, "tell everyone about the gods' best kept secret and hope everything works out" is a terrible plan. You aren't managing an offensive strategy, you'rer hoping that self-interest means that political power players all band together to do what's best for the world, which is a sucker's bet. I'm sure all the warlords of the western continent will handle having the key to a god killing abomination in their disputed territory perfectly rationally.

I'm also sure that the gods will be delighted that you told literally everyone in the world about the abomination they made that can permanently kill them. I'm sure they're all going to be very comfortable knowing that every mortal and outsider in the world knows about the Snarl and not kill everyone to keep the secret.


But let us assume an effective megalomaniac tries to move my version of the gate to target something or other. Okay, great. Now that gate is a pile of junk and the rift is right where it always was.

I see no reason to accept that your version of the gate would actually be able to prevent someone from moving the rift if they understood the mechanism by which you sealed, or indeed that your alternative gate construction would work at all.


In your disagreement your strength is imaginary. Puzzles exceedingly hard for Xykon were trivially easy for Nale. So you have to defend against every possibility you can imagine, then fail when faced with a more imaginative foe.

Yes. So do you, and I'm not convinced you'd succeed against a less imaginative one.

[JNAProductions]

You’re working under the assumption you can build something that several epic level casters working together could not manage.

It’s like saying any energy crisis is easy to solve-just use fusion power.

[brian 333]

The Defenses have failed because the story is not about how the Scribblers did everything right and our heroes don't need to do anything, but they have come close.

More to the point, "tell everyone about the gods' best kept secret and hope everything works out" is a terrible plan. You aren't managing an offensive strategy, you'rer hoping that self-interest means that political power players all band together to do what's best for the world, which is a sucker's bet. I'm sure all the warlords of the western continent will handle having the key to a god killing abomination in their disputed territory perfectly rationally.

I'm also sure that the gods will be delighted that you told literally everyone in the world about the abomination they made that can permanently kill them. I'm sure they're all going to be very comfortable knowing that every mortal and outsider in the world knows about the Snarl and not kill everyone to keep the secret.

Political power players are primarily self preservationists. When they become megalomaniacal power mongers, the other power players band together against them or join them in the hopes of surviving. But none of them can survive The Snarl, and attempting to use The Snarl against the gods just encourages the gods to pull the slip-knot before they can succeed.

It is anti-self preservation to tolerate any fooling around with the rifts. If you fail you die. If you unleash The Snarl, everyone dies. Even if you succeed and harness The Snarl, the gods pull the cord and everyone dies anyway. Those are the only three options.

The only reason Xykon is even trying is because he does not know this!

The power players who make a play for control of the gate only gain defeat, no matter how it plays out. Why would the ones who want to survive not band together to stop that?


I see no reason to accept that your version of the gate would actually be able to prevent someone from moving the rift if they understood the mechanism by which you sealed, or indeed that your alternative gate construction would work at all.

Granted. I cannot know that it is possible. Nobody has tried. It may not be.

But keeping the gates secret has not made them safer. Even if my defense is completely impossible, it still would be safer for the world if knowledge of rift-patching and the consequences of fooling with them otherwise was common.


Yes. So do you, and I'm not convinced you'd succeed against a less imaginative one.

You'd be surprised at how effective I am at wargames. Still, you only have my word for that.


You’re working under the assumption you can build something that several epic level casters working together could not manage.

Since they never tried, there is no evidence one way or the other about what they might otherwise have done. It may be easier in the same way that building tiny working gas turbine engines is easier than building full scale gas turbine engines, or more difficult the way tiny V8 diesel piston engines are much harder to build than full scale V8 diesel piston engines.


It’s like saying any energy crisis is easy to solve-just use fusion power.

Yes, exactly. We do not know if it can be done, or even if it is wise to make the attempt. What happens when a full scale fusion power reactor fails catastrophically? I don't know.

Fortunately, this is a thought exercise, and no real worlds will be harmed by my failure. So, not knowing that it can be done is Schrodenger's fusion reactor. It both solves the energy crisis and rips the atmosphere from the world until a working model is built and made operational.

Obviously, I took the side that such a gate is possible. If you think it is not, build your own perfect defense scenario.

[JNAProductions]

I mean, if we're allowed to just make stuff up, then I propose that two new pantheons get made and their quiddities be used to make a five-color prison, even more real than the Snarl itself, and so able to withstand it for eternity.

[Errorname]

Political power players are primarily self preservationists. When they become megalomaniacal power mongers, the other power players band together against them or join them in the hopes of surviving. But none of them can survive The Snarl, and attempting to use The Snarl against the gods just encourages the gods to pull the slip-knot before they can succeed.

Nobody seemed willing to take on Xykon after Azure City fell. Maybe the threat of the Snarl would raise the stakes enough to force people to act, but it's also very easy to imagine people hesitating out of fear of the Snarl.

I'm also not sure there's a deep well of epic level characters who aren't already in play, there's a pretty strong implication that most of the really high level characters are already involved in the Snarl conflict. Tarquin is wrong when he says Elan can just go grab replacements for Roy and Durkon at any tavern, this is not a setting with dozens of unaligned epic level characters just running about.


But keeping the gates secret has not made them safer. Even if my defense is completely impossible, it still would be safer for the world if knowledge of rift-patching and the consequences of fooling with them otherwise was common.

That assumes the gods are willing to let knowledge of the rifts be common, which I do not think they are. The Snarl terrifies the gods more than anything, and mortals knowing about it's existence and the deeper metaphysics of the universe could pose a serious threat to them. If I was on the Scribblers, I would be very paranoid about the gods deciding that keeping Snarl-lore secret from their creations was worth destroying the world over.

[pearl jam]

It wouldn't surprise me if Xykon is the first person to reach epic levels post Scribblers, yeah.

[Kardwill]

Since they never tried, there is no evidence one way or the other about what they might otherwise have done. It may be easier in the same way that building tiny working gas turbine engines is easier than building full scale gas turbine engines, or more difficult the way tiny V8 diesel piston engines are much harder to build than full scale V8 diesel piston engines.


The Scribblers were the most knowledgeable group about the rifts, they spent 10 years building the best Gate system they could come up with and several more decades defending and reinforcing them, and yet all they could do was put up a makeshift barricade that blows up every time someone looks at them funny, breaking the seal and ripping the rift wide open in the process. I don't think "build a gate, just better" would be that easy. You could try to look at the situation from another angle with the benefit of seeing how the original gates failed, sure, but it's likely any "easy to explore/obvious" idea has already been thought up and discarded bay the Scribblers for some reason or another.



Yes, exactly. We do not know if it can be done, or even if it is wise to make the attempt. What happens when a full scale fusion power reactor fails catastrophically? I don't know.

I think the point of the fusion analogy is that we've actually been trying to do it for decades with big international research projects and actual experimental reactors, and we're still nowhere near getting a working fusion energy plant (or even knowing if such an energy plant is actually practical with our available ressources and technology)
It's not as simple as saying "Well, fission stinks and its fuel is not infinite. Let's just do fusion instead, it was obvious in retrospect", even if we really, REALLY wanted to do it (we do). We do fission because, while fusion is the natural energy source for big-ass stars using 99,9% of their system's mass to contain and pressure their "reactor", fission is actually simpler to do for us planetbound apes.
A new idea is not enough : It can be impossible. it can be impractical. It can be too expensive. it can necessitate a long, grueling process to make it something more than "why don't we just...". And it can be an idea somebody else already checked and discarded.



That said, if your main line of defense is making the gates public... That's another thing. It's something that can be applied on top of the Scribbler's "build a fortress on top of the gate, and an organisation to man that fortress" defense as well as your own. the main problem I see with it is that the gods are really unconfortable about lowly mortals (and, perhaps more importantly, devious Outsiders) knowing their weakness. "Too many mortals know the secret already, let's nuke the planet" has been one of the points made during the godsmoot (sure, it was a paranoid god of secrets, but still.
They erased the Eastern Gods from History, hid the "lost worlds graveyard" behind the barn, rebooted the memory of every Outsider. I don't think they would be happy if a Western Warlord was publickly sitting on a gate and using it as a doomsday weapon to ensure his rule is unchallenged, even if said Warlord has no intention of actually ripping the rift open.

On the other hand, that could spark the creation of international cooperation to protect the gates. Bring more adventurers and armies in the defense of the Gates. Make taking on a gate a more daunting process. But I'm not optimistic. The Southern Gate was defended by an entire militaristic nation, and it still fell when a band of malcontent goblinoids led by a lunatic lich decided it was time to kick over the board.
Outsiders would do even worse. The IFCC is willing to risk their minds, their actual immortality, and possibly Creation itself, to play with the Snarl. What would happen if the entire population of the Lower Planes knew of such "opportunity"? That sounds like a good way to spark up a "war in heaven" scenario.
There will always be bad guys who think they can game the system and take that risk. Xykon wouldn't be initimidated by the threat of a divine reset. His mindset has always been "Go big, and to hell with consequences"

That's the main problem, isn't it? All gates, all defenses, all organisations and defenders are temporary. At one point, something is bound to happen that will make the gods panic and hit the reset button. All the scribblers' efforts and sacrifice bought the world 6 decades, and now it's on the brink of destruction again. You just need one fail point, one lucky villain, one freak accident or ill-advised decision for the world to make one more step toward the edge. It literally happened billons of times. The situation is simply not sustenable long term.

[Liquor Box]

I disagree. Defenses against anything only work so long as there is an active offense supporting it. This is why the defenses have failed four out of five times so far.

I agree with you that some active offense, something that can actually hurt the attackers is needed.

But all of them were designed with an active offense element. Lyrian's had herself and her nature allies. Dorukan had himself and any monsters and traps in his dungeon. Soon had the Azure army and his ghost paladins. Girard (although they'd gone by the time we saw it) had his family and whatever traps there were. Serini had her monsters and (although they were dead by the time we arrived) and her plan to summon her allies.


But keeping the gates secret has not made them safer. Even if my defense is completely impossible, it still would be safer for the world if knowledge of rift-patching and the consequences of fooling with them otherwise was common.

I don't agree about this.

The secrecy only only failed to protect the gates from Xykon because the secrets themselves had a weakness (Serini and her decision to diarise the locations). That doesn't mean secrecy was a bad idea, only that it was not done well enough.

You speculate that if the gates were public knowledge various do-gooders would arrive to interfere with the evil-doers. But that is only speculation. Shojo knew about the gates and had the whole resources of a city to hand, but was not able to summon any extra defenders (beyond the army he already had) beyond the Order. The Order have also known for some time, and Minrah is the only extra person they were able to recruit, despite visiting centres of power like the dwarven lands, the place where the cleric vote was, and several cities. One higher level character, Julio, chose not to go with them. So the story suggests that heroes more powerful than the Order would not be queuing up to involve themselves.

One could equally speculate that if the location of the gates was widely known, other baddies, beyond Xykon might have tried to use them nefariously.

[Provengreil]

The power players who make a play for control of the gate only gain defeat, no matter how it plays out. Why would the ones who want to survive not band together to stop that?

Counterpoint: The Dark One. One drop of his quiddity could help the gods lock down the snarl long enough for him to survive a world wipe and make a proper prison in the next one, and yet that plan is being heavily resisted.


But keeping the gates secret has not made them safer. Even if my defense is completely impossible, it still would be safer for the world if knowledge of rift-patching and the consequences of fooling with them otherwise was common.

Facts not in evidence, and actually contradicted by evidence. One of the rifts was revealed to a larger audience, specifically the Vector legion, and was seized by two different evil empires for study and exploitation within a day.


You'd be surprised at how effective I am at wargames. Still, you only have my word for that.

Actually, we have your previous threads that you've called wargaming for evidence. I remain impressed only by your capacity to assume success despite suggesting actions of dubious characterization or plausibility.

[Tubercular Ox]

I mean, if we're allowed to just make stuff up, then I propose that two new pantheons get made and their quiddities be used to make a five-color prison, even more real than the Snarl itself, and so able to withstand it for eternity.

Is it impossible to allow something made up unless we allow everything made up?


But all of them were designed with an active offense element. Lyrian's had herself and her nature allies. Dorukan had himself and any monsters and traps in his dungeon. Soon had the Azure army and his ghost paladins. Girard (although they'd gone by the time we saw it) had his family and whatever traps there were. Serini had her monsters and (although they were dead by the time we arrived) and her plan to summon her allies.


I don't have brian's experience with war games but I'm pretty sure only Soon's crusade counts as an active offense. Everything you mention here are troops manning a static defense, except the traps, which are classic static defenses.

[Elanfanforlife]

Is it impossible to allow something made up unless we allow everything made up?
I mean, those two are about on the same level. If we allow the magic gate factory that works nothing like the gates in the text, then we can allow two new pantheons ascending. With that said, I'd like to propose my perfect defense of the Gate that instantly kills the Snarl. It's never stated that this is doable in the text, of course, but I'm sure the Order of the Scribble just didn't research hard enough.

[Provengreil]

I don't have brian's experience with war games but I'm pretty sure only Soon's crusade counts as an active offense. Everything you mention here are troops manning a static defense, except the traps, which are classic static defenses.

There's a lot of space between active defense and a series of crusades. An active defense can remain alert but defensive, and send forces to destroy/deter specific threats as they are detected, going beyond their normal defensive areas if they deem it necessary. This is different from destroying anything that might one day become a threat: I'd go as far as to say those crusades were largely or entirely unrelated to the defense of the gates.

[Tubercular Ox]

There's a lot of space between active defense and a series of crusades.

Sure, okay. But brian 333 didn't say that:


Defenses against anything only work so long as there is an active offense supporting it.

And I've got to support this sentence. Turtling is an invitation to pick your defenses apart step by step. It only works when your enemy giving up and going home is a reasonable option, and everything in this thread suggests we're not accepting that as a reasonable option for people trying to take over the gates.


I mean, those two are about on the same level. If we allow the magic gate factory that works nothing like the gates in the text, then we can allow two new pantheons ascending. With that said, I'd like to propose my perfect defense of the Gate that instantly kills the Snarl. It's never stated that this is doable in the text, of course, but I'm sure the Order of the Scribble just didn't research hard enough.

Honestly, I feel like, "just kill the Snarl," is still a different level of making stuff up from, "There are two new pantheons."

Comparable to the latter would be, "I don't need a gate because in my world the Snarl disappears."

Comparable to the former would be, "My ideal gate defense is working to ascend a new guy with no sponsorship from any existing pantheon."

Which I'm going to suggest. Soon joins the Athar. Plot twist!

[gbaji]

Political power players are primarily self preservationists. When they become megalomaniacal power mongers, the other power players band together against them or join them in the hopes of surviving. But none of them can survive The Snarl, and attempting to use The Snarl against the gods just encourages the gods to pull the slip-knot before they can succeed.

It is anti-self preservation to tolerate any fooling around with the rifts. If you fail you die. If you unleash The Snarl, everyone dies. Even if you succeed and harness The Snarl, the gods pull the cord and everyone dies anyway. Those are the only three options.

You have probably never played the red/green game. What you are describing is how many people think people will act. That is *not* how people actually behave though. There is a very simple and common schoolroom exercise that illustrates this fact.

It does not matter to what degree political players may be acting in the pursuit of self preservation. They will act in ways that are counter to their own self preservation if they percieve a risk of others taking such action, or that their own lack of action will allow someone else to "pull ahead" of them.


The power players who make a play for control of the gate only gain defeat, no matter how it plays out. Why would the ones who want to survive not band together to stop that?

Yes. But they will do it anyway, out of fear that someone else might succeed. I don't think you are fully grasping the massively greater motivation for people to "try to gain control of a gate" versus "work to prevent someone from doing that". People will always work much much harder for personal gain than they will merely to maintain a status quo.


But keeping the gates secret has not made them safer. Even if my defense is completely impossible, it still would be safer for the world if knowledge of rift-patching and the consequences of fooling with them otherwise was common.

We have no way of knowing how many hundreds or even thousands of evil groups did *not* try to take control of the gates over the last 50 years purely because they did not know they existed. I suspect they were made vastly safer by keeping them secret. Certainly, everything else remaining the same, they were safer by being hidden.

If your reasoning worked, then we would see methods like this used in real life to prevent any of a number of highly dangerous things from being used by crazy evil people. Not surprisingly, the methods actually used look a lot more like the ones the Scribbler's used, and not at all like what you are proposing.

[Tubercular Ox]

If your reasoning worked, then we would see methods like this used in real life to prevent any of a number of highly dangerous things from being used by crazy evil people. Not surprisingly, the methods actually used look a lot more like the ones the Scribbler's used, and not at all like what you are proposing.

There is one highly visible exception to this that I cannot post because of the rules. Free hint: brian 333 is very proud of his wargaming hobby.

Do you really need this one argument so badly? Can't you rest your case on other arguments? It's a highly charged position.

EDIT: Just thought of a second highly visible exception, and now there is one on each side of the aisle. I'm not sure if a thread nuke counts as politically neutral but there you go.

[Errorname]

I can imagine a setting in which the 'full disclosure' part of the defense would make sense, the threat of mutually assured destruction binding all the power players of a setting into a mutual pact. That said, I think the Scribblers would need to do more than simply make the existence of the gates public knowledge, simply trusting that politics will shake out in the way you want is not the sort of thing you should settle for if you're an epic level character. I also don't fully buy that this is would be any more stable or long-term viable than the secrecy plan, it would be very tempting for a bad actor in position to control a gate to threaten the world with armageddon)

Taken together with the "Stickworld doesn't seem to have that many high level characters who are not already involved" and "It really seems like the Gods do not want people to know about the Snarl" and I really don't think the problem was keeping the Snarl secret, but rather the Scribbler's inability to rally the banners and work together to respond to threats. If after Xykon attacked Lirian the second time, she'd been able to call for backup from the other gates, that probably ends the story right then and there.

[Liquor Box]

I don't have brian's experience with war games but I'm pretty sure only Soon's crusade counts as an active offense. Everything you mention here are troops manning a static defense, except the traps, which are classic static defenses.


And I've got to support this sentence. Turtling is an invitation to pick your defenses apart step by step. It only works when your enemy giving up and going home is a reasonable option, and everything in this thread suggests we're not accepting that as a reasonable option for people trying to take over the gates.

Whatever you call it, the thing that stops an attacker picking apart a defence step by step is something that threatens the enemy. All the gates had that, all the gates had elements that could threaten an attacker. None are turtling, because all might have seen the attacker dead (or otherwise unable to continue). The only question is whether the threat to the attacker is strong enough to overcome that attacker.

[Unoriginal]

Let's imagine a world where everyone is made aware of the Gates and agree they must be protected.

How long do you think it'll take for wars to be fought on how to protect the Gates properly and who will be doing it?


You're basically taking control freaks like Tarquin, self-important jerks like Kubota, well-intentioned but callous fools like Hurak, honorable-to-a-fault idealists like Hinjo, and strangled-by-protocol bureaucrats like the Dwarven Clans' leaders... and asking them to shoulder the responsibility of the world together.

[Tubercular Ox]

Let's imagine a world where everyone is made aware of the Gates and agree they must be protected.

How long do you think it'll take for wars to be fought on how to protect the Gates properly and who will be doing it?


You're basically taking control freaks like Tarquin, self-important jerks like Kubota, well-intentioned but callous fools like Hurak, honorable-to-a-fault idealists like Hinjo, and strangled-by-protocol bureaucrats like the Dwarven Clans' leaders... and asking them to shoulder the responsibility of the world together.

Sure, let's turn this into a conversation over whether it's right to put you and your opinions ahead of everyone else's when the fate of the world is on the line. Because obviously the first assumption of this exercise is that we and our chosen successors are incorruptible, and a self-selecting elite reserving ultimate power for themselves will definitely work out this time.

[brian 333]

Let's imagine a world where everyone is made aware of the Gates and agree they must be protected.

How long do you think it'll take for wars to be fought on how to protect the Gates properly and who will be doing it?


You're basically taking control freaks like Tarquin, self-important jerks like Kubota, well-intentioned but callous fools like Hurak, honorable-to-a-fault idealists like Hinjo, and strangled-by-protocol bureaucrats like the Dwarven Clans' leaders... and asking them to shoulder the responsibility of the world together.

Yes, I expect gate wars will be fought. The gods may even wager over them because there is nothing like a war to bump up the exp.

But once you control a gate, what do you do with it? The only thing it can do is cause the gods to destroy the world and everything in it, including the guy who pulled the plug on their food factory.

A: Do you really think either a Shojo or a Tarquin is going to leave a guy who credibly threatens global destruction in charge?

B: Do you really think anyone who is competent enough to seize a gate and hold it is also capable of deceiving himself into believing he can gain anything by having it that he cannot gain without it?

C: Do you really think anyone who has the ability to hold a gate will not realize it will only result in painting a huge target on his back?

Redcloak is the kind of nut you are describing. If, as another poster mentioned, anyone with power had been aware and able to intervene when Lirian's gate fell, Redcloak would now be dead, (and Roy's story would not involve the gates at all.)

In fact, if Xykon was aware of what Durkon knows, he would not be involved. Even if he thinks it would be funny to blow up the world and escape to his Astral Fortress, he is not stupid enough to think that the gods who live in the astral plane will let bygones be bygones and let him survive.

The only reason the world is in danger now is because Xykon doesn't know The Secret. If he had known, when Redcloak lied about his intent for The Gate Xykon would have known The Plan would not work. He might have even killed Redcloak.

But even better: TDO would never have come up with The Plan because he would have known that the gods would destroy the world faster than he could gain control of the gate.

The secret is what allows any chance at all for The Plan to succeed. Without it, there is no plan.

[Tubercular Ox]

But once you control a gate, what do you do with it?
I'm going to grade this, and I'm sorry for being opinionated.


The only thing it can do is cause the gods to destroy the world and everything in it, including the guy who pulled the plug on their food factory.
Yeehaw, this one. More people deserve to know it's not just the Snarl threatening the world. (Hey, maybe this is where we get started ascending a fourth quiddity that isn't a basket case.)


A: Do you really think either a Shojo or a Tarquin is going to leave a guy who credibly threatens global destruction in charge?
Yes. If you can't put the mutually in your assured destruction, then traditionally capitulation is the strategy.


B: Do you really think anyone who is competent enough to seize a gate and hold it is also capable of deceiving himself into believing he can gain anything by having it that he cannot gain without it?
Yes. See that other MAD above.


C: Do you really think anyone who has the ability to hold a gate will not realize it will only result in painting a huge target on his back?
No, but they're going to do this risk/reward thing that people are traditionally bad at.


Redcloak is the kind of nut you are describing. If, as another poster mentioned, anyone with power had been aware and able to intervene when Lirian's gate fell, Redcloak would now be dead, (and Roy's story would not involve the gates at all.)
Yeehaw.


In fact, if Xykon was aware of what Durkon knows, he would not be involved. Even if he thinks it would be funny to blow up the world and escape to his Astral Fortress, he is not stupid enough to think that the gods who live in the astral plane will let bygones be bygones and let him survive.
I'm with you on the first sentence. Second one I'm shaky on. There are evil and vindictive gods who would do something about it, and that's probably enough.


But even better: TDO would never have come up with The Plan because he would have known that the gods would destroy the world faster than he could gain control of the gate.
And now a yeehaw for the gods themselves.


The secret is what allows any chance at all for The Plan to succeed. Without it, there is no plan.

I'm going to assume you meant the secret is what allows any chance at all for The Plan to exist.

[Errorname]

Redcloak is the kind of nut you are describing. If, as another poster mentioned, anyone with power had been aware and able to intervene when Lirian's gate fell, Redcloak would now be dead, (and Roy's story would not involve the gates at all.)

Crucially though, we can get this outcome without needing to let men like Tarquin or Kubota in on the secret of the gates, because what's actually required is organization among the Scribblers.


The only reason the world is in danger now is because Xykon doesn't know The Secret. If he had known, when Redcloak lied about his intent for The Gate Xykon would have known The Plan would not work. He might have even killed Redcloak.

See, I wonder about this. Xykon clearly already suspects that Redcloak is hiding the truth from him. I think it's (probably) true that he wouldn't have gotten involved if he knew the secret from the start, but I can't help but think that Xykon's already planning with the assumption that he can't trust Redcloak's plan to harness the Snarl.

[gbaji]

But once you control a gate, what do you do with it? The only thing it can do is cause the gods to destroy the world and everything in it, including the guy who pulled the plug on their food factory.

Except that's not true. It's so demonstrably not true that we have an entire comic strip based on the fact that two of the most powerful spell casters in the world both believe they can use the gate for other purposes. If both Redcloak and Xykon believe that there is value to holding a gate, why on earth assume that everyone else in the world will think there isn't? And they'll think this so hard that they will avoid doing any testing or experiementing or whatever (not fight really hard to be the one in control of a gate so that they can do this in the first place?).


A: Do you really think either a Shojo or a Tarquin is going to leave a guy who credibly threatens global destruction in charge?

No. But as this strip has shown us, they may not have much say in the matter. Tarquin, at least, is already on a "conquer and control as much as I can" agenda anyway, so.... if he could control a gate, he would. And if he can't, it's due to other factors than the fact that he knows said gate exists and that someone else controls it. And it's ineteresing to note that Shojo was in charge of an organization that systematically wiped out all references to the gates, which somewhat flies in the face of your core assumption here.


B: Do you really think anyone who is competent enough to seize a gate and hold it is also capable of deceiving himself into believing he can gain anything by having it that he cannot gain without it?

Um... Yes? Was that supposed to be a trick question? Again. The entire plot of this strip assumes that there are things powerful people can do with gates, and that they will attempt to do so. Redcloak clearliy believes he can do more with a gate under his control than he can do without. Ditto for Xykon.

Why assume other powerful people will not make the same assumptions that both of the primary antagonists of the story have (well, and presumably the Fiends as well)?


C: Do you really think anyone who has the ability to hold a gate will not realize it will only result in painting a huge target on his back?

I would not say that's the "only result". Um... And would you assume that Redcloak and Xykon don't both already have a huge target on their backs (and would regardless of their actions with regards to the gates)?

See... This is the problem with your asssumptions. Yes. Nice, kind, peaceful leaders would not want the gates to be used. But they are also the ones who would therefore have the least reason to actively expend resources to obtain and control one. They have to think about things like how to feed their people, trade agreements, how to direct construction resources, etc. Holding and securing a gate is an extra cost that gains them nothing at all. So the problem is that anyone who does spend those resources taking and holding a gate, is going to also spend more resources studing and experimenting with it, just to make that cost worthwhile.

Even the most well intentioned leader, having done this, will come under enormous pressure to use that gate for something. And, guess what kind of people will likely rise to the position of studying and experimenting with said gate? Or will be briibed to grant other folks access, or any of a number of other scenarios. We actually already have a model for this in Azure City. The gate was secure for a very long time precisely because no one knew it was there, and only the Sapphire Guard was entrusted wit its care and protection. No one even knew that's what they were for, so no one was actively trying to corrupt or subvert them either (and being an order of mostly paladins helped). We literally see a case here where the very first pair of powerful people who know that there's a gate there, are able to take down the entire city in the couse of trying to get to it.

Multiply that by a thousand, and that's what would happen if the rifts and seals and gates were public knowledge. Every wanna be bad guy would be coming for them. Every evil organziation. Every powery hungry politician. The last thing anyone who isn't trying to do something nefarious with a gate would want is to have control of a gate, since that would result in constant attacks that would have to be deal with. The "good guys' would not want anything to do with the gates. Only the bad guys woiuld. Because you've made the cost of "sittting here doing nothing with the gate except defend it" very very very high, and the total accumulated number of people who will want to try to do something with the gates also very very high.



In fact, if Xykon was aware of what Durkon knows, he would not be involved. Even if he thinks it would be funny to blow up the world and escape to his Astral Fortress, he is not stupid enough to think that the gods who live in the astral plane will let bygones be bygones and let him survive.

Except the problem is that what Durkon knows is that Redcloak is planning on double crossing Xykon. But let's recall that Xykon actually thinks the gate is exactly what it is (a tear in the world, with great power contained within). Your plan would tell Xykon exactly what Redcloak told Xykon to get him to help him with the ritual. Yes, the ritual doesn't actually do what Xykon thinks it does, but that does not change the motivation Xykon has. And every other bbeg would have the same motivation, for the same reason.

Redcloak's lie to Xykon only works if someone as high level as Xykon believes that what Redcloak promised (we can control the power of the snarl) is possible. Which means that other high level arcane casters would believe it is possible as well.


The only reason the world is in danger now is because Xykon doesn't know The Secret. If he had known, when Redcloak lied about his intent for The Gate Xykon would have known The Plan would not work. He might have even killed Redcloak.

Again. He doesn't know Redcloaks secret. But that's not the secret you are arguing should be made public knowledge. That secret is what lead Xykon to believe he could and should spend all of this time and effort to take control of a gate in the first place. Any other evil, powerful, and/or just ambitious person would likely arrive at the same conclusion.


But even better: TDO would never have come up with The Plan because he would have known that the gods would destroy the world faster than he could gain control of the gate.

Why would you assume this? Your plan literally assumes that every gate will be under "someone's" control at all times. But you assume that only good people, with no intention to use the gates for any purpose would be the ones holding the area around the gate and controlling access to the gate. Good gods only make up 1/3rd of the whole set of gods. Its seems silly to assume that only good people would be allowed to control access to a gate without the whole of the gods deciding to pre-emptively destroy the world.

There will be folks controlling the gates. Some of them will almost certainly be evil (if anything the gods would make this happen as some kind of balance requirement). All TDO has to do is get the bearer of the crimson mantle to convince one single high level arcane caster to join him in casting the ritual, just once, on any one of these gates, and TDO has control.


The secret is what allows any chance at all for The Plan to succeed. Without it, there is no plan.

I think you've conflated two very different secrets there.

[Anymage]

I just want to chime in that both Redcloak and Serini were skeptical when first informed that the gods were standing by ready end the world if the situation got too bad. Similarly you had Azure City nobles who didn't believe just how bad the attack on their city was going to be. Just because you tell people that the gods will destroy the world if they monkey with something doesn't mean they'll necessarily believe you. Especially because it's hard to clearly demonstrate that the gods will end the world without them doing just that, which would render all gate defenses irrelevant.

[Somniloquist]

Basically, you put up a "Push button to get everyone bitten by venomous snakes" sign, you WILL get people assuming the snakes will only bite everyone else.

Also, I notice your plan has people fighting wars over the gates built right into it. People fighting over the gates is exactly what caused every gate so far to be destroyed.

[brian 333]

Except that's not true. It's so demonstrably not true that we have an entire comic strip based on the fact that two of the most powerful spell casters in the world both believe they can use the gate for other purposes. If both Redcloak and Xykon believe that there is value to holding a gate, why on earth assume that everyone else in the world will think there isn't? And they'll think this so hard that they will avoid doing any testing or experiementing or whatever (not fight really hard to be the one in control of a gate so that they can do this in the first place?).

They believe they can use the gate for other purposes only because they are unaware that the gods can unmake the world and everything in it with fifteen minutes warning, and that they have already done so many, many times. They believe that gaining control of the gate will allow them to blackmail the gods, but if they knew The Secret they would know that before they can gain control of the gate the gods will have pulled the rug, (and the world,) from under their feet.

And they only believe this because the gods and the Scribble have kept this a secret.


No. But as this strip has shown us, they may not have much say in the matter. Tarquin, at least, is already on a "conquer and control as much as I can" agenda anyway, so.... if he could control a gate, he would. And if he can't, it's due to other factors than the fact that he knows said gate exists and that someone else controls it. And it's ineteresing to note that Shojo was in charge of an organization that systematically wiped out all references to the gates, which somewhat flies in the face of your core assumption here.

Because Soon believed in keeping the secret and taught his successors to do so as well does not mean he was right. Soon was wrong about the unbreakability of the honor of a paladin as well.


Um... Yes? Was that supposed to be a trick question? Again. The entire plot of this strip assumes that there are things powerful people can do with gates, and that they will attempt to do so. Redcloak clearliy believes he can do more with a gate under his control than he can do without. Ditto for Xykon.

Why assume other powerful people will not make the same assumptions that both of the primary antagonists of the story have (well, and presumably the Fiends as well)?

They assume they can pull a fast one while nobody is looking. This is only possible because nobody is looking. If knowledge of the rifts was available to all, everybody with power and a vested interest in a future would be looking!


I would not say that's the "only result". Um... And would you assume that Redcloak and Xykon don't both already have a huge target on their backs (and would regardless of their actions with regards to the gates)?

They do not. The only people who are not at the North Pole who even know about them are either building a new home, (in Gobbotopia or Azure island,) or in school in Cliffport. If knowledge of the rifts was common, everyone would have heard about the attack on Lirian's gate. There are certainly three or four epic characters somewhere who are willing and able to come out of retirement to save the world from TE. If only they knew they should.


See... This is the problem with your asssumptions. Yes. Nice, kind, peaceful leaders would not want the gates to be used. But they are also the ones who would therefore have the least reason to actively expend resources to obtain and control one. They have to think about things like how to feed their people, trade agreements, how to direct construction resources, etc. Holding and securing a gate is an extra cost that gains them nothing at all. So the problem is that anyone who does spend those resources taking and holding a gate, is going to also spend more resources studing and experimenting with it, just to make that cost worthwhile.

Violent, Evil people will want to preserve the gates too. Knowing that literally all one can do with a gate is destabilize existence, one is faced with meekly accepting death, or raining destruction and carnage on those who seek to wreck the world. Few Evil folks will choose A if they have a choice. The world is where they get to do their best Eviling.


Even the most well intentioned leader, having done this, will come under enormous pressure to use that gate for something. And, guess what kind of people will likely rise to the position of studying and experimenting with said gate? Or will be briibed to grant other folks access, or any of a number of other scenarios. We actually already have a model for this in Azure City. The gate was secure for a very long time precisely because no one knew it was there, and only the Sapphire Guard was entrusted wit its care and protection. No one even knew that's what they were for, so no one was actively trying to corrupt or subvert them either (and being an order of mostly paladins helped). We literally see a case here where the very first pair of powerful people who know that there's a gate there, are able to take down the entire city in the couse of trying to get to it.

Use the gate for what? We already know that Redcloak's (and TDO's) Plan is a bust. The Gods will unravel the world before their Ritual can be completed.

The only thing anyone can do with a gate is to make powerful beings angry and afraid enough to gang up an gank them.

The Secret protects TE more than it protects the world.


Multiply that by a thousand, and that's what would happen if the rifts and seals and gates were public knowledge. Every wanna be bad guy would be coming for them. Every evil organziation. Every powery hungry politician. The last thing anyone who isn't trying to do something nefarious with a gate would want is to have control of a gate, since that would result in constant attacks that would have to be deal with. The "good guys' would not want anything to do with the gates. Only the bad guys woiuld. Because you've made the cost of "sittting here doing nothing with the gate except defend it" very very very high, and the total accumulated number of people who will want to try to do something with the gates also very very high.

The idea that one can 'do something' with the gates is based on knowing about the rifts and the Snarl, but not knowing that the greater danger is what the gods will do if threatened. Otherwise, it is as useful as a one-wheeled garbage truck.


Except the problem is that what Durkon knows is that Redcloak is planning on double crossing Xykon. But let's recall that Xykon actually thinks the gate is exactly what it is (a tear in the world, with great power contained within). Your plan would tell Xykon exactly what Redcloak told Xykon to get him to help him with the ritual. Yes, the ritual doesn't actually do what Xykon thinks it does, but that does not change the motivation Xykon has. And every other bbeg would have the same motivation, for the same reason.

Redcloak's lie to Xykon only works if someone as high level as Xykon believes that what Redcloak promised (we can control the power of the snarl) is possible. Which means that other high level arcane casters would believe it is possible as well.

The double-cross? When did Thor tell him about that?

The Secret is that the rifts are sealed to keep a world-eating, god-destroying entity caged, and that the gods have many, many, many times destroyed the world to salvage as much as they can before it gets loose again.

Xykon believes he can control the power of the Snarl because he is ignorant of the facts. All he can really do is hurry the destruction of the world and ensure his own demise.


Again. He doesn't know Redcloaks secret. But that's not the secret you are arguing should be made public knowledge. That secret is what lead Xykon to believe he could and should spend all of this time and effort to take control of a gate in the first place. Any other evil, powerful, and/or just ambitious person would likely arrive at the same conclusion.

Take control of a gate for what? See, he currently mistakenly believes he can use the Snarl like a big weapon: aim it, fire it, reload, repeat.

He is wrong. Redcloak knows he is wrong. Redcloak believes he can use the Snarl to gain concessions from the gods. He too is wrong. Durkon knows he is wrong. Durkon believes if anyone comes close to gaining control of the Snarl, the gods will destroy the world. He is right because Thor showed him the graveyard of worlds.

If what Durkon knows was common knowledge, only the suicidal would want to take control of a gate. And all they could accomplish by doing so is to destroy one gate before everyone else granted their wish and rebuilt the gate they destroyed.


Why would you assume this? Your plan literally assumes that every gate will be under "someone's" control at all times. But you assume that only good people, with no intention to use the gates for any purpose would be the ones holding the area around the gate and controlling access to the gate. Good gods only make up 1/3rd of the whole set of gods. Its seems silly to assume that only good people would be allowed to control access to a gate without the whole of the gods deciding to pre-emptively destroy the world.

There will be folks controlling the gates. Some of them will almost certainly be evil (if anything the gods would make this happen as some kind of balance requirement). All TDO has to do is get the bearer of the crimson mantle to convince one single high level arcane caster to join him in casting the ritual, just once, on any one of these gates, and TDO has control.

My plan is based on the knowledge that the only result of controlling a gate is to cause everyone else in the world to assess the degree of threat that person represents, and to take action to eliminate that threat


I think you've conflated two very different secrets there.

No. I don't care about Redcloak lying to Xykon. That will sort itself out in time. The only secrets I'm talking about are the ones involving what the rifts are, what is on the other side of them, and how many times the gods have destroyed a world or hid while the Snarl destroyed it.


I just want to chime in that both Redcloak and Serini were skeptical when first informed that the gods were standing by ready end the world if the situation got too bad. Similarly you had Azure City nobles who didn't believe just how bad the attack on their city was going to be. Just because you tell people that the gods will destroy the world if they monkey with something doesn't mean they'll necessarily believe you. Especially because it's hard to clearly demonstrate that the gods will end the world without them doing just that, which would render all gate defenses irrelevant.

The gate defenses are currently irrelevant. The only difference is, nobody is building new gates. I don't know how long it takes, but if everyone knew, surely someone would be trying to rebuild Lirian's gate by now? Heck, with three epic arcanists and three epic divinists working, Lirian's, Dorukon's, and Girard's could be under construction now.

The secret prevents that.

[JNAProductions]

I'm not sure it's worth debating you on this, Brian.
You ignore anything that doesn't suit your preconceived notions and dismiss valid points because they reveal your idea's weakness.

[fuschiawarrior]

Another complication about revealing everything about the Snarl is that people would start worshipping it ("if it can kill gods, it must be more powerful than them so it will give me what I want/ need if I pray/ sacrifice/ make this ritual") and if enough of them believed it, we would have Snarl apotheosis and this destabilize everything even if it wouldn't result in immediate destruction of the world.

[Errorname]

Because Soon believed in keeping the secret and taught his successors to do so as well does not mean he was right. Soon was wrong about the unbreakability of the honor of a paladin as well.

Was Soon wrong? His own honour seemed pretty unbreakable and nearly won the day, and the Guard were all willing to give their lives in defense of the gate when called. Arguably the problem is that Soon could not conceive of a situation where a Paladin's unbreakable sense of honour would become a bad thing.


They assume they can pull a fast one while nobody is looking. This is only possible because nobody is looking. If knowledge of the rifts was available to all, everybody with power and a vested interest in a future would be looking!

Xykon and Redcloak march a massive army of Hobgoblins into the biggest city on the southern continent. Everyone is watching already, and most of them aren't willing to intervene.


The idea that one can 'do something' with the gates is based on knowing about the rifts and the Snarl, but not knowing that the greater danger is what the gods will do if threatened. Otherwise, it is as useful as a one-wheeled garbage truck.

The problem is that your solution of exposing the Gods's greatest and best hidden secret to the entire world will also threaten the gods. Like, both Stick and Scribble understood that their job was not just to protect the world from the Snarl, but also to protect the world from what the Gods might do to protect themselves from the Snarl.


The gate defenses are currently irrelevant. The only difference is, nobody is building new gates. I don't know how long it takes, but if everyone knew, surely someone would be trying to rebuild Lirian's gate by now? Heck, with three epic arcanists and three epic divinists working, Lirian's, Dorukon's, and Girard's could be under construction now.

I don't know if there even are three epic arcanists and three epic divinists who could be working on those gates. Xykon and Redcloak might be the only ones (even then I don't think Redcloak is epic level yet), and well, they are working on the gates.

I do agree that the inability of the Scribblers to respond to catastrophic failures of the other gates and repair the damage is a massive problem. I do not agree that the only way to solve that problem is complete transparancy. The Scribblers needed better communication within their conspiracy


Another complication about revealing everything about the Snarl is that people would start worshipping it ("if it can kill gods, it must be more powerful than them so it will give me what I want/ need if I pray/ sacrifice/ make this ritual") and if enough of them believed it, we would have Snarl apotheosis and this destabilize everything even if it wouldn't result in immediate destruction of the world.

I had not factored in the possibility of Snarl worship, and I think this clinches any doubts I had that telling the whole world the secret would result in the gods destroying the world. The Gods absolutely would not be willing to risk allowing Snarl worship to exist, and the second cults started to pop up they'd pull the plug.

[brian 333]

I'm not sure it's worth debating you on this, Brian.
You ignore anything that doesn't suit your preconceived notions and dismiss valid points because they reveal your idea's weakness.

No, I am not ignoring anything. It is okay to disagree with me, even if I still think I am right. I defend my ideas, but that does not mean I dismiss yours. I do learn, sometimes, even if only that I am an optimist floating on a sea of pessimism.

It does seem that some valid points I have made have been dismissed as well, but I attribute that to the difficulty of responding to massive wall'o'text replies.

Sometimes I don't respond to posts with which I agree, or at least don't disagree. That is not 'dismissing a point,' that is concerning a point.


Was Soon wrong? His own honour seemed pretty unbreakable and nearly won the day, and the Guard were all willing to give their lives in defense of the gate when called. Arguably the problem is that Soon could not conceive of a situation where a Paladin's unbreakable sense of honour would become a bad thing.

All it ever takes for any defense to fail is one overlooked safety feature. In such a situation it is vital to have trained first responders ready to perform mitigation and remediation when the inevitable happens.


Xykon and Redcloak march a massive army of Hobgoblins into the biggest city on the southern continent. Everyone is watching already, and most of them aren't willing to intervene.

Who among them knew that the whole world was at risk? Their concern was their own survival. I would not doubt that they all strengthened their own defenses, never knowing that Azure City's conquerors put them all at risk of being unraveled.

They watch now, but nobody even knew about the attack until it was over. And still nobody knows about what is going on at the North Pole. They do not knows that they should be doing something because of the secret.


The problem is that your solution of exposing the Gods's greatest and best hidden secret to the entire world will also threaten the gods. Like, both Stick and Scribble understood that their job was not just to protect the world from the Snarl, but also to protect the world from what the Gods might do to protect themselves from the Snarl.

The gods do not want to destroy the world. They do want to protect themselves from the Snarl. The Secret does not make them safer because, as we see in comic, when the gates are threatened, there is nobody to call upon to defend them or rebuild them. If everyone knew that the gods were willing,able, and had a history of unravelling worlds to defend themselves, then for every Redcloak willing to blow the whole thing up, there would be many willing to stop him.

As for using the gates as a weapon against the gods, we know from Thor that if this was ever to become more than theoretical, the gods would just end the world and start over. The ultimate no-win scenario. The only reason TDO thought he might get away with it is because nobody was supposed to know he was even trying. The Secret helped him and endangered the rest of the gods.


I don't know if there even are three epic arcanists and three epic divinists who could be working on those gates. Xykon and Redcloak might be the only ones (even then I don't think Redcloak is epic level yet), and well, they are working on the gates.

I do agree that the inability of the Scribblers to respond to catastrophic failures of the other gates and repair the damage is a massive problem. I do not agree that the only way to solve that problem is complete transparancy. The Scribblers needed better communication within their conspiracy

I do not know if there is even one, now that Dorukon is gone. But if there are any, they should be either fighting Xykon or rebuilding broken gates. The Secret has them comfortably on the sidelines.


I had not factored in the possibility of Snarl worship, and I think this clinches any doubts I had that telling the whole world the secret would result in the gods destroying the world. The Gods absolutely would not be willing to risk allowing Snarl worship to exist, and the second cults started to pop up they'd pull the plug.

I had not considered Snarl Worship. Having now considered it, would that be a bad thing? Anyone who wants to meet the Snarl could step through the rift. Maybe one day one of them will come back.

[Unoriginal]

Dorukan was aware of Lirian's Gate being destroyed for years.

That means he either didn't want to replace the Gate, or couldn't.

Considering Dorukan spent a lifetime protecting the world, actively tried to bring Lirian back from the dead, and knew better than anyone still alive what a Snarl rift being left open represent to the world, it'd be incredibly out of character for him to not want the region where Lirian's forest was to be safe.

Which means that the logical explanation is that Dorukan couldn't replace the Gate. Despite being the world's premier expert in magical seals, and half the team that crafted those Gates in the first place.

The idea that Gates could be rebuilt and rifts resealed if only all the people in the world knew about the Snarl simply does not hold up.


As for the "but what would the villains even do with a Gate if they knew the truth?" question, the answer is simple:

Unlike Redcloak, the master of the sunk cost fallacy, Xykon knows that *any* power is power, and that you go to war with the army you have not the army you want.

Even if they can't use the Snarl directly, whoever has the Gates can make the gods destroy the world. That is power. The gods are maybe willing to destroy the world if there is an hint the ritual to move the rift to a different plane is happening, but that doesn't mean a majority of them wouldn't consider "just let Xykon rule the world and he will make sure they hold" to be a preferable alternative. And as long as the gods don't blow up the world, Xykon can racket mortals' nations and

Furthermore, as pointed out above, it's likely possible to do *something* with the Snarl, or at least try to. Having access to the Gates and a detailled explanation means a ton of people will want to experiment, and even more will want to make the experimenters unable to do it.

[Errorname]

All it ever takes for any defense to fail is one overlooked safety feature. In such a situation it is vital to have trained first responders ready to perform mitigation and remediation when the inevitable happens.

True, but something of a non-sequitur.

I would also say, again, having a response strategy for catastrophic failure does not need to entail letting everyone know about the god killing abomination.


The gods do not want to destroy the world. They do want to protect themselves from the Snarl. The Secret does not make them safer because, as we see in comic, when the gates are threatened, there is nobody to call upon to defend them or rebuild them. If everyone knew that the gods were willing,able, and had a history of unravelling worlds to defend themselves, then for every Redcloak willing to blow the whole thing up, there would be many willing to stop him.

The Gods are, at this point, extremely used to destroying the world, and if it wasn't for the Dark One presenting a chance to break the cycle of the Snarl escaping Stickworld would have already been destroyed. The Snarl is a god killing abomination they created with their petty squabbling that will inevitably destroy the world. The mortals and outsiders knowing any of those is bad, knowing all of those is terrible. It exposes all the weaknesses of the gods' claim to rightful authority, and potentially undermines their sources of worship.


I had not considered Snarl Worship. Having now considered it, would that be a bad thing? Anyone who wants to meet the Snarl could step through the rift. Maybe one day one of them will come back.

For the Gods and their interests? Absolutely. It's disastrously bad, because it is both denying them the worship that sustains them and directing it towards the abomination that they hate and fear, potentially further empowering it.

[Tubercular Ox]

Okay, seriously, let's make this about the dubious ethics of appointing yourself savior of the world and deciding by yourself who gets to contribute to its protection and who doesn't. The Paladins went rogue within a generation, Girard's family was slipping, Lirian's inventing bioweapons (bet the gods would love to see that one become a pandemic), Serini did things she regrets, but only because of a near death experience. I guess Dorukan gets a bye, but he seemed to have less of a plan than the others for what to do after the timely death he never got.

I don't want to make this a binary thing where either it's completely secret or we're starting grammar schools to warn the children. Maybe having an outreach department is a middle ground here? You know, actually look for people who can help out instead of assuming you're the only incorruptible champion who is safe to know the world's darkest secrets?

And I'll poke the gods on this, too. There is more they could be doing than just placing bets on a handful of mortals with delusions of grandeur, and if they have real concerns about doing that, we should be trying to figure out those concerns and do something to allay them.

[brian 333]

Dorukan was aware of Lirian's Gate being destroyed for years.

That means he either didn't want to replace the Gate, or couldn't.

Considering Dorukan spent a lifetime protecting the world, actively tried to bring Lirian back from the dead, and knew better than anyone still alive what a Snarl rift being left open represent to the world, it'd be incredibly out of character for him to not want the region where Lirian's forest was to be safe.

Which means that the logical explanation is that Dorukan couldn't replace the Gate. Despite being the world's premier expert in magical seals, and half the team that crafted those Gates in the first place.

The idea that Gates could be rebuilt and rifts resealed if only all the people in the world knew about the Snarl simply does not hold up.


As for the "but what would the villains even do with a Gate if they knew the truth?" question, the answer is simple:

Unlike Redcloak, the master of the sunk cost fallacy, Xykon knows that *any* power is power, and that you go to war with the army you have not the army you want.

Even if they can't use the Snarl directly, whoever has the Gates can make the gods destroy the world. That is power. The gods are maybe willing to destroy the world if there is an hint the ritual to move the rift to a different plane is happening, but that doesn't mean a majority of them wouldn't consider "just let Xykon rule the world and he will make sure they hold" to be a preferable alternative. And as long as the gods don't blow up the world, Xykon can racket mortals' nations and

Furthermore, as pointed out above, it's likely possible to do *something* with the Snarl, or at least try to. Having access to the Gates and a detailled explanation means a ton of people will want to experiment, and even more will want to make the experimenters unable to do it.

Maybe he could not replace the gate. Maybe he didn't want to. Maybe he just didn't know anyone who was capable of learning the divine half of the sealing ritual. One thing is certain: because of the secret, anyone capable does not know that she is needed.

From what PoV is Xykon ruling the world worse than everyone dying? If Xykon rules, heroes will have to be more heroic. Even Evil creatures will have to submit or resist, (or both.) Xykon, or anyone like him, would exist in constant danger of being offed. Eventually, someone or some group would win if for no other reason than that he was bored and stopped paying attention.

And until he tries to actually do something that threatened the gods, two thirds of them will not want the world to end because of the sweet, sweet devotion. Fifteen minutes after Xykon's bluff becomes a real threat, the world will end. So the gate can only be used to paint a target on the back of whoever wants to control it.

I am certainly interested in what the 'something' could be. I can only think of three things:

Do nothing to or with it.
Use it as a bluff threat.
Use it as a real threat.

Do nothing and the gate is safe.

Use it as a bluff and you can frighten people until someone calls your bluff. Then you have to either do nothing or use it as a real threat.

Use it as a real threat and you can either intimidate locals or the gods. If you try to control the gate, the gods unravel the world leaving you with nothing to threaten. If you destroy the gate, you no longer have anything to use as a threat.

So, what am I missing? What 'something' could you use to benefit from controlling access to the gate?

I submit that if everyone knows about the gate, all about it, the world is safer. The secret is the only thing which allowed The Plan to have even a chance of working, and because The Order stumbled into it by accident, The Plan has failed three times in a row, but only because people now know about it.

[Liquor Box]

Okay, seriously, let's make this about the dubious ethics of appointing yourself savior of the world and deciding by yourself who gets to contribute to its protection and who doesn't. The Paladins went rogue within a generation, Girard's family was slipping, Lirian's inventing bioweapons (bet the gods would love to see that one become a pandemic), Serini did things she regrets, but only because of a near death experience. I guess Dorukan gets a bye, but he seemed to have less of a plan than the others for what to do after the timely death he never got.

The paladins didn't go rogue their defence was attack, Lyrian created a bioweapon that she was able to deliver to attackers only, I don't even know what you mean by "Girard's family was slipping" and Dorukon's defence did actually stop Xykon.

The only one who really did something to damage the defences was Serini, by writing down the locations of all the gates so they could be revealed. That's the very thing you are suggesting they should do voluntarily.

[fuschiawarrior]

I had not considered Snarl Worship. Having now considered it, would that be a bad thing? Anyone who wants to meet the Snarl could step through the rift. Maybe one day one of them will come back.

I honestly don't know what would happen, maybe it's even the solution: deify the god-killing abomination so it destroys itself because it hates the divine so much. Maybe it's business as usual. If this world is destroyed, would it have a say on the creation of the next one? Can the others gods starve it by destroying this world and staying in the inter-regnum period for a long time?

The gods' priority is not to have this world to feed on but to have a world to be their nourishment and mortal belief is a very big constraint on them, for example Odin is senile because of the beliefs from a world destroyed a long time ago (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1145.html) and Loki can't tell the truth to his own daughter (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1177.html), so they would never allow something that could make their situation worse to happen. The gods and the snarl pose a threat to the world existence and you have to take both in account when preparing your defenses. Even if you prepare the perfect defense that work against the Snarl for eternity, maybe comes a Godsmoot and it's decided that they are bored and tired (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0999.html) of this world, only a third of them are Good, and they can setup this assured defense on the next one.

[Errorname]

The paladins didn't go rogue their defence was attack, Lyrian created a bioweapon that she was able to deliver to attackers only, I don't even know what you mean by "Girard's family was slipping" and Dorukon's defence did actually stop Xykon.

Girard's family was an insular cult with an extremely cruel method of replenishing their numbers that was bound to bite them on the ass eventually, but there's no indication that they were slipping in terms of effectiveness beyond losing their best caster to old age, and their ultimate doom came from factors entirely outside their control.

[fuschiawarrior]

Girard's family was an insular cult with an extremely cruel method of replenishing their numbers that was bound to bite them on the ass eventually, but there's no indication that they were slipping in terms of effectiveness beyond losing their best caster to old age, and their ultimate doom came from factors entirely outside their control.

While I don't believe that Girard went straight to kidnapping babies to stablish his clan of Gate defenders, the first generation were adults from his immediate family maybe even his kids, he must have been alive when the practice started. Familicide was out of their control but if they recruited members outside of biological family, at least they would have survived to defend the Gate, so their method for obtaining new clan members did bite them on the ass in the end.


Part of me wonders if Girard started the practice or if the Draketooths were just like that already and Girard simply took their existing practices and turned them towards protecting the gate.

Interesting, I hadn't considered the possibility that the Draketooth were always like that.


Yeah, same with Soon and the unbreakable honour stuff. I'd say it's a theme with the Scribbler's Gate defenses is that they're undone by circumstances conspiring to turn their strengths into weaknesses, but it's only really that clear cut with Soon and Girard.

Agreed, one could kind of make a case for Dorukan's since he believed in magic as the ultimate defense and he was defeated by a powerful caster but it's shaky.


Because everyone knowing means everyone knowing.

I would add to this list people like Jephton, the Unholy who said when spliced to Vaarsuvius: "Tear down creation just to see if you can".

[Errorname]

While I don't believe that Girard went straight to kidnapping babies to stablish his clan of Gate defenders, the first generation were adults from his immediate family maybe even his kids, he must have been alive when the practice started.

Part of me wonders if Girard started the practice or if the Draketooths were just like that already and Girard simply took their existing practices and turned them towards protecting the gate.


Familicide was out of their control but if they recruited members outside of biological family, at least they would have survived to defend the Gate, so their method for obtaining new clan members did bite them on the ass in the end.

Yeah, same with Soon and the unbreakable honour stuff. I'd say it's a theme with the Scribbler's Gate defenses is that they're undone by circumstances conspiring to turn their strengths into weaknesses, but it's only really that clear cut with Soon and Girard.

[Unoriginal]

Maybe he could not replace the gate. Maybe he didn't want to. Maybe he just didn't know anyone who was capable of learning the divine half of the sealing ritual. One thing is certain: because of the secret, anyone capable does not know that she is needed.

1) this is once again affirming without evidence that there *is* anyone capable.

2) The Order of the Scribble were more than fine explaining to people how the Gates work and what is at stake, so that those people could help with the defense.

What you're holding against them is that they were only fine telling that to people they trusted to be competent, responsible and non-corrupt, rather than telling everyone.

Which is a weird thing to hold against someone.



From what PoV is Xykon ruling the world worse than everyone dying? If Xykon rules, heroes will have to be more heroic. Even Evil creatures will have to submit or resist, (or both.) Xykon, or anyone like him, would exist in constant danger of being offed. Eventually, someone or some group would win if for no other reason than that he was bored and stopped paying attention.

And until he tries to actually do something that threatened the gods, two thirds of them will not want the world to end because of the sweet, sweet devotion. Fifteen minutes after Xykon's bluff becomes a real threat, the world will end. So the gate can only be used to paint a target on the back of whoever wants to control it.

And some people would be happy about being in that situation. To say nothing about the people who wouldn't realize it would happen before they're in the situation and then can't stop.



Use it as a bluff and you can frighten people until someone calls your bluff. Then you have to either do nothing or use it as a real threat.

Use it as a real threat and you can either intimidate locals or the gods. If you try to control the gate, the gods unravel the world leaving you with nothing to threaten. If you destroy the gate, you no longer have anything to use as a threat.

Destroying all Gates or doing anything else that may release the Snarl on the Gods (like Redcloak wants to do) results in the world being destroyed.

That means someone who control a Gate could blackmail anyone in the world who doesn't want that to happen.

I don't think you realize how much power "do what I want or I upset the gods enough they blow up the world" is.



So, what am I missing? What 'something' could you use to benefit from controlling access to the gate?

It could be *anything*. Maybe given a decade of access to a Gate, a mage could come up with a "Summon Threads of Reality" spell, for example.

It doesn't even need to actually be possible, it just needs to be plausible enough that people would try.



I submit that if everyone knows about the gate, all about it, the world is safer.

And you are incorrect.

Because everyone knowing means everyone knowing.

Everyone means the incompetent, the fool, the cruel, the omnicidal, the paranoiac, the control freak, the hypochondriac, the greedy, the petty, the delusional, the desperate.

It means people like Eugene Greenhilt, who thought conducting dangerous magic experiments near an unsupervised toddler was just fine.

It means people like Bozzok, who thought paying extra to remove all the safety measures meant to control a golem in order to make said golem more powerful was a great idea that couldn't go wrong.

It means people like Geoff, who thought suffering years of imprisonment and torture and forcing his brother-in-law to suffer alongside him was worth it so long as his son could have a better life.

It means people like the Hobgoblin who pushed Redcloak out of the boulder's way during the Azure City siege, who thought nothing of sacrificing his life so long as his leader survived.

It means people like Therkla, who thought Kubota was worth fighting to keep alive until the moment he poisoned her.

It means people like Haerta Bloodsoak, who thought creating a Epic spell that would kill anyone related to the target, and anyone related to anyone related to the target, was a worthwhile use of her time and ressources.

It means people like Commander Gin-Jun, who would happily kill children so long as it gives him the "glorious war" he wants.

It means people like Nale, who would happily kill children just to indicate where his latest scheme is to his actual targets of his self-acknowledged irrational hatred.

And you're saying that the world would be safer if all of the people with those mindsets and ideals and flaws knew about how the world will be destroyed if five points are hit with enough force?

If all of those people knew about the entity who even the gods are scared off but who *can* be affected by badass enough mortals?


You're giving them just enough knowledge so they can harm themselves and others.

[brian 333]

1) this is once again affirming without evidence that there *is* anyone capable.

Yes, this is obvious. And you are implying without evidence that there is *not*. The difference is, if there *are* people capable of helping, because of the secret they are unaware that they *should*.


2) The Order of the Scribble were more than fine explaining to people how the Gates work and what is at stake, so that those people could help with the defense.

Yes, and no. Where is the knowledge of how to seal a gate? Where is the knowledge that the gods have destroyed many worlds to preserve themselves? Those who shared knowledge carefully selected what knowledge they shared.


What you're holding against them is that they were only fine telling that to people they trusted to be competent, responsible and non-corrupt, rather than telling everyone.

Which is a weird thing to hold against someone.

Yes, because there may be someone in the world capable of putting the smackdown on TE who is unaware that he should. Because there may have been whole teams of people ready and able to save Lirian's gate who didn't know they were in danger. Because even if the OotS wins, who among them knows how to seal a rift?

The problem with telling only trustworthy, competent, responsible, and non-corrupt people is that not only are you relying on a personal judgement as obviously flawed as the one who judges, but that you intentionally exclude everyone else who wants to continue living in the world, who may even be more capable of defending it than your hand-picked few.


And some people would be happy about being in that situation. To say nothing about the people who wouldn't realize it would happen before they're in the situation and then can't stop.

Yes, that's why I put a zipper on my seal. Those who go fooling with it get killed or lose minions, and even better: they attract the attention of everyone who wishes to continue living! In a world of adventurers, the moment a credible threat to the world appears, adventuring parties of every and all alignments will show up to earn some exp and GP.

Only the secret has prevented this from happening to TE.


Destroying all Gates or doing anything else that may release the Snarl on the Gods (like Redcloak wants to do) results in the world being destroyed.

That means someone who control a Gate could blackmail anyone in the world who doesn't want that to happen.

I don't think you realize how much power "do what I want or I upset the gods enough they blow up the world" is.

Yes, blackmail works great when nobody can touch the blackmailer. It paints a target on his back, otherwise. Anyone stupid enough to do that, either as a bluff or as a serious threat, will quickly discover a Therkla in his boudoir every time he tries to go to sleep.

And if it is a super-powerful unkillable abomination who performs the blackmail? So what? The world still exists, people still get to live, and someday a hero will come along.


It could be *anything*. Maybe given a decade of access to a Gate, a mage could come up with a "Summon Threads of Reality" spell, for example.

It doesn't even need to actually be possible, it just needs to be plausible enough that people would try.

And public enough that if they do people notice and stop them. The sane outnumber the crazies at least 10:1. Plus, fooling with a gate for a decade or so is likely to attract the attention of The Snarl. That scenario is specifically why I put in the button, (though I was thinking about the Holey Brotherhood at the time.)


And you are incorrect.

Because everyone knowing means everyone knowing.

Everyone means the incompetent, the fool, the cruel, the omnicidal, the paranoiac, the control freak, the hypochondriac, the greedy, the petty, the delusional, the desperate.

It means people like Eugene Greenhilt, who thought conducting dangerous magic experiments near an unsupervised toddler was just fine.

It means people like Bozzok, who thought paying extra to remove all the safety measures meant to control a golem in order to make said golem more powerful was a great idea that couldn't go wrong.

It means people like Geoff, who thought suffering years of imprisonment and torture and forcing his brother-in-law to suffer alongside him was worth it so long as his son could have a better life.

It means people like the Hobgoblin who pushed Redcloak out of the boulder's way during the Azure City siege, who thought nothing of sacrificing his life so long as his leader survived.

It means people like Therkla, who thought Kubota was worth fighting to keep alive until the moment he poisoned her.

It means people like Haerta Bloodsoak, who thought creating a Epic spell that would kill anyone related to the target, and anyone related to anyone related to the target, was a worthwhile use of her time and ressources.

It means people like Commander Gin-Jun, who would happily kill children so long as it gives him the "glorious war" he wants.

It means people like Nale, who would happily kill children just to indicate where his latest scheme is to his actual targets of his self-acknowledged irrational hatred.

And you're saying that the world would be safer if all of the people with those mindsets and ideals and flaws knew about how the world will be destroyed if five points are hit with enough force?

If all of those people knew about the entity who even the gods are scared off but who *can* be affected by badass enough mortals?


You're giving them just enough knowledge so they can harm themselves and others.

And giving the vast majority who are not those nuts the knowledge they currently lack: that their own existence depends on not letting the nuts do whatever.

And this highlights an important aspect of my position that has been overlooked: currently The OotS has destroyed two and an OotS adjacent character has destroyed a third, because they did not know what they were doing.

Once again, the perceived threat, (world domination by an Evil lich,) caused an actual threat, (risk of releasing the Snarl,) because of the Secret.

Absent The Secret, with knowledge of the rifts, Snarl, and everything commonly available, TE would never have attacked Lirian's gate. Because of The Secret, they are one gate shy of destroying the world.

[Unoriginal]

Absent The Secret, with knowledge of the rifts, Snarl, and everything commonly available, TE would never have attacked Lirian's gate.

That claim is fundamentally incorrect.

Even if they knew everything about how the gods would rather destroy the world than let the Snarl break free, the Dark One would still want to give the Goblinoids an edge over every other creatures, Redcloak would still be a traumatized, sunken-fallacy-prone teenager who hasn't grown since his family was massacred, and Xykon would still be a murderous, impulsive old man who spent his life searching for a way to make sure no one could tell him what to do.

If anything Redcloak would be even more motivated to conquer a Gate to get it out of the hands of any unjustly privileged humanoid who use their position of power to oppress Goblins (which at this point in his life is every humanoid except a Goblin).


You are also rather adamant that either a) no one would bother trying to hold on a Gate because it can only be temporary before someone stops them or b) it doesn't matter if someone temporarily hold the Gate because it will be temporary and then someone will stop them... but everything a mortal does is temporary, and mortals still go through life.

[Tubercular Ox]

I apologize to everyone, I regretted the tone of that post as soon as I made it but the server kept erroring so I didn't know it finished posting.


That's the very thing you are suggesting they should do voluntarily.

I'm still looking for middle ground on this. I'm watching people get closer and closer to rejecting not only help but the usefulness of help. It's starting to sound like people want the first person to find a gate to have sole responsibility for defending it, whether their primary skillset is bashing heads or international politics.

All of the Scribblers found a way to trust other people with the defense of the Gate. I think a mistake they all made was when they let that mission to find others stop.


Girard's family was an insular cult with an extremely cruel method of replenishing their numbers that was bound to bite them on the ass eventually, but there's no indication that they were slipping in terms of effectiveness beyond losing their best caster to old age, and their ultimate doom came from factors entirely outside their control.

Girard's family was perfectly positioned to take over the gate as soon as one of Girard's great grandchildren asked why they weren't using the power of the gate to help the Draketooths. After all, they were saving the world. Is becoming the villain a slip in effectiveness?

The gates need protection not just from the Snarl, and the gods, and all the villains in the world, but also ourselves. None of us are going to live long enough to protect the gates as long as they will need protecting, there needs to be some checks and balances in place. "Maintain sole control, and don't tell anyone what I'm doing," is the opposite of that.

[brian 333]

That claim is fundamentally incorrect.

Even if they knew everything about how the gods would rather destroy the world than let the Snarl break free, the Dark One would still want to give the Goblinoids an edge over every other creatures, Redcloak would still be a traumatized, sunken-fallacy-prone teenager who hasn't grown since his family was massacred, and Xykon would still be a murderous, impulsive old man who spent his life searching for a way to make sure no one could tell him what to do.

If anything Redcloak would be even more motivated to conquer a Gate to get it out of the hands of any unjustly privileged humanoid who use their position of power to oppress Goblins (which at this point in his life is every humanoid except a Goblin).


You are also rather adamant that either a) no one would bother trying to hold on a Gate because it can only be temporary before someone stops them or b) it doesn't matter if someone temporarily hold the Gate because it will be temporary and then someone will stop them... but everything a mortal does is temporary, and mortals still go through life.

TDO still wants to give his people an edge. He thinks, incorrectly, that The Plan can accomplish that. We know that the gods will destroy the world before he can actually accomplish his Plan. If he had all of the facts he would know that and would be trying something else.

Redcloak might still have been traumatized; however, in this case he was specifically traumatized because Soon insisted on keeping the secret. Absent The Secret, there would be no Sapphire Guard running around murdering goblin villages. (Which does not preclude random adventuring parties doing the same, of course.)

And Xykon would likely be dead. More dead than he is now. Without Redcloak needing an arcanist, who would have lichified him?

The idea that anyone would want to control a gate is predicated on the idea that they can do something with it. But this belief is based on a bad assumption, which everyone would be aware of if the gods didn't maintain The Secret. If every High Priest was escorted to the graveyard of worlds, they would know that maintaining the seals is necessary. Any attempt by anyone to use or destroy a gate will be vigorously opposed. By everyone.

So assume someone does want to use a gate. For what? There is literally nothing one can use it for that will gain any benefit, (as Durkon explained to Redcloak.) And before anyone could take control of a gate to teleport it, everyone who does not want to die will stop them. Finally, destroy the world guys might destroy one, maybe two gates before someone stops them.

[Unoriginal]

TDO still wants to give his people an edge. He thinks, incorrectly, that The Plan can accomplish that. We know that the gods will destroy the world before he can actually accomplish his Plan. If he had all of the facts he would know that and would be trying something else.

Redcloak might still have been traumatized; however, in this case he was specifically traumatized because Soon insisted on keeping the secret. Absent The Secret, there would be no Sapphire Guard running around murdering goblin villages. (Which does not preclude random adventuring parties doing the same, of course.)

And Xykon would likely be dead. More dead than he is now. Without Redcloak needing an arcanist, who would have lichified him?

The idea that anyone would want to control a gate is predicated on the idea that they can do something with it. But this belief is based on a bad assumption, which everyone would be aware of if the gods didn't maintain The Secret. If every High Priest was escorted to the graveyard of worlds, they would know that maintaining the seals is necessary. Any attempt by anyone to use or destroy a gate will be vigorously opposed. By everyone.

So assume someone does want to use a gate. For what? There is literally nothing one can use it for that will gain any benefit, (as Durkon explained to Redcloak.) And before anyone could take control of a gate to teleport it, everyone who does not want to die will stop them. Finally, destroy the world guys might destroy one, maybe two gates before someone stops them.

... No offense meant, but I struggle to understand how someone who plays wargames ends up insisting "my plan will definitively survive contact with the enemy", like you're doing.

The idea that giving knowledge to people means they will automatically and rationally act in the collective interest of the world, just because they are part of the world and as such it's also self-intetest to do so, is thoroughly debunked by watching the news for a few minutes (for real life) or reading any OotS page where the titular party interacts with other people (for in-universe). *Some* will do that, but not all, not even most.

Your Perfect Defense would only work if the world was solely populated by lawful neutral examplars. But at this point you could also protect the Gates by putting an OSHA-approved Do Not Touch sign on them.

[Errorname]

Girard's family was perfectly positioned to take over the gate as soon as one of Girard's great grandchildren asked why they weren't using the power of the gate to help the Draketooths. After all, they were saving the world. Is becoming the villain a slip in effectiveness?

But you didn't say 'they might slip', you said they were slipping, which there's no indication of, and frankly I have a hard time imagining the specific scenario you described being the point of failure for the family.

[Unoriginal]

But you didn't say 'they might slip', you said they were slipping, which there's no indication of, and frankly I have a hard time imagining the specific scenario you described being the point of failure for the family.

The point of failure of the Draketooth Clan is more one or several members getting angry at the expectation they will spend all their life staying in a pyramid in the middle of nowhere protecting the legacy of some long-dead authority figure, including seducing someone then leaving them forever once having a kid is secured, and then managing to escape to the rest of the world and spread the knowledge.

[fuschiawarrior]

I see Girard's Gate Defenders so much as a doomsday cult analogue, isolated society on a harsh environment that worships some guy and it's heavily involved with the world destruction, that I was imagined their breaking point would be that some minor skirmish happen which cause them to get increasingly paranoid about the paladins and the idea of losing control of the Gate to them so they decide to blow it up themselves.

[Metastachydium]

TDO still wants to give his people an edge. He thinks, incorrectly, that The Plan can accomplish that. We know that the gods will destroy the world before he can actually accomplish his Plan. If he had all of the facts he would know that and would be trying something else.

There's two tiny little (by which I mean HUGE SUPERMASSIVE) issues with that:
1. no, we don't know the gods will or, for that matter, can destroy the world before he can actually accomplish the Plan. That the "if we all agree on that" clause in Loki's speech (strip no. 998, page no. 2, panel bo. 3) oft cited by myself and others implies the vote must conclude before they can do that. It might not mean that, but so far I haven't seen anyone convincingly demonstrate that this is the case.
2. Plan B, should the Plan fail has always been "destroy the world and gun for better cards next time". Not even the gods are certain Big Purple wouldn't survive the transition, and the possibility is not part of the Gates' lore anthow.


Any attempt by anyone to use or destroy a gate will be vigorously opposed. By everyone.

Except for guys like Tarquin who know (or believe) villains fighting villains is always a toss-up; and people like the Hobgoblins who'd gladly march into certain death just because their Supreme Leader orders it; and any bunch of Undead creeps folks like Hel could field to wreak havoc; and the crazy cults and churches of Fenris and the like who just want to piss on graves and are bored of this iteration anyway; and…

[Provengreil]

There's two tiny little (by which I mean HUGE SUPERMASSIVE) issues with that:
1. no, we don't know the gods will or, for that matter, can destroy the world before he can actually accomplish the Plan. That the "if we all agree on that" clause in Loki's speech (strip no. 998, page no. 2, panel bo. 3) oft cited by myself and others implies the vote must conclude before they can do that. It might not mean that, but so far I haven't seen anyone convincingly demonstrate that this is the case.


If you're looking for hard proof of voting rules, prepare to be disappointed. But you shouldn't need them to evaluate the story as given. Rich gave Loki that line specifically to enforce the idea that the gods are waiting, willing, and able to drop the hammer on the world as soon as RC actually secures a gate OR the gate is destroyed.

[Liquor Box]

I'm still looking for middle ground on this. I'm watching people get closer and closer to rejecting not only help but the usefulness of help. It's starting to sound like people want the first person to find a gate to have sole responsibility for defending it, whether their primary skillset is bashing heads or international politics.

I think you are asking the wrong question here. It's not a question of should the first person to find a gate have sole responsibility for defending it. The question is, if you found the gates in the circumstances the Scribble did, should you publicise their existence or keep them secret.

This isn't about rights or 'who should'. It's about effectiveness. We have an epic party defending the gates, so from that point, is the defence more effective if they let everyone know about the gates, or if they keep them secret. To me, of those two options, secrecy is clearly the better approach.

I don't recall if Serini warned the other Scribbles when she lost the secret of the gates, but I presume she did (it would be a pretty stupid decision not to). So I agree with you from that point. Once the Scribble knew that a powerful threat was aware of the gates, it would have made sense to quietly seek allies (as Shojo ultimately did). But even then, the gates were still secret from most people (and most potential threats), so it would be crazy for the Scribble to make them completely public.

[Tubercular Ox]

But you didn't say 'they might slip', you said they were slipping, which there's no indication of

Normally if you found a group of people practicing parental abduction and grand larceny on an industrial scale, intentionally treating the parents of their own children as prey, you call them evil and be done with it, so maybe you're right, maybe they weren't slipping, maybe they were gone.

I argue that if Girard's family can be trusted to protect people who are worth seducing and abducting children from but not falling in love or forming families, then we really need to consider whether other people who can't fall in love or form families represent an untapped pool of talent we can divert to protecting the gates.


The question is, if you found the gates in the circumstances the Scribble did, should you publicise their existence or keep them secret.

This is exactly the thing I want a middle ground on. Those are not the only two choices.

[Errorname]

Normally if you found a group of people practicing parental abduction and grand larceny on an industrial scale, intentionally treating the parents of their own children as prey, you call them evil and be done with it, so maybe you're right, maybe they weren't slipping, maybe they were gone

They certainly weren't nice people, but that doesn't mean they were ineffective as guardians.

[Provengreil]

Normally if you found a group of people practicing parental abduction and grand larceny on an industrial scale, intentionally treating the parents of their own children as prey, you call them evil and be done with it, so maybe you're right, maybe they weren't slipping, maybe they were gone.

I argue that if Girard's family can be trusted to protect people who are worth seducing and abducting children from but not falling in love or forming families, then we really need to consider whether other people who can't fall in love or form families represent an untapped pool of talent we can divert to protecting the gates.



This is exactly the thing I want a middle ground on. Those are not the only two choices.

I'd say Girard found your middle ground. If you want to call the procreative activities of his clan evil, I'll back you up, but they spread knowledge of the gates to a trusted few that kept to their duty, as far as we could see. In fact they probably had the second best defense of the first four, but that's a different thread topic.

[Somniloquist]

Also Soon. The Sapphire Guard is probably the best middle ground you're going to get - a small but growable group of trusted individuals, based on honor rather than merely blood, who are all in on the secret of the gates and sworn to protect it.

[Errorname]

Also Soon. The Sapphire Guard is probably the best middle ground you're going to get - a small but growable group of trusted individuals, based on honor rather than merely blood, who are all in on the secret of the gates and sworn to protect it.

Unfortunately, at least when Soon was recruiting he was mainly pulling upper class aristocrats, which might have worked okay when he was around to keep everyone in check but it definitely resulted in some real arrogant bastards with a divine mandate to eliminate what they perceived as threats to the gate whose indiscriminate murder of civilian targets is kind of the reason the world is in the current predicament.

That's probably be a worse failure than Girard unintentionally leaving his gate vulnerable to Familicide, a thing he had no way of knowing about or anticipating as a potential threat.

[woweedd]

Unfortunately, at least when Soon was recruiting he was mainly pulling upper class aristocrats, which might have worked okay when he was around to keep everyone in check but it definitely resulted in some real arrogant bastards with a divine mandate to eliminate what they perceived as threats to the gate whose indiscriminate murder of civilian targets is kind of the reason the world is in the current predicament.

That's probably be a worse failure than Girard unintentionally leaving his gate vulnerable to Familicide, a thing he had no way of knowing about or anticipating as a potential threat.

In terms of effectiveness, yes, in terms of morality, though, jesus, Girard is worse.

[Errorname]

In terms of effectiveness, yes, in terms of morality, though, jesus, Girard is worse.

The Draketooth's didn't massacre villages or wipe out entire families, so the Sapphire Guard are still pretty competitive here

[woweedd]

The Draketooth's didn't massacre villages or wipe out entire families, so the Sapphire Guard are still pretty competitive here
OK, fair enough. ON the other hand, massacres were at least not embedded in the fabric of Sapphire Guard operations. But, fair point. I assume, like his comrade, Girard did not condone what his heirs ended up doing. If he did, I struggle to grasp his being Neutral and not Evil.

[Provengreil]

In terms of effectiveness, yes, in terms of morality, though, jesus, Girard is worse.


The Draketooth's didn't massacre villages or wipe out entire families, so the Sapphire Guard are still pretty competitive here

I find these comparisons a bit awkward as I'm not sold that the village attacks were related to the defense of the gates at all. I haven't read all the side stories though, did one of them say/imply that they were actively hunting a threat to the gates? I thought it was just the worst version of what happens when you cross holy warriors and mission creep.

[Errorname]

OK, fair enough. ON the other hand, massacres were at least not embedded in the fabric of Sapphire Guard operations. But, fair point. I assume, like his comrade, Girard did not condone what his heirs ended up doing. If he did, I struggle to grasp his being Neutral and not Evil.

The Draketooth family tree only includes one parent for each generation post the initial dragon/human coupling, so it wouldn't surprise me if Girard himself was a product of the practice.


I find these comparisons a bit awkward as I'm not sold that the village attacks were related to the defense of the gates at all. I haven't read all the side stories though, did one of them say/imply that they were actively hunting a threat to the gates? I thought it was just the worst version of what happens when you cross holy warriors and mission creep.

They were hunting the Bearer of the Crimson Mantle. The raid depicted in Start of Darkness eliminated Redcloak's mentor and predecessor in the role, and the raid in How the Paladin got his Scar was them chasing a dead end after failing to secure the Mantle itself in the earlier raid. There's a lot of senseless collateral in both raids, but the ultimate target is indisputably a serious threat to the gate.

[brian 333]

The Draketooth family tree only includes one parent for each generation post the initial dragon/human coupling, so it wouldn't surprise me if Girard himself was a product of the practice.

The last panel on this page (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0842.html) shows Girard as the middle child of the middle child of The dragon. He is the one with the halo. So he is at least 1/4 dragon.

The presence of the human spouse to the dragon on that chart implies a relatively equal relationship, but the absence of the other spouses could simply be for clarity. Even in Girard's generation there would have been at least six spouses, and if each of Girard's children had a different mother, that would be three extra spouses. The family tree would be far more complicated and difficult to decipher.

This does not invalidate the hypothesis, but it may offer an alternate one.

[Errorname]

The presence of the human spouse to the dragon on that chart implies a relatively equal relationship, but the absence of the other spouses could simply be for clarity. Even in Girard's generation there would have been at least six spouses, and if each of Girard's children had a different mother, that would be three extra spouses. The family tree would be far more complicated and difficult to decipher.

I couldn't even imagine taking my mom off of the family tree just for the sake of reducing visual complexity. You'd think if these were beloved members of the family, they'd be treated as such.

[Metastachydium]

Rich gave Loki that line specifically to enforce the idea that the gods are waiting, willing, and able to drop the hammer on the world as soon as RC actually secures a gate OR the gate is destroyed.

[Citation needed.]

[Tubercular Ox]

mission creep.
Yes! This is the word I need. I'm worried about where mission creep goes for people who have already decided mom is a nonperson without a right to raise her own kids or keep her own property. They have no empathy for the people they're nominally protecting. That is bad.

It's easy for people here to see the problem with Tarquin. Tarquin would be a great gate guardian. We've already seen him put keeping the world safe above personal objectives, he has experience with both politics and dungeon diving, he knows how to keep a secret, and he makes plans for what will happen after he's gone. But he's always high on the list of people we need to keep the gate from because he has no empathy for the people he's protecting and we don't trust him not to change his mind down the road and bend the gate to serve his own ends.

The Draketooths are worse. They're a Stanford prison experiment waiting to happen. If they are effective guardians, then Tarquin is more effective because he represents the same risk but is more competent at the skillset.


I'd say Girard found your middle ground ... they spread knowledge of the gates to a trusted few that kept to their duty, as far as we could see.

I had a think:

Secrecy is volatile, you can lose it at any moment through no fault of your own. Therefore every plan that relies on a secret must have a backup plan for when the secret fails. The longer your secret must be active, the more important this plan. The gates need to be protected for the rest of forever, it's criminal not to have a backup plan.

Secrecy is expensive, and yet does not have a price tag. You never know if you are spending enough on secrecy, and the temptation is always to spend more. It is easy to get into a situation when you are spending more on the secret than you can afford, but you cannot stop spending because you forgot to make a backup plan, and now you can't afford to prepare one.

The gates need to be protected for the rest of forever. If your backup plan is not sustainable, you need a better back up plan. If your back up plan is sustainable, you really need to look very hard at why you're keeping the secret. Is it cheaper? What are you doing with the savings? Maybe you could spend it on making the back up plan more affordable?

The trajectory of every secret is exposure, and victory is when you find a way to stop caring if the secret is exposed. So the middle ground is when you don't expose the secret, but work towards a day when exposure doesn't matter.

Everyone failed. Everyone decided there was a size of secret they were comfortable with and committed to sustaining that for the rest of forever.

[OvisCaedo]

Everyone DID have backup plans. Everyone DID have allies or communities who were let in on enough of the secret to be trusted to furthering its defense. Keeping the rifts in reality a secret has never looked to be "too expensive" from what we've seen in comic. The Scribblers all seemingly spent pretty much everything they had on the defenses, and then made the free choice of "let's not tell anyone about this unnecessarily".

Dorukan's tower was thoroughly staffed, Lirian had a druidic grove full of allied creatures (from what I've gathered? I've not read Start of Darkness.), Soon had an entire paladin order, Girard had the whole family thing (which was, of course, morally dubious for various other reasons), Serini's got hundreds of dungeons stocked full of volunteer guardians.

Did they all eventually fail? Yes. But there's not much evidence to argue confidently that telling everyone about the gates would have netted more benefits to their protection than it would have caused villains to attack. (or, you know, the gods stepping in because it's their biggest secret.)

[brian 333]

Everyone DID have backup plans. Everyone DID have allies or communities who were let in on enough of the secret to be trusted to furthering its defense. Keeping the rifts in reality a secret has never looked to be "too expensive" from what we've seen in comic. The Scribblers all seemingly spent pretty much everything they had on the defenses, and then made the free choice of "let's not tell anyone about this unnecessarily".

Dorukan's tower was thoroughly staffed, Lirian had a druidic grove full of allied creatures (from what I've gathered? I've not read Start of Darkness.), Soon had an entire paladin order, Girard had the whole family thing (which was, of course, morally dubious for various other reasons), Serini's got hundreds of dungeons stocked full of volunteer guardians.

Did they all eventually fail? Yes. But there's not much evidence to argue confidently that telling everyone about the gates would have netted more benefits to their protection than it would have caused villains to attack. (or, you know, the gods stepping in because it's their biggest secret.)

You are correct, there is not much evidence. It was not tried, so it cannot be known how successful or not it might have been.

What I do know is that in a world of adventurers, building sacred groves, dungeons, and pyramids in the desert will eventually attract adventurers, and the throne in a room full of bickering, power-hungry nobles will eventually be inside the area of effect of a spell.

What is needed is a reason for power-hungry madmen to not destroy the gates.

Letting those who are too dumb to listen to fair warning look inside both eliminates the ones dumb enough to not read or believe the warning, and demonstrates to everyone else that the danger is real. Letting everyone else know that only global destruction can be accomplished by fooling with the gates stops everyone but a tiny minority from fooling with them, and strongly incentivizes the majority to quickly eliminate the few suicidal idiots who want to take the world with them.

Posters keep claiming that the gates give the ones who control them power. I disagree. If everyone knew what they are, everyone would know that there is only one use to which they may be put: to destroy the world. That's not power, that's painting a target on the back of whoever makes the threat.

And if that individual is powerful enough to defeat anyone or any group that attacks him, why does he need the gate? He can do global suicide all by himself already.

The only reason The Plan had a chance is because nobody knew they should do something when gates started to be destroyed.

The objection here is that we don't know of anyone able to take out Team Evil.

This is true, but if they do exist, they don't even know their existence is in danger because of The Secret. If they do not exist, why does TE need a gate? They already have the power to do whatever they want. What they don't know, (or believe,) is that what they seek to do will not, and cannot, achieve their stated goals.

[Provengreil]

Yes! This is the word I need. I'm worried about where mission creep goes for people who have already decided mom is a nonperson without a right to raise her own kids or keep her own property. They have no empathy for the people they're nominally protecting. That is bad.

It's easy for people here to see the problem with Tarquin. Tarquin would be a great gate guardian. We've already seen him put keeping the world safe above personal objectives, he has experience with both politics and dungeon diving, he knows how to keep a secret, and he makes plans for what will happen after he's gone. But he's always high on the list of people we need to keep the gate from because he has no empathy for the people he's protecting and we don't trust him not to change his mind down the road and bend the gate to serve his own ends.

The Draketooths are worse. They're a Stanford prison experiment waiting to happen. If they are effective guardians, then Tarquin is more effective because he represents the same risk but is more competent at the skillset.


The way I see it, the difference between Girard's clan and Tarquin is respect of the Snarl. Tarquin doesn't respect the Snarl and so would attempt to exploit the gate somehow, but the Draketooths do and are content to bury it and never touch. I feel like this respect is what Brian's publicity plan is all about, making sure everyone knows just how dangerous mucking about with the gate actually is.



They were hunting the Bearer of the Crimson Mantle. The raid depicted in Start of Darkness eliminated Redcloak's mentor and predecessor in the role, and the raid in How the Paladin got his Scar was them chasing a dead end after failing to secure the Mantle itself in the earlier raid. There's a lot of senseless collateral in both raids, but the ultimate target is indisputably a serious threat to the gate.

I'm not so sure about that though. I lost my copy of SoD years ago and never read HPS so I'm admittedly running from partial memory, but I remember the paladins being pretty gobsmacked to actually find the cloak. Then when they killed its owner, they made no attempt whatsoever to secure it, to the point that Redcloak looted it, wore it, had the plan beamed into his thinkmeats, staggered off very unsubtly, got shaken out of it, and slinked away all entirely unnoticed. It just doesn't really click for me that the cloak was the target of the raid.

[Errorname]

I'm not so sure about that though. I lost my copy of SoD years ago and never read HPS so I'm admittedly running from partial memory, but I remember the paladins being pretty gobsmacked to actually find the cloak. Then when they killed its owner, they made no attempt whatsoever to secure it, to the point that Redcloak looted it, wore it, had the plan beamed into his thinkmeats, staggered off very unsubtly, got shaken out of it, and slinked away all entirely unnoticed. It just doesn't really click for me that the cloak was the target of the raid.

The main villain in GDGU participated in that raid, and gives a Sapphire Guard perspective on the events.


We had it in our grasp! We won! We defeated him soundly! But back then we didn't know it was the Mantle itself that was our enemy. We thought the red cloak was merely a symbol of office—that it didn’t matter what happened to it as long as the creature wearing it was dealt with.

I even remember some of my compatriots actually congratulating themselves on not being so vain as to collect the cloak as a trophy. A little more vanity might have saved the world!

[Unoriginal]

What is needed is a reason for power-hungry madmen to not destroy the gates.

Power-hungry madmen do not care about reason.

That's why they're power-hungry madmen and not power-hungry reasonmen.


Letting everyone else know that only global destruction can be accomplished by fooling with the gates stops everyone but a tiny minority from fooling with them

Because people always believe what they're told about worldwide threats, aside from a tiny, inconsequencial minority.


and strongly incentivizes the majority to quickly eliminate the few suicidal idiots who want to take the world with them.

Because the majority always stands up to the few abusers who have power.

Always.


That's not power, that's painting a target on the back of whoever makes the threat.

Painting a target on a back IS power, if you're smart enough about it.

[Provengreil]

The main villain in GDGU participated in that raid, and gives a Sapphire Guard perspective on the events.

Fair enough, I stand corrected.

[OvisCaedo]

All I'm saying is, if I had been at that rift with my party, it wouldn't have went down like it did.

[gbaji]

Lots of stuff since I last posted. Just a few points about what I think is a misconception:


They believe that gaining control of the gate will allow them to blackmail the gods, but if they knew The Secret they would know that before they can gain control of the gate the gods will have pulled the rug, (and the world,) from under their feet.

Knowing that literally all one can do with a gate is destabilize existence, one is faced with meekly accepting death, or raining destruction and carnage on those who seek to wreck the world. Few Evil folks will choose A if they have a choice. The world is where they get to do their best Eviling.

Use the gate for what? We already know that Redcloak's (and TDO's) Plan is a bust. The Gods will unravel the world before their Ritual can be completed.

The only thing anyone can do with a gate is to make powerful beings angry and afraid enough to gang up an gank them.

The idea that one can 'do something' with the gates is based on knowing about the rifts and the Snarl, but not knowing that the greater danger is what the gods will do if threatened. Otherwise, it is as useful as a one-wheeled garbage truck.

Take control of a gate for what? See, he currently mistakenly believes he can use the Snarl like a big weapon: aim it, fire it, reload, repeat.




You've made the same statement several different ways here, but I don't think it's correct. Just because Redcloak is actually lying to Xykon about what the ritual does, and that it actually gives TDO the power to move the gate, does not mean that it's impossible to "do something else" with a gate.

You keep insisting (and your entire argument rests on this asssumption) that there is nothing anyone can do with a gate except destroy it and release the snarl, and no one would do that since that would force the gods to destroy the world.

My point, which you managed to completely ignore somehow, is that Xykon would not believe Redcloak's lie if "use the gate to make myself super powerful and control the world" wasn't something that was actually possible, with the right magical research and skill. You seem to completely discount this as even being a possiblity, despite absolutely zero evidence in the strip that harnessing a gate as some sort of magical power source (or some other use, that doesn't involve destroying said gate and releasing the snarl) is impossible. Yet, as I stated earlier and have just re-stated, if this was actually absolutely impossible, and something that is so obviously impossible that someone merely reading the strip, with no actually magical ability himself, can make such a statement, then you'd think Xykon would have known this as well.

Let's just go out on a limb and assume that Xykon has a better idea of what is possible with magic in the Stickverse than you do, and he certainly thinks that it's possible to "do something" with a gate.

It's reasonable to assume that other powerful spell casters in the Stickverse would also believe this was possible. And if enough of them know about the gates and the rifts and the snarl, then a whole lot of them are going to commit a whole lot of time to trying to figure out how to use them to "do something". And, just due to sheer numbers and statistics, there are good odds that one of them will succeed at some point.

Durokan and Liran, two powerful spellcasters with no prior knowledge of rifts in the universe, and the snarl, still managed to study them and figure out how to seal them. They then further researched how to create the gates which hold the seals in place. They managed to do all of that, despite "create rift seal" and "create rift gate" not actually existing as spells in D&D. It's reasonable to assume that other magic spells and enchantments could be researched related to these things as well. Yet, your entire argument rests on this just simply not being possible at all.

I don't find that convincing at all.



The Secret is that the rifts are sealed to keep a world-eating, god-destroying entity caged, and that the gods have many, many, many times destroyed the world to salvage as much as they can before it gets loose again.

No. That's not the secret. We have zero evidence that the scribblers ever knew that this wasn't the second world the gods created.

The scribblers could not have revealed information to the public that they, themselves, didn't actually know. So all they could have told everyone was the same information that Shojo revealed to the Order. Which was that these gates were holding seals in place, which kept rifts at bay, which contained the snarl. So... basically the same information that TE has, and which hasn't prevented them from trying to take control of a gate. So.... why assume this same knowledge would prevent others from doing so?

Again. Both members of TE certainly believe that they can take control of a gate and perform a ritual and that the gods will not destroy the world as a result. Note, that nowhere in the story was "and if the gates are controlled by evil people, the gods will destroy the world" ever mentioned. Only that if the snarl is released, it will destroy the world. Sereni actually seemed quite surprised that the gods were ready to destroy the world just based on what has happened so far. So it's likely the scribblers were not aware of this at all. The information that the gods were aware of what the Scribblers were doing and allowed them to continue, to see if their plan would work, was only revealed to Roy and Durkon at the godsmoot. There's no evidence that the Scribblers knew any of this.



If what Durkon knows was common knowledge, only the suicidal would want to take control of a gate. And all they could accomplish by doing so is to destroy one gate before everyone else granted their wish and rebuilt the gate they destroyed.

Except that no one trying to control any of the gates has actually tried to destroy them. The folks defending them have, to keep them out of TE's hands (or just accidentally). Again, you seem unwilling to accept that the evil people would want to control gates, and keep them intact, so they could study and use them in some other way. Destroying the gates so as to release the snarl is *not* the only thing that can be doine with a gate.



My plan is based on the knowledge that the only result of controlling a gate is to cause everyone else in the world to assess the degree of threat that person represents, and to take action to eliminate that threat

How is that any different from the reaction to any other world conquering evil type person assumes will occur? And yet, such people still go about plotting their evil schemes to conquer the world, don't they? When ever did the bbeg just say "Well. Gosh. If I try to take over the world, everyone will try to stop me, so I guess I should not try"? Never, right?



No. I don't care about Redcloak lying to Xykon. That will sort itself out in time. The only secrets I'm talking about are the ones involving what the rifts are, what is on the other side of them, and how many times the gods have destroyed a world or hid while the Snarl destroyed it.

So, now you are changing your plan from "Scribblers reveal everything they know about the snarl, rifts, and gates" to "the gods reveal everything they know about the snarl and every world that has been created and destroyed for the last several million years". That's some serious goalpost moving right there.


If you're looking for hard proof of voting rules, prepare to be disappointed. But you shouldn't need them to evaluate the story as given. Rich gave Loki that line specifically to enforce the idea that the gods are waiting, willing, and able to drop the hammer on the world as soon as RC actually secures a gate OR the gate is destroyed.

I'm also going to ask for a citation on that. I don't recall any of the gods actually stating that they would or could destroy the world as a result of RC securing a gate. The contingency that they were talking about was if the final gate was destroyed, and the snarl was released, that they could destroy the world at that point (instead of just destroying it immediately). There was no mention of RC completing the ritual on a gate as a trigger for anything.

I know that a lot of posters assume that this must be the case, since clearly the snarl being released in an outer plane must be seen as a greater threat to the gods, but it's unclear if that's actually true. I mean, it would be true for any gods physically present in that outer plane at the time, and it would probably wipe out all of the mortal souls in that plane. And that would certainly be "bad", but it may not be totally catastrophic, especially for the 8/9ths of the gods who don't call that their home plane.

We just don't know enough to make any assumptions here. And the gods did not say anything about it either.

[Unoriginal]

Let's just go out on a limb and assume that Xykon has a better idea of what is possible with magic in the Stickverse than you do, and he certainly thinks that it's possible to "do something" with a gate.

It's reasonable to assume that other powerful spell casters in the Stickverse would also believe this was possible. And if enough of them know about the gates and the rifts and the snarl, then a whole lot of them are going to commit a whole lot of time to trying to figure out how to use them to "do something". And, just due to sheer numbers and statistics, there are good odds that one of them will succeed at some point.

Durokan and Liran, two powerful spellcasters with no prior knowledge of rifts in the universe, and the snarl, still managed to study them and figure out how to seal them. They then further researched how to create the gates which hold the seals in place. They managed to do all of that, despite "create rift seal" and "create rift gate" not actually existing as spells in D&D. It's reasonable to assume that other magic spells and enchantments could be researched related to these things as well. Yet, your entire argument rests on this just simply not being possible at all.

I don't find that convincing at all.

Indeed.



Sereni actually seemed quite surprised that the gods were ready to destroy the world just based on what has happened so far. So it's likely the scribblers were not aware of this at all. The information that the gods were aware of what the Scribblers were doing and allowed them to continue, to see if their plan would work, was only revealed to Roy and Durkon at the godsmoot. There's no evidence that the Scribblers knew any of this.

Shojo said the Order of the Scribble was afraid the gods would take matter into their own hands, before they secured all the rifts. Serini, in her own words, forgot that the god were active participants in the affair because she hadn't hung out with a Druid in a long time. So she just assumed they wouldn't jump the gun this time either.

[hroþila]

Even if it was true that the gates can't be used for any other purposes AND everybody in the world knew and believed that, the gates would still be the obvious target for anyone aiming to destroy the world. And there is no shortage of such people in this universe

[KorvinStarmast]

[Citation needed.]
https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0998.html

Given what we learned about how many times they have been through this before (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1139.html), Loki is a credible source for that.

[Unoriginal]

[Citation needed.]


https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0998.html

Given what we learned about how many times they have been through this before (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1139.html), Loki is a credible source for that.

Indeed.

Loki is saying "if we all agree on giving the mortals one more chance to fix the mess and the Snarl breaks out anyway, we have the time to pull the plug". Not "we can't pull the plug unless we all agree at the Godsmoot, even if the Snarl breaks out

[brian 333]

Lots of stuff since I last posted. Just a few points about what I think is a misconception:



You've made the same statement several different ways here, but I don't think it's correct. Just because Redcloak is actually lying to Xykon about what the ritual does, and that it actually gives TDO the power to move the gate, does not mean that it's impossible to "do something else" with a gate.

You keep insisting (and your entire argument rests on this asssumption) that there is nothing anyone can do with a gate except destroy it and release the snarl, and no one would do that since that would force the gods to destroy the world.

My point, which you managed to completely ignore somehow, is that Xykon would not believe Redcloak's lie if "use the gate to make myself super powerful and control the world" wasn't something that was actually possible, with the right magical research and skill. You seem to completely discount this as even being a possiblity, despite absolutely zero evidence in the strip that harnessing a gate as some sort of magical power source (or some other use, that doesn't involve destroying said gate and releasing the snarl) is impossible. Yet, as I stated earlier and have just re-stated, if this was actually absolutely impossible, and something that is so obviously impossible that someone merely reading the strip, with no actually magical ability himself, can make such a statement, then you'd think Xykon would have known this as well.

Let's just go out on a limb and assume that Xykon has a better idea of what is possible with magic in the Stickverse than you do, and he certainly thinks that it's possible to "do something" with a gate.

It's reasonable to assume that other powerful spell casters in the Stickverse would also believe this was possible. And if enough of them know about the gates and the rifts and the snarl, then a whole lot of them are going to commit a whole lot of time to trying to figure out how to use them to "do something". And, just due to sheer numbers and statistics, there are good odds that one of them will succeed at some point.

Durokan and Liran, two powerful spellcasters with no prior knowledge of rifts in the universe, and the snarl, still managed to study them and figure out how to seal them. They then further researched how to create the gates which hold the seals in place. They managed to do all of that, despite "create rift seal" and "create rift gate" not actually existing as spells in D&D. It's reasonable to assume that other magic spells and enchantments could be researched related to these things as well. Yet, your entire argument rests on this just simply not being possible at all.

I don't find that convincing at all.

Having repeatedly asked what that 'something else' might be and receiving no answer, I do not feel that it is fair to say that I have completely ignored the point.

The closest thing to an answer that I have heard is to somehow use it to manipulate the strands of reality. They already have that; it's called 'magic.'



No. That's not the secret. We have zero evidence that the scribblers ever knew that this wasn't the second world the gods created.

The scribblers could not have revealed information to the public that they, themselves, didn't actually know. So all they could have told everyone was the same information that Shojo revealed to the Order. Which was that these gates were holding seals in place, which kept rifts at bay, which contained the snarl. So... basically the same information that TE has, and which hasn't prevented them from trying to take control of a gate. So.... why assume this same knowledge would prevent others from doing so?

Again. Both members of TE certainly believe that they can take control of a gate and perform a ritual and that the gods will not destroy the world as a result. Note, that nowhere in the story was "and if the gates are controlled by evil people, the gods will destroy the world" ever mentioned. Only that if the snarl is released, it will destroy the world. Sereni actually seemed quite surprised that the gods were ready to destroy the world just based on what has happened so far. So it's likely the scribblers were not aware of this at all. The information that the gods were aware of what the Scribblers were doing and allowed them to continue, to see if their plan would work, was only revealed to Roy and Durkon at the godsmoot. There's no evidence that the Scribblers knew any of this.

What The Scribblers knew is irrelevant. They should have made what they knew public. Every cleric who sought to verify or refute what they claimed would have asked their gods, and absent 'The Secret,' would have been answered.

It is rather easy to explain. Minrah and Durkon got the whole story in half-a-dozen strips.


Except that no one trying to control any of the gates has actually tried to destroy them. The folks defending them have, to keep them out of TE's hands (or just accidentally). Again, you seem unwilling to accept that the evil people would want to control gates, and keep them intact, so they could study and use them in some other way. Destroying the gates so as to release the snarl is *not* the only thing that can be doine with a gate.

So an Evil guy studies a gate but keeps it intact. Great. Enjoy. The world is safe.

As I have said many times, Good and Evil characters have a vested interest in keeping the gates intact, so I am not worried if Evil Guy has control of a gate. As soon as anyone, Good or Evil or Vanilla or Antispin, starts to actively try to do something to the gate, everyone should know so that anyone capable of stopping him knows it is time to do something about it. But study it? That's a great idea. Maybe he'll come up with a better gate design.


How is that any different from the reaction to any other world conquering evil type person assumes will occur? And yet, such people still go about plotting their evil schemes to conquer the world, don't they? When ever did the bbeg just say "Well. Gosh. If I try to take over the world, everyone will try to stop me, so I guess I should not try"? Never, right?

Yes, the only difference is, so long as knowledge of the gates is secret, nobody knows that they should stop him or die trying.

BBEGs try to take over the world as often as Pinky and the Brain, and sooner or later someone comes along to topple them. The issue here is knowing that BBEG can actually cause the world's destruction. Oops, nobody knows because it is a secret. Oh well, guess we wait for Random Hero to come along in a few generations.


So, now you are changing your plan from "Scribblers reveal everything they know about the snarl, rifts, and gates" to "the gods reveal everything they know about the snarl and every world that has been created and destroyed for the last several million years". That's some serious goalpost moving right there.

This is not moving the goalpost. This is common sense. The Scribblers tell what they know, those who do not believe ask the gods, the gods answer, knowledge proliferates. Because of The Secret,' nobody ever asks.


I'm also going to ask for a citation on that. I don't recall any of the gods actually stating that they would or could destroy the world as a result of RC securing a gate. The contingency that they were talking about was if the final gate was destroyed, and the snarl was released, that they could destroy the world at that point (instead of just destroying it immediately). There was no mention of RC completing the ritual on a gate as a trigger for anything.

I know that a lot of posters assume that this must be the case, since clearly the snarl being released in an outer plane must be seen as a greater threat to the gods, but it's unclear if that's actually true. I mean, it would be true for any gods physically present in that outer plane at the time, and it would probably wipe out all of the mortal souls in that plane. And that would certainly be "bad", but it may not be totally catastrophic, especially for the 8/9ths of the gods who don't call that their home plane.

We just don't know enough to make any assumptions here. And the gods did not say anything about it either.

We know enough to know that none of the gods want The Snarl finding where they live. And according to Loki, it takes fifteen minutes to undo the world.

I could be wrong, of course, but none of the gods seem particularly suicidal.

[Unoriginal]

Having repeatedly asked what that 'something else' might be and receiving no answer, I do not feel that it is fair to say that I have completely ignored the point.

You've not completely ignored the point, you've completely ignored the answers when people told you about the "something else".

You want us to speculate more about what can be done? Fine, let's speculate:

Fact 1: we know that mortals can create a barrier that resists the Snarl, at least for a time.

Fact 2: by creating barriers with an opening, it is possible to make what is contained within the barrier take a specific path. Like a mouse in a maze, or water in a tube.

Fact 3: Some people in the OotS-verse can open portals connecting point A to point Z without going through any of the points in-between. Even if point A and Z are on different planes of existence.

Conclusion: it's theoretically possible to create a "tube" with "walls" that can contain the Snarl for a while, and have a portal at one end of said tube, letting someone do precisely targeted strikes with the soul-annihilating abomination.

Since the person doing that live in the world as described in your OP, they just have to put one of those tube+portal in front of your Zipper Gate, unzip it open, and wait for the Snarl to try to grab the thing outside.



The closest thing to an answer that I have heard is to somehow use it to manipulate the strands of reality. They already have that; it's called 'magic.'

I said the Threads of Reality.

Maybe you haven't ignored the answers, then, you've just misinterpreted them into something easily dismissable with a "they have magic already".



What The Scribblers knew is irrelevant.

It certainly is not, given you're judging them as inefficient for acting on what they knew.



They should have made what they knew public.

This thesis has not been demonstrated.



So an Evil guy studies a gate but keeps it intact. Great. Enjoy. The world is safe.

Safe under the power of an evil guy.

What a joy.



As I have said many times, Good and Evil characters have a vested interest in keeping the gates intact

And as you've been told many times in answer to that, that assumes that people act to further their own interests in a rational manner.

A lot of people don't do that.



BBEGs try to take over the world as often as Pinky and the Brain, and sooner or later someone comes along to topple them.

That doesn't make "living under the BBEG's rule until someone come along" a pleasant perspective.



This is not moving the goalpost. This is common sense. The Scribblers tell what they know, those who do not believe ask the gods, the gods answer, knowledge proliferates.

Once again, you are affirming that your plan would definitively survive contact with the enemy.

How about:

-The gods answer, people don't believe the answer. Knowledge withers on the vine.

-The gods answer, people believe the answer, but that make a large quantity of them lose their faith in the gods. The gods grow weaker from the lack of faith, meaning their quiddities weakens, and a few generations down the road the Snarl can break through the prison again. Knowledge destroys the prison.

-The gods give different answers, possibly smiting the one who ask for daring to do it. Different religions fight and debate about which answer is true. Knowledge remains uncertain.

-The gods refuse to answer, because the ones who want to tell the mortals are outnumbered by those who don't want to tell the mortals and they held up a vote to decide how to handle the situation. Knowledge is not acquired.

-The gods hold up a vote to decide how to handle the situation, and the number of gods who think the world shouldn't be allowed to continue now that so many mortals know about the Snarl is bigger than the number of gods who are fine with that new status quo, so the gods destroy the world. Knowledge results in judgement day.

All those are very real possibilities you're refusing to acknowledge because you think there is one right way to do things and not only that all the other ways are wrong, but that no one will do those wrong ways if they knew the one right way.



We know enough to know that none of the gods want The Snarl finding where they live. And according to Loki, it takes fifteen minutes to undo the world.

No, according to Loki it takes 15 minutes for the Snarl to breaks out once the last Gate is gone.

[Errorname]

So an Evil guy studies a gate but keeps it intact. Great. Enjoy. The world is safe.

Evil guy trying to harness the gate's power to do evil things is likely to lead to conflict that might destroy the gate, even if he's not risking the fate of the world, which I am not convinced he wouldn't be

The gates so far have been defended with the understanding that "destroy it" is a better plan than allowing it to fall into enemy hands, which makes me think using the gates to harness the power of the Snarl is possible

[ShadowSandbag]

Virtually none of the supposed benefits of secrecy ever actually happen, but secrets allow nefarious behavior to go unopposed. If the gates had not been a secret, any three epic characters showing up after Lirian's gate was destroyed could have saved the other four from danger. And that is all the secret of the gates ever achieved.
You've mentioned the existence of these other Epic Characters a few times. But we have not seen any evidence of epic characters outside of The Scribblers and Xykon. And there have been events that should have called Epic level character's attention. The fall of a major capital city to an epic level lich is the sort of thing that is just begging Good Epic characters to intervene, if they exist. If there were any Epic Level clerics or other divine people, you would think they would have been at least mentioned at the godsmoot. It's impossible to prove that there are not any Epic level characters in the world, but its impossible to prove the absence of just about anything. If you have any evidence that even implies the existence of other Epic characters, i would love to see it.


Having repeatedly asked what that 'something else' might be and receiving no answer, I do not feel that it is fair to say that I have completely ignored the point.

The closest thing to an answer that I have heard is to somehow use it to manipulate the strands of reality. They already have that; it's called 'magic.'

Sure; here is an example for you. Something else someone can do with the gates.



ShadowSandbag's Snarling Strength

Level: Clr 1, Pal 1, Brd 1, Rgr 1, Sor/Wiz 1
Components: V, S, M
Casting Time: 1 round
Range: Self
Duration: Forever

This spell raises the user to permanent Overdeity status.
Material Component
A gate leading to the Snarl. The gate is not used, harmed or altered in the casting of this spell.
This material component may not be replaced or replicated in any way, even by Wish.


Is that a good enough answer to that question for you?

[Tubercular Ox]

But there's not much evidence to argue confidently that telling everyone about the gates would have netted more benefits to their protection than it would have caused villains to attack. (or, you know, the gods stepping in because it's their biggest secret.)

This is someone else. I'm the guy who just said you don't expose the secret. I said things after that but they don't change the game enough that I can sit still and let this opinion be assigned to me.


The way I see it, the difference between Girard's clan and Tarquin is respect of the Snarl. Tarquin doesn't respect the Snarl and so would attempt to exploit the gate somehow, but the Draketooths do and are content to bury it and never touch. I feel like this respect is what Brian's publicity plan is all about, making sure everyone knows just how dangerous mucking about with the gate actually is.

Sure, okay, fair point. I wasn't considering the cost of transition at all, I was just picturing Tarquin as having been in Girard's place.

But Girard's family is guarding a giant brick that says, "Sorry, your gate is in another pyramid." If they were allowed to persist, then at some point they would run out of people who actually saw the gate. Or knew Girard. At some point Girard is a legend and not a family member, and you can only trust family.

Personal experience is a fleeting advantage and you need a good plan for transmission that competes with the need for secrecy. The more of one you have, the less of the other. I'm not saying you can't have both, I'm just saying that there are now two ways to screw up instead of one: loss of secrecy and loss of transmission.

But, tangent, you're the guy who said we need to hook up to the laws of drama that drive OotSworld. So think of it this way: Do you want to be the impossible dungeon that someone eventually conquers, or the impossible quest that someone eventually completes? Pushing to make the gates unnecessary puts us on the right side of drama.

[Provengreil]

This is someone else. I'm the guy who just said you don't expose the secret. I said things after that but they don't change the game enough that I can sit still and let this opinion be assigned to me.



Sure, okay, fair point. I wasn't considering the cost of transition at all, I was just picturing Tarquin as having been in Girard's place.

But Girard's family is guarding a giant brick that says, "Sorry, your gate is in another pyramid." If they were allowed to persist, then at some point they would run out of people who actually saw the gate. Or knew Girard. At some point Girard is a legend and not a family member, and you can only trust family.

Personal experience is a fleeting advantage and you need a good plan for transmission that competes with the need for secrecy. The more of one you have, the less of the other. I'm not saying you can't have both, I'm just saying that there are now two ways to screw up instead of one: loss of secrecy and loss of transmission.
You're not wrong, but Tarquin would have a similar problem unless the plan is to hand it over to Malack.

Also, Girard's clan could probably head that off with a field trip to the gate every now and then via passwall? Maybe as a right of passage, they get to see that the gate is real?



But, tangent, you're the guy who said we need to hook up to the laws of drama that drive OotSworld. So think of it this way: Do you want to be the impossible dungeon that someone eventually conquers, or the impossible quest that someone eventually completes? Pushing to make the gates unnecessary puts us on the right side of drama.

Failing to make the gates unnecessary contains more drama. That way there's always that lever, that end-of-the-world goal for someone. Using the impossible dungeon to buy time for the impossible quest is repeatable.

TBH though, I stopped posting along those lines because found this thread flawed in concept. There aren't limits save what we pretend exist for our own made up rift and gate. As such, it's less an optimization exercise and more a creative writing one. A much better ask would be to ask how one single epic character of a given class would protect a specific gate already in the story.

What's the more interesting question? Is it:

1. You have a rift with a gate that no one can ever be allowed to seize. How will you defend with whatever resources you can imagine, with whatever magics you can dream up, in whatever circumstances you care to write?

OR

2. You have a rift with a gate that no one can ever be allowed to seize. You have a single class epic character, about twice their expected wealth, your old team mostly hates you, the surrounding region is canyons and, surrounding that, just desert. The local polities are unstable and power hungry, quite likely to attempt to capture the gate and use it somehow rather than defend it. What do?

[Anymage]

I'll just leave this here. (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0278.html). (Also, first two panels of 282.)

[Metastachydium]

https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0998.html

Given what we learned about how many times they have been through this before (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1139.html), Loki is a credible source for that.


Indeed.

Loki is saying "if we all agree on giving the mortals one more chance to fix the mess and the Snarl breaks out anyway, we have the time to pull the plug". Not "we can't pull the plug unless we all agree at the Godsmoot, even if the Snarl breaks out

Yes, now that two more people are telling me the strip where Loki doesn't say what you say he says can only mean he means what you say he means, I'm suddenly convinced that is the one possible and valid reading of the line.

[Provengreil]

Yes, now that two more people are telling me the strip where Loki doesn't say what you say he says can only mean he means what you say he means, I'm suddenly convinced that is the one possible and valid reading of the line.

Not the only possible one, but it's a valid, reasonable understanding of the words.

It strongly implies that the gods can scoop the world in an extremely short timeframe. The vote to destroy the world was deadlocked as is, if the situation gets worse you can bet the vote will pass. Don't forget that Thor has already worked out the plan (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1142.html), and I find it unlikely no other gods have.

So yeah. I put these facts together and come to the conclusion that if Redcloak has any apparent chance of actually conducting his ritual, the gods will reap the world real quick like. A conclusion Durkon seems to agree with. (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1207.html)

[Metastachydium]

1. no, we don't know the gods will or, for that matter, can destroy the world before he can actually accomplish the Plan. That the "if we all agree on that" clause in Loki's speech (strip no. 998, page no. 2, panel bo. 3) oft cited by myself and others implies the vote must conclude before they can do that. It might not mean that, but so far I haven't seen anyone convincingly demonstrate that this is the case.

Not the only possible one, but it's a valid, reasonable understanding of the words.

(…)

So yeah. I put these facts together and come to the conclusion that if Redcloak has any apparent chance of actually conducting his ritual, the gods will reap the world real quick like. A conclusion Durkon seems to agree with. (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1207.html)

Yes, I accept that as a valid and logical reading, hence the cautious formulation of the idea above. I just happen to find the other way to read it equally valid and logical, at the very least, and prefer that one.


It strongly implies that the gods can scoop the world in an extremely short timeframe.

Indeed. I would merely add an if they all agree it must be done.


The vote to destroy the world was deadlocked as is, if the situation gets worse you can bet the vote will pass.

Indeed. If they get to put that on the schedule, I would add.


Don't forget that Thor has already worked out the plan (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1142.html), and I find it unlikely no other gods have.

Thor (and others; he uses a we there) has a correct suspicion, but is explicitly not certain there is a Ritual and it can actually do that. He also says the others who figured it out are trying to preempt that with their YES votes on Apocalypse Special.

All in all, I'm not saying you're wrong. All I'm saying is I'm not wrong either.

[KorvinStarmast]

I would merely add an if they all agree it must be done.
No. A simple majority suffices. See the godsmoot.

[Metastachydium]

No. A simple majority suffices. See the godsmoot.

That's fair, granted, but it's neither here nor there beyond that.

[Provengreil]

Thor (and others; he uses a we there) has a correct suspicion, but is explicitly not certain there is a Ritual and it can actually do that. He also says the others who figured it out are trying to preempt that with their YES votes on Apocalypse Special.

All in all, I'm not saying you're wrong. All I'm saying is I'm not wrong either.

Excessively, uselessly narrow tautology accepted. Loki did not use the phrase "If the goblin attempts his ritual, we, all the gods, do so pre-emptively agree to reap the world" and then get a yes vote on panel.

[gbaji]

Loki is saying "if we all agree on giving the mortals one more chance to fix the mess and the Snarl breaks out anyway, we have the time to pull the plug". Not "we can't pull the plug unless we all agree at the Godsmoot, even if the Snarl breaks out

That's not what the citation request is about (at least not why I was asking, and I assume the original question as well). It's about the bolded section:


Rich gave Loki that line specifically to enforce the idea that the gods are waiting, willing, and able to drop the hammer on the world as soon as RC actually secures a gate OR the gate is destroyed.

Loki's line said nothing about Redcloak securing a gate. Quite the opposite. He specifically spoke of what they would do if the last gate was destroyed. Lots of posters assume the gods will destroy the world if TE starts their ritual, but there are zero statements from the gods in the comic that this is something they can or will do.

If someone has a citation showing that the gods have stated that they will destroy the werld if TE gains control of a gate, please provide it. In the absense of that, folks need to accept that any speculation/prediction which asssumes this will happen, has zero foundation on which to rest.



Having repeatedly asked what that 'something else' might be and receiving no answer, I do not feel that it is fair to say that I have completely ignored the point.

I don't recall you actually asking what "something else" might be, but even if you did, there's a huge difference between asking that question, and insisting (repeatedly, as I quoted you previously) that there was "nothing else", and effectively basing your entire argument off of that assumption.

And as Anymage has nicely provided The author has provided the answer to your question (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0278.htm).

You're certainly free to speculate or propose theories which ignore this fact, but then you should not be surprised when a heck of a lot of people don't put a lot of weight in those things. The author has clearly stated that Durkokon, one of the most knowledgable people about the gates and rifts, believed that it was possible to "do soemthing" with a gate other than simply release the snarl. So much so that he built a self destruct mechanism in his gate. The author has provided us exactly one other arcane caster on the same power level as Durokon (Xykon), and he *also* believes that it's possible to "do something" with an intact gate other than simply release the snarl. We can also speculate that since Lirian, the other most knowledgeable person about the gates, built her defense in a way that virtually ensured destruction if anyone else tried to take possession of it, also felt that "destruction of the gate is preferrable to someone evil getting possession of it"

So we must kinda accept that this should be true. Basing an entire theory around the assumption that every single epic or near epic spellcaster in the stickverse is wrong about this, despite no evidence to support that assumption, is pretty much inviting critique on that point alone.



As I have said many times, Good and Evil characters have a vested interest in keeping the gates intact, so I am not worried if Evil Guy has control of a gate. As soon as anyone, Good or Evil or Vanilla or Antispin, starts to actively try to do something to the gate, everyone should know so that anyone capable of stopping him knows it is time to do something about it. But study it? That's a great idea. Maybe he'll come up with a better gate design.

Sure. So maybe your strategy works against the doomsday cult type folks. I'm not super convinced of that either, given the relative ease with which gates can be destroyed versus defended, much less rebuilt. But hey. Maybe we assume that in this model of things, the gates are built to be much more sturdy than they are in the comic itself. So... I'll give this a firm "maybe".

But it still, as I and several posters have pointed out, leaves out the "do something with the gate" (but not "to" the gate). And the problem with your model is that it requires that "someone" must always have physical possession and access to every single gate, and be defending it from all the crazies who might try to destroy them maybe. But that only works long term if we asssume that not one of those "someone's" ever tried to do something with the gate themselves.

That's where the red/green game point I made a few posts ago comes in. In any system where the reward for choosing to do something harmful to others but beneficial to yourself significantly outweighs the "benefit to all" by simply choosing not to do that harmful action, the harmful action will win over time. There are only two ways to prevent thiis:

1. Change the system so that the "benefit to all if we all work together" outweighs the "benefit to me if I screw everyone else over" (which I'm not sure is possible here). Here is where your earlier assumption comes in though. If you were actually correct that the only thing the gates could be used for was blindly releasing the snarl and destroying the world, it would meet the "benefit to not allowing that exceeds the benefit for using the gate for selfish purposes". But the assumption is not true, so this condition is not met when considering how to deal with the rifts and gates.

2. Reduce the number of people playing the game. A small number of close friends can play the red/green game and all win. As the number of people increasees, the odds of that outcome occuring drop. Super fast. For reference, this is typically played in a classroom setting with say 20-30 students participating. I've never heard of any such game ever resulting in anything other than "everyone loses". I'm sure it's possible it has happened, but it would require a very specific set of people, who for some reason are all of a very specific and similar cooperative mindset (ie: Not a typical class of students in a random school, much less "everone in the world").

And yes. The means by which you reduce the number of people playing the game is "keep it secret". Which is exactly what the Scribblers did.



We know enough to know that none of the gods want The Snarl finding where they live. And according to Loki, it takes fifteen minutes to undo the world.

Only if they all agree to do so. There is zero evidence that they have already agreed to destroy the world if Redcloak and Xykon gain control of a gate and begin casting their ritual on it. I get that many people assume this is what the gods "should do", but no one has shown any evidence in comic that this is something they already have set up and have already agreed to do.

The problem is that it's basically the same as the Scribblers having control of the gates, except with an alginment change. The gods didn't destroy the world the last time a powerful group of mortals gained control of the rifts, studied them, and used magic on them (which created the gates in the first place). Why assume that if an evil group of adventurers gained access to a gate, and began using magic on it, that this would result in an auto-destruct of the world?

It's a pure alignment issue among the gods. If a group of good aligned mortals are allowed that much leeway to learn about and use magic on the rifts, then a group of evil aligned mortals should be allowed to as well.

And btw, this becomes even less of a likelihood in a "we tell the entire world about the gates, rifts, and snarl" model. In that situation, the gods would expect that possession of gates should be somewhat evenly distributed around, and not "hogged" by just the good aligned folks. In your model "someone" must possess every gate, all of the time. It's pretty unreasonable to expect that the evil gods are going to be fine with those someones's all being worshippers of the good gods, and would certainly not agree to any sort of godmoot agreement to destroy the world just because someone evil got their hands on one.

If it were actually the case, that the gods would destroy the world rather than allow gates to be controlled by someone not of their own alignment, then the result of this model should be nearly instant agreement to destroy the world. Good folks have control of the gates, so all the neutral and evil ones vote to destroy this world and start over. Done. Your model requires that we assume that the gods will *not* destroy the world, simply because mortals who are not of their own personal alignment have control of a gate. Which means that it must require that people of all different alignemnts may gain control of any given gate, and the gods will not destroy the world as a result. Which means that the threat of "gods destroy the world if someone evil tries to 'do something' with a gate", simply does not exist.

If it was a real risk, the gods would already have done so. So for every would be bbeg, with a plan to create their own magic ritual to use the gates to make themselves super powerful, conquer the world, etc, the very fact that the world is still around them, means that they can move foward with their plan. As long as they don't actually release the snarl, the world is in no danger, and they are free to do whatever they want. Again, the fact that your model tells everyone this information, tells them exactly what they can do with the gates without risk of world destruction.

Which means that's exactly what will happen. It's reasonable to assume that as long as the evil folks also prevent the doomsday folks from destroying the gate they have possession of, the gods will sit by and allow them to use those gates for anything else. Which can include all sorts of super powerful magic things, which may create lots of problems for the other mortals living on the prime material plane, but as long as this doesn't result in release of the snarl, the gods will presuambly stay out of it.


I could be wrong, of course, but none of the gods seem particularly suicidal.

They don't have to be. As I stated earlier. Only 1 outer plane is at risk. That's a very large majority of gods who will not be directly affected even if the ritual is completed, the gods fail in their negotiations with TDO, and the gate is transported to and opened in one of the outer planes.

Heck. A lot of the gods might very well be rooting for this outcome. Recall what the Fiends want to do to the good aligned planes. They would be perfectly on board with TDO unleashing this thing, as long as it's not unleashed on them.

[brian 333]

You've not completely ignored the point, you've completely ignored the answers when people told you about the "something else".

You want us to speculate more about what can be done? Fine, let's speculate:

Fact 1: we know that mortals can create a barrier that resists the Snarl, at least for a time.

Fact 2: by creating barriers with an opening, it is possible to make what is contained within the barrier take a specific path. Like a mouse in a maze, or water in a tube.

Fact 3: Some people in the OotS-verse can open portals connecting point A to point Z without going through any of the points in-between. Even if point A and Z are on different planes of existence.

Conclusion: it's theoretically possible to create a "tube" with "walls" that can contain the Snarl for a while, and have a portal at one end of said tube, letting someone do precisely targeted strikes with the soul-annihilating abomination.

Since the person doing that live in the world as described in your OP, they just have to put one of those tube+portal in front of your Zipper Gate, unzip it open, and wait for the Snarl to try to grab the thing outside.

Which is exactly where we are now. The only difference is, with my plan there are people who are aware of the danger this places them in. With The Secret if there is some one or many who can stop TE, they are oblivious and merrily do nothing as the world comes apart around them.


I said the Threads of Reality.

Maybe you haven't ignored the answers, then, you've just misinterpreted them into something easily dismissable with a "they have magic already".

Excuse me, but that was not a dismissal. That was an honest answer. Manipulating reality is what magic does. Epic magic is an obvious example.


It certainly is not, given you're judging them as inefficient for acting on what they knew.

Not inefficient, paranoid. So afraid of imagined threats that they cannot trust anyone who might help them against real threats. So certain that no one can be trusted that they create the conditions which allow TE to even have a chance to do what they are doing.


This thesis has not been demonstrated.

It certainly has not been tested, so of course it cannot be demonstrated. As I have repeatedly admitted. Why not try? You never know who is out there until you look for them.

Or is the absence of evidence now considered evidence of absence?


Safe under the power of an evil guy.

What a joy.

Safe, and alive in a world with a future. How is global destruction a better choice?


And as you've been told many times in answer to that, that assumes that people act to further their own interests in a rational manner.

A lot of people don't do that.

And many more do. See, in protecting from the few who would try to use the secret for their own ends, you are protecting those same irrational people from the multitudes who would oppose them if they only knew that they should.

The vast majority are not altruistic. They won't risk death to stop a madman when they can run away. But when they cannot run and their death is certain?


That doesn't make "living under the BBEG's rule until someone come along" a pleasant perspective.

Less pleasant than being dead?


Once again, you are affirming that your plan would definitively survive contact with the enemy.

No. Your claim, not mine. My claim is that there is no perfect plan. The more people who know what to do when the plan goes sideways, the better your chance of recovery.


How about:

-The gods answer, people don't believe the answer. Knowledge withers on the vine.

-The gods answer, people believe the answer, but that make a large quantity of them lose their faith in the gods. The gods grow weaker from the lack of faith, meaning their quiddities weakens, and a few generations down the road the Snarl can break through the prison again. Knowledge destroys the prison.

-The gods give different answers, possibly smiting the one who ask for daring to do it. Different religions fight and debate about which answer is true. Knowledge remains uncertain.

-The gods refuse to answer, because the ones who want to tell the mortals are outnumbered by those who don't want to tell the mortals and they held up a vote to decide how to handle the situation. Knowledge is not acquired.

-The gods hold up a vote to decide how to handle the situation, and the number of gods who think the world shouldn't be allowed to continue now that so many mortals know about the Snarl is bigger than the number of gods who are fine with that new status quo, so the gods destroy the world. Knowledge results in judgement day.

All those are very real possibilities you're refusing to acknowledge because you think there is one right way to do things and not only that all the other ways are wrong, but that no one will do those wrong ways if they knew the one right way.

You are right. The gods might not cooperate. Which leaves us no worse off than where we are now.

Please do not take my not doing point-to-point replies to every post as some sort of refusal to acknowledge, because I don't have enough time in the day to reply, especially to these wall-o-text posts. And generally, I don't post a rebuttal to points with which I agree. So, assume any point I don't try to rebut is one with which I agree, and you will be wrong about me less often.


No, according to Loki it takes 15 minutes for the Snarl to breaks out once the last Gate is gone.

And his implication in that observation, based on the prior discussion, is that that is long enough to pull the plug. So, no. This does not refute my point. Try again.


Evil guy trying to harness the gate's power to do evil things is likely to lead to conflict that might destroy the gate, even if he's not risking the fate of the world, which I am not convinced he wouldn't be

The gates so far have been defended with the understanding that "destroy it" is a better plan than allowing it to fall into enemy hands, which makes me think using the gates to harness the power of the Snarl is possible

And here we are, ready to harness the gate to control The Snarl, or destroy the last gate to deny it to the enemy.


You've mentioned the existence of these other Epic Characters a few times. But we have not seen any evidence of epic characters outside of The Scribblers and Xykon. And there have been events that should have called Epic level character's attention. The fall of a major capital city to an epic level lich is the sort of thing that is just begging Good Epic characters to intervene, if they exist. If there were any Epic Level clerics or other divine people, you would think they would have been at least mentioned at the godsmoot. It's impossible to prove that there are not any Epic level characters in the world, but its impossible to prove the absence of just about anything. If you have any evidence that even implies the existence of other Epic characters, i would love to see it.

The Giant has repeatedly said he is not going to have someone else show up to save the day.

That is a far cry from saying "no other epic characters exist." We do know of at least three other epics in OotSworld: Vaarsivius's splice-buddies. Why are we so quick to exclude the possibility of more?


Sure; here is an example for you. Something else someone can do with the gates.



Is that a good enough answer to that question for you?

That was an obvious joke. It was even kind of funny. If you took it seriously, it just became very funny. If you expect me to take it seriously, it just became hilarious.

[Unoriginal]

Excuse me, but that was not a dismissal. That was an honest answer. Manipulating reality is what magic does. Epic magic is an obvious example.

Well thank you for confirming you honestly don't know what the Threads of Reality are.


EDIT:

I apologize, I made a mistake. What I'm referring to is called the Threads of Creation (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1291.html) in-comic.

[brian 333]

Well thank you for confirming you honestly don't know what the Threads of Reality are.


EDIT:

I apologize, I made a mistake. What I'm referring to is called the Threads of Creation (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1291.html) in-comic.

I think you have that backwards. You don't need magic in the outer planes where thoughts manifest. You only need magic where real things exist, and real things are made of the Threads. Magic has no other purpose but to manipulate real things, therefore, magic manipulates the threads.

[Errorname]

I think you have that backwards. You don't need magic in the outer planes where thoughts manifest. You only need magic where real things exist, and real things are made of the Threads. Magic has no other purpose but to manipulate real things, therefore, magic manipulates the threads.

I do think there's probably a pretty serious difference between normal manipulation of the threads of creation, and the exposed and unraveling threads seen in the final dungeon.

[Timy]

I do think there's probably a pretty serious difference between normal manipulation of the threads of creation, and the exposed and unraveling threads seen in the final dungeon.

I guess you mean the Final Dungeon ?

[Precure]

As they say, the best defense is a good offense, so, the perfect defense must comes with the perfect offense. Like an army of crusaders that destroy anyone deemed as a threat. But an army like that has to be lawful evil due to nature of its deeds.

[Metastachydium]

Excessively, uselessly narrow tautology accepted. Loki did not use the phrase "If the goblin attempts his ritual, we, all the gods, do so pre-emptively agree to reap the world" and then get a yes vote on panel.

Well, I'm terribly sorry, I seem not to have the supernal clarity neccessary to see a vote with no takebacks that was always going to be very close (this much is clear to Hel, even, as per the Word of the Giant) despite the urgency of the matter and conclude that the vote is a joke and can be scrapped at a moment's notice with everyone suddenly reaching a broad consensus.

[KorvinStarmast]

Well, I'm terribly sorry, I seem not to have the supernal clarity neccessary to see a vote with no takebacks that was always going to be very close (this much is clear to Hel, even, as per the Word of the Giant) despite the urgency of the matter and conclude that the vote is a joke and can be scrapped at a moment's notice with everyone suddenly reaching a broad consensus. You have won this week's Run On Sentence Award. Please see the ushers for which prize you'd like to choose.
:smallbiggrin:

[Peelee]

You have won this week's Run On Sentence Award. Please see the ushers for which prize you'd like to choose.
:smallbiggrin:

That was not a run-on sentence.

[brian 333]

Well, I'm terribly sorry, I seem not to have the supernal clarity neccessary to see a vote with no takebacks that was always going to be very close (this much is clear to Hel, even, as per the Word of the Giant) despite the urgency of the matter and conclude that the vote is a joke and can be scrapped at a moment's notice with everyone suddenly reaching a broad consensus.

When someone shows up at the poker table and waves a gun in everyone's face, it is time to take the money and run.

By long precedent, the gods appear to have "cash in the souls" as their default option when The Snarl breaks free of its prison. No Godsmoot needed.

And I could be wrong, that is just how I see it.

[Metastachydium]

You have won this week's Run On Sentence Award. Please see the ushers for which prize you'd like to choose.
:smallbiggrin:

…
Are the ushers all Vampires?


That was not a run-on sentence.

Also, this. The prize feels more and more like a TRAP!


And I could be wrong, that is just how I see it.

Which is entirely fine as far as I'm concerned. I respect that opinion and your having it, and made sure to stress that much from the get-go. I merely
1. see it differently; and
2. kinda take issue with the notion that this makes my position hair-splittingly obtuse or whatever, somehow.

[Provengreil]

Well, I'm terribly sorry, I seem not to have the supernal clarity neccessary to see a vote with no takebacks that was always going to be very close (this much is clear to Hel, even, as per the Word of the Giant) despite the urgency of the matter and conclude that the vote is a joke and can be scrapped at a moment's notice with everyone suddenly reaching a broad consensus.

Uh huh. Here's the thing: this isn't the geekery thread. We don't need the comic to explicitly say someone has charisma 18 to list it as charisma 18 here.

As I stated before, Durkon agrees with my conclusion. (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1207.html)

Belkar, Roy, and Haley agree with my conclusion, and Serini agreed with almost no resistance. (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1207.html)

That's 5 characters, 4 of which are main characters, 2 of which are explicitly stated to have high wisdom, and 2 others highly skilled in manipulation, which involves figuring out the priorities of those involved.

As for Redcloak's plan itself and its consequences, Thor has explicitly worked it out (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1142.html)(And sure, he said "he "thinks", but he'll act as though it's true in that case, so it's the same as though he knows), plus Loki specifically recognizes this as a chance to stop the snarl and, expicitly, while telling the truth in the only way and time feasible, said he'd swap sides immediately if the chance disappeared. (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1177.html) And that one vote changes everything even if no one else swaps.

Notably, the only character to reject this conclusion is Redcloak himself, who is called out by yet another high(ish) wisdom character (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1262.html) on his impending inability to accept the truth in favor of what he previously believed.

So yes. Have your little "he never said the exact phrase" tautology, and its utter failure to contribute to any ongoing conversation. {scrubbed}. Meanwhile, the rest of us will take the clearly foreshadowed conclusion that the gods can and will reap the world immediately upon Redcloak securing a gate and attempting his ritual and work from there.


EDIT: And, uh, no. That was not a run on sentence. Just a long one.

[Metastachydium]

Uh huh. Here's the thing: this isn't the geekery thread. We don't need the comic to explicitly say someone has charisma 18 to list it as charisma 18 here.

As I stated before, Durkon agrees with my conclusion. (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1207.html)

The same Durkon who's a Cleric and still needs a reminder from Greg about the domain agreement, knew jack **** about quiddity or the Astral Plane, cannot undersdtand Thor doesn't hate trees even after explained, had gaping holes in his understanding of divine dietary needs until explained twice in painstaking detail… Shall I go on?


Belkar, Roy, and Haley agree with my conclusion, and Serini agreed with almost no resistance. (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1207.html)

Oh, wow, Roy (who doesn't like gods, knows very little about their internal politicking and much less about theology) trusts his best friend and only source on the matter and three increasingly Chaotic people distrust authority figures and assume a worst case scenario! How could I not see this?!


That's 5 characters, 4 of which are main characters, 2 of which are explicitly stated to have high wisdom

It's also a goo thing they've never been wrong about anything before and being a Main Character protects them from such mishaps! Like how Durkon saw straight through Malack, and Roy through Greg, for only a couple examples! Or how Serini understood her own teammate Soon so perfectly! How could I not see this?!


As for the plan itself and its consequences, Thor has explicitly worked it out (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1142.html)(And sure, he said "he "thinks", but he'll act as though it's true in that case, so it's the same as though he knows),

So? He'll act on what he thinks is the case. Cool. Which changes… Nothing, since he's the one guy who'll likely try and give a chance to the Team no matter what and the rest of that "we" doesn't seem to vote strictly along.


plus Loki specifically recognizes this as a chance to stop the snarl and, expicitly, while telling the truth in the only way and time feasible, said he'd swap sides immediately if the chance disappeared. (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1177.html) And that one vote changes everything even if no one else swaps.

He can't do it with a vote, since guess what? No takebacks. And switching side in the given context sounds a lot more like switching sides over to his daughter. Remember her? They are talking before her door on why Loki supports Thor instead of her.

Which can just as well mean (and that is more likely, in fact) trying to help her cheat which she was doing anyway and which will either work or won't. Congrats on demonstrating nothing, buddy.



So yes. Have your little "he never said the exact phrase" tautology, and its utter failure to contribute to any ongoing conversation. You're like a child in a corner crying that he has to be recognized that he's not entirely wrong: I have given you this recognition. Meanwhile, the rest of us will take the clearly foreshadowed conclusion that the gods can and will reap the world immediately upon Redcloak securing a gate and attempting his ritual and work from there.

And I won't dignify this crap with an answer, sorry.

[Tubercular Ox]

Rich is writing the gods like people. I expect compliance with what was agreed before to be more than zero but less than one. And if nothing prevents the gods from destroying the planet on cue, they'll find something else to disagree on before we reach that point.

The goal is conflict.

[gbaji]

By long precedent, the gods appear to have "cash in the souls" as their default option when The Snarl breaks free of its prison. No Godsmoot needed.

I tend to agree. While not explicitly stated, it's reasonable to assume, given the number of worlds they have rebuilt, and Thor's comments about how they've gotten quite good at saving mortal souls whenever the snarl breaks free that "we all agree to immediately destroy the world if the snarl breaks free" is almost certainly a long standing agreement they have, so there would be no need to re-vote on that which has already been agreed upon.

The godmoot was about whether to do so before the snarl breaks free.



Uh huh. Here's the thing: this isn't the geekery thread. We don't need the comic to explicitly say someone has charisma 18 to list it as charisma 18 here.

As I stated before, Durkon agrees with my conclusion. (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1207.html)

Correct. But that's the vote that is currently being held up. If we assume that the gods must vote and agree to destroy the world for any condition other than "the snarl breaks free", then this is the vote to do that, and that vote is currently tied, and waiting for some dwarven carpentry to finish before it can be completed.

Which means, until they can finish the vote, if TE completes their plan the gods will not destroy the world. They will only (presumably) do so if the snarl is released. But The Plan doesn't do that, so they can't destroy the world.


Belkar, Roy, and Haley agree with my conclusion, and Serini agreed with almost no resistance. (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1207.html)

Assuming you meant to link to this strip (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1255.html) (or the one after it). Again, this is the party's perception and statements to Serini. I suspect there's a fair amount of leeway in their statements, given that they are actively trying to convince Sereni to help them. They need her to believe that "let TE win" isn't a viable option, so they tell her that. I would not take their statements here as absolute fact about what the gods will or will not actually do if that is the case.

At the end of the day, I doubt very much that at any point in this comic TE will complete their ritual anyway. So not necessarily relevant for the comic itself, but certainly so for hypothetical cases (like we're discussing here).

And as for hypotheticals, it does show us that "destroy the world if someone takes control of a gate in a way that might threaten us" is not remotely a definite thing that the gods would do. It's a tie vote right now. If we assume that the gods do know what TDO's plan is (Thor seems to know, and a few of the comments by various deities at the godmoot suggest they know it too), then that's a tie vote despite having a very very direct threat to themselves. If some powerful evil wizard were to just be using a gate for the same kind of thing that Xykon think's the ritual is about? I doubt very much that the gods would do a darn thing about that.

So things like "tap into it for a super magic source" is not going to result in world destruction by the gods. "Figure out how to selectively release the snarls tendril thingies to a targeted point on the PMP" would also not cause this. And that's just two uses right off the top of my head. Given we have a tie vote on what is arguably the absolute most likely thing someone could do with a gate to get the gods to destroy the world kinda strongly suggests that anything short of that will *not* result in the gods doing so.

Which leaves us back at "every wanna be bbeg will be gunning for control of a gate" as the likely result if the knowledge about them were widely spread.

[Provengreil]

-snip-

And you didn't even notice that I linked to the wrong strip in one of my links. You aren't even trying. So to quote Josiah Bartlet: "Just be wrong. Just stand there in your wrongness and be wrong and get used to it."

[gbaji]

And you didn't even notice that I linked to the wrong strip in one of my links. You aren't even trying. So to quote Josiah Bartlet: "Just be wrong. Just stand there in your wrongness and be wrong and get used to it."

So, you referrenced a conversation in the comic, but linked to the wrong strip. The person responding to you responded to the correct strip you meant to link to, and not the one you accidentally linked to instead, but that makes their response... wrong somehow?

It was pretty obvious in context exactly which conversation you were referring to, and it didn't happen that long ago in the comic, so I don't think someone merely responding based on their own memory of the event's being referrenced is inherently wrong at all. Maybe just take their response to what you were talking about at face value instead of playing a really really strange "gotcha" game.

[Provengreil]

So, you referrenced a conversation in the comic, but linked to the wrong strip. The person responding to you responded to the correct strip you meant to link to, and not the one you accidentally linked to instead, but that makes their response... wrong somehow?

It was pretty obvious in context exactly which conversation you were referring to, and it didn't happen that long ago in the comic, so I don't think someone merely responding based on their own memory of the event's being referrenced is inherently wrong at all. Maybe just take their response to what you were talking about at face value instead of playing a really really strange "gotcha" game.
For one thing, it shows that they aren't actually checking the sources.

But more to the point, taking their response at face value means their entire..."argument"....boils down to them saying "you don't know that," in the face of rather significant evidence towards me, yes, knowing that, while making no contrary positive statements to back themself up. If it's not clear, this kind of thing is a MASSIVE pet peeve of mine.

Someone wants to say my, or anyone's really, interpretation of something not stated in exacting detail is wrong? Cool, I'll listen. Heck, one page ago I admitted my own perception of the Sapphire Guard raid on Redcloak's village was wrong. This is, after all, a discussion board for exactly such topics. But they need to bring their own interpretation or sit down. And what did they say about their own argument?



All in all, I'm not saying you're wrong. All I'm saying is I'm not wrong either.

If that's all you're saying, you've got nothing to say.

EDIT: spelling

[Peelee]

The Mod on the Silver Mountain: Thread re-opened. Let's tone down the hostility, please.

[brian 333]

Are the ushers all Vampires

They are not all vampires. Some of them have more than one template.


Also, this. The prize feels more and more like a TRAP!

It is a trap (its a trap meme) but you don't have to trigger it.

But you know you want to...


…Which is entirely fine as far as I'm concerned. I respect that opinion and your having it, and made sure to stress that much from the get-go. I merely
1. see it differently; and
2. kinda take issue with the notion that this makes my position hair-splittingly obtuse or whatever, somehow.

1. You are entitled to your opinion, and I acknowledge that yours may be more correct than mine. I do not own the one, infallible truth to which you must adhere. And even if I am right, I have no dogmatic authority to impose my rightness upon you.

2. Hair-splittingly obtuse opinions are fun. I wish more posters would post them, because bandwagon bloviators are generally dull and seldom say anything worthy of consideration. But your opinion, no matter if I agree with it or not, is valued because I can rely upon it being an honest one.

(There are several posters on this forum with whom I generally end up on the opposite side of in a debate, whose insights I greatly value even as I disagree with them.)

C) If ever I have said anything that causes you (or anyone else) to feel disrespected in any way, I apologize. It is never my intent to be disrespectful. If in the future I do so please let me know so that I can correct my behavior.

Moving on: I really like the LE Army idea. It sounds like a perfect setup. Wrap them up in a set of unbreakable rules, complex rituals, and fanaticism.

What could go wrong?

[Metastachydium]

And you didn't even notice that I linked to the wrong strip in one of my links. You aren't even trying. So to quote Josiah Bartlet: "Just be wrong. Just stand there in your wrongness and be wrong and get used to it."

For one thing, it shows that they aren't actually checking the sources.

As gbaji helpfully pointed out while I was away (thank you, by the by), if you expect me to see you reference a recent strip I recognise with ease and link another one, clearly by accident and go "HA-HA, YOU LINKED THE WRONG STRIP XDLOL, YOUR POST DOESN'T MATTER ANYMORE", instead of actually reacting to what you said, I'll continue to disappoint. I would feel very childish if I dod so. And yes, the strip in question is about two characters extremely distrustful of authority using the extreme distrust towards authority of a third to convince her the worst case scenario is a realistic scenario, so ultimately this little detour was just you adding another cringe ad florem insult irrelevant to the discussion at hand to the previous string.


But more to the point, taking their response at face value means their entire..."argument"....boils down to them saying "you don't know that," in the face of rather significant evidence towards me, yes, knowing that, while making no contrary positive statements to back themself up. If it's not clear, this kind of thing is a MASSIVE pet peeve of mine.


Your "significant evidence" is a couple characters who have been explicitly wrong about the whole situation at least three or four times so far (Dorukan's Gate exploding was just a stupid trap destroying some sweet loot; Xykon is trying to destroy the world using the Gates; Team Evil wants to use the Gates to rule the world; maybe the Snarl doesn't even exist after all…) and might stil be wrong about it, alongside the gods themselves (the whole planet in the Rift issue)… Stated an opinion based on something only two of them have at least some first hand pointers on. And then you added "everyone else agrees with me because I'm right" (a highly dubious statement) and rant on regarding "the clearly foreshadowed conclusion that the gods can and will reap the world immediately upon Redcloak securing a gate and attempting his ritual and work from there" even though due to Elan's prophecy, that is the one thing we'll be absolutely certain we'll never ever see demonstrated, regardless of what happens or doesn't happen in Redcloak's diseased little fallacious mind.

Meanwhile, to stick with your one alleged master argument that isn't just trying to offend me, you handily ignore the person with probably the highest WIS score in the scene you referenced, i.e. Lien dismissing Belkar/Haley/Serini's conclusion, and being right so far as we know because the Southern Pantheon did vote NO on Apocalypse Special.


Someone wants to say my, or anyone's really, interpretation of something not stated in exacting detail is wrong? Cool, I'll listen. Heck, one page ago I admitted my own perception of the Sapphire Guard raid on Redcloak's village was wrong. This is, after all, a discussion board for exactly such topics. But they need to bring their own interpretation or sit down. And what did they say about their own argument?

Once more, I argued based on
–the exact wording of Loki; and
–that as gbaji also points out, there is a vote on the subject which is a quite silly thing to have if they don't need one since they "can and will just reap the world at a moment's notice whenever without a vote", especially since it's not a time constraint thing – unless you wish top argue Loki is wrong when he explicitly says they will have time to perform Apocalypse Special even if all Gates break down and the Snarl is fifteen minutes away from getting loose.

So far as I could tell, you basically argued that you're right (and therefore I'm wrong, I should just go deal with it) and the protagonists are right because they are the protagonists or whatever (which as I said before and elaborated upon in this very post) is demonstrably false. That makes two non-arguments, neither of which warrants that high herbivore you rode in on.

EDIT:


It is a trap (its a trap meme) but you don't have to trigger it.

But you know you want to...

Case in point, I tried, repeatedly, to click on the VERY SUSPICIOUS LINK there.


2. Hair-splittingly obtuse opinions are fun. I wish more posters would post them, because bandwagon bloviators are generally dull and seldom say anything worthy of consideration. But your opinion, no matter if I agree with it or not, is valued because I can rely upon it being an honest one.

(There are several posters on this forum with whom I generally end up on the opposite side of in a debate, whose insights I greatly value even as I disagree with them.)

Heh. That can be all too true. I used to mentally call dancrillis one of the best fringe theorists of our time, for instance. And we all have our moments, if only we try!


C) If ever I have said anything that causes you (or anyone else) to feel disrespected in any way, I apologize. It is never my intent to be disrespectful. If in the future I do so please let me know so that I can correct my behavior.

No, no, you're a cool dude saying cool things and we're cool!


Moving on: I really like the LE Army idea. It sounds like a perfect setup. Wrap them up in a set of unbreakable rules, complex rituals, and fanaticism.

What could go wrong?

NOTHING! THERE IS ONLY ONE RIGHT WAY! EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!

[gbaji]

Ok. Moving on. I'll just add onto my earlier opinion on the whole issue of the Order saying that TE getting control of the gate means that the gods will pull the plug on the world:

That scene could indicate that the Order actually believes that this is true. It could indicate that they are fudging things a bit to persuade Serini to help them. Heck. They're not even entirely lying here, since technically that was (to some degree anyway) exactly what the gods were voting on. But regardless of what the Order actually believes, the reality is that the gods will not destroy the world merely because of the threat of TE to the gates, unless and until they reconvene and vote to do so.

Two additional points on that as well:

1. The vote may not be "yes". Hel was manipulating the dwarven counciil to vote yes, but the Order stopped them. Whether the council will vote yes or no, once reconvened, and no longer being dominated by vampires, is unknown.

2. The vote itself is not at all tied to "If TE gets control of the gate". If the vote is "yes", the world is destroyed, regardless of what TE or the Order do. If the vote is "no", they do not destroy the world. Period. Which presumably puts us back to the default of "the gods will only destroy the world if the snarl is released". That condition is not met if TE gains control of the gate though, which makes what the Order told Serini a false statement, pretty much no matter how we read it.


As far as we know, the council of dwarves do not have any direct knowledge about what is going on at the final gate. So however they do decide to vote, it presumably wont be a result of the current condition of the final gate, and whether or not TE or the Order has won. I mean, I suppose we could speculate that since it will almost certainly take longer to build a new table than it'll take to resolve the conflict at the gate, and if we assume the Order survives, they could go back to Firmament and tell the council what has happened, and that could be the deciding factor in their vote. Maybe. But barring that happening, the vote will be whatever it will be, based on whatever their original non-dominated opinions were.


I suppose, just for completenesses sake, we could speculate that there is already some previous vote by the gods that says "If TE gains control of a gate, and begins the ritual to hand control of its position to TDO" we destroy the world". That would certainly make both Durkon and Roy's statements true ones. But there's no actual evidence in the comic to support this assumption. And there's a fair bit that opposes it. Tyr's statement in particular suggests strongly that the reason they are voting to destroy the world now is directly out of concern about TE completing the ritual:

"I will see this world torn to shreds before I will allow anyone to gain a strategic advantage over us"

It's hard to read that as anything other than Tyr knowing about "The Plan", and voting to destroy the world before it can come to fruition. But if that's the case, then there would be no reason to have this vote at all, if they already had an agreement to destroy the world if TE gained control of a gate and began the ritual. Thus, we can conclude that there is no current agreement in place to do this, and that this is what the vote was about in the first place.

Which... after said long windy path, leads us to the conclusion that Roy and the rest of the Order's statements to Serini were not true. Whether they were lying, or just misunderstood what the gods were doing is unknown. But we can reasonably assume that there is no actual triggered "destruction of the world if TE wins" present.

[Errorname]

That scene could indicate that the Order actually believes that this is true. It could indicate that they are fudging things a bit to persuade Serini to help them. Heck. They're not even entirely lying here, since technically that was (to some degree anyway) exactly what the gods were voting on. But regardless of what the Order actually believes, the reality is that the gods will not destroy the world merely because of the threat of TE to the gates, unless and until they reconvene and vote to do so.

I do think there's a possibility that the failure to resolve the Godsmoot might tie the hands of the gods and prevent them from acting to unmake the world.

I do not think there is enough evidence to speak this confidently about that. All our characters seem to believe that the stakes are 'if we fail, gods kill everyone' and what we've heard from the gods post-indefinite stalemate has no concern that the failure to resolve the godsmoot might prevent them from taking future action.

[gbaji]

I do think there's a possibility that the failure to resolve the Godsmoot might tie the hands of the gods and prevent them from acting to unmake the world.

I do not think there is enough evidence to speak this confidently about that. All our characters seem to believe that the stakes are 'if we fail, gods kill everyone' and what we've heard from the gods post-indefinite stalemate has no concern that the failure to resolve the godsmoot might prevent them from taking future action.

Right (assuming I'm reading that last sentence correctly). From the Order's perspective, them "winning" is the only safe path forward. There's no way to know what the gods might do in the future if they fail. Even setting aside what may happen if TE gets ahold of a gate and performs the ritual on it, it's likely that the world will be destroyed at some point (probably shortly) after that anyway. Or other horrible things will happen. Too many variables to be sure.

But the one path that does result in "world saved and we all go back to living our lives" is if the Order defeats TE, sequres the final gate, and removes the threat(s) that the gods are reacting to in the first place. If they can also do the whole "four quiddity seal" thing as well, that's even better. But one kinda depends on achieving the other as well. Maybe.

I fully expect and predict that things will not go down that way at all, but at least from the Order's point of view as of this moment, that is their best plan for saving the world. Which is why I said earlier that regardless of whether their statements to Sereni are 100% accurate, it doesn't matter. They are correct enough that the simple version of "TE gets control of the gate == worlds destruction" is a fair way to put things.

Where this is relevant to the thread topic is that we should not take those statements in this particular context and situation, as evidence that in a hypothetical alternative timeline, where the Scribblers told the entire world about the snarl, rifts, and gates, that the idea that "the gods will destroy the world if any evil person gets their hands on one and uses it for evil purposes" is at all an accurate assumption to make. In this world, where the "evil purposes" at hand are a ritual to allow an evil god to move the gate to an outer plane and threaten the gods themselves with release of the snarl there, the gods are merely tied on the decision to destroy the world in order to prevent that.

It's reasonable to assume that in this alternative hypothetical scenario, if there were other evil people, doing other evil things, but that didn't actually threaten to release the snarl entirely, nor to release it partially on an outer plane, that the gods would very very likely not do anything about that at all. As long as whatever they use the gates for only affects other mortals on the prime material plane, I suspect the gods response would not be to destroy the world, but jockey to get their own followers hands on gates, and engage in similar research of ways to use them against the evil folks. That's not to say that may not escalate to a point where world destruction occurs, but it would not be the kind of "MAD" deterrent that it's being assumed to be. It really depends on what said evil folks come up with (and what's actually possible to use them for, which we don't actually know).

[Provengreil]

I do think there's a possibility that the failure to resolve the Godsmoot might tie the hands of the gods and prevent them from acting to unmake the world.

I do not think there is enough evidence to speak this confidently about that. All our characters seem to believe that the stakes are 'if we fail, gods kill everyone' and what we've heard from the gods post-indefinite stalemate has no concern that the failure to resolve the godsmoot might prevent them from taking future action.

I think a much more likely scenario is that the IFCC's artifact and the planet within the rift create a set of circumstances the gods have no preplanned agreement for, and therefore they can't safely act without creating other snarls.

[KorvinStarmast]

I think a much more likely scenario is that the IFCC's artifact and the planet within the rift create a set of circumstances the gods have no preplanned agreement for, Yes, provisionally.
The gods have made and lost millions of worlds before this one. They've seen a lot of variations on how the world can be lost, but, as with "the new color in the crayon box" a new wrinkle such as the one you propose is certainly possible.

and therefore they can't safely act without creating other snarls.
Maybe. I think that they have learned their lesson by now, a few million worlds later.

[Provengreil]

Yes, provisionally.
The gods have made and lost millions of worlds before this one. They've seen a lot of variations on how the world can be lost, but, as with "the new color in the crayon box" a new wrinkle such as the one you propose is certainly possible.

Maybe. I think that they have learned their lesson by now, a few million worlds later.

The existence of the godsmoot suggests otherwise. It's not so much that they don't know how to work together, it's just that they need to work in concert when they do, and for that they need a plan.

You ever see ceremonial military formations doing their thing? That level of unity isn't just basic teamwork, every one of those people knows every order that's gonna happen that day when they wake up. My image of the gods working with the creation and reaping of the material world involves a similar level of planning and concert.

[Tubercular Ox]

Maybe. I think that they have learned their lesson by now, a few million worlds later.

But they're facing an existential threat right now (sorry not sorry). There's never been a fifth quiddity before, there's never been a quiddity as willing to destroy the other quiddities, and there hasn't been a quiddity with no personal experience with the Snarl since the Snarl was first made known. If any of them have a self preservation instinct they may find themselves doing things they promised they never would when circumstances were calmer.

One could argue that the fact that no one has ever been able to threaten them in the way The Dark One is right now means they have no practice responding to those threats in a controlled manner. See also: Tyr.

Also, please remember that we do not have to correctly predict the point of conflict in order to predict conflict. If the gods are united behind destroying the world as soon as the last gate is destroyed, then they will be conflicted over destroying the world as soon as Team Evil takes possession of the gate. But if instead they are united in destroying the world as soon as Team Evil takes possession of the gate, then they will be conflicted about destroying it when Team Evil enters the final dungeon.

It works in the opposite direction, too, I'm just not as good as guessing what milestones there will be after when the gods hypothetically decide to postpone destroying the world because of new developments.

Given that they have forbidden themselves from acting based on the word of a handful of dwarves, there is no practical way for them to make progress towards a consensus for action except someone has the idea first and is put in the position of having to sell it to others.

There will be conflict before there will be consensus.

[Errorname]

But they're facing an existential threat right now (sorry not sorry). There's never been a fifth quiddity before, there's never been a quiddity as willing to destroy the other quiddities, and there hasn't been a quiddity with no personal experience with the Snarl since the Snarl was first made known. If any of them have a self preservation instinct they may find themselves doing things they promised they never would when circumstances were calmer.

We know for a fact that the opportunity presented by the Dark One is the thing that brought Loki over to the "let's not kill them all yet" side, and I doubt he was the only one

[Jay R]

Getting back to the original topic.

I'm not sure it would work, but I think the OP came up with a reasonable, well-thought-out plan that (possibly) could have prevented the entire story of a comic that currently supports Rich and his family.

[Unoriginal]

I'm not sure it would work, but I think the OP came up with a reasonable, well-thought-out plan

There was nothing reasonable or well-thought-out about that plan.

Again, the only way it'd work was if the OotS world was solely populated by emotionless lawful neutral exemplars devoided of ambition and curiosity. And if that was the case you can save yourself the zipper gate and just invest in "do not touch" signs.

[KorvinStarmast]

You ever see ceremonial military formations doing their thing? That level of unity isn't just basic teamwork, every one of those people knows every order that's gonna happen that day when they wake up. My image of the gods working with the creation and reaping of the material world involves a similar level of planning and concert. Roughly the exact opposite of how the OotS gods actually create a world ... (I have done silent drill. Yes, it's a whole different level of teamwork than even competitive platoon level drill (with bayonets) was, and that took the kind of effort your point towards).

There's never been a fifth quiddity before, there's never been a quiddity as willing to destroy the other quiddities But there's been a snarl that has been desiring and able to.

, and there hasn't been a quiddity with no personal experience with the Snarl since the Snarl was first made known.
Given that TDO isn't in any of the pantheons, that hardly matters.

If any of them have a self preservation instinct they may find themselves doing things they promised they never would when circumstances were calmer. They already know how to preserve themselves; destroy the world, make a new one to trap the snarl in.


One could argue that the fact that no one has ever been able to threaten them in the way The Dark One is right now means they have no practice responding to those threats in a controlled manner. Disagree. The Snarl's surprise attack that wiped out the Eastern Pantheon was orders of magnitude more dire than this thing that they see coming.


Also, please remember that we do not have to correctly predict the point of conflict in order to predict conflict. If the gods are united behind destroying the world as soon as the last gate is destroyed, then they will be conflicted over destroying the world as soon as Team Evil takes possession of the gate. But if instead they are united in destroying the world as soon as Team Evil takes possession of the gate, then they will be conflicted about destroying it when Team Evil enters the final dungeon. I don't see the point of that paragraph. The vote had to do with preemptive destruction, not "the balloon just went up, gotta do it again" destruction.

There will be conflict before there will be consensus. There already has been, hence the whole story and in particular Book 6.

We know for a fact that the opportunity presented by the Dark One is the thing that brought Loki over to the "let's not kill them all yet" side, and I doubt he was the only one Yep.

I'm not sure it would work, but I think the OP came up with a reasonable, well-thought-out plan that (possibly) could have prevented the entire story of a comic that currently supports Rich and his family. If only Isildur would have thrown that ring into the crack of doom when he had the chance, we'd have been spared the drudgery of LotR., and perhaps been spared the very existence of hobbits. :smallyuk:

[Unoriginal]

If only Isildur would have thrown that ring into the crack of doom when he had the chance, we'd have been spared the drudgery of LotR.

Worth noting that all the "Isildur could have thrown the One Ring in the volcano but didn't have the willpower to do it" stuff was invented for the movie. As was the "Isildur defeated Sauron" stuff.

In the book, Sauron fights Gil-Galad and Elendil, fists vs spear and sword, and they kill each other. Then Isildur cuts off the finger of Sauron's corpse to loot the One Ring, with no one in the Last Alliance knowing what it was or what it did.

[Errorname]

There was nothing reasonable or well-thought-out about that plan.

I think it has correctly identified a weakness of the original strategy, the inability of the scribbler's to proactively respond to attacks on the other gates. I think it overcorrects into full disclosure and sacrifices some very useful layers of defense in the process, concealing the existence and location of the gates from bad actors is a valuable defensive asset.

It also assumes a political situation where the threat of the Snarl will prevent conflict over the gates and where even villainous political actors would be trusted to not mess with the pillars holding up reality, neither of which are bets I'd want to make. Girard's Gate is located in the center of the most contested territory on the planet with a ton of evil warlords all jockeying for any advantage that might let them consolidate power over the region.

[Unoriginal]

I think it has correctly identified a weakness of the original strategy, the inability of the scribbler's to proactively respond to attacks on the other gates.

I mean, they weren't unable to do it, they deliberately chose to not set up the defense like that.



I think it overcorrects into full disclosure and sacrifices some very useful layers of defense in the process, concealing the existence and location of the gates from bad actors is a valuable defensive asset.

It also assumes a political situation where the threat of the Snarl will prevent conflict over the gates and where even villainous political actors would be trusted to not mess with the pillars holding up reality, neither of which are bets I'd want to make. Girard's Gate is located in the center of the most contested territory on the planet with a ton of evil warlords all jockeying for any advantage that might let them consolidate power over the region.

Accurate.

It also assume that Redcloak's lies to Xykon are the only reason why he or anyone like him would gun for the Gates.

[Tubercular Ox]

But there's been a snarl that has been desiring and able to.

Given that TDO isn't in any of the pantheons, that hardly matters.
They already know how to preserve themselves; destroy the world, make a new one to trap the snarl in.

Disagree. The Snarl's surprise attack that wiped out the Eastern Pantheon was orders of magnitude more dire than this thing that they see coming.
I don't see the point of that paragraph. The vote had to do with preemptive destruction, not "the balloon just went up, gotta do it again" destruction.
There already has been, hence the whole story and in particular Book 6.

We need to start over. Your answers seem a little random compared to what I was trying to say. It's probably my fault.

How about a different angle? Loki, God of Flames and Chaos, is allied with his nemesis and against the safety of his own family. He's already threatened to make Thor responsible for anything that happens to his daughter because of his own decisions. How do you think Rich is going to write the transition from that to the professional gambler who's going to fold on his family and on imprisoning the Snarl forever because the stakes weren't high enough?

[brian 333]

Getting back to the original topic.

I'm not sure it would work, but I think the OP came up with a reasonable, well-thought-out plan that (possibly) could have prevented the entire story of a comic that currently supports Rich and his family.

I am confident that The Author would still be a successful storyteller no matter how the gates are defended. Perhaps TOotS would have a different mission, or perhaps we would be reading The Company of the Dustbunnies, but I am certain it would be as fascinating and as entertaining as the current story.


There was nothing reasonable or well-thought-out about that plan.

Again, the only way it'd work was if the OotS world was solely populated by emotionless lawful neutral exemplars devoided of ambition and curiosity. And if that was the case you can save yourself the zipper gate and just invest in "do not touch" signs.

Opinion noted. I have to point out that the current defenses only held out for two human, three goblin, or one halfling generation. Not really sure how any defense could do worse.


Worth noting that all the "Isildur could have thrown the One Ring in the volcano but didn't have the willpower to do it" stuff was invented for the movie. As was the "Isildur defeated Sauron" stuff.

In the book, Sauron fights Gil-Galad and Elendil, fists vs spear and sword, and they kill each other. Then Isildur cuts off the finger of Sauron's corpse to loot the One Ring, with no one in the Last Alliance knowing what it was or what it did.

Elrond recalls urging Isuldur to throw the ring into the Cracks of Doom in Fellowship of the Ring. It appears that at least one bearer of an Elven Ring knew what it was.

Please note that my concept here has nothing to do with changing The Giant's story. In response to the many, many critiques and rankings of the effectiveness of the various gates, I proposed to 'design a gate' and, like the various gates in the story, subject it to judgement against a standard of 'perfect effectiveness.'

So, seeing that it is easier to pick out flaws than it is to create new theories, I would like to see more 'Perfect Defenses' proposed. Perhaps The Giant will have a similar, or better idea for The Gates 2.0, and the poster can get an 'Internet Told Ya So' badge.

[Jay R]

I am confident that The Author would still be a successful storyteller no matter how the gates are defended. Perhaps TOotS would have a different mission, or perhaps we would be reading The Company of the Dustbunnies, but I am certain it would be as fascinating and as entertaining as the current story.

And people would be trying to come up with ways to prevent that story, too.

The crucial observation remains: the author is not looking for a clever way to prevent his story from occurring.

[brian 333]

And people would be trying to come up with ways to prevent that story, too.

The crucial observation remains: the author is not looking for a clever way to prevent his story from occurring.

Reposted from the post previous to yours:


...Please note that my concept here has nothing to do with changing The Giant's story. In response to the many, many critiques and rankings of the effectiveness of the various gates, I proposed to 'design a gate' and, like the various gates in the story, subject it to judgement against a standard of 'perfect effectiveness.'

The point here is not to "correct" the author, but to have a bit of fun in his playground.

[Errorname]

Opinion noted. I have to point out that the current defenses only held out for two human, three goblin, or one halfling generation. Not really sure how any defense could do worse.

At several points the current defenses were almost good enough to win the day, or manage to buy a considerable amount of time, so it's very easy for me to imagine defensive strategies that perform worse. Not all failures are equal.

[brian 333]

Girard's Gate is located in the center of the most contested territory on the planet with a ton of evil warlords all jockeying for any advantage that might let them consolidate power over the region.

I do not see any advantage to holding a gate, but it does impose liabilities.

What advantage can one achieve holding a gate?

Threaten to destroy the world?
Actually destroy the world?
Some other thing like gaining access to the threads and potentially destroying the world?

I'm not clear on how this can be converted to an advantage if everyone knows what the gate is. It is only the fact that virtually no one knows what they are which allows anyone to control a gate.

The liabilities are apparent. If one takes a gate to threaten destruction, that person becomes a target for everyone.

Imagine a single item, such as a magic genie-lamp, that gives a person unlimited wishes. So long as it is a secret, the owner can get whatever he wants. The moment others know about it, they will do their best to take it for themselves. The more people who know, the more potential murderers and thieves will appear.

Now, the gates cannot grant wishes, and if no one knows what they are, they cannot even credibly be used to make threats. Threats only work when the target believes it to be credible. So, it would seem that everyone knowing would mean everyone could be threatened.

But the genie-lamp analogy demonstrates that everyone who can would do whatever they can to be the one making the threat, and I wonder how many warlords would have to be assassinated for them to get the idea that there is no up-side to gate ownership?

The same applies to those who want to destroy the gate. Anyone whose goal is to kill everyone and everything would be faced with everyone who wants to live opposing him. No up-side there, and no benefit to actually owning or controlling one.

The destruction option seems easiest of all; Roy took out a gate with a pointy stick. So, where is the instruction manual? A copy of Gate Repair For Dummies should be everywhere, so that when some Evil attacker, mindless idiot, self-righteous zealot, or well-meaning would-be hero comes along the damage can be repaired.

As for the unknown third option, whatever comes of that is already covered in the above.

[Jay R]

So, where is the instruction manual? A copy of Gate Repair For Dummies should be everywhere, so that when some Evil attacker, mindless idiot, self-righteous zealot, or well-meaning would-be hero comes along the damage can be repaired.

Unfortunately, the instruction manual starts with, "Destroy the universe and everybody in it. Then start over."

[Errorname]

Even if the only utility of a gate was "pillar holding up reality" and any interaction with it would have only negative consequences (which does not appear to be the case), if their existence was public knowledge people would probably still fight wars over them. Do you think the Elves would trust the Empire of Blood to control the Western Gate?

The only way this plan works is that if everyone cares enough to actively strike against anyone trying to use the gates but don't care enough to get really paranoid about their political rivals controlling the button that ends the world.

[brian 333]

Even if the only utility of a gate was "pillar holding up reality" and any interaction with it would have only negative consequences (which does not appear to be the case), if their existence was public knowledge people would probably still fight wars over them. Do you think the Elves would trust the Empire of Blood to control the Western Gate?

The only way this plan works is that if everyone cares enough to actively strike against anyone trying to use the gates but don't care enough to get really paranoid about their political rivals controlling the button that ends the world.

Which is why nobody would want to control one. It serves no practical purpose, politically, except to get the controller killed.

It certainly would be watched, by everyone with power. And a bunch of people with commoner-level power might set up concessions nearby to profit off of the fools who want to push the button, but otherwise it is a dunsel.

But, we need more Perfect Defenses. Here is an option the gods will hate.

Each gate could be enclosed in its own pocket universe, each of which has nothing capable of sustaining life, and each pocket universe could be hidden where nobody will ever find them.

[gbaji]

What advantage can one achieve holding a gate?

Threaten to destroy the world?
Actually destroy the world?
Some other thing like gaining access to the threads and potentially destroying the world?

The problem is that you keep looping back to this assumption, despite somewhere around a dozen other posters having listed off a number of other possible things that could be done with a gate that have nothing at all to do with destroying the world. And, as has also been previously linked in this thread the author has also said this (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0278.html)


It is possible that someone could learn to harness the power of the Snarl, perhaps releasing it under more controlled circumstances, with the proper magic. Mr. Scruffy further hypothesizes that the gates may enable such a plan by defusing the Snarls energy.

Everything else you have argued falls from the starting premise that it's not possible to use the gates to empower onesself without bringing about the destruction of the world. That is the core basis for your assumption that everyone would fight super hard to prevent anyone from gaining control of any gate. But that starting premise is false. Ergo, the conclusions based on that premise are also false.

As a general rule, by far the best way to keep bad people from using something dangerous is for them to not know it exists in the first place. Yes, this leads to exciting stories when some bbeg does discover such things, and works to get their hands on them. Great. But the alternative is... well... worse.

If I were planning as perfect a defense as possible, I'd do something similar to what a few folks have posted about in the past. Bury the gates in some kind of solid magic/ethereal/plannar blocking stone. Build a solid mountain on top of that. Then put some kind of listening devices buried inside the mountain that warn me if someone is digging into it anywhere near where my solid block of gate burying stone is.

Then yeah. Take a page from Soon, and build a secret organization dedicated to monitoring these things, and responding if any threat appears involving them. Otherwise, said organization is doing other things, and appears to be a normal adventuring guild, paladins guild, wizards guild, whatever, but with a "secret purpose" that none but the more senioir members are even aware of (except if some emergency happens involving a gate, of course). Said organization would also secretly hold the information needed to repair or rebuild (or build from scratch) any gates.

Yup. This goes in the opposite direction than what you proposed. I think it would be massively more successful. Could potentially last centuries, or even forever, since it also contains within it methods to deal with new rifts if they form. I suspect that the Scribblers might have come up with something more like this, had they not had their falling out. Imagine a single global organization, founded by the Scribblers, on the surface an adventuring guild, formed by epic level adventurers to help guide new folks into the trade, but hiding a secret purpose the whole time. It's potentially a very self sustaining model, and would be very successful.

And heck. The story practically writes itself too. Not like that background and setting (or similar) hasn't been used for dozens of other fantasy/magical based plots already. And also utterly believable. Which just increases the likelihood of long term success.

[Provengreil]

Everything else you have argued falls from the starting premise that it's not possible to use the gates to empower onesself without bringing about the destruction of the world. That is the core basis for your assumption that everyone would fight super hard to prevent anyone from gaining control of any gate. But that starting premise is false. Ergo, the conclusions based on that premise are also false.

I'd like to add to this point. Even if it's completely impossible to harness a gate for personal gain, there's going to be no shortage of madmen willing to try. That kind of thing makes people very jumpy. A lot of potentially damaging events can still happen just because someone wants to try, and others won't just let them because the risk is too great if they turn out to be right.



Yup. This goes in the opposite direction than what you proposed. I think it would be massively more successful. Could potentially last centuries, or even forever, since it also contains within it methods to deal with new rifts if they form. I suspect that the Scribblers might have come up with something more like this, had they not had their falling out. Imagine a single global organization, founded by the Scribblers, on the surface an adventuring guild, formed by epic level adventurers to help guide new folks into the trade, but hiding a secret purpose the whole time. It's potentially a very self sustaining model, and would be very successful.


Oh, I really like this idea. Even the self awareness of Stickworld plays into it.

[Errorname]

Which is why nobody would want to control one. It serves no practical purpose, politically, except to get the controller killed.

This is not a matter of want. The gates exist within the world and will fall into territory controlled by various powers. One of the gates is literally within the borders of a major city.


It certainly would be watched, by everyone with power.

Right, but why would I as a political leader be comfortable with one of the pins holding reality together being within the borders of my rival. Who knows what that idiot might do with it!


Each gate could be enclosed in its own pocket universe, each of which has nothing capable of sustaining life, and each pocket universe could be hidden where nobody will ever find them.

Considering that the function of the gates is to keep this universe from unraveling, I doubt you could shunt them onto another plane without compromising their function (if it was possible Dorukan probably would have done it). That's not a concern for the Dark One's plans, but if you're trying not to unleash the Snarl it's something to worry about.

[Metastachydium]

Considering that the function of the gates is to keep this universe from unraveling, I doubt you could shunt them onto another plane without compromising their function (if it was possible Dorukan probably would have done it). That's not a concern for the Dark One's plans, but if you're trying not to unleash the Snarl it's something to worry about.

I literally just popped out of my hiding (don't look at me like that, today's Murder Flowers for No Good Reason Day vol. 2) to react to this. While I agree with gbaji and Provengrell that "encase it in concrete, encase that in lead, the lead in more concrete and then more lead and then make all of that multidimensional and play active defense far away and from far away from the Gate" is the closest mortals can probably come to foolproof…

Actually, if they can be safely moved, then this is just genius. Build Gates; use the Ritual; put them all in the Graveyard of Worlds, a place nobody other than the gods seems to have ever found on their own since the beginning of time; and PROFIT. And now excuse me as I run away before someone gets "harvest the Flower" kind of ideas.

[Errorname]

Actually, if they can be safely moved, then this is just genius. Build Gates; use the Ritual; put them all in the Graveyard of Worlds, a place nobody other than the gods seems to have ever found on their own since the beginning of time; and PROFIT. And now excuse me as I run away before someone gets "harvest the Flower" kind of ideas.

Yeah, but it's sort of a "everything proof shield" solution.

[Unoriginal]

Right, but why would I as a political leader be comfortable with one of the pins holding reality together being within the borders of my rival. Who knows what that idiot might do with it!

To paraphrase a character in Discworld's "Making Money": "If we don't imagine the army of giant-sized killer Golems firsr, someone else will!"



Considering that the function of the gates is to keep this universe from unraveling, I doubt you could shunt them onto another plane without compromising their function (if it was possible Dorukan probably would have done it). That's not a concern for the Dark One's plans, but if you're trying not to unleash the Snarl it's something to worry about.

Honestly, we don't even know if the Dark One's ritual would work as intended now that the last Gate is doing the job by itself, given that it was designed for a world with five working Gates while being only aware of one.

[brian 333]

The problem is that you keep looping back to this assumption, despite somewhere around a dozen other posters having listed off a number of other possible things that could be done with a gate that have nothing at all to do with destroying the world. And, as has also been previously linked in this thread the author has also said this (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0278.html)



Everything else you have argued falls from the starting premise that it's not possible to use the gates to empower onesself without bringing about the destruction of the world. That is the core basis for your assumption that everyone would fight super hard to prevent anyone from gaining control of any gate. But that starting premise is false. Ergo, the conclusions based on that premise are also false.

As a general rule, by far the best way to keep bad people from using something dangerous is for them to not know it exists in the first place. Yes, this leads to exciting stories when some bbeg does discover such things, and works to get their hands on them. Great. But the alternative is... well... worse.

If I were planning as perfect a defense as possible, I'd do something similar to what a few folks have posted about in the past. Bury the gates in some kind of solid magic/ethereal/plannar blocking stone. Build a solid mountain on top of that. Then put some kind of listening devices buried inside the mountain that warn me if someone is digging into it anywhere near where my solid block of gate burying stone is.

Then yeah. Take a page from Soon, and build a secret organization dedicated to monitoring these things, and responding if any threat appears involving them. Otherwise, said organization is doing other things, and appears to be a normal adventuring guild, paladins guild, wizards guild, whatever, but with a "secret purpose" that none but the more senioir members are even aware of (except if some emergency happens involving a gate, of course). Said organization would also secretly hold the information needed to repair or rebuild (or build from scratch) any gates.

Yup. This goes in the opposite direction than what you proposed. I think it would be massively more successful. Could potentially last centuries, or even forever, since it also contains within it methods to deal with new rifts if they form. I suspect that the Scribblers might have come up with something more like this, had they not had their falling out. Imagine a single global organization, founded by the Scribblers, on the surface an adventuring guild, formed by epic level adventurers to help guide new folks into the trade, but hiding a secret purpose the whole time. It's potentially a very self sustaining model, and would be very successful.

And heck. The story practically writes itself too. Not like that background and setting (or similar) hasn't been used for dozens of other fantasy/magical based plots already. And also utterly believable. Which just increases the likelihood of long term success.

Mr.Scruffy is wise and knowledgeable in the ways of magic, and he has had ample time to study the Azure City gate. (Translation: Shojo is not stupid. He probably knows what he is talking about.)

That aside, The Author has said that the only use for the gate is as a one-shot nuke. That may be specifically in relation to The Ritual, but I think, once The Snarl is released, everything else goes out the window.

And then there is the problem of researching all these other possibilities. That can only be done if nobody is looking. If everyone with the power to do so was watching the gates, the minute someone started fooling around with experiments that potentially end the world, it becomes obvious that progress will be interrupted, probably violently, and probably terminally.

As I have repeatedly said, fooling with a gate makes you a target.

And while there are positive points in your outline, there is a fatal flaw: who watches the watcher?

Assume a power-hungry adventurer with great acting skills and inferior ethics becomes a senior member of your organization. Now assume he thinks of one of these 'sieze power' schemes secret organizations are having all the time. Now assume he thinks he can use this guild secret to gain even more power. He has access to the resources and skill sets to investigate, and the security and privacy to do it as long as it takes.

Now we have a guy who can control The Snarl, (theoretically,) and the gods have no reason to not destroy the world. And you might get the power-hungry adventurer the very first time you promote someone.

[gbaji]

Sure. There's always the possiblity that some power hungry person could rise in the ranks of our organization, never revealing his true nature, until being promoted to a point where he learns the "secret of the inner circle", and then proceeds to embark on a mission to subvert whatever security and warning systems are in place (which he just learned about, and everyone at his level and above is more aware of), gains access to a gate and proceeds to use it for his evil purpposes.

But the odds of him being caught at an early point in this process is high. And the odds of him being able to wrangle a way to gain control of a gate without someone else in the organziation figuring it out is low. Possible, but I'll take those odds. And hey. We've got an entire organization of highly powerful people, right there, fully in the know about what's going on, and available to stop this one individual. Again. I'll take those odds. Because he's just one guy, who stumbled opon the information, while we are a whole group of people, who've known about it all along. Huge advantage for the defenders here.

Contrast that to the alternative. Everyone knows about the gates. There are 5 of them, and they will have to be held by "someone". Who controls each one at any given time? Even if we assume that every single gate is being held by some good aligned kingdom, group, organziation, or whatever, the risks within each of those groups of some power hungry person rising to power and gaining control of a gate is the same as it is in my scenario (much higher, arguably)

The core difference is that said power hungry individual knows that the gates exist, and knows where they are before he joins the group in charge of defending it. He may embark on his evil plan to take control of a gate, from day one, ploting the whole thing out from start to finish. You'd see swarms of power hungry people gravitating toweards the whichever groups currently hold the gates, with the intent of gaining access to them.

In my scenario, the member has no reason to know this. He has no reason to lie and conceal his evil nature along the way, because he doesn't know there's a special prize waiting for him, if only he can fool the other members for long enough. Such a person, with such motivations, is very likely to give in to that nature long long before he ever rises high enough to learn about the gates in the first place. And most evil folks would not consider a plan of "I'll secretly join the most prominent good aligned adventureres guild in the world" and.... um... hope that there's some reward for doing this that outweighs the risk of almost certainly being caught. I could see an evil person trying to use some leverage against a member of that guild to try to gain access to the gate. But again... he'd have to know it exists in the first place.

We would almost have to assume someone who did not start out with any sort of evil power hungry plan, but then, long after learning the secret, gave in to the temptation to use the gate (but only in the direst of emergencies, of course!). But... again. That's just as much a risk in your plan. The good ruler of Azure City could just as easily decide that the gate they defend is just the powerful tool he needs to help defend their borders against enemy incursion, and authorize study of it to find a way to safely weaponize it. Best of intentions, right? And worse, since in your scenario, everone in the world knows there's a gate in Azure City, there will be a lot of enemies trying to take control of it, maximizing the odds that said good leader might just have to make that desperate decision in the first place.

Basically, every single risk to my plan, also exists in yours. But mine significantly reduces the number of occurances of this, and thus the likelihood over time that it will actually happen. And there are a whole host of other risks that simply don't exist (or are massively reduced) in mine.

[ShadowSandbag]

That aside, The Author has said that the only use for the gate is as a one-shot nuke.

Where was this said? I don't remember this and it seems fairly important.

[Kish]

I believe brian 333 is dubiously paraphrasing this (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?602358-The-problem-with-Thor-and-Durkon-s-plan&p=24253092#post24253092).

[Unoriginal]

I believe brian 333 is dubiously paraphrasing this (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?602358-The-problem-with-Thor-and-Durkon-s-plan&p=24253092#post24253092).



The Snarl is like a nuclear bomb. You can get a lot of leverage out of owning a nuclear bomb, because no one wants it dropped on them. But if everyone knows you only own one and then you use it on someone...then everyone left knows you don't have it anymore. Sucks for your one target, but it won't end well for you, either.

That's why the Dark One's actual plan is to use the threat of moving the Gate to extract concessions from the other gods and deter preemptive strikes against his followers. Those concessions will be significantly less than, "All of you be my slaves forever," because at that point, the calculus would change and some of the gods might risk the bomb getting dropped on one of them to end the Dark One's threat to their friends and family.

I think it's safe to say that The Giant disagrees with any analysis that declares the Gates are useless politically.

[Tubercular Ox]

The Snarl is like a nuclear bomb.

You mean the weapon of mass destruction that everyone knows exists, anyone who wants to can learn how they work, anyone dedicated can get instructions on how to make, and the major limitation on making more is the lockdown on the ingredients?

The things I can just look up (https://blog.batchgeo.com/nuclear-locations-worldwide/) where to find?

And all of those facilities have hugely visible fences with signs telling you no one will find your corpse if you cross the line?

Of course nukes were much better kept secrets 60 years ago, but it sounds like someone made a backup plan.

[Peelee]

You mean the weapon of mass destruction that everyone knows exists, anyone who wants to can learn how they work, anyone dedicated can get instructions on how to make, and the major limitation on making more is the lockdown on the ingredients?

The things I can just look up (https://blog.batchgeo.com/nuclear-locations-worldwide/) where to find?

And all of those facilities have hugely visible fences with signs telling you no one will find your corpse if you cross the line?

Of course nukes were much better kept secrets 60 years ago, but it sounds like someone made a backup plan.

If I'm misreading this, please correct me, but are you actually arguing with the author here?

[Tubercular Ox]

If I'm misreading this, please correct me, but are you actually arguing with the author here?

It was not my intent to argue with the author. I saw Rich's quote as a proxy for Unoriginal's argument, but I did not make that clear in my quoting and TBH I'm not sure how to bring that out, so I screwed up and I'm sorry.

To reiterate: Yes, please, let's compare the gates to nuclear weapons, because nuclear weapons have a robust defense that depends on surprisingly little secrecy once you get into it. That secrecy was not disdained like brian 333 is recommending, but the backup plan was there from the beginning.

[Errorname]

You mean the weapon of mass destruction that everyone knows exists, anyone who wants to can learn how they work, anyone dedicated can get instructions on how to make, and the major limitation on making more is the lockdown on the ingredients?

It's not a perfect comparison, obviously, but there are still useful parallels

[brian 333]

My point was that it was a single-use attack which, having made the threat to use, invites pre-emptive attack by everyone who does not want it used.

If one has the power to hold the gate against literally everyone else, he does not need the gate to establish his power, and if there is even a single, more powerful entity out there, it is pointless to try to hold it.

One such threat is the attempt to investigate multi-use capabilities which are not currently apparent.

And while Ox rightly points out that the current lockdown on available materials is what slows the proliferation of nukes in our world, he is also pointing out that in our crazy world, almost every nation has joined together in opposition to nuclear proliferation. Why would a fantasy world be less wise than ours?

[Errorname]

And while Ox rightly points out that the current lockdown on available materials is what slows the proliferation of nukes in our world, he is also pointing out that in our crazy world, almost every nation has joined together in opposition to nuclear proliferation. Why would a fantasy world be less wise than ours?

You would note though that in our crazy world, all the major superpowers have nukes. We did not all band together and say "nobody can have access to these", the most powerful states in the world have said "nobody else can have these".

[Unoriginal]

The point of the Giant's comparison is that both the nukes and the Dark One's plan for the Snarl is that they're both *threats*, aka political tools, rather than actual military tactical tools.

Nobody wants to be the first to be hit, but everyone knows that once someone gets hit it's the end of the world as everyone else unleash their power too.

So basically the use is to go to the negociation table with a big "don't make me mad or we're all gonna suffer" button, aka a "you must treat me like I matter" method.

One of the Dark One's problemd is that Redcloak is actually the kind of spite-filled hubristic jerk who think it's a military tactical tool. As he made clear to Minrha and Durkon, he think only his side has the spine to do the "unleash power" part and so that he'll be able to bully them while they bend over backward to preserve the world.

[Tubercular Ox]

the most powerful states in the world have said "nobody else can have these".

In your view, are the most powerful states succeeding or failing in protecting the world from nukes?

[Errorname]

In your view, are the most powerful states succeeding or failing in protecting the world from nukes?

For now, but that's not relevant to the subject at hand, they are not protecting the world from people having nukes.

So no, if we're using Nukes as our model I do not think full disclosure would prevent people from trying to control or harness the Snarl. I think you might be able to rely on the major players reaching a MAD equillibrium where none of them are willing to actually use the gate, but they would all have that capacity, and this is not a state of affairs the gods would tolerate.

[Metastachydium]

Yeah, but it's sort of a "everything proof shield" solution.

And what's wrong with that? (Hey, speaking of: one could even combine the two approaches and encase the Gates in divination-proof multidimensional slabs of stone disguised as one of those dead world markers! Needle, meet haystack!)


In your view, are the most powerful states succeeding or failing in protecting the world from nukes?

Could we not talk about that? Please and thank you.

[Tubercular Ox]

So no, if we're using Nukes as our model I do not think full disclosure would prevent people from trying to control or harness the Snarl.

And again, that's not me. I just got done saying nuclear weapons have a robust defense that depends on surprisingly little secrecy once you get into it. That secrecy was not disdained like brian 333 is recommending, but the backup plan was there from the beginning.

I'm also sad that gbaji gets credit for the adventuring company idea that I put out:

What if you started with Soon's defenses, then added an adventurer outreach program that made Azure City the place for mid- to high-level good aligned adventurers to feel safe?

Maybe I should just keep waiting and eventually you guys will catch up completely.

[Metastachydium]

Maybe I should just keep waiting and eventually you guys will catch up completely.

To be fair, I'm focusing more on the "bury it in something very thick" aspect, with the active defense (its nature almost irrelevant) being merely a failsafe for keeping it that way.

[Tubercular Ox]

To be fair, I'm focusing more on the "bury it in something very thick" aspect, with the active defense (its nature almost irrelevant) being merely a failsafe for keeping it that way.

Tangent, I think people's active defense is too focused on lasting forever despite there being an ever growing number of ways to render the gates irrelevant:


Convincing TDO to play ball.
Ascending your own quiddity
Inventing a ritual that moves the gates somewhere easier to defend
Encouraging divine intervention

I figure a thousand years and a year, tops, to figure out one of those will work and then execute.

[Peelee]

You would note though that in our crazy world, all the major superpowers have nukes. We did not all band together and say "nobody can have access to these", the most powerful states in the world have said "nobody else can have these".

Weeeeeeelllllllllllllllll........

Ya know, i shan't go there. Unless you'd like to discuss it on Discord or something. :smalltongue:


Tangent, I think people's active defense is too focused on lasting forever despite there being an ever growing number of ways to render the gates irrelevant:


Convincing TDO to play ball.
Ascending your own quiddity
Inventing a ritual that moves the gates somewhere easier to defend
Encouraging divine intervention

I figure a thousand years and a year, tops, to figure out one of those will work and then execute.

The defenses don't have to outrun the bear Snarl. They just have to outrun you it being a threat.

[Metastachydium]

Tangent, I think people's active defense is too focused on lasting forever despite there being an ever growing number of ways to render the gates irrelevant:


Convincing TDO to play ball.
Ascending your own quiddity
Inventing a ritual that moves the gates somewhere easier to defend
Encouraging divine intervention

I figure a thousand years and a year, tops, to figure out one of those will work and then execute.

I'd concur, in principle, but as you can see:


This thread (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?285517-Create-A-Gate-The-Power-is-Yours&p=25970421#post25970421) inspired me to come up with what I believe to be the Perfect Defense for a Rift Gate.

…that's mostly just people staying on topic (I know, it's wild). The premise of the thread is "how to protect a Gate", not "how to remedy the Snarl issue".

[Tubercular Ox]

…that's mostly just people staying on topic (I know, it's wild). The premise of the thread is "how to protect a Gate", not "how to remedy the Snarl issue".

There could be other ways to make the gates irrelevant, the ones I think of are that way because the story is leading us there.

Bottom line, gate defense includes an R&D department. The Scribbles are with me on this, that deadbolt Rich describes was invented after the gate, if I understood it correctly.

[Metastachydium]

There could be other ways to make the gates irrelevant, the ones I think of are that way because the story is leading us there.

Bottom line, gate defense includes an R&D department. The Scribbles are with me on this, that deadbolt Rich describes was invented after the gate, if I understood it correctly.

My point was more like "yes, Gates are not ideal for anyone, but we are talking about how to make Gates safer, not how to obviate the need to have them" here.

[Provengreil]

Weeeeeeelllllllllllllllll........

Ya know, i shan't go there. Unless you'd like to discuss it on Discord or something. :smalltongue:


Lets be honest, the nuke metaphor is horribly overextended at this point anyway. Probably best we all move on.

[Tubercular Ox]

Lets be honest, the nuke metaphor is horribly overextended at this point anyway. Probably best we all move on.

What are you talking about? Take the nuke out and put in anything you want and the lessons about how to secure a facility with members of the general populace all remain the same.

[Kish]

I suggest putting in a raspberry muffin.

[Tubercular Ox]

I suggest putting in a raspberry muffin.

I didn't want to be the guy who brought it up first, but yeah, Area 51 is another great example of maximum security that doesn't disdain the secret but had a backup plan for when things got out.

[Errorname]

What are you talking about? Take the nuke out and put in anything you want and the lessons about how to secure a facility with members of the general populace all remain the same.

Well, Nukes are a very late modern concept and D&D tends towards medieval and early modern social dynamics, so it is something of an imperfect match.

[Jurai]

The perfect defense here would be to eat The Snarl.

[hroþila]

Well, Nukes are a very late modern concept and D&D tends towards medieval and early modern social dynamics, so it is something of an imperfect match.
They have Celine Dion records in this universe

[Kardwill]

Actually, if they can be safely moved, then this is just genius. Build Gates; use the Ritual; put them all in the Graveyard of Worlds, a place nobody other than the gods seems to have ever found on their own since the beginning of time; and PROFIT. And now excuse me as I run away before someone gets "harvest the Flower" kind of ideas.

Isn't the "graveyard" a secluded corner of the Astral Plane? The Gods' entire line of defense against the Snarl is "contain it inside the prime material world, so that the outer planes are safe". I don't think they would like mortals moving the god-killing-ticking-bomb closer to their homes.

[Metastachydium]

Isn't the "graveyard" a secluded corner of the Astral Plane? The Gods' entire line of defense against the Snarl is "contain it inside the prime material world, so that the outer planes are safe". I don't think they would like mortals moving the god-killing-ticking-bomb closer to their homes.

Well, yes, but that doesn't put the Snarl on the Astral. The Snarl would still be imprisoned within the Material. Only the Gates would be on the Astral, wher nobody would, in all likelihood, ever find them, so while there would be a small risk involved, I think it'd average out to "kinda still worth it".

EDIT: Also, again, we are talking about protecting the Gates, not the gods or the world, so…

[Kardwill]

Well, yes, but that doesn't put the Snarl on the Astral. The Snarl would still be imprisoned within the Material. Only the Gates would be on the Astral, wher nobody would, in all likelihood, ever find them, so while there would be a small risk involved, I think it'd average out to "kinda still worth it".

EDIT: Also, again, we are talking about protecting the Gates, not the gods or the world, so…

We know the Snarl can lash out from the rifts when the gates fail, and I assume that it emerges from the rifts when it is released. RC's entire plan relies on the fact that moving the gate will allow the snarl to attack the plane it is moved to. So...
"Yes, we just dug a tunnel that will allow the tiger to roam your living room and eat your family, but don't worry. Its actual cage where it spends most of its time is still in the circus"


The big problem of moving the gates (and the rifts they seal) to the outer planes is that, if/when those gates fail (and they always do, after some time. The gods tried several million "perfect prisons", and failed every time), then the Snarl is free to ransack the outer planes. It threatens not only the Prime Material, but also the Gods, the Souls, the Planes, and the entire creation. It's actually worse than "simply" destroying the world.

[Metastachydium]

We know the Snarl can lash out from the rifts when the gates fail, and I assume that it emerges from the rifts when it is released. RC's entire plan relies on the fact that moving the gate will allow the snarl to attack the plane it is moved to. So...
"Yes, we just dug a tunnel that will allow the tiger to roam your living room and eat your family, but don't worry. Its actual cage where it spends most of its time is still in the circus"


The big problem of moving the gates (and the rifts they seal) to the outer planes is that, if/when those gates fail (and they always do, after some time. The gods tried several million "perfect prisons", and failed every time), then the Snarl is free to ransack the outer planes. It threatens not only the Prime Material, but also the Gods, the Souls, the Planes, and the entire creation. It's actually worse than "simply" destroying the world.

Actually, it's not quite as bad as that. That is entirely dependant on the Gate failing. And oddly enough, no Gate has ever failed on its own so far.

[gbaji]

Actually, it's not quite as bad as that. That is entirely dependant on the Gate failing. And oddly enough, no Gate has ever failed on its own so far.

Sure. But someone can make one fail (just as they have the ones in the story). But the risk from a gate being destroyed on the astral plane is vastly worse than it happening on the PMP. So we have the wost of both worlds here. We're both entirely dependent on people not knowing about the gates and where they are *and* we've kinda maximized the whole "risk to the world if they mess with a gate".

And this is before considering how the gods would react to anyone's plan to "Let's just magically move the gates to another plane" in the first place. I mean, that's basically TDO's plan, right there. I'm reasonably certain that if anything were to result in the gods just deciding to punt this entire world and build another one where maybe the morttals would not come up with such a dangerous idea, that would be it.

[Jay R]

I suggest putting in a raspberry muffin.


The perfect defense here would be to eat The Snarl.

Either way, I assume that a doily is involved (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0033.html).

[brian 333]

The perfect defense here would be to eat The Snarl.

Can you imagine the case of indigestion that would cause? You'd have to drink Pepto by that gallon! And what if The Snarl is like a jalapeno: hotter coming out than going in?

On the plus side, I have been wanting an excuse to make Gramma Rose's homemade marinara for a while now.

[hroþila]

May I just say that "the best defense is a good offense" is an often flanderized adage, not an absolute truth, and that sometimes letting the enemy destroy themselves against your defenses is 100% the right call (and also, that active defense is not offense)? I mean, there's a whole genre (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_defense) of video games about this

[Kardwill]

Actually, it's not quite as bad as that. That is entirely dependant on the Gate failing. And oddly enough, no Gate has ever failed on its own so far.

We know that every world has failed after a few thousand years. They all fell to the Snarl, some of them so unexpectedly that the gods couldn't save the souls of the inhabitants.
There has been several millions, berhaps billions, of attempts. None of them survived.

So we have to assume that the Gates won't hold the snarl for all eternity. The gates delay the inevitable, but this world too will fall. The Snarl is more "real" than anything in existence, including the gates.

And seriously, they're not that sturdy. Girard's and Soon's gates blew up after a few solid swings from ordinary humans. Lirian's blew up because of a forest fire.
At one moment or another, for whatever reason (freak accident, decaying magic, "internal pressure" from the Snarl, deliberate attack...), the Astral gate will blow up, ripping open a rift in the middle of the Gods' backyard. If the Snarl gets out at that moment, the gods won't be able to contain it in the PMP. It will be over. Everything will be over, forever.

That's... kinda scary.

[Peelee]

So we have to assume that the Gates won't hold the snarl for all eternity.


Why? It's easily possible that the Gates do work indefinitely, and more rifts popped up than were sealed, eventually culminating in the Snarl getting loose despite other rifts being sealed.

[hroþila]

Prediction: the gates will hold, more rifts will open up, they will be patched up, millions of gates, nothing but gates all around, a gate world

[Kardwill]

Why? It's easily possible that the Gates do work indefinitely, and more rifts popped up than were sealed, eventually culminating in the Snarl getting loose despite other rifts being sealed.

Yeah, it's possible. But given the size of the explosion evert time someone looks at them funny, and the way the small Azure City Rift ripped wide open when it happened... I'm under the impression that those things build up a lot of pressure behind them.
And even if they don't decay nor overload, given enough time, the probability of a freak accident happening at least once tends to approach 1:1

So, putting them in your living room doesn't sound safe.

[Peelee]

Yeah, it's possible. But given the size of the explosion evert time someone looks at them funny, and the way the small Azure City Rift ripped wide open when it happened... I'm under the impression that those things build up a lot of pressure behind them.
And even if they don't decay nor overload, given enough time, the probability of freak accidents happening tends to approach 1:1

So, putting them in your living room doesn't sound safe.

Potential energy doesn't mean pressure. There are many explosives that have incredibly yield but are also quite stable.

Just because the gates go boom big if destroyed doesn't meany that they're not fine to just sit there forever without getting hit.

Also, the gates arent the seals.

[Kardwill]

Also, the gates arent the seals.

The gates reinforce the seals, but the seals didn't survive the gates blowing up, so I don't see how that distinction is important at that point. They both blow up together when something unfortunate happens, leaving the rift wide open.

[Peelee]

The gates reinforce the seals, but the seals didn't survive the gates blowing up, so I don't see how that distinction is important at that point. They both blow up together when something unfortunate happens, leaving the rift wide open.

The car's steel frame reinforces my skull and if the car is crushed my skull is crushed but there's still a pretty big difference between the car and my skull.

[Kardwill]

The car's steel frame reinforces my skull and if the car is crushed my skull is crushed but there's still a pretty big difference between the car and my skull.

Yeah, sure, but in practice, in this story? It's a point of the background that do exist, but is the distinction between them that important? They work in tandem, and the role of both is "keep the rift closed".
I don't understand the point of saying "the gate isn't the seal" when arguing about the gates durability?

[Provengreil]

We know that every world has failed after a few thousand years. They all fell to the Snarl, some of them so unexpectedly that the gods couldn't save the souls of the inhabitants.
There has been several millions, berhaps billions, of attempts. None of them survived.

So we have to assume that the Gates won't hold the snarl for all eternity. The gates delay the inevitable, but this world too will fall. The Snarl is more "real" than anything in existence, including the gates.

And seriously, they're not that sturdy. Girard's and Soon's gates blew up after a few solid swings from ordinary humans. Lirian's blew up because of a forest fire.
At one moment or another, for whatever reason (freak accident, decaying magic, "internal pressure" from the Snarl, deliberate attack...), the Astral gate will blow up, ripping open a rift in the middle of the Gods' backyard. If the Snarl gets out at that moment, the gods won't be able to contain it in the PMP. It will be over. Everything will be over, forever.

That's... kinda scary.

I suspect that it's less that gates will fail on their own, and more that new and undiscovered, unpatched tears appear and let the snarl out that way.

That said, I've always held to the theory that their brittleness was a feature, not a bug. Of the 5 gate defenses we've seen:

-Dorukan's had a literal self destruct button.
-Soon's had a Paladin choose to destroy it, a fallen paladin follow through, and Soon personally called it a fulfillment of her oath.
-Lirian's was shackled to ents that weren't warded against fires. My theory on this one is that if a druid of her level cannot deal with a fire, the gate is in that much immediate danger of being captured.

Leading on from these, I theorize but cannot prove that Girard's clan had orders to break their own gate if the trap and spell storm failed to stop an invader. Sure they may be casters but a big hammer should be enough.

Serini may actually be the only one who didn't plan for something like this(haven't seen everything), and even she didn't really fight hard against the notion that such a thing might be necessary in a general sense. Just that her gate, now the last one left, must not be touched.

[Peelee]

Yeah, sure, but in practice, in this story? It's a point of the background that do exist, but is the distinction between them that important? They work in tandem, and the role of both is "keep the rift closed".
I don't understand the point of saying "the gate isn't the seal" when arguing about the gates durability?

The point is you hypothesized that the pressure, presumably from the rifts builds up being the Gates. Going back to my analogy, how overworked the driver is doesn't matter one whit to how brittle the car's frame is. The crusher is entirely external. No sword hitting the Gate or trees physically tearing it apart, no boom.

If you want to make the argument that Gates can be damaged or destroyed and that's bad, well, everything can be damaged or destroyed.

[Kardwill]

If you want to make the argument that Gates can be damaged or destroyed and that's bad, well, everything can be damaged or destroyed.

That was indeed my main point : Gates can be damaged or destroyed. Putting one in a "safe" place that you really, really, REALLY don't want to get snarled sounds reckless.

[Peelee]

That was indeed my main point : Gates can be damaged or destroyed. Putting one in a "safe" place that you really, really, REALLY don't want to get snarled sounds reckless.

Depends, really. Is that "safe" place also much more difficult to get to? Would putting it in an "unsafe" place necessarily be better, given their susceptibility to damage (which, again, everything is anyway)? People found the rifts without even looking for them on at least two occasions, in less than a couple thousand years. Did anyone, even outsiders, ever find the graveyard, despite the billions of years it's been there? We don't know, but I'd put my money on "no".

[Precure]

The snarl won't be imprisoned forever, it will be free once again, just like Calder, and Serini/Gods will need to face the consequences.

[KorvinStarmast]

The snarl won't be imprisoned forever, it will be free once again, just like Calder, and Serini/Gods will need to face the consequences. We will get the Michael Palin voice over from A Fish Called Wanda.
Revenge!

[Metastachydium]

We know that every world has failed after a few thousand years. They all fell to the Snarl, some of them so unexpectedly that the gods couldn't save the souls of the inhabitants.

If we are assuming things like "growing pressure under the Gates", we might as well assume things like "sometimes the gods were just too jaded or torn among themselves to cash in the odd world". So, meh.


There has been several millions, berhaps billions, of attempts. None of them survived.

So we have to assume that the Gates won't hold the snarl for all eternity. The gates delay the inevitable, but this world too will fall. The Snarl is more "real" than anything in existence, including the gates.


This is apparently the first time this actual method was used. Right before it was employed, the gods already almost gave up and held a vote (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0998.html). Its long term efficacy has never been tested.


Prediction: the gates will hold, more rifts will open up, they will be patched up, millions of gates, nothing but gates all around, a gate world

UNLESS you start storing them off-plane!


And even if they don't decay nor overload, given enough time, the probability of a freak accident happening at least once tends to approach 1:1

So, putting them in your living room doesn't sound safe.

It's not their living room, though. It's a sealed basement in that abandoned industrial area kilometers away from the last actual place of residence that was never even demolished because nobody cares enough to do so. Heck, the most used bits of the Astral (which is not the remote corner behind a barrier (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1139.html) we are talking here) is more like the street outside.

What kind of freak accident happens in a place in an unused and hidden bit of an infinite place only the gods know about and can visit?


That was indeed my main point : Gates can be damaged or destroyed. Putting one in a "safe" place that you really, really, REALLY don't want to get snarled sounds reckless.

I wonder, though, all of a sudden. If the Astral is the space between the planes; and the Material plane is the Snarl's prison (as it is usually assumed, if I'm not mistaken)… Doesn't the Snarl always end up with access to a less remote and more poorly defended part of the Astral when a world is unmade? Serious question.