OOTS #829 - The Discussion Thread

[The Giant]

New comic is up.

[gooddragon1]

Will he kill her then?

[Eisenfavl]

Not with these few spells. He is still all out of power at the moment.

Going to have to surrender the phylactery to prevent a fight?

Edit: By which I mean that this is more than enough to convince xykon to do something, but a phylactery dodge may well prevent it. Or not, considering that just puts them closer to performing the ritual.

[Nix Nihila]

Well, this is exciting.

[Curious]

Soooo. . . The secret is that he is going to summon the Snarl, rather than contain it? I'm not sure I get it.

[Gift Jeraff]

Oh, crap.

In case anyone's curious: all the ritual does is loosen a Gate and allow the Dark One to plane shift it--it can't even be moved across the Prime Material Plane.

[legomaster00156]

Well, well, very clever, Ms. Tic Theurge.

[bengator]

Is this a reference to the books? I dont get it . . .

[Seerow]

Easy counter-bluff "All of the Enchantment part of the ritual is in the Divine half. You just admitted you only see half the ritual, why would you assume that my half would use the same type of magic as the arcane half? Are you stupid?"

And then hope she rolls for crap on sense motive.

[Blisstake]

Well that's something new...

I wonder if this is it for Tsukiko. Redcloak can't be letting that info get to Xykon.

[legomaster00156]

Well that's something new...

I wonder if this is it for Tsukiko. Redcloak can't be letting that info get to Xykon.

Well, she is likely a spell level or two behind him, but if it goes down to a war of attrition, she would have more spells per day even if Redcloak hadn't been in a recent fight against the Resistance. I suspect he's fairly low on spells, so I'm not sure he'd risk it. What's more, Word of Recall wouldn't save him in an emergency, since they are in his study.

[RaggedAngel]

Redcloak's response, if he knows what he's doing: "Harm. Quickened Inflict Light Wounds."

That said, if this turns into a fight he's outnumbered; he can Rebuke her undead, but that would leave him open to Tsukiko. The best option here is to kill her in a single turn, before any of her minions can start draining his levels. If she has Death Ward up (and it's fairly likely she does) he's going to have a hard time of this fight.

And this will be a fight; if Xykon learns that the ritual won't let him control the Snarl, Team Evil will turn into one giant bloodbath.

[QuakeIV]

I think she is

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betting way too much on redcloak being intimidated.

She's probably going to **** her pants when she realises he is just going to kill her, he may not even need to kill her, just threaten her.

Also, after three tries the lurker has emerged from the darkness. e: by that i mean the kaptcha filters out humans.

[QuakeIV]

Okay seriously Redcloak just disintegrate the ***** already.

Full agreement here.

[Debatra]

Is this a reference to the books? I dont get it . . .

Start of Darkness, pg 45-47.

[AgentofOdd]

Easy counter-bluff "All of the Enchantment part of the ritual is in the Divine half. You just admitted you only see half the ritual, why would you assume that my half would use the same type of magic as the arcane half? Are you stupid?"

Not to mention, the ritual in question isn't supposed to effect the Snarl, but the Gate. Easy to say that a ritual to modify a gate should use concepts from that school of magic since that is of course what they'll be doing. A tidbit that Redcloak could give the Theurge to possibly plant a seed of doubt on how much Xykon trusts her with information.

[Circle of Life]

Pity Redcloak doesn't have any ninths left. Things might actually get messy here.

[Ellen]

But, as Tsukiko is one of those characters with a radically fluctuating IQ (brilliant one moment, convinced Xykon loves her the next, for example), she may be about to tell RC what she's deduced about what he's really up to - and get it all wrong in a way RC can use.

[Lord Raziere]

Well, well, well.

This is quite interesting….

[Argok]

So it looks like they don't know he got it back. So she has to hunt down the resistance on what is now a fool's errand.

[Holy_Knight]

But, as Tsukiko is one of those characters with a radically fluctuating IQ (brilliant one moment, convinced Xykon loves her the next, for example), she may be about to tell RC what she's deduced about what he's really up to - and get it all wrong in a way RC can use.

Yeah--we can't be sure that what she suspects the ritual does is actually what it does. Depending on what she's thinking, Redcloak might still be able to talk his way out of this or turn the situation to his advantage.

[Pheldagriff]

I don't think it does what everyone thinks it does.

loved that reference

[Enlong]

Is this a reference to the books? I dont get it . . .

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From day 1, Redcloak has told Xykon that the ritual would control the Snarl, and give them command over it. Xykon wants to use the power of the Snarl to basically intimidate his way into ruling the world.

When he became a Lich, and lost his sense of taste, the reason Redcloak gave him for not killing him then and there was that if he died, Xykon would never be able to complete the ritual and control the Snarl. "You will have gone through all of this for nothing."

The ritual was never meant to control the Snarl. "Control" is a wholly alien concept to the thing. All it's meant to do is control the location of its portal. Redcloak intends to put it in the realm of the gods, and use that to give teh Dark One leverage over them.

In other words, Xykon really did go through all this for nothing.

If Xykon learns the truth, there is no way in Hell that Xykon will let Redcloak live. Heck, who knows just what he'll do if he finds out? We've seen small, very small glimpses of him truly angry. They are never pretty.

[PhantomFox]

I agree. This can be easily deflected... into hilarity or manipulation depending on how good he is at it.

[SpaceBadger]

Awesomeness, and a reward for staying up late tonight! Thanks, Giant.

[Enlong]

Easy counter-bluff "All of the Enchantment part of the ritual is in the Divine half. You just admitted you only see half the ritual, why would you assume that my half would use the same type of magic as the arcane half? Are you stupid?"

And then hope she rolls for crap on sense motive.

Except, she said that she figured out what was and wasn't in it by realizing she was only looking at half of each effect.

She knows that there isn't even a single shred of Enchantment or Transmutation in the ritual, for the Divine half of it to complete.

[cc_kizz]

Ooo. This is getting good. But where is the name "Wrong-Eye" leading?

[with an e]

...So much for the smart part, Tsukiko. I didn't think the speculation about

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her impending death is going to be true, but now that she blabbed about figuring out the ritual, I'm not sure what else RC would do.

[fibonacciseries]

Looks like the cat's out of the bag now.
It looks like someone will be killed soon DUN DUN DUN

[Enlong]

Ooo. This is getting good. But where is the name "Wrong-Eye" leading?

It appears that she knows the story behind Redcloak's brother, who Xykon always referred to as "Right-Eye".