Whatever happened to "Buisness before Pleasure"?

[stavro375]

Given that "Buissness before Pleasure" seems to be the main philosphy of Team Tarquin, if not Tarquin's personal mantra, why is he suddenly engaging in a time-wasting, resource-draining diversion while there's a scenery-chewing villain trying to take over the world? All for the sake of an ego he's willing to sacrifice for the sake of the mission?

And why is the rest of his team going along with it? What's he going to say when Laurin asks why he's called the entire gang together to watch his army kill those 3 guys in the crater, "So my son can achieve his full heroic potential"?

[Gift Jeraff]

He's in the business of pleasing himself.

[Cerussite]

And that is why I fully expect Laurin and Miron to stay out of this engagement.

[NerdyKris]

For starters, at first there was very little chance of them winning before V showed up. Now that V, Elan, and Haley have joined the fight, I'd gather Team Tarquin might start objecting.


Secondly, you're assuming Tarquin isn't a raging hypocrite. It's entirely possible he is. But throwing faceless mooks at an enemy isn't really resource wasting when his entire grand plan actually includes killing those soldiers with the other team member's soldiers to keep up appearances.

[Mando Knight]

This is business. Team Tarquin's defeat by some "Roy Greenhilt and his Order of the Stick" would be terribly ignominious, while Elan has dramatic potential (at least, in Tarquin's mind). Furthermore, their defeat by said Order of the Stick appears to be possible, due to Tarquin's own previous assessments of Roy's ability, as well as TT losing one vampire cleric while OotS gained one. Before V appeared to help hold off the horde, the army would have eventually done the job of eliminating a threat while also furthering Elan's character growth.

[RadagastTheBrow]

He's in the business of pleasing himself.

Weird, he doesn't seem to have gone blind or anything.

[Talvereaux]

Laurin and Miron have no personal stake in this, at least as far as we know. Most likely, even if they didn't approve of wasting soldiers, they're probably willing to let one another indulge their selves as long as there's no significant or personal conflict of interests.

Secondly, even if they did, he'd just try to talk his way out of it. It's obvious that Laurin was hurt by Malack's death, but Tarquin was planning to spare Nale anyway. The "business before pleasure" thing is a face he puts on to keep his allies loyal, not an actual philosophy he abides by. As soon as he caves in, which we've seen twice with Malack and Laurin put on the back-burner to serve his sons, he'll make his bluff check.

[CletusMusashi]

Exploring Girard's Gate in their backyard was Business. Worrying about what Xykon is up to in the north really isn't as big a deal to Tarquin. Supervillains are a dime a dozen. and exaggerating how dangerous they are is nothing unusual; he really has no idea how big a deal Tarquin actually is.

[Porthos]

Given that "Buissness before Pleasure" seems to be the main philosphy of Team Tarquin, if not Tarquin's personal mantra, why is he suddenly engaging in a time-wasting, resource-draining diversion while there's a scenery-chewing villain trying to take over the world?

Because the 'scenery chewing villain' is no longer on his doorstep and thus no longer his concern.

And that's if you think he cared about Xykon in the slightest in the first place and just didn't want him on his doorstep with some sort of powerful whatchamacallit at its disposal.

If there is no business left to be taken care of, and there isn't when it comes to Xykon, then it's time to start getting Elan to realize his potential.

See, just because Elan cares about Xykon it doesn't necessarily follow that Tarquin should.

[David Argall]

Given that "Buissness before Pleasure" seems to be the main philosphy of Team Tarquin, if not Tarquin's personal mantra, why is he suddenly engaging in a time-wasting, resource-draining diversion while there's a scenery-chewing villain trying to take over the world? All for the sake of an ego he's willing to sacrifice for the sake of the mission?

And why is the rest of his team going along with it? What's he going to say when Laurin asks why he's called the entire gang together to watch his army kill those 3 guys in the crater, "So my son can achieve his full heroic potential"?

As others have suggested, Tarquin was business before pleasure. He summoned the other members of the party because of the business of the gate. That could have really changed their game plan. Now the gate is destroyed and the alarm is off. Business is done. So the others are willing to let Tarquin play. The army, by the way, is purely Tarquin's and his toys to waste. The others likely don't approve, but they have their own armies. [and this is only one division of Tarquin's army. He has thousands more, 500 of which are finishing some treachery, and other units are elsewhere.] It's really none of their business.
I'd say that the others will help Tarquin if he asks. It's not like he faces a real threat. The Order is way outclassed. But with the loss of Malack, their game plan is a bit shaky, and the loss of Tarquin could cause serious problems. So even if it is just his play, they may feel they have to make sure he wins the fight even if he can do it himself.

[Porthos]

I think a lot of the disconnect with how some people are seeing Tarquin's actions is fairly simple to explain.

A) Tarquin has been shown to dealing with things that he thinks are important in a fairly ruthless way.

B) The forum at large thinks Xkyon is pretty darn important.

therefore,

C) A large portion of the forum expects Tarquin to view Xkyon with the same amount of importance that we do and act accordingly.

But it seems that he doesn't view Xykon as that important after all.

And thus the disconnect forms between how some expect Tarquin to act and how he is actually acting.

As to why Tarquin doesn't think Xykon is all that important (note, not 'unimportant' just 'not that important)? Who knows. It's been discussed (pro and con) to death. Maybe he doesn't think he really can do much of anything with Kraagor's Gate and thus it is 'power that he can't use'. Or maybe Tarquin's playing some sort of long game when it comes to Xykon and the Gate and still has some sort of plan for it helping him, though I doubt it given commentary from Rich.

But the actual business with Girard's Gate? That's quite decided. Thus there's nothing left on that score. And Elan? Well that might be both business and pleasure given Tarquin's plans for Elan.

[LadyEowyn]

My issue is expecting Tarquin to regard Xykon as a major threat. It's that Laurin and Myron should have some kind of a problem with Tarquin committing substantial resources to a goal that not only is no use to them, but that is intended to end in their empires' ultimate defeat. While Tarquin may be happy with the idea that he'll be defeated someday but have had a good run of it and told a good story, that doesn't mean that all the other members of his team are so sanguine about potential defeat and death.

Plus, he's wasting large numbers of soldiers, and he's unnecessarily revealed their six-person con to a group of heroic adventurers, a choice he made due to personal considerations.

I'd expect them to start objecting at some point before this is over.

[thereaper]

Tarquin believes that killing the OotS (minus Haley and Elan) won't matter, because more adventurers would conveniently appear to fill the gap. Therefore, in his mind, killing them doesn't hurt him.

Obviously, he's wrong, but that's beside the point.

[Amphiox]

I strongly suspect that "business" for Team Tarquin means whatever Tarquin decides and manages to convince a majority of his teammates of, and "pleasure" means whatever is not in that first category.

We are, thus far, not privy to whatever conversation Tarquin had with Laurin and Miron prior to assembling this force and coming here with them. We don't know what specifically he told them about the Order or the mission.

It is entirely possible that Laurin and Miron currently believe that attacking the Order is part of a larger plan that counts as "business", while Tarquin's interest in Elan is just the secondary "icing on the cake" as it were, so that Tarquin, to their minds, is accomplishing business AND pleasure at the same time, which is probably allowable under their agreed-upon rules.

[factotum]

As far as Tarquin's concerned, Xykon is a second-string villain whose only narrative purpose is to act as a speed bump on Elan's way to defeating the main villain--who is Tarquin himself, of course. He doesn't see Xykon as a threat to that. He *does* see Roy as a threat to it (because he's holding back Elan's true heroic nature), which is why it *is* business for him to immediately deal with Roy and forget Xykon for the moment.

Tarquin is, of course, entirely deluded in this belief, but I don't think that telling him HE's the second-string villain would go down all that well at the moment!

[Lombard]

Why is Xykon important again... he has one city, Tarquin has an empire. Oh yeah Xykon keeps trying and failing to secure a gate so that he can perform a ritual to control a 'Snarl', a purportedly uber-powerful being that doesn't appear to actually exist. Yeah, Tarquin should just drop everything and go get involved in that.

[Yendor]

I strongly suspect that "business" for Team Tarquin means whatever Tarquin decides and manages to convince a majority of his teammates of, and "pleasure" means whatever is not in that first category.

We are, thus far, not privy to whatever conversation Tarquin had with Laurin and Miron prior to assembling this force and coming here with them. We don't know what specifically he told them about the Order or the mission.

It is entirely possible that Laurin and Miron currently believe that attacking the Order is part of a larger plan that counts as "business", while Tarquin's interest in Elan is just the secondary "icing on the cake" as it were, so that Tarquin, to their minds, is accomplishing business AND pleasure at the same time, which is probably allowable under their agreed-upon rules.

Exactly. "Business before pleasure" is just a means of manipulating his team. Anything that gets in the way of Tarquin's plans gets shoved aside for whatever long-term goal he can convince them of. Malack got dragged into this mission by an implied promise Tarquin had no intention of keeping. If Nale had succeeded, Malack would have to suck it up. Nale failed completely, and killed Malack first chance he got, and still Tarquin thought he could "smooth it over" with Laurin.

If I was in Haley's position, I'd be having a quiet word with Laurin about Malack's death, and the threat they're really up against, and what she thinks about Tarquin's egocentric villanous fantasy.

[Taelas]

I strongly suspect that "business" for Team Tarquin means whatever Tarquin decides and manages to convince a majority of his teammates of, and "pleasure" means whatever is not in that first category.

We are, thus far, not privy to whatever conversation Tarquin had with Laurin and Miron prior to assembling this force and coming here with them. We don't know what specifically he told them about the Order or the mission.

It is entirely possible that Laurin and Miron currently believe that attacking the Order is part of a larger plan that counts as "business", while Tarquin's interest in Elan is just the secondary "icing on the cake" as it were, so that Tarquin, to their minds, is accomplishing business AND pleasure at the same time, which is probably allowable under their agreed-upon rules.

Basically, he tries to get away with as much as possible by passing it off as "business", but if they call him on an inconsistency, he's more than willing to accept the reprimand (even going so far as to apologize immediately).

A lot of normal people I know would do exactly the same, so I'm not sure why this is particularly noteworthy...?

[Morty]

Tarquin obeys rules, including his own, only for as long as it's convenient for him. Man, who would have thought?

[Der_DWSage]

Because the business was explicitly thus:

1)The desire to secure a potentially useful magical maguffin, now exploded, as others have stated.

2)The desire to groom Nale into a capable 7th party member for them. Regarded as business because, as much as they may dislike Nale, it's still recruitment. And if nothing else, Nale could've been a glorious patsy. When he showed he was too erratic and self-serving to be useful, Tarquin would've had much more difficulty convincing the rest of them of his usefulness.

3)Groom Elan into playing the 'Hero' in this tale. Uncertain if he explicitly called it as such, but judging by the way the rest of Team Tarquin is simply standing around while Tarquin calmly tells Elan some key points implies that Tarquin might still not be telling him everything about his scheme with the Empire of Blood, Sweat, and Tears. Possibly still nursing hope that Elan can succeed him in the business, one way or another.

He's a villain, after all. They can, from time to time, lie to the heroes.

4)Killing off a potential future threat to Team Tarquin. Four high level adventurers against overwhelming odds? Certainly no way they can live...through...oh. Right. (Tarquin may have wanted to check his genre savvy there.) Still, killing off a potential future threat to Team Tarquin holds merit. Especially since they're the only other ones, so far as Tarquin knows, that has knowledge of the Gates beyond Xykon.

And finally, they may well be there for the fun of it. Yes, business before pleasure-but much of the business seems to be wrapped up, and they seem to trust Tarquin as far as they can throw him. After all, he's the one that came up with the scheme in the first place, at least according to his narration. Tarquin seems capable enough to smooth things over afterwards-just look at how the fight with him and the Lizgreaper went. He was dressed down, apologized, and they were best friends right after.

So why pleasure before business? Because business seems to be wrapped up, so they may as well catch something more interesting than the typical gladiatorial battle.

[Kish]

As Gift Jeraff, Amphiox, Yendor, and Morty said: What happened to it, is that it is and was always as fundamentally dishonest and self-serving as every other word out of Tarquin's mouth.

[pendell]

Given that "Buissness before Pleasure" seems to be the main philosphy of Team Tarquin, if not Tarquin's personal mantra, why is he suddenly engaging in a time-wasting, resource-draining diversion while there's a scenery-chewing villain trying to take over the world? All for the sake of an ego he's willing to sacrifice for the sake of the mission?

And why is the rest of his team going along with it? What's he going to say when Laurin asks why he's called the entire gang together to watch his army kill those 3 guys in the crater, "So my son can achieve his full heroic potential"?

Tarquin, being lawful evil, manipulates the rules for his own personal benefit. In this last few strips "business before pleasure" was nothing more than a pretext Tarquin used to keep Nale alive , like a lawyer using every angle at trial.

It should be noted that Tarquin hasn't actually involved the rest of his team in his own personal business yet -- only his troops. So 'business before pleasure isn't a factor right now'. Now, *I* would think he owes a debt of honor to them not to sacrifice them uselessly, but whatever my alignment it's a bit shallower on the evil scale than his is :).

Also, Tarquin doesn't think the way we do. He thinks he's in a story (true) and that Elan is the main protaganist (false) of which Tarquin is the main villain (false). Therefore he concludes Elan is fated to overcome this "cheesy side villain" before moving on to the main event.

As I've said before -- I would like to see a sequel with Tarquin and Elan, because I think Tarquin is right in this -- there IS a good story to be told in the overthrow of the empire of blood. But unlike Tarquin, i recognize that Xykon is the main villain of the strip (though he may be replaced by Redcloak or the Dark one). I would find it very unsatisfying for the Giant to spend all this time writing Tarquin into his world, only to kill him out of it at the end of this book. Tarquin hasn't *earned* his death yet, in story terms, so far as I'm concerned. In real life, people die randomly all the time in dramatically inappropriate ways, such that some have accused life of being a meaningless farce. Whatever the truth about the real world (and I don't believe it, but it's out of forum scope), it is definitely NOT true of OOTS. Tarquin is right: OOTSworld runs on drama first, then gaming, then science and magic. However, his oversized ego distorts his appreciation of this, causing him to take actions which may wind up destroying the world and everyone in it, himself included.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[foyrkopp]

If we watch it from his Teammates' point of view, this is propably not "business", since they're unlikely to be part of Tarquins Elan-shaped retirement plan - Malack certainly wasn't.

How much T is willing and able to twist that perspective is another matter entirely.

[Diadem]

Yeah I don't see an inconsistency here either.

There is no business here. The gate is gone, Nale is dead. We don't know what Laurin and Miron think of Tarquin's plan to create a legendary confrontation between father and son - they might unaware of it (though Tarquin seemed to have been pretty honest about it towards Malack at least), they might not care, they might even approve. We just don't know enough about them.

But regardless, it seems likely that they'll see it as something that has no direct relevance to them. Why should they object to Tarquin's hobbies when those hobbies don't involve them? I'm sure they all have t heir hobbies too.

And even if they do care: Tarquin is currently trying to kill several high level enemies who are aware of their grand scheme. They have absolutely no reason to object to that. Quite the contrary. And if the order does defeat Tarquin's army? Well that just proofs they are a genuine thread. Also, opportunities for gaining experience are probably rare, so why not get personally involved?

[King of Nowhere]

My issue is expecting Tarquin to regard Xykon as a major threat. It's that Laurin and Myron should have some kind of a problem with Tarquin committing substantial resources to a goal that not only is no use to them, but that is intended to end in their empires' ultimate defeat.

Maybe they all share tarquin's opinion that some hero would come along sooner or later and defeat them all, so it may as well be the son of the party leader to make a better story.

[Kish]

Maybe they all share tarquin's opinion that some hero would come along sooner or later and defeat them all, so it may as well be the son of the party leader to make a better story.

Malack didn't see it that way.

I suspect most of the others are closer to Malack's view than Tarquin's.

[stavro375]

Laurin and Miron have no personal stake in this, at least as far as we know. Most likely, even if they didn't approve of wasting soldiers, they're probably willing to let one another indulge their selves as long as there's no significant or personal conflict of interests.

Secondly, even if they did, he'd just try to talk his way out of it. It's obvious that Laurin was hurt by Malack's death, but Tarquin was planning to spare Nale anyway.

Fair enough. Tarquin's team may start asking questions when he gets personally involved in finishing off the Order (which he'll probably have to now that V, Elan, and Haley have/are about to regroup with Roy), but he's proven his ability to talk his way out of jams.

But one of the main reasons I'm befuddled by Tarquin is this:

As far as Tarquin's concerned, Xykon is a second-string villain whose only narrative purpose is to act as a speed bump on Elan's way to defeating the main villain--who is Tarquin himself, of course.
<snip>
Tarquin is, of course, entirely deluded in this belief, but I don't think that telling him HE's the second-string villain would go down all that well at the moment!

Tarquin doesn't know Xykon's capabilities, assets, or even location, but is assuming that he's not a threat based off narrative convention alone. It's as if he's never heard a story where some unassuming background character is suddenly revealed to be the main villain of the story.
And this comic may play fast-and-loose with the fourth wall, but there's only so far I as a reader am willing to let characters acknowledge that things happen because the author said so. And Tarquin's letting narrative convention not just influence, but dicate his planning goes beyond that point. Usually when characters in the strip acknowledge narrative convention, it's to explain recent events or choose from multiple courses of action... not choose an insane plan over a sensible one.

[Kish]

And this comic may play fast-and-loose with the fourth wall, but there's only so far I as a reader am willing to let characters [act on not-story-internal motivations]. And Tarquin's letting narrative convention not just influence, but dicate his planning goes beyond that point.

...Then you fundamentally reject Tarquin and you should either stop reading now because the story is too offensive to you, or try to ignore all the parts of the story with Tarquin in it.

I confess, I really do not understand the number of readers who have apparently been going, "Tarquin's so cool! So intelligent! He handed out a guard manual that said 'We do not have surprise inspections, the inspectors in front of you are intruders, get them!' yay! ...His narrative fixations are leading him to be wrong rather than right? No no no, that's too much of a breach in the fourth wall for this comic where a semi-major villain was out of the action for hundreds of strips after winning a battle and then being carted off by lawyers for being an intellectual property violation!"

(I also think "an ego he's willing to sacrifice for the sake of the mission" greatly overstates the amount of ego-mortification involved in mouthing an empty apology to Malack.)

[NerdyKris]

Fair enough. Tarquin's team may start asking questions when he gets personally involved in finishing off the Order (which he'll probably have to now that V, Elan, and Haley have/are about to regroup with Roy), but he's proven his ability to talk his way out of jams.

But one of the main reasons I'm befuddled by Tarquin is this:

Tarquin doesn't know Xykon's capabilities, assets, or even location, but is assuming that he's not a threat based off narrative convention alone. It's as if he's never heard a story where some unassuming background character is suddenly revealed to be the main villain of the story.
And this comic may play fast-and-loose with the fourth wall, but there's only so far I as a reader am willing to let characters acknowledge that things happen because the author said so. And Tarquin's letting narrative convention not just influence, but dicate his planning goes beyond that point. Usually when characters in the strip acknowledge narrative convention, it's to explain recent events or choose from multiple courses of action... not choose an insane plan over a sensible one.

Tarquin is an evil Bard. Not the class, but the concept of a person completely educated in the tradition of telling stories. He's insane.

He knows nothing of Xykon. He assumes he's a minor villain in the story because Tarquin is completely delusional that he is a legend. He's not seeing the narrative threads that bind the story. He's seeing what he believes are the narrative threads that bind the story. And he's completely wrong.

If you reject him, you'd have to reject Elan as well, since they are fundamentally seeing the same thing. It's just that where Elan sees uncertainty and suspense, Tarquin sees a roadmap that he can control.

[Reddish Mage]

Tarquin is an evil Bard. Not the class, but the concept of a person completely educated in the tradition of telling stories. He's insane.

He knows nothing of Xykon. He assumes he's a minor villain in the story because Tarquin is completely delusional that he is a legend. He's not seeing the narrative threads that bind the story. He's seeing what he believes are the narrative threads that bind the story. And he's completely wrong.

If you reject him, you'd have to reject Elan as well, since they are fundamentally seeing the same thing. It's just that where Elan sees uncertainty and suspense, Tarquin sees a roadmap that he can control.

I was with you up till the last paragraph. Elan sees the story for what it is and chooses to play his assigned role, whether it is as the hero or the clown. Tarquin sees a completely different story and tries to fit whatever he sees into that framework.