OOTS #1037 - The Discussion Thread

[Keltest]

In that case, if MitD (GBiS) ever devours Redcloak for betraying Xykon - the knowledge of the divine half may be lost as well. If the MitD is sufficiently powerful that his devour powers extend to an artifact created by a major god, that is (casts Summon Grey_Wolf for non-argumentative purposes).

Spoiler

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Yes, you guessed correctly - I was wondering if Hel helped create the ritual for her own dark purposes. It appears not.

We don't really know exactly how destructive the MITD's stomach is, but Xykon seems to think his phylactery will survive.

[Peelee]

In that case, if MitD (GBiS) ever devours Redcloak for betraying Xykon - the knowledge of the divine half may be lost as well. If the MitD is sufficiently powerful that his devour powers extend to an artifact created by a major god, that is (casts Summon Grey_Wolf for non-argumentative purposes).

Spoiler

Show

Yes, you guessed correctly - I was wondering if Hel helped create the ritual for her own dark purposes. It appears not.

Spoiler: SoD

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Imean, it's not like the Dark One can't just up and make another cloak.

[monkeyslinger]

Now that I've washed my hands of the argument part of this, I am actually curious--are there any other works where the villain turns out to be a character who was introduced late? Shining Wrath said something about Girl Genius, which I don't know, but Grey Wolf makes it sound like "the Other" is a shadowy but established figure, not actually someone introduced late.

Someone brought up Final Fantasy VIII earlier. You spend half the game preparing to fight Edea, then afterward you learn that she was being controlled by another sorceress, Ultimecia, who isn't mentioned or shown at all until ~60% of the way through the game.

[Ruck]

While OOTS may not be in the mystery *genre* it certainly *contains* many mysteries.

But this doesn't address the point I'm making, it just takes the word "mystery" and runs with it.

The main plotline in OOTS is the Order's quest to stop Xkyon and Redcloak from controlling a gate, not to solve a whodunit.

[zimmerwald1915]

Someone brought up Final Fantasy VIII earlier. You spend half the game preparing to fight Edea, then afterward you learn that she was being controlled by another sorceress, Ultimecia, who isn't mentioned or shown at all until ~60% of the way through the game.

I wonder what conclusions can be drawn from so many of the mentioned examples being video games?

An aside: The Legend of Zelda is notorious for the late-stage true-villain reveal, A Link to the Past and Twilight Princess being the examples that spring to my mind.

[Shining Wrath]

I wonder what conclusions can be drawn from so many of the mentioned examples being video games?

An aside: The Legend of Zelda is notorious for the late-stage true-villain reveal, A Link to the Past and Twilight Princess being the examples that spring to my mind.

Perhaps a problem familiar to many DMs: you want to have an epic final boss but that means the L1 (or L5, even) party would be squashed like bugs, so you keep the final boss off the stage until later and introduce mid-level bosses first.

The whole concept of "leveling up" in games, whether video or TT, motivates different story telling than a novel where character development may occur but getting significantly more powerful doesn't.

[jere7my]

Someone brought up Final Fantasy VIII earlier. You spend half the game preparing to fight Edea, then afterward you learn that she was being controlled by another sorceress, Ultimecia, who isn't mentioned or shown at all until ~60% of the way through the game.

There are a lot of "What the hell is going on? Why is so much weird stuff happening?" stories in which the antagonist is hidden for most of the story and their existence is a third-act reveal. I think Gozer from Ghostbusters probably qualifies.

[Goblin_Priest]

I think it is a 3.0 BoVD hivemind swarm of insects, likely roaches. Per RAW, it should have *hundreds* of levels in sorcerer.

Nobody in the MitD thread agreed with me when I suggested it years ago though.

I suspect it might be a worm that walks, or other similar vermin swarm. Otherwise an aboleth or mindflayer.

[factotum]

Someone brought up Final Fantasy VIII earlier. You spend half the game preparing to fight Edea, then afterward you learn that she was being controlled by another sorceress, Ultimecia, who isn't mentioned or shown at all until ~60% of the way through the game.

Is it worth bringing up Dragonball Z here, where each successive super-powerful boss the Z fighters face is more powerful than the last, yet was generally never even mentioned up to that point, much less shown?

[Mx56]

I suspect it might be a worm that walks, or other similar vermin swarm. Otherwise an aboleth or mindflayer.

A worm that walks would have to be heavily refluffed, since per SRD they're created from a ritual on an already dead body and have the personality and memories of the original. I don't think a worm that walks produces offspring in the normal sense* either so wouldn't really make much sense for MiTD to talk about his father as if it were the same sort of creature as him, also wouldn't be surprising that one could speak common. Refluffing isn't a major problem rules wise but it would kind of screw over the whole thing of MiTD's nature being guessable.

I'm inclined to guess that it's something that isn't normally particularly intelligent and doesn't normally form complex societies (since the hunters who found MiTD expressed surprise at him speaking common and were quite comfortable capturing him to put him in a circus, which doesn't scream sentient being from a civilisation of powerful, intelligent aberrations who might come looking for their missing young), beyond that I have no clue.

*Canonically this is also true of mindflayers, who reproduce through body horror and weird tadpoles iirc.

[Domino Quartz]

*Canonically this is also true of mindflayers, who reproduce through body horror and weird tadpoles iirc.

But...isn't that how humans reproduce in real life?
I had a very incomplete understanding of human reproduction when I was very young.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Canonically this is also true of mindflayers, who reproduce through body horror and weird tadpoles iirc.

But...isn't that how humans reproduce in real life?

Domino Quartz just won the thread. Congratulations!

GW

[Mx56]

But...isn't that how humans reproduce in real life?

Touche

[ryuplaneswalker]

The Sigil on House Stark of a Dire Wolf?

I think we might have found the Wolfy Beast that inspired it.

[sengmeng]

The whole concept of "leveling up" in games, whether video or TT, motivates different story telling than a novel where character development may occur but getting significantly more powerful doesn't.

There is powering up in novels, it just has more fluff, instead of *kill monster* *ding*
Think Gandalf the Grey becoming Gandalf the White, or Paul Atreides unlocking his visions. Or a training montage. Or when the hero learns a super move, but never manages to pull it off until the critical moment. It's just more likely in certain types of stories and characters. Luke Skywalker becoming a Jedi is a good example, but Han Solo never really changes. Sometimes the story calls for a nobody to become a hero, sometimes circumstances reveal that they were always awesome, and sometimes we know right off the bat that they are an uber-badass.

[Shining Wrath]

There is powering up in novels, it just has more fluff, instead of *kill monster* *ding*
Think Gandalf the Grey becoming Gandalf the White, or Paul Atreides unlocking his visions. Or a training montage. Or when the hero learns a super move, but never manages to pull it off until the critical moment. It's just more likely in certain types of stories and characters. Luke Skywalker becoming a Jedi is a good example, but Han Solo never really changes. Sometimes the story calls for a nobody to become a hero, sometimes circumstances reveal that they were always awesome, and sometimes we know right off the bat that they are an uber-badass.

And sometimes they find a Macguffin that makes them powerful - e.g., there are Conan stories where he has to get the magic dingus to eliminate the evil wizard. Obviously Conan starts the story as, well, Conan, but the upgrade comes from the item.

Sometimes the change is more in attitude than actual power, e.g., Merry and Pippin didn't really get more power from bodily growth, but from growth of personalities.

[Ruck]

I did think of one way the final showdown could be with a villain who wasn't revealed until part of the way through the story, but it wouldn't be Hel. It'd be the IFCC.

We've known about them at least since #380, and they have some plan for the Gates that they really haven't gotten to act on yet. I don't think they'll be the "main villains" of the story, but I'd be surprised if we don't see them making another big move before the end of the series (even beyond cashing in their remaining tokens for Vaarsuvivus' soul).

[Gift Jeraff]

We've known about them at least since #380

Even earlier, actually.

[Knaight]

Now that I've washed my hands of the argument part of this, I am actually curious--are there any other works where the villain turns out to be a character who was introduced late? Shining Wrath said something about Girl Genius, which I don't know, but Grey Wolf makes it sound like "the Other" is a shadowy but established figure, not actually someone introduced late.

I mentioned a few examples earlier, along with a small selection of the numerous reasons they weren't at all applicable to D&D. Romance of the Three Kingdoms in particular works here, as inasmuch as there is a singular villain it would be Sima Yi, who crops up in about the last eighth of the book. This is arguably true of The Fencing Master, but it again depends on who you cast as main villain where there are arguably several options. There are also some cases where a villain shows up in a story that isn't driven by the villain, so that whatever is driving it (usually the protagonist) can do their thing for a while absent an actual defined villain, pushing them back. There's a case to be made that you could map Huckleberry Finn to this, but that runs into the issue of how the term villain is defined.

With that said, the post above regarding this coming up disproportionately often in videogames is on to something, and it's worth observing that video games are uniquely well suited to getting away with completely stupid storytelling as long as the gameplay is good. Film can do that to a much more limited effect with special effects instead of gameplay, and written and oral stories have very little to fall back on.

[Goblin_Priest]

A worm that walks would have to be heavily refluffed, since per SRD they're created from a ritual on an already dead body and have the personality and memories of the original. I don't think a worm that walks produces offspring in the normal sense* either so wouldn't really make much sense for MiTD to talk about his father as if it were the same sort of creature as him, also wouldn't be surprising that one could speak common. Refluffing isn't a major problem rules wise but it would kind of screw over the whole thing of MiTD's nature being guessable.

I'm inclined to guess that it's something that isn't normally particularly intelligent and doesn't normally form complex societies (since the hunters who found MiTD expressed surprise at him speaking common and were quite comfortable capturing him to put him in a circus, which doesn't scream sentient being from a civilisation of powerful, intelligent aberrations who might come looking for their missing young), beyond that I have no clue.

*Canonically this is also true of mindflayers, who reproduce through body horror and weird tadpoles iirc.

Depends on the point of view. Characters knowing what a worms that walks is likely wouldn't be surprised that it talks. But to the common folk, I suspect they would mistake it for a simple vermin swarm, in which case it would be quite surprising that it talks.


For the father, I have no idea which strip you are talking about, so I'm afraid I can't comment on that aspect. Could be that his father was subject to the same ritual he was, though.

I'm not really convinced of it being anything in particular, but I do suspect that it is something that looks like something else. And that this something else is aquatic or insect-like. Aboleths kinda look like fishes, and worms that walk kind of look like an average swarm. Could be something else, but both of these wield great powers. Describing him as something monstrous, like say a umber hulk, would explain others' attitudes towards him... but not his magical (psionic?) powers.

[Ruck]

For the father, I have no idea which strip you are talking about, so I'm afraid I can't comment on that aspect. Could be that his father was subject to the same ritual he was, though.

MitD describes his father to O-Chul in #651.

[LuPuWei]

Add my name to the list of those who want "Nod. Get treat." to be on a T-shirt...

[KorvinStarmast]

Mystery: I think V sums it up pretty well in 672.

perhaps we do not know everything about the task we are undertaking.

[Goblin_Priest]

MitD describes his father to O-Chul in #651.

Thanks... Well living in the forest with his father does seem to kind of invalidate my guesses.

[KillingAScarab]

Someone brought up Final Fantasy VIII earlier. You spend half the game preparing to fight Edea, then afterward you learn that she was being controlled by another sorceress, Ultimecia, who isn't mentioned or shown at all until ~60% of the way through the game.

Final Fantasy has been doing this since the first game of the series. Final Fantasy II is the only game predating Final Fantasy VI which didn't quite follow that, but I confess I have only read about FF2 and not experienced it first-hand.

[Kantaki]

Final Fantasy has been doing this since the first game of the series. Final Fantasy II is the only game predating Final Fantasy VI which didn't quite follow that, but I confess I have only read about FF2 and not experienced it first-hand.

To be fair, FF I’ final boss technically first appears right at the beginning.
That this guy is the Big Bad on the other hand is only revealed when you meet him again.

[Gryndel]

MitD describes his father to O-Chul in #651.

This may have been metioned before, but I always thought that the image in the Go game is a representation of the MitD creature type. Like an 8 bit pixilated version, though this has not helped me guess what creature it is.

[8BitNinja]

I wonder what conclusions can be drawn from so many of the mentioned examples being video games?

An aside: The Legend of Zelda is notorious for the late-stage true-villain reveal, A Link to the Past and Twilight Princess being the examples that spring to my mind.

Don't forget Skyward Sword and Zelda 2