Goblins XVIII: Being yourself can be dangerous

[Vinyadan]

Looking back at prophecies:

https://www.goblinscomic.com/comic/12082009/

And Forgath's real prophecy:

https://www.goblinscomic.com/comic/12142005

Young and Beautiful's original wording and the wall's reaction make me wonder if Forgath needs to die again. She didn't say a dwarf would kill him, and he died after a battle, not in one.

So, what could this mean?

Spoiler

Show

Had MM not met the Goblins, he would have not caused the battle in the Opposites room, and the Axe would not have broken. Now all three teams are ultimately converging to the axe to solve the hellscape problem. Forgath is unrecognisable, and Idle and Bowst don't know Kin. Bowst could attack Kin once he sees her with the axe, and MM reacts attacking everyone in Bowst's party.

Ward the Talking Sword-Click also might love Idle. Had Forgath not met the GAP again, he wouldn't have ended up in Idle's party. I'm not sure of what that has to do with a snake, but the friend turning to enemy could be Ward.

[Lurkmoar]

I get what you're saying but at a certain point I feel like there is no longer a point to continuing to invest myself in the characters. The comic has always sort of towed the line between a legitimate narrative and torture porn - if it decides to dunk this entire arc for 'emotional impact' I think I'd just be done - unable to find reason to continue caring.

Too bleak, stopped caring.

I'm way past caring. I'm just morbidly curious and determined to see it though. It only costs about a minute to see if there's an update for me.

Initially, wasn't the pitch about the comic that non-human creatures were every bit as sapient and sentient as traditional player character races? What's the story about now? How utter monstrous and selfish good can be, and how evil will prevail because of that? I'm willing to see if there's a good payoff, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

[Traab]

Looking back at prophecies:

https://www.goblinscomic.com/comic/12082009/

And Forgath's real prophecy:

https://www.goblinscomic.com/comic/12142005

Young and Beautiful's original wording and the wall's reaction make me wonder if Forgath needs to die again. She didn't say a dwarf would kill him, and he died after a battle, not in one.

So, what could this mean?

Spoiler

Show

Had MM not met the Goblins, he would have not caused the battle in the Opposites room, and the Axe would not have broken. Now all three teams are ultimately converging to the axe to solve the hellscape problem. Forgath is unrecognisable, and Idle and Bowst don't know Kin. Bowst could attack Kin once he sees her with the axe, and MM reacts attacking everyone in Bowst's party.

Ward the Talking Sword-Click also might love Idle. Had Forgath not met the GAP again, he wouldn't have ended up in Idle's party. I'm not sure of what that has to do with a snake, but the friend turning to enemy could be Ward.

Didnt forgath die to poison given to him by that character with the bunny ears who has to die once per day? And isnt she a dwarf? I thought there was something there like she didnt want to say because their clans are enemies or some such thing.

[Fyraltari]

Didnt forgath die to poison given to him by that character with the bunny ears who has to die once per day? And isnt she a dwarf? I thought there was something there like she didnt want to say because their clans are enemies or some such thing.

Yes, but that wasn't a great battle.

[Typewriter]

Too bleak, stopped caring.

I'm way past caring. I'm just morbidly curious and determined to see it though. It only costs about a minute to see if there's an update for me.

Initially, wasn't the pitch about the comic that non-human creatures were every bit as sapient and sentient as traditional player character races? What's the story about now? How utter monstrous and selfish good can be, and how evil will prevail because of that? I'm willing to see if there's a good payoff, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

I care about the characters but hate the frequency of pointless misery. Plus I'm still waiting for some sort of payoff for any of it too - I mean at this point in time we've got three different relevant factions and an entire other faction that has never bumped into any of the core story. All of that could start to reconvene into something that has a point. Maybe.

Didnt forgath die to poison given to him by that character with the bunny ears who has to die once per day? And isnt she a dwarf? I thought there was something there like she didnt want to say because their clans are enemies or some such thing.

You are correct.

[Vinyadan]

Didnt forgath die to poison given to him by that character with the bunny ears who has to die once per day? And isnt she a dwarf? I thought there was something there like she didnt want to say because their clans are enemies or some such thing.

I might be reading too much into it, but:

Young and Beautiful said: "I know that you will not die this day because I have seen your death. You will die in a great battle with another dwarf. When the serpent becomes your prey, friends will become enemies and love will fuel hate." https://www.goblinscomic.com/comic/12142005

Then the wall said: "If you ever find those goblins, it's going to end badly for both of you. When the serpent becomes your prey, friends will become enemies and love will fuel hate." https://www.goblinscomic.com/comic/12082009

I think that both of these prophecies refer to the same event, the one foreshadowed by the cryptic verses and which has yet to unfold.

Then Forgath alters the wording of what Young and Beautiful said: "Hey, that's what that goblin hag said to me. She also said that a dwarf would kill me." (that's not what Young and Beautiful said). Which prompts the wall to chime in with a prophecy: "Oh yeah, that's totally going to happen. And not a good death either. Lots of screaming." https://www.goblinscomic.com/comic/12152009 And I think that here the Wall was prompted to answer truthfully, emitting a new, separate prophecy, referring to the death we have seen: Idle the Dwarf poisoned Forgath, who died a bad death with screaming, fear, and so on. But Young and Beautiful said that Forgath would die in a great battle (which didn't happen, he died because of a battle but not in it), and that "with another dwarf" could be understood in a lot of ways (against a dwarf? together with a dwarf?)

Anyway, there certainly is a tragic fate now hanging over MM and Forgath, because they found the Goblins, and it will end badly for both of them. (If I am wrong in how I read the prophecies, then Forgath might be out of the hot water the way Dies Horribly is; he has already met a ugly end. But MM is most likely still there; the worst that happened to him is separation from Forgath.)

I care about the characters but hate the frequency of pointless misery. Plus I'm still waiting for some sort of payoff for any of it too - I mean at this point in time we've got three different relevant factions and an entire other faction that has never bumped into any of the core story. All of that could start to reconvene into something that has a point. Maybe.

Actually, this is the sort of universal emergency that could cause all threads to converge.

[Kish]

Didn't Klik die as well?

Sure did! But I'm blinking at the idea that anyone thought Dies-Horribly's plot device, who had literally no relationships with anyone else and was known even to Dies-Horribly only by what is now established to be the species name, was a protagonist. Klik's death had less emotional resonance in my eyes than Hawl's, and he died to establish that the villain was scary and evil.

...actually, depending on how big a role the corrupted klik has later, quite possibly the exact same is true of Klik...

Anyway, there certainly is a tragic fate now hanging over MM and Forgath, because they found the Goblins, and it will end badly for both of them.

I truly wish my reading was the same as yours there.

[Kornaki]

I have to say, I am 100% on team forgath dies again.


I also honestly forgot he died the first time, which says something about the pacing of the comic.

[Traab]

The prophecy only says that there will be another dwarf, not that he will be killed by one. There was a great battle, he took a lethal wound in it, and took poison to avoid being turned into an abomination. he died with lots of screaming. I think that fulfills every part of the prophecy that pertains to forgaths death. Now the part with minmax is still a mystery. No telling how that will go. Just that it wont be good. Which is the biggest ah duh moment possible considering the way this comic works.

[Kornaki]

I agree, if that was the whole prophecy then I wouldn't feel cheated, but if he did die again and it was set up from the start that those were descriptions of different events, I would find that to be one of the better pieces of prophecy writing.

[Anteros]

The prophecy only says that there will be another dwarf, not that he will be killed by one. There was a great battle, he took a lethal wound in it, and took poison to avoid being turned into an abomination. he died with lots of screaming. I think that fulfills every part of the prophecy that pertains to forgaths death. Now the part with minmax is still a mystery. No telling how that will go. Just that it wont be good. Which is the biggest ah duh moment possible considering the way this comic works.

The exact phrasing is you "you will die in a great battle with another dwarf" not "you will be poisoned by another dwarf afterward battle because you got infected". I don't really see how it fulfills the "in battle" part of the prophecy at all. My suspicion is that this scene exists to add ambiguity to the prophecy so people will be more surprised when it really happens.

[Vinyadan]

I truly wish my reading was the same as yours there.

Something more catastrophic? Or authorial forgetfulness?

[Traab]

The exact phrasing is you "you will die in a great battle with another dwarf" not "you will be poisoned by another dwarf afterward battle because you got infected". I don't really see how it fulfills the "in battle" part of the prophecy at all. My suspicion is that this scene exists to add ambiguity to the prophecy so people will be more surprised when it really happens.

He was in a great battle with another dwarf fighting the abomination. He died with lots of screaming because he got wounded by it before they won. I think its a bit of semantics to claim it doesnt count because he died 10 minutes after the fight was over rather than mid fight. I wish i could argue with your "what a tweest!" stance though, its absolutely the sort of thing she would do. Also, does forgath even COUNT as a dwarf now? He is sort of a humanoid omniklik now. At least with whats her face she is just cursed and can be turned back

[Anteros]

He was in a great battle with another dwarf fighting the abomination. He died with lots of screaming because he got wounded by it before they won. I think its a bit of semantics to claim it doesnt count because he died 10 minutes after the fight was over rather than mid fight. I wish i could argue with your "what a tweest!" stance though, its absolutely the sort of thing she would do. Also, does forgath even COUNT as a dwarf now? He is sort of a humanoid omniklik now. At least with whats her face she is just cursed and can be turned back

It's prophecy. Semantics are important.

[Vinyadan]

Yes, it's clearly semantics. Right now, I think that it would be normal for Goblins writing if Forgath's death had been done and it's over, but, as it's written, I think it should be two different prophecies.

However, it's probably like when we wondered if the angel was staring at Ears not because of the preposterous claim that she was his mum, but instead because she had noticed the hell strings growing around him. It would have been some refined writing. It also didn't happen.

Anyway, looking at Vorpal's prophecies...

https://www.goblinscomic.com/comic/page-21

A few have already come true. "The levels are gained outside of time" alludes to the angel, I guess. "The dwarf cries no more" is Forgath's death. Looking at those yet to come true, "The hammer awaits" sounds like the hammer of Prissan.

[Kish]

Something more catastrophic? Or authorial forgetfulness?

I wish there was a tragic fate hanging over Minmax and Forgath, for I despise both characters. I like redemption stories; I don't like "I assume my audience sympathizes with the genocidal mass murderer because I assume they've all played similar characters in D&D, so handwaving him getting friendly with the protagonists doesn't require having him acknowledge that his mass murders were in fact doing something wrong" stories.

On an unrelated note, it occurs to me that, in a comic with a character named Bowst, "BOWSTRINGSBREAK" cannot be distinguished between "Bowstrings Break" and "Bowst Rings Break."

[Vinyadan]

I wish there was a tragic fate hanging over Minmax and Forgath, for I despise both characters. I like redemption stories; I don't like "I assume my audience sympathizes with the genocidal mass murderer because I assume they've all played similar characters in D&D, so handwaving him getting friendly with the protagonists doesn't require having him acknowledge that his mass murders were in fact doing something wrong" stories.

I can see that. Now that I think about it, the recurrent axe/acts of racism jokes miss this point. Even after meeting Kin, MM is still oblivious to what he has done.

https://www.goblinscomic.com/comic/10032013

[Gez]

I wish there was a tragic fate hanging over Minmax and Forgath, for I despise both characters. I like redemption stories; I don't like "I assume my audience sympathizes with the genocidal mass murderer because I assume they've all played similar characters in D&D, so handwaving him getting friendly with the protagonists doesn't require having him acknowledge that his mass murders were in fact doing something wrong" stories.

That's true of Minmax, less of Forgath: https://www.goblinscomic.com/comic/12302005

[The Glyphstone]

I had completely forgotten that Complains is Thaco's son.

[Kish]

That's true of Minmax, less of Forgath: https://www.goblinscomic.com/comic/12302005

Oh, true. I should probably hold less of a grudge against Forgath.

[Anteros]

A bit harsh considering the Goblins had set up a war camp and were perfectly willing to hunt and kill adventurers in their area. Even Thaco says you can't really blame them. The very first strip we ever see is them gleefully hunting down and killing a paladin. They're specifically there to trick people into attacking them. Good job I guess? They're not the guiltless innocents you're making them out to be.

Events from Minmax and Forgath's view:
1: They hear goblins have set up a war camp and are terrorizing an area.
2: They attack the camp and find a prophecy that the goblins are going to destroy the world.
3: They decide the threat to the world is great enough that they have to hunt the goblins down.

Without some serious psychic powers, they had no way to know that this was the one tribe of goblins in the entire setting not actively engaged in a plan to kill all non-goblin life. I know the point of the story was originally that goblins are people too, and adventurers are wrong for judging them based on appearance, but that's not the story that Elli actually told.

[Vinyadan]

Eh... first, I don't remember the page where they hear that our goblins are terrorizing passers by (which doesn't mean that there isn't such a page, just that I can't remember or find it). Second, MM concludes that the Goblins wanted to end the world on the basis of his racist assumptions concerning goblins. https://www.goblinscomic.com/comic/03122006 Goblins are a bad lot altogether; their intentions must be assumed to be evil. Compare later with Kin. MM's racism is still pretty clear in his early interactions with Kin. Kin does something? She's trying to summon a demon. Is that so far from accusing random people of trying to end the world by summoning the white terror? The logic is really the same. Monsters are bad, all of them, they do bad, unknown things.

Also, you should be fighting people, not learning about them https://www.goblinscomic.com/comic/02242006/

Of course, MM is being whiny and self-serving at the warcamp: Forgath shouldn't waste time learning about the goblins, because he should be looking for a weapon for MM. Forgath shouldn't make friends with the goblins, because they didn't cease hostilities towards MM, who, unlike Forgath, never stopped attacking them. What Forgath has learned during the fight and after he stopped breaking Goblins skulls is irrelevant, because MM wants his high: to be a hero who saved the world.

Vorpal arguably started out in the same condition, seeing the world's inhabitants as falling in two groups, XP and allies. However, Vorpal grew out of it because he felt bad about it and started out on a (quixotic) quest to make things right. https://www.goblinscomic.com/comic/04182006

The thing is, even after he falls in love with Kin, MM still believes not to have committed any acts of racism*, and he's still hounding the goblins (I personally didn't find his later association with the goblins to make much sense).

*yes, one could go like Redcloak (racist vs speciesist), but the comic doesn't seem to have taken that direction.

[Morgaln]

Minmax's association with the goblins , especially with Vorpal, makes even less sense if you consider the timeline involved.
Even if we assume every room in the current dungeon took an hour and add an eight hour rest early on, it has been less than a day since the battle on the bridge. You really don't become fast friends in that time, especially if one of you previously murdered two dozen people you've known all your life.

[Kish]

Eh... first, I don't remember the page where they hear that our goblins are terrorizing passers by (which doesn't mean that there isn't such a page, just that I can't remember or find it).

There isn't one; Gez just linked the opposite, where Forgath asks Minmax for anything of the sort and Minmax replies to the whole idea that anything like that is applicable with "What the hell has gotten into you?"

[Vinyadan]

Minmax's association with the goblins , especially with Vorpal, makes even less sense if you consider the timeline involved.
Even if we assume every room in the current dungeon took an hour and add an eight hour rest early on, it has been less than a day since the battle on the bridge. You really don't become fast friends in that time, especially if one of you previously murdered two dozen people you've known all your life.

About the GAP not killing MM, there is something which I would have liked to see. It's something I have noticed after a few years since that scene first appeared. Back at the beginning, Chief said that MM and Forgath were deserving of punishment. Well, death sounds like the right one, in a fantasy medieval setting. However, Thac0 stops Complains from killing MM.

Then it came up to me that Thac0 also refused to kill Goblinslayer.

Wouldn't it be cool, if the two things had been related? What if Thac0 just doesn't believe in killing as the answer? He's old, he's a monk, he's been in a voluntary exile. He has what it takes to have his own philosophy, detached from or going beyond the laws of the clan. A refusal of the death penalty, fundamentally, but also of revenge in and of itself. GS had to be defeated for Vorpal's sake, not for revenge. Whose good is it to kill Minmax now?

This, of course, wasn't in the comic. Thac0 tells Complains that he will personally kill him if he goes for Minmax. And he spares GS not out of pity, but so that there will be no GS legend.

I think it would have been interesting. To let the hate seep through, with Thac0's morals and authority being the only thing protecting MM, and the challenge during their collaboration would have been NOT to kill MM. The Goblins could have had different approaches, for example giving a legalistic "death penalty" approach to Ears, and an openly hateful one to Complains, while Vorpal slowly emerges from mutism and has to tip the scales by forcing the goblins to realise that he was no better than MM, to the point of mortally wounding an innocent child, but he did change.

[Kish]

while Vorpal slowly emerges from mutism and has to tip the scales by forcing the goblins to realise that he was no better than MM, to the point of mortally wounding an innocent child, but he did change.

Wait what?

I remember Vorpal carelessly frightening a child and accidentally stealing her bear, and getting captured by Dellyn trying to bring it back to her. I sure don't remember any mortal wounds.

Edited to add: For getting Minmax to work with the goblins, I don't think it really would have been particularly hard, especially with Kore chasing them all. The trouble is that Ellipsis doesn't seem to recognize (any more than Anteros does) what a vile character she was writing with Minmax, and thus never intended to write a redemption story--just a "team up" story.

[Vinyadan]

Wait what?

I remember Vorpal carelessly frightening a child and accidentally stealing her bear, and getting captured by Dellyn trying to bring it back to her. I sure don't remember any mortal wounds.

He slashed her with his broken sword and sent her in the negatives. She only survived because Chief healed her. https://www.goblinscomic.com/comic/04172006

[Draconi Redfir]

Minmax's association with the goblins , especially with Vorpal, makes even less sense if you consider the timeline involved.
Even if we assume every room in the current dungeon took an hour and add an eight hour rest early on, it has been less than a day since the battle on the bridge. You really don't become fast friends in that time, especially if one of you previously murdered two dozen people you've known all your life.

If nothing else, i think you could at the very least consider their current state an alliance of convivence. They needed MM because he was the only one big enough to hold open the gate at the entrance of the dungeon, the only one who could properly connect with Vorpal (and properly bring him out of his catatonic state), and eventually the only one who could save Vorpal from the teller spirits, due to not being a goblin.

I'm pretty sure if you were to ask the GAP themselves, most of them sans Vorpal would agree. I think Vorpal sees him as an actual friend, Big Ears thinks he's worth redemption and / or respects his freindship with Vorpal, Thaco would probably say he's an idiot but useful to have around, and Complains would likely just say they're better off without him, even if he did come in handy a few times.


On Minmax's end, i think he mostly misses Vorpal, but might have gotten more attached to the Goblins then the Goblins did to him. Plus with Kin present, he might be feeling a bit more emotional then usual.

[Kish]

Ah, yes, I remember now. So yeah, Ellipsis can write "yay fighting yay XP!" shifting to "oh no what have I done?" (A couple pages later, Vorpal even says "I was no different from the adventurers that attacked us.") She's just not doing so with Minmax's murders.

[Anteros]

Minmax is slow. Just because he hasn't expressed regret yet doesn't mean he won't get there.

Plus, they did find a prophecy in the goblin camp involving killing all non goblins. And Duv's goblin alliance does exist. They just happen to be the single clan that hadn't joined up yet.