OOTS #1260 - The Discussion Thread

[Thermophille]

It does seem that at least one of them made it to the current world, though.

I love the implication that sentient snacks are more competent than the denizens of nearly all worlds, considering their ability to survive between kalpas like this.

[Jervis]

The instantaneous duration doesn't mean the delivery mechanism only lasts for a millisecond. Fireball is instantaneous and the bead has travel time. All we can say for sure is that the ray lasts no longer than 6 seconds per casting - how much drawing he could get done in that time isn't specified in the rules.

We know he was drawing for a bit before the panel and continued through the conversation so whatever he used either required multiple castings, had a duration that allowed for multiple turns of beams, or was some sort of multi charge spell.

For the moment i’m operating under the theory that it was a Reach Spell metamagic Scalding Touch (or similar). Yeah takes a round for him to cast but once it’s cast he has CL number of ray attacks he can make with it. Until I find a better option I think i’m going with that.

Edit: could also be thunderlance I suppose but that’s a bit unlikely since he wasn’t holding it and instead extended it from his finger.

[AnnieTheTanuki]

Right. It continues to amaze me that some people seem to think that, across all the googols of prior worlds, this notion that Xykon was the first mortal to ever come up with the idea of avoiding the reset on the Astral Plane persists, much less that he'd be the only one successful at doing so.

I'm pretty sure some earlier comics had that come up- Hilgya I think said something about Plane Shifting elsewhere if it seemed like things were exploding, and there was a joke about how some planes(the mineral ones) don't accept gold as money for obvious reasons. So clearly some of the people in the know do have plans to escape that way.

Personally I'm not so sure going to the Astral Plane or any other would actually help- the webcomic look was said to be part of this world's creation, and if those are in the same format, maybe those get reset too?

[ByzantiumBhuka]

Random speculation: could the new speech boxes indicate that Team Evil is going somewhere with a reddish background where the old text would be difficult to see (say, the IFCC lair)?

[MaverickMopete]

What in this strip leads you to believe it was not a brief vignette from the previous world?.

I actually believe it is. Remember that Soda Pop serves out "vengeance" by bisecting Pizza with a pizza cutter, which makes perfect sense if you see it as him avenging the death of Milk Dudes at Pizza's hands.

[Jervis]

Random speculation: could the new speech boxes indicate that Team Evil is going somewhere with a reddish background where the old text would be difficult to see (say, the IFCC lair)?

Or maybe the demon roaches gained a level by virtue of being technically in the party and thus took the Obtain Speech Bubble feat.

[Ruck]

Random speculation: could the new speech boxes indicate that Team Evil is going somewhere with a reddish background where the old text would be difficult to see (say, the IFCC lair)?

In theory, but I think the most likely explanation is "Book 7 art upgrade." (As someone else mentioned, the old style would be more and more difficult to read as the backgrounds have gotten more and more complex.)

[Duncun]

[QUOTE=Mic_128;25496971]Even the Gods don't know about the planet in the rift, which is massively important.

Here is my theory. I think the Gods do know about the planet in the rift. I think they built it as a lure to the snarl and then encase both in the new real planet.

[TRH]

What in this strip leads you to believe it was not a brief vignette from the previous world?

*Shrug*

Nothing about it screams flashback, so I just kind of default to thinking it was the present, or at least the recent past if it's a performance of some kind.

1) I acknowledge the impossibility of proving the negative in this case (without being Rich of course), but I remain confident nonetheless that, regardless of whether refugees are possible or not, it won't be for Xykon.

2) Putting aside Rule of Funny for the movie theater snacks, or the possibility that we were in fact getting a glimpse into the prior world, they don't have to be refugees at all. For all we know, the gods could have had a standing agreement to remake a small group of them in this world purely for the purposes of that one gag. (The gods know they're in a comic, after all.)

More and more suppositions. Maybe you misunderstand my position, because I'm not asking you to disprove a negative, I'm asking you to prove a positive, namely that planetary destruction means the extinction of everyone who originated there even if they're not on the planet at the time. And with or without the movie snacks I'd say the dearth of planetary escapees in story have other explanations. In addition to the ones I listed previously I can also add that some could have died of old age, and also that this story hasn't been plane hopping much, so we haven't been in a position where we'd necessarily expect to see such people.

And like I said earlier, Xykon's plan to escape the end of the world may or may not succeed, but I still don't see any reason to think the reason it will fail will be because it was always impossible due to some sort of divine intervention. It will probably be some combination of Redcloak's phylactery switcheroo and the Order's efforts because this is their story. Oh, and also it being academic because too much is riding on this planet surviving, so if it was truly impossible to survive the end we'd never know for sure.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

I think the Gods do know about the planet in the rift.

They don't.

GW

[Duncun]

They don't.

GW

You're right. I had forgot that. My bad.

[JonahFalcon]

Funny. Most of my elders say the pipes CAN'T stop flowing at a certain age.

[brian 333]

In the ancient days of the sixties, (1960s) comic books had rounded speech balloons for characters and rectangular speech balloons for the narrator's. Sometimes a character would narrate and the balloon would be rectangular if the scene was showing what was being narrated.

I'm not certain that that applies, but I'm assuming that the roach balloons are considered out of character.

[TRH]

They don't seem any more out of character than the roaches' dialogue usually is. At most it might be an indication that these characters have less respect for the fourth wall than anyone else in the comic.

[Psyren]

More and more suppositions. Maybe you misunderstand my position, because I'm not asking you to disprove a negative, I'm asking you to prove a positive, namely that planetary destruction means the extinction of everyone who originated there even if they're not on the planet at the time.

At such time as Rich shows us a non-god character who has survived prior iterations I'll gladly change my mind. Until then, I have plenty of evidence to indicate it's not possible, certainly more than your wagonload of nothing proving it is.

And like I said earlier, Xykon's plan to escape the end of the world may or may not succeed, but I still don't see any reason to think the reason it will fail will be because it was always impossible due to some sort of divine intervention. It will probably be some combination of Redcloak's phylactery switcheroo and the Order's efforts because this is their story. Oh, and also it being academic because too much is riding on this planet surviving, so if it was truly impossible to survive the end we'd never know for sure.

We won't ever know if it's truly possible either.

[TRH]

At such time as Rich shows us a non-god character who has survived prior iterations I'll gladly change my mind. Until then, I have plenty of evidence to indicate it's not possible, certainly more than your wagonload of nothing proving it is.

My evidence is that we have a model for how someone can survive - the Snarl is only a threat on the Material Plane, so just Plane Shift away from it and you're okay. You would need to make the case that this somehow won't work, either because the way the gods destroy the world somehow targets its residents on other planes like Familicide on steroids somehow, for some reason, or the gods go out of their way to assassinate anyone who tries it after the fact. And there's no evidence for either of those.

[brian 333]

At such time as Rich shows us a non-god character who has survived prior iterations I'll gladly change my mind. Until then, I have plenty of evidence to indicate it's not possible, certainly more than your wagonload of nothing proving it is.



We won't ever know if it's truly possible either.

Julio Scoundrel thinks it's a good bet. So does Hilgya.

[TRH]

Julio Scoundrel thinks it's a good bet. So does Hilgya.

Well to be fair, if Hilgya believes something that would be beneficial to her if true is true, then it's almost certainly false.

[hungrycrow]

At such time as Rich shows us a non-god character who has survived prior iterations I'll gladly change my mind. Until then, I have plenty of evidence to indicate it's not possible, certainly more than your wagonload of nothing proving it is.

What about this guy?

[bunsen_h]

Funny. Most of my elders say the pipes CAN'T stop flowing at a certain age.

As far as urine goes, there tends to be a shift to needing to pee relatively small amounts frequently, until there's loss of control. Constipation also becomes an issue.

Well to be fair, if Hilgya believes something that would be beneficial to her if true is true, then it's almost certainly false.

I'd say, rather, that if she believes that something like that is true, her beliefs are unreliable and the truth can't be inferred from them. That's she's delusional, rather than being "insane" in the Raymond Smullyan "automatically believes the opposite of the truth" sense.

EDIT:

What about this guy?

Though it's a snack, I don't think that's a movie theatre snack, so one can't assume that it survived from that former world.

[TRH]

Though it's a snack, I don't think that's a movie theatre snack, so one can't assume that it survived from that former world.

On the other hand, the intermission strip had a pretty broad definition of the term, to include stuff like pizza, soy lattes and nachos: https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0301.html

And as someone pointed out before, the soy latte archer even appeared later in strip 350. He might be the strongest case for an overt survivor of another world.

[brian 333]

What about this guy?

An humunculous created by the Sorcerer's Fruit Pie Corporation Marketing Wizards.

[Krakius]

Always hungry . . .
Wait, I've got it! The Monster in the Darkness is a dog!

[PontificatusRex]

Julio Scoundrel thinks it's a good bet. So does Hilgya.

I don't think it applies to Julio, I'm pretty sure that he expects Elan to save the day and really is just taking a vacation in a place where it will be impossible for the Order to reach him if they get desperate.

In general, I expect that the gods are pretty good at sweeping for refugees on the other planes, it would go along with their whole "mindwiping the outsiders" process. The fact that Thor casually dropped the existence Xykon's Astral fortress instead of treating it like it was a big deal strongly implies that, in my view. Which is why I mentioned in the "Why not negotiate with Xykon" thread that having the Order tell Xykon they know about the fortress would help their position - the very fact that they know about it, and got their info from the gods who are just on the edge of wiping out the world, should be a convincing argument that it's not as safe as he thinks it is.

[The MunchKING]

Balrog was originally meant to be the End Boss name, and the boxer M.Bison as a joke about M Tyson but they had to change it as it was too close
The facial features are a dead give away

I know that, people tell me that every time I reference Balrog. The point is still they called the Boss Bison and the boxer Balrog.

Personally I'm not so sure going to the Astral Plane or any other would actually help- the webcomic look was said to be part of this world's creation, and if those are in the same format, maybe those get reset too?

I kind of got the opposite impression when Thor talked about how the Astral Plane, along with all the Outer Planes, were basically made up of enough thoughts crammed together they start thinking for themselves.

My takeaway was they weren't made with the same Threads of Reality that Prime Material was, and so they didn't need to (and possibly COULDN'T) unmake it every new go around. Which is also why they didn't want the Snarl getting lose out there.

[faustin]

In general, I expect that the gods are pretty good at sweeping for refugees on the other planes, it would go along with their whole "mindwiping the outsiders" process. The fact that Thor casually dropped the existence Xykon's Astral fortress instead of treating it like it was a big deal strongly implies that, in my view. Which is why I mentioned in the "Why not negotiate with Xykon" thread that having the Order tell Xykon they know about the fortress would help their position - the very fact that they know about it, and got their info from the gods who are just on the edge of wiping out the world, should be a convincing argument that it's not as safe as he thinks it is.

Of course Xykon´s fortress is neither safe or hidden from the Big Guys. As Eugene pointed out, Celestia has beyond epic scrying power.

The gods have settled non-interference clauses because, in Odin 's words, "if everyone could play in the sandbox all the time, there wouldn't be a lot of castles left unkicked." The moment the sandbox is out, there is a absolutely zero reasons for not paying a visit to the ballsy lich who tried to blackmail them. Xykon's ultra-megafortress of doom is just another sand castle for them.

[TRH]

I too expect the gods to solve the Xykon problem even after an entire book explaining why they can't, won't and shouldn't.

[Peelee]

I too expect the gods to solve the Xykon problem even after an entire book explaining why they can't, won't and shouldn't.

The Xykon problem is "Xykon is an existential threat to the world". The Xykon problem is not "after the universe was destroyed, he is hiding out in the astral plane until the next world is created".

The gods can't, won't, and shouldn't solve the first. There's no reason they can't, won't, or shouldn't solve the second, in the incredibly unlikely event it happens.

[dancrilis]

There's no reason they can't, won't, or shouldn't solve the second, in the incredibly unlikely event it happens.

It risks creating another snarl - the gods won't know if all the other gods are fine with them moving against Xykon unless they have a meeting to discuss it (and they should probably invite the Dark One to that meeting - somehow), and trying if they are not fine risks divine intervention.

They might have already agreed to do this (so no meeting needed) but they should still likely check with the Dark One in case he shows up to fight on Xykon's behalf.

[brian 333]

Hey, that world was a good run for us, wasn't it. It sucks that we were so close to fixing it except for that Xykon guy. Anyone object if I mind-wipe him and add him to my battery stockpile?

Hel, no. He's Evil and Northern, so he falls under your purview anyway.