Ranking the defence of the gates

[AeonQuasar]

So maybe this have been done before, but I'm just ocationally in this forum so whatever. I'm doing one now anyway.

After now we have seen how all gates are protected and I do want to rank them in order of how good and well designed they where for defence. I add my take as my personal opinion, but I would love to see others take on it as well. No need to use my format. We don't fully know enough about Kragors gate, but we can at least take into account of how much we know about it.

Note: By mortal I mean human age where knowledge and power can be gone in a few generations.

C Tier:

5: Lirian's gate.
+ A virus destroying "all" living spellcasters that gets close to it. Making them spell-impotent.
+ Good alligned nature creatures in high numbers
+ Elven warriors and Lirian herself

- Basically no defence at all against the undead (what was she thinking?)
- Extremly weak to forest fires (or just if not given enough time to buff before)
- Weak to surprise attacks (apparantly nothing against teleportation or similar)

4: Soon's gate
+ Ghost warriors in high numbers as last defence
+ An entire city in first line of defence
+ Saphire guard able to remove threats as they come by

- Arrogant, makes themselves a target and easily corruptable
- Nothing beside their own force can defend it / weak to magic
- Mortal.

B tier:

3. Dorukan's Gate
+ Magic master in command
+ Inpenetrable castle
+ Tons of magic traps and protections

- Main defender can be lured out of its defence position
- Summoning allowance (for personal reasons) are a weak point
- Mortal (few defences once dead - no offspring)

A Tier:

2. Kraagor's gate
+ Remote hostile and hard to find location
+ RNG puzzle with dangerous monsters (that probably are a bluff)
+ Traps and amnesia poison available

- No (yet) ways of dealing with presistent strong targets
- RNG Puzzle can be cheesed with magic
- Last defence are very uncertain in power (yet to be seen)

1. Girard's Gate
+ Entire generations of dedicated spellcasting protectors
+ Riddled with tons of deadly traps, bluffs and illusions
+ Hard to find

- Can be located with logic and magic
- Entire defence can be wiped out by one (though very rare) spell (even on a basically unrelated person/monster)
- Mortal


If Lirian had a defence against the undead and fire she would probably be 1 or 2 ranked. The virus are quite powerful stuff. Girard might be lower on the list as we don't really know the true power of the traps and illusions. Kraagors gate are not yet completed so it can go up or down.

[BaronOfHell]

I recall reading Girard's gate also had no apparent anti-undead measures.
Of course we can't really know that for sure given the defenses were down at the time, but I do think all the gates are really well protected and their true weakness is within the personal flaws of those who protects them.

[Zarhan]

The key Aesop of this whole gate setup is that Scribble failed with the whole "monitor other gates only, no visits"-policy because they couldn't work together.

Fine, they had bad enough relationships that building common approach for defending the things was out of the question, but they really couldn't even be bothered to even set up an alarm effectively saying "gate threatened, I'm about to die, come and help NOW, you guys hate me but world might get nuked". The current setup only shows that gate has been destroyed. Even Lirian did not have any prepared panic button for Dorukan or apparently vice versa despite being lovers.

No points for effort.

[Synesthesy]

Are we sure Dorukan was still a mortal?


Said that, every Gate is defended with the forces every member of the Scribble thought was best, and it was defended against what every member thought it was the worst. It also seems that both Dorukan and Serini did not have a plan for what will happen after their death.
And the second important thing we can notice is that an undead epic lich and his team are out of their league despite them being epic too: Xykon literally destroys both Lirian's and Dorukan's (and the second was kinda easy for him), Girard's weak point are creatures immune to illusion, as for example an undead epic lich, and creatures who have Serini's diary, as again our favourite evil sorcerer. Kraagor has putting on a fight, but with Redcloak's summons it would be only a matter of time (if the Order wasn't there). Only Soon's gate was able to defend their gate and it would have ended the threat forever if given little more time.


If I have to rate the various gate, I would say:

E) Lirian's is too weak to anything who is immune to diseases. And non-magical fire could have worked too.
D) Dorukan's is weak to anything magic is weak against. Arrogance is one of them. But relying on just one living man, even if really powerfull, is not a good idea.
C) Girard's is very strong, but still can be defeated by anyone immune to illusion. In a world where undead are kinda common, this is a big weakness, even if not as big as Lirian's to fire.
B) Kraagor's can be defeated only by a combination of smartness and strength. Very often people rely only in one of them (just like team Evil). But can be defeated by a team high level enough who can spot traps (for example, an evil Order of the Stick).
A) Anything that can brute force Xykon to submission has the win to me. The secrecy of an holy order, the city investing money and soldiers to defend itself, and the strenght of the Spirits are a very good defence. Soon's project + Shojo execution were kinda perfect imho.

[Fyraltari]

It also seems that both Dorukan and Serini did not have a plan for what will happen after their death.

Serini doesn't seem to be necessary for her defenses to work, I don't see why that would change after her death.

Dorukan and Lirian don't seem to have a mecanism in place to take over after their eventual death (in fairness Lirian probably still had a long time to think about it) but it's not absurd to think both of them were grooming successors that TE murdered off-screen because they don't matter to the story.

[Wintermoot]

It's too soon to rank Serini's gate defenses because we still don't know where the gate it. However, just with what we are given, I'm rating it pretty darn high.

Girard's gates defenses are ludicrous to me. I keep hearign people go on about how Soon's knights were corruptible, well what about Girard's family of rogues, rapists and kidnappers? You can't possibly believe that every child and grandchild of this family have remained loyal and on point for the purpose of living out in the desert, casting illusion spells on schedule for generations. To be high enough level to cast those spells, they need to go out and adventure and gain experience and they don't strike me of the mindset of returning home when requested to do their duty. It's a ridiculous idea that could only exist in service to a story and falls apart when looked at logically.

I have to assume that for every one good-little-illusionist who did their job, there are 10 others who went out into the world and didnt' come back. And every one of them was a potential leak of information or another person who could decide "hey maybe I can use this for personal power and glory"

Even if you ignore all of that, Illusion magic is notoriously easy to protect against and get around, especially in a self-aware fantasy parody.

So I would rank his lowest, along with Lirian's. Because both were very easy to get around with a minimum of planning. (Protection from Disease and Truesight)

Dorokun and Serini both built formidible traps and defenses that I admire and respect so I would put them next. They took effort to shore up a second level of defense behind their gaping holes at least.

Soon built an entire city and culture around defending his gate. To me, that's the most formidable defense. As would seem to be supported by needing an entire hobgoblin invasion to get through to it.

[Peelee]

C Tier:

4: Soon's gate
+ Ghost warriors in high numbers as last defence
+ An entire city in first line of defence
+ Saphire guard able to remove threats as they come by

- Arrogant, makes themselves a target and easily corruptable
- Nothing beside their own force can defend it / weak to magic
- Mortal.

What? Soon's was objectively the hardest one to tackle - Xykon, an epic level undead sorcerer, needed a literal army in order to even have a chance to hold the Gate, attempted to bypass most of the defenses, and still would have lost and been completely destroyed (arguably the closest he's ever been to being destroyed), and his only saving grace was being saved by pure luck - an unhinged person who was lucky enough to escape prison, lucky enough to go to the throne room, lucky enough to miscontrue the situation in the throne room, lucky enough to neither see nor hear the founder of her entire order dealing the final blow to the lich she had been so terrified of and was basing all her decisions on up to that moment... Xykon only survived due to obscene luck.

"Arrogant" as a con? All of the scribblers were arrogant. They all thought they could hold it. The Gate wasn't a target due to the Azurites. Hell, the Gate and the entire Sapphire Guard was almost entirely unknown to virtually everyone in the world. And they weren't particularly weak to magic, unless you consider "absolutely immune to any and all magic" to be "weak to magic", in which case that's also a trait shared by all the Gates defenses.

This is a wildly inaccurate assessment of Soon's Gate, IMO.

[Fyraltari]

Girard's gates defenses are ludicrous to me. I keep hearign people go on about how Soon's knights were corruptible, well what about Girard's family of rogues, rapists and kidnappers? You can't possibly believe that every child and grandchild of this family have remained loyal and on point for the purpose of living out in the desert, casting illusion spells on schedule for generations. To be high enough level to cast those spells, they need to go out and adventure and gain experience and they don't strike me of the mindset of returning home when requested to do their duty. It's a ridiculous idea that could only exist in service to a story and falls apart when looked at logically.

It's only been 60 years, most of them probably knew Girard. Counting the dead at the lunchtables and comparing with the family tree, there can't have been more than a handfuk of deserters. The whole set-up implies a high degree of indoctrination among the family and it's likely that all the adventuring happened under the supervision of trusted, senior relatives, likely parents and elder siblings.

Edit: that said, I agree it was untenable in the long run.

Soon built an entire city and culture around defending his gate. To me, that's the most formidable defense. As would seem to be supported by needing an entire hobgoblin invasion to get through to it.

Soon did neither of those things, Azure City is much older than him. He built a paladin Order and a castle and handed them both to his liege lord when he died, that's it.

Edit: by the way, do you think he told his king about the gateway to a god-killing abomination inside his throne before or after giving him said chair?

[Metastachydium]

It's too soon to rank Serini's gate defenses because we still don't know where the gate it. However, just with what we are given, I'm rating it pretty darn high.

Yup. What we do know is that it's largely self-sustaining and it currently has 4+ layers of defenses (Serini&Sunny; the decoy dungeons; the backstage; and whatever's actually protecting the Gate). That's quite impressive as it is.

Girard's gates defenses are ludicrous to me. I keep hearign people go on about how Soon's knights were corruptible, well what about Girard's family of rogues, rapists and kidnappers? You can't possibly believe that every child and grandchild of this family have remained loyal and on point for the purpose of living out in the desert, casting illusion spells on schedule for generations. To be high enough level to cast those spells, they need to go out and adventure and gain experience and they don't strike me of the mindset of returning home when requested to do their duty. It's a ridiculous idea that could only exist in service to a story and falls apart when looked at logically.

I have to assume that for every one good-little-illusionist who did their job, there are 10 others who went out into the world and didnt' come back. And every one of them was a potential leak of information or another person who could decide "hey maybe I can use this for personal power and glory"

Add to that Girard's personal philosophy amounting to "authority is corrupt and it corrupts". Sounds like just the thing that breeds discipline!

Even if you ignore all of that, Illusion magic is notoriously easy to protect against and get around, especially in a self-aware fantasy parody.

Yeah, that too. And if the schedule's anything to go by, much of it wasn't even that strong.

So I would rank his lowest, along with Lirian's. Because both were very easy to get around with a minimum of planning. (Protection from Disease and Truesight)

Right, Lirian. The gal who hung her Gate on two living creatures vulnerable to fire in a forest she actively kept from being even mildly fireproof.

Dorokun

Dorukan. The arrogant wizard guy who hired all manners of folks with no professional experience to man his side projects and then allowed them to wander off on "very important missions" (not to mention the thing with Lirian).

Soon built an entire city and culture around defending his gate. To me, that's the most formidable defense. As would seem to be supported by needing an entire hobgoblin invasion to get through to it.

Soon didn't build the city, but making its ruler the head of the Guard must have sure helped with shoring up its defenses, so much so that yes, it took a literal army with heavy-hitters at the helm to break through and they still almost lost. The Ghost Martyrs also amount to a pretty damn neat invisible last line of defense, they are incorruptible and they are getting stronger with each passing generation.

As for the raids, yes, they ultimately did backfire, but the basic idea (be pre-emptive, tie up loose ends) was sound and the operation was apparently very succesful in expunging the records. We don't know of anyone other than the Oracle and the Church of the Dark One that managed to elude them.

[Dame_Mechanus]

What? Soon's was objectively the hardest one to tackle - Xykon, an epic level undead sorcerer, needed a literal army in order to even have a chance to hold the Gate, attempted to bypass most of the defenses, and still would have lost and been completely destroyed (arguably the closest he's ever been to being destroyed), and his only saving grace was being saved by pure luck - an unhinged person who was lucky enough to escape prison, lucky enough to go to the throne room, lucky enough to miscontrue the situation in the throne room, lucky enough to neither see nor hear the founder of her entire order dealing the final blow to the lich she had been so terrified of and was basing all her decisions on up to that moment... Xykon only survived due to obscene luck.

"Arrogant" as a con? All of the scribblers were arrogant. They all thought they could hold it. The Gate wasn't a target due to the Azurites. Hell, the Gate and the entire Sapphire Guard was almost entirely unknown to virtually everyone in the world. And they weren't particularly weak to magic, unless you consider "absolutely immune to any and all magic" to be "weak to magic", in which case that's also a trait shared by all the Gates defenses.

This is a wildly inaccurate assessment of Soon's Gate, IMO.

I also think Dorukan's gate is ranked far too highly here - the castle was hardly impenetrable, and out of the three gates where the primary defense was "lots of magic" only Dorukan mostly just filled the place with monsters and then sat around doing very little to reinforce his defenses. Once Xykon drew him out it was pretty easy to take over, and not one but two adventuring parties got in there just fine. Seriously, at least Girard's gate had traps, and most of them were placed more accurately.

Meanwhile, Soon's gate wasn't just protected by a city and an army but by being wholly inconspicuous. If you didn't know about the gate you could stumble around for ages without finding it. Heck, not only did Soon have protections while everyone was alive, he clearly had better defenses in place in the event of death; Girard's gate relied on a constant stream of illusion refreshers from his family while Soon made sure that even if something similar to Familicide hit the Sapphire Guard, they would still have defenses in place.

[Fyraltari]

We shouldn't forget that Dorukan's final defense is what held Xykon back the longest (so far, Kraagor's Tomb may break that record. Although, now that the heroes are her, I doubt it).

[Jasdoif]

5: Lirian's gate.
...(apparantly nothing against teleportation or similar)

Not exactly.

The implicit assumption of several lines of Redcloak's dialogue is that he already tried everything he knows how to do. I just didn't show it all because I had limited space, and because I assumed that the reader would understand that if a smart, tactically-minded caster like Redcloak says, "X is the only way out," then he probably tried the easy ways first.

After all, Lirian would have needed to ward her prison against people coming in to rescue them, too, which means locking it down to plane shifts and stone shapes, even if she thinks her prisoners are incapable of them. A restored Xykon, however, is more powerful than Lirian could ward against.

[Resileaf]

I don't really have a horse in this race, but I wanted to comment on a single point.

- Entire defence can be wiped out by one (though very rare) spell (even on a basically unrelated person/monster)

This doesn't count. This is the equivalent of saying "Can be destroyed by a nuclear bomb". Like, yeah, obviously an epic spell is going to be trouble.

[Peelee]

I don't really have a horse in this race, but I wanted to comment on a single point.



This doesn't count. This is the equivalent of saying "Can be destroyed by a nuclear bomb". Like, yeah, obviously an epic spell is going to be trouble.

Seconded. Every Gate could be knocked out by a single, homebrewed epic level spell specifically engineered in the exact way to strip a Gate defenseless.

[Mike Havran]

Here are my 2 cp:
We don't know the full extent of Kraagor's Gate defenses, so I will not rank it now. But it's already well above the weakest one, which is Lirians.

Lirian neglected that a significant amount of villains are going to make themselves immune to any disease one way or another. The fire thing is also a big blunder.

Other three destroyed Gates were far better guarded and it was idiocy of their would-be defenders that was the reason they are gone.

Dorukan's castle was a tough nut to crack and Xykon got incredibly lucky that Dorukan cared for Lirian so much. Otherwise, the bad guys might have been still sitting at the Cloister's perimeter. Even after that, Team Evil was still thwarted by the final sigil. I'll grant that they would probably find a way around eventually, so they were in a similar situation as they are right now with Kraagor's gate.

Girard's defenses were destroyed by incredibly overpowered überspell. You can't do much against it, especially since even Girard himself likely didn't have epic spells. Otherwise, the bunch of spellcasters would probably made it a hell for any invader. It's not just that they had only illusions, they were a coordinated team of powerful mages bound by blood. It is hard to say how much Girard told them about the Gate's meaning and how likely is that somebody would try to betray them.

Soon's gate was the best one, IMO, and the circumstances of its destruction are on par with Oracle's theories about Belkar's prophecy fulfilment. Awfully contrived.

[Lord Torath]

Regarding Kraagor's Gate, we don't know how it is replenished. There could be an automated process, but I suspect that Serini re-populates each dungeon herself (with help from her friends). We don't know that it will keep going after she dies.

[Mike Havran]

Regarding Kraagor's Gate, we don't know how it is replenished. There could be an automated process, but I suspect that Serini re-populates each dungeon herself (with help from her friends). We don't know that it will keep going after she dies.

I think it is automated somehow. If Serini has "friends" that can move monsters (even powerful enough for Xykon to get EXP from) into a small dungeon, then it's high time for them to show up and start kicking ass.

[Fyraltari]

Regarding Kraagor's Gate, we don't know how it is replenished. There could be an automated process, but I suspect that Serini re-populates each dungeon herself (with help from her friends). We don't know that it will keep going after she dies.

Serini left after it was finished and only came back a couple years before the comic started. That place ran itself without her help for five decades.

[brian 333]

Consider that all four of the destroyed gates did what they were designed to do.

1) Hold the rift they were built on together and prevent The Snarl from getting out,

2) Prevent anyone from using them for other purposes.

Redcloak has gotten zero use out of the gates. They have done their jobs.

Any sane person who attacked and destroyed a gate would soon realize what they were, and either flee the area allowing someone else to build another gate over the rift, or build another gate themselves out of self-preservation.

The fact that Redcloak has not yet realized that he and Xykon could have built a gate over Lirian's Gate and then used the ritual on it amuses me. He is the mastermind whose clever schemes have resulted in... nothing? He seeks four gates in a row, only to find the first useless, the next two destroyed before he got to them, and the last actively defended by the same crew that kept him out of the last two.

Yes, the world is unstable and ready to implode. But that is not a sign of a weakness in the defenses of the gates. Their primary strength was that anyone strong enough to seize one would quickly realize how stupid it would be to destroy them. In this regard, Redcloak is as stupid as Elan. He is causing gates to be destroyed, and his only backup plan is to move on to the next.

The problem is that none of the gates, built and guarded by relatively sane people, were proof against insane people who would see the destruction of the world, even if it included their own destruction, as a positive outcome.

[Elanfanforlife]

Any sane person who attacked and destroyed a gate would soon realize what they were, and either flee the area allowing someone else to build another gate over the rift, or build another gate themselves out of self-preservation.

The fact that Redcloak has not yet realized that he and Xykon could have built a gate over Lirian's Gate and then used the ritual on it amuses me. He is the mastermind whose clever schemes have resulted in... nothing? He seeks four gates in a row, only to find the first useless, the next two destroyed before he got to them, and the last actively defended by the same crew that kept him out of the last two.

Does Redcloak know how to build a gate? And even if he does, he might need to be epic level or something of that sort to build one.

[catagent101]

Yeah, that's a good point, the gates so far have indeed worked for their intended purpose.

As for ranking the gates:

5: Dorukan's Gate. I feel like the fact that Dorukan was a key linchpin in its defense while being an old guy kinda forces this one to be last. Like, Xykon could just move in after he killed him, not a good look. The ward was good, I'll give him that much though (if at the end of the day, bypassable). The fact that he randomly put a self-destruct rune though, not so much.
4: Lirian's Gate. An army is as good a start as any I suppose and is certainly more sustainable, but the gate's killer feature (the virus) is easily bypassed and also hanging the gate on treants looks cool but is pretty questionable defense-wise. Also Lirian, you really need to read up on your undead girl.
3: Girard's Gate: Like other people have mentioned, a lot of it can be bypassed by a spell that costs 250gp. That said, I do think it had some neat tricks and unlike Dorukan's and Lirian's doesn't have a self destruct mechanism. Girard turning his family into a cult to defend it is a mixed bag I guess. It undermines the keeping the gate's location secret but it also gives the gate a fighting chance if somebody does find it.
2: Kraagor's Gate (tentative); The fact that it has stupidly powerful monsters is good at least. The big question is how well is the actual gate protected/hidden. Can someone just stumble upon it and take control of it? I'd presume no but I doubt it has the defenses the fake gate has. The fake gate does require prior knowledge of the gates to work, but most people who would try to take control of it probably have that so I think it works.
1. Soon's Gate: I think the fact that the defenses of the gate grow stronger with each passing generation is pretty cool (though their vulnerability to Rebuke Undead is a notable weakness) and it probably has the most effective army of the lot. It would probably struggle against neutral or good opponents, but admittedly those would be unlikely to try to take the gate so I suppose it's a fair assumption. It's also cleverly hidden in the throne room inside the castle so it has a bit of a best of both worlds situation going on.

[Fyraltari]

In this regard, Redcloak is as stupid as Elan. He is causing gates to be destroyed, and his only backup plan is to move on to the next.

Redcloak is stupid because his actions might result in an outcome he considers positive?

Does Redcloak know how to build a gate? And even if he does, he might need to be epic level or something of that sort to build one.

Spoiler: SoD, p72

Show

Can we build a new [Gate]?
Maybe, if we were both epic level, but we'd still have to research how to do so, and that could take years of study! Maybe decades!

The fact that he randomly put a self-destruct rune though, not so much.

It's not random, though. It's there to ensure the gate doesn't fall into the wrong hands. This may also be why Lirian put her gate between two treants (note that unlike Girard's or Soon's it simply broke, it did not explode).
Girard turning his family into a cult to defend it is a mixed bag I guess. It undermines the keeping the gate's location secret[/quote]
How so?

the fake gate

What (fake) gate?

[brian 333]

Redcloak is stupid because his actions might result in an outcome he considers positive?

Spoiler: SoD, p72

Show

Can we build a new [Gate]?
Maybe, if we were both epic level, but we'd still have to research how to do so, and that could take years of study! Maybe decades!

He is insane to believe his outcome would be a positive result. Based on nothing but wishful thinking he has decided a future world would be better for goblins than the current one. The reality is that in the next incarnation, goblins might be chewing gum and end up stuck to the bottoms of chairs, desks, and tables, or dropped on floors and sidewalks while elves get to be fried pies and dwarves get to be jawbreakers.

He is stupid because he does not re-evaluate his position with each failure. He does not even acknowledge them as failures from which he might learn.
An example might be that he controls a rift in Azure City. Instead of playing games with Xykon's phylactery, why didn't he look for the gate-making ritual in the Azure City Library? If he had, we might be watching him construct a gate about now.

[ZhonLord]

I would argue that Soon and Dorukan's gates need to be swapped in ranking.


1. You say easily corruptible, however any paladin who becomes corrupt would be banished by the Twelve Gods for their foolishness. Miko can't be the only Fallen paladin from the Sapphire Guard, there's going to be a history of others as well. She is, however, the first and only true traitor to the Guard. That's not nearly as potent a weakness from a risk-vs-severity standpoint as one might think.

2. Mortal is not a weakness as far as Soon's Gate is concerned, as that same mortality allows it to continue to build strength over time through the Martyr's Oath. Xykon almost LOST against the ghost army, and that was with only a couple generations built up; Miko's intervention saved him. What if there'd been another 30-50 years of ghosts added to the force? Just 1-2 more smites would have made all the difference in Xykon and Redcloak's hit points, let alone another 20+. Girard's Gate is maintained by mortals as well, but they're more maintaining a status quo than putting souls in the "bank" over time. Soon's Gate turns mortality into an asset, not a hindrance.

3. Soon's Gate also has secrecy and divination-protection on its side as advantages; Redcloak and Xykon originally had no idea where the Gate was or what shape it took; had they not overheard that the Throne itself held the Gate, they would have been searching the entire palace by hand to try and figure out what they were looking for - they might have even overlooked the gem multiple times in their search. The throne room couldn't be scried into, similar to Dorukan's dungeon, but this divination-blocker is sustained by the Twelve Gods themselves instead of being something that can be claimed by taking a single magic item. And knowledge of what the Sapphire is in the Sapphire Guard was only passed down by word of mouth from Soon to Shojo to Hinjo, never written or recorded. They would have had to find one very specific person in the whole city, assuming he even lived through the battle, and interrogated him to get the information. And he got away scot-free on a ship before anyone on Team Badguy could have a chance to figure out his importance.

[Xihirli]

Dorukan DID have measures in place after his death that Xykon and Redcloak seemingly had no way to bypass: his gate could only be accessed by someone Good-Aligned.

And, perhaps more importantly, he also kept this secret. It’s not in the diary. It’s probably not in his spell book or anything else Xykon would have free access to after killing Dorukan. The only hint he has is that this other area in the dungeon has a similar protection.

Now, once it’s figured out it’ll be easy to get around it. Any number of Good-Aligned people could be tricked or forced into dispelling the last defense, but it’s not like Dorukan had NO contingencies. Team Evil had the run of the place for… weeks? And couldn’t manage to even get to the gate, giving a ragtag band of adventures plenty of time to swoop in and save the day.

[dancrilis]

Think I will broadly stick with my previous answer:

Lirian's was the worst in my mind:

Spoiler

Show

She attached it to living creatures who broke it (and could have gotten bored and done that at any time being free willed creatures), her defences were effectively dealt with by low level goblins - the only true threat was herself (who granted being a elf would live a while).

Soon's was the best in my mind:
A secret order of paladins dedicated to preemptively eliminating threats, linking the gate to the center of power so regardless of who held the thrown (even if they didn't know about the gate which may have happened if the leader got assassinated) so it would be protected, and situated in a prominent city which would not present a soft target for most, and than himself and a legion of all the deceased members of the paladin order to defend it.
It was a tough cookie to crack.

Where the other three lie?
We don't know about Dorukan's as his defense likely intended to include himself, but as such it had a single point of weakness (himself). I will say that his was second weakest.
Girard likely next as at least he had a clear plan for his death and if any individual died it would not be an issue.

For Kraagor I am not sure - for all we know Serini coded her diary to point to his tomb rather than the gate as a bit of misdirection in case it fell into the wrong hands (and had the other ones correct as it was her diary in case she wanted to find them). I am tieing it with Girard's at the moment - but could easily go up or down in my estimation.

I may be inclined to push Kraagor's into second place and it might take Soon's position as first subject to how things go - whatever else you can say about them it clearly lasted longer then the rest of them which is likely worth something.

[Ionathus]

I'll preface by saying that I think all of the gates are indeed Epic-level strongholds. They did their jobs, and the threat each one posed required extremely high levels of force to bypass. They're all at least B tier in my book. At the same time, none of them are perfect, because that's the point of the Scribble: they each tried to go it alone, rather than band together and create a stronger, more lasting defense.

I won't rank Kraagor's Gate because we haven't seen all of it yet. Based on what we've seen so far, I feel like its defenses are pretty solid, but I won't rank it.

Roughly in order from lowest (relative) defense to highest:

Lirian's - Without spellcasters, you'd have a hard time against her army of nature. The weakness against liches is bad, but pretty niche. The death of the treants via forest fire would've been solved by Lirian if she wasn't busy being murdered by Xykon at the time.
Dorukan's - Big dungeon full of monsters and an epic-level wizard calling the shots. Seems like the Sigil did most of the heavy lifting, though, and Dorukan didn't really have a strong backup plan.
Girard's - Secretive, ingenious, with numerous redundancies and a highly-regimented spellcasting defense system. Turning your family into a reclusive cult has its pros and cons and is a non-zero risk, but it should hold for awhile at least if you're careful about family size and your indoctrination. Even if your illusions can be countered, you've still got 7+ high-level wizards who can snipe spells as your intruders run the gauntlet. I honestly don't see any glaring weaknesses here, short of Familicide.
Soon's - Having the backing of an entire nation and its army, plus secret Ghost Paladin assassins nobody knows about, is about as strong a play as you can get. At the end of the day, this is the only gate that actually came the closest to stopping Team Evil (plus an ocean of hobgoblin soldiers).

"Arrogant" as a con? All of the scribblers were arrogant. They all thought they could hold it. The Gate wasn't a target due to the Azurites. Hell, the Gate and the entire Sapphire Guard was almost entirely unknown to virtually everyone in the world.

Seconded. The Order of the Scribble fell apart because of arrogance, on all sides. Soon just gets the blame because he's the paladin and therefore must have obviously had the biggest ego in the entire world, paladins amirite???? Arrogant chaotic types love to mock paladins (just watch Serini interacting with captive O-Chul and Lien), but for all of that, Soon's defenses got the farthest.

[Bacon Elemental]

While I don't quite think Soon's Gate was the best defended (For a start there was a real if unlikely long-term risk of the Gate being destroyed incidentally given that it was in the chair of the Lord of Azure City.)

However, it is probbably one of the best long-term prospects so far in terms of Gate defense, not being reliant on a single person's life to protect, and I think much better prospects than Girard's Gate had in the long run. Sooner or later one of them was going to get busted or run off, and being a mono-school fortress is a major weakness.

[Carl]

As for Lirian i'd point out that the only examples of the virus not working we saw involved a racial immunity and a divine artifact. Whilst Cure Disease and Break Enchantment did nothing.

The fire vulnerability is an issue, but it's in the middle of the forest and the gates seem pretty fragile given they can be taken down by a sword strike so even if supported by stone, if the rest of the forest caught fire the radiant heat might well have done it in anyway.


As far as the Scirbblers flaw, i'd say it was't so much arrogance as dis-unity. It's obvious at least 2 distinct groups existed with Dory+Lir and Giriad+Serrini, though serrini seems to have had a good opinion on everyone barring Soon. Krageors a big unknown and probably key to how they held together so long. Soon in some respects is pretty blank as well, the most we know is that he couldn't unite the diseperate PoV's into a cohesive force. He had the authority, but he wasn#'t a great leader. At least in his scribbler days. TBF to him though, his class really doesn't help foster the kind of flexibility needed. Roys got a big leg up there, his class lets him be flexible and he actually has the witherell to develop that flexibility.

[Resileaf]

Talking about whether Soon was a good leader or not is too soon (rimshot) considering we don't know what exactly caused the split. There's something about Kraagor's death that is yet to be revealed. It could be as simple as Kraagor pushed Soon out of the rift at the last second and the others did not believe him, or something like Soon, in a moment of cowardice, pushed Kraagor into the Snarl to save himself and the others never forgave him.