OOTS #1277 - The Discussion Thread

[RatElemental]

Are you suggesting that some dungeons might be infinite?

Well there's at least one that probably is. Or at least indefinite.

[Provengreil]

Thanks for the comic; it makes it pretty obvious that Serini has a multi-layered defense, but it makes no sense for Xykon to suddenly be told "here is the access to the final dungeon" after he clears every dungeon. It makes more sense for Xykon to be baited with a death trap ("the Princess you are looking for is in another castle, and hi, here's a bomb!") on clearing all dungeons, then expecting Xykon to find another way to access the final dungeon.

As far as accessing the Gate for maintenance and monitoring goes; the best solution is still to shove the Gate into an inaccessible cave, magically monitor it, and do maintenance via rock-eater and Dig. Serini's already demonstrated the capability to have magically-existent wall that can be dug through via Sunny or other Beholder beams, so using large quantities of magic-walls is probably the correct solution.

The alternative solution is to use a magically-smart (as opposed to electronically smart) teleport access system; the Monster Hollow system will always teleport a non-Serini-approved person to a dungeon without cave access, but will teleport Serini to one with gate access.

It makes sense for Xykon to find the dungeon after clearing the hollow because that's how the dungeon works. Remember that this is still a universe inherently structured after adventuring rules, you see trials and challenges supposedly to select a good guy that the bad guy could trivially pass all the time. The best solution to prevent all access may be not having a path there, but that's just not going to be the case.

But really, what's the point of giving an attacker access to the gate after having cleared all of the Monster Hollow dungeons? Like I've said, from Serini's point of view, the only people with a valid reason to access the gate would be Serini and the maintenance teams, so why give them the gate in return for clearing every dungeon in Monster Hollow?

More likely, what Serini really means is that since Xykon didn't already figure out that the Monster Hollow dungeons are a shell game, he'll figure it out after he's cleared all of the Monster Hollow dungeons.

No, V pretty much told us he'll find it by clearing the hollow, and Serini's reaction confirms.

One of the things I'm thinking is, IRL, digging equipment is slow and expensive, look up the Boring Company and the average digging rate by digging machine these days (maybe 1 km a day if you're lucky).

In DnDs, although not necessarily in OOTS-land, you have the dig spell, which can excavate about 0.28 m^3 worth of dirt (per 2 caster levels) per casting.

The solution that Xykon can resort to, if he's convinced that the gate is still within Monster Hollow, and that the surface area of Monster Hollow is a trap, is just to use dig, earthquake (if he's willing to put up with the damage risk), or even magical divination that can see through dirt to locate interesting subterranean objects and get to the desired location that way.

There is no reason Xykon has to play the game Serini set up for him; Xykon is smart enough that he doesn't have to play the Monster Hollow shell game.

Xykon has to run the gauntlet for the same reason the gauntlet will let him through at the end: the base rules of the universe demand that there be a right answer to this. Also, Serini's main reason for not telling the location is that one of the Order could be captured and blab the secret. If the secret was "straight through half a mile of rock," she could say that just to impress upon the order how long the have to suss out a perfect scenario, and even Team Evil knowing wouldn't help them much in such a case.

Addendum:

A few points I'm thinking about right now:

--Serini's underresourced, because stockpiling Monster Hollow is extremely expensive, what with hundreds of dungeons filled with monsters? She's also been adamant that OOTS stop Xykon before he reaches the Final Dungeon, implying that their odds wouldn't be higher if they did a flanking attack on him while Xykon was distracted by Final Dungeon defenders. It also brings up the possibility that the Final Dungeon is underresourced, i.e, the monsters there don't provide more protection than the monsters in Monster Hollow, or if there's no monsters at all, with everything pushed in on a big surface bluff.

--The Final Dungeon is almost certainly blocked by magical stone. If Kraagor's Rift was discovered underground, it makes sense for Serini to seal immediate access to it via magical stone, making it extremely difficult to discover via casual inspection. That's substantially more security than the Backstage-Monster Hollow shell game, as implied in 1258.

--The question is whether the entrance to the Final Dungeon is via Monster Hollow or Backstage. Backstage can't actually be ruled out, because in 1258, Serini never said that the entrance wasn't in Backstage. As far as Monster Hollow goes, if Serini gave an ETA of Monster Hollow clearance times + backtrack search for magical stone times, she'd be confirming that the path to the Final Dungeon lies through the Monster Hollow warps, a weird kind of double bluff.

That also doesn't violate her claim that the Final Dungeon can't be discovered through mere luck, because luck is sufficient to discover Backstage, but it takes a combination of luck and skill to know that not only is Monster Hollow an apparent shell game, it also contains the actual entrance to the Final Dungeon, which can only be discovered through magical scrying for magical stone. A double bluff, if you will.

--Monster Hollow did it's thing for about 50 years before she met Xykon, I don't think it costs anything to restock. Her demands that Xykon be defeated outside are simply practical in that if they lose, Xykon still has to find the tomb.

--All the other gates were relatively easy to access if you had no one bothering you at finally reaching it, the worse being a thin lead sheet at Girard's. I see no reason why Kraagor's would be heavily encased when Neither Girard's nor Dorukan's was.

--My going theory on accessing the final area is that backstage will allow entry to the final dungeon, but only once someone else opens it first. This prevents backstage from being a liability, while still not leaving the defenders stuck should someone find their way in. No amount of luck will help you find the FD, someone must clear the hollow.

I've also been thinking as to whether or not it makes sense to directly allow access to the Final Dungeon by going through Monster Hollow.

Opening a magical portal from Monster Hollow to a death trap only works the first time; i.e, the attackers can send a limited amount of scouts through, and when they don't come back, conclude it's a trap.

And remember, part of the role of Monster Hollow is to attrition down the attackers, so if the attackers spend time backtracking and searching for the magical stone entrance to the Final Dungeon, they'll be somewhat recovered, removing the value of Monster Hollow.

On the other hand, letting the attackers in to the final dungeon, upon finishing off all 100+ Monster Hollow dungeons, gets you weakened attackers who've spent quite a few spell slots on dealing with Monster Hollow opponents.

If, say, attrition damage is enough to force the attackers to go back and rest, the attackers are likely weak enough to be defeated by Final Dungeon defenders trivially.

If, say, it's not, the attrition damage helps weaken the attackers down enough to be defeated by a combination of Final Dungeon defenders + Serini with her reserve force.

We don't know how long the entrance will remain open, and neither would any attacker: they'd have to push in immediately, without a rest. Recall that this is 3.5E, there's no short rest, so the recovery is pretty much a barbarian not being exhausted anymore, plus available healing. Any further attrition will stay. This is one reason the quinton is such a problem: he's allowing Team Evil to clear the entire place without use of daily magic, Xykon's impatience notwithstanding.

FWIW, my guess at how long the entrance remains open is several weeks. I'd guess that it times itself to when monsters respawn, which Oona says happens every few months. Since she's not marking calendars exactly, that's likely 10-14 weeks. Team Evil set up camp directly after Girard's gate blew up, and while the comic gives us a poor sense of time, it's probably a month or more to resolve the whole Durkula thing, and another week to travel to the north pole. That leaves at least 5 weeks, minus however much longer than my estimate it took for the Durkula arc, to hit the fastest respawn timer of 10 weeks. In short, once it's open, it's open.

[bunsen_h]

* I'm beginning to suspect that Redcloak knows something's fishy with the doors, though he may not have worked out precisely what. Roy said it immediately on arrival, each tunnel would have to be a straight line, and they aren't.

Again, that simply isn't true. All that's needed to have a normal, non-linear dungeon is for each to have a long hallway between the "front door" and the rest of the dungeon. The hallways extend outwards and downwards from the canyon, fanning out. That's an entirely mundane solution to the problem, and there are others. My suspicion -- not popular hereabouts -- is that the "multidimensional stone" permits some other shenanigans.

FWIW, my guess at how long the entrance remains open is several weeks. I'd guess that it times itself to when monsters respawn, which Oona says happens every few months. Since she's not marking calendars exactly, that's likely 10-14 weeks.

"See, there's one unavoidable fact about dungeon ownership. If you leave it empty, some random monster is going to show up and start living there."

[JT]

Again, that simply isn't true. All that's needed to have a normal, non-linear dungeon is for each to have a long hallway between the "front door" and the rest of the dungeon. The hallways extend outwards and downwards from the canyon, fanning out. That's an entirely mundane solution to the problem, and there are others. My suspicion -- not popular hereabouts -- is that the "multidimensional stone" permits some other shenanigans.

While possible, the corridors would need to be very, very long indeed. There are multiple layers of doors/corridors/dungeons, so you need to have a long enough corridor to get past not just what is on either side of a given entrance, but also what is above and below that entrance.

More likely, the teleporting swapover traps are connecting to dungeons scattered all over Monster Hollow's underground.

I would think Redcloak and Xykon would both have figured that something was amiss (and for that matter, Oona and the Hobgoblin tribe, though they might just not care), but maybe Serini put in some very, very long entry corridors to try and hide the fact that there was a teleport from people who have a modicum of spacial awareness.

[danielxcutter]

I'm like 99.99% sure that multidimensional stone here means stone that exists in the bordering Astral and Ethereal as well, as those planes are used for teleportation and incorporeality respectively. Though that's not completely incompatible with "there's other dimensional trickery", I admit, whether or not it's due to the stone itself.

[Ruck]

I'm like 99.99% sure that multidimensional stone here means stone that exists in the bordering Astral and Ethereal as well, as those planes are used for teleportation and incorporeality respectively. Though that's not completely incompatible with "there's other dimensional trickery", I admit, whether or not it's due to the stone itself.

Redcloak is pretty explicit about the latter when he exposits the multidimensional stone. I would expect there to be some kind of teleportation limitation, although I'm not very knowledgeable about the nature of teleportation and I also don't know how the stone would affect the swapovers (I do think there's not enough room in Monster Hollow for this many dungeons, although I don't know how big they are).

[bunsen_h]

Redcloak is pretty explicit about the latter when he exposits the multidimensional stone. I would expect there to be some kind of teleportation limitation, although I'm not very knowledgeable about the nature of teleportation and I also don't know how the stone would affect the swapovers (I do think there's not enough room in Monster Hollow for this many dungeons, although I don't know how big they are).

Teleport requires one to have some familiarity with the details of the destination. Even Greater Teleport requires that one have "at least a reliable description of the place to which you are teleporting". One ought to be able to teleport back to a dungeon that one had already explored, in the absence of a teleport blocker, but even Greater Teleport would only improve the situation if one had a description from someone else who had explored a dungeon.

[danielxcutter]

It might mean that you can't just spam D-Door as a shortcut. Some monsters have it at-will.

[Quizatzhaderac]

What's a notorious elemental favorite of Redcloak? Chlorine Elemental.

I'd classify chlorine as acid damage, which Xykon isn't immune to. He wouldn't even be able to use a gas mask, since he doesn't have any skin to protect his bones.

I don't think the Quinton was updated to 3.5 though, so I think it's using the 3.0 Wall of Force. That fits perfectly here since 3.0 Wall of Force can make both walls and spheres to trap monsters in (and really big ones since the Quinton casts it as a 20th level sorcerer) which last minute/level (so 20 minutes).

So, what happens after 20 minutes? Are those monsters still aggro'ed or do they forget you exist after you leave line of sight?

Were I DM, I think I'd point out (at the start) that they stand a good chance of getting Zerg rushed like that.

[Peelee]

I'd classify chlorine as acid damage, which Xykon isn't immune to.

Despite that chlorine is not an acid? Cl₂ doesn't have hydrogen. It can form hydrochloric and hypochlorous acids, but in elemental form, which an Elemental would inarguably have....

[brian 333]

Despite that chlorine is not an acid? Cl₂ doesn't have hydrogen. It can form hydrochloric and hypochlorous acids, but in elemental form, which an Elemental would inarguably have....

It is highly reactive, sometimes violently so.

As we saw when The Order was dealing with a chlorine elemental.

[Peelee]

It is highly reactive, sometimes violently so.

As we saw when The Order was dealing with a chlorine elemental.

When did the Order deal with a chlorine elemental? I remember the one that Tsukiko fought, which didnt react with anything and waa defeated by magical sonic energy.

[Bacon Elemental]

On the subject of "Buried half a mile straight down", that almost certainly isn't an option! Kraagor's Gate is probbably on or above the pre- Kraagor's Tomb ground level, as seen in Soon Kim's recollection. Redcloak points out that the entire ravine is built up from the multidimensional stone [1040], and otherwise I'm not sure how this stuff would protect the Tomb's secrecy. Therefore the whole complex is within or beneath a giant artificial hill built to hide the fact that the dungeons arent actually here from casual observation.

Presumably despite the awesome scale of the Tomb, Ms Toormuck's resources are not actually infinite when it comes to procuring Plot-ium rock, merely very large, so she can't build the Tomb up arbitrarily high.


Additionally, I think some posters have forgotten that the Tomb was explicitly designed and set up to not require intervention*. Serini set up the king of brutal grind-them-down dungeoncrawl adventures to honour her dead friend and keep nosy people away from Kraagor's Gate, then left to get on with her Chaotic Good adventuring life. So analyses of the Gate's defence setup which hinge on the Epic halfling and her cadre of moderately powerful behind-the-scenes monsters should remember that the Tomb is *designed* without her. She's probably been worriedly preparing it for Xykon ever since he scry-and-die'd her and Gates began exploding (We know she was still recruiting powerful monsters as late as the Dungeon of Dorukan), but she can only add ad-hoc defences to the original design, like setting up kill traps with Sunny's AMF and the mimics in empty chambers backstage.


*edit: As explicitly as the truth of any of the Secret Lore of the Sapphire Guard can be considered that is. It hasn't strayed far from the truth yet but there's always a chance)

[Peelee]

On the subject of "Buried half a mile straight down", that almost certainly isn't an option! Kraagor's Gate is probbably on or above the pre- Kraagor's Tomb ground level, as seen in Soon Kim's recollection. Redcloak points out that the entire ravine is built up from the multidimensional stone

Devils advocate: so you acknowledge that there was no canyon in the crayon drawings, and that the multidimensional stone was built up, but you reject that it was built up enough to have thr rift by underneath the level that became "ground"? You have a very narrow snd restrictive interpretation of how rock is allowed to be raised up, it would seem.

[Quizatzhaderac]

Despite that chlorine is not an acid? Cl₂ doesn't have hydrogen. It can form hydrochloric and hypochlorous acids, but in elemental form, which an Elemental would inarguably have....

If a person thinks reindeer live on the south pole, have black and white feathers, lay eggs, eat fish, and are monogamous, then they don't have many incorrect ideas about reindeer, they have one incorrect idea about what penguins are called.

Chemistry needs a lot of ways to describe "corrosive chemical", in fact the main point of chemistry (in a sense) to be as precise about those things as possible.

3.5e has 12-ish damage types, which is arguably too many. It's also way too few to distinguish between acids and bases or acids and strong reducing agents. D&D "acid" is very clearly Hollywood acid, and as unscientific as that is, I think that's the right call.

D&D "poisons" on the other hand, don't even affect plants. Now, let's ask, what would pure chlorine damage? Plants? Archaebacteria? Nanobot swarms? Robots? I'm pretty sure pure chlorine will react with calcium phosphate, which is what Xykon mostly is.

..... Redcloak points out that the entire ravine is built up from the multidimensional stone [1040],....

That's an interesting word choice for what I'd assumed was a single, deliberate construction project. Although, I don't think I've ever heard anyone was "build up" to specify the literal vertical direction.

My best guess is that is was first initially built, then later "build up" with multidimensional stone. Like, maybe they laid the foundation/tunneled the caves first, then cam back and added some stone to the astral plane; between doing the plumbing and the insulation.

[JonahFalcon]

Chlorine gas can suffocate you, and damage your lungs severely when it reacts with the mucus and liquid in there.

(Ditto oxygen. It's called oxygen toxicity.)

[El_Chupacabra]

I'd classify chlorine as acid damage, which Xykon isn't immune to. He wouldn't even be able to use a gas mask, since he doesn't have any skin to protect his bones.
So, what happens after 20 minutes? Are those monsters still aggro'ed or do they forget you exist after you leave line of sight?

Were I DM, I think I'd point out (at the start) that they stand a good chance of getting Zerg rushed like that.

They have a functionally-infinite number of Force cages/walls, after 20 minutes create a new forcecage.

[bunsen_h]

I'd classify chlorine as acid damage, which Xykon isn't immune to. He wouldn't even be able to use a gas mask, since he doesn't have any skin to protect his bones.

I'm pretty sure pure chlorine will react with calcium phosphate, which is what Xykon mostly is.

Not by real-world chemistry. Calcium, in the form of compounds (i.e. Ca²⁺ ions), is already as oxidized as it can be. Phosphate isn't going to be oxidized by anything less than fluorine. Hit Xykon with a fluorine elemental and you might get somewhere; calcium fluoride is pretty stable. Or one of the alkali-metal elementals; I think that sodium metal will reduce calcium ions, and I'm certain that any of the other metals in that series (potassium, rubidium, cesium) will. As will francium, though if you've collected enough francium to make a visible chemical reaction, you have other problems to address.

In general, when it comes to harming people, I'd count chlorine as a poison rather than as an acid. For damage to objects, counting it as an acid is probably the closest.

[Lumix19]

So, what happens after 20 minutes? Are those monsters still aggro'ed or do they forget you exist after you leave line of sight?

As El Chucapabra said, the Quinton can create a new Wall of Force if the monster remains an issue. But since each dungeon is taking Redcloak and co. about 7-8 minutes I doubt the time limit is a factor.

Presumably the creatures can't leave their respective dungeons, simply because dungeons are where monsters belong.

[Peelee]

If a person thinks reindeer live on the south pole, have black and white feathers, lay eggs, eat fish, and are monogamous, then they don't have many incorrect ideas about reindeer, they have one incorrect idea about what penguins are called.

Actually nothing lives at the South Pole, and only Emperor penguins live in Antarctica; the majority of penguin species are warm weather birds, IIRC.

[brian 333]

When did the Order deal with a chlorine elemental? I remember the one that Tsukiko fought, which didnt react with anything and waa defeated by magical sonic energy.

Yeah, I was thinking about the Si elemental in the desert. Memory is a cruel *****.

But, just to test my memory, I checked and found that half of all penguin species are subantarctic, with almost one third being described as living on Antarctica. That's kind of hard to explain, since all of them live more than 2/3 of their lives in the water.

In the what-comes-next column, I wonder how Serini thinks she is going to stop The Order from fighting Xykon.

Assuming the swapovers are actually portalling the explorers to dungeons all over the world, (far easier to do than to create infinitely restocking dungeons in multidimensional space within Monster Hollow,) I speculate that she will sic them on Xykon while he is inside a dungeon, then break the swapover so it doesn't bring anyone back to Monster Hollow. Allowing them to blow up some dungeon on the other side of the world beats blowing up the gate and it's defenses.

[hamishspence]

Actually nothing lives at the South Pole, and only Emperor penguins live in Antarctica; the majority of penguin species are warm weather birds, IIRC.

The Adelie is also Antarctican, residing on the pack ice in winter, and the coastline in summer. Two other species nest at Antarctica - the chinstrap, and the gentoo penguin.

[Inst]

Okay, I've figured it out.

What is Monster Hollow IS the gate? Someone mentioned all this multi-dimensional stone, but why would you need that? Just to provide Serini with plot armor to make sure her backstage system works?

===

Some good points others have brought up:

--Serini is lazy and wants a self-maintaining gate defense.

--The gate defense is easily expensive, so Serini would rather pay the minimum amount necessary for a quality defense, whereas the whole Monster Hollow set-up seems horribly expensive, in part because of the multi-dimensional stone.

===

From that, if Serini is chaotic good, you'd imagine she'd have, among other things, difficulty hiding information, and that it'd be better for the team to know where the gate is so they could organize a better defense.

I don't think Monster Hollow is a gauntlet, in part because Xykon is not actually "clearing" the dungeons, only inspecting them at this point. He's not killing all of the monsters that live there, only neutralizing them via the Quinton.

From that, it follows that Xykon is likely to realize early that something is amiss, before actually attriting all the monsters in the dungeons.

===

Put another way, every gate we've seen is relatively small. But we're roughly at the North Pole, and if you're familiar with various conspiracy theories, there's a theory that there's actually a planet within the planet, with the entry being at the geomagnetic or geographical North Pole.

It'd also make sense for the biggest gate to be at the North Pole, because the magnetic effects (if there are any) of the Snarl is best disguised through the geomagnetic North Pole, and likewise, if there's a "weak point" with the thinnest possible crust, well, planets generally are oblate spheroids, with thicker crust at the equator and thinner crusts at the poles.

===

If the entirety of Monster Hollow is the gate, then it'd explain why Serini is hiding where the gate is, and why she doesn't want OOTS + Paladins to fall back and do a final defense / counter-attack at the gate. First, the nature of the gate is its best security; Serini's been forced to resort to security through obscurity because of the size of the gate. Second, there is no final defense / counter-attack OTHER than attacking now, because Xykon has already located the gate, he just hasn't realized it yet.

===

So basically, Serini did the best she could to defend the most indefensible gate on the planet. Stuff a bunch of distractions on top, provide backstage monitoring and probably a teleport beacon if she needs to reinforce the gate, and employ brute strength as needed to defend the gate, because the gate is way too large to provide a defense-in-depth.

===

It also explains why Serini was so horrified that Xykon could beat her. If she had, say, a castle a la Dorukan, she could simply bring out her monstrous creatures and exploit a defended position to kill Xykon. Same with Liirian, she had a defense in depth, allies, and bioweapons, Soon's Gate was defended by Azure City, and Girard a bunch of illusions and a family cult.

Serini quite simply could have recovered, gotten more aid, and upgraded her defenses, but at the end of the day, she has no ability to do a real defense simply because of the size of the gate.

[The MunchKING]

You build a Gate around a Rift. so the whole mountain can't be the Gate in a meaningful way, unless the Rift is the size of a Mountain. Which it wasn't, it was man-sized.

Also "Lazy and wants a self-defending Gate" seems like exactly when she'd shell out all the money, not cheap out.

[Peelee]

The Adelie is also Antarctican, residing on the pack ice in winter, and the coastline in summer. Two other species nest at Antarctica - the chinstrap, and the gentoo penguin.

Ya know, i suspected that would come back to bite me.

[Quizatzhaderac]

Phosphate isn't going to be oxidized by anything less than fluorine.

I stand corrected. Never send diatomic chlorine to do a chloride's job; my aunt Delores always said.

They have a functionally-infinite number of Force cages/walls, after 20 minutes create a new forcecage.

That's at most 200 at a time, considering there's about 100 doors, there may be far more monsters than that.

Worse, they might come while the Quinton is dealing with a party in front of them, or two parties from might arrive at once.
Even if it worked out perfectly, the Quinton would end up spending all it's time dealing with monsters behind it rather than making progress.

Presumably the creatures can't leave their respective dungeons, simply because dungeons are where monsters belong.

That makes, well not sense-sense, but D&D sense.

Actually nothing lives at the South Pole...

And therefore reindeer don't live there, got it.

[Kish]

Of course not. Reindeer are found at the North Pole.

[Peelee]

I feel like the real issue here is everyone ignoring the indigenous fauna at the West Pole.

[Tzardok]

Don't get all up in polearms about it.

[Quizatzhaderac]

I feel like the real issue here is everyone ignoring the indigenous fauna at the West Pole.

I hear they've changed.