An Order of the Stick speculation

Is Therkla possibly Right-Eye’s daughter or granddaughter? Burlew went out of his way to mention that Right-Eye sent his daughter off to be raised by humans to get her away from Xykon. So I have to assume he was planning on some future use for the girl. And now we have a female character who’s an orc (or half-orc).

Admittedly the stories don’t seem to match up. Therkla has said she’s a half-orc whose father was human. But she may not realize she was sent away from her real family (or she might have been lying to Grukgruk). And the timeline is an issue. If I’ve calculated it right, Right-Eye sent his daughter away two to six years ago. That would work for Therkla herself but it would seemingly make it impossible for Red-Eye’s daughter to be Therkla’s mother.

What do people think? Is there some way to make this connection work? Or am I looking for a connection that isn’t there?

Is Right-Eye from the books? I haven’t read those, just the online strips.

Yeah. Right-Eye is introduced in Start of Darkness. He was Redcloak’s brother. His story is one of the reasons Start of Darkness is easily the best Order of the Stick book so far.

If you haven’t read Start of Darkness you are really missing out on one of the best parts of the comic. She doesn’t look like a regular orc, which Right-eyes daughter would be, but i don’t see any other reason why she’d be so heavily focused on now so its possible.

One point I may have overlooked. I’m assuming goblins and orcs are the same? Or am I just a bigoted human who thinks all those pointy-eared fanged green people look the same?

No. Therkla clearly states that she is a half-orc here – and it’s while she’s talking to orcs (who would recognize that), and she needs to be a half-orc to make the joke work (there have been no half-goblins in D&D that made people feel ooky about their backstory).

Additionally, while goblins and orcs are both green, they’re different shades of green – compare Redcloak here (under normal light). Therkla has been half-orc colored since she showed up.

Right-Eye’s daughter will probably show up eventually, but hasn’t yet. Heck, we’re still waiting to see Elan’s father, Haley’s father, and V’s family show up.

And ears. The goblinoids have ears.

ETA: And actually, even Wizards of the Coast needs to make up its mind what color orcs are supposed to be. the Monster Manual specifically states they have gray skin, yet orcs and half-orcs are depicted in different artwork as having gray, green, yellowish, or pinkish skin.

So goblins and orcs are two different things. Which makes my speculation clearly wrong. Sorry. As you were.

A bump to say you’ve got to love a strip that assumes its readers will get a punchline that requires familiarity with both Homer and Stan Lee.

I’m going off OoTS. The transition from humour to plot isn’t working out so well any more. The story is too fragmented.

I’m of the opposite opinion. I feel that the plot has taken what was a good webcomic and turned it into a great one. I don’t think the strip could have sustained itself this long as a series of one-off D&D jokes.

I like the idea of bring plot into it, but face it: for nearly a hundred strips nothing at all has happened. That, to me, is not plot.

What do you think that the plot is?

I was about to take you to task for this, but then I went back and checked. It has been 100 strips since Greenhilt bit it. Although the time spent in conversation with everybody “on high” should count for something.

Homer, Stan Lee, and Lost.

Burlew has never rushed the overall story. I believe he’s said he plans on spending at least ten years on the strip (but he’s said he already knows what the final panel will be).

The pacing of the strip has always seemed slow at the time the strips are appearing. Look at some of the early storylines. The first encounter with the Linear Guild was spread out over thirty strips. The quest for Roy to find the starmetal for his sword ran for forty strips. The single night they spent in the inn with Miko ran for twenty five strips.

But the past 100 strips have consisted of everybody standing around explaining why they haven’t done anything. Was all that delay really necessary or could they have resurrected Roy and moved on?

If it wasn’t necessary, they would have resurrected Roy and moved on.

And we have learned quite a bit in all these side excursions. The ultimate end the strip seems to be heading for is the Scribble. We now know what Xykon’s and Redcloak’s progress is on finding out about the next Gate. We now know who/what one of the other factions likely to be in contention for it are (i.e., Lord Kubota’s patrons). This is all stuff that will eventually pay off. I won’t be surprised at all if Roy’s celestial visit turns out to have been critical, as well.

As Little Nemo mentions, the starmetal quest went for 40 strips. How important was that to the plot? Not so much.

And that pay off is a long ways off. We still haven’t seen Haley’s father, nor Elan’s father, nor V’s family – all of which we’ve got hints are coming. And, of course, the Linear Guild hasn’t shown up in a while; they’ll be back for sure. Plus, there’s the fact that the Oracle’s prophecies still need to be fulfilled. I have no doubt that the things and people we’ve seen in the last 100 strips will be important to what is coming up. Rich is setting things up, and this is a heck of a lot more coherent than the set-up was when the strip started out.

I’d say a bit more than that has been going on. We’ve seen Haley assume a leadership role in the resistance in Azure City. We’ve learned a lot about Roy’s backstory, and his motivation for his quest against Xykon has fundamentally shifted - and with it, his relationship to his jerk of a father. Vaarsuvius is also surprisingly driven to locate either Roy or Haley, above and beyond his concern for the party members immediatly surrounding him (or her), which may hint at a signifcant character revelation of its own. Also, a number of secondary characters have been introduced or given special prominence. We’ve had a series of strips that focused O-chul, the captured paladin, as the sole protagonist, and they made him out to be a pretty kick-ass character. He’s also befriended the mysterious thing in the darkness, which is almost certainly going to be significant at some point. There’s the half-orc ninja, who may or may not tie into Redcloak’s history. There’s the mounting conflict between Lord Hinjo and the corrupt nobility of Azure City, which is mirrored in the rifts between the resistance factions that were left behind. That’s a fair amount of plot and character development for 100 pages. Burlew writes with an eye towards the long term. Right now he’s putting a lot of stuff into play that’s not going to pay off for a long time, but when it does, I expect it to pay big.

I’m thinking the eventual payoff we’re going to see from the current storylines is a change in characters (in addition to the changes Miller already mentioned, Elan has become more responsible) and in the relationships between the characters. In the past, we’ve pretty much always seen them working as a group of six held together by Roy’s leadership. Now they’re split up and leaderless. When (and if) Roy’s resurrected and the six are reunited, they may have started to move in different directions and acquired different goals. Or they may find themselves reacting to their fellows as they remember them being rather than as they’ve become.

ETA: Another thing we’ve seen is that Redcloak is not just Xykon’s follower. He has his own agenda and is willing to plot behind Xykon’s back. This is something that readers of Burlew’s books already know but it’s news to those people who only follow the webcomic.