Belkar is reading Dune, then!
That seems to be a point of contention on the Giant in the Playground forums.
… It’s big and purple and in the System Reference Document. What else could it be?
A phallic symbol?
Sometimes a giant worm is just a giant worm.
Or a Phroid’s Phanciful Phallusy spell…
Also, note who he’s rooting for.
I just wanted to mention that the reference completely whooshed me. Until Hypno-Toad’s posting. All Hail Hypno-Toad!
Oh my thick head, I just want to mention that the reference completely whooshed me TWICE. The first two times I read the comic, I thought Belkar was 1) reading the Monster Manual and was telling V not to move him closer to the worm’s mouth because of what he’d just learned about it and then 2) reading Dune and was telling V not to move him closer to the worm’s mouth because of what he’d just read about it.
It took this post for me to get an Aha! moment. All hail Hypno-Toad and Reno Nevada!
The contention is over whether it’s actually a purple worm, or some homebrew Dune-sandworm creature.
If someone wants to clue me in, I’d appreciate it. My memories of Dune are very vague.
IIRC, early in the Dune book, the main antagonist is nearly killed by an assassin whose tooth contains a small canister of poison gas.It’s more complicated than that, but that should suffice to get the joke.
As you said, it was more complicated then that.[spoiler]To briefly recap the first book, there were two noble families, the Atreides (the heroes) and the Harkonnens (the villains). Both were portrayed in very black and white terms - Lincoln vs Hitler. Paul Atreides was the book’s main hero and Leto was his father. The Atreides had a doctor in their service named Yueh but the Harkonnens had kidnapped Yueh’s wife and used that to make Yueh betray the Atreides. Yueh suspected that the Harkonnens were not going to return his wife so as a fallback revenge plan he implanted a hollow tooth filled with poison gas in Leto. With Yueh’s help, the Harkonnens captured Leto and then, sure enough, told Yueh they had killed his wife and were now going to kill him. Yueh told Leto about the tooth and told him that Baron Harkonnen would personally gloat over Leto and to use the tooth then. Baron Harkonnen did show up to gloat as predicted and Leto tried to gas him but Harkonnen got lucky and escaped. So the person Belkar is “warning” is the villainous Baron Harkonnen who is mocking the vanquished hero.
And all this was a minor plotline involving secondary characters. Dune was one complex story. Which was followed by eight more books which made things much more complicated.[/spoiler]
Eight? I count 6: Dune, Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, God-Emperor of Dune, Chapterhouse: Dune and Heretics of Dune.
Ah, suddenly it all becomes clear. I thought that Belkar was telling V not to lean in because the worm has a poison tooth.
I don’t think a list of the titles needs to be spoilered. I was counting the Brian Herbert/Kevin Anderson books, which I realize some people want to pretend don’t exist. Personally, I’ve only read the first three books.
But I did miscount. There are actually at least thirteen books that followed Dune (although some are chronologically prequels).
The Frank Herbert books:
Dune (1965)
Dune Messiah (1969)
Children of Dune (1976)
God Emperor of Dune (1981)
Heretics of Dune (1984)
Chapterhouse Dune (1985)
The Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson books:
Dune: House Atreides (1999)
Dune: House Harkonnen (2000)
Dune: House Corrino (2001)
Dune: The Butlerian Jihad (2002)
Dune: The Machine Crusade (2003)
Dune: The Battle of Corrin (2004)
Hunters of Dune (2006)
Sandworms of Dune (2007)
Plus there’s The Dune Encyclopedia by Willis E. McNelly (1984), which is not considered “canon” and doesn’t match the events of later published works, and The Road to Dune (2005), a collection of shorter works by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson. And National Lampoon’s Doon (1984), a parody by Ellis Weiner, which as I recall had something to do with giant pretzels.
Oh. Those.
It WAS considered canon until The Son and his pet Hack started making shit up.
I treasure my volume of the encyclopedia. I guess they’re sort of scarce.
I actually went online to find a copy a few months ago. I’d had one way back in the very early 90s and I lost track of it somehow.
Did you find one? What did it run?
Oh, yeah. I’m enjoying the sandworm appearance in OOTS, too! 