Thank you, Sith Lord.
Gosh, it has been a long time.
I started playing when we didn’t even have polyhedral dice.
We actually had numbered tokens in a dixie cup and picked them out to determine the ‘roll’.
Yes… This was 1974.
Really.
To expand: Redcloak has at least 6 4th-level spell slots, 4 6th-level, and 2 8th-level, to use on Lesser Planar Ally, Planar Ally, and Greater Planar Ally, respectively. Each of those slots could have gotten him 1, 2, or 3 Bearded Devils, respectively. A Horned Devil would take an 8th-level slot, and the elemental either a 6th or an 8th level slot, depending on precisely how big it was (though he might have Summoned that rather than Allying it; we don’t see the elemental getting paid). So he could easily have had the slots for, say, a pair of Horned Devils, plus 14 Bearded Devils. And it’s even more, if he used scrolls or the like.
It’s 3.5. There was a joke near the beginning of the whole thing where the PCs got upgraded from 3 to 3.5. Rich has stated that he has no intention of moving the strip into any newer editions than 3.5.
I was negative one years old at the time.
Yeah, specifically, when Redcloak threatens to smash it, he says “Thing is, my soul isn’t in there right now. Smashing it won’t do anything to me. That phylactery is just a pricey bauble unless you destroy me first. Of course, if you so much as smudge the shine on that pricey bauble…”
Er, and when I say “he” says, I meant that that’s what Xykon says to Redclock in response to Redcloak’s threat to smash it. Also, since this IS the SDMB, I’ll add a cite: the quote was from page 74 of Start of Darkness.
That’s what I was thinking about when talking about switching phylacteries around, yes. If Xykon wasn’t lying and destroying his philactery wouldn’t be a big deal to him as long as he was still unalive, I assumed he could just make a new one (else Redcloak smashing it, while evidently leading to the death of Redcloak in a very near future, *would *severely affect Xykon’s power).
In which case it would be prudent to smash this one and create another before moving away from Azure City.
Are you kidding ? It’s all mucky and gross down there. Also very extensive, apparently. He’d take ages to comb the sludge on his own (and that’s assuming it hadn’t washed out to sea already).
[QUOTE=Gray Ghost]
Oh, and if Tsukiko is researching the Ritual with the unspoken goal of replacing RC as the divine caster, why not bring Tsukiko along to kill the Resistance? (With the idea of having her inconveniently fail to survive the raid?)
[/QUOTE]
Red is evidently trying to leave zero evidence of his smash & grab raid that Xykon could suss out. Xykon might not like Tsukiko, but he’d notice if she went missing. Probably.
Besides, Xykon would probably just grab some popcorn if the both of them wanted to duke it out right in the open - no need for cloak & dagger there.
A possibility occurs to me. Assuming Niu is able to send her message (which appears to be a good assumption) then the information will presumably be sent on to Roy. Which means that Roy may be aware that Xykon’s phylactery’s been found and Xykon himself might not know it. And Redcloak appears to not have noticed Niu’s escape. This could create an interesting situation when the Order of the Stick has their inevitable confrontation with Team Evil.
“Hey, whatever happened to pig-tail girl?”
Seriously, I think Xykon is more aware of what’s going on around him than he appears. As he once said, there’s a difference between not knowing and not caring.
At this point, it’s entirely up to how Rich wants to game it in his world, because there’s nothing in the books to cover this, but it seems to me that if he could make a new one, he could just make a new one - no need for the original to be destroyed.
I also wonder if Xykon is less blase now about losing his phylactery then he was shortly after he became a lich. Back in Start of Darkness, he was still flush with the power and possibility of his newly undead form. But that was before Roy destroyed his body at Dorukan’s gate. Having been killed once, he might be a little more attentive about threats toward the thing that kept him alive.
That’s the point, though: if he can sense his phylactery just by being near to it, he wouldn’t need to comb through the sludge. He could just walk through the tunnel on one of those walkways we see in the searching scene - or just fly above the surface of the muck. As extensive as the tunnels are, it wouldn’t take that much time for him to simply walk through them all until he felt the proximity of his phylactery, and then he could tell one of his goblins to get to digging. Time consuming, but still probably quicker than having his goblins rummage around in all that crap by hand. And Xykon is not known for his patience. Lazy as he is, I don’t see him passing up a way to get out of Azure City weeks or months faster than searching for it by hand.
I don’t know about that - Neither Niu nor Roy has no reason to suspect any sort of a rift between Xykon and Redcloak. I don’t think anyone outside of Team Evil even knows who Redcloak is, do they? He’s just another goblin henchman to them - more powerful than the others, sure, but essentially just another interchangeable green face.
I think the original one does have to be destroyed.
Otherwise wouldn’t every Lich just create a dozen phylacteries from word go?
O-Chul does.
And therefore we have to assume the others know. O-Chul’s too good a soldier to not pass on that sort of intel.
And Haley was a leader in the Azure City resistance for months. She must have noticed that Redcloak was a leader of the goblin occupiers.
Good points, but I don’t think they have any reason to suspect Redcloak is less than completely loyal, do they?
That was my point. Up to now, they’ve had every reason to think Redcloak is just a loyal albeit powerful minion.
But they now know he has Xykon’s phylactery. So if at some point, Roy finds out that Xykon thinks the phylactery is still missing, he’ll be able to put the pieces together and realize Redcloak is keeping secrets from Xykon and isn’t as loyal as he appears.
Thanks for the lengthy answers to my questions, Miller & Kobal2.
I don’t want to get all Zapruder film-y, and Burlew isn’t absolutely ironclad with consistent artwork, but the Horned Devils have different colored lower bodies, with fur, and hooves. The Devil in the Tunnel’s lower body is the same color as its upper body, and in the last frame, it has a foot the same color as its hands.
Of course, Pit Fiends usually come with their own standard barbecue display, ‘wreathed in flames’ etc… which are absent in this creature’s art. (Just curious as to whether it was a Pit Fiend, as it’s my front-runner theory for what the MiTD is. Obviously, a baby or child version. I know, creature that’s an embodiment of pure evil, they don’t have kids, etc… A lot of the powers the MiTD has—Wish, high strength, ugliness, brains—it fits. Well, that or it’s something in Deities and Demigods that didn’t get converted over to 3.5, with CR>19 or so. It should be possible to easily guess, given there just aren’t that many creatures with that high a CR, that can fit in that box, that can also be charmed and can cast wish/greater teleport/plane shift/you-name-the-‘escape’-spell)
Thinking about it, yeah RC probably doesn’t want to let X know that he’s had a spy in their midst, and that the Resistance has had one in their midst, and that therefore RC knew where the Resistance was for awhile. And was only now getting around to snuffing them. He also definitely doesn’t want to let X know that he almost lost the phylactery forever—if the raiding party had a Sphere of Annihilation or such handy.
Does Redcloak know that she’s doing that?
We’ve seen a Pit Fiend already in the comic. At least, that’s what everyone was assuming that was, at the time.