I believe it says ‘I <3 gold,’ but I’m too lazy to search for the strip in which we can see it more clearly than that one.
It’s red; is that a tattoo or a wound?
One of those two is not going to be leaving that roof alive.
Room. I mean room.
So where is Tsukiko going with this? Why would it matter if some ritual (the one mentioned in exactly one comic like 1000 strips ago) has conjuration or beef flavor or whatever? Can DnD geeks geek in small syllables for the less enlightened? Thanks.
Cliff’s notes version? She was looking at a ritual supposedly meant to control the Snarl, that doesn’t actually use magic that is good at controlling things. It’s sort of like finding a cake recipe that contains potassium nitrate, charcoal and sulphur.
[Spoilers from Start of Darkness]
What Redcloak knows - and Xykon doesn’t - is that the Snarl is by its nature uncontrollable. That ritual is designed not to command it, but to free it from its prison, allowing it to destroy the universe. That’s the Plan - either to compel the gods to make the world a fairer place for goblinkind, or to wipe the slate clean and hope the next world is better.
After the fight, it may well be a roof…
Man, Redcloak is lucky Xykon isn’t back yet… Or Ms.Crazy Eyes would have already told him, and he’d be dead by now. Xykon is gonna be PISSED… Redcloak may have to kill her now and cover it up.
[quote]
What Redcloak knows - and Xykon doesn’t - is that the Snarl is by its nature uncontrollable. That ritual is designed not to command it, but to free it from its prison, allowing it to destroy the universe. That’s the Plan - either to compel the gods to make the world a fairer place for goblinkind, or to wipe the slate clean and hope the next world is better.Hell, do I need to purchase Start of Darkness (and other aftermarket stuff?) to follow this comic? It’s been fairly followable until this issue, and I haven’t bothered with the for-purchase stuff, figuring people with duododecahedron dice need bother. I’m hoping RC or someone will start monologuing some plot details soon. That said, I can certainly see spiffing Berlew some $$$ in exchange for this comic, it’s pretty cool. I was hoping for a Belkar plush instead of a dead-tree exposition, though.
But something tells me Tsukiko has some ace in the hole if she’s confronting him now.
At least it’s high up instead of being a tramp stamp.
What kind of guy do you think Elan is, anyway?
[quote=“squeegee, post:3132, topic:508323”]
I’m sure that you wouldn’t need to buy any of the books to follow the main story; there is extra information in there, but anything that’s critical to the plot would be brought up in the strip when it’s important to know it. That said, the books are terrific and do a lot to flesh out the characters (except that in Xykon’s case, it’s more of a de-fleshing – lich joke!).
I’ve never played D&D and my only dice are 6-sided, but I’ve got all the books and I’ve enjoyed them all.
Gate spoiler: My understanding is not that the ritual will release the Snarl from the Gates’ control but rather transfer that control to the Dark One, thus giving leverage for the Dark One to demand fairer treatment for goblins from the other gods and their followers or face the unravelling of this world in the hope that the next weaving of reality will mean a better deal for goblins.
Redcloak can’t really allow Tsukiko to tell Xykon what she’s figured out. I don’t see her leaving that room. She thinks her ‘Wrong-Eye’ jab is just a way to push Redcloak around, but she doesn’t realize what a dangerous game she’s playing. Everything Redcloak has done, every compromise and sacrifice he’s made, most especially what happened with his brother, has been for the Dark One’s Plan. The only reason he swallowed his pride before is that he’s playing a long game. Tsukiko has just directly challenged that long game. She’s toast.
Sheeesh.
This is a bit a a … uh… snarl in the plot, isn’t it?
Yeah, I read that this morning and I thought ‘Uh oh, here we go’. One of the things readers need to remember, and I’d bet the Redcloak DOES remember, is that Tsukiko is inherently irrational. She’s working for Xykon out of, God help me, love. She truly believes that completing her research will win Xykon’s love for her in return. At the same time she also clearly views Redcloak as a rival for Xykon’s affection.
She can’t be counted on to respond rationally to any form of persuasion.
Toss that in and earlier fact that Burlew showed us that RC just leveled up to at least 17? I can’t imagine that Tsukiko is anywhere near as high as that. If she were how the hell did Azure City manage to capture and imprison her? Keeping a near epic level spellcaster imprisoned is non-trivial.
There should be more exploding cakes in this world.
I’m not so sure akshully. Redcloak seems genuinely puzzled in panel #10. His expression in the last panel is more open to interpretation - could be “Oh crap, she knows !” or “What the fuck is she talking about ?!” or even “My whole life has been a lie !”
What I think is that Tsukiko is a dumb-as-nails bint who might have stumbled into something that had eluded Redcloak’s notice from the beginning. After all, if the cloak comes from God and the cloak imparts knowledge of the ritual, it’s only natural Redcloak would trust the ritual to do whatever it is God says it does, right ? But the true ritual is not about summoning the Snarl per se. It’s supposed to be about being able to move the rifts around and maybe also undo the bindings put on them by the Gates. Maybe the one with an embarrassing little secret that just popped out from under the carpet is the Dark One, is what I’m saying.
Admittedly, this theory is annoyingly hampered by the fact that teleportation and planar manipulations also broadly fall within the Conjuration school, so Redcloak shouldn’t be all that confused even if his god did BS him.
Still, it’s a thought. Didn’t Vaarsuvius bitch that Teleport used to be in Evocation under older rulesets ? Also, while moving matter around is Conj, usually anything that manipulates magic itself, such as loosening the Gates, should fall under Abjuration right ?
From Start of Darkness:
It seems pretty clear to me.
Yes, that’s my point. That’s what Redcloak has been led to believe by the revelation from the Cloak: that the Plan is to give the Dark One control over where the Gates (and rifts) are so he can *threaten *to release it, or release it in a controlled fashion so the world/prison has to be remade with new ground rules.
But all of his knowledge comes from one source: the Dark One. Whom he implicitly trusts to have the best interests of gobbokind in mind. But maybe what the Dark One *actually *planned was to let loose the Snarl to begin with, no negotiations, no blackmail, just kill everything and every god and unravel the Universe into nothingness out of sheer spite.
He is an Evil god, after all. They do that.
Post-limit ETA: maybe I was being unclear. What I’m saying is that if the Ritual did what Red thinks it will (i.e. wrest control of the gates from whoever has it now, hand it to the Dark One to do as he pleases), it would probably be Abjuration magic, not Conjuration, since that’s the school that deals with manipulating primal magic, most notably containment spells and barriers.
Since the ritual is Conjuration, not Abjuration, it could well do something else entirely, like summon the Snarl outright or even make more Snarls. Or it could just be Conjuration because moving shit around the Planes is Conjuration magic. But there’s some ambiguity to be found there.
You’re probably overthinking it. There’s enough drama in Tsukiko finding out Redcloak’s big secret without adding new wrinkles.