Would it be possible for RedCloak to bluff that whatever Xykon is expecting the ritual to do is in the divine half?
No. Tsukiko won’t trust anything he says, and as soon as Xykon finds out the game is up. The lich may not be that detail-oriented, but he’s surprisingly intuitive, especially when it comes to his chief minion.
First of all, what Tsukiko has discovered is perfectly consistent with what Redcloak has already said he knows about the ritual. Second, he’s had access to the entire ritual for a lot longer than Tsukiko has, and he’s an intelligent and intellectually-curious person: I’m sure he’s studied it in just as much depth, or likely much greater depth, than she has. So I find it quite implausible that she’s found something that he hasn’t.
And Burlew has said that the prequel books will never be necessary to follow the main comic. Material from them will inevitably show up and be important in the main comic, but when it does, it’ll be introduced sufficiently. That said, though, even though it’s not essential, Start of Darkness at least is an excellent read, and well worth buying (On the Origin of PCs less so; that one is mostly just light humor of the joke-a-day style that predominated at the start of the strip).
But she found it on the arcane half of the ritual, which Redcloak wouldn’t be able to grok. Clerics have rubbish skill points, not like they can waste many on Knowledge(Arcana) or Knowledge(Planes) even if they’re technically class skills. IF the Dark One was a deceiving prick and IF he’d devised a ritual to do something while telling his priests it’d do another, that’s exactly where he’d hide the small print - clerics rarely multiclass into wizards, especially when they’re High Priests for their entire race :p.
I’d also dispute the assertion that Redcloak is all that smart. He’s not a complete moron, but he’s still pretty dim all things considered - or at least a large majority of his reasonings and decisions have led either to disasters, or to the exact opposite of what he was trying to achieve.
He only *appears *particularly brightbecause he’s usually the straight man to a room that contains Xykon, Tsukiko and the Monster in the Dark.
It’s a tattoo. In panel 9 of the Haley-and-Elan New Year’s Eve dinner strip, Haley’s word balloons translate as “I cheat at solitaire. I have a tattoo you’ve never seen. I kissed a girl once. OK, OK, more than once!”
In War and XPs you can see it a bit better. It’s a heart with an arrow through it.
Haley’s gibberish word balloons are translatable? Is there some substitution table? (And if so, I’m sure someone has already transcribed her months of dialog and put them up somewhere, right?).
And by the way, a question for the group: what specifically is “the Crimson Mantle” ? Red Cloak’s cloak? Some other red/crimson thing he wears?
If you buy “War and XPs”, all of her dialogue is translated. But I’m sure it’s somewhere on the internet as well.
Edit: The Crimson Mantle is indeed the cloak, but the cloak is also a signifier for his role as the Dark One’s tool for bringing about goblin justice. It also confers powers, allowing him to live unnaturally long and cast spells more powerfully.
It’s the red cloak that he wears. In Start of Darkness we find out that
it is an artifact created by the goblins’ god, the Dark One, that keeps the wearer from aging, protects against disease, and imprints knowledge of the Plan and the ritual necessary to take control of one of the Snarl-guarding gates.
It’s definitely worth getting Start of Darkness at the very least; it explains a lot about the background of the villains.
… and No Cure for the Paladin Blues, of course.
Huh, I should just googled. Here’s the translations.. I’m really surprised I never knew the dialog was translatable; the characters in the strip explicitly state it’s not a language at all. They couldn’t translate it using magic, so why could we? (rhetorical)
Here you go, from the OotS forum: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4909
And the Crimson Mantle is indeed Redcloak’s cloak. It is the symbol of the high priest of the Dark One and his direct connection to the god.
If you enjoy the strip, you owe it to yourself to pick up SoD. Really. I’ve always considered Xykon and Belkar to be the best characters in the strip. And it’s interesting to see Xykon with flesh. And hair.
Burlew has said if he had it to do over again, he’d have just used random letters. He said once readers realized Haley’s lines could be translated, they felt they were important secret messages when they were actually just throwaway jokes at most.
New strip is up, and isn’t it nice when the author obligingly resolves all the speculation promptly and completely?
Woah.
Hey, at least it gave all those fertile minds out there something to do, and it’s better than some things that could have been done.
Yow, so that is just — yow.
Buh-bye.
Story observation: with the backstory of the Snarl and the Gates and the Dark One’s Plan for both laid out so plainly, it would appear that the main plot is about to come back into focus. There are two Gates left, and we know from the Oracle that Xykon will be close to Girard’s Gate next. The Order of the Stick is hunting for that Gate right now. Xykon has been contacted with the news that his soul-hidey-place has been found, and doesn’t yet know that it’s been ‘lost’ again. Is Redcloak going to produce it as a way of distracting Xykon from everything that’s just happened and getting him out of the city as quickly as possible, or continue to conceal it?
Great strip. When Redcloak teaches a lesson (like “Undead aren’t people”), he doesn’t do things by halves.
Yowser!