This is what I think as well. This is Redcloak’s private study and he’s a powerful cleric; Tsukiko mentioned the wards protecting it, which she could only get past with the magic key she took from the hobgoblin she killed. Redcloak tends to be careful to the point of obsession. I can’t believe he would leave any stone unturned in protecting his privacy, particularly considering his deception with Xykon.
That hobgoblin – any chance of Redcloak raising him? Or would he reluctantly decide, as with his spy in the Resistance, that it’s vital that there be no witnesses to any of this?
Very little chance. Raise Dead spells require a very expensive diamond as a component, which is destroyed. Xykon controls the funds, and won’t pay to raise a janitor.
But he’s admitted killing people just doesn’t have the thrill it once did. After the first few thousand murders, it gets to be just part of the routine.
Raise Dead is the cheapest and lowest-level spell, and should work fine here. Resurrection is higher level and more expensive, but doesn’t require the body to be intact, just a piece of the remains, and can work after a longer time. True Resurrection is the highest-level and most expensive, but doesn’t even need any remains, and can work literally centuries later, and also doesn’t make the raised character lose a level.
And Redcloak has plenty of resources available on his own to raise this guy if he wants. Consider: The hobgoblin spy, he apologized that he couldn’t raise him because he had to keep the secret. He didn’t say anything about not being able to afford it. This implies that he would have raised him if secrecy weren’t paramount.
Plus, Redcloak’s at least 17th level. 5,000 gp is pocket change to most 17th level characters, even if they don’t have the resources of their own private metropolis to draw on.
I wondered if perhaps that was why he was having Tsukiko research the spell in the first place – that maybe he knew something was amiss and wanted to make some changes in secret to give control to himself instead of the Dark One.
Come to think of it, the Cloister spell must have been pretty lucky for the Resistance, I guess, or Team Evil could have just pulled a “Miko” scam on them right at the start – score a few hairs from one of the dead hobgoblins overseers at wherever the first Resistance liberation site happens to be (well, the first Resistance liberation that happens after Team Evil becomes aware that the Resistance exists, I guess), tell Teevo to record that person for a while, and bam, they know exactly where the Resistance HQ is from almost the very beginning.
Depends how far out of the city the Resistance’s lair used to be. Considering Redcloak feels that his secret will remain safe even after crashing an entire mountain, I’d say it’s at least beyond the horizon. Then again IIRC it’s the same lair Haley was holed up in, and she certainly was in Cloister range, so that point is possibly moot.
I guess it also depends on how long Xykon’s been away.
Same thing, since Xykon already knows his phylactery has been found.
Unless Redcloak already has a fake phylactery ready for when Xykon teleports in any second now, he’ll either have to hand over the real one (which would defeat the purpose of all his skullduggery so far), or tell the boss the Resistance hijacked it, in which case Xykon finding out about a crushed mountain lair wouldn’t add up.
Dead hobgoblin possibly was a forger bringing a fake phylactery (he’s dressed like a smith or jeweler), but then again how could he have forged something without an original to copy ?
I suppose Red could always say the Resistance got it, wait for his fake, then break over to Xykon that he’s brought a mountain down on the elves’ heads and BTW here’s Precious ; but that still seems kind of risky to me considering Xykon will probably want to be in on the search for the Resistance and/or its crushing. Also suspicious - why would RC have done it himself without backup if he didn’t have anything to hide ?
Sorry for interrupting the flow, but I have another D&D-based question, and it’s about Strip 825. Obviously, we’ve seen Redcloak use “Word of Recall” several times to tell-a-pork himself back to the hallway outside his study in the Team Evil tower. But how did he get to the Resistance HQ in the first place? He must have gotten there pretty fast to have killed everyone there and set up that horrific display for the Resistance leadership got back from retrieving the phylactery. I assumed he teleported somehow, but is that even possible? Could one of his summoned creatures / planar allies / whatever have teleported him there? Could the polymorphed goblin traitor have set up some kind of teleport receiving doodad for him to jump to “Word of Recall”-style?
Or must he have just flown there? (Come to think of it, can Redcloak cast any kind of flying spell? We’ve never seen him fly, have we?) Or maybe he rode one of his summoned giant fiendish mammoth creatures? That would be quite a sight, a goblin with an eyepatch riding a giant pink evil mammoth away from Tower Evil, through the city, and over to the mountainous area… and since he obviously wanted to keep this completely hush-hush, that probably means he didn’t do THAT.
In fact, the fact that he didn’t want ANYBODY else to know what he was up to strongly implies that he somehow arrived magically right in Resistance HQ, doesn’t it? But how could he have managed that?
Ha. Maybe that’s specifically why he earthquake’d the place into oblivion. “They brought the mountain down on themselves and committed mass suicide just to keep the phylactery away from you, Lord Xykon. But don’t worry, my round-the-clock teams of hobgoblins won’t stop digging until we find it! Unless one of them somehow slipped out the back first.”