He was admittedly eager to fight someone worth battling – even getting his axe out of storage for the occasion! – but I think you’re implying a bit much.
If by ‘meeting his expectations’ you mean none of 'em will spot the tracking device he planted on them, and all of 'em will believe he’s Thog, and their front-line fighter will be knocked down by a well-swung axe, and their clowning foil will be screaming “Ahh! It’s burning! Get it off!” – because, in this race for hidden treasure, it’s the protagonists who sweat and bleed and die to overcome the many challenges before the antagonists seize it from them at the last minute, such that he merely needs to move 'em into position by saying something to make 'em rush into place at the mere suggestion of its location – then, yes, they’re flawlessly meeting his expectations; I think he referred to it as “child’s play”.
I’ll grant that (a) for Tarquin it’s about a great story über alles, and of course that (b) he always goes into antagonist-v-protagonist confrontations accepting the price he may eventually pay after living like a god for decades. But, sure as the self-styled finest warrior of his generation thinks he may well win, I don’t see that he expects 'em to do especially well against him and his; it’s just that he has some long-term plans in motion, and those plans need a little nudge here and there from people with the OOTS’s talents, is all.
I was going to quibble that there is only one gate after this one, but then I realized that I had probably read you wrong. Assuming that we’re on the same page – there are two remaining gates, Girard’s Gate and Kraagor’s Gate – I totally agree with your point here. Kraagor’s Gate will be the scene of the final, most dramatic battle and the climax of the story.
We know that Belkar will die fairly soon. I wonder if it will happen as part of this fight (or as Team Evil’s first move when they arrive at Girard’s Gate), or if Rich Burlew is saving it for the last confrontation at the final gate.
My apologies then; I did read you wrong at first. Your phrasing was “This will not be the final battle. There are two more gates in existence…” and my first understanding is that you were saying that there were two more gates after this one. You were in fact not saying that and I will just go sit quietly in the corner over there now.
Okay, I see your point. I should have said “There are two gates remaining in existence”.
And while we’re on the subject, I should have said “long-term guesses”.
But my main points remain. Here are my predictions:
Girard’s Gate is just another mid-point in the story, like Durokan’s Gate or Soon’s Gate was. The climax isn’t going to happen here.
Team Evil is going to show up at Girard’s Gate.
The Linear Guild will end up fighting against Xykon and becoming a de facto ally of the Order of the Stick.
The plotlines involving Nale, Sabine, and Tarquin are going to be resolved in the next arc while the plotlines involving Xykon, Redcloak, and the Monster in the Darkness will be deferred until a future arc.
3a. Both sides (Xycon vs Linear Stick Guild Order) will lose the proximate fight when the proximate gate is also blowed up like the previous one. Krakakoooom. Then off to the next gate, with or without the Linear Guild (who will probably turn on the Order as soon as Girard’s gate is toast).
But what I don’t buy is that Durkon can see through the Illusion. Helm or not, are you telling me he can’t tell the difference (purely in terms of body shape and size) between a Half Orc barbarian and a human fighter?
I think it’s a terrible plot point nerfing True Seeing like that.
What body shape and size? Everybody’s squarish and has the same spindly arms and legs with round hands with three spindly fingers coming out of them…the only real way to tell the difference between a half-orc and a human in The World Of The Stick is to see skin color, hairstyle or facial features. All Durkon can see is some humanoid person in full armor (including gauntlets and helm)…the general party assumption that it’s Thog isn’t a definite identification. It’s based entirely on context (that this person is apparently a brute force fighter in association with the LG and that he talks like Thog). Subtlety in personal presentation is pretty much unknown in this world.
It’s not a nerf of True Seeing. True Seeing penetrates the illusion, but it explicitly does not help against mundane disguises or stealth. What Durkon sees is someone in armor. Yeah, Thog (who has the same body as Roy) is a bit beefier than Tarquin (who has the same body as Elan), but armor will mask that at least somewhat, Durkon (being a dwarf) probably isn’t too up on the fine distinctions, and it’s perfectly reasonable to expect Thog anyway.
Exactly, the art style of the strip has been lampshaded as being literally the way things are in Stickworld multiple times, not least in the CPPD Blues strip.
I guess Lawful Evil in the Stickverse means “Twist the truth into a pretzel, but never tell a lie… unless you really really need to. In which case, go ahead and swear the sky is green.”
People are not all one thing. Tarquin is Lawful Evil because he’s the sort of person who has five different intrigues running at the same time, four of them in opposition to each other, and three separate failure contingency plans per intrigue, all so that no matter what happens, he has a plan ready to put into action so he comes out on top. Being that sort of person does not preclude him from telling a lie, nor does the fact that he occasionally lies balance the massive amount of obsessive planning and organization he regularly employs to keep himself in power.
None by Burlew, I don’t think. There’s a LOT of fanart, though, that realisticizes (is too!) the characters. This thread in the tgitp forums has a compilation.
Yet when Red Cloak was examining the copy of Xykon’s phylactery, he commented, “Perfect. Every detail, every scratch . . .” but all we were seeing were two concentric circles. I figured at the time our view into the stickverse is less sharp than the residents’.