So, is that a reference to the Super Mario Bros. “Thank you Mario! But our princess is in another castle!” that happened at the end of every world until the last one in the original NES game?
I think so, yeah.
I appreciate that the pink crustacean-looking fiend appears to be hustling on out 
Wow. All the people killed by the Familicide spell while guarding the pyramid, all the trouble the Order went through to get there, the death of Yakyak, the death of Durkon, an epic illusion that traps both the Order and the Guild, and there’s nothing there?! (Unless, of course, it’s a double-bluff).
I bet it’s a double bluff. Remember, Girad was worried about paladins.
Wow, that was a heck of a surprise!
I think it is a double bluff as well.
But, who knows other than The Giant?
So would one of the detect spells have found the gate if it was hidden behind the (non-magical) big block o’ wood?
I would guess it’s a big block o’ stone.
In which case True Seeing would do nothing, since all you would see is stone. Detect Magic would only work if the gates register as magic items, which I can imagine they don’t.
The interesting one is locate object. It would find the gate if it was there, but only if ZZ had an accurate mental picture of the gate. So, the spell may have fizzled because he assumed the gate looked different than it actually does under that stone.
My guess is that the stone is hollow and the gate is inside, and a quick spot check by Haley will find the hinge.
It is probably somewhere in the maze but not in the same room. Like off some obscure hallway.
Betcha V stumbles over it.
It’s possibly accessible via the passage that V found in the bottom of the pit trap with the passwall when fleeing the accusing mummy. After all, a pit trap is something that adventurers go out of their way to avoid. So why not put the secret entrance down there?
Or there’s a nasty trap or monster inside, along with another sign saying “THOUGHT YOU WERE REAL CLEVER, DIDN’T YOU?”
I thought V made that tunnel?
If Girard went that route, it wouldn’t be that much harder to line the cavity in the stone with a thin sheet of lead–and that’s assuming the usual divination blockers, which include 1 foot of stone as well as a sheet of lead, aren’t enough to block Locate Object. The SRD doesn’t mention any other than lead, but it would be a reasonable extension as a house rule.
Will something happen to this gate if the Linear Guild leaves (an argument in favor of Malak seeing the Order; but then, without V, Durkon, and Belkar, I don’t think they’d stand much of a chance, which is why I don’t think there’ll be a fight)? After all, IIRC, they still have to secure or do something with the final gate to fully cut off all the evil groups’ plans, so giving the Order a clear win on this one wouldn’t hurt the rest of the story.
True, If the stone is hollow I would believe it’s lead-lined. But it would be interesting to see if the gate is sufficiently different that Z wasn’t able to think of it accurately.
Nothing, it has been sitting there for a while, it will continue sitting there. Of course, I don’t know how the Order thinks it’s going to turn the gate off, so there’s not much point in keeping it from the LG since they don’t have Xykon with them.
The LG’s True Seeing and Detect Magic will easily see through Elan’s illusory wall. A fight ensues. One of the OotS will have the heart-wrenching job of dispatching a negative-hit-point Durkon with a coup de grâce.
Well, maybe not yet.
Is that how passwall works? I thought it just opened a passage through a wall.
I’m expecting the Order to ultimately kill the Snarl itself, which would presumably render the gates harmless or nonexistent. There’s a throwaway line about how the Gods who created the Snarl were “perhaps more susceptible” to it; it felt to me like that was foreshadowing. That’s definitely not happening any time soon, though.
How they’re going to protect the gates in the meantime is another question, but I assumed that they planned to dispatch the LG and Xykon, though as has previously been mentioned, the odds of that are pretty low given the Order’s current state.
With Nale having them beat feet out of the room, I’m guessing they don’t see the OotS up against the far wall (in the shadow?). I could easily be wrong.
Yeah, I imagine that V just came across the tunnels because they intersected her Passwall tunnel.
I’m thinking Malack will notice them and will not deign to mention it because a) he’s pissed off at Nale (probably more so by something that will happen next strip, since Nale is angrily freaking in this one), b)and they’re not really a threat, so he’s willing to ignore them in honor of his friendship with Durkon. Durkon will notice them but do/say nothing because he’s under Malack’s thrall and Malack will keep him leashed.