I should have stated this more plainly: 2 of the 3 destroyed gates did not explode. I don’t know why Azure City’s gate went with such a bang, but we can’t assume Girrard’s will.
Huh? Dorukan’s gate clearly exploded. It appears that the explosions are increasing in magnitude, which means destroying Girard’s Gate will be a pretty big bang.
Go back one comic from that. It’s not the gate that exploded. It’s the self-destruct rune that Elan touched.
Hence why I stated that plainly. Also I should learn to spell “Girard”.
No, Elan was later charged with destroying the gate not “castle blowing upness”.
“The explosion destroyed the Durokon’s gate” != “Durokon’s gate exploded”.
There were two explosions in Dorukan’s Dungeon, first the BOOM from the self-destruct rune (which caused puffy clouds of explosion), and then the CRACKAKOOM from the destruction of the gate itself (which caused a radial beam explosion).
I just flashed on a notion, and we’ll see if the next comic makes me an idiot for thinking of it. But maybe Roy’s plan to destroy the gate is to somehow trick Xykon/Redcloak into destroying it.
V could put a load of explosive runes on the pillar, when Xykon reads them, he’ll blow up the gate.
What are the chances Malack will join the OotS? He’s never forgiven Tarquin for killing “his children” and he and Nale despise each other. What’s the point of him sticking around the LG?
Well, Malack is lawful evil, and while the order deals with Belkar, I dunno that they really want extra evil characters in their party.
Tarquin didn’t kill “his children” - that was Nale, and the reason Malack hates Nale. Malack is adventuring with Nale as a favor to Tarquin only.
Very little, he’s clearly really evil and already has plans & commitments. Plus, there’s that whole “killed Durkon and made him into an undead abomination” thing.
You mean Nale, not Tarquin killed them. And Malack is just following orders, something he’s very, very big on (lowest left panel).
I don’t see it being possible at all as long as Roy, and maybe Haley are around. They’re not going to forgive Durkon’s destruction that easily. I could see him tagging along simply because the team isn’t strong enough to put him off, but they’re not going to consider him part of the group.
I still got a little choked up when I reread the sequence where Durkon became vampirized.
Then I realized that it is just a web-comic.
Then I thought, doesn’t that same logic apply to when you cried in the movie theater when a main character that you grew up thinking of as a role model died?
Hrrr…
The Giant really writes well. That is indisputable.
It stuns me to realize that this opus has been years in the making.
The characters are as real as those in any other well-written fiction.
What a ride it has been, and the best is yet to come.
…
My prediction is that Malack will not join OOTS, but he may well be a useful proxy ally. If Tarquin gets too ‘uppity’, things could swing swiftly.
The Giant also draws well: with just a few solid lines his facial expressions have a fair amount of emotional latitude.
If this were a US comic book, Malack would joint Oots because he’s a popular character. Sort of like the Punisher. But the Giant is pretty good with his characterization and tends to avoid railroad plots with a few exceptions.
Malack is a poor fit for Oots; in addition to the above, he’s a little over-powered: only a contrivance would make him serve under Roy. Alliances of convenience are entirely plausible though: heck that’s the way Tarquin and he have stayed alive (or undead as the case may be).
I disagree with that; he’s already explicitly stated that he takes the long view on Tarquin (the man will be dead in 40 years or so; he can afford to wait).
OTOH, he’s quite a good candidate for becoming a proxy ally in the face of Xykon’s arrival.
A Malack/Xykon showdown would be pretty epic.
Rule of Funny and/or Awesome naturally trumps all, but FTR Explosive Runes aren’t that blow-stuff-uppy - they only do 6d6 damage (which in-game would be mitigated by the Gate’s hardness rating, which would be pretty high even if it was just thick stone without any reinforcement, magical or otherwise, whatsoever). For reference, at V’s level a simple fireball does 10d6. Disintegrate does somewhere around 30+ d6s, albeit on a single target.
Plus, RAW Xykon couldn’t detonate multiple explosive runes at once, since it’s the act of reading one that blows them up, and each set of runes is a discrete message (you can’t pack 5 XRunes into a single message). One assumes he’d only get blasted once before figuring out what the next set of runes says. OK, twice, maybe. Thrice tops.
I doubt it. I think the strip’s pretty clear that Xykon is well above any of the other characters in power. Vaarsuvius, for example, had to significantly ramp us his power via the soul-splice to even be a challenge.
How about this scenario: There’s a couple of strips of back and forth within the OOTS about how to destroy the gate by themselves. Meanwhile, cut to the LG, wherein Malack tells Nale to sod off and unbeknownst to Nale wanders back, with Durkon and the fiend in tow, to confront the OOTS and claim the gate from them. This follows exactly Tarquin’s plan: let the heroes almost reach the goal before snatching it away, which Malack proceeds to try to do. It also makes use of one of Chekov’s fiends and Malack’s knowledge that the OOTS was in “fordor” room.
Enter Xykon. Shit gets real(er).
Edit: meanwhile Nale reaches the top of the pyramid and gets in a pissing match with Tarquin.