Oh, yes. Our LARP is strongly D&D-influenced, and still has an “any single-word command” spell. It gets abused from time to time. Dance-related commands are popular, especially when using metamagic to shift it from single-target to AoE. (Someone threw one of those into the middle of a mass melee once, with the command, “Mosh!” Just so he could say that he couldn’t tell if it worked or not.) I’ve also seen “defenestrate” and “dive” used to great effect. (The latter was issued to someone standing on the bank of the River Styx.)
2E helpfully suggested not only the 3.5-ish options of flee and halt and fall, but also “surrender”, and everybody’s favorite default: “A command to ‘Die!’ causes the creature to fall in a faint or cataleptic state for one round”.
Or one time, when my party was pumping a local street urchin for information…
Cleric player: I cast Command: “Pray!”.
DM: The urchin drops to his feet and begins to pray…
Cleric player: Yes!
DM: …to the god of mischief.
Thief player: Yes!
I recall that in RA Salvatore’s D&D based Cadderly series, in one fight every time this enemy wizard tried to cast a spell Cadderly Commanded “Sneeze”, disrupting the casting.
How many guys did he bring? All of them, I think.
Has Mr. Scruffy always disliked Durkon, or does he just disapprove of undead dwarves who munch on Belkar?
Mr Scruffy never showed any animosity to Durkon before. I would imagine it’s a combination of undead-ness and the munching.
And the rise and fall and rise and fall and rise of the linear guild continues. That is quite the addition to the guild, but I doubt Tarquin won’t be in charge this time around.
Do you doubt he was in charge before? 
Okay, then, my previous question once again seems relevant:
I would assume that Tarquin is aware that the gate was destroyed. So then why bring Dino Army out into the middle of the desert? Capture the Snarl? Picnic at the crater?
Strip 910. Wholly credible characterization: Elan misses the point, Haley calculates while Belkar and Roy argue. Within 3 panels that plus the Order’s general stance towards Durkula is established. Also humor. Dang, I like this strip. ----
Elan and Nale are pretty hopeless in their own way: one is retarded, the other is shackled by his immature and pointless grudges. I’m thinking that they have a saving grace though: they are young. Maybe they are somewhere between 16 and 21: there’s room for growth. I sort of hope they are at the younger end of that range, since that would permit greater changes in perspective. We’ve seen some of that with Elan.
Also: Law. Sure, chaotic evil can be fun. But if you want to organize minions properly, you need the power of Rule of Law behind you. Too bad fiction tends to emphasize heroes over systems and armies.
I don’t think Tarquin is operating under an innocent until proven guilty system. I’m pretty sure he’ll see through any lies Nale is stupid enough to tell him and that will be enough justification for him to do whatever he wants to do with Nale. That said, although he won’t be happy, he’ll probably accept it. He knew the two were going to throw down eventually, and even though he valued Malack and seemed to genuinely like him, I think he’ll find some role for Nale, rather than killing him outright.
Yes, I imagine Tarquin is practically headmaster of the “Why destroy a useful asset as long as you can keep it under control?” school. Nale is petty and generally has a much higher opinion of himself than reality would dictate, but he’s also resourceful, ruthless and somewhat effective. As long as the positive (for Tarquin) qualities outweight the negative, Tarquin isn’t going to be wasting minionage.
Besides, he’s genre-savvy, remember? There’s still a lot of mileage to drag out of the sibling rivalry/parental approval arc and he won’t want to cut that short.
IIRC, the twins are 24.
I imagine Tarquin has a number of diviners among his staff. He probably watched the whole encounter. If I were him, I’d want to know if my kid could get out of a bind by himself. Nale seems to have failed that test.
Of course, Tarquin could have intentionally let Nale get clobbered to bring him down a peg and remove his support while Tarquin waited for an opportunity. Losing Malack may have been an acceptable loss, especially if Tarquin preferred to keep Nale instead of Malack.
I wonder how much Tarquin knows about what happened. The huge army could be to secure the gate for the Empire of Blood. If so, he is going to be very pissed at Roy and co.
So, if the big ‘army-moving’ spell is Gate, does that mean the caster has access to True Resurrection, and if so, will we see non-undead Malack? That would be a funny meeting: alive Malack and undead Durkon.
Not sure what this giant army plans on doing in the middle of the desert. Nor how Tarquin and company plan on feeding and watering them. Pretty bad ass though, and it would have been interesting to see Team Evil fight them.
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