So apparently they did manage to get out of the shadows. Since they commented that they hadn’t actually seen a shadow in years, I figured it would be just like Burlew to make them wait years for another shadow to appear and let them out. NM.
Hell hath no fury…
Uh-oh!
ETA: And really, Tarquin should have foreseen that possibility. He knew about their connection. Even if he was sure it was just a business/pleasure thing, the narrative requires SOMEONE with some sort of vengeance imperative to exist. Just because Nale was GENERALLY a waste of space doesn’t negate that.
I was wondering why there’s blood dripping out of the TV, then I remembered: it’s a blood plasma screen. Impressive attention to detail there.
“That’s coming out of your holiday bonus” - Hell of a deadpan there (pun intended).
He probably figures Elan has that role, and he thinks he can contain his other son just fine. Remember, Sabine is a succubus, she’s going to be all over whoever the leader of the party is anyway, so he probably just dismissed her as a rake.
Although, it occurs to me that this doesn’t really prevent Sabine from visiting Nale - she just has to figure out what plane of the afterlife he’s stuck in and plane shift away.
I still doubt Sabine’s ability to do much directly to Tarquin but I suppose she’ll act as a spoiler in some fight.
I’m not at all suggesting Nale will return, but has there been previous mention about access to Wishes in the OotS universe? I really just ask out of curiosity; I can’t see a whole side plot about Sabine (who else would bother?) acquiring access to one.
But is she angry that Nale’s died or is she angry that she didn’t capture his soul?
She’s not a direct threat, no…but there’s all sorts of indirect things she could do. Give Redcloak and/or Xykon information that makes them think Tarquin’s a threat, for example. Or possibly convince the IFCC that Tarquin would make a good replacement pawn…sure, they’d “help” him but them being fiends it would all turn out badly for him in the end.
I don’t think Nale will return, but I do think there is a high chance that Tarquin will at some point use that Nale blood covered dagger to negotiate with Sabine.
I think if that were in the cards, Burlew would have made a point of showing blood on the dagger when he pulled it out of Nale. Instead, it looked clean.
More immediately than Tarquin, I’d be worried if I were Qaar. Well, if I were Qaar and I was aware that I skipped out on Nale about twenty minutes before he got stabbed and disintegrated. He might be more directly in Sabine’s reach.
Well, that was why Roy could talk to his dad’s ghost, and why Roy could be floating around as a ghost in the mortal world, but as Roy says in panel 6 of strip 528, he doesn’t even know if the sword is what lets him visit the mortal realm as a ghost, or if it’s the Blood Oath that lets him do that. (That confused me, but I guess a “ghost” that can float around in the mortal world and interact with living people is apparently something different from just the immortal soul of a person, and requires special conditions and/or special magic to exist…?)
But Berlew did make a point of mentioning that Res only needs one drop of blood only a couple of strips back.
Which means that in the OOTS universe, it would be a good idea to leave a vial of blood in a safe deposit box somewhere, with a note that reads “In case of disintegration”, wouldn’t it?
Did you spot the art error?
Obviously the force of Sabine’s rage flipped them upside down in their bonds! 
Pretty much, yeah. Usually, when someone dies, they go off to whichever afterlife best fits them, and never look back. Certain kinds of death, however, can prevent a soul from going to the afterlife, causing them to linger on the mortal plane as undead. This usually involves death by some sort of death magic (called “negative energy” in game terms), or being killed by another undead (such as a vampire creating another vampire). Being powered by negative energy, as all undead are, gives them great power, but also usually makes them hostile towards living things, which is why undead are almost always evil, even if they were good aligned in life.
Ghosts are a little weird for undead, in that they’re usually spontaneously created when someone dies with a great, unmet need. Despite being powered by negative energy, they can be of any alignment. They gain a number of abilities they didn’t have in life, presumably thanks to the negative energy that’s keeping them tethered to the mortal plane.
The basic D&D rules don’t really cover what happens to people who are just dead-dead, and not undead. They can be spoken with (per the speak with dead spell) and brought back to life (as discussed at length in the last few pages of this thread), but there aren’t extensive rules covering how to run a dead soul in the afterlife. It’s clear that they are not undead, however, and presumably are not infused with negative energy.
Roy’s case appears to be a unique situation in which a dead soul was able to return to the mortal world without becoming an undead. I don’t think there’s a rules precedent for that, other than GM fiat.
Yes, he did, because Resurrection is a thing that he’s already established as existing in this universe, and he’s a good enough writer that he’s not going to have his characters forget it exists at a crucial moment involving the death of a major character. At the same time, that same attention to detail is what makes me think that, if a bloody dagger were going to be a significant plot point down the line, he would have shown that the dagger was bloody in the strip.
This was rather extensively dealt with in other product lines, though - Planescape, for one.