My best guess would be that intention plays a role. Is Ray still training to win? Does he really think a 95% chance is not good enough? The judge said that trying is the most important part.
Nah, it’ll be a rock attack that damages the balloons, thereby causing the Mechane to drop like a Roc…
If you read the actual text of the oath (it’s in SoD), you’ll find that the oath Eugene swore did not bind his heirs. And if it did, I’m sure a being of pure Good would find such a provision to be Evil and thus not be required to enforce it anyway.
The full text was quoted on the last page, so I’ll quote it again
I, Eugene Greenhilt, swear on the blood that flows from my wounds this day that I shall not rest, in this life or any other, until I or my heirs have enacted horrible vengeance on those that have slighted me, named here as Xykon the sorcerer.
So you’re correct to say they aren’t bound by the oath. However, it seems that Eugene is still bound until his heirs fulfill the oath. And if that heir is lawful good, I suspect they would feel an obligation to free their ancestor from their binding, if at all possible.
It’s also in the oathspirits’ best interest to convince their heirs that they are in fact bound, and would be unable to enter their afterlife until they fulfilled it. That might even motivate people of non-lawful alignments.
All I can find on a bloodoath in D&D is a very high level spell that actually deals out unhealable damage if you aren’t taking actions to fulfill it. And it apparently changes one’s alignment to lawful. So I can’t add anything from that.
You know, it occurs to me that by persuading his heirs to go after Xykon, he was technically attempting to fulfil the strict letter of the oath.
Right. **Eugene **can’t rest until his heirs fulfill the oath. Roy could walk away clean, it isn’t his oath, and maybe Eugene bothers him the entire rest of his life, then starts bothering Roy’s children and grand-children about it.
We know, however, that won’t happen. Roy and his friends are stuck being the Heroes in this particular tale.
Roy even knows that. Way back in Shojo’s throne room, Roy told Eugene that if Xykon wasn’t a threat to the world, he’d have abandoned the oath already.
My problem with that is that I question whether it would break his lawful good alignment. Sure, to not do it because there’s greater good in not doing it would be fine. But to merely decide not to do it because he hates his dad? And sure, maybe a single non-LG action is fine. But it wouldn’t be a single action. It would be a repeated choice.
Like I said, I don’t see how a lawful good character could not feel an obligation to fulfill their ancestor’s blood oath.
Then again, if Eugene is still counted as lawful good despite choosing not to fulfill his oath, then I guess Roy would be in an even better position.
Not to get all real world theology here, but in Christianity, everyone is still tainted by the original sin of Adam, which was passed on to all his heirs (i.e everyone) and prevents us from going to heaven until we properly repent. And Christians are pretty adamant that their good is pure Good. So there’s some precedent for good deities being okay with the idea of genetic sins.
That occured to me when we had this same discussion on the GitP forum a few days ago. It would bother me if I were still a Christian, but I haven’t been one for 40-some years. (And let’s try not to get into a theological discussion on Christianity in this thread, please.)
For certain flavors of Christianity.
Convincing people they’re bound by an oath when they actually aren’t doesn’t seem like something Lawful Good beings would do. The Deva chastised Roy for the fact that he sometimes used deceptive means to achieve Lawful Good ends.
Again, my assumption is that what you do after you die doesn’t matter anymore.
I also note that Roy still got in. The only requirement was that he was trying to be lawful good. So it sure sounds like that’s all that’s necessary.
This reminds me that Roy asked his archon if it had taken care of the things he’d asked it to do while he was back down on earth. Makes me wonder if Roy set up some kind of heavenly ace in the hole for the last encounter and the comic was just putting in a quiet hint.
“See, I’ve already forgotten that.”, Brilliant, funniest line from OotS for a long while.
Wait, what? When? Or did you mean when Roy was scrying with dear old Dad? And, you know, still in the afterlife?
Yeah, that’s what I was thinking of.
I said about the previous strip:
And what do you know, they’ve run into an encounter in Passage Pass. I hope everyone is suitably impressed with my predictive abilities.
For my next prediction, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that neither flight nor fight will work to resolve this encounter. They’re going to have to outwit the frost giants.