What strip had that prophecy?
This isn’t more of the “I might not be exactly what you’d call___” thing, is it? Because that’s the only thing I remember where people were speculating about her background being a Plot Point, because nothing’s too crazy for an OOTS fan to theorize about.
EDIT: ninja’d
Durkon wasn’t aware that Malack was evil; at their tea time, Malack says that in his pantheon Death was not an innately evil concept. Between that, his aid in Durkon’s spell research and Malack’s hatred for Nale, he probably assumed Lawful Neutral.
Unresolved:
- the love triangle between Redcloak’s niece, Fryon’s son, and Jiminy
- has Jiminy gotten any polearms in his shop yet?
Quite possibly though having been taught about the other pantheons he would have known that Nergal was Evil.
He didn’t even have enough Knowledge: Religion to realize that Loki was evil.
As for a confrontation between Belkar and Roy, I expect something like this:
Belkar: What!? Why didn’t you tell me?
Roy: Because you’re an evil psychopathic murderer that I’ve only barely managed to keep under some semblance of control.
Belkar: Eh, fair enough.
I will confess, though, that I’m a bit surprised that Belkar hasn’t already died. His death has to be at some dramatic moment, right? But what would have been more dramatic than dying during the resolution to Durkon’s vampirization, given Belkar’s involvement in it? Probably too late for that now, though, since that’s now mostly resolved (there’s still the Exarch to mop up, but that should be anticlimactic compared to the battle vs. Not-Durkon).
Which means it would be the perfect place to have it happen. 
Yeah. Typo.
If being good means you can’t enjoy killing bad guys, then there hasn’t been a good player character in the history of D&D.
Nah. Malack tells him that Nergal isn’t necessarily evil, nor are his clerics and that they’re actually more Neutral. Obviously that doesn’t hold for vampires but Durkon was unaware of Malack having that particular condition.
As Chronos pointed out, Durkon isn’t even especially sharp about his own pantheon, much less those in other parts of the world.
What is it that Haley may not exactly be? It’s a secret that even Vaarsuvius doesn’t know. And who are Kyran, Rachel, and all the others?
Actually, I tend to think that Tarquin’s story is done. He’s served his purpose.
The key characteristic with Tarquin was that he saw events as a narrative but he imagined himself as one of the central figures in the narrative. He figured his son Elan was the main protagonist and he himself was the main antagonist. He dismissed Roy and Xykon as just being secondary characters in “his” story. As Julio told him “You always think that everything that happens is about you.”
I think Burlew used Tarquin to mock the attitude that’s common in D&D gaming and fiction in general of treating the central characters of the story as if they live in a different plane of existence from everyone else. A thousand nameless NPC’s can die and nobody gives it a thought. But if a main character dies, it’s treated as a world-shaking event.
Burlew would want you to remember that none of those thousand nameless NPC’s thought of themselves as a minor character. They all would have had lives that were just as important to them as the main character’s life was to him. Everyone is the center of their own epic lifelong story and nobody gets to decide that they’re the main character and their life has more meaning than everyone else’s.
So dropping Tarquin out of the story and never having him reappear, while he was protesting about not having a satisfying resolution, would be his resolution.
I might think so too if the Holey Brotherhood had just appeared that one time.
But check out the mysterious cloaked figure in these strips. He’s there in the middle of one of the major climatic scenes of the story but he appears to be separate from the crowd with no explanation given as to who he is or why he’s there.
He’s a paladin of the Sapphire Guard, and is exactly as significant as any of the other paladins of the Sapphire Guard we’ve seen. Remember, the first time we saw Miko, she was wearing a similar cloak.
And then Belkar wore a similar cloak. It seems it’s a fairly common item of clothing.
Whether Loki is CN or CE has been argued at length on the GiantITP forum - and elsewhere. That Hilgya is CE is now undoubted.
Might have even been TWO Paladins of the Sapphire Guard. The one in #448 has no stripe at the hem of his cloak (and is corporeal). The one in #459 has the stripe (and is incorporeal).
He was still being hurt by his Protection from Evil brooch twenty strips ago, so he can’t have been CN for all that long.
I think the current strip (1151) pushed him over the CE-CN boundary. Just the unprompted apology is evidence, but to be certain we’ll have to wait until he activates the cloak clasp again. Which he’ll probably do in the upcoming battle with the remaining vampires. I predict a massive thread/argument on the GitP forum when that happens.*
- I don’t know about anyone else, but I am thoroughly sick of alignment arguments, of which they have a surfeit on the other forum.