Order of the Stick book 7 discussion thread

Cafe Society
2324

Right, any time you have a whole plane full of evil people, it’s inevitably going to become a hellscape, because that’s what evil people do to the places where they are.

It’s like Terry Pratchett pointed out in one of his short stories: If Many Worlds is true, then somewhere, there’s a world where everyone always made the moral choice, the choice that led to the greatest good for all of their fellow beings. And somewhere, there’s the charred ruin of the world where everyone made the opposite choice.

2325

This is a great discussion!

Over time, DND cosmology, and the worlds that inhabit it, have gained nuance. I think Paizo has done a better job of it overall, compared to TSR/WotC, who mostly hand wave it. Paizo has several products that tell a possible origin story to entities that start as one thing but evolve to something else over eons. IIRC, it’s an origin of Asmodeus, who is a deity in their world of Golarion. No reason to assume that it couldn’t have happened for all deities.

I’m going to counter that with this one

One Bad Decision

That’s when Miko decided to end Lord Shojo. That one decision cost her the LG afterlife.

I suppose we could argue how close she was to losing her paladin/LG status at that point and this was the tipping point. We could discuss if each action “weighs” more heavily on the actual scales, which we have seen with Roy.

I think it’s worse than that. Probably 98% of the population, including all sentient beings, live their life and have no interaction with anything except clerics/priests who preach to them. I would think that makes them more neutral. I mean, how many of us have an opportunity to do something really Good (LG) or really Evil (CE)?

(Digression. I went looking for a word so I didn’t have to use “really” as an intensifier but nothing I found worked. (Excellent, Fantastic, Astonishing, breathtaking) Maybe Exalted and Vile?)

Then you have the 2% that do interact with and know about the afterlife and they still take risks! Heck, a lot of this is Roy stopping Xykon due to Eugene making an oath to that effect!

One of the bad ideas of Forgotten Realms, was the Time of Troubles. FR does have an overgod that sent all of the deities of the Realms in avatar form to the Realms. If they died there, they were gone for good. It was said after that, deities would have power based on their worshippers. Fortunately, I think 3E did away with that nonsense, or otherwise (for the Realms) Chauntea, goddess of agriculture, would probably have 70% of all power. Then the evil gods, like Bane, Lord of Tyrants, would have next to no power! Equally, same for Tyr, Lord of Justice. That is due to my thought that most people aren’t extreme and just want to live their lives.

Thanks for the discussion!

2326

And here: 652 No Respect for the Wicked - Giant in the Playground Games

While afterlives are a real thing in the D&D world, so is immortality. Which means you can use one to avoid the other.

2327

I wonder whether Xykon would be considered more valuable in hell than the craftsman who made his fake philactory. I would guess less, barring extensive intra-planar war. Then again, being able to cast meteor strikes left and right might provide you with a at least a mid-level ranking.

Exceptionally might work.

2328

Exceedingly?

2329

1320 - Goal Oriented

2330

“The evil deities treated us poorly! Like, what the heck?!”

2331

Are they on Central Daylight Time? I was there this morning apparently 30 minutes after the timestamp on the forum thread there, but didn’t see it or the new comic.

Yes, last post there shows 10:43, not 11:43, so I was actually 30 minutes early. Oh weel. I have done the new post here at least once tho…

2332

I mean, what part of “evil” are they not getting?

2333

Yes, interesting that in the end their great scheme derives not from some grand evil but from petty resentment (But what is all evil in the end, he said going all CS Lewis).

Also interesting that they are wrong about one big important fact, which if they knew the truth would only make them more irate. This is not the second world at all and their brains have been wiped more times than anyone could count..

But most interesting is what this means for Nale. We’ve seen him go through some character development - is he really going to do what has been asked of him, with all the consequences, just so he can spend eternity with Sabine?

2334

Granted they’re not working with a full knowledge but this just seems like a dumb plan. If the last Gate is broken, the gods will just remake the world again anyway so the outsiders will get wiped. Only by keeping the Snarl confined do they get to keep their memories intact.

For that matter, if Nale breaks the final Gate, either the Snarl eats everyone and Nale & Sabine are destroyed or the gods wipe existence and Nale & Sabine are destroyed. Again, the only way to stick around is to keep the Snarl locked.

I suppose the next strip might address this point with some cunning twist.

2335

They are responding to a totally predictable slight with insanely over-the-top vengeance that’ll hurt innocent bystanders.

I think they’re getting “evil” just fine.

2336

As far as they know - and as far as we know, really - the Snarl can only kill the gods and destroy the Prime Material Plane, which is what they’re referring to when they say “destroy the world.” The way they see it, the Outer Planes (Hell included) and their non-divine denizens will remain untouched.

2337

Even taking that at face value, the gods will still remake existence once the Snarl is freed.

Though it opens the question of what happened to all the Eastern Pantheon outsiders after the gods were killed.

2338

They won’t if they’re dead. As far as the Fiends know, the gods only succeeded in building a prison around the Snarl once. Maybe next time they’ll fail. Maybe they’ll do something to make sure they’ll fail.

2339

I don’t think there are specific species of outsiders who are associated with specific gods or deities. The individuals who served them had their minds wiped like all the others.

2340

Art imitates life. “I never thought the gods would eat my face. They’re not hurting the right beings.”

2341

I don’t really think that’s it.

To me, it reads more like:

Sure, the goody-two-shoes gods are going to wipe the minds of their outsiders to comply with any agreement they made with the other gods about remaking reality.

And the neutral gods might go along with it.

But the EVIL gods? Why are they cooperating with the other gods in remaking reality and covering it up? They should have left that knowledge in their highest ranking fiends (ie, US) so we could scheme with them to use this Snarl to our advantage, usurping the good gods and ruling creation! Mwahahahaha!

2342

My reading is that they don’t care. This is about breaking something that presumably the gods care a lot about and takes some real effort to bring about. Yes, maybe they can build another, but at least the fiends will have smashed their toy in protest. And if it’s even more destructive/disruptive than that, all the better.

2343

I can’t remember where the memory wipe was mentioned and why the Gods do it. I tried rereading the section where Thor takes Durkon and Minrah to the Astral Plane, but it wasn’t there. Must have been earlier.