Good point. My guess is that Serini, in her old age, has become a super-spymaster, with agents and assets everywhere in the world, constantly monitoring threats to the Gates.
It would also be just like a paladin to ward the living shit out of the throne room to prevent scrying, and not consider someone slipping a scullery maid 10 silver pieces for the content’s of the Lord’s waste paper bin.
Regardless of how she found out, she still seems to be being kinda stupid. Shouldn’t a rogue be smart enough to consider that maybe they’re not working alone?
And, well, a future oath would in fact be enough if she’s so sure she knows how paladins think. All they have to do is swear an oath that they will not destroy this or any other gate. There’s no reason to care about the past if she’s so sure that a paladin would keep their oath no matter what.
I guess it’s possible now that she actually did the Order and considers them actually powerful enough to handle it. But then why not consider that maybe the paladins were working with them? The paladins were clearly in a scouting position, and it’s not like paladins don’t scout or never work with adventuring parties.
So I have to conclude she’s gone a bit mad and lost her touch. Maybe in part due to being part troll now. Not because trolls would be dumb, but because they don’t quite mix properly. Or maybe just part of her brain got damaged in the attack, and this was never fixed. Or she’s just gone a bit mad in isolation.
I hope she comes to her senses soon, and this isn’t just a way to keep them away from the battle. Or one of those situation where only those who didn’t know about the gates get to survive.
I’ll worry about that when she creates an account and starts posting.
“I can’t touch that with my beak,” said the chicken “must be some real impeccable logic.”
She’d have had to have been scrying on him almost every waking hour just to catch that. OK, the laws of drama say she could likely catch that by scrying only every once in a while, maybe even just that once. (Stupid laws of drama.) But it would have been even more dramatic for her to have scried during the actual event. There was a lot more going on there than just what O-Chul did.
More than a nitpick: I had forgotten a major and moving subplot.
I suspect your concerns will be resolved in the next few strips. I’m hoping for the Superspy Serini (with questionable judgment) scenario . Maybe I’m missing something, but I see no reason why she hasn’t figured out what the paladins are doing. If so, the Order might be in her sights as well, given that Elan in fact destroyed one of the Gates. Or maybe she figures she can work with Oots, but she wants to have fewer random actors on the board.
Besides, if she’s a teleport master, she can slot in the paladins if and when she feels like it. What we’ve been shown is an interrogation, a dark art that often involves deception.
And I guess Serini is one of the previously unknown factions mentioned by the devils/demons. How many are left to be discovered?
I would say the nine sides that have or had a definite agenda for the gate are:
- Oots/Sapphire Guard
- Xykon
- Redcloak/Dark One
- IFCC
- Linear Guild (now defunct)
- Tarquin and co.
- Thor, Loki and allies
- Hel and allies
- Serini
Also: the Snarl.
I think of the Snarl as the prize (kinda) for the winning side.
We don’t know if the Snarl is sentient or not. If it is, it may constitute its own faction.
My speculation is that the Snarl is sentient, but doesn’t really understand much of anything.
It doesn’t perceive being imprisoned as a hostile act by some third party. All it knows is that sometimes its “room” is small, and sometimes it’s big and there’s a nice snack waiting for it.
If the Snarl knew about the gods it could have, in any of the million times it got loose, just flown to the Outer Planes and destroyed everything, including the gods.
If you mean the “nine” sides, it was actually the roaches who said that.
As for why I put the quotes in that sentence, there are no definite nine factions that Burlew had in mind when he wrote it. He just meant a largish number of sides. After all, what he actually wrote was “at least nines sides”. So any attempt to figure out what are the nine sides is futile. It’s probably best if everyone stops trying to come up with what they think is the official list.
Try telling that to the posters on the giantitp forums - if Rich sneezed they’d be trying to figure out what hidden meanings to the plot he just revealed 
My interpretation is based on her saying that they’re clearly too weak to take out Xykon. But that’s only true if they’re working alone. They’re not too weak as part of a team, maybe fighting off some lesser troops while the more powerful go for the main guy.
Of course, it’s possible she’s not telling the truth about her motives here. But then we’re back to not having an explanation for her actions. And it definitely came across like Burlew was having Ochul ask a question that the readers would have.
Her stated reasoning—stopping them because they’re too weak to actually do anything beyond destroying the gate—is suspect to me. And she seems to simultaneously think that paladins do and don’t have to hold to their oaths.
That said, I did go back an reread the capture, and I note that what she’s saying doesn’t seem to line up with her assumption that, once she executes her plan, she (or whoever else was invisible) will no longer exist.
I think it’s entirely possible that even now the Order of the Stick is “too weak” to take out Xykon. They’re probably not that much higher level than Miko was when she beat up the entire Order (minus Durkon), and she couldn’t even hurt the Monster in the Darkness. Not that long ago, they struggled to handle ONE of Redcloak’s spell slots (though they WERE low on resources at the time).
That’s not to say they won’t win in the end, mind you, but I doubt it will be through brute force. If that’s all you’re considering, Xykon and his allies could very well mop the floor with the Order, Paladins included.
That forum is full of nerds. Rich can’t drag a definite number in front of them without them going off the deep end in trying to analyze it. They can’t help themselves.
But I stopped posting to that forum a while ago. I do read some of each strip thread, but usually only a few pages. Occasionally I see another thread that looks interesting and read that. I used to spend a lot more time there.
I think the Scribblers who were not Soon tended to project their faults onto him. They all supposedly took an oath not to have anything to do with the other gates, but then most of them violated that oath. Soon was likely the only one who did not.
No, she wouldn’t have. Why assume that she was scrying at all? After all, she’s a rogue, not a spellcaster. She has access to magic if she wants it, in the form of both items and allies, but her main schtick isn’t magical at all. She could have just had nonmagical spies watching important people like Hinjo continually or near-continually, in person, and reporting in when they saw or heard something interesting.
Right. HU(manoid)INT rather than SIGINT. And you don’t need to watch your targets constantly, you just have to talk to the people around them.
Cite? Do you have a specific quote from Burlew to support that, or is it your own speculation.
His work does have a history of including small details that turn out to be highly significant later, sometimes many years later. People are on the lookout for them. It seems fairly likely that this is one of them, that he had an actual list of nine separate sides in mind when he wrote that.
I gave my cite. The line was “at least 9”, not “exactly 9” or something similar. OK, I can’t say with certainty that he didn’t have 9 specific sides in mind at the time he wrote it, but my impression was that he knew there were more than that many at that time. But it’s also a matter of definition by the person counting the sides. Exactly what consitutes a side? Everyone wants to come up with exactly nine, but I say count as many as seem like a side to you. The list you come up with should have at least nine, but probably more.