I struggle to parse that. Are these people who fold fleece and smack goats, or are they like file folders made out of fleece that are used to smack goats, or folders (either kind) of goat-smacking fleece, or what?
(I know - it’s authentic halfing rogue gibberish, and I thank Serini Johnson for her words.)
There’s only one way that having to explore behind every door will lead to finding the gate and that’s if it’s an intentionally created way to get around the traps. That is, it’s a backdoor set up just in case Serini or some ally of hers finds themself outside without whatever mechanism† she uses to bypass the teleport traps at the beginning of every tunnel. I find it’s an unlikely backdoor, since it’s so time consuming. That’s even if all one has to do is cross all the traps within a given period of time.
So I’m not sure why such a backdoor would be there. But I’m past the point where I’m going to worry about such minor details. I’ll just point them out in threads like this and then ignore them.
† I suspect the usual mechanism is having Sunny look at it with his big, magic-suppressing eye. But she must have another way around the traps in case she’s not with Sunny. Something faster than crossing all the traps. Probably the same way Haley did. Well, with something other than a dead rat’s head.
Serini never said that the Gate was in this dungeon complex. She said that, if Team Evil keeps going this way, they’ll find it. I think that the actual Gate is somewhere far from here, and accessible only by teleporter. And the teleporter that leads there is ensorcelled to only work after you’ve been through all the other dungeons.
No but the location was in her diary. That’s where RC & Xykon teleported to. Note that the diary had the correct location of Girard’s gate and not the decoy location that was given to Soon. So I expect it had the correct location of this gate, too.
The actual dungeons that Team Evil are exploring are somewhere else, but I expect the gate to be in somewhere in the backroom area that Serini’s living quarters are in. That’s likely a rather large dungeon, so it could be fairly far from where they’re at now.
BTW, I went back to the strip where RC makes the deal with the Quinton and reread exactly what deal they made with him. The wording is
If the Order intercepts Team Evil inside one of the dungeons, that guy will treat them like he does the other monsters there (neutralizing them with force walls.) But if they intercept TE outside a dungeon, he’ll just stand by and do nothing. He’s totally Lawful, so he’ll stick to the letter of the agreement.
The location in Serini’s diary is the location you have to go to to be able to reach the Gate, so in that sense, it’s correct. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s where the Gate actually is.
And yes, definitely the quinton will only abide by the deal actually agreed to, and that will probably end up biting Team Evil in the butt in some future climactic scene. It’s Chekov’s Modron. I would say that such a scene is inevitable, except that that’s a different kind of law-bot.
(though there was a bit more to the agreement than that: It also agreed to help them with mapping and the like)
I expect she wrote the diary entry before she constructed this big, well, whatever you want to call the canyon and surrounding hills. It’s all clearly artificial. The images of this rift in the Crayons of Time show a flat area with some hills in the background. That’s not what we’re seeing here. Combined that with the extra-dimensional stone in the dungeon walls means the entire area is built up over likely flat terrain. Since the rift was at ground level, it’s virtually certain she built the hill over the rift/gate. The statue was moved to the top of the hill, of course.
The Rift could still be completely enclosed somewhere (even somewhere close by), accessible only by the teleporter traps, and with the teleporter traps designed to only go there after they’ve already gone everywhere else.
(it’s an open question why the Gates are accessible at all, rather than just being completely encased in concrete or the like. The narrative reason, of course, is so there can be an adventure, but what’s the in-story reason? Did they expect them to need maintenance, or something?)
I realized that long ago and even posted something to the effect, I think in the previous thread. My guess is that narrativium trumps the need for an in-comic reason and we’ll never get one.
Maybe fear that a bad guy would figure out their location and use magic to carve out a little hideyhole next to the gate from where they can figure out its secrets.
Crayon images in OOTS represent an unreliable narrator, almost always someone repeating 2nd hand hearsay, subject to embellishment, omission, misunderstanding and outright lies. Don’t believe any crayon drawing as accurately representing what happened. The Crayons of Time was Shojo’s interpretation of the History. He wasn’t at the rift, and doesn’t know what it looked like.
As far as I can tell, all the images of the rifts in the Crayons are fairly accurate. That is, after allowing for the changes the OotScribble made subsequently, of course. So I expect this gate to be the same.
And you thought it was bad when the bouncer stamped your wrist…
Title is
Wow. That is a thing that happened.
I wonder how this affects Xykon?
I had exactly the same thought.
His necromancing proctologist might get a little surprise.
1279 - Post Mortem
Matt Groening reference! (I assume)
“Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, trapping you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come.” – Matt Groening
The exchange between Belkar and Roy makes the wait between strips worthwhile.
Heh - “Post Mortem”.
A reasonable assumption - that’s what I immediately thought of too.