“Presume intentionality for all linguistically-feasible disparagements”
Y’know, on thinking about it, this one has a pretty big foreshadow in it. Serini hasn’t actually checked up on the final dungeon since it was built 50 years ago. Who knows what she (and we) will find when it’s finally re-opened? My money is on some of the stasis traps having failed, and the monsters actually settling into some sort of self-sustaining ecological equilibrium.
And the Tarrasque, of course. I think we all know that the Tarrasque is going to be in the final dungeon.
I’m waiting for something that makes the Monster in the Dark yell “Daddy”!
1280 - Another Helping
Awww. I like this one.
Oh, no! Belkar was always my favorite character, and if the prophesy didn’t doom him, this character development definitely does 
Genuine character development for Belkar.
Yep, he’s doomed.
ETA: Simulpost from the cynics.
We know the prophecy will come true. He was already doomed.
Nice pufferfish joke snuck in there.
We don’t know that, for sure, in a way that is meaningful and permanent. What we do know is that prophecies lie. They are always subject to misinterpretation, manipulation and wrong thinking. Look how Durkon returned to his homeland. Who saw that coming? Ordinarily I’d not worry about what happens to Elan and Hailey because of what was prophesized, but you just can’t trust predictions.
I’m betting Belkar bites it doing something selfless and honorable, like saving V, and hates himself for it. But I could very well be wrong. I usually am!
He could be reincarnated. But he’ll certainly die
Or he could become a born-again Thorite.
“Belkar is dead. From this moment on, I am Rakleb.”
All of the Oracle’s other prophecies ended up played pretty straight (he even tried to talk Roy out of fooling himself), and he was really, really clear and unambiguous about what would happen to Belkar. He’ll draw his last breath-- ever. He’d better savor his next birthday cake. He’s not long for this world. I mean, yeah, there are ways you can rules-lawyer it away (because if there’s one thing D&D players will do, it’s rules-lawyer), but it’s a really weak case.
I’ve made my two predictions about the Oracle’s prophecies:
Belkar will not die until their is a scene where he finds out Roy and Haley have known about him dying all along and never warned him. There will be a major confrontation and they will be forced to acknowledge how callous that was.
Roy - The Oracle did not screw up and accidentally forget to erase Roy’s memory. His ability to see the future showed him that the only timeline where the Order succeeds in saving the universe is one where Roy knows Belkar will die.
Vaarsuvius - Will die in the strip. When Belkar was arguing with the Oracle about the prophecy he had received, the Oracle defended himself be listing the ways in which Belkar had been responsible for other people’s deaths. His last words before Belkar stabbed him were “And as for the elf-”.
Note -
The memory charm only erases memory of what the Oracle looks like. Roy would still have retained memory of the prophesy.
Although I do agree that he deliberately allowed Roy to retain his memory for some carefully planned purpose.
More precisely, the charm erases everything but the prophecy itself. The Oracle actually gave Roy’s ghost a freebie prophecy about Belkar’s short life expectancy, which fits the idea that he had some reason to give him that information.
Keep in mind the Oracle actually gave Roy the prophecy about Belkar’s death twice. The first time was here when he specifically said he would be erasing their memory of it, which he did. The second time was here and this is the time he “forgets” to erase Roy’s memory.
Roy thinks this was an accident but I think that’s unlikely. The Oracle had told them Belkar was going to die and he saw there was a path to a future where they save the universe. Then he did his standard memory erasure and that path disappeared. So he set up a second occasion where he told Roy again and this time he didn’t erase the memory.
I’ve stopped using spoiler tags on this because I feel silly posting spoiler tags for something that was published in 2008.
But that was what, a couple weeks ago, strip time?
There are people who have actually established a timeline for the events in the strip.
But the Oracle specifically says that Roy will remember the Belkar prophecy since it was a legit prophecy “on the house”. So there’s no shenanigans about ‘forgetting’ the memory wipe necessary for that.