It took me a while to get hooked too. I read some of the earliest strips and dismissed them as yet another nerd webcomic. Later on as the popularity picked up I looked in at a particularly uninteresting patch of stories to new readers (the first couple of strips of book 3 IIRC). Eventually it did catch me, though.
We didn’t even go for the…
I better cut myself off there. I think it’s obvious you’re just begging for a game of Mornington Crescent to break out by just mentioning it in a thread like this.
I don’t see it as happening. V’s set up as a tragic figure and while there might be some attempt at redemption I don’t see Vaarsuvius surviving it.
I’m intrigued by Elan’s view that taking Neutralize Poison as a 4th level spell was so important. Therkla’s dead and not coming back, right? Did he take that spell as a “just in case” precaution so he’ll be ready if he ever needs it for Haley?
If so, that is some serious growing up coming from him.
Not necessarily Haley but he clearly took it because he realized that the time could come again when he won’t be able to depend upon someone else having healing standing by. Look at his choice of spells in general: Mass Cure Light, Neutralize Poison, Greater Dispel Magic, and he’s planning on taking Cure Serious Wounds. Elan is taking on responsibility for others.
Which is kind of disappointing since my pet crazy theory was that he actually had very high Int and Wis scores and realized through his bardic knowledge of storytelling conventions that the innocent who wanders through in a haze always survives.
Everyone has a Big No when the demon(s) come to collect. Everyone*.
Besides, his whole breakdown takes its roots in nothing *but *compassion, i.e. him not dealing with the fact that he was unable to save every last Azurite. It’s the Azurites’ suffering and the death of Roy that plague him, more than his failure. He merely whips himself for failing to avoid dealing with that grief. Imagine the shock when he realizes that this time not only did he fail to prevent suffering, but he also caused quite a lot of it, as I’m sure he’s wont to before the splice ends.
But I admit it could go either way - it could start the redemption, or it could send him further 'round the bend, eventually deciding he needs the Snarl’s power to really get things done (and get out of the whole Soul Contract thing)
*Oh, all right, all right, everyone except John Constantine, who tricks him *again *and tells him to sit on it. Nit-picker.
I think what hooked me was #43, the introduction of Nale and the Linear Guild; I’m a sucker for a well-done brother vs. brother storyline, and this really cemented Elan as the strip’s MVP for me. Before this arc he was basically Martin Prince in adventurer’s garb; now, he seemed more like Xena’s Joxer. Revealing a nemesis brought out a deeper, more sympathetic, sweet side to what had just been a hapless goofball.
I still think all the stats and whatnot mentioned throughout the thread are an elaborate ruse. You guys are making this stuff up as you go along, right?
I hope you’re wrong, but you probably aren’t. I’m just hoping that Rich doesn’t want to repeat the Miko arc so closely by having someone go batshit insane in the name of self righteousness/anger only to end in ignominy and death. Plus, AFAIC, nothing beats a good disgrace/redemption arc that results in a stronger, sadder-but-wiser character. Speaking of which…
Oh absolutely, though I agree that it’s not just for Haley. He seems to have taken his failures to heart and trying to prepare himself. I think Elan has really grown during this separation – really, ever since Nale switched places with him, his character has taken a slow but steady rise in skills and intelligence. Is that due to “leveling up,” I guess? I can’t imagine the idiot who blew up the castle way back in those early episodes managing to perform all the tasks he’s accomplished over the past 250 or so strips.
Sadly, since he is my favorite character, I fully expect him to defy the Oracle’s prediction and end tragically. It is the order of things.
Regarding Elan and Haley and Elan telling Haley about Therkla, although I agree that Elan and Haley have shown maturation, there is a big fly in the ointment right then and there, and that is V.
Recalling comic #597, what if V becomes so frustrated at his continued failure to wow everybody with fantastic feats of high magic that he blurts something along the lines of his tirade to Elan on #597?
Far-fetched, indeed. But perhaps not out of the realms of possibility. One has to hope, as someone wrote in the main OotS forum (paraphrasing), “V may be so strung out that he might end up disintegrating passers-by left and right, but hopefully sniping at Elan and Haley’s happiness will still be beneath him”.
A classic case of “victim of your own success,” I think – the last few months, the server started occasionally coughing up hairballs if both comics on the site updated at once, and then more often when either updated, and now sometimes flakes out under general baseload traffic levels.
The story works just fine if you have the usual geek-cultural-osmosis understanding of D&D – there’ll just be an occasional momentary pause while a joke flies over your head.
Heh heh heh…
If you’re particularly interested in characterization, I’d recommend Start of Darkness (the prequel volume describing Xykon and Redcloak’s backstory). There’s also a prequel volume for the OotS (On The Origin of PCs), but that’s nowhere near as rich in character development, IMO.
The Oracle’s prophecy was that Belkar would kill “Roy, Miko, Miko’s horse, Vaarsuvius, or the Oracle.” Belkar killed the oracle, who was resurrected shortly thereafter. Prophecy fulfilled.
It’s strips like this that remind me why Elan is my favorite character. He’s not particularly smart and he knows it, but he’s just so earnest. Everyone else in the party has their own motives and agendas, but he just wants everyone to be happy and to protect the people he cares about. And ever since escaping from jail he’s matured a lot while still maintaining that childlike optimism. Arguably, he’s still the weakest member of the party, but he’s certainly not worthless anymore. I really look forward to seeing how he gets on with Roy after he gets resurrected. Roy never respected him before, because there never really was much to respect, but what about now? Will Roy treat him like the person he’s become, or the PC he remembers?
It’s really surprising how much I care about these stick figures.
Go Haley! And I like the sharpness Elan shows towards V.
I’ll probably be shown up as a dope in two strips, but I’ve got a feeling that this whole arc will wrap up in a big way in #650, just because Rich makes a point of never doing big things in strips with round numbers.
