442 is just as good, though.
I don’t get it. Who?
Why, yes it is, isn’t it? 
O-Chul was in the room when Soon mentioned the phylactery around Redcloak’s neck, and now he’s in the room with an elf who’s able to do something about it.
Paralyzing Touch wouldn’t have prevented O-Chul from hearing, I imagine, just moving.
I have one of the Ravenloft books on liches, and it points out that if you hide the phylactery where NO ONE can find it, how will a killed lich get a new body? How does he check up on it to make sure no one accidentally finds it? Plus there’s the overweening ego thing; liches wouldn’t be liches in the first place without it.
That sounds like backward excusing. There’s a million and one ways to deal with all of that and make it so secure that they won’t die. The obvious one is to drop it in the middle of the ocean and put a few not very noticeable wards around it that would let the lich know someone stumbled onto it. If they need to regrow a body they can do it on the bottom of the sea just as well as they could at the bottom of a dungeon.
In Xykon’s case there’s a really good reason that his is Redcloak’s holy symbol but that’s a story reason (and yet another reference to Start of Darkness).
I don’t know about that; there’s fates worse than ending up a walking corpse in D&D. Someone not inclined to religion in the Forgotten Realms might choose to become a lich or other undead just to avoid the Wall of the Faithless, for example. Or even as a means of avoiding the normal Lower Planes; in a world where a hellish afterlife actually exists for the evil, it’s kind of odd that the majority of evil types don’t get themselves vampired or lichified or something of the kind.
You need to hit a certain level of power to get lichified, I think, and theoretically there’s a mere handful of people in any given world who are above level 10, much less 15 or 20. Plus there’s always the possibility (nay, probability) of getting struck down by a group of heroic adventurers before the evil plans can come to fruition.
As for Xykon putting Redcloak in charge of the phylactery? Redcloak’s pretty powerful and intelligent in his own right, so he’s a good guardian for it. Being that it’s his holy symbol, it’s hiding in plain sight, and an adventurer’s first thought regarding a phylactery is that it will be well hidden. Pretty clever spot to hide it, all things considered. Then there’s the side benefit of not letting Redcloak forget that he’s tied to Xykon.
The best thing D&D ever did for me was teach me the word phylactery. It’s such a great word to say and type. Phylactery!
Actually it was Redcloak’s idea. He thought it would give him more control over Xykon. It was also Redcloak’s idea to turn Xykon into a lich and capture the Gates. People who haven’t read Start of Darkness are surprised to learn that Redcloak was the original boss of the team.
Considering the vast number of sentient species that live in the oceans of your average D&D world, you might as well drop the phylactery in the middle of a busy city street.
The point isn’t to hide it somewhere no one will ever find it, but to make it insanely hard to destroy *both *the lich and the philactery in one go. As long as the philactery’s out there, the lich will always come back. As long as the lich is undead and kicking, destroying the philactery doesn’t accomplish jack.
As for checking on the status of the philactery, that’s what scrying magic, alarm wards etc… are for.
I’ll grant you the ego thing, though. Xykon’s not the sharpest spoon in the drawer, but damn if he ain’t thinking of himself as a +5 Vorpal Katana.
… and it seems as though Rich has messed up his coding. Tsk, tsk.
I’d been wondering if anyone else was experiencing that problem.
It’s solved now. Most likely it was a little coding mistake during the latest Erfworld update.
Dang! I misremembered. I’ll clearly have to pull the book out and have another read.
…Well then. There goes my prediction right out the window. Holy crap.
But what puzzles me is Redcloak saying “I should have known immediately.” The three demons imply that this is something unique or at least incredibly rare. Does Redcloak really have that many ranks of Knowledge/religion? :dubious:
Well, the three fiends say that it is a “special, once-a-century deal”. So not completely unknown. And it’s pretty obvious that Redcloak – much like Roy – did not use Int for his dump stat; I’d expect him to be pretty good at knowledge rolls.
To my utter non-surprise, Haerta didn’t show up as an ally of Xykon.
And V is getting pwned, here. Didn’t have much of a strategy worked out beyond time stop, apparently. Didn’t anticipate the bad guys being more clever, or working together. Didn’t think that her Concentration check wouldn’t be up to snuff, without the actual levels that would have improved it to where it needs to be for tossing around 10th+ level spells. (And forgot liches are immune to lightning; not like V at all)
And just got disarmed of most of the high-level spells needed to take on Xykon (… who just tossed off a 12th level spell!). Xykon’s assessment is correct: V is a dumbass.
Also, the GitP server still sucks.
Demons don’t always tell the truth.
Fuck a very large duck.
I am hoping that things are looking especially bad for Vaarsuvius now so that we’ll be extra extra impressed when the tide turns later on, perhaps because Monster-San gets in the game. I can’t imagine V. is completely without any cleverness – s/he’s shown some instinctive strategic abilities before in the strip (such as with Nale).
If not, the elf’s toast. 