It’s not clear why the other roach would answer with “Ssh! They don’t know about some of those yet!” if that’s what the number nine referred to.
I don’t think it can be the nine alignments, because Roy and Elan (LG and CG) are pretty clearly on the same side, as are probably Belkar (CE) and Vaarsuvius (Neutral-ish?).
Things get fuzzier than that, yet: Are the IFCC on the same side as the Linear Guild? Sabine is working for both of them, and the fiends apparently consider Nale to have considerable promise, but Nale apparently doesn’t even know of the fiends’ existence, and would probably resent being anyone’s pawn.
As an aside, does anyone else rush over to the GinP site whenever this thread gets bumped in the hopes that it signifies an update?
And yes, I know about the RSS feed – just haven’t taken advantage.
Roy’s dad may be a faction. Albeit a largely impotent one , but he does have his own motivations.
I think the factions is going to be debatable even after the end of the strip. I’m sure Burlew has his nine in mind but to someone just reading I think that beyond number five or six they’ll become a bit debatable. Do you divide these in two? Does this back story that occurred before the beginning of the strip count as a “faction”? Can a person be a faction on their own? What about this obscure character which potentially had an impact? I doubt we’ll ever get something definitive.
That’s ridiculous. The “9 sides” was effectively a throwaway line, but I’m prettey sure that it did indeed refer to actual sides in the conflict, not just alignments which would make absolutely no sense in context.
For my money the current sides are
- Roy and the Order of the Stick
- Xykon, Tsukkio and the Undead
- Redcloak, the Dark One and the goblins
- The Northern, Western and Southern Gods
- The Sapphire Guard
- Nale (+Sabine?) (+Lord Tyrinar?) and Thog
- The IFCC, Qarr (+Sabine?)
- Girard (+Serini?)
9+ ???
That’s only my guess though.
/raises hand
No, I rush here, and scroll down looking for links to the lastest. If there isn’t one, no need to wait for GitP’s hibernating servers to wake up.
I don’t rush to the site, but if I see a link anywhere in a new post I click THE HELL off the page, because while I love my fellow Dopers, I fear a plot twist might be revealed in the same post as the new strip announcement. Something like in this VERY FAKE example:
Lord love you guys, I wouldn’t be so freakishly addicted to OOTS or have even discovered it if it weren’t for y’all. But … it could happen. 
That said, OOTS is in my Google homepage, so it’s easy for me to keep track of new strips. Though I do wish there were a way to get an email announcement. (There isn’t, is there?)
I still don’t see the nine alignments as being the nine sides. As Chronos wrote, they’re too intermixed. I also don’t see Eugene Greenhilt as a faction; he has an agenda in the story but it doesn’t appear to be related to the gates.
Sorry for raising false hopes but I figured I could slide this broader discussion in between the more immediate discussions each strip engenders.
The RSS feed is actually kind of evil, at least for me. Every now and then I’ll see a new item pop up and eagerly click it, only to find out that it’s for an old strip. I have no idea why it does that.
How much do you know about RSS? I’m relatively new to it myself, but the basic premise is that there is one reader that looks at all the websites you follow and notifies you when there is an update.
I find it useful for keeping track of news stories from various sources and of course webcomics (especially from ones that update sporadically).
The Greysky City Thieves Guild is probably a faction by now since they will be searching for Haley with malice aforethought.
But again, there’s no sign the Thieves Guild has any plans involving the snarl or the gates.
Nonetheless, they and their interests can have quite an impact on the Order of the Stick.
Could the Snarl itself be the ninth side?
You could also add Kubota and/or most of the rest of the Azure City nobility. OK, Kubota’s side is pretty well defunct by now, but it was still a going concern at the time of the roach’s comment.
We don’t know that. Kubota himself is dead, but we haven’t seen any of his allies in ages.
Personally I wouldn’t call the Snarl a “side”. As far as I can tell it doesn’t even have a subhuman intelligence, it just is. I wouldn’t call a force of nature a side. If it is ever demonstrated that it actually wants something I’d change my mind.
Also I personally wouldn’t call any group that doesn’t know or care about the Snarl and the gates a “side”. I’d only consider them obstacles for the real sides.
YMMV of course.