I have to admit that I did not anticipate Tiamat knowing who, at core, was responsible for the Familicide spell. But I guess I should’ve, her being a god and all. This doesn’t eliminate the possibility of her going after V too, but it lessens it.
New thought: if Tiamat DOES know who was responsible for Familicide, what do the various pantheons, in general, know about the fiends’ plot? If said plan involves taking over or harnessing the power of the Snarl, would said pantheons intervene somehow (by, say, helping the Order in some way)?
Not a chance there. Tiamat’s calling them first because they’re the arms dealers who are living in the same town. But when the time comes for vengeance she’s not going to go after them, Tiamat will want the person who pulled the trigger.
The Three Fiends have been working to organize a pan-evil alliance. So it figures they’ve been communicating directly with Tiamat. That doesn’t mean that all the pantheons on aware of their activities.
So we’ve seen Belkar willing to at least fake teamwork, Elan demonstrating some foreplanning, Roy willing to go to Haley for advice, Haley in turn ready to work as a leader, and Durkon and Vaarsuvious both willing to concede their mistakes and acknowledge their need to work together. This is like the formation of the Order of Stick Mark II. This is a much more formidable team than it was a year ago.
Hmmm…if Tiamat (from Final Fantasy?) is part of the OotS mythology, I wonder if that gives us any insight into the nature of the Monster in the Dark?
The art in the past couple of strips seems slightly different. Maybe that’s just because it’s been so long since we’ve seen normal V and Durkon and Roy.
This would be Tiamat from Babylonian mythology. And her use in D&D predates Final Fantasy by about ten years.
Yeah – I don’t think the Babylonian mythology Tiamat had the five heads. But the D&D one does, so so much for the FF theory.
Backtracking a bit. But I checked on this. The Oracle spoke in his normal voice when he said that Belker was going to die (329, panels 7 & 8). But when the Oracle repeated the information to Roy later (the time he would remember it) it was shown as coming as an official prophecy (572, panel 2). Which would fit if it was the Oracle’s intent to pass it on to Roy “accidentally”.
Of course that raises the issue of why the Oracle said it in 329. If it was fake then there was no point in telling the Order it then because they were just going to forget it anyway.
But you can fanwank it. Let’s pretend that the Oracle’s power to see the future works like some other fictional precognitives’ do. They see the future as a mesh of possibilities - all kinds of things might happen in the future, based on what people do, including how they react to the Oracle’s information. So the Oracle would see the future as a cloud of possible futures that constantly change as people make different decisions. So he could see futures where Belkar dies within a year and others were Belkar lives to an old age. And he can see futures where the Snarl destroys the world and others where the Snarl is kept contained.
Now let’s say the Oracle originally said Belkar was going to die for no reason except to annoy Belkar. It was just a cheap shot because he knew Belkar might or might not die and he also knew that either way he was going to forget the prediction anyway. But when he said it, it happened to lead to a future where the Snarl was defeated.
Now as the weeks went by afterwards, the cloud of future possibilites began showing virtually every future as ending in the destruction of the world. No matter what was done, the Snarl was going to escape and destroy everything. The only possibility where that didn’t happen was the one where the Order thought Belkar was doomed. And the Oracle, with his power, was able to see how that one piece of knowledge (even if it was false) was the key to defeating the Snarl and saving the world.
So not wanting to permanently die, the Oracle realized he had to make that future happen by making sure the Order believed Belkar was going to die. And he saw the easy way to do that was to “accidentally” tell it to Roy and “forget” to erase his memory.
Yeah, I wouldn’t trust D&D for accurately representing mythology; that’s just where D&D took the loosest of concepts from (a goddess and a dragon pretty much). You’ll note that we’ve seen Marduk on panel too in OOTS associating with her.
It’s the metatextual reason there; it’s amusing for the reader for the oracle to constantly drop vague hints to be speculated over. And her personality has been established as a forth wall breaking, sarcastic jerk who likes taunting people with her foreknowledge.
As a side note, the Oracle’s clearly been established as a male.
You’re right. The town name. I could have sworn there was some comment that hinted at the oracle being female…
Kobold’s got nards!
Some of the characters imagined the Oracle was female after their actual memories were erased.
New one up.
The Fiends pretty much go over what we already know.
Link to the new one. I like the touch of how the yellow eyed fiend is beat up and smouldering in the first panel.
Apparently they weren’t talking to her. I don’t think they are on the side of the Evil gods; they are their own side. Not a pan-evil alliance, but a pan-fiendish alliance.
A detail that someone on another board noticed; in the picture of the Linear Guild, the dead/gone members are crossed out.
Yep. And the fiends have clearly torn it out the first book. I bet it was a library copy too since they’re evil.
You’d think the lawful one wouldn’t be up for just stirring the pot though I suppose they all could be NE or CE and lying.
Well, that confirms a lot of theories. And debunks a lot of others.
FIVE Good dragons killed for each Black dragon dead?
:eek:
I’ll say it some more:
:eek::eek::eek: