In Order of the Stick 548, one of the demon roachs says that there are at least nine sides in the central conflict of the strip.
Now that particular strip was talking about Xykon and Redcloak - they’re working together but they have different goals. So that’s two sides.
The Order of the Stick itself is another side. It’s opposing both Xykon and Redcloak.
Hinjo and the Sapphire Guard seem to have some differences with Roy and the OOTS about how this thing should be handled so that might count.
The last time we saw Nale, it appeared the Linear Guild was going to make a play for the Snarl.
Maybe the Snarl itself would count as a faction.
But this is only six possible sides we’ve seen. So either there’s going to be more factions being introduced or some of the existing factions will split up.
We haven’t seen Girard’s or Kraagor’s Gates yet so we don’t know what the situations are there. So they might be the source of new factions.
The Order is currently split up so they might end up having different directions. And we’ve seen hints that Sabine is keeping secrets from Nale.
We’ve also seen a couple of mentions of the Holey Brotherhood being involved at the heart of all this with no explanation of who they are.
That’s a joke. Still, you can add “Kubota and the nobles”, “tyrant guy holding Haley’s Dad”, “Greysky City Thieves Guild”, “ancient black dragon”, “Qarr” and probably others to the list.
If we are taking the demon roaches at their word, note that the other one says that we don’t know about some of the sides yet.
I don’t remember the strip number, but if you recall, when Sabine heard about the gates, she viewed it as pretty urgent to inform her superiors about them. I expect they’ll count as a side before it’s all over.
Maybe. Let’s see which alignments we’ve got so far.
The Order of the Stick is Lawful Good or maybe Neutral Good. The Sapphire Guard is either Lawful Good or Lawful Neutral. Xykon is Chaotic Evil. Redcloak is Lawful Evil. The Linear Guild is Neutral Evil. The Snarl may be Chaotic Neutral.
Best guesses are that Roy and Durkon are lawful good, Haley and Elan are chaotic good, Belkar is chaotic evil, and Vaarsuvius seems to be true neutral. So I guess as a group, they’re neutral good with occasional outbursts of evil.