Haley contemplates whether or not to execute Bozzok.
Cast[]
- Haley Starshine ◀ ▶
- Belkar Bitterleaf ◀ ▶
- Celia ◀ ▶
- Bozzok (also frozen) ◀ ▶
- Hank ◀ ▶
- Ba?spear Troll
- Blue?agon
- Two Human Head Meatballs
Transcript[]
- Panel 1
Haley: Hey, this two-on-one thing is pretty sweet, I can see why you like it.
Haley shoots two arrows into Bozzok, "fft! fft!"
Bozzok: Shut up, you ungrateful brat! When Crystal gets here, we're going to—
Belkar full attacks Bozzok: stab! stab! stabbity stab!
- Panel 2
Haley hits Bozzok with an arrow, freezing Bozzok into an icicle.
"BURST!"
Haley: Ooo! Icy Burst! Yes!
Belkar: Nice! Though that peppermint smell is making me hungry again.
Belkar: Where the hell is my sandwich anyway?
- Panel 3
Haley: OK, Bozzok, end of the road for you.
Belkar (off-panel): WAIT!!
- Panel 4
Belkar: Don't you think you should make some sort of cold-related pun while you kill him?
Belkar: You know, Arnie style?
Haley: Oh, yeah, I guess you're right.
- Panel 5
Haley: OK, Bozzok, time to put you on—
Celia (off-panel): WAIT!!
Haley: Oh, NOW what?!?
- Panel 6
Celia: Don't kill him Haley!
Celia: I negotiated a truce with the Thieves' Guild.
Haley: You did WHAT???
Belkar: Instead of getting my lunch??? I thought we were a team!
- Panel 7
Haley: Aren't truces generally for people who haven't already, I dunno, WON?
Celia: Come on, put the bow down. Do you really want any more bloodshed today?
Haley: Sorta, yeah!
- Panel 8
Hank: How about bloodshed tomorrow? Or next month? You still care about the common people of Greysky City, right?
Hank: That was your dad's shtick, wasn't it? Rob from the rich, give 40% to the poor?
Haley: 40%, after reasonable expenses.
Hank: Well, obviously.
- Panel 9
Hank: You know that there's no nice and orderly line of succession for the Guild.
Hank: You kill the Boz-cicle here, and it'll be a free-for-all until someone muscles their way to the top, long after you and your adventuring pals have left.
Hank: Remember, it took Bozzok over a year to consolidate the Guild under his rule.
- Panel 10
Hank: And in the meantime, we have a dangerous power vacuum. There are groups worse for the city than the Thieves' Guild.
Haley: Tell me you're not talking about—
Hank: Yeah... The MOBs.
- Panel 11
Ba?spear Troll: They camped outside Two-Life Tony's cave and just waited for him to respawn.
Blue?agon: You get a train over there, and you make them an aggro they can't refuse.
Ba?spear Troll: Yes, Boss Monster.
- Panel 12
Hank: Do you really want things to get that "video gamey"?
Haley: Please. Someone says that every time there's a change around here. I just don't see it.
Belkar: Hey, can I get a buff in case we go back to pwning their doods? kthx.
D&D Context[]
- Haley's +5 Icy Burst longbow has the ability to deal an extra 2d10 cold damage when scoring a critical hit, expressed by freezing Bozzok solid.
- Haley's retort in the last panel refers to the criticism of later editions, particularly 4E, attempting to mimic the feel of video games, particularly World of Warcraft (tying into the gag in the panel before), with the changes to the system. Her line in particular references a common response to such claims.
Trivia[]
- Arnold Schwarzenegger is known for his witty one-liners prior to killing someone in his movies. Arnold appeared in the 1997 film Batman & Robin as Mr. Freeze. This is probably the preponderance of cold-related one-liners in Arnold's career.
- This is the only appearance of Ba?spear Troll and Blue?agon, the World of Warcraft mobs whose character names are partially obscured by their speech balloons.
- The last two panels parody the MMORPG style of video games:
- The sign on the restaurant window reads: "Blizzard's Ristorante". Blizzard Entertainment is the publisher of World of Warcraft, the world's most-subscribed MMORPG.
- The troll and dragon's character names appear above them as in WoW and other MMORPGs.
- The troll and dragon are introduced as "MOBs". Mobs in video games are computer-controlled non-player characters.
- In many of these games, players can respawn after they die.
- Spawn Camping is when a player waits at the place where mobs respawn in order to kill them again.
- Aggro is short for "aggravation". "Causing aggro" is the act of performing actions in order to attract mobs to kill a player character.
- Boss monsters are powerful mobs which are usually stationed at the end of a quest of some sort. It may take many players to beat a boss monster.
- Train may refer to the technique of "training" mobs in which one aggravates a large amount of them and runs to an area to bring the mobs there, possibly to transfer the "aggro" to another player or even funnel them into an area in which they can be easily killed.
- Buffs increase the characters stats for a period of time.
- Pwning is a leetspeak term derived from the verb "own". The term implies domination or humiliation of a rival.
- "doods" and "kthx" are internet slang terms for "dudes" and "ok thanks", respectively.