The party leaves a message for Girard, should he come scrying.
Cast[]
Transcript[]
- Panel 1
Belkar: I mean, if this story arc is going to be that short, I needed to get a lot more face time.
Roy: Belkar, that was NOT the Gate exploding, it was just a booby trap.
Haley: Yeah, the Gates make more of a "krackakoom!" noise when they explode.
Vaarsuvius: It is troubling that we can now recognize our failures by immediate auditory familiarity.
Durkon heals V.
- Panel 2
Vaarsuvius: At any rate, despite our reception being less cordial than we had expected, we HAVE accomplished one of our main objectives: We have put Draketooth on his guard as a result of the signal he will receive vis-á-vis this illusion.
- Panel 3
Haley: On his guard for a paladin, V, not a lich.
Roy: Yeah, I may want to strangle Girard right now, but we still can't let him get blindsided by an epic-level sorcerer.
Vaarsuvius: Which is why I have prepared a visual warning, should our illusionist scry the area.
Durkon heals Roy.
- Panel 4
Elan stands next to a message he has written in the sand with a stick, which reads, "HELP! THERE's A Epic SORESIRER LITCH COMMING 2 TAKE YOU'RE GATE!!1! LUV, ELAN"
Roy: ...So, are you planning on—
Vaarsuvius: There will be a proofing stage, yes.
- Panel 5
Elan: Man, I can't believe the illusion guy lied to the nice ghost-paladin!
Haley: He was just a regular human back then, honey.
Elan: Oh. Well then I can't believe the illusion guy lied to the nice ghost-human.
- Panel 6
Roy: I'm going to ignore that and skip directly to saying, "Yeah, I can't believe it either, actually."
Roy: I knew the members of that party were angry at each other, but I don't understand why Girard assumed a paladin like Soon would break his oath.
Roy: And I had no idea there was THIS level of animosity between the two of them.
- Panel 7
Belkar: Yeah, gosh, who ever heard of party members trying to blow each other up?
Belkar: Vaarsuvius
Vaarsuvius: It seems like a reasonable response to me. As the size of an explosion increases, the number of social situations it is incapable of solving approaches zero.
- Panel 8
Blackwing: Whisper whisper whisper whisper whisper whisper.
- Panel 9
Vaarsuvius: And that would be wrong.
D&D Context[]
- It is unclear which spell Durkon is using to heal V and Roy in the first and third panels, but given the magnitude of the explosion and the fact that they appear uninjured after the spell, it may be the 6th level Heal spell which heals 10 points per level.
Trivia[]
- Gates do explode with more of a "krackakoom!" sound, as seen in #120 and #463 (and also later in #899).
- The stick Elan is holding in panels 4 and 5, and with which he wrote the message in the sand, while inexplicably existing in a treeless environment, is identical to the stick on coat of arms of the Order of the Stick as shown in the cast page.
- Elan's message contains a 1 instead of one of the exclamation points, a common error when using a U.S. style keyboard where this would happen by failing to press the shift key while typing the exclamation point. In an hand-written message it is inexplicable. Xykon does something similar in #457 when he signs his note with a pair of hyphens on a hand-written note, instead of what would intuitively be a single long dash.
- Blackwing in the penultimate panel is likely reminding Vaarsuvius of the effects of the Familicide spell vis-á-vis using explosions to solve social situation.
- Belkar in the third-to-last panel is likely referencing the running gag spell "Explosive Runes", whom Belkar has been a victim of in #221, #317, and #318. He also mentions he has been a victim of it for at least 11 times.[1]
References[]
- ↑ Comic 323 "Don't Make Me Turn This Quest Around"