Roy and Vaarsuvius have a chat about what V's done.
Cast[]
Transcript[]
- Panel 1
Below deck.. Vaarsuvius sits on a stool while Roy stands with his nearby.
Roy: OK.
Roy: OK, so there are two windows left for them. One for 20 minutes, one for about three.
Roy: Going forward, then, we need to try to plan our tactics so that if the fiends pull you out of action, we can cover the—
- Panel 2
Vaarsuvius: Sir Greenhilt, when I sought your counsel on this issue, I was not primarily concerned with the resultant tactical implications.
Roy: Too damn bad! That's all I'm qualified to talk about!
- Panel 3
Roy: I'm sorry. I'm sorry, it's just what you're telling me... Familicide... This is just way over my head. It's too big.
Roy: I'm the guy who hits things, not a philosopher. And our cleric is in the shop.
- Panel 4
Vaarsuvius: You seem at ease dealing with the halfling's various transgressions.
Roy: When he hits things, yeah. I can wrap my head around it. This... Am I supposed to be mad at you? Or just horrified?
Roy sits down.
- Panel 5
Roy: Legally, I can't make heads or tails of it.
Roy: You may have killed an unknown number of unidentified victims in indeterminate jurisdictions.
Roy: I wouldn't know to whom to turn you over.
- Panel 6
Roy: And morally? Ethically?
Roy: I don't know. You said one word and wiped out thousands of lives. Some intentionally, most accidentally.
Roy: How can that ever be fixed? What price paid could ever be enough?
V lowers their head in shame.
- Panel 7
Vaarsuvius: I respect your integrity. I would thus still value your opinion.
Roy: *sigh*
Roy: OK. Well, here's what I've got.
- Panel 8
Roy: When I was younger, I... knew a wizard. Who did a lot of empirical spell research.
Roy: And one time, one of those experiments blew up and... someone died. Someone innocent.
Roy: And yeah, it was an accident, but for years he never acknowledged that maybe it could have been...
- Panel 9
Roy trails off. Silence
- Panel 10
Roy: I don't... really know where I was going with this.
Roy: But you care. You know you screwed up, and you want to make it right.
Roy: I've been told that trying counts for a lot.
- Panel 11
Roy: You may never balance the scales. You may never make it up to the one who died on your watch.
Roy: But giving up on fixing it is like killing them all over again.
- Panel 12
Vaarsuvius: ...Are we discussing my situation, your family history, or your decision to donate blood to Master Thundershield?
Roy: Hey, don't go changing the subject by trying to determine the actual subject.
Trivia[]
- As Roy has mentioned, out of the three fiends V is still indebted to, two still have debts they can call in, one for twenty minutes and one for three, due to V holding onto soul splices for that amount of time. The timings were mentioned in #667.
- In Panel 10, Roy mentions how trying counts for a lot. This is what the Deva told him in #491 when he was granted admission into Paradise.
- As V points out, Roy is also discussing how he's angry with himself because he failed to save his brother from dying in an accident during one of his father's experiments, and was unable to prevent Durkon from being killed and turned into a vampire.