Belkar and Haley discuss Belkar's role in battling the Frost Giants
Cast[]
- Haley Starshine (invisible) ◀ ▶
- Belkar Bitterleaf ◀ ▶
- Blackwing ◀ ▶
- Two Frost Giants
Transcript[]
[Note: The strip employs a somewhat non-traditional panel layout with the first six panels depicting a single scene through which Belkar moves. The giant takes up panels 3 and 4.]
- Panel 1
Belkar Featherfalls gently through the air.
- Panel 2
He alights on the ground.
- Panel 3
He leaps into the air.
- Panel 4
He decapitates the frost giant, "SKLRT!", while springing off his shoulder.
- Panel 5
He tumbles mid-air...
- Panel 6
...And lands in the snow grinning.
- Panel 7
Haley approaches Belkar who is mid-leap.
Haley: Belkar? What are you doing here?
Belkar: Aaaaah! Who said that?!?
Haley: Chill, it's me. Haley. I'm invisible.
- Panel 8
Haley: Do you want me to hit you with my fly wand? Just 225 gp per casting, plus a 50 gp service fee and a 6% administrative charge.
Haley: I'd comp you, but I gotta to keep my wealth-by-level constant, you know.
Belkar: I'll manage, thanks.
- Panel 9
Haley: Suit yourself. You're on cleanup duty, then.
Haley: Finish off the ones that V and I don't kill, especially those that could take a shot at the ship's back end as it passes.
Belkar: No, no, no, that's lame. I'm not doing that.
- Panel 10
Haley: OK, new plan: you're the Doomsealer—
Haley: —Seeking out those who defiantly cling to life after surviving lesser horrors and ruthlessly snuffing out their futures in a cruel mockery of their perseverance.
- Panel 11
Belkar: Hell yeah! Let's do this!
- Panel 12
Blackwing: You know she just tricked you into doing the same job but with a more hardcore description, right?
Belkar: Did she? Or did I just trick her into
coming up with a hardcore description for a job I was down with anyway?
Belkar kills a giant with two daggers to the chest.
Belkar: BAM! Doomsealed!!
D&D Context[]
- In the D&D 3.5 Dungeon Master's Guide (p.135) there is a table which lists the expected wealth of a character at every level. To stay close to her expected wealth, Haley needs to gain experience points and gold pieces at approximately the same rate, and giving away valuable treasure (such as charges on her Fly wand) while killing monsters violates this principle.
- Belkar has some (as yet unspecified) item which imparts the ability to Featherfall.
Trivia[]
- The title references William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliette, Act II, scene ii, when Juliette (overheard by Romeo, during the famous Balcony Scene) says, "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet".
- Belkar bought an item which imparts the ability to fall safely (Featherfall, as above) in a flashback to the gnome city in #1015.
- Belkar might still have his Ring of Jumping +20 that he lent to Roy in #429 (picking it up later from Roy's corpse), but he's an excellent jumper on his own behalf too, as noted in an extra comic Uncivil Servant.