The OotS thread

[Ender]

BTW, I love how even the fiends are shocked at what V just did.

[Imperial Overlord]

V was certainly feeling alignment feedback. The souls he was bonded to were giving him advice and feedback on his actions and that feedback certainly urged him to commit evil actions. He was, just as the fiends' said, in total control. They deceived him with the truth.

[Solauren]

Lying with the truth is the best thing an evil person can do.

And we've seen that work wonderfully before in the right hands....

*cough Sidious/Vader cough*

[The Yosemite Bear]

lets give credit where it's due: Faust, and Paradise Lost also used that too.

[Raesene]

641 is up

This talk will be interesting. I wonder how much Vaarsuvius has him/herself under control - it could end nasty.

[Peptuck]

641 is up

This talk will be interesting. I wonder how much Vaarsuvius has him/herself under control - it could end nasty.

S/he has complete control over her/himself. S/he just thinks that s/he doesn't.

[avatarxprime]

Who think's Haerta might end up running across our favorite Mystic Theurge with a thing for necrotic flesh?

[Raesene]

641 is up

This talk will be interesting. I wonder how much Vaarsuvius has him/herself under control - it could end nasty.

S/he has complete control over her/himself. S/he just thinks that s/he doesn't.

Exactly - I am concerned his/her temper (which led to the recent character development) will also cause some unpelasantness to the family. The fiend phrased it quite well when he recommended to tell people they are not responsible for their actions as a good way to turn good persons to Evil...
V doesn't even think (as far as I can tell from the comic) about the bound souls' recommendations.

[consequences]

I'm more concerned about the necromancer in question finding a mortal host to possess on her own, and becoming a massive long-term threat.

[Solauren]

I'm more concerned about the necromancer in question finding a mortal host to possess on her own, and becoming a massive long-term threat.

I don't think the Fiends would have risked something like that.

I do like the idea of a certain Mystic Theurge talking with her (or even better Xyklon)

[avatarxprime]

I do like the idea of a certain Mystic Theurge talking with her (or even better Xyklon)

Xykon can be a bit loopy, I'm not entirely sure what he would do if Haerta came up to him, but Tsukiko, well I think she'd jump at the chance to do whatever Haerta wanted if it meant she would be able to one-up Redcloak.

[Venator]

642 get.
Spoiler

At least V didn't kill his family. It's pretty clear that he is going to be wreaking some major havoc in the future; I'm not sure if it's fair to say that V wanted the power more than a family, though - in his mind it's probably more responsible to go save the world than to stop now... but the long-term effects aren't going to be good for anyone.

[Ford Prefect]

Venator, you don't leave your spouse and children behind for six years seeking ultimate arcane power. That does actually tend to give you an idea of what V's actual motivations were when he left.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Keep in mind, 6 years to an elf is like 4 months to a human.

[Lord of the Abyss]

A speculation. Now that we see that the Splice can come apart one soul at a time, that puts a new face on the idea that the fiends can take V over while alive, and not just after death. Purple-text fiend, who owns the necromancer may be able to take control of V for as long as V hosted the necromancer RIGHT NOW, while V still has two epic level souls spliced to him/her. In that case, continuing to hold on to the splice is even a worse idea than it seems on the face of it.

[Venator]

Venator, you don't leave your spouse and children behind for six years seeking ultimate arcane power. That does actually tend to give you an idea of what V's actual motivations were when he left.

Oh, duurrr. Hadn't thought of that, I was just thinking of the present events in isolation.

[Solauren]

Um, for all we know, V was already an apprentice when V and V's mate got married (I refuse to use Gender nouns with them until we know which is which), and had already made preperations to leave.

Quite frankly, according to most support books for D&D I've read, it's not uncommon for married elves to take 'extended vacations' from each other, even if they are bounded by divine and arcane magics.

So, we can't really judge V by human standards on this one.

V's mate may have just seen this the way some people would see a mate going on a 2 week business trip.

Hells, to Elves, that might be what a short (to elves) adventuring career is!

[Ender]

Gonna make the following bet - V rounds up the rest of the party to reunite them (Rich said that one member would have to make a major sacrifice to do it, and your family seems to fit the bill), but loses the other two souls at the shock of meeting "New" Belkar (this providing the inadvertent means by which Belkar causes V's death, V is trying to regain that power after that and gets killed at some point in the future)

[Ford Prefect]

V's mate may have just seen this the way some people would see a mate going on a 2 week business trip.

Hells, to Elves, that might be what a short (to elves) adventuring career is!

So why did the spouse care enough to mention the length of time? If it really is an insignificant span of time, he or she wouldn't have mentioned it. Of course, it's irrelevant as V's spouse obviously just doens't like the fact that V buggered off at all.

[The Yosemite Bear]

Think evil fantasy version of Harry Chapin's one big hit.

[CarsonPalmer]

God, people on the forum at Giantitp are terribly stupid. The latest rant is about how Vaarsuvius has a terrible, ungrateful spouse and how he's really the hero of the whole thing.

[CaptainChewbacca]

God, people on the forum at Giantitp are terribly stupid. The latest rant is about how Vaarsuvius has a terrible, ungrateful spouse and how he's really the hero of the whole thing.

It could be considered he WAS the hero, however misguided or out of his depth, right up until he refused to end the splice. Then he became something else.

[Ender]

God, people on the forum at Giantitp are terribly stupid. The latest rant is about how Vaarsuvius has a terrible, ungrateful spouse and how he's really the hero of the whole thing.

I read there a couple of times before leaving it and coming to the conclusion that I had managed to find an entire internet forum full of pyschopaths and sociopaths. Across the board their moral compasses are just fucked.

[Styphon]

I found the arguments about whether or not Familicide was somehow an act of Good particularly off-putting. Though, in all fairness, the people arguing the obvious (no, killing 1/4th the world's population of anything is EVIL!) prove that not everyone over there is a complete psycho.

[avatarxprime]

God, people on the forum at Giantitp are terribly stupid. The latest rant is about how Vaarsuvius has a terrible, ungrateful spouse and how he's really the hero of the whole thing.

It could be considered he WAS the hero, however misguided or out of his depth, right up until he refused to end the splice. Then he became something else.

I don't know. I don't think it was ever really about saving the family for V, it was more so about V feeling powerless to do anything in the first place. Powerless to save those people in Azure City, powerless to save her friends, powerless to find Haley, and now powerless to save V's family. V's family was just an excuse, a way of being able to accept the fiend's deal while feeling that V was doing the right thing. Now that V has the power, V wants to fix all these things that V considers failures that resulted from V being weak. V still thinks V is doing the right and heroic thing to keep the splice going as long as possible and to fix everything.

*much like Solauren, I refuse to use gender pronouns for V*