THE OotS Thread, Part IV.

[AniThyng]

Simon has articulated my position perfectly, so let me just add that Xykon himself considers vampirization an option to avoid being sent to hell. While he is of course not a cleric, it's not contradicted either since malacks statement can be read differently

[Irbis]

At this point, the biggest thing Amun-Zora's* resistance has going for it is that Tarquin doesn't appear to know it exists

Except for heavily foreshadowed "uncle is a traitor" bit?

The second-biggest thing is that Malack is dead, and Laurin and Shewdanker probably both upset about the ugly fight in the desert that Tarquin's obsessions drew them into...

Didn't they both owe him a favour? What exactly they lost except getting to erase old debts for 5 minutes of fight, fight they botched spectacularly, at that?

It's alluded to that he did things that irreversibly changed his character and his social world.

Or, as the character with best knowledge about undead we have put it: "they're nothing but bits or skin and bone and dark energy glued together by magic into a shape of a man" [1]. Yes, Redcloak is prejudiced, but we have this example [2] to confirm it. Durkon went from 'you are evil abomination I must destroy despite friendship' and 'even idea, much less actually drinking blood, makes me vomit' to 'my current state is fine and I will gladly drink blood of my best friend' just like that wight.

Xykon gets to keep his soul as this is part of monster he is, but if you observed his transformation in Start of Darkness, even he went from evil cackling sorcerer to Spoiler

something so inhumanly Evil even Redcloak and his brother were repulsed and jumped ship.

It doesn't matter if he was that person 200 years ago, the question is whether there's any real continuity of values, attitudes, or even memory now, in the present day.

But the thing is, if resurrection erases the memories (which we know are stored in soul) then it plainly means soul wasn't involved at all in them. Ergo, something else took over.

My reading of Xykon, for example, might well accept a Resurrection spell if one could be offered to him, and if it were convenient for him to do so. The main reason he might not is simply that he was an old man, would not have long to live as a man, and now appears to desire the eternal existence and special powers of a lich more than he desires to be a living being.

Spoiler

There is also rather pesky matter of his body being full of magic and flesh-eating virus, which the resurrection might bring to life too. Why would he risk that? For coffee?

*You might feel the same way as Malack if, after a long and happy life, someone proposed to zap you with a magic wand and regress you to the state of a newborn baby. If someone guaranteed that the new baby Irbis would grow up to believe and do things totally alien to the current mature Irbis, you might well react to the offer by refusing.

While in theory this might extend "your" life, in practice you might see it as a complicated way of killing you- because all that makes you you, all the memory and personality, would be gone and erased. This might sound like being removed from existence, rather than a way of extending your own existence.

*shrug* Newborn? More like teenager. But, you see, you're supporting my argument, not yours - if my soul, which is for all intents and purposes, 100% of me that matters, doesn't get to keep memories, then whoever would be inhabiting my body is not Me. Just like Durkon isn't Durkon if something else than his soul inhabits his body now. Resurrection doesn't remove memories, if they aren't recorded it's because someone swapped the HDDs with operating system, IMHO.

[AniThyng]

I would say it would be more likely he keeps vague echoes of his memories much like Roy only remembers very vaguely his time in the afterlife. And he would also be giving up his ability to continue living his lifestyle as it were.

I think if we use your computer analogy, if we take the os and data that has accumulated and tuned to run on a i7 and shove it back into a 486 it would be excruciatingly slow

[Napoleon the Clown]

Having your alignment forcibly changed would change your entire thought process. You may still have basic vestiges of your old personality, but quite a few aspects of your personality would change. People you cared about and valued before could still hold value to you, though considering how Rich handles evil in this setting the way you value the people could result in it being more as them being property than people.

[Simon_Jester]

Durkon shows a lot of signs to me of having more or less the same basic personality, including some real sentimental attachment to the old times, and a certain degree of good-natured bumbling. But he clearly has far less scruples than he did before, and I'm betting we'll see more evidence of his personality changes over time.

The second-biggest thing is that Malack is dead, and Laurin and Shewdanker probably both upset about the ugly fight in the desert that Tarquin's obsessions drew them into...

Didn't they both owe him a favour? What exactly they lost except getting to erase old debts for 5 minutes of fight, fight they botched spectacularly, at that?

I think you misunderstand. My point is that the spellcasters are somewhat disaffected- they may demand a high cost from Tarquin for assistance, or may be slow to come to his aid. And they have their own business to attend to, so they certainly won't be hovering protectively over Tarquin's shoulder all the time.

The resistance DOES need caster support- but they are in a somewhat better position than they would be normally, because of recent events. The need is slightly less urgent, and they might need a bit less of it.

It's alluded to that he did things that irreversibly changed his character and his social world.

Or, as the character with best knowledge about undead we have put it: "they're nothing but bits or skin and bone and dark energy glued together by magic into a shape of a man" [1]. Yes, Redcloak is prejudiced, but we have this example [2] to confirm it.

Aaaand I'm pretty sure that undead!Isamu was under control of Tsukiko, at least by proxy.

We know quite well that most of the undead (certainly any undead Redcloak creates) are the slaves of some other being. That doesn't mean they ALL are, or that they're weird random alien minds transplanted into the bodies of the dead, as opposed to drastically altered personalities that retain some continuity with the dead.

Durkon isn't the same by a long shot, but he has too much in common with his old self to be entirely a coincidence.

Durkon went from 'you are evil abomination I must destroy despite friendship' and 'even idea, much less actually drinking blood, makes me vomit' to 'my current state is fine and I will gladly drink blood of my best friend' just like that wight.

His attitude toward drinking blood certainly changed sharply, and he seems to... take his current state for granted. He is definitely drastically altered.

Xykon gets to keep his soul as this is part of monster he is, but if you observed his transformation in Start of Darkness, even he went from evil cackling sorcerer to Spoiler

something so inhumanly Evil even Redcloak and his brother were repulsed and jumped ship.

We don't really see how evil Xykon was before his transformation. I've read Start of Darkness too, but looking at it, Xykon's behavior before he became a lich was pretty much consistent with the way he acts now. He cracked jokes while killing good-aligned people, he betrayed people and was quite capable of sadism.

I think the changes could be adequately explained by one thing by itself. He now concentrates on acts of sheer evil to get his pleasures from sadism and dark humor, because the physical pleasures of being human are lost to him. There were actually a few allusions to this in Start of Darkness if you look for them.

It doesn't matter if he was that person 200 years ago, the question is whether there's any real continuity of values, attitudes, or even memory now, in the present day.

But the thing is, if resurrection erases the memories (which we know are stored in soul) then it plainly means soul wasn't involved at all in them. Ergo, something else took over.

We know resurrection erases (or at least blurs) the memories you have of time spent in the afterlife; it did so to Roy. Why wouldn't it blur or erase memories of time spent as one of the undead? And by your own argument, if something else takes over the body, why does it have the memories of that body if the memories are all stored only in the soul?

Also, you missed my point about values and attitudes, so as to focus on memory. If Malack has spent 200 years as an evil cleric of destruction, and built up this elaborate philosophy of Lawful Evil to justify his actions, then purely normal personality development would explain why he doesn't want to go back to the "ignorant barbarian shaman" he once was.

It is possible that the entity we call 'Malack' is actually just an evil spirit possessing Malack's body. But it's not necessary to explain any fact we see. It's easy to understand why Xykon acts the way he does, or why Malack would rather be destroyed than changed back into the living being he used to be. And to understand this without assuming that the transformation into an undead is mind-replacing or mind-destroying, as you seem to assume.

My reading of Xykon, for example, might well accept a Resurrection spell if one could be offered to him, and if it were convenient for him to do so. The main reason he might not is simply that he was an old man, would not have long to live as a man, and now appears to desire the eternal existence and special powers of a lich more than he desires to be a living being.

Spoiler

There is also rather pesky matter of his body being full of magic and flesh-eating virus, which the resurrection might bring to life too. Why would he risk that? For coffee?

Were it convenient for him to do so, I said. It might not be convenient, he might have plenty of reasons not to want to be changed back.

But I've seen no sign of a priori opposition to the idea. If it were tactically convenient for Xykon to become living, and didn't put him at any disadvantage, I see no reason to believe he'd resist.

[Also, since when do chraacters resurrect from the dead with diseases still in your body? That's lame; it means that if they die of a disease, then if they resurrect the disease will just kill them all over again. Next thing you know, they'll be telling us that if a character died of a sword through the heart, resurrection would bring them back with a huge stab wound in the chest]

*You might feel the same way as Malack if, after a long and happy life, someone proposed to zap you with a magic wand and regress you to the state of a newborn baby. If someone guaranteed that the new baby Irbis would grow up to believe and do things totally alien to the current mature Irbis, you might well react to the offer by refusing.

While in theory this might extend "your" life, in practice you might see it as a complicated way of killing you- because all that makes you you, all the memory and personality, would be gone and erased. This might sound like being removed from existence, rather than a way of extending your own existence.

*shrug* Newborn? More like teenager. But, you see, you're supporting my argument, not yours - if my soul, which is for all intents and purposes, 100% of me that matters, doesn't get to keep memories, then whoever would be inhabiting my body is not Me. Just like Durkon isn't Durkon if something else than his soul inhabits his body now. Resurrection doesn't remove memories, if they aren't recorded it's because someone swapped the HDDs with operating system, IMHO.

In this case, the living Malack was a very different person than the undead one- and it IS implied that resurrection resets a body/mind to its past state. If we're going to push the computer analogy, Malack's been playing for 200 years without saving a backup, and if he had to choose between resetting to his 200 year old default or giving up his existence on this plane entirely, he'd rather give up.

Malack MIGHT remember all the things he did as a vampire. But he might well have reason to doubt that he'd view those actions the same way, or carry out the plans he wants to carry out now.

[Is it really a surprise if a cleric of destruction prefers being destroyed to being remade as a drastically different version of himself? Maybe he'd have the opposite view if he were a cleric of a god of rebirth or renewal, but he's not.]

[Ralin]

[Also, since when do chraacters resurrect from the dead with diseases still in your body? That's lame; it means that if they die of a disease, then if they resurrect the disease will just kill them all over again. Next thing you know, they'll be telling us that if a character died of a sword through the heart, resurrection would bring them back with a huge stab wound in the chest]

Raise Dead specifies that normal diseases are healed but magical ones are not, but Malack would have been well past the time limit for that. The Resurrection line of spells contains no such language, so presumably they're removed too unless the DM decides he wants it that way. Haven't read Start of Darkness for awhile, but from what I remember the disease in question does sound like a candidate for persistence.

[Lord of the Abyss]

941 up!
Spoiler

OK, now I'm really curious about what Elan's secret plan for dealing with Tarquin is. And, this almost certainly means we'll see at least a little of Tarquin later.

[Crazedwraith]

Hmm. Elan your secret plan you didn't tell us trick worked once. But surely you must be meta-genre savvy enough to realise it can't work out again.

[FaxModem1]

Trying to remember, who is Haley referring to in people she left are all dead? The resistance?

[Grumman]

Trying to remember, who is Haley referring to in people she left are all dead? The resistance?

Yes. She got the sending while they were hiding behind the imaginary wall.

[Lord of the Abyss]

#942 up!
Spoiler

Complete with a callback all the way back to #136.

[Irbis]

So, the leak had been plugged, eh? Still, I feel plot didn't progressed at all last 80 strips if we exclude anything tied to T. and that particular subthread...

[Esquire]

It's a major character development for Haley, if nothing else - freeing her father has been her driving motivation for quite a while. Combined with Elan's coming to terms with his own family, and it looks like we're setting up for them to get their happy ending in the nearish future.

[Simon_Jester]

Also, it looks like Geoff wasn't spying for Tarquin, only for Bozzok- and we can be reasonably sure that Tarquin will not be informed by Geoff about the resistance's plans or whereabouts.

[Isolder74]

Also, it looks like Geoff wasn't spying for Tarquin, only for Bozzok- and we can be reasonably sure that Tarquin will not be informed by Geoff about the resistance's plans or whereabouts.

I'm not sure of we can. Bozzok very much now appears to be in league with Redclock now. It is possible that he wants to know where Haley is for personal revenge but he's asking many questions that hint at more then that. We do have to keep in mind that T did send to Haley that ransom letter so Bozzok could also be working for T as well, one of his other allies. One that he's kept his other allies from knowing about.

[Simon_Jester]

Also, it looks like Geoff wasn't spying for Tarquin, only for Bozzok- and we can be reasonably sure that Tarquin will not be informed by Geoff about the resistance's plans or whereabouts.

I'm not sure of we can. Bozzok very much now appears to be in league with Redclock now. It is possible that he wants to know where Haley is for personal revenge but he's asking many questions that hint at more then that. We do have to keep in mind that T did send to Haley that ransom letter so Bozzok could also be working for T as well, one of his other allies. One that he's kept his other allies from knowing about.

Do we have any prior evidence that Bozzok is working for/with Redcloak?

[Isolder74]

No but he's asking questions that seems out of place for his role as a leader of a rouge's guild. I do admit it was just speculation. I did also throw out the idea that it could be a scheme with Tarquin instead.

[Ahriman238]

I'd be really, really surprised if Bozzok was working for Tarquin, as opposed to their previously shown relationship where Tarquin holds one of Bozzok's rivals for a certain monthly sum. The caster from Tarquin's party sent the ransom note. Frankly, Bozzok hasn't shown any ambitions beyond being top dog in Greysky City, while Tarquin has little reason to know or care about a second-rate Thieve's Guild on the other side of the world.

[Crazedwraith]

I don't think Bozzok's questions about Haley really need to indicate that he's gaining info for another party. Bozzok's got plenty beef with Haley after the events of 'Don't Split the Party', considering she killed off vast numbers of thieves, then conned them into helping her get Roy back, then backstabbed them offing Crystal and refusing to pay them like she promised.

He's plenty pissed with her without needed to team up with Xykon.

[Raesene]

Who else assumed that the son is the adventurer ? I must admit I missed the picture of uncle Geoff and his wife on the shop wall...

[Rogue 9]

I don't think Bozzok's questions about Haley really need to indicate that he's gaining info for another party. Bozzok's got plenty beef with Haley after the events of 'Don't Split the Party', considering she killed off vast numbers of thieves, then conned them into helping her get Roy back, then backstabbed them offing Crystal and refusing to pay them like she promised.

He's plenty pissed with her without needed to team up with Xykon.

That, and Xykon doesn't know much about Haley or her relationship to Ian Starshine (or anything about Ian including his existence, for that matter), so he'd have no reason to pry at her. If he knows and cares about any of the members of the Order, it's Roy and Vaarsuvius. The others are just some adventurers who busted down his door once.

[Napoleon the Clown]

He probably doesn't even remember who Roy is that well. V's the only one I can see him remembering, thanks to the phylactery fun. Roy he may go "Oh, you're the guy I dropped to his death. What was your name, again? Scarlet Scabbard?"

[Lord of the Abyss]

He probably doesn't even remember who Roy is that well. V's the only one I can see him remembering, thanks to the phylactery fun. Roy he may go "Oh, you're the guy I dropped to his death. What was your name, again? Scarlet Scabbard?"

"Who?" was his response to encountering Roy just recently.

[Irbis]

First, I'd say new comic is up, but it's kinda non-update, so...

It's a major character development for Haley, if nothing else - freeing her father has been her driving motivation for quite a while. Combined with Elan's coming to terms with his own family, and it looks like we're setting up for them to get their happy ending in the nearish future.

But she already freed him, and the whole reunion scene brought nothing to the plot. He could have been working to bring T. downfall behind the scenes and nothing would have changed.

Also, it looks like Geoff wasn't spying for Tarquin, only for Bozzok- and we can be reasonably sure that Tarquin will not be informed by Geoff about the resistance's plans or whereabouts.

One, I am not sure what this is response to, two, he spied for both. Or, rather, been using T. as convenient imprisoning mean by leaking info to him, but the end result was the same.

[Napoleon the Clown]

Link to the new comic.


Not sure how much a chaotic weapon is gonna be of use. Rather, the chaos enchantment itself.