History Awesome / TheOrderOfTheStick

* After Sunny gets {{Mind Control}}led by Calder, a Red Dragon that Serini is keeping in her dungeon, they use their anti-magic field to make fighting a living hell for all of the magical combatants of the party. So, what does Belkar do? He throws Bloodfeast straight into the field, where the baleful polymorph on the ''Allosaurus'' wears off, allowing it to sink its teeth into the dragon's neck. [[https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1298.html The stunned expression on Calder's face and the 'Glrkt" he makes]] speak for themsevles.

-->'''Belkar:''' [[PreAsskickingOneLiner So... Ready for the show?]]

* After Sunny gets {{Mind Control}}led by Calder, a Red Dragon that Serini is keeping in her dungeon, they use their anti-magic field to make fighting a living hell for all of the magical combatants of the party. So, what does Belkar do? He throws Bloodfeast straight into the field, where the baleful polymorph on the ''Allosaurus'' wears off, allowing it to sink its teeth into the dragon's neck. [[https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1298.html The stunned expression on Calder's face and the 'Glkrt" he makes]] speak for themsevles.

* After Sunny gets {{Mind Control}}led by Calder, a Red Dragon that Senri is keeping in her dungeon, they use their anti-magic field to make fighting a living hell for all of the magical combatants of the party. So, what does Belkar do? He throws Bloodfeast straight into the field, where the baleful polymorph on the ''Allosaurus'' wears off, allowing it to sink its teeth into the dragon's neck. [[https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1298.html The stunned expression on Calder's face and the 'Glkrt" he makes]] speak for themsevles.

* After Sunny gets {{Mind Control}}led by Calder, a Red Dragon that Senri is keeping in her dungeon, they use their anti-magic field to make fighting a livnig hell for all of the magical combatants of the party. So, what does Belkar do? He throws Bloodfeast straight into the field, where the baleful polymorph on the ''Allosaurus'' wears off, allowing it to sink its teeth into the dragon's neck. [[https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1298.html The stunned expression on Calder's face and the 'Glkrt" he makes]] speak for themsevles.

* [[https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1298.html Alley Oop]]: While fighting an ancient red dragon named Calder, the order are in a bit of a bind. He has entranced Sunny and is using the beholders anti-magic cone to disable Varsuuvius and other magical attacks. Belkar thinking quickly throws lizard Bloodfeast at him. Calder is dismissive, but is caught completely off-guard as an "Allosaurus" chomps into his neck.

* Soon Kim:
** [[http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0449.html "Arise, my children. Only the honor of a paladin is unbreakable -- even by death itself. Ghost-martyrs of the Sapphire Guard -- ATTACK!"]] Man, does Xykon [[OhCrap look]] [[WideEyesAndShrunkenIrises scared]], or what? The way it is delivered adds gallons of extra awesome. It's like something out of ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings''.
** Lord Soon pounding both Xykon and Redcloak into the floor, proving himself to be a bigger danger to them than the rest of the Guard put together. It's pretty much the only time in the comic thus far that we've seen Xykon on the receiving end of a [[NoHoldsBarredBeatdown serious ass-kicking]].

[[AC:The Order of the Scribble]]
* Strip #894 is a posthumous awesome moment for Girard Draketooth. The final room of the pyramid contains nothing but a huge stone block with the inscription [[YourPrincessIsInAnotherCastle "Sorry. Your Gate is in another pyramid."]] Which of course means that the first reaction of someone who finds it will be to go and look elsewhere. Instead, it's a double-bluff. The Gate is actually within the block, encased in lead so as to be undetectable by magic.
* Serini Toormuck:
** Her gate also serves as Kraagor's Tomb, and it is actually formed by countless tunnels built within a cliff side, with only one door leading to the actual gate. Each door leads to an area that contains some of the strongest monsters she could find, reflecting Kraagor's belief in the power of physical might, and according to Oona, they always come back after her clan hunts some of them. Despite the proximity of a native Bugbear clan that often delves into the tomb, her gate's defenses are amongst some of those that delayed Team Evil longer than any other gate before other than Dorukan's Gate, which had magical defenses that even ''Xykon'' didn't want to personally touch that left them stuck for several months. This includes the city that was defended by an entire army, an elite Paladin organization, a group of adventurers and the ghost-martyrs of the Sapphire Guard's past. And just how strong are the monsters guarding the place? From the mouth of the lich himself, strong enough that Xykon, an '''epic level''' undead sorcerer lich, ''actually gained experience from some of them.'' And [[https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1219.html it]] [[https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1222.html gets]] [[https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1223.html better]]: it would appear that each of the dungeons exist in an extradimensional space, with a very subtle and hard-to-detect spell-trap teleporting intruders into the dungeon. The only way to ''actually'' access the Gate is to disarm the portal trap, and the obvious challenge of the mega-dungeon makes it extremely unlikely that anyone would think to look for such a trick. In effect, the entire dungeon is a ''shell game''. And a shell game cleverly constructed in a way that Team Evil, who have themselves ''used a shell game in the past'', failed to spot.
*** And then, [[https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1277.html it's revealed]] that the actual mechanic that hides the gate is ''even more devious'' than it seems. When the order managed to get Serini to, with extreme reluctance, admit that Team Evil's current method of scanning the dungeons will eventually let them find the right door, she adamantly refuses to disclose which one it is regardless out of her rampant paranoia. V nonetheless deduces the answer from that: ''all the mini-dungeons'' have to be opened and searched in one go in order to reveal the correct way to the gate.
---->'''Roy:''' Of course! Kraagor wasn't a rogue, he was a barbarian! It's not a shell game, it's a '''''gauntlet!'''''\\
'''Haley''': It's both! Why build a system where someone can get lucky when you can build one where they can't?
*** The best part is that this is even ''more'' effective on Team Evil than it would be against anyone else: Xykon is a BloodKnight who rarely ever faces an actual ''challenge'', and the monsters in the dungeon are strong enough to actually do that. As a result, he refuses to just let Redcloak's summoned Quinton just Force Cage them and be done with it, buying even ''more'' time.
** While it's mitigated somewhat by how Serini is unfortunately LockedOutOfTheLoop regarding ThePlan and the Dark One, after she finally appears in the comic and not only [[RefugeInAudacity succeeds in lying to two paladins while literally standing in front of them]], but she delivers a vicious TheReasonYouSuckSpeech to both O-Chul and Lien where she calls them out on both their HonorBeforeReason and ProtagonistCenteredMorality regarding the [=non-PC=] races.
** She's one of the most [[CombatPragmatist clever fighters]] the Order has ever faced - her ambush strategy with a Beholder and Mimic was impressive enough, but she's [[CrazyPrepared long figured out]] a way to get multiple adventurers at once: [[https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1241.html training Sunny]] to do the EyeBeam version of a DangerousBackswing, and regaining her balance more than quickly enough to take out Vaarsuvius while the ''slow'' spell lasts. That one move comes damn close to incapacitating the entire Order. And she manages to tame all these creatures while being a rogue- which means Handle Animal is a cross-class skill for her. She's taming them all with a ''handicap.''
** Her opening encounter for the real dungeon that hides Kragor's Gate shows how devious she is as a dungeon master. The first encounter appears to be a regular old giant monster, only it turns out that the giant monster is a distraction from the real first encounter, a small pack of disenchanters that come out from hidden passageways and the enchantments on the party's magic items, along with a paragon rust monster to eat whatever remains. And then while the party is dealing with having all their equipment destroyed, [[FromBadToWorse a swarm of fumblebees comes out and starts draining everyone's Dexterity]]. And should the party somehow survive all of that, the way out is blocked and they still have to deal with the giant monster while both underequiped and Dex-drained. Tomb of Horrors, eat your heart out.
** The fact that through sheer guile, she actually managed to do the one thing that nobody believed possible - get the Order of the Scribble to work together one last time. By playing herself up as a helpless little halfling girl in over her head, she was able to get the other members to help in the construction of her gate's defenses without any of them being wiser to each other's presence.
** She also topped herself with the reveal that one of the creatures she trapped to serve as a guardian is an ''Ancient Red Dragon''.