Following the Fall of Azure City, the Order find themselves separated; Roy's dead, and his body is with Haley and Belkar in Azure City, while Elan, Durkon and Vaarsuvius are all at sea with the Azurite refugees. As each of them try to cope, Vaarsuvius ends up in serious trouble, and is forced to make a decision that will change everything...
Tropes
- A Day in the Limelight: Vaarsuvius finally gets a significant plot arc to their own in this book with their Faustian bargain with the IFCC causing them to engage in Jumping Off the Slippery Slope.
- Asshole Victim: Haley's reticence to attack other members of the Thieves Guild vanishes when she remembers that everyone she grew up with is an asshole.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: While it's nothing new to the comic, Haley goes a step further and steals the diamond she's holding on the cast page.Haley: Huh, what do you know, it worked.
Elan: You sure it didn't need to stay there?
Haley: Nah, that cast page is painfully outdated anyway. We all look deformed, or something. - Batman Gambit: The Inter-Fiend Cooperation Commission gave Vaarsuvius the Deal with the Devil for ultimate power because they wanted Xykon to get off his butt and resume hunting the Gates. They figured that if V had enough power, they would lash out at the most powerful subject available- Xykon.
- Calling the Old Man Out: Roy tries several times, before finally coming to an epiphany and realizing nothing he could say will cause Eugene to change, and therefore gives up on him completely.
- Celestial Bureaucracy: Roy's past actions and whether or not he qualifies for the Lawfull Good afterlife is examined by a deva acting as clerk for a business.
- Chekhov's Gun: The Oracle gives one of the most important prophecies in the entire comic when they proclaim that "Belkar will draw his last breath - ever - before the end of the year." And that's an In-Universe year, too.
- Chekhov's Gunman:
- Remember that young dragon Vaarsuvius destroyed in No Cure for the Paladin Blues? So does his mother...
- The three fiends in charge of the Inter-Fiend Cooperation Commission that offer Vaarsuvius a Deal with the Devil previously appeared in passing during War and XPs as Sabine's bosses, and were first mentioned even earlier than that in Dungeon Crawlin' Fools.
- Blackwing, Vaarsuvius' oft-forgotten familiar, finally reappears right when both V and O-Chul need something to help them get rid of Xykon's phylactery.
- Chekhov's Skill: Elan's skill at stonecarving with a rapier (not seen since #17) makes a reappearance in #598.
- Crazy-Prepared: Not only does the Oracle have a cleric scheduled to revive him after death, but he's also cunning enough to have some vengeance prepared as well.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Despite being spliced with two high-level magic users, V is quickly curb-stomped by Xykon.
- Cutting the Knot:
- Deconstructed; V disintegrates Kubota simply to avoid a subplot they have absolutely no interest in, despite having no idea who Kubota even was to begin with. Elan is still horrified by the elf deciding to resort to murder for the sake of self-centered expedience.
- Played slightly straighter when, after the soul-splice, they move the entire Azure City fleet to an abandoned island they know of, though again not for selfless reasons. They just want to be done with the Azurites.
- Darkest Hour: The Order hits it by #599. Roy is still dead and his body is now in the possession of Hieronymus Grubwiggler, Haley is trapped in Greysky City and being hunted down by those she had grown up with, Belkar is sick from activating his Greater Mark of Justice and Vaarsuvius has abandoned Elan and Durkon, who are the only two members of the Order who have remained active and united.
- Deal with the Devil: Vaarsuvius ends up making one to gain ultimate power to save their family from the mother dragon. However, the Fiends offering the deal point out an alternative, and state that if they make the deal it will be to avoid admitting they needed help.
- Didn't Think This Through: As Elan even points out to V, their idea to cover up Kubota's murder involves lying to a paladin, and even Elan knows this makes it a bad plan.
- Dramatic Irony: Haley says the fact that tropical birds somehow found her group — and were subsequently eaten — isn't notable, as random encounters happen all the time. What the audience knows is that the birds were sent by V with a message for Haley.
- Every Scar Has a Story: An insert in the collected edition details all the scars that O-Chul gained as a prisoner of Team Evil, there are many.
- Eyepatch After Time Skip: Elan has one, but he doesn't really need it. Hinjo angrily takes it off of him soon after we see them.
- Eye Scream: O-Chul takes out Redcloak's eye with one of the bars of his cell. Afterward, Xykon refuses to let him regenerate it as punishment.
- Failed a Spot Check: Vaarsuvius is so out of it from sleep-deprivation and then trying to kill Qarr that they fail to notice a fully grown Black Dragon emerging from the ocean behind them until she's right on top of them.
- Fluffy Cloud Heaven: Roy spends almost the entire story arc stuck on Mount Celestia (the Lawful Good afterlife in D&D), which mostly resembles the archetypical Heaven.
- Foreshadowing:
- Despite his father's mocking remarks to the contrary in #485, Roy does get to train with a martial arts master in the afterlife (here, his grandfather) in #600.
- The Monster in the Darkness managing to wish away both O-Chul and Vaarsuvius right when they're about to get killed by Xykon is initially foreshadowed in #543 when he complains about O-Chul's unsuccessful escape by stating "I hoped really, really hard and he still didn't escape!"
- The ancient Black Dragon's presence in the story is foreshadowed multiple times in this book. First off, in the print version, Elan and Lien encounter a large... thing in the water (which quickly takes off), setting up the appearance of the ancient Black Dragon. Then, the Oracle tells Roy's spirit that he needs to vamoose in #572 because he has an "important client flying in". The ancient Black Dragon mother is a child of Tiamat, the Monster Progenitor of all evil dragons and the one who grants the gift of prophecy to the Oracle, making her an "important client" to the Oracle since they both have the same patron, and her being a dragon means that the phrase "flying in" was Not Hyperbole. And finally, Roy's baby brother Eric can be seen playing with a toy black dragon in #600.
- Speaking of the Black Dragon, when Vaarsuvius is Drunk on the Dark Side and casts familicide, one of the dragons that can be seen dying is standing upright while wearing a full suit of armor like a normal mortal. This serves as an allusion to how the next story arc will reveal that familicide also affected the Draketooth family because of them all being Uneven Hybrids related to the Black Dragon.
- In a bonus strip, Crystal asks "Why would anyone ever want to be a golem?" In Utterly Dwarfed, Bozzok has Crystal turned into a Flesh Golem to serve as the instrument of his revenge against Haley.
- For the Evulz: Belkar is seriously tempted by Tsukiko's offer to join Team Evil... but then he decides he'd rather throw Mr. Scruffy in her face instead.
- Helpful Hallucination: Belkar has one about Lord Shojo, which may or may not be his ghost or a manifestation of the Mark of Justice. In the hallucination, Belkar learns he has to fake Character Development to get ahead in life.
- Human Sacrifice: Elan nearly gets Lien sacrificed to Banjo. More to her irritation, her new orc priests figure Banjo prefers someone who's got experience, rather than the usual virgin sacrifice.Lien: How does my mother keep being right about these things?
- I Did What I Had to Do: Defied. The IFCC go out of their way to tell V there's another option to save their family, so as to ensure the bargain was motivated by pride rather then any higher motive.
- Irony:
- Last time, the Oracle's memory charm nearly screwed the Order over when it made them forget the realization that Xykon was actually attacking Azure City, with only a stroke of luck that they remained in the city just before the attack. This time, the charm saved Belkar just as Haley was kicking him out of the Order for killing the Oracle, although it did have the side effect of them not knowing his Mark of Justice had gone off.
- Leo, Nero, and Cedrik give Vaarsuvius the Soul Splice power as part of a Batman Gambit to get Xykon out of stationary and start the hunt for the remaining gates, but the only reason he remained in Azure City was because Redcloak was using torturing O-Chul for information he didn't have as a pretense to set up a hobgoblin society in the city.
- Judgement of the Dead: Roy goes through this. The Deva responsible for judging him takes the opportunity to call him out on many of his more questionable actions, but he ultimately passes into Fluffy Cloud Heaven.
- Kick the Dog: A heavily sleep-deprived and guilt-ridden Vaarsuvius sinks to their lowest when in an argument with Elan they threaten to kill him if he keeps being an obstacle.
- La Résistance: Haley forms one while in Azure City. There are also two other groups, but they don't want to cooperate.
- Let's Get Dangerous!: V and O-Chul separating Xykon from his phylactery pisses the lich off to the extent he gets really serious about snuffing them out. "Meteor Swarm down the throat" serious.
- Loophole Abuse: The Mark of Justice only works in a town. The Oracle, knowing Belkar would fatally stab him, made sure to set up the town of Lickmytinyorangeballshalfling the week before ("population: just enough"), which sets the Mark off.
- Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Xykon's vicious "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Vaarsuvius over the nature of power actually bites them in the ass since it inspires the elf to fight smarter and not just resort to brute force, causing Xykon to temporarily lose his phylactery and severely hampering Team Evil's progress.
- Prophecy Twist: Parodied, with both Belkar and Haley (the latter of which lampshades how weird it is that she's actually agreeing with Belkar for once) calling out the Oracle for how lame their Exact Words-style responses were to Belkar's prophecy in the last book.
- Running Gagged: Two, both involving Vaarsuvius.
- The first is with regards to Blackwing, who originally showed up in the comic only for short periods whenever V happened to need him for something. V summoning him as part of their attempt to destroy Xykon's phylactery was deliberately written as a conclusion to this Running Gag, as Rich Burlew thought that it would be impossible for any future iteration of the joke to have a greater impact than that. V's desire to keep Blackwing around permanently starting with the final page of this book also serves as a signal of the wizard's Character Development, showing their intention to atone for their past mistakes.
- The second involves Vaarsuvius' use of explosive runes, with them being applied here to inconvience Xykon when he's flying after Blackwing who is carrying his phylactery. The runes explode in Xykon's face and provide for a window of time where the phylactery can fall into the sewers of what was formerly Azure City.
- The Ending Changes Everything: Well, maybe not everything, but The Reveal that Blackwing saw a planet inside the Rift where the Snarl should be has certainly opened a whole new can of speculation...
- Time Skip: One happens while Roy is in Fluffy Cloud Heaven, about three-and-a-half months long. And he doesn't even realize it until his grandfather Horace tells him. He does not take the revelation well.
- To the Pain: The Black Dragon explains in detail how she will kill Vaarsuvius's mate, then their children, then bind their souls and escape to another plane where V will never find them, in the confidence that V will be entirely unable to prevent this.
- Two Lines, No Waiting: There are two main plotlines in this book - Elan, Durkon, Vaarsuvius, and the Azurites at sea, and Belkar, Haley, Celia, and the Azure City Resistance. There are also intermittent cuts to both Roy up on Mount Celestia and O-Chul undergoing torture by Team Evil. Vaarsuvuius eventually splits off and has their own storyline (which eventually merges with O-Chul's storyline) while the rest of the Order eventually meets back up in Greysky City and they all then meet back up by the end of the book.
- Unskilled, but Strong: Despite Vaarsuvius having the power of three (later two) of the most powerful dark wizards in the Lower Yard, they didn't work for the power, whereas Xykon gained all his strength with his own hands. Xykon even lampshades as such with his "The Reason You Suck" Speech.
- Unwanted False Faith: Durkon is not happy in the least that the orcs take to worshiping Elan's puppets, Banjo and Giggles.Durkon: But..but thar no real gods! Thar puppets! Cannae ya see tha thar just puppets?!?
Elan: The only way to settle this dispute between two gods is with a pie-eating contest!!
Orcs: Hooray!
Durkon: PUPPETS CANNAE EVEN EAT PIE!!! - Visual Pun:
- Behold
, the Island of Cyclops. - One of the hobgoblins shows up with a lampshade that Redcloak tells him to hang just anywhere.
- In the bonus strips with Lien and Elan's underwater adventure, one fish has a sword for a nose and there is a shark with a hammer grafted to its head. So they're a literal swordfish and hammerhead shark. There's also a jellyfish, represented by a jar of strawberry jelly with tentacles on its underside.
- The wallpaper, Beach Day, also has a horseshoe crab made from an actual horseshoe.
- Behold
- Wham Line: In the final page, Vaarsuvius speaks with Blackwing, apologizing for treating their familiar badly before in the past, and thanking the raven for doing their part in trying to destroy Xykon's phylactery. How does Blackwing, who refused to speak common and only communicated through an empathic link respond? "You're welcome." This demonstrates the shift in the relationship between the wizard and familiar.
- What the Hell, Hero?: The Deva Roy meets in the Upper Realm questions Roy on some of his less moral life decisions, such as letting Elan be taken by bandits that one time, and letting Belkar on his team. For the former, Roy admits it was a heinous move on his part, but points out that he did wake up and helped out. As for Belkar, Roy feels that a Boxed Crook is more reliable than trusting in a Cardboard Prison, which the Deva puts down as trying to reform an evildoer.
- Would Hurt a Child: Vaarsuvius is horrified when the ancient Black Dragon has made the decision to kill their children and mate followed by subjecting them to a hellish Fate Worse than Death. And when the dragon teleports away to their location, they completely freak out.
- Wrecked Weapon: Crystal snaps Haley's bow in half with her dagger. Fortunately, Haley acquires a new one from Blind Pete's collection.
