Follow TV Tropes

Following

Comic Strip / Nodwick

Go To

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/nodwick.jpg

The story of Nodwick is a classic tale of boy meets party, boy hires on with party, boy becomes injured, crushed, punctured, smelted, flattened, stapled, eaten, and occasionally used to carry stuff.
— Nodwick's Rogues Gallery

Nodwick was a print-and-webcomic by Aaron Williams, (author of PS238 and Full Frontal Nerdity) starting as a standalone comic strip in Dragon Magazine in 1998 before diversifying into an arc-based print comic while moving its standalone comics into a webcomic format. It focuses on what can only be called a misadventuring group in a fantasy world based loosely on 'classic' Dungeons & Dragons settings: The party consists of a less than worldly cleric named Piffany, a power-hungry wizard named Artax, a dim brawler named Yeagar and Nodwick, a completely expendable henchman whose job it is to carry the loot, distract the monsters and disarm the traps (by stepping on them). The print comic followed a story arc concerning the party's battle with an evil god called Baphuma'al, while at the same time the online variant and its apperances in Dragon Magazine provided shorter a-gag-a-week stories that were unrelated to the goings-on of the print story.

After having completed its bimonthly print run in 2008 after 36 issues, the comic is currently on hiatus as Mr. Williams focuses on PS238 and Full Frontal Nerdity. The author instead uploaded the story from the print comic into the website for free in lieu of new strips. The last page of the print comics was posted on April 5, 2013.

Here's old issues from Dragon and Dungeon. Here's newer web comics.


Nodwick provides examples of:

  • Abnormal Ammo:
    • Henchmen, frequently.
    • Yeagar also develops a catapault that requires the stones to be saucer-shaped.
    • One strip features a crank-powered sword-shooting gun.
  • Absurdly-Spacious Sewer: Justified in #1255 when the sewers drain into caves.
  • Action Girl: Rowen in the print comic. There are also quite a few that show up as one-offs, ranging from other adventurers to several female immortals (most if not all of whom killed Nodwick) in the Highlander parody.
  • Action Survivor: In "World Without Piffany" storyline, Nodwick quickly shows that without Artax and Yeagar intentionally getting him killed, he is quite hard to kill.
  • Adam Smith Hates Your Guts:
    • Played straight when the crew, after a series of extremely lucrative hauls, ended up causing runaway inflation due to over-saturating the market with gold and gems.
    • Averted the time that they met the Kobold accountant mentioned below, who audited their loot for them and showed them how to achieve maximum profit from it.
  • All Just a Dream: One strip featured the characters as ordinary people who happened to be playing a game of D&D with Aaron Williams as the DM. Nodwick's player wanted a new character, but Williams insisted that despite being a Butt-Monkey, his role was vital to the party's success. Cue Nodwick waking up and looking confused.
  • Always Chaotic Evil: Subverted repeatedly.
    • The party encounter a Kobold accountant.
    • "You'd be surprised..."
    • And a down-on-her-luck Drow shows up squatting in the party's basement due to a housing crisis.
  • Amusing Injuries: Verbally. Half the fun of Nodwick suffering a severe injury comes from statements such as "I can't feel my kneecaps...oh wait, yes I can, they're in my shoes."
  • An Arc: The print comic.
  • Anachronism Stew: Plenty. References are made to things that are centuries ahead of the apparent technology level, such as one storyline where magic is treated in the same way as a PC system. Other small examples include references to Daylight Saving Time and modern technology like submarines.
  • Appeal to Tradition: the wizard Liam Geakes tries to rework magic to make it easier to use, and knock other magicians down a peg or two. One problem: the new system is awful, and full of Weaksauce Weaknesses. Naturally, the magical community is not happy with him.
  • Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking:
    • A certain Sword in the Stone, which if pulled out too early, will curse the land with fire raining from the sky. It adds additional curses if someone is dumb enough to put it back in... and additional ones if you pull it out again... and so on and so on. These curses get increasingly silly, such as every firstborn child becoming a lawyer, demons building mini-malls, incontinent pelicans, "reagonomics", and market-researched sit-coms. Curiously, for such an extensively planned curse, it doesn't have any dispensation for what happens when someone gets fed up with the bullshit and breaks the sword. Well, none that we see; the guys with the book listing the curses are still searching when the party leaves.
    • And then there are the rumored consequences for circumventing established spellcasting procedures:
      Artax: We are sooooo dead. I hear that anyone who even thinks about challenging Liam Geakes meets with an unfortunate "accident," usually involving perforation... decapitation... having your credit rating trashed...
    • There's also the angry viking chieftain challenging the sea serpent that has been terrorizing their settlement...
      Chief: You sank our ships! You killed our brethren! But worst of all...*gestures at Nodwick and company*...you made me hire these morons!
  • Art Evolution: The artwork and character designs have gradually become more streamlined and exaggerated since the beginning. Given a Lampshade Hanging in one strip, where Artax observes that Nodwick's nose is much larger than it used to be, and Nodwick offers the hypothesis that it's developed as a counterweight for all the treasure he's made to lug around.
  • Artifact of Doom:
    • Half the group's income seemingly derives from hunting for these. Usually with some lying spin doctoring to make them more palatable to Piffany.
    • The Gauntlet of Supremacy was a less comedic (and more persistent) example of this trope. It was made by Baphuma'al to create a general that would lead his armies for his world conquest.
  • Back from the Dead: Nodwick. And he's required by law to fill out a new birth certificate every time. On a busy week it's rather inconvenient.
    • A more serious example is Utharr, who's eaten by a monster when the party first fight their Evil Counterparts, then brought back because someone has to wear the Gauntlet of Supremacy and Yeager has managed to shake it off.
  • Badass Adorable: Piffany. For all her childlike mannerisms, she's ultimately the lynchpin keeping Baphuma'al from taking over the world. Major demons and Infernal lawyers fear her.
  • Badly Battered Babysitter: When Piffany is recalled to her abbey, she's deliberately given the "difficult" class by the Alpha Bitch, populated with demons, children of villains and the possessed.
  • Basement-Dweller:
    • One webcomic strip had a Drow woman literally dwelling in the protagonists' basement along with consuming jam stockpiles.
    • Nazgoths in Issue 23 of the print comic are basically Nazgul version of this trope.
  • Berserk Button: Curse enough around Piffany, and she can apparently kick her way through prison bars to deliver an indignant scolding. Don't suggest giving up and going home when there's evil to be smote, either.
  • Beware the Nice Ones: When Piffany gets upset, she gets pretty fantastically upset. During the jousting tournament story, Artax suggests that she has a lot of repressed aggression she channels into her enthusiasm for such a violent sport, and at another time she actually kicks a prison cell door off its hinges and lock when angry at Yeagar. Or one time when Baphuma'al abducts Nodwick:
    Piffany: "If that evil stinky-head hurts our friend, I will give you religious literature every day for the rest of your life... as a suppository!"
  • Big Bad: Baphuma'al in the print comics, Count Repugsive in many of the shorter strips.
  • Boisterous Bruiser: Yeagar, when he's being nice. (Jerkass, when he's not. Case in point.)
  • Bowdlerization: In one strip in Dragon Magazine, Artax offers an exhausted Nodwick a Henchy Snack, which causes Nodwick to immediately take off running down the road. In the Dragon Magazine version, Artax said it was because it had "enough sugar to make a dead mule do Warp 7." The original line (as seen when the Dragon Magazine strips were collected for sale as a trade collection) was "enough amphetamines to make a dead mule do Warp 7."
  • Breather Episode: Once Baphuma'al is on the scene, most serious stories are immediately followed by a silly one. Baphuma'al's introduction is followed by a Superman parody, "A World Without Piffany" by several (mostly) standalone issues, the Gauntlet of Supremacy story by a mixed-up fairy tale story, and so on. Several of the Breather Issues still have bits of the main plot threaded through them, but mostly just to set a few Chekhov's Guns for later.
  • Bring My Brown Pants: Invoked when Artax, Yeagar and Nodwick wind up on an accidental camping trip:
    Nodwick: (seeing stick-figure people hung up in the trees) Well this is ominous.
    Yeagar: If "ominous" means "something that makes you need to change your shorts", then I've learned a new word today.
    (later)
    Yeagar: I just ominoused myself.
  • Broke the Rating Scale: Once, when Yeagar gave up the seven deadly sins, he invented an eighth. Suffice to say, they don't make him try to give them up any more.
    Yeagar: I think we called it blasphitrociterra-o-rama or something. It was pretty fun, actually.
  • Brotherhood of Evil: The Brotherhood of Evil Henchmen
  • Butt-Monkey: Nodwick, whose job description involves carrying extreme weights, suffering abuse, and being completely expendable. To put this in perspective, Nodwick is hired ostensibly to provide someone who can carry things. However, the less morally constrained members of his party put him to other use:
    It was Yeagar who pioneered many of the techniques in henchman use that adventuring parties use today. Far from relying on hirelings as mere human shields, he demonstrated their employ as projectiles, bait, door-jammers, and flotation devices.
    • ... not to mention battering ram, trap disarmer (as Artax at one point puts it, "In the same way stick disarms a bear trap.") and an all purpose tool, with the only person with any moral decency at all in the party being too clueless to stop this. Said uses, more often than not, result in his death, only to Piffany to conveniently patch him up with Duct Tape, so that said abuses can be heaped upon him all over again. And all of this takes place on top of the fact that he is frequently expected by his employers to haul several metric tons of "loot." To make matters worse, his guild is manipulated by the Adventurers Guild so that the president is a hamster and his health plan consists of a bottle of poison (The exact type of poison changes periodically). His contract is utterly impossible to get out of and at one point, he finds out that it is cosmically infeasible that he would ever get out of his current situation. This is so bad that when he dies, he is reduced to begging the powers that be to let him stay dead, only to find that he was due for resurrection yet again.
    • Later, a representative of "The Powers What Is" offered just that. Nodwick tried to turn it down immediately. (The reason being every time they tried to help him it either made matters worse for him or somebody else. If he died permanently Piffany would have a nervous breakdown and that goes against all of reality for her to angst. It doesn't help that he's contractually obligated to stay with the party.)
    • The Powers That Was mentions that Nodwick is a Destiny Sponge. He suffers because otherwise there would be more suffering in the universe. So his Butt Monkey status is literally a law of the universe.
  • The Cameo:
    • Nodwick makes a few brief appearances in the live-action independent film The Gamers 2: Dorkness Rising.
    • Death of the Endless appears briefly in one issue of the comic when Yeagar temporarily dies. She asks him if he's seen "the henchman" (meaning Nodwick), saying that she "keeps missing" him.
    • Open the official D&D supplement, Book of Vile Darkness to the Monsters chapter. Look very carefully at the party of adventurers those two skeleton monsters are about to attack. Familiar?
    • Nodwick and the party also appears in an issue of PS238 as part of an elaborate time-travelling/dimension-hopping plot.
    • They have a full page of them.
  • Cannot Tell a Lie: Piffany not only lacks the ability to lie, she can't even keep her mouth shut while others do so.
  • Captain Ersatz: The god Tharizduuhm is a pretty obvious ersatz Tharizdun, himself something of an ersatz Lovecraftian Old One. However, Lolth, Spider-Man, and Count Strahd, among others, all appear as themselves.
  • Cataclysm Backstory: The world used to be a technological paradise right up until a scientist destroyed everything when his experiments spectacularly misfired.note 
  • Cerebus Retcon:
    • The role of henchmen in the series started as a joke on the shabby treatment of hired NPCs in most tabletop RPGs. Though their inability to permanently die is still played for laughs in the later books, there's a good deal more attention paid to why things are that way.
    • Duct tape used for healing started as an anachronistic joke about the shoestring budget of Nodwick's party. It got used more and more consistently to amazing effect, and other people were shown using it as an equivalent to healing potions. Eventually it's revealed that it was actually a powerful, but easily reproduced, magical invention by a great wizard. Specifically, Countess Repugsive from before she became the Antipaladin Death Knight Lich Lord she is now.
  • Cerebus Syndrome: in the print comic; with Baphuma'al as Knight of Cerebus.
  • Character Alignment:invoked Not surprisingly, since it's inspired by Dungeons & Dragons. They actually have official character sheets (for 2nd Edition) that were published in Dragon and then later added to the online archive. Then again, the dissonance between their sheets and how they act is a deliberate part of the humor. For those interested, Piffany and Nodwick are Lawful Good (to no-one's surprise), Yeagar is apparently Chaotic Good, and Artax is Neutral Good (though gods know how, considering how they treat most of their fellow beings — and Nodwick). Or, as the first strip says:
    Nodwick: I guess the "Lawful Good" in your want ad was a typo, right?
    Yeagar: Our cleric placed the ad; she's a bit of an idealist.
    • Presumably it's a joke at the expense of those roleplayers who end up playing good alignments as neutral — certainly Artax acts True Neutral and Yeagar is textbook Chaotic Neutral.
  • Chekhov's Hobby: Sort of. The weapon that can kill Baphuma'al is an arrow, but this leaves the heroes with a small problem - none of them are any good with a bow. Fortunately, Rowen (who has just joined them) is an expert with it. She doesn't actually use her archery skills until the Final Battle, but it does come in very handy then.
  • Chekhov's Gun: In one of the first Nodwick strips, Yeagar remarks that the party really needs a thief; Artax reminds him that their last one is still in therapy. Years later, we discover that Artax and Yeagar are the reason said thief was in therapy...
  • Chekhov's Gunman: The series loves these:
    • First of all, the hamster gets superpowers at the end of Last Son of Xenon. No mention is made of them again until the final confrontation with Baphuma'al.
    • Another example: In an early issue of the print comic (the first appearance of Baphuma'al, in fact) the party breaks the curse of a pixie who is cursed to work as a tooth fairy. Again, this storyline is not mentioned again until Piffany asks for her help before the final battle against Baphuma'al.
    • The most important one, was a prophecy that Piffany mentions in one episode, how her first kiss will unleash great holy power that can smite the greatest of evils. This is forgotten about until the Final Battle, where Nodwick tricks Elonan into trying to kill her and Yeagar with an unholy version of a wedding, which enables her to unleash this power, defeating Baphuma'al once and for all.
  • The Chew Toy: Once again, Nodwick. (Literally when Orville is around.)
  • Cloudcuckoolander: In the print comics, this is the fate of Elonan after overspending her power. A rather dark example altogether, given that she starts treating the undead as her family and tries to kill off our heroes with a wedding ceremony.
  • Cluster K-Bomb: KRUTZ!
  • Color Blind Confusion: One comic had the party detailing this time they'd heard a red dragon was terrorizing a village and bought an "Orb of Commanding Red Dragons" to vanquish it, only to find that the village in question had a tendency towards genetic red-green color blindness.
  • Cosmic Plaything: "The Powers What Is" have stated that Nodwick is a "destiny sponge". If he doesn't suffer, the rest of the world suffers instead. Which makes Nodwick something of a martyr...who comes back to life to be martyred again...and then comes back to life to be martyred again...I'm gonna stop right there.
  • Crapsack World: Society has devolved to a feudal system, none of the sentient races get along, the gods argue all the time, and there are far too many carnivorous monsters for Nodwick's tastes.
    • Then their attempts to help the creation of a perfect world turn out even worse with the creation of a world occupied entirely by absurdly muscular fairies who talk like Piffany, do all-night magic research sessions, and then have to cope with 200 proof water.
    • It's still a picnic compared to the parallel world in A World Without Piffany, though. Baphuma'al runs the place.
  • Crossover:
  • Cyanide Pill: The Henchman union's health plan is a vial of poison, the first month it was literally cyanide, another time it was hemlock.
  • Deadpan Snarker: Nodwick. Artax takes over the role if Nodwick isn't around, and his Evil Counterpart Ildomir in the print comics gets rather sarcastic when things aren't going his way.
  • Death is Cheap: Nodwick has to file a new birth certificate with his union every time he dies. His file holds eight trees worth of paper. In one issue of the comic book, he dies 10 times on one page, and many many more times in the rest of the issue. He dies so often that the compilations have a "Rest Index Peace," an index of which pages he dies on, and in what manner. (Which itself was discontinued after the second book or so because it just became TOO MUCH to keep track of.)
  • Dirty Old Man: Artax has grey-white hair, a moustache down to the ground, and can still come across as a bit of a sleaze, although admittedly not as much of one as Yeager.
    Artax: My invitation was to participate in a sunrise ceremony with the Sisters of Sylvanity. The magician's mark on the paper seemed genuine enough...
    Yeager: Aren't they the ones you told me about that do all their spells in the buff?
    Artax: Maaaayyyyyybe...
  • Disproportionate Retribution: In A World Without Piffany, someone was left to rot in a dungeon for littering.
  • Distaff Counterpart: Rowen turns out to be very much alike Yeagar, only one with breasts and a bow. (And Orville, though you know that Yeagar would steal a pet dragon if given half a chance.) It's very evident in the PS238 crossover where they're introduced arguing over both of them squandering the party's money on carousing that they were supposed to put towards the latest round of damages to the Fang and Flagon tavern.
  • The Ditz: The Evil Henchman Beobor from the print comic. Nodwick's constant bamboozling of him makes Yeagar look smart by comparison.
  • Divided Deity: One issue has a god named Schizophrenius who is divided into Chaotic and Lawful halves. The party-animal worshipers of the Chaotic side stole the Lawful side's temple, who hired the protagonists to get it back.
  • Dragon Rider: One of the knights in a jousting tournament rides a dragon, and gets around the "horse involved" rule by having his mount eat a horse. With a Disqualification-Induced Victory for Yeagar thanks to the dragon's "fast metabolism." Later on Yeagar's ex Rowen turns up with a dragon named Orville that she stole from an empire with a whole army of dragon riders.
  • Duct Tape for Everything: The favoured healing method of our party's cleric. She has a holy Humongous Mecha that shoots duct tape to resurrect Nodwick.
  • Dumb Is Good: Both played straight with Piffany (good, but naive and either very selectively oblivious or has a real problem with failing spot checks) and Artax (smart, but utterly amoral), and subverted with Yeagar (dumb as a stump and not very nice) and Nodwick (smart and good, making it a wonder he ever became a henchman in the first place).
    • It should be noted that Piffany is usually very perceptive when it comes to everything except Artax and Yeagar's antics. (One of the earlier comics showed that Piffany is intentionally ignoring it.)
  • Dungeon-Based Economy: Adventurers have the whole "bring everything nailed to the ground" mentality and the henchmen to carry it out. It is a plot point in some adventures. Not to mention the building where all the stuff gets sold is called the Tomb Depot.
  • Early-Bird Cameo: Baphuma'al gets introduced pretty early on. However no one would suspect that it is The head of the Evil Henchman Guild.
  • Elephant Graveyard: The Henchman's Graveyard. Whenever a henchman reaches the point where he is about to die of old age, he takes all the loot he can carry and goes to this sacred place, which can only be found by henchmen. There isn't any treasure there. Only one henchman has ever died of natural causes, and he died bankrupt due to his party robbing him blind.
  • Empathic Weapon: The (now defunct) AD&D character sheets from long ago detailed how Yeagar's sword was an intelligent Holy Avenger, a powerful sword meant for paladins, but being stuck in Yeagar's service has rendered it traumatized and catatonic. A later strip showed it chatting telepathically with another sword (wielded by Yeagar's opponent) as they both commiserated over being stuck with idiotic owners to whom they refuse to reveal their true natures.
  • "End of the World" Special: Yeagar of all people get the opportunity for this near the end of the print comic.
  • Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: This is subverted with Orville. Apparently, his species is driven by instinct to kill their fatthers, and this works to the heroes' advantage at one point. Elonan uses a spell that causes the heroes to perceive her zombies as their parents or former mentors, intending to fool them into being vulnerable to their attacks, and this almost works. However, because Orville regards his father as an enemy, he becomes enraged and incinerates them.
  • Everyone's Baby Sister: Pretty much everyone is protective of Piffany. Once, one villain made her begin to cry. One outraged realization of this fact from Artax and Yeagar later, a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown resulted.
    • In one of the webcomic strips the orcs are staging a mass invasion, our heroes are in a bidding war against the orcs for an army of mercenaries whose assistance will turn the tide. Initially, the army of mercenaries sides with the orcs until Nodwick tells the leader of the mercenary army that would make Piffany cry. In the very next panel a report from the field says that they have completely defeated the orc armies, have captured their homelands, and have rebuilt every settlement destroyed by the war. Even more amazing, the mercenaries accepted their pay in Piffany's cookies.
  • Everyone Has Standards: In one early strip, Nodwick was going over the contents of the haul, and found a Ring of Protection +7. Naturally, all three of his employers wanted it (in the Dungeons & Dragons game, +5 is usually the limit, making such a thing priceless) until he told them it was a Nipple Ring of Protection + 7, at which point they all said they'd pass.
  • Evil Counterpart: In the print comic Utharr, Ildomir and Elonan are this for Yeagar, Artax and Piffany respectively.
  • Evil Sorcerer: The party faces these on a regular basis in the webcomic. Ildomir from the print comic is perhaps the most pronounced example, although he's technically a wizard.
  • Evil Twin: Inverted, Yeagar ends up developing a good twin in the print comic after enough smacks to the head with the clue-by-four.
    • Well is less Good Twin and more Enlightened Twin. Regular Yeagar is rather dumb.
  • Eldritch Abomination: So very many.
  • Elves vs. Dwarves: A brief war ended because A) the Artifact of Doom both sides were looking for would have killed both sides if it was used, and B) they decided the humans needed careful watching, since the stuff in their tavern cellar is clearly an explosive siege weapon - it can't possibly be drinkable (see Gargle Blaster below).
  • Exact Words: "That Which Man Was Not Meant To Know" is only forbidden knowledge for men. It's perfectly safe for women to know it (though it's hard for them to look at men afterwards without laughing).
  • Failed a Spot Check: Piffany repeatedly fails to spot Athax and Yeagar's more egregious abuses of Nodwick. It's implied it may be more Selective Obliviousness.
  • Fairy Tale: One stand-alone story in the print comic has Nodwick and crew reenacting several classic fairy tales.
    • Fractured Fairy Tale: Hilarity Ensues as the characters start rebelling against their roles and act like themselves instead of the characters they're supposed to be, which epically messes up the fairy tales.
      Narrator: Once Upon a Time, there was a beautiful princess. Her beauty was so that it outshone the queen. The queen grew jealous, and exiled the princess to the forest, in the hopes that she would be felled by the beasts living there. The princess was found by a kindly troupe of seven dwarves, five of which were on vacation and one of which had a hyperactive thyroid condition...
      Yeagar (as Snow White): This is really starting to get old.
      Nodwick (as dwarf): Wow. If the queen exiled you for being pretty...
      Yeagar: Can it, Dopey.
      Artax (as dwarf): Ugly jokes and men in dresses. Two dead horses that can't avoid being beaten...
  • Fighter, Mage, Thief: Subverted, as the group mirrors the classic D&D party - a cleric, a wizard, a fighter, and a thief — but they don't have a thief rouge]] rogue. Instead, Nodwick disarms traps... the way a stick disarms a bear trap.
    • They used to have a rogue. They fired him for stealing from them.
      • Only after Nodwick caught him (see Moment of Awesome); the first time they had to force a cursed helmet on him that drove him insane for a few years.
  • "Flowers for Algernon" Syndrome: Yeagar suffers this in the print comic thanks to the "Clue-By-Four". At the end of the issue the gods remove his newfound intelligence and take over the thinking (the artifact caused permanent head injuries even as it made the sufferer smarter) and Piffany disposes of the artifact.
    • Sorta. At the end he Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence and becomes one of the Gods. However they both need the super intelligent Yeagar to help them, and the Dumb Muscle Yeagar to remain with the party. So they split Intelligent Yeagar off and put dumb Yeagar back.
  • Fluffy the Terrible: "Naughty furry thing with slimy tentacles, death ray eyes and cute, fluffy tail! whack!
  • Foreshadowing: The later Gauntlet of Supremacy and Orb of Omniscience storylines were hinted at during "It's a Wonderful Afterlife."
    • The items themselves were also used by Yeagar and Artax respectively in A World Without Piffany.
    • "It's a Wonderful Afterlife" also introduced the Powers What Is, who would later prove instrumental in the final fight against Baphuma'al.
  • Fourth-Wall Mail Slot: Though it just doesn't end well.
  • Friend to All Living Things: Piffany, whose most terrible crime is that she once smooshed a bug. And she did a week's penance just for that!!!
  • Funetik Aksent: Master "Franswa," a recurring bit character who speaks with an exaggerated French accent. (Or whatever this world's equivalent of France must be.) He's the only one who ever speaks with it, too.
  • Future Badass: Nodwick, thanks to the power of Save Scumming. To elaborate, Nodwick touched an artifact that basically created a Save Point, sending him back in time every time he dies. Nodwick's companions being their usual competent selves meant that Nodwick had to go back to the start of the loop repeatedly, eventually becoming a Fighter/Mage/Cleric of greater power than any of them. His enhanced abilities don't last past the end of that comic, of course.
    • Both Artax and Yeagar get a very negative version of this in some of their alternate futures. In A world without Piffany and It's A wonderful afterlife, we find out that without Piffany or Nodwick around, Yeagar and Artax get ensnared by (respectively) The Gauntlet of Supremacy and the Orb of Omniscience. In A World Without Piffany they also end up as dual Dragons to Big Bad Baphuma'al. That said, Artax still tries to oppose Baphuma'al when he can. Not that he can often, when the guy's literally a god that rules the world.
  • Gambit Pileup: Played with in this strip and the following ones, in which LITERALLY everyone in the country is trying to take the throne for themselves.
  • Garage Sale: The party has to hold a yard sale to sell off the excess junk they'd been looting from dungeons when they learn that Nodwick had been forced to build an extension to their house out of looted junk to store the rest of their looted junk.
  • Gargle Blaster: Skullwhomper Ale. Apparently the stuff is so volatile that the elves and dwarves thought that it was some kind of high explosive (Which can potentially cause a fireball 15 miles across). It was actually invented by a dragon as a doomsday weapon - he was really embarrassed when he learned that humans were drinking the stuff.
    Nodwick: Why is this recipe labeled "Liquid of Fiery Vengeance"?
  • Genre Blindness: Most adventurers, villains and non-henchmen.
  • Ghostly Goals: Parodied. Nodwick stays around in ghost form whenever he's killed (until Piffany inevitably resurrects him) because his henchman contract makes him contractually obliged to not pass on as long as there's even a chance of revival at some point.
    • The party also ends up assisting ghosts with their final requests a few times. One of them needed to return his neighbor's rake.
  • Glowing Eyes of Doom: Baphuma'al and Ildomir in the print comic.
  • God of Evil: Baphuma'al.
  • The Gods Must Be Lazy: Zigzagged. The gods have periodic manifestations and open conflicts, but more often work through mortal agents and prophecy. As well, while Baphuma'al gets to intervene directly, the various gods of good hang back and do nothing. When they learn that Baphuma'al managed to cheat the system by learning the prophecies and actively circumventing them, the good gods get involved in helping the party prepare. This culminates in one of the higher gods and minor Power What Is Ranoa openly manifesting on the field of battle to create a distraction for the party's benefit.
  • Good News, Bad News: "I've got some bad news and some good news and some bad news..."
  • Goofy Print Underwear: Artax wears blue boxers with gold stars and moons on them. It's an occupational obligation, apparently.
  • Good thing you can resurrect: Inverted in the "World Without Piffany" story line. The second that Nodwick is unable to be resurrected on demand, suddenly he's able to escape certain death numerous times. Of course he also didn't have Yeagar and Artax there to throw into the way of certain death, so that helped.
  • Guile Hero: When he's not reluctantly serving as either ammunition or bait, Nodwick's lack of combat power tends to force him to use his wits to prevail, such as by repeatedly tricking Beobor into leaving him alone during the "Brotherhood of Evil Henchmen" storyline or calling on the other henchmen to make "krutz" uncool.
  • Harmless Villain: Count Repugsive gets close in the print comics. The first big Evil Plan unleashed by this vile villain was to use an army of the undead in a blockbusting scheme, and they never really got much more dangerous (as noted by the fact that our heroes are apparently the go-to party to foil Repugsive every time). Ironically, Repugsive got a lot closer to world domination than the actual Big Bad did during A Day in the Limelight in the print comic.
  • Heel Realization: If you consider Yeagar to be a Heel, then he has a big one during the Final Battle against Baphuma'al. After receiving the power of Piffany's Sacred First Kiss, the Powers That Be give him the ability to reshape the universe any way he wants to, literally. His use of this power - which could have easily been abused if he had gotten it sooner - surprises even the Powers That Be. He asks for one thing for himself, that the wedding he had been forced into be changed so that Rowen was the one marrying him (something she had wanted in the first place). Everything else he requested involved giving himself and his friends the edge they needed to defeat the villains, including giving Rowen the previously-misplaced weapon she needed to slay Baphuma'al.
  • The Hecate Sisters: Here.
  • The Hero: Yeagar. Nodwick may be the protagonist, but in the print comic the plot really rotates around Yeagar. He gets the most Character Development, the deepest exploration of his issues, and takes center stage on a lot of important events. Several issues establish both Nodwick and Piffany as irreplaceable to saving the world, but ultimately it's because they're necessary to enable Yeagar to be the real hero of the story.
  • Heroism Incentive: If Nodwick ever gets too tired to lug around all the junk the party loots, they give him Hench Snax, H-shaped biscuits with "enough amphetamines to make a dead mule do warp seven."
  • Holy Water: Piffany's favorite weapon against the undead is her trusty H2Oly Sacred Soaker. She also kills a giant demon with a lake full of holy water.
  • Horny Vikings: The heroes dealt with Vikings like these in one story, who wanted them to slay a Sea Serpent. In fact, that led to this interesting exchange after Yeagar tried using a cow as bait, which Piffany naturally objected to:
    Piffany: Now let's try a plan that doesn't get anyone hurt, especially cows!
    Yeagar (aside, to Artax): Does she not know where Vikings get the horns for their helmets?
    Artax: Let's not burst her bubble just now...
  • Humans Are Bastards: Played pretty straight most of the time, with the exceptions of Piffany and Nodwick. Artax at one point explains the origins of all the world's ruins as being a result of a human quest for experience points; while Heathwick gleefully sells out to the Adventurer's Guild (themselves rather bastardly) when appointed President by Nodwick after the Hench Games. Within two seconds.
  • Human Pack Mule: The main job of henchmen such as Nodwick (trap disarmer, dragon bait and monster chew toy only being regular side duties). They have the ability to carry a much heavier load than their strength would otherwise allow.
  • Humiliation Conga: The final fate of Ildomir in the print comic. Unlike all the other villains who get killed, Ildomir survives and ends up doing community service shoveling dung for Krutzing Hollow.
  • Humongous Mecha: At one point, Piffany.
  • I Can See My House from Here
  • Impossible Thief: The party's ex-thief, Bezzler, who apparently once stole all the tips from a bunch of strippers while they were in the middle of a striptease. During his brief re-stint in the party, he makes off with most of the party's loot and Nodwick's pants.
  • Incorruptible Pure Pureness: Someone on that page has suggested that that trope could be renamed The Piffany.
  • Informed Attribute: The power of This One Ring. It didn't do anything for the dark sorcerer who made it, it didn't do anything for the king who killed the maker for it, and it didn't provably do anything to the halfling who found it later. Despite this (And Nodwick's attempts to point this out), the party insists that it is an incredibly evil and powerful artifact that must be destroyed.
  • It's a Wonderful Plot: The multi-part "World Without Piffany" storyline features an Alternate Universe which is Exactly What It Says on the Tin. Without Piffany, Nodwick was Killed Off for Real shortly after Artax and Yeagar hired him, neither of them were able to rid themselves of two Artifacts of Doom that they later found, both became Co-Dragons to Baphuma'al, and he ended up ruling the world. Nodwick witnesses this horrible and escapes, and the knowledge he brings back is able to convince Piffany's abbey to let her continue her adventuring career.
  • It's Popular, Now It Sucks!: Invoked Trope. Being a henchman is such an undesirable career that they're able to kill any annoying fad by making people think they like it. They claim to have done so with handlebar moustaches and Nehru tunics (bellbottom pants died on their own, but they were preparing to get rid of those), and were able to make people stop saying "krutz" within an hour.
  • I Was Having Such a Nice Dream: Even Nodwick's happiest dreams are doomed to be interrupted by plot, destiny, or whatever else is at hand.
  • Jerkass: Yeagar, frequently. Artax gets in on it too frequently.
  • Joker Jury: The Council of Three and a Half, composed of geeks Yeagar bullied in school. They shrink him and use him in one of their miniatures games.
  • Just Think of the Potential!: Everyone wishes that Artax would stop doing this.
  • Kill and Replace: In one strip, a dragon devours Nodwick and impersonates him for weeks by shapeshifting in order to lure the others into a trap. Naturally, it was All Just a Dream.
  • Kill It with Water: Piffany's answer to sneaky undead: "H2oly Sacred Soaker".
    • One time they eliminated a giant demon by getting Piffany to bless an entire lake and splashing the demon with it.
  • Kleptomaniac Hero: The absurd amount of worthless junk that the party loots during quests and forces Nodwick to carry home has to be seen to be believed.
    • At one point, Nodwick builds a new wing onto their house out of junk - to house the rest of the junk.
  • Knight in Sour Armor: 'Knight' is pushing it, but Nodwick is an altogether nice and loyal person (almost overly so) while at the same time being extremely cynical and resigned to a life of pain as a henchman.
  • Lad-ette: Rowen. She's basically a gender-flipped (and saner) Yeagar.
  • Lampshade Hanging:
    "It makes your clothes grow, too?" "This version does. There were some major problems with the first version when-" "THANK YOU! That's enough information."
  • Laser-Guided Amnesia: The Clergy In Black have a ring that induces this. For some reason it has no effect on Piffany, so she went for years wondering why they make a point of showing her that ring every time they meet.
  • Lethal Chef: Yeagar, whose idea of a special treat involves ingredients a month past their use-by date.
    • In the Expedition to the Barrier Peaks parody, Artax is able to identify deadly poisonous mould by its similarity to Yeagar's cooking.
  • Let's Get Dangerous!: What happens whenever Piffany cries to any males in the area. At one point the very possibility of her crying caused an army of mercenaries that been hired by a Orc Lord to destroy the Orc Army, retake their home lands and rebuild all the destroy villages.... in a week.
    • Actually hurting Piffany is likely the easiest way to make Yeagar, Artax, AND Nodwick fly into a rage. Nodwick usually gets killed in these situations, naturally, but this is one of the few times where Yeagar and Artax will risk their own lives.
  • Long Runner: Lasted 10 years. Still isn't 'finished' so much as 'on hiatus' while PS238 gets the limelight.
  • Love Makes You Evil:/Love Redeems: When Yeagar describes his history with Rowen it sounds like he became a jerk because things didn't work out between them. When Rowen describes the past it sounds more like he only acted nice sometimes for her.
  • Love Potion: Gets slipped into Piffany's lemonade.
  • Meaningful Name: Piffany is a cleric. She probably had an epiphany at some point that sent her down this path.
  • Mike Nelson, Destroyer of Worlds: The party. Implied to be repeat offenders in this regard.
  • Morality Chain: Piffany and Nodwick, albeit unintentionally, turned out to be the only thing able to save Artax and Yeagar from a life of evil in the print comics.
  • Morality Pet: Piffany. What's more, she can take on this role for anyone but the most abjectly evil people and gods, not just her own friends. Her cookies are so good that gods will threaten (and then back down from) holy wars over them, and legions of amoral mercenaries will fight evil monsters for free because she might cry if they took the side of evil.
    (Consulting with the Orb of Omniscience's creators)
    Not!Tom Baker: But his little clerical friend would be doomed in that scenario. She'd be crushed by the falling stones.
    Artax: Piffany dying isn't an option.
  • Musical Episode: The print comic story "Phantom of the Way, Way Off-Broadway Musical" (now uploaded). Artax casts a "spell of thespia" on Yeagar without checking its spell description, which turns out to be to turn the adventure into one "until end of production or until first tomato is thrown". The entire rest of the story is spend with both villains and heroes belting out Musical Pastiches of 80s rock and pop with new lyrics.
  • My God, What Have I Done?: Yeagar and Artax have this moment when they throw Nodwick into a Dimension Rift in attempt for Piffany to stay with the party. When told that Nodwick isn't coming back, then seeing Piffany cry, they don't take it well.
  • Negative Continuity: The Dragon magazine and online-only comics. Some went on to get referenced in the comic book, but others have never been brought up again. A lot of the early Dragon comics involved the characters going through some classic Dungeons & Dragons adventures and giving them the MST treatment from within the adventure, for example - something that wouldn't fit well into the continuity of the later print comic.
    • The background details of the world tend to get this treatment. It's been suggested the world was once a Crystal Spires and Togas Magitek utopia that blew itself up into Medieval Stasis, or that it's somewhen in the history of Earth (or at least the Earth of PS238), or even crossed over with Full Frontal Nerdity as a parallel Earth with magic that never developed into a modern world. Nodwick has even had nightmares that he's the resident Butt-Monkey in a group of D&D players, as if he was getting a glimpse of the true cruel nature of his world.
  • Nerd Glasses: Piffany.
  • Nice Guy: Nodwick himself. One story arc has him impress a pleasure cult "nun" by looking her in the eye and listening intently while she talked about her feelings for four hours straight.
  • Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: The villains started a chain of events that eventually led to their final defeat. They created a golem to use in the Hench Games; the golem's actions resulted in the hamster gaining super powers. In turn, the hamster - due to his powers - was instrumental in defeating Baphuma'al. Of course, they could never have forseen this chain of events, but they started it nonetheless.
  • Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Like so.
    Yeagar: You don't understand! He's a ninja and a pirate!
    Artax: That's a level of awesome you just can't beat without high explosives, maybe.
  • Non-Action Guy: Nodwick is lethally bad at combat. Yeagar tries to teach him the bow, and his first shot nails their neighbor through the head. At another point the party sends him to "join" the monsters in a dungeon, with the story that he's turned evil and betrayed the party - because as soon as Nodwick tries to help the monsters fight, he screws up so much he kills all the monsters (and himself) by accident, something that Artax and Yeagar were counting on to make everything easier.
  • No Name Given: Utharr, Ildomir and Elonan weren't given names until long after their first appearance. This was even lampshaded by this exchange:
    Nodwick: Hey, it's the evil-warrior-guy who used to hang out with the evil-wizard-guy and the evil-cleric-gal!
    Piffany: We really need to get their names the next time we see them.
  • Noodle Incident: A lot all around: There are many references to (mis)adventures the group have been on (and their aftereffects on Nodwick) scattered around the pages. A Running Gag and recurring source of fear for Yeagar in his backstory is something "Suzie Klopman" (we never learn who it is) did to him on his fifth birthday.
  • Oh, Crap!: "Oh, Krutz!" Things often go to Yeah That Place in a handbasket.
  • Only Sane Man: Nodwick. Henchmen in general, actually, but especially Nodwick. (Nodwick once told the rest of the party that the reason he didn't become an adventurer was because he was overqualified.)
  • Our Clones Are Different: Artax has cloned Nodwick under the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition rules on multiple occasions when Piffany wasn't around to resurrect him the clericy way.
    • In one comic Nodwick finds what appears to be his own head in a jar, it turns out that Artax and Yeagar had gone on an adventure while Piffany was on a trip and Nodwick was temporarily dead so Artax had cloned him to carry their stuff. However, when he asks whether he's the original they're suspiciously unable to give a clear answer.
    • Another time they delve a dungeon full of zombies that look like Nodwick, Artax admits that he and Yeagar had been there before without Piffany and had brought a few "spares" for when the Nodwicks inevitably got killed. In this case he also claims that his Scroll of Clone was going to expire with the edition change, referencing how the spell works dramatically differently between 2nd and 3rd edition.
  • Our Dwarves Are All the Same / Our Gnomes Are Weirder: According to an old Dragon strip, both races are just halflings wearing fake beards and platform shoes. They get more money from Sourcebook royalties that way.
  • Out-of-Character Alert: What tips off the rest of the team at one point that a doppelganger has replaced Yeagar? They find a trap, and the fake Yeagar suggests using a rock to set it off instead of Nodwick.
  • Out-of-Character Moment: In the Future Badass strip, upon hearing that Nodwick has become a competent, powerful adventurer in his own right as a result of constant time-looping, Yeagar expresses the opinion that he's not sure if he likes the idea of Nodwick being better then all three of them, and Artax agrees to wipe his memories of his true power once he gets them out of this mess. Not only do they say this out loud and in front of Piffany, Piffany quite blithely encourages them to do so by telling them to keep an eye out for a spare left hand she can use to replace the hook the Adventurer-Nodwick has.
  • Paper-Thin Disguise: Artax's Illithid disguise. At least he keeps his acting (relatively) believable.
    • A Running Gag is how Piffany's order uses a painfully fake moustache and nothing else as a valid disguise... And it always works.
    • Even better than one may think. In one story, Nodwick was able to fool Baphuma'al himself with a simple fake moustache, along with Utharr, Ildomir and Elonan, even though they were specifically trying to keep him out of the caves where they were building their citadel.
  • Paying for the Action Scene: At least once, Yeagar ended up with the tab for damages after a bar brawl — he was the last guy standing.
  • The Peeping Tom: There's actually a goddess devoted to this in this reality (who, ironically, is often a victim of them).
  • Phosphor-Essence: We never actually see it (possibly because the Powers What Is hide just how good she is), but as a child Piffany apparently kept her parents awake with her halo of purity.
  • Powered Armor: When Piffany messes with an old spell meant to summon angels, she gets this. She is also shown in a Power Loader in the Metal Dungeon story arc.
    • The July 31st 2001 strip has a dwarf engineer who was "trying to invent a way to have hot tea on the battlefield, and it kinda snowballed". He is shown in a steam engine-assisted suit of superheavy platemail.
  • Powers That Be: The Powers What Is. (And in this reality, they actually have a sense of humor.)
  • Powers via Possession: Failing one check vs. a sentient item's Ego usually sucks. On the other hand, having one's wits run over by three artifacts at once may work wonders on some meek henchman.
  • Power Trio: Yeagar (id), Artax (ego), Piffany (superego). Nodwick is a henchman and gets no say in the matters, but is a superego.
    • Amongst their evil counterparts in the print version, Utharr (id), Elonan (ego), and Ildomir (superego). Elonan and Utharr end up switching places after Utharr becomes fully sentient as an undead and Elonan goes Ax-Crazy.
  • Pull a Rabbit out of My Hat: "I've heard tell of a silk hat that produces an endless supply of rabbits..."
  • Punch-Clock Hero: This party definitely is.
  • Reality Warper: They once got an artifact that allowed them to have something happen instantaneously while they remember what happened. The problem is that is when someone used it to attempt something that would never happen causes damage to reality. They wound up causing all of reality to break.
  • Refusal of the Call: This strip right here is pretty much the trope's platonic ideal.
  • Reluctant Mad Scientist: Artax. He has a very bad habit of thinking of all the Potential Applications and wanting to try them out, often without fully thinking about the consequences. Generally he's not too bad - apart from repeatedly blowing himself and Nodwick up. However, he can veer very close to Mad Scientist on occasion, and there's an implication that if Piffany and the gang weren't around to stop him from concentrating on ways to blow up his lab, he'd probably end up Jumping Off the Slippery Slope. Indeed, his "Giants in the Earth" profile says that most of his ancestors/family wound up eventually killing themselves as a result of some magical experiment going wrong at some point in their lives.
  • Reluctant Warrior: Piffany.
  • Required Secondary Powers: Played with in one story where Nodwick is given a growth potion to repel an army of invading orcs. The potion doesn't increase his mass, so he floats away in the breeze like a balloon.
  • Riddling Sphinx: Fortunately, the Sphinx is flexible about the form in which it will accept the answer.
  • Ring of Power: Parodied by This One Ring.
  • Robe and Wizard Hat: Artax.
  • Role-Playing Game 'Verse: One of the Ur Examples for comics, being three years older than 8-Bit Theater and five years older than The Order of the Stick. It contrasted most of its fellow Dragon alumni by being set In-Universe from the characters' point of view instead of from the players sitting around the gaming table.
  • Royals Who Actually Do Something: The Legion of Princesses. (Most of the time. In the issue where they appeared, however, they had to be rescued, much like other princesses. But even so, they weren't helpless.)
  • Sacred First Kiss: Piffany, literally. Her first kiss will bestow a major blessing upon whoever she kisses (On the order of rewriting reality to suit the desires of the kissee), so she has made a conscious effort to avoid giving away her first kiss until such time as that blessing is needed, onto a person worthy of that blessing. In the last issue of the print comic she kisses Yeagar, who rewrites reality to give the party a much-needed edge against Baphuma'al's forces.
  • Samus Is a Girl: Countess Repugsive
  • Sarcasm Failure: It takes a lot to make Nodwick drop the snark. When he does, it's usually a sign that things have gotten really serious.
  • Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Yeagar starts talking like this after some exposure to the Clue-By-Four. After a few wallops more, he stops (having either evolved beyond 'language' or just realized smart people don't need to use big words to explain things).
  • Ship Tease: More than you'd expect between Piffany and Nodwick. A lot between Yeagar and Rowen once she joins the cast.
  • Shoulders of Doom: Yeagar's shoulderpads are huge, (and their Spikes of Doom are actually practical!), but even he can be cowed by shoulder pads with blades.
  • Shout-Out: Regularly.
  • Sixth Ranger: Rowen in the comic book.
  • Sliding Scale of Fourth Wall Hardness: Has slid from one end to the other over the comic's history. The strip was introduced at the tail end of Williams' previous Dragon magazine work Floyd as Animated Actors promoting their upcoming work. The early Dragon strips involved a lot of Medium Awareness, especially in strips where they were put through classic Dungeons & Dragons adventures or lampooning fantasy game tropes. As the series progressed - especially once Williams started the comic book version - the fourth wall breaking became much less common but never completely went away.
  • Small Name, Big Ego: Utharr, Ildomir and Elonan, seriosly. No matter how many times the heroes defeated and humiliated them, they refused to ever consider for a minute that they were worthy adversaries. (Baphuma'al was like this too, but this was more of a case of Stupid Evil on his part, seeing as he was someone with a Big Name and a Big Ego)
  • Spontaneous Choreography: Yeagar asks Artax to cast a spell to make him more charming. The resulting spell makes Yeagar (And anyone around him) spontaneously go into song and dance routines.
  • Statistically Speaking: Either Inverted or played straight. Nodwick, whose stats say he's weaker than Artax, can lift an impossibly heavy object and move it across the room because somebody decided it would look better there, but if he were to lift it on his own it would surely snap his spine. Rule of Funny at work, which one character even lampshades when he suggests that this distinction between whether or not Nodwick can carry an object indicates something worrying about the universe. Eventually, the print comic published a special Henchman class for 3rd Edition Dungeons & Dragons that got ridiculous bonuses to Strength only for the purposes of carrying stuff (up to +100 Strength at 20th level). Meanwhile, when they got statted for 2nd ed in Dragon Magazine #270, this was explained as being a function of ridiculously high Non-Weapon Proficiencies in various forms of hauling crap substituting for his lousy Strength.
  • Strong as They Need to Be: Due to Rule of Funny, the party's power level fluctuates wildly in the stand-alone strips, with the party going hunting for ancient dragons one week and doing interplanar travel and in the next are right back to being chased by a band of goblins. The print comic's Myth Arc makes them (slightly) more consistent, but the comic never directly involves the ruleset in its canon and their exact character levels are unknown outside some (now outdated) character sheets published in Dragon.
  • Supreme Chef: Piffany, whose cooking skills are so incredible that Nodwick was able to use her brownies and punch as part of a scheme to convince a mercenary army to fight off an orc horde and rebuild every single town destroyed by said horde (this having beaten the orc chief's offer to the mercenaries of allowing them a portion of the loot and their pick of the women of the conquered territory for not trying to stop them). Piffany's cooking was also at one point used to buy off an entire pantheon of deities who were jockeying to get Piffany to sign on as the avatar of one of them. She successfully dissuades them by giving up her COOKIE RECIPE. Heck, her cooking is so good, it's practically an in-universe Meme.
    • Nodwick's being allowed to be lick the bowl whenever she bakes may be the only perk he gets from his job.
  • Suspiciously Clean Criminal Record: A pair of bureaucratic devils look up the history of the Lawful Good cleric Piffany and discover that the worst thing she's ever done is squash a bug. And she did a week's penance to make up for that!
  • Take Over the World: Baphuma'al wants to do this, of course.
  • Take That!: Strahd von Zarovich vs. Anne Rice (he's so not a vampire). The good side of a certain Door Stopper. The D&D Movie.
  • Flashbacking Is A Free Action: Subverted. "Excuse me, but while the two of you were busy with this charming flashback, the lummox you were fighting de-meloned you both."
  • Talk to the Fist: The party are naturals at this.
  • Theme Naming: All henchmen have "wick" at the end of their names.
  • There Are No Therapists: Surprisingly, this Trope seems to be Inverted in this world; Artax claims Nodwick was in therapy after their exploration of the Temple of Elemental Evil. (And it seemed to take, although Artax's idea of a replacement for him was to use all the Clone scrolls he had lying around...)
  • There Can Be Only One: The point of the Highlander parody issue "It's a Kind of Tragic".
  • There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Defied on at least one occasion, played straight myriad other times.
  • These Are Things Man Was Not Meant to Know: Overlapping a hair with No Man of Woman Born.
  • They Killed Nodwick Again: Multiple times per issue. The aforementioned Highlander parody had about eight times on one page. A few issues actually averted it because there was no means for Nodwick to be restored to life (such as in "A World Without Piffany"), so even he had to be more careful with himself than he was used to.
  • This Is Gonna Suck: Nodwick has long since grown too abused and cynical for mere 'Oh, Crap!' moments. Ildomir also gets into the spirit at times after a few run-ins with the party.
  • Token Evil Teammate: No, not Yeagar; Artax is portrayed this way in the "Giants in the Earth" article dedicated to the crew in Dragon Magazine. Highlights of his past include the fact he left his last adventuring party specifically because he thought they were too heroic, his blatantly implied role in murdering their former fighter (who was "mysteriously struck dead by lightning on an open field in the middle of a cloudless day"), and the fact he deliberately took up with Yeagar because said former party rejected Yeagar for not fitting their standards of behavior. Yeager is more likely to get this treatment in the actual stories, although it may just be that Artax 1) is more likely to have thought things through than Yeager, and 2) gets on slightly better with Nodwick, who is after all the usual viewpoint character.
  • Token Good Teammate: Piffany was this before they hired Nodwick, caught between Yeagar, Artax and their kleptomaniac rogue team-mate.
  • Too Much Information: Here.
  • Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth: Piffany.
  • Undignified Death: Well, sure, it happens to Nodwick a lot, but he doesn't really mind. For a couple of other major characters, it was worse. In the finale, Elonan fell into her own vat or necrotic fluid and was dissolved into goo. Not very dignified at all.
    • Even worse was what happened to Baphuma'al. After he was hit by Rowen's arrow, leaving him powerless, he made an attempt to escape by turning into a fly... But was swallowed by Orville. As if his career up to that point wasn't humiliating enough for a dark god of evil...
  • Unsound Effect: Ka-Dimensional-Rift!
  • Unusual Euphemism: "KRUTZ!"note 
  • Upgrade vs. Prototype Fight: The wizard Liam Geakes creates a new magic system so that people can use magic without actually learning how it works. Problem is, he didn't do it so well, sure, anyone can cast a spell, anyone, with the proper knowledge, one of his books, the money to pay him, and of course, the resources of a flea market. Needless to say, the traditional system wins.
  • Vitriolic Best Friends: The party in general, especially Yeagar and Artax. The two bicker and insult each other routinely but clearly respect each other in their own way and consider each other equals. Artax and Nodwick also have a dynamic like this at times since Artax considers Nodwick an intellectual equal even though he frequently abuses him for his own gain. All three of them are also united in defence of Piffany. In the print comic, Yeagar is revealed to have an attitude like this towards Nodwick. When pressed by his good counterpart he goes on an irate rant about how Nodwick's intelligence makes him feel stupid and the constant snark, insults and smugness gets on his nerves, only to reply mumbling that "Piffany would miss him" when asked why he puts up with him.
  • Waiting Skeleton: One story arc features a time traveller from the past (the "present" in the comic being After the End for him). He eventually finds himself in an ancient waiting room, where the skeletons of his peers have been left (along with an Apocalyptic Log lamenting the idiot who caused The End of the World as We Know It by travelling through time), watched over by an undead receptionist who doesn't realise they've become the dead dead sort of skeleton while waiting for her.
  • Walk into Mordor: Nodwick is Genre Savvy enough to know that the hidden path that Smeagor is trying to convince him to take is a trap, so he knocks on the front door and bribes the customs official with a bag of cinnamon crunch almonds.
  • Weaksauce Weakness: Ildomir went to a school for wizards called the Heractium Dark Arts Academy, where teachers punished students with a song called "I Write the Spells" (a Song Parody of the pop classic I Write the Songs) which also made them more evil. Unfortunately, this punishment was too much for Ildomir, and ever since, simply hearing the song drove him to the brink of madness. And the E-13 magic system is filled with these, one of which being total magic failure near anyone thinking of "w".
  • Weird Trade Union: There's the thieves' guild and adventurers' guild, of course, which are pretty standard fare. The henchmen union, however, really takes the cake. The employment contract is so draconian it prevents the henchmen from passing on.
  • What Measure Is a Mook?: Played straight, lampshaded, and played with frequently. A lot of the random monsters the party slays are given little regard, unless it would be funnier otherwise. But the king of this in the comic is the treatment of henchmen in general and Nodwick in particular. They are so poorly regarded they are effectively disposable. This would be horrifying if it wasn't for how easy it is to raise them, or that they seem to be Made of Iron (again, unless it's funnier otherwise). This is derived from numerous stories of gamers treating Non-Player Character hirelings as similarly disposable while playing games like Dungeons & Dragons. Ten foot poles and other trap-disarming tools cost money, but a dead hireling no longer needs to be paid...
  • Women Are Wiser:
  • Your Head Asplode: At one point Nodwick gets hit with two separate curses with the same trigger condition. One turns his brains into blue cheese dip, the other makes his brains explode. It gets messy.

Top