The Order of the Stick

Best end for Tarquin is to simply never mention him again.

...But wouldn't the country's collapse happen regardless of how Tarquin dies? I keep seeing it brought up as if it's some sort of point against Tarquin being dealt with in a suitably karmic fashion, but I doubt anyone would bat an eye if Tarquin gets offed by Roy or Elan (however unlikely that may be) in the current battle.

Heck, the discussion keeps popping up because Tarquin is widely acknowledged to be blindly driving towards his own destruction and people want to speculate on a way that could happen that doesn't let him "win".

@Fighteer: Eh. I see it as a possibility. And of course she'd want Nale, but also her revenge.

And on Tarquin's empire: do D&D stories ever figure such particulars? Why is the evil empire there^note A kingdom from gloomy swampy lands of cragged forests is attacking kingdoms living upon the sunny grassy meadows. Heroes, save us from this evil!
(Said evil is also known as people we forced into swampland where they barely eke out the living while we're happy on our rich farmland that used to belong to them.), what happens to it when the ruler falls to the roving pack of murderhobos? Naah. Bag guy is beat, roll the Happy End and credits.

Fixing the continent is a task for a epic-grade do-gooders. And they'll have to stretch themselves just like Tarquin and co doing - but they will also have harder time as they'll need to reinstill morals eradicated by the history of wars.

edited 13th Sep '13 1:44:56 PM by Adannor

Our heroes are too wimpy to save a continent so must settle for saving the world.

If Tarquin commits himself to a battle in which he is defeated (by a hero or a villain or even an unimportant NPC), that's a predictable risk. It's not morally imperative on the winner of the fight to take over Tarquin's empire in a You Kill It, You Bought It fashion.

Moreover, Tarquin is certain to have planned for some form of succession upon his untimely death in battle; not doing so would be inviting disaster both politically and narratively.

The situation we're discussing is for someone to deliberately strike at Tarquin — murder him with premeditation — in such a way that would leave his Empire decapitated and without a clear authority figure. All of these vengeful demises we come up with for Tarquin, after all, involve not just stripping him of his life but of his sense of victory. What good (or rather, Good, capital 'G') is that if millions of people suffer in the aftermath?

@Adannor: Yes, it's typical do-gooder style to whack off the head of the badguy and move on, happily ignorant of what happens to the people in his absence. But OOTS is not that style of comic; or rather, it's the kind of story where the consequences of doing something like that are most definitely explored.

edited 13th Sep '13 1:49:29 PM by Fighteer

This, with a side helping of the fact that the popular go to device people keep bringing up, having some villain be the one to off him, actually makes things worse for those many people because Evil Is Not a Toy. "Well, just have Xykon do the revenge scheme."

Great. Now Xykon owns a continent. BEST CASE SCENARIO, he abandons it and goes back to what he was doing, and the Empire degrades into what it was before Tarquin came.

Villains aren't usually courteous enough to be there when you need something dirty done without bloodying your own hands doing it, and then leaving as soon as they're no longer required. Specifically, it's the leaving part they have trouble with, and just having your villain eaten by a bigger fish means that now you have to deal with a bigger fish.

edited 13th Sep '13 1:54:15 PM by TobiasDrake

Strictly speaking, I'm not suggesting anyone commit premeditated murder — except Sabine, I guess, who'd probably love to.

No, I figure that Tarquin's the type to either A) piss off people who are perfectly capable and willing to ruin his grand plan, or B) gloat about it to people who could do something about it but probably wouldn't have if he hadn't run his mouth.

Technically, the Order is already dealing with Xykon. Not particularly well, but he's at the top of their list. Tarquin's not even on the list, I don't think.

edited 13th Sep '13 1:59:31 PM by CorrTerek

I wouldn't imagine Xykon would care to take over Tarquin's empire; even if he did, it would devolve rather rapidly into the kind of crapsack that Tarquin "civilized" in the first place given Xykon's Chaotic alignment and his poor attention span.

If Redcloak were to take over and run things... just imagine the atrocities. He hates humans. Plus, he has slightly bigger priorities at the moment.

Tarquin has shown himself to be remarkably Genre Savvy about that whole "pissing off people who then take revenge on him" business. Note that it happened at least once in the story already, and has been implied to have occurred many times before.

edited 13th Sep '13 1:58:48 PM by Fighteer

And yet here he is, committing a number of acts that sure seem to be Genre Blind. Either he's losing his touch, or this is all part of some even more convoluted plan.

edited 13th Sep '13 2:00:53 PM by CorrTerek

That's the point. As we've discussed previously, "fixing" Tarquin's empire is a lifetime goal. If Elan and Haley, say, return in the Epilogue, unseat Tarquin from his throne, and set their lives to trying to build a better civilization out of what Tarquin started, they could be able to actually make the Western Continent some day be a place worth living. This is the good ending.

If someone like Xykon - not necessarily Xykon himself, but he isn't the only villain in the world - does it, sure, it would be tremendously cathartic for the audience to get to see them do awful things to Tarquin that Elan and Haley never would, but then Xykonesque Villain gets to be the one to rule his Empire and create an even more awful place to live. This is the bad ending.

Or, if nobody takes control of the Empire - either because whoever defeated Tarquin didn't want it, or Tarquin just got killed in battle somewhere, etc. - then the whole thing is left to collapse back into the chaos and anarchy that Tarquin found it as. This is the neutral ending.

edited 13th Sep '13 2:03:59 PM by TobiasDrake

He's only being Genre Blind if you realize that his basic logical premise — that he's the A-villain rather than the B-villain — is false. Otherwise he's being extremely savvy, if a bit of a smartass, which invites a sort of karma all on its own.

You said it perfectly.

edited 13th Sep '13 2:05:01 PM by Fighteer

>Moreover, Tarquin is certain to have planned for some form of succession upon his untimely death in battle; not doing so would be inviting disaster both politically and narratively.

The only ones I see in this position are his party members. Well, the empires will be left in the hands of their pawns (which won't be able to hold them together for long, I'd wager), but the plan is party only, I feel.

>@Adannor: Yes, it's typical do-gooder style to whack off the head of the badguy and move on, happily ignorant of what happens to the people in his absence. But OOTS is not that style of comic; or rather, it's the kind of story where the consequences of doing something like that are most definitely explored.

But it also lampshades the typical stories, so that outcome is on the table still.

Tarquin's philosophy also follows the conventions of those stories. He has planned his story like that. What happens should he be killed (irrevocably), he wouldn't care much - that's not part of the story he lives.

So for everyone, who's your favorite Order member and why?

I can't decide yet myself.

Roy. I respect that he's a reasonable leader, while still being a fallible human being. He's not perfect. He just tries to do the best he can with what he has to work with, and he knows how to make compromises for the sake of completing his goal, without letting his goal compromise him. He's willing to ask whether the ends justify the means, but he also recognizes the other important question that many overlook: do the means justify the ends?

I also like how he and Xykon are parallel on the Wizard issue; they both have the arrogance of Wizards as a part of their motivating factors. They've both suffered the accusations of, "Wizards are great, your class is worthless," and they've both worked very hard to take that arrogance and cram it up Wizards' noses.

Durkon.

Roy, I think, for the same reasons Tobias listed. He's a melee fighter with a big sword, and yet, he's the only one out of his party with the brains to lead them. Best part is, it still works.

On the other side, Redcloak (mostly because I read Start of Darkness). I think overall, I'm actually rooting for Redcloak. :/ Second favorite on the evil side: Xykon. He's probably my favorite of all Big Bads, actually. He's hilarious and hateable at the same time, and he's quite possibly the best example in the whole comic of exactly how much thought Burlew puts into his characters.

edited 13th Sep '13 4:24:55 PM by Knowlessman

Gee, who'd'a thought that coming up with a realistic way to reconstruct political stability in a turbulent desert country after the overthrow of an evil dictator would be so difficult? I mean, we must have been spitballing ideas for weeks and we're getting nowhere...

@ Matues: Who's "Tarquin"?

edited 13th Sep '13 4:24:11 PM by johnnye

Is that the fanon name of Mook #1 from the last comic?

Actually, Mook #1 from the latest comic has a name. It's Amir. :|

EDIT: Maybe Tarquin's his last name.

edited 13th Sep '13 4:33:17 PM by Knowlessman

Must be the one he's talking to then, the lizardfolk.

Roy for all the reasons stated above, and especially because he's a black lead character in a fantasy setting that has a legit personality and flaws other than "I'm black, what more do you want?". But seriously though I fucking cling to characters like Roy, especially his skin is never an issue or even mentioned, which seems to be all too common in a lot of stories.

I just love the Order as whole, as everyone complement each other exactly, and balance each other out in their own ways.

edited 13th Sep '13 5:37:11 PM by dazai

That's actually a really good point. Roy's a black protagonist without being a "black" protagonist. His being black isn't a big deal or the sole purpose of the character. It's just part of who he is.

Word you want's complement, BTW, not compliment.

But yeah.

Gee, who'd'a thought that coming up with a realistic way to reconstruct political stability in a turbulent desert country after the overthrow of an evil dictator would be so difficult? I mean, we must have been spitballing ideas for weeks and we're getting nowhere...

Stellar comment. Why can't real-world governments of superpowers be as smart as tropers are?

edited 13th Sep '13 5:05:33 PM by WarriorEowyn

Elan is my favorite member of the OOTS. He's a good person (not just Good: Roy is kind of a dick) that really tries to compensate for his flaws. He even succeeds somewhat in that. Plus, the cast for his character arc really works well with him. Most of the other party members don't have villains or recurring characters they can bounce off of well.