The Order of the Stick

Regarding the gate, I think the best of both worlds would be for it to be in the dungeon and buried/walled inaccessible. Like, hidden in the space between two caves, near the end of them, such that:

• You can beat either or both caves without noticing anything amiss (since there isn't a secret door or anything like that)
• Even if you know where the gate is, you can't approach it without beating one of those caves first.

Maybe the invisible duo know about the Mechane's "Always arrive in the nick of time" ability. Which means, of course, that Team Evil is going to discover the true entrance just as the Mechane arrives.

The dungeons must be packed quite closely in the mountain, considering how many entrances there are here. I wonder if the intended solution wouldn’t be to map them all as you go through them, then find the big blank part where there aren’t any tunnels and start digging. That would require both brute force and cunning where neither alone would suffice.

Edit: This is starting to sound like a job for Roy and his architecture degree. :P

Edited by Noaqiyeum on Dec 5th 2019 at 1:40:22 PM

Oh, that's gonna be it, isn't it? "A quick Knowledge (architecture and engineering) check tells me that this entire dungeon makes no sense because ___, that must mean the real Gate is ___."

Honestly, a neat trick would be for the Gate to be hidden near where the paladins were keeping watch on Team Evil. They chose that location because it was a good vantage point from which to watch people raiding the dungeon, while also being somewhat nondescript to avoid attention; that sounds like what a rogue waiting for a sneak attack would do. And that has a nice payoff of having the paladins literally having the rift under their feet, but they never looked for it there because they were distracted by the fancy dungeon as well.

I rather think the whole point of this is to take the Paladins to their secret lair, where they will talk themselves into a partnership.

Looking at that final panel, the shape of the canyon itself... kinda looks like a gate in bas-relief.

I'm not sure how that would work though. My first thought was that the Rift itself was buried under loads of rock with the crystalline "archway" of the Gate maybe buried more accessibly under the canyon floor, but Kraagor's statue is on top of the whole thing and that was built while the Order of the Scribble were still in the area...

The statue could be moved. She did had access to a crane that could move an encaged purple worm, it can move that statue.

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0277.html

And I still don't see why the Gate needs to be accessible.

As far was we're aware the gates cannot be moved. The gates act as doors around the rifts but they're stuck in place. Trying to move or damage one destroys the gate.

Interesting thought, but according to Hinjo, Dorukan's Gate was the largest, and Kraagor's Gate has to be at least somewhat smaller.

I think Will 29 means why do the gates need to be accessible to someone after they've been sealed. For Soon, who depended on his paladins to defend the gate, having access to it might make sense. The rest, however, created entire structures and/or relied on natural defenses and, far as we know, never had anything to do with the gates beyond defending them after that, so why set the gates up in such a way that someone can still access them if they get far enough through your structure and/or natural defenses.

Well, Dorukan, like Soon, was personally part of his Gate's defense, and had a throne room built around it so he could be close. He also maintained access to it so he could activate the self-destruct rune should it become necessary, and Soon's paladins were also instructed to smash the Gate rather than let it fall into enemy hands.

This suggests a reason for all of the defenders to be able to reach their Gates themselves—to destroy them.

Was Girard’s gate even accessible, it looked pretty sealed away behind the lead? Hell Soon’s was technically hidden inside the gem, so the gate itself wasn’t out in the open.

Lirian being a Druid wasn’t going to do some huge act of terrain sculpting to hide her gate.

In the end they had to be accessible to begin with because they were built, but after that they don’t seem to have required maintenance.

Edited by Silasw on Dec 7th 2019 at 9:06:56 AM

Why not? Druids get some pretty crazy terrain sculpting spells. It's not she was above tampering with the ecosystem to help protect the gate or anything, considering she engineered a virus to help with the defences.

Edited by Gilphon on Dec 7th 2019 at 7:26:01 AM

Not to mention the perfectly ecological self-sustaining holding cell.

I think it is fair to say that, no matter the reason, the Scribbles wanted to keep some sort of access to the gates. I, personally, think that's a reasonable course of action. If there is even the slightest risk of things going wrong (like, say, the gates breaking down on their own), you don't want to excavate an entire mountain before being able to get at the problem.

I feel like it should be noted that being able to destroy a gate before it falls into the wrong hands (as both Soon and Roy have done) is entirely for the benefit of the gods, and not the mortals. An intact gate can be used to blackmail the gods, while a destroyed gate merely hastens the destruction of the world.

That depends on how many gates are intact. If there are many gates left, destroying one may be preferable to letting it fall into wrong hands. What constitutes as "many" may be subjective. When Roy destroyed Girard's gate, he was thinking of the people, not the gods.

We already know that blackmailing the gods is not going to happen. The gods will just blow up the planet and start anew, which is also a win state for the Dark One. Or it would be, if he knew about the divine food pyramid.

So yes, destroying any one gate is very much for the benefit of the living people. Destroying all of them is where things get... complicated.

When Roy destroyed the Gate, he didn’t yet know exactly what Team Evil wanted with it. His impression was still that Xykon would control the Snarl on the Material Plane to take over the world—as indeed Xykon believes will happen. The Order is only just now clued in to Redcloak’s true plan thanks to Durkon’s afterlife conversation with Thor. So even if destroying the Gate benefits the gods more than the mortals, Roy still believed otherwise.

Oona is working with Serini

The fact that Serini (if it is her) has stayed in the area* suggests she probably knows all about the bugbears and has no problem with them helping Xykon; perhaps because it's all part of the plan?

In order to manage the ecology of a dungeon full of monsters, Serini could have encouraged a society of bugbears to take up residence in the area. Either they already had a culture revolving around beast-mastery, or that culture developed over the years around the task she gave them. Their secondary role was to act as guides to anyone who expressed interest in exploring the dungeon.

Why, though? It works well with the theory that the dungeon itself (or the given terms of it) is a distraction from the true hiding place of the Gate. Oona, as a bugbear and a Noble Savage stereotype, and as someone with apparently no knowledge of the Gate, is well placed as a shill: information she provides is unlikely to be second-guessed. Her stated objective for helping Team Evil doesn't make much sense - she wants to "make sure Monster Hollow still has monsters for clan", but surely they could have frozen enough meat by now to keep her clan alive until they start to respawn, and she doesn't seem to be objecting now even though they're ostensibly tearing through the ecosystem (unless she's seen through the Mit D's trick).

Also, if the statue is somehow connected to the Gate, the bugbear village is perfectly situated to keep an eye on it.

* (Caveat: she may have arrived recently in response to V's Sending.)

So to ease the silence a bit before the strip comes back in February, apparently in the book commentary Mr. Burlew says that a character that has only appeared in a grand total of one whole page (both main story and prequels) will become an important ally in the first half of the last book.

And he said to have fun trying to guess who it is, so...

Edited by LSBK on Dec 25th 2019 at 12:08:15 PM

Goblin cleric #2.

I was going to suggest Goblin Dan, who set up the hydra-head BBQ hut, but looking at the OOTS Wiki, it appears we've seen him twice, so no go.

Edited by Geoduck on Dec 25th 2019 at 7:08:39 AM

That random Cleric who Elan was with before the latter joined the Order?

Um...one of those Lizardfolk clerics that resurrected the Oracle?

Some Thieve’s Guild flunky that only lived for a panel?