The Order of the Stick

That harkens back to Xykon's Breaking Speech to Redcloak in Start of Darkness. At the end of the day, the main point of distinction between Xykon and Redcloak is not that Redcloak is better or nobler or more altruistic than Xykon. It's that he believes he is, while Xykon doesn't bother with the pretense of a justified cause.

Redcloak's life is built on self-deception, while Xykon is completely honest about who and what he is.

Now Redcloak can’t be to far off, as the Dark One is still granting him spells, also Thor identified the Dark One as evil at least at the point of his ascension.

A point to consider though, the gods are shaped by belief, Loki is physically incapable of telling the truth because his followers believe he’s always lying.

Redcloak is the Dark Ones high priest and has been for a long time, possibly a longer time than any other high priest.

So how much has Redcloak shaped the Dark One? Via both his personal perception of the Dark One and by him spreading that perception to other worshipers.

Redcloak alone isn't powerful enough to do that. The Dark One is shaped by the collective belief of all goblinoids.

Sure, and Redcloak has been the Dark One’s representative to goblinkind for a long time. He’s helped shape the collective belief of goblinoids.

Redcloak might well have done nothing to shape the Dark zone, but I wouldn’t rule it out.

Have we actually seen Redcloak say anything about the Dark One to someone else? Like something concrete. Because it's been made clear that he would rather like to speak to the boss directly given that all he knows is some possibly unreliable backstory and that TDO wants The Plan to succeed for reasons that may be straight up lies.

How could Redcloak's teachings have shaped belief when he doesn't offer any and doesn't know anything to begin with?

When Redcloak put on, well, the red cloak, he had all the knowledge of the Plan blasted into his mind. Before that he was a cleric, so he would have studied his religion more than most goblinoids.

If you're talking to me, that doesn't really answer what I said.

Or I suppose Redcloak not passing along any teachings may give his followers an impression of something like 'The Dark One only cares about killing.'

Edited by Arha on Dec 31st 2020 at 5:14:00 AM

Sort of. While there is only one Bearer of the Red Cloak, there are lots of clerics of the Dark One, and since Redcloak is a "hands off" kind of leader, those clerics would do all the work of spreading the message.

What I'm saying is that I don't see Redcloak doing much or even having much responsibility to act as a spiritual or cultural leader.

Yeah I agree with that.

Redcloak is at least a figurehead, for conquering them a homeland if nothing else. “We love you, Supreme Leader!”

Hm, did we ever get elaboration on that "Xykon periodically vanishing and returning with a new trick" bit?

If you're talking about why he was gone that time, he was setting up his astral fortress. If you're asking why or where he disappears to learn new tricks, I don't think that's particularly relevant to the overall plot.

Edited by Resileafs on Dec 31st 2020 at 1:47:35 PM

In the origin comic, xykon disappears long enough for redcloak to get bored, visit his brother, and very nearly decide to settle down. Then Xykon appeared with an army of trolls in tow and the events of the main comic had to begin

He was probably putting together an army of monsters that would ultimately be used to conquer and inhabit Dorukan's dungeon. Didn't he also find Serini's diary in that time period?

Found and translated it, yes. Supposedly that took up the majority of his time.

It's probably come up before, but I don't remember it, so I ask. I was archive thrawling, and I came across this comic. Here, V says that he cast Sending to Girard and Serini, but got no answer, and he doesn't know whether they are unable or unwilling to answer. We know that Girard is dead. Does anybody think that Serini got the message, but deliberately did not answer, but she is still making preparations to protect the place? I know that there's been speculations that she might be behind the kidnapping of Hinjo and Lien. If so, that's possible that she (or one of her henchmen) was there in the first place because V had contacted her.

I think if Serini was still alive, she'd started making preparations the moment that Soon's gate was destroyed relatively quickly after Dorukan's gate. Not to mention if anything truly raised the state of alert from orange to red, it would be the destruction of Girard's gate, leaving Kraagor's gate as the last line of defense against the end of the world. I have no doubt that Serini also would have something that would warn her about the destruction of the gates. I would not blame V for the kidnapping, especially since at least trying to warn the Order of the Scribble was a perfectly reasonable course of action, regardless of how redundant it might be.

Edited by Frosthead on Jan 14th 2021 at 5:23:10 AM

IIRC, each of the Gates had a thingy that alerted their guardians to the "currently destroyed y/n" status of the other Gates.

When did the last comic go up? It feels like forever ago but maybe it's just been a particularly dramatic couple of weeks

EDIT: Ah, December 19th, so I'm not going crazy.

Edited by johnnye on Jan 21st 2021 at 7:28:39 AM

The last strip was on December 19th. It's been a bit longer than the average time between strips, but part of that gap is Christmas, to be fair.

Yeah it’s been a while, I’m hoping it’s because we’re getting some particularly impressive art.

Both explanations make sense. Obviously the holidays are a thing. But the comic is also likely going to pull some visually impressive stuff when we see the true nature of what the Order just discovered.

Watch it be a conversation entirely in an unremarkable tunnel.

Then it was due to Christmas. No big deal.