The Order of the Stick

Technically his goal is to avoid the great fire below. Cessation of Existence would maybe help but I dunno, might feel as getting off too easy for him. But it could be poetic kinda if he's eaten by the Snarl at the end, I guess?

On the other hand he might fear that even more than being tortured for all eternity?... Just spitballing.

I don't know if such a device exists in canon, but I find amusing the idea that one of the characters in the fight might have some form of an item for escape to such a positive plane, and before they can use it, Zykon snatches it away for his own escape, only to suddenly appear in said positive plane with all the dead heroes surrounding him.

I think if Roy gave up his afterlife and blood oath to ensure the world got saved the Chaotic Good afterlife would roll out a red carpet and a parade for him.

He wouldn't be able to see his family, but he has a lot of friends destined for that afterlife.

Edited by Whowho on May 2nd 2022 at 8:35:05 PM

Careful. He can hear when people spell his name with a Z and he doesn't like that.

It's not the alignment that matters, it's the effect of the Blood Oath. I don't think someone could get away from a Blood Oath by changing alignments.

Couldn't he get a chaotic good god to break the thing as thanks to him. I mean in this scenario it means the snarl isn't a threat there would be tons of Gods that I feel would be willing to bend the rules to get him into their preferred after life. I mean if something like him giving up his blood oath is required I feel like a God that Thor has been shown to be would be willing to do him a solid and break the blood oath for him. Of course that is assuming it even matters since Xykon was still alive when he died and he was still let in to the after life because he tried to full fill the blood oath and was killed during it. The same might hold true for giving up on his blood oath to save the world.

Oh there's true, though it would be in character for the chatoic good afterlife to just ignore a blood oath.

It was in-character for the Lawful Good afterlife to ignore the Blood Oath because Roy died attempting to fulfill it. Lawful good doesn't mean "Follow the rules at all costs", it means "Do the right thing and don't give up".

Exactly.

In fact, I think that he'd still get a chance to go to Lawful Good heaven even if he let Xykon go.

Eugene was only kept out because he didn't try and fulfill the oath (he meets literally every other requirement), so it seems that trying and failing is good compared never tried at all but did everything else correctly.

Plus, they've already judged Roy to be worthy of going in once, so why keep him out again?

Edited by HandsomeRob on May 2nd 2022 at 2:15:21 AM

Yeah I'm of the opinion it would be perfectly in character for a Chaotic Good afterlife to disregard a Blood Oath. Blood Oath's are textbook lawful stuff. Still I agree with the others that the afterlife might consider it more important that he put the safety of the world over his oath. But I strongly suspect that Xykon is not going to become some sort of Karma Houdini.

If Roy gets to the point of deciding that negotiating a ceasefire with Xykon is more productive than killing him, does that fulfil the oath to "defeat him" or is that giving up in the same way his father did? I can see it going either way, but I lean towards the latter because I think the idea of the blood oath is inherently more lawful than good to begin with.

I'm pretty certain that choosing to save all of existence over fulfilling the Blood Oath would not prevent Roy from entering the Lawful Good afterlife on a technicality. That said, there is not likely to be any sort of Happy Ending found in Xykon remaining alive undead and able to commit more mayhem.

Edited by Fighteer on May 2nd 2022 at 6:37:23 AM

Yes, at this point If he actually put the ath over everything else in this hypothetical scenario, forget Lawful, the disqualifying factor would almost certainly be Good from how it seems to me things work.

Edited by LSBK on May 2nd 2022 at 5:42:10 AM

Roy even brings up that point. Xykon's an unrepentant mass murderer whose idea of fun is killing more people (and as Start of Darkness revealed, it's the only thing he can really enjoy since becoming a lich means he cannot taste coffee). The best outcome for most people wouldn't include Xykon being free to keep killing.

Edited by M84 on May 2nd 2022 at 11:57:23 PM

I'm sure a situation could be engineered where it was necessary, but it's not going to happen.

I thinking that the fact that there's an exploitable rift between Xykon and Redcloak is doubtless gonna be important, but also, if he was told Redcloak's been lying to him all along and what he wants isn't possible, Xykon would just murder Redcloak, and possibly a bunch of other people. Which isn't the goal we're shooting for.

The best case scenario of that would be Redcloak and the Order teaming up against Xykon, which, y'know, doesn't involve Xykon's survival being a good thing.

We're probably overthinking this. She explained why she asked—it was just a simple test to see how Roy would react in a hypothetical extreme moral situation (can you set aside revenge on a monster if that's what is needed for peace?). As she noted, she doesn't see it as likely either, but it's an important character moment for Roy that he admitted he'd accept the possibility.

I don't expect the hypothetical to actually go anywhere, Xykon's a Generic Doomsday Villain who's stopped negotiating even with his own minions, but the point of raising the hypothetical is to consider its consequences and the potential consequences for Roy because of his father's oath are interesting.

[gestures broadly at the thread and the website in general]

Plus the comic itself is good at generally making use of this sort of thing as foreshadowing.

For me the benchmark for overthinking is "are we putting more thought into this than the creator(s) themselves clearly did?"

Edited by sgamer82 on May 4th 2022 at 5:10:33 AM

I think that's why this thread can get so mental, because it is clear that at times a humongous amount of thought has gone into certain plot threads in this comic, so we're prepared to expect that again for potentially any plot thread.

At least we're no longer talking about the Holey Brotherhood.

Sunny is just a distraction, a round blob to cover up the hole that is the Brotherhood's plan! *cackles*

The Holey Brotherhood was legitimately plausable as a theory.