The Order of the Stick

I was mostly thinking in terms of being afraid that her new allies would eventually get tortured or mind-read for information. In that case, why give them a little information if she can give them false information?

I mean, there are several reasons not to lie to them if my suspicions are correct, but Serini is the exact kind of person who would outwit herself like that.

Edited by Tharkun140 on May 25th 2022 at 6:48:58 PM

I think if Redcloak realizes he's been trapped in a dungeon, he's just going to Word of Recall to the bugbear village.

Which is why I think they should throw O-Chul at him. It's not as easy to do as I'd thought since I was misremembering how the swap-over works,^note They'd have to temporarily disable the swap-over, let O-Chul across, reactivate it, let him cross again, then break it but if Redcloak spots his hated enemy, the escaped paladin prisoner who took his eye, he won't want to escape, he'll want to attack. And the MITD will be on hand to stop Redcloak from hurting his friend, and Xykon won't be on hand to hurt him anyway, and basically it could lead to all kinds of interesting character interactions and more hints about the MITD's identity, if not a reveal yet. Durkon should go too, to keep working on Redcloak for Thor. Nah, they need the cleric to fight the lich.

Edited by HeraldAlberich on May 25th 2022 at 1:32:13 PM

That’s awfully manipulative, as well as requiring out-of-character knowledge about Team Evil’s motivations.

You think? From what O-Chul has said, I think he has enough knowledge or suspicions about both Redcloak and the MITD to predict their behavior in this circumstance. He spent months with them, after all. And he’d probably phrase the idea differently, as a chance for the Monster to show his true potential and complete his journey of self-discovery and whatnot.

The Mit D is not even at the scene. We haven't seen him participate to the search for the dwarves at all. He's probably hanging out in the village somewhere.

I'm pretty sure it is stated you can't teleport through the dungeon (besides the swap-over trick, that is).

I thought it was that you couldn't phase through the dungeon. It's made from "multidimensional stone", which I believe is a homebrew. It prevents spells from letting people pass through the walls. I don't think it blocks teleportation, though.

By definition, a barrier that blocks teleportation also blocks plane shifting and other forms of interdimensional movement. At least this is true if the world is following standard D&D 3.x rules. This is because most such forms of travel use alternate dimensions, such as the Ethereal and Astral planes, to operate. Depending on how psionics rules work in this setting, it's possible that psionic teleportation would not be blocked by barriers to dimensional travel, but we left Lauren behind on the Western Continent.

You can clearly teleport out of the dungeon, that's what the swapovers do. They send people in the caves out of the caves, and people from out of the caves back into the caves. Or, I suppose, to and from different parts of the caves.

This pretty strongly implies Word of Recall isn't interdimensional travel, since it only functions on one plane. And it could function on any plane, not only the Material, so it's not an Ethereal plane trick or something like that.

Teleportation isn't travel through another plane, it's not travel while intangible at instantaneous speeds, it's just going from point A to point B directly. Stuff can interfere with teleportation, but that's magical effects; this stone is just multidimensional. As in, it exists in more than the usual dimensions. Specifically, it exists in the corresponding place in any coexistent planes. You hop over to the Ethereal Plane to abuse your intangibility to the Material while there, but find that the caves are still there, still physical and in your way. That's all it is.

Barriers that block teleportation generally block extradimensional travel, but that's not the direction we're working from. It's a much weaker implication from "Barrier that blocks Ghostform and Ethereal Jaunt" to "Barrier that blocks teleportation".

Oh wait. I went to double check something, and see V's hypothesis here. It seems I'm right about the mechanisms entirely, but some instantaneous forms of teleportation might be utilizing the Ethereal (or Plane of Shadow, or any other plane the stones exist in) in this world, even if their RAW versions don't.^note Unless I'm wrong about the kind of spell Serini's wand uses, which I definitely could be, it shouldn't rely on the Ethereal, RAW. So it comes down to how the author thinks Word of Recall works with respect to that, I suppose.

Edited by RaichuKFM on May 25th 2022 at 4:37:41 AM

The pass-overs may be designed not to transport people directly through any of the extradimensionally warded rocks. And as far as I remember, all forms of teleportation are extradimensional in D&D 3.x, although I'd have to check the SRD to make sure.

This is what happens when you try too hard to explain teleportation. It can never be as simple as "You were there and now you are here."

Though D&D is far from the only media to interpret teleporting as taking a quick jog through the Teleport Dimension to arrive at the other end. Don't see why they'd need to, though. There's basically only one utility for a Teleport Dimension: Allowing teleportation to be intercepted by other teleporters or by something within the Teleport Dimension itself.

But I don't think D&D has a rule for counter-teleporting into someone's teleport and then fighting them inside the teleport itself?

Edited by TobiasDrake on May 25th 2022 at 1:50:40 AM

The "teleport dimension" is an existing plane, like the Ethereal or Astral, depending on the ability. There is no need to invent new cosmology when what you already have will serve just as well.

Oh yeah, you're right, I'm wrong. Apparently the default teleportation explanation when nothing different is mentioned in 3.5 is through the Astral Plane, even if only barely touching it for an instant.

This is... hard to square with the notion of the multidimensional stone blocking teleportation by just existing in "the same place" in those other dimensions. Because the Material decidedly does not map one-to-one onto some portion of the Astral. Multiple different points in the Astral sea could each take you to any given point in the Material. As I understand it, there's not even any proper presentation of structure, generally, so even multiple copies of the rocks don't really suffice.

But it's not impossible to square. To borrow some terminology, I'm going to say a point in the Astral which is "touching" a point (in a given moment) is an "image" of that point.

I guess maybe 'direct travel' teleportation happens to go along a very short straight line in the Astral which is the image of longer straight line in the Material. So on the points of that line which are images of points containing multidimensional stone, the Astral has to contain that stone (because it exists everywhere the image of its point in space exists). But then this would require compressing that stone in the Astral, because the images aren't smaller, just closer together. So the whole stone would be squeezed into a smaller area. But that would be as hard as (and the same as) compressing the stone in the Material and that isn't something teleportation spells can do. So the spell fails to set up the Astral and fizzles before you exit.

But, if the straight line in the Material doesn't pass through the stone, the line in the Astral doesn't contain any multidimensional stone and there's no issue. And more sophisticated teleportation spells can go through the Astral, but aren't so lazy with the path selection and compression, so those effects aren't interfered with by the stone. The swapovers seem to essentially be a tunnel between two points, so the Astral endpoint(s) are already formed.

I'm entirely confident the author did not sit down and work this all out, but I am pretty confident this is going to be the right answer nonetheless; it's a formal version of "You can't teleport from point A to point B if there's stone in between those points, except for the swapovers which we see doing that".

See, it wasn't that I tried too hard to explain teleportation, last post. I simply didn't try too hard enough.

Sure, that's... good work. See also the spell dimensional anchor, which prevents all forms of teleportation by preventing the target from leaving its current plane of existence.

#1259: By Size, Color, and Number of Holes

I love it when leaders appreciate the capabilities of their subordinates.

This is building up to be quite the heroic charge!

Which, naturally, means the inevitable failure will be all the more epic.

Yes, that's probably true, but it makes me wonder what sort of rabbit Team Evil is going to pull out of its hat. Because, numerically speaking, the Order should be at a fairly decent advantage here.

That said, hitting Team Evil while their resources are depleted is a sound tactical move. If they go up against two high-level casters with a full suite of prepared spells, it's going to be quite the fight.

Also, the question of where the actual Gate is has suddenly become relevant. While Xykon is too easily distracted to figure it out, I wouldn't put it past Redcloak once he realizes that there is a deception.

Edited by Fighteer on Jun 8th 2022 at 10:17:00 AM

Speaking of, since they're once again settling down to go over what we already know, the time is ripe for a scene change. Good odds we're about to see Redcloak have his "Eureka!" Moment.

It is Redcloak who thought about creating the three fake Xykons at Azure City, he's the most likely to realize he might have gotten caught in the same trick he pulled.

Alternatively, the Mot D brings it up off-handedly and Redcloak has a 'Eureka' moment.

There's precedent for that second option too, with Tsukiko and the Ritual.

The heroes have their acts together, and are figuring out their plan.

Time for things to go wrong.

I'm amused by Haley's muttered threat at Serini; that particular joke wasn't ever that funny to me and I'm not a huge fan of Serini in the first place.(Though I don't think Serini would have thwacked Haley anyways; it was a reasonable question.)

Mostly I just love Minrah's line in the last panel. Whatever reason Rich had for adding her for this last arc, totally worth it.

The place is called Backstage. I love that. The implication that this whole portal network trick isn't even a Gate defense. It's just a logistical component of the dungeon design. The Order accidentally solved the fourth wall, not the Gate puzzle!

Edited by TobiasDrake on Jun 8th 2022 at 9:44:37 AM

"Unstructured alliance-building exercise"