May 27, 2015: The Ties That Bind

[Aegis J Hyena]

Huh. I would have thought they'd at least get a Reflex save to dodge that before the ropes... vines... whatever they are, animated and lashed out at them.

[Tofu]

and why cant you just whip around with a knife to cut yourself free. There must be a preventative feature of the ropes/vines to stop that somehow.

I guess (insert ominous music here) that Oblivious is the key to cutting the ropey/vines ...

[Krulle]

As you can grab that from anywhere.

But Minmax would need to change armour colour for that.
(Gray when it last grabbed Oblivious, and his armour is yellow right now)

Another idea to flee: Big Ears could stop to be willing for the Axe to not pass his body, so that it's attached to his armour. If the axe would start falling through him, this could lead to the axe cutting some of the vines.

Well, Thaco at least was able to deflect one vine. Go Monk!


Also: fully shaded permalink: http://www.goblinscomic.org/05302015/

Edit: the transcription:

► Show Spoiler

Minmax: Wow. That is uh... That is a lot of dead adventurers.
Thaco: Let's not end up like them.
Forehead Fumbles: Monster

Complains of Names: Yeah...

Complains of Names: ...I agree.

Fumbles (Senor Vorpal Kickass'o): Look at these ropes.
Big Ears: I wouldn't touch...
Forehead Fumbles: Monster

SFX: Thwip
SFX: Tha-Wip
Minmax: Whoa!
SFX: Wip
Thaco: Hey!
Forehead Fumbles: Monster

SFX: Thuwip
SFX: Wwip

Thaco: What did I just say?! I said let's not end up like them! And what did we do!?
Complains of Names: We ended up like them.
Thaco: We ended up like them!

unshaded image

[mertol]

The goblins didn't drop their weapons so I guess it's not possible to just cut the ropes.

Anyone recognize his character and wanna talk about it?

[RocketScientist]

It would be funny if he grabbed it now and confused us all about the armor color.

[Krulle]

I did not recognise any of the submissions linked in the twitter thread...

Another question: Are they still alive?
I don't see any "rot".

And what is the meaning of the statues?

Dang, this page opens up so many questions, I can hardly look at it without frustration of having no answers.

And Fumbles fumbled (triggering the vineyard).

[Insane Kitty]

I wonder if Thac0 will be able to escape bonds, or if MinMax has traded something to get out of sticky situations.

[mertol]

He wasn't able to escape the shield of wonder...

[Zathyr]

Or that lake monster before that. This is exactly the kind of situation Forgath would normally get Minmax out of.

And while Thaco chose to be a monk to have escape artist as a class skill, and presumably has max ranks as well as the feat he took to raise his bonus, we've yet to actually see him escape from any of the binds he's been in. Will this be his moment, or will he continue to be ineffective? Tune in next page for the exciting continuation!

[Sidewaysgts]

Unless were missing something, I dont think well be seeing them need oblivious to get them out of here- His hand was gray the last we saw it, which is still a possibility, but the room behind the hand looked distinctly red. So unless something changes big time..

[SpeaksManyLanguages]

Yeah, the adventurers are definitely dead.
Am I right that every adventurer has a statue under him? Or are the statues placed randomly?
All the adventurers have their weapons dropped to the floor, that is weird.

I'm pretty sure, Ears will play a key role here. We had him play around with the Axe on the last page.

[extrabigmehdi]

Finally a bit some excitement in the story. I was a bit bored with the lame jokes, and all the initial elements to show the "settings".

[Krulle]

Courtesy of SpeaksManyLanguages:

One of the characters was courtesy of @Kaoticken

► Show Spoiler

(Pasted here, as this thread is as relevant to this as the Twitter thread, where we collected some submissions to Thunt...)

[Dana Son-of-Bear]

Okay, here's my second post, because I came to geek out about the fact that there's a tiny chance I may be immortalized in another one of my absolute favorite comics. (I'd link the first but I'm not sure if that's against the rules.) After all, there's only seven of the fifteen characters Thunt estimated he'd need. So there's possibly another eight dead adventurers hanging around off-panel.

I guess (insert ominous music here) that Oblivious is the key to cutting the ropey/vines ...

But Minmax would need to change armour colour for that.
(Gray when it last grabbed Oblivious, and his armour is yellow right now)

It's possible Minmax says something about the gray death-tentacles before grabbing Oblivious.

I'm hoping more of the adventurers are identified, because now I'm curious about their stories and whatnot.

[Krulle]

You're fine when linking within a context.
You're also fine just naming the comic, or linking using the specific webcomic thread in the community subforum...

[Squidangel]

And what is the meaning of the statues?

The statues all seem to have blindfolds.

[Krulle]

One of the dead characters is named Moira:

Ohhh Moira, why'd you have to touch the purple ropes? (Probably b/c her fav color is purple..) Thanks @Thunt_Goblins! pic.twitter.com/neuJkqkDTa

► Show Spoiler

edited in second picture, as the tweet was updated later

[Dana Son-of-Bear]

And what is the meaning of the statues?

The statues all seem to have blindfolds.

Or at least some kind of head wrap. The center-left statue seems to have its bind missing the left eye. Or where the left eye should be. The statue just to the left of that one looks more like a bandanna than a blindfold, but it could be looking up or something to that effect.

Krulle - thanks for the clarification. I just don't want to step on toes.

[stevedj]

Am I right that every adventurer has a statue under him? Or are the statues placed randomly?
All the adventurers have their weapons dropped to the floor, that is weird.

A couple of thoughts ...

Our team didn't drop their weapons when grabbed, so it seems reasonable that all those dead adventurers also kept hold of their weapons/stuff.
Later, they died, and then dropped their weapons.
Some weapons are on the floor, clearly nowhere near a statue.

So no, every adventurer doesn't have a statue under them ... at least at this present time.

It is interesting that the statues are all perfectly positioned on their stones. It almost looks like a deformed chess board, or at least game board (not dual-colored like chess).

Hmmm... Do the statues move, like pieces in a game? Can you order them to move? (i.e. Harry Potter 1 when Ron played the life-sized chess board?)

More thinking needed...

[Dovearrow]

Yay! My character is dead on this page. He's the elf on the far right in the blue cloak. His name is Anandale. The book on the floor is his as well.

[MyLiege]

I can't help but note that every statue is blindfolded. The two that have the blindfold slanted and only over a single eye have either a bleeding eye or a giant helm obscuring vision over that one eye. I'm thinking the solution to this involves being able to see or not see.

[ForgetsOldName]

I see eight "colored" characters and as many as 19 characters in silhouette. There are probably fewer than 19 because some might be different parts of the same adventurer and a lot of the silhouettes are effectively just blobs. I think there are at least 15 adventurers in silhouette, assuming everything we're looking at qualifies as an adventurer and no one is in pieces.

Any way you calculate it though, there are only 14 statues in the frame, and even if we shifted some statues out of the frame based on some adventurers being partly out of the frame themselves, there are more adventurers than statues.

What I find most interesting about the whole scene is that everyone looks pretty fresh for a bunch of corpses. Clearly a lot of them died while looking at something unpleasant, yet none of them seem to have been injured in any way. They do not seem to be in rigor mortis. Also, I wonder if Kaotickin's character is Willowing, wide-eyed, or has empty eyes sockets.

[RocketScientist]

Congratulations to everybody who got a character in the scene!

[Dana Son-of-Bear]

@Dovearrow - Don't suppose you could supply more information for us character geeks? I'm assuming he's a wizard?

For everyone else - I agree they look fresh, but it's possible they're a week old or so. Rigor mortis only lasts about a day before the enzymes that cause it begin to denature, and so the corpses would start to go limp again. After that, one of the first signs of decay would be bloating due to bacteria, and since some of them, such as Anandale, look pretty tied up, it's possible the deathtentacles simply held them tight enough to allow them to look like the Pillsbury Dough Boy.

While some (Kaoticken's character) look like their screaming in horror, (after all, they were just murdered by deathtentacles) the others look like... well, normal, slightly decayed corpses. The muscles that hold your mandible closed go limp just like every other muscle after rigor mortis. It's actually rather well-known and was taken into account in burial practices prior to our current embalming processes.

If the jaw isn't strapped shut when a body is mummified, it naturally falls open during the process of decay, leaving a permanent "scream." Most modern burial practices account for this -- the ghost of Jacob Marley, Scrooge's business partner in A Christmas Carol, is always shown with that weird headband/chinstrap for precisely this reason.

Source is here, though I should note that cracked.com tends to use language that is not PG-13 and is highly addictive. Also, that article is particularly scary, so don't read it in the middle of the night.

So, once more, using our buddy Anandale as an example, it's possible they had a quick death. As anticlimactic as that is. Though, fighting off what could be a quick death would certainly be exciting for the... can we call them the GAP since they're tolerating Minmax now? "GAP+M?"

Also, obligatory "It's magic" hand wave

[Simon]

Ooh interesting comic, I can't wait to see what happens next!

I don't think it's been mention yet, so to add to the dead body discussion, the shading hasn't been done yet ( I don't think?) so more obvious signs of decay could be added later. We may just be seeing the bodies before any rot/mummification stuff is added.

I was thinking about the vine things. It's a pretty unlikely idea, but what if it lets you control the statues? I can't really see exactly how the vines wrap round (like, is it one vine for each arm and leg) but by 'moving' (or trying to move) it could confer that to the statues. The blindfolds on the statue could signify that you can't see through it. Or maybe the statue's 'eyes' take the IME of the controller. Probably not though. Why would they be on pillars for one thing, and you may expect some statues to be holding weapons if people could control them.