May 13, 2016: The Cracking of Reality

[wordelo]

permalink: http://www.goblinscomic.org/05132016-2/

So I'm not sure if anyone else noticed this but when he said "only a corner is infected." I actually looked at the corner of the page and it is cracking and glowing red. if you go back at the other two pages they are also cracking.

[CocoaNutCakery]

Look familiar?

I know we've been pretty certain at this point, but it's still kind of cool.

[Guus]

So the DM decided that the axe was going to break here anyway regardless, because the "monsters" were were introduced with a broken axe. Great.

[Lurks_In_Shadows]

Where's a Time Lord when you need one?

[mertol]

I now noticed that the bottom right corner of the strip has been cracking the last 3 updates too...

[TurtleShotty]

We dont see Fumbles daemon alt after Ears shattered the axe on his face. So I assuming that since Ears killed fumbles unknowingly and fumbles was 1/11 paladin it was an evil act that destroyed the axe.

[CocoaNutCakery]

We dont see Fumbles daemon alt after Ears shattered the axe on his face. So I assuming that since Ears killed fumbles unknowingly and fumbles was 1/11 paladin it was an evil act that destroyed the axe.

He's in the top panel here.

[Strawberrycocoa]

I like how in the last panel of today's they are standing in the same poses we first saw the "demon" party in: http://www.goblinscomic.org/03132016-2/

[YardMeat]

I'm still thinking the Axe's shattering has more to do with the staff. BE was defending himself against an attacking party, so I don't think it would count as an evil act for him to attack demon-Fumbles; however, we've seen the Fumbles's staff vaporize stuff on contact before.

I'm also wondering if we are going to get some clues as to how Complains's new sword works soon. Lots of stuff going on: What's with the staff? What's with the sword? Why did the Axe break? How far away is Kore? How long to we have before the demon god shows up? I'm still feeling some MM-level confusion here.

[Krulle]

Cudos to all those great guessers!

Now, for the first time since Goblinscomic, the comic is breaking the fourth wall, although it's still a slow process?

I wonder how this'll play out...... ...

[Rooks]

So the DM decided that the axe was going to break here anyway regardless, because the "monsters" were were introduced with a broken axe. Great.

Sure seems that way doesn't it? Back when I played, our DM did that a handful of times and everytime it nearly ended the campaign outright. Most of the time though he sort of "bought" us off by giving us uber rewards though. Haha... only way I see around this is if somehow leaving the room also reverses the effects on the parties items? But with the corner of the pages now cracking and seeming to indicate a countdown to the demon, it doesn't seem likely.

Overall, I'm super excited to see where this goes. I'm a little bummed it seems like we are 20+ updates away from the demon being released unless the progression of the cracking goes faster.

[Gift Fastidious]

It's been noticed that the monster-versions seem to be talking to a klik in the ealrier panel. They're been pretty loose in enforcing their rules so far, I'm thinking it might have arranged something where it covers the ake in klik stuff as a way of helping to seal it further, while also covering the party, which would have the side affect of makign them appear demonic.

[Sessine]

I like how in the last panel of today's they are standing in the same poses we first saw the "demon" party in: http://www.goblinscomic.org/03132016-2/

They really are the same, down to many small details!

[RocketScientist]

Even the speech bubble more or less match.

[Guus]

So it's safe to say that the axe, being broken, has an overwhelming evil aura, which means it's able to drown out other auras. But still BE was defending himself and wouldn't have done so if the axe wasn't already destined to be broken, so I guess the time had passed anyways. I have trouble believing a group of Paladins wouldn't somehow add a safeguard against dispelling magic, so I'm in camp "you should've been more active Paladin-y, BE!", but I suspect I'm alone there :,)

[Mereneth]

If I were to guess based on three panels of corruption, the demon shows up in about 13 panels.

[YardMeat]

So it's safe to say that the axe, being broken, has an overwhelming evil aura, which means it's able to drown out other auras. But still BE was defending himself and wouldn't have done so if the axe wasn't already destined to be broken, so I guess the time had passed anyways. I have trouble believing a group of Paladins wouldn't somehow add a safeguard against dispelling magic, so I'm in camp "you should've been more active Paladin-y, BE!", but I suspect I'm alone there :,)

The Paladins may have had safeguards, but we have no idea how powerful that staff could be. Maybe I'm in denial, but I just don't see how BE has been anything other than a good paladin so far.

[Guus]

It's not that he's been bad, it's that he hasnt been doing active good deeds. The whole thing of the axe is that it needs to be actively used doing good deeds or the prison weakens, and although BE hasn't been bad, he hasn't been proactive doing good deeds either. So the axe might be breaking despite BE, not because he's been bad.

[YardMeat]

It's not that he's been bad, it's that he hasnt been doing active good deeds. The whole thing of the axe is that it needs to be actively used doing good deeds or the prison weakens, and although BE hasn't been bad, he hasn't been proactive doing good deeds either. So the axe might be breaking despite BE, not because he's been bad.

*Shrug* He seems pretty proactively good to me. His actions in Brassmoon, his attempt to save Chief.

[Krulle]

The thing about the axe is.... marginally acceptable to me anyways....

In the AoP wielder pages, several times he axe is hidden by their iwners, partly due to age of the wielder and he axe not zaving been passed on, partly because the deaf paladin hides out with hus family.
Hiding, or going in pension quickly surpasses 13 months, as well as an axe having been "lost" in a dungeon due to the adventurer/wielder having fallen to a trap.

But it makes nice stories....

[Gift Fastidious]

It's been noticed that the monster-versions seem to be talking to a klik in the ealrier panel. They're been pretty loose in enforcing their rules so far, I'm thinking it might have arranged something where it covers the ake in klik stuff as a way of helping to seal it further, while also covering the party, which would have the side affect of makign them appear demonic.

Oh wait, that's the Fumble's demon, not a klik.

[Syonique]

One of two possibilities I see here:
1) The goblins and Minmax 'follow the script', fight their past selves, point to the doorway, and once their past selves pass through... then are still in the same room (so then what, they go back to the arched hallway and go out the far door they were originally trying to sneak towards?).

2) The goblins and Minmax try to 'break the loop'. Maybe someone (Big Ears?) makes a noble sacrifice to try to prevent the axe from breaking.

Of significant note: Minmax's Oblivious already demonstrates that the timeline is effectively already set in the Goblins universe (since it passes messages back and forth between future and past). The same 'oblivion tech' that was used in the sword's reforging has also been demonstrated as being able to retroactively change the timeline (eg. Kin's necklace). So it's sort of like Back to the Future in the sense that 'the future is already set, unless something goes into the past to change it'. So the 'demonic duplicate axe' appearing cracked when first introduced is internally consistent with how the Goblins universe works and not some real-life DM taking away a player's free will, if you will.

Observation:
Minmax drops Oblivious in one of the panels on 5/2 (at least by the last panel when he throws up his hands and says, "Okay, that's it! I have no idea what's going on anymore!" - but it's possible he dropped it in one of the earlier panels, or in between panels, at a time when he wasn't speaking).
Minmax re-draws the sword in panel 3 of 5/13, when saying "This was the lamest, most confusing room ever. I'm glad to be leaving it."
There are no speech bubbles coming from either comic from future/past Minmax. While it's quite feasible that dropping Oblivious was done off-panel sometime during 5/2, I can't help but feel that past Minmax would pay attention to future Minmax saying something like, "This was the lamest, most confusing room ever. I'm glad to be leaving it." - that's kind of VERY PERTINENT information and not something that he'd ignore, even if he was dropping the sword off-panel. One rationale is if future Minmax was just quietly muttering his complaint on 5/13, too quietly for it to be heard through Oblivious's time-tunnel.
Another possibility is if there's a break in the timeline - an alternate future timeline wherein Minmax does NOT make that same complaint about the room, would mean that past Minmax doesn't hear said complaint. As demonstrated, Thunt is careful enough in his long-distance future planning to make this entirely plausible.

Either way, it's promising to be an interesting journey!

[Mekronid]

The demon-selves and mirrored rooms are symbolic of their "crossing over" from being a good group to a bad one. This is why the demons pointed at the door - it was their time to cross over.

Why? Because the axe shattered. That was the final straw in Ears' conversion, Names is more of an unfortunate bystander, or perhaps the catalyst which allowed Ears to lose himself. The axe requires a stream of selfless acts, whereas Ears' acts have been entirely selfish. Notice the color of Ears' aura. It's a mix of gray and yellow in battle, but only yellow outside of battle, which means she's conflicted when she fights.

However, this isn't the only oddity. When they're standing at the gate to the dungeon solving the tree/key puzzle, she's just about to go help Forgath. But Names, the group's half-demon, tells her not to be selfless for an enemy... and she listens! Again, when Names wants to kill Minmax for selfish reasons, she does nothing despite knowing it's wrong. Both times her aura turned gray with a hint of yellow. Just after that, it turned entirely gray like Kore's - right when she wanted to kill Minmax for racist reasons, yet to her the reason was just. In other words, since she's gotten the axe, she's become more and more deluded by her own self-righteousness. She had even begun to take pleasure in Minmax's suffering, seeing him as an unrepentant evil.

The most important point is that the axe was designed when Paladins would lose their powers for committing evil acts. However, in the Goblins world, it's probably no longer the "old days" where Paladins lose their powers for being a douche. Because thaco mentioned that 3.5 is a thing in terms of how old he is, it's likely we're at D&D 4.0, which means paladins can be any alignment. This is hinted at numerous times throughout the comic, notably when Ears lies to Minmax about losing her powers, then offhandedly remarks that she won't lose them. She basically pointed out that she was losing her "good" alignment just a few minutes before the axe exploded.

So clearly, despite wanting to be a good and selfless person, Ears is well on her way to becoming like Kore, because her personal "virtues" take precedence over her selfless ideals. I think the gray soul color is supposed to literally represent the "gray and gray morality" trope. The axe exploding had little to do with fighting the demon-selves and everything to do with Ears' warped personality. If the demon-selves staff did indeed disintegrate the axe, it's only because the axe was weakened while possessed by at least two selfish and amoral actors.

[nikohl]

....which allowed Ears to lose herself. ...

All else aside: Big Ears is male. Not a "she"

[Sessine]

A minor point:

Because the Drow are present, it's now definitely D&D 4.0, which means...

Drow were around at least as far back as AD&D 2.0, so one cannot deduce anything from their presence in the story. (I seem to recall Thunt has said that Goblins goes by 3.0 with maybe a touch of 3.5. Or maybe it's all 3.5? In any case, definitely not 4.0.)