29 september 2013 my precious...

[arpfaust]

NO comments about this tweet folks?

I personally think the teapot is going to have a personality.

It makes some kind of sense if you think of it. People have pointed before that the pot could understand your request to teleport ambiguously. (I remember someone saying that FMK would be teleported to Dies if MinMax thought of "the goblins we were chasing")
Ambiguity is impossible if they can actually talk to the teapot and explain who they want to teleport to in a lengthy fashion.

Plus: I think a teapot with a sassy British woman's personality would provide a nice counterpoint to how dark the comic is getting since the MoM.

[ForgetsOldName]

Kin seems to know a lot about it and hasn't mentioned a personality, although she did say it was a curious object. I figured it was Minmax's axe/glove/blender/whatever thing. Anyhow I hope there is some way to resolve all this and get FMK and the teapot back to where ever it is they are going and not either break up the romance or turn Kin into a renegade. But the comic has surprised me before...

[stevedj]

NO comments about this tweet folks?

I personally think the teapot is going to have a personality.

It makes some kind of sense if you think of it. People have pointed before that the pot could understand your request to teleport ambiguously. (I remember someone saying that FMK would be teleported to Dies if MinMax thought of "the goblins we were chasing")
Ambiguity is impossible if they can actually talk to the teapot and explain who they want to teleport to in a lengthy fashion.

Plus: I think a teapot with a sassy British woman's personality would provide a nice counterpoint to how dark the comic is getting since the MoM.

You mean, like this? (sorry, you'll have to skip the ad first)

[Restomak]

Kin's is a "you're screaming in my face" cringe. And Ruby's is a jaw drop + yelling (in Kin's face).

I figured Kin wasn't cringing from yelling, but more because she expected it. I imagined her cringing before she spoke, or as she spoke. Somewhat along the lines of "Now, don't get mad at me, buuuut..."

[AntMac]

WMG: Maybe Kore has been through the Maze of Many, and they're near the entrance, and they somehow push him through it and he is vaporized by the paradox?

Ah, but that makes me remember the thing where Minmax was gunna pee on some part of the entrance that killed dead anyone who touched it. Aha, the blade was deadly.

And MinMax can toss a bullock and a Psimax, maybe he can toss a Paladin-Dwarf?. *Bizzzzit* one less nasty bigot in the world.

[Simon_Jester]

What if she sincerely believes that the necklace must be cursed or something to make Kin do this?

Then she should know it isn't now, because she didn't need a Remove Curse to get it off.

While officially, "cursed items" in D&D require Remove Curse spells, it would hardly strain belief to imagine that Kin₁₅₆ is stuck with a unique cursed item of crude, improvised nature that can be removed by normal means. Especially if it's one that would, all by itself, give the wearer a desire to never remove it on their own.

Hmm. I wonder what happens if a person tries to take 2 items from the room. Is it simply not allowed? (A shield appears that blocks the item off until the person take their hand away, or the item become intangible) or does it trigger a more severe response? (Taking more than 1 item may result in loss of body parts, teleportation of all your bodily fluids outside the body, forced transfiguration, or death. Please consult your cleric before using MoM.)

Or the consistent fan theory of the statue coming to life might actually hold some water.

The Maze treasure room is designed to reward people, so I'd bet on some kind of nonlethal deterrent like a magical shield or intangibility. The Maze is designed to try to kill you until you clear the tower room; after that point there seem to be no more potentially lethal menaces.

Sorcerer-Kin says there's no point in taking loot for the Kins-Only party...

But why doesn't she, and the rest of the Kins, simply take treasure to give to FMK, thus doubling the loot??

Also, I must wonder if Ruby-Kin is intellegent enough to understand the psionic gears, why is it she is so stupid when it comes to quantum physics?? Infinite realities allows for universes where humans and dwarves are anywhere from Good to Evil, Chaotic to Lawful. Why on earth would she assume that humans and dwarves are as evil on an INFINITE number of UNIVERSES, as they are on her own universe?? She's a complete idiot.

She may believe that human nature is actually pretty consistent- at best we have universes where humans and demihumans are violent racist jerks (like the Brassmoon City people, let alone people like Goblinslayer and Kore?) And then you have places where humans and demihumans are even worse, like the tentacle reality.

Prejudice and idiocy are not the same thing.

[willpell]

She may believe that human nature is actually pretty consistent- at best we have universes where humans and demihumans are violent racist jerks (like the Brassmoon City people, let alone people like Goblinslayer and Kore?) And then you have places where humans and demihumans are even worse, like the tentacle reality.

Yuan-ti are also even worse in the tentacle reality (and the blood-god reality and several others), so that part of the argument is moot. And you're kind of missing the point of BanditoWalrus's post, in an infinite multiverse there should be representations of all possibilities, although that contradicts the "evil is winning" we've already heard.

Prejudice and idiocy are not the same thing.

By definition, making assumptions on the basis of a predetermined idea, and then refusing to accept evidence which contradicts it, is prejudice. Minmax is as obviously guileless as a human can get, and yet Ruby still refuses to trust him (despite her altsplanation indicating that she's supposed to be learning to give humans a chance). That makes her a bigot (whether speciesist, sexist or both is debatable). She may have justification for bigotry, but that doesn't mean it doesn't count.

[RocketScientist]

What if she sincerely believes that the necklace must be cursed or something to make Kin do this?

Then she should know it isn't now, because she didn't need a Remove Curse to get it off.

While officially, "cursed items" in D&D require Remove Curse spells, it would hardly strain belief to imagine that Kin₁₅₆ is stuck with a unique cursed item of crude, improvised nature that can be removed by normal means. Especially if it's one that would, all by itself, give the wearer a desire to never remove it on their own.

She just happens to have a unique item that doesn't follow the normal rules of a cursed item? Given to her by someone with an INT below... what was it, 8? And then she doesn't notice when it's removed? Belief strained quite a bit, here.

[Elizabetonth]

2. Realizing that somehow the necklace is tied to her feelings for Minmax, she dumps the necklace into one of the oblivion holes. Thus forgetting that the necklace was given and both forgetting the feelings for each other. Now, while not completely full proof, since Kin realized Minmax had pants in a prior comic even after he threw them into the hole. There isn't anything really able to jog memory that Kin used to have a necklace, such as Minmax never wearing pants would do.[/quote]

Aaaaaah, that'd be SO awful! Minmax totally Saw Kin, though, when he was fighting below and her tail was blown up, so if Ruby does do that, I imagine that he'll do something that demonstrates how much he genuinely cares about Kin, she'll realise, and then she'd better fix the damage she has as yet hypothetically wrought.

[Simon_Jester]

She may believe that human nature is actually pretty consistent- at best we have universes where humans and demihumans are violent racist jerks (like the Brassmoon City people, let alone people like Goblinslayer and Kore?) And then you have places where humans and demihumans are even worse, like the tentacle reality.

Yuan-ti are also even worse in the tentacle reality (and the blood-god reality and several others), so that part of the argument is moot. And you're kind of missing the point of BanditoWalrus's post, in an infinite multiverse there should be representations of all possibilities, although that contradicts the "evil is winning" we've already heard.

Er, to clarify:

BanditoWalrus is right that in an infinite multiverse there should be worlds where all humans and demihumans (and therefore Forgath and Minmax) really are virtuous, noble, and not-racist towards "monster" species.

However, that doesn't mean that Kin_Ruby believes in that, or expects it to happen, or actually expects that any given Minmax or Forgath she runs into will be nice people. She's allowed to have prejudices too, y'know. And her actions will be influenced by her own experiences and expectations, not by those of BanditoWalrus, even though BanditoWalrus is totally right and being logical about all this.

Prejudice and idiocy are not the same thing.

By definition, making assumptions on the basis of a predetermined idea, and then refusing to accept evidence which contradicts it, is prejudice. Minmax is as obviously guileless as a human can get, and yet Ruby still refuses to trust him (despite her altsplanation indicating that she's supposed to be learning to give humans a chance). That makes her a bigot (whether speciesist, sexist or both is debatable). She may have justification for bigotry, but that doesn't mean it doesn't count.

I think Kin_Ruby is very much prejudiced, I quite agree on that point.

In her reality, she was a much colder and more violent person than Kin₁₅₆. And in her reality, Minmax and Forgath were horrible people who were on Dellyn's side, she killed them all, and escaped Brassmoon with the help of another entirely different human. So her "learning to give humans a chance" appears to have more to do with "learning to not automatically try to kill humans on sight." Not so much "learning to trust humans."

Now, within the bounds of her own perspective (humans are untrustworthy, dangerous people, sure some of them are okay, but they're not to be trusted and certainly not to be loved), she is not stupid. She is capable of examining a complicated situation, or an unfamiliar object, and drawing logical conclusions about it. What she is not capable of is (easily) re-examining her own basic assumptions and recognizing that she's being too hard on humans, especially since if we look at most of the humans she'll meet in the Maze of Many, they are not really very nice people.

So she is intelligent, but bigoted- and her bigotry does tie into real, very unpleasant experiences in her own life, it's not just something she's too dumb or ignorant to think about. Thus, she can be smart enough to understand the psionic gears, but not flexible enough to reconsider her feelings about humans when dealing with an alt-universal copy of the guy who probably said "wow that's cool" when Dellyn described how he was using her as a sex slave.

She just happens to have a unique item that doesn't follow the normal rules of a cursed item? Given to her by someone with an INT below... what was it, 8? And then she doesn't notice when it's removed? Belief strained quite a bit, here.

A 'cursed item' which is inferior to a normal cursed item (i.e. easier to take off) would hardly be surprising. Also, she doesn't know the full details of Kin's home universe. We've seen universes where magic rings practically grow on trees, where Kin is a sorceress, where cats are the most common form of life... if we didn't already know that Reality-156 was 'normal,' we'd hardly be surprised to hear someone describe a reality:

"In Reality-XYZ, anyone can make weak cursed magical items as long as they really mean it. In this universe, Minmax wanted to make sure Kin didn't betray them, but still thought the magic collar was kind of creepy... so he put his head together with Forgath to create a cursed necklace of his own, that would make Kin loyal to them. However, Minmax is only slightly smarter than Lenny the monkey-god, so it isn't as hard to remove as a normal cursed magical item."

Kin_Ruby can't assume that's what actually happened, but it's a real possibility for all she knows, and she might want to try it out by seeing whether or not removing the necklace causes any immediate change in Kin_156's behavior. It's more consistent with her prejudices that Kin₁₅₆ is being twisted into loving Minmax by an outside force, than to believe that this is just a natural, honest consequence of Minmax₁₅₆ being such a nice (if stupid and childish) person.

[RocketScientist]

William of Ockham would like a word with you.