30, April--What's Going On?

[SamWiser]

Link

I'm with you Minmax. I'm with you.

[RocketScientist]

Agreed. I am so confused!

[SpeaksManyLanguages]

One of the russian fans' theory: this is a door that rolls back time.

[WastesTime]

The comic completely lost its momentum due to Thunt's sad episode, I am really happy that both he and his masterpiece have regained it!

[Sidewaysgts]

Im guessing these "bad guys" werent really "bad guys", which is why when ears finally made contact with the axe it shattered?

Now we gotta play the waiting game again

Also seeing some nifty little protrusions coming from names back now as well.

[LarsenSan]

The theory about these "demons" being MinMax and the GAP in the future distorted by illusion magic makes more sense. Just look at the red one's legs; yup, that's Complains.

Also, another theory: the axe's demon and Klik Jr. are going to clash and kill each other.

[SpeaksManyLanguages]

Another theory/elaboration on what's going from russian comments

It looks like the demons are the GAP and Minimax themselves from future (but not very far). The magic of the room has made their speech unrecognizable for them-from-the-past. I.e. behind the door they'll start discussing something and they'll hear a sound from behind the columns. Then there'll be a rush of demons from there, talking a non-decipherable language. And then Big Ears will see how a big eared demon will hit Fumbles and an explosion, just like the one from the past, will happen. They will stop fighting and point at the door for the demons. That's it. A temporal loop door/room. This theory incapsulates/explains why the Green demon's axe started up shattered and the Red one had backwards legs. And superevil that Ears felt was from the broken axe, not from the demons themselves.

(it looks like this theory is flying around on these forums too, but still, i thought it was worth translating. I hope the russian commenter wasn't translating the english theory himself)

[Guus]

Not much to say about this one, I'll leave my comments for the next comic when it hopefully makes a bit of sense. I really don't get it.

[extrabigmehdi]

I think that complains was already transforming in the past as a demon.
And he is completing his transformation now, because of the axe fragment he received.
All the bad guys are pointing the door , to tell him to rejoin hell or something like that.
There's also the potential idea, that all the "Goblin Adventuring Party", would transform as demons.
And the "bad guys", are actually a copy of themselves coming from the future.
Since they were fighting against themselves, no one could win.
All what the "bad copies" could do , is tell the GAP to join hell, and accelerate the transformation process.

[sryshti]

http://www.goblinscomic.org/12232008/
The comic wherein Complains partially transformed into a demon, for those who may want to revisit it.
I was forgetting how powerfully emotional this comic can be -- the impact can be a little lessened reading it at 1 pg/wk
Felt good to read a sizeable chunk of it again =)

[Yamadasan]

The breaking of the axe has changed the Final Boss status from Dov the crazy to SUPER HELL DEMON in the span of two panels. That's how big the breaking axe is.


I feel that this demon will take up the remainder of the Goblins plot, being our end goal...who isn't yet nearly in sight...but totally just got set up.

[Gazirra]

I still say they're some sort of Klik thing... look at the green one, and tell me it's not Forgath

[YardMeat]

I still say they're some sort of Klik thing... look at the green one, and tell me it's not Forgath

IMO, it's not Forgath. It's some sort of mirror of Big Ears. I don't think it is a coincidence that this "demon" group had the exact same numbers and weapon array as the GAP. There's no way it is a coincidence that the demon's axe was cracked, just like BE's axe, or that one of the demons has backwards legs, just like Complains.

[Gazirra]

I still say they're some sort of Klik thing... look at the green one, and tell me it's not Forgath

IMO, it's not Forgath. It's some sort of mirror of Big Ears. I don't think it is a coincidence that this "demon" group had the exact same numbers and weapon array as the GAP. There's no way it is a coincidence that the demon's axe was cracked, just like BE's axe, or that one of the demons has backwards legs, just like Complains.

My argument is based on the similarities between Forgath and the green guy. It has the same build and size of Forgath. It has one hand covered and it's holding an axe. It even has an echo of the Racist Axe and Forgath's horned helmet. Plus, currently Forgath has a green Klik patch on his head.

[YardMeat]

I still say they're some sort of Klik thing... look at the green one, and tell me it's not Forgath

IMO, it's not Forgath. It's some sort of mirror of Big Ears. I don't think it is a coincidence that this "demon" group had the exact same numbers and weapon array as the GAP. There's no way it is a coincidence that the demon's axe was cracked, just like BE's axe, or that one of the demons has backwards legs, just like Complains.

My argument is based on the similarities between Forgath and the green guy. It has the same build and size of Forgath. It has one hand covered and it's holding an axe. It even has an echo of the Racist Axe and Forgath's horned helmet. Plus, currently Forgath has a green Klik patch on his head.

Could be, but it seems weird that there would be doubles for everyone else in the group except for BE, and then a double for Forgath, even though Forgath isn't there. There just seem to be way more similarities between the two groups as a whole than there are between the green guy and Forgath.

There are five members of the GAP.
There are five "demons."

Fumbles has a staff.
One of the "demons" has a staff.

Thaco fights unarmed.
One of the "demons" fights unarmed.

Minmax is larger than the rest of the group and has a sword.
One of the "demons" is larger than the rest of his group and also has a sword.

Complains has a sword and backwards legs.
One of the "demons" has a sword and backwards legs.

BE has a broken axe.
One of the "demons" has a broken axe.

Either:

1) The "demons" are some sort of mirror group, or
2) Forgath has gone back to using the racist axe as an axe (even though it can be any other weapon), the big "demon" is Bowst, Idle just happens to be one of the others (maybe the one with the staff?), and two kliks have formed the rest of the party, Forgath's color is determined by one of the many patches on his body while the colors of the others are seemingly random, the rest of the weapons just happen to match the weapons of the GAP (including a damaged axe for some reason), the fact that one "demon" and one member of the GAP has backwards legs is purely a coincidence, and Forgath and his group would have some reason to understand what is happening with the GAP enough to indicate where they should go next

1 explains a lot more of the similarities and requires far fewer coincidences.

[Liquidmark]

It's future versions of minmax and that gap. That's why they instantly stopped when the axe broke. They realized that they had been through that before from the opposite side. There's some sort of illusion. Of course, if there is an illusion, it could be possible that kore might not be a big threat. He could be experiencing an illusion that would make everyone look good to him by his standards.

[Baphomet]

Gonna quote myself from last thread:

So picture this. The GAP manages to defeat the demons, but something weird happens. Maybe they've just killed the one that Big Ears just hit with the Axe, and the rest disappeared? Maybe the rest fled? Maybe they were all killed off, but acted strangely at the end? Maybe some other unrevealed property of the room causes the combat to end weirdly. In any case, something about the end of the encounter with the demons makes them stand there where the fight took place and talk, to re-evaluate what just happened in this room. Big Ears explains that the demon from the Axe will probably emerge in 13 days since it is broken now. Someone brings up the possibility that there's some sort of weird time shenanigans happening here. Someone suggests that the demons were their future selves, and they might be in a time loop where their past selves are sneaking in right this second, but will see them as the demons. Suddenly, Minmax's voice can be heard yelling from the other side of the ledge. Their past selves are here! Maybe they look like demons too?

Minmax instantly screams and charges, because that might be past Minmax over there, and present Minmax hates that guy. The others all rush in to try to stop the inevitable. Fumbles and Thaco go in to stop Past!Big Ears, maybe to prevent the demon from being released. Past!Complains bowls Fumbles over effortlessly. Fumbles, not very smart and still coming to terms with what's going on here, gets mad at Complains and tries to take it out on him by hitting Past!Complains with the staff. Complains looks over at Fumbles, tells him he's an idiot, that he has a bruise from that attack because this fight already happened, it's him that he's hurting, see? Kind of wanting to demonstrate and kind of being angry, he tags Past!Fumbles in the shoulder with the sword, still looking at him, not really engaging the encounter as real combat. Fumbles figures it out finally, realizes that means Past!Big Ears is about to get him with the axe and cause the explosion a moment too late, and gets viciously cut down by Past!Big Ears, breaking his axe since he's killing his friend. Everyone freaks out that Fumbles just died. They act strangely. Something weird happens, possibly resulting in a TPK, or possibly something to do with the room, or maybe everyone just flees. In any case the combat stops and the GAP are no longer present.

Their past selves think it was weird how that thing just happened, and stop to talk about what they think is going on in the room. Past!Big Ears explains that he expects that the demon will fully emerge in 13 days since the axe broke. Someone brings up the possibility that there's some sort of time loop going on in the room. Meanwhile, Past!Past!Big Ears is hiding behind the ledge with the rest of the Past!Past!GAP, casting Detect Evil and being overwhelmed by the evil aura radiating from the broken axe...and the story repeats.

Except, something has to break them out of the loop. I'm not sure how they might do that, but I'm gonna guess Oblivious has something to do with it. Because, you know, it has some weird time-travel properties of its own, and Minmax is going to be pissed off that the one goblin he kind of liked is dead now. Maybe he manages to communicate something to a past self to get him to kill Past Big Ears before Past Big Ears can kill Past Fumbles? I'm going down a rabbit hole of speculation here but that would make some kind of sense.

Looks like it's all coming together. Note that the yellow "demon", which is future Fumbles, is conspicuously absent from view except for a sliver of him at the bottom of panel 1. You can't even tell what angle he's at here, but I bet he's lying facedown on the ground. The weird thing that happened after combat is now revealed to be the demons immediately disengaging and then pointing at the door. Complains is now going entirely demonic, which would also trigger Big Ears's detect evil.

[Sinik17]

Green "demon's" axe is cut as well.
The Prissan axe is bleeding demon stuff, hence why ears said "SOOO EVIL" he's sensing his residual axe juice. Probably a time traveling door similar to oblivious.

[Guus]

Evil auras are a b*tch

[Glemp]

Green "demon's" axe is cut as well.
The Prissan axe is bleeding demon stuff, hence why ears said "SOOO EVIL" he's sensing his residual axe juice. Probably a time traveling door similar to oblivious.

Ooh, that's a good one.

[YardMeat]

Green "demon's" axe is cut as well.
The Prissan axe is bleeding demon stuff, hence why ears said "SOOO EVIL" he's sensing his residual axe juice. Probably a time traveling door similar to oblivious.

I think you are onto something with the time traveling door, but I don't think the axe has anything to do with the "SOOO EVIL" part. Remember when Saral Caine had the axe? The evil radiating from it was so powerful that Big Ears didn't even have to consciously use his detect evil ability. It triggered automatically. This time he used his power intentionally. Also, with Saral Caine, Big Ear had a much, much stronger reaction than the one we just saw. And even with the evil aura of the axe before, he was able to see that Goblin Slayer and Saral Caine were evil and that Kin was not, so the aura was not enough to cloud his ability to detect evil in individuals.

[Rndom]

Another theory/elaboration on what's going from russian comments

It looks like the demons are the GAP and Minimax themselves from future (but not very far). The magic of the room has made their speech unrecognizable for them-from-the-past. I.e. behind the door they'll start discussing something and they'll hear a sound from behind the columns. Then there'll be a rush of demons from there, talking a non-decipherable language. And then Big Ears will see how a big eared demon will hit Fumbles and an explosion, just like the one from the past, will happen. They will stop fighting and point at the door for the demons. That's it. A temporal loop door/room. This theory incapsulates/explains why the Green demon's axe started up shattered and the Red one had backwards legs. And superevil that Ears felt was from the broken axe, not from the demons themselves.

(it looks like this theory is flying around on these forums too, but still, i thought it was worth translating. I hope the russian commenter wasn't translating the english theory himself)

Which would also explain why BigEars-Demon's axe only has one blade, as opposed to being a double sided one, and would suppose that he keeps on using it.

But what happened to the big evil demon then? Is it too big to spawn in the room and so spawned directly above them in the overworld?

[Guus]

It's weird anyways that BE is able to see if individuals are evil or not. That's not how detect evil works in 3.5

[Arch Lich Burns]

Er yes it is. Not to mention that ears was able to detect whom was evil or not in presence of a super evil axe

You can sense the presence of evil. The amount of information revealed depends on how long you study a particular area or subject.

1st Round
Presence or absence of evil.

2nd Round
Number of evil auras (creatures, objects, or spells) in the area and the power of the most potent evil aura present.

If you are of good alignment, and the strongest evil auraÔÇÖs power is overwhelming (see below), and the HD or level of the auraÔÇÖs source is at least twice your character level, you are stunned for 1 round and the spell ends.

3rd Round
The power and location of each aura. If an aura is outside your line of sight, then you discern its direction but not its exact location.

[YardMeat]

Which would also explain why BigEars-Demon's axe only has one blade, as opposed to being a double sided one, and would suppose that he keeps on using it.

But what happened to the big evil demon then? Is it too big to spawn in the room and so spawned directly above them in the overworld?

Yeah, so far it seems a little anticlimactic, unless the demon has started possessing Complains or something. Maybe the Axe is just really weakened now and not completely destroyed? Maybe it has started a counter of some kind?

I hate to say it, but Kore may be the best hope for containing the demon if it does escape. Like the Axe, he is a sort of soul prison.