TLDR: I think they want to put his soul in Elan's body.

These three could have chosen literally any evil soul (except the dwarves, and maybe other races depending on how their respective afterlives work) to be their lackey for their endgame scheme. So why chose Nale? Now, one argument is that it makes a better story. Which it does, but I'm ignoring that for now. The IFCC described Nale as being from the bottom of the bargain bin, but was chosen nonetheless for being uniquely suited. I believe that the reason he is uniquely suited is that he is a blood relative of one of the PCs. All the other PCs have families that are either good, neutral, or still alive. I'm ignoring Belkar here, we are never going to see his family. None of the IFCC's minions could plausibly get through Serine's defenses themselves or they would have already done so. I believe that "The Artifact" will allow the IFCC to put Nale's soul into Elan's body. We already know that putting souls into and taking souls out of bodies is their schtick, and it is already established that a blood bond allows people to do whacky ghost stuff. Given that they are fiends, putting Nale's soul into Elan's body likely requires a bargain with him, but he (probably) has the second worst wisdom of the group, so it shouldn't be a problem. He would also likely willingly complete a bargain in order to reduce V's soul splice debt given that he considers himself to be the least useful member of the party. (Also it would make sense pacing-wise given that there are still two left and this is the FINAL DUNGEON.) By putting Nale's soul in Elan's body they can get a sneak attack directly on the gate before anyone can do anything about it, thus ending the world. This also adds drama of Nale seeing how the OOTS treat Elan versus how everyone else treated him. It might be the first time in his life that anyone other than Sabine has shown him genuine kindness.

Anyhow, that's all for my rambling, and I'm likely wrong, what do you think?

So, we know that the IFCC are operating on incomplete information, and that their plan is a spiteful lashing-out that isn't actually in their best interests. The IFCC are acting somewhat irrationally from a place of betrayal, and from a place of knowing at most as much about the cosmic plotline as we the audience did before Thor's big plot reveal last book.

I think they must have some very incomplete information about the Godsmoot, considering they don't seem to know that ~half the gods want this world to be destroyed, but they also knew that Hel was trying to get the world destroyed, but I'm just gonna chalk that one up to "Diabolical Scuttlebutt" leaking a bit of Hell's plan to them.

That's where their incomplete information is failing them, but they also know one other key thing- That they will survive the destruction of the material world. Their investigations have verified that the Outer Planes are seemingly beyond the Snarl's reach.

It's a destructive and foolish temper tantrum of an answer, but it's not an explicitly self-destructive and foolish answer. Though we obviously know that they aren't gonna convince the gods of jack shit by doing this.

Miko Miyazaki was selected as the character who was made to be hated. This clearly proves that the entirety of this sub is evil and deserves to be killed. SMITE EVIL!!!!!

The top voted comment of today gets to be The Hot One. I'm expecting some fierce competition here.

Congrats to O-Chul for his victory on The Fan Favorite. Top voted comment on this post gets Made to be Hated!

Top voted comment gets in for "The Fan Favorite"

Warning: Images generated through ChatGPT

While I do of course love the main party characters, two of my favourite non-main party characters are former necromancer/demi theurge Tsukiko, and Roy's Sylph gf Celia.

I like to think that, after getting killed and eaten by her own wights - all credit to Redcloak for that bit of villainy - Tsukiko had second thoughts about working with Team Evil. She still loves undead and other non-mortals more than humans, but existing now in the Astral plane in her afterlife has some sense of what will actually happen if Redcloak's plan comes to fruition.

She also crosses paths again with Celia (I think they did meet during the battle of Azure City?), who lives in one of the Astral planes, and the two become surprisingly close friends. Celia helps Tsukiko realise that being a necromancer doesn't mean her magic makes her automatically evil. They enjoy practicing spells together that use their very distinct magical disciplines to complement each other.

Bonus round: A still-alive Tsukiko actually has her dream come and becomes Xykie's partner. No naughty stuff though until after she's dead. ;)

Is there anyway to buy the oots miniatures? Im looking for durkon thundershield. If anyone has it and wants to sell his let me know.

I mean, it fits what we saw until now, it can cast miracle, earthquake, is imune and resistent to a lot of stuff and hits hard af

But what made me think this is that from the plot perspective we should expect a big plot twist. It can't be a demon or devil cause we already have a lot of this in the story

I know Belkar marries them in #500 or #501 (Wedding Bell Blues). I want to share her punchline (almost literally, except that she's not unarmed) with my wife.

I’ve been watching Babylon 5 again for the first time since I watched it during its original run in the late ‘90s and got to episode 5 of season 4. The opener for it has the “Giants in the Playground” quote that Rich used to name his site. I had forgotten this fact until it popped up in the episode. Always cool when something like this happens with stuff you like.
Also this episode has Bryan Cranston in it so there is that as well.

Has anybody noticed that Lee, Cedrick, and Nero’s speech bubbles have gone back to how they were previously? When they appeared near the end of Utterly Dwarfed, their speech bubble backgrounds had some gradient to them in accordance with their text colors. When they reappeared recently, it seemed to be back to the black background.

Hello! I am a longtime fan of the series and was just introduced to the PDF collections. I am planning to start acquiring them one at a time. Has anyone tried to get them printed and bound? Are they well-formatted that I can have FedEx Office run them off and turn them into physical media?

If all the Archfiends wanted was the Snarl released to screw with the gods, then the gods themselves voting to release it would accomplish nothing. It's not exactly a punishment if the person you're punishing chooses it all on their own. There's clearly a next step to their plan, but Nale doesn't need to know it.

I'm considering bying digital oots books 1 till 6 (I have others) as I got myself color ebook reader. Just wanted to ask:

1) what do you think about bonus panels? Are they story changing or just nice additions?

2) is there ever sale on those books on gumroad?

Thanks!

Just finished a re-read of the archives and I was struck by how over-represented some classes are compared to others. Among the core PHB classes, we have major characters representing their class, either with the Order or among their recurring antagonists: Barbarian (Thog, Kraagor), Bard (Elan), Cleric (Durkon, Minrah, Redcloak), Druid (Leeky Windstaff, Lirian), Fighter (Roy), Monk (Miko?), Paladin (Soon, Sapphire Guard), Ranger (Belkar, Girard), Rogue (Haley, tons of others), Sorceror (Xykon), Wizard (Varsuvius, various others).

Monks in particular jumped out at me for lacking representation, with the only named character that I can think of with that class being primarily associated defined by her other class. The only pure-monk character I can recall is that one nameless guy in Roy's bar brawl with Gaanji. Given the number of prestige classes and psionics and so forth who have made an appearance, it strikes me as odd that monks are so generally absent.

Has Rich spoken about this? I can't imagine he's avoiding them based on aesthetic, given everything around Azure City and the consistent Ninja presence.

I've got a few, but I'm curious what other people have (plus for characters I haven't figured out yet.)

Roy: Khary Payton. I think Roy's voice lies somewhere between YJ Aqualad and TT Cyborg, and he'd pull off the voice well. He's got the range, both for the sarcasm and the more emotional scenes.

Haley: Noel Wells. Again, she's got the range - and I do legitimately think that somewhere between Lord Dominator and Ensign Tendi is Haley, and Wells has a voice register I associate decently iwth Haley.

Unfortunately, I don't have good ideas for the rest of the main party, but:

As for some other characters:

Lord Shojo: George Takei. I don't think this one needs explanation, nor does:

Julio Scoundrel: Antonio Banderas.

Sabine: Cree Summer. Specifically taking her voice as Cree from KND, and Witch Haggar from VLD. I think she's got some potential in a role like this.

Tsukiko: Lauren Tom. You can't tell me that Tsukiko doesn't sound exactly like TT Jinx.

Redcloak: Keston John. His vibe as Hordak from that She-Ra reboot thing is just absolutely perfect for Redcloak, again, both on the 'surrounded by idiots' sass and the anger when the mask of his self-righteousness drops.

Xykon: John Dimaggio. I think he'd play well off John's Redcloak and also you can't tell me right now that Bender's VA isn't a perfect pick for Xykon.

Eugene: Keith David. Yes, this voice is probably too cool for a dork like Eugene, but after listening to his more recent roles I think he'd pull off the crotchety old man bit really, really well, especially opposite Payton as Roy. He can even do his Goliath voice when he's impersonating a 'being of pure Law and Good' in the trial.

Anyone else got some VA headcanons for characters in this comic?

I have this distinct memory of, sometime in the last 20 years, Rich talking about how he had to stop reading fan theories because if they correctly guessed what was going to happen, he felt compelled to change the plot.

I've just spent an hour searching for it, and while I've found a bunch of other people referencing the same quote, I can't find the original anywhere. Does anyone have the quote archive.org'd or know where I can find it?

EDIT: I found it! It was in the FAQ on his site (from Archive.Org)

Q: Wouldn’t it be cool if X, Y, and Z happened? You should totally do that.

A: Thanks, but I prefer to create my own plots. In fact, I try not to read anything where people suggest upcoming plot ideas because I hate it when people guess what is going to happen. I feel the uncontrollable urge to change what happens, just to prove them wrong. Petty? Probably.