3461

Well, some classes innately get feats/abilities that do improve dodginess, but it’s nothing like you can find in some variants (WoT and Arcana Evolved gave many classes AC bonuses that improve with level and such).

3462

Tarquin is wearing different clothes and has a similarly dressed mage with him in that last panel. I wonder if he’s from the Empire of Tears.

3463

3rd to last panel in the last strip has the empire of tears wearing blue, so I don’t think so.

3464

OK, I am now willing to bet (nothing substantial, just my pride) that Tarquin turns out to be a good guy! And all this stuff is just audience misdirection… I’m sure of it!

3465

Mind sharing the train of thought leading you to this conclusion? It’s an interesting idea.

3466

No. I think you are very certainly wrong.

  1. The Giant doesn’t cheat
  2. The Giant will surprise you
  3. The Giant don’t do bullshit switcheroos (except when he does, then he lampshades them, then he subverts them anyway).

IMHO, natch.

3467

The panel where he says “Suffice it to say, it needed to be done, for their own good. And it was done with less bloodshed than…”

…that sounds like it potentially could have a genuine explanation behind it. In the previous strip he let whatshername tell the story to Elan and said “I have nothing to hide”. So. It could be that he’s just bad, but it sounds like the author is leaving himself a little bit of room to write a “good” explanation for Tarquin’s behaviour. And that makes me think, well, unless you’re planning to use it, why allow any room at all? If Tarquin were just obviously or straightforwardly good, there’d be no surprise and no tension when it turns out that he is. But if it were a “bullshit switcheroo” then the audience would get up in arms about being cheated. So… yeah. Based on that, I’m making a guess.

Of course, all just my opinion, and I may very well turn out to be utterly wrong. :P

3468

Thanks for elaborating, Lesslucid! I like you idea.

I try to not expect anything from Burlew as he has a habit of always doing the unexpected.

3469

On the other hand we see Tarquin having a mage freeze a woman’s feet in a block of ice to get her to marry him.

3470

And he could easily be putting things in the best possible way in order to keep Elan happy. I’m pretty sure he’s solidly Lawful Evil. He abides by the rules and agreements, but doesn’t hesitate to take advantage of loopholes. Plus the whole “Empire of Blood” thing.

3471

Haha, Elan’s dad is evil as Hell. (The D&D Hell, of course.)

That’s what’s so refreshing about D&D; good is good; evil is evil; the rest of the stuff is just procedure.

3472

I was pretty sure he was just going out of his way to make clear that he is Lawful as well. The whole, “I’ll kill you, but there will be an ordered reasoning behind it, and it will be within whatever ruleset I follow.”

3473

What’s more, Good sometimes means dying for the right cause. The Good choice in that case is clearly to defend what is right, even to the death – and the way to avoid bloodshed is to fight as intelligently as possible.

Also, most of the blood that was saved was that of the soldiers of the Empire of Tears.

Put it this way; probably the closest thing to an objectively evil government we’ve seen was 1930s Germany. Now suppose the US had made its surge on Germany’s side, rather than the Allies’? It is highly likely fewer people would have died, that less blood would have been shed. But would that have been the Good choice?

No, Elan’s Dad isn’t Good.

3474

In my mind, it’s all something like this…

3475

The graphic seems to imply that Elan is Lawful Good, which is impossible as bards have to be chaotic.

3476

Yes, Elan is obviously as CG as it’s possible to be.

3477

D’oh! I was wonderin’ about that.

(Come to think of it, this is the second time I’ve made that mistake in this thread, isn’t it?)

3478

He did specify it was in his mind, which should have been a red flag right there.

3479

there, i fixed it :D

3480

I thought it had been made pretty clear that Elan’s dad is Lawful Evil. There is no way that he is going to turn out to be good.

Lawful Evil (snipped from WP): Characters of this alignment see a well-ordered system as being easier to exploit, and show a combination of desirable and undesirable traits; while they usually obey their superiors and keep their word, they care nothing for the rights and freedoms of other individuals and are not averse to twisting the rules to work in their favor. Examples of this alignment include tyrants, devils, undiscriminating mercenary types who have a strict code of conduct, and loyal soldiers who enjoy the act of killing.

Fits Tarquin to a T.

It would not surprise me to find that the Order gets manipulated into siding with Tarquin, though. It would be just like Burlew to write a story arc where the “Evil” alternative proves to be the preferable choice - even in the D&D universe. There’s way too much development going into the character of T and the vampire lizard (or whatever the cleric is) to make them simple villains.