Vaarsuvius and Haley team up to eliminate four frost giants
Cast
- Haley Starshine (invisible) ◀ ▶
- Vaarsuvius ◀ ▶
- Blackwing ◀ ▶
- Four Frost Giants
Transcript
- Panel 1
Vaarsuvius: Fireball.
- Panel 2
The fireball hits the giants, "BOOM!"
- Panel 3
Frost Giant: Kill the wizard before it—
- Panel 4
Haley flies in behind the giants and kills all four with a Sneak Attack, "THUNK! THUNK! THUNK! THUNK!"
Frost Giant: Ulrk!
- Panel 5
Haley flies away.
Haley: Can I just say that I love being high level? We used to run away from goblins!
Haley: Regular goblins, not even evil high priest goblins!
Haley: (We might still run from those, I'm not sure.)
- Panel 6
Vaarsuvius: I recommend focusing our efforts on those frost giants that will be in closest proximity to the Mechane as it passes.
Vaarsuvius: It should be easy to project the vessel's exact flight path by calculating—
- Panel 7
Blackwing flies into the back of Haley's head, "WHONK!"
Blackwing: Ahhh!
Haley: OW!!
- Panel 8
Vaarsuvius: Strange. He never crashes into me when I am flying invisibly.
Haley: Probably because of the empathic link. Or because you keep talking the whole time.
Blackwing: Look, if you don't want birds to crash into you, don't turn into a high-elevation windowfolk.
D&D Context
- In D&D there are six main types of Giants: Hill, Stone, Frost, Fire, Cloud, and Storm. These giants are frost giants, but the title makes a pun on the other type and being sacked or dismissed from a job.
- Fireball is a 3rd level spell and a staple of attack spells in D&D. It does 1d6/level damage (to a max of 10d6) in a 20-ft radius area of effect.
- In order for Haley to get four attacks off in one surprise round, she would have needed to use her Rapid Shot feat.
- A Wizard's familiars shares an empathic link, but they cannot share thoughts as with true telepathy. This caused Blackwing some problems in #1013, Little Empathy.
- Calling Haley a "high-elevation windowfolk" is a D&D joke playing on the various races of "-folk" which began with lizardfolk (originally Lizard Men in AD&D) but expanded to all kinds of human/beast hybrids such as catfolk or the zebrafolk in #791. Thus Haley is a skyscraper/human hybrid when she is invisible and just as deadly to birds.