While the rest of the group is asleep, Roy is visited by the ghost of his father, to be given a cryptic message.
Cast
Transcript
- Panel 1
The party sleeps while Roy keeps watch.
Roy: *YAWN* Stupid unreliable party members.
Eugene (off-panel): Roy... Roy...
- Panel 2
Roy: Is someone calling me?
- Panel 3
A ghostly form appears.
Eugene: No, Roy, I'm just shouting "Roy! Roy!" for the hell of it.
Roy: Aaaah!
- Panel 4
Roy: Dad? But... you and Mom are both dead...
Eugene: Yeah, funny thing about being a ghost, it has some harsh prerequisites.
- Panel 5
Eugene: Now stop being shocked with disbelief and listen to this:
Eugene: "When the goat turns red strikes true."
- Panel 6
Roy: What? I don't—I don't understand.
Eugene: Of course you don't understand yet, it's foreshadowing.
Roy: Foreshadowing?
- Panel 7
Eugene: Good gods, boy, it's a common literary technique used to build tension by hinting at events yet to come. Didn't they teach you anything in that fancy Fighter College I sent you to?
- Panel 8
Eugene: Of course, your mother wanted you to be a wizard, but nooooo. I had to pay 40,000 gp a year in tuition so you could learn to swing a big sword!
Roy: It's called a greatsword, Dad.
- Panel 9
Eugene: Feh. Well, I'm playing canasta with some archons tonight. gotta go.
Roy: Wait, Dad!
- Panel 10
Eugene disappears.
Eugene (off-panel): Remember, Roy: "When the goat turns red strikes true."
- Panel 11
beat
- Panel 12
Eugene reappears.
Eugene: And what, they have no clerics where you live? Would it kill you to Speak With Dead once in a while to let your mother and me know how you're doing?
D&D Context
- Speak with Dead is a 3rd level cleric spell that does exactly what it sounds like. It isn't particularly appropriate in this context, though, because you use it to talk to a corpse without involvement of the latter's soul. It is used appropriately by Xykon in #95, Dead Men Tell Tales, and by Durkon in #845, The Last Laugh.
- Archons are Lawful Good aligned angelic creatures typically found in Heaven (Celestia), as well as Arcadia and Bytopia.
Trivia
- This comic marks Eugene's first appearance.
- This comic sheds some light on Roy's past—his mother and father are dead, and Roy went to an expensive Fighter College, despite his parents wishes that he become a wizard; it is also only now known that Roy is using a greatsword.
- This is the first comic where a being speaks with a colored speech bubble.
- Eugene's prediction came true in #59, The Shot Heard Round the Dungeon.
- This is the first time archons are mentioned.
- There is a continuity issue in this comic: Eugene implies that even in the afterlife, he is still with Sara, although he reveals that he hooked up with another oathspirit, Violet, citing the particularities of his marriage vows as a justification, as early as Comic #39, Date with Destiny. During the events of Don't Split The Party, the true extent of the breakup is revealed.
Quotes
- "When the goat turns, red strikes true."—Eugene