Nale decides not to exposit his latest villainous plot.
Cast
Transcript
- Panel 1
Julia: What the hell is going on? What am I doing here anyway??
Nale: Why, you're the centerpiece of a daring plan to lure your unsuspecting brother Roy into a trap, child.
- Panel 2
Julia: Uh, "child"? You're, like, three years older than me, Blondie.
Nale: Five, actually, not that it matters in the least.
- Panel 3
Pompey: Wait, you're only 21? Geez, I'm 43, why the heck am I letting you call me "kid"?
Nale: It's not the years, kid. It's the mileage.
Nale: Now, as I was saying, my plan—
- Panel 4
Julia: Hey, you know, you'd be kind a cute if you shaved off that stupid beard.
Nale: ...
Nale: I'm going to gag you now.
- Panel 5
Nale: Well I was going to monologue my entire villainous plot to you, but now I guess the readers will have to wait to hear the details.
- Panel 6
Nale: Sabine, find us a lair, somewhere we can hole up for 2 or 3 weeks. Someplace where no one will notice a teenage schoolgirl bound and gagged.
Sabine: I'll start near the hentai bookstore and work my way out.
- Panel 7
Nale: Pompey, hit every magic store in the city. Buy up every scroll you can find with an arcane spell named "Sending".
Pompey: Got it.
Sabine: "Sending"? What does that spell do?
- Panel 8
Pompey: It allows the spellcaster to telepathically contact someone that they know personally.
Nale: Right, my minion, and it's how we're going to dangle our lovely bait.
- Panel 9
Nale: Within a few weeks, I will have my sweet revenge on my brother, and the rest of the Order of the Stick will be dead!
- Panel 10
Sabine: Wait, so now we're NOT killing Elan??
Nale: Oh, no, my darling. That would be over far too quickly.
- Panel 11
Nale: I want my brother to suffer for daring to oppose me. Suffer in the most exquisitely torturous way possible.
- Panel 12
Thog takes out a "Celine Dion Live in Concert" record.
Nale: No, no, Thog, I'm still civilized.
D&D Context
- Since elves and half-elves have longer lifespans than humans, it is typical for them to still be considered "young" when they are much older than adult humans. Also, the wizard class takes the longest amount of time to become a first level character (as discussed in #126) so Nale can easily be a higher level despite being half the age of Pompey.
- Sending is a spell that allows telepathic communications with a person you have met before.
Trivia
- Nale (and thus Elan's) age are set here at 21.
- "It's not the years, kid. It's the mileage" is a variation of a quote from the Indiana Jones film Raiders of the Lost Ark.
- Celine Dion is a Canadian singer with many hit albums and songs. At the time of this strip's publication her signature song was the love theme from Titanic. At that time she had also recently ended her hiatus from performing and began her residency in Las Vegas, what would become the most successful residency show of all time, grossing over $385 million. From the context of this strip it can be inferred that Rich Burlew is not a fan.
- Common Article IV of the Geneva Conventions prohibit the use of torture (see the above note on Celine Dion). Currently, the four 1949 Geneva Conventions are in place. It could be noted that the Conventions ONLY cover legal combatants who "wear a distinctive sign, visible at a distance," such as a uniform, and so it wouldn't come into effect, even if the nations that exist in the OOTS world somehow signed the Conventions.