Haley and Belkar search for Roy's body.
Cast
- Roy Greenhilt (as a corpse, also as mummy, shadow, and vampire) ◀ ▶
- Haley Starshine ◀ ▶
- Belkar Bitterleaf ◀ ▶
- The Monster in the Darkness ◀ ▶
- A Demon-Roach ◀ ▶
- O-Chul ◀ ▶
- Mr. Dragon ◀ ▶
- A Hobgoblin Cleric
- A Vulture
Transcript
- Panel 1
Haley and Belkar walk in the open plain outside the city walls.
Haley: Are we being followed?
Belkar: No. it looks like they’re focusing their efforts on people escaping into the mountains, so they aren’t really looking out here on the plains.
- Panel 2
Haley: Good, because Roy’s body should be right over—
- Panel 3
They find the spot where Roy it the ground, but the body is not there. A vulture sits on the Greenhilt Sword and Celia's amulet lies nearby.
Haley: *Gasp!*
Belkar: Ah, crap.
- Panel 4
Belkar: Are you SURE this is the place you saw him fall, Haley?
Haley: Yes! His sword is here, plus that amulet. Maybe the vultures ate the body?
Belkar: Yeah, I’m sure these are members of the rare Armor-Eating vulture subspecies.
- Panel 5
Haley picks up Celia's amulet.
Haley: Well, he’s got to be within a mile or your Mark would have activated. Can you track whoever took the body?
Belkar: I think so, there are tracks all over the place.
- Panel 6
Haley: I bet it was one of the hobgoblin clerics who took it. They were animating undead during the battle, you know.
Haley: What if they turned Roy into a zombie??
Belkar: He’d be more fun at parties?
- Panel 7
Haley imagines a hobgoblin cleric animating Roy as various undead.
Haley (inset): Or wait—what if they turned him into another type of undead—
Haley: —like a mummy?
Mummy Roy: Hey, that’s pretty comfortable. What’s the thread count on this?
Hobgoblin Cleric: 600
Mummy Roy: Silky.
- Panel 8
Haley (inset): Or a shadow?!?
Shadow Roy: Who knows what stupidity lurks in the hearts of men?
- Panel 9
Vampire Roy has killed the hobgoblin cleric in Haley's imagination.
Haley (inset): Or—gasp—a vampire?!?
Vampire Roy: Sorry about that. I just want you to know that I’m horribly conflicted about needing to kill sentient beings to sustain my—
Vampire Roy: Mmmm, what is that smoky flavor in your blood cholesterol? Is that gouda? Damn, that’s tasty.
- Panel 10
Haley: Just think of all the d10’s he’d need to buy…
Belkar: Yeah, I don’t think so. These tracks are… weird. They’re definitely NOT hobgoblin footprints, and they’re not Undead Roy’s, either. I don’t know what made them.
- Panel 11
Haley: Wait, look! I think we have our answer, sort of.
Belkar: Oh, man. That’s just wrong. That poor, poor bastard.
- Panel 12
The Monster in the Darkness has added Roy's corpse to his tea party with O-Chul and Mr. Dragon.
Monster in the Darkness: Would either of you gentlemen care for another scone? They’re fat-free.
MitD: …
MitD: No? OK, more for me!
D&D Context
- When Haley reacts to Roy becoming a Vampire with her remark about d10s, this is a reference to the Vampire: The Masquerade RPG published by White Wolf, originally in 1991. The D&D system uses a variety of polyhedral dice mostly based on Platonic Solids: the tetahedral d4, the cubic d6, the octahedral d8, the non-platonic decahedral d10, the dodecahedral d12, and the iconic icosahedral d20, for which the modern d20 System is named. Vampire, on the other hand, uses exclusively d10s, which requires players to acquire a large number of these dice in order to be able to play efficiently.
Trivia
- The title refers to the 1956 Sci-fi horror film Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The movie is also referred to by Haley's Self-Loathing in #382.
- Shadow Roy references the 1937 radio drama The Shadow. Roy wears a cap and a hat and wields two pistols just as that character does, and he plays on the introduction to the radio show: "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!". The Shadow was adapted for several media and had a large influence on later comic book heroes, particularly Batman.