Vaarsuvius tries out Vaarsuvius' Enchanced Scrying.
Cast
Transcript
- Panel 1
Durkon descends below deck on Hinjo's ship.
Durkon: Vaarsuvius?
Durkon: Are ye still down ‘ere? I haven’t seen ye in a few weeks…
Durkon: Come up an’ join tha party…
- Panel 2
Vaarsuvius is casting, creating a large rectangular panel in front of them.
Durkon: Thor’s bicuspid! What’s all this?
Vaarsuvius: I am devising a new divination spell. I have almost completed it.
- Panel 3
Vaarsuvius: As of yet, every existing divination or communication spell that either you or I have cast has failed to locate Miss Starshine—
Vaarsuvius: —so it stands to reason that a new spell of great potency might succeed, if only on account of it not being specifically blocked by the effect.
Vaarsuvius: I procured the necessary rule supplements at our last stop.
- Panel 4
Durkon: Vaarsuvius, ye know tha we need ta be focusin’ our energy on findin’ Girard’s Gate, na Haley and Roy.
Vaarsuvius: In fact, I know no such thing.
- Panel 5
Durkon: Look, I’ve known Roy longer ‘n any o’ ye. An I know tha if he were here, he’d want us ta protect tha Gate an’ forget aboot rescuin’ ‘im.
Vaarsuvius: If he were here, there would be no NEED to rescue him. He would already be here.
Durkon: Ye know wha I mean!
- Panel 6
Durkon: If’n I had his corpse, I’d raise ‘im this instant, but wha good will it do ta throw our lives away after ‘is? Haley tried, an’ now she’s lost too.
Vaarsuvius: Of course it is easy for you to forsake them. It is not your fault they became trapped behind enemy lines.
- Panel 7
Durkon: V, no one blames ye fer runnin’ when ye ran out o’ spells then…
Vaarsuvius: Of course not. Fleeing at that point was the only sound tactical decision.
- Panel 8
Vaarsuvius: I am saying I am to blame for my magic not being powerful enough to avoid that situation in the first place.
Vaarsuvius: I could have saved the lives of countless soldiers with only a slightly greater application of arcane force, but I did not possess the capacity.
Varsuvius: I could not even protect myself from the death knight—I needed a thinly veiled deus ex machina to save my life!
- Panel 9
Vaarsuvius: Do you remember when I was obsessed day in and out over gaining more knowledge? What happened? I wasted my time on… on juvenile pranks with a sociopathic halfling!
Vaarsuvius: I will not make the same mistake again. I will not allow Miss Starshine to continue to suffer because my spells continue to fail!
- Panel 10
Vaarsuvius: For this purpose, I have researched this new spell:
Vaarsuvius: Vaarsuvius’ Enhanced Scrying! Show me Haley Starshine!!
- Panel 11
The scrying window displays an error:
| “ | 404 Not Found The person cannot be displayed. The person you are looking for is unavailable… location might be experiencing technical difficulties, …may need to adjust your scrying settings. |
” |
| — Try the following: Click the Refresh spell, or try again later. …spoke the person’s name aloud, make sure that it was pronounced correctly. |
- Panel 12
Vaarsuvius: NOOOOOOOO!!!
D&D Context
- Independent spell research is only briefly mentioned in the basic rule books. This is why V mentions procuring additional rule supplements; presumably the rules which spell out the limits of what original spells can do are in these supplements, and were used to create Vaarsuvius' Enhanced Scrying.
- Attaching the name of the spell creator is common for original spells; some of the classic spells in the game have the names of the game creator's characters attached, such as Mordenkainen and Bigby.
Trivia
- 404 Not Found is a standard response code in Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), the protocol of the World Wide Web. The Not Found error is usually sent when a client requests a page from a server that does not exist, often from dead or broken links.
- This is Vaarsuvius' first appearance in Don't Split the Party.
- In Panel 9, Vaarsuvius refers to the Explosive Runes running gag they played on Belkar.
- In Panel 8, Vaarsuvius refers to the Zombie Dragon's head falling on the Death Knight and destroying it in "Getting Ahead and Staying Ahead".