Haley arrives in the nick of time to save Celia.
Cast
Transcript
- Panel 1
Celia: Look, I'm sure we can come to an equitable agreement.
Grubwiggler: Perhaps. Would you be interested in barter?
Celia: At this point? Absolutely! What do you want to trade?
- Panel 2
Grubwiggler: Well, I'm always in the market for raw materials...you have no idea how wasteful making golems can be. I mean, sure, I try my best to practice sustanable[sic] wizardry, but it takes six bodies to make a single golem!
Grubwiggler: So I'll make you a deal: I'll void your debt to me in return for that lovely body of yours.
- Panel 3
Celia: What? Are you nuts?? What do I care about a debt if I'm dead?!?
Grubwiggler: Well, your heirs won't have to pay for it.
Grubwiggler: Golem, squeeze her until she has made good on her bill, one way or the—
- Panel 4
Haley appears stage left with a huge bag and attacks Grubwiggler with a sap, "WHUNK!"
Haley: SAP SNEAK ATTACK
- Panel 5
Frankenstein-like golem squeezes Celia, "squeeze..."
Celia: Haley! HELP!
Celia: Unnnh!
Haley: Hold on, I'm looking for my alchemist's fire.
Celia: hurry!
Haley: I should really get one of those handy haversacks.
- Panel 6
Haley throws alchemist's fire to the Frankenstein-like golem, "keesh!"
Haley: Found it!
Golem: Raaarrrgh!
- Panel 7
Giro: Stop right—
Haley: Oh, you want to try your luck, Lumpy? I took down both your pals, but hey, maybe the third time's the charm.
- Panel 8
Celia (whispering): Haley, I don't think you took down the golem...more like just slowed him down a little
Haley (whispering): Hey, you're the one who's against killing, here. It's what adventuring professionals call "a bluff," so just keep standing in his line of sight.
- Panel 9
Giro: OK, OK! Don't hurt me, please!
Haley: Smart man...toad—... whatever. On the floor and don't move.
Giro: I'm not even a real hunchback! I stuffed my hump to get this job!
- Panel 10
Haley tries a clearly marked secret door.
Haley: Darn it, the door must have locked behind me. No time to pick it before Grubby wakes up, we're going out the front.
Celia: Door? How did you get in here, anyway?
Haley: There's a secret passage from the sewers, up through the dungeon.
- Panel 11
Haley: I woke up when the rain—
Celia: Wait, how the heck did you know there was a secret passage in this castle
Haley: Hmmm? Oh, I've robbed this castle twice before.
Celia: Twice??
Haley: I grew up in this town
- Panel 12
Celia: Oh.
Celia: And what's in the giant sack?
Haley: Like I said, "Third time's the charm."
D&D Context
- Sneak Attacks with a sap do nonlethal damage which can render the victim unconscious.
- Alchemist's Fire is a standard non-magical item in D&D. It causes 1d6 damage per round for two rounds on a direct hit, with the possibility for splash damage to those nearby.
- All Golems have specific reactions to certain attacks, as a means of compensating for their strong resistance to magic. In the case of Flesh Golems, being struck by magical fire places them under an effect identical to that of a Slow spell.
- The Handy Haversack is a magical backpack. Each pocket of the backpack acts like a Bag of Holding, but it has the additional virtue that whatever item is desired appears on top, preventing the need to search through the bag.
- This comic again returns to the gag where secret doors appear as a door with an
Son it. This is a reference to a common map convention in D&D maps. The gag first appeared in #522, We're Doomed If She Finds the Map Key.
Trivia
- The title is a play on the common American English idiom, "You can take the boy out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the boy...", meaning that a boy raised in the country will always be a bucolic rube even if he moves to the city. Here it is used to suggest that Haley cannot escape her thieving origins in Greysky.
- The sap Haley uses to knock out Grubwiggler has an unusual provenance: Haley took it from Isamu's corpse in #521, who in turn bought it from the Duergar arms dealer in a flashback in #531.
- In panel 2 there's a typo in the online comic: sustainable is written as sustanable.