Vaarsuvius commences battle with Xykon.
Cast
- Vaarsuvius (Soul Spliced) ◀ ▶
- Team Evil
- Ganonron ◀ ▶
- Jephton the Unholy ◀ ▶
Transcript
- Panel 1, Page 1
Xykon: Someone tell the TeeVo to cancel Movie Night... I think we've got our own little action-comedy-drama here.
Vaarsuvius: Time St—
Ganonron: Do you feel that?
Jephton: Behind us!
- Panel 2, Page 1
Three magic symbols on the wall behind Vaarsuvius light up and zap them with magic, "BZZZZZWUMM!!", disrupting the spell, "fizzle!"
Vaarsuvius: ARRRRGH!!!
- Panel 3, Page 1
Redcloak: See? SEE?
Xykon: Fine, fine, I admit: Installing magic traps that zap anyone casting an arcane spell other than me and Pigtail Chick was NOT a total waste of an afternoon.
- Panel 4, Page 1
Vaarsuvius: Skeletal buffoon! Your meager defenses will not save you from me!
Vaarsuvius: Quickened Chain Lightning!
Vaarsuvius casts a lightning bolt that hits Xykon, Redcloak, and Jirix and destroys the wall behind V, "zzzap! zzzap! zzzap! zzzap! zzzap! zzzap!"
Ganonron: Strike them all down!
Jephton: Actually, liches are immune to electricity.
- Panel 5, Page 1
Xykon flies up towards Vaarsuvius.
Xykon: They got you to waste your surprise round, Mystery Elf, so they were money well spent.
Xykon: Though how you can have 10th level spell slots and still blow a Concentration check THAT easy is beyond me.
- Panel 1, Page 2
Xykon: So, what's your deal, then? The elves finally found a way to slip through my defenses, so they thought they'd send someone in to take me out? Help your old friends, the Bluebeards?
Vaarsuvius: You cannot possibly comprehend the path that has brought me to—
- Panel 2, Page 2
Xykon: Oh, sorry, that was rhetorical. I don't really want to hear your backstory, Mr.-or-Mrs. Spock.
Xykon: Energy Drain!
Vaarsuvius: Ha! Your necromantic syphon has no effect on me, sorcerer!
Ganonron: AAAAHH!
Jephton: NNHHHH!
- Panel 3, Page 2
Ganonron: No effect on YOU, maybe, but his level drain got BOTH of us!
Jephton: I lost my epic spell slots! I didn't even get to cast one of them yet!
Vaarsuvius: We have many high-level spells remaining. We shall triumph in this contest.
Vaarsuvius: We must.
- Panel 4, Page 2
Jirix: What the hell is going on?!?
Redcloak: What, this? You'd be surprised how often people pop in to kill you when you're doing an evil scheme.
Redcloak: Remind me when this is over, I'll tell you about the time, back in the day, when a dozen druids jumped out of our potted fern.
- Panel 5, Page 2
Redcloak: Though something here IS a little... off. That Energy Drain should have had some effect on the wizard...
Redcloak: True Seeing.
- Panel 6, Page 2
Redcloak sees the two spliced souls with his True Seeing spell.
Ganonron: I have no more Time Stop spells prepared. Should we try Disjunction?
Jephton: That was Haera's spell. As was most of the necromancy.
Vaarsuvius: Then let us attempt—
Redcloak: Of course! Soul splices! I should have known immediately!
- Panel 7, Page 2
Vaarsuvius: Empowered Sunburst!
Xykon: NNNRGHHH!
- Panel 8, Page 2
Vaarsuvius: Quickened Dimensional Anchor!
Xykon dodges Vaarsuvius's spell, "dodge!"
Xykon: Wait, YOU are trying to stop ME from escaping?? Someone got two scoops of self-esteem in their raisin bran this morning!
- Panel 9, Page 2
Redcloak: Xykon, this elf is using two Soul Splices!
Xykon: Oh, I get it now. You only have a king or queen showing, but you've got a pair of jacks in the hole, am I right?
Vaarsuvius: There is little reason to deny it. I am channeling the raw unlimited energies of two of the most powerful souls ever damned to the Lower Planes.
- Panel 10, Page 2
Xykon: Oh, you poor dumb elf. Don't you get it?
Xykon: Be a vampire, or a ghost, or an immortal with a paint-by-numbers portrait in the rec room. Hell, even a brain-in-a-jar, in a pinch.
Xykon: Anything to avoid the Big Fire Below.
Xykon: So what this tells me is—
- Panel 11, Page 2
Xykon: —you're channeling the "raw unlimited energies" of two chumps who didn't have the balls to stay in the game!
Xykon: So MAXIMIZED Energy Drain, dumbass.
Ganonron: AAAAAAAH!!!
Jephton: NOOOOOOOO!!
D&D Context
- Time Stop is a 9th level spell which allows the caster 1d4+1 free rounds to act while the rest of the world is stopped in time.
- Vaarsuvius got a Surprise Round since Team Evil was not aware of V at the start of combat.
- The Quicken Spell Feat allows the caster to cast the spell as a bonus action, leaving their regular action for the round free to cast another spell or perform another action.
- Chain Lightning is a 6th level spell which strikes one target initially and then arcs to up to one target per level subsequent targets. The primary target takes 1d6/level damage (max 20d6, which Darth V hits), and the secondary targets take half that.
- As Jephton notes, Liches are immune to electricity damage, along with cold, polymorph, and mind-affecting attacks.
- Energy Drain is a 9th level spell which causes the target to gain 2d4 "negative levels", a debuff that approximates losing a level. Each negative level reduces the target's HP by 5, places a small penalty on attack rolls and skill checks, and forces the target to lose access to their current highest-level spell. Negative levels turn into permanent and genuine level loss after 24 hours if the subject fails their saving throw for each negative level. As Xykon used the Maximize spell feat on his second casting of this spell, Ganonron and Jephton lost 10-16 levels each.
- Jephton never cast an epic spell. Hearta cast Familicide and Ganonron cast Epic Teleport twice.
- True Seeing is a 5th level spell for clerics. It allows the subject to see all things as they truly are, including invisible and ethereal objects (like the spliced souls).
- Sunburst is an 8th level spell which causes a globe of radiance to explode from a point. All creatures take 6d6 damage, and undead take 1d6/level (max 25d6) damage, or death on a failed saving throw.
- The Empower Spell Feat increases all variable effects of a spell by one-half, so the Sunburst would do 25d6x1.5 damage.
- Dimensional Anchor is a 4th level spell which prevents the target from using any type of extradimensional travel such as teleportation.
- The Vampire, Ghost, and Brain in a jar are all types of undead in D&D. Vampires first appeared in the original 1974 (white box) D&D set. Ghosts are similarly early in the game, first appearing in TSR's The Strategic Review #3 (the precursor to Dragon magazine). Both subsequently appear in the 1977 Monster Manual. Brain in a jar, on the other hand, first appears in the 2004 Libris Mortis supplement for 3.5e D&D. For the "portrait in the rec room", see below.
- The Maximize Spell Feat causes any variable numeric effect of a spell to take their maximum value. In this case it was the 2d4 levels lost to the Energy Drain.
Trivia
- In panel 2, page 2, Xykon references Mr. Spock from Star Trek. Vulcans in Star Trek have pointy ears like elves in D&D.
- The "immortal with a paint-by-numbers portait in the rec room" is a reference to Oscar Wilde's 1880 novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray. The protagonist, Dorian Gray, stays young and handsome, while his portrait ages and is corrupted by the abuses of his life. This isn't the only Dorian Gray joke Burlew has made. In Start of Darkness, when Redcloak first suggests turning Xykon into a lich, he mentions that he looked into other options for immortality but doesn't "even know anyone who can paint a decent portrait".
- The title is a play on the phrase "No rest for the wicked." The phrase refers to the eternal torment of Hell that awaits sinners, and is originally derived from Isaiah 57 in the Hebrew Bible.