The fiends discuss their future plans.
Cast
- Qarr ◀ ▶
- The IFCC
- The Linear Guild
Transcript
- Panel 1
Lee is badly battered.
Lee: You know, that went about as well as could be expected.
Lee: I managed to convince her that it was an unfortunate necessity of a secret scheme to bring down the gods of Good.
Cedrik: Technically true, I suppose.
Nero: Good work.
- Panel 2
Cedrik heals Lee with negative energy.
Lee: I did need to promise that we would eventually destroy five Good dragons for every black one that died today.
Cedrik: Not a problem. If our plan for the Gates really works, such a slaughter will be trivial.
Lee: That's what I figured.
- Panel 3
Qarr: Gates? What gates are you talking about?
Nero: We'll tell you later, it's too much exposition for right now.
Nero: All you really need to know is that we only care about the elf because of these five Gates.
Nero: Well, two, now.
- Panel 4
Qarr: I knew it! I knew you weren't after the elf's soul, not really. Those terms were too good.
Lee: Yes, the elf's soul is little more than the free soup-or-salad to our main course of wickedness.
Cedrik: After that stunt with the dragons, I think we have a 50-50 chance of ending up with it anyway.
Nero: The truly important thing is the overall struggle between Xykon and the Order of the Stick.
- Panel 5
Qarr: So... then what? Giving the elf the power was somehow supposed to sabotage their ability to stop Xykon? I don't see it.
Lee: Don't be silly. Why would we want the lich to win?
Qarr: ...Because we're Evil?
Cedrik: And that makes us all one big happy family? Screw that.
Nero: The truth is, we don't want EITHER side to really win.
- Panel 6
Lee: We want for them the same thing that has held the fiendish races back for all these millenia.[sic]
Cedrik: We want conflict.
Nero: Destructive unnecessary conflict.
- Panel 7
Cedrik: The worst thing that could happen would be a victory by one team.
Nero: Look at the lich: He beats the Sapphire Guard and then sits on his tailbone for months.
Lee: That's why we needed to knock him out of his comfort zone.
- Panel 8
Qarr: Knock him out... Wait, you PLANNED on the elf attacking Xykon???
Cedrik: More like it was a foreseeable consequence to the deal we were already putting together.
Cedrik: Our standard pre-Faustian psych report gave an 84% chance that given enough power, the subject would lash out at the most formidable foe available.
- Panel 9
Cedrik: It wasn't a perfect plan. We only wanted the lich roughed up, not destroyed.
Nero: As it stands, though, the race for the next Gate begins tomorrow.
Lee: And while they fight each other, we move our pawns into position.
- Panel 10
The fiends stand in front of a picture of the Linear Guild. Hilgya, Zz'dtri, and Yikyik are scribbled out.
Qarr: We have pawns?
Cedrik: Definitely.
Nero: Even though most of them don't know it.
Lee: Destructive unnecessary conflict is pretty much all they do.
- Panel 11
Qarr: ...
Qarr: They look like total morons.
Cedrik: They are! Isn't it just perfect?
Trivia
- The picture of the Linear Guild in panel 10 is taken from the third chapter of the print book Dungeon Crawlin' Fools.
- Tiamat, as the god of dragons in D&D (in ancient Mesopotamia she was a god of the sea), is angry because of the Familicide spell that Haerta Bloodsoak cast during the Soul Splice with Vaarsuvius. The spell wiped out one quarter of all black dragons in the world. It is she who damaged Lee, continuing the joke of her on the phone from the previous strip.