Roy attempts to impose discipline on the team: no talking, no singing, no joking and no complaining. Xykon breaks the latter imperative.
Cast
- Roy Greenhilt ◀ ▶
- Haley Starshine ◀ ▶
- Elan ◀ ▶
- Belkar Bitterleaf ◀ ▶
- Mr. Scruffy ◀ ▶
- Xykon ◀ ▶
- Redcloak (one-eyed) ◀ ▶
Transcript
- Panel 1
The party walks down a corridor with runes running along the wall in silence.
- Panel 2
Elan: Hey Roy, do you think we—
Roy: No talking.
- Panel 3
Elan: Um, OK, but maybe I can help Haley look for traps by—
Roy: No singing either.
Elan: Oh.
- Panel 4
The party walks in silence.
- Panel 5
Roy: Haley, are those runes dangerous?
Haley: Don't think so.
Roy: What do they do?
Haley: Beats me. But if they were going to blow up, they'd have done so by now.
- Panel 6
The party walks in silence.
- Panel 7
Belkar: Geez, I know this comic can get longwinded, but this is—
Roy: No breaking the fourth wall!
Elan: But Roy, you just—
Roy: Be quiet!
- Panel 8
Belkar: What, we're just going to walk in silence from now on?
Roy: YES! Yes, we're going to walk in silence from now on!!
- Panel 9
Roy: If we had been standing quietly instead of cracking jokes and playing the lute and whatever else—
Roy: —maybe we would have heard Durkon fighting for his life.
Roy: Maybe we could have saved him.
- Panel 10
They reach a door at the end of the hall.
Roy: So if I have to put some goddamn discipline into this team to keep anyone else from getting killed, that's what I'm going to do.
Roy: No talking, no singing, no joking, and most importantly—
- Panel 11
Xykon and Redcloak emerge from the door.
Roy: —no complaining.
Xykon: Ah, crap. Not THIS guy again.
D&D Context
- The title refers to the currency system in D&D, which relies on specie in denominations of: copper pieces (cp), silver pieces (sp), electrum pieces (ep), gold pieces (gp), and platinum pieces (pp), in ascending order of value. The exact relative value of these coins varied across the various editions of D&D. In all editions, 1 gp = 2 ep.
Trivia
- The next strip shows that at least the last panel of this one (and therefore Xykon and Redcloak as well) are illusions.
- "Breaking the fourth wall" is when a character references the audience of a dramatic performance or otherwise breaks the convention that they are unaware that they are in such a performance. In this case, Belkar mentions the comic, while Elan complains that in forbidding breaking the fourth wall, Roy has himself broken it.
- The runes on the wall are written using Miskatonic font by Blambot. Corresponding latin characters form a repeating string of "nosecretmessage - nosecretmessage - nosecretmessage".