That doesn't really work, though it is an interesting interpretation of it, because he asked 'when he would achieve' it. Since he doesn't have ultimate arcane power right now, his prophecy isn't done yet.

He could come back. Like a ghost, or something or other. As Roy has shown, death is not the end, it'll just take a little more creative method with Kubota since he is dust in the wind.

Episode 331: For the Future

V: How will I achieve complete and total ultimate arcane power?
O: By saying the right four words to the right being at the right time for all the wrong reasons.

His prophecy is complete. Killing Kubota allowed him to break from the Order to seek the ultimate arcane power on his own.

Oh he did say 'how.'

Interesting.

Because it means killing Kobuta caused the rift between the OOTS and V, and he did it because he's an elitist asshole. Which means it's the start of his progress towards ultimate power...by consorting with Quarr?

Hm.

Reviving Kubota should be pretty impossible unless someone finds a cleric capable of casting True Ressurection. Casting such spells seems to be well in the realm of the legendary in the OotS world so I'm not expecting it to happen anytime soon.

I doubt anyone would go through all that trouble just to ressurect him

as for the prophecy, it seems to fit except it was 'to the right being' and he didn't actually say those words to anyone. Heck Kubota wasn't even alive (whole) for most of them

Haley actually specifically says she doesn't think there even are any clerics that powerful, to which Belkar says Redcloak might be.

Which is kind of nice, considering other than 'chose not to' there's some ways that keep you dead dead dead forever. Resurrection works in DND but to make it so throwaway in a story kind of hurts.

EDIT: Wow, seriously, what is causing V's attitude? Is he just cranky cause he hasn't slept, or because he can't find Haley, his best friend? He was always an ass but he at least felt bad when he upset Elan. I don't know what's gotten into him lately but being so condescendingly dismissive is unlike the V I've known through the comic so far. Arrogant, yes, but not completely apathetic to everyone that is not him.

I think the line to notice is how he describes the Azurites as essentially pathetic.

Random thought that occured to me:

whatever did happen to Hilgya, anyway? I want to say something happened that took her out of the picture for good, but honestly, details elude me.

EDIT: naw, can't be her. Wouldn't really have been Burlew's style, either, but now that I've thought about it I'm compelled to go back and check where we did see her last, just for kicks.
EDIT2: I can't decide whether I should be glad there's a way to easily find out things like this or depressed Wikipedia actually has a separate article on the Linear Guild. For those who also have obsessive-compulsive tendencies: Durkon left her alone in a dark basement. Actually I'm making it sound a lot worse than it probably is. Dwarf.

Otherwise, I find myself checking for updates upwards of three times a day. This better be good.

Last time we saw her she was alone in a dark basement. Given the fact that said basement is now, in fact, a pile of rubble, either she was killed or escaped before everyone else.

Wouldn't surprise me if she reappeared again.

Oh God here we go. Episode 600.

...

... well. I think it's funny.

Heh, yeah. He pulled that joke off pretty well.

I was kind of wondering what Roy was up to, though.

And I bet something major will happen in the next comic or three.

Also, am I the only one who thinks Roy's baby brother is the cutest thing in webcomics?

I agree. He is adorable.

And I am intrigued about what might happen now. IO mean my interest was waning with the whole Kubota thing but now, it might pick up again.

I was going to come in with a "God damn it, Burlew" as a link to Comic 600, but I had already posted before so I couldn't.

So, God damn it, Burlew.

I was absolutely sure the whole "ha ha not doing anything special for #600" half of the comic would turn out to lead in to a panel of dead Vaarsuvius or Lien finding a certain suit of armour or whatever.

But it's good to see Roy gearing up to return, although he'll most certainly be nonplussed with the current status and whereabouts of his remains.

I'm kind of hoping that Burlew makes up for the long wait for a lackluster update with a significant development in 601 or 602.
Interesting revelation here, though, is that Roy is completely unaware of the rift between V / Elan + Durkon, and he's also unaware (as are we readers) to the developments on Haley's side of things. My guess is Roy spies on Haley and company first, and we learn what's been going on there, and then the big revelation will be seen from Haley's perspective: V will return to Haley (that's the good news,) but she/he'll be a shadow of his/her former self, leading Roy (in heaven) and Haley (on Earth) to wonder what the hell happened to him/her...and why she/he doesn't give a damn about leaving Durkon and Elan behind.

EDIT: Haley could also inadvertedly advance the spilt between V and the Order by getting a bit angry when she hears about V leaving Elan behind. From V's perspective, it would seem that Haley cares more about a romantic relationship than V's successful return...or the Order actually doing its job. From Haley's perspective, V's return will pale in comparison to him/her abandoning Elan and clearly looking like crap. It could be fun.

Also Roy's spying absence means that nobody is aware of Belkar's Mark of Justice being activated, which means all sorts of fun stuff.

EDIT: Oh. Yeah. Whups!

God this comic moves slowly.

He knows about it.

He was there when it happened. The oracle just happened to banish him after wards.

On a semi-unrelated sidenote, Erfworld is continuing its quest to become the most incomprehensible comic on the internet. I absolutely do not know what is going on anymore and I think it's actually impossible to know unless you re-read the entire series every time there's an update.

I sometimes have trouble telling what's going on in a given panel, but the plot usually seems pretty straightforward.

It helps if you only read it in like 40 comic bursts. This is only way I read it.

I don't think this solves the main problem, namely the fact that it throws around 'references' in place of actual content. I mean, on the Simpsons, if they allude to something that you've never seen, usually they do it in a way that you can still laugh at the overall situation without prior knowledge (and then maybe come back one day with a deeper insight and enjoy it more), but Erfworld's philosophy seems to be that just namedropping obscure references without context as the sole joke == solid gold.

It doesn't help that it's written by one of the most insufferable, self-loving pricks on the Internet. It's a real shame that the art is wasted.

EDIT: On-topic, did I miss something or has it time-jumped on us? That three-year line threw me for a loop, but I can't remember if it's consistent with how long Roy was up there without noticing the first time or if it's actually longer and Roy has gone three years extra without being resurrected.

Months. Roy's been dead for three MONTHS.

At least, that's what Roy's Archon said. And keep in mind, the Oracle said that Belkar wouldn't last the rest of the year, and he ALSO implied that Belkar would be at least partially responsible for the death of V.

Seeing as how neither Belkar nor V are dead at this point, it's been less than a year.

Speaking of which, I just re-read the entire archives. It's theory time.

-Elan said that he felt like he would never see Haley or Belkar again. Being very genre-savvy, it sounds like he was foreshadowing that he would NOT, in fact, encounter them ever again.
-The Oracle said that it would be a happy ending for Elan. In theory, this means that he will be better off at the end of the story than at the beginning, and (if you're going with the traditional "Happy ending") he would have some lady love to spend the rest of his life with. I believe that either he WILL see Haley again, or she will die some time in the near future and he'll go find someone else.

I was sure I had more.... bleh, I'm tired. Maybe I'll remember stuff later today.

The "last three years" line I'm pretty sure is just a reference to how long Roy has been travelling and/or how long his mother has been dead. Confused me too initially; that whole "time passes at a different speed in the afterlife" didn't help, and neither did that I forgot if it passed slower or faster. (Faster.) By extension that means Roy isn't going to hang around the cloud level for a few months in afterlife-time but in realm of the living-time. From his point of view he probably plans to set up camp for only a few days.

That gives me an idea - surely he's going to talk to his dad down there. Who wants to bet he gets resurrected away just when they're about to hit an important point in their conversation?

You're totally missing that Roy's granddad and Roy's dad will have it out. :D

I thought time moved the same in heaven but it seems to pass more quickly since you don't need rest or food and such.

Time moves at the same rate in the afterlife, but it only seems to move faster because there is nothing to really mark the passage of time. As shown in the comic, Roy was constantly asking about the time so his three month lapse did not repeat itself.

And I thought it was fairly obvious that the "every day for the last three years" was the time since Roy's mom died. Especially since it showed earlier in the comic Roy keeping strict watch of the time.

New ep.

Now that's funny.

So... Haley and the rest have given up on Roy?

Also, do they still think that Belkar's Mark of Justice is inactive? Because I'm pretty sure they're a mile away or more from Roy's corpse.

No, I'm sure this is just part of the 'waiting until the heat slows down' process. It does take a while, after all.

And honestly I'm surprised Haley hasn't realized that the Mark went off yet. Roy even made it perfectly clear that he would get 'sicker and sicker until he's incapable of hurting anyone.' Celia, okay, she's an airhead. But Haley's tough and smart in her own way.

EDIT: And...is Celia getting the single strand of hair out of place like Haley?

Quoted for truth. It actually made me laugh.

I choose to think clerics of Loki are picky about how you dress yourself when you approach them.

Right. They prefer plate armour. Which will make it difficult for a rogue, a sick ranger and a winged character to approach them.

Also, Mirai, now is not the time for racial slurs.

Airhead.

Bah.

but if you recall thats how they were gonna makes sure they didn't take the corpse away. So to them, they will assume that just means Roy's body is still in the area

But what I mean is that it surprises me that Haley hasn't put two and two together and realized A - that she can't remember anything about any of her trips to the Oracle, and B - that Roy even said that the Mark would make him sicker and sicker until he was incapable of harming anyone.

Also, Meister, I think your PM inbox might be filled, or maybe you just haven't checked it? I was hopin' to follow up on the name change.

I think part of the memory loss is you don't put two and two together. Remember Roy already made two trips and until asked specifically about what happened it didn't even cross his mind.

As for the sicker and sicker thing, well not like the mark is the only thing to cause illness. She has no reason to think he activated it because as far as she knows he never did anything to cause it to activate

Except that Belkar wasn't sick before they went in, he was VERY sick when they came out, his mark specifically was to be activated by murder and they COINCIDENTALLY didn't get any questions answered.

I mean, sure, maybe they didn't know that there was a town nearby, but even so, it's possible that they could've guessed. And theoretically, the town would be on a map - Oracle DID consider naming the town "Shouldacheckedamap," which would imply that checking a map would have fixed the problem. If they DO see a map, they may notice a town on Sunken Valley that wasn't there before. A town named "Lickmyorangeballshalfling".

If that's not two and two I don't know what is. Other than, y'know, four. And twenty-two, depending on your definition of "two and two".

as I said, I think that is part of the whole memory loss thing. You dont even consider the fact your memory was wiped. So to make the connection they would have to realize that something made them forget in the first place which that barrier disallows.

And it wouldn't be on a map as any map maker wouldn't recall the town to begin with

Then why call it Shouldacheckedamap?

While I understand what you're saying, I just don't agree.

I really think it's odd that Haley just hasn't thought, hey, you know what? He's becoming violently ill and can't even fight in combat. Maybe that's what the Mark does?

Kobolds are jerks.

yea but she could also conclude that he is violently ill, thus he got sick. For it to be the mark he would need to violate its conditions which as far as she knows he hasn't. For it to be illness he'd need to become infected, which could happen at any time and without anyone noticing.

If to your knowledge he has not done anything to activate it, then its more logical to conclude something else caused it. Especially since she doesn't know what would happen even if it did activate.

For her to come to the conclusion she'd have to assume the mark would cause this reaction, that he did something to activate it, and afterwords something caused her to forget that he did (which as I said, I think the barrier makes impossible as Roy never considered it even though it was obvious their memories were unusually fuzzy). Thats one possibility

The other is that a bug bit him when they weren't looking and he got sick.

Belkar is pretty sneaky normally. It not a particularly big jump to assume he was causing havoc while I was say sleeping or something. It's not like he hasn't done such a thing a million times before.
Also if he was normally ill they only need to find a level 1 cleric to cure it. And the illness is pretty debilitating so one would assume they would try and find a cleric, any cleric, pretty quickly.

I think it's pretty likely that Haley just doesn't care that Belkar is sick. I mean he's delusional sick and that's impossible to miss. It's normally pretty dangerous to be delusional sick too especially with the crazy fatal DnD diseases. When you don't care about the guy being sick you really don't think about the why or hows or even the extent of his sickness.Which is my explanation for the whole Haley doing or saying nothing about the whole Belkar in an obvious extremely downward spiral. Going to be pretty amusing to have Roy return only to have Belkar succumb to the sickness and kick the bucket.

New comic.

We can stop arguing about the Mark of Justice now, cause the cleric just was like, oh, hey, it totally went off, FYI.

Aw man, I liked Pete. :(

Oh well, now I can like the Loki cleric instead, though he should rethink his no name policy very quickly.

Yeah this seems like we're going to have a long running trail of 'The Cleric' in reference to Loki. Though maybe not since they know who he is now.

Wish Pete didn't act like a dick though. Roy saying 'well, not as much impact the second time around' was pretty funny too.

I am wondering if this is going to spurn up Belkar's death, considering since Haley refused to cure him (And now they don't have time to if they had to), yet I don't think she'll leave him behind. Very interesting development, though for the comic's sake I hope we get on track of resurrecting Roy.

EDIT: Visual gag; Haley using Evasion on Belkar's vomit.

Heh. "Everyone I grew up with is an asshole."

New comic, btw.

I hope Pete's basement is not also Sending-proof.

I have noticed how Burlew still manages to make Celia's drawing look like a crude stick figure, given the circumstances.

The crack in the last comic of 'I always get the eyes the same shape' set me up for that one. Its pretty amazing how his cartoony stick figure comic has its own crude stick figures without looking too much like each other.

EDIT: I sincerely hope Celia doesn't get killed. This comic has enough female protagonist deaths, I'm quite happy with keeping it as it is, especially since he's flat-out explained, hey, FYI, here's a reason Celia can die and stay dead.

Metatextual dream strongly suggests Belkar's end is imminent.

Or maybe Belkar will try to change before he dies, though that sounds too cliche to be likely.

Or Belkar as we know it will die and become a different person.

Probably real death, though.

I would say "I don't think I would be able to believe Belkar turning over a new leaf", but Burlew manages to surprise me all the time, so I'm just going to hold out for the next episode.

And by hold out I mean check every hour or so.

If anyone could get him to do it, it would be Shojo.

Just as chaotic, half the evil!

Belkar's antics just don't get old for me. Burlew manages to take that one dimension and keep it funny.

I hope he doesn't die and stay dead, but I also hope he doesn't undergo broad sweeping changes.

Maybe it's just me, but I got a definite "Can't you fucking see how lame this character has become"-vibe from Faux-jo's smackdown.

"I have to PRETEND to have character growth!"

All I can see coming from this is more roleplaying XP for Belkar.

I'm predicting that Belkar will try to pretend to have character growth, and end up actually going through character growth. Then he'll die, to make his death meaningful.

This one was once again pretty clever. Especially since it still works as a D&D metaphor.

*reads it again*

Took me a second reading to get all of the jokes and symbolism in the imagery.

And I just realized that the background image is a massive picture of Belkar sleeping.

I sincerely hope that this means Belkar changes just enough to stay Belkar.

Gotta love Mr. Scruffy having his own character sheet in the D&D panel.

Man, how is it that Rich Burlew can transform even the most formulaic, predictable comics -- you know, the type of "plot event" you know's going to happen in advance, and the strip you predict you're going to find boring and droll -- and transform the scene into something eminently readable and absolutely awesome?

I mean Burlew's on fire even on his off-strips, if there's even such a term that could be applied to OoTS.

Yeah, I gotta give props to this episode. Coming into it, you know what to expect. Belkar has to become a different person to progress in the story. But instead of riding the Cliche Pony, he solidifies that Belkar wouldn't even change anyway! And he uses Shojo as a way of saying, hey, Belkar, you can still be Belkar, but stop being such an idiot about it!

This is the kind of writing that makes me bitterly jealous of Burlew. Given years of practice I don't think I'll ever be this good.

this is far better then I thought, in a way this is character growth as he is realizing he has to atleast pretend to conform. Not really enough to make him worthwild character (thats not really possible at this point anyways), but it is enough so that people will stop wishing for him to die as soon as possible.

Would be an interesting kick in the teeth if they kill him in the next strip anyways

New ep.

Holy damn is that chick stupid. And I will hate Haley forever if she seriously doesn't have a backup weapon or five.

Let's hope Belkar wakes up, minus the affliction, kicks the door down, and kicks some Fighter/Rogue ass.

So, Crystal's dagger looks funky and Hailey called attention to it earlier. Can anyone recall off the top of their head what splat book loot it's supposed to be?

It looks like a Kukri to me. Maybe a Large Sized one, so she can power attack, (and thus feasibly destroy that bow), with it.

Maybe just a cool looking short-sword, but I don't think so.

You'd think cutting the string would have been easier.

Heh. Sucks for Haley how there's no rules for that.

yea but also easy to fix. Restringing a bow would take less then a minute.

Sundering is easy enough as it is.

Good point. Talking about this to a friend yesterday I also realized that a bow has 5 HP and it's a +4 dagger, so unless the +3 also modifies HP that's again pretty clever.

It does, the bow has 35 HP, and 11 hardness, which means that she would need to deal 46 damage in one blow to destroy the bow. Unless it was an admanatine dagger. Even so, it's a pretty impressive feath of strength.

So I was just about to say "today's new strip is subpar," but then I noticed the lime green boots young Haley was wearing.

...the same lime green boots Haley originally referenced in the comic's third strip.

...why? Why are you so damned good, Burlew?

Holy shit. That's awesome.

Well, it's also a pretty good joke about how some people hate each other for basically no reason.

I like that I don't have to check the site anymore, because New Posts will tell me when OotS updates. :D

Same here, phil.

But yeah. The boots were the first thing I noticed myself. It made my day.

I seriously think the lime green boots were just something Burlew threw in there at the last minute. Like he was writing the strip, then thought, okay, what would she hate that Haley would wear or have?

HOLY SHIT THE BOOTS"

Plus it was referenced another time to Celia. Great writing!