3282 Phillips Epiphane
HELLO! And welcome back to Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic.
Had a little hiccup with the security levels on the server and Dreamhost had to redirect us for a little while until I could sort out the problem. But with their IT help we got it figured out and fixed and we’re back on track! Thanks for your patience and sorry for the interruption!
-Rich “Beholder King” Morris
I mean, I don’t know who hired you to get that hand back in the day, but boy was that a mistake.
… wait, what happened with that hand? I don’t remember …
🙂
The party doesn’t remember either. (Which is, I’m guessing, your point.)
https://www.yafgc.net/comic/2711-handed-unhanded/
When they left Dewcup behind in the tomb, Goldwolf seemed to forget all about her. Slissy called him out on it, but one strip later, she couldn’t remember where Dewcup was either.
Goldwolf: "Ah, she must have found her way home. Anyway, looks like we got the hand. Let’s head back."
Slissy (looking perplexed): "um…"
What I’m wondering now is whether the memory charm worked on Slissy’s demon, or if the succubus still remembers the events of Raana’s tomb. Not sure why she would be immune, except that she seemed cannier and less…hapless than the adventurers she ran with.
No, I found THAT part. I didn’t find what happened with the hand afterwards.
As far as I know, they haven’t told us what happened with the hand after that. The point was that removing the hand from the shielding around Ranna’s body removed a major impediment to her rise, as I understood it. Re-read the part where Ata tells Lewstrom about her time with the Drow. Towards the end of that, she tells of how one of the last remaining Drow priestesses, and a dear friend of hers, sacrificed her hand to keep the shielding around Ranna’s body running, as the Drow there descended into madness.
didn’t they bring it to the evil wizard that lived in the mirror? he was the one asking for it i believe.
Nope. That was the lamp that Morgana’s party went to find in the Black Mountain. It was never explicitly stated who sent Phillip’s party for the Hand. Nor what happened to it after they found it. But we can assume it went well for them after. Presumably they brought it back to whoever wanted it and they were paid.
So you pissed off a Panteon, hasn’t EVERY adventuring group done that sooner or later ?
I don’t know about whole pantheons, but getting at least one god on your case is standard for any good campaign that I’ve ever run.
good to see it all back up – and for who can’t recall events – that’s what the archive is for!
Psst. Don’t tell Phillip he could have saved himself a long, arduous vigil by just reading the archives.
Heh, perhaps what he describes as a ‘long isolated vigil’ WAS a dive into the archives. Goodness knows, I go to look up one old strip, and five hours later, I haven’t left my room, or spoken to my family… *dry chuckle*
Welcome back, Rich and YAFGC!
Thank you! Good to be back! 😀
Was he gone?
Wait, was *everyone* getting a "too many redirects" error message too? I thought that was just me.
Some of us are still getting them & had to find other ways to reach the comic.
Didn’t get any redirects, just got "could not find the page" errors
Did get the notice letting us know there was a problem (and saved it 😀 )
I got "could not find the page", then later I got redirected to Rich’s message about working on the problem, then I got the ‘too many redirects’ error from then until today. I even killed all my cookies, trying to fix it. Glad it is sorted out now. 🙂 (And yes, I check the site several times a day. 😛 )
Thank you Rich for all the energy you put in to get this fixed 🙂
Thank you, Rich, for all your hard work getting things back up and running.
Phillip, you and the group have a lot of work ahead of you. First thing, what did you do with the hand?
Philip and group: What hand?
Slissybus remembers quite a few hand jobs but isn’t sure what T’Chall’s question means specifically.
You naughty Beholder King. ?
Aaaaand we’re back!
Soooo… an adventuring team unleashed the ancient evil did they? Does seem to happen all too often.
Yeah, most adventuring groups still remember what they did though
True, forgetting you unleashed the ancient evil is a new one. Although from the ancient evil’s perspective; a good idea. Adventurers that unleash the ancient evil tend to go on quests to re-leash it, but if they don’t remember they did it, then there is no quest, and the ancient evil has time to carry out its ancient evil plan (well, the plan isn’t necessary ancient, it could be new).
Good points 🙂
Maybe more evil forces will remember to put a Forget-Me boobytrap spell on the item that entraps them
Yes, this reminds of that Planescape book, about this guy who couldn’t remember anything and the journey he goes on to recover his memory
Can’t remember the name of the book though (ironic, no? 😛 ), can still remember the gist of it but can’t say it as it would give the whole plot away
Not being able to recall a title can be quite a torment.
I never read the book, but I played the game several times.
About a book, I don’t know. But it reminds me somewhat of the plot of the old computer game Planescape: Torment.
Yeah, thought it was Torment, but looking it up to check, only posted links to the game, read the book in the 80’s or early 90’s
Did the game deal with a guy who drank from the river Lethe?
It was this book that gave me the idea for the ultimate punishment and, well, torment (so maybe it is the same as the game)
There is a novel for Torment.
https://www.amazon.com/Planescape-Torment-Ray-Vallese/dp/0786915277
Oi I know what book your on about, I read it earlier this year, It’s called Pages of Pain or something edgy like that.
Yes, that’s the one! Much thank yous!! 😀
Hmm, looking it up to get an idea of when I read it, the dates don’t seem right: the paperback edition claims 1997, and the hardback 1996, had stopped reading novels long before then…
Wow, William got OLD! Shame he didn’t get any smarter 😛
He doesn’t look that old to me. Behind that majestic beard he still seems kinda baby-faced. I’d put him (and Slissy and Richard too) comfortably in their mid-thirties, though all a little haggard from stress.
I suspect that is a blond beard and hair, not white. He didn’t get old, just grew a majestic beard. 🙂
Wait, if it’s been ten years, does this mean this is in the future?
Nope, present.
How is that possible? Did it take ten years for Charlie and Co to finally find the place?
Yay, the site is back! Time for some archive diving:
The stealing of the hand arc was shown out of sequence. Chronologically it must have happened some time between https://www.yafgc.net/comic/0298-why-you-shouldnt-cross-the-rachne/ (when Dewcup has just left Arachne) and https://www.yafgc.net/comic/1401-dead-guy-in-da-hood/ (when Lewie returns after his visit to Ruun). That’s a lot of time, so it’s unclear exactly when it was compared to the rest of the story. Charlotte only became taken over by Ranna later, in https://www.yafgc.net/comic/1915-lolth-gets-concerned/
and it still took some time before she left the valley in https://www.yafgc.net/comic/2836-monsters-in-the-mountains/
The theft of the hand had to happen before Lewie found his sister again, as Dewcup was in the process of escaping from Ruun and Ata when Lewie ran into her. After finding Ata, Lewie spent a long while with her, before returning to the world. So yes, it could easily have been ten years ago that the hand was (sort of accidentally) stolen by Dewcup and ‘handed’ off to the adventuring group just as Ata was wiping their memory, and the exit-teleport was triggering.
Thought the memory wipe was an automatic thing, Ata just kicked them out
Was just trying to figure out the timeline from when the Merry Band of Idiots (and tell me one adventuring group that _weren’t_ idiots, specially in this world 😛 ) left with the hand and when Charlie and Co arrived
Just can’t believe this whole thing with Ranna wandering around eating the pantheon has being going on for ten years, two years at the most (talking in-world years)
Right, Ranna didn’t start her rise immediately when the hand was removed. It just created an opportunity. She had to realize that the opportunity was there, and start settings things up, which likely took a while. It still hasn’t been revealed just how she deposed her sister, and took her captive, after all. I think the first sign of trouble I remember was when the adventurer priestess (Celena) that had been captured by the Dark Mistresses was being tortured, prayed to Ch’Thier, and got her evil sister instead.
Wasn’t that bit with Celena _before_ the Hand job?
Just… trying to work out the timeline of the End of the Magic Age
NotRichard: The stealing of the hand was shown out of sequence, I said. It was part of the Dewcup/Lewie flashback chapters, and happened years earlier.
Okay, thank you, didn’t quite understand
Forgot to say, glad to find you managed to get the ‘problem’ sorted, "Merceneiress" wasn’t so lucky: their host decided to cancel their subscription and they have to repost everything
"We did something terrible!"
Of course you did. You were player characters. It’d be surprising if you didn’t.
BTW Rich, it looks like the forums are still glitched up. Time to summon the IT genies for Round 3.
Hunh. Sorry, the forum’s working okay for me.
The header appears to be somewhat screwed up when opening a thread, I presume that’s what Prairie Son was referring to. Screenshot:
https://i.imgur.com/BeKVmES.png
Do believe Philip is partially correct: some of the gods are in hiding and trying to communicate, it’s just maybe the ones they are trying to communicate can’t hear them
The surviving gods are probably whispering to those who can hear as its dangerous to cry for help when there’s a rampaging snake goddess who will literally eat you if she finds you.
Yeah, that’s what I was thinking: start whispering to your followers, when that doesn’t work, start broadcasting in a wider radius hoping that _someone_ will hear
Glad everything is back.
How time can change a person!
William is rocking a seriously epic beard these days. When I first saw him, I thought it was some random elder–even with the first-name dialogue and the location: D’oh!–but I guess William *is* an elder now. 😀
I’m curious.
With all the gods being killed/eaten/imprisoned–what’s Philip’s paladin status these days?
Considering how he looks, I’d not be surprised if he had lost it, or be on some sort of divine probation.
Of course, it’s equally probable with all the evil loose in the world, he’s just had a taxing ten years smiting whatever godsforsaken abomination pops up. 😉
Under the game rules–invoking 1st ed. AD&D for discussion/comparison, not criticizing on a narrative level–Phil did some stuff that might very well have got him busted "back in the day". Knowingly associating with a demon, for a start.
But then, those same rules are what made it so easy to fall into the trap of playing paladins as Lawfully Stupid/Leeroy Jenkins anything Evil *Right Now* religious robots instead of human beings.
Phillip is more complicated than that.
Did he hang out with a demon? Yes–but quite clearly set boundaries over her attempted temptations and such. (Also, hard to avoid considering the circumstances.)
Did he *knowingly* commit a chaotic or evil act (as the rules used to define it)? Considering the epiphany he’s just come to–I’m going to say no.
Can’t wait to see where this goes–I love how all these dangling plot threads are coming to fruition years later!
Yeah, was just going to point out that not all Holy Order’s had giant Divine Sticks up their arses
Fairly sure, if his deity simply ‘vanished’, he would just be an Un-Powered Paladin, as long as he continued to ‘keep the faith’
Whether his deity would have booted him out if they were still around depends on the deity (only their god can remove their Blessing, not the Order)
Gah. That was way too wordy–and I completely ignored the fact that Phillip mentioned above he’d done penitence.
It’s what comes of reading a strip that doesn’t have a hook I can hang a Monty Python reference off, I guess.
Also, the tags still refer to him as a Paladin. And tags don’t lie. 😀
It also spells his name with one ‘L’ 😛
The gods are trying to tell us we did something terrible, all those years ago. Maybe by buggering up the web server during a security update?
This gap in memory and/or lack of knowledge thing is a *really* cool plot.
t!
There’s a typo in the first panel ("bud" instead of "but"). Just mentioning this in case you want to correct it later.