Vaarsuvius provides essential intel; Elan, not so much.
Cast[]
- The Order of the Stick
- Mr. Scruffy ◀ ▶
- Minrah Shaleshoe ◀ ▶
- Kraagor (as statue) ◀ ▶
Transcript[]
- Panel 1
Roy: First things first: is anything following you that we're going to need to fight right now?
Haley: No, I don't think so.
Haley: We took a winding route back, and stopped to hide a few different times.
- Panel 2
Roy: OK, then: Tell me what you saw, starting with the tomb itself. What does it look like? How big is it?
Haley: Well, it's sort of like a big, crescent-shaped -
Vaarsuvius: I apologize for interrupting, but I believe I can surpass a strictly verbal account.
- Panel 3
Vaarsuvius: Phantasmal Force!
Vaarsuvius conjures a 3-D image of Kraagor's Tomb
- Panel 4
Roy: Oh, this is great. What's the scale here?
Vaarsuvius: If you look closely, there is a statue of a dwarf that can be used to infer scale, but I can overlay a hex grid if you prefer.
Roy: No, that's good enough, I can figure it out from that.
- Panel 5
Roy: And that dramatic orchestral music...is that something you heard while you were there?
Vaarsuvius: That is not originating from my illusion.
Elan: Look, your spell can tell him how big it is, but only my spell can tell him how to feel about it.
D&D Context[]
- Phantasmal Force is not a spell in D&D 3.5 edition. It is, however, present in AD&D 2nd Edition, where it is similar to 3.x's Silent Image. It first appeared in Men & Magic for the 1974 original Dungeons & Dragons game, and is also a spell in 1st edition. A spell named Phantasmal Force is also present in 5th edition, but only affects a single creature, forcing it to perceive an illusion as real and take damage from it.
- Hex grids are often used when playing D&D, especially for mapping outdoor locations.
- The map, suggestion of a hex grid, and the ambient background music evoke the how many people play D&D both in person and especially using sites like roll20.net and dndbeyond.com.
- It is unclear what spell Elan is using to produce the incidental music for their reconnaissance report. He has not previously shown to have an audible illusion spell in his list of known spells. Two possibilities are Minor Image, a 2nd level spell which produces an audible illusion but normally includes a visual component, and Ghost Sound, a cantrip which creates audio only.
Trivia[]
- The title plays on the term incidental music, which is music, often background music, for non-musical media.
- Hex grids for D&D were previously used for an in-world joke in #175.