The Order discover the latest bunch of monsters massacred by Xykon, and learn of Serini's recruitment process.
Cast[]
Transcript[]
- Panel 1
Blackwing (thinking): Hey, I don't want to alarm anyone, but...I think we're being followed by a giant eyeball.
Vaarsuvius: *sigh*
Roy: This should be fairly straightforward, so let's head...uh...straight forward. To the last room, where we'll open the portal to the—
Haley: Roy, look!
- Panel 2
The party have entered a new chamber, which is filled with the corpses of dead monsters.
Minrah: Woah.
Belkar: I don't know, I've made way bigger piles of corpses.
Roy: Sadly, this is about what I expected.
Serini: Hope you boys at least chipped his tooth on the way down.
Urdook (off-panel): Unnnnhhh...
- Panel 3
Serini, Minrah and Mimi the Mimic are rushing to Urdook's aid.
Serini: Hey, we got a live one over here!
Minrah: Out of the way! Medic coming through!
Urdook: Miss Serini...We failed...
- Panel 4
Serini: Urdook, right? Don't talk like that. You did your best, that's all I ever asked of you.
Urdook: But the Gate...
Serini: —Is still in one piece as far as we know.
Minrah: Cure Light Wounds!
- Panel 5
Lien: Wait, so the monsters...The monsters behind all these doors know what they're defending?
Serini: Did you think I just asked people to stand around and wait to die without knowing why? Is that how Soon taught you to do it?!
- Panel 6
Lien: Huh? What does that—
Serini: Ugh...to tell you the truth, that's exactly how I used to do it. Until I started looking at things through a troll eye.
Serini: Since then, I've only recruited volunteers.
- Panel 7
O-Chul: How do you explain it to them?
Serini: You can talk to anything with the right magic. I asked my closet where I'd put a certain shirt last week.
O-Chul: No, I meant: How do you make them understand what's truly at stake?
- Panel 8
Serini: I don't really get into the metaphysics of the rifts and the Snarl and all that rigmarole.
Serini: I tell them that we need as many strong creatures as possible guarding these doors to keep the world, including their families, safe.
Serini: It helps to approach monsters already stuck in someone else's dungeon, away from their own kind.
- Panel 9
Lien: Wow...and they agree to that?
Serini: Not most of them, no! A lot of them try to kill me on the spot!
Sunny: That's how my spawn-parent reacted, when I was just a bud.
- Panel 10
Serini narrates over an image of a younger version of her standing in front of a Beholder carcass with a small bud with Sunny's face growing out of it.
Serini (narrating): Cutest little outgrowth I ever saw, Sunny was. Couldn't let them just wither on the vine, you know?
Sunny (flashback): Qlrktk?
- Panel 11
Back in the present, Sunny is crying and telekinetically pulling Serini close to him.
Sunny: Awww, mom.
Sunny: You're the best mother an aberration could habe and I'm so happy you raised me!
Sunny: Telekinetic hug!
Serini: Acck! Let's change the subject. Kid starts crying, it'll flood the room.
D&D Context[]
- Cure Light Wounds is a 1st level cleric spell which heals 1d8 points of damage +1 point of damage per level. It most certainly wouldn't be enough to heal all of Urdook's wounds, but any amount of magical healing will prevent a patient from dying.
- The reproduction of beholders has changed greatly betwen editions and settings. Those of 3.5 did not canonically reproduce by budding, but in a far more... disgusting way. Obviously, Rich Burlew choosed a different means of reproduction for the beholders of his setting.
- Urdook and the other monsters that defended the chamber could be any of the large variety of draconic creatures in D&D 3.5. Suggested candidates include pack dragons, drakes, landdrakes, wyrmling, or even half-dragon versions of other creatures.
External Links[]