Cast[]
Transcript[]
- Panel 1, Page 1
Nale looks out a set of windows.
- Panel 2, Page 1
Outside the window show various torture in hell, with Nale's reflection looks back at him.
- Panel 3, Page 1
Sabine enters the room.
Sabine: There you are.
Nale: Here I am.
Nale: Still dead.
- Panel 1, Page 2
Sabine: Hey, so I know eating is kinda weird down here, but this place has a sweet kitchen. I was thinking of making cinnamon rolls?
Nale: I should have been nicer to Elan.
- Panel 2, Page 2
Sabine: ...Because of...cinnamon rolls?
Nale: No, just in general. Right from the start.
Nale: I should have told him everything.
- Panel 3, Page 2
Nale: He's a fundamentally heroic person right?
Nale: If I had laid out everything I knew about our father and what he and his buddies do, Elan would have been 100% onboard with helping me overthrow them.
Nale: There was no reason for us to be at odds, until I gave him a reason.
- Panel 4, Page 2
Sabine: I mean, you tried, babe. You explicitly asked him to join you, didn't you?
Nale: Yeah, in the context of abandoning Greenhilt. I should have presented Tarquin as the obvious follow-up to their initial mission to defeat Xykon.
Nale: Adventurers love hooks like that! It would be rude not to accept it!
- Panel 5, Page 2
Nale: I even had a second chance to steer him where I wanted him to go, and I wasted it on what? Some meteorite??
Nale: "Oh, you know who has starmetal to fix your sword, Mr. Greenhilt? A place called the Empire of Blood!"
Sabine: Oh yeah, I forgot that was us...
- Panel 6, Page 2
Nale: I got so wrapped up in doing showy over-the-top villainy that I sabotaged my best chance to actually beat that old fool.
Nale: Instead, when he and Elan did clash, I ended up in crossfire.
- Panel 7, Page 2
Nale: Alone.
- Panel 8, Page 2
Nale: I think Dad's actually right about me.
Nale: I do make too big of a production number out of everything.
Nale: So does he, to be clear. He's not nearly as restrained as he likes to think he is.
- Panel 9, Page 2
Nale: But I always wanted-no, needed- for him to know I was the one who beat him.
Nale: Now that it's all over, I can see that didn't matter at all.
Nale: I was just seeking his approval with extra steps.
- Panel 10, Page 2
Sabine sits with Nale.
- Panel 11, Page 2
They both look out of the windows.
- Panel 12, Page 2
Nale: Feels weird to be figuring all this out after I'm already dead.
Sabine: Actually, it's really common.
Sabine: We call it "post-knell clarity."
D&D Context[]
Trivia[]
- The open torso on legs in the infernal scene is from Hieronymus Bosch's Garden of earthly delights.
- The three posters in the third panel depict, from left to right: the Nine Hells (nine-layered cone), Hades (three layers with the Styx on the top one) and the Abyss (countless layers spiraling chaotically).[1]
- The scene of the damned souls being tortured has more in common with the traditional Christian view of Hell than the Nine Hells of Baator, the uppermost layer of which is where Lawful Evil souls are turned into lemures (the lowest-ranking type of devil) and where devils and demons continually battle each other in the Blood War.
External links[]