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"Spoiler alert: They failed."
This article contains spoilers from Start of Darkness, On the Origin of PCs, and/or Good Deeds Gone Unpunished
Snarl
Snarl
Biographical information
First Comic

273

Last Comic

1257

The Snarl is a god-murdering creature born of deific foolishness which, if unleashed, would end existence as we know it.

When the world was young, it was made up of threads of possible realities. The Gods arrived in their Pantheons (North, East, South and West), intent on creating a world of worshippers. The pantheons, unfortunately, could not agree on the properties of this world. There were arguments, and when this occurred the Gods would simply pull on the threads of reality. The tangled threads eventually gave way to the Snarl.

Snarl

The Snarl unmakes the first Creation

When the Snarl attacked it wiped out the entire Eastern Pantheon (which explains why Durkon Thundershield and others have never heard of them). The Snarl then proceeded to undo creation by tearing apart the world, which it succeeded in doing after exactly 27 minutes, showing how powerful it is.

The Gods retreated to their Celestial Realms, where they hatched a plan: when the Snarl tore the world apart, the threads that created the world were now usable to create a new world. This time, each of the gods made his or her additions to the world a single thread at a time, passing the task between them in sequence, accepting the others' creations. They created the new world in exactly the same dimensional space as the Snarl, shunting it into a demiplane from which it could not destroy the world.

Unfortunately for the gods, this new world did not hold the Snarl for long. Four years later, it broke free of its prison and destroyed the second world. The gods made a third world in another attempt to contain the Snarl, but again, the Snarl broke free and destroyed the world. The gods eventually settled into a seemingly neverending cycle of creating worlds to trap the Snarl, and the Snarl breaking free and destroying them. With the loss of the Eastern Pantheon, the combined three quiddities, or colors, of the gods could not hold back the Snarl forever, due to its nature as a four-color being.

Aeons later, in a world created by the gods as a "stick figure fantasy parody," five rifts appeared in the Snarl's prison. Six PCs, the Order of the Scribble, embarked on an epic campaign to seal them and save the world. Though the party was ultimately successful, history repeated itself as they began to argue over the best method to safeguard the rifts from future abuses. A similar agreement was reached, by which the five surviving PCs would each safeguard the gates nearest to their homelands in their own way and never interfere with the others' under any circumstances.

Redcloak following orders of the Dark One, intended to release the Snarl and blackmail the gods, so that the goblins could have a better life. That way, following Xykon, they started to hunt for the Gates.

In addition, there is also something resembling another world within (or on the other side of) the Rifts, which the Snarl likely has something to do with. It could be anything from the remains of the old creation, to the locale the things it destroys end up (Possibly even including the Eastern Pantheon), or even something more strange and unknown. Whatever the world in the rift is, it is likely that we have not seen the end of it, and it may become more relevant to the plotline at a later time. Given that this world within the rifts was never mentioned by Shojo, it's also entirely possible that some or all of the information concerning the Snarl and the nature of the Gates is unreliable, having been related by Shojo who received it third-hand from Soon Kim via Ronjo. This is the opinion of Vaarsuvius.[1]  Though much of that information was confirmed by Thor, it's clear that even the gods weren't aware of the other world, so the information is at best incomplete. In addition, when Girard's Gate was destroyed, the rift showed an ocean with no land or creatures in sight. Miron Shewdanker and Laurin Shattersmith were standing closest to Girard's Rift when something (supposedly the Snarl) exploded out of the rift, impaling and killing a guard standing close to the rift. Miron pulled Laurin back before she was caught by the Snarl.

Eventually, some of the gods, like Thor, caught on to the fact that there was finally a sign of real hope with the ascension of the Dark One, a god whose essence isn't the same as those of the major pantheons, and who might be able to help the three surviving pantheons contain it. Unfortunately, the Dark One and his followers have a bad history with the three pantheons and their worshipers, and therefore he doesn't want to work with them.

See also[]

References[]

  1. Comic #896, "Two Paths"
Appearances
273, 274, 275, 276, 411, 945, 1225, 1226, 1257
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