MapsGroxily wrote:Hi guys, has been a while!
Let's look at what we know:
- They entered a door with eyes on it, and then a door with what appears to be an hourglass on it, then went through a hallway to reach this room.
- There are 5 'demons', one significantly bigger then the rest and all of them showing some traits of the GAP (The red demon's demon claw and hoofed feet, the grey demon's stature, the purple demon's immediate reaction to minmax's voice and using a sword that looks to be grafted to him (like how minmax's sword cannot ever not be in his hand, whenever he tries his future self grabs it) etc.)
- The axe hit the 'fumbles' demon's staff and an explosion occurs, shattering one of the axe's blade and lodging part of it into Complains.
- The axe is now smoking badly and in a worrying way, the final panel has a red hue on it's edges, and the white border for the comic turns yellow (the same tint as his armor no less) and has cracks on the corner of the last panel.
There are two possible outcomes to this i'd be satisfied with:
A. The many doors all lead to the same room but change the challenge within that room, and the initial door you enter also changes the challenge. So entering a nose door and a time door to get to the next room would impose a challenge involving smell and time. In this case, they entered with an eye door and a time door, thus the result is a challenge involving sight and time. In other words, they are either directly fighting themselves but cannot tell due to an illusion, or fighting constructs based on their future selves. The Axe comes into play with the illusion; it's a trick to trip up the team, and may even summon a 'false demon' to really sell home the point. I'm not sure how you'd counter this, and one point against this is that Thaco can still see the demons even with his eyes covered, so either the effect encompasses even that or this fell through.
B. The demon really is about to be released due to a combination of lack of good deeds showered on it, a lot of questionable things done to it (I too put my stock into the whole 'giving it to a half-demon' thing) and all of this made it so fragile that actual combat finally broke it, not so much anything related to the thing it actually hit.
I'd be really disappointed if either of those were true. A would mean that Thunt was messing with us in a way that us truly messed up, even in light of his statement on April Fools Day. As for B, the Axe survived being held by actual evil people. I doubt the extremely minor "questionable" actions of BE have weakened it. Not to mention the fact that this would seriously break continuity. The comic has established that, when the Axe is weakened, it sends out evil vibes so strong that a Paladin's detect evil abilities are automatically triggered (no conscious effort required), and it is enough to cause them extreme pain, to the point of a nose bleed. To suddenly have the Axe weakened without any hint to BE, even when he consciously uses detect evil, would be a complete change of how the Axe works.