April 12, 2016: How?

[thinkslogically]

Big ears can detect evil, but he can't detect good. Who's to say those creatures aren't good-aligned? Also, who said names was good? If he's evil (or at least partly because of his demon-part) and those things ARE mirrors of the party then at least one must be good-aligned.

If that's the one BE attacked, it could count as an evil act. It shouldn't however count as a knowingly evil act. So, BE might have broken the axe through carelessness or ignorance, but he should at least get to keep being a paladin to feel bad about it.

Then again, I sometimes feel like paladin only exist in d&d stories so they can fall...

[Urobolos]

I don't think we can count leaving Chief behind against Ears. Chief ordered Ears to leave him behind. Disobeying your Chief's direct order is probably not the correct paladin thing to do.

It would, in fact, be unlawful.

I'm of the opinion that it had something to do with him voluntarily giving it to a demon.

[Shardstorm]

Is it possible that more time has passed than is obvious? Wasn't the door they walked into marked with an hourglass, a common symbol of time?

Perhaps they are in an accelerated time zone, or pushed into the future. If it has been more than 13 moons, the axe would be greatly weakened.

Oh, good point. I very much doubt the Hourglass is there for decoration. So it's pretty reasonable to assume there's something happening to time here. The middle bottom panel in this has a pretty pointed statement too:

http://www.goblinscomic.org/02252016-2/

Had they been able to see the other doors they might have been able to make a better choice. Or at least understood they were different. They possibly all lead to the same place with different effects.

[Rndom]

If BE isn't a paladin, then would he still have access to Detect Evil? When's the last time he's done something Paladin-y?


Also, it's a long shot, but I'm hoping for a GAP+MM+Kore against Mirrors+Super Evil Demon.
Also, Also, inb4 Super Evil Demon is related to Not-Walter.

[Aegis J Hyena]

Super Evil Demon is probably Not-Walter's employer. "What, you're short 6 million souls again this month? Back to the gold-eyebrowed Minmax in the Maze of Many, slacker!"

[YardMeat]

If BE isn't a paladin, then would he still have access to Detect Evil? When's the last time he's done something Paladin-y?

If he were a Cleric, he could prepare it as a spell, but he wouldn't have it as an ability. Given recent events (http://www.goblinscomic.org/03132016-2/), he's still a Paladin. he's used Paladin abilities in this scene, so that's pretty recent. He also passed the Axe through his body, which only a Paladin can do, while walking through the halls of the dungeon. I think he did it in the rope room too.

[Krulle]

It would not be lawful...
But then, protecting your Chief is part of the law too.

So you either break one or the other rule.

[Guus]

A direct order from your chief to abandon him is lawful. The Paladins have their own code, but part of being lawful is that you follow the rules, and since he was with his clan an order from Chief is basically law, because he has to listen to his chief. This is why Paladins can be interesting: the conflict between good and lawful, that aren't always on one line. That's what shapes a Paladin character, when does he follow the law and when does he follow common good sense when they conflict?

Also, although the things he did arent really lawful good, he hasnt done anything severe enough to shift alignment. We are just finding reasons why the axe would break. The being touched by a demon could be a good reason, but I did want to see something in that scene that hinted at that.

[Rndom]

Is it possible that more time has passed than is obvious? Wasn't the door they walked into marked with an hourglass, a common symbol of time?

Perhaps they are in an accelerated time zone, or pushed into the future. If it has been more than 13 moons, the axe would be greatly weakened.

Oh, good point. I very much doubt the Hourglass is there for decoration. So it's pretty reasonable to assume there's something happening to time here. The middle bottom panel in this has a pretty pointed statement too:

http://www.goblinscomic.org/02252016-2/

I would buy the whole "Time moves quicker in this door"-thing, but I have a few gripes with that.

• Where is Kore? It's shown that he's less than a day's walk, and two (eventful) rooms away.
• The axe radiates more and more evil the closer to 13 moons (one year) it is, and Ears should know about it, especially since when he first came close to it, he had to do a reflex save (or something similar) and forcefully get shushed by two other goblins when it simply passed by (http://www.goblinscomic.org/02112007/)and he had a massive headache when he was walking down a hallway to it (http://www.goblinscomic.org/07302007/)
• I don't think that sign on the door is an Hourglass. An Hourglass normally has sand in it, and I feel the middle is too thick. If it were a depiction of it, I would expect to see a triangle at the bottom with a line going up, and then a flat line on the top half. Something like

[thumbnail]http://mt-st.rfclipart.com/image/big/91 ... S-1783.jpg[/thumbnail]

I'm reminded of the decorated door (http://www.goblinscomic.org/12212009/) which, I thought looked more like an elephant's head of some sort, rather than the deadly egg with a bow on it that it actually is. It actually took me a couple of read-throughs to actually decipher the door. And of course it made sense in hindsight, since that's always 20/20.

[YardMeat]

Big ears can detect evil, but he can't detect good. Who's to say those creatures aren't good-aligned?

If they are good aligned, then why did detect evil reveal them as evil? Could be that some magic is interfering I guess.

[LarsenSan]

OK, I have a theory: these creatures (I'm not going to call them demons) come from another reality and they are mirror matches of Minmax and the GAP, like most of you have say. But they are not evil: Ears' detect evil detected the evil emanating from his counterpart's Axe, which is cracked and probably has a powerful demon inside too. By attacking one of them and probably wounding him that was an evil act, enough to finally break the axe. Just look at Green Ears; I bet his yelling something like "That axe...!"

[Krulle]

And the "Demons" Axe broke and releases a powerful angel, which will battle the AoP Demon, and they both annihilate each other....

[Urobolos]

OK, I have a theory: these creatures (I'm not going to call them demons) come from another reality and they are mirror matches of Minmax and the GAP, like most of you have say. But they are not evil: Ears' detect evil detected the evil emanating from his counterpart's Axe, which is cracked and probably has a powerful demon inside too. By attacking one of them and probably wounding him that was an evil act, enough to finally break the axe. Just look at Green Ears; I bet his yelling something like "That axe...!"

Except they were attacked by the *demons* so they are acting in self defense, therefore not an evil act.

[LarsenSan]

OK, I have a theory: these creatures (I'm not going to call them demons) come from another reality and they are mirror matches of Minmax and the GAP, like most of you have say. But they are not evil: Ears' detect evil detected the evil emanating from his counterpart's Axe, which is cracked and probably has a powerful demon inside too. By attacking one of them and probably wounding him that was an evil act, enough to finally break the axe. Just look at Green Ears; I bet his yelling something like "That axe...!"

Except they were attacked by the *demons* so they are acting in self defense, therefore not an evil act.

Maybe they detected evil too. Also, they attacked creatures who look monstrous by their standards and inside a dungeon... sounds like your average adventure party to me.

[Rooks]

I'm sort of excited at the prospect of Kore fighting the demon of the axe.

[Xavier78]

Maybe the "Demons" are just stuck adventurers but the dungeon is making both teams see Demons. (ie- the other team is seeing Demon "opposites" as well?)

]Not that it would matter as the Goblins are, well, Goblins. I dunno.

[Theis2]

Then again, I sometimes feel like paladin only exist in d&d stories so they can fall...

The one rare time I look at the update thread I find this!

...

Guess I can't blame you since my dice hate you guys xD

[Rndom]

I just noticed that the bottom right corner of the image, seems to be cracking and is blending to roughly the same color as the explosion.

[thinkslogically]

Big ears can detect evil, but he can't detect good. Who's to say those creatures aren't good-aligned?

If they are good aligned, then why did detect evil reveal them as evil? Could be that some magic is interfering I guess.

They don't ALL have to be evil or good though. Only one technically has to be evil for BE to detect it and one strong signal could overwhelm him as has happened before. Only one of the demon-mirrors needs to be good to screw up the axe and that could have been lost in the mix of the others.

[Gift Fastidious]

The axe breaking like this actually answers something I've been wondering since we saw that they were evil counterparts: Why is Big Ear's axe only one-bladed rather than dobule-bladed like BE's own battleaxe? Something i suspected was that the demons might be projectons of their future selves. Now that Big Ear's axe is broken, his future self would project back as having only one blade on his axe. So I expect later they'll be in a room like this, and detect similar demons who go through the motions that they're going through now. So the trick is to survive without killing their future selves, by realising what's going on soon enough to stand down.

Also, I think I remember paradoxes being needed to beat him, which would make this a better-than-most opportunity to try. For instance, Kore might try to win both battles by being imposibly capable, but that would constitute a grandfather paradox.

[Gazirra]

I have a kind of out there hypothesis: They did indeed go forward in time, possibly a good distance.
The metal guys are the result of various Kliks trying to repair Kore at some time prior to the GAP's current temporal location.
The white parts of the metal guys matches Kore's IME pretty closely. Plus, we do know that Kliks reproduce by attaching a small portion of Klik-stuff to a being and syphoning off a small part of their soul to give a new sol to the new klik. Kore just so happens to have dozens, if not hundreds, of souls to spare for new Kliks.
The forms of the metal guys don't correspond with the GAP, but with people Kore killed or will kill. The green one, for example, is foreshadowing for Forgath. The horns on his head correspond to his helmet, the one hand with plating is his stone gauntlet thing, and he even has a possible version of the Racist Axe. The yellow one would be Chief, who had a similar weapon when he was killed by Kore. The big blue one could be foreshadowing for Biscuit, as his size, build, and weapon are pretty close to the blue guy's.
Evidence for this could be found if you look at the most recent images of Forgath, at his head specifically

[Guus]

The theory about detecting evil doesn't make sense, for one reason mainly: this is still a D&D game. If the DM answered the detect evil from the player in such a way he was actively tricking a Paladin into doing something to further the plot. The DM has been railroady now and again, but allowed for a big monster escape as a way to escape Brassmoon city too. I refuse to believe that the DM would be such a douche to actively trick a Paladin into doing something he wouldn't do normally.

[Baphomet]

So picture this. The GAP manages to defeat the demons, but something weird happens. Maybe they've just killed the one that Big Ears just hit with the Axe, and the rest disappeared? Maybe the rest fled? Maybe they were all killed off, but acted strangely at the end? Maybe some other unrevealed property of the room causes the combat to end weirdly. In any case, something about the end of the encounter with the demons makes them stand there where the fight took place and talk, to re-evaluate what just happened in this room. Big Ears explains that the demon from the Axe will probably emerge in 13 days since it is broken now. Someone brings up the possibility that there's some sort of weird time shenanigans happening here. Someone suggests that the demons were their future selves, and they might be in a time loop where their past selves are sneaking in right this second, but will see them as the demons. Suddenly, Minmax's voice can be heard yelling from the other side of the ledge. Their past selves are here! Maybe they look like demons too?

Minmax instantly screams and charges, because that might be past Minmax over there, and present Minmax hates that guy. The others all rush in to try to stop the inevitable. Fumbles and Thaco go in to stop Past!Big Ears, maybe to prevent the demon from being released. Past!Complains bowls Fumbles over effortlessly. Fumbles, not very smart and still coming to terms with what's going on here, gets mad at Complains and tries to take it out on him by hitting Past!Complains with the staff. Complains looks over at Fumbles, tells him he's an idiot, that he has a bruise from that attack because this fight already happened, it's him that he's hurting, see? Kind of wanting to demonstrate and kind of being angry, he tags Past!Fumbles in the shoulder with the sword, still looking at him, not really engaging the encounter as real combat. Fumbles figures it out finally, realizes that means Past!Big Ears is about to get him with the axe and cause the explosion a moment too late, and gets viciously cut down by Past!Big Ears, breaking his axe since he's killing his friend. Everyone freaks out that Fumbles just died. They act strangely. Something weird happens, possibly resulting in a TPK, or possibly something to do with the room, or maybe everyone just flees. In any case the combat stops and the GAP are no longer present.

Their past selves think it was weird how that thing just happened, and stop to talk about what they think is going on in the room. Past!Big Ears explains that he expects that the demon will fully emerge in 13 days since the axe broke. Someone brings up the possibility that there's some sort of time loop going on in the room. Meanwhile, Past!Past!Big Ears is hiding behind the ledge with the rest of the Past!Past!GAP, casting Detect Evil and being overwhelmed by the evil aura radiating from the broken axe...and the story repeats.

Except, something has to break them out of the loop. I'm not sure how they might do that, but I'm gonna guess Oblivious has something to do with it. Because, you know, it has some weird time-travel properties of its own, and Minmax is going to be pissed off that the one goblin he kind of liked is dead now. Maybe he manages to communicate something to a past self to get him to kill Past Big Ears before Past Big Ears can kill Past Fumbles? I'm going down a rabbit hole of speculation here but that would make some kind of sense.

[Nerre]

Wow! So many theories about the Axe of Prissan: http://www.goblinscomic.org/08122007/

I think the axe of Opposite Ears is not broken, it already had a crack in the first picture of the Opposite GAPMM-Group: http://www.goblinscomic.org/03132016-2/

After we had a lot of alternate versions magic in the maze of many, I doubt Thunt would bring up the same topic again right again. The GAPMM-Copies look far to similar to GAPM, as to be random or alternate versions. Even within the maze of many, the group constellations changed. Sometimes a person was replaced by another, or simply missing.

We do not know if Ears good deeds did reset the "used for evil"-counter from Saral Cain, or if it rather had to balance out his bad deeds with good ones. I think the rules describe rather the later, so maybe Ears did not enough good. Or maybe it is some thinking like goblins are acting good, but still are listed as evil in the monster manual thing. So maybe Ears using them, he did evil deeds rather than good, despite of his deeds mostly appear good to us.
The symbol on the door looks more like hourglass than anything else, but I doubt that a fast-time-dungeon would affect the axe so much, without having any effect on the GAPMM-group. If several days would have passed within minutes, the GAPMM-Group would have starved of hunger and thirst pretty quickly.

So maybe what Ears felt while using "detect evil", wasn't the evil within the GAPMM-Copies, but the strong evil from his own axe, overriding any sources of evil by blinding him and making him almost throw up. I think he maybe missjudged the situation, although he knew how the axe worked, cause he sees himself as good. Maybe him using it against Kore even sped up the process, even if he could not hurt him with the axe.
If we follow that theory, of goblins being technically evil, although they act good from their point of view, it would make a lot of sense that the axe broke. It almost was at a cracking point, which Ears reaction during detect evil maybe should give away to us. (He reacted like then http://www.goblinscomic.org/07302007/ but stronger)

I am not sure if the GAPMM Copies really are evil, or just react and attack cause of Minmax very loud scream, which they had understood as little as the GAPMM did their language. If they are opposite copies, they would be good if our beloved GAP was evil. So the only evil Opposite person, would be Opposite Minmax. If we follow down this path, Ears hitting Opposite-Fumbles, would have been an evil person hitting a good person with a weapon that doesn't like evil deeds. The last hit would have been the straw to break the camel's back.

We see that the opposites can hurt any member of GAPMM, not only their regarding copy.
We see that the GAPMM can at least hurt their regarding copy, as Minmax and Thaco scored hits already.
Only thing we do not yet know, if goblins can hurt others copies than their own, but since Complains already dodge Opposite Fumbles, I expect that to be possible.

Long thinking short: While Thunt displays the goblins as good in his comics, he maybe still follows the rulebook about them being evil in regards of the Axe of Prissan rules. Only thing that makes sense to me, after the axe broke. But I would be happy to be proven wrong, as I would like the goblins to really be good and not only from our point of view.

[Guus]

3.5 player char goblins can be good despite their background, just like the drizzt character is good despite himself. That the dominant cultures are evil doesn't mean the player characters are evil.