Kore Discussion / Speculation

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Re: Kore Discussion / Speculation

Post by Lurks_In_Shadows » Fri Oct 17, 2014 4:19 pm

No, but they might be used by the DM to punish a consistent offender of the alignment rules. I grant I'm speaking from a rather antique set of knowledge (the original AD&D rules are what I'm most familiar with). If a character was constantly flouting their stated alignment, it was within the DM's prerogatives to sic a deity and/or their emissaries of that alignment on the character in punishment. Having an army of celestials (and maybe a torqued deity or two) come pound on you tends to ruin your day. So while a god may not grant a paladin his powers, he ignores them at his own risk.

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Re: Kore Discussion / Speculation

Post by Knucklekraken » Fri Oct 17, 2014 5:14 pm

So. What if he draws his powers from the divine force of law only? Perhaps the curse disconnects him, somehow, from the force of good but reinforces his lawful nature to the extent that he remains unfallen.
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Re: Kore Discussion / Speculation

Post by Zathyr » Fri Oct 17, 2014 5:15 pm

MakesNoSense wrote:Beyond this, did Thunt explain from which edition Kore is a core paladin?
Same as the rest of the comic - mostly 3.0, with a bit of 3.5 and some houserules.
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Re: Kore Discussion / Speculation

Post by YardMeat » Fri Oct 17, 2014 9:04 pm

MakesNoSense wrote:Re: Yardmeat's response.

I was attempting to get you to see things from another perspective - the video game analogy was taking another related gaming scenario and showing how there are some people who do play a "lawful good" paladin in ways that are somewhat similar to the "Kore" paladin - if you judge the base actions and not the role-play of the character.
I understand that much, but that isn't roleplaying. Hell, it isn't really a perspective; such a world would lack perspective in nearly every issue of morality. And it doesn't fit with they way Thunt has created his world.
To me, this is exactly how Minmax's "player" approached building a character for the campaign - from that same perspective.
Yes, but that was out of ignorance, and most of his character development has come from overcoming that ignorance.
I also believe that the whole setup of "goblin culture" - their treasure chest with magic items that goblins can't use amongst other things... are also built from the same perspective. I have always seen the Goblins story as challenging that - of why those perspectives and views are not where you find the best value in role-playing.
Sure, hence the whole "life through their eyes" thing, but that doesn't explain Kore. Everyone in the setting who is familiar with paladins thinks that Kore is an anomaly. If the whole "video game" theory held, there should be paladins like Kore everywhere.
I personally think that it would be a great spin on the story, as it could be used to show how Kore's dominance and abuse of the rules cannot, in the end, overcome good role-playing.
But we know that Kore's view is an anomaly, as is Kore himself. Thuntverse has innocent non-humans and harming those innocent non-humans will cost a paladin his powers.

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Re: Kore Discussion / Speculation

Post by Lurks_In_Shadows » Fri Oct 17, 2014 10:12 pm

Knucklekraken wrote:So. What if he draws his powers from the divine force of law only? Perhaps the curse disconnects him, somehow, from the force of good but reinforces his lawful nature to the extent that he remains unfallen.
.....
You mean like a lawful neutral? Order is everything and good and evil are irrelevant? And he's attempting to sterilize all chaotic factors (i.e. almost anything living)?
I don't know that you could have a pure lawful neutral be a paladin. They are pretty strictly defined by their alignment. And I still think Kore's actions tend to be more chaotic in some respects. Can a lawful do chaotic actions in the furtherance of a lawful goal? That sounds more like a neutral stance. (I usually played a neutral good character for that reason: I could be pragmatic in achieving my goals).

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Re: Kore Discussion / Speculation

Post by Knucklekraken » Sat Oct 18, 2014 3:11 am

I do not in fact mean like lawful neutral. I mean more like lawful blank. Like maybe Kore has had an entire axis removed from his alignment, or, more accurately, an axis has had Kore removed from it.
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Re: Kore Discussion / Speculation

Post by MakesNoSense » Sat Oct 18, 2014 6:12 am

YardMeat wrote:
MakesNoSense wrote:
I personally think that it would be a great spin on the story, as it could be used to show how Kore's dominance and abuse of the rules cannot, in the end, overcome good role-playing.
But we know that Kore's view is an anomaly, as is Kore himself. Thuntverse has innocent non-humans and harming those innocent non-humans will cost a paladin his powers.
In what way do we know that harming innocent non-humans will cost a paladin his or her powers?? This has never happened (to my knowledge). The only Paladins (to my memory) we have seen in the comic are the Paladin from the opening comic, Ears and Kore. Both Ears and Kore seem to be rather different, in that Ears is a goblin and therefore should not be able to pick adventurer levels. Kore has his curse/blessing.

This leaves the Paladin from the beginning of the comic, and the logical extension that there have been other "typical" paladins. We know that the paladin from the opening strip was teamed with a rogue and a wizard, and that the adventurers were the ones who attacked initially.

It seems likely, given the setting of the strip, that this was not the only paladin to go attacking innocent non-humans. But in no manner have we seen a paladin stripped of their powers for attacking innocent non-humans. We do have the strong suggestion that Paladins have attacked non-humans before without being stripped of their powers.

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Re: Kore Discussion / Speculation

Post by Wolfie » Sat Oct 18, 2014 6:45 am

This isn't all home-brew. The comic follows the rules of D&D. The rules state that a Paladin has to follow a strict code of conduct or risk falling from grace. Kore has already violated that code sufficiently enough to another paladin in game that THAT paladin has questioned how Kore remains unfallen. Ears being the other paladin.

This isn't a huge moral dilemma or thinking problem. Again, the issue, to me is as simple as explaining the curse on Kore. A curse he calls a blessing. The only reason he would call it a blessing is that it is keeping him from falling when he does things that would otherwise cause him to require atonement. To me it's the only thing that makes sense. Several characters, including Forgath, have referred to him as either cursed or "scourge of the realm" (nice Knowledge:Local check there Forgath). He's a paladin. A good guy. Paladins are supposed to be paragons of good, shining examples of how to live your life on the right path. Never before have I heard of a Paladin being called a "Scourge of the realm".

Explain the curse and you'll have your answer for Kore. I have a feeling that when his curse his lifted, he'll have a lot of explaining to do.

... I wonder if he made a bargain with a demon or god...
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Re: Kore Discussion / Speculation

Post by Lurks_In_Shadows » Sat Oct 18, 2014 7:02 am

Curse implies it was inflicted on him. Whether by an evil deity or a very powerful demon or an arch-devil I cannot say. If he still has a soul of his own, and if his soul is aware of what has been done, it must be screaming in torment to be made into its anti-thesis.

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Re: Kore Discussion / Speculation

Post by MakesNoSense » Sat Oct 18, 2014 8:38 am

Wolfie wrote:This isn't all home-brew. The comic follows the rules of D&D. The rules state that a Paladin has to follow a strict code of conduct or risk falling from grace. Kore has already violated that code sufficiently enough to another paladin in game that THAT paladin has questioned how Kore remains unfallen. Ears being the other paladin.

This isn't a huge moral dilemma or thinking problem. Again, the issue, to me is as simple as explaining the curse on Kore. A curse he calls a blessing. The only reason he would call it a blessing is that it is keeping him from falling when he does things that would otherwise cause him to require atonement. To me it's the only thing that makes sense. Several characters, including Forgath, have referred to him as either cursed or "scourge of the realm" (nice Knowledge:Local check there Forgath). He's a paladin. A good guy. Paladins are supposed to be paragons of good, shining examples of how to live your life on the right path. Never before have I heard of a Paladin being called a "Scourge of the realm".

Explain the curse and you'll have your answer for Kore. I have a feeling that when his curse his lifted, he'll have a lot of explaining to do.

... I wonder if he made a bargain with a demon or god...
I am not saying I think that Kore is a good guy. Nor am I saying that he is what we believe a Paladin should be. And I agree that I believe that Kore's curse/blessing enables him to act in a way that we (as well as Thaco and Ears) sees as contradictory to the code of a paladin.

As for how he is known - Attila the Hun was known as "the scourge of God", punishing Rome for its sins. It was believed that God (who is, by the standard of the people doing the naming, the absolute "Lawful-Good" if you will) sent Attila to punish the Roman Empire for their collective sins. While many citizens of the time might well have considered Attila "evil", there were many others who believed him to be divinely sent to punish (if not destroy) the Empire.

If anything, I always thought that his title of "Scourge of the Realms" had a sort of "fire and brimstone sent by the forces of law and good" ring to it - I did not think it necessarily meant "evil" :)

I am sure Thunt will eventually have the comic reveal the precise nature of the curse, and we will all look at it and say "Ohhhhh!". But until then, I think until then, it is interesting to speculate on the possibilities of how Kore acts in the manner he does.

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Re: Kore Discussion / Speculation

Post by Glemp » Sat Oct 18, 2014 9:58 am

MakesNoSense wrote:
Wolfie wrote:This isn't all home-brew. The comic follows the rules of D&D. The rules state that a Paladin has to follow a strict code of conduct or risk falling from grace. Kore has already violated that code sufficiently enough to another paladin in game that THAT paladin has questioned how Kore remains unfallen. Ears being the other paladin.

This isn't a huge moral dilemma or thinking problem. Again, the issue, to me is as simple as explaining the curse on Kore. A curse he calls a blessing. The only reason he would call it a blessing is that it is keeping him from falling when he does things that would otherwise cause him to require atonement. To me it's the only thing that makes sense. Several characters, including Forgath, have referred to him as either cursed or "scourge of the realm" (nice Knowledge:Local check there Forgath). He's a paladin. A good guy. Paladins are supposed to be paragons of good, shining examples of how to live your life on the right path. Never before have I heard of a Paladin being called a "Scourge of the realm".

Explain the curse and you'll have your answer for Kore. I have a feeling that when his curse his lifted, he'll have a lot of explaining to do.

... I wonder if he made a bargain with a demon or god...
I am not saying I think that Kore is a good guy. Nor am I saying that he is what we believe a Paladin should be. And I agree that I believe that Kore's curse/blessing enables him to act in a way that we (as well as Thaco and Ears) sees as contradictory to the code of a paladin.

As for how he is known - Attila the Hun was known as "the scourge of God", punishing Rome for its sins. It was believed that God (who is, by the standard of the people doing the naming, the absolute "Lawful-Good" if you will) sent Attila to punish the Roman Empire for their collective sins. While many citizens of the time might well have considered Attila "evil", there were many others who believed him to be divinely sent to punish (if not destroy) the Empire.

If anything, I always thought that his title of "Scourge of the Realms" had a sort of "fire and brimstone sent by the forces of law and good" ring to it - I did not think it necessarily meant "evil" :)

I am sure Thunt will eventually have the comic reveal the precise nature of the curse, and we will all look at it and say "Ohhhhh!". But until then, I think until then, it is interesting to speculate on the possibilities of how Kore acts in the manner he does.

Now there's something. Kin mentioned in the Maze that Evil was winning out against Good across the various realities - Perhaps Kore was blessed as an emergency measure with an Omniscient Morality Licence by Good, as otherwise the realm would slide into universal Evil.

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Re: Kore Discussion / Speculation

Post by MakesNoSense » Sat Oct 18, 2014 10:32 am

Lurks_In_Shadows wrote:Curse implies it was inflicted on him. Whether by an evil deity or a very powerful demon or an arch-devil I cannot say. If he still has a soul of his own, and if his soul is aware of what has been done, it must be screaming in torment to be made into its anti-thesis.
Well, from that perspective, we do have a very powerful demon tied to Kore inside the Axe. That demon also has another similarity to Kore in the "evil is contagious" concept. Kore believes all evil is contagious and anyone in contact with evil becomes infected (as per Thaco's description of Kore). While Thaco and Ears seem to dismiss that concept, there is another instance of this with the possession of the Axe of Prissan by Drose the Golem Paladin. Despite being a Paladin, Drose felt itself being corrupted by the demon inside the axe, slowly being turned towards evil.

It could well be (as many have speculated) that it was this demon who cursed/blessed Kore.

But how could this curse have allowed Kore to retain his paladin status? Especially since Kore thinks of it as a blessing, which implies that he took it upon himself willingly.

This demon which is trapped inside the Axe of Prissan has generally been described as more powerful than the combined might of the realms. The other popular theory, that Kore was the one surviving paladin who forged the Axe so many years ago, only gives another tie between Kore and this demon.

Another interesting parallel between Kore and the Axe, is that the Axe captured the soul of the demon (designed to capture an "evil" soul) while Kore looks to capture the souls of those he hunts (capturing all "evil" souls he can find - using Kore's belief). If you assume that Kore's curse is what enables the capturing of the souls, then it seems the connection looks even closer.

Some people have asked, could Kore have been twisted by the magic that created the axe? and Lurks is right, the implication of Blessing or Curse is that it is the conscious result of someone else bestowing it.

Could that demon have laid the curse before being imprisoned? Possibly, but if Kore was the sole survivor, the demon could have let forth a more self-serving curse. Something that would not have left the demon imprisoned.

It is also interesting to note that the Axe needed to be in almost constant use of good and selfless acts in order to retain enough power to imprison the demon. While Kore is in an almost constant state of hunting "evil" creatures so he can eradicate all evil.

I wonder if the "secret and forbidden magics" included the summoning of a power from the upper planes, and that is where the curse/blessing was bestowed from. The only issue there is that aside from Herbert, we have not been introduced to any of those beings, and it would seem weird to introduce a new power at this point.

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Re: Kore Discussion / Speculation

Post by MakesNoSense » Sat Oct 18, 2014 10:33 am

Glemp wrote: Now there's something. Kin mentioned in the Maze that Evil was winning out against Good across the various realities - Perhaps Kore was blessed as an emergency measure with an Omniscient Morality Licence by Good, as otherwise the realm would slide into universal Evil.
I totally forgot about that! Nice memory catch :)

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Re: Kore Discussion / Speculation

Post by Erix » Sat Oct 18, 2014 3:46 pm

MakesNoSense wrote:
Lurks_In_Shadows wrote:It could well be (as many have speculated) that it was this demon who cursed/blessed Kore.

But how could this curse have allowed Kore to retain his paladin status? Especially since Kore thinks of it as a blessing, which implies that he took it upon himself willingly.

This demon which is trapped inside the Axe of Prissan has generally been described as more powerful than the combined might of the realms. The other popular theory, that Kore was the one surviving paladin who forged the Axe so many years ago, only gives another tie between Kore and this demon.

Another interesting parallel between Kore and the Axe, is that the Axe captured the soul of the demon (designed to capture an "evil" soul) while Kore looks to capture the souls of those he hunts (capturing all "evil" souls he can find - using Kore's belief). If you assume that Kore's curse is what enables the capturing of the souls, then it seems the connection looks even closer.

Some people have asked, could Kore have been twisted by the magic that created the axe? and Lurks is right, the implication of Blessing or Curse is that it is the conscious result of someone else bestowing it.

Could that demon have laid the curse before being imprisoned? Possibly, but if Kore was the sole survivor, the demon could have let forth a more self-serving curse. Something that would not have left the demon imprisoned.

It is also interesting to note that the Axe needed to be in almost constant use of good and selfless acts in order to retain enough power to imprison the demon. While Kore is in an almost constant state of hunting "evil" creatures so he can eradicate all evil.
Everything definitely points towards a connection between Kore and the Axe. The most likely (and obvious) scenario I see is that Kore's curse came during the process of binding the demon to the axe. This could go down any number of ways, but possibly he had to act as a conduit to trap the demon in the axe, possibly intermingling with it as it passed through. He was tainted by the demon (and maybe himself left some trace in the demon), and now the evil within him colors his view of the world, making him think it's everywhere when it's really coming from inside. The selfless nature of the act that cursed him, and his continued attempts to be lawful and good (even if doing a terrible job of it) may somehow prevent him from losing his paladin status. Alternately, maybe the demon itself reached out an left part of itself in Kore or otherwise cursed him, in an explicit effort to have a paladin that would be driven to find and use the axe in an evil manner, eventually setting the demon free.

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Re: Kore Discussion / Speculation

Post by Tofu » Sat Oct 18, 2014 4:22 pm

Fascinating difficult discussion here. Very enjoyable to read.

I speculate Kore has bound part of the demon to his soul, and part of his soul to the axe, expected to kill the majority of the demon by an act if self sacrifice by being killed / suiciding with the Axe of Prissan, and things went awry leading to Kore being one hell of a cursed paladin with a demonic portal in his own brain and manifestations of souls saved from evil manifestating all through his body & IME.

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Re: Kore Discussion / Speculation

Post by SpellsBedly » Mon Oct 20, 2014 5:42 am

A relation between Kore and the axe seems very likely. But as for how Kore manages to stay a Paladin: maybe he manages to shift the blame for his acts onto souls he bound to himself, all the faces on his chains and in his face. They have technically committed the evil acts, through some sort of rules loophole curse, and he gets to stay a paladin. Justifying it all to himself is the easy part, if he's a paladin and has the ability to perform these acts, they can't really be evil can they? It has to be the will of the gods, it has to be his sacred duty.

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Re: Kore Discussion / Speculation

Post by raaabr » Mon Oct 20, 2014 4:56 pm

SpellsBedly wrote:A relation between Kore and the axe seems very likely. But as for how Kore manages to stay a Paladin: maybe he manages to shift the blame for his acts onto souls he bound to himself, all the faces on his chains and in his face. They have technically committed the evil acts, through some sort of rules loophole curse, and he gets to stay a paladin. Justifying it all to himself is the easy part, if he's a paladin and has the ability to perform these acts, they can't really be evil can they? It has to be the will of the gods, it has to be his sacred duty.
But then the question becomes "How did he start off?". If your theory is correct, that means that there was originally a soul he possessed that he blamed for his first evil acts, but how did he get that first soul? I'm fairly sure (And correct me if i'm wrong) that although killing evil doers is not an evil act, collecting/absorbing their soul like a demon is at least on the moral dark-grey side, if not straight up evil. It's entirely possible something happened outside of his control that grafted the soul into him, so it is explainable, but it does mean that Kore isn't the only one who had a part of this.
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Re: Kore Discussion / Speculation

Post by SoulReaver » Mon Oct 20, 2014 6:14 pm

I personally don't subscribe to this theory, but if Kore was paladin of Prissan, that first soul might be the demon.
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Re: Kore Discussion / Speculation

Post by raaabr » Mon Oct 20, 2014 6:47 pm

Actually, don't demons have no soul at all? Complains was becoming a demon in the battle of BrassMoon, and he likened it to losing a piece of his soul, if memory serves.
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Re: Kore Discussion / Speculation

Post by SoulReaver » Mon Oct 20, 2014 7:22 pm

Maybe. We can change "soul" to "scapegoat".
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Re: Kore Discussion / Speculation

Post by Tofu » Tue Oct 21, 2014 5:04 am

Kore donated his soul as the first soul. In donating his soul, the act begat evil, his soul then was tainted ... Or something like that.

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Re: Kore Discussion / Speculation

Post by ThinksHard » Sun Oct 26, 2014 3:39 pm

MakesNoSense wrote:In what way do we know that harming innocent non-humans will cost a paladin his or her powers??
It was mentioned in a conversation between Ears & Thac0, further Y&B asked Kore how he could keep his powers given his actions.

Ok, crazy thought here. We have to assume what Kore is doing isn't evil, which means we have to be looking at more than one entity.

Further, the comic has already seen a Soul Spike Devourer. One assumes what the SSD does has no impact on it's captured souls.

IMHO "Kore" is something like a SSD (maybe even exactly a SSD which lost it's save vs. a Wish), where there's a Paladin soul captive and sometimes supplying magic, and a controlling "thing" which has been mind controlled into thinking it's a Paladin.

Kore-the-paladin is just one of the captured souls, maybe even the first captured soul. Kore-the-construct is something really nasty which has been ordered to think it's a paladin.

Edit:
http://www.goblinscomic.org/09242006/ (thac0 and complains)
http://www.goblinscomic.org/03272006/ (Y&B... although the previous page may also be on point)

In the previous page Kore casts a spell which is pretty clearly "Speak with dead". Thing is, this is NOT a Paladin spell, it's a Cleric. At a guess, whatever "Kore" is can use all the spell casting abilities of anything it's killed.

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Re: Kore Discussion / Speculation

Post by RocketScientist » Sun Oct 26, 2014 9:09 pm

He appears to be using a magic item (rock or bean) in the first couple of panels of the previous page.

It doesn't seem likely to me that he's based on anything soul spike devourer related. That's a 4.0 monster according to... actually I forget who told me that. But anyway, the comic was fully written during 3.0/3.5. Things that pop up from 4.0 are just add-ons. But you never know. It could be possible, I suppose.

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Re: Kore Discussion / Speculation

Post by Zathyr » Sun Oct 26, 2014 10:08 pm

Well there's a regular devourer, without the spikes. That was in 3.x, and it still ate souls. Nasty things. I suspect something different for Kore though.
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Re: Kore Discussion / Speculation

Post by Gormash » Mon Oct 27, 2014 10:15 am

I have a theory that I've not seen yet, though how likely it is remains to be seen.
Sometime in the future, Forgath goes through some seriously disturbing stuff and ends up transported back in time and ends up as Kore. This means that he's actually fighting himself, though Kore hasn't realized this (yet). This would indicate that Forgath survives their current battle and probably kills Kore (himself), thus fullfilling the prophesy that he will be killed by a dwarf.

I've had this thought for a while now, and once we saw Kore's face it made me that much more sure of this theory. Just look at their faces side by side and you can see the similiarities.

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