Friendship is Dragons
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Page 723 - City of Villains, Part 8
Author Notes:
So it took only six hours once I pointed it out, but someone correctly figured out that "Golf-Alpha-74" on Part 6 was an oblique reference to Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson creating and publishing the original Dungeons and Dragons in 1974. I mean, what else was it gonna be?
Man, I was way too proud of that at the time. Now I know how Munroe feels.
Ah the classic evil villain laugh. i'm most proud that when i'm in "the zone" as a DM I can do a pretty decent Tim Curry evil laugh.
The sinister anime bad guy laugh is less dramatic, but more appropriate for game stores and other crowded areas.
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"No, don't do it. *SMASH* You just doomed us all!"
"What are you talking about?"
"That machine was supposed to seal away the demon, Porlis"
"Isn't that the name of the king's advi.... oh no!"
This is a variation of Nice Job Breaking it Hero
You are given a goal, and you completed it.
But, it turns out that the mission made evil even stronger, and the giver knew that from the start.
Oops
Ever did that before?
A world had been brought to ruin, and its people to near-extinction, by the awakening of elemental (fire/lightning/etc.) spirits, who then divvied up what remained and ruled their own sections of the planet. The PCs were tasked with going around and capturing these spirits. This took up over 90% of the campaign. (7 of the 8 chapters, and part of the final chapter.)
Thing is, while they had gone mad and out of control, these spirits were also the only thing keeping an alien invasion at bay. (They had been awakened to power and fire the Volcannon: an artificial volcano built as an anti-space weapon. Firing it just once was what broke the world in the first place, although the aliens allowed a large shuttle full of slaves to escape so they would be right in the shot's path.) The quest giver (an awakened spirit of the "element" of gravity) was an alien who had coopted the invasion - basically, conquering the invasion force and then making them still invade so as to conquer the PCs' world too. With the spirits gone, the invasion could finally proceed after having been delayed for a century, right?
Cue the PCs invading the invasion "ship" (a moon by that point), dismantling the invasion force in epic fashion, and in the epilogue using the ship to start up interstellar exploration, starting with the planet the aliens came from.
It's actually similar to a story/campaign idea I had, where the main characters are summoned to save the heroes of the Final Fantasy worlds from "Apocalypse WEAPON," but it turns out that the guy who called them just wanted to get the heroes out of the way and destroy them so he could ascend to godhood or something.
And Mane-iac has a horn in two panels here, right before turning the machine on and then just after.
I think I know why now. I looked up the comic these came from and, the villans are, basically stealing the Power Ponies' powers, with Long-Face and mane-iac gaining Radiance and Masked Matter-Horns powers.
So I guess that means they gained hons too.
Why must you Pun-ish us so ;p
Well, that's kind of what you get when you have a villain player, you're going to get the triumphant laughter bit (or a xenomorph scream from whatever the shadow-y villain is, or the dramatic victory chant from High Heel, or the "slightly doesn't care" grunt from Shadowmane).
Or if your me, it's stopping part way through the final cinematic of the hero's demise to go and grab a snack (which usually results bad things to happen).
But, really, why WOULDN'T you break into spontaneous laughter?
If you didn't enjoy it, you'd not really be evil, more like neutral and amoral, so to be truly evil you do have to want power.
Or, I guess be one of the outliers that want power in a gloomy and boring way, I guess, but we don't like those.
Still, that's the first typo I've seen in over 700 pages, so, you know, good job.
http://youtu.be/P3ALwKeSEYs
Also, I got to the end of the page and couldn't help but think, "but what about Humdrum?"
He's only a non-powered sidekick... unaffected by a power-sapping machine... generally overlooked by villains...
Besides, Humdrum isn't Spike, and visa versa; Spike 'won the day' with his 'superpower' of opposable thumbs, and the courage and wit of Equstria's Number 1 Assistant (remember, he manages to keep Twilight sane, a Herculean task by itself, while also taking care of a lot (probably most) of her errands - heck, he even breaks the 4th wall if it's needed for Twilight's sanity, even if most commentators seem not to notice)
Humdrum doesn't have that.
But if he defeats them, I suspect it will be by chance, and will be just as much a 'Deux Ex Machina' as if they were defeated by the ceiling falling on them.
Non-Spike Humdrum will surprise me enormously if he turns out to be genuinely useful.
I do wonder what they'll do next, though; They've won, they're not that connected to each other, but if they now split up they're going to head straight into the 'lesson'
After, we'll have to wait and see; People've already spoiled that it steals their power, and that the ones gaining unicorn power gains a horn, so we'll see whether there's anyone who has the wrong number of limbs after we see who gets who's power (though I suspect this page is meant to show it)
In which case they're NOT boy-scouts and first-response professionals; Those jobs don't get the recognition heroes crave.
They're basically just as insane as the villains, with much the same urges, but they get their 'power trip' by SAVING lives rather than destroying them - and there's been papers written on how a hero-complex is just a few steps short of becoming exactly the kind of mindset that creates serial killers; If people start taking the heroes for granted, the 'thrill' isn't the same anymore, and they'd need to take more drastic steps to get the same 'high' - such as ritualistic murder.
Seriously, 'heroes', even when not defined by their complex, are not sane.
And the thing about madness is that it rarely is just the one thing - you're not going to have someone crazy enough to charge into a burning building, without them also crazy enough to be frightening once they get pushed.