Chapter 11 – Page 21
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He made a grave error.
and yet another dead end
Best is in a hole new level.
Some of these puns are really killing me.
They had barely begun to unearth Best’s secret identity.
This is the pits. How low can you sink?
You’d best grab some spelunking gear.
Best just gave his soul for rock and roll
I was going to refrain from joining in this punning joke but then I pulled a Best. And caved in.
I really hope one day we get to delve deeper into Best’s persona and uncover the earth shattering truth.
I’m sure what we would find would be truly crushing.
These puns are really scraping the bottom of the basin. I wonder when we’re going to run out and cave in?
Ultimately he dug his own grave.
Cave in? Never. We’ll just have to get a bit boulder with our puns.
Truly, he died for the crater good.
“BECAUSE I AM!”
This whole Best thing is kind of tragic. :(
At least he wasn’t erased from existence. Better late than never.
They should really just ditch the eulogies before they’re buried in melodrama.
screw him, sums up my sediment.
Cool avatar image, what’s it from?
Oh, and yeah, screw Best. :D
drew it myself. wanted to draw a few years ago, but never followed through.
well, he had alot of debts for douchiness, but i guess he found out how to payet best…
Here, I was hoping she was gonna make a magic arrow out of him.
Actually, I’d like to be buried some place like that. It sounds peaceful.
It does I think, but I suppose that the problem Best had with that was that it implied that was the legacy he was going to leave behind. Not great deeds, legends and myths told ever greater, or grand statues in bastions of civilization.
Just a grave atop of a hill…
True. But if you think about it, how the hell would he get any rest with a constant stream of mourners and a huge statue weighing down on you?
Best to leave the monuments in the city, and let the dead have their rest.
We don’t know the grave was Best’s. Don’t assume anything.
True, but it was enough for him.
Technically we don’t even know that Best raged because he thought it was his grave. There could be other explanations. Explanations that will perhaps redeem him in the future.
It would be interesting if everyone saw different things.
Or, like the Palantir, the basin shows you truths but drives you to interpret them wrong. Best saw a grave atop a hill. It could have been his next destination on his quest, but he mistook it for his distant future rather than a near future.
The palantir does not drive you to misinterpret it – the massively powerful, incredibly evil, magical spirit sitting at the other end drives you to misinterpret it.
Ye’r cool, man! I loved this one…
Frigg and Byron were also looking in, too, and didn’t contradict Syr’Nj. I wonder if the last panel is supposed to indicate that they didn’t hear her.
Yes, it would be really interesting to hear what they have seen. If everyone saw their own fate, a grave under a tree for Syr’Nj seems plausible.
Well, he’s still not buried in a grave at the top of a hill under a lonely tree, and they don’t appear to be going down to retrieve the still-unseen body to do it.
Is THIS the part where he turns into a recurring villain that’s pissed that they didn’t try to save him?
Or do we cut to H.R’s world, where they drag him out of the tank and RealBest tries to screw with them from out there?
This is the part where Peter Blest joins the party.
Count the trees in the last panel of page 19.
There’s at least two more around, though. Two between Byron and Syr’nj in the second panel, and one off to the side in the first. Not to mention your tree, on the other side of the hole.
Also, not on a hill.
It’s an inverted hill. Technically, he’s on the top of it now.
Mind = BLOWN
Either he’ll come and TRULY save them in their darkest hour or…
Hey, guess what! Bandit was Best’s alt!
The lonely grave ends up being either a red herring (the grave the party put up in memoriam) that Best sees later on, or the lonely grave is where he buries a lovely woman who helped him after he makes his way out of the pit (a la Boba Fett in the expanded Star Wars universe)
Or, you know. He’s really dead.
Nah, Bandit is Dedalus. I’m sticking with that train of thought.
Bandit is Carol, Dedalus’ assistant. Calling it.
The body of Best’s player will be removed from the VR tank in which it died, and then secretly be buried on top of a hill under a tree.
he just asked the wrong question. he didn’t say “what is my destiny in the NEAR FUTURE” because technically all mortals are destined to end up in a grave somewhere. besides, mebbe the grave is in the middle of a graveyard with a big stinkin plaque at the bottom exclaiming best’s many deeds.
not that i hope for it. can’t say as im too upset aboot his death… bandit on the other hand was really cute and not a douchebag. well except maybe technically…
He saw the one destiny we all share.
Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.
This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill….
(RLS)
What is that from?
Requiem, by Robert Louis Stevenson. It is inscribed on the author’s grave, which stands alone atop Mount Vaea.
The best epitaph.
And I wasn’t punning for once.
And if we had had a proper space program, it’d be written on a discarded paper page, wrapped around a container of a gallon of sea water, somewhere on the Moon.
But I’m not bitter.
If you really want to make long range space travel viable you’re going to need a colony ship that can maintain its own air supply and grow it’s own food. That’d need to be about the size of a continent (minimum), so it’s not surprising that the shuttles turned out to be more than a little bit limited.
“The grave read “Firefly”. Don’t know why it made him so angry.”
Take my axe, take my fame
Take me where I cannot name
I don’t care, I’m still Best
You can’t take my final test.
There’s no place I can be
Since I found destiny
You can’t take the hero out of me.
God bless you Jean-Luc. Though I’d say, “my destiny” not just destiny. fits the syllables better.
Yeah, you’re right. I blindly followed the original and didn’t want to interject anything between “found” and the object word but it sounds awkward as it is. So whoever reads it add the “my”. :P
First time my google-fu failed me in a long while… what is the original for that now? (if its an original… kudos).
That would be the the theme song from the TV series ‘Firefly’.
There ye go, thanks! Gotta get me the time to watch that sometime.
You really need to watch Firefly, don’t put it off.
At least watch Serenity. I understand not being able to catch a whole (admittedly great, from the episodes I’ve seen) series, but there’s no excuse for not sitting down for a couple hours and watching one of the best science fiction films I’d seen in a while.
No, don’t watch Serenity until you’ve seen the series. Jeez. :P
dude, its only twelve hours of a series! thats like half a day if you sleep in late!
Gold Star.
Well it is a somber end..but it would be nice if Best diddn’t return. Our lovely elf ladyput it in the best of terms to part with someone you don’t like.
I do hope they do find someone new…and don’t lose them.Hopefully…actually would be interesting to get a female troll or wereshark.Someone not really humanoid also advacating for peace. Would be a nice concept
This. This is why Syr’Nj is my favourite character. Whether as “acting leader” or not, she’s always been the heart and conscience of the team.
Ah, but now there also seems to be confirmation that Bandit is also “gone”. Interesting, that.
Good story arc, I think.
Also, I’ve enjoyed seeing Syr’Nj grow as a character and as a leader. Pun intended.
Did anyone *actually* think she wasn’t?
Now, Payet OTOH is a real person, and him not coming back may mean very bad things for him in real life.
Bandit is gone . . . as far as they know.
It’s not like they found her rotting corpse . . . just each others’.
And Best rises up from the grave in anger at the prospect of a group of nobodies stealing his mission.
And forum comments go “that a douchebag self-centered zombie only thinks about himself”
I was hoping that being a zombie would have rid him of cognitive thought.
How would you tell the difference?
Well, the basin could show EVERYONE a grave as their ultimate destiny, and it wouldn’t technically be wrong. No reason to freak out.
It wasn’t merely that he saw a grave. Best would’ve been aware that he was as mortal as anyone else. His goal, since he began to believe the hype about the “prophecy,” has been immortality through heroic deeds, as opposed to immortality through not dying. Rather, it’s that he saw a common, possibly unmarked, grave, as opposed to some sort of grand mausoleum or whatever, and he took it to mean that no one would remember him after he was gone.
That said, I agree that was no excuse to freak out to the extent that he did. But as the saying goes, “Don’t cry over spilled prophetical basin water.”
I also thought this. What if instead of being some mighty artifact, the basin always shows the same scene. It is nothing more than a reminder of one’s ultimate destiny for all who gaze upon it.
It’s an ancient artifact untouched for no one even knows how long. Perhaps a case of the legends being exaggerated?
Okay, I can see being pissed about that. Buried alone and forgotten someplace is a pretty lame “destiny.”
I dunno. Having a grave on a hilltop all to yourself under a scenic tree sounds more like a monument than the usual slab in a row somewhere.
Maybe if the gravestone weren’t shaped like a public urinal…
Actually, I’m wondering if its possible that Syr’Nj saw her destiny. Since well, it appears Best got a smoking crater for a grave, not in fact a hill with a tree.
Also, whats this about a glowy hammer that Byron and Frigg are talking about? I feel like I’m missing something.
It’s what Frigg smote the library golem with. Nobody else saw it, and it didn’t happen again when she wanted it to.
Library golem should become a standard monster now.
Able to rest in peace while others run around making his destiny happen? It’s really the Best fate he could have.
A theory someone mentioned further up the page, that I quite like:
The grave beneath the tree is a grave the party makes in memoriam of Best. He’s not actually dead. After pulling his way out of a twisted hellmaze, or whatever, he eventually comes across this grave, and realises that the main party did legitimately care about him.
Either that, or he’s just dead.
The player died in the VR tank IRL when the character died in-game… the character Best saw his player’s grave, after the game company secretly buries the body on top of a hill.
My understanding was that Daedalus had previously gone to some effort to kill off all the others within the game, and was surprised that they managed to return to life. The only one not killed was Best — which seems like a rather significant omission, especially given that Daedalus was observing as the ghost of Gravedust met Best and set him to the task of recovering their bodies.
Anyway, by the evidence we have so far, it doesn’t look like killing them in the game will change their status in the VR tanks.
Of course Dedalus wouldn’t risk the life…of his OWN SON!
That sounds eerily correct.
Indeed it does. Best may have been getting special treatment.
When we saw Daedalus approach the VR tanks, it was “Byron” whom he addressed, suggesting that he has especially strong feelings about Byron’s player. That is still compatible with Karishi’s theory — Daedalus may blame Byron’s player for what has happened.
I get the feeling he might not be completely gone from this and might show up sometime later to help out when they least expect it.
I think best mat be dead. And I’m going to keep with my theory from long past that both Best and Bandit where the same player.
The same player who boasted about his many online personas during the interview. So we may yet see another of his personas.
We see Best and Bandit active at the same time in ways that, at the least, would be nigh-impossible to manage in WoW.
Nonetheless, I do like the idea of someone else in Arkerra taking up the mantle; the idea that the player’s consciousness is infectious like a meme; the idea that someone is always Best.
So if he’s consciously switching between personas does that mean he’s the only character who actually knows it’s a game? If he knows it’s a game a treats it as such that would actually explain a whole lot. He’s just a diehard roleplayer.
It would also explain why both Best and Bandit were a little bit more extreme in their personalities. Bandit was the eternal mischievous trixter, and never broke from that for a moment. Best was a douchey adonis hero type and similarly limited all actions and dialogue to feats that would reinforce this. He doesn’t break character. The consummate actor.
That could end up being his tell though. When you treat it like a game then even your good aligned characters are bound to have a little casual sociopathy. Bandit stole for the sake of stealing as near as I can tell. She stole pretty much because that was what she did. She didn’t seem to be hungry or anything. We found her in a city where she had stolen everything and still she continued to steal, because that was her thing. No guilt associated with it. The patholigical singlemindedness of it is also noteworthy, since where else but a videogame would one literally steal every single item of value from a city before just moving on to the next fun item to present itself. That’s a whole lot of theft by any standards, let alone someone with no stated reason for wanting or needing all that stuff.
Best similarly despite considering himself a hero and being ostensibly good aligned didn’t flinch when making decisions that would make others pall in horror. Child endangerment, risk of personal death, whatever none of it ever phased him. He’d treat it like a videogame mission with an objective and pat himself on the back when he got it done.
I don’t think I personally subscribe to this theory but it really is quite fun and seems worth toying around with. I suppose the characters we see in the near future will be telling in this sense.
Bandit and Best have been in the same scene before. So, unless he’s actually a stack of Christmas elves pretending to be a tall person, that’s pretty unlikely.
Bearing in mind that we don’t know the exact mechanics of the “game” aspect of all of this, so who knows what could be possible.
Also, dear lord. Was I drunk when I typed that first post? My spelling and grammar is horrible.
Payet Second-Best?
Nice. :-)
I am so glad Byron isn’t being mopey about failing to save Best. Now we wait for another fifth member to turn up I guess. Four is just a weird number of people for an adventuring team to have.
Maybe Bandit? I’d normally say it feels too early to reintroduce her but it feels like Best’s death came out of nowhere so anything can happen.
Actually, classic RPG parties were theoretically balanced between a fighter, thief, wizard, and cleric.
Of course, I reckon that doesn’t happen in stuff like WoW, but…
Then, of course, we realised that five works so much better. That way person can be skillmonkey with no discernable combat ability, yet the whole thing still works.
Were goimg through FNGs faster than a platoon in Nam.
I was trying to find a particular quote, I think from Hemingway, but to no avail. The gist was that replacements at the front in WWI died off so quickly that it would have saved time and effort if they just machine-gunned them as they climbed off the trucks.
I only know off such a quote from Black Adder when he remarks how it would’ve been easier to just stay at home and slaughter 50.000 of their men each day. Though BA often referenced other sources.
For some reason, the old song “Fool on the Hill” keeps running through my mind now.
It totally doesn’t fit the situation. It’s annoying.
Some troper may have posted this but I’ve been thinking about the party in terms of a Five Man Band, and here’s what I’ve got.
The Hero: Byron
The Lancer: The fifth member has been the best fit for lancer in both instances, I think.
The Smart Guy: Syr’Nj, Gravedust has some aspects of this.
The Big Guy: Frigg (perfect fit)
The Chick: Syr’Nj and Gravedust both
Syr’Nj acts as Lancer, though.
Four Temperment Ensemble with fifth wheel?
– Choleric = Frigg.
– Sanguine = Syr’nj.
– Melancholic = Byron.
– Phlegmatic = Gravedust.
(Or, you know, not every work has to be square-pegged into some round-hole trope.)
Under a tree on a hill….alone. Judas?
“My eyes could not reach” = “I’m short >:[“?
Syr’s response: “Should I describe it to you? Or would you like me to find you a box?”
In my eyes, you won a big apple to chew on…
On a completely non-Best-related note – I love Byron’s awkward glance to the side in the 3rd to last panel when Bandit is mentioned. :P
“Hehe, oh yeah, her… >_>;;;”
Byron and Frigg sort of look like shoulder angels in that last panel.
Byron: Don’t do it, you’ll only regret it later!
Frigg: Just do it and move on!
Well this totally went in a different direction than I thought. Oh you good writers, you.
<3
has anyone else noticed Byron isn’t attatched to his shadow in the last pannel…
creepy
Aw, he was my favorite douche.
I guess this guy is getting the same treatment I always get when I try to roleplay : All my characters die for fucking stupid reasons…
… except my Call of Cthulhu character. ¬_¬
All about “me”.
Gotcha.
ha, so hes not dead then. wrong grave. that aint no hill, its like the total opposite of a hill :)