Level 9: #5
Chapter: Comic, Level 9 — Hotel Califormian
Thanks for voting! The turnout was amazing, with 847 readers submitting a response! Here’s how the votes break down:
| Candidate | Percentage | Votes |
| Y.T. the Lamia | 34.47% | 292 |
| Madeline the Paladin | 27.63% | 234 |
| Stabs Doogan | 24.68% | 209 |
| Prestige P. Perkins | 20.66% | 175 |
| Dorilys | 18.06% | 153 |
| Derek the Cleric | 15.58% | 132 |
| Slobber Stankbreath | 14.99% | 127 |
| Robespierre | 13.58% | 115 |
| Patina (write-in) | 11.55% | 99 |
| Roxy Casbaugh | 7.56% | 64 |
| Anti-Madeline (write-in) | 1.63% | 14 |
| Schmetts (write-in) | 0.93% | 8 |
| Dirk and/or Kris Doogan (write-in) | 0.47% | 4 |
| Drago Stromscale (write-in) | 0.47% | 4 |
| Plaidbeard (write-in) | 0.47% | 4 |
| Trapweaver (write-in) | 0.47% | 4 |
| Calamitus (write-in) | 0.35% | 3 |
| D. D. Burnum (write-in) | 0.12% | 1 |
| Byron Bloodhoof (write-in) | 0.12% | 1 |
| Card Shark (write-in) | 0.12% | 1 |
| Hopkin the Bullywug (write-in) | 0.12% | 1 |
| Ms. Bai (write-in) | 0.12% | 1 |
| The Night Wight (write-in) | 0.12% | 1 |
| V’inny (write-in) | 0.12% | 1 |
| Zar (write-in) | 0.12% | 1 |
Well, at least one of my votes won, and it was the one that I wanted more strongly for this mission. I guess I’ll have to try to send Prestige somewhere else. With Y.T. already being deployed, that leaves me with two open slots to reconsider, so there’s ample opportunity.
That ship-on-rails they’re travelling in reminded me of Plaidbeard’s, but is probably unrelated. There’s probably more landships rolling around the countryside, because pirates need something to attack.
We appear to have skipped being shown how Yuan-Tiffany was talked into helping. Well, we’ll probably hear more about how she thinks about this whole thing later. Though since she was last seen talking about “taking this [roller derby] show on the road”, I’d think she’d already have experience with work-vacations…
So what I’m wondering now is, what farm tool is Madeline going to end up with next? She’s already had a hoe, a shovel, and a pitchfork, while Madeline has claimed the ever-popular scythe.
According to the Harvest Moon series of video games, the five indispensible tools for any farmer are the hoe, watering can, axe, hammer, and sickle. Hoe and sickle/scythe have been used, and axe and hammer probably resemble real weapons too much for Madeline (even if it’s technically a woodcutting axe), so…
Sudden last thought: Madeline is probably upset because the stench of smoke is disrupting her ability to sniff out evil.
Oops, meant Anti-Madeline has claimed the scythe. Unfortunately we can’t edit posts.
Further note: for someone who’s insisting this isn’t a vacation, Madeline seems to be treating it like one too in the second panel…
I’m hoping for a rake this time around.
Still holding out for trowels, but here are some other thoughts:
Dowel(sing) rod
Hedge (wizard) trimmers
Cult-evader
Blade of Fore-Shearing
Whip(saw) of Vampire Slaying
Ooh, I like the hedge-trimmers!
I agree, a rake seems like the right one to do next (although we did already have Dinkum try to sell that one to Presti). I am reading Journey to the West, the Chinese Classic Novel, and there is a memorable rake fighter there.
A few other tool possibilities:
It isn’t the farmiest of farmiest, but Madeline fighting with a saw would be a memorable sight. She might think of it as a falchion, but I suspect that that is too sophisticated a term for her (she did think that a thing could be a trident with four tines), so maybe she would settle for calling it a sabre.
Again, there are more agricultural things, but a pickaxe could make for some rather impressive scenes. I don’t know what she would call it. War picks look a lot like that, but they are, I think, much too obscure for her. Surely she would know better than just to call it an axe?
Madeline could go whole hog, and fight with a plough. I ca’n’t really think what weapon she would think it was, though. A scythed chariot, maybe. In a similar line, I wouldn’t mind seeing her with a wheelbarrow, either.
Another weird weapon would be an auger. Depending on the type, she might think it was a rapier or… I really don’t know what she could possibly think a taper auger like a reamer was.
A crook is another strong possibility. It’s anyone’s guess what she might think it was (functionally, the closest match would be a halberd, but she’s already mistaken a long spade for one of those), but with her strength, it could be a very effective weapon. I suppose she might think of it more as a crozier; I don’t know what a paladin’s attitude to using such a thing would be, but I would guess them to be objects of notable power in a Dungeons and Dragons setting.
And of course, flails are originally threshing tools. She could have a more agricultural-style one. She might well think it was a nunchaku, too, and given their probable origins, she probable wouldn’t be so very far off the mark.
Yes, smoke may interfere with her alignment-smelling. I feel like I could smell the neutral coffee smell through tobacco, but not the others (at least if the smoke was thick enough). On the other hand, she might well be thinking about how many monsters track by scent…
She actually might mistake a plow for a war axe.
Plowshares into swords, surely.
Spud bar. Wooden handeled bark peeler or solid iron digging bar. Either would be would be a “spear”. Both probably found together so one could be an immediate “throw away” and the other carried for a time.
Watering can. It’s Maddie’s idea of what a holy water sprinkler is.
Perhaps a swing blade? It’s a grass cutting tool that has none of the mayhem potential of a scythe, really pretty flimsy actually, so it should be right up her alley. =) I doubt it would be a push plow, that’s be too unwieldy even if it is smaller than a full size plow. Other possibilities are a Sickle, Pick, Saw and Spade, after that she’s have to branch out into some other field of tools, construction maybe.
Thing is, all of her weapons so far actually did have pretty good mayhem potential. A hoe or shovel might not look like a “conventional” weapon, but it would still definitely hurt a lot to get hit by. In fact, shovels are great weapons. Many soldiers in World War 1 preferred using their “entrenching tools” (spades) in melee combat over the actual bayonets or combat knives they were issued with. The Soviet Spetsnaz units were issued shovels and trained to use them, despite their role as special forces meaning they would rarely be expected to dig trenches, solely because shovels make such great melee weapons. Shovels’ shapes really do give them a striking force similar to an axe (or halberd if the handle is long enough).
A hoe, too, is basically an axe head mounted the wrong way on the pole. It’s a little tricky to line up right to hit someone with, but if you do then it’s going to hurt. The shape of axes (and by extension hoes and shovels) means that even if the blade isn’t razor-sharp, a strong chopping swing is still going to do a lot of damage.
Pitchforks, for their part, usually aren’t sharpened enough to make great weapons, but if sharpened sufficiently then they function very much like the tridents (or quadents) that Madeline believed them to be.
That’s the real problem here – there are plenty of farm tools we haven’t seen yet, but I’m not sure which ones (A) legitimately make decent weapons, while (B) not making such great weapons that they’d be hard to distinguish from actual weapons designed for combat (like would apply to, say, woodcutting axes).
Nunchaku, scythes, sickles, all based on farming implements.
Flails. Actual, agricultural flails, unlike the weapon ones, which are all thought to be fakes.
@Mary You know your medieval weaponry well! It’s amazing how popular the ball-and-chain flail is in fiction despite how obviously ridiculous it is as a weapon.
Flails were very rare weapons, and the ball-and-chain version rare even compared to other flails, but they did exist. Several authentic ones have been found.
They are, of course, very difficult to use well, but if anyone can pull it off, it’s Madeline. She once dueled a circus acrobat while balancing on a tightrope. She’s not lacking for control.
…At least, assuming she’s gotten over her resurrection trauma.
That moment when you don’t even see your write in on the tally. That bad, huh? =)
Glad to see Y.T. here though! This should be fun!
What was your write-in?
Are we allowed to nominate the Author for Gnome Prizes? ‘Cause “Hotel Califormian” may be the absolute best-worst D&D pun I’ve heard in years.
Also, this should be interesting. Not who I picked, but it will be a lot of fun to see how this goes!
… ok, this may be interesting and one of my picks win but I’m worried we could use Madeline better in those other two missions …
Eh, I think Madeline would have been a really bad pick for Mimic’s team. She might be good if we need the entire black market smited, but not if we actually need to negotiate with criminals to find the artifact we’re looking for while keeping a low profile.
She might have been useful on Cube’s team, using her detect evil ability to find the infiltrator, but I doubt it’s that simple. There are ways to fool alignment detection (which are more likely to be used by a professional infiltrator than by whatever is going on with the ants), and given what the princess is like, we can’t rule out there being evil people who are supposed to be in the palace.
So I definitely think Rusty’s team is where the ability to detect evil is the most useful, and it’s the biggest reason why I wanted her here. Clerics can cast detect evil too, but they can’t use it at will like paladins can.
Mimic’s idea team would be Stabs, to deal with the market, and Roxy, to deal with the genre-changing.
Or perhaps I have read too much Order of the Stick
The infiltrator has something to do with Grawlf, giving the gloating at the end of the last chapter. But it’s probably not witting on his part.
I voted Derek and YT, so I guess Madeline and YT is fairly close. Madeline has many of the skills and advantages that Derek has. Just glad we got to see more of Tiffany.
I fancy it is no accident that Y.T. is not wearing or carrying any visible metal.
Well, she wasn’t carrying any metal in her previous appearances either (except for the coins she used to pay for the pizza – they were well-hidden, but so was Roxy’s underwire), so it’s not specifically something she decided on for this adventure. Still, it’s certainly convenient when travelling with a rust monster. We do know through Madeline that Rusty doesn’t eat metal belonging to friends… question is whether he knows Y.T. well enough to consider her a friend at this point. He was briefly in the same room as her during the vampire arc, but they didn’t really interact.
It appears that Y.T. just isn’t inclined to use metal weapons or armor. I imagine it might be hard to find armor fitted to a snake, that provides reasonable protecting and is still flexible enough to move in. For that matter, we don’t know how good she might be in a fight at all. She’s definitely strong, but we don’t know if that strength comes with any actual combat skills. Her only on-screen success was restraining a physically-weak opponent while having the advantage of surprise, and she was still defeated pretty readily when Prestige downed the potion of transformation. She’s clever and figured out the male vampire’s weakness, but it was Madeline who actually landed the hit.
Well, this selection should be alright both for competence and entertainment.
However, I’d still suggest that we will vote the other teams in two stages:
1. We vote on one candidate.
2. We vote on the other candidate knowing who won round 1.
That way we can pay more attention to synergy between the three.
That would mean less time for each vote, though, and we still had people coming in late and trying to vote after the poll had closed even now.
Anyway, I think this was the team where synergy mattered most, since from last week’s posts it looked like there was a high chance of both Madeline and Derek/Dorilys getting sent, which I felt was overkill on the divine spellcasting / undead turning ability and too little variety. Oddly Derek and Dorilys didn’t even wind up all that high (actually below Prestige, which I voted for), maybe due to vote-splitting between the clerics (a lot of people wanted to send a cleric rather than a paladin, but couldn’t agree on which).
As far as Madeline/Y.T. goes, my only point of concern is that they’re characters who have worked together before, so they might not be at interesting as a brand-new combination. But then, it’s not like they spent all that much time together or really had the opportunity to stop and chat, so this is still pretty new (Y.T. just hasn’t had much screentime in general).
In terms of actual abilities I think synergy is pretty good: based on how she handled the vampires, Y.T. is more brains than brawn, and that’s something a team with Rusty and Madeline on it desperately needs.
On Mimic’s team the only thing that would worry me is if somehow two Doogans both get chosen.
Oh boy, the snek won!
Definitely can work. One who can deal with necromancy and one with diplomacy.
Yay Maddie! It’s so great to be seeing more of Madeline the paladin.
What I wanna know is: is that a cigarette, or does The Lamia abide?
It’s actually a flute, but don’t tell her that
She does look kind of stoned in that 5th panel…
Eh… pretty sure it’s more of a “pointing out the obvious to ‘Captain Oblivious’ ” type of look…
Nope rope smokes dope to cope with tropes?
“Wal since I like to roll my own, I stopped back home, & hung out with my friend Willie. The sweetheart gave me some of his private reserve. Says it puts the ‘giddy’ in your ‘giddy-up’ “
They’re going to a hotel, one infested with undead, and Madeline has the Shining, or at least shining armour…
awww, no vacation with new girlfriend. sadness.
Yay! Rusty, Maddy and Y.T.!!!!!
While maybe not the most… “tactically optimized*,” we get an entire adventure arc with the three cutest characters in the whole comic!!!
*SQUEAK!* (It’s like an Abirik for my eyes!! )
*Though I can see many ways this will work beautifully!
A song for Y.T.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWRrQ6GlI8o
Well, like for many, 50% of my vote won… (The bizarrely popular YT)
I was hoping to see more of Dorylis though, and this seemed a great opportunity for her. I still have a chance with the palace, though…
I don’t see her working in the black market scenario though. Might as well hold up a neon sign with “here comes the fuzz”
. . .
Hotel Califormian is a very ominous name for a den of corrupted critters…
They are venturing into caves. 7-94 says there’d be lava men.
Or larvae-men, because, you know, *ants*.
If they’re actually ants, they’re far more likely to be larva-women…
Both Derek and Dinkum can access Zar. Does this mean both are clerics of Knowledge?
It was a trek to reach Zar after Dinkum.
Dang. I was hoping for Patina, but these two are good.