Editing Order of the Stick (section)

==The Cast==
Of course a D&D story would be nothing without [[PC]]s, [[BBEG]]s and a supporting cast of [[NPC]]s. They are on all sides of the spectrum between [[skub]] tier and god tier. 

{{spoilers}}

===The Party===
The titular Order of the Stick, named first for the artstyle, then retconned into a nearby object.  All of their builds are purposely terrible (on Burlew's part) to both A) make the fight scenes last longer than two panels, and to B) emphasize reliance on clever tactics and teamwork to win.  The exception, impossibly enough, being Elan.

* Roy Greenhilt, the party's [[fighter]] and leader. Despite avoiding the whole "INT is a fighter's [[dump stat]]" thing, he still spends most of his time hitting things with his green-hilted (get it?) greatsword, putting up with the party's bullshit and, for a good chunk of the comic, being dead.  Comes up with the plans and gives out the orders too, if they'd transitioned to 4e he'd be a [[warlord]].  Or a tactician archetype in [[Pathfinder]].  Or a battle-master in [[Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition|5e]].  Or... well, let's just say that he's playing in the worst edition possible for his particular class and archetype.  There was a gag about him not going for [[warblade]], a class he'd probably excel at, because his bitter old wizard father didn't want to shell out for a ''doctorate'' from Fighter College.  Late in the story he starts taking levels in a homebrew prestige class (or at least obscure but legal actual feats) that lets him unlock new powers from his ancestral weapon.
* Haley Starshine, the party's [[rogue]] and second in command. [[Blood Ravens|Will steal everything that isn't bolted down, then steal the bolts, followed by stealing the thing that was bolted down.]] Besides her extremely literal money fetish, has an actual reason to do so: to pay off her father's life-sentence in prison. Then, when she met him he wanted nothing to do with her because she was snackin' on the rapier of the son of the man who put him there. Whelp. (They made up eventually.) Wields a bow and is comfortable with fighting as dirty as possible to win. Despite her greed and cynicism she is a loyal party member, and manages to stay "[[Chaotic Good]]-ish."  Dating Elan after a messy incident involving her being unable to speak for about a hundred comics and him meeting a Final Fantasy character. Note... Haley's speaking in aforementioned incident is actually in a cryptogram, but it CHANGES EVERY STRIP, which is fine in 2005 when you have a week to work on each one before the next comes out, but is just a waste of like, an hour when you have a hundred to go through and went in with the assumption that they all used the same code.
* Elan, the party's [[bard]]. He is the living embodiment of every derpy character you ever rolled up just to screw with your friends. He's as thick as a loaf of fine [[meatbread]], sucks at barding duties (often resulting in "wacky" hijinks) and has a homebrew [[Prestige Class]] that forces him to make bad puns as he fights.  As the story goes on, he starts to suck less, and it helps that he's the ONLY member of the team with an optimized build.  (Maxed CHA for everything bard-related, plus that prestige class adds it to his attack and damage, meaning that he doesn't suffer from [[MAD]] as much as a typical bard.) He also goes through some honest-to-God character development to be more aware of his actions and their impact on other people, without becoming noticeably more cynical or intelligent overall. Apparently, if Haley can be trusted, that maxed CHA is also worth a good deal "under the hood." As a bard consciously aware that he exists in a fantasy story, Elan is the character most "narratively equipped" to deal with the environment and is often able to use rules of traditional storytelling to predict, even manipulate events. In other words, he's a metagamer. As per the Oracle, is going to get a happy ending for himself, though this explicitly does not extend to the rest of the team.
* Durkon Thundershield, the [[dwarf]]en [[cleric]] of [[Thor]]. Gruff, dutiful and honorable, as all good dwarves should be.  Pretty stereotypical and solid in his support of the team, although he has had extremely subtle character development over time highlighted by a major story arc focusing on him. Has an accent so thick that it affects the way his dialogue is spelled, despite no other dwarf family in the comic talking like him- except for his mom, who he lived with for most of his life before his exile. His clan had a vision that his return would herald a great cataclysm, so they sent him away and told him they'd tell him when he could come back and never did, because no one in fantasy stories has ever read a fantasy story. Was turned into a [[vampire]] and secret pawn of the goddess of death for 200 strips until he got staked, died, got resurrected, died ''again'' 30 seconds later after an ill-advised marriage proposal, then got resurrected for real. Received a hell of a plot dump from Thor while dead, and was tasked with convincing Redcloak and his dark god to betray Xykon, lend their aid, and save the world(s), which is going the exact opposite of swimmingly. (What do you expect? He's a dwarf; he sinks like a rock.)  Also now wields a powerful lightning hammer which Thor gave him directions to find. (Password's "Loki sucks.")
* Belkar Bitterleaf, the chaotic evil [[halfling]] [[multiclassing|multiclassed]] [[ranger]]-[[barbarian]]. A hard-drinking, hard-fighting, hard-fucking killing machine, Belkar is one of the best characters in the comic. [[Murderhobo|He kills what he can't fuck and he fucks what he can't kill, sometimes fucking things before he kills them]] (but not the other way around, ew). His style of fighting involves stabbing as many dudes as possible with as many knives as possible. Despite being able to steamroll regular enemies, his low Will means that any spellcasters he faces will kick his ass, and his effed-up build (barbarian-ranger is an unhappy marriage where XP is concerned, his low STR means he mostly has to kill minions with tricky maneuvering, his low WIS makes him useless at casting Ranger spells, and despite being a 3.5e ranger he didn't put <i>any</i> points into his tracking ability) means that bigger people (like Roy) can still kick his ass. Still, he is murderously awesome and the PC with the biggest body count thus far (or would be if it wasn't for the time a powered up Vaarsuvius cast an evil epic spell that unintentionally caused a far bigger genocide than they intended). He originally faked character development to milk roleplay XP, then kept faking it as he went from a low-functioning sociopathy to a high-functioning one so the party wouldn't keep cutting him loose, and since has realized that somewhere along the way he went from faking it to developing for real, something that makes him just as angry and defensive as everything else to realize. Has a pet cat called Mr. Scruffy, hurting him will cause Belkar to rip you inside out and feed them to you, and vice versa. Also has a motherfucking allosaurus (currently polymorphed into a small lizard). Has been prophesied to die for keeps within the next (in-comic) year by his nemesis the Oracle, which Roy and Haley are aware of but haven't shared with anyone else, and to be responsible for the deaths of a big swathe of characters, some of whom are still alive...
* Vaarsuvius, the [[elven]] [[wizard]]. Talks too much. V's undescribed gender is something of a running joke - emphasis on "something"- in the series, which makes you wonder what their voice must sound like for it to be of no help in the matter. They have a spouse at home who is  also of unknown gender, and it isn't even clear if they are the same or different sexes; both are likely a play on elven androgyny. (In setting, elves all seem pretty androgynous/non-binary and don't seem to care about gender either way.) V's primary M.O. is "use fireball", [[Meme|and if that doesn't work, "use more fireball"]] (fitting, given their name). They also like to prank people with the Explosive Runes spell, and other forms of blaster magic may or may not be prominent. The fact that this is probably the worst way to play a wizard in no way diminishes the fact that V is easily the most powerful member of the Order by a country-mile, able to turn the tide of entire battles unless some convenient dramatic device takes them out of the action for a while, which it often has. While they used to possess an ego befitting both an elf and a wizard, V was recently taken down a notch when they were forced to <Strike>sell</Strike> rent their soul to a [[Tanar'ri|demon]], [[Baatezu|devil]] and [[Yugoloth|daemon]] (all at the same time) to save their spouse and (adopted) children from a black [[dragon]]. They eventually [[RAGE|flipped the fuck out]] and [[powergamer|killed up to a quarter of all black dragons in existence through a nasty 'Familicide' custom spell]] alongside their direct non-blood related (read: non-dragon) families in order to posthumously spite said dragon, something with more or less instantly destroyed their marriage on the spot; they've been too busy trying to save the world to try to rebuild bridges with their spouse and kids and didn't even contest the divorce when papers were delivered. They are also further horrified when they realized the unintended consequences of this caused the deaths of countless innocent people with black dragon ancestry or even with no dragon ancestry who had relations to those people. Despite being put through the emotional wringer, they've developed to the point that they're getting better at using the right spells for the right jobs and being creative with their magic instead of treating it like a proverbial hammer and every problem as a proverbial nail.
* Minrah Elle Shaleshoe: A female Dwarf Cleric/Fighter multiclass who joins the party much later in the story as Durkon's cohort.  She first teams with them to stop an attack on the dwarven lands by vampires led by vampire Durkon, but at the end of that arc decides to travel with them permanently after learning about the threat of the Snarl while she and Durkon were both dead, refusing a guaranteed place in the paradisal afterlife to do it. Hasn't had as much of a chance to show off her stuff as everyone else, but she's apparently Durkon's cohort and a fighter/cleric multiclass, and has gotten in some absolutely sick burns on multiple main cast members, not least Redcloak.

===Antagonists===
====The Snarl====
Backstory time.  In the beginning of the universe, four pantheons of gods came together to create a world, but they had disagreements with each other over what the world should be like and the threads of creation became tangled together and created a god killing monster that attacked and completely wiped out one of the pantheons.  The remaining gods created a new world to act a prison for the Snarl, but the prison was flawed and rifts in space time began to open leading to the Snarl, who promptly started tearing apart everything and everyone around it, body and soul.  A group of heroes sealed the rifts away with magical gates before immediately imploding into petty squabbles and rivalries, nonetheless keeping it contained. Taking control of the gates and therefore the Snarl is Team Evil's goal, although they all have very different ideas of who exactly will do the controlling and what controlling it will mean.

====Team Evil====
* Xykon the formerly human [[lich]]. An [[epic]] level [[sorcerer]], Xykon is bored out of his skull and as such toys around with holes in reality that serve as gates to [[Warp|a dimension containing a world-eating Snarl]]. Used to be Redcloak's pawn and henchman as the magical equivalent of a stupid brute, until the intelligence and wisdom boosts from being lich-i-fied gave him the brains to snap any kind of controls his former master could put on him, (or at least thinks that he has). Doesn't like [[wizard]]s because they were condescending to him during his life, and likes beating the shit out of them with his ability to cast spells over and over again  (like Energy Drain). He is wholly and unapologetically evil, and [[Eldrad|kind of a dick]], but he's still kind of funny because his charisma is through the fucking roof (as a sorcerer, it kinda has to be).  In fact, the author purposefully avoided giving him a sympathetic backstory in the prequel book so that readers wouldn't see him as any less evil, unlike Redcloak who does a sympathetic motivation for evil.
* Redcloak the [[goblin]] [[cleric]] and high priest of the Dark One, a goblin hero turned god outraged by what he sees as a divine conspiracy to use his people as XP fodder for other races. Xykon's main henchgoblin and ruler of a major goblin tribe and later also the leader of a much larger hobgoblin army, Redcloak is the guy who's told to "get it done". And hoo boy, does he get it done. He murders the resistance to his people's occupation of a major city, has another of Xykon's servants eaten by her own wights and reveals that he was using Xykon from the beginning for the good of his people, all in the span of a half dozen pages.  Has a lot of backstory in the prequel comic, but you have to pay for it so f*#$ that noise. ''During'' the comic, he grows out of his racism towards hobgoblins, and is generally the cool, logical, rules-nerd left brain to his boss's impulsive, screwball right brain.  He gets his name from the Crimson Mantle he wears, which is an artifact created by the Dark One that grants the goblin that wears it knowledge of the plan to take control of the Snarl, as well as an extended lifespan.  He has never revealed his original name because Xykon hates long names. Although superficially more reasonable and rational than his evil boss, Redcloak is also very guilty of moral cowardice and egotism, on some level wanting to be right more than he actually wants to help his people, something Durkon astutely sums up as being right about what's wrong but wrong about how to make it right.
* The Monster in the Darkness is a creature of many mysteries and few truths. All we know that it has two yellow eyes and acts even stupider than Elan. It also is stupidly powerful: it can punch people so far they are launched into the sky; it stomping on the ground is powerful enough to cause localized earthquakes; and it can teleport people with but a word and a thought.  Has the personality of a child (a non-evil one).  After extended contact with O-Chul, has begun to think for himself, discovering, to his own surprise, that he is actually ''extremely'' intelligent and doesn't ''want'' Team Evil to win, and so has begun subtly undermining their efforts from within, something that has been enormously successful because none of his teammates see it coming or expect him to do ''anything'' smart.  [https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?646977-MITD-Sweet-XVI-and-Never-Been-Guessed If you think you've got the brains, feel free to jump on the ride that never ends and try to follow the breadcrumbs and figure out what he is.]  We'll wait.  [[Troll| Remember to only pick ones with Trenchant Political Analysis as a listed special attack!]]
* Tsukiko, a mystic theurge. A necrophile necromancer with a crush on Xykon (which grossed <i>him</i> out) and also a parody of the [[Mary Sue]] archetype. She was in charge of the wight brigade until she discovered Redcloak's plan to double-cross Xykon, which got her eaten by her own wights for her troubles. Ultimately a somewhat tragic figure; in the end, she was just a stupid teenager assuming the opposite of the society she hated had to be right and was just desperate to be loved, something the Monster in the Darkness points out while noting that he's literally the only one who cares that Redcloak killed her.
* Beastmistress Oona, a [[bugbear]] of ambiguous class (although popular fan money's on the "beast heart adept"). Extremely cheery and friendly, she speaks entirely in broken "foreigner" English and is known to lavish unexpected bone-crunching hugs and headpats when least expected. She's part of a clan of bugbears that lives outside of a dungeon whose self-replenishing monstrous inhabitants they essentially farm for powerful magical spell materials, and is helping out Team Evil mostly so she can get them going on their way sooner rather than later and make sure there's still a dungeon for them to farm in when it's over. Controls her many beastly and magical beastly minions through positive reinforcement and mutual respect, up to and including the jars full of bees she uses like makeshift hand grenades. Despite being a silly character and source of great comic relief, Oona is far more intelligent and perceptive than her broken English and cheerful personality would imply, and has got an extremely clear-eyed perspective on what's actually going on within Team Evil. Her major beast minions have so far included Lancer, an arctic variant of a yrthak, and Greyview, an hilariously morose and gloomy warg who uses all its dialogue to express nihilistic viewpoints.

====The Linear Guild====
* Started out as evil counterparts of the PCs (which was deliberately done by their leader, Elan's twin brother Nale (get it? Nale is Elan backwards!)). The Guild consists of three core members plus two other slots that keep having replacements due to death or quitting:
** Nale, a Fighter-Rogue-Sorcerer multiclass specializing in enchantment, which is, if you didn't notice, basically a [[bard]] only [[Tzeentch|more complicated]] and capable of being Lawful Evil. This tells you a great deal about Nale's personality. Is permanently dead; he was stabbed by his father and was subsequently disintegrated for murdering Malack and rejecting his father's attempt to reconcile.
** Sabine, a [[succubus]] and Nale's lover with whom she shares a deep and fulfilling relationship based on human sacrifice.  Is currently stuck somewhere in the Lower Planes, trying to get revenge on her boyfriend's murderer, and since Thog is also probably dead she the last member not to die or quit.
** Thog, a [[Half-Orc]] [[barbarian]]/[[fighter]] (but only for a dip on that second one; even someone as stupid as Thog knew taking more than a few fighter levels was for suckers and he's got the dungeoncrusher alternate class feature too) who's part of the Dumbass Triumvirate alongside Elan and the Monster in the Darkness, and like them he sometimes expresses moments of startling and funny insight and erudition. Unlike either of them, Thog is ''not'' a good person; his cheery demeanor masks a sociopathic and childish delight in breaking things and people. He talks like the Incredible Hulk, and turns more green when he activates his rage.  Although unconfirmed, he likely is dead after Roy tricked him into collapsing a ceiling on himself, burying him under a ton of rubble.
* On the four different occasions the teams have clashed the Linear Guild employed a subset of the following people:
* '''First Encounter'''
** Zz'Dtri, the [[drow]] wizard. An obvious copy of [[Drizzt]], he was hauled off by the lawyers of [[Wizards of the Coast]] for being an obvious [[Drizzt]] copy. [[Wat|Yes, that happened]]. Later returned ([[Wat|because he was a parody, not a copy, protected speech bitches!]]) and clashed with V using all the interim levels to tailor his build just for fighting the wizard, mostly by boosting his innate spell resistance. This did him no good against Durkon, the party cleric, particularly with that vampire strength boost. Currently dead.
** Hilgya Firehelm, a dwarven cleric of [[Troll|Loki]] who fucked, fought with, and fled from Durkon during the Guild's first encounter with the Order, in that approximate order. Reappeared after over 1000 strips to save the party from a vampire horde in the nick of time, intending to get revenge on Durkon, then fled for the Outer Planes when it became clear the world has a good chance of going up in flames soon. Has a self-serving memory, believing everyone around her is selfish and taking advantage of her when she's one of the most selfish beings on the planet. Brought Durkon's baby into the battle in a papoose [[Dwarf_Fortress|like a true dorf]].
** Yikyik the [[kobold]] ranger. Was beheaded by Belkar and turned into a [[hat]]. Currently dead.
* '''Second Encounter'''
** Pompey the [[half-elf]] wizard (get it? Pompey and Vaarsuvius are named after Pompeii and Vesuvius!  We're clever). Had a crush on Roy's sister and teamed up with the Linear Guild so that he could have her, but he was defeated, imprisoned, and then escaped, signing on with Leeky. Has not been seen since.
** Leeky Windstaff the [[gnome]] [[druid]]. Turned into a giant monster and rampaged through a city (get it? [[CoDzilla]]!) before being defeated by Durkon and escaping alongside Pompey.
** Yokyok, son of Yikyik. A parody of [[The Princess Bride|Inigo Montoya]] who attacked Belkar for... oh do I even have to say it? Belkar was under a curse preventing him from killing, so he set a tavern full of [[adventurer]]s loose on Yokyok, then turned his head into a nacho repository. Currently dead.
* '''Third Encounter'''
** Yukyuk. Yet another kobold: this one was dominated (the status effect, mind you) by V (who used him like a missile weapon to shoot up Zz'Dtri) and got used as a litter box ([[Sick| without being decapitated first!]]) and living trap-springer before dying in a horrific accident protecting a [[cat]].
* '''Fourth Encounter'''
* The fourth encounter with the Linear Guild included Tarquin and Malack (as below). It also involved Chancellor Kilkil (Urd, a Kobold variant... with wings! It's in the 2nd ed MM), who is more a clerk and personal assistant than a combatant, though he is a hyper-competent bureaucrat and a flying calculator.
** General Tarquin, a human [[warlord]], general of the Empress of Blood and de facto ruler of the Empire of Blood. Despite the suggestion of him being aligned to [[Khorne]] this is far from the truth: he is a friendly and cheerful person like his son Elan, but at the same time is outright ruthless and has the evil smarts like his other son, Nale. He is the ultimate in [[Alignment|Lawful Evil]]: he understands that his rule is not eternal, but his legacy can be. As such he is forging an entire continent into his empire: even when he is defeated (which he holds as being inevitable) he gets to be a legend. Though he's not very keen on the "being stabbed by a hero" part, it would mean he gets to live like a god for who-knows-how-long, and only the last few minutes sucked. [http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0763.html The man himself explains it best.]  On the other hand, given his Lawful obsession with forcing the messy chaos of reality to conform to the outline of a neat little story, refusing to conform to the character archetype he expects you to fill (e.g. playing a [[bard]] when he thinks you're the protagonist) causes him to quickly fly into a fit of [[butthurt]] rage to put [[That Guy]] to shame and start [[railroading]].  On joining the Linear Guild he disguised himself as Thog.
** Minister Malack is a lizardfolk (possibly yuan-ti) cleric of Nergal and serves as adviser to the Empress of Blood and Tarquin. Is actually a [[vampire]] and has just turned Durkon into one. Like his former adventuring companion Tarquin, Malack is an affable and well-spoken person and is the heir to the Empire of Blood after Tarquin's death. When he does become the next Emperor he plans to [[Emperor|sacrifice a thousand people to his god per day]] [[grimdark|in rooms that serve as gas chambers/abattoirs, the sacrifices generated by a continent's worth of people living and dying for the glory of Nergal]] (although the writer later stated he means meat packing rooms as he plans to use the thousand sacrifices to feed to himself and his vampiric spawn, who'll be running the empire). Like I said, real nice guy. Has a beef with Nale for killing three of his "children", but set aside his grudge at Tarquin's behest. Even then he is a honorable person: when he promises not to kill someone despite it serving his goals, he does so.  A very different sort of Lawful Evil, but still fits. Perma-dead, having been killed by Nale with sunlight, which has a disintegration effect on vampires.

===Other Characters===
* Eugene Greenhilt, Roy's deceased father who occasionally visits him as a ghost and the one who originally sent Roy on the quest to kill Xykon.  Although his alignment supposedly is lawful good, he is extremely arrogant and an emotionally abusive jerk.  He is very proud of being a wizard and resents his son for not also becoming a wizard.  When he was younger, he swore a blood oath to kill Xykon for the murder of his master (beating him to death with his own whizzy award), but eventually got tired of this quest and decided to raise a family.  His former wife describes him as a man who is very passionate about his interests, but doesn't stay interested in things forever.  He was a good father and husband for a while but eventually got tired of it.  Because he gave up on fulfilling his blood oath, he is banned from entering Celestia until one of his descendants fulfils the oath for him, and he is very frustrated with having to rely on his non-wizard son for this.  Roy eventually gets so sick of Eugene's behavior that he makes Eugene agree to never contact any member of his family again once he is allowed into Celestia.
* Miko Miyazaki, an absolutely and fanatically [[Lawful Stupid]] [[Paladin]].  None of the other paladins like her so they send her on far away missions as much as possible.  She is sent to capture the Order of the Stick after they destroy one of the gates containing the Snarl and though Roy initially is attracted to her he later realizes that she really is a horrible unlikeable person.  She is so convinced that she is a good person who does everything right due to being a servant of the gods that she becomes increasingly detached from reality as the evidences stacks up that she is doing wrong.  After losing her paladin powers by killing a wacky old dude, she tries to redeem herself by sacrificing herself to save the day, but [[Fail|the only thing she accomplished was making the situation worse]].
* O-Chul.  The Lawful [[Awesome]] Paladin.  He is everything that a paladin should be and everything that Miko isn't.  He is reasonable and a nice guy.  While captured by Team Evil, he is put through all kinds of tortures both for Xykon's amusement and Redcloak trying to get information and survives all of them, never giving up defying them.  During his time as a prisoner he manages to befriend The Monster in the Darkness and convince him that Xykon and Redcloak are not his friends.  He is another poorly optimized character.  He used to be a normal Fighter so his charisma score is terrible, and thus is bad at casting his paladin spells, but has an insanely high constitution that lets him tank godly amounts of damage (he has a hit point total on par with ''young adult dragons'').