Shamus Says:

This comic was made backwards. In days of yore, I’d write a joke, then Shawn would draw it. This one came art-first, the webcomic equivalent of a breech birth.

This comic grew in the making. It began as a few ideas that we’d kept from the original run but never got to use. We batted these ideas back and forth, but none of them felt worthy of being a final strip. Then Shawn drew this square kilometer of art and I felt the need to do it justice in words. (Compare this strip to the first one to see just how far he’s come.)

Each of us had about a dozen jokes we wanted to jam into this final strip, and it took a while to find a set that we were both happy with, that worked together, and that matched the art.

This is sort of a snapshot of what we had wanted to do with the series. When they were done with Deuse Baaj, they would have moved on to Star Wars or vampires or steampunk or pirates or whatever else.

Hope you enjoyed it. Thanks for reading.

Shawn Says:

And there you have it!  I’m going to stick by our theory that the wait was entirely deliberate, and meant to evoke early 2008.

If you’re curious, from my end, this comic took between 20 and 30 hours from start to finish.  For reference, the average Clockworks page takes between 4 and 6 hours.

If you’d like to see a much, much larger view of today’s comic, sans word bubbles, it is the current vote incentive for Clockworks over on TopWebComics.com.  That’s right, I’m bribing you all to go vote for my other comic by putting up something you want to see for this comic.  I’m a bad man.

Anyway, this brings our adventure in Chainmail Bikini to a close.  Hope you’ve enjoyed it.  Feel free to chat with Shamus or myself on his blog or my comic.  Later!

We’re doing this one backwards, which doesn’t help.  Usually he’d write the script and then I’d draw it.  This time I had an idea for a comic, based on old running jokes we’d discussed about where the comic would go back when our plan was to keep making new CB strips forever.  Sadly, the art I came up with is too awesome, and Shamus has mentioned that he’s intimidated trying to live up to it and give a proper ending to the series, which is silly because the dude’s hilarious.

Hopefully I’ll have a final script from Shamus in the near future, and you guys will have a comic to enjoy in the next week or two.  In the mean time, here’s a sneak peak:

See you soon,

Shawn

Scene Four:

The party is now face-to-face with their vaguely defined and poorly conceived nemesis. Deuse (Casey) begins what promises to be a very long bit of exposition. It is revealed that he is not a Necromancer: He’s a LICH.

Everyone is outraged. (Except for Marcus, who doesn’t know any better.) A Lich is way, way out of their league. They protest. Casey points out that there were sidequests available which would have let them to seek out the “seven parts of the Ageless Armor” and the “Twelve Shards of the Champion”, an armor and sword which would have given them the power to defeat Deus Baaj.

It’s obvious his plan for this campaign was for them to go on a long series of fetch quests, so at the end Casey’s Super Weapon could defeat Casey’s Super Villain. Luther the Gnome had the information needed to get the armor, and the sidequests in the Necropolis would have led them to the sword.

Casey is smug. He’s obviously trying to teach them a lesson about resisting his railroad plot, and he’s decided that a Total Party Kill is the best way to drive that lesson home.

Deuse resumes his Big Speech. Josh announces a sneak attack. He runs at Deuse. It turns out Deus has some artifact that puts people under his sway if they come within thirty feet of him.

Josh: No problem. My saving throw is…

Casey (Evil grin.): This one is charisma based.

Josh: Oh crap.

Josh has been undone by his own min-maxing and falls under the sway of the Lich, who tells him to jump out the window. Out he goes.

Josh argues that he SHOULD be able to grab the rope on the way down and save himself. Casey relents, and lets Josh do so, at the cost of taking 8d6 “rope burn damage”. Josh is now at the bottom and out of the fight. (We would have established earlier that it takes a long, long time to climb the tower. There is no way for Josh to get back into the battle in time.)

Chuck reminds Casey that he still has the spear of insta-killing undead. Casey had forgotten about this. They all laugh at Casey, because this campaign is about to be undone by his super-weapon from an earlier campaign.

Ramgar THROWS the spear to avoid entering the radius where he would fall under Douchbag’s control. Chuck rolls a one. The spear goes out the window and lands point-down, right beside Josh. (This is another nod to a classic FtB gaming story.) The players go back to being screwed.

Marcus sees that things are about to end badly. Having died so many times already, he really wants to escape this one alive. He decides to run for it, climbs out the window and begins climbing down the rope.

Lich’s turn now. Casey is being vindictive. Rather than fighting one of the two remaining players, he’s more concerned with making sure that nobody escapes alive. He spends his turn going over to the window and kicking the grapple hook loose, letting Topaz fall to her death.

Marcus tries to cast levitate. Casey overrules him, saying he can’t cast while falling. This is NOT in the rulebooks, and seems to be an ad-hoc house rule. They argue, but Casey comes up with very flimsy justifications for it and moves on.

(I’m thinking that MAYBE Josh saves her in some way I haven’t devised yet, or maybe she just pancakes at the bottom. Either way, she’s out of the fight. I’ve noticed readers have been getting upset at Marcus’ bad fortune. His deaths have been viewed as “mean” instead of “absurd”, and that’s not what I was going for. I might have used the “death” of Jade to help me gauge which way I should write this.)

Only two players left. Ramgar is unarmed and Lucretia doesn’t have any magic that can hurt this guy.

It’s now Lucretia’s turn. She walks over to Douchebag and stops one step short of his magical mind-control radius. She takes out the potion of “bring anyone, ANYONE back to life, anytime” – which I hope the reader has forgotten about until now – and chucks it at the Bad Guy with a simple underhand toss. It shatters and splashes him.

Casey tries to protest. But if this potion could bring back someone chopped into paste by a trap (see Act I) then it should certainly work on this guy. The players think this should destroy him (like throwing a Pheonix Down on an undead in Final Fantasy) but Casey isn’t ready to accept defeat just yet. Instead, he announces that Deuse Baaj is now… alive again? So they’re just fighting a Wizard instead of an undead Lich? He doesn’t even know how to handle this. He consults the rulebook.

It comes around to Ramgar’s turn again. Ramgar runs and delivers a flying leap-kick to Douchebag, who, if you remember, is still standing at the window from when he sent Topaz falling. Ramgar entering his sway doesn’t couse a problem, since he’s just a very heavy projectile at this point. His boot sends Douchebag out the window. Casey tries to react:

Casey: As he falls, Deuse casts feather fall-

Everyone: YOU CAN’T CAST WHILE FALLING.

Deuse plummets to his death where he lands on the spear at the bottom.

There is a pause where Josh stares at the impaled Deuse. Then, just for good measure, he gives the guy a halfhearted and disappointed poke with his knife.

I haven’t written a denouement, so our tale ends here. I hope this helps close the tale for you. I do thank everyone for reading.

-Fin-

Shamus says:

That’s how it ended. Hope you enjoyed it. Also, thanks to Shawn for getting the great re-posting project rolling. It really is nice knowing the comic has a proper home again and wasn’t lost to the bit bucket.

Thanks again for reading.

Scene One:

We have reached the Necropolis. We get the character’s dumbfounded reactions as Casey describes it: It’s a place of white clouds and rainbow bridges. Birds. Flowers. Butterflies.

We cut back to the table and see that Casey is sick, and out of his mind on cough medicine. (This was written before we came up with the earlier strip where Casey gets sick. Maybe this would have been too much, to have him get sick twice like this.) This setup is a nod to a classic – perhaps even legendary – Fear the Boot gaming story. FtB host Luke actually did this once, and he’s still teased about it today.

At the Necropolis Casey tries a few of the World’s Most Obvious Quest Hooks, which the players sidestep or ignore. They don’t want any sidequests. They want to head right for the Black Obelisk. Casey tries to force them, and Chuck puts his foot down.

Chuck insists that players MUST have the freedom to play the game as they see fit. They want to be free to act and deal with the consequences, without the GM helping or punishing them based on his preferences.

On hearing this, Casey becomes suddenly insidious. “Oh REALLY?” He stops trying to railroad them and lets them head north for the Obelisk.

Before leaving town, Josh buys a grapple hook and a mile of rope.

Scene Two:

I think this would actually be a good spot to have the players remember the pigs they were carrying. Shawn and I were trying to work this joke in at various times since the attack on Calm Meadows. Casey tries to pressure them in the blackened wilderness on the way to the Obelisk, threatening them with starvation. Having never said they got rid of the pigs, but also not mentioning them for the last several game sessions, the players manage to swindle Casey and convince him they still have the pigs, which they eat.

There is another encounter with something absurd and seemingly overpowering. Josh kills it in a single round with his Rulebook-Fu.

Scene Three:

The party reaches the Obelisk. Casey very nearly talks them to death with his breathless description of the evil of the place. Josh has some convoluted plan he’s working on with the ropes, but the players ignore him and head inside.

There is a massive spiral staircase leading up the inside of the tower. Topaz gets blasted by a magical trap as soon as she steps on the first step. They very quickly realize the there are thousands and thousands of steps going upwards, and Casey has most likely trapped them all.

Josh calls them back outside. He hands Topaz the grapple hook and rope and tells her to levitate up the side of the tower and hang the hook from the topmost window, which was the first thing readers were shown in the very first comic. (Marcus, never one to pay attention to game mechanics, didn’t even know he COULD levitate.) Casey is irritated, having just seen them route around a lot of his hard work, but he’s still being smug and cryptic. He’s planning something.

(Childish punchline panel: Topaz is flying up the tower. Lucretia looks bored, arms folded. The guys are Looking Up at their miniskirt-wearing mage levitating above them. )

The players climb the rope and pile into the topmost room, having circumvented everything below it. They find themselves in the “Throne Room” of Deuse Baaj, who has been waiting for them.

As promised, here is the remainder of the Act II story arc for Chainmail Bikini. It turns out the full end of the story was way, way too long to fit into a single post. (Always count on me to find the size limits for written text. Brevity is a cross-class skill for me.) So the end of the story will be posted over the next three days. Today you get the remainder of Act II. The next two posts will tell the story of Act III and bring the story to a close.

This isn’t broken up into jokes, but instead functions as a list of joke ideas and hooks. It won’t be funny, but it should give you an idea of how things were supposed to turn out.

When I write the comic I come up with arcs or scenes, and then Shawn and I work to turn those scenes into individual jokes. If you remember in the last few strips before the end of Chainmail Bikini, they’d met a shopkeeper who kept trying to give directions through the swamp but kept being ignored. This was the first half of one such scene. The gist was that they thwarted the attempted railroading more or less without even realizing it. This scene would end with Casey finding some clumsy way to keep the railroad going even with the shopkeeper dead.

The path he intends for them to take is a series of underground passages. There is a series of dusty stone catacombs just a few feet below the surface of the bubbling swamp. The gist of the jokes is that we contrast the different player reactions: Marcus and Josh both accept it without question, and Chuck and Ivy are put off by the absurdity of it.

Before the end of Scene Four we might also work in a reminder of the overarching goals: Reach the Necropolis, then the Black Obelisk where they can defeat Deuse Baaj.

Scene Five:

The players are sitting at the table, and the room is dark. They are gaming by candlelight.

Josh: Um. It’s dark in here.

Ivy: Yes. Let’s talk about that. What’s the deal?

Casey: You’re in the ancient dusty catacombs of Gra’neth, the twisting underbelly of the swamp.

Ivy: No, why are WE sitting in the dark??

Josh: I can’t see my character sheet.

Casey: I’m trying to set a mood!

Marcus: Do I smell apple and cinnamon?

Casey: It’s the candle. It’s scented. We had a bunch of of them leftover from the holidays.

Ivy: So we’re sitting in a dark, APPLE-SCENTED dungeon under a swamp?

Marcus: Mmmm. This is a very festive dungeon.

Casey: I have a pumpkin & spice from Thanksgiving if you want to try that instead.

The situation gets worse as they try to actually play. They can’t see character sheets or dice rolls. Marcus holds his character sheet up to the candle so he can read it, and ends up setting the thing on fire.

Scene Six:

Still in the dungeon. Marcus needs a new character. The lights are on again in the room.

Marcus: I’m rolling up my new character.

Chuck: You should try playing a man.

Josh: With pants.

Ivy: Seconded.

Casey: Why not play this Gnome Paladin? He’s integral to the plot.

Marcus: (Evil grin.) Oh REALLY?

Casey presents Marcus with a huge stack of notes. This character evidently comes with a good deal of baggage. Casey tries to give Marcus on overview of the character, how it should be played, how he relates to the world. Marcus ignores him and begins his dramatics:

Paladin: Hail adventures. I’m…

Casey: Luther Whitehammer…

Marcus: (overlapping) A paladin!

Ramgar: Let’s assume we get to know each other and we’re all buddies now. I want us to push towards the Nor-

Luther, looking at Lucretia: Forsooth! I am struck by the beauty of your female companion!

Luc: Oh yeah. I can’t imagine how this can end well.

Marcus / Luther: My character is smitten by this pale beauty.
I’m going to cut myself to demonstrate my love to her.

Casey: I don’t think that’s how a paladin would demonstrate love…

Marcus / Luther: Hey, you gave me this character. I’m just going with what I know.

Casey: Well you CAN’T cut yourself. You don’t have an edged weapon.

Luther (to Josh): Could I get a…

Josh, who is bristling with knives and swords: I’m not sharing. I need all these.

Marcus: Fine. I’ll just go with what I have here.

(Luther begins slamming himself in the face with his hammer.)

FWANG!

Lucretia: I don’t know how to say this little guy…

FWANG!

Lucretia: But this face-hammering business just isn’t doing it for me.

FWANG!

Casey: Oh. alright. The banging sound of your character has attracted the attention of…

(roll)

Casey: A ravenous… Badger-Dragon.

Luther: In order to protect my lady, I jump into its mouth.

Casey (horrified): You WHAT?

Marcus: Head first, man. All the way. Anything to protect his beloved.

Casey: (Silence.)

Casey: Uh. I guess he’s dead then.

Marcus (Surprised): Oops. Really? I figured being integral to the plot made him immortal.

Casey: No, it just means you fed crucial quest items and maps to a monster.
(Pause.)
Which, having been so generously fed, leaves.

Marcus – giving back the paladin: Wow. Maybe I should have read some of that stuff while I had it.

Ivy: Next time you’re playing a woman.

Josh: With some sort of combat usefulness.

Chuck: Seconded.

Scene Seven:

Marcus introduces his next character: Topaz, a cheery female Wizard with a witch hat and a little miniskirt. There is a little difficulty in getting the other players to accept this, as they already HAVE a caster. We trot out the usual assortment of jokes remarking on how CROWDED these dungeons seem to be that they keep meeting new people. Then there are some jokes reminding us of just how overpowered Josh is.

They continue on, and exit the dungeon next to the Necropolis.

End of Act II

Shawn Sez:

And here’s where it ended, more or less.  This wasn’t the original plan to end the series.  I had become horribly burnt out on doing the comic, and we posted this comic to lead in to a hiatus.  Said hiatus ended up becoming permanent.  We will not be reposting the “Hey, the hiatus is finally going to end! Oh no it totally won’t, the comic is ending forever” strips that followed this one a month or two later.  The basic story is after some time away, I decided I was ready to get back in to the groove.  And then as we were plotting and drawing what would have been comic #52, I realized that no I really was not.  I probably should have realized that before telling the world we were coming back, but live and learn.

A few random art notes: I love how Ivy has a Fitzpatrick backpack.  I like to imagine she bought it at Hot Topic, that in the CB universe, not only is D&D&D available in gaming stores, but Fitzpatrick is some kind of cute goth icon.  Also, this is probably the worst I ever drew Ivy.  Man, she looks horrible in this comic, especially the panel where she’s looking away.  She looks like some sort of horrible, horrible Ctrl+Alt+Delete character.  Ugh.

Anyway, I think the new final comic we’re going to leave you guys with next week will be a much better cap to the series.   Which reminds me, I need to finish drawing it so Shamus can make it funny…

Shamus Says:

That frame of Ivy? That Shawn hates so much and says it looks like a CAD hackjob? That’s my favorite pic of her in the entire series. This is why Shawn and I never had a falling out: The ways in which we misunderstand each other are far too comical for anyone to get upset over.

Over the next couple of days I’ll be posting the ending to this thing. That is, I’ll be posting all of my notes on where the story was intended to go and how it all turned out. I’d had the final battle sketched out before we even made the first comic, and hopefully you’ll find it a satisfying way to bring the tale to a close. It should be better than leaving the story hanging, anyway.

Original Text: (from Shamus)

I hate doing returns, although I’ve never had one go this badly.

Shamus Says:

And a quick murder gets things back on track. Casey’s story might require that they get through the swamp, but MY story requires that Ramgar have his spear.

Shawn Says:

And we’re nearing the end of the original run.  Man, the “Ramgar’s Spear Is A Euphemism For Chuck’s Penis” subtext really shines through in this one.

Also, Penis.

Original Text: (From Shawn, believe it or not!)

1: You have undoubtably heard by now, Gary Gygax passed away this week. There are tributes and references all over the net, but I think Order of the Stick did it best. If you find yourself with some free time, you should celebrate Gary Con Around The World.

2: I’ll be at Fear the Con this Saturday, along with our gracious hosts from Fear the Boot. If you’re within driving distance of St. Louis, you owe it to yourself to come see us. I’ll be running a Savage Worlds Chainmail Bikini adventure. I promise to have an update next week on how it went. I’ll also be running a World of Darkness mortals game, and my goal will be to scare the crap out of all of my players. Sadly, both of my games are full, but you can always watch in awe.

3: There may be an extended hiatus in the future for Chainmail Bikini. You’ve likely noticed the update schedule has been somewhat erratic since the new year. I’ve moved into the exciting world of home ownership, which is also the exciting world of “Great Googeley Moogely How In The Crap Are We Going To Pay For All This And Still Buy Food?!?!” Due to this, I might need to take a break from drawing the web comics, to focus on the exciting world of Making Money To Pay The Bills.

If and when a hiatus is necessary, we’ll let you guys know well in advance, and leave the comic at a satisfying place for a pause. We might not have a break, but if we do Shamus and I wanted you, the loyal reader, to know about it in advance.

Later, and have a great weekend!

Shamus Says:

Ah. That original text. As timeless as ever.

It’s been interesting following the reactions to Steve. People disliked him intensely for attempting to sell Ramgar’s spear. So much so that this injustice overshadowed the actual joke – which was the absurdity (and visual fun) of seeing a character change players. People were mad at Steve for attempting to sell the spear, at Casey for allowing it, and at me for writing it.

I think one of the benefits of DM of the Rings was that everyone already knew the plot. They KNEW Gandalf wouldn’t stay dead, that Aragorn was going to be king, and that Gimli would get a big fat bag of nothing for all his efforts. Everyone knew where we were going, so the fun was in discovering how we got there and what was said along the way. Everyone knew who got shafted, so there wasn’t any sense of betrayal when it happened.

But here the audience didn’t have a sense of where this was going. The plot was more important, and arcs like this one brought it to a halt.

The “get screwed by someone running your character” is a tabletop trope as old as the game itself. There’s a lot of absurdity that we players just gloss over when it happens, and so there’s a lot of fun to be had with the idea. Maybe it would have helped to telegraph that everything would be okay in the end. Maybe I just needed to ride it out and wrap it up, knowing that all would be forgiven when we reached the outcome.

Original Text: (From Shamus)

The dice may get you. The GM might get you. The other players might get you. All of this becomes far more likely if you’re not around keeping an eye on your charcter.

Shamus Says:

“charcter”? CURSE YOU 2008 SHAMUS YOU ILLITERATE BASTARD!

Where was I? The comic, right.

I believe this strip was mostly written by Shawn. I feel it important to mention this because at this point I was doing the comic layouts, and the deal was that I wouldn’t ask for more than three new images per comic. And here we have a ton of new images. I just felt the need to point out that I didn’t demand this much art. I imagine Shawn was trying to recapture some of the job satisfaction he lost when I started doing the layouts.

Shawn Says:

Basically I was feeling fairly confined and burnt out on the strip by this point, and really wanted a chance to stretch out and experiment a bit.  Looking back, the art shift seems fairly unnecessary now.  Playing around with the art style is something I’ve had a bit more success at in Clockworks.  That said, I do really dig the Chuck closeup in panel 7.  Also, I love that Chuck only knows the words to the chorus of Free Falling.

But yeah, aside from the fact I was growing increasingly unhappy with doing the strip, this comic has no real reason to exist.  Ah well.

As to why I was growing increasingly unhappy with drawing Chainmail Bikini, I think it’s pretty easy to look at the comics Shamus and I have done before and after CB, and see that the two of us have some pretty fundamental differences in what drives us to create stuff.  I’m really much more story driven, and Shamus is a man with an almost biological desire to mock and lampoon that which he loves.  We had a lot of fun together, and despite the bumps along the way I think we made a few damn funny comics together, but in the end I think we both want fairly different things out of making the funny comics.

This also goes in to why a full on continuation has a roughly 0% chance of happening.  I’m pretty happy unfolding the multi-year adventure Clockworks, complete with romance and drama and world building; and I’m pretty sure Shamus is enjoying making fun of new video games every week.  (And getting paid for it, jerk.)  (insert smiley here.)  There’s really very little incentive for the two of us to go back to CB long term.  I’m happy that it’s returning to a permanent home online, but we’ve both largely moved on to other stuff.

(As an aside, I’d love to collaborate with Shamus on a one off project again.  I think the ideal way would be if we came up with some very loose story together.  “Daring scientist travels in to the future, fights the evil Space Overlord and attempts to win the girl.” or something.  I’d then draw out the whole thing, probably black and white as time is limited.  Then I’d hand it over to Shamus and let him do whatever the hell he wants to with the words.  I think it would be fun to see what sort of absurdities he’d come up with given a shell of a story already drawn out.)

Original Text: (From Shamus)

The illusion of trade:

1. Anything the GM wants you to have will always be something you can afford, regardless of how broke you are or much it should cost.
2. The shopkeeper will never buy anything that you are required to own for the purposes of the plot.
3. The shopkeeper will never have anything for sale that the GM doesn’t want you to have.

Buy hey, if you feel the need to trade anyway, knock yourself out.

Shamus Says:

Shawn Says:

In retrospect the entire Stevegar scene really isn’t all that funny, aside from the visual gag of Stevegar himself.  Ah well.

We’re nearing the end here kids.  If you have any topics you’d like to see Shamus and I ramble on about in a future Bonus Commentary, ask away.  The clock is ticking.

There are 4 more regular CB comics left, and then the text ending, expanded with some all new commentary and maybe a sketch or three, and finally one all new Chainmail Bikini comic strip.  Feel the excitement.