OotS #548 is up

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Who controls the last two gates?

Whoever is left of the Order of the Scribble.

[sblock]Girard Draketooth and Kraagor. The latter is dead; his Gate is protected by a bunch of monsters.[/sblock]

 

[wingsandsword]

O o

So what are these gates you speak of?

The MacGuffins the plot of the entire series is built on.

They are explained in the series beginning at comic 273 through 277:
http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0273.html

Or, put into text: [sblock]
When the Gods first created the world, their disagreements and strife on how to make the world created subtle snags and snarls in the threads of creation. Made of pure divine anger and conflict, it ripped the world apart and slew one of the original four pantheons (now only three remain). The Greco-Roman Gods were killed from that world in that incident.

When the Gods remade the world, they could not easily undo the threads that made up the Snarl, and the Snarl could kill entire pantheons with disturbing ease. A new world, the current world was created as a prison for the Snarl, to protect the world as well as the Gods themselves.

However, there were still subtle faults in the Snarl's prisons. In six places in the world there are rifts where the Snarl threatens to slip out and destroy the world. Decades before, a group of adventurers (including the founder of the Sapphire Guard, which was created to protect the Gate at Azure City, which was a tiny sapphire mounted in the throne of the city) discovered this threat and sealed the rifts with magic gates.

Xykon and Redcloak are working to capture one of the gates intact so they can use it (via an Epic spell they have to cast together taking weeks with one epic-level Arcane and one epic-level Divine caster) to control the Snarl and use it as a superweapon to allow them to rule the world.
[/sblock]

 

[Orius]

What gates?

Heh.

(Uh guys, I think he's making an in-joke here, and knows damn well what the gates are.)

And yeah, I'd say the Snarl itself is one of the sides mentioned. Probably the gods are too.

 

[Slife]

I'm guessing there's at least one side for each alignment.