'Not A Villain' Webcomic - Explanation of the alighnments.

‘Not A Villain’ Webcomic – Page 298

And the alignments are explained!

The Q&A questions and other filler from the December break have been removed from the archive so as to not interrupt when doing an archive-binge. They will eventually make their way to the Extras area. I'll do a shout out when they're settled in.

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45 Comments

Hmm, I’m not quite sure, what is that Kesti route?

Something tells me a certain someone is going erbana.

You know I swear I was just re-reading the last comic and noticed it turned pink for Kat right before this comic came out. Looks like the percentage is indeed a completion percentage (once again: lol poor Dude.) I wasn’t expecting so many different colors though; it seems like rather than the usual good/evil alignment it’s more of a play-style choice, which leads to some really interesting ways it could affect what happens in the actual game. Also based on the shapes I’m guessing there’s going to be a pie chart of all the alignments. I wonder if the positions will have any meaning.

I just did a quick job with MS Paint and well, it looks like

11:00-01:30 o’clock=Kesti
01:30-02:30=Cardista
02:30-05:00=Morto(not shown)
05:00-07:00=Mani
07:00-09:00=Demoli
09:00-11:00=Erbana

Give or take a little here and there.

So, with the alignments finally revealed…when will the strategy guide detail what actions in the Tutorial give which alignment?

Morto really has a bad vibe going for it, but considering what Danni did (she let everyone die), it seems to involve someone cursed.

Also: is it too predictable that, given how Katt/leya handled the Tutorial, she’ll end up as Erbana? I’d be frankly more surprised if a secret alignment is unlocked to show how Kleya “gamed” The Game.

And…it seems that the alignments spread from a Heroic-Villainous spectrum, with Erbana or Kesti (the Healer and Knight paths, pretty much) being Heroic, while Mani and Demoli (the Face and Destroyer paths, pretty much) lean on villainous. Cardana seems neutral, since its whole purpose is looking at the Game exactly like that, and not from a story perspective. Hence, it’s more likely that Morto is also somewhat neutral, or otherwise every rookie would be a villain (then again, virtually all wrestlers nowadays start as Heels, so that’d be an unusual callback).

Thus, it seems Jane’s team will definitely be a Villain group, if going for a +/- bit, unless there’s some sort of secondary set of characteristics that influence the team’s overall alignment. Definitely Erbana and Demoli would cancel each other, but there’s no Kesti to overcome Mani and the last two (likely the alignments of Dude and Danni) cancel each other, so you end up with +1 to Villainy. Unless Erbana is just THAT rare, or the completion percentage acts as a modifier.

In any case, don’t mind me. I love tweaking with mechanics, so this comes as second nature for me. It’s a legitimate way to enjoy a story, to delve into its mechanics and understand the nature behind it, no?

Not minding at all, Oscar. I enjoyed the added perspective and seeing you reason. Comments sections are as fun as the stories themselves, sometimes, as a reader! You get to see what’s going on, react, share reactions, and then see what others think.

I think you are reading too much into it. Sure some alignments do lean one way more than another, but anything can be turned to any purposed. A killer can save innocents, a manipulator can steer people towards better choices, a destroyer can get rid of that which is hazardous and a healer can use that knowledge to poison. Its how you use it that matters. I think the Hero/Villain thing is just a conscious choice by the team to be a certain way because it suits the alignments of the team.

For instance, a team of manipulators, destroyers and killers would be better suited to being a villain team than a hero team, easier to keep alignment that way. But those who quest, or collect or heal might be better suited to the hero path. But if your dedicated to an alignment you likely can find wiggle room to stay in that alignment and be either hero or villain.

May I ask why the two neutrals cancel each other out? I see it as 2 votes villain, 2 votes Neutral, 1 vote Hero. The 1 hero vote cancels 1 of the villain votes. So that’s 2 votes neutral, 1 vote villain left over. 2 beets 1 they are Neutral. Very likely Chaotic Neutral, but neutral. So unless their is no neutral alignment and then they are villain.

Especially since if we were to take it as they are 3 villian types and 3 hero types rather than any neutral(because their is no neutral choice then), that would likely be Mani, Demoli and Morto for the villains. With Erbana, Kesti and Cardista for Heroic. That would be 2 votes hero, 3 villain. Villain Group. But it all depends on if their is a neutral or not. As then the first method said would show it’s neutral.

Just wondering out loud we will find out soon enough…or not as the case maybe depending on if they are waiting on the scores of if Danni even made the cut, one of the reason they took this tutorial in the first place.

There are no neutral routes, there are three heroic and three villainous routes. As seen on Page 254. The Hero alignments are: Kesti, Cardista, and Erbana; the Villain routes are: Mani, Morto, and Demoli.

Should we be worried that Kat does not seem to be there with them?

I think it might be because her routes a bit longer but I’m not sure…

So here’s what we know so far:

Kleya=Erbana(As shown. Incidentally, it’s also pink…)
Danni=Morto(As explained above)
Bandit=Demoli?(Lots of boom)
Dude=Cardista(Obsessesion much?)
Ma…Jane=Mani?(Actions not shown beyond pulling the kid’s hat over his eyes after threatening his mother with her sickle)

I agree on that. Bandit clearly went the “flashy” route wich involved hitting giant floating rocks against one another.
And Erbana shows a plant, wich kinda fits what Kleya did. And it’s pink wich was the color her mother liked. And Kleya clearly said she was going “her mothers way”.

Jane going for Mortis would be the expected way. But there is a chance she went for/got Mani instead.

Well, we didn’t see Jane actually kill the NPCs, she may have just been scaring them to get them to do what she wants….

A card alignment? Morto is for killers? Kesti? Demoli? That’s the one Bandit did, right?

What is with this? Alignments are too confusing! Can’t we do the D&D system instead? 🙁

I think in this case “Cardista” is more like the “greedy” route: obsessed with material gain. Sort of like early-Order of the Stick’s Haley, who carried around a dozen Bags of Holding and polished her gold pieces every night.

For those who want to see the original colorwheel of Game alignments…here it is:

Page 254

Looking at the original, the following alignments are heroic:

Erbana
Cardista
Kasti

Conversely villainous:

Morto
Demoli
Mani

Ok, who gets which alignment? The big question is if Aneeka plans to use them all different alignments. It would make sense from the meta POV. But as you change alignments in game, some initial overlap could occur.

Side note: Most alignment names are obviously derived from the English words describing them best.

Morto: Death -> Killing -> Killer.
Kasti: Sounds like you started with pronounciating “quest” differently.
Mani: Manipulation.
Demoli: Demolition.
Cardista: Cards.
Erbana: Herbs.

Kleya: Erbana. She stated that she employed the least favorite route. Also the silhouette is a flower. No questions.
Jane: Probably Morto. Jane killed those NPCs. Killer alignment is fitting. I’d say the entire character of Jane is aimed for this alignment. Causes overlap with Danni at least.
Dude: Cardista. Stealing cards? Knowing what the card effects are? Can’t be anything else.
Bandit: If Demoli is indeed demolition, I’d say that in hacking times this alignment corresponds best with Kleya’s preferences. It would also fit with the comments from Bandit and Kleya.
Danni: As explained above, Danni will likely switch her alignment. Meta arguments say that Aneeka will choose between Mani and Kasti. For Mani speaks the fact, that Aneeka could showcase Kasti via Susuke. Against Mani speaks the fact, that Danni is too honest to actually try to manipulate people. Also questing might provide a hook for encountering Susuke later.

Ohhhhh!!

Thanks!

I actually think Jane went Mani. We didn’t actually SEE her do much. Also, if you look at the “slices” mani is an evil route. It looks like the top slices are good, and bottom are evil. I say Jane went mani, it certainly fits her.

also her entire combat style involved emotional manipulation

I forgot to mention that Erbana is likely the pacifistic alignment. Nature and peace are connotated after all.

Lol. They each went a different route. Wierd

seriously, you’re making it way too easy to guess the storyline for the next part 😡

obviously Saisuke will join the team as stated some pages ago, seems like he planned it with the tournament organisators, they left out the 6th team spot for the first time just after Saisuke became extremely famous.

he also completes the alignment circle for some time until anyone manages to change his alignment. this team with saisuke as their new leader (because he is the most famous of them and Jane is not really accepted by all) will then be the one of first team sever to have all 6 alignments and by that make the game even more popular i guess.

if all happens the way i predict (which is highly unlikely due to Aneeka’s enormous SURPRISE MTHRFCKR skills) this is definitely the best comic ever.
if it happens another way it also is the best comic ever.

by the way, in my opinion Jane went Demoli because she got a 100% destruction score and doesn’t speak enough to properly manipulate everyone, while Bandit is the Mani player. He used the child to get to the floating island and in general tries to manipulate everyone (e.g. made Dr. Grace believe Kat isn’t Kleya, wants to get closer with Danni and Kat to find out who she is) and of course he can hack, which means manipulating game data!

Phantom

I don’t Kleya or Bandit would be up for letting Saisuke just jump in their team. It would help popularity of the team, but individual members would suffer. Plus both of them have egos like hot air balloons. I am more of the mind they will compete against Saisuke. Of course he could just hijack their team on occasion for the reasons you laid out, who can say no to someone with that much popularity?

Heh heh, now I gotta knock on some wood because I keep seeing Kleya doing just that over and over again…

My wager for why most get the Morto alignment the first time?

It’s the killer alignment, they probably focus most of their efforts on killing the Fiendi. Killing monsters is, after all, a traditional staple of modern MMO’s.

Spot on in my opinion. It’s also why Danni got it, seeing as she went to fight the Fiendi directly and mano a mano until stumbling over the goal.

I cant believe how every single one of you is getting it wrong.

Kat = erbana, think we all agree
Danni = morto, as confirmed by comic
Dude = Cardista

But this is where everyone is screwing up.

Bandit is mani. He is the face of the group and is all about manipulating the rules and those around him. I would of thought as fans of the comic this would of been more obvious to you guys.

Jane is demo. She is the killer of the group and this fits here because killing is fun in any game but tricky if theres always concequences to it (like in skyrim) plus the symbol looks like blood spatter.

You’re misunderstanding something. In the Game, a player’s alignment isn’t determined by who they are, it’s determined by how they complete that section of the tutorial. So even though Bandit is an irritating, manipulative little liar of a man, the route he took involved lots of demolition and chaos, which is what’s led most of us to conclude that he’s gone Demoli.

Sooo… the team is going to be team villain )= too bad
I agree that Jane is definitely Demoli and Bandit is likely Mani. Sure it’s tough, that’s where fun is.

What I don’t understand is how the h*** is Cardista a Hero alignment. If I were designing a system, I’d put Morti on the hero half (it’s not about killing everyone, that’s Demoli, it’s about the traditional interpretation of hero as someone who’s the best at killing the enemies and protecting the innocents).

On the other hand, I kinda like it better when the newbies start as villains and have to learn how to play to get the chance to be heroes. And where hack’n’slash doesn’t make you heroic awesome.

But seriously, Dude with a heroic alignment? Haha.

If I were playing the game, I’d so go Erbana. Rare, tough and pacifistic. Pink color is its only drawback, but then, my favorite colours of the presented are blue and turquoise, and these are the worst alignments for me.

where did u get the impression of dude beeing a villain? to me he seems quite the opposite, he is sensible (shown when paddy was in the robot avatar), honest, has a sense of non-sadistic humor and beeing bad is a challenge to him (he changed his chess figures so he didn’t forget they were opponents)

even is he is no real hero he still should be on the good side imho :3

He’s not a villain (XD) in the comic context, but he is definitely not a hero in the context of the game. Look what he did with a poor boy )=

I just really dislike his playstyle, I guess?…

Be happy, Danni; turquoise will go nicely with your outfit! 🙂

Why is Jane grinning? Nothing good will come of this…

Oooh, idea! A poll for what alignment people would choose could be pretty fun.

I agree. It would really be interesting to know (=

Has anyone noticed Jane looks like heck now? Seems something took the psychotic wind out of her sails.

i think kat got the eberna one, by using the plants, the dude got cardista, bandit got demoli, jane got either the manipulative or the quest one, and we all know what the last one got.

So you win the tutorial not by completing the objective but by earning an alignment. That would be why Dude went for the card I take it…

I’m calling it right now. Jane is not who we think she is. She’s thinking a level higher than anybody else. Appearing to be a crazed, psychopathic killer has given her the leverage needed to do many different things. And the way we cut away from her before she actually hurt anybody, or the fact that we don’t know what type of alignment she gets? Let’s look at the facts: she was able to use her scary looks to manipulate the group into not kicking her, and while she normally talks like a weird Elizabithian freak, she was talking normally to that one inspector guy; moreover about a plot or secret between them. Finally, her deception may go one step deeper. Despite her special appearing to be a mess of code, she was able to pull off a move that Kleya was unable to doge, and attack her with a weapon she didn’t know she had. In fact, in this way, Jane sort of “saved” Kleya from being suspected as a hacker by the investigator. So, although Jane looks weird and currently acts like a flat character, I see her coming up with some BIG reveal further up the road. But that’s probably not for a while.

Dude!!

im guessing danni will eventually shift to kesti? it would probably make her more popular, and she belongs in a hero position but its the only one i could maybe see her doing.

It’s interesting to examine how the 6 routes relate to classical MMO classes, even though they are intended to represent playstyles.

Erbana is a clear Beastmaster. Taming an enemy instead of killing it is a tactic I really enjoy, myself, because it tends to ignore the target’s defense and HP. However, the way Kat goes about it is slightly GuideDangIt. I don’t see how anyone could simply figure out the complex recipe needed to create the final taming lure. I assume that, in the future, she will use her specials to manipulate the emotion stats of her targets to get a similar effect.

Morto is a classic Warrior/Tank, the favorite class for newbies. It’s the most straightforward, and ends up leaning mostly on stats than skill. Not one of my favorites, really. Danni might change alignment later, is is alluded in this comic, since of the 5 she is the only one likely to change playstyles, making it up to her to change the team from a Villain team (3 v, 2 h) to a Hero team (2 v, 3 h). It’s possible she might aim for Kesti later on.

I’m somewhat surprised that Bandit’s Demoli route is actually a designed route. The way he exploits the gravity changes makes it seems more like unintended exploitation of the game rules. Then again, he does mention that it’s also possible to climb that pole normally, and the gravity exploit just makes it faster. He also mentioned an event is triggered when you cut the ropes to the portal platform. Since Kat designed the game, it doesn’t sound far fetched that she’d design the ability to smash the platforms together as an intended route. As she said, it was her favorite old route. As for the class, the use of indirect attacks, and keeping the enemy out of reach, makes me think of an Alchemist’s golem-and-barrier tactic. Keep the enemies behind a barrier, and confuse their aggro with a golem, thus avoiding any direct combat. Personally, I like indirect combat, and would most likely use this route.

Now, the first thing I think about, when I consider The Dude’s route, is his comment regarding how he needs specials. Poor at close combat, and reliant on special moves, instantly screams “Mage” to me. If you consider the cards as Spell scrolls, it fits his Cardista route. And while it’s true that mages don’t generally rely on spell scrolls, they do rely on MP potions. Alternately, you can compare it to an Archer’s reliance on arrows. Item reliance is one of the reasons I usually avoid such classes.

We’re not shown much about Jane’s Mani or Saisuke’s Kesti. But we are given hints to what other solutions there are.

The first hint is the constant mention that the village has its own Esone, but taking it would cause the village to crumble into the mist. Stealing that Esone would allow Jane to use her specials while in the tutorial, therefore making short work of the Fiendi. While most games try to prevent you from using NPC death to your advantage, either by making the immortal, or making their death a failure state, if you also consider her fighting style, I’m willing to compare this to Summoner/Necromancer. In a way, it’s also a form of indirect combat, class-wise, but the tutorial doesn’t quite stress that part, since you’re still using your own specials.

The second hint is when the kid talks about the portals platform, mentioning it can call back his people. Since this pretty much screams “side quest”, and doesn’t involve sacrificing anyone, I’m going to guess this is the Kesti route. Being not just a non-combat, but also non-confrontational route, which uses quest details instead of actually facing the enemies, it looks like a Merchant class to me. It’s the epitome of using non-combat quests and activities to powerlevel, and/or focusing on diplomacy stats. Not too common, but sometimes OP in games where it appears, due to lack of balance in exp bonuses for quest/crafts vs mobs. I tend to exploit it at lower levels, myself, but the grindwork is usually a killer.

At any rate, I wonder how Kat will react to realizing that despite her efforts, she still doesn’t get to be a hero, mostly due to Danni’s screwup. It might just put enough of a crack on her poker-face for Dude and Bandit to figure out her real motives. All they really need her to say is “I wanted to be a hero”, and then put 2 and 2 together. She’ll probably try to get Danni to change alignment, though. Jane would probably rather keep it as-is.

Joy for being partly color blind.. I can’t tell which color Kat got…. *Sighs*

Not A Villain Webcomic

Webcomic of a semi- reformed hacker trying to redeem herself in a post- apocalyptic world she may have created.

‘Not A Villain’ Webcomic – Page 298