Rude!

"You wouldn't say that if you'd ever heard V actually talking for more than a minute," she grumbles.

She stands next to Roy, especially since she's at least ostensibly his second in command.

Roy nods to Nale.

Nale lays out the plan. It's a fine plan, one which was established entirely on-panel and thus has no significant likelihood of failure. He takes the liberty of putting Roy and thereby Belkar on the fire team.

"And you'll want someone of pure heart to touch each sigil," he concludes. "I believe there should be at least one confirmed Good-aligned member of each team, but if anyone's uncertain I've got a Detect Alignment free." (In a Blackguard slot, but he's not sure there even are rules for recognizing what class someone's casting from.)

The member of the Order most likely to have enough ranks in Spellcraft to tell if such rules did exist really doesn't care, anyway.

Roy knows that he and Durkon are both Lawful Good. He looks at the Air Dungeon team…

Well, actually, he's not sure. Haley doesn't seem Evil, he guesses, but he wouldn't be surprised if she came up Chaotic Neutral, and while he might have vaguely slotted V as Good there was that whole thing the other day with the spiked tentacles and the forced intrusion.

Now, how to say this without offending anyone…

Roy's about as subtle as the greatsword on his back.

"You can go ahead and hit us, it'd be embarrassing to find out that all of us are Neutral when we're at the sigil. Does anything explode if we get it wrong?"

Red glowy eyes! "You're good. That is to say, you're Good. Neutral would be lightly zapped, Evil... well, Evil can look out for themselves."

"Damn straight, Blondie."

And Roy can look out for Belkar looking out for himself.

"Are we ready to go, then? I know we all went to the bathroom, so if anyone has last-minute revelations that would change everything they should say them now!"

lol. lmao.

"...we'll talk on the way."

"Okay! Yay!"

Elan waves at his party members as they go their separate ways.

"See you soon, guys!"

"Not if you die first!"

"So!" Nale says brightly as he, Elan, Durkon, and Thog enter the Earth Dungeon. "I'm your long-lost identical twin brother."

"Not you, Thog."

"Wow, really? That sounds pretty fun, I never had a brother before. Wait, I don't have a goatee, so if you have a long lost identical twin brother it's probably someone else."

"Lad, ye could prob'ly grow one if ye wanted to. If ye did that—or if 'e shaved—thar'd be no diff'rence at all."

"Indeed. A man could take advantage of a resemblance like that. Multiple times, at great personal expense." Cough. "Anyway... what do you know about our father?"

"Yeah, hair takes a long time to grow so you'd probably have to use a potion every time you wanted to grow it back! Let's see, my mommy didn't tell me a whole lot about my dad… she said he was a mean fighting guy who left us behind when he went off to battle. And she always went quiet when I asked if he was mean to her, too, and I don't know if that means yes or no."

"...you know, I don't know either? But... either way, he left, instead of getting any meaner than he did. There's a kind of nice in that."

He's not projecting.

"I can confirm that Dad's mean in a lot of ways. He... hurts people. For no good reason. And he doesn't trust anybody who's just nice, he can't understand why somebody would help somebody else without it being some kind of trick."

He isn't projecting.

"And... he's. Kind of just a big, dumb kid. In other ways. He's mean because he wants to have fun, but nobody wants to play his games, because he hurts them. So he makes them play, because he can, because he's strong. Because that way he can win."

Have you considered the possibility that you're projecting? Because he sure isn't.

"Oh."

That last part sounds… a lot like Elan. He acts like a big, dumb kid a lot. He likes to have fun! He doesn't try to make people play, though, and he doesn't care that much about winning.

Maybe it's a good thing he isn't very strong or good at fighting.

"I'm sorry that you had to grow up with him, then. My mommy was always nice. She had rules and didn't always let me do whatever I wanted, but she never made anyone do anything. She used her words because that's how people get along with each other even when they disagree."

Was she scared that Elan was going to grow up like his dad if she didn't teach him how to be nice?

"There's plenty of ways to hurt people with words... but yeah, she sounds like a good person. I wish I could meet her."

"Oh my gosh, that would be great! Maybe after we kill Xykon you can come with me to visit her! Hmm, I wonder if you should be a surprise… she thinks surprises are fun but you're a very big surprise. Oooh, do you wanna see what she looks like?"