Vaarsuvius

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caption=Vaarsuvius, drawn by Rich Burlew.
comic_color=background:#8080ff
character_name=Vaarsuvius
real_name=
publisher=Giant In The Playground
debut="The Order of the Stick" #1
creators=Rich Burlew
alliance_color=background:#ffc0c0
status=Active
alliances=Order of the Stick
gender= unknown
previous_alliances=
aliases=
relatives=
powers=Powerful wizard, high intelligence, Raven familiar|

Vaarsuvius is a major character in the webcomic "The Order of the Stick", written by Rich Burlew. A high-elven wizard, Vaarsuvius' gender is intentionally unclear.

Character history

Pre-Order

Vaarsuvius, or 'V' as he/she is often called, was born to ranger parents in the Great Elven Forest. He/she was introduced to magic at an early age by a close family friend who later took Vaarsuvius on as an apprentice, a position that V filled for sixty years. His/her master, however, became concerned that, while V excelled at the academic aspects of magic, the apprentice had become too isolated from the real world and thus Vaarsuvius was sent out into the world to learn more (via a "Bixby's Evicting Hand" spell).

Vaarsuvius decided that the best way to make a name in magic was to challenge one of the Iron Mages, a group who specialised in the artistic side of magic. One of the Mages would accept the challenge and Mage and challenger would be given an hour to research one or more spells using a given material as a component. Whoever was judged to have created the most effective and artistically pleasing set of spells would be deemed the winner.

Vaarsuvius issued a challenge, with the aim of outdoing his/her opponent and thus gaining access to the vast libraries of the Iron Mages. The challenge began, but Vaarsuvius, temporarily distracted by the Master of Ceremonies asking a question, replied in his/her usual long-winded manner, leaving him/her with very little time to actually complete the task. Vaarsuvius watched in annoyance as the Iron Mage revealed a sizeable collection of inscribed spells, potions and a magic item, a considerable lead over the two spells that Vaarsuvius had inscribed in the time. Proceeding to the testing stage, V was shocked to realise that he/she had made a serious error in scribing one of his spells, transposing range and area of effect. The resultant blast leveled the stadium. Unsurprisingly, Vaarsuvius was disqualified.

Apparently attempting to drown his/her sorrows, Vaarsuvius visited a local tavern where he/she encountered the rogue Haley Starshine. Discussing the relative merits of research against adventuring, Haley persuaded V to visit the local adventurer's tavern to see what opportunities might be available. While still uncertain, V agreed.

At the tavern, Vaarsuvius encountered the fighter Roy Greenhilt, who was recruiting a team to locate and destroy the lich Xykon. Haley had already signed up and recommended Vaarsuvius to Roy as a possible recruit. Irritated by Roy questioning his/her abilities, V magically shattered the table that Roy was sitting at. Roy asked V to join the group, but the wizard initially declined, claiming that Roy was clearly only inviting him/her to sign up because he was intimidated by Vaarsuvius' mental prowess and needed the opportunity to reestablish his dominance. Roy then proceeded to describe in highly technical detail the nature of a Fireball spell and his/her specific need for someone who could cast it- as Vaarsuvius just had. Initially shocked and then pleased at this unexpected display of intellect from a fighter, Vaarsuvius agreed to join the party.

It has been revealed that Vaarsuvius is married, something that came as a complete shock to his/her teammates Belkar Bitterleaf and Durkon Thundershield, although Haley appeared to already be aware of this. The identity (and gender) of V's mate and where he or she currently resides is as yet unrevealed. However, since V stated that it took many years for the pair to recognize their love for one another, we can surmise that V's spouse is also of a long-lived race and perhaps as emotionally detached as V.

The Order of the Stick

Vaarsuvius is the strongest member of the order, capable of fighting many foes at once. He/she originally joined the order just to find the secret to arcane power, but he/she has made friends with everyone on the team besides Belkar. Thus, he/she now willingly follows the order wherever they go.

Throughout the adventures of the Order to date, Vaarsuvius has generally proven himself/herself to be a highly effective member of the party, using his/her considerable magical abilities to great effect. He/she has, on occasion, found himself/herself to be vulnerable in battle, something typical of mages. He/she took the "ring of wizardry" from Xykon's finger as his/her prize after the battle.

Since then, he/she has travelled with the Order to Azure City, where he/she was given the run of their spell libraries, although, much to his/her frustration, the oddities of the rules prevented him/her from gaining as many additional spells as he/she hoped to.

Visiting the Oracle of Sunken Valley, Vaarsuvius posed the question "How will I achieve complete and total ultimate arcane power?" The Oracle [http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0331.html replied] "By saying the right four words to the right being at the right time for all the wrong reasons."

After a side adventure in Cliffport to rescue Roy's sister Julia from Elan's brother Nale, the Order returned to Azure City, with, unbeknownst to them, Nale, now masquerading as Elan. Later that night after (unknowingly) helping out the fiend Sabine with her undirected rage at Nale, Vaarsuvius was forced to prevent Belkar (whom Nale had enchanted) from murdering Durkon. [http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0397.html Visiting Haley] to procure some decent restraints for Belkar, they discovered the Linear Guild attempting to overpower the now-returned Elan and Haley. Vaarsuvius was faced with the identical twins. He/she swiftly tricked Nale into revealing himself by simply insulting his many so-called master plans, then blasted him into unconsciousness.

When Azure City fell under attack by Xykon's hobgoblin army the next day, Vaarsuvius easily [http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0424.html bested] Redcloak's Titanium Elementals by using the "Dismissal" spell. Unable to return to his/her assigned position on the wall, he/she volunteered his/her services to help defend the breach in the wall caused by the elementals. Vaarsuvius orchestrated the initial defense of the breach by picking the thirteen best warriors available, using his/her magic to provide them with multiple magical bonuses, then using an enlargement spell to expand them to a huge size, allowing them to wipe out multiple hobgoblins at a time. A death knight, however, managed to use the corpses as a bridge and blasted through the front-lines. Vaarsuvius managed to disable and deprive the spell-resistant death knight of its mounted combat feats by disintegrating its skeletal mount. Despite this, the undead easily wiped away the warriors facing it with an abyssal blast (a death knight special ability), leaving Vaarsuvius standing alone against the brutal opponent. However, the death knight was soon after crushed by the head of Xykon's undead dragon after Roy chopped it off in mid-flight. Later on in the battle, Redcloak leads the entire army in a charge at the breach that frightens a large number of the soldiers into fleeing. Vaarsuvius states that he/she is out of spells save for Invisibility, which he/she casts on himself/herself and escapes, apologizing that he/she can do nothing more. He/she is later found by Elan hiding among the refugees of the city sneaking into Hinjo's junk. Although no longer having any spells, Vaarsuvius advises Elan on creating an illusion of a celestial lion to intimidate the enemy.

During the four months Vaarsuvius has been shown working obsessively over finding a way to scry on and/or communicate with Haley, blaming himself/herself for stranding her in Azure City. All such attempts have hitherto been thwarted by Xykon's Cloister spell. V claims that his/her spells were too weak at the moment and retreat could have been avoided had he/she had more powerful spells, stating that he/she wasted his/her time harassing Belkar rather than gaining more knowledge. Vaarsuvius' latest attempt, using three birds to convey a spoken message to Haley and Belkar, was thwarted when the latter shot and later roasted the birds on a spit.

Recently, Vaarsuvius has turned to stone a large demon summoned by Qarr and disintegrated Daimyo Kubota as Elan was leading him to his trial. He/she then left Elan and Durkon behind, believing them to hinder his/her search for Haley.

Personality, abilities and traits

According to his/her character profile in the "No Cure for the Paladin Blues" collection, Vaarsuvius is currently around 130 years old, although on his/her application form to join the Order he/she claimed to be 103. He/she is rational, intelligent, perceptive, witty, and erudite to the point of often being unnecessarily long-winded and somewhat detached. He/she sees the world in a scholarly manner and is good at explaining things, but is somewhat lacking in other people skills. To summarize, V fits many of the characteristics of the stereotypical intellectual, albeit backed up by the ability to inflict a considerable amount of magical destruction on those around him/her.

Vaarsuvius has a (justifiably) high opinion of his/her own magical and intellectual ability, which frequently comes across as arrogance and often feels that his/her powers are being wasted on minor matters. His/her main motivation is knowledge and arcane power. However, he/she also finds joy in [http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0020.html unleashing great destructive spells] on a deserving target. He/she is known to have had an [http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0031.html Intelligence of 18] when recruited into the Order, which may have increased in the interim. Vaarsuvius appears to be level 12 during an [http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0220.html incident] where he/she attempted to charge the sum of 360 gold pieces for casting a Fireball spell (which carried a cost of thirty times the level of the spellcaster), and his/her ability to [http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0186.html cast Disintegrate] (a 6th-level spell). Later he/she [http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0306.html scribes] the 7th-level spell Power Word: Blind, showing he/she has progressed up to at least 13th level. In recent comics, Vaarsuvius targeted a group of NPC soldiers with several [http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0427.html Mass enhancement spells] : since such spells affect 1 creature per level, and the target group was specifically limited by Vaarsuvius to no more than 13 soldiers, it may be inferred that Vaarsuvius has not progressed beyond 13th level as yet. As an elf, Vaarsuvius is proficient with a sword or rapier and with bow and arrow, though he/she is by no means particularly good at using them.

In accordance with D&D rules, he/she is specialized in the Evocation school of magic; one of his/her barred schools is [http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0340.html Conjuration] , and the other has never been directly mentioned, but by process of elimination must be Necromancy.or|date=September 2008

V's principal weakness is that he/she generally possesses the expectation that things should be clear and logical and gets highly frustrated when the "real" world all too frequently fails to live up to this, and many of the comic's game-related jokes are based on V's observations about the rules of the world in which he/she lives. V appears to be overly confident in the power and ability of magic that is fairly common in Wizards and Sorcerers - Roy's father Eugene Greenhilt himself shares this personality trait, as revealed in "On the Origin of PCs".Fact|date=September 2008 Vaarsuvius is often irritated at the irrationality of many of the party. He/she has a relationship of mutual respect with Roy, based on their shared intellect, gets on reasonably well with Durkon and appears to regard Haley as a friend and occasional confidante. He/she dislikes Belkar immensely (however he/she finds the ranger much more bearable than the arrogant and commanding then-paladin Miko Miyazaki) and has recently been going out of his/her way to irritate the halfling after the incident in Azure City where the drunken ranger kissed him/her. Vaarsuvius finds Elan's frivolity highly frustrating, although he/she has shown a genuine affection for the bard on occasion, mostly notably after Elan announced that he wanted to become a wizard and dressed up in a stereotypical wizard robe, hat and beard. Initially assuming that Elan was making fun of his profession, V became angry at Elan, leaving the bard in tears. Ultimately realizing that Elan actually saw wizards as being cool and powerful and wanted to emulate him/her by becoming one himself, V apologized. Elan happily accepted and the two now consider each other to be friends, and V seems to have made an apology by teaching Elan how to make better, more effective illusions.

Vaarsuvius has a notable tendency to inflict punishment on others using the "Explosive Runes" spell; those who cross him/her often encounter the phrase "I prepared Explosive Runes this morning" (or similar) written somewhere unexpected. This was especially apparent in the aftermath of the kiss in the Azure City; Vaarsuvius subsequently used Explosive Runes on Belkar no fewer than 14 times. He/she has also demonstrated a gift for improvised retribution; after being polymorphed into a lizard, Vaarsuvius responds to Belkar's attempt to determine V's gender with "My vengeance will be prolonged, diminutive cretin." Subsequently, he/she uses Suggestion (one of only three spells his/her lizard form could cast) on a black dragon that has swallowed Haley, then commands the dragon to "Vomit. Now. And aim for the halfling."

He/she also apparently likes the works of Judy Garland, and coffee, specifically espresso.

Blackwing

Vaarsuvius has a raven familiar, which appears out of thin air whenever necessary to the plot, but whom he/she rarely remembers (a parody of the way many "D&D" players forget the existence of their characters' familiarsFact|date=July 2008). Haley has named him Blackwing, though Vaarsuvius did suggest the name Piñata after the raven was shot numerous times with arrows. He too asked a question of the Oracle of the Sunken Valley; what he asked is unknown, but the Oracle recommended that he "try ginkgo bilboa ["sic"] ", which likely indicates that Blackwing wants his master to remember his existence more consistently. As a raven familiar, Blackwing is capable of speaking Common, but finds it demeaning and refuses to speak in anything but his native raven tongue (meaning that only Vaarsuvius and the Oracle are able to understand him). When Vaarsuvius summoned the familiar to defend him against a death knight, Blackwing immediately deserted the wizard.

Gender ambiguity

Vaarsuvius's gender is intentionally unclear, even from his/her teammates, and author Rich Burlew has already stated that V's gender will not be revealed and that any instances of characters in the comic referring to V as "he" or "she" only reflect on those characters' perceptions, and not on the reality of V's gender. [cite web | last=Burlew | first=Rich | url=http://www.giantitp.com/FAQ.html#faq10 | title="Order of the Stick" FAQ | work=The Order of the Stick | accessdate=2008-10-01]

Vaarsuvius appears to have trouble telling genders apart himself/herself — when Roy was magically transformed into a woman, he/she appeared not to notice. He/she also did not find it odd when Nale (disguised as Elan) was making out with an apparently male CPPD officer (actually Sabine shapeshifted). When Sabine asked him/her about his/her opinions on men, he/she claimed he/she was not certain he/she was most qualified to discuss gender traits. In [http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0177.html one instance] , V was transformed into a lizard and Belkar examined the lizard's genitals in an attempt to determine its gender, but lacked knowledge pertaining to lizard biology.

The Order of the Stick Adventure Game

Vaarsuvius is one of the characters players may choose when playing the Order of the Stick Adventure Game. The abilities of the character are reflective of his/her personality and skills as depicted in the comic, with cards titled such things as Fireball, Verbose Recitation, and Ambiguous Gender.

References