Webcomic / The Weekly Roll

4 Following

The Weekly Roll is a Dungeons & Dragons-based webcomic created by Reddit user CME_T in late 2019. It follows a party of misfit adventurers, consisting of Human Paladin Sir Becket, Gnomish wild magic sorcerer Trevor, Half Orc Warrior Grogna, Dwarf Necromancer Torvald and Tiefling Celestial Warlock Klara. The group fumbles and murders their way across the world in search of riches, glory and cool magical weapons.

The comic can be found on Reddit and Webtoons.

The setting has led to two spinoff comics by the same creator: The Pos'Thal Chronicles features the titular order of Unstoppable Mailmen; Sellswords and Sorcery features a dubious group of mercenary adventurers.

This Webcomic features examples of:

• 24-Hour Armor: Torvald and Becket are never seen without their face-concealing helmets or out of their armor.
  • Justified for Becket, who keeps the helmet to "never forget the face of [his] shame."
  • It seems to be a tradition for Torvald's clan, who also wear face-concealing helmets.
• The Ace: Torvald's zombies sometimes retain their sentience. That's not normal, he's just that good. He is also a good fighter, knowledgeable of many culture and magic applications and having married into royalty (though his mother in-law hates him) is quite successful on his personal and professional side.
• Affectionate Gesture to the Head: Becket does this to Trevor before leaving for a few months, to reassure Trevor he is coming back.
• And I Must Scream: Torvald keeps a lich's skull in a bag. It's still conscious and yells at him.
• Angelic Abomination: Klara's patron looks like an Old-Testament style angel, one of those who say "Fear not" for a very good reason.
• Anti-Climax: In #72 "Expect the Unexpected", Trevor gets a Wild Magic surge, thinking he's about to get something awesome. Instead, he summons a Flumph.
• The Atoner: Sir Becket is secretly working to redeem himself after the atrocities he committed as a crusader.
• Automaton Horses: Averted with a vengeance. Every horse the team has had has died horribly. Becket himself technically has the ability to summon a celestial horse as his steed, but poor Rufus has died so many times in Becket's service that he feels bad for calling him and just lets him rest in the Celestial Realm. Even Trevor is disturbed by the poor horse's hollow eyes.
• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: In chapter 27, Trevor decides to spare a random bandit partially because he's getting tired of killing them, but also because he wants to make Becket happy. Ten chapters later, he also puts himself at risk in the middle of combat to give Becket a healing potion. When the group decides to take a year off Becket reassures Trevor he is not ditching them as he is having fun with them.
• Badass Normal: Grogna is the only party member without magic of her own, but she's still the party's main damage dealer.
• Bad Ol' Badger: The badger who adopted Trevor is most of the reason he ended up the way he is. Her last request was that Trevor turn their hide into a cloak and burn the entire forest to the ground, starting with Mr. Rabbit's house.
• Bad Powers, Good People: Torvald is a student of the necromancy school of magic and arguably the most mentally stable and civil of the group. So long as you don't try to tax him, that is.
• Bad with the Bone: Grogna uses a splintered bone to stab an armored bandit below the armpit.
• Battle Couple: Grogna and Trevor.
• Beleaguered Boss: Becket is the only one trying to resolve conflict in any remotely peaceful way, but the others always end up going first.
  If I had a copper piece for every time you psychos accidentally burned down a town over some inane argument with a shopkeep that you managed to escalate beyond belief...
  I'd have two copper.
  Which isn't a lot... But it's FUCKING WEIRD that it happened twice!
  Trevor: Twice that you know of.
• Berserk Button: Becket has one you should expect from a fundamentalist: Heretics. AKA people who doesn't follow the same god and/or prophet as him. He's apparently lightened up a bit on this since joining the party. Breaking his sword and throwing puppies in a fire are others.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Dwarfs hold income tax fraud to be punishable by death. Torvald would rather die than pay taxes. Both of these statements apply to a sum of 84 gold. Torvald's father nearly disowns him when he hears he paid the owed taxes and is moved at the reveal that Becket paid it, because his son became a man fine enough his friend would disgrace himself to save his life.
• Book Dumb: Part of the reason the party took on Torvald is because they are all this to some extent and needed someone more intelligent. They didn't learn he was a necromancer until after he joined.
• Bring It: When Becket and Klara visit her parents' palace, the entire place turns against them when her father loudly demands his minions kill them both. Becket raises a hand and offers everyone the chance to repent, give up evil, free their slaves and give away their ill-gotten gains. When nobody takes him up on it, he raises his fists and prepares to fight.
  Becket: Any takers? Anyone? Nobody? Shame.
• The Bus Came Back: That project the evil king had the gnome necromancer work on to sic on the Bucket Brigade? Konrad the Breaker.
• Buy Them Off: An evil giant deals with the party by outbidding the Quest Giver.
  Sir Becket: What foul tricks are you up to, fiend? Sorcery? Winter wolves?—
  Giant: One rare magic item each if you fuck off and leave me alone.
• Call-Back:
  • Sir Becket's Shirtless Scene shows that he still has a scar from the time Trevor needed to pour a Healing Potion into an open gut wound.
  • In #180, Trevor casually mentions that his badgerskin cloak used to be his adoptive mother, who requested that he turn her into said cloak and burn down the forest they lived in as her Last Request. Becket is flabbergasted, and demands that Trevor stay and elaborate when he and Grogna are distracted by the buffet.
    Sir Becket (partially obscured): Trevor don't you fucking dare walk away after dropping that kinda weird lore outta nowhere!
• Calming Tea: Sir Becket likes to relax over some chamomile tea — as the Only Sane Man in a group of Heroic Comedic Sociopaths, his nerves quickly start to fray when he runs out. Trevor sometimes passes him a fresh cup in the middle of particularly stressful situations.
• Chain Mail Bikini: Mentioned as being stupid and useless by Grogna's dad.
  Grogna's Father: They're just silly, either wear armor or wear nothing. Very liberating.
• Character Class System: Obviously, it's based on D&D.
  • Trevor is a Wild Magic Sorcerer (and not a druid or ranger despite wearing a badger as a hood, as he would like to remind you).
  • Torvald is a Wizard of the Necromancy school.
  • Becket is a Paladin who has sworn the Oath of Redemption.
  • Grogna is a Fighter (and not a Barbarian, despite appearances. And behavior).
  • Klara is a Celestial Warlock.
• Comically Small Demand: Torvald is nearly hanged because of his refusal to pay taxes, to the point even though he knew his debt was a measly 84 gold and paying would have him set free, he still refused. Becket, irritated and knowing Trevor spent more than that on booze in a week, pays his debt off, at which point Torvald declares he now owes Becket a blood debt - unless he decides to cash in those 84 gold.
• Cool Sword:
  • Grogna seems to have a knack for getting those.
  • Becket's sword subverts this, as it is rather worthless, but has great sentimental value. A blacksmith later improves it with better materials, replacing all but the hilt and the pommel. Then the blade breaks, implying that it was made from subpar materials.
• Crazy Sane: Despite her initial impression, it slowly becomes increasingly clear that Klara is very much not normal. Her idea of a "relaxing vacation" when the team took a break from adventuring was to paint murals honoring her Celestial Patron in the blood of humanoids. It becomes even more obvious by #181, where she reveals that she invited Becket and the rest of the party to her family's estate so that they could help her murder them, though it's soon made clear that her parents are very much abusive, and are slave traders.
• Creepy Good: Torvald, a dwarf mage whose magic centers around reanimating the dead, is probably the least likely to kill you on sight.
• Creepy Souvenir: Trevor's badgerskin hood is the fur of the badger who raised him at her request.
• Cursed Item:
  • Grogna got her hands on the cursed Blade of Brunn, which supposedly increases her bloodthirst. Given how cartoonishly violent she already was, no one really notices a difference.
  • Grogna later gets another cursed weapon after the Blade of Brunn is broken, courtesy of Drin. This time it's the Axe of the First Murderer, an ancient axe used in the first murder, and apparently it has had a history of violence since. Grogna's caught in a trance watching said history, with tears of black liquid (possibly blood) streaming from her eyes. Mind you, she's smiling while that's happening, so it seems like a good fit for her.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Oh boy how.
  • Trevor was abandoned as a child and was raised by badgers. Magical, talking badgers, that is, that raised him lovingly, but instilled in him his pyromania and hatred for civilized society.
  • Torvald is a tax evader, which is truly abhorrent behaviour for a dwarf.
  • Becket may have killed his old party due to religious differences. He also used to be a violently zealous crusader who abandoned his old life after killing a seemingly innocent family.
  • Klara first meets her patron while she's restrained in a straightjacket and locked in a dark cell. Despite implying that it initially caused a Brown Note, she still ranks it only as the third most traumatic experience she's had.
    • In chapter 182, she elaborates that as a mere child, her parents (who were slave traders) had her committed to an Insane Asylum, where she spent eight years in misery and was threatened with lobotomy at least once. We don't yet learn her parents had a reason for this, or whether they were just getting rid of her, but understandably, Klara has bone to pick with them about it.
  • Grogna, of course averts this completely, coming from a loving household, her parents being former adventurers who settled down to open up a bakery and support her decision to leave home.
• Distinction Without a Difference: Klara's pet/assistant quasit notes that while he is unhappy about working with the "good guys", his access to fresh eyeballs to eat is unchanged, since "good guys ice a lot of people"
• Does Not Like Spam: When Becket's given a barony, most of his reforms are modest — separating the baron's finances from the barony, improvements on taxation, social services, abolishing corporal punishment in favor of fines and imprisonment... and making serving any form of raw red onion in a serving establishment without clear notification to the patrons punishable with a kick to the groin.
• Dog Got Sent to a Farm: Klara's rather vapid mother asks her if she liked the farm she was sent to. Her more lucid father corrects her - Klara got sent to the Bedlam House, the dog got sent to the farm.
• Drugs Are Bad: Klara's mother does cocaine, and seems to be permanently loopy from the substance abuse.
• Elective Mute:
  • Grogna has been seen laughing maniacally so she definitely has a voice, but to date she hasn't uttered a single word on-screen.
  • After Klara gives her a book on sign language, she’s seen making genuine efforts to learn and utilize it, so it may be a case of Ambiguous Situation as to whether she can speak vocally.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • Torvald used to make deals with fellow dwarves where he'd raise their bodies after they died of natural causes and rent them as Undead Laborers. This got him kicked out of his clan, not on principle but because he didn't pay income tax on it.
  • Trevor sees Becket brutally murdering the man who broke Becket's sword and opts to leave him be.
  • Later the entire party sees the blacksmith has repaired the sword by replacing everything but the hilt and the pommel. Trevor immediately breaks out the chamomile to prevent Becket from going nuts.
• Evil Debt Collector: Trevor at one point asks Becket to join them in "killing some bloodsuckers". Becket initially subverts this trope by pointing out that tax collectors are just normal people and a vital part of an operating society. Then Trevor clarifies that the tax collectors in question are literal bloodsuckers, Vampires, at which point Becket is completely on board.
• Evil Weapon: Played for Laughs — Grogna keeps finding cursed weapons that drive their wielders mad with bloodlust, but she's enough of a Blood Knight on her own merits that it makes no difference.
• Felony Misdemeanor: Torvald's outstanding taxes to the dwarvish kingdom are severe enough to warrant the kingdom sending bounty hunters out to track him down and execute him. Torvald's outstanding balance? Eighty-four gold.
• Five-Token Band: The party consists of a human, a halfling, a dwarf, a half-orc, and a tiefling. Between them, they also cover the major class types in D&D, with some overlap: Caster (Torvald, Trevor, and Klara), Tank (Becket and Torvald), Damage Dealer (Trevor and Grogna) and Support/Utility Caster (Becket with his divine magic, Torvald with his useful zombies, and Klara with the assorted healing abilities Celestial Warlocks have natural access to).
• Fourth-Wall Observer: Trevor has a limited amount of this, noting the passage of real time between breaks and hiatuses. Becket, the only person remotely interested, dismisses this as part of his drug habit.
• Fridge Logic: In-Universe, Becket asks Klara exactly why she's planning to fight her parents in the middle of a crowded ballroom, knowing the presence of Trevor and Grogna will ensure it will end in a bloodbath. Klara responds saying that's exactly what she wants — showing all of the other attendees, including her parents, are slave traders.
• Full-Frontal Assault: Grogna's dad's take on armour is that either you wear something practical or wear nothing. He chose just an apron, because it's very liberating.
• Funny Background Event:
  • When Becket is recruiting Torvald, he mentions Grogna is in jail. Increasing amounts of smoke fill the screen behind him, and three panels later Grogna is with them.
  • A guy tries to backstab Torvald, breaks his spear in Torvald's helmet, and gets a shovel in the skull for his trouble.
• Giant Spider: The Arachnocapitalists are a legion of giant, intelligent spiders who believe in a completely free market with no government interference.
• Groin Attack: As baron of Tegelstein, Becket declares that the punishment for putting red onions in food without notifying whomever the food is being served to is a kick to the groin. When the aide asks if he means that regardless of the perpetrator's genitals, Becket remarks that groin kicks sucks for everyone.
  Becket: My combat instructor called it "the great equalizer."
• Heroic BSoD: Sir Becket has a big one when Klara reveals to him that goblins are not universally evil.
  Becket: "I've killed so many goblins..."
• Heroic Comedic Sociopath: Everyone in the group qualifies to some extent.
  • Grogna solves all her problems with a big weapon.
  • Trevor solves all his problems with fire.
  • Torvald is a practicing necromancer, possibly necrophiliac (although that may have been poor phrasing on his part) and committed tax fraud.
  • Klara (during the group's vacation) took to drawing murals of her Celestial Patron. The paint? The blood of goblins. They had been tied up by their legs, their throats slashed, and buckets placed underneath them to collect the blood.
  • Even Becket has some traits of a religious fanatic, and may have killed his previous party over religious differences as well as a young couple and their child, though he's trying to atone.
• Hope Spot: Trevor wants to keep a baby goblin as a pet. Becket tries to imagine it'll be Ugly Cute... and then Trevor shows up with a horrible shrieking demonic-looking thing.
• Hypocritical Humor:
  • Becket goes on a rant about how taxmen are a vital part of a functioning society, and not vampiric parasites. Then Trevor reveals that these ones actually are vampires, at which point Becket is ready to stake them.
  • Grogna's parents acknowledge that they'd be happier if she stayed with them at their bakery instead of being an adventurer, but also that preventing her from doing so would be very disingenuous of them, being former adventurers themselves. They just ask that she not wear a Chainmail Bikini.
• Immediate Self-Contradiction: When Trevor and Torvald asks if they can keep the goblin they found.
  Becket: Why're you asking me? I'm not your mother. But no, you cannot.
• Improbable Weapon User: Becket, of all people, thrives on using improvised weaponry, to the point that people joke he took the Tavern Brawler feat.
  • As Konrad the Breaker finds out, Sir Becket can be rather brutal wielding a brick. Especially if you just broke his sword. Turns out, the rules for Smite don't specify what you need to be using to attack with, something Sir Becket exploits to brutalize a would-be assassin with a quill.
  • Becket has taken on a werewolf with a sock filled with silver coins.
  • His weapon of choice after his run in with Konrad is a brick tied to a rope, which is then replaced after a monk that Trevor befriended gifts him a holy brick tied to a holy rope.
• Insurance Fraud: Trevor and Grogna celebrate the party's hiatus by opening a well-insured restaurant, then celebrate the end of the hiatus by setting it on fire.
• Interspecies Adoption:
  • Trevor was raised by badgers. When they died, he set the forest where they'd lived on fire, taking care to torch Mr. Rabbit's tree.
  • Mr. Rabbit, assuming he was a case of Species Surname, had an adopted bear child who then seeks Trevor in revenge (and there' also a parrot egging the bear on, relation unknown).
• Intimidating Revenue Service: Dwarf tax collectors go around in full armor and carry weapons like a combination blunderbuss axe. Torvald doesn't even attempt to fight them.
• I Owe You My Life: Torvald believes he owes Becket his life after Becket paid off his debts to the authorities. Simply paying Becket back the money is out of the question.
• It's the Principle of the Thing: It turns out the dwarf revenue hit squad was sent after Torvald for not paying eighty-four gold in taxes. Which Torvald still refuses to pay. Notably, both Torvald and the collector say "it's the principle" in unison when called out on it.
  Becket: Trevor alone spent more on booze last week...
• King Incognito: Torvald turns out to be a prince among his people. Trevor thought he was joking.
• Know When to Fold Them: Lady Malthar surrenders after the Bucket Brigade decimates her undead fire giant. Becket is left confused and unsure of what to do, since no one had ever surrendered to them before.
• Laser-Guided Tyke-Bomb: Trevor's adoptive badger parent apparently raised him to wreak havoc on the rest of the forest, with Mr. Rabbit being singled out as target #1.
• Laughably Evil: Grogna, normally seen killing someone or disposing of a dead body, closely rivaled by Trevor's more madcap antics.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: The comic never goes full RPG Mechanics 'Verse, but it does make some passing in-universe reference to the game it's based on:
  • The party raids a cult that worships the "Na'at Twanti", which is symbolized by a 20-sided polyhedron.
  • Klara's angelic patron's true form is that of a pentagonal trapezohedron (better known as a ten-sided die) with various wings and eyes and flames. (Notably, a ten-sided die is the die of the Warlock's signature cantrip, Eldritch Blast.)
  • During a combat encounter with a Giant skeleton with a flaming skull Klara casts a guiding bolt that winds up blowing the creatures head apart and even surprises it's caster with the sheer power that came off of it; this is heavily implied to be what the result of a natural 20 looks like in-universe with the words 'Nat 20' appearing in the background and Becket even lampshading it:
    Becket: That was a proper one in twenty shot right there!
  • While tripping balls on his own magic mushrooms, Trevor makes reference to their status as PC characters and that they are at the whim of dice.
• A Lighter Shade of Gray: Sir Becket is the main voice of protest against senseless murder but he may or may not have murdered his old faith-based party due to them following different prophets of their god (although they were doing the same to him and each other).
• Locked Out of the Loop: Due to Becket not attending the party's pub drinking sessions, he's not privy to crucial information about his party member's pasts, like the fact that Trevor's badgerskin hat is made from the skin of his adoptive mother^note She asked him to do it after she died, Torvald's status as a prince by marriage, or the fact that Klara's parents, and literally everyone else at the ball she brought the party to, are slave traders.
• Malicious Misnaming: Trevor never calls Becket anything but "Bucket".
• Mirroring Factions: Subverted. While high on chamomile, Becket briefly wonders if they are right to persecute cultists, since even the church of Stevicus started out in a basement. Then the cultists throw a puppy into the fire.
• Monty Haul:
  • Inverted — the local Sorcerous Overlord loves being the Adventure Guild's Most Wanted because "the average adventurer is loaded!
  Lady Malthar: I make more gold looting a single party than all the local villages make in a month!
  • Becket complains that Grogna can't expect to just immediately find people to kill for new weapons and armor... cue a band of well-equipped yet very killable raiders appearing right behind him.
• Mundane Utility: The Bag of holding, a portable bag shaped portal to Astral Space that allows for almost endless storage space is one of the most vital tools for an adventuring party, and Trevor uses it primarily to store "magical" mushrooms.
• Never Learned to Read: Trevor is completely illiterate, relying on his "cheat sheet", a book full of profanity written by Torvald, to vandalize things.
• Nominal Hero: Sure, they are helmed by an overall good and moral guy in Sir Becket, but the party still tends to cause collateral damage, leave a rather long trail of corpses in their wake and you better pay them well, because they will switch sides if the other guy's offer is high enough.
• Noodle Incident: That thing with the dinosaur in #58. They don't speak of it. They also lost one of their horses to a ballista. Not a ballista bolt, the ballista itself.
• Not Me This Time: Becket congratulates the rest if the party for not destroying a town after a shopping trip, and Klara cheerfully says how well behaved Trevor and Grogna were. The town behind them promptly explodes, with Trevor and Grogna looking confused.
• Obnoxious In-Laws: It's suggested that an aggravating factor in Torvald nearly getting hanged for a relatively minor debt is that his mother in law, the dwarf queen, hates him. When visiting the dwarvish kingdom, he takes the time to pass through her room and throw double middle fingers to the heavily-armored figure sitting on the throne, suggesting the feeling is mutual.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: While Torvald and Becket were handling Torvald's debt problem, the rest of the party were off getting ice cream... And discovering then killing a cult who used a dark apparatus powered by orphan souls to make said ice-cream.
• Oh, Crap!: The king of Reidon freaks out when the Bucket Brigade find damning evidence of his attempted murder.
• Our Angels Are Different: Klara's Celestial patron looks more like the Old Testament type of angels, with ten wings, each one with one or more eyes, surrounding a burning pentagonal trapezohedron (ten-sided die) which is also covered in eyes and has a flaming halo.
• Our Liches Are Different: Torvald keeps the head of the one he defeated in his satchel. It's still "alive".
• Plug 'n' Play Prosthetics: Thanks to the RPG Mechanics 'Verse, Sir Becket not only finds a magical stone prosthetic that starts working perfectly as soon as it's strapped to his arm stump, he gets it in the middle of the wilderness from an Intrepid Merchant with plenty of options to choose from.
• Powered by a Forsaken Child: Klara, Trevor and Grogna raid a cult off-screen that used a dark apparatus powered by the souls of orphans to... chill ice cream.
• Pragmatic Villainy:
  • The giant in chapter 16 has a way of dealing with adventurers.
  • After Grogna kills the guide for making eye-contact with her, Torvald reanimates him as a zombie and uses him to set off traps.
  • After Klara oneshots a giant, flaming skeleton, lady Malthar just gives up immediately. If the party easily killed her most powerful minion, she's not keen on taking her chances.
• Punch-Clock Hero: To the point where they might ignore a villain because he pays more.
• Raised by Wolves: Trevor's backstory, he was adopted by a talking badger who raised him as a pyromaniac.
• Reforged Blade: Subverted in a Surprisingly Realistic Outcome when Sir Becket takes his broken Tragic Keepsake sword to a blacksmith to be reforged. It turns out the only salvagable part was the pommel. Trevor wordlessly passes him some Calming Tea.
• Retired Monster: Grogna's dad describe adventuring as "going out in the world and indiscriminately killing for fame and gold", then there's the fact that her mother's an orc of the kind that normally goes around pillaging for a living. It's some pretty heavy hinting at what kind of adventurers they were before settling down for the bakery.
• "Scooby-Doo" Hoax: In ch. 47 (which came out just after the rerelease of the classic Ghosts of Saltmarsh which features a similar plot), the gang finds out that the undead they just fought are just wearing makeup, causing Becket to conclude that this is what's going on. He then opens the tightly locked door only to find a very real undead inside.
• Serious Business:
  • Hell hath no fury like an adventurer who doesn't get their breakfast.
  • While taxes are indeed serious business, dwarves take it to the next level, to the point that committing tax fraud is a slam dunk death sentence. And Torvald would rather die than pay taxes.
• Servile Snarker: Dismas, the undead valet of Malthar. His wit is as dry and deadpan as his own bones.
  Sir Becket: So this "Malthar" guy... is he a "good" necromancer? Like, is he a bad guy? Castle really has that dilapidated evil look to it, so that fits the bill.
  Dismas: While I am biased, I can vouch for the master's moral character. I practically raised him myself. Then he repaid the honour by raising me. If you'll pardon the undead pun. As for the state of the castle, the upkeep of an ancestral estate this size is very expensive.
  *OMINOUS ORGAN MUSIC*
  Sir Becket: And the evil soundtrack?
  Dismas: The organ is haunted, sir. It only plays the most ominous bit from that one slightly ominous song whenever it feels the mood calls for it. It feels that way... *EVEN MORE OMINOUS ORGAN MUSIC* ...a LOT.
• Ship Tease: Becket and Klara, as between them they serve as Team Dad and Team Mom. Whenever Becket goes shirtless, Klara always makes sure to take a nice long look and Becket himself has a rather steamy dream about the two of them.
  • Later, when Klara invites the party to a ball being thrown by her parents, she hangs off Becket's arm the whole time, and even gets him to dance with her.
• Shout-Out: The entire comic is obviously based on Dungeons & Dragons.
  • After eating some "magic" mushrooms, Torvald wanders into a graveyard and starts acting like an unboxer YouTuber, complete with a sponsorship by Raid: Shadow Legends.
  • The battle between Torvald and the Lich is portrayed as a Pokémon fight.
  • Trevor's graffiti in #13 includes the phrase "Custodes Eunt Domus".
  • Chapter 25 references the corridor scene at the end of Rogue One, with Torvald playing the role of Darth Vader against a group of bandits trying to break through the door to a dwarven tomb.
  • Chapter 29 features what seems to be a Plague Marine. Becket for once endorses fireball as a solution.
  • The title of ch. 30 is a reference to Darkest Dungeon.
    Curious is the trapmaker's art
  • "The laughter of thirsting gods" in #31 is a phrase from 40k's tagline.
  • The author has a habit of sneaking in references to memes in his comics.
    • In the comic detailing Grogna's backstory, two of the panels use the same composition as the "woman yelling at cat meme".
    • In the first anniversary comic, Becket references a commonly memed quote from Phineas and Ferb villain dr. Doofenschmirtz.
      "If I had a copper for every time you time you psychos accidentally burned down a town over some inane argument with a shopkeeper that you managed to escalate beyond belief, I'd have 2 copper, which isn't a lot but its fucking weird it happened twice."
    • Chapter #55 is a blatant reference to the infamous JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders "Oh, you're approaching me?" meme.
  • In #42, the old man tells the adventurers to "Stay a while and listen."
  • In #49 Trevor invokes the "Do I feel Lucky" speech from Dirty Harry.
  • One to a silly spy show in #46 when a knight about to be tossed into a well goes "just like the vistani woman said!".
  • Torvald's defiant last words to the taxman ("My ancestors smile upon me, leech. Can yours say the same?") are taken from Skyrim, replacing "Imperial" with "leech".
  • Sir Becket once smote a bounty hunter "with a fucking quill".
• Shovel Strike: Torvald's go-to method of defending himself when out of spells, he even sharpened his shovelhead so he can use it somewhat like an axe.
• Skewed Priorities: Torvald's clan put a price on his head, not because of his unnatural practices of renting out his clansmen as zombies for manual labor, but because he didn't pay income tax on the profit. And he's willing to die rather than pay what he owes (84 gold), which Becket finds ridiculous.
• So Much for Stealth: In the aptly-titled When stealth fails go for intimidation, Torvald tries to sneak up on grave robbers. But, well, he's moving in heavy armor and his shovel makes Sinister Scraping Sounds.
• Square Race, Round Class: Two members of the party: Torvald, a Dwarven Wizard (who, for bonus points, wears full plate armor at all times), and Klara, a Tiefling Warlock... whose pact is with a Celestial.
• Stating the Simple Solution: Becket asks if he can pay Torvald's taxes in his stead. He does, so the tax collectors leave satisfied.
• Status Quo Is God: Subverted, the events in the comics are somewhat unrelated but there is a pretty clear continuity, with frequent call-backs and a few tenuous Myth Arcs developing.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
  • For defeating a cultist, Becket is rewarded with the sword of a legendary warrior king. Unfortunately, sitting at the bottom of a lake for several centuries didn't do wonders for its structural integrity.
  • A village is being set upon by an army of hobgoblins that outnumber them five-to-one, and they turn to the party to prepare them for the battle the next day. Becket and Trevor bluntly inform them that a day isn't nearly enough time to train, let alone make other battle preparations, and that they're absolutely going to get massacred if they stand and fight.
  • After completely annihilating Lady Malthar's most powerful minion in less than a minute, the villain immediately surrenders rather than try to fight them, preferring to go straight to jail instead of risk getting killed outright.
  • Becket punches the elderly evil king in the face for betraying them, who due to his frailty dies instantly.
• Tempting Fate: The party is recruiting their fifth member, and it's Trevor's turn to pick. Becket requests that he picks someone more pious, like a Cleric. Cue Klara the Warlock making her entrance, and a rapid Double Subversion when we learn her patron.
• That Came Out Wrong: Torvald claims to put the "Romance" in "Necromancer". It's uncertain if he meant it that way.
• Theseus' Ship Paradox: Directly referenced when a blacksmith named Theseus reforges Becket's sword, replacing every component except the pommel.
• Tiny Guy, Huge Girl: Trevor is a gnome in a happy relationship with half-orc Grogna.
• Token Human: Sir Becket is notably the only human in the party.
• Tom the Dark Lord: Trevor advises Malum Shadowblade of the Bloody Hand to go back to his birth name Eugene on the grounds that "Get yourself a reputation with a name like "Eugene", people will know that you earned that shit properly!"
• Too Dumb to Live: In a scene that wouldn't be out of place in Skyrim, a common bandit is completely adamant that he can take Trevor one-on-one, even after he casually defeated all of his brethren. Trevor, lampshading this, keeps giving him chances to back down before just polymorphing him into an octopus and walking away.
• Town with a Dark Secret: Parodied. Tegelstein is seemingly an idyllic community, which immediately makes Becket suspect foul play and demand a local tell him what their dark secret is. Turns out that everyone living there is left-handed, which isn't exactly dark or gruesome, but is a tad weird. Becket doesn't really know what to do with this information.
• Tragic Keepsake: Becket's gear is taken from an innocent family he killed for religious reasons: the sword and shield from the father, the cloak from the mother, and the name from the child, who had nothing else to give. He also kept his helmet, to never forget the face of his shame. It also means he takes the loss of the sword very badly indeed.
• Training the Peaceful Villagers: Subverted, maybe if they had a month to do some training...
• Undead Servant: Lady Malthar's butler practically raised her, and she returned the favor by raising him as a zombie who still serves her.
• Unstoppable Mailman: Mail in the setting is handled by the followers of Pos'thal, and they are a tough gang. A follower is seen fending of a group of thugs, and later jumping off a cliff, with no apparent ill effects.
• Vitriolic Best Friends: Becket and Trevor live on opposite sides of the moral spectrum and constantly give each other crap, yet they are definitely friends.
• Was Once a Man: The horrifically mutated creature in #29 reappears as a follower of king Ianric, though the armor makes it hard to know exactly what it was back then.
• Weird Trade Union: Torvald is so good at raising the dead, they have a chance of being smart enough to unionize.
  Bald Zombie: Wait, you guys are getting paid?
  Hugh the Zombie: No one is getting paid, that's the problem.
  Skull Cap Zombie: Do we need to unionize? I feel like we need to unionize.
• Wham Line: In #181, when Becket and Klara are dancing at the ball hosted by Klara's parents, Klara asks Becket for a favor. Becket agrees, and Klara asks;
  Klara: When my parents show up, would you help me kill them?
• What the Hell, Hero?: The first comic consists on Sir Becket chewing out Trevor and Grogna for having set a whole town on fire over a complimentary mint from the alchemist's store.
• You Kill It, You Bought It: Becket allows Trevor and Grogna to negotiate with an orc warband to spare a village. Grogna kills the chieftain, taking over the warband... and leading them on the attack on the village.