Parable

El Goonish Shive Newspaper Story Arcs
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Parable is the fiftieth storyline in EGS:NP. It started with the EGS:NP Comic for 2019-08-28 and ended with the EGS:NP Comic for 2021-02-06.

It starts as another game parody, this time starring Susan and parodying the Fable series, but is eventually revealed to be a magical shared dream involving Susan, Jay, Grace, Rhoda and Catalina and is mostly canon as such.

Summary

The storyline starts with the narrator telling Susan about the setting: She was a hero, someone born with extraordinary potential. The story is supposed to be about choosing between good and evil. When Susan said that video game parodies are Grace's job, the narrator denied that the world is a video game parody. Her home village was destroyed by bandits when she was a child and since then she was raised by an old hero who looked like Arthur.

Arthur told Susan to enter a cave to awaken her hero abilities. In the cave Susan was disgusted by the giant beetles that she had to kill. Susan leveled up in the cave so the narrator told her to choose her first spell and Susan chose "slow time". Then Susan's body changed to reflect that she leveled up to level two in each of the three stats: she grew taller to reflect the ranged weapons stat, she grew more muscular, causing the sleeves of her shirt to burst, to reflect the melee stat, and her breasts and hips grew to reflect the magic stat. When Arthur saw her when she came back he said "Wow" and then apologized.

Then Arthur sent Susan to a town. He warned her that she would encounter bandits and there would be tacked-on moral choice after the fight. On the way to the town Susan tore off most of her tight skirt. Then she asked the narrator if there was any limit to her use of magic and was told that there was no practical limitation with her slow time spell. When she encountered the bandits she used the slow time spell to disarm them and tie them up. The narrator said that it didn't count as defeating them and that it wouldn't be possible in the games parodied. Another bandit showed up to offer a nonsensical moral choice but Susan tied him up before he offered it. After Susan turned in the bandits to the town guards she asked the narrator if she earned any XP but the narrator told her that she would only get XP for killing enemies and from certain potions and mentioned that potions would be easy to afford if she became a landlord.

Then Arthur told Susan to take a bartending job so she worked at a bar along with fellow barmaids who looked like Rhea and Diane. Susan asked the narrator about landlording and was told that she could make money by buying properties and renting them out and that she could lower the rent to improve her purity stat to the point that she would always stay clean. Thus Susan got rich and pure by landlording. As time passed Arthur got bored and tried to contact her by psychic magic but Susan ignored him. A landlording guide by Grace explained Susan's landlording strategy. Due to Susan's clothes and purity giving her high attractiveness, NPCs followed her with hearts in their eyes, which annoyed Susan so that she used the roar emote to scare them away since they wouldn't respond to politely asking them to leave her alone.

Then the narrator suggested that Susan romance townfolk. Susan wasn't interested at first since the NPCs weren't interesting and she doesn't like physical contact but the narrator offered to introduce more interesting NPCs and pointed out that the purity stat made her always clean, which made her interested. Thus Susan met a blacksmith who looked like Elliot. She asked him why he became a blacksmith. His answer made her happy and she fondled him while he answered. At that moment Arthur found Susan but was embarrassed and left them alone for that time. Then Susan saw more NPCs who looked like Elliot and the narrator explained that NPC character designs were reused.

Then Susan went to the alchemist Dee ElSee (Mr. Tensaided) to buy potions. Susan took off her clothes (except her underwear) to avoid damaging her clothes while trying out potions and to get a break from the attractiveness bonus of her clothes. She tried out a potion that made her fat. The potion made her feel lighter so she jumped and ran around to experience that. Meanwhile, Dee ElSee made his sales pitch for his potions: he had cosmetic potions for hiding or faking the effects of leveling up, asset swap potions for making characters look like different characters (he recommended feeding it to NPCs), dog form potions, XP potions, shrink potions and chicken squawk potions. While Susan reversed the weight gain potion he told her about his attract potion.

Susan fed an asset swap potion to an NPC who looked like Larry and it changed him into a bunny girl who looked like a tall blonde Susan. Susan suggested to the bunny girl that she romance Elliot the blacksmith. Then Susan fed potions to more NPCs until she gained devil horns and a tail. She complained to Dee ElSee about the morality meter seeing her as evil for feeding the NPCs potions even though she couldn't tell them what the potion did and the NPCs could see what the potions did to others. He told her that the purity stat was separate from the morality stat and that she could get good morality points by donating money to a church.

Then Arthur took Susan away to continue her quest. There were several NPCs who looked like Susan at his place since many of the asset swap potions resulted in NPCs looking like her and he was unsure who was the real Susan.

Arthur told Susan that there was a temple that needed Susan's help with a ritual and she hadn't missed it despite spending months in the town. He also told her that they would recruit the hero of melee, who would wield a giant hammer and Susan said that hammers should be her thing.

When Susan met the head of the temple he refused to let her help them because she didn't have bards singing about her. To gain fame she captured bandits by feeding them shrink potions while using her slow time spell. After she did that the head monk still treated her with disdain because he only cared about her reputation among bards so she paid a bard (who looked like Ellen) to sing about her.

Then the head monk introduced the monk Rhoda and told Susan that her task was to protect Rhoda while she carried out the ritual. Rhoda saw Susan's horns and tail and worried about her being a bad influence. Then Rhoda told Susan that the danger against which she had to defend her was off-panel skeleton monsters. While Susan thought that she wasn't missing anything in the town, Elliot the blacksmith declared that two bunny-Susans could both be his girlfriend since they were identical. When the skeleton monsters approached, Susan attacked them with a fire spell, which spared herself and Rhoda. Rhoda asked her about her magic prowess and Susan told her that she was max level in everything due to potions and she used other potions to control her breast size. Rhoda asked why she wasn't ugly do to corruption points from using cosmetic potions and Susan told her that she earned purity by providing low-rent housing. Learning that Susan had done that caused Rhoda to doubt the morality system. She noted that the temple didn't do much useful except the ritual to bless the fertility of the soil.

Then an evil cult showed up. While the leader of the cult, Ragnar, talked about the purpose of the cult, Susan was immobilized and realized that it was a cutscene. Then he threw a balloon filled with shrink potion at her. Then Rhoda decided to help Susan, renounced her monkhood, tore off her clothes and took up a hammer that Ragnar's cult had forgotten to remove. While Rhoda was fighting the cult Susan mused that Rhoda would never again be as capable as in this scene establishing her ability. After Ragnar fled saying that he would come back and be important to the story, Susan predicted that Rhoda would try to help her, despite her being able to undo the shrinking with her own shrink potions, instead of chasing the enemy, which she indeed did. When Rhoda realized that she should have chased the enemy, Susan told her that it was a cutscene but Rhoda didn't understand it. They realized that Rhoda would no longer be able to do the ritual.

When Susan met the head monk again he complained about her lack of clothes and said that female bodies are sinful. Susan drank a potion that made her breasts enormous. He blamed Susan for Rhoda leaving.

Then Arthur approached Rhoda to recruit her as she was the hero of melee. Meanwhile, the head monk complained about Susan to the bards, making her famous, and Susan was sent to look for the hero of magic.

Arthur wanted Rhoda to stay in with him but Rhoda wanted to go to a pub. Arthur said that she couldn't pay the pub but Susan gave her a bag of gold. At the pub Rhoda ordered whiskey but Catalina intervened by changing the order to beer and water. Rhoda told her that she was sheltered and naive but could fight with a hammer. After Catalina and Rhoda introduced themselves to each other, Catalina explained that she ordered water to avoid dehydration. When Rhoda drank her beer she didn't like it. Then Rhoda thanked Catalina for helping her and asked her to show her the town.

Meanwhile, Arthur told Susan that it was a bad idea to let Rhoda go to the pub alone, which made Susan embarrassed as she realized that he was right. Susan looked for Rhoda at Rhea's pub and found herself trapped in the bartending minigame as Rhea forced her to go back to her former work.

While Catalina showed Rhoda the city, Rhoda was amazed by its size. They saw several bunny-Susans. When Rhoda said that they looked like the hero Catalina realized that Rhoda was the monk who defeated the cultists, which she hadn't realized before as the account of the fight that she had learned from the bards was inaccurate. Rhoda suspected that Susan was testing her because of how badly Susan performed in the fight. A shadowy figure was watching them. Catalina asked Rhoda what she thought about being the hero of melee and Rhoda said that she liked the chance to do good but disliked the fact that she could only do it because it was her destiny. Catalina asked how she, as hero of melee, made the world a better place and Rhoda didn't know. They talked about the angel and devil icons that sometimes showed them if their acts were good or bad. Catalina said that she wished that the angel and devil icons showed up more often, such as when she stopped Rhoda from ordering whiskey. Rhoda called Catalina an angel and then blushed.

Meanwhile, Susan accidentally fed an NPC who looked like Ashley a shrink potion while asking her for Rhoda. Then she saw the blacksmith Elliot with his two bunny-Susan girlfriends.

Rhoda noted to Catalina that they were on something that started to resemble a date and told her that she wasn't used to dating. Catalina asked her if she wanted it to be a date and Rhoda said that she did. They kissed but stopped and held hands instead.

Susan saw Rhoda and Catalina holding hands and then saw the shadowy figure watching them. She cast her slow time spell but the shadowy figure fled as if the spell wasn't there. Susan complained about the shadow figure ignoring the spell. She noted that such enemies could be good for game balance but dismissed that thought since the game wasn't balanced anyway. She chased the shadowy figure into a dead end. The shadowy figure complained about Susan being the protagonist hero instead of the hero of melee. When Susan asked why, the shadowy figure elaborated on how being the hero of melee suited Susan better than Rhoda and said that Grace should have been the protagonist since the world was based on her mind. Susan said that a world based on Grace's mind wouldn't have characters wearing underwear when they would otherwise have been naked.

Susan had a headache as she thought of the possibility that the world was based on Grace's mind, which worried the shadowy figure (it was later explained that she was worried that Susan might be waking up from the dream). The shadowy figure declared that she was out of options and turned of cheats, which reset Susan's ability and morality stats. The shadowy figure acknowledged that she didn't understand why it reset Susan's stats and left. Susan was disappointed that she lost her tail due to the morality reset. Her memory of the conversation with the shadowy figure was somewhat vague. She found that her XP potions had become baby-themed to symbolize that they had become much weaker.

Susan asked Dee ElSee about the XP potions and he said that stronger potions would make the game too easy. Susan asked if she could buy a large amount of potions and Dee ElSee said that he was only allowed to sell one of each kind per week. Then Susan tried to feed a potion to an NPC but the NPC refused because making NPCs drink potions now required affinity. Susan tried to raise the NPC's affinity but gave up because she made too slow progress. However, she still earned as much money and purity from rent as before. She drank XP potions and leveled up to level 2 in melee in order to be able to take a hit and level 3 in magic since she preferred it to close range fighting and guns. She tried to buy a curve reduction potion from Dee ElSee but he said that such potions were only sold by his cousin Paid Dee ElSee on an island. She asked him for a hair reduction potion and he told her to go to a barber. He didn't see anything magical about the fact that barbers could give people longer hair or beards.

Susan went to the barber, who looked like a female Justin (specifically the female form he used when he planned to receive a pizza delivery for a party in female form). When Susan asked the barber if she could give her a beard, the barber at first pretended to think she meant a fake boyfriend. Then they tried out beard styles. Then the barber tried out twin ponytails for Susan's hair. Then they tried out more hair styles, all referencing the main characters in canon. The barber said that Susan should keep her bangs the same style as normal to remain recognizable. Then they tried out short hair for Susan and the barber told her that it gave a negative attraction bonus. Then Susan thought about Rhoda and the barber told her that nothing would happen until she would see it or barely miss it. While Susan mused that she could prevent bad things from happening by not progressing the plot, Arthur the mentor took her away to resume the plot.

While the shadowy figure was thinking of how to proceed to learn more, she lost her shadowy veil as she became the hero of magic.

Arthur told Susan that the hero of magic had been kidnapped. Rhoda asked Susan what had happened to her. Catalina mentioned that Susan was naked and Susan said that she had underwear but Catalina didn't see it. Susan recalled Grace complaining about video game NPCs saying that her player character was naked when it looked to her like they were wearing underwear and realized that others couldn't see the underwear that she was seeing. The fact that other characters didn't care more about her being naked made her happy.

Arthur told Susan that the hero of magic was held in a fortress on an island and that his plan for infiltrating the fortress was to earn more fame to enter a gladiator game and win the gladiator game to get hired as a guard. Susan instead proposed that she hide on a supply ship to the fortress using a shrink potion. Arthur told her to level up her dexterity and ranged weapons skill.

While looking a side quest Susan met a beggar. Annoyed that someone was still poor, she gave him a large amount of gold, which caused the morality meter to register enough good points to give her angel wings and a halo. Then she realized that her money wouldn't make a difference for the beggar and the beggar admitted that he was just helping her grind morality. When Susan applied for sidequests she didn't want quests involving human bounties and turned down a quest involving goblin-like creatures that possibly used to be human children. Instead she accepted a giant beetle extermination quest. When she shot the giant beetles she was disgusted by them. When she leveled up her dexterity she noted the irony of becoming taller when becoming better at sneaking. Then she saw her angel wings. She was scared of the wings and ran past Dee ElSee. When she realized what her wings was, she decided to do something evil to shift her morality meter. She tried to kick a dog but lost her nerve. When she came back, Rhoda saw her halo and said "I knew you were good".

Arthur told Susan that, since the primary inspiration for this world has no stealth mechanic, the stealth would be inspired by other games. Meanwhile, a lady (presumably Grace) was thinking about stealth while an artist who looked like Sarah was panting a picture of her. While Susan was wondering how to be stealthy, Catalina rose from a barrel to offer help, which startled Susan. Susan wondered if Catalina was the hero of ranged weapons but Arthur told them that the hero of ranged weapons was someone else, someone famous.

While Susan trained stealth, a floating eye above her showed whether she was being observed. She tried out several stealth techniques. The narrator (or Catalina) noted that being naked might be optimal for stealth since the weight of clothes might make it harder but then noted that clothes didn't have weight stats and speculated that even plate armor would do nothing for either stealth or defense. When Susan mentioned her slow time spell Catalina warned her that spellcasting would be noisy and when Susan tested her spell it indeed made a loud ticking noise. When Susan talked about how inconvenient the inability to cast the spell was to the mission, she wished that the world was based on platformers and Grace thought about platformers. Catalina asked Susan if she could jump high because of her angel wings and it turned out that she could.

Susan sneaked aboard the supply ship while the guard was singing about being a guard. She shrank herself to hide, which was shown with a voiceover sung by Ellen the bard. The guard sang about being trapped in crime because he couldn't pay his bounty and Susan gave him a bag of gold. When Susan arrived at the fortress, the narrator was surprised by the stealth mechanics and the fact that she didn't follow Arthur's plan.

Then Susan found the cell where the hero of magic was held. The hero of magic was Jay. Susan didn't recognize her at first but then recalled Grace telling her about the "pony hair girl" She jumped onto Jay's head to wake her. A guard who was walking past the cell saw Susan's halo but he didn't see Susan herself so he assumed that it belonged to Jay. Susan asked the hero of magic for her name and Jay, unwilling to reveal her real name, called herself "Jack". Susan told Jay that she was going to shrink her out of her shackles with a shrink potion. When Jay shrank, the potion bottle made a loud noise when it fell to the floor. Jay was shrunk smaller than Susan because she used a different potion. A guard found Jay's cell empty with her clothes on the floor.

Jay suggested that she ride on Susan's shoulders to run faster than Jay could on her own. A guard tried to stop them and Jay shot him with a fireball. The guards tried to surround Susan and Jay so Susan spun to let Jay shoot fireballs in all directions. Jay said "Double Tech Spin Fwoosh" while shooting fireballs ("double tech" is a term from Chrono Trigger). Jay suggested that Susan cast the slow time spell to escape the guards and when Susan realized that it was too late for stealth anyway, she decided to do so. Thus they escaped using the slow time spell. Before Susan teleported away using the fast travel mechanic she said "Two to beam up" (a Star Trek reference) and Jay called her a dork. When the guards were looking for Jay and Susan, they realized that Susan had arrived on the supply ship and the ship guard realized that he had failed at guarding it.

After Susan reversed her shrinking she grabbed Jay, who was still shrunk, and confronted her about her pop culture knowledge. Jay denied that she knew about Star Trek and instead claimed that she only realized that Susan was referencing something. Susan then pointed out that Jay had said "double tech" and Jay said that it was a term from that world. Susan gained enough evil points for interrogating Jay that she lost her halo and wings.

When Susan, who by that time had devil horns and a tail for holding Jay, asked Arthur the seer whether "double tech" was a common term and he confirmed that it was. He pointed out the implied threat of Susan restraining Jay. Susan apologized to Jay while she reverted her shrinking.

While Jay was thinking about about what the world told her about Grace and about her desire to befriend Grace and Tedd, she realized that she couldn't have set it up though she had dream magic. She realized that she was unable to figure out what was going on.

When Rhoda saw Susan with her devil horns and tail, she had mixed feelings and Catalina teased her about liking Susan's devil tail.

Jay thought about the possibility that telling Susan that this world was a dream might end the dream and worried that it could be a simulation gone rogue.

Arthur then told Susan, Jay and Rhoda that he had found out that the hero of magic weapons was a pirate named Grace. Susan realized that Grace had been cast as a character she disliked. Jay asked her what she meant and Susan told her about the evil scene-stealing Fable character she was thinking of. Arthur told them that Grace was greedy and wanted to be paid with large amount of money, which didn't worry Susan since she was very rich. Jay was enthusiastic about meeting Grace but Arthur said that Susan would recruit her alone, which disappointed Jay. Susan wanted to bring Jay and Rhoda in order to prevent an event where they would be captured but Arthur said that she shouldn't risk changing fate away from the known happy ending. Susan thought about cutscenes and the possibility that the game would never end if she changed it so that the ending cutscene wouldn't happen. She made a decision.

Then Susan went on side quests. After she came back she no longer had devil horns and a tail and her clothes were torn. She told Rhoda that she had gained more experience in the ranged and melee stats in order to become more durable and sneaky and because weapons looked less violent than fireballs. Rhoda asked if she had earned good morality points on the side quests and Susan said that she should have angel wings for them. Rhoda suggested that she wear fancy clothing to impress Grace. When she wore her most attractive outfit Rhoda and Catalina were disturbingly impressed. Adter Susan left Rhoda was worried and Jay tried to reassure her that Susan and Grace would get along since they had the same alingment, as she hadn't seen that Susan's alignment had changed to neutral.

When Susan went to visit Grace, Grace's friend Sarah directed her to a graveyard where she met Grace. Grace tried to shoot Susan, who ran for cover behind a tombstone. Susan said that she wanted to hire Grace but Grace thought that Susan could only be there for her bounties because of Susan's reputation as a do-gooder. Grace said that she had two squirrels fighting for her soul. When she had Susan pinned at gunpoint she said that most people are terrible so there was no reason to care about them. Susan told Grace that she was being self-destructive

Grace exploded and two squirrels appeared, one with fur like flames and the other with fur like clouds. The two squirrels fought and the cloud squirrel devoured the fire squirrel. Grace reappeared in their place. She glomped Susan. She apologized and said that monks and cultists had been trying to control her. Susan asked her about her experience with them and Grace ranted about what the monks did, including making her wear clothes and trying to make her stay in the temple because an evil seer would use her blood in a wish ritual. She said that she could threaten the evil seer with a gun but then noted that it would be bad gun safety as she didn't want to shoot anyone under any circumstances. Susan asked her about the evil seer and Grace pointed at a nearby hill saying that someone she suspected to be the seer was there.

Arthur the seer was there with Ragnar and his cult and they had Jay and Rhoda in shackles. Jay said that Arthur was always an obvious bad guy. Arthur said "If I'm evil, it is only due to how I am perceived". Jay at first considered the possibility that someone's opinion caused him to be portrayed that way but then dismissed it as mind games. Susan asked where Catalina was and Arthur answered ominously before saying that he sent her on an errand. Meanwhile, Catalina came back and found no one there. An unicorn found her and mentioned that he had done something and another person's dream magic interacted with his. Susan asked Arthur what he would use his wish for and he answered that he would control who would have access to knowledge and magic. Jay realized that this portrayal of him came from her view of him.

When Arthur declared that the final cutscene would begin, Susan shot a fireball upwards and revealed that she had recruited cutscene-preventing x-factors during the sidequests where she lost her devil horns. She elaborated on how she tried to recruit NPCs and Dee ElSee (Mr. Tensaided), the only NPC she managed to recruit, showed himself. Ragnar wanted to kill him but Arthur explained that she cutscene couldn't happen as scripted anyway. Susan revealed that she was max level in all skills and had hidden it with potions. Grace asked her about their fight and Susan confirmed that she had been holding back to fool Arthur but had been in real danger. When Arthur and Susan were preparing to fight, a voice interrupted them.

The unicorn arrived with Catalina riding him. He asked who had dream magic. Susan asked him if he is a night mare and he said that he is a stallion, not a mare. The unicorn said that he was lookiing for someone to use for a thing, that he used magic to set up a shared dream to check several people at the same time, that another person's dream magic affected the dream, that some of the dreamers were lucid and others were not and that he could only see silhouettes of the other people in the dream. He asked those who knew that they have dream magic to tell him. Then he saw that Rhoda is royalty, which was what he was looking for. He asked her for information to find her in the waking world. Arthur ordered the cultists to kill the unicorn and the unicorn made Arthur and the cultists vanish since they weren't real people. Jay was angry about Arthur's disappearance and almost fought the unicorn. The unicorn said that the real Arthur wasn't harmed and Jay denied that she cared about him. He noted that Jay was lucid and a true mage (presumably meaning wizard). Grace realized that she could confirm that it waas a dream, which made Jay hope that she could learn something about her. Then the unicorn tried to interrogate Rhoda again and Jay decided to stop him so she pinched her cheek.

Jay woke up, ending the unicorn's spell as her magic had modified the dream. She didn't remember much of the dream. The other dreamers, including Rhoda, Catalina and Tensaided, continued dreaming but their dreams were now mundane and no longer shared. Most dreamers remembered little of the dream but Grace, who was revealed by the narration to have dream magic of her own, remembered the dream and wrote in her dream journal about the unicorn.

In the last strip of the storyline Edward Verres clarified that the shadowy puppet master that Jay was when she first appeared was a role that she was assigned by the dream and that she wasn't as lucid as Susan at the time. During the strip Edward changed into a female form.