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From the depths of time comes a story of wicked villains, terrible secrets, and monumental screw-ups! The Order of the Stick: Start of Darkness reveals for the first time the secret origins of Xykon, Redcloak, the Monster in the Darkness, heck, even the demon cockroaches. Containing 112 pages of all-new never-published-online comics in dramatic black-and-white, Start of Darkness is full of villainy goodness for any fan of the OOTS. Learn such secrets as:

How did Xykon and Redcloak meet?
How did Xykon became a lich?
Why did Eugene Greenhilt swear revenge on Xykon?
What ever happened to Lirian's Gate, anyway?
How did Redcloak discover the Monster in the Darkness?
Why on earth does Redcloak put up with Xykon's crap???

The Order of the Stick: Start of Darkness is presented primarily in black-and-white, similar to our bestselling On the Origin of PCs, but features a special full-color insert detailing the Secret Lore of the Crimson Mantle--in the popular crayon format, first seen in No Cure for the Paladin Blues. Featuring introductions by the author and Miko Miyazaki, paladin of the Sapphire Guard, this book is a flat-out must have for fans of the OOTS plotline, as it fills in missing details in the story of who these evildoers are and why they do evil. Wallowing in unrepentant villainy has never been this much fun (legally)!

112 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2007

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420 people want to read

About the author

Rich Burlew

26 books117 followers

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Displaying 1 - 30 of 63 reviews
Profile Image for Patrick.
Author 82 books243k followers
July 3, 2013

This is a prequel to one of my favorite webcomics: The Order of the Stick.

It's an interesting thing in terms of narrative: the backstory of the antagonists.

This is a tricky sort of story to write. If you make them sympathetic, they're not a proper villain anymore. But if the reader doesn't feel something for them, then the story isn't engaging.

Suffice to say, this is a nutsy book to write. And despite the trickiness of it, Burlew pulls it off. It's a good story. It's got funny bits. Dark bits. Gaming bits. Ample backstory and worldbuilding. And it shows the underlying motivation for the characters without turning them into good guys.

It's a really interesting piece of story, and folks interested in the craft of storytelling could learn a thing of two by reading it.


Profile Image for Juho Pohjalainen.
Author 5 books348 followers
November 7, 2023
Much better. This is how you do a proper prequel comic: establish character motivations, where they came from, what drives them, and how much of a dick one of them has been the entire time. It's the least funny The Order of the Stick has ever been, but even then it manages a few good jokes. I feel for these people, even if sometimes it only makes me want to see them die all the more.
Profile Image for Shannon Appelcline.
Author 30 books167 followers
March 4, 2020
An interesting backstory, well told. Much more cohesive than the Origins of PCs, and it would generally be up to the standards of the normal series (or better) if not for the miserly decision to print black & white.
Profile Image for Ville-Markus Nevalainen.
429 reviews34 followers
November 25, 2015
I picked up this comic after reading Patrick Rothfuss praising it here on Goodreads. I wasn't sure where to start as two prequels had been released for the story. I ended up picking one of the prequels which might've been a slight mistake as it seemed to be made for those who are already familiar with the story and the characters. But even though this was my first touch with Order of the Stick, it worked quite well!

The Order of the STick is an odd series. Sure, it's a web comic, but still. The artstyle looks like it's made with Windows Paint and the story is ALL over the place with random jokes that don't make any sense.

So I think it is even more unbelievable to see how well it all works.

Sure the art is very crude and simple, but it works. Damn, it even manages to make the reader emotional at few points of the story. Perhaps it is only the eyes that slighlty change from scene to scene but it is enough. It is beautiful how well you can do something so simple.

And the story is fun. It does tell the backstory of some more major characters of the series (or so I believe). And these crude stick figures, a human sorcerer and... goblins?, have real stories. It is the goblins who are the highlight of the story and really have an emotional journey that, surprisingly, makes you feel bad for them. It is actually a pretty good story.

In addition there's jokes. Lot of them. The fourth wall is constantly being pummeled down, there's references to popculture and, well, to everything you can imagine, and then there are ninja clowns coming out of shoes and they are being stopped by - cotton candy?

Yeah. It makes absolutely no sense and that might be the biggest thing: you either love it or probably hate it. For me it works so well.

I did not even mention that it's actually a parody of D&D games, which is hilarious when it is embraced fully, for example by saying that these monsters aren't in the Monster Manual or "see you in two turns".

Yeah, I kinda need to read more of this.
Profile Image for Matt.
566 reviews7 followers
April 21, 2010
Holy crap, I feel dirty for having read about how the bad guys got so bad. As always, Burlew is a master at storytelling and humor, and turning cliches on their heads.
My favorite quote from the main Evil guy: "I know people think I'm stupid. Because [I didn't earn my power:]. Because I get bored easily. Because I have no interest in strategy or tactics or contingency planning....Only two things matter: Force in as great a concentration as you can manage, and style. And in a pinch, style can slide."
Also, I really enjoyed the moral tainting of the second in command. He starts off as a defender of his people and the power behind the throne, and is eventually confronted with his betrayal of his people: "You're willing to throw good lives after bad so that you don't have to admit that we were wrong... in the first place..." (Sound familiar?)
All this couched in between a scene in Taco Night and continual breaking of the fourth wall and jokes about the hero's absent father: "Did you say 'childREN'?".
Profile Image for Ben Stoddard.
Author 6 books6 followers
August 11, 2015
Mr. Burlew has a definite dark place in his inner psyche. I gotta say I really like the complexity that is Xykon far more than he appears to be in the comics at first. He does a really good job of looking like a blundering madman, but yet he's actually quite calculating. His method of enslaving the goblins (particularly Redcloak) into absolute tyrannical underlings is impressive and utterly devastating. You do start to feel for the goblins and their plight. And Redcloak's descending spiral in his ever increasing desperation to vindicate the loss of his own personal morals is something that is both wonderful and terrible to watch. All in all, this is truly a great read, but be warned that it is a dark story in which the bad guys win...
1,026 reviews10 followers
February 28, 2012
This is the foundation of the entire story of Order of the Stick, more or less. It shows the genesis of our bad guys, and the reason our protagonists are so involved in stopping them. Its also surprisingly bittersweet,
Profile Image for Darth Reader.
1,118 reviews
July 30, 2015
I loved this fucking comic. First of all, I love the reference to Heart of Darkness, second the evil dude reminds me SO much of Rick from Rick and Morty, it's amazing.

What I find most interesting about these comics is that though they're about D&D the author sure does make a ton of fun about people who play the game.

Excited to continue reading these!
Profile Image for Sol.
700 reviews35 followers
August 15, 2019
The hype was too much. I've been reading OOTS for nearly 15 years now, and Start of Darkness was the missing piece of the story that everyone said was oh so great. And how couldn't Redcloak's backstory be great? He's the best character in the comic. His dynamic with Xykon is one of the highest points of Burlew's writing. He plays the part of the beleaguered underling to Xykon, yet he considers himself the true driving force of his and Xykon's villainy, manipulating him to his own somewhat admirable ends. Xykon, on the other hand, never fully shows how much he sees through Redcloak's deception. He's not as stupid and careless as he often acts, and certainly never lets Redcloak (overtly) walk all over him. At all times it's an unstable partnership, with Xykon threatening to slip loose from Redcloak's control and ruin everything he's fought for.

This volume does add some extra context to that relationship, namely that it was Redcloak who made Xykon a lich, and that he gave up everything he ever had in life in order to follow and aid Xykon in their quest. By the time OOTS proper starts, Redcloak can no longer possibly give up on their partnership. And like any sunk cost, he keeps spending as OOTS goes on. Finding out what exactly Xykon's jab of "Wrong Eye" meant was rewarding, and the addition of Xykon's inferiority complex about being a sorcerer added a nice extra layer to a usually flat character who tries never to show any weakness. Of course, it has yet to come up in the main story, so can it really be said to exist?

Still, I was really not that entertained throughout. The vast majority of it seemed like hole filling. Finding out how Lirian's gate fell, finding out how Dorukan died, finding out how Gene ended up swearing the blood oath, finding out how Redcloak got the Monster in the Darkness, etc. Personally I could've lived without knowing these things, but they form the vast majority of the book. The jokes largely fell flat for me, the black and white art loses an essential component of the comic's already stripped down style, and Burlew's commitment to not putting essential story information in a spinoff prevents this from having anything that must be read. Burlew's writing skill has advanced by leaps and bounds since this was released 12 years ago. If he were to do something like this now, I think he could really do it justice. The fact that he did "the Redcloak flashback" way back when, and this is the result, is immensely disappointing to me. This comic is far more of a piece with the awkward first two books, rather than the well put together latter four. At least it's better than Origin of PCs.
Profile Image for Brenton.
144 reviews12 followers
April 14, 2020
This is the second supplemental volume of The Order Of The Stick, and much like On The Origin of PCs, it is (mostly) in black and white and takes place prior to the beginning of the main online strip. Potential readers may view this as, like PCs, an amusing but unnecessary aside that serves to pad out the main storyline. They would be remiss. While PCs was entertaining, it wasn’t much of a story by itself. It did explain some of the main cast’s motivations, and detailed how and why the Order got together in the first place, but as a whole it was a footnote to the main OOTS story. Start of Darkness, on the other hand, is a near-perfect anti-hero tragedy, ranking with some of the best villain origin stories out there. Here, Rich Burlew proves, in tighter form than the sprawling online strip, that he can write an engaging, dramatic story.

The main antagonist of OOTS, and the villain front and center on the cover of this book, is the lich Xykon. And he is a truly terrifying evil, to be sure - a point driven home time and time again in Start of Darkness. But Xykon is also a one-dimensional villain who, as the book reveals, was never any less psychopathic than he is now; he was simply less powerful. (This is not to say he's a badly written villain - he's a convincingly written psychopath.) Start of Darkness is really the story of Redcloak, Xykon’s second-in-command. Redcloak is a powerful and devout goblin cleric, and in direct contrast to Xykon, he is averse to pointless death and destruction and seems to have, what is in his mind, a noble and just cause. How is it that one such as Redcloak came to be subservient to a reckless, chaotic, cruel narcissist like Xykon? The road was long, as it turns out, and marked by a lot of tragedy and pathos.

Not all villains start out as such. Start of Darkness asks whether one can perform evil acts in the service of achieving good and how far over the line one can step before becoming irredeemably evil. It also serves as a cautionary tale about utilizing terrible things (or terrible people) for the greater good lest the terror become too powerful. By the time the villains are entering the castle of Dorukan, wherein the Order of the Stick find them at the beginning of the online comic, readers will have been gut-punched by the horrific losses suffered by the antihero goblins - and by the horrific choices they have subsequently made in their quest for justice. A satisfying if heart-wrenching tale on its own, Start of Darkness adds compelling twists to the mythology of the OOTS world and enriches the continued narrative of the main strip.
Profile Image for Karl Muller.
178 reviews9 followers
October 24, 2020
Look, we all love The Order of the Stick - they're the good guys, they're saving the world, rah rah. But as Burlew points out in the intro, it's tricky to write a prequel for the bad guys that fleshes (heh) them out as real characters in the world. The can't be too sympathetic, too powerful, too cruel... and this book walks that line perfectly.

No, you don't have to read this to enjoy Xykon, Redcloak, and Team Evil in the main story. But it gives them so much more depth that you understand the reasons behind what they do - not just the words they tell themselves (and us), but the actual actions that got them there.

If you're a roleplayer, next time you write a backstory for your character that has a villain, try to come up with a compelling and complete backstory for that villain. Then realize that you'd have to fit that into an already-established universe, and still throw in punchlines every step along the way, and still make the bad guy someone that you can have some sympathy for but still want to defeat, and then you're on the road to what this book is.
Profile Image for Jason.
352 reviews5 followers
July 26, 2020
This is the first Order of the Stick book that fulfills the promise that its die hard fans have been making through their fandom. It deepens the mythology and it keeps its tight and consistent humor, but more importantly, there are real characters making real decisions that have real and continuing consequences. It’s a well-paced story that makes full use of its artistic form. I am fully impressed.
105 reviews
December 11, 2021
This prequel to the main "Order of the Stick" webcomic tells the backstory of the main villains, and a couple of other characters (such as Eugene Greenhilt). Of course, because it's a prequel, mostly the bad guys win and bad things happen. Still a fun read, maybe not as light as the main webcomic due to fewer humorous interludes, but definitely a must for fans of the series.
8 reviews2 followers
March 11, 2025
I got this book for Christmas and really liked it.
I think the black-and-white artwork goes nicely with both the flashback theme and the darker and edgier story. I just wonder what this would look were it made today.
Profile Image for Joshua.
23 reviews
July 8, 2018
It's a very inappropriate fun read for Lord of the Rings fans. I like it because it's a funny, inappropriate graphic novel that holds the information for the introduction of The Order of the Stick. It's also a very quick read, although hopefully you will enjoy it.
Profile Image for ***Dave Hill.
1,026 reviews29 followers
February 4, 2020
Burlew pulls off here something that few longtime creators manage well -- filling in backstory in a satisfying and entertaining fashion, even as he balances what is essentially a humor strip with a tale that has deep, disturbing drama in it. Really strong stuff here. Well done.
Profile Image for Ronja.
60 reviews1 follower
January 17, 2022
Good book, just a little disappointed about no colors and that "right eye" ended up dying, I liked him so I'm also disappointed about that, but it was a good way to lead up to everything else that happened.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Profile Image for Andre.
1,267 reviews11 followers
August 18, 2017
The origin story of the villains. A journey through the backstory of characters that I found engaging and that builds up to its conclusion beautifully. How it should be done IMHO.
Profile Image for Phil.
103 reviews3 followers
October 28, 2017
This is some of Burlew's best writing. The ending is fantastic.
Profile Image for Sarah Ehinger.
818 reviews10 followers
August 16, 2019
Despite the author's preface warning, I read this before reading any of the others. It was still enjoyable. A great back story to the order of the stick villians.
122 reviews
June 14, 2020
A hard hit, but crafted wonderfully.
Profile Image for Kathy.
1,370 reviews14 followers
July 18, 2020
A fun look at the origin stories of the antagonists. Plus the demon cockroaches make appearances!
Profile Image for Loren.
169 reviews
July 31, 2020
Wow. That ending. Xyklon's speech to Redcloak is fantastic.
Profile Image for TONY.
199 reviews8 followers
September 13, 2021
Not my kind of humor but I can see why my friends recommended it.
Profile Image for Rebecca.
43 reviews6 followers
February 4, 2012
When a book tells you that Taco Night is one of 26 unpleasant things that happen in the course of it, then you're right to be skeptical. I was and I knew Rich Burlew's writing. The Order of the Stick is phenomenal. Really it is. It's a ongoing pleasure of a webcomic that has progressed into a behemoth of geekdom. It's made me almost wet myself laughing and it's even made me shed a tear.

But Taco Night. It just sends shivers down my spine.

This book is a print-only prequel to the online comic and therefore comprises content that you will not find online if you only frequent legit sites. Therefore an OotS completist should stop reading this review as you should either be cursing your mistake and rushing off to buy it, or you'll already own it and my opinion doesn't matter. Not that it does anyway!

However if you don't know OotS, then there is still enough to justify this book. As a story of how pure evil can destroy many lives in many ways, there are few books that can keep up with Start of Darkness. And I'm really not just saying that. The culmination of this book still horrified me now and it is almost 5 years since I first read it.

Do not be put of by the stick figures. There's more emotion in those little guys than in many novels that I have endured. And kudos to Rich Burlew, because he makes you care about something that is a circle, a rectangle and an assortment of lines. That's how good his writing is.

Terrifyingly first class.

-----

Check out the main story at www.giantitp.com
Profile Image for Mike.
932 reviews44 followers
May 5, 2012
Start of Darkness is a prequel story featuring the villains of the Order of the Stick webcomic. It is the second "print-only" OotS book, featuring material not available on the website.

As with the other print-only collections, this trade is in greyscale due to cost concerns (except for a 9 page section in the middle).

Start of Darkness is 112 pages long, and features background on Xykon and Redcloak. It's got light touches of humor, but is mostly a dark tale, as befits the embodiments of evil plaguing our heroes. Without going into spoilers, there is a TON of information here that gives great insight into the characters and their motivations.

Although I recommend reading all of the OotS books, I found On the Origin of PCs (Start of Darkness's hero analog) enjoyable but not strictly necessary. In contrast, while like with Origin there's nothing here vital to understanding the main story, there is great depth added to our villains here (particularly Redcloak) that shouldn't be missed.

A fantastic side story to the central quest, Start of Darkness really is a must read if you're following the main trades.

While the volume number -1 is appropriate from a "in-comic" time perspective, it doesn't tell you when you should be reading this volume. As the author states in the introduction it can be read after Volume 2 without spoiling anything, but I'd recommend reading it between Volumes 3 and 4 (along with Origin, if you choose).
Profile Image for Adysnewbox.
822 reviews7 followers
March 21, 2020
I'd probably round up the ratings on both this volume and "On the Origin of PCs" to 3 1/2 stars. Neither one are essential reading to understand the plot of the "Order of the Stick" web-comic, but both of them provide really nice background information. "Origin of PCs" provides a lot of character background; "Start of Darkness" goes one better and provides more plot background, especially concerning the villain's overall plot. This isn't always PLEASANT to read (we ARE following a variety of Evil characters as they run roughshod over Good characters), but it is still funny (if darkly so) and informative. This book does much to flesh out the Redcloak character, making him a much more nuanced and interesting villain than his boss/partner Xykon (even though Xykon is undoubtedly funnier). I enjoy spending time more with the Order of the Stick, but I'm glad I read "Start of Darkness" because I feel that I understand Rich Burlew's fantasy world better for having done so, and I understand the history of many significant background characters as well that I probably wouldn't have learned about any other way.
Profile Image for Kathryn.
255 reviews131 followers
October 3, 2011
Rich Burlew, author of The Order of the Stick (a webcomic), has, besides his comic strip compilations, also written two companion books. Book -1, Start of Darkness, explains how the bad guys – Redcloak, Xykon, the Creature in the Darkness – got together. Everyone who reads the comic faithfully needs to read this book. The background information about the Crimson Mantle (Redcloak’s...um...red cloak), Roy’s dad’s blood oath of vengeance, and Xykon fills in a lot of gaps in the series mythology as a whole. It explains a lot of characters’ motivations, and as the story begins to draw closer to the end, the plot threads in this book are getting picked up in the comic (for example, Redcloak’s plan for Azure City).

I’m really looking forward to seeing the comic tie up all its loose ends...
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