If you think about it, a world with access to Detect Evil magic makes being a non-evil predator upon humans far easier than in real life, in theory at least.
“Good…still good…another good…aha, Evil!”* <MUNCH!>*
[spoiler]In 3.5 D&D, there are vampires and vampire spawn. If a vampire hits you too many times with its energy draining attack, you turn into a vampire spawn. Note in strip #870, Malack was energy draining Belkar with slam and bite attacks (that’s what the black glowy stuff is, presumably). So Belkar would have turned into a vampire spawn.
The other option is to drain someone’s blood, which turns them into a full-fledged vampire, and that’s what he did to Durkon.[/spoiler]
I go back and forth as to whether that was a reference to the nine alignments or whether there are still more sides to be revealed and how granular you want to get. For example there are at least two factions of (former) Azure Cityites, the Empire of Blood Resistance (including Haley’s dad) and you could maybe include Malack as well…there’s a lot going on and that’s before you drag in the elves and dwarves and flumphs and lawyers and the Oracle and all.
I need a diagram just to keep it straight.
I’m no expert, but I do recall that when Yukyuk was being dominated by V (in the elf v drow battle) he was aware enough of events to realize that the drow was trying to kill him (and to resent it somewhat).
I’m pretty certain that it was a throwaway line by the roach.
I don’t think so… Rich has referenced it in his comments in the books and seems to treat it as accurate…
I’m not saying there aren’t going to be a lot. I think the point was to say that it wasn’t going to just be OOTS vs Xykon with a side order of LG. There are many people working at cross purposes and it’s the Giant, so trying to tabulate in order to come up with exactly 9 is a fool’s game. The strip may end with only 7 delineated sides. It may end with 11. Just not 2 or 3.
From the commentary in Book 4:
I’m reading this as saying that there aren’t exactly nine sides, but that the demon roach’s comment wasn’t just an alignment joke.
Me, too. Some days I think that was just a Greek (er…demonic) chorus throwaway reference to the alignment diagram and some days I think that there are actually nine different groups vying for control of the gates (including taking Evil, Inc. as three separate sides…I’m not convinced that those three specific bosses can keep the rest of their respective alignment groups in line, or that they will even be able to maintain their cooperative outlook themselves when the ultimate goal is in reach).
There’s the Holey Brotherhood, which has been shown but about which we’ve been given virtually no information. But they’re obviously deeply involved with the Gates.
And there’s also the Snarl.
Just reread the last comic - is that Xykon’s phylactery around Durkon’s neck, or is it just his own Holy Symbol?
It’s his Holy Symbol, turned dark along with his armor and his beard to signal his alignment shift, I presume. sigh
The seven brothers he references are almost surely his biological siblings from before he was turned into a vampire. Drinking their blood, I’m guessing, means that he followed the common vampire trope of killing his family as soon as he rose from the grave. Now, after two hundred years of hindsight, he misses the fraternity he had, but even now, his vampiric nature means that he relishes the taste of their blood even more. It’s a meditation on “vampirism as curse.” His old personality is still there, and still likes the things it used to like, but it always is in submission to his basic predator nature, whether he likes it or not.
In reference to Durkon, it may be exposition to set up Durkon as a free-willed vampire, but I suspect that Malack is feeling the same sense of loss over Durkon that he felt over his brothers. Regardless of how he feels about what Malack did to him, Durkon isn’t a friend anymore, he’s a victim. Malack is reflecting that, in his life, he’s accumulated a lot of the latter, and very few of the former.
Yes, he should remember everything. Neither spell effects the target’s memory.
He’s the high priest of the God of Death and Destruction, and second in command to a ruthless dictator who throws empires into turmoil and chaos as a hobby. There’s never been any doubt about his alignment since the moment he showed up, and that was before the vampire reveal. Yeah, there was that comic where he talks about neutral death priests, but if you look at where he is, who he associates with, and what he had to do to get them where they are now, there’s absolutely no way he was anything other than evil.
Yuan-ti pure bloods look mostly human. Half-bloods, per the 3.5 MM, are humanoids with “a serpent’s head, complete with long fangs and a forked tongue, ris[ing] from their shoulders.” They also have a 60% chance of a major physical mutation, one of which is that they have a single huge tail instead of separate legs. Malack is unlikely to be an abomination. Foremost, abominations are large creatures, and Malack is clearly medium. Abominations are also the ruling class in yuan-ti society, which is highly advanced, and arrogant about it. Which makes it unlikely that Malack would look back at his previous life as that of an “ignorant barbarian shaman.”
I think I might try rolling up a vampiric yuan-ti cleric, just to see how it works, but my instincts tell me its not a particularly powerful build, relative to other things in its weight class. And I do think that both Tarquin and Malack are in Xykon’s weight class, although in any one-on-one battle, I give it to the lich by a wide margin. Epic level spellcaster trumps just about anything except another epic level spellcaster.
As for the fight between Durkon and Malack, I think if you played it out with the suggested builds on a game board, it would go largely the same way. Durkon got in one really good hit with that heal spell, but otherwise didn’t do all that spectacularly. Certainly not any better than Roy did the first time he tried to solo Xykon, and about equal to the second time Roy tried to solo Xykon.
So Tarquin is presumably heading back to the pyramid on a pterosaur packing “cleric in a can” packets in its pouch. Maybe the Order might get hold of that stash, mitigating some of the strategic loss of their cleric.
I don’t know the vampire rules for D&D. Is it possible that Malack is shape-shifting? It’s a relatively common trait for high-level vampires and it would explain why a lizardfolk would suddenly have a long anaconda-like tail.
D&D vampires can change shape into a bat or wolf, but I don’t think that’s what happening here. I think we’re just supposed to assume that he’s basically a serpent with arms. That’s not his tail, it’s his body, he just usually holds it coiled up inside his cloak.
Said “snake features” mostly being scales and a snake head. The variants table shows a 20% chance of a variant with no legs, so I’ll grant you that much. As to the abominations’ status in society–“Our snake-people are different.” If there’s a local version of yuan-ti that are barbarians, the abominations would likely hold tribal leadership and shamanic positions, as those would be the highest-status positions available. (If they’re not barbarians, then that’s more support for Malack not being one of them.)
All of which is still likely irrelevant, since (1) as far as we know, Rich doesn’t have a license to use yuan-ti, (2) we have only seen lizardfolk so far, and (3) Malack has actually indicated that he’s lizardfolk. Playing around with possible yuan-ti stats and builds is entertaining, but not likely to shed any light on the comic, given what we currently know.
Perhaps next we should postulate that Malack is really a kobold who answered an “Increase your tail size in just 2 weeks!” ad back when he was alive, and his stubby little legs are just dangling up in his robes somewhere. 
There are lizards without legs, or with vestigial legs, so technically Malack could be a lizardfolk, just of an obscure kind of lizard. However, legless lizards don’t constrict - that’s something only certain snakes do. Maybe that’s why Tarquin had to teach Malack that move, rather than him knowing it already.