I think there’s an important moral to be learned here: when time is of the essence, don’t send the guy with a 20 ft./x3 move speed.
Of course, there’s the question of whether or not vampires have an afterlife. If killing them and resurrecting them is a “complicated way of annihilating the person I am today” according to Malack, it’s quite possible that any “Malack” in the afterlife will be that 200 year dead barbarian shaman, not Vampire Malack.
He was disoriented by sunlight, panicked, and really hated Nale. Most smart people aren’t very smart when when they are on fire.
Nitpick: x4. As a dwarf, he’s not slowed down by armor.
Another useful piece of advice. 
He keeps his 20 ft. move speed, but I don’t recall it removing the change to the run multiplier.
Relevant portion of the manual
A dwarf’s base land speed is 20 feet. However, dwarves can move at this speed even when wearing medium or heavy armor or when carrying a medium or heavy load.
[/QUOTE]
Run (×3)
Moving three times speed is a running pace for a character in heavy armor.
[/QUOTE]
Sounds like he still can’t run at x4 with the heavy armor.
Someone on another forum says that “according to SRD”* Darkness is destroyed by bright, direct sunlight.
*I’m not sure what SRD is but it comes up a lot. When I actually played D&D it was still called Advanced Dungeons and Dragons
“SRD” is a reference to the System Reference Document for the d20 system–the bits of D&D that have been (sort of) open-sourced. There’s a hypertext version, which has an entry for the Darkness spell. That version, at least, does not explicitly say that bright, direct sunlight will disrupt the spell, but it does say, “Normal lights (torches, candles, lanterns, and so forth) are incapable of brightening the area…” That seems to imply that brighter lights, like full sunlight, can’t be fully blocked by the spell.
As a DM, I would probably compromise, since it’s not explicit: the Darkness spell would provide limited protection, as it fails to completely block out the sunlight. The vamp would both take damage (determined arbitrarily on the spot) each round and have a few extra rounds to reach shelter. If he hits 0 hit points or fails to reach shelter in N rounds, he’s ashes.
Thanks for the explanation of SRD, it was bothering me. 
Darkness (a level 2 spell) is dispelled by Daylight (a level 3) spell. The assumption being made is that full daylight would have the same effect as a spell that creates what is almost full daylight.
Deeper Darkness is level 3 and explicitly states that it negates Daylight. So there was still a plausible low level spell based solution but, again, no guarantees that he had the spell memorized.
When Zz’dtri and Qarr rose into the air immediately after Z cast the spell against Malack, I figured they were going to race Durkon to the staff, but they just hovered above Nale and Malack. Do you suppose they did that to stay out of melee range?
I wondered the same thing in post 6320 and I figure we’ll find out in the next comic, and that they’re somehow flanking CountDurkula for whatever comes next.
I give Malack a pass on this one. He was in great physical agony, and the man who killed his “children” was taunting him. I wouldn’t be thinking too clearly under such circumstances.
What do you think the odds are that Elan will try to recruit Durkon-of-the-Damned to his team?
Quite possibly - also, how many protection from level drain potions did they have - just the one for Nale, I believe.
Best to get out of touch range of an angry vamp, if you don’t have protection.
But Nale buys them in bulk.
Doesn’t mean he shares any of them, Quartz.
Nale’s got every reason to want Durk dead, and not many to keep him around. I really can’t see Count Durkula choosing to work with Nale. So, I’d imagine the logical next step would be for Nale and Z to try and kill the Count. OTOH, nale might think that it’d be more painful to Elan and the Order to send Durk back to them as a vampire. I don’t think Nale knows that the Order already knows about the vampirization. The more I think about it, that’s what I think Burlew will do.
The, “It’s hard to think quickly when you’re on fire,” brigade are convincing me. I still think it wouldn’t have strained Burlew much to have shown Z casting Dimensional Anchor, but w/e. And I don’t buy a vampire being that casual about his lifeline when he’s next to two casters and horrible pain and oblivion is only 12 seconds away, but again, w/e. Agreeing with one of the posters at the OOTS Boards, that I really don’t understand why he and Durkon didn’t just snuff Nale and Z the moment they realized the Gate went boom.
When the author says, “You gotta’ go,” you’re gone whether it makes perfect sense or not.
You don’t make it to level 12 if you flip out and lose your shit each time you’re hit with a fireball, Flame Strike, Burning Hands, red dragon breath, etc 
Sure he does. Getting Durkon on his team would *devastate *the Order. Remember, Nale doesn’t want to kill his enemies - he wants to crush them.