So the vampire lackey is in V’s room? Maybe stealing the teleportation orb so that Durkon can try to destroy the last gate as Phase II?
I agree – today’s strip should have come with Cliff notes. I do appreciate Burlew lampshading the fact that the dwarf cleric is not Durkon, because frankly, all those vampire dwarf clerics look the same to me.
Yeah, my guess is that he’s looking to steal the orb since that’s the only real idea that Roy would have given Durkon lately. Destroy the last Gate and the gods are forced to destroy and remake the world.
Of course, it’s entirely possible that Xykon & Redcloak are already there with their ten (?) day ritual to take control of it. I can’t imagine Gontor having a prayer’s chance in that case. Destroying the Gate sort of goes against both of their plans.
Speaking of, I’m missing some random Xykon evil hijinks and Redcloak drive right about now. It’s been too long.
Could the tiger be some sort of demigod representative?
Probably not. Vel & Tiger are the Kickstarter cameo. I think it’s rather unlikely that he will make a substantial change to the character, or kill them off.
Not impossible, but unlikely.
But that doesn’t have to do with the “one vote that hasn’t been counted.” I’m calling Banjulhu.
Don’t forget Banjo’s brother: Giggles the Clown, God of Slapstick
http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0561.html
The canonical accepted method for settling disputes between The Holy Brothers is Pie Eating Contests. FYI.
Burlew already said. There’s a (legitimate) demigod priest who hasn’t voted yet. That fact is unrelated to Gontor on the airship.
Hel wanted a decisive 4-2 vote right now so the last demigod vote wouldn’t matter. Instead, she’s facing a tie-breaker (because the one priestess/demigoddess changed her mind before voting) and so is putting Plan B into effect rather than relying on the vote to go her way.
My wacked-out theory: as long as the gods are incarnate, they can be harmed. Sure, they’re in a holy stone palace that nothing short of a football-field-sized missile could take out–but floating over their heads is a football-field-sized airship. And one of Hel’s minions is about to get jiggy on that airship’s crew.
Look for a big-league crash in the next couple of strips.
This is rare with Burlew but I feel he did drop the ball with this strip.
Yes, he did show seven characters walking in and only showed six clerics voting. But it was hardly clear from the strip that the seventh character was the tie breaker. It’s not like pantheon votes are a common occurrence that everyone would be expected to know the rules. Hel’s reaction and Roy’s reaction both created the impression that Hermod’s vote was the deciding vote and not just the sixth vote out of a total of seven. And cutting away to the ship while Durkon was referring to the backup plan created the impression the outcome of the vote would involve events on the Mechane not back at the Godsmoot.
I’ve been trying to guess who the 7th Demigod is.
Elli maybe?
It would make balance sense with Iounn of youth. Although I’m not sure the personification of eternity is a great bet to take the side of saving one piddly little world versus potential complete deicide.
I assume the priests of Surtur and Thrym are half-giants? Do they have half-giants these days?
Durkon: There’s still one more vote outstanding, actually.
Perfectly clear to me.
I feel perfectly clear would have been Durkon saying: “What are you, too stupid to count? Seven people walked in and only six of them have voted.”
Durkon saying he’s working on a backup plan and cutting away to the Mechane, narratively implies that the seventh cleric in the room isn’t the important character. Hel’s anger at Hermod’s switch supports this - why would she be so angry if all Hermod represented was a 5-2 win instead of a 4-3 win? Why would Roy say “it sounds like us winning” when he should be able to see that the vote is tied at 3-3 and the seventh voter is right there in the room?
Burlew should have instead had Roy say something like “That helps our side. We’re tied and it look like Hel has no idea which way the last guy is going to vote.” and then have Durkon say “Actually Hel knew Hermod couldn’t be relied on. So we’ve been working on a back-up plan.”
Maybe. But you’d expect Elli’s chosen cleric to be older.
Roy thought he was winning. That makes no sense if there is a tie and one person hasn’t voted. Plus Hermod acts like he just gave the final deciding vote, with Hel getting upset and having to put in some weird plan that she’s apparently not too confident in (or else she’d have used it instantly.)
Durkon said that like it’s something that’s not common knowledge. Yet everyone in the room should know that one guy hasn’t voted. It makes far more sense to interpret that as one person no one expected to vote hasn’t voted yet.
He needs to fix it. Edit that one panel so Durkula says. “Has everyone forgotten how to count? That’s only six votes!”
Then again, it might flow ok when we see the next strip. Or the one after that.
I see that V on the Mechane apparently didn’t witness the Belkster plunge to his doom.
Roy was not paying attention to the vote. He was too busy trying to get through the antilife shell. He heard Hel’s “Damn you” and jumped to the conclusion that the vote had gone against Hel.
She’s probably not as certain of the last voter as she was of others. She was probably really counting on wrapping it up with Hermod.
The back-up plan is just in case the vote goes against Hel. It’s probably to take over the Mechane by vamping or killing everyone on board. It may be just stealing the Teleport Orb, but how would Vamptor carry it off the ship? He can’t while in mistform, can he? Or bat-form?
Yes, I know the official explanation. That’s not the point. The point is that the way the comic is structured is misleading. These things don’t make intuitive sense.
Why in the world is Roy not paying attention? It’s literally the most important thing going on. It’s not as if he’s executing some plan to get through Durkula’s shield–he’s just flailing at it with a sword that he knows won’t reach him.
Plus, talking is a free action, so he doesn’t lose out at all by paying attention.
Plus, why the fuck would Durkula be politely correcting him rather than insulting him for not paying attention?
The official explanation feels like a fanwank to explain away something that doesn’t makes sense.
I thought the comic was a little unclear in some ways. “Needs” is a little overstated IMHO.
This is a little polly-anna, but my take is that a book needs to flow. But these individual installments can handle a little ambiguity, since we’re going to be studying them obsessively anyway. My response in the Mechane was, “Huh. I see that cleric has a rock for a holy symbol. Probably the stone guy. Was he a dwarf?” (A: Yes) Also, for better or worse I didn’t initially notice that only 6 votes had been cast: I just assumed the important action had shifted to the Mechane.
I still say BigT’s fix may or may not be appropriate depending upon how the next 1 or 8 strips flow. But I’m thinking in book terms.
As a tangent, do you guys feel like the plot progression is very slow?
I understand that the comic is free to read, and he has to make a living out of this, and he’s trying to create this great big epic story. But it seems to me like if this were a tv show, we’d wait 2+ weeks for an episode and then that episode would last about 3 minutes tops. I just wish there was a way to completely forget about the strip for about 6 months at a time and then binge all the strips at once.
Another side note, it’s kind of unsettling to me the way the posters on the forum fawn over Burlew, he really has god-like status over there in his playground.