Those low-level characters are not as hapless as they first appeared. They all just gave themselves a +5 Has a Name defensive bonus.
You really should spoiler a detail like that. It kinda ruined the joke for me.
What joke?
Well, I dunno if I’m kindly, but I am a mod. And the post report got me to see the new comic at least three minutes before I otherwise would have, so thanks.
Don’t worry about Elan-- A Glyph of Warding is a one-shot thing. Once it zapped Roy, the spell was discharged and done.
Oh, that’s why the writing on the step disappeared. (Another demonstration that I’m not a D&D player. There’s lots of rules I don’t know, and every once in a while, that shows up.)
PS thanks for the link fix.
I see someone remembers the prophecy.
Without going back to look, I’m going to guess that that guy is one of those who physically threw Durkon out into the snow.
And, yup, looks like he’s the guy who held Durkon’s feet.
PS Love Elan’s excuse not to drink dwarf beer.
It’s covered more clearly in On the Origin of PC’s. The high priest of Odin received the prophecy about Durkon and exiled him with the cover story that Durkon was being sent on a mission to live with humans. The priest confided the real story to his friend, the brew master, who this character appears to be. As far as we know, the high priest didn’t tell the real story to anyone else (we’ve seen he didn’t tell his successor) so it seems likely the brew master is the only living person who knows about the prophecy.
Quite frankly, it’s one of the least believable parts of the entire series for me. It’s contrived as hell. The high priest had no reason to keep the prophecy a secret. It would have been a lot more sensible to have told other people about it, including Durkon and the other priests in his temple.
This beer server looks somewhat like one of the dwarf tossers in 1007, but those guys don’t look at all like the tossers in 305. The Durkon tossers in OoPCs do look like the latter two.
But yes, this server also looks like Firuk Blackore, the Brewmaster. The only thing is, you’d expect the Temple Brewmaster to be a high level position in a Dwarven temple, so why is he working the night shift? Well, I’m sure we’ll find out if he is Firuk in the next strip.
I agree about with you about Hurak keeping the prophesy secret. He had absolutely no reason to do that.
I’ve not got a problem with it. If they tell the real reason, then people can argue with it.
Of course, this seems to be the self-fulfilling type of prophecy, since Durkon wouldn’t have been vamped if he’d been able to stick around. He can’t return if he’s never left, either.
(That is the prophecy, right? It’s that something bad will happen when Durkon returns? I don’t have the book handy.)
Without having the book handy either, I believe the exact words were, “When next he returns home, he will bring death and destruction to us all.”
“But… he’s at home now!”
“The prophecy states when he returns home, not when he is at home.”
Possible response by Rich, underlining is mine: [INDENT][INDENT]By the way, in case you haven’t noticed, one of my favorite techniques is taking real-world material and twisting it before inserting it into my world. The fact is, aspects of the setting that are reminiscent of history ring more truly than anything made up out of whole cloth. After a few thousand years of human history, it’s hard for an imaginary world to compete with the level of complexity of the real thing-so why not steal a little of that density of information? In particular, I find that looking to the real world helps me avoid accidentally writing the world’s history to be too logical and organized. What I mean is, from a dispassionate point of view, splitting your nation up among your sons is a recipe for political disaster, but it happened. Studying the real world helps put me into the shoes of the men and women who shape my imaginary world and think about how they won’t always (or even usually) make the best decisions. [/INDENT][/INDENT] We’ve seen it established via contrast that the now deceased high priest may not have been the best decision maker. His successor certainly seems wiser. Former high priest agreed that fooling with prophecy is a dangerous business. Keeping his dubious decision secret may have been motivated in part by ass-covering but also by barely perceived shame.
As for today’s strip, there’s a lot going on, not least of all the depth of Durkon’s machinations, as alluded to earlier by Chronos. I doubt whether Durkon had the necessary life experience for such planning during his worst day.
I’m not suggesting he should have ignored the prophecy. I’m saying he handled it in just about the worst possible way.
If you know there is some catastrophically dangerous threat, you tell people about it so they know to avoid it. You don’t keep it a secret.
The High Priest should have gone to Durkon and told him the prophecy. Durkon, who is filled with a sense of duty, would have voluntarily left his homelands and never tried to return. Instead, he was filled with bitterness and resentment over being exiled for no apparent reason. In the end, he stuck with his vow despite this. But what if he had been pushed just a little farther and decided “To hell with the High Priest. He acted like a dick. I’m going home.”
As we saw, Durkon did ask permission to return home because he didn’t have any reason not to. And the new High Priest, who hadn’t been told about the prophecy by the previous high priest, granted it to him. It was only circumstances that kept Durkon from returning home. All that could have easily been avoided by just telling people about the prophecy.
And none of this was necessary to the story. Durkon has returned home - but he did so while being controlled by Durkula. So it wouldn’t have mattered if Durkon had known about the prophecy all along. There was no narrative reason to keep him ignorant.
One wonders if Durkula - and Durkon - will find out about the prophecy and how Durkon will react to that. There could still be a narrative reason for it - we’re not at the end of Durkon’s story yet.
I get the feeling that the narrative reason will soon be revealed.
See this strip: His exile is over … the truth always has a use.
So, somehow this truth will defeat Durkon-vampire, in a way that would not have been possible without the exile and the secret.
Enter the Exposition Fairy. Er, Dwarf.
Is Sigdi still alive? Do we know? I sort of read “Is he related to Sergeant Sigdi” as a yes (and we know she was when Durkon was exiled) but maybe there was a previous strip establishing otherwise.
If she is, of course she’s going to be involved in all this. On the dwarf council or something.
It’d be rather surprising if she weren’t. She’d still be fairly young, by dwarven standards, and she’s not going to be sent to any particularly dangerous hot spots with only one arm. At the same time, she’s badass enough that any duties she might still have wouldn’t be a serious risk to her.
I’m also a little curious why the clergy never sprang for a Regenerate spell for her-- It’d only take a level 13 cleric, and doesn’t even have an expensive material component, and she’s clearly powerful and highly respected. I’m guessing that they’ve offered, and that she’s declined, for personal reasons: She probably feels guilty about her husband’s death, and considers the missing arm to be a sort of penance.
Roy’s comment about the inherent goodness of his best friend reminds me of just how much I love Durkon, and I hope they can kill Durkula without also consigning Durkon to a terrible fate.