I’m with you guys on this would feel cheesy if the vampire changes his mind, but if he doesn’t, what would then stop Team Vamp from blood-tasting the Order into oblivion? Incidentally, I love the splash of red artwork from Ponchella chomping down.
As Johnny Bravo wrote above, Burlew’s kind of written himself into a corner here. Though I think there will be some twist to make the change of heart more believable. I hope so anyway.
Maybe it’ll have something to do with Roy’s knowledge that Durkon can come home?
I do not have any new insights, but here’s something I came across going through old strips, and I wanted to call y’all’s attention to it: 963 - Internal Struggles.
Durkon gets an idea here, and I don’t think we’ve seen the payoff for it yet. But it has something to do with learning about not helping unless requested. And clearly, Durkon got an idea from the memories, some way they can be used against Durkula. So, where could this be headed? How does this connect to the current predicament?
That strip established that Durkula is not omniscient; he can see and hear Durkon’s memories but he doesn’t necessarily understand their meaning. So Durkula doesn’t know everything Durkon knows even though he has access to all of Durkon’s memories. This is how Durkon realized he could deceive Durkula by showing him memories which were true but which Durkula would misinterpret.
Durkula just loses his shit over the memory, because it proves how idiotic good people are. He starts laughing and carrying on, and in the process does something to endanger the baby. Maybe tossing it up and down in the air. This gives Helga another saving throw, which she makes, and she shakes off the domination.
This keeps Durkula’s response to the memory believable, but is then problematic because it doesn’t really explain what Durkon’s plan was. He’s been planning this since before the battle, so “get Durkula to giggle and endanger the baby” isn’t a plausible motivation.
I’d really like Roy telling Durkon of the end of his banishment to be relevant, but it’s hard to see how it would be, with Roy (and everyone else who might know) unconscious.
My best guess is that the Five Friends (and possibly Sigdi herself; even with only one arm, she’s still a legitimate badass) show up and save the short-term day, and then Roy can deliver the news and help with the longer-term saving.
Perhaps Roy or one of the others is playing possum? The Dinner Party crew showing up would be interesting, but wouldn’t they just be a speed bump to the vamps? And if they wouldn’t be, then they need to tag along for the fight with Xykon.
I guess my issue is this: Burlew IMHO, wrote the scene in a way that purposefully disregarded the 3.5 rules so that he could have Durkon’s struggle and plan save the day. Durkon inciting Greg to do something which irks Hilgya enough to shed the domination doesn’t make sense to me for two reasons. 1, he came up with the plan before he knew she was around, and 2, why is she going to start making easy Will saves now? It’s something that Durkon recognized about Greg awhile ago, coupled perhaps with his religious knowledge of vampirism, that made him think he could rattle Greg. I just can’t see what that would be though, and a change of heart by a vampire seems really unconvincing.
Not to mention, if his plan was “Tell an inspiring story and watch Greg’s heart grow three sizes”, he would have already done it. It has to be something that wouldn’t have worked until now.
Endangering Kudzu would not give Hilgya another saving throw, unless Burlew is throwing out the rules. The rule is that it’s only orders that go against one’s nature that give a saving throw and unless he orders Hilgya to do it, there’s no order to Hilgya involved.
OK, he does toss the rules sometimes, but so far he hasn’t tossed that rule in this fight. Possibly he did in the fight at the Godsmoot. Looking back at strip 1009, it’s hard to say. He’s questioning Roy who is under domination. Could just answering the question be something against Roy’s nature? Perhaps. It is not a question that Roy would normally want to answer.
The direction was, “you should give up.” Roy failed his save when his friend told him that–but when he realized it wasn’t Durkon at all, suddenly the command was entirely against his nature, so he got a second save.
It’s a reading of the rules in an ambiguous fashion, but I’d definitely allow it.
Burlew does seem to have written himself into a corner, but that’s what I always think. In fact I thought that when I saw Oots splayed out on the stone floor. I guess I lack Elan’s genre-savvy.
True, and nice wordcraft.
That said, one of Burlew’s themes involves the varieties of Evil. Even on your worst day, you still have some aspect of your baseline: it’s just buried pretty deep. Malack demonstrated that you can be evil and still at peace with some of your former psychological demons. I guess I’m saying that to pull this off, Burlew also needs to keep a foot in the Greg-grows-as-a-character camp, while evading the cringes. Seems impossible… but that’s what I always think.
Your typical player would argue that “not doing anything to save one’s baby from immediate harm” goes against a mother’s nature. That said, I doubt that’s what’s going to happen. Durkula is sort of in the same space as Xykon as a villain - he’s snarky unempathetic evil, not baby-eating-for-the-hell-of-it evil.
Speaking of Xykon, I really miss him and Redcloak :(.
Me too, Kobal, me too. I wonder if Burlew will have one of their fights in the tomb as a bonus strip when this book gets printed?
Really though, I popped back in to relay the following theory I read at the GITP forums, which I thought was an elegant way of squaring “Durkula’s evil and won’t be swayed” vs “If he doesn’t stop his team, the Order’s all dead in a round or two.”
Basically, it goes like this: Greg is Durkon on Durkon’s worst day. Greg also is in favor of Hel’s plan and is working to pull it off. If Hel’s plan works, Sigdi and her family go to Hel when they die. But even on Durkon’s worst day, he’d never consign his mom and her ‘family’ to Hel. However, if he runs off to find her, fight her, and kill her and the fam, they get to go to Valhalla and cheat Hel. (Hel will just have to make do with the few million other dwarves Greg didn’t get to kill.)
That might be impetus enough for Greg to abandon what is a petty vendetta against Roy, grab Ponchella and whoever’s left, and leave. If Roy’s playing possum, he can treat V, who can Magic Circle the group, which will put the Domination in abeyance, and then Elan can Sing everybody back to normal. It’d be nice if Hilgya was there too, for some needed healing, but the Order may be carrying enough potions to not need her spells.
That strikes me as a touch more believable than a Hel-created vampire deciding to heel turn on the face of his patron just because his host’s mom did an amazing thing.
As far as healing magic goes, the Order has plenty of that. Elan has a wand of Cure Moderate Wounds that he’s never used. Since it was bought at a store, it probably has a full load of 50 spells.
Hows this for an idea: Scruffy is currently pawing at Belkar to wake him up. One of those pawings happens to go across the clasp of Protection from Evil that he’s wearing. The clasp is activated by rubbing on it, so that activates it. Belkar is still unconscious, but the pain of that device wakes him up. He then grabs the stake he dropped and offs the vampire that’s approaching him to sample his blood (probably not Ponchella, the other one). Belkar needs some healing, so he opens his Bag of Holding to get a potion. Bloodfeast is now awake and jumps out of the BoH at that time. Ponchella or possibly Hilgya casts an area Dispel Magic at Belkar to suppress his clasp, fail on that but dispel the Polymorph that’s on Bloodfeast. Posing for heavy metal album covers ensues.
Unless we have WoG (Word of Giant) on that, I’m not sure I agree with it. It’s not in the imperative mood, which is the usual grammatical form of an order. Admittedly, people often make suggestions when they really mean to be giving orders, but that’s mostly for politeness. But there’s no point in being polite to a dominated person.
Many DMs would probably agree. Technically, though, it would require a specific order, such as “stand here and do nothing”. She hasn’t been given such an order, since that’s the default action of someone under domination not given an order.
You’re sort of right, but also sorta making me go full-out nerd at you.
The actual commands are given via telepathic bond. Technically none of the speech bubbles matter, except to illustrate to the reader the nature of the command. There’s nothing whatsoever to indicate that spoken words have any effect on a dominated victim; it’s only the telepathic orders that matter.
Great guess on Mr. Scruffy, dtilque. As to what else happened in the strip—I mean—beyond Belkar starting to live up to that sexy shoeless God of War thing—I’m still not buying it, Burlew. But I guess we’re going to have to. EDIT: Oh, and I guess one vamp is going to get away, which, as a chronic vampire infestation, might fulfill the whole death and destruction coming to the Dwarves thing.
Now off to see what the Playground forums make of this new development.
Ok… so, from a strictly story perspective, it’s fine. Cool. Nice story telling.
From a game perspective… meh. Once again “Speed of Thought” = “Speed of Plot” and I don’t buy the whole vampirism thing, with it being more possession than undeath. I mean, it’s Burlew’s world, he’s running it, he can tweak or house-rule things however he wants. I’m not saying “it sucks”; it just doesn’t really fit into the 3.5 milieu in my opinion.