But “Take 'em all” could be in the running for the best single panel so far.
I was a little disappointed at first, but the more I think about it, the more I like it.
At first I thought Durkon just managed somehow to persuade Durkula to be empathetic. But that’s not it at all. Durkon studied what it meant to have a vampiric version of himself. He experimented with using his only tool (memories) to manipulate that vampire. He fed the vampire a stream of memories that, while satisfying the explicit demands of the vampire, also steered it in a particular direction, providing the essential context for his main memory attack.
Then, when the time came, he provided the vampire with a key memory that could only be understood by understanding empathy. The vampire had just enough background at that point to be made uncomfortable by this attack, so when Durkon offered the contextualizing memories, the vampire accepted the offer.
And THAT was the real attack. The contextualizing memories are everything that comprises Durkon.
He didn’t persuade the vampire to become empathetic. He tricked the vampire into becoming Durkon.
It’s really pretty great, IMO.
Do you think this means we’ll have Durkonasvamp for the rest of the comic? Assuming he can convince people he’s really Durkon that vampire template could be really useful.
That, I don’t know.
I guess I still am not convinced that now was the only time that Durkon could have sprung this. What rattles Greg is the Sigdi story, and that could have come at any time after Durkon thinks to use this plan. If Greg were still in the middle of battle, getting hit, when the Sigdi story hit, I could see that he was shaken and distracted, and not therefore inclined to question why Durkon was telling him these things. But the battle’s mostly over when he gets the memory of why Sigdi donated the money: he’s in the Anti-life Shell, he’s no longer getting sniped by Haley, and he’s just grabbed onto Kudzu. Roy’s still being a pain to the rest of the vamps, but Haley, Elan, and soon, Hilgya are about to settle his hash.
He gets the memory that she did it to raise them, right about as Ponchy goes, “We Won.” So the fight’s over. He can take as much time as he needs to process this revelation, the same if he had received it at the 'Moot, or vamping half of Firmament. It’s going to mess him up whenever he hears it, because it’s an act that is completely alien to his self-image. Yet it’s going to affect him emotionally whether he understands it or not, because he’s made from Durkon, and this is one of the most foundational memories of Durkon’s personality.
Now, it’s true that Belkar starts getting stabby right as Greg is bombarding Durkon with a bunch of questions, but I don’t think Greg’s paying any attention at all to anything outside his head at that point. Greg is just as able to cope with this problem now, as he would have been if Durkon would have sprung this on him earlier. There are no distractions that Greg is paying any attention to. In fact, he’s probably more able to cope with it now, versus earlier, as he has a smidge more experience dealing with Durkon’s memories and assimilating them.
So I don’t get why it had to be now, and not earlier. Moreover, Greg was in direct communication with Hel while he was on the ship pre-'Moot. We’re supposed to think that the Goddess of Death was ignorant of this possibility happening, and/or chose not to warn her best tool for implementing her grand plan that this might happen?
It’s a neat scene. I’m looking forward to seeing how this ultimately resolves with Hilgya and the kid. But I agree with Mr. Shine about this part of the arc.
Also to be considered is that if Durkon goes through the staking and resurrecting process, he’ll stand to lose some levels, levels that will make him a more effective fighter against Team Xykon. Of course, he’ll need to convince the remainder of the Order that he’s a real ally now, and not just a Trojan horse for Hel.
And that might require him to Dominate the gathering in Firmament and require them to vote “No” on the “destroy the world” question.
OTOH, doing THAT might motivate Hel to smite him where he stands. Which would put him in the position of needing a resurrection, and losing levels.
Well, the Goddess of Death has never had a cleric of a high enough level to take and hold a High Priesthood for longer than it takes an adventuring party to come along and stock up on XP. While I’m sure she has researched enough vampire lore to become familiar with a vampire’s exploitable strengths, I’m also pretty confident that when she got hold of Greg, she got herself a touch of hubris that renders her blind to any possibility that her scheme could benefit from her anticipating any exploitable weaknesses that Greg might be vulnerable to.
Come to think of it, I’m not sure that Durkon himself knew that his gambit would have such spectacular results. Does anyone recall a scene aboard the Mechane where Greg tells Durkon anything that suggests that a “data surge,” if you will, would jeopardize his mission?
Okay, so maybe Greg will just release Hilgya and let her execute him. OOTS then resurrects Durkon somehow and Durkon is himself again. Or something.
But… how would part 2 of that plan even happen? I assume resurrecting is a two-step process: you have to kill the vampire to resurrect the original person. Witness how Roy got reborn: his golem had to be destroyed first. The other vamps who have gotten toasted have turned into vapor, and I assume the same would happen with Greg. How do you resurrect a puff of smoke (much less get it to hold still) ?
And I suppose for dramatic tension, the strip would have to destroy Greg. Otherwise the denouement of this fight is Greg just telling all his spawn, “Nevermind about fixing the election by vamping the dwarves. Everyone troop in here and let the Order stake you”, much like Redcloak ordered Tsukiko’s undead to destroy each other.
Per the rules, you can kill a vampire by staking it through the heart first (which paralyzes it until the stake is removed) and then beheading it/destroying the body. When Belkar stakes the vampire last time, it was in the back and presumably not through her heart since she reacts by trying to cast Harm before being beheaded. I guess if he staked her heart and then beheaded her, her body would have remained.
The Order also still has to deal with the vamped Exarch who went ahead with the No-Name vampire spawn to the meeting place.
Ok, thanks for clarifying.
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. It seems like the Exarch is the next Big Bad in this chapter. But Exarch is a Spawn too, no? Greg could just tell him to stake himself or whatever.
I think it was “now” because it was the big show down. Either the Order wins and kills Greg, thus making Durkon’s plans moot - or Greg wins, and all of Durkon’s friends die. I think it wasn’t “earlier,” because Durkon needed time to build and bait the trap, and since he was only going to get one shot at it, he wanted to be as sure as possible it was going to work before he tried it.
And I have absolutely no problem with Hel not seeing this coming. Norse gods are pretty easy to trick, going by the actual legends. This specific part of the story has its origins in Loki tricking Thor into that whole “death in battle” thing at the beginning of the world, and then Hel using a loophole in Loki’s plan to engineer the apocalypse. Seems perfectly fitting that her plan is undone by a mortal finding his own loophole.
Correction, Loki tricking Hel, with Thor either co-operating, or too drunk to resist.
Solid DM logic. I can accept that.
Lolwut, Burlew? Greg gets formed in the pyramid. How many days was between that and Greg running off to vamp everyone? I mean, the pyramid blows up, they fly to Gnome town, run around there for a day, then fly to the 'Moot, then was it another day to Firmament? Greg had plenty of time to gather most of the memories, just like a normal vampire would. Granted, not in the quiet reflection of the grave—there was a whole lot of communion in the bowels of that ship—but still. That doesn’t sound like the reason Durkon’s plan worked.
I am not a stickler for the rules. I like when the rules get bent to make a better story: Elan’s quips while dominated, this achievement by Durkon; hell, Roy chucking Xykon into the RedMountain Gate. And ultimately, this turn of events doesn’t really change much. The Order should have, by any reasonable estimate, curbstomped this collection of vampires, after which, we’d have gotten a dusted Greg, and tried to figure out how to Rez Durkon. Which is probably what’s going to happen here, absent Odin sending a sign that Durkon’s at the controls of the High Priest of Hel. For real this time, and we’re going to prove it by having Odin or Thor start to give Durkon^2 his spells from now on.
Burlew’s version is far more inspiring, entertaining and yep, dramatic, than that, I think. But man, his attempts to explain this are just making it worse, IMHO.
Not only did Not-Durkon miss out on that three-day headstart in the grave, but he was also released from thralldom much earlier than normal for a vampire. Malak even specifically said that if that happened, it could cause considerable confusion in the new vampire. Plus there’s also the business about Durkon being Durkon.
Speaking of thralldom, it’s not actually known that Not-Gontor et al are actually thralls. We’ve already seen that vampiric thralls are childlike, naive, and otherwise less effective than the more adult, independent ones. It’s possible that Not-Durkon released the others immediately after spawning them, relying instead on their devotion to Hel (as dwarven undead) and his hierarchical position as head of the church.
He also spent some time researching the InstaVamp spell while in the ship’s hold. He was on the ship for about 3 days total, I think, but he didn’t spend all of that in the hold. He was on the deck when the lightning bolt hit the ship, for example. So definitely less time than the 3 days in the grave.
I think the three days in the grave are qualitatively different than after the vampire wakes- after all, the incipient vampire isn’t even conscious at the time.
The higher level resurrect doesn’t require a body. You still have to kill the undead version, first though.
OK, given the combination of
i Hel’s hubris
ii The non-standard vamping spell
iii Greg being tricked into asking for more than he would normally take at a time
iv Durkon fuckin’ Thundershield.
I’m warming to this plot development.