Maybe Hilgya had sworn an oath to kill him and she had to fulfill it.
Don’t try to look up an old girlfriend; no good ever comes out of it.
“I had to kill him because I swore to, but now that I’ve done that everything is cool” is a very Lawful sort of attitude. In other words, no, I don’t think that’s Hilgya’s reasoning.
DesertDog, the first rule he should have followed was “don’t stick it in the crazy”.
Well, that said, he didn’t know the extent of how much of a free thinker - in dwarven terms - Hilgya was at the time.
And yeah, I don’t see Hilgya using that sort of excuse about killing him unless she was under some sort of geas about killing him. Far more likely is her being pissed off at him, knowing she could bring him back, and just smoking him because it felt right. THAT’s more Loki.
Someone on the GitP boards made an observation that puts Durkon’s proposal in a less out-of-the-left-field light: Durkon wasn’t there when Hilgya told the Order the reason she was looking for him. From his perspective inside Durkula, he first sees her rushing into battle. Sure, she’s trying to kill his shell, but so is the rest of the Order- they’re doing it to help save Real Durkon. So she shows up out of the blue, she has his son, she’s gunning for Durkula- he thinks she came looking for him because she still loves him and/or because she wants help raising their baby.
He still made of a hash out of his apology speech and rolled a 1 on his Sense Motive. But he kinda had a reason for his completely wrong take on her.
I can’t see that at all. Her entire dialogue about her motivations revolves around people not being able to tell her what to do, and her lethally resenting their attempts to do so. Durkon is all about honor and living in accordance with what he thought Thor wanted him to do. Even if it made him miserable. We’ve abandoned the “opposites” theme, but they still seem to view life in a diametrically opposed manner. I can’t see either, with a bit of thought, being comfortable allowing the other parent to raise or influence the kid.
Which then leads to the question of why then did she try to track down Durkon so intently? It wasn’t to seek out his guidance on raising the kid. It wasn’t to get money or other support from him. I can see twisting the knife by showing him he has a child and then telling him he’ll never have anything to do with it. The only thing that makes sense to me is that she needed to track him down in order to kill him, because he had the temerity to tell her to go back to her husband, and he refused to have a further relationship with her.
(Aside, flip the genders on that relationship, and see if the audience thinks it’s still really funny when a man burns a woman to death because she wouldn’t keep sleeping with him. The South Seas don’t have enough pearls for all of that forum’s clutching that’d result.)
Anyway, that makes her a psychopath in my book, at least with respect to Durkon. A psycho that, sans something like a Revivify-type spell, means Durkon lost another level he shouldn’t have, at a time where the Order is gearing up for a fight they probably on paper shouldn’t win. Even if she says she has her anger out of her system, do you really think the Order can trust that, coming from a cleric of Loki? Yet, the Order and the rest of Stickworld could really use someone with her power. Maybe a geas is the answer? One from V, especially with the Ioun Stone boosting spell levels, should be enough to make it stick on Hilgya.
EDIT: And M,I,S! makes a great point about Durkon not having the benefit of our knowledge of Hilgya’s motivations when he decided to make his proposal. Although he really should’ve had enough religious knowledge about priests in his own pantheon to know how that conversation would likely go. "“I can help ye work thru yer demons, wha’ev’r they be. I know yer a good person an’ ye can be happy.” I mean, holy shit that’s tone deaf.
Yep, good point.
And sure, she could have bitch slapped him across the room, and gotten the same effect. But burning him to death? That’s just pure evil. Belkar, do yo thang.
Golly, I hope the cleric of an evil deity learns to rein it in and stick to slaughtering untold thousands or tens of thousands of innocent beings just out of spite because someone very, very vaguely related once threatened her family.
I just now noticed that Hilgya covered Kudzu’s eyes when she flame struck Durkon. Nice touch.
It moves Hilgya from crazy to extremely crazy. Wanting to kill somebody because he abandoned you after getting you pregnant is crazy. Wanting to kill somebody because he had sex with you one time and then didn’t call is extremely crazy.
Well, technically she just burned him to death because he offered to continue sleeping with her. And the whole, “Got her pregnant then abandoned her to raise the kid alone,” is hard to gender flip.
Besides, the gag was less “Burns him to death” so much as her “Pfftt… what-ever, I’ll just raise him again” response to everyone’s reaction.
And, honestly, I’m skeptical that Burlew even considered the extra level loss in the face of Rule of Funny. Just like the question of how a single Flame Strike would kill a high level character.
I ran the numbers and there are three possibilities, but the most probable is that Hilgya’s Flame Strike did more than 50 HP damage which triggered a save for massive damage. Which he failed.
Yeah. She should make it at least a clean kill.
So, she’s mad at him because he cut off the relationship, so he tries to make it up to her by offering to continue the relationship, and now she’s even more mad at him? To quote Belkar, I officially have no idea what you people want from me.
Her: I left our community because I hated being in a marriage based not on mutual affection, but because it was culturally mandated.
Him: Harlot! Get out!
time passes
Him: I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have called you a harlot. Instead, I should have helped you stop being a harlot by following our culturally mandated traditions and marrying you!
Her: Die.
Agreed. Telling somebody you forgive them for being immoral may be a step up from telling them you condemn them for being immoral. But the bottom line is that either way you’re still judging them to be immoral.
True progress is when you accept their right to have a point of view that is different than yours.
He also keeps talking about her being in “the darkness” and rescue her and make her a good person.
She’s a high level cleric of a Chaotic Evil deity. She’s in her dark place by choice and doesn’t need some Lawful Good cleric saying how he’s going to “rescue” her from it.
I don’t read Durkon as condemning her as an immoral harlot, and now promising forgiveness. I read him as not wanting to be in a relationship with a married woman, and now proposing a way they could actually be together, with him doing what he can to get her a divorce.
He’s operating with a lot of assumptions right now. Neither he nor Durkula were privy to all the discussion about how Hilgya has moved on with her life and has her own ethos and religion to follow. All he knows is that someone he loved has come to him bearing their son, and haven helped rescue him from a vampire.
I think he genuinely thought that Hilgya was there to get back together with him. And, of course, he wants to be there for his son. So he came up with a way he could do so while sticking with his Alignment.
He also would think he’s helping save her from an afterlife of torment with Hel. He doesn’t know about her plan to honorably serve Loki. Following the traditions is not merely some personal choice in this world, but dictates ones actual afterlife.
Don’t get me wrong. Given her point of view, I do 100% understand why she would not be receptive to this point of view. It’s still the thing she is trying to flee. But I don’t think this is an issue of Durkon being a judgmental prick. I mean, the dude willing remained in a party with Neutral and Evil aligned characters.
Their values just aren’t compatible.
I don’t think Hilgya’s values are actually compatible with anyone.