Sheesh! Durkon was vamped LAST WEEK?
Belkar’s going to be alive FOREVER…
ETA: Also, AWWWWWW…
Either a week or five and a half years … maybe six by now.
So, is this the point where Hilgya splits? Or rather, remains with Durkon’s mother?
Probably not. I think she’ll stick with the Stick, and be an ally in the fight against Xykon. She might be persuaded to leave the baby with Grandma, though.
Ooo, do you suppose that Durkon will regenerate his mother’s hand now?
How many months ago IRL?
The joke there is that a week in in-comic time was 5.5 years in real time. But that strip was published last summer. Someone on the other forum said Durkon was vamped in March 2013 (strip 877), so that’s almost 6 years (about 70 months).
Right now he’s about out of spells and is unlikely to have that one prepared anyway, considering that Durkula chose which spells to prepare. But it’ll be dawn soon, so he’ll be able to prepare Regenerate then. That is, if he hasn’t lost the ability by coming back to life twice. The Geekery thread on the other forum has him at level 14, but I don’t know if it incorporates the two levels he should have lost. So possibly that dropped him to level 12, in which case he can’t cast a cleric 7 spell, which is what Regenerate is.
But if he can cast it, he’ll probably tell Sigdi in advance that he’s planning on preparing it. Based on her personality, I’m going to guess she’ll outright forbid him from doing so, telling him not to waste a high level slot on her when he may need some other spell for the upcoming battle.
So no, he won’t regen her.
Is there any way of assessing Hilgya’s Level, based on the spells we’ve seen her use? ‘Cos Durkon should be two lower than that.
Okay, maybe I’m reading too much into this. But check out Belkar’s expression in the fourth panel. He seems to be looking with puzzlement at some kind of magic ward on the floor, which he just stepped crossed.
My speculation is that he realizes it must be a ward against evil beings and he was able to cross it without difficulty. I think Belkar just noticed his alignment has shifted.
Belkar went out that door not too long ago and didn’t have any difficulty. There were runes on the floor then, too, and he was definitely Evil at that time. I don’t think that’s what the runes are for. Most likely they seal the door, so the vampires couldn’t vapor around it.
Now the runes are in two sets, one set inside two parallel lines that we see in both strips, and the others further inside the Temple. We never see that second area in any previous strips. So they could be new, laid down since the party left the temple. But there’s only a couple low level clerics in the temple, so likely they didn’t add any.
What’s Roy doing in the first panel? It almost looks like he’s casting.
ETA: Never mind, I forgot about the runestone.
Not really. She may have been the same level as Durkon on Dorukan’s Dungeon, but maybe not. Since then Durkon has gained a lot of levels, who knows how many HGilgya has. Although evil opposites, they’re not rivals in the sense Crystal was, so she doesn’t get the free level upgrade.
Critical hit to the heart, indeed.
Unintentional mom burn!
The only problem with Belkar thinking he just crossed some anti-Evil runes, is that his Knowledge(magic) is almost certainly zero, so he won’t know what any particular runes do. He may suspect it, but he’ll have to confirm it with a magic user. And of course, we don’t know for certain exactly what he was looking at. He could be just looking at Durkon. Although I’ll admit I can’t interpret his expression in that case.
I assumed it was just a “huh-wha?” sort of look at Durkon suddenly yelling about his mom.
In which EVERYBODY wishes they could grow up to be Sigdi Thundershield. 
Psst, you linked to 1152. You got a 2 minutes to edit it!
Woo, holy smokes that left-turned on me. I thought we were going with the ‘Sigdi and Hilgya bond over how dorky boys are’ concept and instead there’s a heavy helping of, “Bitch, you get one of those” concept.