The barrier is going to keep out everyone but Durkon and Minrah out. Looks like this is their time to shine. Although if there’s a fight in the middle chamber, Roy and Haley could contribute with ranged weapons.
A couple possibilities: 1) Durkon impersonates a vampire and countermands the order about voting. 2) One of them brings up another issue for the Council to vote on, and thus makes that the main proposal, or at least confuses them about what is the main proposal.
If Hilgya is staying with the group (reasonable since Loki didn’t want the world to end), she’ll be able to assist as well.
So most of the group will stand on the other side of the orange barrier and try to mess up the vampires with range, right? Or better yet, get them to the other side of the barrier. The dwarves will go on through, and convince the dominated people to do something unvampire-friendly.
Idea: Elan creates an illusion of a vampire, saying, “Smack a dwarf upside the head!” Everyone dominated does so, and gets turned to stone until the meeting adjourns.
I wonder if the OotS could find a way to invert the proposal being voted on? So instead of voting “Yes” on ending the world, they vote “Yes” on maintaining the world?
Or change the “main” proposal to something irrelevant and harmless, and then vote on the whole ending the world thing.
Wow, I cannot wait to see how Burlew gets himself out of this corner it looks like he’s painted himself into. This is good writing.
But the vampires will probably be in mistform, as they were when the woman counselor arrived. They could retreat to the inner chamber as soon as they see the Order. So there’ll just be dominated guards left who will attempt to prevent Durkon, Minrah and Hilgya, if she’s there, from entering. I expect the three casters could handle the dozen or so low-level guards.
Doesn’t the illusion have to stay within sight of the caster? I don’t think one can see into the inner chamber from beyond the orange barrier. Possibly this illusion could order the guards to do something, though, but getting them turned into stone doesn’t really help.
The way to do that, of course, is to only seemingly paint oneself into a corner, but have a way out thought up beforehand. The good writing part is to make the corner seem to have no secret doors.
How would he know to do that? The Order has no way of knowing what specific orders the vampires gave – all they have to go on is general knowledge of the security setup (from Durkon, etc) and what they can see when they arrive.
It’s not necessary to formally quit. You can just stop posting. But I’ll forward your post on to one of the moderators.
It’s a spammer. Reported.
OK, for starters, there are two Dominated guards just inside the orange barrier. Anything that pulls them through that barrier will mean two additional allies.
And precisely how is “attacking” defined, for purposes of dwarven law? Would a grapple, for instance, be an “attack”?
Dispel Magic has a range of 100’ +10’ per level of caster. So we’re looking at a minimum of 220’ for Durkon even with lost levels, etc. Maybe there isn’t any line of sight between the chambers because otherwise it would be trivial to Dispel from outside the blue zone.
Of course it won’t be that easy. But I don’t have the advantage of deciding the answer before writing the puzzle 
Can’t somebody just cast Dispel Magic, and accept the penalty that they will temporarily be turned to stone? Perhaps Haley has a wand that will do it.
I’m guessing that a barrier that dispels magic also won’t allow any spells (such as Dispel Magic) to be cast through it.
I just want to say I love the final panel. The kid has obviously read up on advice for Evil Overlords.
The orange barrier prevents non-Dwarves from entering, so Haley can’t be there to do it.
Also note it says “instantly turned to stone”. That makes me think it may happen before any castings are completed. Just the act of starting to cast may trigger it. So a Dispel is likely to fail.
On the other forums, it’s been suggested that Durkon use that fancy new hammer to break the ceiling of the chamber and let in sunlight. Which the vampires are vulnerable to, of course. In strip 1131, it looks like Hilgya was released from domination when Durkon* was destroyed. So this may be a way to release all the dominated councillors at once. However, I expect that destroying property is against Dwarven law, so that would result in an instant petrification. So maybe he gets one swing. Better make it a good one.
I also had the thought that, since Roy can’t enter the chamber, he’ll go outside and be ready to assist in breaking the roof, perhaps with the assistance of the Bandana and the Mechane. That is, once Durkon smacks the ceiling, Roy finishes the job with his star-metal sword. Or possibly Durkon goes outside too. He’ll be outside the blue barrier, so he won’t be turned to stone. But that would mean Durkon doesn’t get a showdown with his former subordinate.
Or this is the excuse for Roy temporarily handing over his belt for Super Thor Hammer Action without the “But what about Roy’s melee?” concerns.
I wouldn’t assume that by the spell effect (I’m guessing a field that dispels magic uses Dispel Magic). It’s not an anti-magic field. At best, I would assume it might act (as the spell description) as a weaker Counterspell, giving the caster a chance to power through it. But that’s supposed to be a targeted effect of Dispel Magic and this is a static field.
Obviously though, it’s going to do whatever the story says it does and I doubt the story says “Casters shrug and just cast 200’ range spell with an area-of-effect into the room ending all the Dominations”
Well, there is actually a spell in one of the books that makes a wall that dispells anything that passes through, and it does in fact also block spells cast through it. Of course, it’s an open question whether Burlew based his orange-barrier effect on that spell, or if he used the same sort of reasoning as that spell’s designer.
Well, maybe, but I still expect Durkon has his own belt and doesn’t need to borrow Roy’s.
He’d only get petrified if he was in the chamber at the time. Presumably he could break it from above. However, Chekhov’s Petrification says that we’re going to see somebody turned to stone via this rule, so perhaps it will be Durkon.