Go Mama Thundershield. I wonder if the vampire is about to do something stupid like attack her and break the rules. Although I wonder if the rules are still in effect.
Stop monologing and whack him already!
Okay, I don’t think anyone saw that twist coming.
If the meeting’s over, Durkon presumably gets unpetrified and fighting is permitted IIRC.
On the other hand, you gotta feel bad for the Godsmoot people who aren’t allowed to leave until the dwarves vote - and the dwarves now can’t vote until they get a new table.
Also, Hel is going to be pissed.
ETA: Scones! Scones and…beer?
I wonder if there’d be a more elegant way to break the table in a single action that relied less on hoping a sufficently sized rock falls on it and cracks it but I’m not familiar enough with the 3.5e cleric spell list to say. My first thought was Shatter but that’s a limit to 10lbs per caster level and I assume the table weighs over 140lbs (or where ever Durkon is at post Resurrection/Raising)
In theory he could have just hit it with the hammer in the first place. But that’s less dramatic.
There might also have been some reason why the table had to be broken by an outside force rather than by something or someone who was inside the room.
Reading farther down to the next paragraph, of course the dwarves legally mandate light refreshments and beer afterwards!
I was about to question whether it’d do enough damage to break the table, but he DID just throw it through a stone ceiling. Plot level amounts of damage!
And yes, Durkon does remember the first time his mama took him to see tha sky.
EDIT: Oh, and “unzot” is the best sound effect ever.
I get that Burlew gets pissed at people constantly bitching about the plot, bringing up the SRD about things that happen in the strip, and such, and the temptation to flex on those fools must be overwhelming, but enough with the rules-lawyering already.
OTOH, as noted at their forums, the Dwarves unable to vote might preserve the lockdown at the Godsmoot for a short time. Which prevents a bunch of high-level priests from maybe showing up to Kraggor’s Gate and crashing the Order’s party. The lockdown only needs to last another week or so to run out the clock on Belkar’s prophecy anyway, since I don’t think Belkar is going to die until the very end of the entire story. I do expect Team Evil to find the Gate by the end of this book.
I wonder how they’re going to unstone Durkon? Suspending the vote doesn’t seem to have done it. Is the meeting adjourned?
Anyway, this needs to be wrapped up soon. Get us some closure with Hilgya, Kudzu, Durkon’s family. What’s going to happen with Minrah, are the Order taking the Mechane to the Tomb, or are they getting zapped there one way or another?
An all right book, but I think so far I preferred the last one. Cruder art and all.
So if Ex-arch (what does that title even mean?!?) attacks Sigdi (as he looks quite about to), does he violate the terms/spells of the council and turn to stone or something? Honestly I’ve lost track of what someone can/can’t do inside which chamber.
Either the meeting is still technically in session and he gets turned to stone if he attacks or it’s ended and Durkon should get un-stoned and the other dwarfs outside can come in and attack as well. Neither way ends really well for Gondor (though he’s still a rather powerful vampire)
If the meeting is still technically in session and just temporarily recessed, then Durkon won’t automatically turn fleshy again. But it’s not a significant problem. There’s no Dwarven law against carrying a statue out of a room, and once he’s out of the room, Elan or probably Vaarsuvius can restore him.
But if it’s recessed, I don’t know whether the “no violence” rule is still in effect. That is, the trigger to create statues and the trigger to undo statues can be different. I’d actually expect them to be different.
I suppose the sheer quantity of it must get old but it’s not as though there’s a lot else to discuss between strips and the length of time between strips is often a week or more. It feels like either you’re going to get people talking about that stuff or you’re not going to have a community that gets together more than a couple days a month.
I’d expect it to be a binary switch that either the meeting is in order and the protections are on to guard the meeting or the meeting is adjourned and the protections turn off. Heck, it might be more than that since the blue field was up before the meeting actually started and maybe you ALWAYS get turned to stone when you break the law and just have to wait for the next meeting to be formally adjourned. Stricter but makes more sense than saying “When a meeting is temporarily suspended, feel free to hit the guy next to you with an axe.”
Exarch: (in the Orthodox Church) a bishop lower in rank than a patriarch and having jurisdiction wider than the metropolitan of a diocese.
In broad terms - upper middle management in a religion. So Durkula would have been the Patriarch, and the Exarch would have been the next level down.
But he was already an exarch before he got vamped, and with how the Creed of Stone was grousing about not being invited to the meetings, you’d think that they’d send their highest-ranked cleric.
Orange Barrier: around the whole “building”, i.e. the middle chamber (the one with the stairs) plus the Council Chamber. It prevents anyone not having a dwarf body from entering. It also blocks spells and undoes any kind of spells or spell-like effects cast on people entering.
Blue Barrier: around just the Council Chamber. It causes anyone violating Dwarven Law to be petrified. That includes casting any kind of spell or spell-like effect on another person in the room. It also blocks sound from entering the Chamber.
Note that the barriers are complete. You can’t get around them by going through the roof, for example.
They’d only have to go to the middle chamber to get to Squeaky and his apprentice. Well, she’s probably not an apprentice any more, more likely a journeyman. But they may be busy undominating the guards. After all Song of Freedom takes a full minute. Yes, he probably, and she definitely, shouldn’t be high enough level to sing that song. But if they need to sing it, that’ll be another rule Burlew ignores.
Anyone capable of using Song of Freedom can do it a dozen times a day. And a minute casting time is a big deal in the middle of combat, but when the timescale is “until they can find another 20’ oak”, it’s plenty fast.
Come to think of it, they don’t even need to use it on the dominated elders. If they can get them out of the council chamber, then they can also get them out of the building… through the orange barrier that’ll dispel it.