It’s also interesting that Odin said “I see worlds within worlds and yarn winding yarn.” This suggests that he is aware of the world beyond the gates.
Given the cryptic way he mentioned it, it’s a toss-up as to whether he has informed any of the other gods. He may not have seen the other world himself, and may simply be getting nudged by a vague vision. Or he simply doesn’t want to nudge anyone too hard. Interesting stuff.
We don’t know, I guess, but I don’t think so. Durkon summoned the devils to assist Nale & Co because Durkon had already memorized the Planar Ally spell intending to guard the Gate with devas. And Vampire-Durkon seemed to quickly run out of spells during the desert fight, having exhausted his spell complement fighting Malack (and the whole previous jaunt through the pyramid, fighting Tarquin, etc).
Durkon states that he’s all out of spells until he prays for new ones after dusk.
Is Darkwing a crow or a raven?
Yeah, but he’d been casting spells when he was a thrall. Not a whole lot, that we saw, but it’s possible he’d thrown around some buffs off panel, too.
That’s quite a few buffs 
I think the Planar Ally is the clincher. The story made sure to mention that Durkon prepared it for the Gate and then vampire-Durkon casts it to get some diabolic assistance. I take that as a pretty strong indication that Durkon was running off the same spell list before and after his conversion. Your own opinion may vary, of course.
Ooh, good catch! Blackwing (presumably) isn’t Hugin or Munin, but it’s still quite plausible that Odin might see through the eyes of all ravens.
I was kind of proud of it myself. I don’t know if anyone on the Giant’s forums came up with or not, since I don’t read those.
Yeah, that’s a very clever idea. Rich could certainly subvert the ruleset for such a good narrative cause, but what are the D&D rules for where familiars come from?
I don’t know if there are set rules. I remember back in the day seeing some rules suggesting that the animal just seeked you out when you cast the Find Familiar spell and so some areas may be more favorable than others for specific familiars. For example, casting it in a city for a cat familiar versus up in a mountain for a hawk or raven familiar. I think that was from a Dragon article though, not core rules. Plus things may have drastically changed in D&D-rules-world since then.
In newer editions, familiars are not actually animals - they’re arcane creatures who take the shape of animals.
I’m pretty sure 3.x familiars are actual animals, though, which are imbued with extra intelligence and powers by virtue of the Find Familiar spell.
There isn’t a find familiar spell in 3.X. Familiars are a class ability. If you’re a wizard (or one of a handful of other classes) you get a familiar at first level automatically.
And the familiar gets extra intelligence, hit points, etc. Just by virtue of hanging out with you. There was a strip poking fun at that rule.
Dumb question: Why no Eastern Gods?
If we believe the Crayons of Time story as told by Shogo to be the unvarnished truth, they were killed by the Snarl during the destruction of World 1.0, (and were based on the classical Greek pantheon)
A familiar is a creature empowered by their master’s own magic. No gods involved, unless you’re using multiclassing-based Feats or Prestige Classes.
Now if Hel really has it in for the other gods, there’s no reason she’d vote to destroy the world. They can just make another one, and it seems pretty clear that they’re not all that attached to this world. What would be sneakier is to vote to not destroy the world and then make sure that the gods don’t get their 15 minutes of grace after the last gate is destroyed, thus threatening them with destruction.
That makes sense, but then why the surprise reveal after the vote had already passed, and the world was going to be spared?
He was hungry.