Perhaps Durkon will pray, and Thor will respond – possibly via his cleric. I don’t think that’s against the rules. Interchurch stuff, and all that.
That “hole in your heart” line–I think Durkula may have unwittingly handed Durkon a weapon to use against him. Durkon had willfully forgotten about that hole, but now that his attention has been called to it…what effect will it have on Durkula if he fills it in somehow? With forgiveness, or acceptance that his friends are his “people” now, or whatever. Even if it is true that we are, at root, what we are on our worst days–a premise I do not accept–that doesn’t mean that’s all we can be.
I don’t imagine it would be enough by itself to give Durkula the boot, but if it weakens his control at the right moment, it could turn the tide.
While I agree that it would be dramatically appropriate for Durkon to play some key role in the vampire’s defeat, what I can’t see is how. Vampirism in D&D is not the sort of thing that can be overcome via an act of will. Earlier, I would have guessed that Durkon would trick the vampire into revealing its true nature, but that’s hardly relevant now, since the only person authorized to fight the vampire is already doing so. What difference would it make if Roy knew?
Vampirism in D&D is not, as far as I know, defined the way it has been in this story. At the least, it’s left more vague. Moreover, while Rich uses the rules as a framework, story trumps rules. If he thinks it’s appropriate for Durkon to affect the outcome in some way, that’s what will happen.
I think Durkon will play a role in the vampire’s defeat. And I think we’ve seen a clue about how it will happen.
As we saw in this strip, the vampire can see all of Durkon’s memories but he doesn’t necessarily understand the context of them. He views Durkon’s memories from a vampire’s perspective. So while it’s only a slight edge, Durkon could use this to mislead the vampire into acting falsely and revealing his true nature as you suggested.
And it appears Durkon is trying this. In these strips we saw that he changed how he was revealing memories to the vampire. And the vampire did act out of character - but not enough for the others to catch on.
Yeah, I can’t believe that we’ve been reading this much between Durkon and Vampire Durkon and that it won’t end in some sort of influence from the former onto the latter.
The way vampirism is presented here strikes me as sort of nonsensical (why would the new spirit be a level 15 cleric if they’re separate entities?) but I’m just along for the ride.
If we go there, we may as well ask things like, “Why don’t the gods grant more powerful spells to low-level clerics in desperate situations?” If the power comes from a god, why should it matter who’s doing the chanting?
The answer I usually go with is that it’s the same reason we don’t expect a five-year old to squat 500 pounds–they don’t have the muscle, and it would be dangerous for them to try. Likewise, it takes a measure of metaphysical conditioning to channel large amounts of divine or arcane power. You have to work your way up to it, or you won’t be able to use the power safely or effectively, even if the god grants it. As a result, the gods generally don’t bother. (You might get story events when a priest or mage channels power beyond their limits for some reason, but it tends to have serious side effects, such as bursting into flame, exploding, transforming into some sort of extraplanar NPC, or just plain dying.) There are some counterexamples, like various body-stealing and -swapping magic, but I mostly handwave those as the transference magic providing support to handle the overload until the new body catches up, like a trainer spotting you during a crash fitness program.
Durkon’s body and mind–which Durkula hijacked–are conditioned to handle the power typical for a 15th level cleric. Durkula gets the benefit of that, so he can do 15th level cleric stuff as long as Hel provides the juice.
Rich’s portrayal of vampirism has so far been 100% consistent with the D&D rules. He’s gone into more details on some aspects, but he hasn’t actually changed anything. He could, of course, just like he can change anything else about the rules, but so far, for over a thousand strips, he’s shown remarkably little inclination to do that, and so I think it unlikely that he’d start now.
And again, granted that Durkon could trick the vampire into revealing itself, what would it matter at this point? Suppose that Roy does realize that the vampire isn’t Durkon… What then?
There’s nothing about Durkon affecting the outcome that’s any more inconsistent with the RAW than any of Rich’s other details. In another campaign, in which the character’s original spirit turns evil on being vamped, rather than the hijacking scenario we see in OotS, the same thing could be roleplayed as a lingering trace of sentiment or other emotion distracting or confusing the vampire at a key moment. It all depends on how the intervention manifests.
Can’t believe I only noticed this now. In 963, he has his mother call him by the middle name of “Allotrope” = “Other Form”.
Different question. Durkon’s ability to cast level 15 spells comes from Durkon’s spirit’s prolonged relationship with his deity through prayer, study, etc. I’m not saying that the power comes solely from the god, I’m saying that the conduit that is trained to use that divine power is currently tied up in Durkon’s body while some other conduit/spirit is running the show. Durkon’s fleshy body is largely irrelevant to the process.
Now Durkon’s body is trained to take a hit or swing a hammer but swinging a hammer isn’t really what makes a cleric a cleric.
If Durkon’s spirit was corrupted, it would make more sense to me since that spirit trained in divine matters is now choosing a different source of power to tap into. But that’s not what’s happening here as Durkon watches some alien spirit take control instead.
I’m wondering if Durkula is actually the ghost of Hurak, former high priest of Thor. Durkon yells, “To Hel wit’ ye, Hurak!” If something happened between Thor and his high priest, maybe Hel was able to turn him against his former God and his people.
Well, we are. But we’re also what we are on our best day.
Anyway, here’s how I think Durkon’s spirit is going to play into this. Durkon’s worst day was when he was thrown out, with no explanation, of his homeland. Apparently, the vampire spirit draws some sort of power from this memory. So, what happens if Durkon finds out why he was exiled? He’s dwarfish enough that he’d completely understand and approve of the logic behind his exile. If that darkest moment is no longer all that dark for him, what does that mean for the vampire?
And there’s at least one cleric at the Godsmoot who knows recognizes the name “Thundershield”…
You’re assuming that it’s irrelevant. My take is different. We’re talking about actual, physical forces being applied, regardless of where they originate. By analogy, a conductor gets hot if you run electrical current through it, and it can melt if you run more than it can handle. If you want more current, you add more wires.
It’s not the only possible explanation, but the premise that there are physical limitations to how much power they can safely channel accounts for a lot of the restrictions on what casters can cast. Clerics, of course, are also limited by what their deities are willing to grant them, and arcane casters by what they’ve learned the spells for, but that doesn’t really restrict a spirit that’s a special agent of a deity. Hel will grant Durkula whatever he can cast, while Durkon had to prove himself before Thor granted him more powerful spells.
I wondered about that. The new high priest knew nothing about Durkon’s prophesy/exile when he or she wrote back (I couldn’t find the comic easily to see if it’s the same HP as we have now) so I wondered if anyone remaining knew about why Durkon had been kicked out. Or if Durkon himself would ever learn the reason.
Of course, as is the way of prophesy, trying to avoid it is what kicked it off. They would have been better off keeping Durkon under house arrest and feeding him through a slot.
Of course they had no idea what home meant, whether it was the northern lands, their city, his physical house, or heck, death (as we sometimes refer to people dying as “going home”).
If the truth of a prophecy is part of the underlying logic of the world, then perhaps that is the salvation. If the world is unmade before Durkon can return home and fulfill the prophecy then the prophecy becomes false. Since a prophecy can’t be false or made to not come true, the world cannot be unmade until its conditions are met.
Well, yes, since we’re discussing divine metaphysics in a comic about a roleplaying game 
Great brawny warrior shamans channel divine power as do frail, elderly eighty-two pound ascetic priests. The physical form has always struck me as secondary, to put it mildly. For that matter, even if the physical form were important, the fact would still remain that the trained spirit acting as a conduit between divine and physical is now gone and replaced with another.
Is that the exact opposite of what you just argued – that we might as well then ask why all entry level priests don’t get high level spells? My argument is that they don’t get them because their spirit is not trained to be a conduit to channel the divine energy. Durkon’s spirit is trained but is tied up. I suppose it may be where the planes of the damned are filled with clerical spirits of various levels sitting around waiting for their number to come up. “Gene! There’s a level 9 cleric getting vamped! You’re level nine, right? Get on it!”
The “trained spirit” is not actually gone, though - Durkon’s still in there, just not in control. Running with your assumptions about how people channel the energy for magic spells in D&D, it’s not too outre to assume that part of the purpose of those fleshy tentacle things binding Durkon’s spirit is to tap into his spiritual channel and divert it for Hel’s purposes.
Fixed this for you Durkevil:
[INDENT]Part of what [del]Y[/del]you are is who you are on your very worst day, Durkon. Anything less is a comforting lie you tell yourself to numb the pain. [/INDENT]
Oh and but that’s not what matters.
Damn, Rich is good. I was wondering just what Durkevil’s motivation was on the previous strip and instead of dragging it out -bam- Rich presents it. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen a surprisingly quick reveal.
The funny thing is, if Durkon was simply told about the prophesy to begin with he probably would have voluntarily set off for foreign lands and been left with a rather different worst day when he lost his battle with Malack.
No, it isn’t. I’m arguing that there are two separate limitations: what the deity is willing to grant, and what the cleric is able to channel.
In the case of novice clerics, both limits are pretty low. They haven’t earned the privilege of asking for greater powers from their deity, and they couldn’t survive casting anything much more powerful than what they’re getting anyway. Typically, both of these limits move up in parallel as the cleric levels, so the distinction is hidden.
There are corner cases, however, that may be revealing.
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What happens to a cleric when they lose a level? They lose the ability to cast any spells that were enabled by gaining that level–either higher level spells or more spells per day. Did their god decide to deny them spells out of disgust with them for getting drained? I suppose some deities might, but it seems more plausible to me that their ability to handle the strain of casting is reduced along with their hit points and other physical attributes until they recover what they lost.
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What happens when a cleric converts? As it happens, there’s actually a RAW for this case:
So, the cleric undertakes an arduous quest to prove themselves, then joins the priesthood of the new deity. Do they start at the bottom, with first-level spells? No, they get spells equivalent to what they handled before. The quest provides the necessary proof of devotion in lieu of years of service, and they already had the capacity to handle the spells, so they get a short-cut. This is closer to what happened with Durkula–he was sent specifically by Hel on an important mission, so she’s certainly willing to give him whatever power he needs to get the job done, and he moved into a body that was prepared to channel high-level magic. In fact, he says pretty much that in #962:
As to brawny clerics versus frail-looking ones–the physical attributes involved might not be obvious ones. They could be microscopic changes in the brain or nervous system, or subtle alterations to biochemistry, that increase the ability of the cleric to channel the necessary energy. To return to my electrical analogy, an aluminum wire will carry current, but a copper wire of the same diameter will carry much more without any greater heating.