Why the lightning storm?

[pseudom]

I believe it to be safe to say that the storm was caused by Thor. (Yes, it's not neccesarily certain, but I see no other reason for a storn to happen Juuuuuust inside Thor's territory) The question this raises is why did Thor send the storm to the party? Going about this logicaly, last time they were in Northern lands, this didn't happen. Therefore, something mustve happened in the time between leaving the Northern lands and returning again.
While many things changed, only two of them seems to directly impact Thor. Two of the Snarl Gates being destroyed (by or due to, the Order Of The Stick) and The Dourkan Vampire affair. If it is due to the former, it must be that he has enough trust in the purely physical tomb that was erected at the location of the last gate (otherwise he would be glad to have high level PCs there, even if the odds of them breaking it are fifty fifty) which is quite unlikely, therefore it is likely because of the Latter. (The Dourkula affair)

So Thor is aware that Dourkan is a vampire ( which I would.expect him to be) If he is aware of the undead state his cleric is in, why would he cause a storn to damage his vessel? (He focused on the engines when he attacked) We can deduce from this that he doesn't care about Dourkan so much as he hates hpop. (He didnt try to reveal Dorkula, only hinder his dmission by breaking the Mechance)

Thor is hurting hpop because hpop's fmission is one that hurts his position. (Which we already knew) But still, out of all the ways he could hinder Dorkula, he chose to attack his mode of transportation rather than kill him or reveal the nature of vampirism. This opens a +5 cluster<retracted>. If Thor could've, he would've had Dorkula killed so as to completely destroy his chances of suceeding in his quest.

Therefore, Thor feels he couldn't destroy Dorkula. But surely, the Oots united could bring him down. (They could stop by the hpot (high priest of thor) to rez him and it'd be all good) I believe Thor knows this,so there must be something preventing d from alerting the party. (Directly that is, the whole "the party is supposed to allerted by a storm" idea is a fail) What could prevent a god from talking to the party? Why, only a stronger god or a collection of gods. It wouldn't be too far of a stretch to assume that, as part of the agreement between gods, gods can only appear to there own worshippers.

So therefore, thors doesnt see a way to alert the party of Dorkula. Because of this, Thor can't kill Dorkula so he decides to slow his mission instead. But as astute readers will point out, Haily is a worshipper of Thor. It is possible that because of the... unorthodoxed way she joined the church, Thor is unaware of it. So a logical end ground for this bit is thors assistant Celestial notices Hailey Starshine on his clipboard and tells her about Dorkulla. (Just my 25 cents, personally, Id rather havr it be one of those things where one by one the party begins to distrust Dorkulla, the order of this happening would be. Belkar (this is, if he's not just trying to kill Dourkan for fun) then V (high intelligence, mightve remembered the last storm and Dourkans reaction to it) then Elan (Wait, there's no new bad guy in this story arc? IT MUST BE ONE OF US!!! Dun Dun Dun) Then Hailey either agrees with Elan or gets a message from Thor. Finally, Roy is persuaded by Hailey)

[Jaxzan Proditor]

You seem to have double posted this thread. I think that it is really unlikely that Haley counts as a worshipper of Thor, or that Elan's since of drama is enough in this situation. Belkar already distrusts Durkon, and by trying to make a case against him has made it so that Roy is unlikely to believe him. The only one I see is Vaarsuvius.

[CaDzilla]

I think only divine casters can speak to their deities.
The angel can't be summoned by any member of the party, since Durkon can't cast Good spells and V barred himself from conjuration. Elan may be able to summon Roy's archon, but Thor's celestials aren't on the summon monster spell list that Elan can access.

[captain fubar]

remember last time durkon cast weather control and made a sonic attack with its thunder (despite the spell not working that way. and now he cant even keep it from doing things like dodging the lightning rod and very obviously aiming at their ship. thor may have known that even if durkula has the proper spell prepared the fact he has to cast it in the first place and that he is less skilled with it should cast some suspicion on him.

I'm assuming that the discrepancy was due to durkon losing access to whatever domain powers he was getting from thor that presumably modified the earlier casting, though this could have just been a gag rather that seting somthing up given how many comics ago that was.

[thereaper]

How exactly could Thor have proved that Durkon was imprisoned in his own mind with a lightning bolt?

What makes you think that a lightning bolt would have killed Durkon?

[Lord Torath]

Probably best to discontinue discussion here, and move it to this one: Why the lightning storm (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?356450-Why-the-lightning-storm)