Either Hel is friends with snarl or all is a lie.

[torugo]

We have a servant of Hel having access to all durkon's memories and he simply dont care about the whole end of the world prevention mission.

Think about it...even if it is offscreen, the vampire would have looked what the mission were. It is important for him to know where his companions were going to manipulate them. And what happens when he finds out that the mission of his puppet is to prevent a god killing machine to get out of the rift? He would tell Hel about it.

Hel knows about the mission and she doesnt care about it. Only reasons for that are two: Either she is counting with the snarl release or she dont care about the snarl.

[Peelee]

We have a servant of Hel having access to all durkon's memories and he simply dont care about the whole end of the world prevention mission.

Think about it...even if it is offscreen, the vampire would have looked what the mission were. It is important for him to know where his companions were going to manipulate them. And what happens when he finds out that the mission of his puppet is to prevent a god killing machine to get out of the rift? He would tell Hel about it.

Hel knows about the mission and she doesnt care about it. Only reasons for that are two: Either she is counting with the snarl release or she dont care about the snarl.

Or Hel is friends with the Dark One. Or Hel does not have a say in world creation, and is thus not a target for the Dark One. Or she has a contingency plan for the the release of the Snarl. Or dealing with Redcloak and Xykon is a part of her plan (which we do not know of yet). Or the vampire is perfectly willing to help the Order stop Redcloak and Xykon upon completion of Hel's plan.

Man, that's five more possibilities right off the top of my head. I'd bet money that I haven't exhausted the list of possible, plausible options as well.

[NerdyKris]

The contingency plan would be the same as the last, which is "Hide in the outer realms and remake the world again, just like we said we'd have to do if the rifts got bigger."

If you're asking why Hel's High Priest isn't doing anything, you'd have to also ask why isn't Thor or any other god stepping in and saying "Whoa guys, this is world ending stuff." Why didn't Nerghal tell Malack anything about the gates while he was there? Clearly, the gods don't think a random cleric and lich trying to find the gates for some unknown reason is important. Remember, they don't know what the Dark One's plan even is. It's not even clear they know he's involved. They just know there's some lich trying to grab the gates. And they haven't bothered to stop him for 30+ years.

As for Durkon's memories, he also doesn't know why Xykon and Redcloak want the gates. The Order thinks Xykon is trying to take over the world. That's not really important in the grand scheme of a god who can just walk away and make a whole new world if this one goes kaput. the only person who knows about the god killing plan is Red Cloak.

[Porthos]

Why should it be that only The Dark One has come up with a plan (which, naturally is called The Plan - so original :smalltongue:) that involves using The Snarl in some fashion? Why can't Hel come up with some idea to use The Snarl that is, if not completely different to the one proposed by The Dark One, at least at cross purposes?

Seems to me that she might find it useful to have, for all intents and purposes, a WMD. Or WDD, depending on just what her goals are.

In fact, we really don't know the exact scope of her goals, per se. Revenge seems to be pretty high on the list. Power another. But the specifics? Well, we know that she wants to bring the world to ruin (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0946.html). But beyond there's not much to hang our hats on.

Either way, it's already fairly obvious that she sees Roy and co as a useful way to get her high priest to certain destination(s) quickly. Useful enough to not to want to rock the boat right now. Well, not too much.

How long the HPoH keeps up the charade might depend a large part on how long he (and by extension, Hel) view the rest of the Order as being useful. They're not so indispensable that the HPoH won't reject the idea of slaughtering them all out of hand for any reason. But the reason needs to be a good one.

Of course, maybe she doesn't care about the Snarl at all. Why? Who knows. Don't know enough about her motivations/wisdom to really speculate. But perhaps she thinks if she "brings ruin to the world", she doesn't much care if the Snarl gets loosed on the leftovers. :smallsmile:

[Ornithologist]

Why should it be that only The Dark One has come up with a plan (which, naturally is called The Plan - so original ) that involves using The Snarl in some fashion? Why can't Hel come up with some idea to use The Snarl that is, if not completely different to the one proposed by The Dark One, at least at cross purposes?

My thought is that Hel remembers the last time the snarl was loose, and does not want to be anywhere involved in that. Since the Dark one wasn't around when the snarl was killing gods, I'm not sure he knows the full extent of its power. Its the differnece between witnessing a terrible event and beign told about it.

[jidasfire]

I think it's more to do with the way gods think than some vast conspiracy or lies. Gods tend to trust in their own power over that of mortals, and not without cause. The only thing that keeps them in check is the fact that they could be countered by other gods of similar ability.

Let us assume then that Hel's plan is to assert dominance over the other gods throughout the world by killing and/or stealing their clerics at the Godsmoot in some form or other. Should she do this, her minions, not to mention her influence on the world, would grow, and thus her power would with it. Thus it would be harder if not impossible for the other gods to stop any major power plays she might enact, and through her newfound cleric order, she would have remarkable influence in the world itself.

Given this, even if she knows about the Dark One's Plan, she probably assumes that A. He's a weaker upstart god, and her new power would be enough to bring him to heel and B. She or her minions could squash Xykon and Redcloak, as they are the only living (so to speak) enactors of The Plan. I don't therefore think it requires any major cahoots to be going on so much as good old-fashioned overconfidence.

[malloyd]

Man, that's five more possibilities right off the top of my head. I'd bet money that I haven't exhausted the list of possible, plausible options as well.

My bet is on the Snarl is real, but smashing the gates doesn't actually threaten to release it. Remember that the rifts were sitting around for who knows how long before the Order of the Scribble built the gates (for example long enough to spawn a religious order, the Holey Brotherhood) and the Snarl didn't escape, nor did the gods do anything about them - the Gates appear to have been the Scribbler's idea, and the gods didn't put much effort into helping them out.

Oh, and the Southern Gods do know at least a little something about Redcloak's plan, because the Sapphire Guard knew the Bearer of the Crimson Mantle was some sort of threat to the gates, that's their excuse for their genocide program.

[Quartz]

We have a servant of Hel having access to all durkon's memories and he simply dont care about the whole end of the world prevention mission.

How do we know that? Is it not very possible that Hel does care and wants the Snarl contained, and if her agent gets to be a principal in preventing Xykon, then she will gain massively?

[FrankNorman]

I think a simpler explanation is that the evil characters in the OOTSverse are mostly short-sighted idiots.
Consider Nale's reaction to learning about what was at stake: Sabine took it far more seriously than he did. Tarquin did not even care to know - mostly because, as Julio Scoundrel put it, he thought everything was all about himself.

So perhaps Hel is simply so preoccupied with her own little plan, that she simply gives no thought to what could be at stake with the Snarl. Ditto for those fiends that Sabine reports to: they know - they just don't care. It's something outside of what their minds are shaped to work with.
The Snarl could probably wipe all of them from existence and not even notice it had done it. But they are like someone who refuses to get into a bunker when the town he lives in is about to be hit by a nuke, because he doesn't want to miss an episode of his favorite TV show.

[Porthos]

I think a simpler explanation is that the evil characters in the OOTSverse are mostly short-sighted idiots.
Consider Nale's reaction to learning about what was at stake: Sabine took it far more seriously than he did. Tarquin did not even care to know - mostly because, as Julio Scoundrel put it, he thought everything was all about himself.

So perhaps Hel is simply so preoccupied with her own little plan, that she simply gives no thought to what could be at stake with the Snarl. Ditto for those fiends that Sabine reports to: they know - they just don't care. It's something outside of what their minds are shaped to work with.
The Snarl could probably wipe all of them from existence and not even notice it had done it. But they are like someone who refuses to get into a bunker when the town he lives in is about to be hit by a nuke, because he doesn't want to miss an episode of his favorite TV show.

While you could be right about Hel, I think the IFCC is very interested in the Gates/Snarl. Why step in the second that V was about to alert Roy of potential troubles if they weren't.

To put it another way, while they have a plan in regards to the Gates/Snarl, they don't feel like gabbing about it right now (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0903.html). :smallwink:

[Jasdoif]

While you could be right about Hel, I think the IFCC is very interested in the Gates/Snarl.Sabine certainly thought they would be interested, (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0380.html) and they seem (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0637.html) to agree (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0668.html).

...I suppose that last one explicitly says they have a plan for the Gates, but I already looked up the other comics so you get extra links :smalltongue:

[Psyren]

Why should it be that only The Dark One has come up with a plan (which, naturally is called The Plan - so original :smalltongue:)

You're accusing a bad guy named The Dark One of unoriginality? :smallbiggrin:

[Cool Trash]

Why should it be that only The Dark One has come up with a plan (which, naturally is called The Plan - so original :smalltongue:)
That actually sounds kinda usefully ambiguous, though.

Hero 1: "Give me a rundown. What are they gounna do?"
Hero 2: "I don't know. We questioned their mooks, but all they know is that their plan is called 'The Plan'".
Hero 1: "Crap, that could be anything. Well, who's leading these guy?"
Hero 2: "Whomever it would be appropriate to refer to as 'The Dark One'".
Hero 1: "Damnitall!"

[137beth]

If anything, Hel should have a better plan for harnessing the Snarl than the Dark One. She knows more about the snarl, having been present at its creation.