Hel's Math (Answered)

[Sylthia]

Hel seems pretty confident that ending the world will elevate her to supreme deity, but are there enough living Dwarves in the world to tip the scales in her favor? She already has a huge gap, supposedly since the world began, since most old dwarves picked a fight to get themselves killed or died of liver failure. It seems the dishonorable death rule only applies to dwarves, too, since humans (at least) who die of natural cause aren't tied to Hel.

It seems to be Current Living Dwarves plus Hel's current souls would have to outnumber Already Dead Dwarves plus everyone else who worships the Northern Pantheon.

It seems more like she'd simply "get a place at the table", like the Dark One wanted, rather than being the supreme ruler of the Northern Pantheon.

[Jasdoif]

Hel seems pretty confident that ending the world will elevate her to supreme deity, but are there enough living Dwarves in the world to tip the scales in her favor?Yes, there are.

[TurboGhast]

A quote I can't find stated that souls provide more power when they first go to a deity, so that the exact number of souls didn't matter, just that Hel'd be getting much more power than everyone else.

Help with finding the quote?

EDIT: Thoroughly ninja'd. This post is basically pointless.

[Cizak]

Yes, there are.

Darn you, I just found the quote! :smalltongue:

I didn't find it in the index, though. Is is there?

[Sylthia]

Yes, there are.

Okay, so it looks like souls give a sort of finite mana-type resource power. That answers that question.

[Jasdoif]

I didn't find it in the index, though. Is is there?Yep, it's there. People thought the general theme of the post was more important for the description than the specific instance, though.



Storytelling Mistakes?

Assume Accuracy Unless Shown Otherwise
"It works because I say it works, and the rest of the story will be written as if it works," and dialog is how the comic conveys non-visual information.
#1000
08/30/2015

[137beth]

Darn you, I just found the quote! :smalltongue:

Ha! Thou hast failed to increase thy total number of threads thou hast won!
For the BANANA HAS SPOKEN!

[Chronos]

We don't know all the details about how this works, but Hel does. If she thinks it'll work, then we should probably take her word for it.

[Peelee]

We don't know all the details about how this works


Yes, we do.

I'm paraphrasing here, of course.

[BaronOfHell]

The real issue is that we wouldn't know how it works in the first place.

Theories are based on premises.. often assumptions of what seems to be logical.. but there's no guarantee it fits to the world in question. Especially when it comes to fiction where there are no true in-universe "glue", it's all make belief after all. Similarly there exists an infinite amount of theories that can perfectly describe a finite amount of observations and all that..

But it can still be fun to discuss, so if one pretends a relevance of the question, maybe by pretending it matters to the story, or maybe for amusement only (which all of this is anyway), then in what ways could the current amount of dwarves outnumber the total amount of dwarves that has ever lived and are no more? One possible explanation could simply be because the populations started off really small and the world may be large and rich on resources, so the population grew quickly enough for this to be the case.

I am personally a little more intrigued by what measures Thor and Loki set up to prevent Hel from getting souls and why they thought it was necessary? I could imagine Thor would do it, because Hel and going there is what he stand against, but why would Loki, her own father, do that to his daughter? Perhaps just because he could, but I get the sense there is something more to it.

[wumpus]

The part of the math that hasn't been touched on is the number of dwarves that agree to die to save the Universe. If they are assumed that such is a "heroic death" (and I can't imagine how this is any less so than going out to fight a forest) than the amount needed to convince Dvalin may easily be enough to keep Hel out of the catbird seat.

[Psyren]

I am personally a little more intrigued by what measures Thor and Loki set up to prevent Hel from getting souls and why they thought it was necessary? I could imagine Thor would do it, because Hel and going there is what he stand against, but why would Loki, her own father, do that to his daughter? Perhaps just because he could, but I get the sense there is something more to it.

Even without considering their mythological relationship (which I somehow doubt is as paternal/nurturing as you imply it to be), it's pretty obvious to me why he would oppose her. In the current iteration of the world, he has worshipers and priests while she does not. In "World 3.0: Heltopia", all of them are likely to have a smaller piece of the pie than before, including him. And as Loki himself notes, he doesn't consider spiting Odin and Thor to be a good enough reason to upset the current applecart. Loki is clever, as evidenced by his success in keeping her out of the Godsmoot entirely until now; it's a safe assumption that whatever deific math underlies his judgment, that he's thought it through.

[Pyrous]

I am personally a little more intrigued by what measures Thor and Loki set up to prevent Hel from getting souls and why they thought it was necessary? I could imagine Thor would do it, because Hel and going there is what he stand against, but why would Loki, her own father, do that to his daughter? Perhaps just because he could, but I get the sense there is something more to it.

If you are talking about the wager, I guess that Loki thought that Hel couldn't atract any living worshipers and proposed the wager so that his daughter could at least get some souls. Thor fell for his bluff thinking this would mean less souls for Hel. Hel now thinks she could have more worshipers and souls if she hadn't accepted it.

[ORione]

The part of the math that hasn't been touched on is the number of dwarves that agree to die to save the Universe. If they are assumed that such is a "heroic death" (and I can't imagine how this is any less so than going out to fight a forest) than the amount needed to convince Dvalin may easily be enough to keep Hel out of the catbird seat.

But only the members of the Council of Clans will have that opportunity.


Even without considering their mythological relationship (which I somehow doubt is as paternal/nurturing as you imply it to be), it's pretty obvious to me why he would oppose her. In the current iteration of the world, he has worshipers and priests while she does not. In "World 3.0: Heltopia", all of them are likely to have a smaller piece of the pie than before, including him. And as Loki himself notes, he doesn't consider spiting Odin and Thor to be a good enough reason to upset the current applecart. Loki is clever, as evidenced by his success in keeping her out of the Godsmoot entirely until now; it's a safe assumption that whatever deific math underlies his judgment, that he's thought it through.

BaronofHell is talking about the "little scheme with Uncle Thor" that Hel mentioned here (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1000.html), not Loki opposing Hel's attempt to destroy the world.

[Psyren]

BaronofHell is talking about the "little scheme with Uncle Thor" that Hel mentioned here (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1000.html), not Loki opposing Hel's attempt to destroy the world.

I actually knew he was talking about that. My point was that Loki probably kept her out of these meetings for pretty good reason despite them both being Evil and both hating Thor.