Who is in the anti-life shell?

[Malfarian]

I assumed the new High Priest of Hel was in the Shell, but nope, she's outside, and one of the "new" vamps is in the shell, not fighting (she says "so thirsty") then hides in shell?. Is there any meaning to this? Will the clerics get confused and hit the "wrong" one?
Mal

I think the NEW HPOH is in the upper right corner of panel one, she's got her mace still.

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0994.html

Side Question: What is the "large" creature? He's not the half-elemental right? he's fighting belkar.

Vampire #2 is first seen here
http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0996.html

and is in the bottom of panel 2 here

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1018.html

[goodpeople25]

The vamp fighting belkar appears to be a goliath. (Non core race, races of stone i believe) well that seems the more prevalent opinion anyway. We don't really know for sure, sure.

But none of the vamps are really fighting at all (none have got an attack off anyway), they are charging sure but in the direction of the Anti life shell. In fact the one in the shell we can see running into the shell right past roy in panel 5, hardly hiding. So i would say the point is to get into the shell, that has a teleport orb meant for the order thus most likely can transport at least 8.

[Bulldog Psion]

I don't think, personally, that the new High Priestess has to get into the shell.

The other priests definitely won't attack her, not wanting to violate the Godsmoot's terms, get executed, and possibly trigger divine conflict.

IMO, Roy is not her bodyguard and therefore can't attack her. I doubt that bodyguard status transfers automatically and without the High Priest's say-so. More than likely, her unusual status as a High Priestess appointed inside the Moot removes bodyguards from the equation entirely.

(I thought that she was going to pick 2 vampires as bodyguards, but it appears all of them except her are trying to join Lurky Corpsewhiskers inside the shell so they can teleport out.)

[factotum]

I don't think, personally, that the new High Priestess has to get into the shell.


It would defeat the objective if she did--presumably the vamps are going into the AL shell in order to get to the teleport orb, and they definitely don't want the new HPoH to teleport out with the rest!

[Malfarian]

So you think they were charging the shell not Roy? Now I'm more confused.

[Deliverance]

So you think they were charging the shell not Roy? Now I'm more confused.
Why would they attack Roy? How would that benefit Hel?

Hel has a goal: Winning the vote by means of dominating the dwarven elders while her current high priest(ess) holds her voting position in the conclave.

Roy is currently not an obstacle to that plan, nor does he have any obvious way of becoming so. He is a hero, so all else being equal it would be better if he was knocked off the board, which is why the former HPoH did his level best to ensure that once Roy attacked and couldn't be dominated, but all else is not equal.

a) The other vampires aren't protected by anything but people's surprise at them showing up.
b) Roy was tough enough to beat the former HPoH, the highest level of her vampires.
c) Hel has better things to use them for; Consider the following two scenarios:

#1) The other gods continue playing by the rules. In this case Hel gains no benefit from having her other vampire clerics sticking around with her high priestess, who is protected by the rules, but having them teleport out to help with the domination and protect her highest level vampire clerics to increase the chance her plan succeeds makes.

#2) The other gods stop playing by the rules. In this case the vote and her domination plan is meaningless, and having a bunch of vampire clerics present at the meeting makes no difference to the outcome. The world might be destroyed, it might not. If it is, great, she wins! If not, having her vampire clerics away from the meeting of high level clerics acting in the wider world is a good backup plan, since Hel, as we've been told, has serious trouble acquiring high level vampire clerics of her own under normal circumstances.

THAT being said, it wouldn't surprise me at all if the Giant pulled a #3) based on the other gods playing by the rules but Hel using her vampires to some other purpose. While we haven't seen any of the vampires attacking Roy and have seen Roy destroying one that made it past him, some of them are definitely not taking a shortest path route to the anti-life shell in the last panel. That might just be a case of not wanting to run into Roy's blender or scattering to avoid AOE damage from the triggerhappy clerics, but it could also be an indication of some other plan. ::smallbiggrin:

[factotum]

So you think they were charging the shell not Roy?

It's a racing certainty that they are. Look at the fifth panel of #1018--you can see that Roy is stabbing a bearded vampire in the back, and said vampire is in between him and the edge of the anti-life shell. How would that situation come about unless said vampire had already run past Roy on his way to get to the teleport orb? Oh, and one of the vampires is actually standing inside the shell in the last panel of the strip as well, if further proof is required.

[Bulldog Psion]

Yes, they are observably making no attempt to attack Roy. They're like a flock of particularly malevolent pigeons flying around an obstacle.

[Onyavar]

Of course, the vampires were seemingly charging Roy in the first panels, who then of course wanted to defend himself. With the "you know what to do" line, the High Priestess was pretty obscure about it.

Pretty sure: this was yet another plan in the plan in the plan: seeding dissent in the Godsmoot by having the High Priests take sides and sending the Godsmoot into disarray.

I can well imagine the High Priestess of Odin calling them all to order, and whether successfull or not: there were spells fired, there will be hard feelings in the Godsmoot-in-suspension. It's well within Hel's plan.

Maybe Undurkon was calculating that the one who started spellslinging, is to be thrown out. Too bad for Hel that this would be an original 'yes' vote. Or, all the guys who were hurting other representatives are thrown out, in this case we have no idea (yet) who is going to get the boot.