OOTS #1083 - The Discussion Thread

[The Giant]

New comic is up.

[Yklikt]

Who is the frost giant guy name again?

[Czhorat]

Hel and Thrymm are a fun bickering couple.

Poor Hel DID get screwed, but she didn't really think that bet through. Always read the fine print.


Who is the frost giant guy name again?

No. Who is the first baseman's name.

[Keltest]

Huh, ok. So the "no clerics among the living" thing actually is part of the bet, and not just a result of Hel being awful. Well OK then.

[Spore]

Poor Hel DID get screwed

That's what happens if you are content with the scraps other throw you. People - and especially gods of trickery - never offer you their best voluntarily.

[Yklikt]

Hel and Thrymm are a fun bickering couple.

Poor Hel DID get screwed, but she didn't really think that bet through. Always read the fine print.

No. Who is the first baseman's name.

Um, what? Is thrymm his name? Because I can't find comic where she say his name

[AvatarVecna]

One of the main arguments in Hel's favor in the past few threads was "ah, she didn't know Loki was involved, she thought she was making a bet with Thor!" when really, Thor was not only completely plastered at the time, but the whole thing was set up by Loki, no real trickery involved beyond the standard fine print kind of stuff.

[schmunzel]

One of the main arguments in Hel's favor in the past few threads was "ah, she didn't know Loki was involved, she thought she was making a bet with Thor!" when really, Thor was not only completely plastered at the time, but the whole thing was set up by Loki, no real trickery involved beyond the standard fine print kind of stuff.

Its her punishment for being greedy


Um, what? Is thrymm his name? Because I can't find comic where she say his name

Just read through the godsmoot where his cleric is voting you'll find it there

[hroþila]

Interesting that "no clerics among the living" was part of the bet, and that it *is* actually a proper bet which Hel can cash in if she wins. I wonder what the wager was.

[Peelee]

That's what happens if you are content with the scraps other throw you. People - and especially gods of trickery - never offer you their best voluntarily.

If they stand to gain from it. What did Loki gain by helping out Thor?

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Ha! I was right about the "no living clerics" was central to the bet!

GW

[Grey_Wolf_c]

If they stand to gain from it. What did Loki gain by helping out Thor?

Given Thor's state, I suspect this may look like a bet, but it's a plot by Loki to weaken Hel (maybe to make him preeminent amongst the Evil gods of the North)

GW

[warmachine]

I wonder if the author has received any complains at all for abusing Norse mythology.

[Arkku]

What did Loki gain by helping out Thor?

I don't think the bet helped Thor in any particular way (and possibly even weakened him if he ended up losing some dwarven souls to Hel). I'd guess it's simply Loki's trickster nature to fool both Hel and the drunken Thor, while making himself more powerful among the evil gods.

[The MunchKING]

I wonder if the author has received any complains at all for abusing Norse mythology.

I am pretty sure he said he didn't care.

[Keltest]

Hmm... You know, I just noticed that Hel gets default dominion over the souls of dwarves. Durkon framed it as a matter of her getting specifically the dishonored ones, but even honor neutral deaths apparently go to Hel.

...

Also, how on earth did Thor ever get Hel to agree to the alcohol-related-deaths exception? Surely she wouldn't have agreed to that on her own, and I doubt Loki would push for it. Did Thor just get Hel plastered one night?

[Lord Torath]

And there we have the reason why dwarves get such a raw deal: Loki.

Thanks, Giant!

[Arkku]

Also, how on earth did Thor ever get Hel to agree to the alcohol-related-deaths exception?

Is it really an exception as such, or just part of the joke about those being considered honorable deaths:

:durkon: Na so much fer tha dwarf's sake as ta honor tha brave livers tha fought so long against tha inevitable.

[Peelee]

Given Thor's state, I suspect this may look like a bet, but it's a plot by Loki to weaken Hel (maybe to make him preeminent amongst the Evil gods of the North)

GWWell, it's a dangerous game betting against you right now, when one of your predictions was *just* right.


I don't think the bet helped Thor in any particular way (and possibly even weakened him if he ended up losing some dwarven souls to Hel). I'd guess it's simply Loki's trickster nature to fool both Hel and the drunken Thor, while making himself more powerful among the evil gods.
Except now Thor gets nearly all the dwarves souls. Which was a good enough enticement to make Hel agree to a bad bet.

[Keltest]

Is it really an exception as such, or just part of the joke about those being considered honorable deaths:

:durkon: Na so much fer tha dwarf's sake as ta honor tha brave livers tha fought so long against tha inevitable.

I seem to recall Durkon specifically describing it as an exception.

[Quebbster]

Well, that answers that.
Still can't help but wonder why Loki came up with the plan to begin with though...

[Arkku]

Except now Thor gets nearly all the dwarves souls. Which was a good enough enticement to make Hel agree to a bad bet.

I'm a bit unclear on how things would have been without the bet… If the dwarves were worshipping Thor sort of by default in their culture, would he actually have gotten more of their souls without the bet if the sole determining factor had been their allegiance?

[Nightcanon]

Interesting that the secondary effect of this explains how dwarves have the honour-bound society that they have.

[hroþila]

Hmm... You know, I just noticed that Hel gets default dominion over the souls of dwarves. Durkon framed it as a matter of her getting specifically the dishonored ones, but even honor neutral deaths apparently go to Hel.

...

Also, how on earth did Thor ever get Hel to agree to the alcohol-related-deaths exception? Surely she wouldn't have agreed to that on her own, and I doubt Loki would push for it. Did Thor just get Hel plastered one night?
There's no such thing as "honour neutral". In a society where only death in battle is honourable, you either die honourably or you don't. Thor won't argue that a death was "honour neutral", but that it still counted as honourable, being assimilable to death in battle.

As for the alcohol-related deaths, Thor probably didn't need to make Hel agree to that. Thor stretches the definition of "honourable death" to a ridiculous extent, but it works probably because 1) the dwarves actually, sincerely believe those deaths are honourable, and/or 2) thanks to the current arrangement, Thor is much more powerful than Hel.

[Peelee]

I'm a bit unclear on how things would have been without the bet… If the dwarves were worshipping Thor sort of by default in their culture, would he actually have gotten more of their souls without the bet if the sole determining factor had been their allegiance?

I was gonna argue that Thor worship likely came about due to the bet, not as default, but they also have some love for Odin. So not (virtually) all go to Thor.

[littlebum2002]

Seriously, half of Norse mythology is people not realizing you should never make a bet with Loki

[MReav]

Okay, so Loki was central to the bet.

I am surprised on how little agency Thor had in it. This wasn't some scheme concocted together, this was a bet that was made on his behalf while half-drunk.

Incidentally, I wanna know what he's drinking to get a friggin' god blitzed. I had in my old 3.5 game The Drink of the Dead, alcohol so powerful it could inebriate undead (fun fact: our dwarf had insane constitution, so he could drink it without dying), so I am not opposed to this on a fundamental level, just curious.

[JennTora]

I wonder if the author has received any complains at all for abusing Norse mythology.

Probably. I tend to think of the gods in the comic as just characters with the same names and sometimes similar but sillier stories. If you throw a hissy fit about every website that misrepresents mythology you'll spend all day typing in all caps.

Even so, Odin seems more interesting than his first appearance after his "worlds within worlds and yarn winding yarn" comment. I think most of what we've seen with the gods up till now has just been jokes and now it's getting a little more serious.

[JoseB]

And that is what happens when you let your greed overcome your common sense, Hel... I mean, really... An offer from *Loki*, of all gods?

And now I am thinking of possible loopholes that, even if worst comes to worst, might prevent Hel from laying hands on the whole dwarvish population.

[KorvinStarmast]

Seriously, half of Norse mythology is people not realizing you should never make a bet with Loki For some reason, I get the idea that Loki was doing this to wind up Thor, and Thor going ahead and informing the dwarves of how this all works was more or less a byproduct of the bet. I am not seeing why Loki would screw over his daughter like that. Then again, as a Trickster style of God, he is a bit chaotic ...

Decent comic strip, and this comic folds in nicely with the comment Giant made a few years back about "life isn't fair, dwarves have a society with rigid rules ..." (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=19828724&postcount=114).

And as a follow up (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=19828803&postcount=123) on dwarves building that social structure for *reasons*.

[Windscion]

Seriously, half of Norse mythology is people not realizing you should never make a bet with Loki

Um, false. One quarter of norse mythology is Loki helping the Aesir cheat on deals they made -- like with the giant who built Asgard's walls.

[Hardcore]

With this pace of publication I fear "the end is near!". Relatively speaking, of course.

[Keltest]

There's no such thing as "honour neutral". In a society where only death in battle is honourable, you either die honourably or you don't. Thor won't argue that a death was "honour neutral", but that it still counted as honourable, being assimilable to death in battle.

As for the alcohol-related deaths, Thor probably didn't need to make Hel agree to that. Thor stretches the definition of "honourable death" to a ridiculous extent, but it works probably because 1) the dwarves actually, sincerely believe those deaths are honourable, and/or 2) thanks to the current arrangement, Thor is much more powerful than Hel.

The problem with that is, as per Hel's own statement, Dwarven society is specifically engineered that way. Rich implies here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=13053125&postcount=20) that a system of honor that DID have honor neutral deaths would not result in those people going to Hel, because its specifically the dishonored dead (and dwarves who did not explicitly die honorably, we now learn) that she has dominion over. He uses Haley as the specific example for a death that is not dishonorable enough to get her sent to Hel.

So the dwaves have created an honor-binary society out of reaction to the bet, but that doesn't mean they couldn't have honor-neutral deaths had they been left to their own devices like the other races.

[SilverCacaobean]

Finally we learned more about why the dwarfs got that bad deal. And of course it was just a stupid bet. I wonder why Loki did that... Maybe we'll learn more, the scene with Hel doesn't seem to be over.

By the way, Hel gives me the impression that she doesn't have legs, like her lower half is ghostly.


Rich implies here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=13053125&postcount=20) that a system of honor that DID have honor neutral deaths would not result in those people going to Hel

I think what he means is, it applies to humans that choose to believe those things (Haley not being one of them), but it applies to all dwarfs. Not that Honor/Dishonor isn't a binary. EDIT: I mean for Dwarves :smalltongue:

[Bluepaw]

Fascinating to see the situation described, for dwarves souls to belong to Hel by "default" -- to hear a dwarf tell it, of course, honor is so baked into their culture and society that it's the terrible outlier to see a dwarf die "dishonorably" (rather than "normally)!

[Hiro Quester]

Good point about having excellent puns associated with her name.

But as someone who also has a pun-able name IRL, even the good ones tend to be annoying. You rarely make them yourself. And everyone else thinks they are so original when they use the pun you've heard thousands of times before.

"That's a Hel of a name you have there!" Haha. That's so funny. I've never heard that one before. :annoyed:

[woweedd]

And...Of course Loki made this deal. It's a very Loki-esque thing to do, now that I think about it. If Thor tells the Dwarves about it, Hel is kept from obtaining more power. If he doesn't? Loki obtains more power through Hel, since she's very unlikely to be angry at him, in a situation where the deal gets her MORE power. Also, now that I think about it, what was Hel expecting? She's in a world where both Raise Dead and Plane Shift exist. Heck, Speak With Dead is a third-level spell, eventually, the Dwarves would've figured it out, Thor or No Thor.

[hagnat]

Seriously, half of Norse mythology is people not realizing you should never make a bet with Loki

this.

Hel knew exactly who she was dealing with here. She made a really dumb move(tm) by making a bet with her father.

[Hamste]

Maybe the bet is related to keeping the demi-gods down? With the souls defaulting to Hel it forced the gods to make an honor bound society. The fire and frost giants are obviously hurt by the deal as the dwarves most likely go out to hunt them when it is time for them to die. There is also the consideration, that the dwarves are extremely lawful and so are less likely to worship a deity that traditionally doesn't is prayed to or are chaotic and so it must be harder for the demi-gods to get more followers.

[Azazyll]

Interesting that "no clerics among the living" was part of the bet, and that it *is* actually a proper bet which Hel can cash in if she wins. I wonder what the wager was.

This is the real million-dollar question of this strip, I think. The other term of the wager that's interesting to consider is when the sides would be tallied: have the gods always anticipated the world coming to an end? In this fashion? There's a lot to unpack here, and I'm sure Rich has thought about all of the implications, many of which we won't grasp for a while yet.


By the way, Hel gives me the impression that she doesn't have legs, like her lower half is ghostly.

In traditional mythology, they are skeletal. Hel is always half skeletal, although sometimes the binary is vertical rather than horizontal.

[hamishspence]

Seriously, half of Norse mythology is people not realizing you should never make a bet with Loki

Even when he loses bets, he tries to rules-lawyer his way out of it.

And got his lips stitched together once, by dwarves with no tolerance for this sort of thing.

[Doug Lampert]

One of the main arguments in Hel's favor in the past few threads was "ah, she didn't know Loki was involved, she thought she was making a bet with Thor!" when really, Thor was not only completely plastered at the time, but the whole thing was set up by Loki, no real trickery involved beyond the standard fine print kind of stuff.

She probably figured dear old dad was out to fleece Thor, not her. Seriously, Loki helps OTHER PEOPLE cheat on bets or deals all the time. Loki being involved means that he's at least trying to cheat someone, but why does everyone assume that Hel should know or suspect that SHE is the target when Thor is also a possible target?

[Psyren]

Now I'm curious - was Thor's participation needed for the entire bargain, or just the bet? In other words, could she unilaterally claim default dominion over Dwarf souls that died without honor, or was Thor complicit in signing his worshipers away?

[danielxcutter]

All this talk about the bet and for some reason all I can think about is the last-panel joke.

[pendell]

Aand some plot clarification.

Inquiring minds want to know: What happened to Hel's legs?

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Svata]

Um, false. One quarter of norse mythology is Loki helping the Aesir cheat on deals they made -- like with the giant who built Asgard's walls.

The two are not mutually exclusive.

[Shining Wrath]

So Loki played a mean trick on his daughter. I wonder why? Why on earth would Loki want Thor to gain souls while Hel lost them?

Other than being tricksy by nature. We've seen recently that ascribing deep thoughts to the OotSverse gods is a mistake; it may be that Loki's motivations went no deeper than "Lulz it's 2 days past the full moon and I haven't outsmarted my daughter in several days so ... ah, yes!".

Based on panel #3 Hel has no lower body at all, which means Thrym's motivations to be consort had to be more "interest in her mind and power" and less "interest in divine nookie".

Thor may be a drunken sot, but he handled the bet with more class than Hel can manage.

[Kantaki]

Now that we know how it went I can only repeat myself: It's you own fault for betting with your dad Helsy.

But now I'm wondering if Loki just wanted to mess with someone or if the point was to teach his little girl how important clerics are.

Also „Are you sure? Because you've always looked like this” is a great line.:smallbiggrin:

[hagnat]

Um, false. One quarter of norse mythology is Loki helping the Aesir cheat on deals they made -- like with the giant who built Asgard's walls.

moral of the story: Vikings are the worse people to bet with. Will take any bet you can think of, but are the worst kind of sore losers imaginable. You lose even if you win.

[Shining Wrath]

I wonder if the author has received any complains at all for abusing Norse mythology.

If this 1083 strip story was "Thor's adventures with Loki" that might happen. As it is, though, the Northern Pantheon is merely a tool for telling the story of a bunch of lovable misfits as they save the world from the Snarl and the machinations of a goddess with a slight resemblance to the Norse Hel.

[137beth]

Well, this explains why Thor agreed to such an unfair system for dwarfs: (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=19828724&postcount=114) he was too drunk to see that it wasn't fair.

[woweedd]

So Loki played a mean trick on his daughter. I wonder why? Why on earth would Loki want Thor to gain souls while Hel lost them?

Other than being tricksy by nature. We've seen recently that ascribing deep thoughts to the OotSverse gods is a mistake; it may be that Loki's motivations went no deeper than "Lulz it's 2 days past the full moon and I haven't outsmarted my daughter in several days so ... ah, yes!".

Based on panel #3 Hel has no lower body at all, which means Thrym's motivations to be consort had to be more "interest in her mind and power" and less "interest in divine nookie".

Thor may be a drunken sot, but he handled the bet with more class than Hel can manage.
I stated my idea earlier:

And...Of course Loki made this deal. It's a very Loki-esque thing to do, now that I think about it. If Thor tells the Dwarves about it, Hel is kept from obtaining more power. If he doesn't? Loki obtains more power through Hel, since she's very unlikely to be angry at him, in a situation where the deal gets her MORE power.[snip]

Essentially, I think that's what Loki's going for. Thor wins the bet? Loki wins. Hel wins the bet? Loki STILL wins. It's a Xanatos Gambit (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/XanatosGambit), as TV Tropes would have it. A deal whose every possible outcome benefits its originator. Hel wins? She'll thank Loki for giving her more power. Thor wins? Hel can't harm Loki or the pantheon as a whole, thanks to her lack of worshippers and power.

[Unoriginal]

I wonder if the author has received any complains at all for abusing Norse mythology.

Don't see how it's abusing it.

[Shining Wrath]

I think any plan that relies upon the Hel we've seen in the last few scripts being grateful would be a bad plan. Therefore, I doubt that Hel getting more power redounds directly to Loki's benefit any more than Thor gaining power empowers Odin.

Hel's quite evidently a Thor loser, and she's not Loki about it, either.

[Chei]

Now that we know how it went I can only repeat myself: It's you own fault for betting with your dad Helsy.

But now I'm wondering if Loki just wanted to mess with someone or if the point was to teach his little girl how important clerics are.

Also „Are you sure? Because you've always looked like this” is a great line.:smallbiggrin:

I actually think you're right about the bet being a Dad Lesson from Loki. It's just that, as a god, and specifically an evil god of trickery, he approaches it on a scale that most people can't appreciate.

[Quebbster]

Based on panel #3 Hel has no lower body at all, which means Thrym's motivations to be consort had to be more "interest in her mind and power" and less "interest in divine nookie".

It's quite possible to have quality nookie while staying above the waist. Besides, Thrym might have some sort of romantic abnormality that makes Hel appealing nonetheless.
I do happen to think he's in it for the power myself though, but nookie possibilities could sweeten the deal too.

Has anyone suggested it might be Hel's backside that looks living-impaired?

[Unoriginal]

The problem with that is, as per Hel's own statement, Dwarven society is specifically engineered that way. Rich implies here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=13053125&postcount=20) that a system of honor that DID have honor neutral deaths would not result in those people going to Hel, because its specifically the dishonored dead (and dwarves who did not explicitly die honorably, we now learn) that she has dominion over. He uses Haley as the specific example for a death that is not dishonorable enough to get her sent to Hel.

So the dwaves have created an honor-binary society out of reaction to the bet, but that doesn't mean they couldn't have honor-neutral deaths had they been left to their own devices like the other races.

A honor-neutral death doesn't mean that the dwarf loses their honor.

If an old, honorable dwarf dies in their sleep after a life of service to the community and benevolence, I doubt they'd be seen as dishonorable.

But dwarves consider dying of disease to be dishonoring regardless of what kind of life you had before, so...




Based on panel #3 Hel has no lower body at all, which means Thrym's motivations to be consort had to be more "interest in her mind and power" and less "interest in divine nookie".

She's a goddess, she can probably change her form as she desires.

[Gift Jeraff]

Loki's plan may have been that turning the dwarves into a Lawful society would rob Thor (a Chaotic Good deity) out of the very same souls that worship him. But the preface to BRITF shows that Durkon believes that dwarves go to Valhalla (CG afterlife) to party for the rest of their existence, so either

-Thor found a way around Loki's scheme
-what Durkon said only applies to clerics of Thor, and non-clerics go to the appropriate alignment afterlife (if they died honorably)
-Durkon is mistaken
-I am wrong and this is not Loki's intention

[Morquard]

I think it might have been along the lines of "Everyone is afraid of death, so even if I wouldn't have mortal clerics and only undead ones, I'd still be just as powerful"

Well, I was almost right :)

[Keltest]

A honor-neutral death doesn't mean that the dwarf loses their honor.

If an old, honorable dwarf dies in their sleep after a life of service to the community and benevolence, I doubt they'd be seen as dishonorable.

But dwarves consider dying of disease to be dishonoring regardless of what kind of life you had before, so...

And you would be wrong. There was an entire thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?442359-Why-aren-t-95-of-dwarven-souls-going-to-Hel-anyway&p=19821213) about that point when the dwarven afterlife thing was first introduced. The end result was that it sucks for the dwarves by design.

The first several pages are worth a read, especially the Giant's posts. After that it devolves into the usual bickering about minutiae.

[Riftwolf]

My take on why Loki set up that bet; one less evil God to divvy out souls with. And what does he care if Thor gets the lion's share of Dwarves? Loki gets Greysky City instead.

[Anarion]

I suppose the gods have their set relationships, but if I were an OOTS norse deity, and a god named Loki showed up to offer me a tantalizing bargain, I'd reject it on principle.

[woweedd]

Loki's plan may have been that turning the dwarves into a Lawful society would rob Thor (a Chaotic Good deity) out of the very same souls that worship him. But the preface to BRITF shows that Durkon believes that dwarves go to Valhalla (CG afterlife) to party for the rest of their existence, so either

-Thor found a way around Loki's scheme
-what Durkon said only applies to clerics of Thor, and non-clerics go to the appropriate alignment afterlife (if they died honorably)
-Durkon is mistaken
-I am wrong and this is not Loki's intention
(Emphasis mine.)
I'm fairly certain it's this one...kinda. You see, in D and D, generally, Clerics, unlike other people, don't go to their appropriate alignment plane after death. Rather, they go to the plane that their God resides on. Generally, each Plane in the famous Planescape "Great Wheel" has a large amount of Gods with personal domains set up within the various afterlives. Clerics go to their God's personal domain after death. So a Cleric of Thor, even one who was non-CG, would go to Thor's domain, presumably in Valhalla. (Note that, in Planescape, Valhalla is actually the Plane of CN with CG Tendencies, but that's a whole other matter.) Either way, presumably Loki's Clerics to go to hs personal domain after death, whatever their alignments in life were, and so on. This, incidentally, is another reason why not having any mortal Clerics robs Hel of power. Her Clerics, in addition to spreading her influence, would also go directly to her domain in the afterlife, boosting her power directly as well as indirectly. Any people who weren't particularly religious in life (IE Non-Clerics.) instead just go to the generic Plane for their Alignment, presumably feeding the power of their alignment as a whole and, by extension, all Gods of said Alignment.

[MReav]

Now I'm curious - was Thor's participation needed for the entire bargain, or just the bet? In other words, could she unilaterally claim default dominion over Dwarf souls that died without honor, or was Thor complicit in signing his worshipers away?

Technically, everyone is complicit in signing their worshipers away. Thor doesn't have universal control over the souls of dwarves, we've seen dwarven clerics of Odin (Odin's guy in Start of Darkness), Loki (Hilgya), Freyr (Freyr's representative, though that might be a gnome), and nontheistic entities (like The Creed). Thor is merely the measuring stick for this bet. If Thor>Hel, then having clerics > not having clerics. Durkon explicitly states that dwarves who die with honor go to their respective plane. That said, Pete's buddy reacts to the notion of "worships Thor" with "Can you tell me anything about him that differentiates him from any other dwarf", so Thor probably does command a sizeable percentage of dwarven worship. However, Thor comes across as Chaotic Good while Dwarves tend towards Lawful Good, so I think Thor is getting bilked out of souls.


Essentially, I think that's what Loki's going for. Thor wins the bet? Loki wins. Hel wins the bet? Loki STILL wins. It's a Xanatos Gambit (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/XanatosGambit), as TV Tropes would have it. A deal whose every possible outcome benefits its originator. Hel wins? She'll thank Loki for giving her more power. Thor wins? Hel can't harm Loki or the pantheon as a whole, thanks to her lack of worshippers and power.

Well, that backfired, as Hel is depicted as being incredibly bitter at Loki for screwing her over.


So Loki played a mean trick on his daughter. I wonder why? Why on earth would Loki want Thor to gain souls while Hel lost them?

Thor doesn't particularly benefit from this arrangement, since "[Thor] keeps the normal arrangement". The "normal arrangement" is that he gets to make clerics. Souls normally go to the alignment they belong to (possible exception for divine casters).


I think this may be one of Loki's ill-conceived bets (he makes a number in the original myths: he underestimates how fast the builder can build the walls of Asgard, and bets his head to make Mjolnir and several other artifacts, which he only manages to escape via letter of law shenanigans).

He gets the scorn of his daughter, his biggest rival has to double time effort to keep the dwarves out of Hel's grip, typical dwarven alignment means he doesn't get their souls, and typical dwarven alignment means Heimdall, the dude who in mythology kills Loki during Ragnarok, gets a major race dedicating a non-insignificant number of their souls to him.

[Giggling Ghast]

Seriously, half of Norse mythology is people not realizing you should never make a bet with Loki

You mean to say he wasn't being truthful when he said this mistletoe wouldn't hurt anyone? :smalltongue:

[woweedd]

Technically, everyone is complicit in signing their worshipers away. Thor doesn't have universal control over the souls of dwarves, we've seen dwarven clerics of Odin (Odin's guy in Start of Darkness), Loki (Hilgya), Freyr (Freyr's representative, though that might be a gnome), and nontheistic entities (like The Creed). Thor is merely the measuring stick for this bet. If Thor>Hel, then having clerics > not having clerics. Durkon explicitly states that dwarves who die with honor go to their respective plane. That said, Pete's buddy reacts to the notion of "worships Thor" with "Can you tell me anything about him that differentiates him from any other dwarf", so Thor probably does command a sizeable percentage of dwarven worship. However, Thor comes across as Chaotic Good while Dwarves tend towards Lawful Good, so I think Thor is getting bilked out of souls.



Well, that backfired, as Hel is depicted as being incredibly bitter at Loki for screwing her over.



Thor doesn't particularly benefit from this arrangement, since "[Thor] keeps the normal arrangement". The "normal arrangement" is that he gets to make clerics. Souls normally go to the alignment they belong to (possible exception for divine casters).


I think this may be one of Loki's ill-conceived bets (he makes a number in the original myths: he underestimates how fast the builder can build the walls of Asgard, and bets his head to make Mjolnir and several other artifacts, which he only manages to escape via letter of law shenanigans).

He gets the scorn of his daughter, his biggest rival has to double time effort to keep the dwarves out of Hel's grip, typical dwarven alignment means he doesn't get their souls, and typical dwarven alignment means Heimdall, the dude who in mythology kills Loki during Ragnarok, gets a major race dedicating a non-insignificant number of their souls to him.
Again, I think Loki's original idea was that, while Hel would be angry at him, with no worshippers and little souls to her name, it'd be impossible for her to follow through on any threats. Of course, he, like the rest of the Gods, didn't consider the situation that is currently occurring.

[Morquard]

The problem with that is, as per Hel's own statement, Dwarven society is specifically engineered that way. Rich implies here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=13053125&postcount=20) that a system of honor that DID have honor neutral deaths would not result in those people going to Hel, because its specifically the dishonored dead (and dwarves who did not explicitly die honorably, we now learn) that she has dominion over. He uses Haley as the specific example for a death that is not dishonorable enough to get her sent to Hel.

So the dwaves have created an honor-binary society out of reaction to the bet, but that doesn't mean they couldn't have honor-neutral deaths had they been left to their own devices like the other races.

That was 5 years ago, apparently he changed his opinion. He's allowed that. Today we learned, that Hel has default dominion over dwarves. The one exception are honorable deaths. The only one. Period.
So anything that is not honorable, and that includes "honor neutral" would go to her. So it's less a "dishonorable" go to her but "not honorable" do.

As the dwarves are aware of that, they build a system where there are no honor neutral things, because that's the same as dishonorable anyway. And tried to cheat it in some way to make almost everything honorable in some way. Loki probably helped with the fine print there too.

[The Succubus]

Oh that Loki... such a Hel-raiser.

[Chei]

That was 5 years ago, apparently he changed his opinion. He's allowed that. Today we learned, that Hel has default dominion over dwarves. The one exception are honorable deaths. The only one. Period.
So anything that is not honorable, and that includes "honor neutral" would go to her. So it's less a "dishonorable" go to her but "not honorable" do.

As the dwarves are aware of that, they build a system where there are no honor neutral things, because that's the same as dishonorable anyway. And tried to cheat it in some way to make almost everything honorable in some way. Loki probably helped with the fine print there too.

Yeah. If the system worked in such a way that an honorable dwarf who died a neutral death escaped from Hel's clutches, then this whole scheme - blowing up the world to deny the entire dwarven population an honorable death - wouldn't work anyway.

[DaggerPen]

On the one hand, I feel a little bad for Hel - she got legitimately screwed out of something important for gods.

On the other hand, honestly, if she didn't make her afterlife so hellishly (pardon) unpleasant, she wouldn't be in this mess. Many wouldn't try so hard to die with honor if hers was the "free pizza and beer for everyone regardless of alignment" afterlife.

[Shining Wrath]

Yeah. If the system worked in such a way that an honorable dwarf who died a neutral death escaped from Hel's clutches, then this whole scheme - blowing up the world to deny the entire dwarven population an honorable death - wouldn't work anyway.

That may be a plot twist coming - the moment when Loki points out to Hel that yes, there is a loophole, and the dwarves are marching through it to Thor's domain. In perfect formation and step, singing doleful dirges, but marching through nonetheless, because Dwarves.

[ORione]

Speculation: Hel's afterlife wasn't as unpleasant in the first world as it is here. Because much of the suffering the dishonored dwarves go through is due to Hel resenting their honor-based society and taking it out on the only beings she can.

[Jasdoif]

On the one hand, I feel a little bad for Hel - she got legitimately screwed out of something important for gods.

On the other hand, honestly, if she didn't make her afterlife so hellishly (pardon) unpleasant, she wouldn't be in this mess. Many wouldn't try so hard to die with honor if hers was the "free pizza and beer for everyone regardless of alignment" afterlife.How's she supposed to pay for the pizza and beer, though? It's not like she has worship income to cover the expenditure over time....Come to think of it, without clerics the living might listen to, how's she supposed to tell the dwarves that she's started on pizza and beer instead of rocks and more rocks?

[JoeyTheNeko]

so both hel and roy have now used her name for that kind of joke. heh.

[Avianmosquito]

I wonder if the author has received any complains at all for abusing Norse mythology.

Some. But the mods will punish you for bringing it up.

[Riftwolf]

Just curious; what's 'honour neutral' supposed to mean? Especially when Rich gave really good examples of living and dying with honour that didn't involve violence?

[woweedd]

On the one hand, I feel a little bad for Hel - she got legitimately screwed out of something important for gods.

On the other hand, honestly, if she didn't make her afterlife so hellishly (pardon) unpleasant, she wouldn't be in this mess. Many wouldn't try so hard to die with honor if hers was the "free pizza and beer for everyone regardless of alignment" afterlife.
Well, yeah. She's Evil. Their afterlives tend to be at least pretty unpleasant as a general rule. It's part of their whole Darwinian, survival of the fittest thing.

[DaggerPen]

Well, yeah. She's Evil. Their afterlives tend to be at least pretty unpleasant as a general rule. It's part of their whole Darwinian, survival of the fittest thing.

Well, yeah, but I'm saying that basically this is her own comeuppance for being Evil. Reap what ye sow and all that.

[8BitNinja]

Just curious; what's 'honour neutral' supposed to mean? Especially when Rich gave really good examples of living and dying with honour that didn't involve violence?

That doesn't sound like a real term.

[hamishspence]

That doesn't sound like a real term.

I think the idea is "nearly especially honourable nor especially dishonourable"

Being shot while fleeing a battle, might be especially dishonourable, despite being violent.

But dying in an accident, might fall between "honourable" and "dishonourable".

[Lord Torath]

Based on panel #3 Hel has no lower body at all, which means Thrym's motivations to be consort had to be more "interest in her mind and power" and less "interest in divine nookie".Eh, still hard to tell. Yes, her dress kinda dwindles away to nothing, but there's still room for legs in there, and Thor and Loki are floating as well. Allthough, given the half-skeletal bit (which until this thread I had no knowledge of), it seems likely that she could be skeletal below the waist. Which means Tsukiko might be interested (but probably not (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0700.html)), but Thrymm probably doesn't know what is or is not under those skirts. Assuming, of course, that Rich is sticking with the half-skeletal version of Hel.

[hamishspence]

A possible hint that "it has to be an honourable death to avoid Hel, not merely a non-dishonourable death":


Some dwarves live honorable sainted lives of pure humility and service and then choke on a chicken bone and die and are condemned to Hel forever for an eternity of torture and misery. This is a thing that happens. The world is not fair.

[woweedd]

A possible hint that "it has to be an honourable death to avoid Hel, not merely a non-dishonourable death":
No offense, but that's less a "hint" and more a "giant flashing sign declaring the answer."

[ratfox]

If I remember correctly, Durkon said that sick dwarves who feel the end is near find themselves a honorable death in a hurry.
Which may or may not involve dying while fighting a tree.

EDIT: oh yeah, all the details are in http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0737.html

[Jasdoif]

Well, yeah, but I'm saying that basically this is her own comeuppance for being Evil. Reap what ye sow and all that.I think the scenario's rather disproportionate for "poor understanding of the concept of investment", though.

[Avianmosquito]

If I remember correctly, Durkon said that sick dwarves who feel the end is near find themselves a honorable death in a hurry.
Which may or may not involve dying while fighting a tree.

It's amazing that actually works, but that explains their fear of trees.

[Porthos]

I know that there's really not that much of a "Oh, poor Hel" thing going on in the comments, but there is a bit of a sympathy card being played for her. An undercurrent in the comments if you will

So a rejoinder: Hel tried to take advantage of a drunk Thor by accepting this deal.

Not cool, Hel. Not cool at all. Serves you right that Thor figured out a loophole when you tried to take advantage of him.

...

Well that and listening to one of the OG Trickster Gods. :smallamused:

[Themrys]

On the one hand, I feel a little bad for Hel - she got legitimately screwed out of something important for gods.

On the other hand, honestly, if she didn't make her afterlife so hellishly (pardon) unpleasant, she wouldn't be in this mess. Many wouldn't try so hard to die with honor if hers was the "free pizza and beer for everyone regardless of alignment" afterlife.

Indeed. To dwarves, only death in battle is honourable (which is a bit stupid when you think about it) and Hel could advertise her afterlive as being for pacifists. No one forces her to be evil. Indeed, I am not sure Hel was/is evil in the original mythology. There's often some flanderizing in popular culture.


I wonder what dwarves do about childbirth and childbed fever. Most honour-based societies in real life had women who died in childbirth go to a lovely afterlife. (Sometimes the same men got for death in battle). If all your girls decide to become virgin warriors and die in battle, rather than intentionally risk a honour-less death, you're going to go extinct pretty soon.

[Jasdoif]

Serves you right that Thor figured out a loophole when you tried to take advantage of him.How about the dwarves? Does it serve them right?


Well that and listening to one of the OG Trickster Gods. :smallamused:Anyone who legitimately can't trust their own parents deserves sympathy.

[woweedd]

Indeed. To dwarves, only death in battle is honourable (which is a bit stupid when you think about it) and Hel could advertise her afterlive as being for pacifists. No one forces her to be evil. Indeed, I am not sure Hel was/is evil in the original mythology. There's often some flanderizing in popular culture.


I wonder what dwarves do about childbirth and childbed fever. Most honour-based societies in real life had women who died in childbirth go to a lovely afterlife. (Sometimes the same men got for death in battle). If all your girls decide to become virgin warriors and die in battle, rather than intentionally risk a honour-less death, you're going to go extinct pretty soon.
Actually, Rich has implied before that you don't have to die in battle per say, you just have to die doing something honorable/noble. See: The earlier-mentioned example of a Dwarf who dies of exposure while delivering supplies to help his kinsmen survive the winter. Rich has also stated that a Dwarven politician who gets assassinated for his strongly-held would also count as dying with honor. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=19822713&postcount=23) As Rich puts it, "They fought in the arena for which they were most suited, and died while defending their position. Sounds like an honorable death to me." In other words, you have to die whist serving your duty to the Dwarven people. I'd imagine childbirth counts.

[Porthos]

How about the dwarves? Does it serve them right?

Oh, no. They got screwed (well, partially - don't want to make a value judgement on their culture, that only leads to pages and page and pages of comments I ain't particularly interested in). By Loki. But kinda par for the course when it comes Norse mythology.


Anyone who legitimately can't trust their own parents deserves sympathy.

Errrrm... Sympathy probably isn't the word I would use here. Mostly because Hel tried to leap to take advantage of a "Too Good To Be True" situation and screw Thor over in the process.

I suppose mitigated-sympathy might work. Mitigated by "Apple didn't fall far from the tree" and "she's trying to give as good as she gets" when it comes to 'evil' and her father. Her problem is: Loki is much much better at this sort of thing than she is.

[hamishspence]

Actually, Rich has implied before that you don't have to die in battle per say, you just have to die doing something honorable/noble. See: The earlier-mentioned example of a Dwarf who dies of exposure while delivering supplies to help his kinsmen survive the winter. Rich has also stated that a Dwarven politician who gets assassinated for his strongly-held would also count as dying with honor. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=19822713&postcount=23) As Rich puts it, "They fought in the arena for which they were most suited, and died while defending their position. Sounds like an honorable death to me." In other words, you have to die whist serving your duty to the Dwarven people. I'd imagine childbirth counts.

In this case, it's a redefinition of "battle" - you don't have to be battling people - you can be battling the weather - you don't have to be fighting physically with conventional weapons, you can be a politician and battle with words.

[pendell]

Indeed. To dwarves, only death in battle is honourable (which is a bit stupid when you think about it) and Hel could advertise her afterlive as being for pacifists. No one forces her to be evil. Indeed, I am not sure Hel was/is evil in the original mythology. There's often some flanderizing in popular culture.


I wonder what dwarves do about childbirth and childbed fever. Most honour-based societies in real life had women who died in childbirth go to a lovely afterlife. (Sometimes the same men got for death in battle). If all your girls decide to become virgin warriors and die in battle, rather than intentionally risk a honour-less death, you're going to go extinct pretty soon.

Yah. The problem with only battle-deaths getting you out of Hel is that it should encourage the worshipers to be militarily aggressive, or to get jobs as mercenaries to fight in other people's wars. It's not a recipe for a stable society of miners and craftsmen. Good job the gods created all those goblins so that the dwarves would always have a pretext for 'honorable' death :smallamused:

The irony is that in dwarfish society Militarism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Militarism) -- the belief in military force and conflict as a positive good rather than a necessary evil, the glorification of war and conflict -- actually makes sense, since it's only through war that they can reach the appropriate afterlives. Realistically, they should be chaotics always fighting other species and themselves. That's the logical outcome of that worldview. If you reward war and conflict, you get war and conflict.

The bad hand dealt to the goblins in Start of Darkness isn't that much worse than what the dwarves were dealt, it would seem.

The wording of the bet in-strip is "default dominion". Which means to me that a dwarf must die a death that is explicitly honorable; honor-neutral deaths (whatever that means) would go to Hel as with all the other dishonored dead.

I wonder if a dwarf could convert to another religion? Would a dwarvish thief (not honorable in any sense) who traveled to Azure City and worshiped the Twelve be able to enter, say, the chaotic good afterlife?

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[SilverCacaobean]

Anyone who legitimately can't trust their own parents deserves sympathy.

Why? Being more inclined to feel sympathetic to people like that I understand, but "anyone" includes a lot of people and there's a threshold of being a giant gaping ******* that if crossed, that sympathy evaporates. Also, It'll be a cold day in hel (couldn't resist) before I feel sympathy for any OotS God(dess).

[Jasdoif]

Why? Being more inclined to feel sympathetic to people like that I understand, but "anyone" includes a lot of people and there's a threshold of being a giant gaping ******* that if crossed, that sympathy evaporates.Hmm....I suspect being able to recognize multiple emotions concurrently is a factor. Sympathy that Hel was, and still is over a millennium later, betrayed by someone she should expect to have her best interests at heart; does not constitute excusing her for omnicidal tendencies.

[Porthos]

Anyone who legitimately can't trust their own parents deserves sympathy.


Errrrm... Sympathy probably isn't the word I would use here. Mostly because Hel tried to leap to take advantage of a "Too Good To Be True" situation and screw Thor over in the process.

I suppose mitigated-sympathy might work. Mitigated by "Apple didn't fall far from the tree" and "she's trying to give as good as she gets" when it comes to 'evil' and her father. Her problem is: Loki is much much better at this sort of thing than she is.

Thinking about this a bit more, 'pity' might work. Comes closer to my headspace at the moment at least.

Understanding (as in motives, not approval) also works, but that's a bit more intellectual than where I'm at.

Mostly I'm of the belief that she should have known better AND shouldn't have lept at such a transparent ruse. Trying to take advantage of Thor just pushes any residual sympathy to the side.

So, yeah. I think I can feel pity for her situation. But sympathy? Tempered and mitigated at most, as I said.

[woweedd]

Yah. The problem with only battle-deaths getting you out of Hel is that it should encourage the worshipers to be militarily aggressive, or to get jobs as mercenaries to fight in other people's wars. It's not a recipe for a stable society of miners and craftsmen. Good job the gods created all those goblins so that the dwarves would always have a pretext for 'honorable' death :smallamused:

The irony is that in dwarfish society Militarism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Militarism) -- the belief in military force and conflict as a positive good rather than a necessary evil, the glorification of war and conflict -- actually makes sense, since it's only through war that they can reach the appropriate afterlives. Realistically, they should be chaotics always fighting other species and themselves. That's the logical outcome of that worldview. If you reward war and conflict, you get war and conflict.

The bad hand dealt to the goblins in Start of Darkness isn't that much worse than what the dwarves were dealt, it would seem.

The wording of the bet in-strip is "default dominion". Which means to me that a dwarf must die a death that is explicitly honorable; honor-neutral deaths (whatever that means) would go to Hel as with all the other dishonored dead.

I wonder if a dwarf could convert to another religion? Would a dwarvish thief (not honorable in any sense) who traveled to Azure City and worshiped the Twelve be able to enter, say, the chaotic good afterlife?

Respectfully,

Brian P.
I imagine that, if a Dwarf were to abandon both the Northern Gods and the Dwarven concept of Honor, he may no longer be subject to it. Then again, someone like Hilgya, who rejects the Dwarven concept of honor but, crucially, also still worships a Northern God, would probably still be in for an unpleasant surprise.

[Valley]

Seriously, half of Norse mythology is people not realizing you should never make a bet with Loki

And the other half is people not realizing not to make a deal with Odin. :smallsmile:

[Kish]

I would point out that, even if one doesn't care even a tiny bit about the feelings of Hel, Loki, or Thor (me, also SilverCacaobean if I'm reading them right), "default dominion" in this context means "I can enslave souls who don't want to come to my realm, who I will treat like garbage while simultaneously acting put-upon that they go out of their way to avoid being enslaved by me."

(Which is not to suggest that it's significantly better that Loki and Thor were both eager to sacrifice the luckless dwarves Hel just drove off her throne--just that talking about feeling or not feeling sympathy for any of them vis-a-vis their dealings with each other leaves out millions or billions of people who were involved, though the phrasing used by the gods doesn't acknowledge that those are people.)

[TheNecrocomicon]

Fantastic, now we're going to get overrun by the people who are pointlessly sympathetic to Hel and Thrym, notwithstanding the fact that the two deities' cruelty, based as it is on both grandiose and petty reasons, makes the rest of the gods look like relative saints by comparison. And that's after over a thousand strips where the author has made a deliberate point of every single deity constantly being vain, petty and venal jerkasses on a regular basis.

[Jasdoif]

I would point out that, even if one doesn't care even a tiny bit about the feelings of Hel, Loki, or Thor (me, also SilverCacaobean if I'm reading them right), "default dominion" in this context means "I can enslave souls who don't want to come to my realm, who I will treat like garbage while simultaneously acting put-upon that they go out of their way to avoid being enslaved by me."Yeah, the dwarves' Damnation-Without-Representation in the whole wager makes this a much bigger deal than it would be otherwise.

Something like Loki going "OK guys, this was funny for a few centuries, but I think we're all tired of all this arguing over so many souls that only ever seem to go to Thor or Hel; can we all agree to nullify their wager now?" could've solved a lot of problems for everyone.

[Porthos]

Something like Loki going "OK guys, this was funny for a few centuries, but I think we're all tired of all this arguing over so many souls that only ever seem to go to Thor or Hel; can we all agree to nullify their wager now?" could've solved a lot of problems for everyone.

Which ties neatly back to "What does Loki get out of this besides lulz?"

I mean, lulz is a pretty good motivator for Loki. But I think we aren't seeing a complete picture here.

Besides, we already know there is a Church of Loki and Church of Odin (both with dwarven members, by the way), so it stands to reason they're getting a piece of the action.

[Psyren]

Well, this explains why Thor agreed to such an unfair system for dwarfs: (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=19828724&postcount=114) he was too drunk to see that it wasn't fair.

This just reminds me of another quote from the comic: "There wouldn't need to be paladins if the world were, like, fair." (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1032.html)


Technically, everyone is complicit in signing their worshipers away. Thor doesn't have universal control over the souls of dwarves, we've seen dwarven clerics of Odin (Odin's guy in Start of Darkness), Loki (Hilgya), Freyr (Freyr's representative, though that might be a gnome), and nontheistic entities (like The Creed). Thor is merely the measuring stick for this bet. If Thor>Hel, then having clerics > not having clerics. Durkon explicitly states that dwarves who die with honor go to their respective plane. That said, Pete's buddy reacts to the notion of "worships Thor" with "Can you tell me anything about him that differentiates him from any other dwarf", so Thor probably does command a sizeable percentage of dwarven worship. However, Thor comes across as Chaotic Good while Dwarves tend towards Lawful Good, so I think Thor is getting bilked out of souls.

I think OotS Thor is NG, personally.

Note that you can "worship Thor" (as Cole believes that most dwarves do) without him actually being your patron. The Mechane's resident "gods-appeaser" (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0952.html) does this.

[Avianmosquito]

This just reminds me of another quote from the comic: "There wouldn't need to be paladins if the world were, like, fair." (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1032.html)



I think OotS Thor is NG, personally.

Note that you can "worship Thor" (as Cole believes that most dwarves do) without him actually being your patron. The Mechane's resident "gods-appeaser" (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0952.html) does this.

And I think if anything, my second favorite deity (https://youtu.be/Q5uvRd4RWs4)might lean towards chaos. Though my actual favorite (https://youtu.be/6LmGcc9SDAw)is NG, for sure.

[Shining Wrath]

Existential question: do OotS gods choose how they are? Or are they manifestations of essences present in the OotSverse?

Can Loki, by effort of will, become trustworthy and sincere - not just short term for momentary advantage, but as his nature?
Can Hel, by similar effort, become a kind and gracious host to souls entrusted to her rather than a petty vengeful tyrant?
Mind-boggling thought: could Thor become sober?

If the gods get to choose how they are, then we can blame Thor, Hel, and Loki for their part in shaping dwarven culture into such a rigid system. But if they don't? If, despite their power to change the world, they cannot change themselves?

Then the dwarves' fate was sealed before the foundation of the world, because Loki, Thor, and Hel acted as their natures force them to.

[Manty5]

> I mean, lulz is a pretty good motivator for Loki. But I think we aren't seeing a complete picture here.

"Humiliating Hel is not enough of a reason to do this, Loki. It's a pretty funny reason, sure, but not enough of one."

[Avianmosquito]

Existential question: do OotS gods choose how they are? Or are they manifestations of essences present in the OotSverse?

Can Loki, by effort of will, become trustworthy and sincere - not just short term for momentary advantage, but as his nature?
Can Hel, by similar effort, become a kind and gracious host to souls entrusted to her rather than a petty vengeful tyrant?
Mind-boggling thought: could Thor become sober?

If the gods get to choose how they are, then we can blame Thor, Hel, and Loki for their part in shaping dwarven culture into such a rigid system. But if they don't? If, despite their power to change the world, they cannot change themselves?

Then the dwarves' fate was sealed before the foundation of the world, because Loki, Thor, and Hel acted as their natures force them to.

I dare say the people here are not up to an argument about the existance of free will, which is what such will ultimately result in. Ask this somewhere else, where philosophical discussions are not actively discouraged.

[Jasdoif]

Existential question: do OotS gods choose how they are? Or are they manifestations of essences present in the OotSverse?What would the goblin and elven deities be the manifestations of?

[Keltest]

What would the goblin and elven deities be the manifestations of?

Knowledge and wrath.

[pendell]

I dare say the people here are not up to an argument about the existance of free will, which is what such will ultimately result in. Ask this somewhere else, where philosophical discussions are not actively discouraged.

I'm going to disagree; I think such a discussion, so long as it involves The OOTS gods within a fictional universe, will be encouraged. It's only when it turns to any real-world application that the hammer of mod will come crashing down.

Of course, part of the weakness of that is that OOTSworld is not our world, so we don't really know if there is such a thing as free will, at least for gods. We have to look for evidence in Rich's writing, and not use anything from our world or the real-world myths Rich shamelessly appropriated to make his whole fictional pantheon.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[KorvinStarmast]

Yah. The problem with only battle-deaths getting you out of Hel is that it should encourage the worshipers to be militarily aggressive, or to get jobs as mercenaries to fight in other people's wars. It's not a recipe for a stable society of miners and craftsmen. Good job the gods created all those goblins so that the dwarves would always have a pretext for 'honorable' death :smallamused:

The irony is that in dwarfish society Militarism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Militarism) -- No, that isn't what Rich explained in the detailed thread in 2015 (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=19820722&postcount=1). Militarism isn't what he described. I'll take this a step further and point out that "militarism" is being applied in an anachronistic manner; the term itself is a mid 19th century neologism, originally coined in French (https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#safe=strict&q=militarism+origin+of+term&spf=1500319017909).

mil·i·ta·rism /ˈmilədəˌrizəm/
noun derogatory noun: militarism
the belief or desire of a government or people that a country should maintain a strong military capability and be prepared to use it aggressively to defend or promote national interests.
mid 19th century: from French militarisme, from militaire (see military).
While Rich sprinkles in modern ideas into OoTS world, the default D&D settings tend to be closer to feudal, and high middle ages. Feudalism and militarism are not the same thing, and are based on a different mind set in terms of forming a political policy.

OoTS world, and default D&D worlds, are by their nature dangerous and filled with monsters, unlike our world. Goblins, dwarfs, and nations are forced by necessity to be able to fight or repel invasion. (See the whole arc on the Southern Continent and Tarqin ... whose empire of blood is perhaps laced with elements of militarism, maybe). I see it more like the Roman Empire with a little Machiavelli tossed in, but again it's a fictional creation.

[Avianmosquito]

I'm going to disagree; I think such a discussion, so long as it involves The OOTS gods within a fictional universe, will be encouraged. It's only when it turns to any real-world application that the hammer of mod will come crashing down.

Of course, part of the weakness of that is that OOTSworld is not our world, so we don't really know if there is such a thing as free will, at least for gods. We have to look for evidence in Rich's writing, and not use anything from our world or the real-world myths Rich shamelessly appropriated to make his whole fictional pantheon.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

You seem to have missed the thread on this, because multiple mods explicitly stated philosophy was not allowed when somebody actually asked. Gimme a minute, I'll find it.

[pendell]

You seem to have missed the thread on this, because multiple mods explicitly stated philosophy was not allowed when somebody actually asked. Gimme a minute, I'll find it.

Real-world philosophy? Or OOTSworld philosophy? As I said, "free will" in OOTS runs on entirely different rules than the real world, so whether free will exists in OOTS or not is an entirely different question from real-world philosophy.




No, that isn't what Rich explained in the detailed thread in 2015 (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=19820722&postcount=1). Militarism isn't what he described. I'll take this a step further and point out that "militarism" is being applied in an anachronistic manner; the term itself is a mid 19th century neologism, originally coined in French (https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#safe=strict&q=militarism+origin+of+term&spf=1500319017909).
While Rich sprinkles in modern ideas into OoTS world, the default D&D settings tend to be closer to feudal, and high middle ages. Feudalism and militarism are not the same thing, and are based on a different mind set in terms of forming a political policy.

OoTS world, and default D&D worlds, are by their nature dangerous and filled with monsters, unlike our world. Goblins, dwarfs, and nations are forced by necessity to be able to fight or repel invasion. (See the whole arc on the Southern Continent and Tarqin ... whose empire of blood is perhaps laced with elements of militarism, maybe). I see it more like the Roman Empire with a little Machiavelli tossed in, but again it's a fictional creation.


I agree that OOTS world is dangerous and filled with monsters -- but it was specifically made that way and it is impossible to take the world past its medieval roots into anything like a Pax Romana, not when goblins are explicitly pushed into barren lands precisely to force them to be raiders, and the dwarves are forced to fight if they want an afterlife, whether they want to or not.

The modern world has an idea of a world where war is the exception, not the rule. That isn't possible in OOTSverse, and it's because the gods specifically made it that way.

Which sort of implies that if anyone in this setting is to have a truly happy ending they are going to have to destroy the world and start over. Next time, hopefully, with a better set of gods.

Ironically, Redcloak and I see pretty close to eye-to-eye on that -- the difference is that 1) I don't believe holding gods to ransom, or violence in general, is the solution we need. 2) His solution to speciesm is a world without humans, and his idea of a "new set of gods" is The Dark One by himself. I can't go along with that. I'd rather giggles, banjo, and Belkar were the new pantheon.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Guus]

Indeed, I am not sure Hel was/is evil in the original mythology. There's often some flanderizing in popular culture.

THIS! Thank you. It's something that had always bothered me about depictions of Norse mythology. Hel is NEVER portrayed as evil.
She was given her own quiet realm because Hel was the only introverted god in Norse mythology. She was never evil, just quiet. And since vikings were pretty much the opposite of quiet they basically went: 'Why don't you go play over there... by yourself...'

And then everywhere you see a story with Hell in it she's basically the devil... who the F started that?

[Kish]

I don't think they'd be able to adapt to circumstances if they didn't have free will.

Most likely, they'd be locked in World 1.0 Snarl-creating mode permanently: Dragon can never accept dragons who don't breathe fire, Thor is unable to countenance trolls who aren't hardworking blacksmiths who forge magic weapons, even with the threat of destruction hanging over their heads. But as it is, they can compromise but prefer not to unless they have to. Make deals, and bend them as much as they can. It's all very human.

[Avianmosquito]

Real-world philosophy? Or OOTSworld philosophy? As I said, "free will" in OOTS runs on entirely different rules than the real world, so whether free will exists in OOTS or not is an entirely different question from real-world philosophy.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Couldn't wait for me to find the thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?497985-Philosophical-Discussion-on-the-forums&highlight=Philosophical), could you? The conclusion was, "If it's philosophical, religion and politics are inevitable, so don't.". The Giant spoke personally on this one, and while his wording was as ambiguous and open to arbitrary interpretation (and therefore to arbitrary enforcement) as ever, he is actively discouraging any discussion deeper than "I think blue and yellow look nice together.".

[pendell]

Couldn't wait for me to find the thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?497985-Philosophical-Discussion-on-the-forums&highlight=Philosophical), could you? The conclusion was, "If it's philosophical, religion and politics are inevitable, so don't.". The Giant spoke personally on this one, and while his wording was as ambiguous and open to arbitrary interpretation (and therefore to arbitrary enforcement) as ever, he is actively discouraging any discussion deeper than "I think blue and yellow look nice together.".

Thank you for pulling up thread. I'm going to take the Giant's direct quote here:



Yes, you should specifically avoid both of those topics.

As a general rule, if the philosophy you wish to discuss deals with topics that religious and/or political leaders regularly discuss, you should steer clear. Philosophical issues that don't touch on any aspect of religion or politics—like, say, symbolic or linguistic philosophy, or aesthetics—would probably be fine.


Bolding mine.

So the intent of Rich's ruling is to prevent discussion of real-world politics and religion. Because of this, he doesn't want discussion on Kant, or whether Kierkegaard knew what he was talking about, or whether the Marxist view of man as an economic creature is truly the best model of human behavior. All these kinds of questions are out of bounds.

He does not rule out all real-world philosophy , and I think a question that is specific to OOTSworld without real-world implications -- such as "Do the gods in OOTSworld have free will?" -- will still pass muster.

I will nonetheless report this post myself, to see if the mods want to weigh in and render a more definitive ruling.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[PBlades]

Surprising. The strip seems to confirm that Thor is not complicit on this deal, being drunk as he is. The question is: What does Loki gets out of it, and has the cons outweigh the pros for him now?

[Shining Wrath]

You seem to have missed the thread on this, because multiple mods explicitly stated philosophy was not allowed when somebody actually asked. Gimme a minute, I'll find it.

I very much doubt you will find that debating the nature of the gods of the strip, and / or the Snarl, is forbidden. For example, a suggestion as to the nature of the Monster in the Darkness is that he's some sort of Abomination; a disowned, unwanted child of the gods. That's from the 3rd edition rules. If we're forbidden to discuss the nature of the gods, then I'd think a lot of posts over there would have been flagged.

[Avianmosquito]

I very much doubt you will find that debating the nature of the gods of the strip, and / or the Snarl, is forbidden. For example, a suggestion as to the nature of the Monster in the Darkness is that he's some sort of Abomination; a disowned, unwanted child of the gods. That's from the 3rd edition rules. If we're forbidden to discuss the nature of the gods, then I'd think a lot of posts over there would have been flagged.

No, but he's now talking free will, and that will instantly result in a discussion on the inherent silliness of such a concept. Attempts to try and separate in-universe and real-world philosophy are easily penetrated and end poorly. (http://www.sandraandwoo.com/gaia/2015/04/21/breaking-all-barriers-063/)

[Basement Cat]

I wonder if the author has received any complains at all for abusing Norse mythology.
Given what Marvel Comics has done to Norse mythology I expect he's fine.

And now we know about the bet. But one thing I'm curious about is how do they enforce a 'bet'?

[Random Sanity]

I wonder if the author has received any complains at all for abusing Norse mythology.

Meh - Rich has absolutely nothing on Marvel in that area.

[ManuelSacha]

Thrym, you don't need a "punny name".
You are the god of frost giants.
You have a limitless amount of cold puns to make!
Has Arnold Schwarzenegger taught us nothing?

[Jaxzan Proditor]

I'm getting the feeling that Hel is not the birhgtest bulb in the Pantheon. I mean, I guess everyone looks a bit slow next to Loki, but she really seems to miss a lot of things.

It is interesting that this bet was almost entirely at the behest of Loki. I have to wonder what his end game in all this is. Also, I'm glad to know I was right that we'd be seeing more background.

I hope to see plenty more hellosh puns in the strips to come.

[Cedar]

I imagine that, if a Dwarf were to abandon both the Northern Gods and the Dwarven concept of Honor, he may no longer be subject to it. Then again, someone like Hilgya, who rejects the Dwarven concept of honor but, crucially, also still worships a Northern God, would probably still be in for an unpleasant surprise.

Maybe Hilgya could still end up outside of Hell's grasp. The concept of 'Honour' is not necessarily exactly the same as the concept of 'Good'. If Hilgya died on a mission from her god as their cleric, that might count as a 'honourable death'.

The ideas about 'honourable' behaviour has changed all the time in history (just take a look at the wildly different ethics of the Iliad and Odyssey) after all.

[Jasdoif]

I'm getting the feeling that Hel is not the birhgtest bulb in the Pantheon. I mean, I guess everyone looks a bit slow next to Loki, but she really seems to miss a lot of things.Wouldn't Sunna be the brightest? :smalltongue:

[Avianmosquito]

Wouldn't Sunna be the brightest? :smalltongue:

https://media.giphy.com/media/37Ez5CZ8P0jSM/giphy.gif

We need a slow clap emoji.

[Jaxzan Proditor]

Wouldn't Sunna be the brightest? :smalltongue:

I guess that was kind of the glaringly obvious rejoinder, wasn't it?

[Psyren]

And I think if anything, my second favorite deity (https://youtu.be/Q5uvRd4RWs4)might lean towards chaos. Though my actual favorite (https://youtu.be/6LmGcc9SDAw)is NG, for sure.

I'd say Odin is probably TN if not LN. Certainly his reason for voting No, though obscure, did not seem to be as rooted in compassion or justice as that of the other good gods.

[Aquillion]

For some reason, I get the idea that Loki was doing this to wind up Thor, and Thor going ahead and informing the dwarves of how this all works was more or less a byproduct of the bet. I am not seeing why Loki would screw over his daughter like that. Then again, as a Trickster style of God, he is a bit chaotic ...

Decent comic strip, and this comic folds in nicely with the comment Giant made a few years back about "life isn't fair, dwarves have a society with rigid rules ..." (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=19828724&postcount=114).

And as a follow up (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=19828803&postcount=123) on dwarves building that social structure for *reasons*.Loki actually seems relatively decent from everything we've seen of him to date, or at least sane. He was the one presenting the argument against destroying the world (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0998.html), for instance.

(Also, it occurs to me that this probably made Loki the default god for evil-aligned dwarven priests, giving him many more clerics than he would have otherwise and, therefore, much more influence.)

[Jasdoif]

I guess that was kind of the glaringly obvious rejoinder, wasn't it?The glaringly obvious one, sure. Highlights the prominence of the flares, that sort of thing.

If that's too spotty....There's also "When Hel accepted the bet she had never had to do anything (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1082.html), so why would she think not doing anything was a problem; and just now, she's turned the coincidental failures of three high-level clerics from three different pantheons into a shot at reversing the status quo of the last millennium with very little lead time. Maybe she's learned to apply herself?"

But that doesn't look quite as stellar at first glance :smalltongue:

[pendell]

Maybe Hilgya could still end up outside of Hell's grasp. The concept of 'Honour' is not necessarily exactly the same as the concept of 'Good'. If Hilgya died on a mission from her god as their cleric, that might count as a 'honourable death'.


While the Giant has not ruled on this, I suspect that a cleric pledged to a god belongs to that god after death. So Hilgya won't go to Hel -- though her afterlife, being CE, will probably not be notably more comfortable.

And yes, in retrospect the brightest bulb in the pantheon was ... blindingly obvious.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Psyren]

(Also, it occurs to me that this probably made Loki the default god for evil-aligned dwarven priests, giving him many more clerics than he would have otherwise and, therefore, much more influence.)

That's also a good point. With Hel out of the picture where living evil dwarven clerics are concerned, I can't think of anyone in the pantheon who'd benefit more than he would. Doing so would then give him the influence needed to branch outside of being a racial deity, and set up shop in more diverse locales like Greysky that Hel would now have no hope of breaking into.

[Shoelessgdowar]

And there we have the reason why dwarves get such a raw deal: Loki.

Thanks, Giant!


Seriously, half of Norse mythology is people not realizing you should never make a bet with Loki


Skrymir would disagree, as he won all the bets... Of course, perhaps that is because his other name is Utgard-LOKI... so Outlands Loki beat Asgard Loki.

[Jasdoif]

While the Giant has not ruled on this, I suspect that a cleric pledged to a god belongs to that god after death.I'm rather certain that doesn't apply to dwarves who haven't died honorable deaths. I know there's an example referring to this somewhere...ah yes.


Hel does not have rightful dominion over Durkon's soul as part of her normal assignment of dishonored souls, however, because Durkon did in fact die in battle.

[Avianmosquito]

Skrymir would disagree, as he won all the bets... Of course, perhaps that is because his other name is Utgard-LOKI... so Outlands Loki beat Asgard Loki.

I'm just going to sit back and see if anything happens to this post.

[pendell]

I'm rather certain that doesn't apply to dwarves who haven't died honorable deaths. I know there's an example referring to this somewhere...ah yes.

In this particular case, it is because Durkon was vampirized. If he had not been vampirized, he would have died honorably and gone to Valhalla.

Maybe Hilgya also has to die "honorably", which just shows how messed up the rules were, if managing to get killed at the last second makes up for a lifetime of betrayal and murder.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[KorvinStarmast]

Also, it occurs to me that this probably made Loki the default god for evil-aligned dwarven priests, giving him many more clerics than he would have otherwise and, therefore, much more influence. Good call. He was working the con on Hel to get her clerics to serve him. I'll go with that.

[aurilee]

I like how taken aback Hel is that she got tricked by Loki...the trickster god. It's in his title. C'mon now.

[runeghost]

Aand some plot clarification.

Inquiring minds want to know: What happened to Hel's legs?

Respectfully,

Brian P.

While I certainly don't have any special knowledge, my guess is that her lower half is "ghost", maintaining a sort-of parallel to Norse myth.

[Keltest]

In this particular case, it is because Durkon was vampirized. If he had not been vampirized, he would have died honorably and gone to Valhalla.

Maybe Hilgya also has to die "honorably", which just shows how messed up the rules were, if managing to get killed at the last second makes up for a lifetime of betrayal and murder.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Given that betrayal and murder is her literal job, it strikes me that getting killed as a result of her betrayal and murdering would count as honorable for her much in the way getting assassinated counts as honorable for that politician earlier.

[Shoelessgdowar]

That may be a plot twist coming - the moment when Loki points out to Hel that yes, there is a loophole, and the dwarves are marching through it to Thor's domain. In perfect formation and step, singing doleful dirges, but marching through nonetheless, because Dwarves.

The simplest loophole is already there... WAR WITH YOUR ENEMIES. Ie. Politicians begin battling in the arena you are best suited for (Big Debate, with lots of yelling), everyone attack the trees, babies hit the othe babis with your rattle hammers, Dwarf Nerds get into a D&D encounter and argue with your DM, etc.

If they are in conflict when the world ends, they die honorably in battle.


It's amazing that actually works, but that explains their fear of trees.

The question is, who gets the Trees' souls.


While I certainly don't have any special knowledge, my guess is that her lower half is "ghost", maintaining a sort-of parallel to Norse myth.

Hel is half-dead/half-living, dead half is hideous while living half is hauntingly beautiful, traditionally that is right half alive (right 5 letter word, alive 5 letter word) while left half is dead (left 4 letter word, dead 4 letter word)(how I remember which is which), but Rich and other Authors are free to represent their version however they like (Brathalla had top half a cute goth teen, bottom half a rotting zombie... Someone on here suggested front alive back ghostly) whatever works for you, as she does appear to be bottom half or back half ghost here.


I'm just going to sit back and see if anything happens to this post.

What could happen? Is Utgard a bad word?

[factotum]

I like how taken aback Hel is that she got tricked by Loki...the trickster god. It's in his title. C'mon now.

He's also her father, maybe she didn't believe he would trick her?

[The Pilgrim]

"I made a deal with the God of Mischief. What could go wrong?"

Also, Durkon's speech to Hylgia back to DCF now makes a lot of sense. Being a dwarf is all about doing your duty, because otherwise Hel gets your soul for all Eternity.

[Tiltowait]

Inquiring minds want to know: What happened to Hel's legs?
She's actually a snakefolk - and she's studied a variety of exotic holding techniques. Undignified, to be sure, but you will not escape.

[Avianmosquito]

What could happen? Is Utgard a bad word?

No, but you're about the hundreth person talking about actual Norse myth outside the comic, and even though people do that all the time, according to Roland st Jude apparently counts it as real-world religion. So I'm just curious if that ruling has changed since August 13th, 2014, or if there's some other reason.

[DaggerPen]

I think the scenario's rather disproportionate for "poor understanding of the concept of investment", though.

Agreed, but it's hard to separate it as a consequence of "poor understanding of the concept of investment" from a consequence of "actively tortures and abuses the souls in her domain and then wonders why the dwarves go to such length to avoid her realm." To wit-


Indeed. To dwarves, only death in battle is honourable (which is a bit stupid when you think about it) and Hel could advertise her afterlive as being for pacifists. No one forces her to be evil. Indeed, I am not sure Hel was/is evil in the original mythology. There's often some flanderizing in popular culture.


THIS! Thank you. It's something that had always bothered me about depictions of Norse mythology. Hel is NEVER portrayed as evil.
She was given her own quiet realm because Hel was the only introverted god in Norse mythology. She was never evil, just quiet. And since vikings were pretty much the opposite of quiet they basically went: 'Why don't you go play over there... by yourself...'

And then everywhere you see a story with Hell in it she's basically the devil... who the F started that?

If Hel was just a quiet goddess who got screwed over and made a nice little afterlife with what she could but still only got scraps because everyone wanted the showy Valhalla afterlife, I would have sympathy for her. As is, I've got a bit of pity, but that's it.


Something like Loki going "OK guys, this was funny for a few centuries, but I think we're all tired of all this arguing over so many souls that only ever seem to go to Thor or Hel; can we all agree to nullify their wager now?" could've solved a lot of problems for everyone.

Honestly it surprises me that he hasn't tried it, too. My thoughts are either:


He is getting something out of it.
He did try it but Thor refused to nullify it because he's getting a bunch more souls than he would otherwise (or Hel refused for some infathomable reason)
The prize for winning is really really good
Something else I didn't think of




I like how taken aback Hel is that she got tricked by Loki...the trickster god. It's in his title. C'mon now.

Who did she think he was, the bringer of pestilence? (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0501.html)

(Oh my god that comic's even funnier now that we know Hel is the Norse Bringer of Pestilence, but I digress-)

That having been said-


He's also her father, maybe she didn't believe he would trick her?

It strikes me as reasonably likely that she thought Loki was trying to screw over Thor and didn't think it through.

[B. Dandelion]

It strikes me as reasonably likely that she thought Loki was trying to screw over Thor and didn't think it through.

Yeah, this, I think.

Tricking somebody into thinking you're going to work with them to screw somebody else over is often a very effective method for conning people, or so I hear. It's a bit hard to muster up too much sympathy for someone who falls prey to such a trick, but when it's your dad, I could see why Hel might be feeling betrayed.

[Keltest]

Yeah, this, I think.

Tricking somebody into thinking you're going to work with them to screw somebody else over is often a very effective method for conning people, or so I hear. It's a bit hard to muster up too much sympathy for someone who falls prey to such a trick, but when it's your dad, I could see why Hel might be feeling betrayed.

We are, of course, assuming it actually was a trick, and that Thor didn't later come around to Loki and throttle him until he promised to help get Thor the upper hand.

[The MunchKING]

For some reason, I get the idea that Loki was doing this to wind up Thor, and Thor going ahead and informing the dwarves of how this all works was more or less a byproduct of the bet. I am not seeing why Loki would screw over his daughter like that. Then again, as a Trickster style of God, he is a bit chaotic ...


I wonder if her perhaps didn't mean for it to screw her over quite as much as it did. Like he was trying to make a point and get her to think a bit more about her life choices, but then she ended up getting next to nothing and being banned from everything the other Gods do because she didn't have any Clerics. Granted I'm judging that on his one line when she was loud and angry at him, so maybe he was just trying to backpedal to keep her from trying to smack him. But I wonder if he knew how hard it would be to get undead Clerics going when he set up the bet.



So Loki played a mean trick on his daughter. I wonder why? Why on earth would Loki want Thor to gain souls while Hel lost them?

Other than being tricksy by nature. We've seen recently that ascribing deep thoughts to the OotSverse gods is a mistake; it may be that Loki's motivations went no deeper than "Lulz it's 2 days past the full moon and I haven't outsmarted my daughter in several days so ... ah, yes!".

Really? I thought they were recently proving they were much smarter when they cared then in past strips when they were mostly goofing off.


I suppose the gods have their set relationships, but if I were an OOTS norse deity, and a god named Loki showed up to offer me a tantalizing bargain, I'd reject it on principle.

The problem is telling whetehr he's trying to screw you with the deal, or your just a patsy while he screws someone else, and you would walk away with the goods if you took him up on it.


(Emphasis mine.)
Clerics go to their God's personal domain after death. So a Cleric of Thor, even one who was non-CG, would go to Thor's domain, presumably in Valhalla. (Note that, in Planescape, Valhalla is actually the Plane of CN with CG Tendencies, but that's a whole other matter.) Either way, presumably Loki's Clerics to go to hs personal domain after death, whatever their alignments in life were, and so on.

Well while the rules allow some leeway, you would also assume most Clerics would have the same Alignment as their God, so their God's home plane would probably be their alignment plane.


On the other hand, honestly, if she didn't make her afterlife so hellishly (pardon) unpleasant, she wouldn't be in this mess. Many wouldn't try so hard to die with honor if hers was the "free pizza and beer for everyone regardless of alignment" afterlife.

It actually seems quite nice compared to the actual Norse concept of Helhiem. She was into torturing dudes for eternity in nasty ways in that one. None of this "empty cavern and you have to clean my stone throne" stuff.

[SaintRidley]

Well, Hel sure looks really stupid here.

[eilandesq]

Something just occurred to me about Thor's personality and its effect on OotS dwarven religion.

The only way what we've seen so far is consistent with the revelation of the terms of the bet is that whatever Thor *honestly believes* to be an honorable death is by the terms of the bet an honorable death. No reasonably just arbiter would rule in favor of Thor in at least of a couple of the situations we've seen, and yet the implication is that he prevailed. Thor is, at least by divine standards, a drunken buffoon who believes some really ridiculous things, and that fact has apparently saved countless dwarves from Hel's clutches who probably would have been doomed if the standard had been, say, Heimdall's or Tyr's sense of what was honorable. Knowing that, why *wouldn't* dwarves adore Thor for his excessive drinking and other foolish behavior? His flaws are their ticket to the afterlife! :smallcool:

[Jasdoif]

Well, Hel sure looks really stupid here.You mean with the different hair and dress? Maybe that was all the rage with godlings back when the world broke.

[dtilque]

Something like Loki going "OK guys, this was funny for a few centuries, but I think we're all tired of all this arguing over so many souls that only ever seem to go to Thor or Hel; can we all agree to nullify their wager now?" could've solved a lot of problems for everyone.

Probably can't. I'm going to guess that the bet is woven into the fabric of Reality. After all, they were making World 2.0 at the time. If so, they can't undo without undoing the world.

[Alex Warlorn]

Why is LOKI, the god of jackasses and jerks, the god who seems to always be the voice of sanity among the pantheons?

[Aquillion]

Why is LOKI, the god of jackasses and jerks, the god who seems to always be the voice of sanity among the pantheons?Because he's clever enough to realize that the world is where he keeps all his stuff and that he doesn't really benefit from other people constantly knocking it over or causing pointless problems in it.

Also, given that he seems at least a little close to Thor and Odin, I wouldn't be surprised if they were a good influence on him at times, even if he's reluctant to admit it (just like he's been a bad influence on them.)

[Snails]

Why is LOKI, the god of jackasses and jerks, the god who seems to always be the voice of sanity among the pantheons?

He is sanity itself...up until the moment you trust him and he totally screws you over for the lulz.

My personal interpretation is that every obviously Good god voted against destroying the world and every obviously Evil god voted for destruction. Since that did not decide the issue what is left is the Neutralish gods. What will sway them? Probably not arguments about Good & Evil is my guess.

Loki is a pretty silver-tongued choice to promote to the task of making your case, assuming you believe he is actually with you, of course. If you cannot get Loki on your side, then picking a Lawful spokesmen is the surest way to pick up the votes that are not already in Loki's pocket.

I do not recognize that there are other possible interpretations of how the gods voted. I happen to strongly believe it is simply not The Giant's style to want to explore how a Good god explains away blowing up a planet full of people, on purpose. It is not necessarily that The Giant or some other author couldn't tell that tale in an interesting way, only it is not within the moral palette of the tale The Giant intends to tell here.

[SilverCacaobean]

Knowing that, why *wouldn't* dwarves adore Thor for his excessive drinking and other foolish behavior? His flaws are their ticket to the afterlife! :smallcool:

Because Heimdall or Tyr wouldn't have been drunk enough to agree to this nonsense in the first place. :smalltongue:

[ORione]

He is sanity itself...up until the moment you trust him and he totally screws you over for the lulz.

My personal interpretation is that every obviously Good god voted against destroying the world and every obviously Evil god voted for destruction. Since that did not decide the issue what is left is the Neutralish gods. What will sway them? Probably not arguments about Good & Evil is my guess.

Loki is a pretty silver-tongued choice to promote to the task of making your case, assuming you believe he is actually with you, of course. If you cannot get Loki on your side, then picking a Lawful spokesmen is the surest way to pick up the votes that are not already in Loki's pocket.

I do not recognize that there are other possible interpretations of how the gods voted. I happen to strongly believe it is simply not The Giant's style to want to explore how a Good god explains away blowing up a planet full of people, on purpose. It is not necessarily that The Giant or some other author couldn't tell that tale in an interesting way, only it is not within the moral palette of the tale The Giant intends to tell here.

I'm pretty sure the Giant picked Heimdall and Loki in particular to give their statements to illustrate why a Good deity might choose to destroy the world, and why an Evil deity might choose to let it continue. Heimdall wants to protect everyone's souls, which is a Good motivation. The issue isn't split on the Good/Evil line.

Edit: Roy points out that there are Evil people who don't want to destroy the world. (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1005.html)

[Kish]

Indeed, I don't think Rich is exploring how a Good deity explains blowing away a planet full of people, as much as he's simply...not treating Good for a god as anything remotely recognizable as Good to mortals. In the most recent strip we see three deities--two evil, one good (though drunk)--who don't think twice about betting with the eternal afterlives of mortal souls.

In other words: There's no exploration. There's just all the gods being incredibly callous no matter what the alignment on their character sheets. That's the way it is.

[Manty5]

In other words: There's no exploration. There's just all the gods being incredibly callous no matter what the alignment on their character sheets. That's the way it is.

There's a great deal of difference (in the OOTS universe) between being callous with people's lives and being callous with their souls.

Since Gods don't live mortal lives, they may not fully grok just how important a life is, since from their perspective death just brings the soul home to them. Happens all the time. Nothing to get excited about. they might say. Certainly the possibility of the unmaking of souls would seem the greater danger from a god's perspective.

Heck, Loki's defense of the status quo might be primarily motivated on how his tricks will be undone when the world is, not because he values lives.

[factotum]

Because he's clever enough to realize that the world is where he keeps all his stuff

Except he doesn't keep his stuff in the world? He's a God, his home is in the Outer Planes. He's already survived the destruction of one world by the Snarl (if we believe the story told by Shojo).

[Xaphan]

Couldn't wait for me to find the thread, could you? The conclusion was, "If it's philosophical, religion and politics are inevitable, so don't.". The Giant spoke personally on this one, and while his wording was as ambiguous and open to arbitrary interpretation (and therefore to arbitrary enforcement) as ever, he is actively discouraging any discussion deeper than "I think blue and yellow look nice together.".

Given that I have something of a personal stake in this, aesthetic philosophy essentially never deals with whether a particular thing is actually beautiful or not. Even when it does, it goes a lot deeper than a personal preference for particular colours. Or, indeed, a personal preference for anything else one might care to name.
(Also, whilst I don't want to preempt any mod decisions, I want to note that I have personally had several detailed metaphysical discussions about free will which didn't touch on religion or politics, even without talking about a different world).

[Ruck]

Note that you can "worship Thor" (as Cole believes that most dwarves do) without him actually being your patron. The Mechane's resident "gods-appeaser" (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0952.html) does this.

How did you conclude from this strip that the man making the offerings worships Thor? Is there something I missed, or are you perhaps using a different definition of worship than I'm thinking of here?


In this particular case, it is because Durkon was vampirized. If he had not been vampirized, he would have died honorably and gone to Valhalla.

Maybe Hilgya also has to die "honorably", which just shows how messed up the rules were, if managing to get killed at the last second makes up for a lifetime of betrayal and murder.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

I don't think it "makes up" for anything-- such a person would clearly go to a CE afterlife; it just wouldn't be Hel's. Dying with honor just sends you to the standard plane you deserve, as opposed to going to Hel.

[Edric O]

If you're Loki's daughter and still haven't figured out that it's never a good idea to take any bet suggested by dad... then you're gonna have a Hel of a hard time.

[Avianmosquito]

If you're Loki's daughter and still haven't figured out that it's never a good idea to take any bet suggested by dad... then you're gonna have a Hel of a hard time.

https://media.giphy.com/media/37Ez5CZ8P0jSM/giphy.gif

10/10 would slow clap again.

[Nephrahim]

I do wonder what Loki's game in all this was. Maybe I'm just a sucker like Hel was but it seemed sincere when they were voting when he was telling Hel that excluding her "Wasn't the point of the bet."

Though if it is, it makes a TON of sense. In fact, it explains why he was leading the opposition in the first place. He knew exactly what would happen to the dwarf souls, but didn't want to tell the others because then they might try to change the "Wager" which would greatly reduce his influence. Instead he prefers to just keep the Status Quo.

[Mordaedil]

For more Norse Mythos if anyone is interested, I recommend checking out Valhalla Comics, they take some liberties with the surviving myths, but they do a pretty stellar job bringing them on the paper and they are all pretty entertaining to read (imo).

Made by some danish comic artists way back in the day, but it features nudity if that is something that bothers anyone. And uh, of course various dastardly deeds that are more acceptable in Denmark than it'd be in America.

PS: It features Odin pretending to be a sleuthing detective in a noir story trying to solve a murder case in Valhalla.

[Kardwill]

While the Giant has not ruled on this, I suspect that a cleric pledged to a god belongs to that god after death. So Hilgya won't go to Hel -- though her afterlife, being CE, will probably not be notably more comfortable.


If clerics go to their god's side rather than in the "generic alignment sorting place" (which sound kinda likely), I don't see why an evil god would be into punishing his followers for being evil, though. Hel can afford it because basically, the people getting to her domain are innocent bystanders that she despises and not "her people". But Loki? The souls getting to his domain are the people who devoted their life to him, his most faithful servants. OK, the domain of the "chaotic evil tricster god of Fire and broken promises" might be a dangerous, capricious and ruthless place, sure. But the souls getting there are ruthless, capricious and dangerous people, so they may not mind that much.
For Hel, those servants are the death giants and undead spirits like Greg, and none of the ones we saw looks particularly terrified at the prospect of staying/returning in hell.


Unless they somehow pissed off the boss. Then, eternity in said pissed-off-boss domain is probably pretty personal and hellish (more so than Hel who tyranize the dwarven souls for general principle, but mostly don't care since they are beneath her). The reaction of the frost giants clerics were telling : They were okay with the idea of dying in combat and getting dragged into Thrimm's hell, but they were terrified at the idea of their god getting its claws on them after they ****ed up or betrayed him.

[Manty5]

I don't see why an evil god would be into punishing his followers for being evil, though.

Same reason the escalator on the mountain of enlightenment was removed: The plane is full of souls who expect a certain fate.

Remember, belief maintains the god's realm, and they're on the elemental plane, now. they're moulding to it by virtue of being in spirit form (which doesn't explain Eugene, I know. But he hasn't entered the plane proper yet).

So just as LG souls struggle up the mountain for the level of enlightenment they're comfortable with, LE souls struggle in the hierarchy for power and CE souls struggle to subjugate and survive. It's what they did in life, it's what they were led to believe awaited them in death, and they reinforce it themselves once they get there because will shapes the planes.

Thanks, Will! Really great job you did there!

[elros]

So far, there are two gods that have been "screwed" by the way things are:
1) Hel, who is denied clerics because of the bet arranged by Loki (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1083.html),
2) The Dark One (http://oots.wikia.com/wiki/Dark_One), who learned that "the whole of Goblin-kind was created for the sole purpose of providing Clerics with low-level threats to aid in their level progression".

Both want to redo the world because they have been wronged. So why wouldn't they want to turn the tables on the people who wronged them?

[Kardwill]

So far, there are two gods that have been "screwed" by the way things are:
1) Hel, who is denied clerics because of the bet arranged by Loki (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1083.html),
2) The Dark One (http://oots.wikia.com/wiki/Dark_One), who learned that "the whole of Goblin-kind was created for the sole purpose of providing Clerics with low-level threats to aid in their level progression".

Both want to redo the world because they have been wronged. So why wouldn't they want to turn the tables on the people who wronged them?

I'd say the dwarves and goblins have been screwed massively more than their gods, though.
Frankly, if they knew the true nature of the bet, I'd expect the dwarves to try to rip their panthéon apart (or at least their temples) in a fit of drunken berserk rage. I mean, untold number of innocent (sick children, people caught in domestic accidents, disabled people...) have been diverted from their rightful afterlife and sent to Hel because Hel was greedy, Loki felt clever, and Thor was too drunk to understand the wager? And they have to pay the price...
Unfair doesn't even begin to describe it.

[JumboWheat01]

I've played enough games / read enough books / watched enough anime to know that glowing eyes is always bad and we should either kill her with (divine) fire or run for the nearest portal to another world.

[Psyren]

How did you conclude from this strip that the man making the offerings worships Thor? Is there something I missed, or are you perhaps using a different definition of worship than I'm thinking of here?

I'm using the definition that Hel used. People would "praise her name" (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1082.html) in World 1.0 to stave off her wrath, much like the Mechane's storm guy made offerings to Odad for the same reason. I doubt the 1.0 mortals particularly revered her either, but it's common for evil gods to consider that kind of fearful CYA activity to be "worship" too, and gain power from it. See also Umberlee and Beshaba from Forgotten Realms - most common folk can't stand them, but will say a quick prayer to make sure they look the other way anyway.

[drazen]

I'd say the dwarves and goblins have been screwed massively more than their gods, though.
Frankly, if they knew the true nature of the bet, I'd expect the dwarves to try to rip their panthéon apart (or at least their temples) in a fit of drunken berserk rage. I mean, untold number of innocent (sick children, people caught in domestic accidents, disabled people...) have been diverted from their rightful afterlife and sent to Hel because Hel was greedy, Loki felt clever, and Thor was too drunk to understand the wager? And they have to pay the price...
Unfair doesn't even begin to describe it.

I'm still trying to figure out why dying of illness is dishonorable. It's not like a dwarf who dies of illness has acted dishonorably, or is somehow unworthy of respect.

Heck, societies based on honor seem to be quite fungible things (http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Honor). It is a really screwy system where a Lawful Good dwarf who honors his family commitments but dies of sphinx pox goes straight to Hel, while a Chaotic Neutral dwarf bard can be a jerk to his friends and family for years, but die charging at a conifer and get into a better afterlife.

[Doug Lampert]

I'm still trying to figure out why dying of illness is dishonorable. It's not like a dwarf who dies of illness has acted dishonorably, or is somehow unworthy of respect.

Heck, societies based on honor seem to be quite fungible things (http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Honor). It is a really screwy system where a Lawful Good dwarf who honors his family commitments but dies of sphinx pox goes straight to Hel, while a Chaotic Neutral dwarf bard can be a jerk to his friends and family for years, but die charging at a conifer and get into a better afterlife.Dis- means not. Honorable means "bringing or worthy of honor".

Dying of illness is not, in and of itself, an honorable act. Modern English tends to use dishonorable to mean "actively showing a lack of honor", but in fact Hel is the default, a death must be actively honorable to avoid her. It is sufficient for the manner of death to meet the "not bringing or worthy of honor" idea of dishonorable for her to get the soul.

You need to have an ACTIVELY honorable death to avoid her.

As for the CN dwarf who dies fighting a conifer and gets a better after life than the LG who dies of disease, yes, this is an UNFAIR system. Rich has TOLD us that it's unfair! This is not intended to show a fair or reasonable mechanism for determining the fate of the souls of the dead. It is intended to show an unfair and unreasonable system.

[hroþila]

We should not lose sight of the fact that "pick a fight with a conifer to die with honour" is absurdly funny, and that this comic is still comedy. If you try to analyze such a setting according to real life, of course it's going to break down eventually.

[ackmondual]

I am pretty sure he said he didn't care.
Plus, it wouldn't stop there. I'm sure historians would also argue how ninjas are portrayed, for one.

[woweedd]

Indeed, I don't think Rich is exploring how a Good deity explains blowing away a planet full of people, as much as he's simply...not treating Good for a god as anything remotely recognizable as Good to mortals. In the most recent strip we see three deities--two evil, one good (though drunk)--who don't think twice about betting with the eternal afterlives of mortal souls.

In other words: There's no exploration. There's just all the gods being incredibly callous no matter what the alignment on their character sheets. That's the way it is.
Rich has made certain comment implying that the Gods view us the same way we view animals. Some are kind to us, others aren't, but they all eat us in the end. Keep in mind that Rich, in the real world, is a Vegetarian, so there's probably a message in that.

[factotum]

Same reason the escalator on the mountain of enlightenment was removed: The plane is full of souls who expect a certain fate.

The problem is, most Evil people clearly DON'T expect the whole "eternal punishment" fate, or else don't care about it, because otherwise they'd probably stop being Evil. That goes double, no, triple, for the clerics of evil Gods--why on earth would they provide a lifetime of service to their deity in exchange for being first on the toasting forks when they die?

This, of course, is one of the problems with trying to make the D&D cosmology work in a world where one-third of the population are Evil...

[Quibblicious]

Plus, it wouldn't stop there. I'm sure historians would also argue how ninjas are portrayed, for one.

I was going to comment on the ninjas but I didn't see it coming...

Q

[Keltest]

Historically, D&D evil afterlives aren't deliberately punitive, its just naturally unpleasant as a result of being populated by nothing but evil people who have no reason to hold back.

[woweedd]

Historically, D&D evil afterlives aren't deliberately punitive, its just naturally unpleasant as a result of being populated by nothing but evil people who have no reason to hold back.
Indeed. Evil people, by nature, don't tend to play well together. To quote the strip itself:
Lee: Don't be silly, why would we want the lich to win?
Qarr: Because we're evil?
Cedrik: And that makes us all one big happy family? Screw that!

[Shining Wrath]

Historically, D&D evil afterlives aren't deliberately punitive, its just naturally unpleasant as a result of being populated by nothing but evil people who have no reason to hold back.

"People" defined broadly, of course. A Balor makes for a bad neighbor. By at least some versions of the game, evil souls start life at the lowest ranks of fiend and work their way up gradually to big bads. A possible incentive for an evil person to make a deal with a devil / demon is to try to bargain to start higher up the food chain (in the case of demons, quite literally).

Of course, the chicken and egg question of how this system came into being, at whose behest, has not been definitively answered.

[Doug Lampert]

The problem is, most Evil people clearly DON'T expect the whole "eternal punishment" fate, or else don't care about it, because otherwise they'd probably stop being Evil. That goes double, no, triple, for the clerics of evil Gods--why on earth would they provide a lifetime of service to their deity in exchange for being first on the toasting forks when they die?

This, of course, is one of the problems with trying to make the D&D cosmology work in a world where one-third of the population are Evil...

Presumably Evil people expect to easily end up at the top of the food chain. They're cleverer/stronger/better manipulators/trickier/whatever than everyone else after all.

The clerics expect their patron to care for them in an otherwise horrible place, because the patrons must do so.... They wouldn't maintain that membership while alive in one of the most powerful classes in the universe was sufficient reward and that it's your own fault for dying would they?

Consider how many readers of this strip have asked if Belkar will take over then abyss when he dies. No, most likely he gets to be a dretch, he expects a universe where most people are the chew-toys of the more powerful, and that's what he'll get. And just like most of the billions of people there, he'll go there expecting to rather easily manage to be one of the top dogs....

Shame about that.

As others have said, even if the only "punishment" is being surrounded entirely by other evil people, that's likely to be sufficient. Society works in spite of that bottom third, not because of it. Now you're in a place without the rest of the population to put up with your crap and still make things work.

[drazen]

Dis- means not. Honorable means "bringing or worthy of honor".

Dying of illness is not, in and of itself, an honorable act. Modern English tends to use dishonorable to mean "actively showing a lack of honor", but in fact Hel is the default, a death must be actively honorable to avoid her. It is sufficient for the manner of death to meet the "not bringing or worthy of honor" idea of dishonorable for her to get the soul.

You need to have an ACTIVELY honorable death to avoid her.


Loki says the dwarves must "die with honor." It is obviously entirely possible to die "with honor" without being actively honorable when you die. If you have conducted yourself honorably, then you die with that honor. It doesn't go away because you fall ill.

It seems to in this comic, but why that is so makes no sense. It's a screwy definition of honor.

[Ruck]

Hmm, it just occurred to me that this strip paints the exchange from #1000 in a new light. Hel is almost certainly right that Loki's intent was to keep Hel out of power and excluded (or at best, that that was one of several easily foreseeable consequences he was fine with).

[Quibblicious]

"I'm wasting away without worship!"

I think I dated her for a while... :smallbiggrin:

Q

[8BitNinja]

Loki says the dwarves must "die with honor." It is obviously entirely possible to die "with honor" without being actively honorable when you die. If you have conducted yourself honorably, then you die with that honor. It doesn't go away because you fall ill.

It seems to in this comic, but why that is so makes no sense. It's a screwy definition of honor.

According to what I found on Wikipedia, that's not exactly the case. It seems to be specifically death in battle that allows you to have a good afterlife. Disease and old age sends you to Hel. There are accounts of Nordic warriors cutting themselves with spears in order to trick Hel.

[Keltest]

Loki says the dwarves must "die with honor." It is obviously entirely possible to die "with honor" without being actively honorable when you die. If you have conducted yourself honorably, then you die with that honor. It doesn't go away because you fall ill.

It seems to in this comic, but why that is so makes no sense. It's a screwy definition of honor.

In this case, it means "be actively honorable when you die." That's why youre finding a disconnect. most of the dwarves take this to mean they should just always be actively honorable so that when death strikes them, its in the middle of them doing something honorable.

[Kantaki]

Hmm, it just occurred to me that this strip paints the exchange from #1000 in a new light. Hel is almost certainly right that Loki's intent was to keep Hel out of power and excluded (or at best, that that was one of several easily foreseeable consequences he was fine with).

I still think this might be the trickster-god version of a lesson for daddy's precious little daughter.


According to what I found on Wikipedia, that's not exactly the case. It seems to be specifically death in battle that allows you to have a good afterlife. Disease and old age sends you to Hel. There are accounts of Nordic warriors cutting themselves with spears in order to trick Hel.

Look there (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?442359-Why-aren-t-95-of-dwarven-souls-going-to-Hel-anyway) for how it works for Stickworld dwarves.

[littlebum2002]

Loki says the dwarves must "die with honor." It is obviously entirely possible to die "with honor" without being actively honorable when you die. If you have conducted yourself honorably, then you die with that honor. It doesn't go away because you fall ill.

It seems to in this comic, but why that is so makes no sense. It's a screwy definition of honor.

Rich did not come up with this idea. The Norwegians believed you would go to Valhalla if you died in battle, and Hel if you died of old age or disease. If you don't like this concept take it up with the ancient Norwegians, not Rich.

[8BitNinja]

Look there (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?442359-Why-aren-t-95-of-dwarven-souls-going-to-Hel-anyway) for how it works for Stickworld dwarves.

It seems like the OotS world would have lots of wandering old dwarves looking for a duel. Similar to how the dying orcs can be found looking to die in battle in The Elder Scrolls games. To me, it would seem normal for a dwarf to walk up to a traveler and challenge him to fight as a form of "suicide"

[hamishspence]

That doesn't really fit with the whole "die doing the right thing" theme that The Giant emphasises.

[Peelee]

"I'm wasting away without worship!"

I think I dated her for a while... :smallbiggrin:

Damn, that was a good one.

[Slingsby]

Is it bad that I hope Hel gets some sort of consolation prize when the OoTS eventually foil her scheme? I mean sure, she's an evil death-goddess that treats everybody like dirt, but she's kinda sympathetic also.

[pendell]

Is it bad that I hope Hel gets some sort of consolation prize when the OoTS eventually foil her scheme? I mean sure, she's an evil death-goddess that treats everybody like dirt, but she's kinda sympathetic also.

Not to me. My first thought for a "consolation prize" I would choose to give her would be un-making at the hands of the snarl, and to promote someone from the ranks of mortals to take her portfolio.

That's a bit unmerciful isn't it? Okay, how about this: She is placed as a prisoner in her own plane, like any dead mortal,and receives from the new Ruler in precise measure what she gave out to those in her charge.

In case you're wondering, I don't find her sympathetic at all. I remember those dwarves lugging around her goblet when there were plenty of giants standing around to fulfill her task.

Hel is a place of misery, torment, and despair, and she is the one who made it that way. No, my sympathy for her is so close to nil as to be nonexistent.

ETA: That's assuming she cannot become a better person, which if she can I suppose I should give her the chance to do so. But I'm still taking her portfolio, even so, at least for awhile.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[The MunchKING]

"I'm wasting away without worship!"

I think I dated her for a while... :smallbiggrin:

Q

We know Timmy did. (http://fairlyoddparents.wikia.com/wiki/Just_the_Two_of_Us!)

[anonynos]

Oh... I just had a "Duh, OF COURSE" moment. Which... I may have missed someone else saying earlier so sorry if I'm repeating this...

There was some talk about how Hel is usually described as half dead, and how this Hel isn't like that. But She is. She is HALF GHOST.... from the waste down she has "ghost legs". So she's not half alive-half rotting corpse, but she is half alive/half dead...

I can't believe I didn't notice that earlier.

[Kish]

I don't think Hel deserves a consolation prize. I don't think she actively deserves punishment, either--at least, not in any way that any evil god doesn't. She just happens to have the scheme we're focusing on at the moment; that doesn't mean Fenrir (say) is significantly less cruel or callous.

[Matt620]

I am glad Rich's updates have become more frequent, but I'm really not interested in the trials and thoughts of eighth-string characters who have no relevance to the plot at hand. We already had to shift through Andi, Bandana, and both of their crap (and Rich's poor writing of it). This is just getting tedious. And when I consider the updates are fast, that's weird. And a problem.

Hel's desires are not important. I don't want the world destroyed. Will knowing Hel's motivations change that? Somehow I doubt that.

[pendell]

I am glad Rich's updates have become more frequent, but I'm really not interested in the trials and thoughts of eighth-string characters who have no relevance to the plot at hand. We already had to shift through Andi, Bandana, and both of their crap (and Rich's poor writing of it). This is just getting tedious. And when I consider the updates are fast, that's weird. And a problem.

Hel's desires are not important. I don't want the world destroyed. Will knowing Hel's motivations change that? Somehow I doubt that.

Better that then spending a full , literal, real time year on this stuff, isn't it? Rich would still tell this same story regardless of the speed, and I'm grateful to him.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Jasdoif]

I don't think Hel deserves a consolation prize. I don't think she actively deserves punishment, either--at least, not in any way that any evil god doesn't. She just happens to have the scheme we're focusing on at the moment; that doesn't mean Fenrir (say) is significantly less cruel or callous.Yeah....If Hel is to deserve a lesser prize, it would need to be something she willingly abandons her omnicidal scheme to attain; and I'm not sure that'd fit the definition of "consolation prize".

Exactly how that something like that would work, and if it could work, is the really big question there.

[ReaderAt2046]

Existential question: do OotS gods choose how they are? Or are they manifestations of essences present in the OotSverse?

Can Loki, by effort of will, become trustworthy and sincere - not just short term for momentary advantage, but as his nature?
Can Hel, by similar effort, become a kind and gracious host to souls entrusted to her rather than a petty vengeful tyrant?
Mind-boggling thought: could Thor become sober?

If the gods get to choose how they are, then we can blame Thor, Hel, and Loki for their part in shaping dwarven culture into such a rigid system. But if they don't? If, despite their power to change the world, they cannot change themselves?

Then the dwarves' fate was sealed before the foundation of the world, because Loki, Thor, and Hel acted as their natures force them to.

Well, Rich has stated elsewhere that the inhabitants of the alignment planes are literal incarnations of their alignments. They can only bend their alignments slightly, and even then only with great effort. It seems reasonable to assume the same might be true of the gods.

[The MunchKING]

I am glad Rich's updates have become more frequent, but I'm really not interested in the trials and thoughts of eighth-string characters who have no relevance to the plot at hand. We already had to shift through Andi, Bandana, and both of their crap (and Rich's poor writing of it).

*Shrug* If you don't like it, there's the door. I'm pretty sure Rich said he's not changing his story to suit you.

[B. Dandelion]

I am glad Rich's updates have become more frequent, but I'm really not interested in the trials and thoughts of eighth-string characters who have no relevance to the plot at hand. We already had to shift through Andi, Bandana, and both of their crap (and Rich's poor writing of it). This is just getting tedious. And when I consider the updates are fast, that's weird. And a problem.

Hel's desires are not important. I don't want the world destroyed. Will knowing Hel's motivations change that? Somehow I doubt that.

If she's the main villain of the arc, by definition she really isn't eighth-string any more than Tarquin and Malack were of the last arc. I get not finding her, or Andi and Bandana, engaging compared to characters we've had before, but complaining about the plot focusing on her... it's a ship that's sailed, you know?

[ReaderAt2046]

We are, of course, assuming it actually was a trick, and that Thor didn't later come around to Loki and throttle him until he promised to help get Thor the upper hand.

Or that Thor didn't come up with that solution on his own. IIRC, Norse!Thor could actually be very clever when he needed to, it's just that he very rarely needed to. That may not apply to OOTS!Thor, but then again it might.

[Kish]

This is just getting tedious. And when I consider the updates are fast, that's weird. And a problem.
Not weird at all. You want the comic's plot and/or style to be something other than they are; you finding it tedious is to be expected and will probably continue until you quit reading. The only weird thing is that you're apparently expecting the comic to change to accommodate you.

[Liquor Box]

Historically, D&D evil afterlives aren't deliberately punitive, its just naturally unpleasant as a result of being populated by nothing but evil people who have no reason to hold back.


"People" defined broadly, of course. A Balor makes for a bad neighbor. By at least some versions of the game, evil souls start life at the lowest ranks of fiend and work their way up gradually to big bads. A possible incentive for an evil person to make a deal with a devil / demon is to try to bargain to start higher up the food chain (in the case of demons, quite literally).

Yeah, the evil afterlife may not be such a bad place if you are near the top of the food (soul?) chain.


Doug Lampert said:
Presumably Evil people expect to easily end up at the top of the food chain. They're cleverer/stronger/better manipulators/trickier/whatever than everyone else after all.

The clerics expect their patron to care for them in an otherwise horrible place, because the patrons must do so.... They wouldn't maintain that membership while alive in one of the most powerful classes in the universe was sufficient reward and that it's your own fault for dying would they?

Consider how many readers of this strip have asked if Belkar will take over then abyss when he dies. No, most likely he gets to be a dretch, he expects a universe where most people are the chew-toys of the more powerful, and that's what he'll get. And just like most of the billions of people there, he'll go there expecting to rather easily manage to be one of the top dogs....

Shame about that.


I'm not sure what you are saying here. Are you saying high level clerics and characters would not end up higher on the evil afterlife hierarchy than low level characters? To me it seems much more liekly that high level characters would become higher power demons/devils, and it's the level 1 commoners who end up being the bitches. V and Belkar should be powerful figures down there from the outset.

[Ruck]

I still think this might be the trickster-god version of a lesson for daddy's precious little daughter.
Based on what, though? I haven't seen any evidence to that beyond the fact that Loki is, indeed, a trickster god and Hel's father.


I am glad Rich's updates have become more frequent, but I'm really not interested in the trials and thoughts of eighth-string characters who have no relevance to the plot at hand. We already had to shift through Andi, Bandana, and both of their crap (and Rich's poor writing of it). This is just getting tedious. And when I consider the updates are fast, that's weird. And a problem.

Hel's desires are not important. I don't want the world destroyed. Will knowing Hel's motivations change that? Somehow I doubt that.
Yes, we get it by now: Literally every comic that doesn't have the core members of the Order of the Stick as the only major characters, you're going to complain about. You've made that clear in every single comic thread since the updates resumed. What do you expect to accomplish at this point, other than demonstrating that you think you know better what the plot at hand is, or what good writing is, than the author does?

[Skull the Troll]

I wonder if the author has received any complains at all for abusing Norse mythology.

If youre not ok with abusing mythology and dead religions then you really shouldnt be playing D&D at all.

[RatElemental]

And...Of course Loki made this deal. It's a very Loki-esque thing to do, now that I think about it. If Thor tells the Dwarves about it, Hel is kept from obtaining more power. If he doesn't? Loki obtains more power through Hel, since she's very unlikely to be angry at him, in a situation where the deal gets her MORE power. Also, now that I think about it, what was Hel expecting? She's in a world where both Raise Dead and Plane Shift exist. Heck, Speak With Dead is a third-level spell, eventually, the Dwarves would've figured it out, Thor or No Thor.

Alright, I'm a bit late on this, but this is a bit of a pet peeve of mine. Speak with dead doesn't let you speak to the soul of the dead person you cast it on. It lets you speak to their corpse. They can tell you anything they knew in life, but that's pretty much it.

[Psychronia]

I'm a longtime reader that's posting on the forums for the first time! Weeeee!


If they stand to gain from it. What did Loki gain by helping out Thor?

I'm not sure if someone's mentioned this already, but my take on Loki's actions were that he was trying to forge the dwarves into the highly honor-based society they have now. As far as I know about Loki in mythology, on top of being a troublemaker, he was also the dude everyone turned to when they really wanted something done(that didn't involve brute force). In this case, Loki's play was to influence the culture of a major race in its entirety, which he very much succeeded at.

The dwarves live a strict life centered around doing what was honorable because of this incredibly unfair system. How many honorable acts came of this wager since it was made? How many dwarves sacrificed themselves without hesitation for the greater good(though not necessarily "Good" good) because of it?
Sure, they kind of got a raw deal due to selfish-ass gods and it's completely unfair, but I'd like to think that it helped out the rest of the world-or at least their own little communities-significantly as well.

[hamishspence]

If she's the main villain of the arc, by definition she really isn't eighth-string any more than Tarquin and Malack were of the last arc.

Indeed. I think this strip:

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0946.html

made it pretty clear that it would be a major arc.

[SaintRidley]

You mean with the different hair and dress? Maybe that was all the rage with godlings back when the world broke.

More for falling for something this transparent. Loki didn't even have to try, it seems.

[hamishspence]

To me it seems much more liekly that high level characters would become higher power demons/devils, and it's the level 1 commoners who end up being the bitches. V and Belkar should be powerful figures down there from the outset.

Most of the books that talk about the Fiendish Afterlives (MoTP, FC1, FC2) have tended to the principle that the vast majority of Evil characters, even high level ones, start at the bottom.

In the Forgotten Realms, souls who wouldn't go to the Nine Hells, can be bargained into doing so, on the Fugue Plane (when they think Kelemvor will be very severe with them for betraying their deity, they're likely to take such bargains) - and one of the things those souls can bargain for is early promotion from lemure. But it's incredibly rare for a soul to not pass through the lemure stage.

[factotum]

In this case, Loki's play was to influence the culture of a major race in its entirety, which he very much succeeded at.

The dwarves live a strict life centered around doing what was honorable because of this incredibly unfair system. How many honorable acts came of this wager since it was made? How many dwarves sacrificed themselves without hesitation for the greater good(though not necessarily "Good" good) because of it?


Er, but Loki is an *evil* god. Why would he start a scheme whose entire purpose is to help toward "the greater good", even given your parenthetical comment? You need to explain how that benefits Loki himself.

[GloatingSwine]

Er, but Loki is an *evil* god. Why would he start a scheme whose entire purpose is to help toward "the greater good", even given your parenthetical comment? You need to explain how that benefits Loki himself.

If he's more chaotic than evil and it sounded like a giggle? Because he cared more about getting one over Hel than he did about the behaviour of a bunch of scruffy dwarves?

A net increase in good might be an acceptable tradeoff for some other benefit to Loki.

[Kardwill]

If he's more chaotic than evil and it sounded like a giggle? Because he cared more about getting one over Hel than he did about the behaviour of a bunch of scruffy dwarves?

A net increase in good might be an acceptable tradeoff for some other benefit to Loki.

Because he wanted to screw the dwarves?

"Oh, so you want to get all high and mighty about your honour and how my clerics are misfits and renegades, heh? OK, let's play!"

But he probably had a good reason (at least from his point of view) and had something to gain from weakening Hel (after all, Thor is not really reinforced : Durkon explained that honorable souls still go to their initial alignement-compatible destination, so Big Drunky doesn't get any more than before)

[a_flemish_guy]

I think we also need to take a look at who's telling the story

Hel's telling the story in a way that put her current predicament solely on the iniative of loki and thor with her as innocent victim

it's likely that if loki or thor or a neutral observer were to tell it then it would be told much diferently

[a_flemish_guy]

Because he wanted to screw the dwarves?

"Oh, so you want to get all high and mighty about your honour and how my clerics are misfits and renegades, heh? OK, let's play!"

But he probably had a good reason (at least from his point of view) and had something to gain from weakening Hel (after all, Thor is not really reinforced : Durkon explained that honorable souls still go to their initial alignement-compatible destination, so Big Drunky doesn't get any more than before)

he's also looked upon as the guy who saved them from hel (by telling them about the dishonor = automatic hel thing, I don't think he mentioned exactly why that is ;) ) so dwarves would be more likely to follow him

[danielxcutter]

I think we also need to take a look at who's telling the story

Hel's telling the story in a way that put her current predicament solely on the iniative of loki and thor with her as innocent victim

it's likely that if loki or thor or a neutral observer were to tell it then it would be told much diferently

That is an interesting point. The core of it probably won't be much different, but I wonder how it went on Loki's end, or Thor's?

[a_flemish_guy]

The problem is, most Evil people clearly DON'T expect the whole "eternal punishment" fate, or else don't care about it, because otherwise they'd probably stop being Evil. That goes double, no, triple, for the clerics of evil Gods--why on earth would they provide a lifetime of service to their deity in exchange for being first on the toasting forks when they die?

This, of course, is one of the problems with trying to make the D&D cosmology work in a world where one-third of the population are Evil...

the way I justify it is with a certain character blindness for evil people

they don't "get" good or neutral people, they think that their objections to evil don't stem for morality but rather from cowardice, stupidity or shame

a chaotic evil person who get's a kick out of torture really thinks that everybody else loves torture as much as he does but rather just denies it (good example is the joker in the dark knight)

a lawful evil person really does believe that the only way to get something done and to have order in society is to opress the people for their own good (darth vader and many many others)

a neutral evil person really does believe that everyone is out for their own and the rest is just too stupid to take advantages of the situations that present themselves (lex luthor comes to mind)

[factotum]

he's also looked upon as the guy who saved them from hel (by telling them about the dishonor = automatic hel thing, I don't think he mentioned exactly why that is ;) ) so dwarves would be more likely to follow him

That was Thor who told them about that, not Loki (at least according to what Hel says in panel 4), so again, Loki doesn't gain any direct benefit from this. Maybe just screwing Hel over *is* sufficient reason for him to do it, but if he had that attitude to his daughter it would be even more unbelievable that she'd trust anything he said!

[Kardwill]

Well, Hel has been caracterized as very greedy, so she might have been blinded by the sweet whooping pile of souls she was promised.
I mean, getting to be the default underworld of a major semihuman civilisation? Without having to work for it, and without troubling yourself with pesky followers? How cool is that, especially for a spoiled, egocentric deity like Hel? Sure, daddy has a very spotty reputation, but the idea is to scam Thor, not her, right?

Hel is a spoiled brat who thinks she is owed respect and power. Loki did what any good consman would do : He used her pettyness, lazyness and ambition, offered her an easy way to get what she thought she deserved, and made her think she was the clever one (Hel's internal monologue during the flashback would be "The bet is clearly in my advantage. And even if I lose the bet, I win all the souls I'll get between now and then. Suckers!")

[Quibblicious]

"I'm wasting away without worship!"

I think I dated her for a while... :smallbiggrin:

Q


Damn, that was a good one.

Thank you.

It's why Bards travel a lot.
A LOT.

:smallbiggrin:

Q

[Shining Wrath]

I have to wonder why dwarves don't have arenas where dwarves with critical illness and / or advanced age gather weekly or monthly to fight to the death.

No armor, just battle axes, a couple of dozen dwarves enter and only one leaves, hopefully with injuries severe enough to die from.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

I have to wonder why dwarves don't have arenas where dwarves with critical illness and / or advanced age gather weekly or monthly to fight to the death.

No armor, just battle axes, a couple of dozen dwarves enter and only one leaves, hopefully with injuries severe enough to die from.

There is no honor in killing a sick & dying dwarf? Thus, the first dwarf might get away with it, but all the others still go to Hel.

GW

[Shining Wrath]

There is no honor in killing a sick & dying dwarf? Thus, the first dwarf might get away with it, but all the others still go to Hel.

GW

The sick and aged dwarves die "with their boots on". This is a battle to the death where the goal is to lose. Every one of those dwarves presumably died fighting a superior foe, albeit only slightly less feeble than themselves. And they did it to serve Thor. How is that not an honorable death?

[Grey_Wolf_c]

The sick and aged dwarves die "with their boots on". This is a battle to the death where the goal is to lose. Every one of those dwarves presumably died fighting a superior foe, albeit only slightly less feeble than themselves. And they did it to serve Thor. How is that not an honorable death?

Because there is no honor in killing a sick & dying dwarf?

I'm sorry, not sure how else to put it: I can't imagine how killing a sick & dying opponent would be considered honorable in any society, much less the dwarven one. A dwarf does not get a pass on the honor requirements for being sick, but that doesn't make killing a weakened dwarf suddenly honorable.

GW

[Rogar Demonblud]

That is an interesting point. The core of it probably won't be much different, but I wonder how it went on Loki's end, or Thor's?

And now I want to see this, Rashomon style.

[2D8HP]

I am glad Rich's updates have become more frequent, but I'm really not interested in the trials and thoughts of eighth-string characters who have no relevance to the plot at hand....


I know, it's high time that we got back to the MAIN PLOT, which is the romance of Oona and O-Chul (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?490194-Shipping-Oona-and-O-Chul-lt-3&highlight=Shipping+Oona+O-Chul+%26lt%3B3)!!!

The suspense is cruel!!!

[warmachine]

If youre not ok with abusing mythology and dead religions then you really shouldnt be playing D&D at all.
The trouble with the religious is they have no problem with religions being abused in fiction and game except theirs. Their religion is the special case. Now, the Norse religion is dead but the Internet is a big place and someone, somewhere could be a true believer.

[Keltest]

Because there is no honor in killing a sick & dying dwarf?

I'm sorry, not sure how else to put it: I can't imagine how killing a sick & dying opponent would be considered honorable in any society, much less the dwarven one. A dwarf does not get a pass on the honor requirements for being sick, but that doesn't make killing a weakened dwarf suddenly honorable.

GW

Who cares about the dwarf doing the killing? This is for the sake of the people getting killed, not the ones doing the killing.

Anyway, by Durkon's account, they have enough external threats to life and limb that apparently count as honorable that they don't really seem to need to create internal threats as well.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Who cares about the dwarf doing the killing? This is for the sake of the people getting killed, not the ones doing the killing.

The dwarves died while attempting to kill sick individuals. That is not a honorable death.

GW

[factotum]

Who cares about the dwarf doing the killing? This is for the sake of the people getting killed, not the ones doing the killing.

And why would it be any more honourable to *lose* a fight to a sick and dying dwarf than it would be to kill one? In this imaginary scenario all the dwarves in the arena are dying, so doesn't seem there's a lot of honour to go around in there. Durkon still went to Hel despite dying in combat with a vampire, after all, so the rules are pretty strict on what does and does not constitute an honourable death.

[Keltest]

The dwarves died while attempting to kill sick individuals. That is not a honorable death.

GW

No, they died trying to preserve the honor of their fellow dwarves.

This is a society where losing a fight to an inanimate object is considered an honorable death. Do you really think 'My opponent was as sick as I am" is the biggest problem here?

[Doug Lampert]

Yeah, the evil afterlife may not be such a bad place if you are near the top of the food (soul?) chain.



I'm not sure what you are saying here. Are you saying high level clerics and characters would not end up higher on the evil afterlife hierarchy than low level characters? To me it seems much more liekly that high level characters would become higher power demons/devils, and it's the level 1 commoners who end up being the bitches. V and Belkar should be powerful figures down there from the outset.

You are dead, you are no longer a high level character. That's what you were when alive.

You are no longer a cleric, you are a dead guy being used as a source of power by your god. You are a petitioner or a dretch or a lemure or whatever. Everyone starts at the bottom, Belkar may well have the DELUSION that he'll start high up, clerics presumably share this delusion, but the delusion that "I'll be alright, even down there, I'll be on top" is WHY there are Evil people suffering down there in D&D land. Because EVERYONE is convinced "I'm above average, I'll be on the top with the whip rather than on the bottom", and as far as starting status is concerned, they are all wrong!

But the touching faith, "I'll be better off than all those other people" is why there are still plenty of people willing to play for power.

[hamishspence]

Durkon still went to Hel despite dying in combat with a vampire, after all, so the rules are pretty strict on what does and does not constitute an honourable death.

If he had not been turned, he would have gone to Valhalla.


There is absolutely zero difference between Malack and Durkon's vampirizations, with the sole exception that Hel made the spirit sitting in Durkon's head while Nergal made the one that was sitting in Malack's. Hel is able to put that spirit into Durkon's body because of the physical vampirization process that Malack enacts on Durkon's corpse, which opens a door to Negative Energy and traps Durkon's spirit inside it. Which would also be true of any other vampire created from a person who fell under the Northern Pantheon's domain, though she wouldn't take a personal interest in just any person because they wouldn't be a powerful cleric.

Hel does not have rightful dominion over Durkon's soul as part of her normal assignment of dishonored souls, however, because Durkon did in fact die in battle. She got involved because she is also, separately, the Northern deity of undeath, and one of her "duties" is making the evil spirits for all Northern vampires. The vampirization process basically jammed up the normal disposition of Durkon's soul by trapping it inside the undead body. Where Durkon's actual soul ends up will not be determined until/unless it is freed. It's a like a naturally occurring Trap the Soul spell.

[Kish]

Durkon still went to Hel despite dying in combat with a vampire,
No, he didn't. Rich said explicitly that Durkon's death was honorable; he's stuck in his body because of the nature of vampirism, which has nothing to do with the afterlife or the bet between Hel and Thor.

Ninjad by hamishspence, so I'll just add that if the rules actually did say that dying of being blood-drained by a vampire one was grappling with constituted "not in battle," that wouldn't make them strict--it would just make them nonsensical.

[Jasdoif]

Durkon still went to Hel despite dying in combat with a vampire, after all....Durkon's not an applicable example, here.


Hel does not have rightful dominion over Durkon's soul as part of her normal assignment of dishonored souls, however, because Durkon did in fact die in battle. She got involved because she is also, separately, the Northern deity of undeath, and one of her "duties" is making the evil spirits for all Northern vampires. The vampirization process basically jammed up the normal disposition of Durkon's soul by trapping it inside the undead body. Where Durkon's actual soul ends up will not be determined until/unless it is freed. It's a like a naturally occurring Trap the Soul spell.
(bold emphasis mine)

[Keltest]

Sheesh, I go to edit my post with that, and get ninja'd like four times over.

[Doug Lampert]

I got ninja'd five times.

[Jasdoif]

I got ninja'd five times.I find myself conflicted between "hey, other people quote this one too! Nice to see the possibility the Index of the Giant's Comments threads are still useful" and "hey, I posted across the page boundary again? I thought that only happened on the Index of the Giant's Comments threads".

[woweedd]

Because there is no honor in killing a sick & dying dwarf?

I'm sorry, not sure how else to put it: I can't imagine how killing a sick & dying opponent would be considered honorable in any society, much less the dwarven one. A dwarf does not get a pass on the honor requirements for being sick, but that doesn't make killing a weakened dwarf suddenly honorable.

GW
I imagine it's the same as how, in D&D itself, simulated combat lowers your XP gain so that Parties can't just fight each other for XP. It's like that. An honorable death can't be planned, outside of trees. It has to be a genuine response to a crisis. Otherwise, every Dwarf would just pick up a weapon and throw themselves at monsters until they died.

[Keltest]

I imagine it's the same as how, in D&D itself, simulated combat lowers your XP gain so that Parties can't just fight each other for XP. It's like that. An honorable death can't be planned, outside of trees. It has to be a genuine response to a crisis. Otherwise, every Dwarf would just pick up a weapon and throw themselves at monsters until they died.

I thought that was pretty much exactly what they did?

[hamishspence]

I have to wonder why dwarves don't have arenas where dwarves with critical illness and / or advanced age gather weekly or monthly to fight to the death.


Probably because very few dwarves survive to that point. Provoke a duel is an option:


Given that our only glimpse of dwarven society is the life of one disabled veteran and her young son, I think it's a bit of an leap to assume that there are no wars. Or at least, no violent conflicts: Sigdi's husband and a lot of innocent miners died in a troll attack, after all, with no war required. Monsters are everywhere, especially in underground tunnels.

While the line about picking a fight with a tree was intended for comedy, the point still remains that if you know for certain you will only get a good afterlife if you die with honor, you are far more likely to deliberately go seek out an enemy to fight—whether it's orcs, giants, drow, duergar, etc.—as soon as you know you're sick or getting old. I imagine honor duels are probably a very common way of settling the score between two feuding dwarves: If I win, then I win, but if I lose, I still get an honorable death. And again, if you're sick, why not provoke a duel you know you will lose?

Also, there are certainly ways to die with honor that don't involve combat. If there's a cave-in and you take the time to save another dwarf but can't get out yourself before it collapses, that's an honorable death even though you were killed by a falling rock.

but in practice, a dwarf is probably more likely to want to go after a real enemy, not a "fellow dwarf one has a dispute with."



In fact, many dwarves probably live their lives as they wish and let the chips fall where they may with regard to their death, trusting their gods will give them the opportunity to act honorably when the moment is upon them. Many dwarves probably resign themselves to their fate in Hel anyway, because they would view "gaming the system" as cheating.

Dwarves live for hundreds of years. During that lifespan, there will be at least some moments where they have the choice to either act boldly and (possibly) die with honor, or act cautiously and live. Their knowledge of their afterlife will therefore encourage the majority of dwarves to pick the former, and if they find themselves having picked the latter too many times an end up old and dying, well, then there are causes they can pledge themselves to for that last hurrah. That doesn't mean they walk into an orc camp unarmed and get cut down, it means they keep fighting orcs past the point when they should retreat.

[goto124]

Monsters probably count as crisis, especially when one considers the kind of monsters DnD has.

[Lord Torath]

Durkon still went to Hel despite dying in combat with a vampire, after all, so the rules are pretty strict on what does and does not constitute an honourable death.Just to reiterate: Durkon's soul is not in the lower planes. Hel does not have his soul. It is not in the upper planes. Durkon's soul is currently trapped (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0946.html) inside (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0948.html) his (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0953.html) own (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0987.html) body (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1007.html) by Greg (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1030.html) (the vampire spirit that has possessed his body).

Once freed, Durkon's soul will either go to Valhalla, or repossess his own body (if resurrected).

[Grey_Wolf_c]

No, they died trying to preserve the honor of their fellow dwarves.
I don't see how that would be the case. Throwing a bunch of sick dwarves together when they have no reason to kill each other beyond "they are sick" is not honorable for anyone involved.


This is a society where losing a fight to an inanimate object is considered an honorable death. Do you really think 'My opponent was as sick as I am" is the biggest problem here?

I think the biggest problem is that you are trying to turn the "fight a conifer" joke into more than it is.

GW