Quote Originally Posted by Grey_Wolf_c View Post
No, it doesn't. It forces him to obey the will of the council, not the elders. Will that is expressed via simple majority vote. The idea that such vote must be free of coercion is something you've added, not something in the canon.
Yes, the dwarven Council of Clans, consisting of the dwarven elders. Hel's vampires are not dwarves, and have no business basically voting in the Council's stead.

We can speculate why. For example, it seems likely that this is the remnants of what was presumably the politicians/nobles actually running the realm (before they moved to a parliamentary system). Some of those head of clans were likely LE and worked to ensure that engaging in bribery, blackmail and other forms of coercion was exempted from the rules, because they engaged or intended to engage in them at points. Dvalin, by the very nature of the council and his deification, therefore doesn't see a problem with a will that has been manipulated away from the actual desires of the majority of the individuals of the council. Fairness is a G concept, and nothing indicates that Dvalin is anything other than strongly Lawful, and likely merely weak Neutral in the G-E scale, and thus cares not for fairness, only for procedure.

Grey Wolf
The Exarch does speculate that the antechamber was designed to allow for that, but that doesn't mean such practices were not frowned at or they were exempted from the rules. Quite on the contrary, the voting chamber enforces the dwarven law as written and it does not allow dominations.
Further, even if the Exarch is right, there's the thing that
1. Dvalin did not design the chamber;
2. dwarves meddling with dwarven affairs and vampires meddling with dwarven affairs are two drastically different things.

Quote Originally Posted by Goblin_Priest View Post
In the quoted strip, the non-dominated elders who speak first *all* lean towards voting "yes". The dominated ones voting en bloc for the same thing is what makes them change position. Also, they don't seem very bothered that some of them are dominated.
All? Only two of them express that sentiment, and only because no elder really believes it can be a real question.

Dvalin honestly seems less dumb to me than the elders themselves do.
True, but that does not make Dvalin less stupid.

The problem isn't so much Dvalin listening to the council, but rather the council being filled by a bunch of bufoons who 1) didn't take measures to protect their members from voting under the influence, and 2) showed total disregard when it did take place. Surely there's a quorum law that could have been used to abort the meeting instead of letting it get hijacked by the vampires.
So when the morons in the council disregard the vote getting hijacked by vampires it's dumb, but when Dvalin does the same, it's not?