What alignment is Oona?

[Goblin_Priest]

All? Only two of them express that sentiment, and only because no elder really believes it can be a real question.

Yea, 100% of the two people who spoke up before the dominated dwarves started to vote. And as shown before that, nobody had a significant issue with over half of the council being dominated. One of them went "maybe we should wait?", but then was totally fine with continuing anyways. One of them says that sacrificing themselves for the other species would be the honorable thing to do. This question was NOT certain to end in a specific result, was domination to be avoided. The only evidence we have suggests that, indeed, had Hel NOT meddled in their affairs, the dwarves would have voted themselves to damnation.

True, but that does not make Dvalin less stupid.

I don't really see any stupidy in Dvalin.

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?

Yea, because the council are decision-makers, and Dvalin is a rubber stamper.

Is the bureaucrat who executes an idiotic policy decided by his minister an idiot? No, not necessarily. He's just doing his job.

He could defy the government, but then he'd probably lose his job, at best. But he's got agency, free will. Gods, in this setting, are manifestation of ideas. While we can take Loki's "but I can't help myself" with a grain of salt, perhaps, but the deific representation of "I execute the council's will" is *not* likely to defy the council. Even if the council is half dominated.

We can't really have perfect RL equivalents because 1) we don't have deific manifestation of ideas, and 2) we don't have a godsmoot where we'd need someone to be our governments' voice.

But there absolutely are a lot of people who value the rule of law, and who are extremely uncomfortable with discretionary powers. Because granting discretionary powers is always a question of faith. You have faith the person won't abuse it. Or, in any case, you hope they won't. And every time you grant discretionary powers to whatever figure, you rob said powers from legitimized institutions (such as elected assemblies) in order to grant them to individuals. In western democracies, pretty much everyone in the state apparatus was either elected, or answers to someone who was. Sometimes this is many levels removed, like for police officers or teachers, but when you go up the chain of authority you always end up with someone elected, because in the end those are the only people we decided had the legitimacy to call the shots in the name of the people.

Dvalin's not elected. They didn't vote him into being a god, and they didn't vote him to remain the one with their voice in the godsmoot. He is completely disconnected from the People, and thus any and all unilateral (arbitrary/discretionary) decision would be completely lacking legitimacy.

Furthermore, it adds *precedent*, which itself creates a slippery slope. Not particularly pertinent to Dvalin given he's immortal and will hold the spot forever, but going with decisions you disagree with strengthens your role as rubber-stamper for your successors. If you go against the elected legislators, then you set precedent your predecessors can build upon to ignore them and do as he will. And that next person could do a lot of harm thanks to the precedent you set, possibly more than the harm you are approving. Fear of creating precedents is another factor motivating many law-oriented people. And in this context, many people can believe that a society where officials can ignore the elected assemblies when their decisions are bad is also a society where those officials can simply replace those elected assemblies when they will it. Strong democracies are not built upon the elected assemblies always doing the right thing, they are built upon the rule of law. And given a choice, people typically prefer to live in a society where the application of the laws is clear and predictable, as opposed to societies where the executive branch just does whatever the hell it wants regardless of the elected officials' decisions.