What alignment is Oona?

[Goblin_Priest]

Vampire is a template. They remain dwarves.

Thats actually likely not accurate. Dvalin is a (demi)god who was previously a mortal, which means that there was sufficient dwarven will and respect behind him to empower him to that state. The other times weve heard of such an event going on, it was an effort of nearly the entire race to muster that kind of power and worship. So to that end, its likely he was actually "voted" to be there, under a certain use of "vote".

Not necessarily. Dwarves had enough belief in "the law must be obeyed to the letter" than they made a god out of the concept. While individuals can serve as a focus, the gods have been made out to be mostly made out of ideas. And Dvalin is the recycling of a dead mortal that most closely stuck to this idea.

Dvalin is a huge moron, and your analogy does not really work. What we have in the comic is more like „terrorists take the parliament hostage and send a video message to the minister of foreign affairs (who's attending a summit) on which the speaker (with a gun to their head) tells him the parliament decided he must declare war on the world via killing all the other attendees.” If the minister does just that, he's a cretin.

I'm not sure which analogy of mine doesn't work, but neither does yours. As I said, there are no RL equivalent to this. I don't believe the power to declare war rests with the minister of foreign affairs in any country. That's kind of a pretty big power to delegate to such a person. But in any case, even if we go with the hypothetical scenario in which the minister of foreign affairs has the authority to declare war (or not), then this in itself makes the analogy improper, because the distinction is that Dvalin presumably does *not* have the authority to.

Thats actually likely not accurate. Dvalin is a (demi)god who was previously a mortal, which means that there was sufficient dwarven will and respect behind him to empower him to that state. The other times weve heard of such an event going on, it was an effort of nearly the entire race to muster that kind of power and worship. So to that end, its likely he was actually "voted" to be there, under a certain use of "vote".

I still have some difficulty with the idea that it's improbable of a council/committee to keep following a set of rules despite them being outdated and flaw-ridden.

Seriously. The council had a ton of rules to help protect them. But, *gasp*, they didn't foresee vampiric domination. How implausible is it that a rule-heavy system might contain a few loopholes to exploit? Not the least, in my book...

I dont think anybody is arguing that its horrifically unlikely, just that its stupid. And i dont want to read a story about stupid politicians causing problems. I get enough of that in reality. Besides which, plots based on key members being wildly stupid are, IMO, poor in general. If theres going to be a problem, dont have the protagonist be the only one with enough common sense to fix it. It just begs the question of how they got so far in the first place without being destroyed or forced to change.

Vampires are really rare, goodsmoots are maybe rare, and votes on the destruction of the world are probably super rare. So, the opportunities the elders had to hash this out are... probably "never before". That council is also said to not very very representative of the dwarves anymore, it's an ancient institutions held by a bunch of senile aristocrats.

Furthermore, the intelligence of the elders is not a crucial plot point, because more than half of them were dominated anyways. How smart the rest of them are is pretty irrelevant. Durkon's solution is really "thinking outside the box", also self-sacrificing, I don't think it implausible that none of the other elders would have considered breaking the table. As for Dvalin, he's just a rubber stamper.

My understanding of the motivations of Dvalin and the council is that they have extreme faith in the long-term value of The System, and thus refuse to violate procedure to address the immediate crisis.

The proper way to deal with an accusation of vampiric domination is to appoint an inquisitor to fully investigate the matter. Otherwise how can they distinguish between a real domination and a "scurrilous attack on a council member's good character"?

Even if it seems super clear-cut in this case, the rule of law and upholding of due process for the accused outweighs any short-term benefit of circumventing procedure.

Is it so super clear cut, though? We the readers get swirly eyes. In-game, dominated people aren't so obvious, you need to roll a check to notice it as far as I remember. The lack of caution on the council's part is not the smartest move, but the abundance of people out there eating tide pods or drinking bath water or bleach is making me not mind as much anymore for characters making dumb decisions in fantasy stories.