OOTS #1130 - The Discussion Thread

[Particle_Man]

Yeah, Vampires feed on blood, what you take away from that shouldn't be don't have any blood.

I think the old con wasn’t that Greg was Durkon or even that Durkon wasn’t evil but more that even Evil Durkon would want to save the world out of self-interest.

So Greg/Durkon would have to do some convincing this time around. Maybe healing the party would help. Then again since Hilgya wanted to kill Good Durkon anyhow probably not.

[georgie_leech]

You might not be able to do it all at once, but given enough time, you could eventually lift a billion one pound weights, or cumulatively have run a billion miles, or pick up a billion bouncy balls, or whatever.

Hence, why I think this should have been a BSOD moment for the vampire spirit, not a total override. Yes, a big scale, but for me, it would make a lot more logical sense (and not be a cheap Power of Love trope) for the vampire to be *overwhelmed* but not *transformed* by the memory dump.

Not trying to crap on the author, I think it's only the second narrative choice in thousands of comics where I went "What, really, THAT?" ... but this one is a trope that is a huge pet peeve of mine (the other was Roy's guilt induced denial after Durkon died, simply because I think he's smarter than that).

Not for nothing, but dropping ten pounds a day into your arms is gonna have a very different effect than dropping a billion at once.

[Cazero]

I do not see the math mattering. If the vampire can dismiss one or ten memories, he can still dismiss a billion.

The whole point of the bait is to make sure the vampire wouldn't want to dismiss any of those memories.
If Durkon could just shower Greg in memories and call it a day, then he would have done so a lot earlier and all that buildup would have been pointless.

[2D8HP]

From a couple of pages of thread ago:

Oh, wait, I'm an idiot. Belkar is *literally* unconscious because he was knocked out by the flat of the sword (I can't remember the word for it we had back in the seventies, now it's just called non-lethal damage - it's b-something but not bludgeoning - blathing? Or wait, is it "subduing"?). He's not below zero unconscious, he's just knocked out. So when the protection against evil amulet gets activated the pain of it wakes him up.

Haha that's actually brilliant!

Yeah, against dragons at least. IIRC, there was another term in the AD&D 1e books, but I don't have it on the tip of my tongue.

From page 12, of the 1974 Dungeons & Dragons Book 2, Monsters & Treasure:

"Subduing Dragons: Any attack may be to subdue rather than to kill, but this intent must be announced before melee begins. When intent to subdue is announced, hits scored upon the Dragon are counted as subduing rather than killing points. Each round of melee the number of points scored in hits is rationed over the total number the Dragon has (hit point total), the hits obtained being stated as a percentile of the total possible, i.e. 12%, 67%, etc. The percentile dice are then rolled to determine if the Dragon has been subdued. A roll equal to or less than the percentage of hits already obtained means the Dragon is subdued..."

From page 30 of the 1977 Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual:

"Upon announcement of intent to

strike to subdue, all hit points of damage scored by attacks upon the dragon are considered non-fatal battering/bruising damage...."

From page 67 of the 1979 Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Masters Guide:

"Striking to Subdue: This is effective against some monsters (and other creatures of humanoid size and type) as indicated in the MONSTER MANUAL (under DRAGONS) or herein. Such attacks use the flat, butt, haft, pummel, or otherwise non-lethal parts of the weapons concerned but are otherwise the same as other attacks. Note that unless expressly stated otherwise, all subduing damage is 75% temporary, but 25% of such damage is actually damaging to the creature being subdued. This means that if 40 hit points of subduing damage has been inflicted upon an opponent, the creature has actually suffered 10 hit points of real damage. The above, of course, does not apply to player characters..."

Pedantrically,

2D8HP

[luna the cat]

Very 'Dweller on the Threshold' (Theosophy, not the Van Morrison song lyrics), and appropriate given Durkon is a cleric.

[Peelee]

You might not be able to do it all at once

Same for the memory. The author's water explanation was better. We need water, but drink too much and you can die. And when you ask for a drink, you don't expect someone to turn on the firehose.

[Lethologica]

You might not be able to do it all at once, but given enough time, you could eventually lift a billion one pound weights, or cumulatively have run a billion miles, or pick up a billion bouncy balls, or whatever.

The whole point of this update was that Durkon succeeded by flooding Durkon* with memories all at once, as opposed to the usual process where vampire eventually absorb the host's memories one at a time. So your argument by analogy is supporting the logic of the update. Whatever logical objection you claim to have, it's not this logic.

Frankly, I think your 'ick' reaction to 'power of love' developments in general is causing you to reason poorly in this case. And the thing is, there's nothing wrong with having that reaction. You don't have to like something just because it makes sense. The flip side of that is, you don't have to believe something doesn't make sense just because you don't like it.

[Particle_Man]

You might not be able to do it all at once, but given enough time, you could eventually lift a billion one pound weights, or cumulatively have run a billion miles, or pick up a billion bouncy balls, or whatever.

That seems like what vampires usually do so as to incorporate memories safely without threatening their personality. Greg violated this safety rule and so absorbed all of Durkon’s memories at once and that was obliterating.

It is the equivalent of absorbing a life of memories all at once of someone that has lived longer than all of human history many times over.

Suddenly the idea of letting go of the ego self and becoming one with the universe seems scary.

[Boring McReader]

You might not be able to do it all at once, but given enough time, you could eventually lift a billion one pound weights, or cumulatively have run a billion miles, or pick up a billion bouncy balls, or whatever.

Hence, why I think this should have been a BSOD moment for the vampire spirit, not a total override. Yes, a big scale, but for me, it would make a lot more logical sense (and not be a cheap Power of Love trope) for the vampire to be *overwhelmed* but not *transformed* by the memory dump.

Not trying to crap on the author, I think it's only the second narrative choice in thousands of comics where I went "What, really, THAT?" ... but this one is a trope that is a huge pet peeve of mine (the other was Roy's guilt induced denial after Durkon died, simply because I think he's smarter than that).

The vampire was at a complete loss trying to understand what he had seen. Nothing in his brief existence had prepared him for it, and Durkon had carefully curated his memory revelations up until then to guide the vampire toward total confusion. In desperation, the vampire reached out to Durkon's past for the answers that Durkon was ready to provide. That momentary window of opportunity would have closed before too long if Durkon had not been ready with his response.

But because the vampire was desperate for answers, Durkon was able to transfer his entire lifetime as Durkon understood it. Rather than filling in the blanks of the question, Durkon filled in the vampire's life history with his own. There was no time for the vampire to filter it with his old understanding of the world. One moment he was a short-lived evil spirit interpreting Durkon's memories through the personality he was born with. The next moment he was applying 50 years of Durkon's wisdom to every thought and action. It's as though he lived out those 50 years in full under Durkon's guardianship. It happened in a split second, but the effect was that of a lifetime, with no chance for the vampire's own innate tendencies to interfere.

It's also important to remember that this is Durkon's personal negative spirit. Durkon knows where his own deepest pains came from, and what parts of his life helped him overcome them. He's not teaching the vampire the power of love. He's showing the vampire the moments of his life that brought Durkon his own release from the same pains the vampire has been suffering since birth.

[Oxenstierna]

Looks like Greg got hit by an empowered feels strike. 1D6 damage per caster level. Half the damage needs a hug to recover.

[Drascin]

Honestly, I don't see why people find this so hard to believe. The priest of Hel never had an actual identity of his own. He doesn't even have a name, he was just The High Priest of Hel, who existed to Implement the Plan. He's been (un)alive for like a week.

Durkon, on the other hand, has an extremely powerful sense of identity. He's Durkon, he's a cleric of Thor, he's a Dwarf with a capital D, he's Sigdi's son. He knows exactly what and who he is, even when it makes him miserable.

So by taking all his memories at the same time, without seeing them through his own lens but rather just dumping them into his own head, suddenly the vampire has a week of weak-*** barely-anchored memories of being the high priest of Hel versus 50+ years of memories telling him in extremely definite terms that he's Durkon. And well. With that ratio? For all intents and purposes he IS Durkon.

[Doug Lampert]

I just don't see why even 50 years of memories should make this difference to a being of pure evil energy.

Rules or comic cite for negative energy being evil. There are any number of negative energy spells without the Evil tag, and for that matter positive energy spells without the Good tag and the negative energy plane has no alignment trait (and the positive energy plane will kill you if you go there without protection or precautions, and it also has no alignment trait).

Negative energy is not evil. If your analysis is based on it being evil, then your analysis is not following the rules of D&D 3.x.

[littlebum2002]

My big problem is that we barely had any indication that shared memories could affect the vampire, and certainly not about emotions or whatever.

Except we did though. #963 was a comic directly foreshadowing this event. It showed us 3 important things:

1. that the vampire did not have the experience necessary to properly understand Durkon's memories
2. that the vampire could be changed by these memories to be more like Durkon and not realize it
3. that Durkon recognized this, and developed a method by which he would use this information against the vampire

And before you comment that "this is obscure, no one would have noticed it", people DID notice it. Big time.

HPoH seemingly can't determine the emotional connection between Durkon's memories. To hazard a guess, I'd say Durkon plans on giving incorrect information to his bloodsucking parasite by playing off of this.

The short version: Durkon has figured out that if he feeds the right memories to Durkula, he can trick him into behaving in ways Durkon normally wouldn't, thus alerting the Order to there being something amiss with their pal.

There is no emphasis on something. The emphasis is on somethin', which Durkula just said. In the privacy of Durkon's mind. Where there is no one to fool.

Durkula is gaining Durkon's accent as he absorbs Durkon's memories. What else of Durkon's might Durkula pick up?

My theory is that Durkon's just realised that the HPoH doesn't get that memories aren't just useful information, they build your character.

Before, he'd been assuming that the HPoH had a defence against this, now he's hoping that absorbing the right memories can make the HPoH feel guilt or make some other mistake.

This is backed up by the super subtle thing I didn't originally notice, which implies the process has already begun.

(These are just the ones I saw on the first few pages. There are loads more)

Now maybe you didn't catch that, and in which case I'm sorry you didn't because the rest of us have been anticipating this moment for almost 4 years. (How the hell was that 4 years ago already !?!?!). But the fact that you didn't catch it doesn't detract from the fact that it was there, and since it was there, that means this was not bad writing or a deus ex machina. It was a carefully planned out event that was cleverly hinted at years before.

On a side note, this strip brings up an interesting thought experiment. If you cloned yourself, and then fed your clone self all your memories and life experiences, would it end up exactly like you, or different?

[Particle_Man]

Rules or comic cite for negative energy being evil. There are any number of negative energy spells without the Evil tag, and for that matter positive energy spells without the Good tag and the negative energy plane has no alignment trait (and the positive energy plane will kill you if you go there without protection or precautions, and it also has no alignment trait).

Negative energy is not evil. If your analysis is based on it being evil, then your analysis is not following the rules of D&D 3.x.

Sabine might have been a better choice for pure evil, since she has stated that she is literally made out of evil. But even there we have a few redeemed fiends.

[jidasfire]

I haaaate "power of love" resolutions, finding them to be unrealistic hokey BS, and while this one isn't quite as bad as they usually are, it still is fundamentally one of them.

I get where you're coming from here, but I would argue that it's not as hokey as it might seem. If you think about it, Durkon is uniquely poised to understand his opponent here, seeing as in a lot of ways, it is him. While the dark spirit has access to all of Durkon's memories and feelings and thoughts, it's in many ways a very new life (?) form with limited understanding of what it means to exist. In that way, Durkon has it at a disadvantage, which has been shown from the start. He's not undoing the dark spirit by virtue of bringing out some innate goodness, as the spirit doesn't really have any, but by confronting it with actions alien to it but also equally irresistible, given the parasitic desire of the spirit to become a dark reflection of its host. Perhaps in a physical realm, the feat of overwhelming the mind of a dark spirit might be impossible, but in the realm of the mind, Durkon's quiet resolve, experience, and wisdom could in fact stun and override the spirit. It's quite likely no one knew this was possible because no one has ever done it before. But hey, that's what makes for good heroes. They don't just accept the limits put in front of them. They overcome. Personally, I think in an arc centered on Durkon, it's not too absurd for at least one of the conflicts to be resolved through talking.

But you know, even if you don't, I think it's likely that Durkula is the only major villain who is going down this way. Xykon and Redcloak are not going to hug it out with the heroes, and even in this arc, Hel's plans are still in motion, and Gontor and Miss Nameless are still up to no good. I'm sure there will be more stabbing before the story is done.

[1chapelcredit]

Except we did though. #963 was a comic directly foreshadowing this event. It showed us 3 important things:

1. that the vampire did not have the experience necessary to properly understand Durkon's memories
2. that the vampire could be changed by these memories to be more like Durkon and not realize it
3. that Durkon recognized this, and developed a method by which he would use this information against the vampire

And before you comment that "this is obscure, no one would have noticed it", people DID notice it. Big time.










(These are just the ones I saw on the first few pages. There are loads more)

Now maybe you didn't catch that, and in which case I'm sorry you didn't because the rest of us have been anticipating this moment for almost 4 years. (How the hell was that 4 years ago already !?!?!). But the fact that you didn't catch it doesn't detract from the fact that it was there, and since it was there, that means this was not bad writing or a deus ex machina. It was a carefully planned out event that was cleverly hinted at years before.

On a side note, this strip brings up an interesting thought experiment. If you cloned yourself, and then fed your clone self all your memories and life experiences, would it end up exactly like you, or different?

4 years?! That really IS hard to believe! Wow.

Yes, we've all been waiting for somethin' to happen based on Durkon feeding the right memories at the right time to Durkula. I was definitely of the camp that expected him to trick Durkula into revealing that he wasn't the real Durkon... and then The Godsmoot happened. Then I expected Durkon to lay a trap for Durkula based on Durkula not being able to connect a series of memories, or connecting them in the wrong way; this seemed likely enough once Hilgya showed up again. The only problem was I couldn't possibly imagine WHAT that trap would be. Once Hilgya came back, I thought maybe Durkula would try to convince HER that he was the same old Durkon once the Order was neutralized; not realizing that this would be the wrong tactic with her because he didn't grasp the emotional consequences of the memory of their time together. I definitely didn't expect this; which isn't to say I'm not excited about it just the same!

[Sacredweapon]

Up Next:

Durkon releases control of Hilgya, encourages her to mass cure wounds on V/Roy/Blackwing before they bleed out.

Hilgya announces that she's only there to kill Durkon, doesn't care if the party dies, and continues to attack him.

Belkar has to figure out to save everyone.

Decent odds Hilgya is the one who kills Belkar.

[greenfunkman]

Wow. Just amazing. I cried at the splash panel. Twice. Well done Mr Burlew. You are a master storyteller.

Sincerely,

Greenfunkman

[Itrogash]

Rules or comic cite for negative energy being evil. There are any number of negative energy spells without the Evil tag, and for that matter positive energy spells without the Good tag and the negative energy plane has no alignment trait (and the positive energy plane will kill you if you go there without protection or precautions, and it also has no alignment trait).

Negative energy is not evil. If your analysis is based on it being evil, then your analysis is not following the rules of D&D 3.x.

I've been meaning to make this argument. Planes of Positive and Negative Energy are Inner Planes and as such Neutral. There is nothing inherently Good or Evil about them, they are unconscious forces of the universe some may use for evil or good. True, negative energy harms living beings, and that's why I think evil deities prefer to channel it, however positive energy can be as much dangerous. Therefore I don't believe that negative energy makes vampires inherently evil.

[Rrmcklin]

The whole point of this update was that Durkon succeeded by flooding Durkon* with memories all at once, as opposed to the usual process where vampire eventually absorb the host's memories one at a time. So your argument by analogy is supporting the logic of the update. Whatever logical objection you claim to have, it's not this logic.

Frankly, I think your 'ick' reaction to 'power of love' developments in general is causing you to reason poorly in this case. And the thing is, there's nothing wrong with having that reaction. You don't have to like something just because it makes sense. The flip side of that is, you don't have to believe something doesn't make sense just because you don't like it.

If we could upvote posts, I would for the last paragraph (though the first paragraph is good too), because I find myself thinking it in so many discussions with people who cry "Asspull" or "Deus ex Machina" about anything they don't like.

[jwhouk]

My argument is that it's one thing to get a firehose trained at you. It's another thing to be thrown into the base of Niagara Falls, or Victoria Falls.

[drazen]

Except we did though. #963 was a comic directly foreshadowing this event. It showed us 3 important things:

that the vampire did not have the experience necessary to properly understand Durkon's memories
that the vampire could be changed by these memories to be more like Durkon and not realize it
that Durkon recognized this, and developed a method by which he would use this information against the vampire

Agree with 1. Disagree with 2, the mere utterance of "somethin' " could just as easily have been picking up an accent from faking it constantly, and/or from being around Durkon all the time. I took that strip to be about the vampire's inability to make connections between disparate events, and the "somethin' " being Durkon looking forward to exploiting this somehow to give the spirit incomplete information and provoke it into a mistake -- such as with the speculation in the #1128 / #1129 threads that Squeaky and company might be dropping by the feast hall at some point.

Durkon* was revolted by Durkon's alimentary difficulties with human food, so the memories do affect him. He didn't care about Sigdi because he didn't have Durkon's memory of Sigdi and the connection to her. She was a stranger to him at that point.

I don't consider the vampire being revolted by a smell to be an emotional change. That's more of an argument for my position: the memories can affect the vampire and cause a reaction, but don't actually change its nature.

That seems like what vampires usually do so as to incorporate memories safely without threatening their personality. Greg violated this safety rule and so absorbed all of Durkon’s memories at once and that was obliterating.

This is probably the best explanation I've seen, though there's still that sour power-of-love nonsense flavor in the center. Sort of like a circuit overloading without a breaker or fuse. A normal vampire would take "several months" to absorb memories, and integrate them into the Evil Vampire persona. But I still believe it would make more sense for Durkon* the evil spirit to freeze up in this moment, rather than be fundamentally transformed into a spirit clone.

Still, Malack's comment about "a complicated way of annihilating who I am" always made me think he was referring to his vampire spirit, which would hold 200 years of vampire experiences, while the spirit of the original "ignorant barbarian shaman" was just along for the ride. Nothing about that speech made me think he was the same person; he even says he "had a different name when {he} was alive - 200 years ago."

Yes, the author was intentionally ambiguous in that strip so as not to spoil the big reveal at the end of BRitF, but I've generally read it as being 2 beings. And while the vampire is supposed to be Durkon on his worst day, he hasn't seemed much like Durkon on his worst day, but rather like a petty disproportionate-revenge-loving jerk (so, Nale, but competent, and a dwarf?) wearing a Durkon costume. On his worst day, Durkon was angry, but he still carried out his duty. He might have thought about sending them all to Hel, but he was crying copious tears over the feeling, not plotting revenge.

I'm probably largely hung up on Belkar pointing out, correctly, that the vampire was NOT Durkon. And now suddenly it is Durkon? It's all just a little too neat. The vampire explicitly could not make connections between memories, but now, suddenly, it makes all the connections at once and becomes another Durkon? Fine, it's the story, and it's a climax (probably not THE climax, with Gontor running around), but I'm not totally buying it. And if I don't buy it, Belkar probably shouldn't either, but we haven't seen what happens next yet.

[eilandesq]

The image I have is of a game interface where the vampire spirit is busily accepting and/or rejecting memories that allow it to have the knowledge of the host without being overwhelmed by the original personality of the host. In the lower right corner of the screen is a big glowing red button. If pushed, a pop up occurs: "ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO INTEGRATE ALL OF THE REMAINING MEMORIES SIMULTANEOUSLY?"

Durkula just pushed that button and answered "Yes" to the popup. Making him (probably) the first vampire in the history of the OotS universe to be foolish enough to intentionally bypass that safeguard.

[hroþila]

Still, Malack's comment about "a complicated way of annihilating who I am" always made me think he was referring to his vampire spirit, which would hold 200 years of vampire experiences, while the spirit of the original "ignorant barbarian shaman" was just along for the ride. Nothing about that speech made me think he was the same person; he even says he "had a different name when {he} was alive - 200 years ago."

He also said "I was the ignorant barbarian shaman".

That speech was designed to not give anything away while making you think he was fundamentally the same person (as the twist at the end of the book hadn't happened yet), so it's a bit weird to see it now being used to argue the opposite.

Regardless, I don't think littlebum is arguing that the answer was obvious. Far from it. They're just arguing that the leads were there, and that people were using them to come up with theories that were more or less aligned with what eventually happened. I would also add that even though many people couldn't really see where this was going until, like, strip 1129, the idea of the vampire and the host eventually becoming indistinguishable was perhaps the forum consensus, and while Malack's dialogue was perhaps the main point supporting this, Vamp Durkon's accent and conversations with Durkon were also up there.

[arimareiji]

Wrt quantity of memories, and whether a billion memories can overpower hundreds of them... if this were true, Greg could have never taken over Durkon. It would have been a lifetime of memories versus none whatsoever.

The nature of vampirism is what gives Greg complete control over his host's actions. For a snarky example, consider the US govt: It rules over a few hundred million people, but just a handful of deka-billionaires actually pull the strings.

[brian 333]

I think I understand Durkon's plans and Greg's reaction to it. I'm still betting he only gains temporary advantage, and the moment Greg is threatened he rejects the memories.

More than anything else, though, this comic clearly indicates we will not, in fact, be seeing the extensive puss-squeezin' montage we've been promised.

[Rrmcklin]

@Drazen, it really does seem like your biggest issue isn't any foreshadowing or how the actual mechanics works; you just dislike that love, and emotions at all had anything to do with it. Which as others have said is personal taste, but it really does come off as you coming with reasons it has to not make sense, as if you need a deeper reason to not justify it than it did.


You going back to Belkar's "people don't change in an instant!" is the same thing. You're ignoring the context and actual meaning behind that statement, and unilaterally applying it without thinking of the context and circumstances here. And that still doesn't mean you have to like it; it just means you should acknowledge it.

Edit: And as for you point about foreshadowing in strip 963, that you were wrong about what it was supposed to be foreshadowing doesn't make it less of foreshadowing. Someone else has already posted several different posts from different people who all knew that moment meant something, become up with different explanations for would it could be leading to.

[Lethologica]

Wrt quantity of memories, and whether a billion memories can overpower hundreds of them... if this were true, Greg could have never taken over Durkon. It would have been a lifetime of memories versus none whatsoever.

The nature of vampirism is what gives Greg complete control over his host's actions. For a snarky example, consider the US govt: It rules over a few hundred million people, but just a handful of deka-billionaires actually pull the strings.

Greg has still taken over Durkon. Nothing about the nature of vampirism has changed. What has changed is the nature of Greg, an individual vampire spirit.

As to "a lifetime of memories versus none whatsoever": there was never such a contest. Greg did not start out with a lifetime of Durkon's memories; he started out with a mission from Hel and the lowest, darkest memories of Durkon's life. As such, he was a very different person than Durkon.

And the political metaphor...has an extremely low ratio of explanatory power to rules-skirting.

[Particle_Man]

Another point is that the memories are not just dumped randomly all at once, but dumped in the order that Durkon processed them into his Durkon personality all at once. So they are "pre-contextualized" as it were.

Greg never had a chance once he allowed that to happen. Malaak should have warned him, I guess, but there just wasn't enough time before Nale killed Malaak.

OMG this means that Nale is partially responsible for saving the 2.0 world! And if he was set up by the three fiends . . . that would explain why they haven't pulled V out of this fight. They want world 2.0 to keep ticking, at least for now.

By the way, if Hel's plan has souls from 2.0 power her up in world 3.0, are there any souls from 1.0 kicking around the afterlife? Or is it just the Gods (and Snarl) that were there for 1.0 that are still around in 2.0?

[Particle_Man]

More than anything else, though, this comic clearly indicates we will not, in fact, be seeing the extensive puss-squeezin' montage we've been promised.

Wait, are there any bonus strips left to come from the kickstarter?