OOTS #1176 - The Discussion Thread

[Anitar]

With the way Hel was looking in the middle of this strip, I was expecting her to be dead by the end of it.

Also, is this the first time a divine being has referred to the Snarl by name? I recall them all pointedly avoiding that during the godsmoot.

[Draconi Redfir]

Doesn't sound like an "or" situation to me. If they do manage to pull of the Dark One gambit, he's condemned his daughter to millenia, possibly eons, of a slow, wasting demise.

it still might not be too long by God standards. realistically, they just need to keep this world going long enough for the Dark One to gain enough power to survive until the next world. After that, they can start a slow, peaceful apocalypse where no new life is born and everyone slowly ages out without suffering. then they can take apart the world quietly and make a new one with more permanent locks.

[Grey Watcher]

With the way Hel was looking in the middle of this strip, I was expecting her to be dead by the end of it.

Also, is this the first time a divine being has referred to the Snarl by name? I recall them all pointedly avoiding that during the godsmoot.

I think that was because they know the mortals can hear them, even if they can't (won't?) hear the mortals, and therefore it runs up against the gag order.

[Kantaki]

I'm getting a Tarquin-Nale vibe just from before T snuffed his son. Like that of an exasperated resignation on his kid.

How mature is Hel supposed to be anyway?

The difference is Loki (seem like he) genuinely regrets that things turned out like this.
Tarquin not so much.

[Chnapy]

If hel plays her cards right, she could still come out better than she came in with this, even if this world keeps existing forever. She's so messed up because she doesn't get any worship, but now she has a High priest, who can make more clerics just by biting regular clerics. She would have been better served by Durkon* or his second in command, who were much higher lvl, but still.
As long as she doesn't get dusted, Curly can still create an actual cult of undead worshippers of Hel.

[The MunchKING]

Loki is the one who proposed the bet. He should be blamed.

But only a total idiot tells an evil God "it's war to the knife". Smart evil people attack from behind.

Depends on what level the Clerics start at I guess, but you get Cure Disease pretty early. ALOT earlier than you get the ability to absorb fire Damage.

When your world gets nuked every thousand years, it's rather difficult to have a "forgotten Golden Age".

Not THAT hard. The Gods just work it into the Backstory when they manifest the world.

Maybe not even just goblinoids! Maybe a whole "monster pantheon"!

The generic Monsters already have Fenrir, and most of the cool monsters have their own custom God/dess.

[Quild]

Well, at least she's not planning on throwing away what she still has for now?

[Given what Thor said about TDO, would she even survive the interregnum without the mass influx of dwarven souls?]

I wonder the same thing since Thor explained that.
Maybe she wouldn't be the only one at risk if the Snarl happens to destroy all living souls. Some other gods may be low on souls.

Loki really did something wicked to his own blood with this wager.


Also, "interregnum", interesting choice of words. A reader of Mr. Brust work maybe? :)

[Corian]

To be honest, I think at least half the reason Loki went for the Bet in the first place, is because he never expected this world to last any longer than the others, and if it wasn't for the possibility of using the Dark One's quiddity to seal away the Snarl for good, he wouldn't have tried to stop her either.

Second this. Loki is realizing that what was intended as a single-world prank/lesson is going to harm his daughter permanently, he rues it, and he can't even blame her for her anger at that level.
Though I suspect that's it's also true that she could concede the bet and end it. Her saying that it's for the duration of this world is her perspective where she won't give up, and she also expects the world to end soon.
I expect this conversation will have huge plot impact going forward.
Great storytelling as always.

[Garwain]

The habit of calming down (or trying to) by giving shingles is already shown here: http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1082.html

Also, Hel is indeed wasting away by lack of souls. If the gods can indeed patch this world, it will only prolong Hel's suffering and might be her downfall in the end. That prospect is probably saddening for Loki who probably didn't anticipate that this world would have a chance to survive long enough to deplete Hel.
edit: reading the thread, this idea is ninja'd big time. oh well..

[GregTD]

Not THAT hard. The Gods just work it into the Backstory when they manifest the world

In which case their God knows how to cast the spells, and can pass it on. :-)

[Jasdoif]

Also, is this the first time a divine being has referred to the Snarl by name? I recall them all pointedly avoiding that during the godsmoot.

Hel referred to the Snarl by name at the Godsmoot, too.

[Grey Watcher]

Depends on what level the Clerics start at I guess, but you get Cure Disease pretty early. ALOT earlier than you get the ability to absorb fire Damage.



Not THAT hard. The Gods just work it into the Backstory when they manifest the world.



The generic Monsters already have Fenrir, and most of the cool monsters have their own custom God/dess.

True, but I don't think there's anything stopping someone a mortal born under the aegis of Pantheon A converting to the worship of a deity of Pantheon B. If a god specifically for <type-of-monster> arises, I can definitely see their Clerics extolling that more specific interest as a selling point.

[The MunchKING]

In which case their God knows how to cast the spells, and can pass it on. :-)

Only if they're divine.

If Vecna sets you up with the Arcane version, you may just be SOL (Sad and Out of Luck).

[Anarion]

Hel’s face getting worked up does a great scary gaunt look, I’m impressed. I feel no sympathy for her, but I am a bit sad for the lost relationship with Loki, he really seemed like he was trying to get through to her in his way.

[Schroeswald]

True, but I don't think there's anything stopping someone born under the aegis of Pantheon A converting to the worship of a deity of Pantheon B. If a god specifically for <type-of-monster> arises, I can definitely see their Clerics extolling that more specific interest as a selling point.

Banjo: God of Puppets, what puppet wouldn’t want to worship him?

[Fish]

Hel looks tired, desperate, and unhappy. She needs an ally, but she’s burned all her bridges. That’s why I expect

Spoiler

Show

the Dark One

to show up at the end of the book with an offer.

Also, Loki seems to have a lot on his mind. If the world is saved, his daughter will almost certainly die, trapped forever by the terms of the bet; if the world is destroyed, she might live, freed of the bet, but Loki may die. He might change his mind and turn to the Dark Side. I sense the conflict within him. Loki can destroy the world. I have foreseen it. It is his destiny.

Okay, maybe not, but we were bound to talk about Star Wars eventually. Loki might have enough sympathy to let her have a few souls worth of nourishment. Or make souls available. By betraying the dwarves, or something. You’ll have to draw your own parallel to Alderaan.

[Schroeswald]

Hel looks tired, desperate, and unhappy. She needs an ally, but she’s burned all her bridges. That’s why I expect

Spoiler

Show

the Dark One

to show up at the end of the book with an offer.

Also, Loki seems to have a lot on his mind. If the world is saved, his daughter will almost certainly die; if the world is destroyed, she might live, but Loki may die. He might change his mind and turn to the Dark Side. I sense the conflict within him. Loki can destroy the world. I have foreseen it. It is his destiny.

Okay, maybe not, but we were bound to talk about Star Wars eventually.

Oooh! TDO showing up sounds cool, I don’t know if it would happen but it sounds interesting.

What side would Loki be on if not the Dark Side? He sure isn’t on the Light Side.

[xroads]

As long as she doesn't get dusted, Curly can still create an actual cult of undead worshippers of Hel.

There's also the the Frontarch. But she might be in a rather precarious position once the summit ends. Depending on how things end up she may not have the protection of law, allies, or bodyguards in a room full of people who hate vampires.

[DaFlipp]

Was an end-condition ever established for the wager between Hel and Thor? As in, anything to determine who "wins" the wager?

If not... I just got an idea for a potential end to this thread. After the Order brings an end to things on the mortal side of things, Loki and Thor reappear before Hel to discuss the wager. Hel starts to go off on another tirade, but Thor interrupts her to say:

"You win."

He says that her gambit proved to her just how screwed he and the rest of the pantheon would have been if she'd pulled it off, and that there's no use in continuing the terms of the wager. The dwarven dead are no longer re-distributed over such arbitrary lines, and Hel can once again have clerics among the living.

Of course, she didn't really win - Loki convinced Thor to give her an "out" so the clearly-more-unfair-than-any-party-realized wager could officially be concluded.

Granted, the question then is whether Hel is able to accept the "win", or if she's too proud to take the out given to her...

[Pax_Chi]

I'm with the folks that think Hel threatening Loki is a big mistake on her part. After all, she just gave he dad some very good motivation to ensure that this iteration of the world endures as long as possible, if not indefinitely.

I will say in some respects that Loki's lesson has taught Hel a few things. Her predicament at this point is entirely due to her own shortsightedness, and at the very least she's learned the value of long-term planning. Her plan wasn't actually bad and she put a lot of forethought into it, as well as taking advantage of several opportunities that popped up, so she's clearly upped her game a little.

But on the flip side she's still hasn't completely learned her lesson, since the only reason the Order was able to stop her was because she overplayed her hand and gloated about her victory beforehand.

Part of me is wondering if there's some way out of Hel's current situation that she just hasn't considered. I doubt Loki wanted his daughter to literally fade from existence, and his comments about knowing when to quit could easily be seen as him telling her to just admit that she lost this wager, her dad was right and she's learned not to be so shortsighted. At that point, maybe something could be done to allow her worship so she doesn't fade from existence.

But again, threatening her dad disincentivizes him from giving her access to clerics again, so she might have just doomed herself. Her only shot at this point might be to link herself to the Frost Giant and get his worshipers to worship her as well.

[Psyren]

Why would Fenir (the God of Monsters ) have that kind of problem? Loads of monsters are reasonably intelligent and can pray while they prey.

What I mean is that there should be a ton of undead in the world - nobody seems that surprised at their presence (we even get "eyes of their wights" puns and similar.) And yeah, only a fraction of those will be intelligent. But it seems that relatively little of them pull for her, despite being their de facto patron in the north, and I don't really know why.

Not quite, as I understand it. She'd be allowed to have worshipers as long as they aren't priests, but it's impossible to get worshipers without priests to guide them, I'm guessing.

Grey Wolf

Yeah it does seem to be a bit of a crapsack loop.

She has a high priest now though (thanks to the "Frontarchy.") If she abandons this hail-mary scheme and simply builds her church up the regular way she might have a better chance, especially if the world doesn't end and she's forced to work with what she's got now.

More importantly though - if she truly does waste away, what then? "God of disease" doesn't seem like a position that can just go unfilled.

[The MunchKING]

I'm with the folks that think Hel threatening Loki is a big mistake on her part. After all, she just gave he dad some very good motivation to ensure that this iteration of the world endures as long as possible, if not indefinitely.

I dunno. She's still his daughter. He may be thinking once she starts eating right and getting her head back in the right space she'll calm down and get over the ichor-feud.

[Anymage]

True, but I don't think there's anything stopping someone born under the aegis of Pantheon A converting to the worship of a deity of Pantheon B. If a god specifically for <type-of-monster> arises, I can definitely see their Clerics extolling that more specific interest as a selling point.

If gods could change quiddities, there'd be some with of that. The fact that you don't have any strangely out-of-pantheon gods (like a western zodiac animal having the yellow aura of the norse northeners) strongly implies that you're stuck with the quiddity you were born with.

And while in theory nothing would stop a blue western god from hanging out with the yellow northeners, gods squabble. So long as it's just intra-pantheon squabbling, any resulting snarl-like manifestations are single color and easily dealt with. Inter-pantheon dealings are formal and removed because the risks are so high. If someone with a different color starts hanging out like they were family, they'll most likely start squabbling like family but the risks will be much worse.

[Fish]

Part of me is wondering if there's some way out of Hel's current situation that she just hasn't considered.

The Dark One could offer her the worship of those nerdy rebel goblin kids from the first 100 strips. Worshiping a dwarven death goddess would be paint-your-bedroom-black-and-annoy-your-parents Cool.

[137beth]

Well, this page shoots down my speculation that Loki would use this meeting to propose allowing the last vampire to form a temple in this world, although I suppose he could still do so later. On the other hand, the fact that the camera is away from the dwarves gives ample opportunity for Brightstone and Sigdi to explain what's going on to the council off-panel.

[The MunchKING]

What I mean is that there should be a ton of undead in the world - nobody seems that surprised at their presence (we even get "eyes of their wights" puns and similar.) And yeah, only a fraction of those will be intelligent. But it seems that relatively little of them pull for her, despite being their de facto patron in the north, and I don't really know why.

All the ones we saw were Southerners, and Ex-Paladins. Also I'm not sure if wights inherit classes, but I don't think they do.

So they wouldn't necessarily be overly religious anyway.

Maybe the Dwarves just don't get into Necromancy very much, and the good clerics burn the bodies whenever they aren't getting raised specifically to deny Hel. Come to think of it, with one of the only other known to be Evil Gods being "undead are icky" and the other one seeming to not care about spellcasting, it could be Hel is literally the only who would make Clerics to make Undead in the North. Which means it's up to the Arcane casters. And Although better than AD&D, Dwarves still aren't that into learning Arcane Magic.

Yeah it does seem to be a bit of a crapsack loop.

She has a high priest now though (thanks to the "Frontarchy.") If she abandons this hail-mary scheme and simply builds her church up the regular way she might have a better chance, especially if the world doesn't end and she's forced to work with what she's got now.

More importantly though - if she truly does waste away, what then? "God of disease" doesn't seem like a position that can just go unfilled.

In Scion, someone else who Fate considered close would take over. Or the concept would go unclaimed until someone else rose up to take it, and all the other Pantheons' Death and Disease God/desses would have to work a little harder to pick up the slack.

I'm not sure if OOTS is working on similar logic or not, but it seemed like a reasonable starting place to me.

Maybe Loki would have to pop out another Kid to keep the Norse/North Mythos thing intact.

[Schroeswald]

In Scion, someone else who Fate considered close would take over. Or the concept would go unclaimed until someone else rose up to take it, and all the other Pantheons' Death and Disease God/desses would have to work a little harder to pick up the slack.

I'm not sure if OOTS is working on similar logic or not, but it seemed like a reasonable starting place to me.

Maybe Loki would have to pop out another Kid to keep the Norse/North Mythos thing intact.

I’m not even sure how Hel could be the child of Loki, everyone was created at the same time.

[KorvinStarmast]

Possibly it's sad-dad that his kid would hate him THIS much.

Sharper than a serpant's tooth is the tongue of an ungrateful child. On the other hand, CSN suggests teach your children well.

Loki has, by tricking his daughter, set up a bit of bad blood between them (though perhaps with an intent to teach her a lesson?) so he is reaping from the crop that he had sown.

She declared war on an evil God, and told him that he needs to make sure all her clerics get snuffed early?

Yeah, trash talking is usually a bad move unless one can back it up.

But only a total idiot tells an evil God "it's war to the knife". Smart evil people attack from behind.

Fair point, particularly in a D&D context.

Loki is realizing that what was intended as a single-world prank/lesson is going to harm his daughter permanently, he rues it, and he can't even blame her for her anger at that level.

Oh! What A Tangled Web We Weave When First We Practice To Deceive ... Loki, a spider caught in a web of his own making.

The Dark One could offer her the worship of those nerdy rebel goblin kids from the first 100 strips. Worshiping a dwarven death goddess would be paint-your-bedroom-black-and-annoy-your-parents Cool.

That would be a cool reach back. Hope that's included.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

I’m not even sure how Hel could be the child of Loki, everyone was created at the same time.

We don't know that they were created at the same time. For all we know, Odin, Zeus, Dragon and someone from the Eastern Pantheon were the originals, and they created others (who are their children), who created some children of their own.

Grey Wolf

[mjasghar]

Getting together with Thrym might be in Hel's best interest at this point if she is indeed on the verge of withering away. We saw Malack dedicating a shrine to both Nergal and his wife, so presumably having some frost giants pray to them as an unholy union would allow her to survive if the current world and the wager last indefinitely.

Though from the way Thor worded it, Belief seems like the most important part for a god to continue existing, and there will always be Belief in her existence as long as the dwarven afterlife rules remain.

That might count as living clerics which would break the Bet