Isn't redcloak's JOB to take the matter to his god, instead of evaluating it himself?

[Fyraltari]

I'm pretty sure there is something like the Domain Agreement in place so that gods can give minor signs and stuff to help their clerics praying to them for guidance (I'm not talking about collapsing the pyramid on top of Malack's head, especially since that's not what Durkon asked for).

Source? The Domain Agreement is described here and all it says with regards to Thor is that he has to let Clerics of other gods use spell related to his Domain. Thor is free to make as many storms as he wants, but on the North. Nothing says he can make minor miracles wherever he wants.

Durkon is on Team Red's turf, after all, and he can cast as normal, as could a Western cleric in the North.

Yes, Durkon can cast as he wishes, but Thor cannot, that's the entire point of the Clerics: the gods put limitation on their own power and act through semi-independent mortal agents.

Even more to the point, Tiamat, a major Western goddess can deal out big time prophecies through her chosen left and right, although her chosen set up permanent residence in the Sunken Valley which is in the South. If that's not against the turf rules, neither should giving some hint to an important cleric be.

The Oracle is using his favored soul powers, granted to him by Tiamat, to cast Divination magic, this is not the same as just speaking aloud like Durkon did.

Unless of course he likes the bet more than he tells us and he wants to kill Hel or at least mess up her badly.

Seeing as he tried to help Loki mend his relationship with her, I doubt that.
On a more serious note, it does conflict with the image of ”wise Thor” either way.

Like I said, debating souls was not all that urgent,

One person risking an eternity of torture seems pretty urgent to me.

and even if it was, he could still keep an eye on Durkon

No he couldn't, the gods are never shown to be able to do several things as one, they don't have any power of ubiquity.

or at least have some subordinate do that and notify him if things get shaky.

From half the cosmos away? Inside the domain of an ennemy goddess?

Guy doesn't have his priorities straight.

Pretty sure he does because I just remembered a thing: Thor was aware of Durkon's prophecy. This means that until Durkon got back to the Dwarven Lands, it was impossible for him to be utterly incapacited or fail to preserve the Planet. What's more since thor needed Durkon to be dead to explain to him what was happening, he may even have been hoping for Durkon to lose a fight at some point.

Durkon mastered it, eventually, and he knew Death Ward even before that. Massed buff spells are not all that rare, either. Thor could have put two and two together if he cared to.

Malack managed to sneak in a deactivation code word without Durkon noticing so I think the magic involved goes beyond "add a line of incantation to the death ward spell to make it multi-target". Magic isn't just saying the name of the spell out loud, you have to look out for stuff like "negative particle wave interference". And even if Thor could have figured the spell out at the time (which he might, I don't know) it would have been in everybody's best interest, including Durkon if he'd been killed in a relatively low-stake fight, such as a skirmish with the LG away from any Gate, in a major city with at least one friendly Cleric who could have brought him back.

That's why I linked the strip I linked. That storm also broke out pretty much exactly when Miko caught up with the Order, and it stopped abruptly when she and the Order made peace agreed to a temporary cessation of hostilities. Also, unless dancrilis here is to be believed, it was a complete coincidence.

that's hardly the same. For one the Order wasn't involved in cosmic business yet. For twice, the "meaning" of the first storm needed a convoluted interpretation to be explained while the second provided clear evidence that Durkon* ddidn't have Thor's favor anymore since he need a spell to quell it when the real Durkon could have just prayed. Just like the Mechane's crewman was praying to Adad.

[dancrilis]

The Oracle is using his favored soul powers, granted to him by Tiamat, to cast Divination magic, this is not the same as just speaking aloud like Durkon did.

The Oracle is not a favoured soul (as far as we know) he is merely an Expert (panel 9) - how and why he can divine things is unknown (I suspect a template or horrific abuse of the profession skill rules).

[Fyraltari]

The Oracle is not a favoured soul (as far as we know) he is merely an Expert (panel 9) - how and why he can divine things is unknown (I suspect a template or horrific abuse of the profession skill rules).

We know of three mortals who can make accurate predictions of the future. the Oracle who is a worshipper of Tiamat, one priest of Odin and Sangwaan a worshipper of Rooster. I don't think it's a coincidence.

[dancrilis]

We know of three mortals who can make accurate predictions of the future. the Oracle who is a worshipper of Tiamat, one priest of Odin and Sangwaan a worshipper of Rooster. I don't think it's a coincidence.

Sangwaan we actually have some information on.

Spoiler: Spoiler Alert

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Sangwaan is a diviner (a wizard) who also used numerology to make predictions - and who sometimes gets true visions from Rooster.

She is explicitly not an oracle - she is by her own admission not as powerful or as reliable (although she didn't define powerful or reliable).

My assumption is that The Orcale has a custom template, and Sangwaan has a lesser version of that same template - so he can throw out mostly accurate predictions all day (without the ability to avoid them or impact them) and she can occassionally do the same (possibly limited to X times per day/week).

[Metastachydium]

Source? The Domain Agreement is described here and all it says with regards to Thor is that he has to let Clerics of other gods use spell related to his Domain. Thor is free to make as many storms as he wants, but on the North. Nothing says he can make minor miracles wherever he wants. (Â…) The Oracle is using his favored soul powers, granted to him by Tiamat, to cast Divination magic, this is not the same as just speaking aloud like Durkon did. (Â…) Yes, Durkon can cast as he wishes, but Thor cannot, that's the entire point of the Clerics: the gods put limitation on their own power and act through semi-independent mortal agents.

Again, Tiamat does a lot more for the Oracle and he's not a cleric and not even a favoured soul (canonnically he is an Expert directly granted big league visions of the future by his goddess whenever he enters an oracular trance; we only ever see him cast once and he does that with a wand (and using those does not require actual casting provess: Haley is a rogue and she can use wands just fine)).

Seeing as he tried to help Loki mend his relationship with her, I doubt that.

He doesn't really seem to pity Hel (he basically says that she brought the whole thing upon herself). Also, we don't know how genuine his attempt to help is.

One person risking an eternity of torture seems pretty urgent to me.

Except we know lodging appeals later is absolutely possible. „Eternity” in this case would have equalled roughly a few weeks at most.

No he couldn't, the gods are never shown to be able to do several things as one, they don't have any power of ubiquity.

Small scale multitasking is something even the gods cannot do? That's news to me.

From half the cosmos away? Inside the domain of an ennemy goddess?

Scrying from the Outer Planes is cannonically a piece of cake, irrespective of where those scried on are at any given moment. Further, that domai has a door leading to the Astral Plane which is navigable for all. It could be organized with ridiculous ease if someone cared to organize it.

Pretty sure he does because I just remembered a thing: Thor was aware of Durkon's prophecy. This means that until Durkon got back to the Dwarven Lands, it was impossible for him to be utterly incapacited or fail to preserve the Planet. What's more since thor needed Durkon to be dead to explain to him what was happening, he may even have been hoping for Durkon to lose a fight at some point.

I see. „Eh, whatever, worst case scenario, he lives. I better go soak my feet instead of helping.” What a guy! (Also, level draining has good potential for decreasing the future efficacy of folks. And there's still the issue with the pyramid: the vampiric takeover was definitely not something he should have seen as desirable. Moreover, if Thor wanted him dead, rest assured that he would have died a lot earlier.)

Malack managed to sneak in a deactivation code word without Durkon noticing so I think the magic involved goes beyond "add a line of incantation to the death ward spell to make it multi-target". Magic isn't just saying the name of the spell out loud, you have to look out for stuff like "negative particle wave interference". And even if Thor could have figured the spell out at the time (which he might, I don't know) it would have been in everybody's best interest, including Durkon if he'd been killed in a relatively low-stake fight, such as a skirmish with the LG away from any Gate, in a major city with at least one friendly Cleric who could have brought him back.

And it is perfectly impossible that Durkon (who forgot about the Domain Agreement at some point) has an understanding of magic way too poor to notice the tampering? He's no scholar. He's a field cleric. At any rate, Thor knows what Death Ward is and if he cared to check what's going on, he'd have noticed Durkon is trying to defend himself against negative energy and could have sent something more useful than a Masked Debt Gourd.

that's hardly the same. For one the Order wasn't involved in cosmic business yet. For twice, the "meaning" of the first storm needed a convoluted interpretation to be explained while the second provided clear evidence that Durkon* ddidn't have Thor's favor anymore since he need a spell to quell it when the real Durkon could have just prayed. Just like the Mechane's crewman was praying to Adad.

Really? They got themselves involved the moment Elan blew up the Gate and Miko was about bring them to the guy who could actually explain the cosmic stuff to them.

[KorvinStarmast]

I am going to assume that The High Priest of The Dark One knows the duties and responsibilities of The High Priest of The Dark One well enough to do the job he has decades of experience doing.

He does. It helps that

Spoiler: SoD material

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he got a massive data dump when he donned the cloak.

Precisely. Ever since Redcloak has become the Bearer, his god delegated decision making to him and rolled with his decisions.

Yes, and furthermore, he provided Redcloak with "Mission-Type-Orders" that were concise: Don't Screw This Up. Redcloak knew excatly what "this" refers to. The Plan.

To answer the OP: it is Redcloak's job to do as his god directed him to. Pretty sure The Dark One isn't all in on democracy and discussion. He gives orders, his minions carry out their duties.

[Lo'Tek]

Redcloak knows the plan and is perfectly capable of evaluating the matter and in this case rejecting it.

In 1209

No, no - Any deal that doesn't include deific recognation of our ~

Sadly Durkons diplomacy skills are so bad, he didn't notice that Redcloak was going to tell him what TDO wants and interrupted that very important part with some meaningless "i am authorized to negotiate" blanko, then started to offer other things he believes Redcloak might like.

At that moment Durkon failed the negotiation badly. Redcloak now believes they won't get the "deific recognation of their ~" and will just be offered "table scraps". This believe is actually deeply ingrained in he faith of TDO, it is an important part of their religion (the goblins just get scraps, the other gods are unjust, ...). Redcloak is convinced that Thor would not accept, if he knew what they want, and that Thors cleric isn't even willing to hear what they ask for just strengthens that believe. So the deal is a no go.

Durkon honestly believed in his "If n I bring it ta Thor as a done deal" interruption. No one with diplomatic skills would take that seriously, it is a figure of speech, the gods will want to re-negotiate if the deal is not ok for them. But more importantly Durkon completely misinterpreted the situation. He noticed he hit a nerve with the "a deal between us mortals" part but instead of listening what RC spills while agitated, he tried to calm RC, to deescalate and return to moderation. Moderation is the "agree to disagree and no deal" situation they started with.

Now if Durkon had given Redcloak the chance to make his demand and checked that with Thor, then Thor would accept, like Durkon promised. That "deific recognation of ~" is probably a given when they want to use the purple color to seal the snarl and Thor would be amazed that they got such a good deal, since he already recognizes TDO as an equal anyway.

However for RC the fist part of being recognized as equal would be to allow them to voice their needs and listen carefully.

Redcloak is perfectly capable of evaluating "the offer" and evaluated it correctly: it is not enough, it just some scraps and belittlement, mostly about mortal goblins in this world, and not at all what TDO wants according to the plan.

[Bilbo Baggins]

At this point, I don't Redcloak cares about the Dark One's opinion. We know now he's been working without any direct guidance from the Dark One, and his sunk cost fallacy has been shown repeatedly. He's so committed to the plan that he'd trust his own judgment over the Dark One's. Even if the Dark One directly told him to stop, he wouldn't abandon the plan. In the hypothetical situation where the Dark One comes around to help the other gods, the conversation would be something like:

Dark One: "I came to an agreement with the other gods, together we can stop the snarl and then they'll give the goblins a fair place in the world"
: "The gods are so scared of my plan now that they're intervening to send a fake message to trick me (or they compromised the Dark One and forced him to give me that mesage), I have to go through with this!"

Then when the Dark One takes away Redcloak's spells the next day to show he means business:
: "The Dark One's in trouble, the other gods are blocking his influence on the world! As a last ditch effort to strike back I'll release the snarl now, ritual or no ritual. I, Miko Miyazaki Redcloak, now fulfill the divine destiny that the Twelve Gods Dark One has revealed to me!"

Or, y'know, something like that.

[ElderSage]

"The gods are so scared of my plan now that they're intervening to send a fake message to trick me (or they compromised the Dark One and forced him to give me that mesage), I have to go through with this!"

And don't forget what is probably at this point some rampant communication issues...

Which is to say that at this point, if out of the blue, Redcloak suddenly received a message (or even divine visit!) from his god saying something along the lines of:

"Hey, y'know that Plan with a capital P that [SoD... "stuff"...] happened for, and we've been working on for maybe half a century? Well, turns out that there's a lot of godly issues going on that I wasn't aware of, thanks to being a new god, so we're going to work together with the rest of the gods to seal away the Snarl. Mmkay?"

Redcloak would probably be perfectly justified in assuming that: a) a god could totally do that (they probably could) and that b) a god is doing that, considering that the only communication he's directly gotten from his god in fifty years of working as the Bearer of the Crimson Mantle was passed through another goblin, who also got way more information and words from the Dark One than Redcloak did, and consisted of a grand total of seven words that pretty much amounted to "the Plan must succeed".

Then, again, you're probably right as well in that Redcloak might try to self-justify continuing the plan, even if his god tells him not to do it. Just thought I should point out that there's pretty legitimate reasons to assume it wasn't actually his god.

[Riftwolf]

TDO calling Redcloak by his real name would probably be enough to shut him up, at least temporarily.

[Lemarc]

He does. It helps that

Spoiler: SoD material

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he got a massive data dump when he donned the cloak.

Yes, and furthermore, he provided Redcloak with "Mission-Type-Orders" that were concise: Don't Screw This Up. Redcloak knew excatly what "this" refers to. The Plan.

To answer the OP: it is Redcloak's job to do as his god directed him to. Pretty sure The Dark One isn't all in on democracy and discussion. He gives orders, his minions carry out their duties.

Yes. The existing evidence, what little there is, suggests TDO is as all-in on the plan as Redcloak, or more so.

Spoiler: Start of Darkness

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"The Plan must continue. The Plan must continue. The Plan must continue. The Plan must continue." It took the imminent death of Right-Eye to snap Redcloak out of that trance.