OOTS #1176 - The Discussion Thread

[The_Weirdo]

Yeah, but Tarquin strikes me as the kind of person who really likes his bed.

I shouldn't have to live in a world where all the good points are terrible ones.

[flyinglemur]

Why is Hel cruel to the dwarves?

I've always assumed it was just her personality. Before this world she was used to getting a lot of worship when people didn't die, even though she hadn't done anything. I think that kind of grew into a spoiled personality. She believes that she's owed worship and power, and when she took the bet she figured she wouldn't need to do any work to get dwarven souls. Combine that with some sadism, considering that in this strip alone she was planning on giving old people shingles for fun, and you get what you see. She felt free to torment her souls however she wished not realizing there would be push back, and now she's stuck.

She could change, but she doesn't feel like she should have to. She thinks those souls belong to her, so they shouldn't be resisting anyways. Just my interpretation though.

[Verdant Mage]

Hello, I'm new here, just wanted to post because I thought of a loophole in the bet that Hel made:

She is prevented from making any Clerics of the LIVING.

Things she is NOT prevented from doing:

- receiving worship of the living. (which she currently lacks)

- making clerics of the dead. (of which she currently has 1)

Thus, one thing she could do is the classic "undead rulers" trope. Direct her undead cleric to go and find a small (and preferably already in trouble) village of living people, and have her vampire visibly protect them in exchange for a small sample of blood on the regular. Emphasize the villagers' happiness, freedom, and protection. DO NOT let the vampire turn them unless they specifically ask for it, and if the population can support losing one of the living.

Basically, form an order of (Un)Holy Vampire Clerics dedicated by the goddess Hel herself to making life as good as possible for the living villagers in their chosen location, with the purpose being to encourage the living villagers to begin thankful worship of Hel.

Becoming a vampire could even become part of the basic process for induction as a Cleric, for those who wish to give their life to her service (literally). Even if they're trapped inside their own head, they could be upfront about this and spin it as some noble sacrifice for the protection of the people, which the Vampire spirit will do its best to honor. The number of villagers who may desire that wouldn't be so many to start with, but hey, the ones she has are immortal unless killed. She can slowly stock up as the village grows under her protection, until she has her own major city like The Dark One has Azure City now.

Only she'd get her city with less murder, and more enlightened self interest.

[Ruck]

While there's no direct source, belief, souls and dedications are what powers her, and she just lost a bunch of her souls, she also just gave up more power to give spells to clerics, that means her power just got dropped a lot lower than normal, its quite possible that this situation would be the same, this definitely hurt her a lot.

I mean, I don't think it's an unreasonable supposition, but it's far from certain-- this could also be the product of millennia of malnourishment now manifesting itself.

Yeah, but Tarquin strikes me as the kind of person who really likes his bed.

Co-sign. Tarquin did a number of things out of nothing more than spite and made enemies it would have been really practical not to. (Enor and Gannji being the most obvious examples.)

[happycrow]

Verdant Mage:

I am guessing Nergal might run that play, but Hel likes to give people diseases out of a sense of sadism... enlightened self-interest just isn't in her playbook that we've seen.

[RabidEel]

I, for one, have no sympathy for Hel. The only reason she is dying is because she chose to make her afterlife such a terrible place. She actively enslaves and tortures the souls she gets, which is exactly why the dwarves don't want to go to her plane. If she was kind to those souls she could have easily become one of the more powerful gods in this world. The dwarves could have ended up a pacifist culture that scorns violence, where dwarves always seek to pass away peacefully into the loving embrace of Hel. Instead she chose to torment her souls, so the dwarves have to be honorable or suffer eternally. She made her bed, now she must lie in it. If she dies then the bet is rendered null, and everyone is better off with one less evil god.

I was actually wondering about this the other day. Are the afterlives the way they are because a god makes them that way, or does the concentrated essence of millions of souls of the same alignment kind of make the place in their own image? After all, the afterlife planes themselves are made up of recycled soul-stuff. Maybe even the behavior of the gods is significantly influenced by the souls they ingest.

Compare that to the Dark One, whose afterlife is a great reward for his followers, at least by goblin standards.

That is a fairly compelling argument, but as a devil's advocate: there's Evil, and then there's Evil. Beating people up is miserable for the people being beaten up, but enjoyable for the bullies. Being sick, on the other hand, is fun for no one. It could be that the nature of TDO's plane lets the perpetrators have a great time fighting everyone, but a god of sickness's plane is just pure misery incarnate.

[Emanick]

Are you serious? This is exactly what not believing someone but being unwilling to contradict them looks like.

It does to me.

I don't really see it, but if you both do, fair enough. OOTS faces aren't the most expressive, and as an autistic person, I sometimes miss nuances in people's facial expressions.

[Psychronia]

My guess was that "teach Hel a lesson" was the excuse he would tell people. But his real goal was to become the default Evil/Chaos God for the Dwarves as well. He was hoping to get a Hylgia type who would lead all the Chaotics and such to him for the "alternate argument Honor" and he'd rake in all the Chaotic Dwarves. But a combination of strong cultural pressure to be Lawful and a lack of a Hylgia-type to lead them, means he was stuck with whatever slipped through the cracks. Which because he had Clerics and spread throughout the Human lands, was merely a minor setback to him rather than the big deal it was to Hel.

It's part of a theory that he also influenced Odin to go bonkers, and Thor to be stuck trying to be Lawful to protect the Dwarves so that everyone close to him in power would be too distracted by their own problems to stop him from doing even MORE shenanigans.

Okay, I could buy that. Teaching his daughter a lesson seems like a pretty short-sighted and outright harmful approach, but muscling in as an "out" to the very system he started(assuming Hilgya's right about how it works) sounds very much like a Loki con. Smokescreen for other schemes too. The counterargument I would make for this is that if this was part of Loki's con, there should definitely have been more people like Hilgya than what we've seen. He would definitely have capitalized on it more if this was his goal.

Then again, maybe there is a faction of dwarves like that and we just don't know. I might also be adding in too much of Loki Classic interpretation to the Giant's version. The thing is, Classic Loki is a trickster, yes. But he's also renown as the problem solver. If you wanna kill something, send Thor. If you want to fix a problem, send Loki.
Because of this, I tend to hope that Loki has some big-picture goal where everyone wins. Like, somehow this is meant to help with the Snarl, or restore Odin. Something like that.

I, for one, have no sympathy for Hel. The only reason she is dying is because she chose to make her afterlife such a terrible place. She actively enslaves and tortures the souls she gets, which is exactly why the dwarves don't want to go to her plane. If she was kind to those souls she could have easily become one of the more powerful gods in this world. The dwarves could have ended up a pacifist culture that scorns violence, where dwarves always seek to pass away peacefully into the loving embrace of Hel. Instead she chose to torment her souls, so the dwarves have to be honorable or suffer eternally. She made her bed, now she must lie in it. If she dies then the bet is rendered null, and everyone is better off with one less evil god.

Compare that to the Dark One, whose afterlife is a great reward for his followers, at least by goblin standards.

That...is a good point. Y'know, in Norse Myth Classic, it's more like Valhalla was a special case for valiant warriors. Helheim the world was just where the non-warriors would go, and it was basically a carbon copy of the mortal world with the caveat that dead people are static and incapable of change, so if you die a scumbag, you'll be stuck like that forever. If you die a baker or something, you're just an eternal baker, which might've been the plan in life anyway.
Not really such a raw deal, so Hel only has her own sadism to blame here.

Hello, I'm new here, just wanted to post because I thought of a loophole in the bet that Hel made (...) one thing she could do is the classic "undead rulers" trope.

A decent solution, but two main issues. Firstly, Hel refuses to change, and that's been her problem the whole time. She's arrogant, even (or perhaps especially) in her current state.
Second, that sounds like a dope setup for a campaign, which means some PC/Paladin murderhoboes are inevitably going to appear and kill everyone for XP. That was sorta her entire problem with creating undead clerics.

[NihhusHuotAliro]

That last panel made me realize that I ship Hel/Thrym in an "adorable elderly couple" kind of way.

[Particle_Man]

If Hel does die I assume Curly and the Frontarch don’t get new spells but can cast what was previously granted at dusk. Does the Frontarch also lose her protection at the Godsmoot? Also, I wonder what Curly would do without Hel?

[Dion]

I shouldn't have to live in a world where all the good points are terrible ones.

Are you familiar with the American game called T-Ball?

[Rogar Demonblud]

They'd just become non-theistic clerics, assuming they don't sign on with, oh, say Fenrir.

[Dion]

I don't really see it, but if you both do, fair enough. OOTS faces aren't the most expressive, and as an autistic person, I sometimes miss nuances in people's facial expressions.

I don’t think it’s a riddle you can solve with a facial expression.

Instead ask “what are the social norms an allistic might follow in this situation?”

The two cases are “they believe him, and follow the social norm of displaying that belief to increase in-group cohesion”, or “they don’t believe him, but follow the social norm of pretending to display belief anyhow, to reduce in-group conflict”.

The joke is that it looks the same either way.

It’s an allistic joke. Allistics usually do whatever they think is expected of them in social situations.

Ha ha. Very funny. Allistics do such silly things.

[Ruck]

I don't really see it, but if you both do, fair enough. OOTS faces aren't the most expressive, and as an autistic person, I sometimes miss nuances in people's facial expressions.

In that case, just to elaborate a little: I think the idea in panel 2 is that Durkon and Minrah are being polite-- they don't want to contradict their god, but they don't really believe what he's saying, either. (Which is what Fyraltari and Dion have both said.) Thor picks up on that, which gives us panel 3: an exasperated sigh, followed by an explanation he knows they'll buy, and their relief at it.

[The_Weirdo]

Are you familiar with the American game called T-Ball?

No.

No.

No.

[DougTheHead]

Hmm...I wonder if Loki is going to instruct his conveniently-nearby cleric to do something about the Cleric of Hel currently wandering the dwarven capitol?

[Dion]

Hmm...I wonder if Loki is going to instruct his conveniently-nearby cleric to do something about the Cleric of Hel currently wandering the dwarven capitol?

What! You want Hilgya to poach Minrah’s kill?

My irrational hatred for Hilgya grows stronger!

[antipodeF]

She'd need to be sympathetic for that. We've seen not a single depiction of her that wasn't nasty and unsympathetic. She got conned but that doesn't make her likeable.

You don't feel she's the latest page is sympathetic...? Remember, she got conned thousands of years ago and has been in a state of steadily declining physical and mental health ever since then. I won't call it a full excuse - abuse is abuse - but it's at least cause for sympathy.

As for her depictions, so far we've seen her interact with 1) Thor, 2) Loki, 3) Thrym, and 4) miscellaneous dwarven souls. She hates the first two, so it's not surprising she's done nothing nice for them; the third one is clingy and she isn't into him, so it's not surprising she's been snippy toward him too; and the fourth.... well, that's harder to defend. I'll concede she's cruel to the dwarven souls. "Unusually cruel"? Maybe not. What do the other gods act like, besides Thor?

To call Hel a case of utter irredeemability, to say she's entirely unlikeable and unsympathetic..... I mean, it's an opinion. But it's one I disagree with emphatically.

[deuterio12]

Loki: "Your scheme only worked because nobody could've expected vampires using their (un)natural abilities to energy drain, quickly multiplicate and mind-control people."

...

Really?

That's like saying that nobody could've expected giants to smash stuff and throw rocks.

Or that nobody could expect fire elementals to burn stuff.

Was this seriously the first time in this world that vampires tried such a thing? It doesn't even take many, just one dedicated vampire and some isolated village or a dozen.

As for her depictions, so far we've seen her interact with 1) Thor, 2) Loki, 3) Thrym, and 4) miscellaneous dwarven souls. She hates the first two, so it's not surprising she's done nothing nice for them; the third one is clingy and she isn't into him, so it's not surprising she's been snippy toward him too; and the fourth.... well, that's harder to defend. I'll concede she's cruel to the dwarven souls. "Unusually cruel"? Maybe not. What do the other gods act like, besides Thor?

To call Hel a case of utter irredeemability, to say she's entirely unlikeable and unsympathetic..... I mean, it's an opinion. But it's one I disagree with emphatically.

Thrym: "Is that all I am to you? A resource to be used in your scheme?"
Hel: "Yes! And I explicitly told you from the start!"


Now in the other hand Hel seems to be warming cooling up to Thrym due to his continued dedication.

[ti'esar]

I admit, I'm curious to see where (if anywhere) this is going. Whether or not Hel's in danger of literally fading into nothingness, we do have explicit in-comic confirmation that the bet is messing her up, and while I have no real sympathy for her it does seem like this wasn't an entirely intended consequence on Loki's part. That feels like a loose thread of some sort.

[Wowlock]

Boy, Hel is well and truly a lost cause huh?
Time to feed her to Snarl I guess.

[antipodeF]

Was this seriously the first time in this world that vampires tried such a thing?

It's not the vampires they weren't expecting: it was Hel. Hel has been locked away from everything, basically forever. Nobody expected her to get the resources together to affect the Godsmoot in any meaningful way.

(Which, to be fair, it required quite a cosmic coincidence for her to be able to. But hey, it's fiction; every vote is either a razor's edge or a landslide. And doubly so in Order of the Stick, where narrative rules have an almost-physical presence to them. : P)

[Fyraltari]

I wouldn't. Xykon is (arguably) more evil than Tarquin, but what I mean by sociopathic here is uncaring or unfeeling. Xykon is sadistic. Tarquin is a dictator.

Others answered this already but I want to point out that Xykon is definitely a dictator. He took over a tribe of ogres, a community of goblins and a self-described horde of hobgoblins before conquering and enslaving a human city. That Redcloak is doing the day-to-day ruling doesn’t mean Xykon isn’t at the top of the food chain there. In fact his end goal is to be a world dictator.

Yeah, but Tarquin strikes me as the kind of person who really likes his bed.

To date: tried to have Enor and Gannji Killed for making a better Star Wars joke than him, framed Ian for murder for having the audacity not to grovel, killed his own son for wanting to Ben independent and raped at least one woman. Yeah the dude enjoys making people miserable to prop his ego allright. And I may be forgetting somethings.

Hello, I'm new here, just wanted to post because I thought of a loophole in the bet that Hel made:

She is prevented from making any Clerics of the LIVING.

Things she is NOT prevented from doing:

- receiving worship of the living. (which she currently lacks)

- making clerics of the dead. (of which she currently has 1)

Thus, one thing she could do is the classic "undead rulers" trope. Direct her undead cleric to go and find a small (and preferably already in trouble) village of living people, and have her vampire visibly protect them in exchange for a small sample of blood on the regular. Emphasize the villagers' happiness, freedom, and protection. DO NOT let the vampire turn them unless they specifically ask for it, and if the population can support losing one of the living.

Basically, form an order of (Un)Holy Vampire Clerics dedicated by the goddess Hel herself to making life as good as possible for the living villagers in their chosen location, with the purpose being to encourage the living villagers to begin thankful worship of Hel.

Becoming a vampire could even become part of the basic process for induction as a Cleric, for those who wish to give their life to her service (literally). Even if they're trapped inside their own head, they could be upfront about this and spin it as some noble sacrifice for the protection of the people, which the Vampire spirit will do its best to honor. The number of villagers who may desire that wouldn't be so many to start with, but hey, the ones she has are immortal unless killed. She can slowly stock up as the village grows under her protection, until she has her own major city like The Dark One has Azure City now.

Only she'd get her city with less murder, and more enlightened self interest.

I’m not sure Hel can change like that. Not only are the Gods shapes at least in part by belief (and the dwarves don’t believe her to be nice) but the gods have had an immeasurable time together. If they could learn of their mistake and grow they’d have reached peak harmony a long time ago.

To paraphrase a certain witch, what doesn’t age cannot grow and what cannot grow cannot learn.

I don't really see it, but if you both do, fair enough. OOTS faces aren't the most expressive, and as an autistic person, I sometimes miss nuances in people's facial expressions.

It’s not about facial expressions but social behaviour. Given that Thor had just given an argument going against a deep-sated belief, if he had convinced them they should have had an emotional reaction along the lines of «*How did I not see that before? It’s so obvious*» but they don’t which suggest that they were not listening to him and‘ their verbal agreement was just a matter of avoiding confrontation. Thor recognizes that during the beat panel and amends his previous statement because he sees (helped by experience most likely) that this is a lost cause and so he offers them a way out of the cognitive dissonance of disagreeing with their own god.

If Hel does die I assume Curly and the Frontarch don’t get new spells but can cast what was previously granted at dusk. Does the Frontarch also lose her protection at the Godsmoot? Also, I wonder what Curly would do without Hel?

The Frontach is protected as an emissary of Hel if Hel dies, she’s on her own. The vampires could convert to another evil god (or a concept like the Creed of the Stone did) or multiclass.

Loki: "Your scheme only worked because nobody could've expected vampires using their (un)natural abilities to energy drain, quickly multiplicate and mind-control people."

...

Really?

That's like saying that nobody could've expected giants to smash stuff and throw rocks.

Or that nobody could expect fire elementals to burn stuff.

Was this seriously the first time in this world that vampires tried such a thing? It doesn't even take many, just one dedicated vampire and some isolated village or a dozen.




Thrym: "Is that all I am to you? A resource to be used in your scheme?"
Hel: "Yes! And I explicitly told you from the start!"


Now in the other hand Hel seems to be warming cooling up to Thrym due to his continued dedication.

No nobody expected her to claim the dwarven deaths as dishonorable and/or to influence Dvalin by way of the council. Using vampires was not her plan in the same way that «*using a gun*» is not a plan for a putsch.

[The_Weirdo]

Others answered this already but I want to point out that Xykon is definitely a dictator. He took over a tribe of ogres, a community of goblins and a self-described horde of hobgoblins before conquering and enslaving a human city. That Redcloak is doing the day-to-day ruling doesn’t mean Xykon isn’t at the top of the food chain there. In fact his end goal is to be a world dictator.

Fair, fair. And, well, to be sure, there are Chaotic authoritarians and Chaotic would-be dictators. Especially those with a very Lawful-in-theory discourse. In fiction, of course. I should know, I'm a Brazilian and minored in Language and Literature...

I'm also, on other offline matters, exhausted and wanting revenge once said matters are all over, but what's new?

[RatElemental]

I disagree that Loki was bound by such mortal limitations that the logical outcome of the bet would surprise him (assuming that Hel would, indeed, die from this, which is a belief I do not share, but for the purposes of the argument and all).

Well he certainly seems surprised in the panel she fades out in.

[deworde]

Loki: "Your scheme only worked because nobody could've expected vampires using their (un)natural abilities to energy drain, quickly multiplicate and mind-control people."

No, they would easily expect them to do that. But just not at this particular time and place, or for this reason. No-one was expecting an attack on this specific meeting until Hel revealed her plan at the Godsmoot.

Once they're expecting this plan, preventing the vote being disrupted and ensuring the vote goes against Hel is pretty trivial.

[deuterio12]

No, they would easily expect them to do that. But just not at this particular time and place, or for this reason. No-one was expecting an attack on this specific meeting until Hel revealed her plan at the Godsmoot.

Once they're expecting this plan, preventing the vote being disrupted and ensuring the vote goes against Hel is pretty trivial.

"Countless dwarves vampified while for a moment all living OoTS members were down besides the cat plus over half the dwarven leaders falling under vampiric mind control" doesn't exactly sound "trivial" to me. Even Durkon had to be granted a shiny new artifact that allows him to perform laser-guided cave collapses to break the council table at the last moment while erasing spells from the cleric spell list, and that was with the backup of his mary-sue clan that roflstomps everything in their path, including the vampires that in turn roflstomped the next greatest dwarven military forces that were guarding the greatest dwarven fortress that can afford no-save petrification traps but were completely powerless to stop the vampires from taking over.

[Schroeswald]

I mean, I don't think it's an unreasonable supposition, but it's far from certain-- this could also be the product of millennia of malnourishment now manifesting itself.

I mean that's a big part of it, if the same stuff happened to Thor (suddenly the amount of clerics significantly increases relative to the whole and losing a year of souls) he wouldn't exactly be happy but he'd be nowhere near this level, its that it happened to the already pretty weak that pushed her into this territory.

"Countless dwarves vampified while for a moment all living OoTS members were down besides the cat plus over half the dwarven leaders falling under vampiric mind control" doesn't exactly sound "trivial" to me. Even Durkon had to be granted a shiny new artifact that allows him to perform laser-guided cave collapses to break the council table at the last moment while erasing spells from the cleric spell list, and that was with the backup of his mary-sue clan that roflstomps everything in their path, including the vampires that in turn roflstomped the next greatest dwarven military forces that were guarding the greatest dwarven fortress that can afford no-save petrification traps but were completely powerless to stop the vampires from taking over.

Can I just say "remember what we said last time"? Or do I have to actually make all of the points again? I'll just repeat one of them and tell you that no, these are not the "greatest dwarves military force" and they are no in the "great dwarves fortress" nothing at all implies that, the fact there were like four guards implies otherwise.

[RatElemental]

"Countless dwarves vampified while for a moment all living OoTS members were down besides the cat plus over half the dwarven leaders falling under vampiric mind control" doesn't exactly sound "trivial" to me. Even Durkon had to be granted a shiny new artifact that allows him to perform laser-guided cave collapses to break the council table at the last moment while erasing spells from the cleric spell list, and that was with the backup of his mary-sue clan that roflstomps everything in their path, including the vampires that in turn roflstomped the next greatest dwarven military forces that were guarding the greatest dwarven fortress that can afford no-save petrification traps but were completely powerless to stop the vampires from taking over.

The laser guided hammer is a new one (at least to me) so I'll just say Durkon is a dwarf. Dwarves literally have a racial ability that gives them a sixth sense about stonework and their depth below ground.

Also, do you honestly expect the clerics of Hel to have prepared a spell to fix the table when the fact that they overlooked the rule about the table is the entire reason this was the back up plan to begin with?

[Goblin_Priest]

Most of these vampires were low-level, many of which presumably vampire spawns. I don't see the need to call the dwarves mary-sues. Rey is a Mary Sue, she can just do everything, without effort, training, or explanation. These dwarves? What did they do that was so special? Absolutely nothing. They just dogpiled their foes. Vampires can only dominate one target at a time, and action economy stronger favors overwhelming numbers. They also probably had off-screen buffing, and Protection from Evil is a low level spell that many classes get which prevents domination.

I didn't really like the resolution of the fight with Durkon*, but I don't really have any issues with the resolution of this fight.