The Order of the Stick

@Enlong: His winning scenarios are: (a) The gods acquiesce, give his people a fair deal in the here-and-now; (b) The gods refuse, he lets the Snarl loose, the Snarl unmakes the world (including him and his people), the Gods make a third world, but with the Dark One's input this time, ensuring goblinoids get a fair deal.

He loses if: (c) He can't release the Snarl, making his threat empty; (d) The gods and/or the mortals manage to defeat/contain the Snarl such that it no longer poses a threat; (e) The Snarl has changed on its own such that it is not a threat (the epilogue to the last book puts that one firmly to rest as far as I'm concerned); (f) The Snarl destroys the world and all the gods, leaving nobody to remake anything.

Still there are hypothetically people that would starve themselves if the alternative was killing people. As it turns out Durkon wouldn't need to make that choice, especially if vampirization didn't force an allignment change. He knows a good number of people that he's SURE are healthy enough to survive having their blood sucked and any damage it did to their health Durkon could easily repair. Said people would WILLINGLY give him blood so it wouldn't even be a breach in consent. Even if he couldn't avoid killing people he's in a situation where he continually faces off against direct threats to his life and the world itself. Why would killing them by sucking their blood be any less moral than killing them by other means?

And yeah I know it isn't Redcloak's plan to destroy the gods, but he's only willing to risk creation being destroyed because he believes creation as it stands to be corrupt on a fundamental level.

Or g) The Snarl kills some of the gods, including the Dark One, but not all of them. This leads to the world being remade the same way it was before.

edited 21st Apr '14 8:00:03 PM by TotemicHero

Well, I'm disappointed by this turn of events, but moreso because I thought I actually had a shot of my theory being right than because I think this changes anything about my understanding of Malack. :P

I'm not yet convinced that e isn't a possible factor, but that's somehing we've gone over a fair amount, so point taken.

The main thing I got from Rich's post is vindication vis-a-vis "there's no reason to believe that this should be well known to anyone in the world".

@Offensive Handle: But most moral codes would take such mitigating factors into account in judging the actions' morality. D&D morality doesn't seem to make any such allowance, even when you're literally being supernaturally forced to do evil.

Doesn't it, though? Everything I've read regarding Dn D (at least, in the Forgotten Realms setting anyway) suggests that offing a vampire allows them to be judged as they were before vampirism took effect.

I mean, that just seems like the right way to do it. If you were an evil bastard that sought out vampirism, you're still going to the lower planes. If you were a good guy, you at least have a shot at eternal happiness.

IIRC, being mind controlled while you're alive does not reflect on your afterlife. Even a Paladin wouldn't fall just from that.

However as far as I understand vampirism in D&D it DOES turn your soul into an evil bastard and that evil sticks with you. As contrary to OOTS vampirism with the soul being merely trapped.

Based on what we now know, does it seem plausible that the invading spirit might be ousted, leaving Durkon once again in charge of his body—but still a vampire? (Essentially creating a Lawful-Good vampire.)

Since the spirit appears to be part and parcel of Durkon's vampirism, exorcising it and destroying the vampire are effectively the same thing. Once done, you have a dwarf corpse (or a pile of ash) which could then be resurrected as a living being, free of that nasty little soul parasite.

Fair enough, and thank you for the clarification.

Would Durkon's memories be rewritten if he were to be brought back to death and then raised, do you think?

No, memories attach to the soul, so he'd remember everything most likely.

But Roy didn't remember anything specific past the celestial waiting room, so it's hard to say.

Roy didn't remember that because the LG afterlife is so blissful that all time and memory become vague. When Roy was a ghost, he was able to form perfectly good memories. Needless to say Durkon's NOT having a perfectly blissful time right now.

It's a special circumstance blocking memories from what's past the gate.

I imagine the different afterlifes all work the same for different reasons. Good afterlifes as so blissful and happy that one's brain doesn't work normally. Neutral Afterlives are probably either mind numbingly dull (LN, TN) or so chaotic it becomes incomprehensible to a living mind (CN). Evil Afterlifes are probably traumatically horrible or in the case of LE deliberately remove self awareness from their inhabitants.

edited 22nd Apr '14 10:29:53 AM by RhymeBeat

I imagine what few evil characters remember is what causes a change of heart after a near-death (Read: Died and resurrected) experience.

Yes.

[feels vindicated]

I had figured that under the traditional way, the soul is corrupted by evil while the vampire "lives", but then is restored when/if they are staked. Dracula suggests as much.

Burlew's take kind of rules out the possibility of any good vampires, since inside every vampire is a soul trapped and unable to do anything. Well, I suppose there could be cases where the evil spirit possessing the person is less evil than the original person, but other than that...

Kind of beating a dead horse, but I'm not thrilled with the twist, both because it makes Malack even more evil/less nuanced (especially since it means that he wanted to chat with the Nergal-sent spirit that he figured would take over Durkon's body as opposed to Evil!Durkon), but I think it goes beyond deceptive phrasing by the writer into outright deception.

I mean someone on the Giant made the point that Malack saying "I used to be a simple shaman" would be equivalent to Durkula in 200 years saying "I used to be a yokel afraid of trees", but Malack also talks about "his" brothers in a way that makes no sense for their to be deception on his part.

edited 22nd Apr '14 12:37:33 PM by Hodor

I don't think it's metaphysically possible for an human to be more evil than an evil spirit. Theoretically the spirit itself could undergo a change of heart though? I would expect that atonement would tend to involve ceding control of their body back to its original owner, though.

Malack never wanted to turn Durkon into a vampire. What he wanted most was to keep him alive. Only after Durkon made it clear he wouldn't surrender did turning into a vampire become an option. Better a vampire with Durkon's memories than a vampire without Durkon's memories, right?

Yeah, that's the thing. If the spirit did reform, they'd presumably have to give back the body (which I don't think would even be possible short of allowing themselves to be staked). Incidentally, I could easily imagine an evil spirit less evil than Xykon.

I guess you could have a vampire that mellowed out over time and is harmless enough now, even if at one point they mindraped the poor schmuck whose body they control.

That's a good point.

edited 22nd Apr '14 12:42:12 PM by Hodor

As I said Burlew has several ways of dealing with the actually Always Chaotic Evil species. For demons/devils and vampires, they're made of evil. For liches they're evil humans that can't become liches if they're not evil. It seems Burlew's explanation for black dragons is that they're mislabeled or something, because they don't seem to act any more evil than usually evil creatures like goblins or orcs.