The Order of the Stick

Basically, he's a pretty decent politician. He respects the opinions and ideas of his constituency and cares what they think. The council is basically a political caucus, meeting to decide what platform their representative should support.

Y'know. The same thing that people are upset at the other gods for not doing.

edited 27th May '18 6:15:27 PM by TobiasDrake

Really, the only problem with it is a: they apparently never plan for this in advance, so it takes him forever and b: he happens to be the tiebreaker and an evil vampire is trying to rig the ballot.

Technically, he's the tiebreaker for the tiebreaker's tiebreaker.

edited 27th May '18 6:37:33 PM by Gilphon

I wouldn't plan for it in advance either. Setting aside that the council's vote only matters if the other demigods are divided equally, the requirement for the demigods to even be consulted is that 17 votes must end in an even distribution.

Think about that.

And if the Southern and Eastern pantheons had agreed, they wouldn't even need to worry about that.

Not as unlikely as you might think. Hel already had a pretty good idea it was going to end up like that because the gods are set in their ways, and were unlikely to have changed their stance from the last time they voted on this, only a scant (from their perspectives) decades ago.

Y'know, the Southern and Eastern pantheons (and their representatives) must be wondering what the hell the hold-up is. Like, they gotta be asking why the Northern pantheons need several days for a pretty simple vote.

It's the Western Pantheon by the way.

I believe the point being made was that the demigods being needed to break a tie was reliant on an odd number of gods being split evenly. The only way a tie could have happened in the past is if an odd number of gods abstained or were absent from a vote, and the only way it happened here is because Hel unexpectedly managed to get a cleric on the floor and cast the tying vote.

edited 27th May '18 11:07:15 PM by Wryte

It's not an odd number of gods split evenly, Hel being there brought the number to 18, with 9 for each position.

That's where Hel knowing how the others would vote and forming a rapport with the demigods comes in. She knew that her vote will give it to them, and she was expecting to win a clear majority without having to do all this dwarf stuff until one her supposed-to-be surefire "yes" votes backed out.

edited 27th May '18 11:09:47 PM by LSBK

It was an odd number BEFORE Hel showed up - she wasn't supposed to have a high priest, remember?

Perhaps the Godsmoot is just a formality of sorts and they can speak to one another fairly easily in person.

Exactly. There's no reason for the council to prepare in advance when a Godsmoot is called because the likelihood of them ever having to actually cast a vote is near-impossible. Hel had to cheat the system to slip an 18th vote into the mix in order to even achieve this.

That it takes time to alert them and assemble them to vote is entirely reasonable, given the slim fraction of a percentage of possible situations in which they'd ever need to be assembled. It'd be a waste of everybody's time for them to gather for every Godsmoot.

edited 28th May '18 12:02:04 AM by TobiasDrake

Actually not true. Hel has every right to participate, her deal with Thor (orchestrated by Loki) has just kept her from doing so. She couldn't have planned for what happened with Durkon, but it wasn't unfair (well, except for Durkon).

That's really something to keep in mind here: for most of this not only has Hel been following the letter of the rules, but also the spirit of them.

You're missing the point. The point is that, historically, there have only been 17 votes for as far back as anyone can remember, and therefore there is no reason that anyone should ever have thought an 18th vote might happen and therefore no reason to suspect that a split vote between 17 voters is even possible, let alone likely enough to prepare the tiebreaker for the tiebreaker for the tiebreaker in advance.

That said, there is a delicious irony in that the gods, who do not care what mortals think, all have to stand around with their thumbs up their asses waiting for the mortals to wake up and get moving. Anyone who's ever been in a meeting wondering why the manager who called the f*cking thing is fifteen minutes late will appreciate that.

Oh, the chances of this situation happening are indeed very unlikely. I was just focused on the whole "17 votes split evenly" thing because that's not how it happened, and is impossible.

But, yeah, there's no reason the dwarven council should be on normally be on standby for this.

The clerics did imply that this has happened before, though. Several of them knew that the council would need to be called, and that it would take a long time. I wonder if other types of votes have slightly different rules that would increase the chances of this happening. Like maybe there are votes that only the demigods participate in, but all the gods are supposed to be present due to reasons of tradition.

edited 28th May '18 7:44:27 AM by Discar

Perhaps the demigod has done this exact same thing, but when he was called for a vote in a different group.

The demigods were out for a night out and the guy realised that hosting all the demi-gods would be a grand honour, so he insisted that they let him call a vote.

Dvalin having to vote has happened enough that the high priests of the other gods already know what they're in for when it comes up, for whatever that's worth. Presumably sometimes other gods abstain or don't bother to show up.

Or the council is used for other things. Odd to have an entire council in the first place that almost never has to decide anything.

The high priestess of Thor already said that the council is no longer their legislative body. It's just a traditional thing now, but when he made his oath it was to run things by them, not whatever current system the dwarves use.

Yeah, the Council doesn't seem to actually exist other than for this vote. A weird relic of history.

edited 28th May '18 8:18:07 PM by Clarste

I'm guessing the council had regular meetings about more routine matters years ago. Back then they might not have had all the gods in attendance so ties could be more common. One priest also said there usually aren't a lot of Demigod priests so it's possible Dvalin was the only one at times and had to consult the council.

I mean, it's a council of the clan chiefs, right? So even if the council itself is hardly ever called, it's not like the people who make it up are just sitting on a ceremonial title they'll never make any use of (though it's easy enough to imagine Dwarves having such a thing). They're busy being the chief of their clan.

Assuming all the clans still exist, and that they all have a chief.

edited 29th May '18 8:04:58 PM by Clarste