When Belkar dies, will we see his afterlife

[TheNecrocomicon]

First, the Oracle didn't give the prophecy about Durkon and the dwarves;

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that came from one of Odin's priests.

Anyway, where's your proof that Durkon won't be buried there?

The Oracle said that Durkon would die before going back to dwarven lands. That he would be buried there was Durkon's wishful thinking.

Sure. But prophecy is prophecy, whether that's backed by the divine power of Tiamat or Odin or any of their peers.

You're missing the point: that was merely an example I was using of how Rich left himself a massive backdoor for Durkon to return home posthumously, other than the obvious implication that he would simply die and be buried there. Hindsight is 20/20, but at the time very few if any people must have guessed he was going to come home bringing ruin as a vampire.

With that tendency of Rich's storytelling being established around deaths of members of the Order, I think he has deliberately left a similarly huge loophole as to Belkar's supposed death. The Oracle, in his divine-powered precognitive trance in #572, stated Belkar would "draw his last breath -- ever -- before the end of the year" after stating off the record that he was "not long for this world". This is after the Order's earlier visit, where he stated in #329 that Belkar "shouldn't bother funding his IRA" and should "savor his next birthday cake". None of those are a literal statement that Belkar will die, and pointedly leaving out that key fact not once but four times under direct questioning strikes me as a highly suspicious pattern.