Speculation on Durkons ultimate fate

[Riftwolf]

I'm hoping the last comic isnt the sum total of Durkons resistance. I've been thinking about it a while, and I think Durkons going to hinder the vamps some more by withholding vital context... Permanently.

I'm not entirely sure how, but I think Durkon will find some way to destroy himself, so the vampire can no longer search his memory. One method i considered was Durkon pledging himself to Hel; a former devotee of Thor would be a prize for Hel to torment, and she might take it from her High Priest (who believes he's got all the information he needs). It'd be a tragic end for Durkon, but nicely mirrors the story about his father.

[KorvinStarmast]

1. He'll make better use of an apostrophe than Durkula (or the OP of this thread ).

2. He'll not go down without a fight.

3. If Roy can get brought back from all the way dead, I'll offer a nickel bet that Durkon has a way back from being vampired.

I think he's going to play a part in the grand finale with Xykon. (Recall how in the first battle with Xykon his disruption spell was going to be a big help ...)

[goto124]

I think Durkon will find some way to destroy himself, so the vampire can no longer search his memory. One method i considered was Durkon pledging himself to Hel

Wouldn't pledging himself to Hel remove the entire point of stopping Greg from searching his memory? Durkon wants to stop Hel from destroying the world, handing all his memories over to Hel isn't going to work.

[thereaper]

1. He'll make better use of an apostrophe than Durkula (or the OP of this thread ).

2. He'll not go down without a fight.

3. If Roy can get brought back from all the way dead, I'll offer a nickel bet that Durkon has a way back from being vampired.

I think he's going to play a part in the grand finale with Xykon. (Recall how in the first battle with Xykon his disruption spell was going to be a big help ...)

The Disruption spell would almost certainly not have worked. Xykon's will save is far too high. They didn't know that at the time, however.

[Lacuna Caster]

The Disruption spell would almost certainly not have worked. Xykon's will save is far too high. They didn't know that at the time, however.

I think the target also needs to have fewer hit dice than the caster?


I'm... skeptical that Durkon is going to survive the godsmoot subplot. I mean, there are ways he could be killed-then-rezzed in technical terms, but I'm not sure where you'd take his character arc from there. And in theory it would make going after Xykon much more dangerous if the team lack a primary divine caster, which you could argue is consistent with upping the stakes. I guess it could go either way.

[keybounce]

If I recall, the "Durkon turned undead" joke came up around strip 10, and was shelved only because Rich could not figure out how to bring him back -- until he did figure out how to restore Durkon when done, so now Durkon is DurNotKon.

[Jasdoif]

If I recall, the "Durkon turned undead" joke came up around strip 10, and was shelved only because Rich could not figure out how to bring him back -- until he did figure out how to restore Durkon when done, so now Durkon is DurNotKon.

Pretty close!

One of the things I may have mentioned in Dungeon Crawlin' Fools is that while strip #1 was always the first comic, strip #4 was actually the next one produced. Before I posted it, however, I produced another strip that has never been posted; we'll call it #A.

The events depicted in #A can be summarized as follows: Elan and Haley walk on stage to where Roy is waiting. Looking sad and crying, they inform Roy that they met some undead, and Durkon turned undead. Roy is confused, they reiterate. Roy gets annoyed, says that Durkon's a cleric, so of course he turned undead, stop being so stupid. Haley and Elan walk back to the left where V and Belkar are restraining a Durkon that is a vampire—he literally turned into an undead. They make a crack about how Roy took it really well. Ba dum bump.

I did not post this strip; instead, I went back and decided that rather than one-off gags, I wanted each strip to feed into the events of the next. So I wrote #2 and #3 to get from the already-posted #1 to the already-finished (and now renumbered) #4. But that left me with #A, which if I posted it, would derail my fledgling sense of continuity, because I had no way to undo Durkon's vampirism. In the end, I tabled the joke and drew #5 instead.

However, as a result of that comic, it has always been true that someday, Durkon was going to turn into a vampire. At first, I was just going to save the joke for a day when they would have access to the means to undo it, and then later, I decided to drop the punchline and really make it a major part of what happens. But as a plot element, it literally predates the existence of the Snarl, or the Gates, or any other aspect of the plot—even Xykon himself! All of Durkon's characterization and plot, since 2003, has been leading to him becoming a vampire and the story that would spin out of that. It has influenced hundreds of decisions going back ten years of comic.