Why did Greg kill Zz'dtri rather than turning him into a vampire?

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Paranoia about the nobles. The problem is that he extended it to his Paladins, and even The Order, which is suboptimal for someone whose supposed to be a leader.

Paranoia is not something you can simply turn on and off. Not to mention that for most of his life, "the Paladins" was just a subset of "The Nobles", a subset with all the advantages of the nobles, plus martial training and magic. So honestly, a healthy amount of paranoia about them was probably the reason Shojo was still in power by the time the Order was onvolved.

Grey Wolf

[Lacuna Caster]

The G Factor is not a universally-accepted hypothesis...

Neither is evolution, but it remains a fact. Not that this is necessarily apropos to a magical universe, and it's perfectly possible for individuals to be experts in one field and uneducated in others, but again, this does not rest on Shojo's individual decision-making. Just about every other senior member of the Guard has to be wearing giant floppy clown shoes in order for events to go down like this.

That said, please proceed. Wouldn’t be the worst thread derail i’ve seen, I assure you.

Nope, not going to do that. If you really want to, you can mosy over to the other thread and post some other question, preferably having actually read the entire exchange, but I am telling you that this is not a new set of arguments.

[Dion]

I think Durkon should have vampirized the various outsiders who decide if Eugene is to be allowed into his afterlife. That way Eugene wouldn’t have interfered with Shojo. That way, Miko wouldn’t have been sent to collect TOotS.

[Fish]

Getting back to the original question:

Presuming Protection from Sunlight is something like Protection from Energy then it must be cast on a creature, with a casting time of 1 standard action. To make Zz’dtri a vampire would require a minimum of 2 and a maximum of 11 rounds of blood draining (presuming Zz’dtri has a CON score of 7-11 and Greg drains 1-4 CON per round; the average time, given a CON of 7, is 3 rounds). He would have to do this while Nale is attacking him, and hope that a) Nale can’t dispel his own Protection from Sunlight or steal the staff or get help, and b) Nale doesn’t interrupt his staff-casting of Protection from Sunlight on Z. Once Z is vamped, Greg has one round (Sean Connery: “And one round only”) to get that Protection spell right before Z is destroyed.

True, Nale is weakened and his backstab wouldn’t work on a vampire, but it doesn’t sound like a high-percentage play. (Maybe the better plan is “dominate Nale, then vamp Z,” but that’s obviously a question of “why don’t all characters choose optimal strategies?”)

In any case, Greg’s plan required him to have a safe place in which to investigate and study the spells in the staff — and he knew of Elan’s plan to call for Julio Scoundrél’s aid, though not whether that plan would work. (After all, Durkon sent that message.) He might have done this using Domination, but let’s not forget: deceiving the living with a semblance of life is his “thing.” He probably preferred a plan of deception to one involving brute force. There may also have been an advantage to keeping his cards close to his chest in the event a Plan B or C was needed.

[Fyraltari]

Also ditching the Order robbs him of his chance to kill Roy in person, something he was clearly looking forward to.

[Jasdoif]

The G Factor is not a universally-accepted hypothesis, and, in any case, there are countless real-world examples of people who are highly intelligent within their field who turn out to be credulous and incompetent outside of it. Indeed, in my experience, people who are experts in one field have a higher tendency to be condescending asshats to experts in others, treating all other fields as merely specilazied sunsets of their own.

Pretty much. While I do believe there's a general capacity of learning, application of that gets nebulous beyond simple and directly-observable tasks; a lot of real-world skills also involve a great deal of knowing what could happen, what the symptoms of those possibilities are, how to cause/prevent specific things from occurring, the risks/costs/rewards involved in doing so, how those changes interact with the rest of the system....

Which absolutely can be learned (that's what experience is), but requires time and dedication in actual pursuit...and there's far too many skills out there for one person to realistically be an expert in all of them. Trying to apply already-earned skills/experience in a different situation is of course a natural response (the old "if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail" scenario), and to some extent that works (even if only in the sense of "okay, that was the wrong thing to do")...but that's dependent on direct feedback. If you never see the end result, you're not going to know if you misapplied your skill (if you never see any problems from treating everything as a nail, why would you ever question using a hammer?). And this only gets worse in the case of a complicated leadership hierarchy, where there's an entire set of people who (theoretically) have directly relevant experience, are charged with carrying out what the guy at the top says, and have an incentive to silently deal with errors from their leadership.

And that's before considering that things like "don't look responsible for your failures" are themselves skills. Or, for that matter, any application of social skill around a field.

[hroþila]

See Neil deGrasse Tyson like every time he talks about the humanities.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

See Neil deGrasse Tyson like every time he talks about the humanities.

Or any end point of Peter's Principle.

Grey Wolf

[Dion]

I think Durkon should have vampirized anyone who could have warned the council that they would be attacked by vampires.

So, you know, literally everyone capable of a sending spell.

[mjasghar]

My opinion is - we have been led to believe that all dwarf vampires get spirits from Hel
This may be due to the nature of the pantheons that fantasy lotr type dwarves when allowed in a world are always under the northern pantheon since others have different ideas about dwarves
This seems to override any local pantheon authority - though as I’ve discussed before it raises issues about dwarves switching pantheons or even leaving the northern continent fullstop
However it’s my opinion that any vampire created in the West falls under Nergal - unless there is a specific reason like dwarves
Moreover, as an elf subrace Z may well be always under Western influence the same way dwarves are
This does however raise the issue that elves are seemingly happy to leave their homeland for other continents. My guess is they don’t have the same Bet issue and generally get a good deal for being elves as it’s hinted they get favouritism
So Greg waited until he was in the North until he made spawn so all would be Hel spirits

[hamishspence]

My opinion is - we have been led to believe that all dwarf vampires get spirits from Hel
This may be due to the nature of the pantheons that fantasy lotr type dwarves when allowed in a world are always under the northern pantheon since others have different ideas about dwarves
This seems to override any local pantheon authority - though as I’ve discussed before it raises issues about dwarves switching pantheons or even leaving the northern continent fullstop
However it’s my opinion that any vampire created in the West falls under Nergal - unless there is a specific reason like dwarves

Nope - The Giant stated that the specific reason is that Durkon is Northern:

There is absolutely zero difference between Malack and Durkon's vampirizations, with the sole exception that Hel made the spirit sitting in Durkon's head while Nergal made the one that was sitting in Malack's. Hel is able to put that spirit into Durkon's body because of the physical vampirization process that Malack enacts on Durkon's corpse, which opens a door to Negative Energy and traps Durkon's spirit inside it. Which would also be true of any other vampire created from a person who fell under the Northern Pantheon's domain, though she wouldn't take a personal interest in just any person because they wouldn't be a powerful cleric.

Hel does not have rightful dominion over Durkon's soul as part of her normal assignment of dishonored souls, however, because Durkon did in fact die in battle. She got involved because she is also, separately, the Northern deity of undeath, and one of her "duties" is making the evil spirits for all Northern vampires. The vampirization process basically jammed up the normal disposition of Durkon's soul by trapping it inside the undead body. Where Durkon's actual soul ends up will not be determined until/unless it is freed. It's a like a naturally occurring Trap the Soul spell.

[woweedd]

See Neil deGrasse Tyson like every time he talks about the humanities.

I can think of a better example, but it kinda breaks the forum rules.

[Dion]

If Durkon had vampirized Thor, then Thor could have vampirized TDO, and all the problems would be solved easily.,

[Peelee]

See Neil deGrasse Tyson like every time he talks about the humanities.

Or any time he talks about the sciences. For as accomplished as he is, dude is amazingly inept at affable engagement.

I can think of a better example, but it kinda breaks the forum rules.

Dang, now I'm intrigued.

[Dion]

I can think of a better example, but it kinda breaks the forum rules.

Durkon should have vampirized that guy. Maybe he would stop tweeting.

[mjasghar]

My contention was ALL dwarves are under northern pantheon
This was raised by me in other arguments about the nature of vampires in OoTS and in discussions about the Bet - specifically can dwarves get away by worshiping non northern pantheons

[Xyril]

Paranoia is not something you can simply turn on and off. Not to mention that for most of his life, "the Paladins" was just a subset of "The Nobles", a subset with all the advantages of the nobles, plus martial training and magic.

Speaking of which, I remember if it was ever explicitly clear, but I get the sense that Shojo was responsible for the decision to allow commoners to join the Sapphire Guard. In real life, pretty much any leader attempting to dilute the power of an entrenched nobility in such a way was putting his neck on the line, so Shojo's survival is pretty much a testament to his useful paranoia.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Speaking of which, I don't think it was ever explicitly clear, but I get the sense that Shojo was responsible for the decision to allow commoners to join the Sapphire Guard.

I think it is fairly explicitly spelled out at the end of How the Paladin got his Scar.

Grey Wolf

[Xyril]

I think it is fairly explicitly spelled out at the end of How the Paladin got his Scar.

Grey Wolf

Ah, thanks for letting me know. I never bought most of the books.

[Xyril]

Hel does create the vampire spirits but that does not give her dominion over them. They are free-willed individuals just like the living.

I understand that. My point is that the act of creation might create a bigger bond. For example, being raised by your biological parents won't necessarily install any sense of loyalty for give them any sort of influence, but I would imagine on the aggregate that people who are raised by parents (biological or not) are more likely to be very loyal to the parents who raised them than to any randomly selected set of parents.

I'll give you a rundown: when Hel creates a vampire she gets a few moments to cram their head with knowledge (language and her plan mostly apparently), the vampires then absorbs their first memory, the moment in their life where they felt the absolute worst. Since the vampire has never had any kind of childhood, they have absolutely no emotionnal maturity that would help them deal with that suffering, the result is that their personality forms around that moment of anger/despair/suffering and thus becomes evil (just look at the Lower Planes' mottos) and as they absorb memories in no particular order this memory colors all the others (why did Durkon* think Thor was a "deceitful untrustworthy wrench"? Because each time he viewed a memory of Thor's Clergy teaching how caring he is, he remembered his high priest betraying Durkon).

Thanks for the rundown and the links.

The end result is a creature that has all the life-story of the host but twisted, as if view through a faulty window meaning their personnality is the same as the host but with all the worst parts mazgnified and all the good one diminished.

But how do you define "good" or "bad"? For example, religious fervor in real life can manifest in very good or very bad ways. If you have a particularly fervent mortal--like Durkon--whose religious devotion prompted him to act very selflessly, then turning him evil might be as simple as changing that allegiance to an evil deity, but couldn't it also be done by deemphasizing that trait altogether. For example, other traits are much less ambiguously good or bad--for example, the aforementioned selflessness. Instead of looking through Durkon's memories, absorbing his selflessness and sense of duty to others, and twisting it around in some creatively evil way, he simply doesn't pick up those traits at all, instead viewing those memories with resentment. What's to say that a corrupted heroic atheist (or whatever passes for an atheist in a world where the gods are provably real) wouldn't result in villain protagonist whose idea of "heroism" is corrupted by his devotion to an evil goddess?

See above, what the deity creating the vampire thinks is irrelevant next to what the vampire want.

Looking above, I am reminded of that bit you said about the deity having the chance to cram that spirit full of knowledge being letting it loose. Free will doesn't mean zero influence by external forces.

Where does that second option come from? Nobody proposed that, what "incredibly devout worshippers" are you talking about?

You made a point about an-[other deity] created deity being no more likely to be an agent of another deity than any random mortal on the crew of the Mechane. I was pointing precisely why it was more likely: Because Hel, in her role as goddess of the undead, has one additional, temporally proximate opportunity.

Think of it this way. You're at a trial. All parties involved are equally influential--in other words, they're all equally likely to have, for example, employed a juror or a close friend of a juror, or appeared on some talk show that the juror watched, or run into a juror at the gym. You have no reason to believe that any juror specifically had more prior contact with one party or another.

Now imagine you just found out that, after the jury pool was selected, but before the jury was impaneled, one of the involved parties took the opportunity to have coffee with several of the jurors. This doesn't negate the jurors' free will, nor does it mean that the party would necessarily get what they wanted. However, if you were representing one of the other parties--one of the ones without the benefit of a recent talk over coffee--would you want any of these potential jurors?

Why would a creature whose only (or nearly so) memory is one of suffering care for anyone or anything in the world?

Because they're a part of the world, and they're not suffering anymore. This isn't a Crystal-golem sort of situation. Durkula is shaped by Durkon's suffering--or more accurately, his own suffering from experiencing Durkon's memories through his own, twisted lens. That is what shaped his resentment and his hatred of everyone in Durkon's life. But he's enjoying his existence as a vampire.

Malaack is the obvious counterexample. He said he felt no particular affection to the people in his mortal life, and his alliance with Tarquin implies a certain indifference to the plight of the faceless masses, but the fact of his friendship with Torquin et al, as well as Durkon, and his desire to build an enduring empire for Nergal demonstrates that hating much of the world doesn't mean that you don't "care for anyone or anything in the world," or as you also imply, the world itself.

I'm pretty sure that Roy's soul was created by the Northern god of life (so Freya goddess of fertility) who put it inside his body just like Hel put Durkon*'s soul inside Durkon body as part of her duties as goddess of death.

I was going by Thor's speech--I think you can find it yourself--about how multiple quiddities were required to create "real, honest-to-us
independent mortals." I have no idea what Freya's role would be--maybe the pantheons had to get together to create the system through which the individual deities of life create souls, or maybe Freya's just a caretaker who oversees the transfer of new souls into new beings. We don't know. But we do know--or at least, what you have stipulated--is that Hel has the power to use her role to have some impact on each individual soul, even if we might quibble about how much that influence may be. In contrast, I don't recall any evidence that Freya can or would use her role to exert undue influence over new life. In fact, given what we have heard about the rules deities abide by, it seems like it would be a serious breach to allow Freya to have undue influence over all living beings that could potentially restrict the access of other gods to worshipers.

You do not know that. Thor would not grant Durkon* anymore so he needed a new patron and Hel offered both powers and a plan to make the people he hated suffer. She was the logical choice, that doesn't mean that he was supernaturally compelled to serve her over, say her brother Fenrir god of monsters.

Being worried about something does not mean that something is real.

True, but in a setting where we lack the ability to conduct empirical testing, it is sometimes the best evidence in favor of a hypothesis--particularly when there is no evidence at all specifically supporting the opposite proposition.

Durkon felt "the negative energy squirming around" which could mean that all he did would be negated just because negative energy or mean that he was not used to being made of negative energy rather than positive one, or nothing at all. With the fate of the world in the balance Durkon did not take any risk.

As you would say, "you do not know that." It's what you inferred from the text, and it's a perfectly reasonable inference... as is mine.

This has been an interesting discussion, but if you're starting to play evidence-lawyer, I suspect our goals are beginning to diverge. I enjoy your perspective, and I enjoy sharing mine, and if you feel the same I'm happy to continue this talk until I get yelled at for slacking off at work. If you're expecting somebody to "win" or be "proven right," then let me just say that it's been a pleasure talking to you and that I hope to do so again on an entirely different topic.

What does that have to do with the question of wether non-cleric vampires would be loyal to Hel?

Umm, nothing at all. You asked a two part question--first, why would someone be loyal to someone other than Hel, and second, even if they were, why would that other deity not support Hel's plan. This part was addressing that second point. Sorry if I was unclear.

[Xyril]

Yea, but Roy's wrong. Shojo's paranoya is the only reason he lasted so long, able to do all the good he did until then. Without the Order there to protect him, Shojo's doing, Hinjo would have been assassinated moment after his accession.

There's no reason you both can't be right. Perhaps Shojo was simply in an untenable position: too paranoid, and he brings about his own eventual downfall (at a fairly ripe old age, though), don't be paranoid enough, and he never even gets to that point in his life. There are a lot of books--for that matter, there are a lot of real life engineering challenges as well--where the whole point is that there's no clear right answer (or at least, none that anyone's found yet), and your Odysseus is basically stuck in a situation where moving away from one danger necessarily means moving closer to another. As far as I could tell, the only person who might done substantially better in that position would have to a paladin's level of moral fortitude when it comes to long term goals, Haley's level of moral flexibility when it comes to politicking and wrangling the nobles, and O-Chul's remarkable ability to keep going when any reasonable person would just die, because no matter how astute you are politically, Azure City seems like the sort of place where being anything resembling a reformer or an idealist gets you assassinated.

The vampire seems to reflect the person their host was. Since Durkon was fanatically loyal to Thor, HPOH was just as fanatically loyal to Hel. Roy would presumably not feel the same loyalty, no more then he feels loyalty to the gods who birthed him to begin with. And, of course, that's all assuming Durkon* can take on 5 Near-Epic adventures, plus a whole crew of NPCs, who are also presumably above-average as NPCs go, in no way a safe assumption. Frankly, the best move for Durkon would probably be...Well, what he did. Namely, pretend to be his living self and trick them into giving him a lift.

I'm completely in agreement on that last bit. To me, his choices are obvious, even if we assume for the sake of argument that he--and Hel--know definitive answers to all of our questions about the nature of vampire free will, the mechanics of vampire thralls, etc., and that all of those answers are such that the "turn them all" plan is optimized. (In other words, he can control nearly unlimited thralls, all of those thralls are 100% as effective as a living, free-willed being tricked into helping, and that creating more undead doesn't create an opening for other, hostile deities to exert influence.) The fact is, the current plan was working, any alternative, violence-based plan carried substantial uncertainties and would, at best, work slightly faster in a situation where there was zero advantage to getting to the Godsmoot any faster than "in the nick of time." Plus, picking Plan Violence would necessarily preclude a return to the original plan, whereas continuing with the original plan still left an opening to implement Plan Violence later, if the tactical assessment changed.

The vampire-spirit motivation talk has just been more interesting. Rich gave us just enough in the comic to enable to plot--and maybe a bit more in his meta-comments that I might have missed--and it's been interesting to see how different people view this, particularly since it intersects an area of real life that is unknown or debatable to most people.

I think Durkon should have vampirized anyone who could have warned the council that they would be attacked by vampires.

So, you know, literally everyone capable of a sending spell.

Tactically, that makes a lot of sense, and he actually did so within the constraints he was under. (Though it was less "let's vamp all the clerics in the Creed of the Stone who could cast sending" and more "let's vamp all of the Creed of the Stone because we just found a great loophole in the Godsmoot rules.) However, because of those rules, there were over a dozen clerics who could potentially cast sending who were beyond his direct reach. Remember, the pro-Hel (well, pro-apocalypse anyway) clerics only helped Hel when the anti-apocalypse clerics demonstrated that they could help the order without breaking the rules, something neither was willing to do. If Hel's delegation tried to neutralize the anti-Hel clerics and bodyguards who might cast sending, they would be facing off against half of the Godsmoot, plus the Order, all at once--and this is the best case scenario. More likely, the pro-Hel delegations would be helping--IIRC, the rules specifically obligated all parties to respond in the event of an attack on one, meaning that even inaction would put them in breach of the rules.

Perhaps most importantly, Hel has specifically stated that her plan required that everyone obey the rules, or that her rivals be the ones who break them first. This implies that Durkula taking that first step towards breaking them and attacking the protected clerics would likely lead to a substantial strategic cost, one that would far outweigh any minor tactical advantage from preventing an earlier warning.

[Psyren]

I'll go with some combination of "he needed to convince both Roy and the audience that he was really Durkon" plus "there's no way to vamp someone at high noon in the middle of a desert and buff them fast enough to save them" plus "he just didn't like Z that much or think he'd be that useful."

Also, with basically no spells left, what was he supposed to do - stand there grappling/draining Z while Nale did his taxes? Of course he used the quickest means available to dispatch one of them before they could do to him what they had just gotten through doing to his much more powerful vampire boss. After all, if Z had teleport prepared, he could simply blip out of Durkon's grasp (no somatic component.)

[Fyraltari]

I understand that. My point is that the act of creation might create a bigger bond. For example, being raised by your biological parents won't necessarily install any sense of loyalty for give them any sort of influence, but I would imagine on the aggregate that people who are raised by parents (biological or not) are more likely to be very loyal to the parents who raised them than to any randomly selected set of parents.

Why, yes and that is the problem, Hel creates the vampires but does not raise (necromantic powers aside) them. TO go by your analogy she would be like a biological parent who never interferred with the child's childhood.

Thanks for the rundown and the links.

You're welcome, I also suggest taking a look at Jaxzan Proditor's signature.

But how do you define "good" or "bad"?

In this particular case, by good I meant"empathic" or "caring" and by evil "destructive" or "selfish" as this seems to be how these words are treated in D&D.

For example, religious fervor in real life can manifest in very good or very bad ways. If you have a particularly fervent mortal--like Durkon--whose religious devotion prompted him to act very selflessly, then turning him evil might be as simple as changing that allegiance to an evil deity, but couldn't it also be done by deemphasizing that trait altogether.

Yes? In this case it seems to have done both, Durkon* had some loyalty to Hel, but he prioritized his own desires first, like when he decided to ambush Roy in Firmament, when Hel told him point blank she didn't care.

For example, other traits are much less ambiguously good or bad--for example, the aforementioned selflessness. Instead of looking through Durkon's memories, absorbing his selflessness and sense of duty to others, and twisting it around in some creatively evil way, he simply doesn't pick up those traits at all, instead viewing those memories with resentment.

Yes, that is what I mean by twisting the memories, picking up the bad and not the good. We know from Malack that a vampire is capable of love so my guess is that Durkon* had he managed to absorb every memory at his own pace would have picked on some of Durkon's selflessness (one might argue that he already did since he cared about Hel who is another person), but not much. Jus like he started picking up on his accent without noticing (somethin', tha dead, plainly quoting Thirden)

What's to say that a corrupted heroic atheist (or whatever passes for an atheist in a world where the gods are provably real) wouldn't result in villain protagonist whose idea of "heroism" is corrupted by his devotion to an evil goddess?

Where would the devotion come from? You can't twist an abscence of something into that something.

Looking above, I am reminded of that bit you said about the deity having the chance to cram that spirit full of knowledge being letting it loose. Free will doesn't mean zero influence by external forces.

So? If they could impart knowldege that would make vampires theur dedicated servant then every vampire would serve a god.

You made a point about an-[other deity] created deity being no more likely to be an agent of another deity than any random mortal on the crew of the Mechane. I was pointing precisely why it was more likely: Because Hel, in her role as goddess of the undead, has one additional, temporally proximate opportunity.

Think of it this way. You're at a trial. All parties involved are equally influential--in other words, they're all equally likely to have, for example, employed a juror or a close friend of a juror, or appeared on some talk show that the juror watched, or run into a juror at the gym. You have no reason to believe that any juror specifically had more prior contact with one party or another.

Now imagine you just found out that, after the jury pool was selected, but before the jury was impaneled, one of the involved parties took the opportunity to have coffee with several of the jurors. This doesn't negate the jurors' free will, nor does it mean that the party would necessarily get what they wanted. However, if you were representing one of the other parties--one of the ones without the benefit of a recent talk over coffee--would you want any of these potential jurors?

That analogy does not map to the situation said party could have bribed the juror, but in the case that concerns us, I don't see with what, I don't see why and more imoortantly I don't see that the relevant death god knows anything is going on. I mean for any of this to work, Nergal or Rat or whoever would have to know that Hel even has a high priest, where he is, how she intend to vote and be allowed to order their minions to attack the high priest of another deity during a period of truce. And if they could do that wouldn't they also target thz high priests of other gods? I mean the death gods of the other Pantheon are not in the same position as Hel where they have to wait for luck to provide them with servants, they already have established churches and all.

Because they're a part of the world

So what? They don't plan on blowing up with it.

and they're not suffering anymore.

Emotionnal trauma does not work that way. They (or at least the oldeest among that particular patch of vampires, Durkon*) are still angry.

This isn't a Crystal-golem sort of situation. Durkula is shaped by Durkon's suffering--or more accurately, his own suffering from experiencing Durkon's memories through his own, twisted lens. That is what shaped his resentment and his hatred of everyone in Durkon's life. But he's enjoying his existence as a vampire.

So? He is enjoying bringing pain and death to the people he hates and resents and even then plans to go on undying after this plan is done.

Malaack is the obvious counterexample. He said he felt no particular affection to the people in his mortal life, and his alliance with Tarquin implies a certain indifference to the plight of the faceless masses, but the fact of his friendship with Torquin et al, as well as Durkon, and his desire to build an enduring empire for Nergal demonstrates that hating much of the world doesn't mean that you don't "care for anyone or anything in the world," or as you also imply, the world itself.

Malack (that's how it is spelled) was two-hundred years old, he had ample time to absorb all of his host's meory and make more of his own than the host ever had, he has had time to make connections and friendships of his own. He is by every meaning of the world of the word an adult. Durkon* and his spawns have not had that time. It's simple, really, you care about something because you associate it with pleasant emotions, love, friendship, home, what have you ; the vampires of the godsmoot plot have no material to make these associations.

I was going by Thor's speech--I think you can find it yourself--about how multiple quiddities were required to create "real, honest-to-us independent mortals." I have no idea what Freya's role would be--maybe the pantheons had to get together to create the system through which the individual deities of life create souls, or maybe Freya's just a caretaker who oversees the transfer of new souls into new beings. We don't know. But we do know--or at least, what you have stipulated--is that Hel has the power to use her role to have some impact on each individual soul, even if we might quibble about how much that influence may be. In contrast, I don't recall any evidence that Freya can or would use her role to exert undue influence over new life. In fact, given what we have heard about the rules deities abide by, it seems like it would be a serious breach to allow Freya to have undue influence over all living beings that could potentially restrict the access of other gods to worshipers.

Then why do you assume that Hel's "influence" goes that far for undead beings?

True, but in a setting where we lack the ability to conduct empirical testing, it is sometimes the best evidence in favor of a hypothesis--particularly when there is no evidence at all specifically supporting the opposite proposition.

From the double quote, I guess you meant to type something in response to the "logical choice" there?

I would consider the fact that the vampire "re-asserting himself as he was prior to #1130" would negate the extremely emotional, climatic moment moment that came just before evidence enough. I mean, how would that make any sense? "If you have my body and all of my joys and sorrows, you're me. For like five minutes and then you're you again, I guess?"

As you would say, "you do not know that." It's what you inferred from the text, and it's a perfectly reasonable inference... as is mine.

This has been an interesting discussion, but if you're starting to play evidence-lawyer, I suspect our goals are beginning to diverge.

No, there is part of a knee-jerk reaction there on my part, from the previous discussions I have had with people asserting that it was impossible for a vampire to be good, my bad.

I enjoy your perspective, and I enjoy sharing mine, and if you feel the same I'm happy to continue this talk until I get yelled at for slacking off at work. If you're expecting somebody to "win" or be "proven right," then let me just say that it's been a pleasure talking to you and that I hope to do so again on an entirely different topic.

No, no, this is fun and I appreciate your perspective as well.

Umm, nothing at all. You asked a two part question--first, why would someone be loyal to someone other than Hel, and second, even if they were, why would that other deity not support Hel's plan. This part was addressing that second point. Sorry if I was unclear.

Okay, but I still don't understand your response. Why would the death deities of the Southern and Wetern Pantheons be worried about hel upsetting the status quo of the Northern Pantheons? These gods can't do anything to them for fear of a new Snarl. And if she succeeds that means more undead in the next world which means more opportunity for them to get power, sounds like a win-win. And besides, how would they even know what she is planning?

[Jaxzan Proditor]

You're welcome, I also suggest taking a look at Jaxzan Proditor's signature.

Yes, check out my signature for all things vampire!

[rferries]

To respond to the OP - a vampire created from Zz'drti might not have been loyal to Hel - it could have been loyal to the elven god of death, or to Nergal (since the elven gods vote as part of the West, I believe).

[Kish]

He could also have been loyal to no gods at all.

[martianmister]

Creating a paladin order to protect the gates, but making it exlusive to aristocracy. What does it say about Soon?

[hroþila]

Creating a paladin order to protect the gates, but making it exlusive to aristocracy. What does it say about Soon?

That he was the privileged product of a feudal society.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

That he was short on funds and preferred people capable of paying for their own stuff.

Alternatively: that he gave titles and lands to anyone that became a Paladin, and power begets power.

Grey Wolf

[Fyraltari]

Or that objectively the best fighters around were all nobles.