vampire spirits

[WolvesbaneIII]

We saw gregs spirit turn into durkon before he died. I'm wondering if the "negative energy stirring" meant he'd turn back into full out evil greg, or was just a grim reminder for vampire durkon that he was not truly durkon and had a purpose to fulfil now.

I'm assuming its the former.

With this dark energy at play, if it did turn him back into evil durkon, how long would it take? Was there any word from the author on this? It was a cool plot twist, and some things were left open ended, and while I do think its obviously the 1st option, it could have been anything really.

What could have happened would be a truly good *durkon vampire, who had to cope with the reality of his unlife, but I'm pretty sure evil durkon would pop back over time to assert himself once again.

And is greg just absorbed back into the negative energy plane? or would this take some time much like how souls take time to be absorbed into their respective planes? I could see some kind god or high ranking demon pluck spirits like these not necessarily durkons dark energy soul and transfer its conciousness into some other life form. the wisdom and experience of one of these such "spirits" could come in handy, but I don't know if such a thing is possible.

I'm interested in hearing everyones thoughts on this, and I hope to learn something from this.

[Fyraltari]

As far as I understand it, Durkon* was always a copy of Durkon with two differences:
1) the spirit was made of Negative Energy rather than Positive Energy, but since neither are inherently Good or Evil, all that changes is wether the body needs to be technically living to function.

2) ‘Durkon’ had only absorbed a very few moments of Durkon’s life starting with the very worst one. Since people are the sum of their experiences, this meant that Durkon* was a very incomplete copy of Durkon’s personality keeping only the bad parts with none of the (overwhelmingly more numerous) good parts to rein them in.

Had Durkon* managed to live his own life, he would process each memory one at a time, allowing him to color them with his pre-existing outlook and balance them with his own unlife. This would have resulted in someone closer to Malack, an evil version of Durkon with the superficial elements of the original Durkon (like the accent) présent but not the morals.

When Durkon tricked Durkon* into absorbing all his memories, he subverted the process, forcing Durkon to have all of his life with the context associated. Since we are the sum of our experience and Durkon* had lived for less than a week and Durkon for fifty plus years, the end result was another exact copy of Durkon, except with fangs.

The ‘negative energy squirming’ comment, I read as Durkon#2 being uneasy with being a spirit made of Negative Energy instead of Positive Energy like his newfound life experience tells him he should be. I don’t think the Durkon* personality could reassert itself over Durkon#2’s anymore than Roy’s or Belkar’s old personalities could reassert themselves over their current ones for the same reason, their life experience made them grow beyond that.

But Durkon#2 cannot be sure of that and with the stakes at play, ensures it doesn’t happen.

As for the other question, I’m not well-verses enough in D&D to answer, but since Durkon got all of Durkon*’s memory, there is no meaningful sense in which Durkon#2 died. The two simply merged.

[BaronOfHell]

but since Durkon got all of Durkon*’s memory, there is no meaningful sense in which Durkon#2 died. The two simply merged.

I don't think we have enough information to say that for sure. If a wizard somehow created an exact duplicate of someone's soul and then destroyed it, just to argue he destroyed nothing, because that soul already existed I would say he would only be technically correct if the soul he duplicated suddenly experienced the world from two locations in stead of the usual single location.

Carrying on the line of thought, the vampire spirit certainly wasn't Durkon when it was evil since these two were clearly separated, and if they were the same at the point of time of the vampire's destruction is interesting, but not certain. A crude example could be when we cut our hair, a nail or even something that is living, we don't experience life as two separate organisms, in stead we stay in our body.

One can imagine a clone (or robot or zombie) that has all the information that would define e.g. Durkon to the rest of the team (and the rest of the world for that matter), and let's just include all of Durkon's memories into this being, yet if we create it in some far away location and then slay it, I doubt anything about the original Durkon's reality would change.

[hroþila]

I don't think they were literally the same at the end - they still had agency, individually. But they had the same personality, memories, experiences and goals. So in my view Vamp Durkon, a distinct individual who just happened to be an almost identical negative energy copy of OG Durkon, did die in a very real sense.

Other than that, I fully agree with Fyraltari. That was a very good explanation.

[Fyraltari]

That’s true, but there is fundamental differenece between this situation and your examples.
Both Durkons share the same body and sensory input (as symbolized by the eye-window-thingies inside his mindworld). When the two selves had different memories and personnalities, the distinction was meaningful. But once Durkon shared everything with Durkon the distinction feels academic to me.

Durkon now carries Durkon#2’s memories and sense of identity inside Durkon#2’s body, so to me, Durkon#2 is still alive ‘within’ (for lack of a better term) Durkon.

Edit: But at this point we’re just disagreeing on how many angels can dance on a pinhead, so I acknowledge that my position on this is no more valid than anybody else’s.

Other than that, I fully agree with Fyraltari. That was a very good explanation.

Why, thank you.

[brian 333]

I agree that the memories of Greg are now a part of Durkon, but the negative energy soul is permanently and forever gone.

When Durkula was dusted both soul entities were liberated, Durkon to go to Thor and Greg to merge back into the negative energy plane the way a slain elemental would merge aack into its native plane. The animating negative energy spirit cannot survive the destruction of its host under any circumstances, and if Durkon was to get re-vampirized Hel would have to forge a new entity to animate the corpse because Hel cannot preserve Greg under any circumstances.

[WolvesbaneIII]

Great points by all. Thanks for the diverse and well reasoned points of view.

[BaronOfHell]

Thank you for your kind words!

[Quizatzhaderac]

the spirit was made of Negative Energy rather than Positive Energy, but since neither are inherently Good or Evil

Do you have some kind of citation for that? And if you do, are you sure that doesn't say something like "evil adjacent , but not exactly evil itself?"

But once Durkon shared everything with Durkon the distinction feels academic to me.

But in this circumstance the soul is not an abstraction.

There were two real, discrete spirits in the same mind / body. The fact that there's an extra soul there requires consideration the same what that extra mass would.

With this dark energy at play, if it did turn him back into evil durkon, how long would it take?

We have to guess here, but I'd say we have three pieces of information informing us. My interpretation is that it's short.

1) Greg's assessment that he didn't have long in his current frame of mind.
2) This has never happened before (Rich made comments to that effect).
3) Rich's treatment of the undead. This requires some expansion.

The undead are not treated as "humans, expect for practical circumstances are different"; they are not metaphors for humans of different culture/ethnicity. There are reasons that a good character like Durkon to think he could never get along with a Malak based solely on Malak being a vampire. The body and soul of a vampire are all built differently from a dwarf's and every circumstance and experience will affect the vampire differently.

In my interpretation, Greg became overwhelmed with the habit of being Durkon, but the effect was more like a charm spell than a genuine change. Given time, reg would be reminded more that he didn't actually feel the things that caused Durkon's beliefs. For example Drukon might have been touched by Elan's eagerness to donate blood (and guilty about Greg's abuse), but Greg doesn't have the same disposition towards sympathy towards others and would have just thought of Elan as a sucker. Eventually Greg would realize that Durkon's world view isn't consistent with his disposition, even though they have exactly the same experiences forming their worldviews.

[Lord Torath]

I don't really think Durkon got all of Greg's memories. I think he only got the things Greg explicitly shared with him. Otherwise he would na 'ave needed ta ask aboot Greg's plans. Greg couldn't hide from Durkon anything he learned or experienced from the time Greg took over, but anything from before that, Durkon wouldn't know without Greg telling him.

[Fyraltari]

I don't really think Durkon got all of Greg's memories. I think he only got the things Greg explicitly shared with him. Otherwise he would na 'ave needed ta ask aboot Greg's plans. Greg couldn't hide from Durkon anything he learned or experienced from the time Greg took over, but anything from before that, Durkon wouldn't know without Greg telling him.

He only got those memory after #1131, as explained in panel 4.

[Lord Torath]

He only got those memory after #1131, as explained in panel 4.

Very true. Thanks for the refresher.

[ElderSage]

‘Durkon’ had only absorbed a very few moments of Durkon’s life starting with the very worst one. Since people are the sum of their experiences, this meant that Durkon* was a very incomplete copy of Durkon’s personality keeping only the bad parts with none of the (overwhelmingly more numerous) good parts to rein them in.

Had Durkon* managed to live his own life, he would process each memory one at a time, allowing him to color them with his pre-existing outlook and balance them with his own unlife. This would have resulted in someone closer to Malack, an evil version of Durkon with the superficial elements of the original Durkon (like the accent) présent but not the morals.

Wait, Durkon* had the accent? I thought that was a facade by Durkon* pretending to be Durkon, and Durkon* didn't actually have the accent.

[Fyraltari]

Wait, Durkon* had the accent? I thought that was a facade by Durkon* pretending to be Durkon, and Durkon* didn't actually have the accent.

Somethin' (third to last panel). Tha (panel 2).

This slips are unvoluntary and a sign that as Durkon* absorbs more of Durkon's memories he gains more of Durkon's superficial traits. Had the process completed normally he would have ended up evil but with durkon's accent (and probably a few other signs).

That makes sense as hearing an accent is how you devellop one.

[Grey Watcher]

I'm gonna go against the prevailing wisdom here. Panel 3: "I c'n feel tha negative energy squirmin' around. Thar's no way ta know if'n this'll last." To me, that suggests that there's at least a possibility that the Greg persona could reassert itself and could easily do so at any moment.

Maybe this is a bit of a reach, but it really seems to be (very roughly) analogous to my own experiences with depression and other chronic problems. It's not something you can permanently defeat with one heroic burst of willpower. You can beat it back that way, but it's still there and can (and likely will) come back around at some point. It might take weeks or it might take hours, but it's something you have to be ready for. Durkon wants to do what he needs to do (get his vampire body killed) before his magically-enhanced anger issues can come back and force him to do otherwise.

Granted, Durkon, as himself is stabler and healthier in that respect than I am, so it takes a supernatural force to unbalance him. A force which, much more literally than Haley's aphasia arc, takes a specific facet of oneself and gives it a will of its own and the power to (in a typical case) overpower the original. But that's still Durkon's suppressed anger and resentment, his internal blurring of the line between justice and vengeance, his desire to lash out and return hurt for hurt.

Basically, Greg was an incomplete copy of Durkon: all the anger, none of the love, then amplified by evil magic. Durkon was able to fill in the missing parts abruptly enough to put the evil magic part on its back foot, but not knock it out of the game entirely.

I dunno. This gets heavily speculative, and I concede I may be reading too much of myself into Durkon in this case. And there is somewhat contradictory evidence in the way Durkon and Thor talk about the vampire spirit. But it's always read to me as there being a very real possibility Greg could make a comeback and undermine everything Durkon was trying to achieve, which in turn informed the need to let Belkar do his thing immediately.

[mjasghar]

The monster manual focuses on monsters ie antagonists
As a result the positive and negative energy planes populations we know of are generally evil or neutral
However, philosophically in d&d positive energy is good aligned - healing and there’s hints that it’s the basis of souls
Meanwhile negative energy is practically always associated with evil - undead in particular and harm spells etc
So a negative energy spirit is will likely be innately evil in a supernatural way - it either can never turn good or only temporarily. It’s one of the few evil by nature concepts that hasn’t been qualified
Unfortunately they do seem happy to have good supernaturals be an exception and able to fall - personally I think that’s an issue with a lot of writers and their own hang ups with religion and authority. You certainly see many celestials portrayed as practically neutral.