The OotS Thread III

[Grandmaster Jogurt]

No, he's a proper vampire. Vampire spawn is based off hit dice, not whether or not you've got free will. He's just enslaved to Malak's will for the time being.

My interpretation was that Durkon was raised as a spawn by the spell in his staff, circumventing the normal reawakening process which would both take three days and end up with a free willed vampire who might still have some loyalties to his team that you're still dealing with.

[Napoleon the Clown]

Maybe he's a vampire spawn temporarily. But the newly-minted vampire is held to the creator's will regardless of wait time or hit dice, so long as they don't exceed the creating vampire's ability to control. A vampire spawn is just as capable of of free will as a regular vampire, too.

[Kuja]

I went and dug up my old 3.5 Monster Manual to see if it could settle this. Here's what it has to say on raising vampire spawn:

Create Spawn (Su): A humanoid or monstrous humanoid slain by a vampire's energy drain rises as a vampire spawn 1d4 days after burial.

If the vampire drains the victim's Constitution to 0 or lower, the victim returns as a spawn if it had 4 or less HD and as a vampire if it had 5 or more HD. In either case, the new vampire or spawn is under the command of the vampire that created it and remains enslaved until its masters destruction. At any given time a vampire may have enslaved spawn totalling no more than twice its own Hit Dice; any spawn it creates that would exceed this limit are created as free-willed vampires or vampire spawn. A vampire that is enslaved may create and enslave spawn of its own, so a master vampire can control a number of lesser vampires in this fashion. A vampire may voluntarily free an enslaved spawn in order to enslave a new spawn, but once freed, a vampire or vampire spawn cannot be enslaved again.

So Durkon, since he is definately well past 5th level and was killed by Malack's blood drain rather than his energy drain, is almost certainly a vampire proper and not a spawn.

[Lord of the Abyss]

883 up! Spoiler

So, Durkon's magic still works; he just summons a lawful evil devil and not a lawful good deva.

And it's amusing to see V's familar's utter failure at making V feel better.

[Crazedwraith]

Hmm. The Tarquin's team converging on windy canyon theory is starting to look even more likely.

Looks like the ORder is going to need some unexpected cavalry turning up.

[RecklessPrudence]

Waitwaitwait... the imp referred to V as a "him!"

[Panzersharkcat]

And? So has Roy, if memory serves. Might just mean the imp prefers using that instead of schklim or schkler.

[AniThyng]

Waitwaitwait... the imp referred to V as a "him!"

The poor dead horse

I mean, really, you think Qarr has any special insight into what gender V is because...?

[Lord Relvenous]

Waitwaitwait... the imp referred to V as a "him!"

Many characters in the strip have referred to V as either gender-specific pronoun.

[Lord of the Abyss]

Waitwaitwait... the imp referred to V as a "him!"

To quote the Three Fiends:

"He?" "She? It?"

Nobody knows what gender V is, it's a running joke.

[Lord of the Abyss]

Also, a little detail I just noticed: Vampire Durkon's magic has a new color theme; reddish, instead of white like it used to be.

[Alkaloid]

So, I'm just speculating here, but I predict Nales death is going to be both spectacularly brutal and hilarious, because there is no way he survives this.

[FaxModem1]

I admit, I'm a bit perplexed. The Order are the good guys, and I honestly see no way out for them. Not unless Xykon kills Nale's group lickity split as the Order hightails it out of there to the next gate. Unless that happens, it seems like curtains for the Order.

[The Grim Squeaker]

I admit, I'm a bit perplexed. The Order are the good guys, and I honestly see no way out for them. Not unless Xykon kills Nale's group lickity split as the Order hightails it out of there to the next gate. Unless that happens, it seems like curtains for the Order.

Well, 1: The Imp just showed up. 2. Tarquin is unlikely to want to see the order killed. (In fact, it's almost certain), and he can easily dominate " Nale's " group. 3. Xykon showing up outside with an army. 4. A remaining guardian helping hte order inside the complex.

[Rogue 9]

Xykon isn't showing up with an army; when we last saw him he said to travel light, with him, Redcloak, and the Monster in the Dark only. (Tsukiko would have been the fourth member, but, you know...)

[Alkaloid]

They aren't really in a position where they can win if we define winning as defeating Tarquins crew and Xykons, secure the gate and restore justice and goodness to all the lands, but they are still capable of hammering Nale and whoever he takes with him into the labyrinth to pieces. After that they would need to start playing Xykon and Tarquin against each other to buy them time, maybe isolate and pick off a couple of their party members (Malack and Durkon, probably) and escape. I'd be surprised if there wasn't some method in this castle to blow the whole thing to kingdom come as well, although I'm not sure what sort of effect destroying another gate will have on the snarl at this point.

[RecklessPrudence]

Waitwaitwait... the imp referred to V as a "him!"

The poor dead horse

I mean, really, you think Qarr has any special insight into what gender V is because...?

Well, I just thought that since V is Qarr's (thanks for his name, btw, had forgotten) assignment nowadays, he might have been doing some digging. Someone's got to know enough to at least infer what V's gender is likely to be.

Many characters in the strip have referred to V as either gender-specific pronoun.

Yeah I knew that, but I thought they were all (or at least mostly) in the early days of the strip...? Probably wrong, but that's what I thought at when I made the post.

To quote the Three Fiends:

"He?" "She? It?"

Nobody knows what gender V is, it's a running joke.

Presumably their mate and children do, and at least part of the celestial/infernal bureaucracy has to, if only the "Births/Deaths/Resurrections" department.

I guess it's just, since I use the singular "they" for persons of indeterminate/unknown gender, myself (and I recently found out that that was the correct and accepted method of referring to them as little as a century or so ago, so it's not just me) I always find it weird when people refer to a hermaphrodite/neuter/other as either traditional gender, or "it" or something. V works for Vaarsuvius, if only because it is short and flows as if it's "he" or "she", rather than being jarring like "it." Iunno, just a personal thing. If someone has been referred to as a person of indeterminate gender for a while, and then is called "him," my instinctive reaction is that the person talking has received new information.

Nevermind.

[AniThyng]

Hilariously V's children refer to (how do you use "they"in this context to refer to V?) with an elven word that translates to "other parent"

[RecklessPrudence]

Hilariously V's children refer to (how do you use "they"in this context to refer to V?) with an elven word that translates to "other parent"

(Same as usual, they/them/their, as appropriate)

I know, right? Burlew's really gone all-in on the joke. At this point, it's like the whole universe is in on keeping V androgynous. V's mate was, too. I can't remember, are other full-elves as hard to pin down on the whole gender issue? What about those ones that were helping the Azure City Resistance?

I imagine that V's gender will be revealed during the final battle with (Xykon and Redcloak)/(The Snarl), and will have a key part in defeating them .

[AniThyng]

Hilariously V's children refer to (how do you use "they"in this context to refer to V?) with an elven word that translates to "other parent"

(Same as usual, they/them/their, as appropriate)

I know, right? Burlew's really gone all-in on the joke. At this point, it's like the whole universe is in on keeping V androgynous. V's mate was, too. I can't remember, are other full-elves as hard to pin down on the whole gender issue? What about those ones that were helping the Azure City Resistance?

I imagine that V's gender will be revealed during the final battle with (Xykon and Redcloak)/(The Snarl), and will have a key part in defeating them .

This is bordering on off topic, but :

"V's childen refers to them [...]" just sounds wrong to my ears, since to me them always implies plural.

Some elves are obviously female, e.g. Lirian. It's more likely elven society doesn't care to make the distinction and their language reflects that.

Also, you dropped it, but I still have to point out Qarr has always refered to V as "him". To repeat the refrain, the pronoun used reflects the biases of the character using it, and says little about the truth.

[LadyTevar]

You could try s/he and s/him

[RecklessPrudence]

Hmm... reading wikipedia's Singular They page, it seems Americans are less disposed to using "they" as an "epicene" (indeterminate gender) they, preferring, at least until recently, generic "he," while British-English speakers are more prone to "they" in appropriate circumstances...

Hey, AniThyng, what would you suggest instead of (examples taken from wiki):

When someone does not get a haircut, their hair grows long.
and
If my mobile phone runs out of power, a friend that I am with lets me borrow theirs.

Would "they" be appropriate there, or would you want his/her, or something? Would there be a difference between speaking it and writing it?

You could try s/he and s/him

I've done that, but while it works tolerably well for text, I find it clunky and jarring for speech. Also for text, but less so.

And I know this is drifting somewhat off-topic, but it's genuinely interesting to me to get perspectives other than my own, and cultural differences within the same language are intriguing. My own family is European-Australian, but my maternal grandmother was born and raised in England, with her parents emigrating after WWII.

My great-grandfather was a London firefighter, working his way up to Captain of a firehouse in the process - there were a lot of casualties. He tried to join the military early in the war but his father had died of a medical condition that at the time disqualified him from serving - it being much easier to flunk the physical early in the war - and then, once they got desperate enough they would take him and actually did take his little brother (who was injured during training and never served, but got vet benefits), he was already a firey, and they wouldn't take him because they needed all the fireys they could get.

He had a lot of good stories, both from the war and before and after, but preferred to tell the funny ones, or at least ones he could put a funny spin on, and didn't tell the horrifying ones... at least, not until he was in the grips of Alzheimer's and told my Mum, thinking she was his long-dead wife.

Anyway, it's interesting to talk to people from vastly different upbringings and find out the subtle and not-so-subtle differences in everything from our use of English to our general worldview, based on our backgrounds.

Umm... on-topic, on-topic... Malack seems to be getting more and more pissed off with Nale, and Tarquin just fairly peremptorily dismissed his concerns. Anyone willing on taking bets whether Malack's going to follow Nale's orders, or if he's going to get completely fed up with this whole farce and he and vamp!Durkon break off from Nale and give Tarquin another piece of his mind?

And V is really not handling this whole fallout thing well, are they? Blackwing better get V to get their shit together, or the Order might be in trouble.

[Lord of the Abyss]

Umm... on-topic, on-topic... Malack seems to be getting more and more pissed off with Nale, and Tarquin just fairly peremptorily dismissed his concerns. Anyone willing on taking bets whether Malack's going to follow Nale's orders, or if he's going to get completely fed up with this whole farce and he and vamp!Durkon break off from Nale and give Tarquin another piece of his mind?

What I suspect is happening is that Tarquin is setting Nale up to fail horribly, or outright kill himself. Tarquin is a big believer in narrative causality, he's there in the first place to swoop in and grab the prize at the last moment in proper villain style. And now he sends off Nale to fight to Order in a place and time where it doesn't make narrative sense for the Order to lose, while keeping himself and the kobold back. The only actual ally of Tarquin who is going with Nale is Malack, who if "killed" will just reform in his coffin - the kobold would risk being killed. And Tarquin would hardly let Nale steal power or glory from him...if he thought there was any to be stolen. Instead, he's sending off the expendables and the effectively unkillable.

So, I think he figures that Malack will show up alone (possibly reduced to gaseous form) to tell him of Nale's abject defeat. He's been calling Nale things like an easily manipulated leech after all; right before manipulating Nale to go off and attack the Order without Tarquin's help. I think that Nale has Outlived His Usefulness to Tarquin. I don't think that Malack will actually attack Nale; he's rabidly lawful, and that would be violating Tarquin's orders (unless he has secret orders from Tarquin...). But if/when Nale starts losing, I wouldn't be surprised to see Malack cut his losses and leave him to his fate.

[AniThyng]

Hmm.

I agree that in the context of "when someone does X, they should expect Y" it sounds okay, though I'd use "when one" rather then "someone".

now that you mention it, "borrow theirs" sounds okay, I'd I had no particular friends in mind, otherwise I'd use the gender specific one.

I'm still not convinced "my friend is late, I should call them" makes sense though.

[Lord Relvenous]

Hmm.

I agree that in the context of "when someone does X, they should expect Y" it sounds okay, though I'd use "when one" rather then "someone".

now that you mention it, "borrow theirs" sounds okay, I'd I had no particular friends in mind, otherwise I'd use the gender specific one.

I'm still not convinced "my friend is late, I should call them" makes sense though.

Only because you have prior knowledge as to your friend's gender and would therefore use that pronoun. In a situation where that isn't true, "them" works fine.

"My real estate agent is late for our meeting."
"Have you called them?"