| “ | Oh, I'm sorry, did you have an evil magic spirit in your head controlling your actions then, too? That's you. You said those words. You can hang there and pretend you're so much nobler than I am, but for that one moment? You felt exactly what I feel. You are who you are on your worst day, Durkon. Anything less is a comforting lie you tell yourself to numb the pain. And that's who I am. Your worst day, personified. | „ |
| ~ The High Priest after forcing Durkon to re-live his worst memory. |
The High Priest of Hel is a major antagonist in The Order of the Stick, serving as a false protagonist in "Blood Runs in the Family" and one of the main antagonists of "Utterly Dwarfed". He is a vampire and, as the name suggests, the high priest of Hel who possesses dwarven cleric Durkon Thundershield in order to complete Hel's plan to destroy the world and doom the entire dwarven race to be enslaved by her forever.
Biography[]
Blood Runs in the Family[]
Although his existence is not revealed at the time, the High Priest first comes into existence when Durkon, a member of the Order of the Stick, is vampirized by Malack during a battle between the Order and the Linear Guild at Girard's Pyramid (he could not exist before this, as Hel is banned from creating clerics). However, he is unable to act on Hel's plan at first due to Durkon being in Malack's thrall. Despite this, he does have some agency, as shown when Malack allows him to drink Belkar's blood and has to order him not to drink it all. He is also able to take the initiative to summon a devil during the battle with the Order.
The High Priest is freed when Malack is slain by Nale and immediately assumes control of Durkon. He sets about impersonating Durkon, killing Zz'dtri and beating up Nale when they ask him to join them before helping the Order to win the battle by ordering his demon to attack Redcloak's Silicon Elemental. He then assists the Order in their battle against Tarquin's forces until Belkar manages to tame an Allosaurus. When the Order is eventually cornered by Tarquin, Miron Shewdanker and Laurin Shattersmith, "Durkon" is almost killed when Laurin dispels the protection from sunlight effect granted by Malack's staff, but is saved when Julio Scoundrél arrives on the Mechane, providing him with shade. He promptly defeats Laurin by draining her energy until she teleports away, allowing him to re-activate the staff's protections.
"Durkon" and the Order escape on the Mechane. Tarquin attempts to pursue them but is defeated and left in the desert. Afterwards the rest of the Order (with the exception of Belkar, who doesn't trust him because he tried to drink his blood) agree to let "Durkon" feast on some of their blood in order to keep him alive. Afterwards "Durkon" goes down into the storeroom and contacts Hel, revealing both his true identity and that the real Durkon is now a prisoner in his own mind. The High Priest tells Hel that all is going smoothly and they can now proceed to the next stage of their plan.
Utterly Dwarfed[]
The High Priest begins reading Durkon's memories in order to learn how to better impersonate him, and is annoyed by how irritatingly wholesome his childhood memories are. Durkon tries to distract him by showing him needlessly long memories, but the High Priest informs him that this won't work as everything in his mind happens at the speed of thought. Meanwhile, Thor, in order to stop Hel's plan, damages the Mechane with lightning in order to make everyone suspicious since Durkon, as a Cleric of Thor, should be able to stop lightning. The High Priest gets around this by casting a weather control spell.
Belkar, still not trusting the High Priest, threatens to kill him, at which point the High Priest magically compels him to jump overboard. After being retrieved, Belkar gets a psionic dagger from Vaarsuvius and tests it out by stabbing the High Priest with it, causing this to happen again.
Upon arriving in Cliffport for a supply stop, the High Priest persuades Roy to take him to a temple, ostensibly to be resurrected but actually so Roy can take him "where he needs to go". After failing to have him resurrected at several shrines, the High Priest is able to convince Roy to go and see Veldrina, one of the Western Pantheon's representatives at the Godsmoot, so that he can "find out" that it exists and convince Roy to take him there to be resurrected. This ploy succeeds, and Roy agrees to take a detour to the Godsmoot in the Pinnacle Mountains.
Upon arriving at the Godsmoot, the High Priest gets himself permission to enter by identifying himself to Exarch Gontor Hammerfell of the Creed of the Stone (a nontheist cult that protects the Godsmoot). Belkar follows him in to stop him from trying anything, and witnesses him kill and vampirize the Exarch. The High Priest sees Belkar and attacks him in the form of a direwolf before throwing him out the window and going on to vampirize the rest of the Creed of the Stone off-panel (except for one, who cannot be vampirized due to being a half-elemental and is killed by the others).
The Godsmoot commences, with the first order of business being a vote on whether or not to destroy the world in order to prevent the Snarl from breaking free. The vote seemingly ends with 9 - 8 against; however, just before the vote is adjourned the High Priest announces his presence and summons a proxy of Hel, who votes yes because this would be a dishonourable death and so would doom every dwarf on the planet to her domain. This leaves the vote at 9 - 9, meaning that the demigods have to be called in to cast the tiebreaking votes. Hel brags to Loki, the leader of the contingent opposed to destroying the world, that she's already ensured the demigods will vote in favour. In the meantime, Roy realizes he can nullify Hel's vote by killing the High Priest due to the rules of the Godsmoot specifying that every representative must remain in the building until voting is over for their vote to count and jumps down to attack him.
The High Priest tries to appeal to Roy's past with Durkon by quoting memories that he forced Durkon to show him, but Roy refuses to listen. The High Priest then attempts to hypnotise him but Roy throws it off. Roy and the High Priest fight it out until the High Priest subdues Roy with a harm spell and prepares to kill him while bragging about how the dwarves will suffer most from Hel's plan. Meanwhile, inside Durkon's mind, Durkon denies having any grievance towards his people. The High Priest responds by explaining to him that he knows this isn't true, as he was made specifically to harbour that grievance so he would carry out Hel's plan. Because of this, he absorbed the worst memory of his life; the High Priest of Thor having him banished from dwarven lands due to a prophecy, which was followed by Durkon cursing them to go to Hel. Upon re-playing the memory in Durkon's head to mock him, the High Priest goes back to draining Roy's energy.
Roy is saved when another representative distracts the High Priest by shouting "Sneak attack from behind!", allowing him to knock the High Priest away with his sword. The High Priest then invokes "Hel's Might", allowing him to grow to giant size, and, based on Durkon's memories, mocks him over his failure to prevent the deaths of Durkon, everyone Belkar ever hurt, the population of Azure City (who were killed by Xykon's forces after Roy failed to stop him) and finally his brother (who was killed when one of their father's experiments went wrong). He then asks how many pieces his brother's body was found in. This proves to be a mistake, as it causes Roy to realize that the High Priest isn't really Durkon and attack him with his fully-empowered sword, causing him to revert to his normal size and retreat beneath an anti-life shield.
The seven demigods finally arrive and cast their votes. Surtur, Thrym and Sigrun vote in favour and Bragi and Iounn vote against before Hermod, who agreed to vote in favour is called; however, Hermod explains to Hel that he had assumed it was a protest vote before voting against. This just leaves the dwarven king Dvalin, who refuses to vote without first polling the Dwarven Council of Clans. The vampirized Exarch steals the Order's teleportation orb and teleports into the High Priest's anti-life shell so they can teleport to dwarven lands and rig the vote. In order to do this, the High Priest has the Creed of the Stone storm the room and randomly selects a member to succeed him before abdicating his position, allowing him to leave without Hel's vote being discounted. He and the Exarch then teleport to dwarven lands with two of their followers while the representatives are distracted fighting the Creed.
Upon arriving in dwarven lands, the High Priest and the other vampires kill and vampirize several Clerics of Thor, leaving them behind to fight the Order. They then attempt to enter the Temple of Thor by unlocking the door with Durkon's runestone, only for it to crumble to dust due to the failsafe designed to stop anyone but Durkon using it. The High Priest concludes that they should wait for the Order somewhere else and uses Durkon's memories to locate the banquet hall. The four vampires hole up in the hall to prepare for an ambush. Durkon continues to show the High Priest various memories, which only serves to annoy him.
The Order have meanwhile defeated the vampirized Clerics with the help of Cleric of Thor Minrah Shaleshoe and Cleric of Loki Hilgya Firehelm (an ex-lover of Durkon's). Three of the vampires survive and flee to the banquet hall to inform the High Priest, who sets up a Symbol of Death and several other traps and magically contacts Roy to tell him his location and taunt him. Meanwhile, he sends the Exarch and one of the Creed of the Stone members ahead to deal with the Council of Clans.
The Order, knowing about the ambush, have Hilgya deploy summoned "chaos giraffes" to spring the traps set by the High Priest before charging in and killing several vampires. The High Priest observes that Hilgya is wearing a papoose with a baby in it and deduces it to be Durkon's. He agrees not to kill the child until the world is destroyed if Durkon doesn't show him any more memories. Durkon makes him let him show one more, unrelated to Hilgya or the Order.
The vampire clerics dispel all the Order's magical protections. Although Roy is able to kill two of them, the majority of the Order is hypnotized into attacking him. Roy manages to fight them off and wounds the High Priest repeatedly, but the High Priest gets hold of Hilgya's baby from a dominated Hilgya and activates an anti-life shield around them. Roy is knocked out soon after. The High Priest resumes watching the memory, and is confused by what he sees; after her husband died fighting a cave troll, Durkon's mother had the opportunity to resurrect him but used the necessary gold to resurrect several random miners instead because they were destined for Hel while her husband went to Valhalla. The High Priest is unable to comprehend why somebody would give up a chance to resurrect their husband to resurrect five people they hadn't met before.
Belkar's Protection from Evil charm is activated, allowing him to break free of the hypnotism and kill the remaining vampires before attempting to bypass the anti-life shield. Meanwhile, the High Priest is begging Durkon to explain the memory to him. Durkon explains to the High Priest that he was wrong: the worst day of your life does not define you in and of itself; rather, every day of your life does. Since the High Priest is only built around Durkon's resentment, he doesn't have the experience to deal with the emotions this memory causes and begs Durkon to help him. Durkon agrees and tells the High Priest to absorb all his memories so he can fully understand the memory. The High Priest does so, not realizing the truth until it's too late; absorbing all of these memories turns the High Priest into Durkon, more or less erasing it from existence.
What remains of the High Priest is destroyed when Durkon lowers the anti-life shield and allows Belkar to kill him, freeing the rest of the Order from his control. He is then resurrected as his normal self rather than a vampire, ensuring that the High Priest will never return.
Legacy[]
Although the High Priest is killed, Hel's plan goes on because the Exarch managed to escape. The plan almost succeeds, as the Exarch is able to hypnotize half the Council into voting in favor of destroying the world. Fortunately, Durkon gets the vote suspended due to an archaic rule and the Exarch is killed soon after, meaning the end of the world is indefinitely postponed and the High Priest died for nothing.