The dragon - a hypocrite?

[Kaytara]

Now I'll be the first to admit that the dragon's story is pretty heart-wrenching, but I have to disagree with all the people who've outright gone and said that adventurers are mean and wrong to treat these creatures the way they are treated, i.e. "just" because of their creature type or because their scales weren't all shiny.

More to the point, the dragon complains how her kind is viewed as nothing but giant gold-hoarding monsters.

However, she then proceeds to state her intention of killing V's children - children that are completely innocent of what she wants revenge for. Thus, in one fell swoop, she both confirms her kind's reputation of being cruel heartless monsters and proves that, whatever familial bonds she may feel for her offspring, she cares not one whit about humanoids.

So isn't it a little hypocritical to complain about humanoids not caring about her?

[RMS Oceanic]

Not really. It's "An eye for an eye" taken to the extreme. V killed her innocent kid, so she'll kill h** innocent kids. It's nothing to do with her views on different races. She's just taking revenge on one person.

[Snake-Aes]

What did you expect? She is evil. She wants revenge for the loss of what she cared the most. What is more fitting than paying with the same kind of deal? It's not like she cares about those she doesn't give a damn about(err... >.> you got it).

And her complaing about "hoarding monsters" was more about the whole "dragon = loves treasure" stereotype.

[Kaytara]

She's just taking revenge on one person.

...at the cost of innocents.

Unnecessarily harming or killing innocents is Evil, isn't it? In any case, it probably does show a disregard for their lives. So as I said... She's in no position to complain there - her kind has earned their reputation and she's actively contributing to it.

EDIT: In case this wasn't clear, I'm not questioning the dragon's behaviour all that much. She is, after all, Evil. I am questioning the forumites who sympathize with her.

[mcv]

However, she then proceeds to state her intention of killing V's children - children that are completely innocent of what she wants revenge for.

I don't think anyone is claiming that the dragon is the good guy here. I was just pointing out that adventurers do some pretty horrible things when you look at it from another angle.

And looking at stuff from another angle is always fun. Or interesting, at least.

[Finwe]

Yes, the dragon is clearly evil. Does that make it right to break into her house and murder her son?





However, she then proceeds to state her intention of killing V's children - children that are completely innocent of what she wants revenge for. Thus, in one fell swoop, she both confirms her kind's reputation of being cruel heartless monsters and proves that, whatever familial bonds she may feel for her offspring, she cares not one whit about humanoids.

The fact that her retaliation is Evil does not mean she was not wronged.

[Snake-Aes]

In the end, Belkar's wisdom from bard's summon plot chapter proves solid.

[Rotipher]

Yes, Mama Dragon is being a hypocrite. Yet ironically, she's also being very human, not "Always Evil/monstrous", in her choice of vengeance: if she didn't presume that she and V share the same feelings for their respective offspring, why would she expect killing V's children to make V suffer the same grief that she does? If she thought PC races were heartless, like Redcloak does, it wouldn't ever have occurred to her to share her loss with her enemy.

Even if Mama's retaliation is ultimately unjust, it's very believeable for her to respond as she has. Make her a vengeful human mother with a gun instead of a vengeful dragon mother with a breath weapon, and she could easily be the culprit in a Law & Order episode: still in the wrong, but 100% realistic.

[B.I.T.T.]

Yes, the dragon is clearly evil. Does that make it right to break into her house and murder her son?





The fact that her retaliation is Evil does not mean she was not wronged.

Whoa, wait a minute. Mama Dragon's reaction is understandable and even some good characters might find themselves thinking the same thing after finding out that their child has been killed, but let's keep in mind that her son was in the process of eating the Order of the Stick when he was charmed, was commanded not to let anyone leave, and upon snapping out of the charm would have resumed eating the Order of the Stick.

So even though Mama Dragon's anger is understandable, let's not paint the OOTS as murderers necessarily because it seems to me they were acting in self defense.

[Snake-Aes]

Whoa, wait a minute. Mama Dragon's reaction is understandable and even some good characters might find themselves thinking the same thing after finding out that their child has been killed, but let's keep in mind that her son was in the process of eating the Order of the Stick when he was charmed, was commanded not to let anyone leave, and upon snapping out of the charm would have resumed eating the Order of the Stick.

So even though Mama Dragon's anger is understandable, let's not paint the OOTS as murderers necessarily because it seems to me they were acting in self defense.

Nothing of that changes the fact mama dragon lost her kid, and V was the one who killed him.

[Kaytara]

Yes, the dragon is clearly evil. Does that make it right to break into her house and murder her son?

The fact that her retaliation is Evil does not mean she was not wronged.

It does and it doesn't. We have a vicious circle here. The dragon attacked them on sight at least partially because they are adventurers and adventurers are known to kill dragons like him. On the other hand, adventurers kill dragons like him because they act the way he does.

Also, in this particular case, I think you're mistaken. The Order had no way of knowing the starmetal cave was the home of a dragon. More to the point, the dragon himself made no attempt to prevent bloodshed. Instead, he proceeded to attack them, as it was far more powerful anyway.
The problem here is with the attitude of (evil chromatic) dragons in general. They are incredibly powerful and seem to view all humanoids as insignificant fragile monkeys to be oppressed or devoured at whim. The dragon thought them to be insignificant so it didn't try to negotiate.
The Order, on the other hand, were aware that they were painfully outmatched against a dragon and likely would have accepted any opportunity to avoid combat.



Even if Mama's retaliation is ultimately unjust, it's very believeable for her to respond as she has. Make her a vengeful human mother with a gun instead of a vengeful dragon mother with a breath weapon, and she could easily be the culprit in a Law & Order episode: still in the wrong, but 100% realistic.

I could understand if the vengeful human mother with a gun took the liberty of imposing the death penalty on the murderer.
What you're talking about is that mother deliberately kidnapping the murderer and proceeding to slowly kill his two pre-school kids in front of him before finishing him off. I suppose that's still somewhat... realistic, yet not unless we assume that the mother already had serious psycopathic tendencies even before she lost her child.

[Keshay]

There seems to be some confusion here about what the term Hypocrite means, so heres the definition:

hyp·o·crite
Function: noun
1 : a person who puts on a false appearance of virtue or religion
2 : a person who acts in contradiction to his or her stated beliefs or feelings

Follow this train of thought:

You harmed me by doing x.
I want to harm you.
I am going to do x to harm you.

I fail to see how that is in any way, shape or form contrary to the Dragon's apparent belief system.

The dragon never said "You should not have killed my child", or that doing so was somehow morally wrong. She simply presented the ways in which that killing hurt her. If anything, this is the opposite of hypocracy. Espically considering that the dragon is Chaotic Evil, the basic definition of which is "do whatever benefits yourself regardless of morality"

[Kaytara]

There seems to be some confusion here about what the term Hypocrite means, so heres the definition:

hyp·o·crite
Function: noun
1 : a person who puts on a false appearance of virtue or religion
2 : a person who acts in contradiction to his or her stated beliefs or feelings

Follow this train of thought:

You harmed me by doing x.
I want to harm you.
I am going to do x to harm you.

I fail to see how that is in any way, shape or form contrary to the Dragon's apparent belief system.

The dragon never said "You should not have killed my child", or that doing so was somehow morally wrong. She simply presented the ways in which that killing hurt her. If anything, this is the opposite of hypocracy. Espically considering that the dragon is Chaotic Evil, the basic definition of which is "do whatever benefits yourself regardless of morality"

It's not specifically the act of avenging her son that I'm talking about.
The dragon sarcastically remarks that humanoids consider dragons to be mindless gold-hoarding monsters. She then mentions that her mate was lost to adventurers.
Both statements as well as the general tone of her story pretty much paint her kind as the wronged victims who are being preyed upon by evil adventurers.

My reason for considering her a hypocrite is that she proceeds to act in a way that is the very reason adventurers are always eager to kill her kind in the first place.

[Querzis]

It's not specifically the act of avenging her son that I'm talking about.
The dragon sarcastically remarks that humanoids consider dragons to be mindless gold-hoarding monsters. She then mentions that her mate was lost to adventurers.
Both statements as well as the general tone of her story pretty much paint her kind as the wronged victims who are being preyed upon by evil adventurers.

My reason for considering her a hypocrite is that she proceeds to act in a way that is the very reason adventurers are always eager to kill her kind in the first place.

Yeah so you're assuming way too much. She obviously hate adventurers in general, thats true. I really dont see when she said anything that could even remotely make us think that she think all adventurers are evil and wrong while her kind are just defending themselves.

You're trying to paint this in a black or white morality. Its not because adventurers are really killing and looting her kind that it make her right and she never tried to say otherwise.

[Snake-Aes]

It's not specifically the act of avenging her son that I'm talking about.
The dragon sarcastically remarks that humanoids consider dragons to be mindless gold-hoarding monsters. She then mentions that her mate was lost to adventurers.
Both statements as well as the general tone of her story pretty much paint her kind as the wronged victims who are being preyed upon by evil adventurers.

She IS a monster who happens to hoard treasure, that's not denied. I think that complaint was more about the simplification that the stereotype brought.
"ooo, it's a dragon! it must want the treasure back!"



My reason for considering her a hypocrite is that she proceeds to act in a way that is the very reason adventurers are always eager to kill her kind in the first place.

This bit doesn't make sense. The dragoness never denied the fact that she is one of the bigger condensations of "adventuring party must kill" beings.

[Gilmiril]

Whoa, wait a minute. Mama Dragon's reaction is understandable and even some good characters might find themselves thinking the same thing after finding out that their child has been killed, but let's keep in mind that her son was in the process of eating the Order of the Stick when he was charmed, was commanded not to let anyone leave, and upon snapping out of the charm would have resumed eating the Order of the Stick.

So even though Mama Dragon's anger is understandable, let's not paint the OOTS as murderers necessarily because it seems to me they were acting in self defense.

Huh? That's an interesting spin on what really happened.

The Order of the Stick invaded the dragon's home, and the young dragon (who was outnumbered) tried to defend that home. Once he was charmed, the Order had plenty of time to get the starmetal and even loot the hoard and then simply leave. There was no reason to kill the dragon except that V wanted the polymorph removed, and to expedite that, s/he instructed the dragon to keep the rest of the Order prisoner until the next morning so that Durkon could get the necessary spell and restore V to humanoidity. V then killed the dragon because the charm was about to wear off, and only then did they look for the starmetal (and loot the hoard).

The death of young dragon was simply a point of expediency for V. Claiming self defense on behalf of the Order is a non sequitor.

[Kaytara]

Let me put this as clearly as I can - I am not complaining that this dragon is acting in an Evil way. It's an Evil dragon, that sort of behaviour is expected.

What I DO wonder about is that I've seen so many people here actually agree with her.

The point is, she brought this on herself. By extension, her kind did, by treating humanoids like insignificant rodents.
THAT is why I do not see how she can be considered to be right about this.

Yes, adventurers walk in on evil dragons and kill them. What I'm trying to say is that I don't see why we should be feeling sorry for her when it is her kind's actions - actions she supports herself, as evidenced by her choice of vengeance - that presumably created this attitude in humanoids in the first place.

[whatchamacallit]

With the amount of ego normal in a chromatic dragon I think being hypocritical is second nature for them.

[Snake-Aes]

Let me put this as clearly as I can - I am not complaining that this dragon is acting in an Evil way. It's an Evil dragon, that sort of behaviour is expected.

Oh, no one disagrees that she's evil.


What I DO wonder about is that I've seen so many people here actually agree with her.

The point is, she brought this on herself. By extension, her kind did, by treating humanoids like insignificant rodents.
THAT is why I do not see how she can be considered to be right about this.

Yes, adventurers walk in on evil dragons and kill them. What I'm trying to say is that I don't see why we should be feeling sorry for her when it is her kind's actions - actions she supports herself, as evidenced by her choice of vengeance - that presumably created this attitude in humanoids in the first place.

Oh well. I don't personally feel sorry for her, but her intents are fully justified for her, and that's what matters for her.

She isn't being hypocritical at all. I didn't see the dragon complaining at all that it happened, or why it happened. She didn't like it, of course, which is why revenge is being enacted.

[B.I.T.T.]

Huh? That's an interesting spin on what really happened.

The Order of the Stick invaded the dragon's home, and the young dragon (who was outnumbered) tried to defend that home. Once he was charmed, the Order had plenty of time to get the starmetal and even loot the hoard and then simply leave. There was no reason to kill the dragon except that V wanted the polymorph removed, and to expedite that, s/he instructed the dragon to keep the rest of the Order prisoner until the next morning so that Durkon could get the necessary spell and restore V to humanoidity. V then killed the dragon because the charm was about to wear off, and only then did they look for the starmetal (and loot the hoard).

The death of young dragon was simply a point of expediency for V. Claiming self defense on behalf of the Order is a non sequitor.

Was it really defending the home, or did he consider the OOTS to be a freshly delivered take-out meal. I'm inclined to believe the latter. It's not like he negotiated with the OOTS saying "Leave now or I'll kill you." he opened up with the acid blast right away. And upon conversing with V, he also had the opertunity to say "Leave or I'll kill you all." but instead he decided to take a nice big bite of Vaarsuvius ala Polymorph. So I personally think that the self-defense theory is valid.

Additionally, I'm not saying I don't understand Dragon Mama's rage. I'm just saying that murdering someone and killing in self defense aren't the same thing.

[Querzis]

Let me put this as clearly as I can - I am not complaining that this dragon is acting in an Evil way. It's an Evil dragon, that sort of behaviour is expected.

What I DO wonder about is that I've seen so many people here actually agree with her.

...In that case shoudnt the title of this thread be «the people who agree with the dragons - hypocrites?» I hardly see how the fact that people on the forum agree with her is supposed to make her a hypocrite.


The point is, she brought this on herself. By extension, her kind did, by treating humanoids like insignificant rodents.
THAT is why I do not see how she can be considered to be right about this.

She brought this on herself??? What did the dragon ever did to the OOTS before they invaded her home and killed her son? How can the adventurers be right because of what shes doing now when they obviously attacked and killed her son first?

And by the way: «By extension, her kind did.» Redcloak should kill you slowly and painfully for that. Thats exactly the kind of thought that made paladins able to kill lots of goblins childs in cold blood.


Yes, adventurers walk in on evil dragons and kill them.

Yes, for no real reasons except to gain XP and steal their treasure. Once again, you're really seeing this in a black or white morality. Regardless of if they are evil or not, thats doesnt give you the right to invade, kill and loot them. You dont become good by killing evil things!


What I'm trying to say is that I don't see why we should be feeling sorry for her when it is her kind's actions - actions she supports herself, as evidenced by her choice of vengeance - that presumably created this attitude in humanoids in the first place.

So you go with «The dragons started it»? Look regardless of if its the black dragons who started it first by invading humans homes then killing and looting humans or if its humans who started to invade dragons lairs to kill and loot dragons (and its very possible humans started it), it doesnt change anything. At all.

And by the way, I dont especially agree with the dragon (though I do feel sorry for her). I just really dont agree with V or adventurers who do that in general either (though, once again, I do feel sorry for V).

[Gilmiril]

It does and it doesn't. We have a vicious circle here. The dragon attacked them on sight at least partially because they are adventurers and adventurers are known to kill dragons like him. On the other hand, adventurers kill dragons like him because they act the way he does.

No, in D&D, adventurers kill dragons like him because they're worth XP and treasure. And that's what Rich is poking with this Mama-dragon story arc. Adventurers kill dragons because they're dragons. Likewise, they kill goblins because they're goblins, orcs because they're orcs, trolls because they're trolls, et cetera.


Also, in this particular case, I think you're mistaken. The Order had no way of knowing the starmetal cave was the home of a dragon.

In D&D, adventurers barge into monster lairs all the time. Whether or not they knew the starmetal cave was the home of a dragon makes no difference because they would have gone anyway. Had they known, they would simply have tried to prepare better in advance for attacking the dragon.


More to the point, the dragon himself made no attempt to prevent bloodshed. Instead, he proceeded to attack them, as it was far more powerful anyway.

More powerful? And yet it lost! And why should it try to prevent bloodshed when its home was invaded. If it truly was more powerful than the entire Order combined, yes, it could have had the luxury of preventing bloodshed. But it didn't have that luxury, and that is born out by the way it resolved.


The problem here is with the attitude of (evil chromatic) dragons in general. They are incredibly powerful and seem to view all humanoids as insignificant fragile monkeys to be oppressed or devoured at whim. The dragon thought them to be insignificant so it didn't try to negotiate.

So if 5 unknown people broke into your home, you'd try to negotiate? Begging for mercy would make more sense. Other plausible options are to run (if you can) or fight (if you can get surprise). Negotiate would only be vaible if you already have the upper hand.


The Order, on the other hand, were aware that they were painfully outmatched against a dragon and likely would have accepted any opportunity to avoid combat.

And yet when the dragon was rendered harmless via the charm, the Order had all night to complete their little quest while avoiding combat, but they (at V's insistence) decided against that. And you seem to think that the young dragon totally outmatched the entire Order. Please justify how you came to that conclusion.

Because this strip is based on D&D, the Order would reasonably expect that the DM designed this side-quest so that whatever creature(s) they find in the starmetal cave would be of a suitable challenge rating. So if there was a dragon, it would necessarily be a young one not yet fully into its power. That they would later have to deal with its angry mother is yet another poke at D&D (typical dungeon crawlers never have to deal with consequences of their actions, but they do here).


I could understand if the vengeful human mother with a gun took the liberty of imposing the death penalty on the murderer.
What you're talking about is that mother deliberately kidnapping the murderer and proceeding to slowly kill his two pre-school kids in front of him before finishing him off. I suppose that's still somewhat... realistic, yet not unless we assume that the mother already had serious psycopathic tendencies even before she lost her child.

No, this dragon isn't intending to kill V. That would defeat to purpose of its vengeance; V is supposed to live so that s/he can feel the pain of having one's children murdered for no other reason than what they are.

[Keshay]

Let me put this as clearly as I can - I am not complaining that this dragon is acting in an Evil way. It's an Evil dragon, that sort of behaviour is expected.

What I DO wonder about is that I've seen so many people here actually agree with her.

The point is, she brought this on herself. By extension, her kind did, by treating humanoids like insignificant rodents.
THAT is why I do not see how she can be considered to be right about this.

Yes, adventurers walk in on evil dragons and kill them. What I'm trying to say is that I don't see why we should be feeling sorry for her when it is her kind's actions - actions she supports herself, as evidenced by her choice of vengeance - that presumably created this attitude in humanoids in the first place.

But... That's not Hypocritical. Never does the dragon state that what happend to her mate or son was wrong, only that it caused her harm and anger. Never does she state that the treatment of her kind is unfair or unexpected. Unpleasant perhaps, but not wrong.

By human standards it is an apparent paradox that the dragon wants revenge for the behavior of humanity (demihumanity?) towards its kind when her own species' conduct is wholly unpleasant toward humans and demi-humans. However, this is just the way dragons are. Be bad, have bad things reciprocated, get upset and do bad things some more. It never enters thier consciousness that "Oh perhaps I should not have eaten that orpahanage..." Just like it simply never occurs to a gazelle to just stand there and let a lion catch and eat them.

Trying to understand a vastly different creature from an anthromorphic standpoint will always fail. Watch the Dog Whisperer for a good example. The owners have no idea how to control their dogs because they think the dogs preceive and process information like people do. Dogs do not, and ostensibly neither do dragons.

This is not hypocracy on the part of the dragon, its exactly how one would expect a dragon to behave. Unless one would think that a chromatic dragon reforming and becoming an upstanding citizen is a good idea... In which case, all that would accomplish is providing easy pickings for a group of adventurers who assume the dragon is evil based on centuries (millenia) of history to go on.

[Kish]

The point is, she brought this on herself. By extension, her kind did, by treating humanoids like insignificant rodents.
[...]
Yes, adventurers walk in on evil dragons and kill them. What I'm trying to say is that I don't see why we should be feeling sorry for her when it is her kind's actions - actions she supports herself, as evidenced by her choice of vengeance - that presumably created this attitude in humanoids in the first place.
See, I think you're presuming too much there. I don't know if you've read OtOoPCs, but if you have, do you suppose the group of adventurers Roy traveled with there would think, "We should kill this dragon because her kind* treat us like insignificant rodents," or, "We should kill her for treasure and XP"? You're asserting, based on what we see in the strip, that adventurers only kill chromatic dragons because chromatic dragons treat humanoids like insignificant rodents. It would be equally valid (that is, it would not be valid) to assert that chromatic dragons only shoot on sight when they see adventurers because of centuries of adventurers slaughtering them for their treasure. The bare facts presented in the strip don't provide sufficient support for either. We don't know, and likely won't know, what would have happened if Roy had shouted as soon as he saw the younger dragon, "Wait! We just want to talk!" It didn't occur to him or to any member of the Order, and it didn't occur to the dragon to try to talk to them either. I would venture that the mother dragon, while her plan to kill uninvolved people is evil, is manifestly not treating Vaarsuvius as insignificant--if your son dies from a rabid rat bite, you kill the rat if it's convenient to do so, but you certainly don't hunt down its children.

*Note: This attitude would still be reprehensible. Racial profiling much?

And upon conversing with V, he also had the opertunity to say "Leave or I'll kill you all." but instead he decided to take a nice big bite of Vaarsuvius ala Polymorph.
The dragon talked briefly until Vaarsuvius, realizing that the dragon could understand him/her, cast Suggestion repeatedly, with, by D&D rules, a round passing between each Suggestion with no retaliation against Vaarsuvius from the dragon. The dragon, not being Elan-level stupid, realized this was an attack and--after Vaarsuvius pointed out that he couldn't count on his Will save to keep him safe from it forever--responded appropriately.

[Gilmiril]

Was it really defending the home, or did he consider the OOTS to be a freshly delivered take-out meal. I'm inclined to believe the latter. It's not like he negotiated with the OOTS saying "Leave now or I'll kill you." he opened up with the acid blast right away. And upon conversing with V, he also had the opertunity to say "Leave or I'll kill you all." but instead he decided to take a nice big bite of Vaarsuvius ala Polymorph. So I personally think that the self-defense theory is valid.

Additionally, I'm not saying I don't understand Dragon Mama's rage. I'm just saying that murdering someone and killing in self defense aren't the same thing.

But it's NOT self defense when you invade their home! And if you kill something after you've rendered it harmless, it's not self defense either!

As for expecting young dragon to confront the Order and negotiating or threatening them to leave, that would be idiotic. You are assuming it was powerful enough to have the luxury of doing that. Please demonstrate why you assume this. As I see it, opening up with the acid blast was the most prudent response; better to take the fight to these home invaders before they could regroup and organize their attack.

[B.I.T.T.]

But it's NOT self defense when you invade their home! And if you kill something after you've rendered it harmless, it's not self defense either!

Well it was harmless for the time being, but they still would have been killed if they tried to leave. Plus when the dragon snapped out of the charm they would have gone right back to being on the lunch menu.

Also, I think it's prudent to mention that his home was a cave. Anyone could find themselves walking through it, or at least anyone who happens to be wandering around the forrest. It's not like the cave was marked "Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter..." or anything like that. It's a cave, as far as 90% to 99% of the forrest dwellers/visitors, it's public property.


As for expecting young dragon to confront the Order and negotiating or threatening them to leave, that would be idiotic. You are assuming it was powerful enough to have the luxury of doing that. Please demonstrate why you assume this. As I see it, opening up with the acid blast was the most prudent response; better to take the fight to these home invaders before they could regroup and organize their attack.

I assume that based on the fact that it would have taken the dragon no time at all to have said "Leave or die." He didn't. He also had the time to look a Haley and threaten to eat her, in the time he took to say that he could certainly have said "Leave or die." He didn't. That's really all the negotiation he needed, and the OOTS would have less reason to continue fighting.

I

[Pronounceable]

Why would a dragon attempt to negotiate with a handful of adventurers invading its house? Adventurers are a well known breed of dangerous humanoid vermin that would love nothing more than to kill and loot each and every chromatic dragon. There's nothing wrong with, and is actually a sensible precaution for the continuation of their species, to exterminate them as soon as possible. The urge would be all the stronger if they'd already killed your father.

Of course the puny monkeys might object to this point of view, but do THEY care about the point of view of other vermin (like mosquitos) that bother THEM? They even treat their own cousins as vermin to exterminate over minor differences like skin pigment, diet and teeth shape. Why should dragons care what stupid little mammals think?

[hamishspence]

They would have been killed if they tried to leave- because V had given the dragon explicit orders to that effect.

Attacking armed trespassers is generally considered manslaughter not murder.

Killing somebody while in commision of a felony can be murder, even if it would under normal circumstances be self-defense.

Now at the time of the fight, they had no idea it was a creature's home- they had right to defend thmselves.

However, when V rendered the dragon harmless, they now knew it was a creatures home, and the starmetal would probably be there. And V chose to remain, to get the starmetal, and the dragon's hoard, and kill the dragon.

Much more morally dubious.

as for dragon treasure, in most editions of D&D, it would generally not be the dragon's personal property anyway- stolen.

However, in 3.5, a hefty proportion of dragon treasue comes from kobold donations, and the kobolds get their treasure by mining it out of the earth. Thus, even evil dragons be be lawful owners of much, or evn all, of their loot.

[derfenrirwolv]

Was it really defending the home, or did he consider the OOTS to be a freshly delivered take-out meal. I'm inclined to believe the latter

For the dragon, they're not mutualy exlusive.




It's not like he negotiated with the OOTS saying "Leave now or I'll kill you."he opened up with the acid blast right away

Its like finding an armed intruder in your home. You can either shoot them dead OR Waste your surprise and ask them to leave... and then hope they're not quicker on the draw than you are.


.
And upon conversing with V, he also had the opportunity to say "Leave or I'll kill you all." but instead he decided to take a nice big bite of Vaarsuvius ala Polymorph. So I personally think that the self-defense theory is valid.

Varsuvius was, at the time, attempting to brainwash the dragon. If someone broke into your home and started trying to pump you full of somoe mk ultra drug, you'd probably shoot them too. He seemed perfectly willing to have a nice chat with V, untill V initiated hostilities by casting suggestion.

You don't have a right to self defence inside someone elses house. (despite what some burglar lawyers will try to tell juries)





Additionally, I'm not saying I don't understand Dragon Mama's rage. I'm just saying that murdering someone and killing in self defense aren't the same thing.

If momma dragon had opted for killing varsuvius it wouldn't even be a blip on the evilodometer. Heck, a good dragon might do that.

There's no law or court she can take varsuvius to. The only course for justice is that which she can meet out with her own claws.

Now, what the dragon is planning is deliciously evil. Its an eye for an eye, the only problem being that one or more of the eyeballs she's going to pluck
out had nothing to do with the crime... they're an innocent. Not that that matters to the dragoness.

[Kaytara]

...In that case shoudnt the title of this thread be «the people who agree with the dragons - hypocrites?» I hardly see how the fact that people on the forum agree with her is supposed to make her a hypocrite.
Fair enough.


She brought this on herself??? What did the dragon ever did to the OOTS before they invaded her home and killed her son? How can the adventurers be right because of what shes doing now when they obviously attacked and killed her son first?
Of course I didn't mean that she had already wronged the Order before her son had been killed.
However...
For a start, if she had raised her child to ask questions first instead of immediately attacking a bunch of comparatively weak adventurers, none of this would have happened.
As it is, she (and her offspring) seems to have no problems seeing adventurers to be crunchy snacks - and if they stumble unsuspectingly into your lair, all the better.
With that kind of attitude, do you really blame said snacks for finishing you off if they get the chance?


And by the way: «By extension, her kind did.» Redcloak should kill you slowly and painfully for that. Thats exactly the kind of thought that made paladins able to kill lots of goblins childs in cold blood.
That there are extremes to that kind of thinking does not automatically invalidate it.
The situation of the dragons is quite different from that of the goblins. Goblins are weak, dragons are freakishly powerful. More to the point, dragons are usually powerful enough to be able to choose their behaviour while goblins are forced into it by pressure and desperation.
Evil chromatic dragons earned their reputation of ruthless man-eating monsters by acting like ruthless man-eating monsters. While there may indeed be exceptions to the rule, this dragon's willingness to slaughter innocent humanoids shows that she's no more considerate of them than the average dragon.


Yes, for no real reasons except to gain XP and steal their treasure. Once again, you're really seeing this in a black or white morality. Regardless of if they are evil or not, thats doesnt give you the right to invade, kill and loot them. You dont become good by killing evil things!
Same as evil dragons kill adventurers for no other reason than to fill their bellies and loot their treasure. What gives them the right to do that?
Also, I admit I lack knowledge about this, but do we have the same problem with metallic dragons? The problem of adventurers randomly marching in and killing them? I'm assuming we don't, because metallic dragons are good, respectful of life, try to talk before resorting to bloodshed no matter how puny the humanoids seem, and therefore are not deemed okay to kill.


So you go with «The dragons started it»? Look regardless of if its the black dragons who started it first by invading humans homes then killing and looting humans or if its humans who started to invade dragons lairs to kill and loot dragons (and its very possible humans started it), it doesnt change anything. At all.
Incidentally, while it's technically possible that the humans started it, it would seem to contradict common sense. The average human is very severely outmatched by the average dragon, to the point where taking on a dragon can be considered suicide. It is reasonable to assume that humans tried to stay out of the dragons' way when they could. It is even more reasonable to think that the evil dragons considered the tiny humans to be prey and terrorized the settlements until the humans had no choice but to make a focussed effort at self-defense - and, by extension, pre-emptive action.



No, in D&D, adventurers kill dragons like him because they're worth XP and treasure. And that's what Rich is poking with this Mama-dragon story arc. Adventurers kill dragons because they're dragons. Likewise, they kill goblins because they're goblins, orcs because they're orcs, trolls because they're trolls, et cetera.
...And dragons kill adventurers because they're meaty. And any other number of monsters will kill adventurers because they're meaty.
So we have things that kill each other.

If the evil dragons did not eat adventurers, then the adventurers would have no excuse to kill the dragons for XP. As it is, though, it's being considered "okay" precisely because dragons are evil anyway.


In D&D, adventurers barge into monster lairs all the time. Whether or not they knew the starmetal cave was the home of a dragon makes no difference because they would have gone anyway. Had they known, they would simply have tried to prepare better in advance for attacking the dragon.
If it had been a Good-aligned metallic dragon, you can bet Roy and Durkon at the very least would've been hesitant to attack it. As I just said above, it's like a hunting season. It's okay for adventurers to attack evil dragons because said dragons are a menace.


More powerful? And yet it lost! And why should it try to prevent bloodshed when its home was invaded. If it truly was more powerful than the entire Order combined, yes, it could have had the luxury of preventing bloodshed. But it didn't have that luxury, and that is born out by the way it resolved.
It lost only due to Vaarsuvius, who was a lizard at the time and was not considered by the dragon when it decided to attack its allies. The rest of the Order - and the ones the dragon attacked without hesitation - had proven close to powerless against the dragon. The only real damage they did to him was Haley's arrow in its eye, and that seemed more an annoyance than an injury to him. They were no real threat. The dragon had the luxury of deciding what to do with them. Wasting his surprise round to try and negotiate, as a Good-aligned one might've done, would've cost him nothing.


So if 5 unknown people broke into your home, you'd try to negotiate? Begging for mercy would make more sense. Other plausible options are to run (if you can) or fight (if you can get surprise). Negotiate would only be vaible if you already have the upper hand.
As I just said, the dragon was much more powerful than the group that had presented itself to him at the time. It certainly had the upper hand, in a literal way as well. At any point during the fight it could've snarled at them "Leave now, or I'll crush this little blonde bard!" and they would've had no choice but to obey. It didn't, because it wasn't in any way interested in the lives of humanoids, except insofar as snacks.


And yet when the dragon was rendered harmless via the charm, the Order had all night to complete their little quest while avoiding combat, but they (at V's insistence) decided against that. And you seem to think that the young dragon totally outmatched the entire Order. Please justify how you came to that conclusion.
For the last part, see what I wrote above.
As for deciding to wait and kill the dragon, you have to consider that, at that point, the dragon had almost succeeded in eating the party rogue as well as the polymorphed wizard. Only a saint would even think of sparing the dragon after all that. We already know that Vaarsuvius doesn't quite measure up to a saint. XD
Plus, there's the very real danger that, even had they NOT taken a single thing from the cave, the dragon would've hunted them down and killed them anyway just for slighting him if they had spared him.


No, this dragon isn't intending to kill V. That would defeat to purpose of its vengeance; V is supposed to live so that s/he can feel the pain of having one's children murdered for no other reason than what they are.

My point stands - you nitpick at a detail. Whether the vengeful mothers finishes off the offender after reducing him to a helpless nervous wreck by making him watch her murder his children is largely academic - the point remains that she'd have to be a psycho to even be capable of pulling the trigger on a small child.

[Skaven]

The Dragon is not inherently a hypocrite.

She is an angry confused and frustrated mother who's only child has been brutally and needlessly murdered in the same fashion as her husband.

[Mando Knight]

As it is, she (and her offspring) seems to have no problems seeing adventurers to be crunchy snacks - and if they stumble unsuspectingly into your lair, all the better.
With that kind of attitude, do you really blame said snacks for finishing you off if they get the chance?

Yes, yes I would. They're crunchy little snacks. They shouldn't be killing me, I should be eating them. Would you blame a deer if it tried to kill you, the hunter? Or would you blame a cat for struggling to stay out of the soapy water that you're trying to bathe it in? Many people would and do. Especially if they have big egos. Dragons, especially sapient ones, have egos the size of the elemental planes. They would blame the little snack-things for giving them such a hard time when they just want to eat the baked-potato-knight and be left alone. A being that holds less value to its prey's life than its own (i.e. most beings) will be disgusted if its prey kills/defeats them.

[chiasaur11]

The Dragon is not inherently a hypocrite.

She is an angry confused and frustrated mother who's only child has been brutally and needlessly murdered in the same fashion as her husband.

Brutally: Yes.

But needlessly? It was the dragon or the order, and the order is the only gang of idiots actively trying to prevent the world from getting eaten.

[SporeGames]

Not really. It's "An eye for an eye" taken to the extreme. V killed her innocent kid, so she'll kill h** innocent kids. It's nothing to do with her views on different races. She's just taking revenge on one person.

But wasn't her son just as innocent as V's children?

If someone came in to your home ,armed, affiliated with a group that killed your father and is known to slaughter rand loot your kind, openly stated they came for your personal property, super drugged you , and killed you after stating you "a threat" after you came to I in no way see this as anything but evil. And how are the dragon’s actions any different from Roy or his father's? Even more so wrong because this isn’t Xykon whom is pure evil and is about as guilty as a tiger that bits you , but rather adventures who believe they are "good"? (Well except for Belkar but that goes with out saying doesn’t it?

This would be a good time to bring up the discovery documentary on dragons

<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjwOVRekaok=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjwOVRekaok=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjwOVRekaok

Where just as in Deende the human skilled the dragons on notions that they were “evil”

This would also be a good time to bring up ”Goblins” another DnD web comic that practically steeps in this idea.

[RMS Oceanic]

I know about Goblins. Rich's own Start of Darkness also highlights this point: the D&D alignment system is incompatible with modern Morality.

That said, Black Dragons are, as (non)sensible as it is, Chaotic Evil. Taking what your foe took from you, regardless of what that was or how innocent it is, is not unexpected.

[Shatteredtower]

Imagine you walk into a strange home, one you mistakenly believe to have been abandoned. Curtains close suddenly in the room you're in, causing it to suddenly become dark, so you head for the hallway. That's where you find yourself face to face with some kid with a shotgun.

This would be a good time to explain yourself in as non-threatening a manner as possible. You're not in any position to expect the guy whose standing there to do it for you. Sudden moves, including ducking back into that room, are not a good idea.

Basing your behaviour on the colour of his skin is right out.

Note that the dragon isn't interested in the rest of the party or the whereabouts of the treasure stolen. Vengeance is directed squarely at V in a very eye-for-an-eye, sins-of-the-parents sort of fashion. This isn't simply because V, acting as a solo agent, killed her son. It's also because V left nothing of her son behind after the fact, not even so much as an urn full of dust.

The child didn't matter to V after he'd served his purpose and was discarded in a manner intended to make a point to Roy, if not the rest of the party. It was... an impersonal decision.

There's nothing hypocritical in the dragon's decision to give that choice very personal consequences. No more. No less. It is a lot more fair than the decision to intrude upon an intelligent creature, subdue him, and later kill him because you know what "his kind" are like. Still evil, but a lot more fair.

I'd rather that neither V or V's children were harmed. I'd rather V was able to offer a more positive form of redress, but the elf was completely unrepentant about this action. What the dragon wants to do is evil, but the dragon isn't threatening to kill children because her kin was killed for being evil. She's killing them because it's the only way to make V feel the pain the elf inflicted upon her in equal measure.

Heck, odds are that the dragon doesn't even care if V then turns around and kills her, echoing V's own sentiment upon assuming that the dragon had come for the life of her son's killer. Where's the hypocrisy?

[B.I.T.T.]

For the dragon, they're not mutualy exlusive.

You don't have a right to self defence inside someone elses house. (despite what some burglar lawyers will try to tell juries)

Well, we're going to have to agree to disagree on that. I do have other points, but this particular argument is a bit off-topic for the thread.

[derfenrirwolv]

Well, we're going to have to agree to disagree on that. I do have other points, but this particular argument is a bit off-topic for the thread.


Well, what part do you disagree with... that you have a right to self defence inside someone elses home? Mayby if you come in unarmed you can expect a not so polite "get out" but if you show up in someone's house armed to the teeth you can expect an armed to the teeth response.

A dragon putting out a sign saying "This cave is property of smaug: stay out" Is basically putting out a neon sign thats says "slay me". The best possible defence for a lair is having no one know its there.


More to the point, while the mother IS evil, she is NOT a hypocrit anymore than the person who punches somoene else back after being punched.

A hypocrit says "its wrong to punch others" and then punches someone.

Punching someone back after they punch you isn't hypocricy. Its justifiable payback.

What makes the dragons actions evil is that the payback will come to an innocent.

[Pronounceable]

quotes upon quotes

It's been a while since I paid close attention, but I'm thinking so many quotes hasn't appeared in a single post since life and times of Miko Miyazaki.
...

This is exactly like goblinkind vs Azurites on a more personalized level. Both sides are wrong yet justifiable at the same time.

Much as I find the dragon to be more right, I still support V. Only because she's a dragon that needs killing. All dragons need killing. (insert overly long and hateful, not to mention completely offtopic, antidragon rant here). Friggin dragons...
...

AAAAND:
How do you people know V's children are innocent? What makes you think they (assuming they're they and not a he or she or even an 'e like V) aren't psychopathic mass murdering maniacs, or evil oppressive tyrants ruling over their subjects with an iron fist? (This theory holds as much water as "the young dragon was a totally innocent being and mama here snapped just because he's killed", and you all know this)

[chiasaur11]

It's been a while since I paid close attention, but I'm thinking so many quotes hasn't appeared in a single post since life and times of Miko Miyazaki.
...

This is exactly like goblinkind vs Azurites on a more personalized level. Both sides are wrong yet justifiable at the same time.

Much as I find the dragon to be more right, I still support V. Only because she's a dragon that needs killing. All dragons need killing. (insert overly long and hateful, not to mention completely offtopic, antidragon rant here). Friggin dragons...
...

AAAAND:
How do you people know V's children are innocent? What makes you think they (assuming they're they and not a he or she or even an 'e like V) aren't psychopathic mass murdering maniacs, or evil oppressive tyrants ruling over their subjects with an iron fist? (This theory holds as much water as "the young dragon was a totally innocent being and mama here snapped just because he's killed", and you all know this)

More water really, given the behavior of the dragon vs what V would probably like a parent.

Seriously. The dragon was pretty darn killingworthy.

[King of Nowhere]

The way I see it:
the oots had no way to know they were stepping in the home of a dragon, so there's no reason they should have stayed out. The dragon saw them, attacked first, while they were trying to run away ("back into the darkness" said Haley). Now, if there was some sign indicating that was private property, then the oots would have been in the wrong to trepass. Using letal force to defend yourself against armed ostiles who swarmed into your house, I find acceptable. If they were attempting to run away without fighting, much less. But since the oots could not have known, the dragon was wrong. So, the suggestion. Then, the spell was expiring, and V disintegrated the dragon to prrevent him from fighting back (don't tell me he wouldn't). I admit the oots could have left the cave when the dragon was still under suggestion, thus not killing him.
I can understand the mother is mad at V for killing her son, but V was mostly in the right. I can understand killing V for this, but killing someone who did nothing wrong to make someone else suffer, that I cannot understand or justify. So mama dragon is wrong, even if understandable on a certain level.

But, I wouldn't say she's a hypocrite. She's just evil. Not evil in a "kill everything that move and like it, because I'm a DM who wants my player to kill something but couldn't waste time in giving the villains some depth and credible motivations", but evil in a credible and understandable way.
I so much like Rich's work for having such villains: their evilness is not stereotipied (except for Xykon, Nale and Belkar, but they're for fun), it is motivated and understandable, but without losing evilness.

[SporeGames]

To reiterate my point on why V should be burning in the ninth ring of hell right now let me give you a scenario.

It is early post reconstruction I am a black man in the south. a group of KKKs arrives in my house which I was intelligent enough to hide with for this very reason. Now seeing them all decked out in hoods and knowing KKKs killed my father and knowing full well what they and there kind do, I open up fire with my shotgun. After a battle they drug me into a stupor, raid my possessions and then kill me saying "****** would of shot back if we let him live".

[The Extinguisher]

Imagine this scenario.

You're looking for a something for a scavenger hunt, and you happen across a cave where you know it is. But that's all you know. On your way in, and after walking through a magic sphere of darkness, it turns out that there's a dragon in it. Not just any dragon, but one that in you know as Chaotic and Evil, because your gods told you and everyone of his kind you have heard about has acted that in a way consistent with your realties objective definition of Evil. Not only that, he looks angry and starts to shoot you with acid.

Oh wait. These kind of things don't happen in the real world. Maybe we shouldn't be applying real world ethics and morals.

Just a thought.

[Kish]

Oh wait. These kind of things don't happen in the real world. Maybe we shouldn't be applying real world ethics and morals.

Just a thought.
I would venture that that premise, if universally accepted, would at a stroke defeat a great deal of the point of fiction. Suddenly Redcloak would cease to be a tragic villain and merely be a cartoon goblin in a red cloak, associated with a cartoon skeleton whose name isn't worth remembering, and we know they're going to be defeated by the group the strip is named after, but there would be no reason to consider Xykon's winning a bad thing or the Order's defeating Xykon a good thing.

[Optimystik]

Just a thought.

Here's another: If you dislike the alignment/motivation discussions, just avoid them. :smallconfused:

Anyway, while I found V's behavior to be on the morally dubious side, he wasn't evil in dispatching the dragon that had just one round of oblivion left before it resumed its murderous rampage. And since they didn't even know the starmetal was there until after it was dead (or even that it had treasure), greed couldn't have possibly been their motivation for killing it either.

[The Extinguisher]

I actually have no problem with these discussions. It's the constant real life examples that are getting on my nerves.

[Callos_DeTerran]

It is early post reconstruction I am a black man in the south. a group of KKKs arrives in my house which I was intelligent enough to hide with for this very reason. Now seeing them all decked out in hoods and knowing KKKs killed my father and knowing full well what they and there kind do, I open up fire with my shotgun. After a battle they drug me into a stupor, raid my possessions and then kill me saying "****** would of shot back if we let him live".

Now change...

black man=teenage dragon
KKK=adventuring group.
'hoods'=armed to the teeth
shotgun=acid breath

Real world morality may not apply to a fictional game verse, but if you were the black dragon (of indeterminate age group) then I'd bet you'd do what the example says and open fire once you see them too...just to be safe if nothing else.

More importantly his mother left him in charge of the lair. Him. Sole man of the house. It can put a lot of pressure on a kid/dragonlet to suddenly be exposed to that much responsibility. (What will mother think if she comes back and the hoard is gone? How proud will she be if I can show her I bet a group of adventurers! What will the green dragon down the forest say if she finds out I chickened out and let them go? etc.) It's no wonder he attacked on sight, and not just because his home had been invaded. He IS Chaotic Evil as well and a dragon to boot. 'Survival of the strongest, and I'm a bloody dragon! How dare they come in here! I'll show them!'

Was the OotS wrong to fight back? Hell no. Their lives were in danger. Was waiting a full day until the charm wore off when they could have taken the star metal and left? That, that was wrong since it was done purely for the benefit and ego of V who was trying to prove a point when they could have very well taken what they came for (though knowing the OotS they probably would have taken the whole hoard) and left once they knew the lizard was V and he still would have gotten changed back. What V did was murder a 'helpless' (at the time) captive. Did they know Mamma-Dragon wouldn't have cared about the hoard as long as her son was okay? Nope. They didn't even know she existed. Junior probably would have tried to at least get the hoard back though but then that's an even battle which likely would have ended in the dragon's death and then desecration of his corpse for nifty dragon parts.

Is Mama-dragon in the right? No. Is she justified? Yeah. I give her that and on some degree I sympathize. Her husband was killed by adventurers who left her nothing to mourn over to put the death past her and then the first time she leaves her son by himself (Which was likely worrying her a lot all by itself) only to come back and find him gone. No body again and now guilt hits her harder because of the thought process of 'If only I hadn't left him alone!' since she hadn't time to build trust in her son's abilities. And again is was by bloody adventurers though one specific adventurer in particular. Does anyone else notice that the Dragon had a chance at two other members of the Order and doesn't give a rat's furry behind? No, it's specifically the one responsible for her son's death as the Oracle likely told her so she hunts him down and gives him/her the lowdown. 'You killed all my children (even if it was only one) so I'm going to kill all of yours. Fair's fair lower life form, you should be glad I'm not going to take it further for the insult you gave me.'

...Okay, I threw in that last part by myself, but it makes sense if the Dragon thought that too. Aside from that, why shouldn't the Dragon look down on humaniods? They killed her mate, then her son, and lastly they are in fact prey. That isn't just some preference of the dragon. Dragon's are primarily predators and that makes everything smaller and weaker food. It's just that...well...most things are smaller and weaker then dragons so it's a broad category. Is a dragon attacking an orphanage and eating all it's occupants evil? No, the dragon's eating in the same fashion as a leopard (we, as humaniods ourselves) simply find it more reprehensible because it's our kind being eaten. If the dragon took an undue amount of delight IN eating the occupants of the orphanage by itself, then it becomes evil. But that's aside from the point.

I think the dragon's justified and for once I agree with the methods too. V should lose his/her children for V to be square with the dragon. Is it going to end up that way? Hell no. V has every right to try and prevent that from happening just as the dragon has every right to try and make that happen cause I'm bettin' the Mama dragon would have tried to prevent her soon from being disintigrated if she had been there too. Aside from that, even after hearing the why V still can't even offer a small sorry despite being a parent his/herself and that probably rubbed more then a few scales the wrong way too.

Opti=Roy, at the very least, knew the Star-Metal was there and likely would have shown no hesitation about slaying an Evil dragon if it stood in the way of reforging his ancestral weapon because that is the heroic thing to do and Roy's all about the heroism.

[Ledeas]

I have been reading the story since a friend showed it to me in 05, and I must say that this is the first time I have ever checked the forums.

As a father of 2 children and a perosn who feels they are NG or CG, I would freely and whole heartedly admit, if someone killed my children for thier watch, car, and/or $50 I would with shame, want thier life taken quite slowly and painfully.

However thier children would be spared.

my 3 cents.

Hope to be around this forum more.

Ledeas Oakenbough

[Scion_of_Darkness]

I don't think the dragon was ever claiming she wasn't evil. I think she was just mocking V for her simplistic views on draconian values.

[The Minx]

An eye for an eye is not hypocritical. It is cruel, but that's something else alltogether. If she were to go around killing people's offspring arbitrarily and think nothing of it, then THAT would make her a hypocrite.

Since she is an evil dragon, I suspect she has done precisely that in the past, but she's not being a hypocrite for wanting an eye for an eye in retaliation against V, specifically.


In the end, Belkar's wisdom from bard's summon plot chapter proves solid.

What do you mean? :smallconfused:

[TheSummoner]

Food for thought.

The Young Dragon OBVIOUSLY didn't have any upper hand over the Order. He was outnumbered, neither side was expecting that particular encounter, and V took him out with two spells. Arguably, the Order may have softened him up a bit first, but I'd still bet V could've handled the battle by himself.

Dragons are on the top of the food chain. A dragon slaughtering and eating a human is no different than a human slaughtering and eating a cow. Sure, it sickens us because its our own kind being eaten, but we're no better in that respect. If the dragon plays with its food, its similar to abusing the poor cow before the sweet embrace of death, but there was no proof that EITHER black dragon tortured their prey. Point is, humans don't reason with cows, we don't ask them their opinions about being eaten, and we sure as hell don't go hungry when theres food available. Some humans are herbivores by choice, but black dragons are carnivores, they ONLY eat meat, and humans are meat. I'm sure the dragon doesn't care if he eats a nice juicy human or a nice tender horse, he'd likely go after the easier kill or whichever was closer... or if the dragon was hungry enough, both.

The Young Dragon was acting in self-defence and thus wronged the Order (and V in particular) no more than V's children wronged the Mother Dragon. Does that make it right to kill them? Hell no, no more right than the Order barging into the lair and slaughtering the Young Dragon. The Mother Dragon doesn't care that her actions are wrong, her only child was killed by a bunch of meat! She plans to teach the meat it's place on the food chain by making it feel the exact pain she feels. Once again, it isn't the "right" thing to do, but I sure as hell don't blame her for it.

Hmm... makes me glad that Dragons aren't real... as intelligent as they are, I wouldn't be surprised if they raised humans as cattle just like human farmers do to cows...

[Dacia Brabant]

To reiterate my point on why V should be burning in the ninth ring of hell right now let me give you a scenario.

It is early post reconstruction I am a black man in the south. a group of KKKs arrives in my house which I was intelligent enough to hide with for this very reason. Now seeing them all decked out in hoods and knowing KKKs killed my father and knowing full well what they and there kind do, I open up fire with my shotgun. After a battle they drug me into a stupor, raid my possessions and then kill me saying "****** would of shot back if we let him live".

So it's come to this: a black dragon killed by adventurers gets turned into a gun-totin' black guy in the bad old days of the American South.

See, this is why I said it's better to treat some things like dragons as timeless forces of destruction nearly incomprehensible to human beings, like a volcano or a tsunami, rather than an angry pseudo-human mommy. Humanize goblins, hobgoblins and orcs all you like, they're basically human anyway, but there are some concepts that are as far from humanity as night is from day. You can't navel-gaze your way to moral equivalence with a living force of nature--it just is, and it means you harm. Not because its daddy got turned into luggage by people who look like you, not for any good reason to your point of view really, just that you're a foolish, unlucky git who wandered into a dangerous uncharted location and the world is a harsh place like that.

Maybe that's not better storytelling to your guys' tastes, and I readily admit that's subjective, but at least it doesn't result in borderline offensive moral comparisons.

[Underground]

What did you expect? She is evil. She wants revenge for the loss of what she cared the most. [...] Err, taking revenge is more something neutral, not really evil per se. Revenge is a primitive form of law that asserts a minimal kind of order and justice, even in most simple societies, therefore humans instinctively want revenge.

[King of Nowhere]

Dragons are on the top of the food chain. A dragon slaughtering and eating a human is no different than a human slaughtering and eating a cow. Sure, it sickens us because its our own kind being eaten, but we're no better in that respect.
No. It's the whole "sentient being" thing.
The human is a sentient being, therefore it is wrong to kill him for food. The dragon, too. A cow, not.
I have no problems if a dragon eats cows. no one forces him to eat people.

On another point, maybe in 3.5 it changed, or Rich houseruled, but in the 3.0 monster manual it is said that dragon can live indefinitely by eating rocks.

[Snake-Aes]

Err, taking revenge is more something neutral, not really evil per se. Revenge is a primitive form of law that asserts a minimal kind of order and justice, even in most simple societies, therefore humans instinctively want revenge.

I don't see how that changes anything. The dragon there is up for revenge. Methodology may vary.



No. It's the whole "sentient being" thing.
The human is a sentient being, therefore it is wrong to kill him for food. The dragon, too. A cow, not.
I have no problems if a dragon eats cows. no one forces him to eat people.

On another point, maybe in 3.5 it changed, or Rich houseruled, but in the 3.0 monster manual it is said that dragon can live indefinitely by eating rocks.

Are you sure of that? I'm fairly confident that, being the only sentient beings in the world, we might as well use that instead of "we are better than them" food chain just like the guy mentioned.

Also, rocks can't be tasty. Why would a dragon, a being so superior, confident and intelligent, submit himself to eating bricks(****ting bricks must hurt) when he can just fly around and eat a sheep or two, and the shepherd tag-along?

[J.Gellert]

She's a hypocrite because she complains how dragons are viewed as nothing more than killing machines, when her son did nothing more than try to eat the heroes simply for stepping in the wrong cave.

For the same reason (Dragon attacked first -> killing it is very justified) I see no point in sympathizing with the mother. Worst things have happened to better people and they didn't go looking for bloody revenge.

[Snake-Aes]

She's a hypocrite because she complains how dragons are viewed as nothing more than killing machines, when her son did nothing more than try to eat the heroes simply for stepping in the wrong cave.

For the same reason (Dragon attacked first -> killing it is very justified) I see no point in sympathizing with the mother. Worst things have happened to better people and they didn't go looking for bloody revenge.

No. She complained that dragons are viewed as monsters whose only concern is hoarding shinies.

[Lissibith]

To step back and answer what I think was the original question, so many people on this board agree with the dragon simply because A. can you imagine losing your only child and NOT wanting revenge? And B. As a dragon, it's unreasonable to expect a human morality - the dragon wants a reciprocal payment paid by V for the pain V inflicted. And looking back at the callousness with which V first used and then dispatched the younger dragon (a fact the dragoness didn't know, but a factor for us) it's certainly reasonable to feel that V is in sore need of some revenge. Not everyone will agree, but it's an understandable reading of the situation. Heck, while I think she's going overboard, I'm not going to fault a dragon for being a dragon, nor a grieving, angry mother for being a grieving, angry mother.

[Shatteredtower]

She's a hypocrite because she complains how dragons are viewed as nothing more than killing machines, when her son did nothing more than try to eat the heroes simply for stepping in the wrong cave.

You are completely misrepresenting the facts. The dragon attempted to eat V for repeatedly trying to magically enslave him, then tried to eat Haley for injuring his eye. While neither adventurer can be blamed for saving the other in this case, the dragon was acting in self defense both times. Furthermore, the dragon didn't attack first -- armed intrusion into his home was the first attack. It doesn't matter that the party didn't know they were intruding, though the darkness effect should have tipped them off.

[Underground]

Also, rocks can't be tasty. Uh, and why not ? How do you know that ?

[Snake-Aes]

Uh, and why not ? How do you know that ?

Personal experience, but the pain of a broken jaw may have thwarted the results.

But if you are curious about it, try to remember when you ate sand. Kids do that a couple times as they grow up.

[Roderick_BR]

I don't think anyone is claiming that the dragon is the good guy here. I was just pointing out that adventurers do some pretty horrible things when you look at it from another angle.

And looking at stuff from another angle is always fun. Or interesting, at least.
True. That's why when I play "good" types (like paladins), I like to question the things we do, like this one time I was a LN wizard, and I didn't want to set a whole orc tribe aflame just because my group stumbled uppon it, when they haven't done anything.

[Optimystik]

You are completely misrepresenting the facts. The dragon attempted to eat V for repeatedly trying to magically enslave him, then tried to eat Haley for injuring his eye. While neither adventurer can be blamed for saving the other in this case, the dragon was acting in self defense both times. Furthermore, the dragon didn't attack first -- armed intrusion into his home was the first attack. It doesn't matter that the party didn't know they were intruding, though the darkness effect should have tipped them off.

You're forgetting an important fact. The party, on seeing the dragon, did NOT rush forward and say "For glory and shinies!" No, they executed the Order's most time-honored tactic (i.e. legging it) and the dragon attacked them as they fled. That is most certainly NOT self-defense.

[TheSummoner]

You're forgetting an important fact. The party, on seeing the dragon, did NOT rush forward and say "For glory and shinies!" No, they executed the Order's most time-honored tactic (i.e. legging it) and the dragon attacked them as they fled. That is most certainly NOT self-defense.

That doesn't make them any less of a walking meal. If a pizza walks into your house and you're hungry, you're sure going to eat it.

[Snake-Aes]

That doesn't make them any less of a walking meal. If a pizza walks into your house and you're hungry, you're sure going to eat it.

<giggle> that sums up rather well the worth the dragon see in ragtag adventurers :p

[Gilmiril]

You are completely misrepresenting the facts. The dragon attempted to eat V for repeatedly trying to magically enslave him, then tried to eat Haley for injuring his eye. While neither adventurer can be blamed for saving the other in this case, the dragon was acting in self defense both times. Furthermore, the dragon didn't attack first -- armed intrusion into his home was the first attack. It doesn't matter that the party didn't know they were intruding, though the darkness effect should have tipped them off.

You're forgetting an important fact. The party, on seeing the dragon, did NOT rush forward and say "For glory and shinies!" No, they executed the Order's most time-honored tactic (i.e. legging it) and the dragon attacked them as they fled. That is most certainly NOT self-defense.

IF that's true, then you're right. But it seems like you're reading what you want into the relevant strips.

In 181 (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0181.html), Haley emerges from the darkness first and sees the dragon. That strip then ends with Haley trying to push Roy back into the darkness as he emerges.

The next (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0182.html) strip opens with a scene of full combat. Clearly some time (one or two rounds? more?) has passed since the last strip, and we don't know what happened in between. The Order may have tried to flee, or they may have pressed right on past Haley. We just don't know.

All of which is irrelevant because the point is whether or not the Order killed young dragon in self defense. The answer to that is clearly and unequivocally no (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0185.html).

As an aside, no, I'm not cheering for Mama dragon. I can understand her motivations, but I'm cheering for V to win out. . .and hopefully learn an important lesson in the process.

[SoC175]

It's a cave, as far as 90% to 99% of the forrest dwellers/visitors, it's public property.
And a dragon, born before the current kingdom was even founded, might say exactly the same thing about the newly (that is "merely 300 years ago") build castle of the king ("It's just some rocks on a hill, as far as 90% to 99% of the beings who flew over that empty hill for centuries it's public property.")

I assume that based on the fact that it would have taken the dragon no time at all to have said "Leave or die." He didn't.
He wasn't required to do so.

[David Argall]

Clearly some time (one or two rounds? more?) has passed since the last strip, and we don't know what happened in between. The Order may have tried to flee, or they may have pressed right on past Haley. We just don't know.

We can make some good guesses based on what we do know. At previous report, the party was fleeing. At the next report, it is being beat up. That puts the odds rather heavily in favor of the dragon attacking.

All of which is irrelevant because the point is whether or not the Order killed young dragon in self defense. The answer to that is clearly and unequivocally no (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0185.html).

You seem to point to the wrong comic, which gives us an answer of
yes (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0186.html).
V reports the Suggestion is about to end and the dragon will start trying to eat them again. That makes the killing of the dragon self defense. That V shot first does not change this. It is the certainty of attack that matters, not the timing.




You are completely misrepresenting the facts. The dragon attempted to eat V for repeatedly trying to magically enslave him, then tried to eat Haley for injuring his eye. While neither adventurer can be blamed for saving the other in this case, the dragon was acting in self defense both times.
Cases where both sides can truthfully claim self defense are rare at most.
Cases where neither side can are very common. There was already a brawl going on when these events were taking place and the dragon was taking part in it. His claim of any sort of self defense is void.
We can add in the case of Haley that the dragon's words were not that of someone acting in self defense, but an interrupted aggressor.


Furthermore, the dragon didn't attack first -- armed intrusion into his home was the first attack. It doesn't matter that the party didn't know they were intruding.
The very fact that this allows the killing of innocents should be enough to show the idea is wrong.

[B.I.T.T.]

EDIT:

I scrapped my orignal post because I was too lazy to re-read the original post.

Is Mama Dragon hypocritical for complaining about humaniods treatment of her kind and her beliefs about dragons in general, and then killing innocents? That's a toughie, but off-hand I'd say not really. She is confirming what she complains about, but she's more explaining why it is she does these things. It may be a complete rationalisation, but it's what she believes.

As for the self-defense issue, well, it's kind of off-topic for the thread. Is that a problem?

[Shatteredtower]

See, this is why I said it's better to treat some things like dragons as timeless forces of destruction nearly incomprehensible to human beings, like a volcano or a tsunami, rather than an angry pseudo-human mommy.

The reason I can't entirely agree with you is this: no matter how alien the creature may be, it can still be a person.

One of my favourite short stories involved the discovery that one of the primary food sources for a highly advanced and cultured alien species was their own young. This was discovered because the ambassador's own son had gone into hiding after nearly being prepared by a chef as dinner for said ambassador. As it turned out, however, the incident was based on a misunderstanding: the aliens only ate the larval form of their young because they eat regularly spawned hundreds of young at a time, and allowing all of them to reach a sentient age (as the son., who'd mistakenly wandered into the human-operated restaurant that was serving the ambassador, had), would have resulted in either mass starvation or bloody wars.

Alien behaviour, you see, but very personalized.

Another favourite of mine involved an extraterrestrial brought in on the back of a mule by a grizzled old prospector. After the initial meeting with officials, the prospector revealed that that the alien was actually a construct based on another member of their interplanetary society, a test to determine the level of human xenophobia. Then the officials went and failed the test by expressing relief that the real visitor was more like them -- only for the prospector to also turn out to be a construct, with the mule turning out to be the real ambassador at the end of the story.

That one wasn't about how alien other species can be to us. It was about how easily we depersonalize that which is alien to us. As a species, we do it to each other all the time: one only needs to look at the portrayal of enemy combatants in wartime propaganda, including cartoons and comics featuring the likes of Bugs Bunny and Superman. We've used it to justify slavery or other means of disenfranchising people who look or behave differently than us for generations. Whether it's been based on colour, on sex, on occupation, on religious creed, and even on coming from the wrong economic class, we've always had humans treated as something other than people by other humans. We still do.

But even that standard allows for what we call "inhumane" conduct. There used to be an octopus living near Vancouver that was quite friendly to local visitors, greeting any swimmers and divers that came out its way. That continued up until a group got together one day and tore the proor animal apart for their own amusement.

Spider Robinson once had a character declare that he was taught to consider anyone capable of saying, "Excuse me," as a person. I consider this octopus one simply for taking the trouble to welcome visitors to his residence. This does not change the fact that I like the taste of octopus, but seeing it on the menu is now an automatic reminder to show some respect toward everything I eat.

How another creature, especially another intelligent creature, acts or thinks matters less than how we do. The Giant shows how reluctant many of our protagonists have been to see it that way. Despite the hostile response the party (sans V, who is not shown in that particular panel) displayed to Belkar's declaration in strip #13 that, "... I just figured that we'd wander around, kill some sentient creatures because they had green skin and fangs and we don't, and then take their stuff," their actions have sometimes come tellingly close to just that assessment. It's certainly an accurate assessment of events depicted in Start of Darkness, when paladins slaughtered every goblin they could find, regardless of age and ability to pose a threat, simply because goblins are usually evil.

In my opinion, one of the most significant lines in that book was the last thing Redcloak's master said to him at the scene of this massacre: "Do... what must be done... so that this does not... happen again." Compare this to a sentiment expressed by the Giant in the final chapter of War and XPs:

"There is a certain degree of 'What goes around, comes around,' at play here too. Azure City stood as a nation dedicated to all that was good and holy... but in many ways, failed to live up to its own ideals."

It goes on to cite the long history of destroying goblin villages as the most damning of its failings. Now we have the goes-around-comes-around theme repeated in V's tale, as the elf's callousness looks to be repaid in spades by one very mean mother. Her portrayal is less important to the story than how its portrayal relates to the failings of this particular protagonist.

In junior high, one of the main themes my literature class examined was examined in a series of lessons entitled, "Man's Inhumanity to Man." The Giant looks to have expanded upon the idea with this work, so that it might be better labelled, "People's Lack of Personabilibility to People." The Giant hasn't personalized his monsters as a matter of political correctness. Our heroes and their allies have not been condemned for killing those performing evil deeds -- at least, not always. (See Haley's dispute with Celia and V's with Elan for examples.)


Maybe that's not better storytelling to your guys' tastes, and I readily admit that's subjective, but at least it doesn't result in borderline offensive moral comparisons.

Why is it offensive? The killing of the dragon was considered acceptable for the sole reason that everyone knows what their kind is like, not because of anything the dragon did. It was not afforded the same chance Samantha and her father were given. V didn't even see fit to discuss his fate with either the dragon or his fellow party members, which means he was deemed to be less worthy of respect than the Linear Guild, individuals who had shown themselves to be an active threat (one at large again) on three separate occasions.

To the Giant, it doesn't matter how evil an opponent can be. He's got Xykon to show that, with other characters displaying lesser degrees of the same state. What matters is how people behave, regardless of what they look like. The dragon behaved like an impulsive kid trying to fulfill a responsibility to his mother and still showing more consideration toward his intruders -- especially V -- than was shown to him by the wizard. As a result, the consequences of V's behaviour fall solely on V's head.

[vegetalss4]

why does every one keep saying that the dragon started by attackking the order or vice versa when we don't know? i mean one panel we see haley trying to push Roy back into the darkness, the next they are already in combat, we got no way of knowing who started, because we didn't see it.

[Shatteredtower]

There was already a brawl going on when these events were taking place and the dragon was taking part in it. His claim of any sort of self defense is void.

No, it's not, because they'd invaded his home and he hadn't killed anyone, even after they ignored his first warning. Once V took any chance of discussion off the table (and there was more than one chance given), any resulting deaths were a direct result of that decision.

If there's a hypocrite here, it's V. Nale's ongoing survival demonstrates that quite effectively. (And hey, how about some sympathy for that devil?)


The very fact that this allows the killing of innocents should be enough to show the idea is wrong.

Armed intruders that fail to explain themselves when first confronted by a dwelling's inhabitant are not innocents.

[Lost Demiurge]

The dragon isn't a hypocrite.

The order of the stick's killing of the original dragon was at worst, a neutral action. They were there, the dragon was there, both were fighting, crap happened. V might've been a little arrogant, but not evilly so.

But. The dragon doesn't know that, and wouldn't care about the details if it did. It doesn't have our perspective, nor would it want such a thing.

Being chaotic evil means you don't HAVE to care about the moral details. They killed its son, so it's gonna take revenge. And it's gonna do so in the most evil way it can.

[Shatteredtower]

They killed its son, so it's gonna take revenge. And it's gonna do so in the most evil way it can.

Well, no. First of all, the dragon is not an "it" and the party did not kill her son. V did.

Second of all, the most evil way in which she could take revenge would be to kill every non-adult elven child she could, starting with V's own -- and give the elf's name in place of her own as the killer. No, she could top that by doing the same for human, dwarven, and halfling children as well, since there were also members of those races present at the slaughter. Topping that would mean doing the same to every humanoid child she could get her hands on -- or, if she shares Redcloak's views on "traditional positions", she could just go straight after all immature mammals, sentient or otherwise.

Let's keep "disproportionate" revenge in perspective, here. :smallwink:

[chibibar]

well...

Imagine if this was your home. (Regardless of alignment)

someone broke INTO your home and intend to steal your stuff. wouldn't you fight them? Especially if help is literally miles away (i.e. in the middle of nowhere)

The adventurers broke into the dragon's home and gonna steal your stuff. (which they did) the only person home try to defend it and gotten killed (V killed him)

wouldn't you be just as upset (regardless of alignment) coming home to find out your only child died defending your home and all your stuff was stolen?

now the alignment will come into play on HOW you exact revenge, report to authority (and let them handle it) or go vigilante on them.

[Jeivar]

Well, the dragon is EVIL. Moral hypocrisy is to be expected.

[hamishspence]

Hypocrisy would, possibly, be saying "your act was morally wrong, but my vengeance is morally right"

Dragon hasn't said that. Yet.

[thalandus]

These dragons have probably flown to nearby villages and kidnapped peasants to bring them back to their cave, and eat or torture them. They also have probably melted down villages just for fun. So, yes she is a hypocrite. Sure, the OOTS was going in her cave for profit, not to avenge slain humans/dwarves/elves, but that is what adventurers are for. Ordinary people send them to slay evil monsters, and of course the adventurers taking the risk want some kind of reward (experience, treasure). Now I don't remember any specific acts of violence being attributed to the dragons (apart from towards OOTs pcs), but since they are black dragons it is a fair guess that they have hurt people, eviil being their alignment and all. But I don't think the dragon was trying to get the moral high-ground, I think she was just furious and wanted revenge.

If I can go off-tangent for a bit. There is a tendency for gamers nowadays to question the righteousness of judging certain creatures like orcs as being evil, and even anger directed towards the traditional protectors like human soldiers and adventurers; who would traditionally slay the orcs. But imagine if you were a commoner living in a village in a d&d world. Say your village had turned against their protectors, spurned adventurers and fell in love with the idea that orcs are misunderstood. Smug in your articulate ideas, you fail to notice the offended soldiers and adventurers moving elsewhere for employment. You also fail to notice the savage orc tribe massing towards your now vulnerable village. Your smug philosophy won't stop the orcs from raping, razing and plundering your village or sticking you with a spear. While your lifeblood is spilling on the streets, you will probably regret driving your protectors away. If you rely on forces for protection, it is not wise nor just to judge them. It is necessary for people to wage war against evil creatures, unless they are an exception or if they are willing to make amends and stop killing humans.

[Kish]

These dragons have probably[...]

I'm afraid I give very little weight to what you speculate the dragons probably did. You're not the author. The dragons definitely did what we saw them do in the comic. That's all.


If you rely on forces for protection, it is not wise nor just to judge them.
If that sentence were valid, the following sentence would be as well.

"The military should answer to no authority but themselves."

If you rely on forces for protection and don't wish to be a monster, it is absolutely necessary to judge them. To treat them as above judgment leads in a very short line to fascism. Your little scenario is loaded to lead to exactly the conclusion you want. It would be equally as easy, and equally as insulting to the intelligence of everyone reading this, for me to write a scenario where an adventurer, or a group of adventurers, or a village participates in slaughtering innocents because of assuming all orcs are monsters and nothing more. If I wanted to be particularly heavy-handed about it, I could also have it lead to the death of the adventurer/adventurers/village.

[thalandus]

I'm afraid I give very little weight to what you speculate the dragons probably did. You're not the author. The dragons definitely did what we saw them do in the comic. That's all.

If that sentence were valid, the following sentence would be as well.

"The military should answer to no authority but themselves."

If you rely on forces for protection and don't wish to be a monster, it is absolutely necessary to judge them. To treat them as above judgment leads in a very short line to fascism. Your little scenario is loaded to lead to exactly the conclusion you want. It would be equally as easy, and equally as insulting to the intelligence of everyone reading this, for me to write a scenario where an adventurer, or a group of adventurers, or a village participates in slaughtering innocents because of assuming all orcs are monsters and nothing more. If I wanted to be particularly heavy-handed about it, I could also have it lead to the death of the adventurer/adventurers/village.

I am not trying to put words in Rich's mouth, I am very aware I am a mere reader. Just like everyone else here. But the comic is set in a d&d world where black dragons are classified as evil. Now that is not consistent with mordern morality, but if you were living in a d&d world, you would have to deal with the d&d situation where some races ARE classified evil. And if you know orcs are going to try and invade your village, it is necessary to defend yourself. If the orcs want to change, THEY have to initiate negotiations and prove their intent. In the real world there is no such thing as evil races, and people who believe that are racist. But a peasant in a d&d world is not living in the same environment. My point was if people do violence to protect you from rampaging orcs, how can you judge them? This is not a situation where orcs have just initiated first contact with humans, this is a world where orcs have been warring with humans for hundreds of years.

My post was hyperbolic in order to provide a counterpoint to the morally relativistic posts here. Your insulting tone was not necessary in the response. My intent was to provoke a reaction, not to insuly anyone's intelligence. And phrases like 'my little scenario' and reminding me I am just a reader is unnecessary attiutde. You, too, are just a reader. That doesn't stop everyone from speculating. Apart from the tone, your post made good points.

[Babale]

"If you rely on forces for protection, it is not wise nor just to judge them. "

{Scrubbed}

[Teela-Y]

I really don't know weather or not to call the dragon a hypocrite... I mean, I think there's things we don't know about the guy's party leader. And why is the guy dressed in rags? If they are killing dragons, I think they'd be better equipped, especially if he's apart of the party.

She is angry because they supposedly killed her son. I think there's more to the story that we don't know yet.

[kusje]

And since they didn't even know the starmetal was there until after it was dead (or even that it had treasure), greed couldn't have possibly been their motivation for killing it either.

Wrong. They clearly knew that there was starmetal in the cave - that was their quest. They also went in search of the dragon's hoard (See comic 187) after killing the dragon so they clearly expected the hoard to exist.

[TheSummoner]

Wrong. They clearly knew that there was starmetal in the cave - that was their quest. They also went in search of the dragon's hoard (See comic 187) after killing the dragon so they clearly expected the hoard to exist.

No, ROY knew it was somewhere in the forest. No other member of the Order even knew about the Starmetal until they found it, and Roy had no clue about the exact location.

[Innis Cabal]

So isn't it a little hypocritical to complain about humanoids not caring about her?


Firstly, claiming something is hypocritical is...well its a weak argument, as it assumes that there are those who arn't at least once hypocritical.

On to the main point. She's evil, she has been wronged, she gets to do what she pleases.

[LurkerInPlayground]

Now I'll be the first to admit that the dragon's story is pretty heart-wrenching, but I have to disagree with all the people who've outright gone and said that adventurers are mean and wrong to treat these creatures the way they are treated, i.e. "just" because of their creature type or because their scales weren't all shiny.

More to the point, the dragon complains how her kind is viewed as nothing but giant gold-hoarding monsters.

However, she then proceeds to state her intention of killing V's children - children that are completely innocent of what she wants revenge for. Thus, in one fell swoop, she both confirms her kind's reputation of being cruel heartless monsters and proves that, whatever familial bonds she may feel for her offspring, she cares not one whit about humanoids.

So isn't it a little hypocritical to complain about humanoids not caring about her?
Short answer: No.

Long answer:
No, because she's deriding adventurers for their ignorance and lack of insight. She only cultivates multicultural values in her son because she wants him to benefit by it.

She does not care one whit for the well-being or enlightenment of her enemies. She's not trying to "reform" or "teach" V, she's trying to make him suffer for its own sake, hurting V's pride then moving onto his children. The rant is just there to make V feel stupid and angry.

[Warren Dew]

It strikes me that the dragon is not being hypocritical. She just believes in "two wrongs make a right" justice ... or maybe "might makes right" justice.

Either way, it illustrates her evil alignment.

[Alex Warlorn]

She is being true to her evil alignment all right. This is revenge pure and simple. She wants to kill two or three people for the sake of one death. And not even kill the person who killed the person in the first place. And she at least gets to meet her son in the afterlife. She's denying V even that.

Revenge ISN'T eye for an eye.

It's two eyes from the person who half-blinded you, then four eyes from their parents, then another two eyes from the person they care for most. THAT is revenge.

[Selene]

I have to wonder how a similar situation would have played out, had the dragon been a little copper, and the adventuring party been the Linear Guild. Would the little copper guy have said "excuse me, Linear Guild, you somewhat resemble the group that killed my father, and I'm afraid you will have to leave now." Should he have said that? Would it have done any good? Do dragons have Know Alignment? Would a little dragon of any color automatically assume the Order was Good aligned? Belkar's not, and would certainly kill creatures who've just surrendered (IIRC, the phrase was "come here my little chunks of XP!).

And no, I don't think the mother dragon is being a hypocrite.

[EyethatBinds]

Anyone else think that V's mate might prove to be a little more dangerous than the dragon supposes? I mean I know fighting a dragon alone is often hopeless but things might not be so deadly.

On topic: The dragon has yet to claim to be doing this for moral reasons and has also clearly stated revenge was it's goal. Personally, I think the dragon's reason for killing V's family [for killing her son] is more valid than V's reason for attacking the dragon [It was defending it's home from adventurers].

Some might claim there is never a good reason for killing but they're just crazy anyway.

[ABB]

Well, when a dragon sees something shiny and takes it, does he or she care about the people it killed getting the gold or jewel? I wonder how momma dragon would have felt if she's found that the killer of her son was someone coming to take back treasure she's stolen and murdered to get long ago. Suppose momma dragon had murdered someone to get a piece of gold he'd earned, and that person's family hunted down momma's l'il drake to get revenge?

When you look at the dragon's hoard, do you think they got it playing the stock market? If the dragon murdered people to take their stuff and amass a hoard, they have zip right to bitch about people killing them and taking their hoards.

I'd say the momma is a hypocrite, and I hope v's mate knows disintegrate.

[FatR]

Of course she is a hypocrite. Her offspring attacked first without any other provocation than adventurers simply being there, and I cannot believe that this possibility really did not occur to her (as opposed to "she didn't care"). In return she intends to attack someone who have absolutely nothing to do with the entire thing.

[ABB]

Of course she is a hypocrite. Her offspring attacked first without any other provocation than adventurers simply being there, and I cannot believe that this possibility really did not occur to her (as opposed to "she didn't care"). In return she intends to attack someone who have absolutely nothing to do with the entire thing.

Well, in fairness the party DID enter the dragon's home without permission, and if I had armed intruders in my home my response would be to attack, so for that I say the youth was in the innocent.

The point I raised was had the dragon's momma ever invaded someone eles's home, killed them and taken their stuff? If so her right to claim just revenge drops to zero.

[FatR]

Well, in fairness the party DID enter the dragon's home without permission, and if I had armed intruders in my home my response would be to attack, so for that I say the youth was in the innocent.
Except, one who randomly designates a tract of land (that has nothing on it that allows anyone to recognize it as his property) as his home and attack anyone who steps on it, is a murderous thug. So the youth is entirely guilty and brought his fate on himself.

[Snake-Aes]

FOr the guys who said here that the dragon is a hypocrite: Why?
So far the dragon said nothing that wasn't true to her so far. When she complained that everyone thinks they are monsters whose concern is just hoarding, she also kept going to let him know her revenge plans. There's no hypocrisy there.

[Oslecamo]

Well, when a dragon sees something shiny and takes it, does he or she care about the people it killed getting the gold or jewel?

It's a black dragon. They're EVIL by nature. Her tongue is literally driping with acid. She leaves her son all alone to defend the whole family's hoard for several months and expects nothing to happen.

Of course she's an hypocrite. But she's an hypocrite with 7th level spells, plot power, cruel mind and godlike stats, so you really can't argue with her reasoning with words.

If she really cared so much for her son, she would first go in search of a true ressurection scroll, and then kill V's family.

[Snake-Aes]

It's a black dragon. They're EVIL by nature. Her tongue is literally driping with acid. She leaves her son all alone to defend the whole family's hoard for several months and expects nothing to happen.

Of course she's an hypocrite. But she's an hypocrite with 7th level spells, plot power, cruel mind and godlike stats, so you really can't argue with her reasoning with words.

If she really cared so much for her son, she would first go in search of a true ressurection scroll, and then kill V's family.

If she expected a real threat to be nearby, she wouldn't leave. Again, I don't see the hypocrisy there.

[FatR]

Hypocrisy lies in assuming that the death of her son was an unprovoked murder, resulted from unfair treatment of chromatic dragons like monsters, to give herself a higher moral ground. Bonus hypocrisy points for actually behaving like a complete psychopath (i.e. a monster).

[FatR]

If she really cared so much for her son, she would first go in search of a true ressurection scroll, and then kill V's family.
A good point. Can't believe I missed that. She could have actually resurrected her son by spending those resourses and effort she put in revenge. We know, that there are mercenary clerics, after all.

[Snake-Aes]

Hypocrisy lies in assuming that the death of her son was an unprovoked murder, resulted from unfair treatment of chromatic dragons like monsters, to give herself a higher moral ground. Bonus hypocrisy points for actually behaving like a complete psychopath (i.e. a monster).

I don't think she complained about fairness or anything. She knows 2 things.
1: V killed her son
2: She didn't like it

[Aris Katsaris]

How do you people know V's children are innocent?

They're innocent because they weren't in the cave when the young dragon was killed.

That's the solid sort of innocence we're talking about, not the "virgin sinless purity" abstract kind of innocence that only interests the people that want to declare the whole world corrupt, and therefore all moral judgments moot.

Though they are probably that as well.


What makes you think they (assuming they're they and not a he or she or even an 'e like V) aren't psychopathic mass murdering maniacs, or evil oppressive tyrants ruling over their subjects with an iron fist?

That's irrelevant to the dragon, and therefore it's irrelevant to determining her actions to be Evil. As far as SHE knows or cares, the kids are innocent. And even if she indeed knows them to be guilty of something, that's not why she'll be killing them.


(This theory holds as much water as "the young dragon was a totally innocent being and mama here snapped just because he's killed", and you all know this)

The young dragon wasn't killed by the OoTS for being guilty of anything. It was killed for being dangerous to them personally, after they invaded its home in order to take its treasure.

You really need start taking the motivation of characters into consideration, when judging them.

[Lord Vukodlak]

Momma Dragon has proven to be just as evil and vile as the rest of her kind. So it is safe to assume her horde was acquired at the expensive of the lives of good folk. If she had gathered her horde peacefully it would have been part of her self-righteous gloat.

The dragon really isn't a hypocrite. Revenge isn't hypocritical its honest. You hurt me now I'm going to hurt you more.

On the depth of evil.
In campaign I played in earlier this year I was a lawful evil cleric named Christof who served the god of tyranny. He was devote in his belief that only the strict order of tyranny could provide true safety and security in his homeland of Gael.

Now Christof, had a wife and children whom he loved very much and meant the world to him. But he had little regard for the life and dignity of those who'd stand in his way. He was willing to sacrifice innocent people to accomplish his goals in the campaign. Which was to escape the planar island and return home to his family. His goals of domination and control were put on hold until But he was still a person and a practical man.

Over the course of the campaign be performed several acts of charity on the gamble it could pay off with information, favors etc. Or simply to remove an annoyance.
The group comes upon some petrified humanoids. So he used break enchantment to free them. It cost him very little in the long run but perhaps he could gain something useful out of it.

The guide leading the group to a deserted monastery was dropped on his head as a child and suffered from a severe mental handycap. Christof casts heal to cure his condition. Figuring it may be a 6th level spell but I don't want to be led off a cliff.

When he did finally return home (was missing five years). He entered the black gates of his home city. (Think Minis Tirith crossed with Mordor architecture)

He was greeted warmly my some merchant who said "Lord Christof you've returned and you brought slaves" Christof had no idea who this guy was, no memory. From my characters perspective he was gone for six months when on the material it was five years.
Still Christof was happy to see him and greeted him warmly shaking his hand. They chatted. The merchant told him about 9 suitors trying to marry his wife. Their used to be 12 but she killed three of them.
His response to that was "That's my lover"

Now you'd think he marched right up there and slaughtered those suitors in manner befitting of odyeuss but your wrong. With his fiend helm obscuring his face he went up there. He talked to the suitors was a bit proud that many men were attempting to usurp his household.
Then he told them all to leave.
Naturally they asked why should they.
He announced his identity in a dramatic way removing his helm in the processs.
Well they decided to take the option to flee. Unfortuanetly the chaotic evil member of the party (a spellsword) thought I still intended to kill them. He loved murder and mayhem and I spent a lot of time reigning him him. Kinda like Roy with Belkar. Christof was evil but lawful evil.
.
Mr. Spellsword blocked the exit of the court yard with a wall of force and proceeded to slaughter the suitors. For a moment Christof thought to object, but decided he was to tired his family was waiting just inside and considering the city was ruled by the church of the god of tyranny. He was well with in his rights to kill these men for moving in on his wife. So he let him have his fun.


The point I'm trying to make with this story is. Evil can have depth, it doesn't mean its evil in every action and breath.

[snafu]

A dragon putting out a sign saying "This cave is property of smaug: stay out" Is basically putting out a neon sign thats says "slay me". The best possible defence for a lair is having no one know its there.

Actually, that policy worked well for Smaug. He turned up one day, destroyed the dwarf fortress of Erebor, occupied its great hall, gathered all the treasure up into a heap, and then sat on it for centuries. Everybody knew about the fantastic treasure - the Lakemen, the Elven-king, the Goblins of the Misty Mountains, the dwarves of the Iron Hills... Nobody went after it, because they knew there was a Dragon.

The moment word got around that the Dragon was dead, what happened? Everyone went after the loot all at once.

I'd say the presence of Smaug was a pretty strong deterrent. If the dragons here had advertised: THIS CAVE HOME TO ANCIENT BLACK DRAGON. REFER TO ARKELL VS PRESSDRAM. - then I doubt the Order would ever have gone near the place. Instead they came there in ignorance, were lucky enough to find the _really_ dangerous dragon not home and slay the weaker one, and left with the loot.

[Drull]

Hey all, I actually just registered so I could reply to this thread :)

The dragon is without a doubt evil, but there are 2 Terry Pratchett quotes I can give here that are perfect for this situation.

1. When people say that heroes defeat tyrants, steal things from the gods, seduce women and kill monsters, they are, in fact, saying, that heroes murder, steal, rape, and wipe out endangered species.

2. In one of his novels a character of his Lord Vetinari also asks the question, "When a tyrant is defeated or a monster killed, who is the person defining the monstrousness of the monster, or the tyranny of the tyrant? The hero. In fact, when a hero kills someone, he is in fact saying that, if you have been killed by a hero, then you are a person who is suitable to be killed by a hero."

[Drull]

If the dragons here had advertised: THIS CAVE HOME TO ANCIENT BLACK DRAGON. - then I doubt the Order would ever have gone near the place.

The Order wouldnt, but some other high level adventuring party would. They would have heard about the great dragon and the mighty hoard he has behind him. And they would have wanted him.

In Forgotten realms (the more or less dominant D&D world) there are only a few dragons who have/had their lairs well know. And those dragons are either wyrms or dracoliches, either way dragons that can rip a whole adventuring party in other 6 seconds (1 round :P) or just generally strong enough that mighty adventurers dont want to risk their own lives against such a dragon.

Or they were not that strong and are now dead...

[Lord Vukodlak]

1. When people say that heroes defeat tyrants, steal things from the gods, seduce women and kill monsters, they are, in fact, saying, that heroes murder, steal, rape, and wipe out endangered species.


I don't think it was quite fair of him equate seduction with rape.
The rest work perfectly though.

[Noam]

I think we need to consider the OOTS' and the dragon's perspective, and without real life examples - D&D is different from real life in many ways.

Imagine you are a member of an adventuring party. You enter a cave, that you have no reason to believe is inhabited. You encounter a black dragon. Now, in your screwed up universe the color of a dragons skin can make him good or evil. Not all black dragons are evil, but unlike orcs and other evil humanoids, who are mostly evil, black dragons are always evil. Considering that, and the fact that dragons aren't very common, the chance that there is a good black dragon at all is very low.

Now, if there is a good black dragon, it should know that its kind is almost always evil and that good people will try to kill him unless he proves that he is good (can you please use detect evil on me, kind sir?). But the dragon you encountred attacks you for no appreant reason. That only reinforces your assumption that the dragon is evil.

Said dragon is young, but he is old enough to make morale choices. Heck, even the youngest black dragon can do that.

You fight him and manage to neutralize him. You know that the moment he is free he will try to kill you and your friends, and if you'll just get out of there he will continue killing people that get in his way or have shiny objects, because he is evil and because his kind does that kind of stuff. You then execute him, and take his hoard. You wouldn't kill him just for the loot, but if you're already there...

Now, from the dragons side. Imagine you live in an unmarked cave. You never marked it because you knew it will draw adventurers who think you are evil (which is right). A bunch of humanoid adventurers entered your home. You can see that one of them is a cleric of a good god, which means that those are the good guys. They are also armed.

You attack them, because:
1) They might be here to kill you. Possibly because of that hoard of yours that you obtained by killing innocent people. Maybe they are here for your mother, who also kills the innocent for fun and profit.
2) They are lesser beings. You are smarter, or at least dragons in general are. You are just a kid. Well, those creatures are capable of communication with you, invented most tolls and have societies while your kind lives in caves, but you are superior to them because you have better spellcasting or something.
3) You are chaotic evil and enjoy the suffering of other beings.
4) They are yummy. No, wait, they have armor. Those things are bad for your teeth. But you could take their stuff and...sleep on it?
5) Adventurers killed your daddy. You're supposed to be smart enough to know that not all of them are evil (and that the ones that killed your father probably weren't evil themselves) but you don't really care.

For those reasons, you try to kill them.


Am I missing anything here?

[Sutremaine]

Suppose momma dragon had murdered someone to get a piece of gold he'd earned, and that person's family hunted down momma's l'il drake to get revenge?
She could be as pissed off about it as she was about V killing her son, but accept that that's the way of the world. Then she'd take her revenge on Dead Guy's family, because that is also the way of the world. If they then come after her for revenge, she would if possible kill them and whoever else they'd brought along for the fight. Eventually, either she'd be dead or people would figure out that if you keep whacking a hornet's nest and gaining nothing but stings, it would be a good idea to stop doing it.

No hypocrisy, just 'an eye for an eye' and a whole lot of blind people.


If the dragon murdered people to take their stuff and amass a hoard, they have zip right to bitch about people killing them and taking their hoards.
She's never complained about the killing and the hoard-taking themselves (ie. some variation on 'you stupid little monkeys don't have the right'), but rather the pain it's caused to her.

[snafu]

I don't think it was quite fair of him equate seduction with rape.
The rest work perfectly though.

"What exactly has Cohen the Barbarian done that is heroic?" he said. "I seek only to understand."
"Well... you know... heroic deeds..."
"And they are... ?"
"Fighting monsters, defeating tyrants, stealing rare treasures, rescuing maidens... that sort of thing," saidd Mr Betteridge vaguely. "You know... heroic things."
"And who, precisely, defines the monstrousness of the monsters and the tyranny of the tyrants?" said Lord Vetinari, his voice suddenly like a scalpel - not vicious like a sword, but probing its edge into vulnerable places.
Mr Betteridge shifted uneasily. "Well... the hero, I suppose."
"Ah. And the theft of these rare items... I think the word that interests me here is the term 'theft', an activity frowned upon by most of the world's major religions, is it not? The feeling stealing over me is that all these terms are defined by the hero. You could say that a hero, in short, is someone who indulges every whim that, within the rule of law, would have him behind bars or swiftly dancing what I believe is known as the hemp fandango. The words we might use are: murder, pillage, theft and rape. Have I understood the situation?"
"Not rape, I believe," said Mr Betteridge, finding a rock on which he could stand. "Not in the case of Cohen the Barbarian. Ravishing, possibly."
"There is a difference?"
"It's more a matter of approach, I understand," said the historian. "I don't believe there were ever any actual complaints."

Terry Pratchett, The Last Hero, p.20.

[Hannibal]

I find the apparent exaltation of emotion as motivation for action far more perplexing than any whimsical notion of morality or hypocrisy.

[Lost Demiurge]

Well, no. First of all, the dragon is not an "it" and the party did not kill her son. V did.

Second of all, the most evil way in which she could take revenge would be to kill every non-adult elven child she could, starting with V's own -- and give the elf's name in place of her own as the killer. No, she could top that by doing the same for human, dwarven, and halfling children as well, since there were also members of those races present at the slaughter. Topping that would mean doing the same to every humanoid child she could get her hands on -- or, if she shares Redcloak's views on "traditional positions", she could just go straight after all immature mammals, sentient or otherwise.

Let's keep "disproportionate" revenge in perspective, here. :smallwink:

Partly correct. It's got a grudge on against V, rather than the full party, true.

As far as your notion of vengeance... I said that the dragon's gonna take revenge in the most evil way it CAN. Pulling a Pilate on every elven child it can find would get it dead, dead, dead. Pissing off the entire elven race is stupid, and ancient dragons aren't stupid.

Dragon's out for revenge, not genocide. Let's keep the juvenile notions of evil to a minimum, here :smallwink:

[hewhosaysfish]

<<Last Hero Quote>>

Slighty off-topic here but I have to say that I disagree with Vetinari's assessment: the hero is not the one who gets to define those terms; it's the people who come to tell the story afterwards.
I'm surprised that Last Hero doesn't cover that angle, given as how surviving as a legend was one of the big themes.

[Kish]

Imagine you are a member of an adventuring party. You enter a cave, that you have no reason to believe is inhabited. You encounter a black dragon. Now, in your screwed up universe the color of a dragons skin can make him good or evil. Not all black dragons are evil, but unlike orcs and other evil humanoids, who are mostly evil, black dragons are always evil. Considering that, and the fact that dragons aren't very common, the chance that there is a good black dragon at all is very low.

Now, if there is a good black dragon, it should know that its kind is almost always evil and that good people will try to kill him unless he proves that he is good (can you please use detect evil on me, kind sir?). But the dragon you encountred attacks you for no appreant reason. That only reinforces your assumption that the dragon is evil.

Said dragon is young, but he is old enough to make morale choices. Heck, even the youngest black dragon can do that.

You fight him and manage to neutralize him. You know that the moment he is free he will try to kill you and your friends, and if you'll just get out of there he will continue killing people that get in his way or have shiny objects, because he is evil and because his kind does that kind of stuff. You then execute him, and take his hoard. You wouldn't kill him just for the loot, but if you're already there...

The only strong objection I have to this side is that it assumes I'd do things I don't do in a role I do quite often find myself in in games. However...


Now, from the dragons side. Imagine you live in an unmarked cave. You never marked it because you knew it will draw adventurers who think you are evil (which is right).

Objection #1. That sentence should be changed to, "...because you know it will draw greedy adventurers after your treasure, which is right."

A bunch of humanoid adventurers entered your home. You can see that one of them is a cleric of a good god, which means that those are the good guys.

Objection #2. How would the dragon know the dwarf with the hammer is a cleric of a good god? Would the dragon even consider Thor to be a good god? Durkon isn't a cleric of Tiamat. That sentence should be stricken. (Added note: If the dragon thought, for any reason, "these are the good guys" while Belkar was there, he would have been wrong.)



They are also armed.

You attack them, because:
1) They might be here to kill you. Possibly because of that hoard of yours that you obtained by killing innocent people. Maybe they are here for your mother, who also kills the innocent for fun and profit.
2) They are lesser beings. You are smarter, or at least dragons in general are. You are just a kid. Well, those creatures are capable of communication with you, invented most tolls and have societies while your kind lives in caves, but you are superior to them because you have better spellcasting or something.
3) You are chaotic evil and enjoy the suffering of other beings.
4) They are yummy. No, wait, they have armor. Those things are bad for your teeth. But you could take their stuff and...sleep on it?
5) Adventurers killed your daddy. You're supposed to be smart enough to know that not all of them are evil (and that the ones that killed your father probably weren't evil themselves) but you don't really care.

For those reasons, you try to kill them.


Am I missing anything here?
All except the first sentence of 1) and the first sentence of 5) is speculative and should be stricken.

So...no, you're not missing something, but you're adding in a whole lot that shouldn't be there.

[Snake-Aes]

It's only partly speculative. The dragon DOES think he's better than the party just because he's a dragon, it's part of their nature just as much as "Always Chaotic Evil" is.

[Golden-Esque]

Let me put this as clearly as I can - I am not complaining that this dragon is acting in an Evil way. It's an Evil dragon, that sort of behaviour is expected.

What I DO wonder about is that I've seen so many people here actually agree with her.

The point is, she brought this on herself. By extension, her kind did, by treating humanoids like insignificant rodents.
THAT is why I do not see how she can be considered to be right about this.

So because some humans chop down rainforests and don't recylce, we all deserve to die for it? Your logic about "Her Kin Brought it upon her" doesn't match up.

You can't say that the mother brought it upon herself either. All we truly know about her past is that she hates humanoids because they killed her husband (which could have been hundreds, if not thousands of years ago) and then the Order comes along and kills her son while she's away visiting her brother.


Yes, adventurers walk in on evil dragons and kill them. What I'm trying to say is that I don't see why we should be feeling sorry for her when it is her kind's actions - actions she supports herself, as evidenced by her choice of vengeance - that presumably created this attitude in humanoids in the first place.

Ah, the real question is "Does seeking Vengeance truly make you evil?" Is a Paladin who seeks vengeance against a Lich who razed his home justified for the sole reason that he is Lawful Good and the Lich is Chaotic Evil? By your definition of vengeance, it would seem so.

I guess what I am getting at is that you can't call her a hippocrit because of the actions of her people. For all we know, she may have spent her life in her lair with her young son studying Arcane Magic, maybe killing some adventurers who wandered into her lair seeking her treasures. I'd imagine that a single mother wouldn't want to leave her child alone for long, especially at his young age.

In short, you can't use other beings actions to call her a hippocrit. To be hippocritical, you need to compare the dragon's current actions to the same dragon's previous actions, which is something we don't know enough about. To me, it seems like you're sympathizing with V and his / her family on this one, which is perfectly fine. Hell, I feel bad for those poor little gender anonymous kindergartners. However, as far as we know the Dragon's actions are completely justifiable and even logical given her woe.

Now, if the Dragon was a male dragon, I'm sure he would have just devoured V whole and enjoyed crapping him / her out later. But woman, those deviants love to tug on the heart-strings, which I'm sure she'll do to V's mate.

[Kaytara]

So because some humans chop down rainforests and don't recylce, we all deserve to die for it? Your logic about "Her Kin Brought it upon her" doesn't match up.
But the thing about black dragons in DnD is that they're always Chaotic Evil. It sure as hell isn't applicable to our real-world morality, but here we assume that an Ancient Black Dragon is a ruthless, cruel, selfish, evil monstrosity that only has as much appreciation for life as it needs to survive as a species (so caring about its offspring isn't really a surprise there), unless proven otherwise. Therefore, whatever her kind has done to create the animosity towards them, she's also done that in abundance.


You can't say that the mother brought it upon herself either. All we truly know about her past is that she hates humanoids because they killed her husband (which could have been hundreds, if not thousands of years ago) and then the Order comes along and kills her son while she's away visiting her brother.

What we know about the dragon is that she is perfectly fine with inflicting slow, torturous death on creatures that never personally wronged her just to torment the person who loves them. That's entirely consistent with the view of evil dragons as monsters who do not mind killing and eating humanoids at whim.
That's enough cause to assume that, while we do not know much about the dragon's past, she is still an evil monster who has helped earn her kind's reputation and thus indirectly created the circumstances which led to her mate and child being killed.

As for the rest, it's obvious by now that hypocrite is not the right term for her. XD Hypocrisy implies a certain degree of self-righteousness that the dragon who's obviously not at odds with her Evil nature seems to lack.

Then again, her line in this comic....
"Humanoids. You think that just because my kind has stats for every stage of growth, it is perfectly acceptable to murder our children."
...shows that she may have missed the point. Many other creatures are entries in the Monster Manual without being killed as readily as dragons. It wasn't the stats and monster status that make adventurers think that dragons are acceptable to kill, it's the fact that dragons are an active menace to them.

[Noam]

The only strong objection I have to this side is that it assumes I'd do things I don't do in a role I do quite often find myself in in games.

Care to elaborate?


Objection #1. That sentence should be changed to, "...because you know it will draw greedy adventurers after your treasure, which is right."

Greedy adventurers will come, as well as good adventurers (and often, the latter is also the former :smalltongue:). I admit I can understand why the dragon won't mark his home, but he can't really blame the people who wander in it, can he?


Objection #2. How would the dragon know the dwarf with the hammer is a cleric of a good god? Would the dragon even consider Thor to be a good god? Durkon isn't a cleric of Tiamat. That sentence should be stricken.

(Added note: If the dragon thought, for any reason, "these are the good guys" while Belkar was there, he would have been wrong.)


The dragon may not consider Thor a good god, but good is objective in the wonderful world of black and white morality. But...I guess the only thing that is objective is that there are two opposing morale forces, and one may call either good. And you have some good points there, so ok, let's forget about that argument.


All except the first sentence of 1) and the first sentence of 5) is speculative and should be stricken.

1) How do you think the dragon got his treasure? If you have another way of explaining how he got so much treasure, share it with me.
2) As Snake-Aes said, that's a part of the dragon's nature. Plus, look at #182, panel 3: those stupid humanoids. And the last part is simple fact - humanoids create tolls and buildings and the shiny stuff that dragons hoard and dragons kill random people and take their stuff (Unlike good adventurers, that kill specific people and take their stuff).
3) Always chaotic evil. As I said, if he is one of the few natural or good black dragons in exsistence, he should know that the party will assume he is evil and explain that he means no harm.
4) The dragon did say he is going to devour them (he even said Haley was tasty, which PROVES BEYOND A SHADOW OF DOUBT THAT HUMANOIDS ARE YUMMY. HAHAHAHHAH!). Dragons also hoard treasure for the sake of it. Again, how do you think he got his treasure?
5) ...So when adventurers kill dragons, that really are almost always evil, because they are dragons it's wrong, but when a dragon kills humanoid adventurers that come from all aligments it's OK? Besides, dragons are smart. They are supposed to, like, know better.

[Kish]

But the thing about black dragons in DnD is that they're always Chaotic Evil.

In OtOtPCs, Roy gets into an argument with the (paladin) leader of the first adventuring group he joins about the morality of killing orcs. Their listed alignment is Chaotic Evil, the leader says, so there's no reason not to slaughter them for XP. "Well, you can count me out," Roy says, and storms out of the group. Considering how unsympathetically the party leader is presented, I find it remarkable that so many people who fundamentally agree with him have kept reading OotS long enough to reach this strip. :smallyuk:

[Snake-Aes]

In OtOtPCs, Roy gets into an argument with the (paladin) leader of the first adventuring group he joins about the morality of killing orcs. Their listed alignment is Chaotic Evil, the leader says, so there's no reason not to slaughter them for XP. "Well, you can count me out," Roy says, and storms out of the group. Considering how unsympathetically the party leader is presented, I find it remarkable that so many people who fundamentally agree with him have kept reading OotS long enough to reach this strip. :smallyuk:

Key word for black dragon's alignment is "Always" from the "Always chaotic evil" bit, instead of "often" from them orcz.
There's the difference in context, too, for in OOTS, Roy...noticed no evidence of them doing anything other than just being there, which is why he stopped the group from killing them


One hint when reasoning on the morals of combat: It's never fair for the losing side, because it lost.

I still fail to see any hypocrisy in mama dragon so far, too.

[Kaytara]

In OtOtPCs, Roy gets into an argument with the (paladin) leader of the first adventuring group he joins about the morality of killing orcs. Their listed alignment is Chaotic Evil, the leader says, so there's no reason not to slaughter them for XP. "Well, you can count me out," Roy says, and storms out of the group. Considering how unsympathetically the party leader is presented, I find it remarkable that so many people who fundamentally agree with him have kept reading OotS long enough to reach this strip. :smallyuk:

Roy's main argument was that, going by the available evidence, the orcs hadn't done anything to justify being killed. They weren't actually a threat.

This dragon has, or is planning to at the very least. There's also the dragon's hoard. While it may be possible for a dragon to acquire their wealth without harming anyone (like, I don't know, looting wrecked ships on the bottom of the ocean), we'd have to assume that the dragon is willing to go out of their way to avoid harming people, which this dragon clearly isn't.

Now, that still doesn't guarantee that ALL dragons are like that, without exception, you're right about that. And making the monsters sympathetic is an ongoing theme in OotS.

But I think the key factor with the orcs was that they were still humanoids, and not even very powerful ones at that. They live in normal societies and rely on cooperation, so it stands to reason that not all of them are cruel and murderous.

Dragons are completely different beasts. They're ancient, powerful entities. I think Rich's deal with this one was that an evil creature can feel attachment to its offspring and mate and still be completely, irredeemably evil simply by being too different from humanoids to be willing to consider their lives valuable when it can just stomp on them and kill them so easily.

[Lord Vukodlak]

Objection #2. How would the dragon know the dwarf with the hammer is a cleric of a good god? Would the dragon even consider Thor to be a good god? Durkon isn't a cleric of Tiamat. That sentence should be stricken. (Added note: If the dragon thought, for any reason, "these are the good guys" while Belkar was there, he would have been wrong.)


Though observation and scrying she witnessed him casting divine spells. Most clerics display their holy symbol at some point or have it displayed on their person so a simple knowledge religion does that in.
She might have simply heard him say it to.


It's only partly speculative. The dragon DOES think he's better than the party just because he's a dragon, it's part of their nature just as much as "Always Chaotic Evil" is.

Actually thinking your superior to humanoids because your a dragon is part of the nature of all dragons.

In the real world good and evil are intangible things. In D&D and fantasy they are tangible things. They can be felt they can be measured.
D&D is the only thing that matters for this discussion. Its speculative to assume the ancient black dragon hasn't lived a traditional black dragon life.

In the world of D&D cliche's. All chromatic dragons are evil. In the event you encounter a good chromatic dragon it would be the focus of the current adventure. If the young black dragon was in fact not evil like the rest of its kind. It would certainly be intelligent enough to know the rest of its kind is evil and it would attempt a peaceful settlement before engaging in combat, and it certainly wouldn't swallow someone alive.

Also considering the child's size category of at least large. He was a young adult. He was momma's child but not actually a child in dragon terms himself.


Ah, the real question is "Does seeking Vengeance truly make you evil?" Is a Paladin who seeks vengeance against a Lich who razed his home justified for the sole reason that he is Lawful Good and the Lich is Chaotic Evil? By your definition of vengeance, it would seem so.

I think the paladin would be justified simply for the lich killing those people in his some.

More then motivation is methodology. Revenge is about making yourself feel better. Its selfish but not enough to warrant being evil on its own. Certainly not a proper motivation for a paladin.

Lets change your example a little bit.
We have Jaina who quests to slay the evil cleric Christof for killing her father the paladin Jaro and turning him into a wraith. Her motivation if fine, she's probably say she's seeking justice, but lets assume its just revenge.

She is perfectly justified in wanting to bring Christof to justice for murdering her father and profaning his soul.

If she decides to go after Christof's children for the purpose of making HIM suffer.His children had nothing to do with what happened to her father but she doesn't care she wants Christof to suffer. That makes her just as evil Christof but not a hypocrite.

The dragon isn't a hypocrite. She just wants revenge. V made her suffer so now she's going to make V suffer even more.

A hypocrite says one thing but does the exact opposite. A villain lays defeated at the mercy of an adventuring party and he begs for mercy.
The villain has killed countless people begging for mercy. He's a hypocrite of pleading mercy something he'd never grant.

On the subject of resurrection and raising and why it can't solve these problems. The Complete Divine provided the handy DM plot device. In that most creatures when they die come to accept that they are dead and they belong where ever they have come to rest. Few beings have the resolve and the will to answer the call to be returned to life.

[Wanton Soup]

There seems to be some confusion here about what the term Hypocrite means, so heres the definition:

hyp·o·crite
Function: noun
1 : a person who puts on a false appearance of virtue or religion
2 : a person who acts in contradiction to his or her stated beliefs or feelings

Follow this train of thought:

You harmed me by doing x.
I want to harm you.
I am going to do x to harm you.

I fail to see how that is in any way, shape or form contrary to the Dragon's apparent belief definition of which is "do whatever benefits yourself regardless of morality"

What is hypocritical IS EXACTLY THAT. OotS did exactly what they wanted to benefit themselves. Kill a dragon and take its hoard.

So why is this dragon so pssd off?

That's hypocrisy.

It's like the main bad guy with a brother/mother/dad/puppy/... like in Lethal Weapon 4. Killed hundreds of families, leaving them without their loved ones. No problem. But when HIS brother (who is in a dangerous job: criminal) is killed, HE GOES BALLISTIC.

Tough luck, son. That's the RISK you take. The payment for the benefits you reaped.

Similarly for this dragon. If killing their child is worth torturing to death an entire family, then what is V's appropriate response to a creature that tortures to death HIS family? Eternal torture for the entire species?

Heck, V should get in touch with Tiamat and tell her that now that life isn't worth living, he's going to let the Snarl out. Why not let the whole universe go down the toilet. It's not like the gods like here ever HELPED, did they.

Then throughout all the multiverse the Snarl will destroy everything, including every single dragon and probably all the gods with it.

Tough luck, Tiamat.

[Wanton Soup]

But it's NOT self defense when you invade their home!

Are you a Texan? 'cos here in the civilized world, killing someone who enters your home is called "murder" and we don't approve of it.

And without that in the way, the dragon decided to eat these people. And failed.

Would I get any sympathy if I picked a fight with Mike Tyson and lost?

No.

Scorn maybe.

So "Get out" wasn't considered. As far as this dragon was concerned, adventurers are a tasty if dangerous snack and usually come with a lot of magic stuff with them to add to the hoard.

And if someone tries to kill you, even if it's because you entered their house, it IS self defense to fight back.

'cept in Texas.

PS Giant, what do you use for your webserver? IIS on Windows XP Starter Edition????

Jees, this thing is slow to even CONNECT, never mind actually start sending anything along.

[ericgrau]

Now I'll be the first to admit that the dragon's story is pretty heart-wrenching, but I have to disagree with all the people who've outright gone and said that adventurers are mean and wrong to treat these creatures the way they are treated, i.e. "just" because of their creature type or because their scales weren't all shiny.

More to the point, the dragon complains how her kind is viewed as nothing but giant gold-hoarding monsters.

However, she then proceeds to state her intention of killing V's children - children that are completely innocent of what she wants revenge for. Thus, in one fell swoop, she both confirms her kind's reputation of being cruel heartless monsters and proves that, whatever familial bonds she may feel for her offspring, she cares not one whit about humanoids.

So isn't it a little hypocritical to complain about humanoids not caring about her?

Who ever said the dragon claimed to be good? She only claimed to be a sentient creature with feelings, etc. In OotS that covers evil creatures too. In particular she criticized V for being too arrogant to not expect revenge, to think that the black dragon wouldn't care about her son. Not because she's moral. She might have been moral before, who knows, but that's far from necessary to make her point.

[Wanton Soup]

Why would a dragon attempt to negotiate with a handful of adventurers invading its house? Adventurers are a well known breed of dangerous humanoid vermin that would love nothing more than to kill and loot each and every chromatic dragon. There's nothing wrong with, and is actually a sensible precaution for the continuation of their species, to exterminate them as soon as possible. The urge would be all the stronger if they'd already killed your father.

a) Dragons are known to be dangerous monsters that have an irredeemable evil heart and should be exterminated just like any virulent and dangerous infection.

b) There's nothing wrong with killing such vermin that prey on everything else with no thought to the emotional impact their actions have on others

c) OotS didn't kill daddy. Heck, some of the adventurers could have had siblings/parents/friends killed by dragons before. And, since that is apparently all that it takes to make it OK, they are A-OK to kill the daddy dragon.

d) Goblins were made so that low level worshippers could get enough levels to fight the bigger monsters. But after some levels, goblins give no XP. And who are the bigger monsters? Oh, dragons, elementals, demons, etc... Didn't Tiamat create goblins for that reason? INCLUDING the lizardmen?

[Wanton Soup]

Attacking armed trespassers is generally considered manslaughter not murder.


So, if, for example, someone were to attack someone walking through a park that turned out to be private property, that attack is criminal and so if the "trespasser" were to shoot that idiot dead, it wouldn't be murder.

Rather like what happened here with OotS walking into a cave without a "This Hole Belongs to Mrs B Dragon. Please ring before entering" sign and get assaulted by the inhabitant. In self defense (and because the risk of multiple deaths was very real and present) the response that kept the casualties down was lethal force.

Police get away with that all the time.

[Wanton Soup]

Brutally: Yes.

Tell me how you kill someone UN Brutally.

When it comes to death, disintegration is by far the best and cleanest option. If capital punishment existed, disintegrate would be THE way to humanely kill death row inmates.

What are the other options? Sword in the belly several times, head neck, legs. Arrows all over the place. Fireball and lightning bolt up the jacksie. And some divine wrath and a blunt instrument trauma until death claims.

Disintegrate? Practically as painless as it's possible to get.

[Wanton Soup]

To reiterate my point on why V should be burning in the ninth ring of hell right now let me give you a scenario.

It is early post reconstruction I am a black man in the south. a group of KKKs arrives in my house which I was intelligent enough to hide with for this very reason. Now seeing them all decked out in hoods and knowing KKKs killed my father and knowing full well what they and there kind do, I open up fire with my shotgun. After a battle they drug me into a stupor, raid my possessions and then kill me saying "****** would of shot back if we let him live".

Or you're a white dude from Europe. You've wandered into Harlem unbeknownst to you. You are armed (maybe you're Norwegian and know how to use a gun) and there is a black man with a fully-automatic machine gun in front of you.

He aims it at you, saying "I'm gonna blow your honkey ass to kingdom come, whitey" and you duck behind cover before you get hit by the bullets.

So you draw your gun (it was obvious you had one, you don't have a concealed carry license, that takes longer) and shoot back. You kill them by a fluke shot to the head, rather than the (potentially) survivable body mass shot you intended.

That stretch of Harlem "belonged" to the black guy. Not officially, you mind, just because he killed anything that tried to come into "his" territory.

Then his momma, enraged at what you did pay money to track you down (a lot of money, this was a lucrative crime gang!) and tell you that they were now going to phone their compatriots who were at that moment waiting outside your family home and were going to rape skin and kill all your family.

This is a little closer to equivalent.

Remember, the black dragon, though young, was astoundingly dangerous and theoretically able to take care of himself.

[hamishspence]

Difference being that V had, and used, suggestion. A bit like shooting someone full of tranquillizer- then shooting them with bullets as they are waking up.

[Shatteredtower]

Hypocrisy lies in assuming that the death of her son was an unprovoked murder, resulted from unfair treatment of chromatic dragons like monsters, to give herself a higher moral ground.

First, the dragon never claimed that the death was unprovoked, though it was. The party had been given ample warning of danger and plowed on ahead. V repeatedly attacked someone that had handicapped his combat abilities to focus on a face to face conversation against a group that was continuing to press the attack.

Second, it was unfair treatment if you compare it to the consideration offered to Nale and Thog, known mass murderers who had gone out of their way to harm the party on two previous occasions.

The younger dragon behaved like a person. V's behaviour toward him was monstrous. Repaying that with monstrosity is not monstrous.

As for the matter of "juvenile" evil another poster brought up, I really hate to have to disagree on this point. Murder is bad, but genocide is worse.

[Wanton Soup]

An eye for an eye is not hypocritical. It is cruel, but that's something else alltogether. If she were to go around killing people's offspring arbitrarily and think nothing of it, then THAT would make her a hypocrite.

Since she is an evil dragon, I suspect she has done precisely that in the past, but she's not being a hypocrite for wanting an eye for an eye in retaliation against V, specifically.



This isn't an eye for an eye, though, is it. This is more "an eye, a leg or two, the eyes of your family, friends and a couple you said hello to once, with pictures and a high profile smear campaign about how you sodomise little catholic boys thrown in too" for an eye.

Add to that the OotS didn't think "OK, we'll go looking for a dragon, find its nest and then take a magic recording of us making omlettes out of the eggs and leave it as a "F U" to the parents when we leave. Ha ha haar" did they.

[Noam]

Difference being that V had, and used, suggestion. A bit like shooting someone full of tranquillizer- then shooting them with bullets as they are waking up.

Well, yea. What was V supposed to do? Turn him over to the authorities that weren't there? Tie him up? The options were killing him or letting him go. Letting him go means letting an evil being go.


the dragon never claimed that the death was unprovoked, though it was. The party had been given ample warning of danger and plowed on ahead

Actually you can see that they are trying to run away. The dragon was hunting them down and killing them.


Second, it was unfair treatment if you compare it to the consideration offered to Nale and Thog, known mass murderers who had gone out of their way to harm the party on two previous occasions.

They spared the linear guild because they knew they were too important characters to just die, as they discussed in strip #399.


The younger dragon behaved like a person.

How? It attacked a random group of strangers that had no idea that they entered his home, ate Haley and laughed about it in V's face.


V's behaviour toward him was monstrous.

For the love of god, what was V supposed to do with the EVIL dragon? No, I mean it. Tell me what you would've done in that case.


Repaying that with monstrosity is not monstrous.

A person killed my family. I hunt down his friends and family, who never harmed me or anyone. I torture them and kill him infront of him. I eat his baby boy alive while he watches. But it's fine, because he started it.


Murder is bad, but genocide is worse.

Again with the "killing something because of what it is is wrong". Sure it is - in our world. In the D&D world, some creatures are evil. Black dragons are always evil. And besides, the OOTS didn't kill him because he was a dragon, they killed him BECAUSE HE ATTACKED THEM. He made it very clear that he is not, in fact, the worlds only good black dragon.

[Wanton Soup]

someone broke INTO your home and intend to steal your stuff. wouldn't you fight them? Especially if help is literally miles away (i.e. in the middle of nowhere)

Well ignoring the death of a superhuman reptillian overlord (since we don't have any in my home), if they then succeeded in robbing my house and I then went on a vigilante crusade to kill the entire family of the criminal, I would (even if they killed my son) be considered a dangerous deranged criminal and if in a place with capital punishment, killed by the numbers for the torturing to death of children. That they were the children of the killers of my son is irrelevant.

People generally don't go a whole lot on the torture of children. Even my angry moms.

[Wanton Soup]

Hypocrisy would, possibly, be saying "your act was morally wrong, but my vengeance is morally right"

Dragon hasn't said that. Yet.

Hasn't said those exact words, no.

But IS saying that she's justified in doing an EXTREME overreaction because she doesn't like adventurers.

If she didn't think vengeance morally right, why was she so angry at seeing ****NOTHING**** (juddery image) in her home?

All that this act does is at least double the pain and suffering in the world. But she doesn't care about suffering in the world.

Oh, hang, on she does. She cares about HER suffering.

Her moral outrage and then plan to do even worse is the hypocrisy.

[hamishspence]

"letting an evil creature go" isnt evil- remember Samantha? Everyone except Belkar disliked the idea of killing prisoners- even ones that were evil and had tried to kill them.

[Wanton Soup]

"If you rely on forces for protection, it is not wise nor just to judge them. "

Oh? So are you saying that civilians living in Nazi Germany should not have judged the Nazis for their genocide? (The fact that most civilians did NOT judge the Nazis for the very reason you describe above just helps my point.)

No.

a) No nazis.
b) Nazis lived in THIS WORLD
c) The nearest you could get with that is saying that the people should not condemn the allies when they killed nazis in germany that were armed but still young boys (merely trying to kill you)

Try reading the post.

It says right off, IF YOU WERE IN THE D&D UNIVERSE.

Nazis weren't there. None of us were.

[Nightmarenny]

About the whole "dragons are monsters who hoard treasure" thing. How did you all get this so wrong?

V asks if the Dragon attacked and seeks revenge so she can get back the star metal and the dragon responds by sarcastically replying "oh yes because as a dragon we only care about our hoard"

It had nothing to do with alignment, or right or wrong. The only stereotype she resented was the idea that she only cared about treasure.

[Kaytara]

About the whole "dragons are monsters who hoard treasure" thing. How did you all get this so wrong?

V asks if the Dragon attacked and seeks revenge so she can get back the star metal and the dragon responds by sarcastically replying "oh yes because as a dragon we only care about our hoard"

It had nothing to do with alignment, or right or wrong. The only stereotype she resented was the idea that she only cared about treasure.

That's not the only thing she says, and the way she phrases her tale about her mate being killed by another adventurer, not to mention the much more explicitly-stated complaint in the recent strip ("Humanoids. You think just because.... it's acceptable to murder our children.") really does give the impression that she thinks that V is in the wrong here. Morally in the wrong. She may be evil, but that doesn't stop her from passing judgement by saying that adventurers shouldn't be doing these things. But she ignores the real reason WHY adventurers do them, and it's not just because dragons have stats for every stage of growth.
It's because dragons are evil monsters who would readily torture and kill innocent children.

[Wanton Soup]

Difference being that V had, and used, suggestion. A bit like shooting someone full of tranquillizer- then shooting them with bullets as they are waking up.

Not really. No more than killing a prisoner that is shackled and being led to the gallows. Unarmed and outnumbered.

[Wanton Soup]

Though observation and scrying she witnessed him casting divine spells.

No, this isn't about MOMMY dragon. It's about junior. The one who instigated assault.

If he'd scried, he could have just blocked the access, told them via ventriloquism to get out or just let them run the heck out of his mom's basement.

[Wanton Soup]

"letting an evil creature go" isnt evil- remember Samantha? Everyone except Belkar disliked the idea of killing prisoners- even ones that were evil and had tried to kill them.

But killing an evil creature even if it's restrained or so underpowered it cannot possibly survive (Miko) is still not evil.

Else Miko would have had a costume change after killing sam and dad.

EDIT: I *was* going to say it looked like this site was beginning to respond as long as you kept clicking "Stop" and then "Refresh" a few times a few seconds apart. So it WAS going to look like I could post a little slower and get at least some chance that the system wouldn't time out before this site responded.

Looks like I was too late.

It was just as bad for this edit...

[hamishspence]

so underpowered they could not possibly survive- and armed, and attacking. Had Miko beaten them, tied them up, then killed them, yes, we would be expecting a costume shift.

[Wanton Soup]

so underpowered they could not possibly survive- and armed, and attacking. Had Miko beaten them, tied them up, then killed them, yes, we would be expecting a costume shift.

And the attacks of the party were ineffective because the dragon was an extremely capable entity.

Sam and daddy were unable to survive one slash each.

They had no chance.

It's like picking on a four year old when you're a heavyweight boxing champ. Should the champ be OK's because he didn't tie the kid up first?

So if there's gong to be deaths, why must it be a few members of the party (or all of them) and the dragon (unless it wins)? Why not just the dragon?

[Snake-Aes]

What is hypocritical IS EXACTLY THAT. OotS did exactly what they wanted to benefit themselves. Kill a dragon and take its hoard.

So why is this dragon so pssd off?

That's hypocrisy.

It's like the main bad guy with a brother/mother/dad/puppy/... like in Lethal Weapon 4. Killed hundreds of families, leaving them without their loved ones. No problem. But when HIS brother (who is in a dangerous job: criminal) is killed, HE GOES BALLISTIC.

Tough luck, son. That's the RISK you take. The payment for the benefits you reaped.

Similarly for this dragon. If killing their child is worth torturing to death an entire family, then what is V's appropriate response to a creature that tortures to death HIS family? Eternal torture for the entire species?

Heck, V should get in touch with Tiamat and tell her that now that life isn't worth living, he's going to let the Snarl out. Why not let the whole universe go down the toilet. It's not like the gods like here ever HELPED, did they.

Then throughout all the multiverse the Snarl will destroy everything, including every single dragon and probably all the gods with it.

Tough luck, Tiamat.What is hypocritical on the dragon's attitude? They brought it on themselves with their reputation? Maybe. Do they claim otherwise? no. She was pissed that the dragon died. The reasons are irrelevant, and she doesn't mention them at all. When she complained "because for you we are but monsters who hoard baubles", she stood for what she said, and showed that she's deeper than that: She cared about her son.

[galdon]

my opinion is, the dragon will not kill V's children, but left V with the firm belief that she did. There is nothing V can do to stop the dragon and since the dragon said it would leave no bodies, no reason for V to return home simply to verify the grim act was done.

V will still mourn over their losses and be wrenched with the pain of the loss of his/her children, but the dragon would not have to dirty her hands on the blood of the innocent.

[Wanton Soup]

What is hypocritical on the dragon's attitude?



What is hypocritical IS EXACTLY THAT. OotS did exactly what they wanted to benefit themselves. Kill a dragon and take its hoard.

So why is this dragon so pssd off?


Do you read what you quote???

And, just in case you still can't get the hang of this "read the post" thing, the quote I took was:



I fail to see how that is in any way, shape or form contrary to the Dragon's apparent belief definition of which is "do whatever benefits yourself regardless of morality"

So getting pssd off at someone who OBEYS your worldview is hypocritical. Or is it only THEY are allowed to do what benefits themselves? In which case, that's the hypocrisy.

[David Argall]

"letting an evil creature go" isnt evil- remember Samantha? Everyone except Belkar disliked the idea of killing prisoners- even ones that were evil and had tried to kill them.
And about the first thing Samantha does once free is to try to enslave/kill somebody who had helped her. Sounds like the party was suffering a mild case of Celia feel-good insanity morals. If Miko hadn't taken care of the problem, there is no telling how many innocents would have suffered because of their squeamishness.

[hamishspence]

and plenty of innocents do suffer as a result of their "squeamishness" the first time with Nale- and do they change their MO? No (though V suggests it) Why? Because being good means not choosing the evil option, even if consequences end up hurting innocents. Neutrals might do it, but Good- almost never.

the belief that all moral systems go out of the window when lives are at stake is slightly iffy- and a common fantasy trope is for the heroic characters to refuse to, for example, murder somebody, when the consequences would apparently be good.

[Kish]

So getting pssd off at someone who OBEYS your worldview is hypocritical.
So you're saying the only valid reason to be angry with someone is that they go against your worldview?

[Wanton Soup]

So you're saying the only valid reason to be angry with someone is that they go against your worldview?

No, seems you said that.

What the problem is is that if

a) you're dangerous
b) your family relies on their power to get their way
c) kill things and don't care

then if someone kills your family (they are in a dangerous situation BY THEIR CHOICE) then they shouldn't get angry that they failed to win once. They didn't care about anyone else who lost to THEM, so why get angry when YOU lose?

Either it's a dog-eat-dog world and the toughest deserve the spoils of war, or you think that might does not make right and maybe you should consider the feelings of others and NOT rampage.

[Wanton Soup]

Because being good means not choosing the evil option, even if consequences end up hurting innocents.
Good- almost never.

Do you not even read your own posts?

[Snake-Aes]

So you're saying the only valid reason to be angry with someone is that they go against your worldview?

This.

Let's play limits: You're in favor of the death penalty.
some random day, your son is sentenced to death.
Will you agree? Will you like it?

She never said they couldn't do that. Just because the dragon believes in doing whatever it feels like, it doesn't mean it won't care about consequences(it just so happens that the consequences to be threatening to an ancient dragon requires a little bit of overkill).

Other: What if the dragon's worldview that you keep pulling is that DRAGONS cando whatever they want because they can, while lowlives should consider themselves lucky if they're given a single round to try to beg for mercy? (which, as you know, is much more likely than the belief of pure freedom and law of the strong)

Your opinions about anything being mean, nasty and plain evil don't make you hypocritical if you stick to them.

mama dragon wanting revenge for the loss of her kid is no hypocrisy.

[Wanton Soup]

{Scrubbed}

[galdon]

Do you read what you quote???

And, just in case you still can't get the hang of this "read the post" thing, the quote I took was:




So getting pssd off at someone who OBEYS your worldview is hypocritical. Or is it only THEY are allowed to do what benefits themselves? In which case, that's the hypocrisy.

The behavior you describe is inherently selfish, so reacting selfishly would not be hypocritical.

I stand by my own theory that the dragon is only telling V the horrible fate it has in store for his/her children but will not act on it, the belief that it did happen is enough to cause the intended suffering without the need to lower herself to 'V's level'

[Wanton Soup]

The behavior you describe is inherently selfish, so reacting selfishly would not be hypocritical.

So it's impossible to be hypocritical???

Because although *I* demand that all things be free, I don't mean ***my*** things. And that's not me being hypocritical, that's me being selfish!

Or was that a load of codswallop you said?

[dyslexicfaser]

Also keep in mind the alignment system of D&D: Black Dragons are listed as 'always chaotic evil'. That means that, in D&D, you will never come across a black dragon that isn't a black-hearted murderer. Killing people like that - again, in D&D logic - could be seen as a public service.

Not very accurate to real life, but that's how it goes. D&D: the game of black and white morality.

Of course, OotS likes to play around with that - Redcloak and now Mama Dragon, Miko the crazed paladin, probably other examples I can't think of right now - but by the rules of D&D, the Order was totally within their rights to kill any chromatic dragon they come across, take their stuff, and be enjoying a beer in the next village over by nightfall with no moral quandaries.

[Kaytara]

So it's impossible to be hypocritical???

Because although *I* demand that all things be free, I don't mean ***my*** things. And that's not me being hypocritical, that's me being selfish!

Or was that a load of codswallop you said?

Or the two are not mutually exclusive.

Selfishness is simply a frequent reason for hypocrisy. You want to be able to do certain things but you don't want them being done to you. That's certainly selfish and, based on how you view it, hypocritical as well, if you genuinely think that things should be that way but still get upset if you end up on the receiving end for once.

[Wanton Soup]

Or the two are not mutually exclusive.


If they are not mutually exclusive, then the justification for it not being Hypocrisy is insufficient.

Originally Posted by galdon
The behavior you describe is inherently selfish, so reacting selfishly would not be hypocritical.

I can't read words that aren't there, you know.

Mind you, seems a lot can't read words that ARE there...

[galdon]

So it's impossible to be hypocritical???

Because although *I* demand that all things be free, I don't mean ***my*** things. And that's not me being hypocritical, that's me being selfish!

Or was that a load of codswallop you said?

being a hypocrite means saying 'you broke the law! there is nothing worse than breaking the law and i will never allow anybody to break the law and get away with it, i don't care if you are protected from being punished by law, i will punish you myself!' (unless they then turn themselves in for whatever they do) or "smoking is really bad for your health, and disgusting *puff* "

it does NOT mean every evil person who gets revenge is a hypocrite

[Gamebird]

The dragon was not hypocritical.

Our real-world morality is greatly based upon the idea that might makes right. In cases where the individual is not mighty enough to defend themselves, then we resort to the might of the masses, of organization, community, or government.

In D&D, morality is based on an objective, vaguely defined alignment system. Without such alignment system being spelled out in a detailed, understandable manner, we can't judge the morality of the characters operating under it. All we can rely on is statements by the author or demonstrations within the system (such as spells like Detect Evil).

To me this is an obvious ploy to put Vaarsuvius in such a state as to make it reasonable for V to accept the terms of the imp and become a willing servant of evil in order to protect V's family. Of course such a turn of events should, given mythology, work badly for V because although V might avert the family's death-by-dragon, it gives the infernal the keys to V's eternal loyalty ("serve us or your family gets it").

And here I was thinking V was going to become a liche. Of course, V still might.

[Carnivorous_Bea]

Now I'll be the first to admit that the dragon's story is pretty heart-wrenching, but I have to disagree with all the people who've outright gone and said that adventurers are mean and wrong to treat these creatures the way they are treated, i.e. "just" because of their creature type or because their scales weren't all shiny.

More to the point, the dragon complains how her kind is viewed as nothing but giant gold-hoarding monsters.

However, she then proceeds to state her intention of killing V's children - children that are completely innocent of what she wants revenge for. Thus, in one fell swoop, she both confirms her kind's reputation of being cruel heartless monsters and proves that, whatever familial bonds she may feel for her offspring, she cares not one whit about humanoids.

So isn't it a little hypocritical to complain about humanoids not caring about her?

Yes. I completely agree. Of course, hypocrisy goes well with evil -- and what better way to get in a twisting of the modern "misunderstood monster" stereotype than to show that the monster really wasn't misunderstood at all, and is, well -- actually a monster.

[Noam]

"letting an evil creature go" isnt evil- remember Samantha? Everyone except Belkar disliked the idea of killing prisoners- even ones that were evil and had tried to kill them.

They did something much worse - they tied her up. Now, there were two things that could happen:
1) Someone would've found her (and she would probably hurt him)
2) She would starve to death, as she and her daddy can't get out of the ropes themselves. But hi, at least we didn't pull the triger ourself!

Just because the good guys did something once it doesn't mean it's right. By the way, they tied her up with her dad hoping that they will work out their problems and maybe she will change. Because that's what humanoids can and do all the time, change. Black dragons? Not so much.


and plenty of innocents do suffer as a result of their "squeamishness" the first time with Nale- and do they change their MO? No (though V suggests it) Why? Because being good means not choosing the evil option, even if consequences end up hurting innocents. Neutrals might do it, but Good- almost never.

Unlike the dragon or Samantha, the OOTS managed to turn the linear guild to the authorities. They couldn't tie up the dragon and they couldn't give Samantha to anyone.


the belief that all moral systems go out of the window when lives are at stake is slightly iffy- and a common fantasy trope is for the heroic characters to refuse to, for example, murder somebody, when the consequences would apparently be good.

Yes. Another common trope is that heroes' see what their stupid moral code did but still stick to it because "that's what makes us better than him" or something. Often, the villian that the heroes refused to kill gets away from them, killing innocent people. The reason this trope is so common is that authors need their villians alive for reuse.

Let's say you have a prisoner. That prisoner is a killer, that killed thousands of people. If you will let him go, he will kill even more people, and he will never stop because he is not even human and capable of changing. He is a demon or something. You can either kill the poor unarmed murderer, or let him go. Not killing him doesn't make you a hero.

I never said throw out of the window all moral systems when life is on the line. I said throw out all moral systems when the choice is either to do something you don't agree with or letting it happen to someone innocent.

Doing the right thing is about doing what's right, not about doing what makes you feel good.

[Dacia Brabant]

I wanted to reply to you sooner Shatteredtower, but the forum keeps eating my posts, though I think it's okay now.


The reason I can't entirely agree with you is this: no matter how alien the creature may be, it can still be a person.

This is a very good point, as is your point about de-personalizing other people into monsters, which I think is part of the reason why we think and write of the monstrous in the first place. I also enjoyed your descriptions of the various stories that back this up--I wouldn't mind reading them myself if you have titles or links to share--so I can see your point of view from that. However, an intelligent being that's very alien to us would, I think, have a very different idea of what personhood means, to the point where the human idea of it and their idea might be irreconcilable in their differences.

I think about all the intensely chaotic and/or evil yet intelligent creatures in D&D that are almost completely myopic in their self-centered lives, and wonder what personhood means to them.

Take the Aboleth for example, each one of these things are so ancient that they have in their own memories the origins of almost all other species. How does something like that even relate to an individual member of those other species when it knows within its own lifespan how the first generation of said species came about? Would individuality besides other Aboleth or perhaps certain timeless deities even be perceptible to them? I don't know if I would even call something so far outside of the range of experience a person, more like an entity or an embodied idea.

That's where I'm going with much of what I've written here on the subject, of certain monsters as conceptual, psychological forces rather than persons like you've mentioned. Most things that we traditionally think of as monstrous don't fit that, I know, and I wouldn't want to try to shoehorn any of those into the typology I have in mind here, but I really want to claim dragons for that because of what their origins were in our proto-language and therefore in our cultural mindset: greedy/gluttonous guardians of things that mortals shouldn't try to take, whose powers were largely elemental, strike me as something who exists more as a concept than a person. You can't really dehumanize that like you can a goblin or I should say a "green person with fangs" since there's virtually nothing human about it in the first place.

Sigh, I know mine is not a popular view nowadays but I still want to put it forward, if not in a novel or short story then at least in argument. :smalltongue:


Why is it offensive? <snip>

You misunderstood my meaning: I wasn't saying that Rich Burlew's characterization was offensive, I was saying that moral comparisons to real-world suffering that people were deriving from a comic are offensive. He can write however he wants to write and people can say whatever they want about it, but let's leave the juxtaposition to actual human misery out of it please.

[Sholos]

my opinion is, the dragon will not kill V's children, but left V with the firm belief that she did. There is nothing V can do to stop the dragon and since the dragon said it would leave no bodies, no reason for V to return home simply to verify the grim act was done.

V will still mourn over their losses and be wrenched with the pain of the loss of his/her children, but the dragon would not have to dirty her hands on the blood of the innocent.

Um, why would she do that? She is evil, after all.

[Shatteredtower]

The party went after Xykon because he'd murdered Eugene Greencloak's mentor and denied the student any opportunity to undo that murder. They continue to oppose Xykon because he threatens the world with either annihilation or the sufferance of rule by someone that kills for his own amusement.

The party opposes the Linear Guild because of the evils they know them to have done, including mass murder in Cliffport and repeated attempts to kill the party's members.

Vaarsuvius killed a dragon that never did anything more than attempt to defend his family home and obey the wizard's commands to hold the Order prisoner until he was killed. The elf and his party had more than eight hours to learn anything about their host, but the evidence indicates that they didn't even attempt to learn so much as his name.

I've seen a lot of people make the point that black dragons are always evil. This is based on a misunderstanding of the rules. Where an alignment is listed as "Always x", the rules definition for always is:

"The creature is born with the indicated alignment. The creature may have a hereditary disposition to the alignment or come from a plane that predetermines it. It is possible for individuals to change alignment, but such individuals are either unique or rare exceptions."

You'll find that in the Monster Manual glossary under the definition for alignment, on page 305.

Now if the party had killed this dragon on sight, I'd have a bit more sympathy for V, even if it turned out that the dragon was Lawful Good. After four rounds in which the elf had every chance to talk to someone taught the importance of understanding other cultures, not so much. Really, that would be like swinging a knife at a gorilla for half a minute while he did nothing more in response than push the knife away. If he then broke your neck, it would be entirely your own fault.

After more than eight hours, V deserves no sympathy whatsoever, and I've little for the rest of the party either. They had all the time in the world to determine exactly what evils the dragon had performed over the last hundred years, and whether or not that made him more deserving of death than, say, Belkar.

What the dragon is about to do is wrong, but V deserves the suffering it will cause. V's family does not, which is what makes it wrong. And yes, it is eye for an eye in the same way that destroying the mansion of the guy that blew up the one room shack you lived in is eye for an eye. It's true in the same way that 80% of a $15,000 a year income is a bigger donation than 1% of a 10 billion dollar annual income.

Noam, the dragon didn't laugh in V's face. The party also wasn't trying to run away; all we saw was Haley attempt to get them to hide within the dragon's lair.

As for monstrous behaviour... no. The dragon took a captive (Elan) and tried talking with an intruder (Vaarsuvius). That makes him more of a person than the elf that killed him and took his mother's stuff. Mom's reply is personal and caring, as well as reprehensible. Calling it monstrous is just a way of denying the possibility of it being human (or humanoid), when the comic makes it perfectly clear that humans are capable of such actions.

The elder dragon took the time to get to know everything about V's family. V had almost half a day with her son and didn't even bother to learn so much as the dragon's name. In this regard, if no other, she is a far, far better person than V, regardless of how vile her reasons for doing so have been.

Scylfing, I sympathise with your frustrations, which is one reason it may take a few days to reply to your latest post. The other reason is because I want to give a bit more time to considering the response. That much food for thought takes some time to digest, you know? :smallwink:

[snafu]

Let's say you have a prisoner. That prisoner is a killer, that killed thousands of people. If you will let him go, he will kill even more people, and he will never stop because he is not even human and capable of changing. He is a demon or something. You can either kill the poor unarmed murderer, or let him go. Not killing him doesn't make you a hero.

The classic example of this effect (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/JokerImmunity):

"I'll send Robin home. I'll help the emergency teams as best I can. I'll count the dead, one by one. I'll add them to the list, Joker. The list of all the people I've murdered - by letting you live."
Batman, in Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns.

[Wanton Soup]

Noam, the dragon didn't laugh in V's face. The party also wasn't trying to run away; all we saw was Haley attempt to get them to hide within the dragon's lair.



So, we didn't see them run away, we just saw them run back the way they came.

So if they turned around and STILL weren't *running away* they must have been walking away from the dragon BEFORE they saw it.


Yeah.

[Shatteredtower]

So, we didn't see them run away, we just saw them run back the way they came.

We saw Haley turn back -- only Haley, and only back toward the darkness. The next time we see the party, they're heading toward the dragon.

Now if you've got anything but assumptions and obnoxiousness to offer, please show them.

[Noam]

Where an alignment is listed as "Always x", the rules definition for always is:

"The creature is born with the indicated alignment. The creature may have a hereditary disposition to the alignment or come from a plane that predetermines it. It is possible for individuals to change alignment, but such individuals are either unique or rare exceptions."

I know. That's why I said that if he was a super rare good black dragon, he should have made it clear.


Now if the party had killed this dragon on sight, I'd have a bit more sympathy for V, even if it turned out that the dragon was Lawful Good. After four rounds in which the elf had every chance to talk to someone taught the importance of understanding other cultures, not so much. Really, that would be like swinging a knife at a gorilla for half a minute while he did nothing more in response than push the knife away. If he then broke your neck, it would be entirely your own fault.

V was trying to save h** friends. You can't talk with a black dragon, because it's a firgging black dragon. It's more like swinging a knife at a gorilla for half a minute while gorillas are evil creatures of darkness that are smart enough to know that everyone considers them evil and in the chance that one of them isn't he would have made it clear by asking a cleric to scan him because good and evil is objective. Please don't use real life examples when talking about D&D.


After more than eight hours, V deserves no sympathy whatsoever, and I've little for the rest of the party either. They had all the time in the world to determine exactly what evils the dragon had performed over the last hundred years, and whether or not that made him more deserving of death than, say, Belkar.

Only V could've done it, as the dragon was keeping the OOTS prisoners. And V didn't - but guess what, V isn't good, s/he is natural. When someone tries to kill your friends, killing him is fine. Maybe not good, but certainly not evil.


Noam, the dragon didn't laugh in V's face. The party also wasn't trying to run away; all we saw was Haley attempt to get them to hide within the dragon's lair.

It's pretty safe to assume that they were running away, as Wanton said. We only so Haley go back because only Haley saw the dragon at this point. And the dragon did laugh at V's face: it ate Haley and talked about how tasty she was and how he's going to eat V (strip #183).


As for monstrous behaviour... no. The dragon took a captive (Elan) and tried talking with an intruder (Vaarsuvius). That makes him more of a person than the elf that killed him and took his mother's stuff.

We see in strip 183# that the dragon speaks common. Why didn't he talk to the rest of the OOTS? Because he didn't care. The only reason he talked to V was because he was curious as to why a lizzard is an ally of the humanoids that he is currently trying to eat.

Wait, he did try to talk to the OOTS. It talked to Haley to tell her that he is going to kill her. I'm sure he did it to end the violence.


The elder dragon took the time to get to know everything about V's family. V had almost half a day with her son and didn't even bother to learn so much as the dragon's name. In this regard, if no other, she is a far, far better person than V, regardless of how vile her reasons for doing so have been

Yes, the elder dragon learned all about V's family and how innocent it is. And it's going to kill them all anyway. That makes her worse, if anything. V could've learned about the dragon's family and his name, but why should s/he? Again, V isn't good. When someone tries to kill your friends, you don't invite him to a cup of tea and sort this out, you defend yourself and your friends.

[Shatteredtower]

V was trying to save h** friends.

When? Not during the long hours in which they were being held captive under pain of being swallowed whole.


You can't talk with a black dragon, because it's a firgging black dragon.

Comic #182 shows that claim to be entirely false. At best, you can claim that V didn't try talking with the black dragon because it was a black dragon. The dragon gave him an opening to talk, and V instead treated it as an opening to attack -- and lecture.

Reputation is never just cause to kill someone you've held captive for the better part of the day in a state that compels them to answer any questions you may have.


Only V could've done it, as the dragon was keeping the OOTS prisoners.

V was keeping the party prisoners. The dragon had no say in the matter.


When someone tries to kill your friends, killing him is fine.

Except that the dragon isn't killed for trying to kill V's friends, not even at the time of V started slinging spells at him. Elan's state of health at the end of the fight, after being pinned down for four or more rounds, calls that claim into doubt.


Maybe not good, but certainly not evil.

Unquestionably evil. V was representing the halfling's point of view here, as it was expressed by Belkar himself in strip #13.


It's pretty safe to assume that they were running away, as Wanton said.

If that was the case, then the dragon's claw should be pinning Elan down from behind, not with the bard facing him.


And the dragon did laugh at V's face: it ate Haley and talked about how tasty she was and how he's going to eat V (strip #183).

That's not laughing in his face any more than, "You will roll a natural 1 on your saving throw eventually," is.


Why didn't he talk to the rest of the OOTS? Because he didn't care.

Would you care why a fully armed group broke into your house? No, I don't think so.


The only reason he talked to V was because he was curious as to why a lizzard is an ally of the humanoids that he is currently trying to eat.

Please stop making false claims. If the dragon had been trying to eat anyone, Elan would have been down the gullet at the start of the conversation. The only people we saw him try to eat were the one trying to take over his mind and the one that nearly put his eye out.


Wait, he did try to talk to the OOTS. It talked to Haley to tell her that he is going to kill her. I'm sure he did it to end the violence.

Yes, because people always respond so well to someone ramming a needle into one of their eyes. Look, I don't fault Haley for having done so, because she was actively trying to save V with that action, and I don't fault V for trying to save Haley immediately after that, but that's the only justifiable action V took.


Yes, the elder dragon learned all about V's family and how innocent it is. And it's going to kill them all anyway. That makes her worse, if anything.

It shows how capable she is of evil, certainly.


V could've learned about the dragon's family and his name, but why should s/he?

Because there was plenty of time to do so. Because it's the same level of consideration that's been afforded to Belkar, Nale, Thog, and Sabine.

Because V could have been wrong about the dragon's nature and had all the time and ability necessary to determine that. Failing to do so is damnably evil and cannot be justified. It's also incredibly stupid. I mean, really, waiting until after elven form was resumed to ask where the starmetal was being kept?


When someone tries to kill your friends, you don't invite him to a cup of tea and sort this out, you defend yourself and your friends.

Save for that one round in which Haley was swallowed, V wasn't acting in defense of anyone. The dragon, on the other hand, was acting in self-defense the whole time. We only ever saw him fatal measures in response to lethal assaults against his person, and only two of those. Belkar and Elan would have been in worse shape otherwise, considering how close both of them were to that mouth during the course of the fight.

[hamishspence]

Since 3.5 came out, dragons have grown beyond being Targets- movers and shakers, long term schemers, tyrannical (and not so tyrannical) rulers, etc.

With Draconomicon, Dragon Magazine, Power of Faerun, Dragons of Faerun, Exemplars of Evil, etc, we get to see dragons as being far more than "just monsters" without necessarily changing their alignments.

So, the "kill on sight to prevent future evil acts" rationale doesn't necessarily hold water.

In a sense, the female ancient black is in fact behaving with surprising restraint for a CE dragon, according to both the 3.5 and 4th ed Draconomicons, evil dragons do not hold individual humanoids in high esteem and tend to take indiscriminate vengeance, sometimes a lot time after the event on future generations. Roaring Rampage of Revenge, shattering entire towns, for an action committed by one individual.

given that attacks on the fleet would in fact pose little threat to the dragon (it could stove in the boats underwater to whittle down the number of adversaries) it shows much more focus than typical.

[Noam]

Damn forum ate my post. Anyway...


Since 3.5 came out, dragons have grown beyond being Targets- movers and shakers, long term schemers, tyrannical (and not so tyrannical) rulers, etc.

With Draconomicon, Dragon Magazine, Power of Faerun, Dragons of Faerun, Exemplars of Evil, etc, we get to see dragons as being far more than "just monsters" without necessarily changing their alignments.

So, the "kill on sight to prevent future evil acts" rationale doesn't necessarily hold water.

In a sense, the female ancient black is in fact behaving with surprising restraint for a CE dragon, according to both the 3.5 and 4th ed Draconomicons, evil dragons do not hold individual humanoids in high esteem and tend to take indiscriminate vengeance, sometimes a lot time after the event on future generations. Roaring Rampage of Revenge, shattering entire towns, for an action committed by one individual.

given that attacks on the fleet would in fact pose little threat to the dragon (it could stove in the boats underwater to whittle down the number of adversaries) it shows much more focus than typical.

Yes, that's all very nice, but dragons are still chaotic evil. Intersting chaotic evil, but still chaotic and more importantly evil. The kill on sight rationale works perfectly well.


When? Not during the long hours in which they were being held captive under pain of being swallowed whole.

Yea, V was being a jerk at that point. But V did say that the dragon will resume his attempts to devour the OOTS when the spell is over, and didn't have much of a way to stop him other than lethal force. Offer another option V could've used and I will reconsider my position.


Comic #182 shows that claim to be entirely false. At best, you can claim that V didn't try talking with the black dragon because it was a black dragon. The dragon gave him an opening to talk, and V instead treated it as an opening to attack -- and lecture.

Reputation is never just cause to kill someone you've held captive for the better part of the day in a state that compels them to answer any questions you may have.

But you see, it's more than reputation - black dragons are always evil. The reputations black dragons have is right, and the gods themselves remind us that it is right. If there is one that isn't, he knows that his kind is completely evil (save himself) and should make it clear to people that he is good.

As for the trying to talk to V - it didn't try to talk to the OOTS, which makes me believe that he only did what he did because he was curious.


V was keeping the party prisoners. The dragon had no say in the matter.

True. I only meant that you can't blame the order for anything here. I am sorry if it wasn't clear enough.


Except that the dragon isn't killed for trying to kill V's friends, not even at the time of V started slinging spells at him. Elan's state of health at the end of the fight, after being pinned down for four or more rounds, calls that claim into doubt.

Elan did have some scartches on him, and the dragon spat acid at Roy and Durkon. He was also the first one to act when he used his darkness ability.


Unquestionably evil. V was representing the halfling's point of view here, as it was expressed by Belkar himself in strip #13.

:smallsigh: I will say this again. Goblins are not black dragons. Goblins have more than 50% of their society evil, but that means that as many as 49% might be good. Black dragons are evil to the last, and the chance that a good black dragon ever lived is tiny.


If that was the case, then the dragon's claw should be pinning Elan down from behind, not with the bard facing him.

...Hue. I didn't notice that. They could have changed positions in combat, though.


That's not laughing in his face any more than, "You will roll a natural 1 on your saving throw eventually," is.

Alright, you have a point. Though gloating about killing someone is kinda mean.


Would you care why a fully armed group broke into your house? No, I don't think so.

Yes, because my house isn't an unmarked cave.


Please stop making false claims. If the dragon had been trying to eat anyone, Elan would have been down the gullet at the start of the conversation. The only people we saw him try to eat were the one trying to take over his mind and the one that nearly put his eye out.

He spat acid at Durkon and Roy and only stopped because he was talking to V and was distracted. But you're right, maybe he wasn't trying to eat anyone - just kill them.


Yes, because people always respond so well to someone ramming a needle into one of their eyes. Look, I don't fault Haley for having done so, because she was actively trying to save V with that action, and I don't fault V for trying to save Haley immediately after that, but that's the only justifiable action V took.

But it didn't try to talk to the OOTS before he got shot in his eye. "But it was his house!" you say. "But his house is an unmarked cave in the middle of nowhere!" I say.


Because there was plenty of time to do so. Because it's the same level of consideration that's been afforded to Belkar, Nale, Thog, and Sabine.

Because V could have been wrong about the dragon's nature and had all the time and ability necessary to determine that. Failing to do so is damnably evil and cannot be justified. It's also incredibly stupid. I mean, really, waiting until after elven form was resumed to ask where the starmetal was being kept?

I don't know, maybe V did ask him questions - we don't know because we don't see that part. H** probably didn't, though. About Belkar - we need to remember that OOTS is also a comedy comic, and that Belkar is mostly there because it's funny. A real good aligned party would've killed him a long time time ago. The Linear Guild was giving consideration because Nale is Elan's brother, for the most part - that's not very fair, but even the good guys can be selfish at times.


Save for that one round in which Haley was swallowed, V wasn't acting in defense of anyone. The dragon, on the other hand, was acting in self-defense the whole time. We only ever saw him fatal measures in response to lethal assaults against his person, and only two of those. Belkar and Elan would have been in worse shape otherwise, considering how close both of them were to that mouth during the course of the fight.

We didn't really see much of the combat, which is probably what's causing many of the arguments. But the dragon did spit at Roy and Durkon and it did hold Elan under his paw (and left a mark on Elan once he left him, which means he did use force against him). We only see him managing to do lethal damage to someone when said someone pissed him off.

[Shatteredtower]

Hmm... one more thing I find damning about V's behaviour.

The elf says a lot of things to the dragon, but not one of them amounts to an apology, an offer of restitution, or a plea for the lives of the children. V is shown to be more concerned with beating the dragon than with saving the kids, even if the former was attempted as a means of accomplishing the latter. No solution but the magical one was considered.

Earlier, I saw posters ask why, if the son's death was such a big deal to the mother, she hadn't focused her efforts on restoring her son. Well, let's see:

1) The absence of a body means that she's going to require the casting of a true resurrection spell or a wish, both 9th level spells and both very expensive to cast. Let's also consider how long Roy's been dead -- and it would only require 7th level magic to fix that.

2) The Order of the Stick robbed her house. She might not be broke, but it's unlikely that she was carrying 26,530 gp (the minimum necessary to have someone cast true resurrection for her) around either. Perhaps we expect her to simply steal it from someone else, what with her being evil and all?

3) As her child's killer, V is the one that should be paying any costs for having the child restored to life, just as Belkar was expected to pay the cost for raising the guard he'd killed to escape from prison. Perhaps the dragon wouldn't have accepted any such offer. Perhaps the offer would have been accepted, along with V's own life, in exchange for the lives of the elf's children. The only certainty is that V never made any such offer.

[Noam]

Hmm... one more thing I find damning about V's behaviour.

The elf says a lot of things to the dragon, but not one of them amounts to an apology, an offer of restitution, or a plea for the lives of the children. V is shown to be more concerned with beating the dragon than with saving the kids, even if the former was attempted as a means of accomplishing the latter. No solution but the magical one was considered.

I would ignore the rest of your post (because I agree with it) but I will tell you this - V is arrogant. S/he has an ego the size of a mountain. V doesn't ask the dragon to forgive h** or plea for h** children because V won't admit that s/he was wrong or that s/he lost. Does it make h** evil? I don't think so. This is a flaw in V, we can agree on that, but it's not enough to make V an evil person.

[Kaytara]

ShatteredTower, IMO your first point is incorrect.

The dragon didn't exactly give V time to object. It was busy ranting about how it was going to take revenge on him. V's reaction is completely understandable even without considering his arrogance - first, Vaarsuvius is paralyzed with shock at the knowledge the dragon has of his family, then, he reacts with outrage. Very natural.
And then there's something else. If you're dealing with a being so evil that it's going to eat two innocent children alive in as torturously painful way as possible and trap their souls for all eternity, is it even possible that the dragon will change her mind about doing that just because you ask her to?

As for begging for his children's lives, the dragon was looking to inflict the maximum amount of pain on the elf. If the threat to his children had reduced the oh-so-arrogant Vaarsuvius to begging her to spare them, it would've been rock-solid confirmation that killing them was exactly the best way to make V suffer.

[Shatteredtower]

Yes, that's all very nice, but dragons are still chaotic evil.

Except when they're not. Reputation is not an acceptable reason for killing someone you've held under your mental thrall for even a few hours. V didn't kill him on sight.


But V did say that the dragon will resume his attempts to devour the OOTS when the spell is over, and didn't have much of a way to stop him other than lethal force.

V had eight hours to attempt to detemine if alternatives were possible by means of discussing it with the magically compelled dragon and with other party members, allowing the dragon to be the wizard's voice. Failure to make the attempt was inexcusable.

Now if the attempt had been made and it become apparent that the dragon would cause the party grief once free, there'd be grounds for calling Big Mama's listed grievances hypocritical. The next question is whether she'd still have come after V -- and whether or not her intended vengeance would have been limited to killing V instead if she did.


Offer another option V could've used and I will reconsider my position.

"Can I persuade you to stop attacking my companions long enough to see if we can't work out a mutually beneficial relationship?"

That's fewer words than, "I have a Ring of Wizardry, no other spells above third level prepared, and nothing better to do with my actions. The laws of probability dictate that you will fail a Will save before I run out of Suggestion spells," and V was even able to cast the spell in the same panel all of that was said!

Would it have worked? We'll never know. We do know that there were four entire rounds in which it could have been attempted.

Four rounds... and no less than another eight hours. No, let's be more accurate: no less than eleven hours, as that's at least how long the spell would have lasted for anyone able to cast disintegrate.


But you see, it's more than reputation - black dragons are always evil.

No, they're always evil at birth. The rules were very clear on that point. Exceptions might exist (even if the odds of such exceptions are infinitesimal), and eleven hours is enough time to determine if you're dealing with one of those. Even if the dragon was evil, however, and I'm quite inclined to believe that's the case, it was also enough time to determine if he was more deserving of execution than Belkar.


The reputations black dragons have is right, and the gods themselves remind us that it is right.

These are the same gods that sanction paladins to slaughter goblin children wholesale without losing their powers, according to Start of Darkness. Labelling the action non-evil does not change the fact that it's wrong, no matter what the gods might say.


If there is one that isn't, he knows that his kind is completely evil (save himself) and should make it clear to people that he is good.

While they're breaking into his house? And would it be okay to kill him if it turned out that he was neutral in regard to good and evil?


As for the trying to talk to V - it didn't try to talk to the OOTS, which makes me believe that he only did what he did because he was curious.

Curious enough to severely hamper any attempt at slaughtering the collection of killer apes still poking away at him? Sounds like an opening to offer options that would have let everyone survive the encounter.


True. I only meant that you can't blame the order for anything here. I am sorry if it wasn't clear enough.

Hmm. While I admit that the dragon could have handled the initial encounter better, the Order is at least as guilty as the dragon in that regard. V, however, was given a very generous opening to sort things out between the two groups, and threw it away round after round, then hour after hour.


Elan did have some scartches on him, and the dragon spat acid at Roy and Durkon.

The former is what you'd expect from being pinned down by a heavy, clawed quadraped. The latter was roughly equivalent to getting explosive runes to the face -- much like V dished out to a certain parking attendant in strip #173, or to Belkar (twice) for the crime of having kissed the wizard on drunken impulse.


Goblins are not black dragons. Goblins have more than 50% of their society evil, but that means that as many as 49% might be good. Black dragons are evil to the last, and the chance that a good black dragon ever lived is tiny.

When you have half the day to determine whether or not you're dealing with an exception or whether that justifies killing the dragon more than letting Belkar live and run free, you can't use the reputation of his species, no matter how well-earned, as justification for killing him.


They could have changed positions in combat, though.

This is possible. I appreciate that you didn't try to claim it was an art error. No, I'm not being sarcastic, and I apologize if I've implied that you would. I really am grateful.


Alright, you have a point. Though gloating about killing someone is kinda mean.

Oh, sure. Under the circumstances, though, it's unlikely that anyone would be nice about it.

And in V's defense, I doubt there are few things that would put one in a foul mood faster than being turned into a lizard and having your companions act in a manner that seemed entirely oblivious to your plight, especially when it involved the potential for wandering blindly into danger.


Yes, because my house isn't an unmarked cave.

So if you were a cave-dwelling human, as some have been, it would then be okay? Yes, it would have been a good idea to say, "What business do you have in my house?" or some such, but so would, "Is there any way we can avoid a fight here?" to the dragon that was standing in your way, or "Can we talk?" during the four rounds he spends standing on your chest.


I don't know, maybe V did ask him questions - we don't know because we don't see that part.

It's possible, but doesn't the fact that the subject of the starmetal never came up in that time suggests its less likely than meeting a black dragon paladin? :smallwink:


H** probably didn't, though. About Belkar - we need to remember that OOTS is also a comedy comic, and that Belkar is mostly there because it's funny.

Ah. Thank you very much for making this particular argument. I'll accept this point, mainly because I believe Belkar offers a lot to this comic, especially in terms of comedy.


A real good aligned party would've killed him a long time time ago.

I have to disagree with this one, though. Good should be concerned with more than the alignment in your stat block, one reason Miko was deserving of much of the criticism she received. Sometimes, as you've noted, there is an issue of selfishness, but even that isn't always wrong. Acting out of consideration for the life of someone that wants you dead is pretty much the epitome of good, even if that person happens to be family. Acting out of loyalty to someone that's never shown much respect to you, so that he might find his final rest, runs a pretty close second, even if that person happens to be your father.

[Shatteredtower]

I would ignore the rest of your post (because I agree with it) but I will tell you this - V is arrogant. S/he has an ego the size of a mountain. V doesn't ask the dragon to forgive h** or plea for h** children because V won't admit that s/he was wrong or that s/he lost. Does it make h** evil? I don't think so. This is a flaw in V, we can agree on that, but it's not enough to make V an evil person.

I agree with you on all of this. I also agree that the mother dragon is almost certainly evil, and will not deny that her declared intentions are extremely vile.

In my opinion, V is still a character of neutral alignment. I won't even rule out the possibility that V is good. Neither case rules out the possibility of doing evil acts, though.

Killing the dragon, of itself, I might not consider so bad. Killing it after all that transpired, with all of the behaviour displayed by V in the course of that day, is an act I do find to be evil, even if the actor is a good person.

Wow. So many posts worth addressing today, and I'm out of time. Kaytara, I'll have to get back to you Monday, after I've answered Scylfing's post. (My apologies if I misspelled that. Got to run.)

[Oslecamo]

Shatteredtower:If the dragon was nonevil, he certainly wouldn't try to kill the party WHILE insulting and taunting them. Did he try to reason with them? No. Breath and bite away the " stupid humanoids"(by the dragon's own words) by all means.

The dragon made quite clear he wasn't willing for a peacefull solution. The Oots just answered in the same coin. Even Miko agreed that what they did was right.

[Noam]

Except when they're not. Reputation is not an acceptable reason for killing someone you've held under your mental thrall for even a few hours. V didn't kill him on sight.

V had eight hours to attempt to detemine if alternatives were possible by means of discussing it with the magically compelled dragon and with other party members, allowing the dragon to be the wizard's voice. Failure to make the attempt was inexcusable.

Now if the attempt had been made and it become apparent that the dragon would cause the party grief once free, there'd be grounds for calling Big Mama's listed grievances hypocritical. The next question is whether she'd still have come after V -- and whether or not her intended vengeance would have been limited to killing V instead if she did.


"Can I persuade you to stop attacking my companions long enough to see if we can't work out a mutually beneficial relationship?"

That's fewer words than, "I have a Ring of Wizardry, no other spells above third level prepared, and nothing better to do with my actions. The laws of probability dictate that you will fail a Will save before I run out of Suggestion spells," and V was even able to cast the spell in the same panel all of that was said!

Would it have worked? We'll never know. We do know that there were four entire rounds in which it could have been attempted.

Four rounds... and no less than another eight hours. No, let's be more accurate: no less than eleven hours, as that's at least how long the spell would have lasted for anyone able to cast disintegrate.

Honestly? Maybe it didn't occur to V. As you said, V acted in a pretty stupid way when s/he didn't ask the dragon about the starmetal in all this time. Maybe being a lizard caused h** brain damage :smallbiggrin:.


No, they're always evil at birth. The rules were very clear on that point. Exceptions might exist (even if the odds of such exceptions are infinitesimal), and eleven hours is enough time to determine if you're dealing with one of those. Even if the dragon was evil, however, and I'm quite inclined to believe that's the case, it was also enough time to determine if he was more deserving of execution than Belkar.

The dragon attempted to kill V's friends for no reason other than that they were in the wrong place and in the wrong time. V should have questioned him and it's odd that s/he didn't, but it doesn't mean that the dragon wasn't evil. Maybe Durkon scanned him - it's not that unlikly, as you claimed later in the post. It's just that a comic containing "Aye, he be Evil" and nothing else is kinda boring.


These are the same gods that sanction paladins to slaughter goblin children wholesale without losing their powers, according to Start of Darkness. Labelling the action non-evil does not change the fact that it's wrong, no matter what the gods might say.

Those gods are jerks, true. But goblins are cannon-fodder for PCs, while dragons have their very own god. If dragons weren't evil (that is, truly evil, not just evil on the sheet) Timat would have done something about it. Also, nobody save a few very important people knows that the gods are the evil basterds that they are.


While they're breaking into his house? And would it be okay to kill him if it turned out that he was neutral in regard to good and evil?

You keep mentioning that they are breaking into his house - I will adress this later. However, if he is neutral? Investigate further and decide what to do. Neutral could mean plenty of things, from commoner-I don't care about a thing-neutral to Samantha's dad-I'm not evil enough to be evil-neutral.


Curious enough to severely hamper any attempt at slaughtering the collection of killer apes still poking away at him? Sounds like an opening to offer options that would have let everyone survive the encounter.

He thinks that he is better than the apes and has the power to crush them any time. He is a dragon, he thinks this is all just a game. And if he was trying to negotiate, why didn't he negotiate with the OOTS? Forget for a moment about the house-breaking thing, V said that s/he was with them. Show me a reason to treat V a different way than the OOTS, other than "it's a little lizard that is working with apes, I wonder way".


Hmm. While I admit that the dragon could have handled the initial encounter better, the Order is at least as guilty as the dragon in that regard. V, however, was given a very generous opening to sort things out between the two groups, and threw it away round after round, then hour after hour.

The OOTS were defending themselves, and probably didn't know that the dragon speaks common until he talked - at which point he ate one of them. V, on the other hand...I adressed that one above.


The former is what you'd expect from being pinned down by a heavy, clawed quadraped. The latter was roughly equivalent to getting explosive runes to the face -- much like V dished out to a certain parking attendant in strip #173, or to Belkar (twice) for the crime of having kissed the wizard on drunken impulse.

I don't wana rule lawyer or anything but in a grapple you don't cause damage unless you chose to. But it makes sense story-wise, so I will accept that.

About the acid spit-sure, it didn't cause serious damage, just like explosive runes. But that was a friendly prank. Are you honestly suggesting that the dragon wasn't trying to kill the party and was just screwing around, or that the party had to wait until he managed to seriously hurt one of them before attacking him back? The dragon made it clear that he is willing to hurt the party, and as a dragon they know that he is capable of doing so.


So if you were a cave-dwelling human, as some have been, it would then be okay? Yes, it would have been a good idea to say, "What business do you have in my house?" or some such, but so would, "Is there any way we can avoid a fight here?" to the dragon that was standing in your way, or "Can we talk?" during the four rounds he spends standing on your chest.

If I had a cave as a home I would either mark it or not be surprised when people enter it. A guy that kills anyone who enters his home - his unmarked home - without any disscusion, is evil. Again, the OOTS had no idea he speaks common. If they did, maybe they did ask him to stop in the few rounds of combat that we missed - again, we missed a lot of the combat and we don't really know what happened, but judging by how scared the OOTS seemed I think they would have attempted to reason with the dragon had they known they can.


I have to disagree with this one, though. Good should be concerned with more than the alignment in your stat block, one reason Miko was deserving of much of the criticism she received. Sometimes, as you've noted, there is an issue of selfishness, but even that isn't always wrong. Acting out of consideration for the life of someone that wants you dead is pretty much the epitome of good, even if that person happens to be family. Acting out of loyalty to someone that's never shown much respect to you, so that he might find his final rest, runs a pretty close second, even if that person happens to be your father.

Let's leave this one out, as this is not really the topic

[Ellen]

I've got some sympathy for the dragon, but it's limited.

Yes, I see why she's in a world of hurt. Yes, I see why she wants a pretty nasty revenge. I draw the line at going after the kids (I'd draw the line on the spouse, too, but the kids are the main target).

But I don't feel like the dragon is a hypocrite as such.

The dragon's world view is that pain it's caused --> justifies pain caused to others. I think the dragon is completely capable of seeing how this permanently escalates things (A gets revenge against B, B gets greater revenge against A, A survives and comes back for even more revenge, etc), but doesn't care.

So, the dragon's Evil in the personal alignment sense and in its impact on the world (escalating revenge and increasing the circel of people impacted by it). But, technically, I wouldn't call it a hypocrite until it gave the attacking children speech to someone who'd gone after her son to get at her or for other revenge reasons.

Which is a little like saying a mass murderer isn't a hypocrite. I mean, true or not, it really doesn't overshadow the bad things you can say about someone without any argument.

[hamishspence]

Example of immediate lethal force on an intruder- from a non-evil dragon:

Paladin Blues Bonus strip:

Xykon: Silver dragon, eh? So are you just going to give us the: "Your evil deeds have earned you a wedgie" spech like every other monster in the tower?

Dragon: No. (Breath weapon simultaneously)

Yes, maybe its a case of Intelligent Good compared to all the other monsters offering Xykon a chance of redemption (arguably Stupid Good). Nonetheless, it shows dragons, good or evil, never react well to intruders, compared to other creatures.

[Oslecamo]

Example of immediate lethal force on an intruder- from a non-evil dragon:


Except in that case Xykon made quite clear he was evil, and the silver dragon probably had the time to cast detect evil just in doubt as Xykon hacked at the other good monsters.

It's the case of "detect evil, smite evil", wich actually is what people normally call stupid good.

It's not just breaking in, but breaking in and killing everything on sight. The silver dragon saw that Xykon wasn't willing for a peacefull solution, so goes directly to the violent solution.

[hamishspence]

no other monsters in the room.

in the earlier strips, the other monsters conclude Xykon is evil, give him a "Turn back" warning and an offer of redemption, and get attacked.

Whereas here, the dragon initiates attack.

[Noam]

no other monsters in the room.

in the earlier strips, the other monsters conclude Xykon is evil, give him a "Turn back" warning and an offer of redemption, and get attacked.

Whereas here, the dragon initiates attack.

You are a guard in a house. A very well marked house, that no one can wander into without seeing that it's full of people (or angels, or whatever). You see a lich - an evil creature - as well as a cleric of an evil god (and a very important cleric of said god, too). The lich outright says that he is evil. Since he got far inside the building, he got through the other guards. In the very very very little chance that he is not evil, the guards that he passed through would have escorted him and explained to you what the heck is going on. But no one is there, so you assume that he killed everyone in his path.

[Wanton Soup]

But I don't feel like the dragon is a hypocrite as such.


Well I do.

Reasons given earlier.

[Wanton Soup]

We saw Haley turn back -- only Haley, and only back toward the darkness. The next time we see the party, they're heading toward the dragon.

And they don't turn about because they just left magical darkness and Haley was just pushing them back.

"Whu? Wat's going on? Huh???" would be the reaction any normal person.

[Shatteredtower]

Wow. Took far longer to be able to post this than I'd intended. Sorry.


I also enjoyed your descriptions of the various stories that back this up--I wouldn't mind reading them myself if you have titles or links to share--so I can see your point of view from that.

I'm sorry to admit that I can't remember the titles or authors for either. Another one you might find of interest is the short story, "A Martian Oddyssey", which can be found at the start of Where Do We Go from Here?, one of Isaac Asimov's more interesting collections of other people's short fiction. I also recommend the Lester del Rey story in that piece, even though science now indicates that Neanderthals were nothing like the one in the story was physically portrayed, and the idea of evolution pushing certain cultures into extinction has been discredited. (Then again, maybe not, since Star Trek: Enterprise had the heroes following that premise on an episode, and that was within the last ten years.)


However, an intelligent being that's very alien to us would, I think, have a very different idea of what personhood means, to the point where the human idea of it and their idea might be irreconcilable in their differences.

Maybe. Since we still hear this used as an excuse for not negotiating with humans of other cultures, including ones that have lived within walking distance for hundreds or thousands of years, the evidence indicates that we'd be more likely to offer this an excuse in our dealings with truly alien intelligence than for it to be entirely true. You've still got people in Europe and America that treat wolves as monsters, rather than endangered species, who will hunt them out and destroy them all because of the "inevitable" threat they "must" represent. Sharks are likewise become endangered by a similar attitude, and even gorillas haven't fared much better in the eyes of people. D&D tends to demonstrate such patterns as well, with most intelligent creatures of a reptilian, ichthyic, arachnid, or insectoid nature being portrayed as either alienly evil or, at best, amorally neutral. Anything with tentacles is also right out.

I'm not saying there aren't cases. In Buck Godot: Zap Gun for Hire, which is freely available online, Phil Foglio provides the example of a race of creatures that cannot even begin to comprehend why they're being attacked for trying to blow up stars, since that's how they get their primary source of nutrition.


I think about all the intensely chaotic and/or evil yet intelligent creatures in D&D that are almost completely myopic in their self-centered lives, and wonder what personhood means to them.

Should it necessarily mean anything less than what it means to chaotic evil humanoids -- or gods? (I mean... Loki and Thor... they're just these guys, you know, even if they did have a hand in constructing the entire world and everything living on it.) Unfortunately, the game language indicates that it does, since enchantment spells tend to be broken down on the basis of whether or not they affect either "persons" (i.e.: humanoids) or "monsters" (non-humanoids). There's also the matter of the humanocentric portrayal of most celestials (the lantern archon is the major exception) and the archdevils, to say nothing of the succubi, a seducer that an assume the form of its victims species, so long as that species is humanoid. The game plays heavily to human conceit in ways that can be heavily criticized even in a comic strip devoted to rule jokes, whether or not the focus grows beyond such gags.

In this sense, I'm not sure the series' portrayals of non-humans necessarily disagrees with your view so much as it calls out the one that often comes with D&D. There have been some pretty good efforts at exceptions, though most of these are aimed at the judgmentally-named "aberrations", which still points to the human focus. This may (may) offer one more reason he's steered clear of those creature types since the product identity gag, since they seem harder to fit into the collective design of four cooperating pantheons that don't seem all that alien to one another -- even if they all disagree on the subject of what trolls should be -- or even us. Or it may just be that such creatures tend to be best suited as a focus for a campaign, rather than wandering monsters, bandits, or a source of misunderstandings that could have been avoided.


Take the Aboleth for example, each one of these things are so ancient that they have in their own memories the origins of almost all other species. How does something like that even relate to an individual member of those other species when it knows within its own lifespan how the first generation of said species came about? Would individuality besides other Aboleth or perhaps certain timeless deities even be perceptible to them? I don't know if I would even call something so far outside of the range of experience a person, more like an entity or an embodied idea.

"Entity" is a very good word choice, though it's only another word for "being". Nevertheless, I can see how it could be a fitting choice to describe something distinctly "other" from any humanoid experience. The problem I see with such a portrayal is that it requires a lot of effort and attention to avoid making it trivial. In short fiction, that means making it a major focus of the story, and longer works usually need to dedicate at least a chapter's worth to it.


That's where I'm going with much of what I've written here on the subject, of certain monsters as conceptual, psychological forces rather than persons like you've mentioned. Most things that we traditionally think of as monstrous don't fit that, I know, and I wouldn't want to try to shoehorn any of those into the typology I have in mind here, but I really want to claim dragons for that because of what their origins were in our proto-language and therefore in our cultural mindset: greedy/gluttonous guardians of things that mortals shouldn't try to take, whose powers were largely elemental, strike me as something who exists more as a concept than a person.

Much like gods in that regard, or in the way we've seen other human cultures portrayed at certain times and places. (Hollywood, for example, has sometimes been guilty of portraying entire cultures as concepts than peoples.) While it may be entirely appropriate to both gods and dragons (as well as the fey), failing to do the portrayal justice carries the risk of coming across as ignorant, even if we're supposed to take the author's word for it. On the other side of things, if you've all the time in the world to make your aliens as alien as possible, or your gods something supernatural, and this amounts to them being humans in rubber suits with wacky customs or pretty people with good lighting effects and nature-affecting attitudes, you may be selling your audience short. I don't think the Giant is. A lot of tv science fiction has, using the limits of costuming and effects budgets as excuses for failures of writing and performance, as have a number of
movies.

I believe the middle ground between what you describe and the "personalizing" attitude might lie in examples like Disney's Dragonslayer. The dragon wasn't portrayed to be human or even capable of understanding humans, nor even able to care about them. As far as the people in the movie were concerned, she (or he -- the eggs suggest a female, but how do you get fertile eggs with only one dragon?) was either a force to be placated or destroyed. The wizard, however, related to her as something else that was fading from this world. She could also feel rage for the loss of her young and recognize the cause, but there's no indication that she understood what she'd cost the humans of the region. If anything, offering the sacrifices seems like something they'd come up with entirely on their own, and she'd just gotten used to having them leave dinner out for her.


You can't really dehumanize that like you can a goblin or I should say a "green person with fangs" since there's virtually nothing human about it in the first place.

Greedy and patronizing? Sounds very human. And many ancient heroes were described to be forces of nature in human guise.


Sigh, I know mine is not a popular view nowadays but I still want to put it forward, if not in a novel or short story then at least in argument. :smalltongue:

Fair enough. There's still importance in portraying the unknowable. Among other things, it's a good counter-agent to arrogance. I just don't think that excuses us from continuing to try to understand it.


You misunderstood my meaning: I wasn't saying that Rich Burlew's characterization was offensive, I was saying that moral comparisons to real-world suffering that people were deriving from a comic are offensive.

No, I think I got that. I'm not sure why the rule about (not) doing doing unto others (it doesn't even specificy "other humans") as you'd (not) want done to you doesn't apply here. Sometimes, the only way to get people to see the wrong we're doing to other people is by showing it in terms of something else we don't see as human at all. And sometimes the best way to get folks to question their perceptions of real nonhuman creatures is by showing the impact it would have on something fantastic but able to identify with the human condition. D&D assumes that all skin colours and both sexes are equal among humans (not so among elves) -- and that there are still certain acceptable targets you can identify by appearance. Even if we accept that within the game (which I consider to be acceptable), it still deserves to be questioned and discussed regularly.

You know I'm definitely not saying you're wrong, though, right? :smallwink: Even where I might disagree with it, I don't find fault with the specifics of your position.

[Shatteredtower]

Well, it's been a few hours. Time for a few more replies...


Shatteredtower:If the dragon was nonevil, he certainly wouldn't try to kill the party WHILE insulting and taunting them.

Both Roy and Elan prove this claim false. Heck, Elan is even required to do that to be effective in combat.


The dragon didn't exactly give V time to object.

V was given time to cast two 7th level spells. Plenty of time. Not assuming the dragon was only there about treasure -- also abundant. Certainly time to apologize, explain, or ask about restitution, rather than defiantly spit in her face.

People took George Lucas to task for changing a scene in the original Star Wars film so that Greedo shot at Han first, though I suspect it was one of the requirements needed to get what was originally an Adult-rated film scaled back to PG-13. Point is that someone, whether Mr. Lucas or a review board, felt it inappropriate for the hero (even one intended to be more mercenary and motivated by self-interest) to shoot first, even at a guy with his gun pointed at him and considering whether or not to just kill him right there.

The dragon could have incapacitated V right from the moment she appeared, what with having arrived completely undetected, being able to breath underwater, and capable of casting antimagic field and all. Instead, she announced herself, let the wizard fire off two spells, and talked with her prisoner -- with being the active word. The elf had plenty of time to beg, to plead, to interupt the rant in any of its many pauses shown by the inclusion of separate word ballons within panel. But no, V isn't interested in anything more than the chance to call the dragon a monster and defiantly yell out an attempt to stop her.

It's also worth noting that V's second thought was that the dragon was here for revenge, not justice. V was right, but the assumption was not going to be helpful. Guessing for justice would have conceded the possibility of wrong-doing, but V was never interested in conceding that point here. Would it change the outcome? Probably not, but that's not the issue.


And they don't turn about because they just left magical darkness and Haley was just pushing them back.

"Whu? Wat's going on? Huh???" would be the reaction any normal person.

Adventurers are not normal people. Magical darkness is not a normal set of circumstances. If the rogue -- the trapfinder -- says, "Run!" as she comes racing around the corner, and the seasoned adventurers don't immediately heed her advice, they're exhibiting dangerous levels of stupidity.

Dangerous to the party -- and dangerous to the dragon.

[Wanton Soup]

Adventurers are not normal people. Magical darkness is not a normal set of circumstances.

Ah so the conversation that went:

What the-?
Where'd all the lights go?
Maybe someone turned off the sun?
Clearly it is a spell of darkness ....
OK, OK, I'm freaking out.


and continues from there (with Roy's head only just turning into visibility and a serene smile on his face before Haley starts pushing him back are the actions of a crack team of cold-blooded killers, ready for ANYTHING.

Yeah.


EDIT
Oh, and as for the "He killed the dwagon!" he'd said in 183 that no creature that eats a friend will live to see the next dawn. And in 186 he tried suggestion but found that it wouldn't work because he was a lizard when casting it and the suggestion went with the form. Apparently a wrinkle to the magic V didn't know before. So if he had decided to run a couple more suggestions, they wouldn't work in time.
Zap.

[Shatteredtower]

So what you're saying is that they're a suicidal bunch of armed idiots, then, so stupid that they walked blindly through a hazard into an unknown situation with hardly a care in the world.

Yeah.


Oh, and as for the "He killed the dwagon!" he'd said in 183 that no creature that eats a friend will live to see the next dawn.

That justifies... nothing. It certainly doesn't justify the original attack.

Really, why hasn't Roy killed V by now? Who leaves someone willing to feed teammates to a dragon alive?


And in 186 he tried suggestion but found that it wouldn't work because he was a lizard when casting it and the suggestion went with the form.

Took me a minute to realize that what you meant was that he tried making use of the suggestion spell cast eleven or more hours earlier. There was no reason V had to wait eleven hours before asking that question -- or any question at all.

Well, none that isn't monstrous, that is.

[Wanton Soup]

So what you're saying is that they're a suicidal bunch of armed idiots, then, so stupid that they walked blindly through a hazard into an unknown situation with hardly a care in the world.

Yeah.



That justifies... nothing. It certainly doesn't justify the original attack.

Really, why hasn't Roy killed V by now? Who leaves someone willing to feed teammates to a dragon alive?



Took me a minute to realize that what you meant was that he tried making use of the suggestion spell cast eleven or more hours earlier. There was no reason V had to wait eleven hours before asking that question -- or any question at all.

Well, none that isn't monstrous, that is.

Nope, that your assertion that they were going to handle this without confusion is incorrect.

WHICH original attack???? The first attack seemed to be the dragon since there were breath marks on the first panel. The last panel of the previous strip had Haley pushing the team back into the black sphere to hide.

Why hasn't Roy killed Elan by now? He's already said he's wanted to kill Elan.

And nobody asked.

And isn't monstrous like abominable???

[hamishspence]

Roy "left Elan to an uncertain fate" Had he not thought better of it and gone back, he would not have gotten into celestia (or, going by the deva's words, any of the good aligned planes)

[Wanton Soup]

No he had Elan's twin swapped with his current opponent Thog.

And then let forth his dark desire to kill Elan.

[Selene]

People took George Lucas to task for changing a scene in the original Star Wars film so that Greedo shot at Han first, though I suspect it was one of the requirements needed to get what was originally an Adult-rated film scaled back to PG-13. Point is that someone, whether Mr. Lucas or a review board, felt it inappropriate for the hero (even one intended to be more mercenary and motivated by self-interest) to shoot first, even at a guy with his gun pointed at him and considering whether or not to just kill him right there.

The geek chick in me is going to nitpick this. LOL. I'm about 95% sure that Star Wars was originally rated PG. There was no such thing as PG-13 in the 70s. PG-13 was invented in the 80s. In the 70s, if a movie didn't qualify for PG, it got an R-rating. And there's just no way in hell my mother would have taken 7-year-old me to see an R rated movie.

Other than that, I agree with your points. :smalltongue:

edit for Wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPAA_film_rating_system#The_addition_of_the_PG-13_rating Given that it says July 1, 1984 was the origin date for PG-13, that would be after all three of the Original Star Wars movies were released.

[hamishspence]

In Britain, the original trilogy (gore, Han shooting first, etc) were sold as videos with a U certificate. The Special Edition dvds are also sold as Us.

[Lord]

Actaully if we were going to be completely "an eye for an eye" then mama dragon would just kill one kid, and then fly off. It still wouldn't be right but hey...

[Khanderas]

Actaully if we were going to be completely "an eye for an eye" then mama dragon would just kill one kid, and then fly off. It still wouldn't be right but hey...
Eh. as far as we know, V killed all her children. So she will kill all hir children.
Looks the same to me :)

Edit: And how can you compare the worth of a simple twolegger for a Dragon ?

[Shatteredtower]

The geek chick in me is going to nitpick this. LOL. I'm about 95% sure that Star Wars was originally rated PG.

Adult, not Restricted. I remember the newspaper ads being very clear on that point, as well as noting that children would be permitted to attend if accompanied by an adult. That was back when a local theatre showed that movie every summer up until The Empire Strikes Back came out.