OOTS #639 - The Discussion Thread [Archive] - Page 3

The MunchKING

2009-03-21, 03:04 PM

Sure, a bunch of empowered delayed blast fireballs are not gonna hurt, not at all.

A) That's not hurting them while the Time stop is on, that's setting something up that will hurt them when the Time Stop quits.

B) Anias was talking about Familiciding them all while Time Stopped. I was pointing out that IN ADDITION to the reasons you mentioned, Time Stop won't let you do that.

That "mojo" is a) overshadowed by abilities achieved much earlier through proper optimisation, b) pales in comparison to divine powers.

A) if you can optimise them to be X good at 40 then they will only be X+ When they get to 90 now won't they?

B) What doesn't?

Blasting with what? Have you even read the entry? Epic destructo Spells.

Force damage, Sonic damage, etc. weren't mentioned there... All you need is a truely ludicrious amount of non-elemental Damage.

Now come on. I asked you a question. How would V kill Tiamat. You said he could kill off an entire pantheon, how hard could killing a single intermediate deity be?

Psssss... I think you're confusing me for Anias. I certainly never said that. I said a god COULD be killed with enough damage. That was all. To kill a pantheon would take that much damage x however many Gods in a pantheon. Which you would be REALLY unlikely to ever get a chance to do, as even if you COULD blast one, all the others would now be aware you could do that...

Custos Sophiae

2009-03-21, 03:04 PM

Hecatonheires is an epic monster, and a kitten at that.

It's also a quasi-deity, but that was just an illustrative example. Pick whichever abomination you think most deadly, and assume V summons as many as they can, given the presumed DC of the familicide spell, and adds in a ward against dispelling, banishment, disjunction etc. What countermeasures does Tiamat have? Be concrete. Specify which version you're using.

If epic abominations aren't enough, there's the other use of summon. Call up a demon lord or chaotic evil greater god, and offer to transport it and its entire army to Tiamat's doorstep, bypassing all the Blood War battlefields. V has enough power to do that, and Chaotic Evil doesn't care about breaking any rules there might be against direct action. V should be able to find something in the abyss, powerful enough to subdue Tiamat, which will accept that offer. The CE spliced soul could probably suggest a few names.

Broadly speaking, in single combat, even a greater god can be overwhelmed if V summons suitable minions, or asks the right dark god/demon lord, but the key phrase there is in single combat. If V has to fight their way across the plane to reach the god, they'll run out of minions first, and a dark god/demom lord will deadlock short of the goal, but then, defeating Tiamat and all her minions wasn't the challenge posed. Single combat with whatever armies V can bring to the fight, it is.

Mr. Scaly

2009-03-21, 03:07 PM

HUMANS = Any Alignment
BLACK DRAGONS = Always Chaotic Evil

THAT'S the difference.

No. There is no difference that would make this kind of deliberate cruelty on an entire familyof uninvolved creatures okay.

Nope. And s/he didn't, so its a moot point.
But yes, if s/he had killed a **** ton of usually chaotic good elves, there WOULD be cause to object.
Fact remains s/he killed beings of evil, that are born evil and born to destroy.

Someone else said in this thread that there is always hope for redemption. To that, I would add that nobody is 'born to' do anything. That gets into philosophical stuff though.

Sebastian

2009-03-21, 03:37 PM

What could happen next?
I just remembered that create greater undead don't give the caster control over the created undead, so what if the ABD use her breath weapon or one of her remaining spells on V's family?

That would be strangely fitting. V's family dies and would be all his fault.

Taekwondodo

2009-03-21, 03:41 PM

Don't you see all the fault is V's??! He/She is the reason why Mom Dragon took revenge! If V hadn't killed the hatchling in the first place, nothing of this would have happened! He would have not transformed into evil and things would be going good in his/her family right now!

If you think like that then you could say it was the adolescent dragons fault for trying to eat Hayley, or the OotS's fault for even being in that cave in the first place, or the Linear Guild's fault for sending Roy on that bogus quest to find the star metal, or Xykon's fault for breaking Roy's sword.

You are right in thinking that V has gone too far. Killing 60+ dragons for something which does not concern them, even if they are black and can be seen to be evil, is wrong.

Tobimaro

2009-03-21, 04:04 PM

Well, I suppose that there will be no more black dragons coming after V or hir family. I just wonder if other dragon-types might find out what happened and target V, if only out of a sense that V is now a greater threat than any other one they have faced. Plus this might be a reason why evil and good dragons would work together.

But this comic was epic. And not just because of the spell that V cast. :smalleek:

Bilbo27

2009-03-21, 04:12 PM

I can't fathom the entire evilness of the act V did. Karma is a bitch, and she will come a knocking!

msully4321

2009-03-21, 04:22 PM

Reminds me of nethack:

As you read the scroll, it disappears. You have found a scroll of genocide!
What monster do you want to genocide? [type the name] black dragons
Wiped out all black dragons.

(I just ascended my second character two weeks ago. A wizard. Genocide-less.)

jafar

2009-03-21, 04:27 PM

Could someone explain to me how Familicide can even work? It seems way, WAY overpowered even for an epic spell if it can instantly wipe out *every* relative dragon of that one, apparently even bypassing their save.

I'm with you on this. These epic level spells may fit in the so-called "rules", but a spell like Familicide is just outrageous - WAY over the top (if cool).

This is the type of spell that should really attract the attention of the gods, right quick. And who would be most upset? The god who created all those lovely dragons. Even the good gods don't like challenges to their authority so the best way to handle this is for Tiamat to put the major Smack-down on V for her audacity.:roach:

silvadel

2009-03-21, 04:34 PM

The ABD was a student of magic -- maybe it made a spellcraft check on what V was doing and that was why it was so adamant to surrender and looked so very nervous (above and beyond being an animated dragon head).

And since this merely kills as opposed to trapping souls it is NOT disproportionate to messing with the souls of family members. We are looking at 63 C vs 3 C^2.

Also in mideval times a vendetta did very often go to the 6th or so generation.

petersohn

2009-03-21, 04:35 PM

I sense great disturbance in the Force...

I didn't read all the 500+ comments on this thread, so this might have been debated before, but I say my opinion to this.

V has officially gone evil in this update. And in my opinion, he is definitely chaotic evil. Why do I say this? For me, someone's alignment is not only influenced by their actions, but also their motivations.

For example, if someone somehow took an opportunity to use a genocide spell, and chose to wipe out all black dragons, that could be considered as a lawful (but still probably evil) act, because, as it was said before, destroying chaotic creatures makes the world a more lawful place. But V's purpose was just to destroy those dragons, which is a certainly chaotic evil act.

Also, I see V's action more evil than if someone destroyed all black dragons "to make a world a better place with wiping out a bunch of chaotic evil creatures", even if that would cause the death of even more creatures. Because V's purpose was to inflict pain to a certain black dragon. So it was an evil act for an evil purpose, while my other version is an evil act for a good purpose.

TheSummoner

2009-03-21, 04:37 PM

I can't fathom the entire evilness of the act V did. Karma is a bitch, and she will come a knocking!

What V did WAS Karma coming knocking! Lets not forget the mother dragon was the one who first involved three innocent elves into a matter between herself and V.

It doesnt make what V did right, but its some food for thought.

silvadel

2009-03-21, 04:56 PM

Oh and it didnt "inflict pain" really -- it looks like it was a clean instant death to each.

The waiting line in the afterlife will be kind of different tho.

It was a cold methodical destruction of all family members -- the ultimate method of finishing out a vendetta.

The only one inflicted pain was the target who it seems powered the whole thing.

NobodySpecial

2009-03-21, 04:57 PM

If there's a chance that evil creatures may do harm in the future, it may be a good act to slay them preventively.

{Scrubbed}

SuperDuperHai2U

2009-03-21, 05:09 PM

It's also a quasi-deity, but that was just an illustrative example. Pick whichever abomination you think most deadly, and assume V summons as many as they can, given the presumed DC of the familicide spell, and adds in a ward against dispelling, banishment, disjunction etc. What countermeasures does Tiamat have? Be concrete. Specify which version you're using.

If epic abominations aren't enough, there's the other use of summon. Call up a demon lord or chaotic evil greater god, and offer to transport it and its entire army to Tiamat's doorstep, bypassing all the Blood War battlefields. V has enough power to do that, and Chaotic Evil doesn't care about breaking any rules there might be against direct action. V should be able to find something in the abyss, powerful enough to subdue Tiamat, which will accept that offer. The CE spliced soul could probably suggest a few names.

Broadly speaking, in single combat, even a greater god can be overwhelmed if V summons suitable minions, or asks the right dark god/demon lord, but the key phrase there is in single combat. If V has to fight their way across the plane to reach the god, they'll run out of minions first, and a dark god/demom lord will deadlock short of the goal, but then, defeating Tiamat and all her minions wasn't the challenge posed. Single combat with whatever armies V can bring to the fight, it is.

Gods should be able to teleport themselves and others right? Teleport V into a dead magic zone, gg.

DimJim

2009-03-21, 05:13 PM

Am I the only one who thinks that V used Familicide not only to stop any chance of another dragon avenging the dragon's death, but also to calm the 3 souls down a bit so they had a smaller chance of gaining control?

I think the gods will forgive V for anything he does if (and when) he loses control. Take the example of the soldiers in the throne room. Although they did murder each other during the symbol's effect, the gods forgave them.

I'm also thinking that the Neutral afterlife runs off of a karma system of some sort, where if you do something evil (like a temporary soul exchange) all you have to do is do enough good acts to make up for it.

ringsnake

2009-03-21, 05:14 PM

Hadn't Rich said at some point in the past that one of the characters is going to die (like permanent death not to be resurrected from) and one of the characters is going to undergo a major costume change?

Don't make me find the place he says it, but I'm sure I saw it.

Now Elan got the costume change, and it's becoming clear that the death of Roy is temporary.

In addition, a lot of the fun has gone out of V in the last several months. The conflict between her and Belkar, as well as the gender thing, has sort of played out. It could be that the backlash of all this evil or just the splice generally is that V is going to die. After all, the demons didn't say that V was going to be alive after the splice was dropped.

Nor did they specifically say that they were going to stop passing V's soul around the table after each had their time with her. Kind of hard to resurrect someone when their soul is being used like a badminton birdy by the infernal powers.

Raging Gene Ray

2009-03-21, 05:54 PM

Don't know how many people posted this, but I'm hoping V's nameless mate berates hir for using such force. V responds with the predictable "you ungrateful little **** spiel." V's mate talks about ending the cycle of revenge...says that protecting the family should've been enough...

All this happens while Mama Dragon's Floating Head is still conscious. She has an epiphany and begs forgiveness from V's mate, offering what she can (directions to a horde, maybe) to begin to atone for her misdeeds.

V, on the other hand, descends into spousal and child abuse and comes back from the experience uberpowerful, but also profoundly lonely...so what's the point?

David Argall

2009-03-21, 06:10 PM

a-V is not motivated by revenge here. She would have used something like Soul Bind if she were. Like V says, he is wanting to protect his family.

b-V is super powerful, but no, she can't go god killing. This is just a toy from the fiends. If they could use it to kill gods, they would have already have done so.

c-V is not going to get any karma kickback here. He is going back to mundane levels, and any appropriate kickback would be simply lethal.

d-Nor is this deed epic evil. It is not Xykon evil, or even Redcloak evil. With a little work, one could even deem it good.

Ridureyu

2009-03-21, 06:14 PM

Am I the only person who doesn't think that Tiamat is going to put on a pair of boxing gloves and try to meet up for an old-fashioned showdown?

The Minx

2009-03-21, 06:18 PM

The motivation for this act was not protection of V's family, it was spite and the power kick. Protection of family is only the pretext. And while Redcloak did much evil, he never did it gratuitously.

There is no way this act can be construed as good.

Wolf_Plague

2009-03-21, 06:22 PM

d-Nor is this deed epic evil. It is not Xykon evil, or even Redcloak evil. With a little work, one could even deem it good.
I concur.
A few years of intensive work to raise enough money for Resurrection of couple Good and couple Neutral Black Dragons(if there were such) and some sincere apologises would be enough to cover all negative sides of killing a bunch of Evil aligned creatures.

The motivation for this act was not protection of V's family
And the proof will be..?

The MunchKING

2009-03-21, 06:29 PM

a-V is not motivated by revenge here. She would have used something like Soul Bind if she were. Like V says, he is wanting to protect his family.

She's not motivated SOLEY by revenge. She still brought Mama Dragon back from the afterlife so she could watch all her family die.

b-V is super powerful, but no, she can't go god killing. This is just a toy from the fiends. If they could use it to kill gods, they would have already have done so. But it required unprescidented levels of cooperation between the Hellish forces. If they had suggested doing that to any one of themselves, do you think the other 2 would have gone along with it?

No, they needed a mortal, one they could play for a patsy. If this works on Tiamat, Then maybe in a few hundred years they'll power up someone with a mad-on for one of the Good Gods, and let them go to town on the Good side of the Pantheons.

The Minx

2009-03-21, 06:33 PM

And the proof will be..?

:smallsigh:

If you have been following the recent installment at all, you would not need to ask that question. Especially "the pain ended too soon" and "we have only begun to bring misery" and "there is still so much we can do".

Sebastian

2009-03-21, 06:33 PM

a-V is not motivated by revenge here. She would have used something like Soul Bind if she were. Like V says, he is wanting to protect his family.

People keep saying that, but how it is supposed to work? Because unless that spells killed all black dragons in the world there must be someone left, and some of it will be mate or parents of one of those killed by V and will be pissed as the ABD was, only 63 times more. This without taking in consideration Tiamat & c.

The MunchKING

2009-03-21, 06:33 PM

Am I the only person who doesn't think that Tiamat is going to put on a pair of boxing gloves and try to meet up for an old-fashioned showdown?

I would say it's extremely unlikely Tiamat will show up for anything approaching a fair fight. She's either going to ignore it, or sucker-punch V with all the might of a pissed off goddess. Either way, I doubt we'll see some kind of epic V-Tiamat fight.

paddyfool

2009-03-21, 06:36 PM

a-V is not motivated by revenge here. She would have used something like Soul Bind if she were. Like V says, he is wanting to protect his family.

Take another look. Look at V smile as (s)he casts the spell. It's not just protection - V wants to do this.

b-V is super powerful, but no, she can't go god killing. This is just a toy from the fiends. If they could use it to kill gods, they would have already have done so.

Agreed.

c-V is not going to get any karma kickback here. He is going back to mundane levels, and any appropriate kickback would be simply lethal.

V sure as heck should get karma kickback here. I appreciate that plot-wise "V dies horribly" etc. is hard to resolve, but can you deny that (s)he deserves it?

d-Nor is this deed epic evil. It is not Xykon evil, or even Redcloak evil. With a little work, one could even deem it good.

You didn't find an act of mass murder of this kind evil? You think that to write off the lives of all even vaguely related beings in an immediate and callous fashion could be deemed "good"? In time of war, this might be understood, if not condoned. But by using it as (s)he is - as an out of the blue, cold-hearted, arrogant and cowardly preemptive strike against a mass of beings because some few of them "might" have later sought vengeance - V has really gone over. It's a classic, because horrifying, dark side transition.

Nightfall

2009-03-21, 06:44 PM

Holy carp! And " 'Suvie" doesn't even get to keep the XP for this! That's just not right!
:vaarsuvius: I concur. There seems to be a great inequity within the context of this 'deal'.

Cabeza

2009-03-21, 06:46 PM

If you think like that then you could say it was the adolescent dragons fault for trying to eat Hayley, or the OotS's fault for even being in that cave in the first place, or the Linear Guild's fault for sending Roy on that bogus quest to find the star metal, or Xykon's fault for breaking Roy's sword.

Although I agree with your point of information there, taekwondo (btw cool name), I must say that not only, as you said, killing X dragons was unnecessary and unfair, but also we must take in consideration what V did, and that was the lack of mercy.
Going back in the old strips, when V is returned to elf once again after being a lizard, he/she had NO MERCY with the joung adult dragon. What I mean is, he/she did not only use desintegration once, but twice! Remember that the first time he/she casted the spell, the dragon was already woozy and uncapable of fight. Nevertheless, V insisted on departicularizing the dragon.
Remember that V already knew that that dragon was not the only one there, then again... At least He/She might have use a little wit and took in consideration the consecuances of his/her acts. If he/she spared the joung dragon's life, then mom dragon would at least have forgiven he/she for sparing the joung dragon's life. Then he/she might have used a minior spell to not kill it but to knock it out to uncounciousness. Although taking away the hoard would ocasionally disturb mom dragon. But that's not the point. A child's life is more important than any hoard, even more important than the greatest of all hoards, don't you think so? Even for a dragon, who has feelings as any other living being.
And, in strip Nº639, he/she once again gives no mercy, even though the adult dragon begs for it and apologizes.
To settle this, The Order of the Stick had no choice, they had to go into that cave to retrieve the star metal, I know. And I won't argue it. But killing the dragon was a matter of choice. Imagine the problems V had evaded if he/she just let the joung dragon live...

seanearlyaug

2009-03-21, 07:32 PM

In many universes, Elves have a bit different morality than humans.
Check JRRT, Wendi Pini, many others.
They tend to be depicted as being closer to nature.
The genocidal slaughter of an entire species, (and that is what I am seeing drawn here), is an evil on elvish nature of huge and horrible degree.

The bad news is that Galadriel now has the ring,
The good news is that she still likes elves.
Kinda like the return of Sauron.

I feel sorry for V. When s/he gets done, (and when each of the other 3 have their turns finished), there will be so much to attone for, so much sorrow if s/he ever wishes to be considered anything other than a deep enimy of his/her people.

In one way s/he is not being very wise. The length of time the other 3 get is exactly the lenght of time s/he spends working in linkage with them . This must be minimized, and that is not happening.

If s/he were sane, by any terms especially elvish ones, saving ones own family only to turn the world over to very high level destructive spirits is just irresponsible. And doing un-Elvish acts in front of family is just a side problem.
But deprived of rest, s/he has loosed her hold on sanity.

Sean

Mystyco

2009-03-21, 07:38 PM

HOLY
*******
****

talk about overkill, that's like nuking down a dolphin.

Sabre13

2009-03-21, 07:45 PM

I tried to read the entire thread before posting a reply, but YEEEEEEEEEEEEEK there's a lot to read!!! Please dont hold anything i say out of ignorance against me.

Wow... I miss the funnier not-so-plausibly-evil V :smalleek:
I'm going to use some logic a celestial used earlier: Using Evil means to bring about a good end sounds pretty neutral to me. or something.
now because I have extra, :mitd:

Scubasteve0209

2009-03-21, 07:48 PM

To coin a phrase from Erfworld:

Booping Boop.....

Sotris

2009-03-21, 07:49 PM

:smallsigh:

If you have been following the recent installment at all, you would not need to ask that question. Especially "the pain ended too soon" and "we have only begun to bring misery" and "there is still so much we can do".Both opinions have their merit, I think. It is the Voices that say that, not V; but the Voices are subtly manipulating his actions, by making him rationalize the death and destruction he causes. At this point, V himself may think he has a perfectly good reason to cast Familicide (and enjoying the pain he causes ABD is only a bonus)... But he's just fooling himself: The truth is he's becoming a puppet of the Voices with extreme ease. And it keeps getting worse.

sotanaht

2009-03-21, 07:50 PM

A funny thing just occurred to me:

Suppose it's not over yet?

Suppose the next strip is just more panels of dragons dying "out of the blue"? If all dragons are related, and/or crossbreeding between dragon types is possible, then we could conceivably only have seen the beginning of the "main line" dying-- subsidiary and sidelines haven't yet been touched.

Suppose it really is an Extinction Level Event, because of the nature of dragon breeding (and You Are There)?

Would it be "Evil" then (for those of you who think it's not evil now)? It certainly would be the only thing more shocking than what has already occurred.

Perhaps, however, if it could follow those lines, it would also follow half dragon lines, and would eventually reach omnicidal levels. Then again, ask yourself, are the unexpected and unintentional side effects of an action enough to qualify it as evil? Taking an example from KOTOR2, if giving a beggar some money results in him being mugged and possibly killed for that money, was it evil to give them the money?

Xorbon

2009-03-21, 08:01 PM

18 pages of posts so far. I stopped at 8. I think that's not bad.

(Edit: 19 pages now)

Anyway, that was awesome! (Not in a "good" way, obviously.)

I wasn't expecting V to go so far on the scale of evil! And this was an evil act. I don't care what some people say. For one thing, the act was indiscriminate. For another, the primary purpose was NOT to get rid of dragons for the good of the world. Nor was it for the purpose of keeping her family safe. That was secondary (in my opinion, of course). The primary purpose was to cause emotional pain to the mother dragon - to get revenge (once again, in my opinion). Just reread panel 6, and see her smile in panels 10 and 11 as she's committing the act.

Another thing: many people (it looks like maybe more than half of the posters here) are under the belief that the spell just wiped out the entire black dragon population. While it is a possibility, there's no evidence that this is absolutely the case. I, for one, believe the spell only targeted the mother's family members. I would like to see V (or the mother dragon) explicitly confirming this one way or the other in the next comic so we can put this to rest.

And finally, in response to some who don't think V's family can understand V and the dragon talking in common, reread OotS #636 (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0636.html). It clearly shows V's spouse talking to the dragon - presumably in common. That means that V's spouse can understand everything that was said in #639. What that ultimately means for V, we will have to wait to find out!

The Minx

2009-03-21, 08:01 PM

Both opinions have their merit, I think. It is the Voices that say that, not V;

True, though he says "I concur" in the same frame.

but the Voices are subtly manipulating his actions, by making him rationalize the death and destruction he causes. At this point, V himself may think he has a perfectly good reason to cast Familicide (and enjoying the pain he causes ABD is only a bonus)... But he's just fooling himself: The truth is he's becoming a puppet of the Voices with extreme ease. And it keeps getting worse.

He may be influenced by their voices, but ultimately he's supposed to be the one in charge of the gestalt. The soul-splice contract would become null and void if the fiends lied about that, so he's responsible (and don't forget, he entered that splice willingly and for the "wrong reasons"). He may probably think he has good reason to do this, but this is a rationalization, and yes, he's falling pretty fast and far.

MorhgorRB

2009-03-21, 08:07 PM

Admittedly I skipped four or five pages, but it's still a (Crackpot) theory that I feel driven to bring up ; the gods created the new world in order to trap snarl. Now to make outrageous claims!
• V just destroyed (at least) 60ish ancient, powerful creatures. Probably hundreds more.
• The mass destruction (and depending on what happens to the bodies off panel obliteration, husk, etc) s/he may have just removed a large amount of reality.
• Less world, less trapping on Snarl.
• The rift above Azure city might be weakened by this world shattering magic!
• Cut away to Elan making the "Dun dun dun."
• Belkar gets eaten by the now-recurring ZOMBIE CHIMERA.

That is all.

Phoenixus

2009-03-21, 08:13 PM

After listening to the discussion,

I cannot see how you can in the terms of D&D consider this a purely evil act. I see it as a purely nuetral one. Removing emotion and "awe" from size of the equasion... at the end, V killed a large number of Evil dragons.

This is no different than your standard adventuring party wandering into a Dragon's Lair and killing a Black Dragon and looting it's treasure even though it's done nothing wrong. While there are some potentially non-evil creatures killed, in reality V did little more than go on a large scale Dragon slaying hunt (and to prevent any more threats to his/her family).

This is a standard D&D thing on a larger scale.

Was that a very awesome display of power?
Yes...

Are the ramifications of just how large scale it was, chilling?
Yes...

Was it overkill?
Possibly, but from V's perspective it was more akin to self defense.

This is a nuetral act, not an evil one, not in the terms of D&D.

AlexanderRM

2009-03-21, 08:16 PM

While I generally hate all the people who make contentless "OH NO!" posts without reading most of the thread, I'm afraid I just have to do that right now...

Awesome!

Before anyone says V is really evil now, let me point out: He saved the bunny!

:smallbiggrin:

Also, did V just kill every black dragon in the world? No saving throw? How... How can a spell do that?

EDIT: No, wait, I get it now. It killed every blood relative the black dragon had, no saving throw.

I was wondering about why the spell even had to go through as many dragons as it did (I counted 48)just to prevent anyone avenging the death of that one dragon, but if you think about it wiping out dragons with that spell might simply result in THEIR relatives avenging those deaths, so... the spell would seem to create several new problems with every one it solves, and only exponentially increase the number of relatives who might seek revenge.
In order to completely finish it, you'd have to wipe out effectively every black dragon in the whole world, but then you'd also have to wipe out all their half-black dragon (or half-fiendish and half-celestial black dragons) relatives... and then you'd need to wipe out all the fully-non-black-dragon relatives of those creatures. Not only would this eventually wipe out practically every living creature in the world (probably including V and vir family), the spellcraft DC required to do that with no saving throw would probably require... I can't even express how long that would take, even with nonstop ritual abuse summoning (which clearly isn't being used).

...I'm guessing Rich just ignores that issue and makes it all blood relatives X steps away.

I'm guessing Rich just

motub

2009-03-21, 08:19 PM

Then again, ask yourself, are the unexpected and unintentional side effects of an action enough to qualify it as evil?
Unintentional? Unexpected???!

This spell is a Unique-- researched and created by the Evil mage that gave use of it to V.

The effects were undoubtedly intentional, though there is a possibility that they were "unexpected"-- in the same way that the effects of the H-bomb were unexpected (i.e., even more devastating than the design was expected to produce).

And while V may not have known the details of the effect's magnitude, when you gain use of a spell called something like "Familicide", from an Evil mage who "killed (thousands, was it?) with but a thought", "unexpected" starts looking a little thin in the light of bare common sense-- much less V's vaunted huge Intelligence-- as does "unintentional".

EmeraldPhoenix

2009-03-21, 08:19 PM

I've always liked V - up until this. Not even I can defend that action. :smallfrown:

:smallfurious:GAAAAH! It's that evil group of people CONTROLLING Vaarsuvious that are making this happen and making her want so much revenge (not to mention the evil souls directly talking to her), IT'S NOT V'S FAULT! I am an avid, blind, ignorant V supporter, and I wish to remain that way!

So THERE!

jmucchiello

2009-03-21, 08:29 PM

Yay, I can see a whole planet from here =D
And a centaurblackdragonwithnecklace!No, no, far more amusing is the big bad dragon about to swoop down and kill a rabbit.

Oh, and for those mistakenly believing this was the ultimate evil, just wait until V uses one of the scrolls of soul bind on momma dragon.

Sabre13

2009-03-21, 08:33 PM

Earlier on, someone asked if Tiamat and the oracle knew about what would happen now. Yes. V asked the Oracle if s/he would ever reach ultimate arcane power or some such thing, and the Oracle replied "Yes, for all the wrong reasons" or something close. Idk if someone already mentioned this, pls dont kill me if they did, but if no one did, then Woot! Go me!

Is the above even a spoiler? Those unafraid of reading spoilers, please message me if It isnt.

seanearlyaug

2009-03-21, 08:39 PM

Jumped the shark is a phrase
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumping_the_shark
It may be relevent here. I hope not.
Sean

Phoenixus

2009-03-21, 08:41 PM

:smallfurious:GAAAAH! It's that evil group of people CONTROLLING Vaarsuvious that are making this happen and making her want so much revenge (not to mention the evil souls directly talking to her), IT'S NOT V'S FAULT! I am an avid, blind, ignorant V supporter, and I wish to remain that way!

So THERE!

Well it wouldn't really matter anyway even if this wasn't an act that leans to the neutral side (which it does).

Neutrals can do both, so long as they don't spend extended times around one or another. They are a balance, and so long as their actions make sense in the context of what they are doing, there's not going to be a real alignment shift anyway.

Generally for Neutral alignments they will use whatever means necessary to end a situation. They are not bound by the limitations of good, nor are they bound by the limitations of evil. Both are irrelevent to the long term goal they intend to achieve whatever that may be.

Neutrals are more focused on the end result, not the means of getting there.

Pir8bard

2009-03-21, 08:41 PM

Putting aside the morality of what V did, anybody else hear Sean Connery when they read the title? Only thing cooler than that was V's badassness.

aarondirebear

2009-03-21, 08:58 PM

Hmm, I didn't get the title.

"Their man pulls a knife, your man pulls a gun. They send your man to the hospital, you send their man to the morgue. THAT is how you get Al Capone"

Its from an old movie called The Untouchables.

EmeraldPhoenix

2009-03-21, 09:01 PM

"Their man pulls a knife, your man pulls a gun. They send your man to the hospital, you send their man to the morgue. THAT is how you get Al Capone"

Its from an old movie called The Untouchables.

OHHHHHHHH. OK. Thanks.

Turalisj

2009-03-21, 09:01 PM

Di....did.......

......

Did V just kill off every black dragon? :eek:

Volkov

2009-03-21, 09:03 PM

Uh..... Wow!

Well, I guess in game terms all black dragons are evil by definition - so V has just ridded the world of a great deal of evil (all the affected dragons appeared to be black). Whether that's an evil act or not depends on if you judge it subjectively or objectively. Objectively, Good has won a great victory this day and it was a Very Good act. Subjectively, V's motivations were quite evil.

Perhaps V has turned Evil in the commission of a great Good. That would be nice irony.

But mostly, just... Wow!

w
What V has done is created a great imbalance in the Dragon world, and has killed one of Tiamat's heads. Thus weakening devil kind, and giving demons the advantage they need to conquer the nine hells and end all existence.

Code Black

2009-03-21, 09:10 PM

Neutrals are more focused on the end result, not the means of getting there.

There could be a whole debate over whether Machiavellan logic is truly a neutral point, but I get the feeling you're rationalizing this from the perspective of D&D, which I have little knowledge of.

I do note that it's evident that I don't really think Rich defines the morality of actions by their equivalent in D&D, at least not entirely, but rather by their effects in terms of the characters and their world, and, in fact, shows the possible effects if one defines their every action that way (Miko, the death of Redcloak's family); Right and Wrong in this come aren't defined so absolutely here. They're different than the real world, for sure, but they're not as simply put as a lot of people here tend to think.

V just killed the entire family, as far as it goes by blood (it might not stop just at 48, either) of a creature who came to hir in vengeance for the death of her son. Regardless of hir good intentions, that's a shockingly brutal act.

I expect hir family to be horrified.

aarondirebear

2009-03-21, 09:18 PM

{scrubbed}.

{Scrubbed}

Volkov

2009-03-21, 09:20 PM

V killed a wyrmling, a Mated pair, a starving black dragon, and a nest of eggs amongst all others. These acts are incredibly evil, they are evil beyond all imagination, You don't go and kill a child who was just barely born, you don't go and kill a husband and his wife, you do not kill a starving man, and you sure as hell do not kill unborn eggs and the mother. Abortion is a willing act, what V just did is GENOCIDE.

No matter who you kill, Genocide is an inherently evil act.

The MunchKING

2009-03-21, 09:20 PM

Silverain

2009-03-21, 09:27 PM

You know what may turn out to be another problem ...

V can't use divine magic under the terms of his splice (even if his kin souls know any divine spells). Which probably means, if he kills or injures someone and later regrets it, he can't fix it. He would need to go find a cleric to do the healing/resurrection. I am fully expecting him to run into this problem soon, since he is currently having fun killing everything in sight.

It also means that if Somebody (ahem) stumbles on all those dragon corpses V just manufactured, and reanimates them, V cannot turn/rebuke the undead dragons. Which means that if he's run out of destructive spells by then, he may be in serious trouble.

p.s. Also ... the fiends who sold him the spell said they'd get to own him for as long as he rented the souls they control. But the reason they get control over those dead evil mages in the first place is (presumably) because they were evil. So if V has just changed to an Evil alignment, the fiends (or at least the Lawful one) might get V's soul into their jurisdiction PERMANENTLY. I mean, if he's eternally damned himself by what he just did, that's going to send him to an evil plane after he dies, right?

Turalisj

2009-03-21, 09:27 PM

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0331.html

Ultimate power for all the wrong reasons.....

And he killed off black dragons... which would have commited horribly evil acts, thus doing good in the process of doing evil.

No, you wouldn't kill a married couple or an old man. BUT, would you kill them if they were mass murderers? And would you kill a child knowing he would grow up one day to kill hundreds of thousands?

Edit: As to the having fun with killing, I have a baaaaad feeling about this.... I sense V may be mad with power soon. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DrunkWithPower)

Volkov

2009-03-21, 09:36 PM

Wait a minute I just realized this chain will go all the way up to bahumat tiamat and wipe out Dragons as a whole due to how they were created. So now the game will just be. D, Dungeons. Also it will wipe out millions of not billions of sorcerers.

Lupy

2009-03-21, 10:41 PM

I was reminded greatly of Order 66 for some reason. :smalleek:

malakim2099

2009-03-21, 10:42 PM

After listening to the discussion,

I cannot see how you can in the terms of D&D consider this a purely evil act. I see it as a purely nuetral one. Removing emotion and "awe" from size of the equasion... at the end, V killed a large number of Evil dragons.

First, black dragons are not universally evil. Particularly half-dragons (hell, I played a LN half-black dragon in a campaign).

Second, V makes it quite clear that the goal is not to remove the threat to the family. That's a nice justification.

V's goal is to hurt Momma Dragon as much as possible. Intentionally inflicting pain and familicide on that massive a scale, is an evil act.

It disturbs me that so many people can justify this so easily. This is not like an adventuring group seeking out a black dragon threat and killing it. The key word in that phrase is threat. There is no evidence that the black dragons killed off were threats to V or the family.

V just wanted to inflict as much emotional pain on the Ancient Black Dragon, and brought her back to unlife to see it. V didn't want ABD merely defeated. V wanted to crush her hopes, her spirits, and basically reduce her to a whimpering and horrified being.

That, is never a good act. Period. And frankly, I wouldn't be surprised to see V do a soul bind next comic.

As far as Tiamat goes? Gods are patient. I'm quite sure that she might make a few deals with the IFCC (or whoever has V's soul when V dies, because I'm pretty sure at this point the damnation ticket is stamped barring any redemption quests).

Tiamat: "Here, have some abishai servants. Let me have the elf."

IFCC: "Hmmm. Okay!"

:smallamused:

sotanaht

2009-03-21, 10:45 PM

Unintentional? Unexpected???!

This spell is a Unique-- researched and created by the Evil mage that gave use of it to V.

The effects were undoubtedly intentional, though there is a possibility that they were "unexpected"-- in the same way that the effects of the H-bomb were unexpected (i.e., even more devastating than the design was expected to produce).

And while V may not have known the details of the effect's magnitude, when you gain use of a spell called something like "Familicide", from an Evil mage who "killed (thousands, was it?) with but a thought", "unexpected" starts looking a little thin in the light of bare common sense-- much less V's vaunted huge Intelligence-- as does "unintentional".

You missed the point. If the spell can cross species completely and wipe out all dragons, then it would wipe out nearly all sentient life given the crossbreeding in play in the setting, and absolutely all life if it was going back to common ancestors. THAT is unexpected in terms of the spell, and if it managed to do that, it would be nothing but an accident.

No matter how evil the spellcaster was, she most likely did not want a spell that would kill everything, self included, or most likely, even self-alone excluded. It is not reasonable to expect this effect from the spell. If it did happen, it would be nothing more then a massive screw-up, rather then unadulterated evil.

mikeejimbo

2009-03-21, 10:54 PM

So if they pull a knife, kill their whole family?

Quistar

2009-03-21, 10:59 PM

Wow, V is evil.

I wonder if "taking on" every black dragon in the world at once gives him XP.

Actually, no, part of the deal with the Splice was that V could NOT earn any XP while it was in effect.

Probably makes Belkar feel better about the hobgoblin horde he slaughtered back in Azure City tho!

the_tick_rules

2009-03-21, 11:13 PM

I think the spell is limited to only the genetic family of the black dragon. But with such long lifespans this can wind up being a long list. I'm assuming the dragons get a save. Apparently V's ubber badarsery made this save too high. Consdering how high dragon's saves are this spell this mean. As for gods not even close. A deity of level 1 (the lowest level of being a full god) is immune to death effects, so nothing there. Plus deities have certain other abilities, for instance life and death. A god can take it at level 6. Basically if your within it's rank in miles, 6 for this case, of this god (or if your on the wrong side of a level 12 god anyone one of it's 6 avatars potentially) or within 6 miles of any if it's holy sites or objects sacred to god, or within 6 miles of an event realted to it's portfolio happens, anywhere it's name was spoken, or one of it's worshippers for an hour prior it can kill you with a thought, no saving throw and you're unressurectable by anything less than a god who has same ability and is higher ranked. Think the god has an edge.

Oh and the one guy said it was possible to gain xp. But V's massive new EL meant this was unlikely. Would something on this scale suffice? We shall see.

I posted the link to verify my xp claim

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0634.html

FoE

2009-03-21, 11:17 PM

So if they pull a knife, kill their whole family?

That's the rule I've lived my life by. :smalltongue:

Llaqus

2009-03-21, 11:21 PM

um... is it just me or did anyone else notice the dragon/horse thing that V killed and wonder how on earth that thing was spawned.

the_tick_rules

2009-03-21, 11:25 PM

um... is it just me or did anyone else notice the dragon/horse thing that V killed and wonder how on earth that thing was spawned.

A dragon made sweet, sweet love to a centaur?

Xorbon

2009-03-21, 11:25 PM

It's obviously the love child of a dragon and a horse. :smallwink:

Thoughtbot360

2009-03-21, 11:52 PM

And the spell also gets half-dragon centaurs!
:smalleek:

If the half dragon was part of the black dragon's family, then yes.

Also, notice how the pictures shrink? I think the smaller the pic, the more distant the relative. If the spell can reach as far as that....how much of the global black dragon population just died? How powerful is that spell? Aren't all Black Dragons (and maybe even the other dragons and other reptiles) loosely "related"?

FoE

2009-03-21, 11:57 PM

Also, notice how the pictures shrink? I think the smaller the pic, the more distant the relative. If the spell can reach as far as that....how much of the global black dragon population just died? How powerful is that spell? Aren't all Black Dragons (and maybe even the other dragons and other reptiles) loosely "related"?

I think that's just a visual cue telling us how many black dragons were killed by this spell: dozens and dozens. After all, it would have taken a LOT of room to show each dragon getting killed in its own big panel.

Hell Puppi

2009-03-22, 12:40 AM

Mystery

2009-03-22, 12:53 AM

V just missed an opportunity to say, "As a parent, I am sure you understand." (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0629.html)

Warren Dew

2009-03-22, 01:58 AM

I agree that this act was more evil than anything Xykon has done before (Xykon always manages to be funny about it)

Funny makes things less evil? I doubt the people on the receiving end feel that way. In fact, I think funny is often tool to avoid censure while doing even greater evil.

Remember the "resistance" arc? Xykon helped Redcloak enslave thousands of civilians in Azure City, and has likely killed or worked thousands to death by now. Even killing 62 good dragons would not compare to that, and few black dragons are good.

V killed innocents - creatures that had no quarrels with hir.

While they may not have had a quarrel with Vaarsuvius, that doesn't make them "innocents".

I agree, that it needed a material focus for decerning the bloodline. I, however, doubt that it needed the sentient conciousness of a being to do the decerning when genetic material, like a severed head, will suffice.

You're forgetting whose spell it is. Haera probably enjoyed making "reanimated head of recently killed relative" a material component.

As if killing so many blacks is not going to anger the remaining ones.

Huh? Black dragons are evil and selfish. Their reaction is not going to be, "oh my god, this elf killed 62 total strangers, I'm going to get me and my relatives killed trying to avenge them." Their reaction is going to be, "oh my god, this elf killed 62 black dragons in one shot, I am going to stay out of its way!"

At most, Vaarsuvius risks angering a few close friends ... and frankly, probably not by enough for them to risk tangling with this epic dragon killing machine. Tiamat may be a different question.

You misunderstand the comic because you didn't read it carefully enough. Killing the black dragon's family was not about "settling the score". He just wanted to make sure that there won't be another black dragon who comes for revenge (just like the black dragon mother did) and threatens the elf's family again. Killing all relatives of the dragon was prophylactic; it was not about revenge.

Exactly. As someone else pointed out, if it were for revenge, Vaarsuvius would have explained a bit more to the reanimated dragon head first.

And, uh, it's weird that the reanimated head seems to be under the dragon's control and not Vaarsuvius's?

I haven't played since second edition, but I do try to keep up a bit on the iterations of D&D. People have argued for years that mages are stupidly overpowered in 3.5 (they were in 2.0 at high levels), and this really cements the fact. The very thought that one person, with minimal effort, could wipe out so many powerful creatures at a distance is just...stupid. Why would anyone ever bother playing a fighter?

Because very few campaigns get to epic level?

I'm sure there's still some who don't yet believe Suvie is evil, but I think some of them could justify V destroying the whole of the OOtS world and releasing the Snarl.

There are certainly posters who think Redcloak is justified in doing that.

But I just realized something. This act wasn't evil because it was created by the evil necromancer, because it was over the top (overkill, heh heh), or whatever-- the thing that made it Evil was doing it anyway after the ABD surrendered.

Yes, yes, of course the surrender didn't mean anything in practical terms, given that the surrender was given by a Raised Undead dragon head, but symbolically, it meant a whole lot.

Sorry, but no. The surrender is meaningless because the mother dragon has no way to bind her relatives. They may still come after Vaarsuvius's family even after the mother attempts to surrender.

To put it another way, Vaarsuvius has done nothing to the mother dragon herself after her surrender.

Of course, this doesn't compare to the evil of Redcloak, Nale, or Xykon. They have all slaughtered countless people for evil reasons. Much worse than risking hurting a few innocents.

Finally someone with some perspective.

IF V was doing this for pure and noble reasons, then we might and I stress might have a different debate. But he didn't. He did this for selfish and malicious reasons.

Protecting your family from potential harm is selfish and malicious? Overkill, maybe; selfish or malicious, no.

Anyone gots a non-evil (with these sets of circumstances) explanation for that? :smallamused:

Yes. Vaarsuvius could just be relishing finally attaining and exercising ultimate arcane power. I don't think that's a likely explanation, but it is quite possible.

Well, one thing that makes this interesting is the strongly emphasized Alignment Feedback of the Soul Splice. We know from the comic that the souls are influencing Vaarsuvius, and that V's ability to keep the Soul Splice under control directly depends on his strength of will. And V's last shreds of confidence and willpower were completely stripped away in 634

Now, that's an interesting observation. Perhaps the fiends needed to challenge Vaarsuvius's self confidence in order to increase susceptibility to the fiends.

I still think Vaarsuvius still gets full responsibility for the actions, though.

One can think they are doing good things, and yet be massively Evil

Exactly. One's intentions may be good, but it's one's actions that actually matter.

c-V is not going to get any karma kickback here. He is going back to mundane levels, and any appropriate kickback would be simply lethal.

I suspect karma kickback could scale with character power.

gmatht

2009-03-22, 02:33 AM

There's no way V can be sure that every single dragon has been wiped out. The magic system is too vast and diverse, and the dragon family is large enough, that the odds are very good that some dragon somewhere had some special protection or ward or immunity and wasn't killed by the Familicide spell. And even if every single dragon was wiped out, the spell couldn't have killed everyone who knew or liked those dragons--and if it had, then it would have to kill everyone who knew them, and so on until everyone on the planet is dead.

The spell only affected black dragons. The cute green dragoness next door could be coming for *revenge*!.

Wolf_Plague

2009-03-22, 04:37 AM

Second, V makes it quite clear that the goal is not to remove the threat to the family. That's a nice justification.

V's goal is to hurt Momma Dragon as much as possible. There is no evidence that the black dragons killed off were threats to V or the family.
<...>
V just wanted to inflict as much emotional pain on the Ancient Black Dragon, and brought her back to unlife to see it.
<...>

DeadABD: What-? Where am I? I was with my son and husband...
V: I assure you, you will see your kin again shortly.
DeadABD: You-you reanimated my head?
V: Had you simply attacked me, I would have left you dead. But you made the mistake of involving my family in our conflict.
This leaves me with the task of ensuring that today's events will never rise again to threaten them.

I found those motivations pretty clear. Trying to object solely on the grounds of Spliced V's facial expression is highly ridiculous.

:smallfurious:GAAAAH! It's that evil group of people CONTROLLING Vaarsuvious that are making this happen and making her want so much revenge (not to mention the evil souls directly talking to her), IT'S NOT V'S FAULT! I am an avid, blind, ignorant V supporter, and I wish to remain that way!

You have my deepest sympathies :smallamused:

sotanaht

2009-03-22, 05:17 AM

Exactly. One's intentions may be good, but it's one's actions that actually matter.

When ones intentions are evil, but their actions are good is it still only the actions that matter?

Killing such vile creatures as black dragons is defined as a good thing in a normal circumstance. Killing a lot of them should be considered then an incredibly good act, even if they weren't involved with V, they were still evil creatures who were a threat to somebody, somewhere. The reason for doing this however, regardless of what was stated, was likely for revenge and emotional torture, but if only ones actions, and not the reasons why they performed them matter, then this was purely good except for those potentially non-evil half dragons, of which there were not many nor were they likely non-evil.

derfenrirwolv

2009-03-22, 05:21 AM

Paraphrasing Xykon in sod

Evil isn't about WHAT you want. Its about how far you're willing to go to get it.

V just packed for a cross country trip.

It was horribly reckless. An adventuring party going around killing every black dragon in the world would at least have a chance of finding out if a particular black dragon was doing anything evil, just sitting alone in their lair, or if in fact they were the one in a million exception to the "always evil" alignment listed in the monster manual. V didn't look, V didn't care.

It is however, the moral equivalent of carpet bombing an enemy town with a munitions plant in the center. Yes, you'll stop a potential threat to you and yours, but you'll probably get some innocent people as well. In war, there's no other solution. For an adventurer though....

Eonwe

2009-03-22, 05:31 AM

ouch...

imho logically there has to be a difference between Familicide and Genocide, for that reason I doubt it will wipe out all Black Dragons in existance.

T
-----------------
A A
/ \ / \
A A A A
X \ / \ / \ / \

X=Target of Familicide
T=Tiamat
---- = Broken Lineage(no direct still living Dragons on that plane of existence forming the Link)

Looking at the illustration above. My theorie is, if Familicide was cast on X it would trace back in the family tree until the oldest directly linked living ancestor is found and then go back down and kill all it's descendants... in this case only the Left tree, whereas Genocide would always kill everything.

Assuming that the direct descendant of Tiamat which in turn spawned the left tree is not alive, Tiamat and the right tree(of Black Dragons) would be untouched. But of course Tiamat beeing on another Plane would still have been untouched in either case.

Cyradoc

2009-03-22, 05:50 AM

It's pretty unexpected how frequently when quoting somebody else, people can forget to include the whole point of the original poster.

I agree that this act was more evil than anything Xykon has done before (Xykon always manages to be funny about it), or at least this is how it looked today.

I was talking about how the fact itself is being presented to us, and I tried to elaborate in a few subsequent posts, that weren't quoted, maybe not even read, since the thread is becoming so filled with replies.

This is after all, a comic that is supposed to be funny and enjoyable to read, I like the Xykon character, and yes, he's supposed to be an evil 'lich sorcerer, mad with his own power'. Xykon and Redcloak have been pursuing their own evil ends most of the time, but Xykon hasn't yet cast an uberpowerful spell with, I think, the prime purpose of bringing misery.

It's unfortunate that a few people tend to just barge in and say 'You are wrong.' (plain and simple) presenting their own ideas as the absolute truth.
Forgive me if I inferred in your higher-grade philosophical reasonings, I just tried to express a humble opinion in a totally relaxed atmosphere, I am here just to chat and have a laugh with the others. :smallsmile:

2009-03-22, 05:57 AM

Maybe it's just me and my idiotic way of doing things, but aren't we overthinking this a bit?

And besides, it's a fantasy setting! Things we're at the beggining of time as they are now! So there must be hundreds of Black Dragon families since there we're tons to start out with. Does that make any sense? No? Okay let me put it this way.

In the world of X there are 100, lets say, Black Dragons at the worlds creation. Because theres nothing before them theres no family heritage to trace back. Dragons breed and Dragons die and 100 years later, theres 1000 black dragons. True a large number would die but not all of them because the bloodline goes back so far before it stops.

Xaa

2009-03-22, 07:08 AM

Dunno, but for myself, V has slipped past the Moral Event Horizon (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MoralEventHorizon).

Wolf_Plague

2009-03-22, 07:28 AM

Dunno, but for myself, V has slipped past the Moral Event Horizon (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MoralEventHorizon).

Reading such posts I wonder what Great Good Deed those evil black dragons done to earn so much sympathy from readers? Aside, y'now being evil, vengeful and so on? I wonder if anyone else in OotS ever received so much support. And from all possible candidates it weren't people of Azure city or V's children, no, it is a bunch of stinkin' black dragons nobody cared about 5 minutes ago.

snafu

2009-03-22, 07:29 AM

In the world of X there are 100, lets say, Black Dragons at the worlds creation. Because theres nothing before them theres no family heritage to trace back. Dragons breed and Dragons die and 100 years later, theres 1000 black dragons. True a large number would die but not all of them because the bloodline goes back so far before it stops.

Not necessarily.

For a start, do we know the details of how this world was created? Some creation myths have living things created en masse, others have a single breeding pair of each species created and all creatures of a given species descend from that single pair. Reading through the crayon pages, I think the world was created already populated - and indeed already civilised, since they decided on a world with knights and wizards and ninjas - but it's not quite made explicit.

Second, even supposing there are a hundred different black dragon bloodlines at creation, that doesn't mean they're still separate now. It's quite possible that every black dragon in the world is related. Some lineages go extinct; other lineages merge.

Imagine 26 families, A to Z, who settle on a newly discovered island. They live there, they intermarry, they have children and build happy lives in their new home. All of them prosper. No family ever goes into extinction, no family ever fails to have children. But if ever a family has a generation of only daughters, then that name disappears. Come back in a few centuries and you might find almost everybody on the island is called F.

And since the population of black dragons can't be especially large to begin with, I wouldn't be surprised if that's exactly what's happened. They seem to be fairly solitary beings - you don't get packs, or colonies of dragons - so a dragon must be willing to fly long distances to find a mate. The whole world is their happy little island, and by now they're completely interbred.

Regarding the enormous and unfair power of this spell: I wonder if the description said something like 'Spell exterminates all descendants of the target's grandparents. At 30th level it exterminates all descendants of the target's great-grandparents, and so on at a rate of one extra generation per ten caster levels.' Seems reasonable then... but when you have a house-ruled cheese character going Suupaa Saiyajin with a four-way fusion and hold the mustard, it suddenly changes from 'familicide' to 'total global genocide muhahahahahahahaha'...

Xaa

2009-03-22, 09:13 AM

Reading such posts I wonder what Great Good Deed those evil black dragons done to earn so much sympathy from readers?

Flip that question around: What Great Bad Deed had they specifically done to deserve utter extinction? Down to the un-hatched in the eggs?

lovelyluthien

2009-03-22, 10:09 AM

Nooo... He killed the monster in the darkness... Nooo... That hurts.

Kaytara

2009-03-22, 10:23 AM

Nooo... He killed the monster in the darkness... Nooo... That hurts.

That wasn't the MitD. :smallsigh: That was just another black dragon (with green eyes, not yellow eyes) that was concealing itself with a Darkness spell or just hiding in a cave somewhere.

Fabio_MP

2009-03-22, 10:26 AM

long time I don't write here... but the darkening of Varsivius and this utterly evil spell evoked me back

Familicide!

really an epic necromantic evil spell

kudos to the Giant!

Terbovus

2009-03-22, 10:28 AM

Woo!

Even the ickle dragons in their eggs. Varsie, you are going to a bad bad place...:smalleek:

EBass

2009-03-22, 10:31 AM

I really don't get the numerous people on this board who define things in simple alignment terms. I've read numerous times that "Black Dragons are listed as always CE so therefore their destruction is just." This falls down on so many levels.

A) I don't believe that these set in stone alignment descriptions are in any way conductive to anything. I think Rich sees things the same way, hes numerous times put moral shades of grey into characters that go far beyond the simple G/N/E, L/N/C axis. Redcloak would be a prime example, Miko would be another.

In addition to this we've had statements such as Belkar's "I thought we were just going to murder a load of sentinent creatures because they had different colour skin than us."

B) It accepts that it is just to be judge jury and executioner to any individual not on any crimes they have commited but on what is a fairly meaningless label. I mean lets just put this into human terms for a moment.

Lets say that the group "Member of the NKVD (I'm purposely avoiding the SS to avoid accusations of that online forum law.) is automatically listed as CE. Therefore we can, in peacetime, use a spell that slaughters all members of the NKVD and their close family, because in alignment terms that is just. What horsecrap.

Still I'd like to say here that I consider soul-binding the ultimate form of evil and in the story we've only seen the Dragon and Xykon (in SoD) do this.

werewolfjay

2009-03-22, 10:37 AM

Reading such posts I wonder what Great Good Deed those evil black dragons done to earn so much sympathy from readers? Aside, y'now being evil, vengeful and so on? I wonder if anyone else in OotS ever received so much support. And from all possible candidates it weren't people of Azure city or V's children, no, it is a bunch of stinkin' black dragons nobody cared about 5 minutes ago.

thats because we know that v wouldn't let his children get killed and we didnt see a strip of all the people of Azure city getting killed in huge numbers it was only the fighters(who were out numbered by a lot) and theres a under ground organization rescuing them but the dragons were massacred without a chance including unborn and young dragons which is evil no matter how you look at it and what did all those dragons do to v did they deserve to die because v massacred the dragons child and this also leads to some what if scenarios like what if there was human characters(like in dungeon and dragons tactics) related to the dragon or if one of dragons knew the location of powerful items or greater evil to help people( which has happened to me a couple of times)

The MunchKING

2009-03-22, 10:45 AM

thats because we know that v wouldn't let his children get killed and we didnt see a strip of all the people of Azure city getting killed in huge numbers it was only the fighters(who were out numbered by a lot) and theres a under ground organization rescuing them but the dragons were massacred without a chance including unborn and young dragons which is evil no matter how you look at it and what did all those dragons do to v did they deserve to die because v massacred the dragons child and this also leads to some what if scenarios like what if there was human characters(like in dungeon and dragons tactics) related to the dragon or if one of dragons knew the location of powerful items or greater evil to help people( which has happened to me a couple of times)

Dude. Punctuation.

Seventh Dwarf

2009-03-22, 10:49 AM

All of this hand-wringing about killing the family of the black dragon conflates and confuses what I believe are two very different concepts.

1. Game-defined evil
2. The more-or-less agreed modern moral concept of evil.

1.D&D defines certain creatures and acts as evil. Hobgoblins are evil. Black dragons are evil. Consorting with demons is evil. That does not mean that black dragons do not love and care for their offspring or that there is no concept of protecting the weaker members of the tribe (females and children) in hobgoblin society. It means that, for purposes of the GAME, these creatures are DEFINED as evil. Therefore, killing them is considered a GOOD act (if done by a GOOD person). A paladin that seeks the rid the world of orcs and does so by killing every fighter, civilian and child orc is doing good - that is why Smite Evil works on each of them. In a fantasy game, the hero does not need to put the demon on trial for statutorily-defined criminal acts before he kills the demon. Killing the demon is a good act because the demon is evil. The idea that it is less wrong to individually kill members of an evil species by adventuring as opposed to one single spell is ludicrous under this game-defined concept of evil (and the idea that one might find out by adventuring whether a particular dragon is good or evil seems strange considering a lot of kill-the-dragon adventures involve winning initiative and doing as much damage to the dragon on round one as possible).

Under (1), "Suvie" has committed at least one evil act - he/she consorted with creatures of the underworld to obtain ultimate power. This is pretty heinous as I understand evil as defined by the game - probably enough to send his/her soul to the lower planes all by itself. However, killing neither killing the YBD nor the ABD were evil acts. Killing every black dragon in existence was not an evil act.

2. In the "real world", there are no inherently evil creatures. Killing an individual who threatens your or your family is generally considered a "good" or at least acceptable act. On the other hand, committing genocide or "familicide" is evil because you are killing creatures that do not immediately threaten you. In most Western democracies, we have codified this defense of self and others as defenses to the murder and its associated crimes.

A paladin in the "real world" would be serving life without parole or sitting on death row. Why? You don't go around killing intelligent creatures simply because they are evil.

It is incorrect to judge V under (2). He/she lives in (1).

The MunchKING

2009-03-22, 10:51 AM

Lets say that the group "Member of the NKVD (I'm purposely avoiding the SS to avoid accusations of that online forum law.) is automatically listed as CE. Therefore we can, in peacetime, use a spell that slaughters all members of the NKVD and their close family, because in alignment terms that is just. What horsecrap.

2 things.
1) If All NKVD are evil (indeed Chaotic Evil) then they would be doing CE things. They are opressing the poor peace-loving peasents and workers of the USSR, and thus their destruction would be just.

2) The analogy also falls apart because you included their (presumably non-NKVD) family. The appropriate analoge would be a spell that blasts whole chunks of NKVD, as Familicide only hit Black Dragons (and half-Black Dragons).

AtomicKitKat

2009-03-22, 10:54 AM

I originally wanted to point out that Deities are immune to Death effects(someone already pointed that out), and as such, Big T is immune.

Deities also get to detect events affecting their portfolio well in advance(hence, how the Oracle was able to know). Depending on their Divine Rank(basically, like levels, but for Deities), they can detect days, weeks, months, or even years in advance. Takhisis is somewhere around a mid-level Divine Rank. So probably some 10(?)ish months ahead of this, she was well-aware of it, and depending on how Rich thought this through, she was ready to Resurrect/Reincarnate/Reanimate/Quasi-deify as many of the dead as necessary once the event took place.

Either way, V will become a Fiendish Plaything within maybe another 10 more strips.

Taekwondodo

2009-03-22, 12:24 PM

Although I agree with your point of information there, taekwondo (btw cool name), I must say that not only, as you said, killing X dragons was unnecessary and unfair, but also we must take in consideration what V did, and that was the lack of mercy.
Going back in the old strips, when V is returned to elf once again after being a lizard, he/she had NO MERCY with the joung adult dragon. What I mean is, he/she did not only use desintegration once, but twice! Remember that the first time he/she casted the spell, the dragon was already woozy and uncapable of fight. Nevertheless, V insisted on departicularizing the dragon.
Say you were on a quest to find an item to fix something that meant a lot to someone on your team. You enter the cave where the item is and find a black dragon who attacks your team and tries to eat your friend. Would you let that dragon live? Even if you thought of the possible consequences of killing it?

Remember that V already knew that that dragon was not the only one there,
No, not untill they searched the horde.

And, in strip Nº639, he/she once again gives no mercy, even though the adult dragon begs for it and apologizes.
The mama dragon was going to bind V's children's souls. No seeing them ever again even in the afterlife, at least the adult dragon would see her son again when she died, why not just kill V? The dragon escalated matters by threatening V's children in a way which would loose them to V forever. This and the effects of the soul splice (with three evil souls remember) means that it is not totally V's fault.

hamishspence

2009-03-22, 12:43 PM

"killing every fighter, civilian and child evil orc is Good": Not by BoED. In fact, even killing fighter evil orcs is not Good, if they have not been causing active harm.

(the implication is that internal harm- orc parents being horrible to their children, is not a justification for slaughtering the whole orc nation)

Now dragons have much stronger evil tendencies than orcs. But same principle applies- they are not fiends- none of this "allowing it to exist, let alone helping it in any way, is evil" from BoVD applies here.

Coidzor

2009-03-22, 12:51 PM

Familicide, Ethnic Cleansing, Sectarian Violence, Translocation, Modernization. All of these are just euphemisms for Genocide.

V just potentially wiped out an entire species(breed?) of dragon. I'm thinking he has, or at least done something along the lines of 90% mortality.

...I think this is the first webcomic I've ever read which has even touched upon genocide.

I-...I'm not sure whether to feel sick or warm and fuzzy inside.

Yendor

2009-03-22, 01:01 PM

Here's a quick quiz:
1. You're a black dragon and have just discovered that dozens of your kind have been wiped out by an incredibly powerful spell. Do you:
a) Say, "Oh well, they probably deserved it."?
b) Cower in fear of this awesome power?
c) Vow deadly retribution on the perpetrator of this crime against your people?
2. You're one of the fiends of the IFCC and have witnessed Vaarsuvius casting the Familicide spell. Do you:
a) Say, "Oh dear. That wasn't evil at all. This puts a dampener on our plans."?
b) Cheer the elf on for descending into evil?

hamishspence

2009-03-22, 01:10 PM

If you believe Savage Species, answer to question 1 is probably c. Evil creatures can be affectionate parents, and Dragons in particular are the epitome of Pride in D&D. in Basic D&D you could rely on stopping an evil dragon from attacking you, if you flattered it.

in Prince of Lies D&D novel, when a big family of CE white dragons discovers that one of their family has been dissected for its organs, and animated as a zombie, the whole family assaults the city of Zhentil Keep, along with other monsters, devastating it.

Wolf_Plague

2009-03-22, 01:21 PM

Flip that question around: What Great Bad Deed had they specifically done to deserve utter extinction? Down to the un-hatched in the eggs?
Well, flying around killing and robbing people to collect all those treasures adventurers hunt them for? No?

the dragons were massacred without a chance
Whoa, whoa, whoa....
What chance are you talking about? A chance to bring some more pain to others before departing to another plane? Thank you, but I'll pass.

Familicide, Ethnic Cleansing, Sectarian Violence, Translocation, Modernization. All of these are just euphemisms for Genocide.
V just potentially wiped out an entire species(breed?) of dragon. I'm thinking he has, or at least done something along the lines of 90% mortality.
...I think this is the first webcomic I've ever read which has even touched upon genocide.
I-...I'm not sure whether to feel sick or warm and fuzzy inside.
I guess this is the problem with this discussion.
Nobody really cares about personalities of involved creatures, but about silly terminology.
Would anyone here pretend being "utterly horrified by Such Evil Genocide OMG" if there, in fact, weren't such? For example, imagine there were not all BDs killed here but only one-two specimens from every Evil race in D&D summing in same kill amount? First thing - no "GeNoCIdE!1!" posts would be made. No "poor draginz" cryouts. Because you must admit - terminology and emotions, hardwired to it by school, media etc is only what matters.

xroads

2009-03-22, 01:22 PM

Given V's current ECL? ZERO (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0439.html). :smalltongue:

Don't worry though, V can always get XP for Role Playing (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0125.html). :smallbiggrin:

Fair enough. :smallamused:

I also now wonder just how jealous about the mass slaughter Belkar will be. :smallbiggrin:

Belkar: Did you see me kill those hundred of hobgoblins at the battle?
V: Did you see how I committed genocide on an entire family of dragons!
Belkar: ... Aghhhhhh!

AtomicKitKat

2009-03-22, 01:30 PM

hamishspence

2009-03-22, 01:32 PM

Or, according to Cormyr: A Novel, given to the dragon as tribute by lesser monsters, like wyverns, as part of permission to reside within the dragon's domain.

Cabeza

2009-03-22, 01:42 PM

Say you were on a quest to find an item to fix something that meant a lot to someone on your team. You enter the cave where the item is and find a black dragon who attacks your team and tries to eat your friend. Would you let that dragon live? Even if you thought of the possible consequences of killing it?

Frankly no, I would have killed it. But since I thought that V already knew from the beggining that there was another dragon then I would have pondered my next action a little bit. If I was in the place of V, and I already knew that, I would have stopped a bit and think.
But, as you told me...

No, not untill they searched the horde.

Sorry, you are right. My apoligies. This explains a lot then. I might have forgotten due to the fact that the last time I read that strip was between one and two years ago. (means I had 15-14, infant mind).

The mama dragon was going to bind V's children's souls. No seeing them ever again even in the afterlife, at least the adult dragon would see her son again when she died, why not just kill V? The dragon escalated matters by threatening V's children in a way which would loose them to V forever. This and the effects of the soul splice (with three evil souls remember) means that it is not totally V's fault.

So, all right, you convinced me. Mom dragon and Young dragon are the ones who started it all. But I must say that at LEAST V could have vanished mom dragon forever, I don't know, bind her to his/her soul? Or anything? Torment her only? And maybe her husband and son too? And let the other ones live? What I was pointing here is the unnecesary massacre of 60+ dragons.
I understand that the adult dragon was planning to do such a sadistic action, but what does the other black dragons have to do with the current subject? A dragon who was fishing? Whoa, did it even know there was a fight going on with V and mom dragon? I accept the destruction of mom dragon, yes, but not ALL of the other ones. That was what whacked me. Which is, obviously, what most of the people argue with.
IF V wouldn't have erradicated those dragons, I wouldn't have started this debate at all.

This and the effects of the soul splice (with three evil souls remember) means that it is not totally V's fault.

Yes I know, but didn't V have the ability to control them? Or is he/she too weak to solve manners as he/she wished to?

Wolf_Plague

2009-03-22, 01:58 PM

Yes I know, but didn't V have the ability to control them? Or is he/she too weak to solve manners as he/she wished to?
"Direct them" would be more appropriate words. Whatever V do now is tainted by presence of three extremely evil souls in his body. Hell, even V's teeth surrendered to this influence...

sabremeister

2009-03-22, 02:09 PM

DeadABD: What-? Where am I? I was with my son and husband...
V: I assure you, you will see your kin again shortly.
DeadABD: You-you reanimated my head?
V: Had you simply attacked me, I would have left you dead. But you made the mistake of involving my family in our conflict.
This leaves me with the task of ensuring that today's events will never rise again to threaten them.

I found those motivations pretty clear. Trying to object solely on the grounds of Spliced V's facial expression is highly ridiculous.

No, basing an opinion solely on the grounds of what V said in this one comic without taking her character history into account is highly ridiculous.

We have seen throughout the comic that V is arrogant and proud. She believes that magic is the best way to do anything, and is convinced that enough magic can let you do anything. Notice how V was fixated on using magic to locate Haley, when anyone else faced with repeated failures would have tried a different approach, not just another spell. Notice also how, in #623, V is distraught upon remembering what she sees as the failure of her magic to save those fleeing Azurite soldiers. To her, her magic failed, therefore she didn't have enough of it. That's arrogance - the fact that she couldn't see any other way of saving those soldiers than using magic. She didn't think of shouting, "shut up and run you idiots!" or of staying invisible and start throwing stones at the pursuing hobgoblins, she assumed only magic, of which she was unable to cast any more that day, would be able to save them, and so kept quiet. And her pride would not let her admit she was wrong in that belief.

In #627, the ABD resists a high-level spell that earlier took out a 100ft high demon, uses an anti-magic field to break out of a forcecage, and hammer home to V that magic is not the be-all and end-all. In #628, the ABD explains precisely what is going on, and twice V's arrogance shows through - first when she assumes that the dragon is there to retrieve the starmetal (implying she does not believe dragons have feelings enough to care for family), and second when she assumes that the dragon will kill her. The dragon even remarks that V has probably arrogantly assumed she has no enemies worth protecting herself from magically scrying on her.

In the first panel of #630, V declares that she cannot allow her magic to fail her again. At first, she's too prideful to accept the imp's help, but eventually realises that she needs help. And so she demands more help than the imp can give, which allows the IFCC to come along and offer the soul splice. In #634, V's pride again comes to the fore, as she tries to rationalise her acceptance of the deal by saying there is nothing else she can do to save her family. The IFCC tell her a (plainly ludicrous) alternative plan that could save her family, but then go on to explain that it would mean admitting failure of her magic again. The phrases, "I cannot fail again", and, "I must succeed" tell us how unpalatable this is for V to do.

Now, given V's obviously demonstrated pride and arrogance, and belief in the power of magic to solve anything, do you not think that when V gets enough arcane power to completely pwn an ancient black dragon that had, minutes earlier, completely pwned and humiliated her, do you really think that she will not take the opportunity to gloat and rub the ABD's face in the superiority of her magic?

The protection of her family is just another rationalisation to herself - she has the power to do virtually anything she wants, and she is not going to pass up the opportunity to demonstrate said power to a creature who has just gone from victorious vengeful wizard-humiliator, to defeated lifeless chunks of dragon-kibble. And just to prove that her magic is superior to this now-defeated ancient black dragon, she's going to keep on demonstrating until there's nothing less to demonstrate on.

MickJay

2009-03-22, 02:11 PM

Now, few dozen groups of adventurers will not kill these dragons one-by-one; just think about how much XP V wasted with that spell. This was a heinous crime against all the hard-working adventurers everywhere.

On the other hand, think about how much thesaurised gold, stolen from various people, can now return into circulation and revitalize the economy - but at the risk of creating inflation and devaluating gold even further.

Truly, the strip illustrates that even an essentially good deed, like freeing the world of powerful, evil beings, has its price.

This post is not entirely serious.

Yulian

2009-03-22, 02:17 PM

To add to the thoughts here...we did see a few half-dragons in there, didn't we?

There is no guarantee the half-centaur at least, was evil. It is likely at least one of the extended family wasn't Evil (in the alignment sense).

If even one was not, then according to even the strictest interpretation of the rules, V just committed an act of deliberate murder against someone V didn't even know and thus, an Evil act.

Oh yes, I am not certain deliberately killing unhatched eggs of sapient beings in an extended vengeance romp is an Evil act, but it would likely straddle the line.

This is why I personally find the alignment rules as they were up to 3.5E to be sort of silly. It would allow a free pass for literally any depraved act so long as it was against an Evil being. I imagine if genocide doesn't break your alignment, torture wouldn't either.

Tsk...give me the clearer rules of Ravenloft any day. An Evil act is an Evil act there, regardless of motivation or target.

- Yulian

Flicker

2009-03-22, 02:20 PM

Long time reader, first time poster.

Sebastion said

If V's intentions were just to protect the family, why the big hurry? It is not like any ABD relative will know she is dead and teleport in in the next, oh, let's say 10 minutes. She would have time to talk to her family reassure them, maybe limited wish some potion of healing to fix their wounds and even just teleport them to the nearest temple where they will be safe and taken care of and eventually then kill all the ABD family. but obviously at the moment the priority for V was to make the bitch suffer, her family can just wait laying on the ground in pain while assisting her creating a undead with an obviously evil spell and enjoying it.

I was most disturbed by the fact that V left h** family seriously injured - h** children lying on the ground with broken legs and spouse with crucifixion wounds - in order to pursue revenge - a revenge that could have waited until h** family was moved to safety and healed. That ABD head was going nowhere. V could have even brought it along. But revenge was more important to V than the welfare of h** family.

V has definitely crossed over to the dark side.

aarondirebear

2009-03-22, 02:22 PM

hamishspence

2009-03-22, 02:36 PM

3.0 ed had BoVD and 3.5 ed has Fiendish Codex 2: acts which are "corrupt" Always evil, no matter the target, no matter the reason. Torture being one.
(BoED also picks this as "always an evil act")

Not everyone uses these sources though.

Mr. Scaly

2009-03-22, 02:43 PM

Something that I think needs pointing out.

START OF DARKNESS SPOILERS:

The gods did NOT create dragons as exp packets. They were upset that their clerics were too week to venture out and protect their worshipers from high CR threats (like dragons but also demons, purple worms, and other whatnots), so they created the weaker monstrous races. Things like orcs, goblins, hobgoblins, lizardfolk and stuff like that, just so their clerics could kill them and advance in level. It wouldn't make any sense to create another high CR creature when their followers were reduced to making goodberries all day.

Sebastian

2009-03-22, 02:47 PM

Long time reader, first time poster.

Sebastion said

I was most disturbed by the fact that V left h** family seriously injured - h** children lying on the ground with broken legs and spouse with crucifixion wounds - in order to pursue revenge - a revenge that could have waited until h** family was moved to safety and healed. That ABD head was going nowhere. V could have even brought it along. But revenge was more important to V than the welfare of h** family.

V has definitely crossed over to the dark side.

The more think about it the more I believe this will be V's undoing.

consider

undead created with Create greater undead are not under the control of the caster

breath weapons is a supernatural ability. It is very probable that the ABD head still have hers, if not hers spells.

V's family is still in range

Do the math. :smallannoyed:

Beside after the "you can't cast resurrection" clause of the fiends you just know that someone has to die here.

Yahoo_Serious

2009-03-22, 02:53 PM

Always evil, no matter the target, no matter the reason.

Agreed. If I were GM, casting an epic-plus homebrew from a legendarily evil necromancer would absolutely meet these qualifications. (And very possibly the startled expressions on V's family are from the intensely evil aura of such a spell, rather than pitying a black dragon that was about to destroy them.)

Nezmith

2009-03-22, 02:56 PM

So in other words you would rather wait until the tribe of orcs slaughters an entire village of people before acting?

Damn liberals and your hatred for pre-emptive, preventive measures.

There are two Orc Villages and a single Human village.

Orc Village A and Orc Village B are rivals, and seek to eliminate one another.

One day a scouting party from Orc Village B discovers the human village and decides to raid it for supplies which they can use in their ongoing feud.

The Humans repel the attack, and now that they are involved they track the Orcs back to Orc Village B and attack it in mass. They raze it to the ground.

Orc Village A discovers that Orc Village B has been razed and celebrates.

Now, would the humans taking action against Orc Village A be justified in any way? Village A has no idea the humans even exist at the moment, only to think that their warriors were successful in razing their rival's village.

Mystyco

2009-03-22, 02:58 PM

Actually, no, part of the deal with the Splice was that V could NOT earn any XP while it was in effect.

Probably makes Belkar feel better about the hobgoblin horde he slaughtered back in Azure City tho!

"Well, you could, technically, but your effective level would be so high that it's pretty unlikely"

Volkov

2009-03-22, 02:58 PM

Think of all the sorcerers who died, many thousands upon thousands or perhaps millions would die from this spell. Many of them may even be lawful good, far more sorcerers would be killed by this spell than dragons, so V did as much harm as good. Hell if Xykon's dragon blood came from a Black dragon he might lose his body.

So many sorcerers would die that it would cause a severe back lash upon the arcane forces. All those dragons and sorcerers dying would have to cause tremendous Mystical backlash from all the conduits of magic suddenly ceasing to function.

hamishspence

2009-03-22, 03:01 PM

Volkov

2009-03-22, 03:06 PM

we do not know for certain how far spell reaches. So far, we've only seen dragons, Half Dragons, and what looks like a Draconic Kobold.

Yes, spell might affect more distant relatives in next strip, but seems a bit doubtful to me.

I think it killed a lot more than what was shown on-panel, Draconic families are massive beyond belief due to the sheer amount of time they're capable of breeding. Plus Draconic is pretty far removed from Dragon, it's simillar to Tiefling.

David Argall

2009-03-22, 03:08 PM

I wonder if people ever stopped to consider that all those piles of treasure "robbed from poor, innocent people", could perhaps, I dunno, be stuff left behind by less well-prepared adventurers who thought to make a name for themselves hunting down a poor not-so-defenseless Dragon out in the boonies trying to scrape out an existence eating swamp fish.
Oh yes. There is quite a bit of speculation on the point.

Because, y'know, it really stretches my verisimilitude to believe that a Dragon would bother accumulating stuff like swords, and armour, especially when it can't shapechange to use any of it.
An easy answer is status symbols. Actually that is what much treasure is anyway, something that is pretty much worthless that you spent a whole lot of money to buy simply so you can brag about owning this unique item. A first edition uncut can sell for huge bucks after frantic bidding. The same book, slightly used goes unclaimed in the remainder bin. Both give the same story and the same readership values [or would if the owner of the uncut book would even consider letting you open it.] Indeed, we find that the really valuable books are rather second rate works of writers who went on to write much better efforts.
If we look at the animal world, we find many examples of the same thing, items that are prized simply because they are prized. The possessor is able to show off his superiority, as is proved by his possession, after much effort, of something entirely worthless. [If it were actually worth anything, it would not be nearly as valuable.] Thus we have birds who build quite elaborate nests, nests that are far too big to be actually that useful. But they tell the female the male builder is a real stud, well worth having as the father of her kids.
The same logic can apply to dragons or most monsters. The treasure may be useless to the dragon, but it is still very valuable in telling friends, enemies, potential mates... that it is a force to be beware of. It's technically worthless nature just makes it all the more valuable.

The fact of the matter is, most "evil" Dragon treasure is maybe 5% accumulated by robbing the local fief, 10% by digging about/stumbling upon old ruins/gems in the dirt, and 85% spoils of victory from the last group of treasure hunters/xenophobes.
These figures are way off. Digging up and finding goodies is a lot of work, and much easier to do for a horde of smaller critters like dwarves who can look at more areas. By contrast, the big dragon is well designed to take those goodies from the dwarves.
Nor can we deem the majority of dragon wealth to be from unsuccessful adventurers. The adventurers got their wealth from previous dragons/monsters. And a lot of their wealth went for necessities [including booze and broads]. In particular we might note the dragon horde included a great mass of coin and such, stuff adventurers don't carry around.

So the great majority of our evil dragon treasure is from some sort of robbery [likely often enough of lesser evil monsters, but still robbery].

hamishspence

2009-03-22, 03:12 PM

According to Races of the Dragon- Kobolds as a whole are incredibly rich- but much of their riches line the hoards of dragons- they mine it out and donate it to dragons to get their support.

Volkov

2009-03-22, 03:27 PM

Oh yes. There is quite a bit of speculation on the point.

An easy answer is status symbols. Actually that is what much treasure is anyway, something that is pretty much worthless that you spent a whole lot of money to buy simply so you can brag about owning this unique item. A first edition uncut can sell for huge bucks after frantic bidding. The same book, slightly used goes unclaimed in the remainder bin. Both give the same story and the same readership values [or would if the owner of the uncut book would even consider letting you open it.] Indeed, we find that the really valuable books are rather second rate works of writers who went on to write much better efforts.
If we look at the animal world, we find many examples of the same thing, items that are prized simply because they are prized. The possessor is able to show off his superiority, as is proved by his possession, after much effort, of something entirely worthless. [If it were actually worth anything, it would not be nearly as valuable.] Thus we have birds who build quite elaborate nests, nests that are far too big to be actually that useful. But they tell the female the male builder is a real stud, well worth having as the father of her kids.
The same logic can apply to dragons or most monsters. The treasure may be useless to the dragon, but it is still very valuable in telling friends, enemies, potential mates... that it is a force to be beware of. It's technically worthless nature just makes it all the more valuable.

These figures are way off. Digging up and finding goodies is a lot of work, and much easier to do for a horde of smaller critters like dwarves who can look at more areas. By contrast, the big dragon is well designed to take those goodies from the dwarves.
Nor can we deem the majority of dragon wealth to be from unsuccessful adventurers. The adventurers got their wealth from previous dragons/monsters. And a lot of their wealth went for necessities [including booze and broads]. In particular we might note the dragon horde included a great mass of coin and such, stuff adventurers don't carry around.

So the great majority of our evil dragon treasure is from some sort of robbery [likely often enough of lesser evil monsters, but still robbery].

So how do metallic, epic, non-evil planar, and gem dragons get their treasure? Well it's obvious the gem dragons get their treasure from their homes on the elemental plane of earth. But what about the other three?

Sebastian

2009-03-22, 03:32 PM

If we look at the animal world, we find many examples of the same thing, items that are prized simply because they are prized. The possessor is able to show off his superiority, as is proved by his possession, after much effort, of something entirely worthless. [If it were actually worth anything, it would not be nearly as valuable.] Thus we have birds who build quite elaborate nests, nests that are far too big to be actually that useful. But they tell the female the male builder is a real stud, well worth having as the father of her kids.
The same logic can apply to dragons or most monsters. The treasure may be useless to the dragon, but it is still very valuable in telling friends, enemies, potential mates... that it is a force to be beware of. It's technically worthless nature just makes it all the more valuable.

Yeah, that is my take on it, too. If a dragon have a huge hoard then he is a)crafty enough to collect it and b) powerful enough to defend it, and hence he is a good potential mate.

Dragons have the extra advantage that they are intelligent and can put that treasure to good use, so you dragons that by polymorphing or using human agents use their riches to finance merchants, or artists or thieves guilds. (expecting a good return, but that goes without saying) :)

aarondirebear

2009-03-22, 03:35 PM

There are two Orc Villages and a single Human village.

Orc Village A and Orc Village B are rivals, and seek to eliminate one another.

One day a scouting party from Orc Village B discovers the human village and decides to raid it for supplies which they can use in their ongoing feud.

The Humans repel the attack, and now that they are involved they track the Orcs back to Orc Village B and attack it in mass. They raze it to the ground.

Orc Village A discovers that Orc Village B has been razed and celebrates.

Now, would the humans taking action against Orc Village A be justified in any way? Village A has no idea the humans even exist at the moment, only to think that their warriors were successful in razing their rival's village.

Of course.
We're talking about Chaotic Evil "eat your babies" orcs here not "peace loving vegan Dominic Deegan" orcs.

hamishspence

2009-03-22, 03:40 PM

Volkov

2009-03-22, 03:44 PM

the barbarians in Icewind Dale trilogy- first book, behaved exactly like D&D orcs- attacking the towns unprovoked as a horde The heroes fought them off- they didn't go back to the towns and kill the survivors and women and children.

Why, therefore, should Often CE orcs be treated worse than CE humans?

Because humans who must inherit the multiverse even if every other sentient race in the material plane and the planes must all die for it, are the gods favorite species and all other thinking species suck and shouldn't exist. Since we are humans that excuses them for any act of genocide they commit, even the worst human is infinitely better than the best non-human. All other sentient species must be reduced back to animal level intellect or destroyed!
note severe sarcasm, Humans are my least favorite species ever, nothing can convince me to love my own species.

Roland St. Jude

2009-03-22, 04:51 PM

Sheriff: Please don't discuss real world politics on this forum.

DukeOfRoundhere

2009-03-22, 05:19 PM

The only question I have is this... will Tiamat now have five heads, or will be short a head? :smallsmile:

malakim2099

2009-03-22, 05:27 PM

Wolf_Plague

2009-03-22, 05:29 PM

Dagren

2009-03-22, 06:02 PM

I have to say I'm greatly anticipation the next few updates. I can't say I agree with those who think V might soul bind her own family, I mean that was exactly what she was trying to avoid by going home in the first place. The idea that she might view one of her disintegrate spells as an impromptu "Go straight to heaven, do not roll initiative, do not collect 200gp" card has an air of... shall we call it "Chillingly plausible", though I still don't think V has fallen quite that far just yet. I'm not interested in debating whether casting the Familicide was a majorly evil act or not, though I should point out that hearing about killings on that scale is the kind of thing that can cause family to disown each other, and V just did it right in her young children's faces. I'm with those who think V's terse treatment of 'Parent' could be either the desire to get this soul splice thing out of the way as quickly as possible, or could be V simply uncaring, mad with the power. Only Rich really knows, it's too soon for the rest of us to tell for sure. Finally, I choose to keep my preferred continuation of the story to myself, since Rich states in the FAQ that he deliberately tries to avoid people pre-empting his work by changing the outcome if they get it right. (Although I can't resist noting in response to someone thinking that "Parent will think whatever Other Parent wants when Other Parent is through with casting" would apply even to regular V, +2 bonus notwithstanding, let alone putting Dark V into the equation)

Wolf_Plague

2009-03-22, 06:22 PM

Maybe part of him simply wants to make sure his family is safe forever, but a large part of him wants to hurt the dragon and make her suffer.

Agree. But our conflict raises from the question in what proportion those parts are working.
Answer to this question, I'm afraid, is unknown until official resolution.
Speculations, from other hand, would always be heavily influenced by personal sympathies. I have to admit I never saw V as main character and was more concentrated on main staff, but in the last strips it was literally Walls of Universe trying to crash him. Yes, I take V's attempts to locate Haley&co as sincere, including his frustration from failure caused rather by inability to help his teammates than by need to regain selfrespect.
My fanon is "I failed to help my friends and thus lost confidence" leading to "I must fulfil my duty and selfrespect will follow" rather than "I lost confidence due to some stupid people I didn't help so I will kinda help someone else and regain it!":smallsmile:
"Transmares", caused by V's inability to help people relying on him, despite the fact those were just bloody deserters who left V and their comrades to die. Seriously, those bast guys should be court marshalled on spot and yet that elf is feeling guilty for not helping them! Up to self-exhausting sleep deprivation! Honestly, that was the last straw for me. I'm keeping respect and loyalty for him until very extreme circumstances. 63 Ex-BD's doesn't count as those, sorry.:smallbiggrin:

(And I'm too lazy to go with the standard ambiguous V-gender stuff, okay?) :smalltongue:
Thanks Emperor.
I'm fed up with it either.
I always saw V as a homage to Mr. Spock up to catchphrases ("fascinating"), mimics("Spock's Eyebrow") and speech pattern("Spock speech"). And can you imagine L. Nimoy as female?:smallsigh:

PS Sa-a-ay that Evil Dead avatar of yours looks kinda familiar...:smallconfused:

Nezmith

2009-03-22, 06:50 PM

the barbarians in Icewind Dale trilogy- first book, behaved exactly like D&D orcs- attacking the towns unprovoked as a horde The heroes fought them off- they didn't go back to the towns and kill the survivors and women and children.

Why, therefore, should Often CE orcs be treated worse than CE humans?

They shouldn't. But a great number of the people in here seem to be 'fantasy racists.'

Only Elves, Humans, Dwarves, Halflings, and Gnomes deserve to live. Everything else is preventing these races from overtaking the world they live in, and as such are a threat to the Manifest Destiny of the Elves, Humans, Dwarves, Halfings, and Gnomes.

Not to mention that we Humans live in a world filled with many many other creatures that can and do kill humans, and yet I don't see protests or special interest groups devoted to the extinction of these animals.

hamishspence

2009-03-22, 06:55 PM

yes- while R.A. Salvatore tended toward it in D&D stories (Bruenor is described as happy to torture orcs in book 1: The Crystal Shard), the most recent ones are a bit less so- The Orc King- one of the first to show the orcs as not just villains, and ending in a peace treaty between the orcs, and Mithril Hall.

Volkov

2009-03-22, 07:42 PM

I was in a party consistent of me a Mind Flayer Psion, A half dragon kobold Sorcerer, A half dragon blackscale lizard folk fighter, A Draconic Lizardfolk Druid, A Tschori Cleric, a Dracotaur barbarian, A four armed Sahaugin Ranger, A Koa-toa Monk, and a Poison Dusk Lizardfolk Rogue.

The Campaign was to bring an end to the always evil Humans, Dwarves, Elves, Gnomes, and Halflings. We succeeded after a long fought war and managed to burn out several major artifacts to reduce these evil races back to their pre-sentient forms. It took us roughly 1 year to finish this campaign, and we reached level 30 for all of us. We had the blood of thousands on our hands but the non-humanoid races were free of the oppression of the mammals.

But we were probably the oddest party ever created. Half the time our team was in danger of falling apart due to special differences, but we managed to get it all sorted out and kick Moradin's arse to get the final artifact needed to complete the spell.

valce

2009-03-22, 08:06 PM

Not to mention that we Humans live in a world filled with many many other creatures that can and do kill humans, and yet I don't see protests or special interest groups devoted to the extinction of these animals.

I agree with the rest of your stuff, but I'd like to point out that there is a huge gap between animals and sentient beings. I imagine at least some people would devote themselves to the extinction of any sentient race that kills humans. I mean, it has certainly happened in cases when the other 'sentient race' was merely of a different nationality :P

Volkov

2009-03-22, 08:07 PM

I killed Moradin with a brain extraction. I got pretty damn lucky on that roll.

Nezmith

2009-03-22, 08:16 PM

I agree with the rest of your stuff, but I'd like to point out that there is a huge gap between animals and sentient beings. I imagine at least some people would devote themselves to the extinction of any sentient race that kills humans. I mean, it has certainly happened in cases when the other 'sentient race' was merely of a different nationality :P

Very true, however, I feel that I was forced to word it that way since the argument is that "Dragons are evil, and thus deserve to be slain" whereas those same people argued that "Those same rules do not apply for humans, you can't do that to humans."

Warren Dew

2009-03-22, 08:32 PM

Not to mention that we Humans live in a world filled with many many other creatures that can and do kill humans, and yet I don't see protests or special interest groups devoted to the extinction of these animals.

That's because animals are not a significant threat to us. The UN is trying to make polio extinct, and quite a bit is spent on wiping out malaria.

If we were to discover that the polio virus is sentient, I doubt that would change our efforts.

CrimsonAngel

2009-03-22, 08:36 PM

I wish thoes dragons wern't killed. *sings a sad song*

The Blackbird

2009-03-22, 08:38 PM

A sad song (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCYLNj0KXcE)

kpenguin

2009-03-22, 08:39 PM

"Oh black dragon...
The elf, the elf came calling..."

The Blackbird

2009-03-22, 08:41 PM

"Oh black dragon...
The elf, the elf came calling..."
*Sob* Poor Black Dragons...
BWHAAAAA:smallfrown:

Cabeza

2009-03-22, 08:43 PM

I wish thoes dragons wern't killed. *sings a sad song*

Same here pal, same here. *pats your shoulder*

The Blackbird

2009-03-22, 08:46 PM

*While holding some obscure alcholic drink* I LOVE YOU GUYS

CrimsonAngel

2009-03-22, 08:52 PM

*While holding some obscure alcholic drink* I LOVE YOU GUYS

*sends to rehab* :smalleek:

The Blackbird

2009-03-22, 08:55 PM

*sends to rehab* :smalleek:

Not again:smallyuk:

Cabeza

2009-03-22, 08:58 PM

Obscure alcoholic drink? I suppose its Ale....
*glances*
Gimme ale!! There must be a way to drown our sorrows... Let us drink until we forget this

The Blackbird

2009-03-22, 09:03 PM

Obscure alcoholic drink? I suppose its Ale....
*glances*
Gimme ale!! There must be a way to drown our sorrows... Let us drink until we forget this

Indeed, we shall (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0340.html)

keybounce

2009-03-22, 09:11 PM

Sorry if this is a bit off-topic, but I got my first black dragon in the game Dragon Cave the day this comic came out, which makes me want to name it something related to the comic.
Hm....'Familicide'? 'Tiamat's Wrath'? 'Lucky One'? :smallconfused:
Any suggestions?

"Unrelated Dorkface" :-). (Assuming you know what's happening with the dorkface family line over there).

What's the dragon code? I might get some ideas looking at the parental lines.

Ohh ... "Suvie's Friend"? Did we ever get the name of the ABD or the J (juvenile) BD?

I got it.

"Read a scroll of genocide. Wiped out all @'s".
I'm almost entirely certain that you cannot genocide "@" in NetHack.

Ever read them while confused?

David Argall

2009-03-22, 09:17 PM

It's pretty obvious (to me at least, others not so much it seems) that V is justifying the act to himself, as well as the dragon.
And why would V justify the act to herself or the dragon? The dragon in particular. What does V care about what the loser dragon thinks of him?

Maybe part of him simply wants to make sure his family is safe forever, but a large part of him wants to hurt the dragon and make her suffer.
But why does she do such a poor job of it? Soul Bind the dragon to keep her away from her family. Or telling the dragon that she was casting this spell because mama gave him the idea instead of a matter of self defense.

The easier reading is that V is telling the truth. She is trying to defend his family, and any suffering for the dragon is no more than a bonus.

Underground

2009-03-22, 09:22 PM

Did V just kill ...

... PRETTY MUCH EVERY DRAGON IN EXISTENCE ??? :smalleek:

(Or at least every single one of one color)

Lets just hope that, with this, she ends this madness.

Shadowbane

2009-03-22, 09:23 PM

Hm. I think it was overkill, personally, but it's cool.

...y'know, I find myself missing the ABD.

Wadoka

2009-03-22, 09:25 PM

I, too, thought of Andrew Wiggin when I read this strip.

"Because I wanted to win that fight, and all the rest of the fights."

Ender. Finisher. Ruthless and strategically unassailable.

SuperDuperHai2U

2009-03-22, 09:32 PM

And why would V justify the act to herself or the dragon? The dragon in particular. What does V care about what the loser dragon thinks of him?

But why does she do such a poor job of it? Soul Bind the dragon to keep her away from her family. Or telling the dragon that she was casting this spell because mama gave him the idea instead of a matter of self defense.

The easier reading is that V is telling the truth. She is trying to defend his family, and any suffering for the dragon is no more than a bonus.

He defends nothing. A true champion would not be afraid of further retribution for he has the ture power and faith behind his back. Because a true champion could within a second's notice come to his family's aid and wipe out any threat in a blink of the eye. V's action is one of cowardice, his entire dribble is no more than a pretext to veil his atrocity. He did it for no more reason than he wanted to do it, not because he wanted to defend his family.

Warren Dew

2009-03-22, 09:48 PM

A true champion would not be afraid of further retribution for he has the ture power and faith behind his back.

Unfortunately, Vaarsuvius is on a time limit, and knows it.

Mahalanon

2009-03-22, 09:55 PM

I don't think it's been said (Correct me if I'm wrong), but it looks like the Mama dragon was still quite (un)alive and aware that the familicide spell was killing all those other dragons.

And as it has been said more than once in this thread, V is clearly acting with malice in doing this. Killing an evil creature because it's evil, fine I'm sure it would be pretty easy to argue that as a good act in most, if not all, cases. But what V did was obviously done to cause pain to the ABD.

"Because I am not done with the dragon." (See smile on face)

"I concur" (Said to agree with the fact they could further cause the ABD torment and misery)

I'm betting V is going to dismiss the splice and see his family turn to fear him.

sabremeister

2009-03-22, 09:57 PM

The protection of her family is just another rationalisation to herself

How do you know? You want to say that V is, basically, schizophreniac talking to Vself what V want to hear and even on desert island and in the face of defeated enemy? Where did that idea crawled out?:smallconfused:
We such logic I can accuse Roy in "rationalising" by saving the world his "arrogance and proud" only to prove himself as capable warrior and leader. It was his fixation on Greenhilt sword caused necessity to acquire starmetal from the dragon cave with known consequences, it was his "arrogant and proud" wish to battle Xykon on top of the zombie dragon leading to his ultimate demise. I mean, yes he do say it was all for good reasons but we kno-o-o-ow he's just a little liar!:smalltongue:

I'm going to attempt to decipher meaning in your words, because in their current form they make very little sense to me.

You seem to be saying that I'm calling V schizophrenic because she talks to herself, saying what she wants to hear - she did it on the island and in front of a defeated enemy.

No, I'm not saying V's schizophrenic. V is stressed, sleep-deprived, and is having her personal view of the universe challenged. In #634, when V says, "As there is not even one other way [to save them, I must] accept your accursed bargain," that is V rationalising (ie. making it acceptable to herself) taking the soul-splice. It's like saying, "eating a chocolate bar doesn't count if you're walking when you eat it," when you're on a diet. It's just a way of telling your conscience to shut up, because here's something you really want to do, but shouldn't.

Next, you seem to be saying that that's an example of false logic - with such false logic, Roy rationalises his "arrogant and proud" attempts to save the world as proving himself as a capable warrior and leader.

That's a straw man - Roy's personality is nothing like that of Vaarsuvius. Roy only seems to exhibit arrogance and/or pride when dealing with his father and Nale.

Next you seem to say that Roy's fixation on his family sword forced him to look for starmetal, which was taken from a dragon's cave, and we've seen the consequences of that; his "proud and arrogant" wish to battle Xykon atop a zombie dragon was the cause of his demise; yes, he says it's for good reasons, but we know he's a liar.

Ah - sarcasm. Someone round here has got a .sig about the dangers of sarcasm on the internet.
Yes, Roy is a little fixated on his family sword - it's his symbol of defiance against his a-hole father's wishes, and they didn't know that the starmetal would be guarded by a dragon. But, yes, we have seen the consequences of that expedition. And the decision to jump aboard an airborne dragon was taken in the heat of battle, and was made possible by Belkar's loan of a Ring of Jumping for a bet. It turned out to be a poor decision, but hey, them's the breaks, right?

Mr. Scaly

2009-03-22, 10:01 PM

We have reached the point where repetition becomes inevitable.

seanearlyaug

2009-03-22, 10:37 PM

Ok, post all of this,
and assuming that the fragile universe survives a soul who likes to destroy universes,
It may come to the elves that they must revive at least one of the BD race.
Why? Because the elves are more for the balance of nature,
and a few may even sympathise with the BD race.
But the interviews could be interesting.
Frex, "we are sorry an elf wiped out your race. If you promise not to take revenge we might raise you from the dead"
Or
"A catastrophy happened and we will raise you young dragon, to be truely good."

Sean

Sotris

2009-03-22, 10:58 PM

And why would V justify the act to herself or the dragon? The dragon in particular. What does V care about what the loser dragon thinks of him?

But why does she do such a poor job of it? Soul Bind the dragon to keep her away from her family. Or telling the dragon that she was casting this spell because mama gave him the idea instead of a matter of self defense.

The easier reading is that V is telling the truth. She is trying to defend his family, and any suffering for the dragon is no more than a bonus.
V thinks he is telling the truth, IMO. He couldn't have simply tormented the dragon for no other reason but his own pleasure, because that would be an evil act obvious even to him, and he is not (yet) at the point where he doesn't care. So his mind seeks for reasons to justify this urge towards cruel and horrible deeds, and in this case, a supposed long-term protection of his family was a sufficient rationalization.

peejaybee

2009-03-22, 11:03 PM

we do not know for certain how far spell reaches. So far, we've only seen dragons, Half Dragons, and what looks like a Draconic Kobold.

DEEKIN!! NOOOOOOOO!

brilliantlight

2009-03-22, 11:06 PM

Yeah, this is hardcore evil. She killed everyone in that dragons family most of whom don't know she exists.

Klose_the_Sith

2009-03-22, 11:38 PM

\m/ This arc is the best thing since heavy metal \m/

Gelrir

2009-03-22, 11:52 PM

it's from a movie, a Godfather one i think, but the rest of the phrase is -
"If They Pull a Knife, You Pull a Gun. If they kill one of your family, you kill ten of their's" or something like that

basically, whatever they did, you go one up on them, no matter how crazy or outrageous the deed.

You're probably right, but I think a character in Joseph Wambaugh's The New Centurions had a similar line: "Kilvinsky's law says if a guy uses his fists, you use your stick. If he pulls out a knife, you use your gun and cancel his ticket right there."

David Argall

2009-03-23, 01:14 AM

V thinks he is telling the truth, IMO. He couldn't have simply tormented the dragon for no other reason but his own pleasure, because that would be an evil act obvious even to him, and he is not (yet) at the point where he doesn't care. So his mind seeks for reasons to justify this urge towards cruel and horrible deeds, and in this case, a supposed long-term protection of his family was a sufficient rationalization.
And what do you think of a theory that you merely think you are telling the truth, wanting to hid some irrational hatred of V and your mind is seeking reasons to justify your prejudice?

Off hand the two theories appear to have about the same amount of solid backing [very little]. So why do you accept one and not the other?

Now we do see V being quite willing to torment the dragon during the battle. She might have intended to draw the dragon's attention, but she gives us no sign he was doing anything but giving the dragon a bad time. He sees no need to give any excuse for her conduct. Elsewhere we also see
V being quite open about his motives. It is simply much easier to think that V means what she says.

largertyler

2009-03-23, 01:40 AM

I would just like to get this out there. Familycide! WHAT! I think V has gone to far. I could live with razing and killing the dragon over and over again (like Ball and O'neil. We know how that ended. it's a good thing ball made sure his cell was empty cause he would have gone Mcgiver on someones ass. but I digress) I don't mean to sound hostle but I kinda urked here, Rich had better (and I Know he will) Justify such a massive massive massive killing. Yea just right out appalled at that spell. I sound like P.E.T.A or some band of angry moms against video games...I hate them

Hacktor

2009-03-23, 01:40 AM

Mind Blowing! ... Good one Giant :D can't wait to see the next one :D

Mystery

2009-03-23, 04:16 AM

Did V just kill ...

... PRETTY MUCH EVERY DRAGON IN EXISTENCE ??? :smalleek:

(Or at least every single one of one color)I think that it's limited to a certain number of hit dice that varies with caster level (which was very high in this case).

biscuittooth

2009-03-23, 04:19 AM

Long time reader, first time poster. My compliments to the chef.

Regarding the various comments about genocide in this thread - By my count Varsuvius killed 62 Black Dragons and related entities with this spell alone. Given the lifespan of a Dragon it seems reasonable to conclude that they are all from a single - albeit extended - family.

I think with this act Varsuvius has demonstrated that he has lost whatever empathy he may once have possessed and is now a psychopath - that is to say, he has no emotional connection to other beings and is therfore unable to determine the emotional consequences of his actions. To assume that merely wiping out a single family of Black Dragons will spare his family any retribution demonstrates the cold, emotionless logic typical of homicidal psychopaths.

This detachment can be seen in the cold manner in which he greets his estranged spouse and children, for whom this act is supposedly in aid of.

In fact, the only joy he shows is in his newfound mastery of magic.

The conversation with his family is sure to be entertaining.

Taekwondodo

2009-03-23, 04:26 AM

Yes I know, but didn't V have the ability to control them? Or is he/she too weak to solve manners as he/she wished to?

I agree with Wolf_Plague:
"Direct them" would be more appropriate words. Whatever V do now is tainted by presence of three extremely evil souls in his body. Hell, even V's teeth surrendered to this influence... The evil is leaking into V's actions without the splice V would have probably left it with the dragon dead.

Selene

2009-03-23, 04:46 AM

Sotris

2009-03-23, 05:48 AM

And what do you think of a theory that you merely think you are telling the truth, wanting to hid some irrational hatred of V and your mind is seeking reasons to justify your prejudice?Huh? I'm not destroying dozens of lives simultaneously, I'm just making a post on the internet. And even if I somehow had some irrational hatred for a fictional character, how does that manifest in the point that I'm making here, where I'm simply saying that V is subconsciously trying to rationalize his actions?
For one thing, it's more in defense for the poor damned elf than an accusation.

Off hand the two theories appear to have about the same amount of solid backing [very little]. So why do you accept one and not the other?
Um no. My theory has a lot of backing (V's apparently going with what the voices tell him, although he tries to justify it with reasons that seem stretched -to say the least-,and is obviously enjoying every minute of it), while your theory is -weird, to be frank.

Now we do see V being quite willing to torment the dragon during the battle. She might have intended to draw the dragon's attention, but she gives us no sign he was doing anything but giving the dragon a bad time.True, but we are now discussing reanimating the dragon's head and having it witness he destruction of its entire kin.
He sees no need to give any excuse for her conduct.He was in the middle of a battle. He hadn't won already, and none of V's actions during the battle needed any rationalization to be justified. Even his taunts to the dragon about her son's death were justified (and useful), as they enraged her and made her use mostly brute force rather than wit to fight V- which essentially was her undoing.
Elsewhere we also see
V being quite open about his motives.He had no reason to pretend (to himself first) that his actions had different reasons, as there was no allignment conflict at the time.
It is simply much easier to think that V means what she says.It is also much easier for V himself to think that he means what he says. That is my point. You see, it's not just V that speaks anymore. He shares souls with three extremely evil entities, and their desires and urges that he feels as well are (still) in conflict with his own mind and character. That's where rationalization steps in, IMO.

Wolf_Plague

2009-03-23, 06:32 AM

V is stressed, sleep-deprived, and is having her personal view of the universe challenged. In #634, when V says, "As there is not even one other way [to save them, I must] accept your accursed bargain," that is V rationalising (ie. making it acceptable to herself) taking the soul-splice. It's like saying, "eating a chocolate bar doesn't count if you're walking when you eat it," when you're on a diet. It's just a way of telling your conscience to shut up, because here's something you really want to do, but shouldn't.
So you want to say V took the splice just because he got "rationalization" opportunity in form of threat to his family? That a stretch. A huge one, good sir.

Next, you seem to be saying that that's an example of false logic
Yes. "Whatever this person do it's for the reason X, no matter what circumstances and no matter what he says about that or any other indications of reason non-X."

That's a straw man

Yes, these are the words.

- Roy's personality is nothing like that of Vaarsuvius.

How do you know? I say he is good in hiding his true nature, that little monster. A true master of disguise and deception.

Yes, Roy is a little fixated on his family sword

He's a warp-damned maniac if you ask me. Someone should put that loon in mental institution so he couldn cut himself or other with that pointy stick.

- it's his symbol of defiance against his a-hole father's wishes,

SEE? It's all about his pride and "no, daddy, no!" mindset! How many people died because of that? Count, take a try.

and they didn't know that the starmetal would be guarded by a dragon.

Who if not the dragon? An Ancient Black Frog? He was a leader but doomed his whole party just because of stupid sword!

But, yes, we have seen the consequences of that expedition. And the decision to jump aboard an airborne dragon was taken in the heat of battle, and was made possible by Belkar's loan of a Ring of Jumping for a bet.

Even you yourself came to that conclusion. And thus my point is proven.:smallcool:

In short:
In that post I just replaced "V-arrogance" pair with "Roy-fixation on sword" pair.
What I want to say - if a person has some slight personality flaw is one thing, but to claim that even in such extreme situation as saving own family this flaw is absolutely dominant is an overkill. Attributing some kind of "pride conspiracy theory" to every action of Vaarsuvius is plain paranoia if you ask me.:smallsigh:
Sorry for "sharp edges".

LuisDantas

2009-03-23, 06:50 AM

And why would V justify the act to herself or the dragon? The dragon in particular. What does V care about what the loser dragon thinks of him?

Unless he has fully turned to evil, V must grasp at whatever straws he finds to try and justify himself morally whenever he commits such a blatantly evil act.

After all, for all her overkill - planning to soul bind V's offspring comes to mind - the ABD had a fairly good moral justification for her wrath, and SHE is supposed to be evil. Vaarsuvius, recent judgement failure nonwithstanding, hopefully is smart enough to realize that his own moral grounds are less than rock-solidy and, in fact, far shakier than the Dragon's at this point.

Volkov

2009-03-23, 07:00 AM

It's just like on sci-fi boards, anything a human does is justifiable, anything an alien does is not. Even Adolf flipping Hitler is a billion times better than the nicest alien. The Speciesism is unimaginable.

Wolf_Plague

2009-03-23, 07:03 AM

the ABD had a fairly good moral justification for her wrath,
Sir, you just stated, that killing and torturing little children is OK as far as they are connected to conflict somehow, but killing(or being angry at) black dragons without torture is not, because something. Sir, allow me to express my deep despise to your logic, words and personality.

It's just like on sci-fi boards, anything a human does is justifiable, anything an alien does is not. Even Adolf flipping Hitler is a billion times better than the nicest alien. The Speciesism is unimaginable.
And where did you saw humans here?

Volkov

2009-03-23, 07:09 AM

Sir, you just stated, that killing and torturing little children is OK as far as they are connected to conflict somehow, but killing(or being angry at) black dragons without torture is not, because something. Sir, allow me to express my deep despise to your logic, words and personality.

And where did you saw humans here?

Replace human with Elf, Dwarf, Gnome, or Halfling and you'll get my point, the closer a race is to human apparently the more moral it is.

The Lords Breed

2009-03-23, 07:33 AM

But why does she do such a poor job of it? Soul Bind the dragon to keep her away from her family. Or telling the dragon that she was casting this spell because mama gave him the idea instead of a matter of self defense.

She cannot soul bind the dragon. If you recall, the council told her that any existing spell she cast automatically ends when the splice ends but anyone she kills will remain dead. ( http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0634.html )

"Second, any spell you cast with an ongoing duration will end when the splice expires." Panel 2.

Creediki

2009-03-23, 08:06 AM

Aenghus

2009-03-23, 08:27 AM

I'll throw another vote for the familicide being an evil act. Revenge seemed to be a more important act than staying with his family. The epic spell itself was gratuitous overkill, cast as much to torture the freshly animated-ABD as to ensure the safety of his family.

Assumptions have to be made when deciding on such matters, as the comic doesn't provide all the details to make a categoric decision. My assumptions include

-animating the head was a somewhat evil act all by itself.

-whether the epic spell required the head to be animated or not, it's indiscriminate nature suggests it would have the [Evil] descriptor.

-wiping out entire extended families of creatures, geographically distant, even if they are mostly evil, isn't good IMO. I have trouble labelling it as neutral even under most severe provocation. Killing from a distance, not having to see you are killing or know much about them, makes it easier.

V is scared for his family and wants to prevent this from happening ever again, understood. Still, there is a point where ruthless pragmatism crosses the line from neutral to evil, and I think V was well over the line on this one.

And in any case there is a distinct flavour of power-mad BWAHAHA to this strip, that far from any regret or distaste for using the epic spell. V *enjoyed it*. V is definitely under the influence, so it will be interesting to see his reaction once the splice is over, and I do agree that it will end soon.

brilliantlight

2009-03-23, 10:25 AM

It is also much easier for V himself to think that he means what he says. That is my point. You see, it's not just V that speaks anymore. He shares souls with three extremely evil entities, and their desires and urges that he feels as well are (still) in conflict with his own mind and character. That's where rationalization steps in, IMO.

Agreed, we have never seen V NEARLY as cold blooded as this.

Kcalehc

2009-03-23, 10:32 AM

Clearly evil. That was one big can of Pure Win (TM) that V just pulled out.

Also clearly unneccessary. That much power could have been used to plane shift to a nice emty plane, take the family, cast a cloister-esque spell for safety and live happily ever after. Revenge was not required - merely desired - to achieve complete family safety.

One question about alignments: As this act clearly puts V into the evil category (and even if you dont agree, lets just say it does for teh sake of the question), does the evil alignment cause V to act evil, or does V acting evil cause an evil alignment? Does one super hardcore act of evil predispose a person to further evil acts? The alignment system seems rather odd to me as a non-DnD player.

B. Dandelion

2009-03-23, 10:48 AM

You know, I'm pretty sure this was said already, like 20 pages ago, but it bears repeating. Roy has been judged sufficiently lawful good by the deva and allowed into LG heaven. And he was appalled at the idea of killing people from "evil" races who haven't done anything wrong. (See Origin of PCs.) So no, in OotS-land, it's not ok to just kill them, whatever your particular D&D experiences have told you.

It's Roy's philosophy, and it didn't bar him from Lawful Good heaven. But there's no indication that it actually helped his case, much less that his personal standard is the OOTS standard. Else the paladin in "Origin" wouldn't have been able to remain a paladin.

What the OOTS "game mechanic" rules is often different or even completely opposed to the mindset that the narrative appears to encourage. This is NOT unintentional. By the time the series wraps up we will probably see some kind of change to the rules, and the new standards will much more strongly resemble Roy's ethics. But for the time being he's an anomaly and we can't point to his principles as a guideline for to the law of OOTS-land.

Huh? I'm not destroying dozens of lives simultaneously, I'm just making a post on the internet. And even if I somehow had some irrational hatred for a fictional character, how does that manifest in the point that I'm making here, where I'm simply saying that V is subconsciously trying to rationalize his actions?

Oh, that's just David -- don't mind him. He is, of course, the smartest person in the world, and thus any opinions that arise in evident contradiction to his own can only have emerged from a flawed mentality. He's kind enough to spend nearly every waking moment of his precious time here, tirelessly correcting our sad misconceptions in minute detail, but alas, ignorance ever marches on.

Wolf_Plague

2009-03-23, 11:05 AM

Also clearly unnecessary. That much power could have been used to plane shift to a nice empty plane, take the family, cast a cloister-esque spell for safety and live happily ever after.

All spell effects will end after Spice ends. Only death is permanent.
And yes it is more safer to planeshift dragons, not V's family and live the rest of their lives in fear that somebody finds them.

DrivinAllNight

2009-03-23, 11:35 AM

Mannryu

2009-03-23, 11:47 AM

Pretty much just about any spell beyond what V knows is gonna be considered something evil, look at who V is getting vir spells from, three of the most evil people with a passion for torture and evil and death. V can still be redeemed from this, we just have to wait to see what happens in the coming strips.

I agree. But the old V would never do something like this..
I do wonder, what will this elven wizard do next.. will s/he stop with only Familicide or will this "revenge" continue?

MickJay

2009-03-23, 12:12 PM

Yeah, this is hardcore evil. She killed everyone in that dragons family most of whom don't know she exists.

That would depend on how the spell works; maybe it targets precisely those family members the "central" target knows (and cares) about. It would make more sense than just following the bloodline and whatnot. See how V reanimated the head and how the spell started from it: most probably, Familicide obtains information about the beings considered by the target as family and then proceeded to kill them.

werewolfjay

2009-03-23, 12:42 PM

v could have done what the demons suggested in 634 and prevented all this trouble but he didnt because he would have to admit his magic failed again just like at azure city
so he chose the more evil of the two paths to not fail again which the act itself is evil because instead of losing his pride he caused fear,anger, and death on a large scale

David Argall

2009-03-23, 02:47 PM

Huh? I'm not destroying dozens of lives simultaneously, I'm just making a post on the internet.
Irrelevant. We are not discussing how you express any self deluding, but whether there is any.

And even if I somehow had some irrational hatred for a fictional character, how does that manifest in the point that I'm making here, where I'm simply saying that V is subconsciously trying to rationalize his actions?
But once you charge V with subconsciously trying to rationalizing her actions, you become vulnerable to the same charge. What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

My theory has a lot of backing (V's apparently going with what the voices tell him, although he tries to justify it with reasons that seem stretched -to say the least-,and is obviously enjoying every minute of it),
Now given the limited number of strips we have had, we can't have a lot of backing for anything. In fact, we are pretty much limited to "I concur" as evidence here, and that has several possible meanings.

we are now discussing reanimating the dragon's head and having it witness he destruction of its entire kin.
Yet if we say V was trying for revenge, we find the act of reanimating rather unneeded as the news will get back to the dragon soon enough anyway, and poorly done because V does not take advantage of the opportunity to taunt the dragon and increase her suffering. Instead she is pretty much all business.

Even his taunts to the dragon about her son's death were justified (and useful), as they enraged her
But having said so, you remove the basis for saying V is seeking revenge.

He had no reason to pretend (to himself first) that his actions had different reasons, as there was no allignment conflict at the time.
We have some rather heated remarks on V's alignment over those actions. In particular, we can note V killing Kubota here. V is quite open about her motives, which many want to call evil. So we seem to have as much alignment conflict there as we do here.

it's not just V that speaks anymore. He shares souls with three extremely evil entities, and their desires and urges that he feels as well are (still) in conflict with his own mind and character. That's where rationalization steps in.
But who is doing the rationalization? We really have little evidence there is any serious conflict between souls and V. And by our standard theory of why the fiends are doing this, there can be no serious conflict.

Unless he has fully turned to evil, V must grasp at whatever straws he finds to try and justify himself morally whenever he commits such a blatantly evil act.
Again, V killed Kubota and made no attempt to find an excuse. She flatly stated her reasons. Why should we expect him not to do the same here?

After all, for all her overkill - planning to soul bind V's offspring comes to mind - the ABD had a fairly good moral justification for her wrath,
No. One purpose of having ma go after the kids was to show it did not have justification for its actions.

Vaarsuvius, recent judgement failure nonwithstanding, hopefully is smart enough to realize that his own moral grounds are less than rock-solidy and, in fact, far shakier than the Dragon's at this point.
While V's action looks to fall in the evil range, it is morally superior to the dragon. The dragon knew the victims to be innocent and no threat to her. V has every reason to assume the victims are not at all innocent, and they may be a threat. [That the threat is probably small or the spell ineffective in eliminating it does not make the threat zero, which is the approximate threat level of the elven family.]

That much power could have been used to plane shift to a nice emty plane, take the family, cast a cloister-esque spell for safety and live happily ever after. Revenge was not required - merely desired - to achieve complete family safety.
So the family is to run away from all friends, family, all they have enjoyed, to start a new life under strange conditions? That may be better than being killed, but it is hardly desirable.

does the evil alignment cause V to act evil, or does V acting evil cause an evil alignment?
V acting evil would cause the evil alignment.

Rotipher

2009-03-23, 03:17 PM

That would depend on how the spell works; maybe it targets precisely those family members the "central" target knows (and cares) about.

But would Mama have known and cared enough about a bunch of eggs to make them early targets of the Familicide effect? She probably had no idea that those existed, as dragon eggs wouldn't take very long to hatch, and Mama's been obsessively pursuing V for months, not keeping tabs on family birth announcements.

Plus, we see the pink bolt of energy spiking both an adult and a baby dragon in one panel. The fact that it struck down parent and child, one immediately after the other, supports the notion that the dragons were targeted in order of biological relatedness to Mama, not how much she knew or cared about them.

Hmmmm... I wonder if that means we can extrapolate the likely identity of each dragon in #639, based on which panel they get blown away in? Panels 13-15 could be Mama's sibling from the same clutch (same horns as Mama), 16 could be another sibling (ditto), 17 and 18 could be their divorced parents, 19 could be a clutch of half-siblings their father sired with his second wife, etc. Then grandparents, uncles and aunts, that loser of a cousin whose mom was a lizardfolk, and so on and so on....

TheBST

2009-03-23, 03:42 PM

But once you charge V with subconsciously trying to rationalizing her actions, you become vulnerable to the same charge. What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

Or we believe in subtext. And our own reasons- conscious or unconscious- for our opinions is neither here nor there.

Yet if we say V was trying for revenge, we find the act of reanimating rather unneeded as the news will get back to the dragon soon enough anyway, and poorly done because V does not take advantage of the opportunity to taunt the dragon and increase her suffering. Instead she is pretty much all business.

I think killing all the dragon's living relatives is enough to increase her suffering- taunting would be gilding the lily. As for being 'all business'- look at the smile on V's face while he/she casts the spell. Killing an entire bloodline, children and all- shouldn't cause that level of joy in a decent person. With that in mind, V seems to be performing both with both business and a pleasure. The theory that pleasure is outweighing business and V is rationalizing this unbalance in motivations somewhat seems likely to me.

While V's action looks to fall in the evil range, it is morally superior to the dragon. The dragon knew the victims to be innocent and no threat to her. V has every reason to assume the victims are not at all innocent, and they may be a threat. [That the threat is probably small or the spell ineffective in eliminating it does not make the threat zero, which is the approximate threat level of the elven family.]

I said it before and I'll say it again: killing children, which the spell would surely do- is reprehensible. And the spell was overkill. A mother coming to avenge her son? Probable. 3rd cousins twice removed coming for vengeance? Not bloody likely. And if the D&D alignment system tries to rationalise this, it's just more proof of how ridiculous and pathetic it is.

Das654

2009-03-23, 04:20 PM

By the 12 Gods...Disproportionate Revenge indeed.

TyCobb

2009-03-23, 05:24 PM

Definitely an evil act and personally I hope that the backlash kills all of Vs relatives.

Ampersand

2009-03-23, 05:42 PM

We have reached the point where repetition becomes inevitable.

That never stopped the Miko threads. Some of the ones about Our Lady of Chaos went 30+ pages with people talking past each other.

V being quite open about his motives. It is simply much easier to think that V means what she says.

It's been my experience that the person least qualified to explain a person's motivations is usually the person themselves.

Dagren

2009-03-23, 06:01 PM

Sabre13

2009-03-23, 06:12 PM

Definitely an evil act and personally I hope that the backlash kills all of Vs relatives.

That's a little harsh... Look at it this way. Your children are about to be ripped from you, not just in this life, but in the afterlife as well. You are powerless to stop this from happening. You have the potential to NEVER SEE THEM AGAIN. V just got scared, and then when V received the means to save Vs children, V got incredibly angry and vengeful towards the dragon. I would be a little crazy at this point too. Cut V some slack.

Personally I would have just let the dragon be dead and not have wiped out all of its descendants, but remember that while V has the final say, those 3 souls are probably having an effect on what V does. I doubt that the unadulterated V would go that far.

We have some rather heated remarks on V's alignment over those actions. In particular, we can note V killing Kubota here. V is quite open about her motives, which many want to call evil. So we seem to have as much alignment conflict there as we do here.

Again, V killed Kubota and made no attempt to find an excuse. She flatly stated her reasons. Why should we expect him not to do the same here?
V acting evil would cause the evil alignment.

Again, I am going to use the logic that the Deva who examined Roy's alignment used: Using Evil means to fulfill Good obligations sounds pretty neutral to me.
While V bypassed Kubota's trial, if you didn't give a hoot about any legal loopholes, Kubota was unquestionably guilty of murder, attempted murder, espionage, and treason. She bypassed a trial and killed a man who attempted to assassinate his own ruler so he could rise to power. Evil means, good obligation. Neutral aligned.

V used 2 necromancy spells in order to destroy a huge amount of evil dragons (Yes there MAY have been some good aligned descendants, but with no prior knowledge of a black dragon's alignment, wouldn't you attempt to kill it? What about a Red Dragon? There's a reason that the MM says always evil instead of generally or usually evil). These were undeniably evil spells, but then those were Black dragons. ("Dragons: Color-coded for your convenience!' :elan:) Undeniably evil means, undeniably good obligation. Sounds pretty neutral to me. I will admit that V had an ulterior motive all through this, but parenting can make you do crazy things, like lifting fallen trees with your bare hands, or eliminating any possible threat of retaliation from a dragon you got in a spat with. That kind of thing. Your honor? My client pleads self defense.

One thing I was surprised at was the number of people condemning V for "Raising" the dragon before casting Familicide, along with those who described her as being a material component (or focus). I never interpreted it in that way, and can't think of any other spell requiring a sentient creature as a material component. How I interpreted it was that the dragon was the subject of the spell. And if the spell isn't designed to work on a corpse, then raising her was definitely a condition for familicide. Just my personal interpretations of that particular question, nothing more.

That actually makes a lot of sense. Check the Brainmeats on Dagren!:biggrin: He came up with what nobody else in 24 pages did! Looking at the head as the subject solves a lot of questions about the spell, but also kinda makes V look worse for doing it... O well, still a brilliant piece of reasoning.:cool:

Sotris

2009-03-23, 06:52 PM

Irrelevant. We are not discussing how you express any self deluding, but whether there is any. Actually, we are discussing that based on specific actions, and the reasons proposed to justify them. Now, how exactly does me simply saying that V (a fictional character) is in my opinion trying to rationalize his newfound urges here, a "rationalization" of a supposed "irrational hatred" I have for him? It simply does not make any sense. It's a bad analogy.

But once you charge V with subconsciously trying to rationalizing her actions, you become vulnerable to the same charge. What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. How? Which actions of mine become "vulnerable to the same charge"? There is simply no comparison here.

Now given the limited number of strips we have had, we can't have a lot of backing for anything. In fact, we are pretty much limited to "I concur" as evidence here, and that has several possible meanings.Well that, and the distinct pleasure he seems to derive from delivering punishment (and suffering) to the dragon.

Yet if we say V was trying for revenge, we find the act of reanimating rather unneeded as the news will get back to the dragon soon enough anyway, and poorly done because V does not take advantage of the opportunity to taunt the dragon and increase her suffering. Instead she is pretty much all business.Perhaps you have not understiood what I am saying. V has not surrendered entirely to evil at this point. On the contrary, the rationalization that takes place comes exactly from the fact that he is not fully evil yet. His mind needs some form of justification for inflicting such sadistic punishment on the already defeated dragon, and the stretched rationalization comes for that reason exactly.

But having said so, you remove the basis for saying V is seeking revenge.Why? I explained that V himself is not willing to admit that he is doing these cruel deeds only to seek revenge, at this point. That is what rationalization is.

We have some rather heated remarks on V's alignment over those actions. In particular, we can note V killing Kubota here. V is quite open about her motives, which many want to call evil. So we seem to have as much alignment conflict there as we do here. I never thought that V killikg Kubota was necessarily an evil act- but the issue is that a change of allignment is a gradual proccess. But I'm sure you agree that the instant (and near-painless) excecution of a single evil character does not compare to what V is doing here.

But who is doing the rationalization? We really have little evidence there is any serious conflict between souls and V. And by our standard theory of why the fiends are doing this, there can be no serious conflict.The conflict is not between V and the souls: It is between what he finds pleasure in doing (as his soul has formed this peculiar commune with 3 extremely evil souls), and what his reasoning tells him he should do (as his "whatever works" allignment dictates).

Again, V killed Kubota and made no attempt to find an excuse. She flatly stated her reasons. Why should we expect him not to do the same here?V did not have the Voices leading his emotions baack then, and drawing him towards more and more sadistic deeds. But he still wants to be "clear" about his motives, and that's where rationalization steps in. It's not about lying to others, but to himself.

Volkov

2009-03-23, 07:04 PM

It isn't how close a race is to humanity that makes it more moral, it's how closely it aligns with human views and needs. Elves are usually regarded as very moral and human aligned. How long would that last on a planet with 6 billion to feed and conflict between starving humans and elves unwilling to give up pristine plains to agriculture?
Moral relativism is a luxury afforded to affluent species that dominate their available space.

Black Dragons are competing predators. They raid human and elven settlements, kill humans and elves for food and sport. Anything that kills them, especially methods that don't have cruel and unusual amounts of pain or misery, is not evil. The half dragon and the half-centaur are just collateral damage.

Human values are stupid and biased, that's why all my campaign worlds are about the "Non-Human" species banding against the evil "Humans and their Ilk" to destroy them or devolve them once and for all to end their yoke of oppression. Though my old Dungeon Master made humans and their kindred species more evil than the fiends themselves, which in my opinion is taking it a little too far.

Dr. Cthulwho

2009-03-23, 07:06 PM

V is scared for his family and wants to prevent this from happening ever again, understood. Still, there is a point where ruthless pragmatism crosses the line from neutral to evil, and I think V was well over the line on this one.

And V is smart. Sure, he says it is to stop it ever happening again, but really? Some of those dragons may have had mates, or powerful backers/allies. Or their god for example. Or you'd need just one to have some resurrection plan in the event of its death. So V could actually recreate the same situation that motivated the ABD to begin with (some other Black dragon comes home to discover their mate and child is dead) on a larger scale.

Really, I'd think if V's main priority was protecting his family from possible repriasals for his actions while out adventuring he'd have killed the ABD and then got in contact with Aarindarius and ask him to keep an eye on them. I mean, V was prepared to have him step in to stop the ABD after all.

At the end of the day it really looks like, on the balance of things, V's concern for his family is being usurped somewhat by more evil motivations.

Personally I would have just let the dragon be dead and not have wiped out all of its descendants, but remember that while V has the final say, those 3 souls are probably having an effect on what V does. I doubt that the unadulterated V would go that far.

Well, not even descendants. The ABD stated it only had a single child (which was part of its reason for hating V so much). V was killing aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews and cousins. Maybe the odd brother or sister (I doubt the ABD's parents or grand-parents are still on the scene).

I will admit that V had an ulterior motive all through this, but parenting can make you do crazy things, like lifting fallen trees with your bare hands, or eliminating any possible threat of retaliation from a dragon you got in a spat with. That kind of thing. Your honor? My client pleads self defense.

Well, probably not self defense because V shouldn't have had an actual reason to believe any other black dragons would come along.

The ABD had a very personal reason for seeking revenge which probably wouldn't concern some distant cousin on another continant, and she spelled it out to V pretty much:

"You killed my only child in a way that prevented me from having him raised, so I'm going to do the same to your children."

With the ABD dead (which was self defense) that is the end of any specific threat. V arguing self defense to slaying the extended family would be like someone saying "I killed a violent criminal who broke into my home and was going to kill my family due to a grudge he had against me. Then I killed everyone related to him because I thought there may be a chance one of them might try and harm me or my family as revenge at some point in the future."

Warren Dew

2009-03-23, 08:08 PM

One thing I was surprised at was the number of people condemning V for "Raising" the dragon before casting Familicide, along with those who described her as being a material component (or focus). I never interpreted it in that way, and can't think of any other spell requiring a sentient creature as a material component. How I interpreted it was that the dragon was the subject of the spell. And if the spell isn't designed to work on a corpse, then raising her was definitely a condition for familicide.

That makes a tremendous amount of sense, and matches the graphics in the comics better. I take back my support for the "material component" theory, and put it in favor of your "sentient subject" theory.

Now, how exactly does me simply saying that V (a fictional character) is in my opinion trying to rationalize his newfound urges here, a "rationalization" of a supposed "irrational hatred" I have for him? It simply does not make any sense. It's a bad analogy.

It's likely an incorrect description of your motivations - and David admits as much - but the parallel is there. In both cases, there's no direct evidence of the alleged urges. In both cases, the only evidence is circumstantial - on the one hand, facial expressions; on the other, other forum posters who have admitted to irrational hatred of Vaarsuvius. In both cases, the direct evidence is only in favor of the explicitly articulated nonemotional reason. Occam's razor dictates accepting the direct evidence to avoid having to make up unnecessary hypotheses.

Well, probably not self defense because V shouldn't have had an actual reason to believe any other black dragons would come along.

It's not justified by self defense, but Vaarsuvius does have reason to believe other black dragons would come along. In 100% of the known cases so far, a relative came along for vengeance within a year or so. Absent contrary bayesian priors, Vaarsuvius had good reason to believe that another relative will come along to avenge mother dragon.

The reason it's not justified by self defense is that Vaarsuvius doesn't have explicit evidence for each dragon that was killed.

KyrtFurey

2009-03-23, 08:13 PM

It's an evil act. It doesn't really matter who the target was.

V did it at least partly to make the dragon suffer, at least partly for revenge. That in itself is enough to make it evil. The sheer scale of it, the lack of worry about collateral damage, about taking the innocent or good with the guilty or evil...and the possibility that some of theose dragons/dragonkin were good is there, as we know that even Orcs have tried to be "good" so this is a setting where stereotypes aren't 100% accurate...simply exacerbates the issue.

As for if this is an extinction level event? Probably not. But it has, at the least, put a very sizeable dent in the black dragon population.

V has made himself a target. He has demonstrated a level of power few people can achieve. And he's used it to destroy a very large number of very powerful creatures. People are going to notice. To wonder who did this and why. To stop him doing it again. To exact revenge on the one who killed the dragons...some of whom would have friends and mates not related by blood.

The dragons at least can find out. They have an Oracle.

And if it is an ELE....well, that doesn't solve Vs problems. People. Gods. Other dragons races. Are going to wonder. And take steps.

So - evil act. And its going to make things worse for V.

Interestingly enough - anyone notice how <Parent> is scared of V now?

EJL

Sabre13

2009-03-23, 09:49 PM

Human values are stupid and biased, that's why all my campaign worlds are about the "Non-Human" species banding against the evil "Humans and their Ilk" to destroy them or devolve them once and for all to end their yoke of oppression. Though my old Dungeon Master made humans and their kindred species more evil than the fiends themselves, which in my opinion is taking it a little too far.

Woo! I think I just found a friend! Finally someone who shares my view!
Now all I need is for someone else to agree with me that history is made by the victor in every occasion and is almost never unbiased.

It's not justified by self defense, but Vaarsuvius does have reason to believe other black dragons would come along. In 100% of the known cases so far, a relative came along for vengeance within a year or so. Absent contrary bayesian priors, Vaarsuvius had good reason to believe that another relative will come along to avenge mother dragon.

The reason it's not justified by self defense is that Vaarsuvius doesn't have explicit evidence for each dragon that was killed.

Very true. I can't think of a retort at this time. That was an odd post, as you start by defending me but then turn around and smash me. What am I supposed to say?

The sheer scale of it, the lack of worry about collateral damage, about taking the innocent or good with the guilty or evil...and the possibility that some of theose dragons/dragonkin were good is there, as we know that even Orcs have tried to be "good" so this is a setting where stereotypes aren't 100% accurate...simply exacerbates the issue.

So now all of the D&D source books are nothing but stereotypes? There's a reason that adventurers everywhere face Black Dragons and Red Dragons and all of the other chromatic dragons along with all of the other evil beasties and fashion their armor from their hides. It's because the book says they're evil. There's no stereotyping about it. Yes there are some exceptions, but how many DMs are going to put a good aligned Black in their dungeons? I would have, because i liked playing with my victims imeanfellowgamers minds, but how many others? And don't say "ME!! I WOULD" just to put me in my place, i want the truth from anyone willing to quote me and badmouth me.:smallamused::smallamused:

And What on earth does ABD stand for?!?:smallfurious::smallfurious::smallfurious:

Tremas

2009-03-23, 10:30 PM

And What on earth does ABD stand for?!?:smallfurious::smallfurious::smallfurious:

Ancient. Black. Dragon.

I think.

Tremas

2009-03-23, 11:06 PM

After having waded through all 24 pages, I want to cast my vote (and make a prediction). If you disagree with my logic and opinions - fine - but please read the prediction at the end if you don't mind possible spoilers. I want this particular prediction on the record...

I accept V's justifications at face-value. I agree with the posts that point out then when V says "I concur" - the immediate line before that was "There is still so much we can do." And it's true - there is still much more that V can do - with V's new, temporary powers. V acquired and is using the powers to protect V's family - and there's more protection work that can be done.

So - basically - I'm fine with both V's intentions and actions after the soul-splice. (Making the soul-splice deal, or any deal, with devils/demons/fiends/etc is bad. But I think everyone already agrees on that.) I believe the Create Greater Undead spell was necessary in order for V to cast Familicide and not performed as some sadistic way to further torture the ABD. And I accept the logic that Familicide - under those circumstances, in that universe - is a perfectly reasonable way to protect your family from possible revenge from other black dragons. V's soul-splice deal is a once-in-a-forever type of thing, so it's only logical for V to take all steps possible - now - while V has his/her only chance - to do everything possible to protect V's family (without crossing the line into evil).

And I further vote with the side that seems to say "They were Black Dragons. They were evil. The only good Black Dragon is a dead Black Dragon."

Change the Black Dragons into something else (anything non-evil, or anything not shown to have made credible threats against V's family) - and then that's a different situation. But under the situation shown here, V's actions were reasonable, justified, logical, and maybe even a good idea - with the sole exception of what the heck does V do about Tiamat's expected anger now? That's the only "good-idea" drawback I see from the spells so far. The soul-splice, of course, was a very, very bad idea. But what V has done with the resulting power so far? All good.

I would even take it further on the slippery-slope, with the logic of - If there's a magic button to press that kills all Black Dragons in the world - but also kills one perfectly innocent creature for every 100 Black Dragons killed - then do it. It's sad. But do it. The greater good is served by protecting the world from 100's of evil Black Dragons, and the innocents will be rewarded for their inadvertent sacrifice in their after-life. And what if it's more than one innocent per 100 Black Dragons? What if it's 2, 5, 20, etc.? When does the price in innocents become too much? Good question. I would measure by the damage you expect a Black Dragon to do. If an average Black Dragon is expected to kill 1,000 humans (or, if you prefer, 1,000 sentients) during its dragonic lifetime, then even trading 100 innocent lives for every Black Dragon could be justified. It would still save 900 lives per Black Dragon destroyed.

So, in summary, I see:

V's intention = protect V's family (a good intention)
V's actions = kill many Black Dragons (a good result, regardless of intent)

Belkar will die either by saving V, or by stopping some unspeakable, truly evil act that V started. (Belkar will have a logical reason for doing so.) During the death scene, Belkar will discover V's gender. Belkar's last words will be something like - "I knew it! You're a g... (gack)", leaving forever unknown whether Belkar was about to say "guy" or "girl". We will never know, but at least Belkar finds out before he dies.

KyrtFurey

2009-03-23, 11:24 PM

So now all of the D&D source books are nothing but stereotypes?

Well...yes.

There's a reason that adventurers everywhere face Black Dragons and Red Dragons and all of the other chromatic dragons along with all of the other evil beasties and fashion their armor from their hides. It's because the book says they're evil. There's no stereotyping about it. Yes there are some exceptions, but how many DMs are going to put a good aligned Black in their dungeons? I would have, because i liked playing with my victims imeanfellowgamers minds, but how many others?

Me. It's an excellent way to mess with PCs expectations.

The trouble is, V just blasted them, shotgun style with no regard for who or what got killed, what alignment they were, whatever they were doing.....nothing. V didn't care if they were good or bad. He didn't care if they were massacring a town or protecting it from the Gods. It may be unlikely, but given Redcloak and One EYes example, not impossible.

That total alck of concern? Evil.

To put it onto context - his spell targetted eggs and the young. Creatures who never even had the opportunity to be "Evil".

It was indiscriminate slaying of everything related to the ABD, going back several generations at least, just on the off chance that one of them may, somehow, care enough to hunt V down at a later date.

What's more, it's made fairly clear - to me anyway - V may have done it in part to protect his family. The "I concur", "I have not yet finished" etc statements, however, show that the intent isn't just to protect Vs family. Its to make the ABD suffer.

Either way, what V did was evil. And she did it of her own volition. Of his own free will.

Ironically - it was likely a futile gesture because all it did was send up a flare.

BTW - as for XP...the argument was made that the contract forbade XP. Not quite true....it was stated that Vs CL was so high any XP gain would be minimal.

EJL

Deatheater

2009-03-23, 11:37 PM

Wow 24 pages!

Okay, Suvie, go annihilate Xykon. How long can Mr. Bones last? One minute? Two?

Of course the Giant won't let this happen, but I can dream.

DrivinAllNight

2009-03-24, 12:08 AM

I agree. But the old V would never do something like this..
I do wonder, what will this elven wizard do next.. will s/he stop with only Familicide or will this "revenge" continue?

The old V could never have done something like this before, V never before had near the power V does now. V has a habit of taking a train of thought and running it not just to the end of the tracks, but sending it beyond any possible tracks, until the train itself is dead. Even while V consistently was trying to contact Haley, V never made it through, but constantly tried again and again even though he never got through, ever thanks to Cloister. A normal caster who knows when to quit would have stopped trying to find Haley a long time ago. I still personally think V is just taking this train of thought through to a very final conclusion, since I think V believes that if 1ABD will come after the family than any other ABD of the family could do the same thing.
My personal theory is that V will soon give up the massive power, but the use V has done may come with some serious costs now with the family, or much later in the story when the OotS get to the gates.

Selene

2009-03-24, 12:30 AM

It's Roy's philosophy, and it didn't bar him from Lawful Good heaven. But there's no indication that it actually helped his case, much less that his personal standard is the OOTS standard. Else the paladin in "Origin" wouldn't have been able to remain a paladin.

Well, Roy stopped him from killing the orcs. We don't know how long he stayed a paladin after that.

LuisDantas

2009-03-24, 12:36 AM

Sir, you just stated, that killing and torturing little children is OK as far as they are connected to conflict somehow, but killing(or being angry at) black dragons without torture is not, because something. Sir, allow me to express my deep despise to your logic, words and personality.

Do as you will.

But please do notice that you're grossly misrepresenting my stance first. Wrath does not necessarily imply killing and torturing little children, for starters.

Kirgoth the Orc

2009-03-24, 01:11 AM

The real question is will the devils use xbox, playstation or wii controllers from their couch in hell when they take control of V.

keybounce

2009-03-24, 01:22 AM

The real question is will the devils use xbox, playstation or wii controllers from their couch in hell when they take control of V.
There's three of them, so ...

Tremas

2009-03-24, 01:58 AM

What were the three fiends thinking? Did they foresee this result as part of their evil plan?

They should have. They had to have known the spells available to the souls under their control. So - they should have known that "Familicide" would be available to V. And they also should have known the effective level V would be spell-casting at from the triple soul-splice.

So - which is it? Is this all part of their evil plan? Or did the far-reaching effects of familicide cast at V's current casting level catch them by surprise?

And if you were Tiamat, whom would you blame? Would you blame some mid-level sorcerer elf that was handed this super-powerful spell by a third party? Or blame the third-party that handed over the spell to the elf who couldn't possibly have come up with the spell on his/her own?

Is the IFCC currently cheering V on? Or did the IFCC immediately dis-band and run away when they saw what V did?

Mystery

2009-03-24, 02:10 AM

She cannot soul bind the dragon. If you recall, the council told her that any existing spell she cast automatically ends when the splice ends but anyone she kills will remain dead. ( http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0634.html )

"Second, any spell you cast with an ongoing duration will end when the splice expires." Panel 2.That's a good point, but does it apply to scrolls? Does reading a scroll count as casting a spell for that purpose?

Epileptic Ent

2009-03-24, 02:55 AM

1: ... awesome comic ...
2: if you roll a natural 1 on your will-safe, the stun after reading is 2d4 days - ouch
3: ... real brilliant comic!
4: 21 pages? *reads* 22? *reads* 23?! ... 25!
5: absolutely awesome comic!
6: ... and still discussion is running hot ...
7: true masterwork comic!

Okay Giant, you're a genius and a true artist - while I've regarded OotS as one of the best webcomics ever even since I stumble upon it a long time ago in the Dungeon of Durokan ... it has long since already crossed into art, and now into high art!
Managing to evoke such an emotional outcry and an epic debate of ethics - that's a masterpiece few artist ever achieve ... and a damn fine pointer at some very sore spots in real-world ethics debates.
I'm officially amezed and awed.

On the ethics debate itself:
Nice corundrum we have here, as both of the following sentences are 100% true:
a) V just murdered sixty-some sentient beings without any threat or provocation.
b V killed sixty-some creatures that are Evil by their very essence.

... so ... what does that actually mean?

a) would register as a near-Meganazi reading on an Evil'O'Meter
b) would register as a near-Megasaint reading on a Good'O'Meter

... not helpful. not helpful AT ALL.

okay, intent then:
a) protecting helpless and inncocent family (-> good)
b) preventing further danger from potentially hostiles (-> neutral)
c) inflicting more pain (and even more guilt) on an already beaten opponent (-> evil)

... damn ...

subjective perspective:
a) gut-feeling and moral compass scream "*EVIL*"
b) balance effects screams "*GOOD*"
c) rational mind's still not able to come up with a verdict.

... I surrender! ... well, okay, not really, I'm going to stick with my gut feeling and still say "*EVIL*" - and both BoED and BoVD back me up in saying that unprovoked murder can simply not be a good thing - but i can't think of any way to *PROVE* either way of seeing.
And it's not grey either - it's both light and darkness in such amounts that it's simply impossible to see anything.

So, again: AWESOME COMIC!

Aasimar

2009-03-24, 04:14 AM

Am I the only one who thinks that V may have bitten off more than he can chew?

He may have killed a whole family tree, but how many of those dragons will have loved ones or allies who aren't blood relatives. Loved ones and allies who might just be ANGRY.

And I think this is a dragonicide of a scale that would warrant intervention from Tiamat.

And V may just be able to fight a God in his current form, at least for a while, but this is a temporary state. And once it is over, I'm guessing he'll have a world of hurt coming for him.

p.s. While I don't claim to know that V is male, I don't play the hir/he/she/it game, male is the assumed gender in english when discussing something where gender is uncertain but 'it' doesn't fit...or so I seem to recall.

Sotris

2009-03-24, 04:53 AM

Now that I think about it, Familicide is not just a bit of an overkill, but also a bit unreliable- at least for what V is supposedly using it for. Think about it: It removes relatives of the 10th degree that probably haven't even heard of you and could care less about the victim... and leaves the victim's BFF (perhaps equally skilled , since we choose friends among our peers) entirely unscathed.

Of course, the spell's still pretty efficient as a meaningless act of sadistic intent...

Xvos

2009-03-24, 05:31 AM

If V were doing this to Adolf Hitler, murdering everyone related to him, none of us would be trying to crucify him and call him evil.

I would! There are a fair number of people in the world related to Hitler who are perfectly good, nice people. What kind of crazy sentiment is the idea that killing everyone related to an actual real life evil person is a good plan. That is an abhorrent thing to say.

Sorry I know that post was a long way back, but it really disturbed me that people would think like that so I had to say something.

And for similar reasons I think the use of the spell in the comic was evil, but I'm not going to debate that as everything I would say has already been said :).

Hosky

2009-03-24, 07:24 AM

Just wanted to say thanks. #639 was an awesome edition.

You wouldn't think a webcomic could make you stare in disbelief for minutes on end, but here we are.

Great Job.

LuisDantas

2009-03-24, 07:43 AM

Again, V killed Kubota and made no attempt to find an excuse. She flatly stated her reasons. Why should we expect him not to do the same here?

Because the circunstances are different. V was operating under a different delusion as he slayed Kubota, namely that he needed to regroup the Order ASAP and anything that delayed him in so doing was of minor importance. It helps that, as far as anyone knows, he may be right - stopping the Snarl does trump warranting due process for Kubota. Also, we've since learned that V has been having nightmares about his failure to save the Azure City soldiers during the siege, so he does not want to have any free time to remember and regret it.

Neither of those justifications apply in this present scene, while on the contrary, he willing took an unholy offer the he is enjoying far more than he has any right to. Hence the need for justification, shallow as it is.

No. One purpose of having ma go after the kids was to show it did not have justification for its actions.

Ma Black Dragon had little justification for her extreme actions. V has none at all.

While V's action looks to fall in the evil range,

IS happily immersed in the depths of evil's oceans, you mean.

it is morally superior to the dragon.

No way. Are you kidding?

The dragon knew the victims to be innocent and no threat to her. V has every reason to assume the victims are not at all innocent, and they may be a threat. [That the threat is probably small or the spell ineffective in eliminating it does not make the threat zero, which is the approximate threat level of the elven family.]

Excuse me, is that supposed to make any sense at all?

The children of a known adventurer that killed one's own son are not known not to eventually become dragon slayers themselves.

Nor does V know - or even attempts to - find out if any of the Black Dragons he killed deserved it in any way. This talk of "having every reason to assume" is as silly as it is disgusting. One simply can't have moral justification for prehemptive genocide, under any circunstances.

LuisDantas

2009-03-24, 07:44 AM

I would! There are a fair number of people in the world related to Hitler who are perfectly good, nice people. What kind of crazy sentiment is the idea that killing everyone related to an actual real life evil person is a good plan. That is an abhorrent thing to say.

Sorry I know that post was a long way back, but it really disturbed me that people would think like that so I had to say something.

Quoted for truth. And seconded.

danielmayer

2009-03-24, 09:01 AM

... so ... what does that actually mean?

a) would register as a near-Meganazi reading on an Evil'O'Meter
b) would register as a near-Megasaint reading on a Good'O'Meter

... not helpful. not helpful AT ALL.

Ah, but you have to know: Rich is surely relying on the business studies in his world. You have to transfer the BCG-Matrix to Richs' world:
The BNS-Matix: "Burlew-Nazi-Saint"-Matrix: Going into both directions at once would make V a Cash Cow :smallbiggrin:

Tremas

2009-03-24, 09:46 AM

Nor does V know - or even attempts to - find out if any of the Black Dragons he killed deserved it in any way. This talk of "having every reason to assume" is as silly as it is disgusting. One simply can't have moral justification for prehemptive genocide, under any circunstances.

Different universe, similar example.

The movie - Aliens.

"Aliens" are sentient. They have advanced problem-solving skills. Near the end, the heroes (Ripley and Cpl. Hicks) both agree the only way "to be sure" (to be sure they're safe and that all humans everywhere are safe) is to take off and nuke the "Alien" nest from orbit. They didn't try and investigate the alignment of each individual Alien. They didn't have the time or ability. And they didn't have the need! The "Aliens" had already proven - through their actions - that all "Aliens" are chaotic evil and deserve to be killed - preferably while they're still eggs.

This is a "carpet nuke the village example" - and it's a good act, not a neutral or evil one. The evil/goodness/expected behavior of the target makes all the difference. The pre-emptive genocide of all Aliens in the Alien universe is morally justified, as well as good common sense.

Rotipher

2009-03-24, 11:28 AM

Is this all part of their evil plan? Or did the far-reaching effects of familicide cast at V's current casting level catch them by surprise?

I doubt if the Fiends knew exactly what V was going to do, else they wouldn't be so captivated by the reality TV they're watching. They probably knew that there would be some major disruptions if they granted V so much power, and that V's feud with Mama Dragon would be the catalyst. Having Mama's bloodline wiped out is something they might well have anticipated, even if they didn't know the mechanism; it's the sort of thing they'd probably do themselves, after all, and they know all three of the Spliced souls would approve.

Whether the IFCC also approves is another issue. On the one hand, V did just put a dent in the population of evil dragons -- how big a dent, we don't know; Rich hasn't told us how many black dragons survived, or how many exist in Stickworld -- but on the other, the IFCC doesn't actually work for Tiamat. The three fiends care about the long-term strategic advantage for fiend-kind, not the current welfare of black dragons on a single planet.

If seeing how much destruction a Spliced V can unleash will convince the other fiends to cooperate with IFCC's agenda, then the loss of a few dozen black dragons is a trivial price to pay. The fiends' own plans span millions of years; by the time their ambitions bear fruit, who's going to remember a few dragons cacked by some long-dead elf on a power trip? Even if V did wipe out their entire subspecies (which I doubt is the case), it's still a paltry loss, from the fiends' POV: it's not as if Tiamat couldn't import a few blacks from another plane of existence to re-colonize Stickworld.

And if you were Tiamat, whom would you blame? Would you blame some mid-level sorcerer elf that was handed this super-powerful spell by a third party? Or blame the third-party that handed over the spell to the elf who couldn't possibly have come up with the spell on his/her own?

Unless V really did wipe out the subspecies, I suspect Tiamat will write off the loss. At most, she may sue the IFCC for damages ... and use the Oracle to inform any bereaved black dragon widows and widowers of where a certain no-longer-Spliced elf can be found, a few years down the line.

Mannryu

2009-03-24, 11:33 AM

I'm pretty sure someone pointed out this already but...
I wonder how will V's family react to what their 'other parent' did and became.. :smallconfused:

Belkster11

2009-03-24, 12:23 PM

Quoted for truth. And seconded.

It was just a hypothosis. I'm not actually calling for the complete eradication of anyone related to Hitler.

I was just following V's line of thought. :smallannoyed:

Anyway, I don't know what they'd think, but since the spouse is clearly horrified by whatever happend to V, they're not gonna be happy.

El_Chupachichis

2009-03-24, 01:00 PM

Belkar and "I'm nastier than you": We know Belkar will die. We don't yet know who or what kills him.

Would be ironic if Belkar had some Dragon and The Oracle knew this would be how he went splat.

Wolf_Plague

2009-03-24, 01:03 PM

Different universe, similar example.

The movie - Aliens.

"Aliens" are sentient. They have advanced problem-solving skills. .
Now that is an excellent example.
I can't stop thinking now about ABD as Alien Queen avenging her brood and V as Ripley.
And "Familicide"? NUKablooie!:smallyuk:

Mr. Scaly

2009-03-24, 01:40 PM

Different universe, similar example.

The movie - Aliens.

"Aliens" are sentient. They have advanced problem-solving skills. Near the end, the heroes (Ripley and Cpl. Hicks) both agree the only way "to be sure" (to be sure they're safe and that all humans everywhere are safe) is to take off and nuke the "Alien" nest from orbit. They didn't try and investigate the alignment of each individual Alien. They didn't have the time or ability. And they didn't have the need! The "Aliens" had already proven - through their actions - that all "Aliens" are chaotic evil and deserve to be killed - preferably while they're still eggs.

This is a "carpet nuke the village example" - and it's a good act, not a neutral or evil one. The evil/goodness/expected behavior of the target makes all the difference. The pre-emptive genocide of all Aliens in the Alien universe is morally justified, as well as good common sense.

I never saw 'Aliens' but from what little I know it's sounding like you're describing colonists killing off the natives because they were fighting back. :smallbiggrin:

Seriously though, you're right. Different universe, similar example. But ut's not the same example. Ripley and company KNEW that if the xenomorphs found Earth they'd all turn into lunchmeat. V didn't.

Rotipher

2009-03-24, 01:56 PM

IMO, V's own statement that ve would have simply left Mama Dragon dead, had Mama not targeted vir family, gives lie to the notion that V acted out of fear for vir mate and children. If V really expected that Mama's relatives would also try to avenge her, then ve couldn't possibly have settled for killing just Mama: ve would expect the survivors to go after vir family, just as the previous avenging dragon had! Or, even if they hadn't targeted V's family specifically, they might've opted to attack vir at home at some future date, potentially catching both mate and kids in the crossfire.

Only if ve thought the risk to Parent and the Loved Ones was infinitesimal could V have dared to kill Mama and call it a day. Unless we assume that V's statement was a lie said purely to be cruel -- in which case, V's statement about protecting vir family is called into question too -- then V's own words reveal that ve didn't really expect retaliation from Mama's family: V used that argument to excuse vir own vengeful actions, and to lay blame for the bloodline's death squarely on Mama's unliving head.

Mr. Scaly

2009-03-24, 02:02 PM

And V's own statement that ve would have simply left Mama Dragon dead, had Mama not targeted vir family, gives lie to the notion that V acted out of fear for vir mate and children. If V really expected that Mama's relatives would also try to avenge her, then ve couldn't possibly have settled for killing just Mama: ve would expect the survivors to go after vir family, just as the previous avenging dragon had! Only if ve thought the risk to Parent and the Loved Ones was infinitesimal could V have dared to kill Mama and call it a day.

...I'm sorry, could you rephrase? It sounds like you're saying two different things.

Rotipher

2009-03-24, 02:12 PM

Edited accordingly.

Basically, if V really feared for vir family, V would still have used Familicide, but ve wouldn't have said the same thing to Mama. V would've said something like "By your actions, you have proven that avenging dragons are a threat to my family. Therefore, lest one of your kind seek me out and harm them as a result, I have no choice but to kill all dragons who might avenge you in turn." Ve would not have said, essentially, "Nyah, nyah, if you hadn't done this, I would show mercy and leave your family alone, so it's your fault I get to kill them all!"

Mr. Scaly

2009-03-24, 02:28 PM

Tremas

2009-03-24, 02:41 PM

I never saw 'Aliens' but from what little I know it's sounding like you're describing colonists killing off the natives because they were fighting back. :smallbiggrin:

Seriously though, you're right. Different universe, similar example. But it's not the same example. Ripley and company KNEW that if the xenomorphs found Earth they'd all turn into lunchmeat. V didn't.

Actually, both the aliens and humans were colonists in that movie, but that's another story :smallsmile:

My point is - sometimes - in certain Science Fiction and Fantasy universes for certain races - pre-emptive genocide IS both justifiable and a Good Thing. And the Aliens in the Alien series are just one example of that. Once we agree that sometimes pre-emptive genocide is good and justifiable and should be done on occasion, then we're just discussing case-by-case examples.

Then it's just a question of - "is V's use of extreme power here justified in this case?" And you can't say "No - because pre-emptive genocide/familicide is never justified." - because that's not true. Sometimes - for some Sci-Fi and Fantasy universes - pre-emptive genocide/familicide is the right thing to do.

That's the reason for the Aliens example - to refute the argument from a group of folks saying that pre-emptive genocide is never justified. Are the folks from that group willing to agree now that sometimes pre-emptive genocide is justified? Or will we just never agree?

David Argall

2009-03-24, 02:42 PM

Because the circunstances are different.
The circumstances are always different. But they rarely justify what they are claimed to. For 600 strips, V has been honest, and lout, in expressing motive. Why should we say this is different?

Neither of those justifications apply in this present scene, while on the contrary, he willing took an unholy offer the he is enjoying far more than he has any right to. Hence the need for justification, shallow as it is.
That does not explain his "lie". He took the offer whether he is killing the dragon's family for revenge or safety. Essentially you are arguing for a character change that makes his entire history irrelevant. While this is always possible, it is not the way to bet.

Ma Black Dragon had little justification for her extreme actions. V has none at all.
Quite the reverse. Ma simply wanted to hurt V, which of itself is evil. And she found the evil way to carry out her evil plan. V, by contrast, has a good motive, the protection of lives. We can argue he kills too many to save too few, but we still have that basic good motive.

The children of a known adventurer that killed one's own son are not known not to eventually become dragon slayers themselves.
Not at all likely. [It of course might fall under Elan's 1 chance in a million rule, but the dragon should not pay attention to that.] And that is a hundred years away, at least. Even by dragon standards, that is a long time.
Contrast that with the risk of leaving V alive. She is already a danger to the dragon. One easily managed by herself, but the dragon feared to taken on V when she had friends around. Allow V to gain a few levels, and get a good sized party, and the dragon is the underdog. Of course there are a number of ifs there, but compared to the "risks" of leaving the kids alive, it's certain leaving V alive means the dragon will be a suit of armor within a decade.

Nor does V know - or even attempts to - find out if any of the Black Dragons he killed deserved it in any way. This talk of "having every reason to assume" is as silly as it is disgusting.
Why? All our available evidence is that black dragons are evil and routinely doing evil when they have the chance. The ones pictured in the comic are evil. Those who mention the subject in the comic say they are evil. Our rules we are loosely [quite loosely at times] following say they are evil. All our evidence says an overwhelming percentage of these dragons are evil and deserved killing. That some small percentage may be innocent does not make a difference here. Any time we punish anybody for anything, there is a small percentage chance they are innocent. We punish anyway.

One simply can't have moral justification for prehemptive genocide, under any circunstances.
Of course one can. As noted elsewhere, self defense is preemptive violence. You use it to prevent the other guy from attacking you. We are talking 60 instead of 1 here, but that is not a difference in principle. It is merely being pragmatic to say killing 60 dragons to save 4 elves is not sufficient justification. However, when we talk of 400 or 4000 elves, we get a different answer.
Now self defense is normally only an immediate action, but this is because that if the situation is not immediate, you have less violent means of defending yourself, and because the further in the future a threat is, the less likely it is to actually happen. But these too are pragmatic standards. A certain threat tomorrow is a better justification for self defense than a possible threat today. So if we are certain the dragons will cause sufficient evil eventually, we are justified in killing them now.

hamishspence

2009-03-24, 02:50 PM

Punish being the operative word- punishment normally requires evidence- and to be for a specific crime. Punishing someone with execution for "being evil" is, by some WOTC D&D sources, unjust.

And this is a case of a lot of beings, rather than 1. If a bunch of people are all charged with working together to commit a crime and there is a chance some of them were not involved, you don't try them and punish them en-masse, you try, and punish, them separately. Otherwise, unjust.

in any case, where does it say V's motive is to punish? Its either preventative action- which is extremely flimsy justification when applied en-masse, or revenge.

Mr. Scaly

2009-03-24, 02:59 PM

Actually, both the aliens and humans were colonists in that movie, but that's another story :smallsmile:

My point is - sometimes - in certain Science Fiction and Fantasy universes for certain races - pre-emptive genocide IS both justifiable and a Good Thing. And the Aliens in the Alien series are just one example of that. Once we agree that sometimes pre-emptive genocide is good and justifiable and should be done on occasion, then we're just discussing case-by-case examples.

Then it's just a question of - "is V's use of extreme power here justified in this case?" And you can't say "No - because pre-emptive genocide/familicide is never justified." - because that's not true. Sometimes - for some Sci-Fi and Fantasy universes - pre-emptive genocide/familicide is the right thing to do.

That's the reason for the Aliens example - to refute the argument from a group of folks saying that pre-emptive genocide is never justified. Are the folks from that group willing to agree now that sometimes pre-emptive genocide is justified? Or will we just never agree?

Ah, well it seems we've hit an impasse. I'm one of those people who, whether in science fiction or fantasy is always horrified when somebody does something like this and I see it as an atrocity whenever something like that happens. If there's a way out that can be taken then it should, no matter the character of those who'd be killed. I'd probably feel the same in Aliens, if I'd seen it and not Alien...or AvP. Heck, in The Two Towers I felt bad for the orcs being massacred left and right!

Call me a bleeding heart if you like, but this is the sort of thing that turns the heroes into Designated Protagonists at best, and Heroic Sociopaths at worst.

TheCoolThatguy

2009-03-24, 03:18 PM

Different universe, similar example.

The movie - Aliens.

"Aliens" are sentient. They have advanced problem-solving skills. Near the end, the heroes (Ripley and Cpl. Hicks) both agree the only way "to be sure" (to be sure they're safe and that all humans everywhere are safe) is to take off and nuke the "Alien" nest from orbit. They didn't try and investigate the alignment of each individual Alien. They didn't have the time or ability. And they didn't have the need! The "Aliens" had already proven - through their actions - that all "Aliens" are chaotic evil and deserve to be killed - preferably while they're still eggs.

This is a "carpet nuke the village example" - and it's a good act, not a neutral or evil one. The evil/goodness/expected behavior of the target makes all the difference. The pre-emptive genocide of all Aliens in the Alien universe is morally justified, as well as good common sense.

Uh, that really doesn't work. The aliens aren't really sentient. Sure, they're cunning, but that's because nature made them into the ultimate predators, what with acid blood and whatnot. They're just really, really smart parasites. They have no language, no culture and little free will as they function as a hive.

Black Dragons, on the other hand, do. They can communicate, they have a culture, and they can think and feel. They can make a choice and while the Black Dragon's actions may seem excessive to us, bear in mind that V did casually invade her home and kill her only child. So while her revenge is far from justified, it is understandable.