Soul Splice - The Lesser Evil

[Ewig Custos]

NOTICE: This IS NOT a thread about Familicide. Actually, I would like if you wouldn't judge V's existing story at all - right or wrong, good or evil, things happened as they happened. What I want to do is to go for "what if..." speculation - and compare it to what we have.

So, imagine that V didn't take the deal. The Dragon killed V's kids, binded their souls, and V is left to live with that knowledge. What would have happened to him/her next, putting the main story aside?

My guess is V would have gone truly Evil, slowly becoming the monster that Zimmerwald describes every strip. Being power hungry already, V would have lost all remaining limits he/she had before: there's nothing left to care about, only power. There would have been no remorse, not even a single step towards redemption, and in the end V could have ended no better (if no worse, given the effectiveness intelligence provides) than Xykon himself.

And in my opinion this isn't better than consequences of Soul Splice in any way.

But maybe I am wrong? Maybe V is really the type to say "screw magic, no good came from it" and go to the monastery? Or spend several hundreds of years drinking alcohol and tryng to forget all of this? Or keep going forward no matter what? Or its antipode, refuse to live in a world like this? What's your opinion?

[DaggerPen]

I would think that V would become somehow even more obsessed with arcane power, doing nothing but questing to find the ABD until the end of V's days.

[Kish]

I think this thread is nearly as speculative as, "If liches could taste coffee, Xykon would have reformed." What would have happened if an event in a character's life had gone completely differently? Unknowable. Any possible answer to "how would Vaarsuvius' character have evolved from there" is in the realm of fanfic.

I also think "the monster that Zimmerwald describes every strip" is effectively sneaking in doing what you asked for no one to do, like saying, "I would prefer no one express an opinion on the morality of Vaarsuvius' in-comic actions. (But if you think s/he's as bad as zimmerwald1915 thinks s/he is, you're wrong.)"

[multilis]

If V had said no, then V by sacrificing family for greater good (not accepting deal with devils) would have been shifted towards good.

V would have looked in mirror, realized that this was part because aim out from not resting, and started towards path of ultimate magic of friendship to save family and the world.

V would have then arranged to have miko rezzed, after all miko defeated OOTS single handedly so valuable asset. Belkar seeing both Miko and V in same team would have no choice but to abandon OOTS to join them... his 2 true loves in same team would be too much to resist. Bloodfeast, rather than life of gladitorial combat would be inspired by tales of adventures of Team VMB to break free and join them and become the first epic dino cleric in history of world.

Together the 4 of them would defeat Redcloak and X, save V's family and even help Thog to find a new puppy to love!

You can't prove that it isn't true.

[Ewig Custos]

I think this thread is nearly as speculative as, "If liches could taste coffee, Xykon would have reformed." What would have happened if an event in a character's life had gone completely differently? Unknowable. Any possible answer to "how would Vaarsuvius' character have evolved from there" is in the realm of fanfic.
But isn't it what speculation is all about? Of course the true result of changing some event of the story is unknowable for us, but it can't really stop anyone from wondering. Because, well, that can be interesting. After all, allohistory wouldn't have existed if nobody was interested in reading (or writing) it.

As for that reference, perhaps my formulation was not clear enough. I used it as relatively wide-known reference to describe what I mean by "Evil V". Of course anyone can share his vision on V, in this discussion that would (probably/simply) create another set of the events since perceived information about the character would be much different. And different opinions are always welcome.

But if zimmerwald1915 was offended with that remark, I offer my sincerest apologies to him, it was unintended. In fact, I really would like to see his opinion on the matter.

[Kish]

All right. Vaarsuvius could have gone at least three ways: Obsessed with gaining the magical power to chase down her/his family, to the exclusion of doing anything, positive or negative, but magical research. Xykonishly uncaring, as detailed in the OP. Or...s/he could, theoretically, have become a better person as a result of feeling guilty because of bringing an enraged dragon down on her/his family, as much as s/he can become a better person as a result of feeling guilty for committing mass murder.

[ChristianSt]

Obviously the not-soul-spliced version of the Strip would have followed a major other line of events. But with some assumption it is properly save to say that the Order would have it easier in the alternate Timeline:


The Rest of the Order has reunited at the same time, so even without V's help they would be on track the same time.
One large reason the IFCC was interested in V was to knock Xykon out of his comfort zone. Without that attack it would be possible that Redcloak would still delay Team Evil to establish Gobbotopia.
While it is unclear how Girard would interact with the Order, I think we should assume that he would at least somehow not like to have Xykon establishing control over any Gate (especially Girard's Gate)
The IFCC wouldn't be able to mess with an quite powerful member of the Oder


There are some benefits that the Soul Splice had, but most of them could have happened in other ways, too.


V learned to be a better party member. He/She realized that he/she did some really bad things to his/her party members.
V saved his/her family. But they don't have any impact on the story, so their death wouldn't really change anything. (Also the ABD said she would leave with V's family, so it doesn't change anything about whether the ABD is still alive or not. I don't think we have any reason to assume she lied.)
V's attack on Xykon was the reason for MitD saving O-Chul. One additional benefit is the gained intel on Xykon.


Especially the MitD saves O-Chul part could happened for some other reason (like Redcloak finally deciding to get rid of the Paladin) and maybe it would be even better if O-Chul would still directly influence the MitD.
Also maybe with reuniting the Order without V's help he/she would realize, that having Arcane might isn't the necessary thing to have - or not. This is the only true benefit I see in the Soul Splices. But the price was really hefty.

I think in the alternate OotS the Order (maybe doing their quest without V) would have had the chance to talk with Girard's Clan. How the story progresses from there, I don't know, but I think it would make the Orders quest much easier. [Ok, Girard was shown as a bit paranoid - but we don't know how the Clan works, so it is possibly that a talk with them wouldn't be that good.]

Maybe V would decline into Evil - but I can't really assume that a character that discards a deal with the devils is surely going to end Evil.

[sr123]

V's choice to accept the splice was a pretty lame one. When offered an alternative method of saving his family -- kill self to have imp give head to Durkon to send to V's master to then teleport and kill dragon -- V put the reasons for taking the splice instead of a convoluted and speculative plan succinctly: "I must succeed."

However, V seemed to be willing to reject the soul splice if it meant eternal damnation -- perhaps s/he is still pretty rational even in such an extreme situation, since most of us would sacrifice ourselves on every level to save our loved ones from being killed and their souls imprisoned. I guess it's not clear how bad "hell" is in OOTS, or what selling one's soul means on in a world where the soul is a tangible (yet still mysterious - i.e. Durkula) thing.

And the rest of the Order, along with a good chunk of Lawful Good observers, certainly saw V's actions (excluding Familicide and general dickishness) as extremely positive and certainly not evil. Arguably, his greatest failing was being so antsy about getting rid of the Splice as soon as possible -- 5 hours to get the order ready (along with perhaps a small army of paladins) to assault Xykon together would have been entirely justifiable. And if a devil is so keen on getting 15 minutes of your soul that they'd put eternity off the table, how much worse could they do with 15 hours?

Last thing: ultimate arcane power wasn't really the first thing on V's mind on that island -- sufficient arcane power yes, but hardly ultimate. V's priority was ultimate power for the majority of the adventure up until the Battle for Azure City, after which he went on the crazy guilt trip over not being able to save more citizens, find Haley, etc. V's family never constricted his quest for ultimate power; his guilt over Azure City is what made him change his priorities, and failing to save his family would encourage the same. Maybe his path would stray to evil after all that, but his amoral powerthirst would not be at the root. All this is IMHO, of course.


tl;dr: The Soul Splice wasn't a lesser evil. It was the only choice, the good choice, and arguably even the Good choice. Most of us would have accepted far worse terms if offered, but V seemed hesitant to even allow him/erself a minute with the IFCC, so s/he was certainly seeing a bigger picture than most of us would in that situation.

[The Oni]

It was supposed to reflect that, in spite of his apparent heroic deeds, Vaarsuvius is still True Neutral - fundamentally out for his own personal power and pride without having to sacrifice the trappings of his life. He's arrogant, even by Elven standards and by Wizard standards, and the only thing he feared more than not being able to save his family was having to admit to his former master that he wasn't good enough.

[pendell]

NOTICE: This IS NOT a thread about Familicide. Actually, I would like if you wouldn't judge V's existing story at all - right or wrong, good or evil, things happened as they happened. What I want to do is to go for "what if..." speculation - and compare it to what we have.

So, imagine that V didn't take the deal. The Dragon killed V's kids, binded their souls, and V is left to live with that knowledge. What would have happened to him/her next, putting the main story aside?


We'll never know, will we?


The thing about lesser evil is that there must be no other choices. And as the three fiends made painfully clear, there was at least one other option V could take which would allow Aarindarius to save V's children's life.

It's a false dilemma. V had other options, but chose an evil path out of pride , an unwillingness to admit weakness -- the same thing that made Xykon rip off his own flesh in Start of Darkness, so it was an evil act -- and out of V's desire to finally possess the unlimited arcane power V had always dreamed of.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Gnome Alone]

The alternative they offered was more or less horse****, it wouldn't have worked. I'm with you OP, when the options are "deal withe devil" or "let family's souls be destroyed" then HELL YEAH* the deal with the devil is the least evil option. What V chose to do with that power was pretty awful, but hey, threaten someone's family so horrifically like that, and what do you expect?

I admit that I've never quite understood the extent of hate for Vaarsuvius' actions, considering that he was under extreme stress responding to hugely disproportionate retaliation (you DARE defend yourself against my child who was trying to kill you? I will erase your kids' souls!) but people love that moral high horse. I dunno. Whole thing sorta struck me as a an angry mama bear beyond-good-and-evil shindig.

*Ba dump tish

[Morithias]

(you DARE defend yourself against my child who was trying to kill you? I will erase your kids' souls!)

So breaking into someone else's house to rob them, and then killing them when they try to defend their belongings is now self-defense?

[Gnome Alone]

Point of interest, the Order had no idea anything lived there, the evil young dragon simply pounced upon the appearance of seemingly easy prey without any concern for explaining itself, so yeah, I'd call that self-defense.

I mean, I lived in a cave in the middle of nowhere, I'd at the very least throw out a "what the hell are you doing here?" at any unexpected visitors before attempting murder.

[Morithias]

Point of interest, the Order had no idea anything lived there, the evil young dragon simply pounced upon the appearance of seemingly easy prey without any concern for explaining itself, so yeah, I'd call that self-defense.

I mean, I lived in a cave in the middle of nowhere, I'd at the very least throw out a "what the hell are you doing here?" at any unexpected visitors before attempting murder.

Yes because if five heavily armed people break into your house, (when there is a history of such groups breaking in and commiting murder against your race), you're clearly going to ask what they're doing there rather than attempt to jump them to thin their numbers so they can't gang up on you.

[Gnome Alone]

Fair point. I think it's one of those things that can't really translate to the real world though - there's no equivalent to a dragon's lair. You wouldn't know you've walked into it the same way you would a person's house. So, I'll grant the YBD may have had a right to defend itself by way of attack, from its perspective, but even by that generous interpretation, the idea of the ABD taking vengeance by way of V's kids instead of V himself, let alone V's kids' freaking SOULS, is like disgustingly monstrous, so I can totally see the feasibility of grabbing whatever power you can to combat that kind of evil at that point.

[MonochromeTiger]

Yes because if five heavily armed people break into your house, (when there is a history of such groups breaking in and commiting murder against your race), you're clearly going to ask what they're doing there rather than attempt to jump them to thin their numbers so they can't gang up on you.

agreed, in a world where people are willing to commit mass slaughter based on an alignment written on a piece of paper it's GENERALLY a valid tactic to kill the adventurers invading your home with lethal weapons and a love of gold before they decide "HEY! there's XP in living form! GET IT!"

[MonochromeTiger]

Fair point. I think it's one of those things that can't really translate to the real world though - there's no equivalent to a dragon's lair. You wouldn't know you've walked into it the same way you would a person's house. So, I'll grant the YBD may have had a right to defend itself by way of attack, from its perspective, but even by that generous interpretation, the idea of the ABD taking vengeance by way of V's kids instead of V himself, let alone V's kids' freaking SOULS, is like disgustingly monstrous, so I can totally see the feasibility of grabbing whatever power you can to combat that kind of evil at that point.

both sides escalated it. consider the view of a parent, someone does something horrible to your child, something that can never be undone...you'd want them to suffer until they BEG for you to stop and then find some way to keep them in that moment for as long as you can. ABD's kid was killed in a way that she couldn't reverse, she didn't even have his ashes to remember him by, meanwhile V is off adventuring and having a relatively interesting life with their kids and spouse safe at home not even remotely at risk. was bringing them into it wrong? yes, and it was intentionally so for the sake of making V suffer. was V's use of familiacide also wrong? very, it was meant to be the final move in a battle of escalating hostility.

[Morithias]

Fair point. I think it's one of those things that can't really translate to the real world though - there's no equivalent to a dragon's lair. You wouldn't know you've walked into it the same way you would a person's house. So, I'll grant the YBD may have had a right to defend itself by way of attack, from its perspective, but even by that generous interpretation, the idea of the ABD taking vengeance by way of V's kids instead of V himself, let alone V's kids' freaking SOULS, is like disgustingly monstrous, so I can totally see the feasibility of grabbing whatever power you can to combat that kind of evil at that point.

Ironically V got off way easier than she would have if I had been the ABD.

I would've just done the killing and soul binding without any contact with V. She's an elf, she'll find out eventually.

And due to the Kobold Oracle having a WAY shorter life than V, it's entirely possibly when she finds out that the Oracle won't even be there anymore for her to find out.

[BlackDragonKing]

So breaking into someone else's house to rob them, and then killing them when they try to defend their belongings is now self-defense?

Let's say you are walking through a subway tunnel, on the way to a large rock you have been informed is lying in the station that is of interest to you and your friends but have no other details about it.

While walking down this tunnel, you come across an extremely big, well-armed homeless man squatting in the tunnels. You attempt to retreat, sensing a very dangerous fight, but the homeless man spots you and gives chase, assuming you are after his belongings and attempting to kill you all to defend them.

In the process of stopping the homeless man from killing one of your friends, you kill him, and think no more of it; failing to act would have certainly resulted in the deaths of most of your friends because you walked down the wrong tunnel on the way to something you were looking for.

The homeless guy is justly concerned that his things will be taken since the people in "his" tunnel are well armed and outnumber him, but the people who stumble across him and then defend themselves when he attacks are not armed robbers breaking into his house to murder him any more than every adventurer is a serial killer because trolls are obligated by the world to pop into existence once per day while they are on the road in a certain area and fight them to the death.

The Order went looking for a rock with no notion how it might be protected but certainly no reason to expect a frigging DRAGON to be sitting on it. Haley warned them to try RUNNING when the saw a black dragon at the end of a dark tunnel, but the dragon attacked them. They attacked back. The dragon died. What, exactly, did you THINK was going to happen when a sentient but insanely territorial creature comes up against its favored if heavily armed prey wandering into its territory on their way somewhere else? :smallconfused:

[Another_Poet]

I draw a distinction between choosing the lesser evil, versus choosing a horrendous evil that happens to have some silver lining to it.

If you have a choice between doing something genocidal or not, you should choose not to. In the moment you certainly don't know what the consequences of that act will be, but good people err on the side of not committing evil acts.

And that's the thing... if V lost his/her family and that caused V to become an Evil lich, then V was a bad apple to start with. Being good means dealing with the agony of loss in a way that does not endanger the innocent people around you. There is a graceful way to handle grief and there's a nasty, selfish way to handle it. Most of us probably fall somewhere in between (pain and grief is difficult, after all) but most of us do not become psychopaths after we lose loved ones. Because we're not Evil.

If the Fiends had offered V a clear choice--"Door Number 1 is killing a few dozen Good-aligned half-dragons; Door Number 2 is becoming a Lich and killing half the world"--then I guess Familicide would be the "lesser evil." But all V knew was that he/she had to kill one dragon to save her family, and she had lots of non-genocidal ways she could have done that. She chose genocide instead.

It was the Greater Evil.

[Morithias]

The Order went looking for a rock with no notion how it might be protected but certainly no reason to expect a frigging DRAGON to be sitting on it. Haley warned them to try RUNNING when the saw a black dragon at the end of a dark tunnel, but the dragon attacked them. They attacked back. The dragon died. What, exactly, did you THINK was going to happen when a sentient but insanely territorial creature comes up against its favored if heavily armed prey wandering into its territory on their way somewhere else? :smallconfused:

Hmm it does seem the dragon did the first strike in page 182, compared to 181, but I question where the hell the darkness went. Even if it did breath attack the darkness (heh), they could have easily turned around and ran.

[Imgran]

Ironically V got off way easier than she would have if I had been the ABD.

I would've just done the killing and soul binding without any contact with V. She's an elf, she'll find out eventually.

Ironically, that wouldn't be nearly as bad.

A full half of the ABD's planned revenge on V revolved around revealing her actions to V so he would be fully aware of what she was about to go and do -- and fully aware of his inability to stop her.

The act itself was bad in any known sense of the word, but once it's done, it's done. An act of pure evil against your family that you could not have prevented (because you had no way of knowing) is actually far easier to get over than one that you could be preventing RIGHT NOW if you only had the power. The first is tragic and heartrending, the second would be enough to drive a man mad.

Besides, it's not as if V had no access to planar shift spells. All leaving the plane would do is delay retribution, and once V got over his grief and realized that, it would be simply a matter of time before justice was ultimately served.

[Imgran]

I draw a distinction between choosing the lesser evil, versus choosing a horrendous evil that happens to have some silver lining to it.

If you have a choice between doing something genocidal or not, you should choose not to. In the moment you certainly don't know what the consequences of that act will be, but good people err on the side of not committing evil acts.

And that's the thing... if V lost his/her family and that caused V to become an Evil lich, then V was a bad apple to start with. Being good means dealing with the agony of loss in a way that does not endanger the innocent people around you. There is a graceful way to handle grief and there's a nasty, selfish way to handle it. Most of us probably fall somewhere in between (pain and grief is difficult, after all) but most of us do not become psychopaths after we lose loved ones. Because we're not Evil.

If the Fiends had offered V a clear choice--"Door Number 1 is killing a few dozen Good-aligned half-dragons; Door Number 2 is becoming a Lich and killing half the world"--then I guess Familicide would be the "lesser evil." But all V knew was that he/she had to kill one dragon to save her family, and she had lots of non-genocidal ways she could have done that. She chose genocide instead.

It was the Greater Evil.

No, I disagree with you due to one fact.

what the Directors offered was not Familicide itself per se. They offered the POSSIBILITY of Familicide but that's not nearly the same thing, any more than a nuclear detonation is the same thing as the possibility of a nuclear detonation. The OP is restricting his speculation to the Splice itself, not any spells cast as an aftermath of Splicing, which is a distinction worth drawing, so let's all please play by the rules.

The splice itself was simply an emergency means to power, power that unless you wanted to roll the dice on your family's future as living creatures rather than soulbound stones on a frankly harebrained, half-cocked, Rube Goldberg machine of an "alternative" was the only realistic way to save your family. It was up to you to control the influences of the spliced souls, but the Directors themselves made that clear so that should not have taken the signatory to the contract by surprise. Again, that's why V is culpable for what he did while spliced -- it was all his own choice, the decision to splice did not itself force any decision that came afterward.

By that token, the two choices as presented were as follows:

1: Accept the contract, adding a great deal of magical power to your own, and use that power to save your family by any means necessary, fully accepting the consequences of that choice later once your family is safe.

2: Trust to a combination of fate and a Xanatos gambit cooked up between 4 evil-aligned fiends, none of which particularly wishes you well at the moment in what passes for their hearts, and doing so at a time when it's not just your fate on the line, but that of your entire family.

With the power to take a more active role in protecting your family from a fate worse than death literally staring you right in the face, how is taking that second course not pure negligence and abrogation of the duty any godsfearing parent would feel to protect their young?

Unless you can think clearly enough to find the third option (and for several reasons V couldn't) I think the OP's premise holds up fairly well. There's a definite argument to be made that splicing was the lesser evil. Still evil, but of course that's presumed as given.

[MonochromeTiger]

Hmm it does seem the dragon did the first strike in page 182, compared to 181, but I question where the hell the darkness went. Even if it did breath attack the darkness (heh), they could have easily turned around and ran.

they made a clear choice by fighting instead of going into a retreat, they decided the loot was better than getting away from a dragon that might have simply stayed in the safety of his lair over following the armed adventurers out of the place that favors him.


No, I disagree with you due to one fact.

what the Directors offered was not Familicide itself per se. They offered the POSSIBILITY of Familicide but that's not nearly the same thing, any more than a nuclear detonation is the same thing as the possibility of a nuclear detonation. The OP is restricting his speculation to the Splice itself, not any spells cast as an aftermath of Splicing, which is a distinction worth drawing, so let's all please play by the rules.

The splice itself was simply an emergency means to power, power that unless you wanted to roll the dice on your family's future as living creatures rather than soulbound stones on a frankly harebrained, half-cocked, Rube Goldberg machine of an "alternative" was the only realistic way to save your family. It was up to you to control the influences of the spliced souls, but the Directors themselves made that clear so that should not have taken the signatory to the contract by surprise. Again, that's why V is culpable for what he did while spliced -- it was all his own choice, the decision to splice did not itself force any decision that came afterward.

the comic actively has V themself comment on how they were clearly in control at the time (which qarr didn't want V to know so they wouldn't repent their actions) so I have to agree, the fiends only gave V the means of vengeance and only as an offer, they didn't force V to do it. I personally think that the fact V has done something notably evil in that section is reinforced by the fact that the threat is done and yet V doesn't accept the offer to simply drop the power and keep the trust and affection of their family, instead embracing the long sought after power over the arcane in a vain attempt to finish everything at once with no plan or concern for consequences.

[Everyl]

Let's say you are walking through a subway tunnel, on the way to a large rock you have been informed is lying in the station that is of interest to you and your friends but have no other details about it.

While walking down this tunnel, you come across an extremely big, well-armed homeless man squatting in the tunnels. You attempt to retreat, sensing a very dangerous fight, but the homeless man spots you and gives chase, assuming you are after his belongings and attempting to kill you all to defend them.

In the process of stopping the homeless man from killing one of your friends, you kill him, and think no more of it; failing to act would have certainly resulted in the deaths of most of your friends because you walked down the wrong tunnel on the way to something you were looking for.

The homeless guy is justly concerned that his things will be taken since the people in "his" tunnel are well armed and outnumber him, but the people who stumble across him and then defend themselves when he attacks are not armed robbers breaking into his house to murder him any more than every adventurer is a serial killer because trolls are obligated by the world to pop into existence once per day while they are on the road in a certain area and fight them to the death.

The Order went looking for a rock with no notion how it might be protected but certainly no reason to expect a frigging DRAGON to be sitting on it. Haley warned them to try RUNNING when the saw a black dragon at the end of a dark tunnel, but the dragon attacked them. They attacked back. The dragon died. What, exactly, did you THINK was going to happen when a sentient but insanely territorial creature comes up against its favored if heavily armed prey wandering into its territory on their way somewhere else? :smallconfused:

The real issue with V's behavior in dealing with the YBD is that V was completely and totally in a position to not kill the YBD, but chose to do so anyway.

Upon getting a Suggestion through the dragon's saves, V could have said, "I suggest that you inform the mammals that the small purple lizard is, indeed, Vaarsuvius, then fly as far from here as you can before dawn." Or, "I suggest that you treat the adventurers as welcome guests, and politely answer their questions." Or any number of other orders that did not amount to "Sit here until I'm ready to execute you." In your subway tunnel analogy, you left out the part where the homeless man was subdued hours before the killing happened.

V could have used that chance to resolve the mutual misunderstanding that led to battle in the first place. Instead, V chose to kill a helpless sentient being in cold blood. I'm not a member of the V-Haters Club, but it's really one of the darker moments in the character's history.

[ChristianSt]

By that token, the two choices as presented were as follows:

1: Accept the contract, adding a great deal of magical power to your own, and use that power to save your family by any means necessary

2: Trust to a combination of fate and a Xanatos gambit cooked up between 4 evil-aligned fiends, none of which particularly wishes you well at the moment in what passes for their hearts, and doing so at a time when it's not just your fate on the line, but that of your entire family.

With the power to take a more active role in protecting your family from a fate worse than death literally staring you right in the face, how is taking that second course not pure negligence and abrogation of the duty any godsfearing parent would feel to protect their young?

Unless you can think clearly enough to find the third option (and for several reasons V couldn't) I think the OP's premise holds up fairly well. There's a definite argument to be made that splicing was the lesser evil. Still evil, but of course that's presumed as given.

To 1: You forgot to state the drawback of the deal: a deal with the devil(s) is just bad. And normally really bad. Not considering this is just dumb.

To 2: Actually V's fate was never in danger. The ABD said that she will leave and nobody will be able to follow here.

[Rodin]

The thing I have the most trouble with is V rejecting the soul splice, because if V were to reject the splice she would be a different person.

It's what makes the plan so brilliant - the fiends had been waiting for V to hit that moment when they would not reject it. And knowing that taking the deal was a certainty, they extrapolated out that V would go far beyond what is strictly neccessary to save her family.

A V that would have considered not doing the soul splice is a V that would have considered dropping the splice after Familicide was cast. But as Inkyrius points out, the power is what V always wanted. That power - the power to fix everything and demonstrate magic's true power - that was the true temptation of the splice. Familicide was cast more out of a desire to demonstrate overwhelming magical power than it was a true desire to protect family.

On a separate note, let's consider if I'm wrong and V would have rejected the splice. I don't agree that V would have performed such evil acts, because the whole affair took place while V was "going nuts", as Belkar put it. That state wasn't sustainable, and it would have taken months if not years to track the ABD to another plane (assuming the ABD's confidence is not misplaced, and I have no reason to believe that it is).

I just don't think that V could have kept up that unreasoning rage state for that long. By the time that final showdown came down, a long enough period of time would have passed that while V might have exterminated the ABD with extreme prejudice, it would not have lead on to "commit genocide".

[factotum]

The alternative they offered was more or less horse****, it wouldn't have worked.

We know that. We know that Resurrection has a ten-minute casting time and that Durkon wasn't even still on the fleet at the time the IFCC outlined their plan. V didn't know that, though, so we have to remember that he made his decision with the assumption that the IFCC's alternative plan was a valid one. That, and his choice of words upon accepting the power, is the key: *he* had to succeed in saving his family, because getting a message sent to someone else to do the job would be admitting his mastery of the arcane arts was not great enough to solve the problem.

Thus, V accepted the deal out of pride, rather than necessity, which the IFCC needed him to do for their plan to work. If he'd accepted the deal purely from necessity he would have saved his family and then given up the splices, which probably wouldn't have given the IFCC long enough to do what they need to do. As it was, V having the ultimate power became more important than the act of saving his family, so he kept the splices and tried to defeat Xykon with them, with the consequences we all know.

[Ewig Custos]

The thing about lesser evil is that there must be no other choices. And as the three fiends made painfully clear, there was at least one other option V could take which would allow Aarindarius to save V's children's life.
I guess we have different definitions of lesser evil then. For me it's when you have several options, and all of them are bad. By choosing the option with least negative consequences, you choose the lesser evil. It's not a choice if you have nothing to choose from.
As for the "another option", some time ago I read a post here that quite logically explained why the other option was there only to mess with V's head, as there would be absolutely no chances of it succeeding. Even if everything went smoothly, the ABD must be hell of a slowpoke not to finish her plan in 10+ minutes.

ChristianSt, I specifically put the main plot away since the change of event leads to different character growth, and that by-turn leads to change of further events. If we put the character growth aside, the picture we get is implausible. But anyway, you missed 3 points there:
1. Girard was already dead, so there would be no chance of the Order interacting with him (only with his clan)
2. The Order would have no information of world beyond the Rift
3. Azure City Fleet would still be in the open sea.
And my point was that V wouldn't decline into evil by refusing the deal, he/she would do it because of terrible feel of guilt and helplessness which will follow almost immediately.


I draw a distinction between choosing the lesser evil, versus choosing a horrendous evil that happens to have some silver lining to it.

If you have a choice between doing something genocidal or not, you should choose not to. In the moment you certainly don't know what the consequences of that act will be, but good people err on the side of not committing evil acts.

And that's the thing... if V lost his/her family and that caused V to become an Evil lich, then V was a bad apple to start with. Being good means dealing with the agony of loss in a way that does not endanger the innocent people around you. There is a graceful way to handle grief and there's a nasty, selfish way to handle it. Most of us probably fall somewhere in between (pain and grief is difficult, after all) but most of us do not become psychopaths after we lose loved ones. Because we're not Evil.
That's the reason why I am not asking about changing the events DURING Soul Splice. The topic is what would have happened to V if he/she said straight no to the fiends and faced the consequences of that. And of course V is not a good apple to start with, that's the entire point. Imgran described what I want to say about this pretty neatly, give him my kind regards.

And can you please leave the discussion of YBD encounter? It was the exact thing I wanted to avoid in this thread.

[hamishspence]

However, V seemed to be willing to reject the soul splice if it meant eternal damnation -- perhaps s/he is still pretty rational even in such an extreme situation, since most of us would sacrifice ourselves on every level to save our loved ones from being killed and their souls imprisoned. I guess it's not clear how bad "hell" is in OOTS, or what selling one's soul means on in a world where the soul is a tangible (yet still mysterious - i.e. Durkula) thing.

V seemed pretty clear about wanting to sell soul for the power needed to do the saving, before Soul Splice even came up:

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0631.html

Qaar: "What, like a literal sell-your-soul sort of thing?"
Vaarsurvius: "Yes! You are a devil, and I require power! Now!"

[Rodin]

That's the reason why I am not asking about changing the events DURING Soul Splice. The topic is what would have happened to V if he/she said straight no to the fiends and faced the consequences of that. And of course V is not a good apple to start with, that's the entire point. Imgran described what I want to say about this pretty neatly, give him my kind regards.


The problem is that you're asking for a comparative. Lesser Evil compared to what?

From V's perspective, it might have ended up being a lesser evil in that by committing all of the evil "at once", then she has a chance for redemption.

But by the standards of the devas, the chances of V commiting as many "kilonazi" levels of evil during a more extended revenge against black dragons is very unlikely.

In other words, you're trying to measure on two different scales: length/quantity of evilness vs. degree of evilness.

For the first one, there's no doubt that V will spend less time doing evil than if she rejected the splice, as well as committing fewer evil acts. But a true comparison has to bring in degree, and that drags us back into the Familicide debate. It's why V spent so long despairing in the pyramid, after all: V's opinion was that even a lifetime of repenting would not undo that act.

[ChristianSt]

ChristianSt, I specifically put the main plot away since the change of event leads to different character growth, and that by-turn leads to change of further events. If we put the character growth aside, the picture we get is implausible. But anyway, you missed 3 points there:
1. Girard was already dead, so there would be no chance of the Order interacting with him (only with his clan)
2. The Order would have no information of world beyond the Rift
3. Azure City Fleet would still be in the open sea.
And my point was that V wouldn't decline into evil by refusing the deal, he/she would do it because of terrible feel of guilt and helplessness which will follow almost immediately.


That's the reason why I am not asking about changing the events DURING Soul Splice. The topic is what would have happened to V if he/she said straight no to the fiends and faced the consequences of that. And of course V is not a good apple to start with, that's the entire point. Imgran described what I want to say about this pretty neatly, give him my kind regards.

And can you please leave the discussion of YBD encounter? It was the exact thing I wanted to avoid in this thread.

1: Sorry, I missed the to change Girard to Girard's Clan in that list - I think nearly interchangeable of the two.
2: You are somewhat right and wrong on your second point: V didn't tell anything about the world inside the rift before the other members had the chance to figure it out themselves. So the non-V part of the Order didn't gather any information from that incident on the rift.
3: I give you that - but I'm not exactly sure what this would change for the plot.


But anyway, since this whole alternate vs. normal seems to miss the intended OP, I want to add (hopefully something more to the intended discussion):

V had two choices:

Accepting the deal with the devils
more ore less "doing nothing" / try figuring to find another solution


Option (1) is imo the clear evil option, while (2) is the neutral-to-good option:
V did everything he/she can do to prevent her family from being killed/soul-stealed.
But it is out of her reach (and the only possibly valid option offered by the fiends gets nearly immediately discarded). V could choose to try to safe his/her family later (despite ABD assurance that will be impossible) or even try the plan the fiends presented.

If option (1) would be the "less evil" choice, there should be more than enough soul selling deals of any kind to prevent all sort of bad things:
ANY Good character should then make a deal with the devil to safe others (say a orphanage burns down and there is NO means to safe it other than a deal with the devil).
I don't think most most people would argue that this is really a good action/point of view.

I can understand why V made the deal. But imo it is clearly the Evil choice. But nowhere is stated a character can't do Evil things, so it is understandable - personal affairs sometimes just matter more than alignment. And adding to that, V is him/herself Neutral anyway, which can do easily a bit more Evil things than Good characters before falling outside of the character alignment.


Edited to add:
How V would have personally developed without accepting the deal I have really no clue. And I think literally all possibilities are open in both scenarios, anyway. V could easily have had received other development with accepting the Splice, too. Just make him/her steamroll Xykon, which perhaps leads V to even more Soul-Selling deals.
But arguing that taking the Evil option instead of the non-Evil alternative is a better option long-term is imo a little weird.

[Ewig Custos]

The problem is that you're asking for a comparative. Lesser Evil compared to what?

From V's perspective, it might have ended up being a lesser evil in that by committing all of the evil "at once", then she has a chance for redemption.

But by the standards of the devas, the chances of V commiting as many "kilonazi" levels of evil during a more extended revenge against black dragons is very unlikely.

In other words, you're trying to measure on two different scales: length/quantity of evilness vs. degree of evilness.

There's only one scale: degree of evilness. Both the length and quantity increase that degree. Killing n sapient beings in one day is as bad to me as killing 1 sapient being every day for n days, since the result is the same.

And I'm talking of lesser evil not from V's perspective, but within the scope of the OotS' world itself. If refusing the deal (which [refusing, not the deal] is not an evil act in any way) leads to the rise of the evil wizard with power which can be in time compared to Xykon's but with cold consistency of Malack, would that be better for the world in a long term?

And devas' standards are hardly applicable to anyone beyond Lawful Good alignment. It would be really strange for non-Lawful afterlives to have the same level of bureaucracy, and I fing it hard to believe that dead Lawful Evil overlord would be denied eternal damnation because of the left Blood Oath.
Moreover, elves's lifespan is really long, so make your own conclusions of "nazi levels".


1: Sorry, I missed the to change Girard to Girard's Clan in that list - I think nearly interchangeable of the two.
2: You are somewhat right and wrong on your second point: V didn't tell anything about the world inside the rift before the other members had the chance to figure it out themselves. So the non-V part of the Order didn't gather any information from that incident on the rift.
3: I give you that - but I'm not exactly sure what this would change for the plot.
1: Well, Girard was low-epic or close, and we have absolutely no idea about how powerful his successors were, so I guess there would be a big difference if Xykon arrived to Girard's Gate and there was Girard himself on the defense. Anyway, this road of discussion is pointless as we don't have enough data to make speculations of it.
2: Well, at least now they now that different gates show different images of another world. And hey, I guess V wouldn't have got Blackwing as a permanent companion. That's something.
3: I'm not sure either. But I think this is not the last time we hear about Azurites.


If option (1) would be the "less evil" choice, there should be more than enough soul selling deals of any kind to prevent all sort of bad things
For one thing, fiends can deny the deal if it does not serve their interests. Secondly, such deals would probably be about eternal damnation, not time-based, so yes, fiends could hypothetically allow high-level heroes to save the single orphanage for their immortal soul.


How V would have personally developed without accepting the deal I have really no clue. And I think literally all possibilities are open in both scenarios, anyway.
And that's the whole point, I would like to see what scenarios do people find the most likely to happen if thing went on without the Splice.


But arguing that taking the Evil option instead of the non-Evil alternative is a better option long-term is imo a little weird.
Well, perhaps, but I must say that good deeds don't necessery lead to good consequences. After all, proverb "The road to hell is paved with good intentions" exists for a reason.

And damn my knowledge of English, these not-so-long answers take so much time to type.

[Czhorat]

It was a classic Faustian bargain; V offered zis soul for power. And, like most tellings of the Faust story, mostly squandered that power. In a way Xykon was right - the reason this wasn't "true" power is that it was shackled to V, with all of zis weaknesses.

ALso bear in mind that V is in a quest to save the world. How does ze know that the fiends won't take zis soul at a time when they are attacking/defending the last gate and, as a result, release the Snarl and destroy the world?

[ChristianSt]

For one thing, fiends can deny the deal if it does not serve their interests. Secondly, such deals would probably be about eternal damnation, not time-based, so yes, fiends could hypothetically allow high-level heroes to save the single orphanage for their immortal soul.


Honestly: the possibility that fiends can decline Soul Selling should make it pretty obvious that it is the Evil option. Because it shows that the deal is in interest of said fiend.


But ok: some speculation:


First of all: I don't think declining the deal would V lead to an Evil path: Declining the deal would most likely show that V knows it is an Evil option. Turning Evil later would turn up the question:"Why do you not have started earlier with Evil methods? Doing so would have saved your family great pain."
And I don't think V would like that question, kinda the same why Redcloak has a really hard time stopping working with Xykon [ok, Xykon is pretty scary, too]
That leaves imo two most likeliest scenarios: The first is V will try to rescue his family, stopping working with the Order. Probably he/she will fail (maybe even dying) and maybe returning to the Oder (if it isn't too late). If V's struggle goes on long and longer, I think he/she will maybe go kinda nuts (like before the IFCC showed up), but as I said I don't think V will go Evil.
The other option would be that V will suck it up and just continuing with saving the world (just like he/she did in the normal strip). V's emotional state would be not that great - but it isn't great now, either. In that case I would except V later to tell this story and ask the Order for help trying to safe his/her family after they have stopped Xykon.
And that would probably the overall best option. It would focus on the most important task first and assures that V has help rescuing his/her family. Because I can't imagine that the others (probably sans Belkar) would say no if V asks for help.

[Morithias]

The real issue with V's behavior in dealing with the YBD is that V was completely and totally in a position to not kill the YBD, but chose to do so anyway.

Upon getting a Suggestion through the dragon's saves, V could have said, "I suggest that you inform the mammals that the small purple lizard is, indeed, Vaarsuvius, then fly as far from here as you can before dawn." Or, "I suggest that you treat the adventurers as welcome guests, and politely answer their questions." Or any number of other orders that did not amount to "Sit here until I'm ready to execute you." In your subway tunnel analogy, you left out the part where the homeless man was subdued hours before the killing happened.

V could have used that chance to resolve the mutual misunderstanding that led to battle in the first place. Instead, V chose to kill a helpless sentient being in cold blood. I'm not a member of the V-Haters Club, but it's really one of the darker moments in the character's history.

Quite frankly V has committed so many dark acts; murder of a defenseless foe, the familicide, the abuse of a teammate just because he was attracted to her...

At this point I would say Rance is a less evil character. At least Rance has great heroics which include saving 75% of the human world from destruction to counter his sexual misdeeds.

What selfless good acts has V done to counter his dark actions?

Actually let's make that question harder.

What selfless good acts has V done that he actually SUCCEEDED AT?

V is a psychopathic corrupt wizard, and when she dies may she be shipped off to a netherworlds brothel.

[hamishspence]

What selfless good acts has V done to counter his dark actions?

Going back to help O-chul, instead of running away:

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0657.html

[Morithias]

Going back to help O-chul, instead of running away:

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0657.html

So we have the rescue of a single life. Not bad. But I still question it making up for all the acts he's done. Saving one life, does not redeem one murder.

[Zerozzz0290]

Number 1: V's Soul Splice is a direct result of his character development and it had a positive influence in that regard (if not on his alignment chart) but he didn't had any other REAL choice, the rules of storytelling say that the hero must make a choice but he allways chooses the option that will impact the story the most: "Let's wake up from the Matrix and see what the hell is going on" or "I'm going on an adventure!" the hero may consider his options but he will allways go back to the deal.

Number 2: V killed the YBD could he do something else? how long the suggestion spell would have lasted? http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0178.html (178) Here he states he only has three spells and he decides to prepare all of them therefore whatever he prepares he has to deal with it until the end of the day, right? WRONG!!! here http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0186.html (186) we can see he had "time to study" so why not study something a little less deadly if you were to consider "self defense" against the dragon? There are spells which give no Saving Throw but no, let's go with Disintegrate. So self defense my ***

[hamishspence]

So we have the rescue of a single life. Not bad. But I still question it making up for all the acts he's done. Saving one life, does not redeem one murder.

Yup: And V concludes that the short period the 3 fiends get V's soul, will be but a preview of the eternity afterward:

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0843.html

v also deduces that acknowledgement, and repentance, of the act, is a necessary starting point in order to prevent the fiends getting V's soul permanently, here:

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0884.html

[zimmerwald1915]

But if zimmerwald1915 was offended with that remark, I offer my sincerest apologies to him, it was unintended. In fact, I really would like to see his opinion on the matter.
Don't worry about it. And since you asked, my opinion is that V would shortly have ended up dead if she hadn't taken the deal. As you point out, the next logical place for her character to go is obsession over finding her children's souls. She probably would have obsessed even more strongly than she had over trying to find Haley. But unlike Haley, V's and I's kids have no bearing whatsoever on the story. Following V trying to find them would take time away from literally every thing else, and have no bearing on any other events. Rather than waste all our time, either the Giant would have simply stopped following V - the bad option, because it would spawn endless speculation about when V would come back - or simply killed her off.

[Amphiox]

Accepting the Soul Splice need not be considered the "lesser evil" inasmuch as the mere act of accepting it may not even count as evil.

It was how V used the Soul Splice afterwards that mattered.

Imagine if V had taken the Soul Splice, defeated the ABD, did not cast Familicide, and when Inky asked her to, immediately relinquished the splices?

As is often with deals with the devil, what the devil offers is in itself not a evil. It only becomes evil if used in a certain way, and it always remains the individual's choice on how to use it.

Giving the soul splice to V was but the first step of the IFCC's temptation. V succumbed when he chose to cast Familicide, but V could have thwarted the IFCC completely by choosing differently after receiving the splice.

[Angel Bob]

Fair point. I think it's one of those things that can't really translate to the real world though - there's no equivalent to a dragon's lair. You wouldn't know you've walked into it the same way you would a person's house.

I'll try my hand at an analogy. Imagine you and your friends are wandering through an expanse of wilderness, looking for something valuable (maybe not rumours of treasure, but some sort of natural resource). You unknowingly cross a border and are now, technically speaking, in the "backyard" of some reclusive rich guy. Having grown frustrated with all the people trespassing on his turf, the rich guy comes at you with a shotgun. Fearing for your life, you fire back (because for some reason in this scenario you're armed, I guess to defend yourselves against wildlife?), and the guy dies. You continue on your merry way, find what you were looking for, and go away. Assume that due to the guy's reclusiveness and the wide expanse of his property, his body isn't found for some time, and by the time the law starts to inquire, you and your party are long gone.

There, that's about as close as I can get. Of course, in our world, I would hold the party at more fault than I hold the Order at fault. There's a fundamental difference between our world and theirs, in that theirs contains murderous sapient fire-breathing lizards, and ours contains a structured legal system.

[zimmerwald1915]

I'll try my hand at an analogy.
I'm not sure that holds up. By the time the Order had gotten to the mouth of the dragon's cave they'd been given a map of the region, so they weren't exactly wandering blind. Also, the mouth of a cave presents a much clearer boundary than any property line humans have ever drawn over open ground - including the clear-cut USA/Canada border - ever has.

[Roland Itiative]

If V had the insight to deny the Fiends' offer, they'd probably also have the insight to let go of their arrogance and ask for their master's help, as per the Fiends' own suggestion. So V could then resume questing for ultimate arcane power, perhaps a little more careful about who is disintegrated in the path, but without the truly meaningful character development derived from their guilt.

[Kish]

There, that's about as close as I can get. Of course, in our world, I would hold the party at more fault than I hold the Order at fault. There's a fundamental difference between our world and theirs, in that theirs contains murderous sapient fire-breathing lizards, and ours contains a structured legal system.
Theirs doesn't contain structured legal systems? That might be news to Cliffport and Azure City.

Your analogy also presumes that the dragon attacked first (we skipped from them meeting to midfight; you don't know that the fight didn't start by Belkar lunging at the dragon just as the dragon drew breath to say, "Get out, trespassers" or even, "What do you want?"), and leaves out the part where, at a lull in the gunplay, Reclusive Rich Guy demonstrated willingness to talk to a small pink lizard who immediately responded by mind controlling him, using his shotgun to terrorize the rest of the lizard's companions for hours, and then killing him.

[DiamondHooHaMan]

V has all those new scrying spells right? couldn't s/he just have swallowed their pride and contacted some powerful wizard that lived nearby?

[King of Nowhere]

When I first saw the title, I assumed it was a thread about how without the splice V would have never saved his family, rescued O-Chul, or helped the azurites.
but I see it's speculation about alternative character development. I don't think there's any way to predict what character development V would have taken without the familicide. not to mention any possible other plot twist rich may have thrown at him. it would have been a different story, that's all.

[Mike Havran]

Unless I'm missing something, it was never clearly established that the Mama Dragon actually had the scrolls of Soul Bind, and the more I think of it, the less likely it is for her to have them.

Mama Dragon had plenty of time to devise her vengeance. So, if she truly had the scrolls, she would assault the family, kill Inky, eat kids and Soul Bind, then watch for Vaarsuvius to be weakened, assault her and tell her she is about to kill her family. Then leave. V will stew a little bit but ultimately she'll keep on reassuring herself the kids are in the afterlife. When she gets to her house, she'll find a note. Oh-ho-hohoho.

But if she didn't have those spells, then she might as well raise the bets and try to get more fun of V's current suffering. Wizards don't have Sense Motive as a class skill and usually they don't prefer Wisdom that much. And really, CE Black Dragon shouldn't have problem with lying to increase her opponent's suffering, 9th level Necro spells don't exactly cost a penny around every corner and she's got her family's wealth pillaged.

So, what would happen if V told the fiends to go back to hell? Her head would get on the ship. Durkon is away but Azurites seem to have some Sending scrolls in store so they would contact Durkon. In a week, tops, the Order is united (except they need to do two rezzes without diamonds. Yay for more subquest adventuring). In the meantime, V will either meet Inky and the kids (or maybe just Inky) in the afterlife, and at the very least she'll get some sort of judgement, where her denial of the IFCC would roughly balance several of her misdeeds in the past. No Evil route in sight.

[Ewig Custos]

Honestly: the possibility that fiends can decline Soul Selling should make it pretty obvious that it is the Evil option. Because it shows that the deal is in interest of said fiend.
Ahem, I think it is common knowledge that the deals lie in the interests of fiends themselves. And that selling your soul is not the good thing. The whole point is that the person willing to do that either does not care enough about consequences (i.e. Kubota) or is desperate enough to do that. If the whole dragon-raising and lich-ganking parts was cut, V would have achieved Good goal via Evil means.
As for that speculation, I thought that gems destroy souls after some time, I saw something like that on a demilich page, so there would be nothing left for the saving. But I may be wrong, after all, there is SoD spoiler as example.

[BlackDragonKing]

So, what would happen if V told the fiends to go back to hell? Her head would get on the ship. Durkon is away but Azurites seem to have some Sending scrolls in store so they would contact Durkon. In a week, tops, the Order is united (except they need to do two rezzes without diamonds. Yay for more subquest adventuring). In the meantime, V will either meet Inky and the kids (or maybe just Inky) in the afterlife, and at the very least she'll get some sort of judgement, where her denial of the IFCC would roughly balance several of her misdeeds in the past. No Evil route in sight.

I disagree with the notion that rejecting Soul Splice is in and of itself a good act; maybe it's because I play a paladin in the campaign I've joined up since I got into Pathfinder recently, but I've seen Good acts as doing good while not doing something evil is Neutral. Avoiding soul splice has no positive effect beyond V's soul not being in peril, which makes it a mostly selfish decision just as much as one might argue bargaining for arcane power to save the family is a mostly selfish decision. The IFCC can spin that decision to guilt-trip her no matter what she does, and there is no good act that gets results in this situation.

Reject the deal? You're a selfish person who wouldn't risk their soul even for a few minutes to save the lives and quite possibly the immortal souls of your family from a danger your actions brought upon them! I guess we know how much you care about others, you monster.

Accept the deal? Ha! You CLEARLY did this purely for the power, not your family! You're ours forever now, pointy-ears!

I know in V's position there is no way I'd let the time stop dissolve without making the deal. If literally anything in the "alternative plan" goes wrong, even slightly, my entire family is dead and my children are likely soul-bound for eternity. My associates, whom I am relying on entirely to get this done for me, DO NOT HAVE A GOOD TRACK RECORD OF DOING THINGS PERFECTLY.

The IFCC, who by 2/3rds majority is a non-lawful group, has made no promise they will not sabotage this alternative plan to spite me for wasting their time, and the fact they brought it up probably has nothing at all to do with fairness and everything to do with one sort of trap or another. I'd take the splice, every single time, even though in V's position I would also probably have submitted to Inky's terms and hoped the others could muddle through without me.

There are some factors in the whole process of the deal I feel it's important to keep in mind.

1. V is not in her right mind at this point in time. She is insane but functional (barely) from Trance deprivation and guilt by the time Quarr approaches her. Capacity to judge outcomes and search for traps in the bargain on an extremely limited time frame with the knowledge your family might get slaughtered if you dilly-dally even a few seconds is not something she possesses when the deal is made.
2. Because V is not exactly a pillar of mental clarity at the time of the deal, she has no reason to imagine a devil can call in the accumulated time on her soul while it is still in her body, because most deals don't work that way and the IFCC were smart enough never to imply this one stood out in that particular regard. I'd say most adventurers in V's position would not say "waaaaaaait a minute, you're not going to call this in before I die, are you?" and even if they did they would receive a technically accurate but completely unhelpful answer while Time Stop ticks down.
3. The alternative plan is not presented because it can actually work; it is there purely so that V is tricked into thinking she had an option not to do this and still save her family when she didn't. This knowledge, in turn, makes her more likely to lash out all the stronger with her newfound power because a part of her, however small, is convinced she already made a choice for power over purer goals. The IFCC probably planned on precisely that happening and would not have disingenuously or honestly suggested alternatives existed if there was even a chance V would consider them in her current frame of mind.

[Mike Havran]

...
There's good reasons and bad(even evil) reasons for both taking and rejecting the offer. Those concerning accepting the splice were already covered in comic. The ones concerning the rejection could be like,

a)my soul is too precious to be given to fiends for a chance of saving somebody I cared so little about over the last few years. Heck, all is probably in vain anyway, the Dragon has likely already killed my family and she was merely taunting me there. I know I would have done that in her place...

b)the three fiends must want me to take the deal, otherwise they wouldn't bother to come. And if the three embodiements of absolute Evil want to achieve something, then every reasonable nonevil sapient should foil their schemes - no matter the cost, no matter the sacrifice.

And V choose for the wrong reasons.

[BlackDragonKing]

There's good reasons and bad(even evil) reasons for both taking and rejecting the offer. Those concerning accepting the splice were already covered in comic. The ones concerning the rejection could be like,

a)my soul is too precious to be given to fiends for a chance of saving somebody I cared so little about over the last few years. Heck, all is probably in vain anyway, the Dragon has likely already killed my family and she was merely taunting me there. I know I would have done that in her place...

This one is completely, utterly neutral. I'd honestly have more sympathy for someone who gave in out of desperation than someone who shrugged their shoulders and decided they'd ****ed up too much to salvage it and looked purely to their own soul instead. Hell, that's even the evil-leaning side of neutral. "I have not been a particularly attentive spouse at times, so I will leave my spouse and our children to a fate worse than death to protect myself" is borderline sociopathic reasoning.


b)the three fiends must want me to take the deal, otherwise they wouldn't bother to come. And if the three embodiements of absolute Evil want to achieve something, then every reasonable nonevil sapient should foil their schemes - no matter the cost, no matter the sacrifice.

This could be argued as good, but I would not consider it the kind of good that is rewarded or well-thought of. This is the sort of Good reasoning that leaves a lot of righteous corpses stacked up along with the Evil, and V doesn't have any way to "foil" the Fiend's machinations besides abandoning her family altogether; even trying to stiff them and pursue the alternative is still advancing an idea they gave her and therefore not foiling whatever they're after.


And V choose for the wrong reasons.

V chose for a lot of reasons. Some of them were right, many of them were wrong, but she chose the option that worked. The good or evil comes from what she did afterwards, to me, not the decision she made.

[zimmerwald1915]

V chose for a lot of reasons. Some of them were right, many of them were wrong, but she chose the option that worked. The good or evil comes from what she did afterwards, to me, not the decision she made.
Erm, the Oracle and the commentary that preceded the scene were pretty clear. She chose "for all the wrong reasons".

[Mike Havran]

This one is completely, utterly neutral. I'd honestly have more sympathy for someone who gave in out of desperation than someone who shrugged their shoulders and decided they'd ****ed up too much to salvage it and looked purely to their own soul instead. Hell, that's even the evil-leaning side of neutral. "I have not been a particularly attentive spouse at times, so I will leave my spouse and our children to a fate worse than death to protect myself" is borderline sociopathic reasoning. I was actually listing this as the bad, or even evil, reasoning. We agree on that.


This could be argued as good, but I would not consider it the kind of good that is rewarded or well-thought of. This is the sort of Good reasoning that leaves a lot of righteous corpses stacked up along with the Evil, and V doesn't have any way to "foil" the Fiend's machinations besides abandoning her family altogether; even trying to stiff them and pursue the alternative is still advancing an idea they gave her and therefore not foiling whatever they're after. It is. They need her to agree on that one (or, it could be indeed also an elaborate way of making her kill herself by accepting the alternative. But they can't possibly get what they are after if V decides to behave as if they never appeared in the first place).




V chose for a lot of reasons. Some of them were right, many of them were wrong, but she chose the option that worked. The good or evil comes from what she did afterwards, to me, not the decision she made.Well, it needed to work for storytelling reasons, so that can't be used as a defense.

[The Pilgrim]

My thoughts on the matter:

Should V had refused the soul-selling, and should she had been unable to stop the Dragon afterwards...

... She would have understood that in order to find and locate Mama Dragon, she needed to reach Epic Level. And the better way to achieve that, would be resuming adventuring with the OOTS.

She would have become a character even more obsessed with achieving arcane power, but now not just for pride and power itself, but also for a cause - rescue her family. The temptation to go the easy way would be stronger.

She would still have become a more complex character, because her inner contradictions and the consequent inner struggle would have become stronger. More complex but more likely to burst out, instead of becoming more humble and less likely to trigger out.

[zimmerwald1915]

My thoughts on the matter:

Should V had refused the soul-selling, and should she had been unable to stop the Dragon afterwards...

... She would have understood that in order to find and locate Mama Dragon, she needed to reach Epic Level. And the better way to achieve that, would be resuming adventuring with the OOTS.
Wasn't that basically Haley's position until the start of this book, with "wealth" standing in for "arcane power"?

[Imgran]

To 1: You forgot to state the drawback of the deal: a deal with the devil(s) is just bad. And normally really bad. Not considering this is just dumb.

Every option he was given is "bad." you're not telling me anything that isn't implicit in the very dilemma V faced. If there was a GOOD option, then "choosing the lesser of two evils" doesn't come up


To 2: Actually V's fate was never in danger. The ABD said that she will leave and nobody will be able to follow here.

Again this is an exercise in missing the point -- rather a good one actually. When I said "trusting to fate" I mean that step one in the plan is killing yourself, and somewhere along the line being resurrected. Expecting things not to go wrong is "trusting to fate" because you have no control after your own head comes off, on a plan with more moving parts than one of Nale's gambits.

It doesn't matter that V's personal life was never in danger if his family's was.

[Imgran]

The real issue with V's behavior in dealing with the YBD is that V was completely and totally in a position to not kill the YBD, but chose to do so anyway.

Upon getting a Suggestion through the dragon's saves, V could have said, "I suggest that you inform the mammals that the small purple lizard is, indeed, Vaarsuvius, then fly as far from here as you can before dawn." Or, "I suggest that you treat the adventurers as welcome guests, and politely answer their questions." Or any number of other orders that did not amount to "Sit here until I'm ready to execute you." In your subway tunnel analogy, you left out the part where the homeless man was subdued hours before the killing happened.

In theory, yes. In practice? The dragon IS coming after you, and V got HELLA lucky to put that suggestion down on him in the first place. Killing the YABD put down a threat that could do a great deal of damage to the party in the indeterminate future, one that given that all of these people know they're in a narrative comic strip, they KNOW they would have had to deal with again at some point if they didn't destroy him.

To extend the tortured analogy a little further, imagine that the homeless man is bound and tazed, but is a master of escape, has Mob connections, has a photographic memory and can describe every one of you in detail and has made some rather grisly death threats. It still might not set you up to be a paragon of virtue to put him down, but if it's clear that it's you or him, let it be him..


V could have used that chance to resolve the mutual misunderstanding that led to battle in the first place. Instead, V chose to kill a helpless sentient being in cold blood. I'm not a member of the V-Haters Club, but it's really one of the darker moments in the character's history.

A helpless always chaotic evil creature who would have attacked them with glee even if they'd met in a neutral environment and was giving a really good account of himself having eliminated 2 party members before V got DAMN lucky. I'm having a hard time being sympathetic.

[dancrilis]

My personal opinion is that V would have agonised for a time but eventually tranced.

This would have freshened their mind and they would have came up with a plan similar to the following.
1. Get access to gate, ideally scroll possible levelling.
2. Use gate to summon the Dragon.
3. Get souls.

Some of this would likely involve meeting up with the rest of the Order and continuing to secure the multi-verse.

No great need for V to change character in any dramatic manner.

[The Pilgrim]

Wasn't that basically Haley's position until the start of this book, with "wealth" standing in for "arcane power"?

Well, Haley was already greedy before The Letter, but only decided to answer the Call to Adventure after it.

V's obssesion with arcane power, on the other hand, led her into adventuring long before receiving any family incentive. In fact, her family played a totally opposite role on that decision, she went for arcane power and adventuring despite having to leave her family behind.

Also, Haley leant to - somewhat - control her lust for wealth long before the beggining of this book.

[Kish]

A helpless always chaotic evil creature who would have attacked them with glee even if they'd met in a neutral environment and was giving a really good account of himself having eliminated 2 party members before V got DAMN lucky. I'm having a hard time being sympathetic.
This is why I am baffled that Rich thinks it's possible for him to sell "Killing black dragons for being black dragons is wrong" hard enough that the people who didn't immediately think so will start thinking so.

[Rodin]

This is why I am baffled that Rich thinks it's possible for him to sell "Killing black dragons for being black dragons is wrong" hard enough that the people who didn't immediately think so will start thinking so.

To be honest, I didn't give the killing of the YBD a second thought when I first read it, or on any subsequent readings. It was only when his mother showed up that I began reviewing my opinion of it, and it's still difficult because of how "standard adventure" the whole episode was. Adventurers go into cave, meet monster, kill monster, get loot.

So he made me think deeply about my pre-conceptions of a fantasy story, for one.

Then again, I was stunned by Familicide when it happened, even before the big reveal about the Draketooths, and never did really get the "justified genocide" argument from some of the forum.

[Everyl]

In theory, yes. In practice? The dragon IS coming after you, and V got HELLA lucky to put that suggestion down on him in the first place. Killing the YABD put down a threat that could do a great deal of damage to the party in the indeterminate future, one that given that all of these people know they're in a narrative comic strip, they KNOW they would have had to deal with again at some point if they didn't destroy him.

So the Order operates on the basis that anything they don't kill is guaranteed to come back and haunt them later? Then why did they use the exact opposite logic in deciding how to deal with the Linear Guild?

Also, y'know, they didn't have to steal everything of value in the dragon's home in the theoretical situation where V spared him. Mere trespassing isn't the sort of thing that typically inspires dragons to go on homicidal revenge-hunts.


To extend the tortured analogy a little further, imagine that the homeless man is bound and tazed, but is a master of escape, has Mob connections, has a photographic memory and can describe every one of you in detail and has made some rather grisly death threats. It still might not set you up to be a paragon of virtue to put him down, but if it's clear that it's you or him, let it be him..

A helpless always chaotic evil creature who would have attacked them with glee even if they'd met in a neutral environment and was giving a really good account of himself having eliminated 2 party members before V got DAMN lucky. I'm having a hard time being sympathetic.

So, the dragon's Monster Manual alignment makes killing it acceptable? Isn't that one of the attitudes that the Giant has been trying to combat in writing this story?

"Always X" isn't really "always" in D&D. There are exceptions. Also, are you basing your assumption that the dragon would have gleefully attacked them in a neutral situation on anything other than that listed alignment? Do you think that he had an irrational hatred of adventurers because a party of them killed his father? Because that kind of previous experience could just as easily lead him to avoid adventurers at all costs in neutral situations, for fear of his hide becoming the next suit of disturbingly-fancy armor. Even if he was one of the Chaotic Evil majority of his race, the YBD could well have been more the "self-interested" flavor of evil than the "self-destructively homicidal" flavor, when not already cornered in his home. We don't know enough to say, because V killed him without trying to find out.

[CaDzilla]

Tarquin: You were totally justified, elf. You pulled the classic "sell my soul to save people" thing AND you killed the big, evil dragon. Really makes you seem all broody and conflicted, while allowing you to defend your family. I might just leave you alive to be my son's sidekick.
V: I'VE COMMITTED ARCANE GENOCIDE THAT KILLED YOUR PREVIOUS WIFE!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!
Tarquin: You really have to move on with your life. You can't just stop because of one thing going wrong. In fact, Mrs. Tarquin #10 is waiting for me back at the palace. Although, you are the brooder, so forget what I just said.

[zimmerwald1915]

Tarquin: You were totally justified, elf. You pulled the classic "sell my soul to save people" thing AND you killed the big, evil dragon. Really makes you seem all broody and conflicted, while allowing you to defend your family. I might just leave you alive to be my son's sidekick.
V: I'VE COMMITTED ARCANE GENOCIDE THAT KILLED YOUR PREVIOUS WIFE!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!
Tarquin: You really have to move on with your life. You can't just stop because of one thing going wrong. In fact, Mrs. Tarquin #10 is waiting for me back at the palace. Although, you are the brooder, so forget what I just said.
Okay, that was amusing. :smallbiggrin:

[Paseo H]

To paraphrase Tarquin, the alternate plan offered by the fiends had too many moving parts. Maybe it could have worked, but would you take a chance?

Of course, V did do it so he wouldn't have to admit failure, but for us, it might be more a matter of being too precarious to venture.

[Souhiro]

I think this is like the Paladin's dilema:

Our Lawful Good Fighter (Let's call him Croy Redpommel) has a bad day (He is the last survivor from his party) and a minstrel in the streets start to annoy him, singing, dancing and demanding money. Croy Redpommel just lost his nerve, Grabs the minstrel from his shirt and orders him to shut up. The minstrel runs away.
Our Croy still will be a Lawful Good Fighter. He only had a very bad day.

Next, we have a Lawful Good PALADIN (Let's call her Miko Toriyama) and she has also a very VERY bad day, due her weakness (IE: She's level 5, and her town was assaulted by an Ancient Black Dragon) all her people is dead. The very same minstrel goes to her, and start singing, dancing and demanding money again. Miko just intimidates him. Put her hand in her blade, and says him "Run Away"
You can bet that our "Miko" is now a True Netural Ex-Paladin. And she was even less verbal than "Croy"


Most of "V is evil, or would end evil" and "Haley is good" is because the IIFC offered V a solution... yes, a contruved, strange and odd solution


Kill Yourself
Trust the imp to carry your head and not chicken away
Trust that your head won't be lost while they kill the imp
Expect to be resurrected in time
Expect Sending to be casted in time
Expect your master to be prepared to fight a Black Dragon Mommy
Expect that the dragon didn't have enough time to kill your family


Seriously, a plan which relies in other people (people that you have been alienating, or have been years since you saw them) and have 7 steps? The IFFC was bluffing: Drako-Mommy was just two or three rounds before soul-binding and killing V's adopted progeny, and maybe crippling for life V's mate.

V's only choice was to acept the pact.
The strip was called "The wrong reasons" because of that:
"I shall gladly acept and take the duty to endure punishment in hell, in the abbyss and abbadon. Because my mate and my adopted progeny are worth of it. The other plan is too risky"
THAT would have been "The Right Reasons". Maybe it would have even foiled IFFC's plan (All those stories about people who acepts to sacrifice themselves in deal with the devil, but are spared because they're too good for hell)

What could have been if V didn't accept? It couldn't happen: it was more a binary situation

You lose your temper, and accept for the wrong reasons
You keep your temper, and STILL acceotm this time for the right reasons


Should the "B" case had happened, maybe the "Familicide" scenario wouldn't have happened. Maybe V would have used a wish to reunite mother and son, or just killed the beast

[BlackDragonKing]

So the Order operates on the basis that anything they don't kill is guaranteed to come back and haunt them later? Then why did they use the exact opposite logic in deciding how to deal with the Linear Guild?

Also, y'know, they didn't have to steal everything of value in the dragon's home in the theoretical situation where V spared him. Mere trespassing isn't the sort of thing that typically inspires dragons to go on homicidal revenge-hunts.

Some things to consider on how V would make this decision:

1. Elves do not have enlightened views on monster races. See Team Peregrine. Elves take Always Chaotic Evil seriously, and so there is no indication anything from V's culture would suggest NOT killing an Evil dragon is a good idea, particularly when you believe it is guarding something your party needs.
2. A cursory knowledge of dragons like the Order would have would probably tell them two things; one, that chromatic dragons are bad news, and two, black dragons are bad news even by chromatic dragon standards. A White Dragon is usually of a cowardly temperament and so might accept its beating and avoid the risk of clashing with the party again. Black Dragons, however, are known for being incredibly vindictive, so yes, it actually IS the sort of creature that will usually attempt to avenge any transgression against it quite violently. There are a number of dragons that will go on an unholy rampage because the most neglected piece of garbage in their horde was taken while they slept. Since V is not the Dragon Whisperer, she and most of the order would probably assume MOST dragons act in this way.

Additionally, V suggests the exact same logic in dealing with the Linear Guild; say what you like about her, she is not exercising a double-standard regarding defeated enemies they now need to determine what to do with. However, Elan, who is Good, does not believe in killing when you don't have to, and Haley and Durkon are both inclined to agree with him. Since V values Elan's friendship, she respects his call in the situation, albeit also accepting Haley's practical point that Sabine being on the LG means disintegrating them might not get the Guild off their backs forever.

So, the dragon's Monster Manual alignment makes killing it acceptable? Isn't that one of the attitudes that the Giant has been trying to combat in writing this story?


"Always X" isn't really "always" in D&D. There are exceptions. Also, are you basing your assumption that the dragon would have gleefully attacked them in a neutral situation on anything other than that listed alignment? Do you think that he had an irrational hatred of adventurers because a party of them killed his father? Because that kind of previous experience could just as easily lead him to avoid adventurers at all costs in neutral situations, for fear of his hide becoming the next suit of disturbingly-fancy armor. Even if he was one of the Chaotic Evil majority of his race, the YBD could well have been more the "self-interested" flavor of evil than the "self-destructively homicidal" flavor, when not already cornered in his home. We don't know enough to say, because V killed him without trying to find out.

I would personally base my assumption that the Dragon would have attacked in different circumstances on the fact that even GOOD dragons are extremely territorial creatures in most settings, and being the apex predator of most settings means they don't have a very developed fight or flight response; dragons big enough to fight will almost always elect to do so rather than flee unless they have a very compelling reason to flee. Five or six prey animals stumbling upon you is not a compelling reason.

Secondly, do you seriously know of ANYONE whose reaction to subduing a dragon that tried to eat them and their friends is "let's find out if this is the one-in-a-million friendly dragon and hope he goes by "no harm, no foul"?" There's one thing for expecting the readers to take away the intended lesson, but expecting a True Neutral character whose upbringing is unlikely to have given her an open-minded view of alignment by species to behave in a manner that would be above and beyond the standard for Lawful Good is another. Killing a dragon because it's a dragon isn't right, well done. I think we all got that. This doesn't change the fact that we're reaching that view from our chairs, reading a comic that comments on alignment morality, while V is reaching her decision on how to deal with the problem from a Knowledge check and a few minutes of watching a big scaly death-tank trying to devour people she cares about, unaware that any commentary about Always Chaotic Evil is in play at all.


I think this is like the Paladin's dilema:

Our Lawful Good Fighter (Let's call him Croy Redpommel) has a bad day (He is the last survivor from his party) and a minstrel in the streets start to annoy him, singing, dancing and demanding money. Croy Redpommel just lost his nerve, Grabs the minstrel from his shirt and orders him to shut up. The minstrel runs away.
Our Croy still will be a Lawful Good Fighter. He only had a very bad day.

Next, we have a Lawful Good PALADIN (Let's call her Miko Toriyama) and she has also a very VERY bad day, due her weakness (IE: She's level 5, and her town was assaulted by an Ancient Black Dragon) all her people is dead. The very same minstrel goes to her, and start singing, dancing and demanding money again. Miko just intimidates him. Put her hand in her blade, and says him "Run Away"
You can bet that our "Miko" is now a True Netural Ex-Paladin. And she was even less verbal than "Croy"

This speaks to extremely poor judgement on the part of a DM to me. Being curt with someone who is irritating you after you have had a downright TRAUMATICALLY bad day isn't even an Evil act; it's barely neutral unless you think a Good character can never, ever, ever be rude to people. Which Chaotic Good characters do ALL THE TIME. People are ridiculously trigger-happy with taking away a Paladin's powers and changing their alignment any time they're not perfect. Paladins become Ex-Paladins when they forsake their code completely or do something incredibly evil, not when they lose their temper with someone or jay-walk. :smallannoyed:

[Amphiox]

In theory, yes. In practice? The dragon IS coming after you, and V got HELLA lucky to put that suggestion down on him in the first place. Killing the YABD put down a threat that could do a great deal of damage to the party in the indeterminate future, one that given that all of these people know they're in a narrative comic strip, they KNOW they would have had to deal with again at some point if they didn't destroy him.


The narrative argument here is weak. And indeed inappropriate interpretation of narrative convention is the running theme of the latest series of strips right now.

Consider that Androcles' Lion is ALSO a narrative convention. For all anyone could have known, sparing the YABD could have resulted in it returning at a later point to HELP the Order, in payment of that debt.

And indeed, given what we know of the author and his views on the subject of alignment based behavior and the railroading of entire groups of beings into certain alignments, I think a narrative line wherein a supposedly always chaotic evil child is spared coming back to subvert his alignment and helping the protagonists would in fact have been far more likely, from this author, than the old cliche of the irredeemably evil boss-of-the-episode making a cameo later as a cardboard antagonist with no character development in the interim seeking payback or whatever.

[BlackDragonKing]

The narrative argument here is weak. And indeed inappropriate interpretation of narrative convention is the running theme of the latest series of strips right now.

Consider that Androcles' Lion is ALSO a narrative convention. For all anyone could have known, sparing the YABD could have resulted in it returning at a later point to HELP the Order, in payment of that debt.

And indeed, given what we know of the author and his views on the subject of alignment based behavior and the railroading of entire groups of beings into certain alignments, I think a narrative line wherein a supposedly always chaotic evil child is spared coming back to subvert his alignment and helping the protagonists would in fact have been far more likely, from this author, than the old cliche of the irredeemably evil boss-of-the-episode making a cameo later as a cardboard antagonist with no character development in the interim seeking payback or whatever.

We should consider, however, that WE know that, NOBODY ELSE DOES. The Order is not aware Redcloak might have a point, they see a goblin in service to a lich who certainly means the world harm leading around a big damn army. The whole "alignment causes only conflict and isn't as binding or important as we think" is not an argument the CHARACTERS have been exposed to; literally the only person who's suggested that to an Order member so far is Tarquin pointing it out to Elan as justification for his own behavior. So we, the readers, are aware there are good reasons not to kill a Black Dragon when you have it subdued after an intense battle. Adventures are not aware of this, and expecting them to behave as though they were is completely unreasonable.

[Reddish Mage]

Don't worry about it. And since you asked, my opinion is that V would shortly have ended up dead if she hadn't taken the deal. As you point out, the next logical place for her character to go is obsession over finding her children's souls. She probably would have obsessed even more strongly than she had over trying to find Haley. But unlike Haley, V's and I's kids have no bearing whatsoever on the story. Following V trying to find them would take time away from literally every thing else, and have no bearing on any other events. Rather than waste all our time, either the Giant would have simply stopped following V - the bad option, because it would spawn endless speculation about when V would come back - or simply killed her off.

That V ends up dead having not taken the deal relies on metastory concepts. We know, however that from a meta story perspective, that there was no chance of V not taking the deal. What if is more a speculation about what sort of story would flow naturally out of that decision based on internal story factors, not meta story. From there we can imagine V ending up dead and out of play (because V would try the fiends' alternative suggestion which wouldn't work like they painted, with Qarr not truly being bound by his promise or the fiends intervening) or we can imagine V seeking power to find Mama ABD, and perhaps doing other bad things (perhaps going back for the soul splice ).

[Amphiox]

We should consider, however, that WE know that, NOBODY ELSE DOES. The Order is not aware Redcloak might have a point, they see a goblin in service to a lich who certainly means the world harm leading around a big damn army. The whole "alignment causes only conflict and isn't as binding or important as we think" is not an argument the CHARACTERS have been exposed to; literally the only person who's suggested that to an Order member so far is Tarquin pointing it out to Elan as justification for his own behavior. So we, the readers, are aware there are good reasons not to kill a Black Dragon when you have it subdued after an intense battle. Adventures are not aware of this, and expecting them to behave as though they were is completely unreasonable.

The above is true, but it is not a narrative argument. It is a character argument. In this argument, it is not about the adventurers thinking that the YBD is bound to come after them again because they're in a story, and so they'll kill it in pre-emption, it is about the adventurers killing the YBD because that's what they're used to doing and have come to accept as normal and ok.

But the second is not what I was talking about. (And still remains an egregious moral failing on the characters' part).

And as I originally said, the NARRATIVE argument remains weak.

[Kish]

The whole "alignment causes only conflict and isn't as binding or important as we think" is not an argument the CHARACTERS have been exposed to;

The whole, "Alignment causes only conflict and isn't as binding or important as we think" is not an argument that anyone has been exposed to in Order of the Stick, because it is not an argument that is in Order of the Stick, except (Tarquin) as a justification for horrific evil, along the lines of "There is no good or evil, only power and those too afraid to seek it." Claiming it is amounts to strawmanning Rich. He's made it clear that he likes the alignment system. Rejecting racial morality or racial alignment has no relationship to rejecting alignment, and to suggest that the whole idea that genocidal racism is wrong is a strange new idea no one in the comic world has ever comprehended or should be expected to requires aggressively ignoring most of the comic.

[rodneyAnonymous]

The very same minstrel goes to her, and start singing, dancing and demanding money again. Miko just intimidates him. Put her hand in her blade, and says him "Run Away"
You can bet that our "Miko" is now a True Netural Ex-Paladin. And she was even less verbal than "Croy"

Depending on specifics, perhaps the paladin would fall... but two alignment changes? (Lawful to neutral, and good to neutral.) That's preposterous. A paladin could lose their class abilities from one action, but a single action almost never changes alignment. Murdering Lord Shojo and casting familicide may have been evil acts, but they were probably not enough to make Miko or Vaarsuvius evil in the eyes of the gods*. Intimidating a bard certainly wouldn't be.

* Rich said Vaarsuvius was TN pretty soon after that spell was cast, and plenty of posters think Miko was a lawful good fallen paladin when she died.

[veti]

Consider that Androcles' Lion is ALSO a narrative convention. For all anyone could have known, sparing the YABD could have resulted in it returning at a later point to HELP the Order, in payment of that debt.

"Debt"? If the YABD had, I dunno, a walrus tusk or something stuck in its claw that the party helped it with, then sure. But to claim a "debt" when all the party did for the dragon was "refrain from murdering it", sounds to me like a dubious moral point.

[Paseo H]

The whole, "Alignment causes only conflict and isn't as binding or important as we think" is not an argument that anyone has been exposed to in Order of the Stick, because it is not an argument that is in Order of the Stick, except (Tarquin) as a justification for horrific evil, along the lines of "There is no good or evil, only power and those too afraid to seek it." Claiming it is amounts to strawmanning Rich. He's made it clear that he likes the alignment system. Rejecting racial morality or racial alignment has no relationship to rejecting alignment, and to suggest that the whole idea that genocidal racism is wrong is a strange new idea no one in the comic world has ever comprehended or should be expected to requires aggressively ignoring most of the comic.

Do we still believe that V needs to bring all struck down by Familicide back to life in order to be possible of redemption?

[Morithias]

Do we still believe that V needs to bring all struck down by Familicide back to life in order to be possible of redemption?

I question if even that would be worthy of redemption.

[Kish]

I don't know about we, but I would still throw Vaarsuvius into Hades if Vaarsuvius reaffirmed her/his decision that her/his victims belong dead. That's unlikely to change. Either s/he recognizes that what s/he did was an atrocity, or s/he thinks s/he was wrong to do something big but the world is still a better place for it.

[Paseo H]

or s/he thinks s/he was wrong to do something big but the world is still a better place for it.

I think it's a bit too extreme to reject that sort of logic always and forever in all situations.

[Kish]

The logic that genocide is evil, not merely inappropriately large?

I'd hate to see what not-extreme looks like.

[Paseo H]

The logic that genocide is evil, not merely inappropriately large?

I'd hate to see what not-extreme looks like.

More like, you seem to think that V should refute within himself the idea that the world is objectively better off without a bunch of chaotic evil monsters.

[Kish]

More like, you seem to think that V should refute within himself the idea that the world is objectively better off without a bunch of chaotic evil monsters.
Vaarsuvius has already, correctly, refuted the idea that it was anything other than horrific for her/him to dismiss dozens of sapients as "a bunch of chaotic evil monsters." If you consider the belief that s/he should not go back and say, "No wait, actually, it was right" extreme, then Vaarsuvius is currently taking quite an extreme position. And wasn't taking an extreme one when s/he committed Familicide. Which...is a pretty common view on this board, I suppose, but you waste your keystrokes trying to get me to validate it.

[Paseo H]

Vaarsuvius has already, correctly, refuted the idea that it was anything other than horrific for her/him to dismiss dozens of sapients as "a bunch of chaotic evil monsters." If you consider the belief that s/he should not go back and say, "No wait, actually, it was right" extreme, then Vaarsuvius is currently taking quite an extreme position. And wasn't taking an extreme one when s/he committed Familicide. Which...is a pretty common view on this board, I suppose, but you waste your keystrokes trying to get me to validate it.

Then, the world was brighter and kinder because of the existence of monstrous black dragons. Maybe you're right.

[Kish]

What makes someone evil?

The answer could be, "Being a member of an evil race," but...let's imagine, for this post, whether any individual reader believes that or not, that it's not a valid answer. It would be actions, yes? Robbery, torture, murder. Hurting other people for personal gain or without even that reason.

Killing dozens or hundreds of people at once, for being related to an enemy and for no other reason, knowing that they were not involved and knew nothing of one's battle with the enemy? I'd call that pretty epic on the Malev-o-meter. It would be quite a story Rich would have ahead of him, if he wanted to establish that any of the people--excuse me, monstrous black dragons--Vaarsuvius killed had wicked deeds to her or his name to equal Vaarsuvius' own. And so, if they belonged dead...then surely Vaarsuvius belongs dead, too. In fact, if they belonged dead for what they probably had done or what they likely would have done later, then Vaarsuvius' error was in thinking too small. The correct spell would have been one that caused the end of all life, bringing punishment for all crimes and ensuring none would ever be committed again.

Or maybe mass murder is just wrong, unjustifiable, and looking for reasons it's right is the wrong approach.

[Paseo H]

Well played, but V can die and be punished for my point to still work. He was wrong, what we disagree with is why he's wrong.

[Liliet]

The Soul Splice was not even Evil at all, unless you are willing to dive into speculatively mystical arguments like "every deed that as formally described as Evil gives power to the Evil gods and is therefore Evil regardless of actual motives and consequences". Had V limited virself to saving vir children and maybe taking out vir rage on ABD a bit without mixing her other family members in, there would be nothing Evil about the whole thing at all. It was pretty obvious that the Splice was necessary at least for V's sanity. Actually, even if we do dive into the speculatively mystical arguments, what V prevented (double or triple soul bind) was much worse than selling vir soul, so hey, it WAS necessary and all but Good.

What was Evil is Familicide. It was not lesser evil from ANY point of view, and there is no way it can be justified. Only explained and forgiven as "V was really out of control of virself at the moment, and for good reasons", which not all people are willing to do.


Familicide was NOT a natural consequence of the Soul Splice. It was a natural consequence of V's emotional state at the moment multiplied by vir worse tendencies, and aided a little by the voices and V's percieved "alignment feedback".

I do and will argue that V is not fully responsible for Familicide the way ve is responsible for YukYuk's torture, but it has nothing to do with the Soul Splice.

[Rodin]

Given that the Giant has explicitly stated his opinion on the matter, our disagreements on it don't matter much. Kish's explanation is the one being used in-comic.

The questions that we don't know:

A) How do the gods react? They aren't exactly perfect arbiters, as we've seen from Thor (and others) in the past. It could be that the gods are not particularly enlightened when it comes to the whole "always Chaotic Evil" debate, although the Deva that judged Roy seemed to be pretty good on alignment.

B) What constitutes atonement? Does V saving the world fix things, or must V specifically undo the damage caused by Familicide?

C) Does V have to be successful, or like Roy is trying enough?

D) Finally, all we know on the judging comes from the Lawful Good side. How are True Neutral characters judged? We really don't know.

[Liliet]

A) How do the gods react? They aren't exactly perfect arbiters, as we've seen from Thor (and others) in the past. It could be that the gods are not particularly enlightened when it comes to the whole "always Chaotic Evil" debate, although the Deva that judged Roy seemed to be pretty good on alignment.

I'd like to note that the Deva did not even mention killing the YABD and taking its stuff. Entering the cave was obviously not Evil, neither was fighting back when the dragon attacked, but once V had it under vir control, it was not exactly Good to just sit on their thumbs and let the enraged elf sacrifice the prisoner for the sake of vir injured ego. And robbing the cave when it was clear already that it had another owner... was nowhere near Lawful.

So no, anything race-related is up to the heroes' conscience to judge. Oops.

[CaDzilla]

I'd like to note that the Deva did not even mention killing the YABD and taking its stuff. Entering the cave was obviously not Evil, neither was fighting back when the dragon attacked, but once V had it under vir control, it was not exactly Good to just sit on their thumbs and let the enraged elf sacrifice the prisoner for the sake of vir injured ego. And robbing the cave when it was clear already that it had another owner... was nowhere near Lawful.

So no, anything race-related is up to the heroes' conscience to judge. Oops.

Well, to be fair, the gods did make most of the evil creatures in the monster manual as chunks of xp for their clerics.

[Liliet]

Well, to be fair, the gods did make most of the evil creatures in the monster manual as chunks of xp for their clerics.
Well, the gods themselves as individuals in DnD are supposed to be separate from cosmic forces that determine alignment, because alignment is objective and gods are flawed individuals.

The Deva is probably somewhere in between, she judges alignment... but she does not go against the gods who are supposedly exemplary Good, I guess.

[Paseo H]

Given that the Giant has explicitly stated his opinion on the matter, our disagreements on it don't matter much.

Doesn't matter inasfar as how the comic plays out, but we can still discuss it for ourselves.

I agree with Liliet though, regardless of whether the destruction of the black dragons was just and necessary, V willingly consorted with fiends, and rendered them aid and thus furtherance of whatever they are planning, so that alone taints the act, even if it would otherwise be zero wrong.

EDIT: Sorry, I was half delirious from tryptophan last night when I read that, so I misremembered what she said.

[Mike Havran]

I'd like to note that the Deva did not even mention killing the YABD and taking its stuff. Entering the cave was obviously not Evil, neither was fighting back when the dragon attacked, but once V had it under vir control, it was not exactly Good to just sit on their thumbs and let the enraged elf sacrifice the prisoner for the sake of vir injured ego. And robbing the cave when it was clear already that it had another owner... was nowhere near Lawful.

So no, anything race-related is up to the heroes' conscience to judge. Oops.Roy had nothing to do with the murder of YBD. He wasn't supposed to know how Suggestion works or what commands did V give to her target. And since the forest doesn't belong to any established society, the treasure within is not subject to any lawful protection.

[astralmeson]

And since the forest doesn't belong to any established society, the treasure within is not subject to any lawful protection.

I was under the impression that the location of the forest didn't matter. Lawful means following your own code of ethics, not the law of the society that owns the land you walk in. A Lawful character is still lawful if he/she breaks laws.

[Liliet]

Roy had nothing to do with the murder of YBD. He wasn't supposed to know how Suggestion works or what commands did V give to her target. And since the forest doesn't belong to any established society, the treasure within is not subject to any lawful protection.
Roy is supposed to be Lawful Good. In my reading of Roy's version of this alignment, he doesn't need established society and formal jurisdiction to apply his set of moral and ethics. If there were a human teenager instead of the dragon, I'm pretty sure he would pay attention to what V was going to do and step forward as a leader, just like he did remember to do with the soldiers that Durkon dominated, just like he left Sam and her dad tied up instead of letting Haley and Belkar proceed with their creative profitable ideas.

His "people" indicator just didn't light up, he didn't think of the dragon as someone to whom morals and ethics apply.

Roy's empathy sometimes works with a huge lag: see Elan cauht by the bandits, see Miko... But with a dragon, he had a lot of time to do nothing but think, and he did not think to use it to discuss mind control spells and what comes next with V.

I'm not saying it wasn't V's fault and V's responsibility, I'm saying that Roy has his share, too. Their whole society has its share.

[Mike Havran]

Roy is supposed to be Lawful Good. In my reading of Roy's version of this alignment, he doesn't need established society and formal jurisdiction to apply his set of moral and ethics. If there were a human teenager instead of the dragon, I'm pretty sure he would pay attention to what V was going to do and step forward as a leader, just like he did remember to do with the soldiers that Durkon dominated, just like he left Sam and her dad tied up instead of letting Haley and Belkar proceed with their creative profitable ideas.

His "people" indicator just didn't light up, he didn't think of the dragon as someone to whom morals and ethics apply.

Roy's empathy sometimes works with a huge lag: see Elan cauht by the bandits, see Miko... But with a dragon, he had a lot of time to do nothing but think, and he did not think to use it to discuss mind control spells and what comes next with V.

I'm not saying it wasn't V's fault and V's responsibility, I'm saying that Roy has his share, too. Their whole society has its share.That assumes Roy knew that V was about to kill YBD, but he didn't. He didn't even know what kind of spell V used. The rest of the Order could have played a guessing game not unlike the Elan's, but nothing suggested V is going to make YBD her target practice.

After that, it was pretty much about going on with the quest.

[BlackDragonKing]

Roy is supposed to be Lawful Good. In my reading of Roy's version of this alignment, he doesn't need established society and formal jurisdiction to apply his set of moral and ethics. If there were a human teenager instead of the dragon, I'm pretty sure he would pay attention to what V was going to do and step forward as a leader, just like he did remember to do with the soldiers that Durkon dominated, just like he left Sam and her dad tied up instead of letting Haley and Belkar proceed with their creative profitable ideas.

His "people" indicator just didn't light up, he didn't think of the dragon as someone to whom morals and ethics apply.

Roy's empathy sometimes works with a huge lag: see Elan cauht by the bandits, see Miko... But with a dragon, he had a lot of time to do nothing but think, and he did not think to use it to discuss mind control spells and what comes next with V.

I'm not saying it wasn't V's fault and V's responsibility, I'm saying that Roy has his share, too. Their whole society has its share.

Isn't it kind of obvious Roy wouldn't think of Dragons as something you should go out of your way NOT to kill? The order didn't exactly tiptoe past goblins in Xykon's tower to avoid killing them and Goblins are a hell of a lot easier to empathize with than dragons for someone in this universe, even if it's purely on a small scale. Also, Roy's grandfather, who he idolizes, is a famed dragonslayer. He's not exactly going to be that sympathetic to the view that his granddad was morally wrong to kill that Red Dragon, now is he?

[Liliet]

That assumes Roy knew that V was about to kill YBD, but he didn't. He didn't even know what kind of spell V used. The rest of the Order could have played a guessing game not unlike the Elan's, but nothing suggested V is going to make YBD her target practice.

After that, it was pretty much about going on with the quest.
He. Could. Have. Asked.

He should have asked. He's the leader of the group. He's the Lawful Good leader of a mixed alignment group. It's his responsibility to ask what his True Neutral party member is going to do next. He had several hours for that.


Isn't it kind of obvious Roy wouldn't think of Dragons as something you should go out of your way NOT to kill? The order didn't exactly tiptoe past goblins in Xykon's tower to avoid killing them and Goblins are a hell of a lot easier to empathize with than dragons for someone in this universe, even if it's purely on a small scale. Also, Roy's grandfather, who he idolizes, is a famed dragonslayer. He's not exactly going to be that sympathetic to the view that his granddad was morally wrong to kill that Red Dragon, now is he?
Discussion of Roy and Xykon's goblins has been done to death... Well, my opinion is: goblins were enemies, actively attacking and immediately dangerous, just like Tarquin's soldiers were several strips ago. Roy fought goblins and soldiers without trying to keep them alive, but as soons as the danger was over, he cared about those who were his group's responsibility.

Roy's treatment of goblins has nothing to do with his treatment of dragons, me thinks.


Oh, and his gradpa, while obviously influencing Roy's views, was not in a similar situation. Dragonslayer can refer to someone who goes around seeking hidden dragons' lairs and raiding them for gold. Or someone who goes around seeking villagers complaining about ramageous dragons, then finding these dragons and slaying them, and then taking their gold. Do you see the difference?

[Kish]

He. Could. Have. Asked.

He should have asked. He's the leader of the group. He's the Lawful Good leader of a mixed alignment group. It's his responsibility to ask what his True Neutral party member is going to do next. He had several hours for that.
Or, for that matter, after Vaarsuvius had sprung on him "now that we've spent over eleven hours just sitting around, my helpless prisoner will cease to be a helpless prisoner in twelve seconds" and then blasted said helpless prisoner into a heap of ash, he could have indicated that he saw a moral issue there at any time since then.

[Liliet]

Or, for that matter, after Vaarsuvius had sprung on him "now that we've spent over eleven hours just sitting around, my helpless prisoner will cease to be a helpless prisoner in twelve seconds" and then blasted said helpless prisoner into a heap of ash, he could have indicated that he saw a moral issue there at any time since then.
After was a whole other can of worms. V actually did it to "scare the rest of the team into submission". Regardless of moral implications, this is not something the leader of the team should let slide. On the other hand, V's reason was that the whole team ignored him and his distress, which is also not something the leader of the team should allow. Maybe after the event Roy just thought about all this together and decided to not go into it and just pretend this whole episode never happened.

But, yeah, aside from his leadership issues, he really should have paid attention to the moral implications.



Coming back to V's actions, lesser evil and other stuff that the thread is actually about - how many times has anyone in the team expressed discontent with his... more questionable actions?

I remember Roy chastising V and Belkar for their feud, Elan chewing V out for murdering Kubota, Durkon feeling nauseous during the YukYuk scene... although I'm not sure he actually vocalised his objections.

Actually, Roy doesn't even count, since he was objecting not to what V did, but the fact that he did it to the teammate.

So during this whole comic, the only time when V got the message from his Good team that what he was doing was not okay, was from enraged Elan on the ship while half-crazy? The rest of the time it was perfectly normal and acceptable?

I mean, V has done a lot of nasty stuff, the most characteristic being "a wizard never loses their ticket". It was funny and awesome, but not something I would try to do when within view of my Lawful Good boss. Not something I, personally, would try to do at all, but that's beside the point. Did V even have an opportunity to realise that he's doing something wrong before the Familicide arc?

[Kish]

Did V even have an opportunity to realise that he's doing something wrong before the Familicide arc?
...Excuse me? Vaarsuvius, who is chronologically the oldest member of the Order, is in the same age category as the others, and doesn't as far as I know have a criminal record (nor does it say "evil" on her/his character sheet, nor did s/he restrain herself/himself from sniping verbally at Belkar about his failure to understand that other people deserve to exist well before demonstrating what a hypocritical thing that was for Vaarsuvius to say...), is a confirmed sociopath or a primitive AI that needs someone to tell her/him "Random killing is WRONG Vaarsuvius" before s/he has a chance to say, "My god(s) you're right"?

(Credit to someone's sig about Dominic Deegan.)

"Blowing up people who annoy you is wrong" is a fact Vaarsuvius has no more excuse for needing explained to her/him than Roy would.

[pendell]

I was under the impression that the location of the forest didn't matter. Lawful means following your own code of ethics, not the law of the society that owns the land you walk in. A Lawful character is still lawful if he/she breaks laws.

Yeah. I was just reading a book on the history of policing the other night. The first modern police department didn't come into existence until 1829 in London. Before that ...

the earliest system of 'police' in England was that every 10 adult males were grouped into a Tithing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tithings). Each member of this group was collectively responsible for the other's behavior and actions. If a crime was committed by any one member of the group, the rest of the group had to produce him and turn him over to the King's justice. If this didn't happen the entire group would be punished.

Every 10 tithings was administered by a constable, and the administrator of the constables for a shire was the Shire Reeve (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reeve_(England)), or 'sheriff' , as we know him today.

So back in those days there wasn't really much in the way of a police department. Instead, people were expected to mostly do their own detecting.

That's also why the right to arms is written into the basic US law. Because at the time that law was written -- 1789 -- ordinary citizens doubled as law enforcement. The local sheriff, in times of trouble, could summon ordinary citizens to form a posse (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_comitatus_(common_law)). Therefore all free and able-bodied men were expected to keep and bear arms, and to train in the local militia.

This system broke down because it doesn't work in large urban environments full of strangers where no one knows anyone. And that's why we have police today.

I bring this up because back in those days 'lawful' doesn't mean what it does today. In such societies, and especially on the frontier, "lawful" means you choose to obey, fulfill, and enforce the law despite the fact that there are no police or law courts to help you do it. "Lawful" means you band together with your friends and neighbors to enforce justice.

You think about it, a group of ten men with weapons setting out to enforce justice looks an awful lot like a standard adventuring party.

This is the context that Roy and his party are in when they are in the wilderness. OOTSworld has large cities, such as Cliffport and Azure City, which maintain modern police departments with jails and courts. So in those cities, Roy and company are expected to behave as modern citizens would.

Out in the countryside, however, Roy and company ARE the law. They are, legally, a posse. Therefore it is incumbent upon them to uphold the law by themselves with their own weapons. If they see bandits raiding a camp, or ogres attacking a village, it's up to them to act as the local police, if they have the power to act at all. Which, being high-level adventurers, they do.

Everyone acts lawful in the cities. "Lawful" or "chaotic" is what you do in the wilderness when no one can stop you from acting according to your basic nature. Are you the sort who will refrain from robbery and deal honestly with a trader, even when you're carrying a big sword and he is unarmed? Then you're lawful. Are you the sort who lives outside the law -- which normally means engaging in behavior not tolerated in cities? Then you're chaotic.

Looked at this way, it goes an awful long way to explaining why in the early modules "lawful" was synonymous with "good" and "chaotic" was synonymous with "evil." But I digress.

To be a lawful adventurer means you have to act as a posse, a sort of deputy police officer, in the wilderness yourself. Because the odds are good the only "law" that exists is the one you uphold yourself.

So what "law" was applicable in the search for the star metal?

Well, so far as they know the star metal is abandoned when the quest starts, and therefore they are, in good faith, participating in a salvage effort.

There are a number of predators and monsters who do not ascribe to the code of law and are quite willing to murder or kill human adventurers.

Example 1 (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0144.html)

Example 2 (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0176.html)

These creatures are intelligent, but they are still enemies. They do not acknowledge the law, and instead they prey upon men as wolves might prey upon sheep. Since they do not adhere to the law, they are also not protected by the law. They are outlaws (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outlaw).

How does the ancient formula go -- "To be cast out from all protection of Law; to be numbered among the enemies-general of mankind; to be dealt with as wolves are."

This random forum post actually discusses that decree in some detail (http://www.gunandgame.com/forums/1048356-post33.html).

Remember that this decree was, in the real world, applied not to black dragons or to annis or to ogres but to human beings. Homo sapiens, with families and parents and loved ones. But these human beings had chosen to live outside the law and to prey on their fellow humans as wolves upon a sheep. Since they chose to act as wolves, they would be dealt with as wolves were in ancient England -- hunted down and exterminated as two-legged vermin. Not only was killing them not a crime, it would often be rewarded, as the Crown would pay bounties for outlaws.

Take away the magic and the fantastic monsters, and this is wilderness D&D ethics in a nutshell.

It's a dangerous world out there, filled with outlaws. Some of these outlaws are four-legged, and some are two-legged. They are all enemies, who if they do not surrender to Justice are to be eliminated.

Now, where were we? Ah! So when our posse enters the star metal area, they are on a salvage mission for abandoned property. On the way, they encounter a number of outlaw creatures. They would have the right of self-defense even against other beings bound by the law, but against these outlaws they have almost a duty to stop them , for the safety and protection of other level 1 commoners whom these beings might subsequently encounter.

And so, finally, they enter the deepest, darkest, part of the cave and are immediately attacked by a black dragon.

Do they have any reason to believe this dragon is there? No. They had no warning before they were attacked.

Is there any indication that this dragon is subject to the law? No. There is no "no trespassing" sign.

All they know is that they are immediately attacked by a creature which is , in almost all cases, both chaotic and evil. They are given no reason to believe this is NOT the case in the case of the young black dragon. They have a terrible battle which almost costs them every member of their team. But they pull out an extremely fortunate victory.

Having subdued the dragon , they then kill it out of hand. This would be reasonable even in a lawful context, because they do not have any reasonable way of capturing the creature and bringing it to justice. But here's the thing. The black dragon is an outlaw. They are under no obligation to take it alive in any case. Outlaws -- human or monsters -- are the enemies-general of mankind.

Therefore the OOTS bears no more guilt for entering the black dragon's home and killing it than they would for destroying the ogre camp (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0214.html). Those ogres certainly had friends and relatives. They certainly had parents. Who knows? Maybe they even had mates or children who weren't along on this raiding party. But we don't argue at all about THEM, because we never saw any of those beings on panel. Maybe if Rich had included a single panel of an ogre child crying over the body of its dead daddy we'd be all weepy and having constant arguments over whether Roy and Miko deserved the label 'lawful good' because they attacke the camp rather than rescued the dirt farmer stealthily.

And when mama black dragon comes back for revenge, is she acting within the law herself? Of course not. She's chosen to murder Vaarsuvius' mate and children in a painful manner and put them to the most unpleasant torture she can think of throughout eternity.

This IS revenge, but it is not lawful. It is not punishment proportionate to the crime. The mother black dragon's actions are both chaotic (in that they occur outside the law) and evil (in that they are far more cruel than necessary to accomplish their ends).

Therefore, neither the young black dragon nor mama black dragon have any claim against the OOTS on the basis of law. The YBD and MBD evinced no care for the law themselves while they were alive, and it is a reasonable supposition that much of their hoard was acquired from preying on lawful beings. Since they cared nothing for the law in their lives, they cannot then claim its protection for themselves. As outlaws, they have nothing to complain about if they are killed by agents of justice. It's an occupational hazard of living outside the law.

Therefore, the actions of OOTS in entering the black dragon's den are NOT comparable to entering, say, a modern man's house. A modern man, living in suburbia, is a person who both lives under the law and is protected by it. The black dragons did neither of those things.

Thus, the actions of OOTS in regards to the young black dragon were lawful certainly, and at their very worst lawful neutral. It is not evil to kill a creature who lives outside the law, poses a mortal threat to humans, and is in the very act of trying to kill you. It might possibly have been good to spare the dragon and bargain with it for the star metal, but I'm not convinced it would be prudent to do so, given how close the young black dragon came to TPKing the entire party. I leave it to the reader to judge whether that is a more lawful good course of action, or just lawful stupid.

I rest my case.

I sum my argument thus: The "law" which applies in the YBD incident is not the law of a modern city but the laws of the wilderness and the frontier of the heroic age, and under those terms the YBD and its mother are both outlaws, outside the protection of the law. The more we try to project modern city rules and laws to an environment to which they do not apply, the more we act like Celias, completely out of place and at sea in an environment where such things simply do not work.

Your turn, counselors :).

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[BlackDragonKing]

Discussion of Roy and Xykon's goblins has been done to death... Well, my opinion is: goblins were enemies, actively attacking and immediately dangerous, just like Tarquin's soldiers were several strips ago. Roy fought goblins and soldiers without trying to keep them alive, but as soons as the danger was over, he cared about those who were his group's responsibility.

Roy's treatment of goblins has nothing to do with his treatment of dragons, me thinks.


Oh, and his gradpa, while obviously influencing Roy's views, was not in a similar situation. Dragonslayer can refer to someone who goes around seeking hidden dragons' lairs and raiding them for gold. Or someone who goes around seeking villagers complaining about ramageous dragons, then finding these dragons and slaying them, and then taking their gold. Do you see the difference?

On the other hand, Roy felt no need to let the goblins V had put to sleep go; they were Coup De Graced to prevent them from following the Order as they descended and trapping them. Since, again, I feel most characters in the OOTS universe are more inclined to sympathize with goblins and orcs (at least they're humanoid) than dragons, I don't know that V's decision-making in regards to the YBD would really give him much pause. Human and dwarvish societies don't tend to take a particularly charitable view of chromatic dragons any more than Elvish society is likely to.

And yes, there is a difference, but "non-shiny dragons are BAD NEWS" is also, I feel, a somewhat more understandable social bias than the raw deal goblinoids got. Goblins and non-goblins are in conflict because goblins spawn on godawful land and usually have to turn to raiding or finding somewhere nice they won't be found to get by. Dragons eat people and tend to pillage places that have not provoked them in any way to acquire a horde they don't have any use for; when you think about it, the illogic of the two encounter types makes goblinoids much more understandable and dragons much less. Goblins have to be fairly weak and antagonistic for adventurers to have fodder, so they're not very well-nourished and often have come to hate humans violently. Sympathetic. Dragons usually have to have a big ol' horde for dragonslayers to be rewarded for triumphing over such a deadly encounter, so for no discernible reason they feel the need to attack people and build up a gigantic and completely useless nest of plunder in case an adventurer comes by and defeats them; in a universe where dragons don't spring fully-formed from a DM's mind, that's banditry for its own sake. Less sympathetic.

[Mike Havran]

He. Could. Have. Asked.

He should have asked. He's the leader of the group. He's the Lawful Good leader of a mixed alignment group. It's his responsibility to ask what his True Neutral party member is going to do next. He had several hours for that.Oh, I'm pretty sure he could have asked. But he would not be able to understand that lizardy noises V was making at that time.

Why he didn't ask it afterwards? Because he understood V's thinly-veiled threat and didn't want to volunteer a test whether a human's disintegrated pile of ash is of similar size to the young dragon's one.

[Paseo H]

And that's another strike against V: his semi-serious threats of murder against the other party members, on at least two occasions.

[Happy Gravity]

Maybe because they ignored his Polymorph and blithely proceeded onwards with their quest as if he didn't exist.

[Liliet]

On the other hand, Roy felt no need to let the goblins V had put to sleep go; they were Coup De Graced to prevent them from following the Order as they descended and trapping them. Since, again, I feel most characters in the OOTS universe are more inclined to sympathize with goblins and orcs (at least they're humanoid) than dragons, I don't know that V's decision-making in regards to the YBD would really give him much pause. Human and dwarvish societies don't tend to take a particularly charitable view of chromatic dragons any more than Elvish society is likely to.

And yes, there is a difference, but "non-shiny dragons are BAD NEWS" is also, I feel, a somewhat more understandable social bias than the raw deal goblinoids got. Goblins and non-goblins are in conflict because goblins spawn on godawful land and usually have to turn to raiding or finding somewhere nice they won't be found to get by. Dragons eat people and tend to pillage places that have not provoked them in any way to acquire a horde they don't have any use for; when you think about it, the illogic of the two encounter types makes goblinoids much more understandable and dragons much less. Goblins have to be fairly weak and antagonistic for adventurers to have fodder, so they're not very well-nourished and often have come to hate humans violently. Sympathetic. Dragons usually have to have a big ol' horde for dragonslayers to be rewarded for triumphing over such a deadly encounter, so for no discernible reason they feel the need to attack people and build up a gigantic and completely useless nest of plunder in case an adventurer comes by and defeats them; in a universe where dragons don't spring fully-formed from a DM's mind, that's banditry for its own sake. Less sympathetic.
Human, dwarfish and elvish, don't you think?

My point was that V's behavior in YABD situation, while repulsive, was obviously society-sanctioned, if even Roy had no problems with it.



...Excuse me? Vaarsuvius, who is chronologically the oldest member of the Order, is in the same age category as the others, and doesn't as far as I know have a criminal record (nor does it say "evil" on her/his character sheet, nor did s/he restrain herself/himself from sniping verbally at Belkar about his failure to understand that other people deserve to exist well before demonstrating what a hypocritical thing that was for Vaarsuvius to say...), is a confirmed sociopath or a primitive AI that needs someone to tell her/him "Random killing is WRONG Vaarsuvius" before s/he has a chance to say, "My god(s) you're right"?

(Credit to someone's sig about Dominic Deegan.)

"Blowing up people who annoy you is wrong" is a fact Vaarsuvius has no more excuse for needing explained to her/him than Roy would.
Off-topic: how is it possible that the first time I see Dominic Deegan mentioned on this forum is right after I read the comic? I'd remember the name if I saw it earlier, it sounds quite remarkable to me...

On topic: it's not as simple as that.
First of all, random killing was not exactly V's thing. Perceiving virself as inherently superior and disregarding others' feelings was, but killing? I remember only two murders, and one of them appeared to be society-sanctioned (YABD) and the other was after several month of survivor's guilt and sleep deprivation (Kubota).
Second, people constantly compare themselves to their peers and use their opinion to evaluate themselves. It's just how the mind of a social creature works. If a person is too socially daft to understand hints and subtext (which I happen to be and can clearly see in V) all that's left is openly expressed opinion "What you are doing is wrong".
OotS are V's peers, and by the Azure city arc quite probably trusted friends. Have they ever openly expressed disgust and/or disapproval at V's preferred methods of social interaction before Kubota and "And that would be wrong" in the desert?

[Liliet]

Oh, I'm pretty sure he could have asked. But he would not be able to understand that lizardy noises V was making at that time.

Why he didn't ask it afterwards? Because he understood V's thinly-veiled threat and didn't want to volunteer a test whether a human's disintegrated pile of ash is of similar size to the young dragon's one.
V was talking through the dragon. It was possible to communicate with vir at the time.



And that's another strike against V: his semi-serious threats of murder against the other party members, on at least two occasions.
And the first occasion ended with what? That's right, complete success! Everyone was duly intimidated and never repeated the same mistake again. And never told V "you are doing it wrong". It worked!

(And V had a good reason to be pissed in the first place, too.)

And the second occasion ended with... a continuous guilt-trip about everything that V did wrong at the time.

[Mike Havran]

V was talking through the dragon. It was possible to communicate with vir at the time.And the communication on V's part was "sit here in cold water until you can break the spell, or get eaten." No wonder Roy didn't want to talk morals with her.

[Souhiro]

I think that Vaarsuvius was counted as Good before the Darth V episode. He was Good, but the familicide was a truly abominable act.

Okay, he was "Drunk", Drunk with power, drunk with desperation, drunk with some evil consellers wispering him to do it, but we know that Elan, Soon's family, or Thor (Paragons of Goodness) even in their "Darth" form wouldn't familicide the dragons!

Thus, he cannot be still counted as "Good", since "He's capable of doing THAT kind of acts". It's not the fact as he did (He's horrified from his actions, and we can bet that he repents from it!) but the fact that he WAS ABLE to do it.

I think that when V signed Inquirius divorce papers, he didn't think that it was his well deserved punishment; but that he, as a mass murderer, a power-hungry wizards, doesn't deserve the happiness and warm home that Inquirius and his children could give him; in fact they deserve a more caring parent.

In fact, I think that the person who blames Vaarsuvius the most is himself. I think that now everybody espects V to behave more goodly, (He's even more humble, more prone to listening) but as everybody says, before being forgiven, he must forgive himself. I don't think he'll be able to do it, at least, not very soon.

[factotum]

I think that Vaarsuvius was counted as Good before the Darth V episode. He was Good, but the familicide was a truly abominable act.


No, he was pretty clearly Neutral before Familicide. Whether he still is or not is another matter entirely.

[Souhiro]

No, he was pretty clearly Neutral before Familicide. Whether he still is or not is another matter entirely.

Well, this strip (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/images/0oK2SKw8Ke0NwQefZE5.gif), soon after the familicide, says that V had "A dramatic turn towards Evil". You know, from Good to Neutral, from Neutral to Evil

I think that his repentrance and remorse (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/images/kwalLljJkC4325N4GMi.gif) was the only thing that kept him in the edge, True Neutral, than 100% Evil. Well, meeting the Big Fire Below, should he have really enjoyed that moment, and wish to repeat it... his tunic would be pitch black now, 100% immune to wash, bleach and decoloration.

[The Pilgrim]

In #663 (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0633.html), the IFFC tells V that they provide "a trade of one good for one service", and Cedrick punctualices that she has "the good... or the neutral, as the case may be".

That pun can be interpreted as V was Neutral, before Familicide (or that she was either good or neutral).

[hamishspence]

No, he was pretty clearly Neutral before Familicide. Whether he still is or not is another matter entirely.

We do have Word of Giant (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=11664984#post11664984) that V is True Neutral as of that point in the strip (which was sometime after the splice ended).

[Kish]

Well, this strip (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/images/0oK2SKw8Ke0NwQefZE5.gif), soon after the familicide, says that V had "A dramatic turn towards Evil". You know, from Good to Neutral, from Neutral to Evil
To presume that "a dramatic turn towards Evil" is equivalent to "a listed, mechanical alignment shift at least one grade downward" is taking more than you've been given.

I think the most logical interpretation of the events and the author's words is that Vaarsuvius is True Neutral in every strip so far. That's not the alignment I would give Vaarsuvius (as I've mentioned before, the conceited snob who treats other people with contempt and howls if not treated with respect strikes me as instinctively Neutral Evil, with her/his status as Neutral Evil established at the Familicide, reaffirmed at torturing Yukyuk, and backdated to strip #20 with a note of, "I guess we weren't supposed to be shrugging the previous displays of brutal sadism off as Just A Joke, after all"). But I'm not the author.

[astralmeson]

That's not the alignment I would give Vaarsuvius (as I've mentioned before, the conceited snob who treats other people with contempt and howls if not treated with respect strikes me as instinctively Neutral Evil, with her/his status as Neutral Evil established at the Familicide, reaffirmed at torturing Yukyuk, and backdated to strip #20 with a note of, "I guess we weren't supposed to be shrugging the previous displays of brutal sadism off as Just A Joke, after all"). But I'm not the author.

While V can't really be considered good, (s)he never struck me as evil. The familicide was overkill, but could be considered a severe loss in judgement due to the threat to his/her family. Anything violent is more rule of funny- while we can assume that V is slightly violent, that doesn't make him/her evil.