PDA

View Full Version : Hypothetical scenario



Counterpower
2007-06-29, 10:51 AM
Hopefully, you don't need to know where the names and groups are coming from..... you should be able to understand the scenario without knowing what the Council of Cardinals in Thrane is.

Imagine for a moment that you are a member of the Council of Cardinals in Thrane. A meeting is called, and a report is read that a large group of evil cultists are attempting to summon a powerful demon lord. This summoning will take place in the city of Fairhaven, population 92,500. According to the report, the summoning will require 50,000 sacrifices, and the cultists have prepared a ritual which will kill most, if not all, of the people of Fairhaven to power the summoning. Since time is running out, action must be taken immediately to prevent this summoning, since the demon lord involved is more powerful than most of the people in that room combined. The council quickly descends into a raging argument as to the appropriate course of action.

Proposed courses of action:

1. Take the Thrane armies and kill as many of the people of Fairhaven as possible.

Pros: We're certain that this will stop the ritual. We have enough time to go in and kill 42,501 of the residents before the ritual goes off.

Cons: Slaying 42,501 innocent victims?

2. Evacuate the city of Fairhaven.

Pros: No large amounts of blood involved.

Cons: First, depending on what the ritual does exactly, they may end up homeless. Second, evacuations take a lot of time.........

3. Attempt to learn more about the ritual, and look for a way to counter its effect.

Pros: If it works, we'll save the people of the city and the city itself.

Cons: Research is time-consuming, and there's no guarantee that we will find anything at all about the ritual.

4. Ready a plan to destroy or banish the demon lord after it's summoned.

Pros: The demon lord doesn't go rampaging across the countryside killing and maiming.

Cons: The residents of Fairhaven are still dead, and what happens if you can't kill the demon lord?

5. Find the cultists and kill them all before they cast the ritual.

Pros: The people trying to summon this demon lord get what they deserve, and the city's safe.

Cons: You have to find them first, then kill enough of them to prevent the ritual. We may not have the time for that.....




So, if you had to cast the deciding vote, which one of these proposals would you choose?

Dervag
2007-06-29, 10:59 AM
Hopefully, you don't need to know where the names and groups are coming from..... you should be able to understand the scenario without knowing what the Council of Cardinals in Thrane is.

Imagine for a moment that you are a member of the Council of Cardinals in Thrane. A meeting is called, and a report is read that a large group of evil cultists are attempting to summon a powerful demon lord. This summoning will take place in the city of Fairhaven, population 92,500. According to the report, the summoning will require 50,000 sacrifices, and the cultists have prepared a ritual which will kill most, if not all, of the people of Fairhaven to power the summoning. Since time is running out, action must be taken immediately to prevent this summoning, since the demon lord involved is more powerful than most of the people in that room combined. The council quickly descends into a raging argument as to the appropriate course of action.

Proposed courses of action:

1. Take the Thrane armies and kill as many of the people of Fairhaven as possible.

Pros: We're certain that this will stop the ritual. We have enough time to go in and kill 42,501 of the residents before the ritual goes off.

Cons: Slaying 42,501 innocent victims?

2. Evacuate the city of Fairhaven.

Pros: No large amounts of blood involved.

Cons: First, depending on what the ritual does exactly, they may end up homeless. Second, evacuations take a lot of time.........

3. Attempt to learn more about the ritual, and look for a way to counter its effect.

Pros: If it works, we'll save the people of the city and the city itself.

Cons: Research is time-consuming, and there's no guarantee that we will find anything at all about the ritual.

4. Ready a plan to destroy or banish the demon lord after it's summoned.

Pros: The demon lord doesn't go rampaging across the countryside killing and maiming.

Cons: The residents of Fairhaven are still dead, and what happens if you can't kill the demon lord?

5. Find the cultists and kill them all before they cast the ritual.

Pros: The people trying to summon this demon lord get what they deserve, and the city's safe.

Cons: You have to find them first, then kill enough of them to prevent the ritual. We may not have the time for that.....




So, if you had to cast the deciding vote, which one of these proposals would you choose?I would first move that we run plans 2, 3, 4, and 5 in parallel.

Good policymakers have backup plans, and create delegations to develop those backup plans. Have the army evacuate Fairhaven, while the librarians worry about constructing a plan to counter the ritual, and while the most powerful priests of the Church prepare a way to attack the demon lord in case things go pear-shaped at the last minute and he gets summoned anyway.

Dan_Hemmens
2007-06-29, 11:03 AM
Surely you're missing the all-important option #6

Get a bunch of adventurers to deal with it.

PaladinBoy
2007-06-29, 11:04 AM
Are we only allowed to pick one, or can we pick more than one?

Personally, I would set the army on 2 and 5 simultaneously, with diviners and possibly hired adventurers helping. Meanwhile, I would put clerics, librarians, and scholars at home to researching....... mostly 3, but with a little attention to 4.

Of course, if it was the College of Cardinals deciding, I have a suspicion they'd pick 1. Fairhaven is the capital of Aundair, and Thrane hardly has good feelings for Aundair. That and it seems like an unfortunately large number of the Council of Cardinals is evil anyway (okay, only one that I'm sure about, but for an LG church that's too many).

Fax Celestis
2007-06-29, 11:11 AM
Option 1 has a distinct problem: what if the ritual doesn't care who does the killings?

Solo
2007-06-29, 11:14 AM
hire a bunch of Diviners to get intel and send a pack of adventurers to handle the problem.

Fireball.Man.Guy.
2007-06-29, 11:15 AM
Option 1. Starting with the oldest, working the way down.Women , children, and fathers of kids <13 years old will be spared if possible. If that isn't possible, then fathers will be killed. No one less than 18 will be killed.

Counterpower
2007-06-29, 11:24 AM
No one said I found all the cons. Although the way I envisioned it, the ritual would kill them, then summon the demon, so if it couldn't kill enough people, the ritual would fizzle.

I do like the idea of running multiple plans at once. I envisioned #4 as a backup plan anyway.....

PaladinBoy, I said "if you cast the deciding vote." You don't need to worry about what they would do.

If this was actually being played out in a D&D game, of course option #6, hire adventurers, would be used. That said, how would the adventurers handle it? Their choice is much the same.

Fireball, you, um, are advocating a mass killing......... why is that a better choice than the others provided?

Dan_Hemmens
2007-06-29, 11:26 AM
Option 1 has a distinct problem: what if the ritual doesn't care who does the killings?

That's rather what I was thinking. It has that huge, flaming "this is the big plot twist" vibe about it.

Dan_Hemmens
2007-06-29, 11:29 AM
Option 1. Starting with the oldest, working the way down.Women , children, and fathers of kids <13 years old will be spared if possible. If that isn't possible, then fathers will be killed. No one less than 18 will be killed.

Even leaving aside the moral implications of butchering the population of a town, I really fail to see how it will prove logistically easier to round up and execute 49000 people than it will be to evacuate a city.

Dan_Hemmens
2007-06-29, 11:30 AM
Fireball, you, um, are advocating a mass killing......... why is that a better choice than the others provided?

Shock value?

Counterpower
2007-06-29, 11:33 AM
Well, one way I can imagine it being logistically easier is if the commander of the army says, "We'll blow a whistle when you have to get out of the city. Go enjoy yourselves. Be sure to kill people." :eek:

If that was the goal, he certainly succeeded.

Fireball.Man.Guy.
2007-06-29, 11:33 AM
Only way to be sure if sucess. And I carefully structured it so that in about 15 years, the city'd be back to normal. And it's better than 50000 people dying, by almost 9% of the population.

Dan_Hemmens
2007-06-29, 11:34 AM
Well, one way I can imagine it being logistically easier is if the commander of the army says, "We'll blow a whistle when you have to get out of the city. Go enjoy yourselves. Be sure to kill people." :eek:


Not practical. You wouldn't be sure you'd got the right number, and if you get more than the number required for the sacrifice you've wasted your effort. And any cult worth their salt would use exactly that moment to start making their sacrifices.

Dan_Hemmens
2007-06-29, 11:36 AM
Only way to be sure if sucess. And I carefully structured it so that in about 15 years, the city'd be back to normal. And it's better than 50000 people dying, by almost 9% of the population.

Except it's not "sure of success" at all. In fact it's a hugely dumb idea. I mean how long would your production line take to set up? How long would it take to organise? Couldn't you use that time to ... y'know ... evacuate the city anyway?

Contrary to popular belief, just because a plan involves killing a lot of people, that doesn't make it effective.

Emperor Tippy
2007-06-29, 11:38 AM
Mass killing.

If you don't want to use the wraith trick to kill the whole town in a night then go with Cloud Kill fun.

Counterpower
2007-06-29, 11:43 AM
I did say that option 1 was as close to a sure thing as any of the options were. However, I was envisioning the "rampage through the city killing everything" strategy, which *is* going to kill enough people before the cultists are prepared for the ritual. It probably will kill too many, actually. I wasn't envisioning a careful, methodical process here, which probably would take significantly longer.

I'll freely admit that I was trying to spark a morality debate here..............

Edit: lunch break.... won't be able to post for an hour or two.

asqwasqw
2007-06-29, 11:46 AM
I say threaten to kill them all in order to cause a rampage. Nothing like a cloud of death descending upon your city to cause to run away in fear.

Wolf_Shade
2007-06-29, 11:50 AM
Research a limited invulnerability spell that can be applied to an entire town. Mentioning that the demon is stronger than the council combined suggests that they themselves are fairly powerful. Create your own ritual that has an end result of making any individual within an area incapable of dying. When the summoning ritual begins, those in the town will be incapable of being sacrifices for it, and thus the summoning ritual will fail.

Dan_Hemmens
2007-06-29, 11:52 AM
I did say that option 1 was as close to a sure thing as any of the options were. However, I was envisioning the "rampage through the city killing everything" strategy, which *is* going to kill enough people before the cultists are prepared for the ritual. It probably will kill too many, actually. I wasn't envisioning a careful, methodical process here, which probably would take significantly longer.

I'll freely admit that I was trying to spark a morality debate here..............


Unfortunately, morality is not as distinct from efficacy as people believe.

If it's a clear cut "do you kill five million people in order to save five million and one people, bearing in mind that we are treating death as an essentially abstract concept and paying no attention to the actual logistics or uncertainties involved" then the answer is obviously "well yes, but that's a badly thought out absolutist problem."

Actually trying to slaughter half the population of a city (which *will* resist) is a huge logistical effort. Unless you pull the Wraith trick, but in that case you have bigger problems on your hands.

Also: why can't this cult just go to the next city over?

You wind up having to kill everybody in the whole world in order to deny the cult their sacrifices. It's just a plain dumb idea.

lord_khaine
2007-06-29, 12:01 PM
imo the only real option is 5, killing the cultists.
not only do they deserve to die, they also have to die to avoid them just packing up and moving to another city, and summoning their deamon there instead.
worse, if they summon the deamon, you then manage to kill it, and the cultists are still alive then you run the risk of them ressurecting their deamon.

goat
2007-06-29, 12:05 PM
Evacuate. Probably by teleportation circles if you've got the casters.

While most of your army is sorting that out, start preparations for the worst case and tool up for some demon slaying (only MOST of the people in the room combined...), while your army special forces go cultist hunting.

Inyssius Tor
2007-06-29, 12:09 PM
Research a limited invulnerability spell that can be applied to an entire town. Mentioning that the demon is stronger than the council combined suggests that they themselves are fairly powerful. Create your own ritual that has an end result of making any individual within an area incapable of dying. When the summoning ritual begins, those in the town will be incapable of being sacrifices for it, and thus the summoning ritual will fail.

So... a spell which provides invincibility for everyone in a city-wide radius (possibly for an hour or more)? Isn't there a ten-level prestige class with a capstone ability that keeps you from dying for one minute?

Fixer
2007-06-29, 12:13 PM
Oh!

Combine 1 and 2 with the teleport circles!

Teleport them all into a distance volcano/1 mile into the sky over a country you don't like/other death-inducing natural event!


There, problem solved. You can expect my invoice later.

Saph
2007-06-29, 12:14 PM
Dervag already had the best answer - do plans 2, 3, 4, and 5 all at once.

Honestly, I'm amazed at how many of you guys are even considering plan 1. I'm just glad you're not in my party. :) Quite apart from the fact that you're willing to kill 40,000 innocent civilians as a first resort, you seriously think there aren't going to be complications?

I mean, even the Jagermonsters from Girl Genius understand it . . .

Gorb - "Vell, let's just keel her."
Andre - "Gorb. Dis iz turnink into vun of dose plans....hyu know - de kind vere ve keel everybody dot notices dot ve's killin' people?"
Gorb - "It iz?"
Andre - "Uh huh. And how do dose alvays end?"
Gorb - "De dirigible iz in flames, everybody'z dead, and I've lost my hat."
Andre - "Dot's right! Und any plan vere you lose you hat is?"
Gorb - "A bad plan?"
Andre - "Right again!"

- Saph

Fixer
2007-06-29, 12:16 PM
My plan prevents anyone from noticing the civilians are dying.

So there. :P

(I was also joking, but over the Internet that's hard to tell.)

MOD
2007-06-29, 12:17 PM
Sounds like you've got some decent plans brewing however there is a problem. If you a try to kill the population with armies of men you might succeed in killing the requisite 42,501 members of the city but um you've got an army in the city and they are now eligible for sacrifice. Same goes for killing the cultists with an army. Now get a whole lot of diviners and some nice Spellwarp Snipers on there heals going after the cultists and I think you've got a plan...

Belteshazzar
2007-06-29, 12:30 PM
Orbital Strike, Its the only way to be sure. Of course while this would probably eliminate both the cultist and the victems I would only advise it plan one as a final failsafe. Running as many of the other plans as possible at one time is obviously the best answer but if things get really down be prepared to deploy multiple bag of holding/ portable hole, super-weapons at ground zero if things get two out of control. At least then any innocents caught in the vortex have a chance of surviving on the astral plane until possible rescue (astral plane has timeless trait, correct?) as opposed to the certain death of cloudkill or being dammed to undeath as alips or wraiths. On the note of being dammed to undeath, it seems rather pointless to stop a daemon summoning using a cheese chained wraith army whe you have just succeded in creating the largest uncontroled army of undead in the multivese (one can only control a limited hitdice worth of undead and unless you are supra-epic level then 40,000 people is well beyond one's control limit.)

SurlySeraph
2007-06-29, 12:38 PM
Well, #1 is getting notice because it seems like the easiest to implement, since adventurers are always optimized for mass people-slaying. Just rampage through the city setting everything on fire, dumping Cloudkill on all the major roads, Fireball on the crowds, etc. The problem is that, as mentioned before, slaughtering the population might just summon the demon even quicker.

I'd have to say #5 is the best. Use Magic Mouth and similar spells to warn the entire population that there are extremely dangerous cultists in their midst who must be killed immediately. Then send in the army (divided into platoons, of course) to methodically search the sewers, abandoned buildings, underground caves, and anywhere else cultists would likely meet. Give each group a scroll of Sending to call for help if they get ambushed or find the cultists. Meanwhile, the civilians will be forming groups of heavily armed vigilantes and arresting anyone suspicious, magically inclined, or generally funny-looking. If you think you have time, order citizens to bring any suspects they find to a panel of diviners and paladins set up in the center of town. Have your panel of diviners and paladins Detect Evil on all suspects and execute all evil ones with extreme prejudice. Whenever the diviners are idle, have them cast Detect Evil or attempt to scry on suspected cult members and send two platoons of soldiers off to wherever they see danger. Better yet, embed a paladin or diviner with each group for on-the-spot scanning of suspects. Make sure to take off any jewelry the suspects have first - people with amulets of false alignment could give you trouble otherwise. If you're running out of time, you could let the vigilantes execute people on the spot, but there's a risk that cultist infiltrators would execute innocents to meet the sacrifice quota that way. Oh, and make sure to check all your groups of vigilantes for evil-doers too. An efficient way might be to send them into combat against suspected cultists and then cast Holy Smite on the entire group.

Emperor Tippy
2007-06-29, 12:50 PM
Orbital Strike, Its the only way to be sure. Of course while this would probably eliminate both the cultist and the victems I would only advise it plan one as a final failsafe. Running as many of the other plans as possible at one time is obviously the best answer but if things get really down be prepared to deploy multiple bag of holding/ portable hole, super-weapons at ground zero if things get two out of control. At least then any innocents caught in the vortex have a chance of surviving on the astral plane until possible rescue (astral plane has timeless trait, correct?) as opposed to the certain death of cloudkill or being dammed to undeath as alips or wraiths. On the note of being dammed to undeath, it seems rather pointless to stop a daemon summoning using a cheese chained wraith army whe you have just succeded in creating the largest uncontroled army of undead in the multivese (one can only control a limited hitdice worth of undead and unless you are supra-epic level then 40,000 people is well beyond one's control limit.)

You don't understand the wraith trick. You control exactly 1 wraith. Everyone killed by a wraith rises as a wraith under the killers control.

So you get command chains.

To get rid of them you make a gate to the positive energy plane and then just order them all through at once and close the gate.

You can have the whole city killed in a night and all the problems solved.

Counterpower
2007-06-29, 12:59 PM
I'm going to take a possibly radical viewpoint and say that #1 would be a bad idea even if there were no logistical problems at all. From a moral viewpoint, it is just not a good idea to kill tens of thousands of innocent victims. Killing the sacrifices for the ritual is an evil act almost on the level of the cultists' intentions. I think the problem with #1 really should be the incredible backlash that such a course of action would cause. Any paladin that participates in such an act would Fall, and considering that Thrane is a theocracy, I suspect there are quite a few paladins in its military forces. Heck, if I was a paladin in that army I'd be trying to stop my own army from carrying out such orders. The world would be horrified at such a cold-blooded mass killing, especially since there was still the possibility of an evacuation.

If evacuation is still possible, then why is killing a better choice? Get as many people out of the city as you can. Try to find the cultists in the process, likely with hired adventurers. And if neither of those plans prevents the summoning, then be sure to have some defense plans ready to deal with the demon itself.

Wolf_Shade
2007-06-29, 01:30 PM
So... a spell which provides invincibility for everyone in a city-wide radius (possibly for an hour or more)? Isn't there a ten-level prestige class with a capstone ability that keeps you from dying for one minute?

I dunno. I basically figured if you have a ritual that summons a creature more powerful than the ruling mageocracy (that's the impression I got) perhaps it would be possible to have a ritual that prevents anything from dropping below 1 (or -9) hitpoint. They don't have to be invincible (assuming invincible means unharmable), just incapable of reaching the state known as "death". That's more what I was getting at with limited invincibility.

I do not know the full extent of what is and is not functional within the D&D rules, only that you can research spells, that rituals can be used to cast spells beyond any one caster's means, and that it seems the group in question is fairly powerful.

bugsysservant
2007-06-29, 01:32 PM
Quarentine the city. Implement plan one: using teleportation circles to randomly send people to dozens of smaller camps. Once you have distributed the people in low density camps with the cultistists either remaining hidden in the city, or dispersed randomly throughout the camps, implement the execution of all evil people. They shouldn't put up much of a resistance as there will be no critical mass of cultists left. Once done, cloudkill the city for several days to ensure that any remaining cultists die without harming the buildings. Return citizens to their homes.

If this isn't feasible in a timely manner, consider how much you have to lose by fighting the demon. How many cities will he wipeout before being stopped (if he can be stopped.) If the answer exceeds the population of the city, wipe it out. Everyone. This will ensure the deaths of all cultists, and the continuing survival of your realm. I would advocate against the wraith army, though. Those tend to escape your control, just by the nature of controlling evil. It would be better to order a mandatory city meeting. Have the army kill those who don't attend, and meteor swarm those present. After that, cast Blackfire on the panicked survivors, and pull the army out, wiping out any who try to escape the city. This just leaves teleportation, and there are very few ways to stop that (shy of a city-wide antimagic field followed by the rampage of the army)

This may seem cruel, but given no other statistics about the country, demon, etc., I can only assume the worst, i.e. that the demon will wipe out all resistance on the world and create a terrible empire, or at the very least kill thousands before he is stopped.

edit: if you don't think the army will agree to this, look into the work of Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram. You will be surprised.

Counterpower
2007-06-29, 01:52 PM
Quarentine the city. Implement plan one, using teleportation circles to randomly send people to dozens of smaller camps. Once you have distributed the people in low density camps with the cultistists either remaining hidden in the city, or dispersed randomly throughout the camps, implement the execution of all evil people. They shouldn't put up much of a resistance as there will be no critical mass of cultists left. Once done, cloudkill the city for several days to ensure that any remaining cultists die without harming the buildings. Return citizens to their homes.

That's actually plan two, evacuate the city. Getting them out of the city would be sufficent, and you'd have plenty of time to search for the cultists without going on a detect evil-inspired set of killing.


If this isn't feasible in a timely manner, consider how much you have to lose by fighting the demon. How many cities will he wipeout before being stopped (if he can be stopped.) If the answer exceeds the population of the city, wipe it out. Everyone. This will ensure the deaths of all cultists, and the continuing survival of your realm. I would advocate against the wraith army, though. Those tend to escape your control, just by the nature of controlling evil. It would be better to order a mandatory city meeting. Have the army kill those who don't attend, and meteor swarm those present. After that, cast Blackfire on the panicked survivors, and pull the army out, wiping out any who try to escape the city. This just leaves teleportation, and there are very few ways to stop that (shy of a city-wide antimagic field followed by the rampage of the army)

You don't know whether it will successfully prevent the summoning, which is part of the point. Which is the better choice, assured prevention of the summoning with horribly Evil acts, or not-completely-assured prevention of the summoning without doing Evil acts?


This may seem cruel, but given no other statistics about the country, demon, etc., I can only assume the worst, i.e. that the demon will wipe out all resistance on the world and create a terrible empire, or at the very least kill thousands before he is stopped.

Assuming the worst is a good idea, but abandoning hope isn't. Just because evacuation plans aren't a certain success doesn't mean people should abandon hope and commit an evil act that isn't much better than the event said act is trying to prevent.


edit: if you don't think the army will agree to this, look into the work of Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram. You will be surprised.

I hold no doubts as to whether the army could be ordered to destroy the city themselves. Then again, did Stanley Milgram account for paladins? They've got a slightly higher resistance to a mass killing of innocent victims.

Renx
2007-06-29, 02:28 PM
I'd go with:

1) Find out about the ritual. If you find a loophole that says they all need to be above ground for the ritual to work, easy to work around.

2) Build/fortify some shelters, inscribe Circles of Protection from Evil/Chaos on shelters, easier than evacuating. This has the added benefit of collecting drones... ahem, excuse me, civilians in case you have a ritual of your own. Also, low-level spell, so you can put all those pesky 1st-3rd level priests in the city to work.

3) Kill the cultists. Problem solved.

4) Drop a AMF and/or Sphere of Annihilation on the cultists/their cult center when they're starting the ritual. Enjoy watching the ritual backfire.

5) Find an adopted son of a woodcutter, declare him to be the King of Whatever-land-you're-in, and have him command the people to migrate south. Chances are, he's the legal heir, anyway.

Roupe
2007-06-29, 02:49 PM
All of the above... but in an orderly fashion, until the threat has been neutralized. (if i could only to pick one its number 1 or 3..)

3 then 2 then 4 preparations then 5 then 1 (hopefully that doesnt activate 4 countermeasures)

option 3 , do that with a time constraint, then go to option 2 (perhaps some intel can give other ideas to foil the ritua and open up another option)

option 2 , getting controll over the people in the city(so that you have the option 1 remaining) (capture cultist included). Keep them under guard though, partly to find cultist, to protect innocents but also to have them under conrol if other options is needed...

option 4 (kinda)get countermeasures if the demons despite efforts, worst case scenario mesures are good to have availble.

option 5 kill the kultist (but try to post pone it for as long as its safe, if they have valuable info). Punish them eventually for placing the world & city at risk.

Option 1 is implemented ,second to last (possibly only 1-2 people need to be killed by "allies") but if its to save their souls kill them all.
option 1 doesnt seem to prevent the ritual from killing the rest
(thus the entire city is killed)

Option 1 is to prevent the demon from sapwning & killing the rest of the world not save the city.

option 4 if the demons despite efforts, worst case scenario mesures are good to have availble.

The ritual could have( these citizens of the city) as target and not (those within the confines of the city). Then despite where the citizens where brought - they would still be killed by the ritual when in range for it.

Claiming that the innocent that was killed by their allies had cultist ties could lessen the media fallout -but sully the victims. Honerable would to say that they died heroes. since the ritual kills the rest, the threat is made apperent, and the verdict of the surviving public would rbe more of couldnt you have prevented this, rather than that of killing innocents.

Dan_Hemmens
2007-06-29, 03:28 PM
Well, #1 is getting notice because it seems like the easiest to implement, since adventurers are always optimized for mass people-slaying. Just rampage through the city setting everything on fire, dumping Cloudkill on all the major roads, Fireball on the crowds, etc. The problem is that, as mentioned before, slaughtering the population might just summon the demon even quicker.


#1 is getting notice because it's "edgy".

Bassetking
2007-06-29, 06:52 PM
Even leaving aside the moral implications of butchering the population of a town, I really fail to see how it will prove logistically easier to round up and execute 49000 people than it will be to evacuate a city.

Two words, Dan. "Greater Cleave".

Bassetking
2007-06-29, 07:05 PM
Dervag already had the best answer - do plans 2, 3, 4, and 5 all at once.

Honestly, I'm amazed at how many of you guys are even considering plan 1. I'm just glad you're not in my party. :) Quite apart from the fact that you're willing to kill 40,000 innocent civilians as a first resort, you seriously think there aren't going to be complications?

I mean, even the Jagermonsters from Girl Genius understand it . . .

Gorb - "Vell, let's just keel her."
Andre - "Gorb. Dis iz turnink into vun of dose plans....hyu know - de kind vere ve keel everybody dot notices dot ve's killin' people?"
Gorb - "It iz?"
Andre - "Uh huh. And how do dose alvays end?"
Gorb - "De dirigible iz in flames, everybody'z dead, and I've lost my hat."
Andre - "Dot's right! Und any plan vere you lose you hat is?"
Gorb - "A bad plan?"
Andre - "Right again!"

- Saph

I still hold that the Jagers are possibly the best part of Girl Genius.

bugsysservant
2007-06-29, 09:21 PM
That's actually plan two, evacuate the city. Getting them out of the city would be sufficent, and you'd have plenty of time to search for the cultists without going on a detect evil-inspired set of killing.

I was refering to the plans on the order of preference, not the arbitrary way in which they were presented.



You don't know whether it will successfully prevent the summoning, which is part of the point. Which is the better choice, assured prevention of the summoning with horribly Evil acts, or not-completely-assured prevention of the summoning without doing Evil acts?


The only thing we can assume is that it will prevent the summoning. For all you know, there are better hidden cults in other cities in case this one fails. Or they don't need to kill the people themselves, so that the progressive death of 50,000 people to natural causes would summon the demon. What is the real better choice: the overwhelmingly probable prevention of a demon summoning which would potentially transform the entire world into a literal hell on Earth, or the failure to do so because you were shackled by narrow minded moral absolutist philosophies?


Assuming the worst is a good idea, but abandoning hope isn't. Just because evacuation plans aren't a certain success doesn't mean people should abandon hope and commit an evil act that isn't much better than the event said act is trying to prevent.

I did say"if this isn't feasible in a timely manner." WIping out a city should always be plan B. Hope is for people who fail to grasp the underlying statistics, and if my "evil act," prevents the release of a nigh omnipotent demon - the physical manifestation of cruelty and pain - I would still go through, if the option of evacuating the city proved to be too great a task to carry out before said demon could be summoned.


I hold no doubts as to whether the army could be ordered to destroy the city themselves. Then again, did Stanley Milgram account for paladins? They've got a slightly higher resistance to a mass killing of innocent victims.

You're right. Stanley Milgram accounted for people. People who will do what they are ordered to. No paladin would hesitate to kill a quantifiably evil creature, any more than a paladin would hesitate to put down a rabid dog. That's the basis for the paladin class, isn't it? When was the last time you saw a paladin hesitate to kill a red dragon, on the basis that the act of ridding the world of an evil creature would be "evil."?

It is fine to lead lives dominated by ethics and good will, but good rulers must always embrace Machiavelianism. In the above instance I would be the first to pray for a miracle, but one must never allow their convictions to stand in the way of logic and efficiency when the lives of all your people are in your hands. To do otherwise is the true evil act.

my_evil_twin
2007-06-29, 10:06 PM
I don't know the names involved here, but here are some recommendations.

1. DO NOT implement Plan 1. Assuming it works and you win, there's 50,000 citizens who saw you ride in, murder half of their countrymen, and act like you were doing them a favor. They won't see the evil you averted, which for all they know might or might not have happened; all they'll see is the evil you committed.

What's worse, successful demon summoning cults tend to keep themselves very well hidden. Unless this is some sort of high-profile operation, you will have a hard time proving to everyone's satisfaction that there actually was a demon cult to stop. Even if you convince most of the people that what you did was right, expect a lot of townsfolk to head for the hills the next time one of the "good guys" comes to town.

Not to mention that, when your utilitarian blood orgy is over, you still haven't rooted out the cultists. Presumably, they can lay low until the executions are over, most likely losing less than half their number, and start their scheme all over again in an even bigger town in a few years.

2. Whatever else you do, have someone trying to find and destroy the cult. If you don't do it now, you'll just have to do it later when they're trying to summon their demon the next time.

This is D&D, too, so let's be honest. The physics of the world are skewed somewhat in favor of a small strike team attacking the cult in its lair. Hire adventurers of high enough level to get the job done right.

3. Have a contingency plan in place for fighting the demon, should all else fail. Adventurers, again, are probably your best bet. If you can manage it, back them up with a squad of wizards casting a beefed-up binding spell.

Tor the Fallen
2007-06-29, 10:29 PM
I recruit an unlikely band of heros.

Yogi
2007-06-29, 10:43 PM
The plans can be run in parallel, since they require different types of people. Evacuating the city can be done using the rank and file army, learning about the ritual requires researchers and scholars, trying to fight a demon lord requires the heavy hitters, and finding the cultists requires sneaky investigative folk. Each one of these types of people are suited for doing their own tasks and ill suited for doing the other types of tasks. Hence, they should all work in parallel for greater utility.

delguidance
2007-06-29, 11:06 PM
The story I'd want to read would be one where 2,3,4,& 5 are run in parrallel, but you only focus on the one that has the most action at anyone time and the people researching the spells would come in at crucial moments to reveal things about the cultists.

I believe Belkar's solution would be to put a notice outside of a tavern and wait for the inevitable sea of adventurers to get right on it.

Overlord
2007-06-29, 11:22 PM
Even leaving aside the moral implications of butchering the population of a town, I really fail to see how it will prove logistically easier to round up and execute 49000 people than it will be to evacuate a city.

Well, obviously, you'd line up 47,500 of the commoners, have them all craft quarterstaves, and then have them form a Quarterstaff Railgun! You'd have 47,500 rounds of ammunition!

47,500 shots!

That should be enough to take out the other half of the townsfolk, as well as any foliage or structures that might get in the way.

A 4 lb stick traveling at a rate of 39,583.33 feet per second should be lethal, right?

Khosan
2007-06-29, 11:30 PM
Couldn't you evacuate just enough people that there aren't enough left in the city that they can't complete the ritual?

That's probably what I'd do. Humane, takes half the time of a full-blown evacuation.

Or, just have the peasants all pull off the grapple-movement trick. They'll have run around the world in ten seconds.

bugsysservant
2007-06-29, 11:41 PM
I could be wrong, but I don't think the intent of the post wasn't to devise strategies. We weren't given anywhere near enough info for those. Really it boils down to a question of whether you would risk half a city for the entire world, or more specifically, if you are a moral relativist who subscribes to Machiavelli's theories, or if you believe there is some overriding cosmic philosophy which decrees that killing the people of the city is wrong. Or maybe I am just misinterpreting what he originally meant.

Douglas
2007-06-30, 12:08 AM
A 4 lb stick traveling at a rate of 39,583.33 feet per second should be lethal, right?
Doesn't work. The instant the stick leaves the line it goes back to normal thrown-by-one-person speed.

Overlord
2007-06-30, 12:48 AM
Doesn't work. The instant the stick leaves the line it goes back to normal thrown-by-one-person speed.

I was being facetious (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?r=2&q=facetious) [it's my word of the day! ...okay, not really].

The idea is, if an object is moving at that rate, stopping it would require immense amounts of power. But the idea amounts to D&D + Physics = Dead Catgirls.

Xuincherguixe
2007-06-30, 12:56 AM
In the end, the cult will have to be killed off. Even if the towns people are evacuated, it's not going to be sufficient. An evacuation will however slow them down.

The psychopath in me likes option 1, but it has little tactical value and could in fact serve the cultists. Who knows, maybe it was suggested by a cultist to begin with. You just KNOW some of the people in the decision making group are cultists.

So option 2, combined with get some adventurers to take care of things.