redcloaks secret [SoD spoilers]

[Mina Kobold]

what is the secret about redcloak? in the start of soD he will do everything to save his brother and acts good, but later he kills his brother and begins to act evil (plus he seems to have lost his goal) :redcloak:

[BRC]

what is the secret about redcloak? in the start of soD he will do everything to save his brother and acts good, but later he kills his brother and begins to act evil (plus he seems to have lost his goal) :redcloak:

There is no secret. He became obsessed with The Plan, and refuses to abandon Xykon because then he would have to admit he was wrong, he would have to admit that he allowed all those goblins to die and killed his own brother for nothing.

[DreadSpoon]

holy missing spoiler tags, batman

[Mina Kobold]

so you are saying that its because hes afraid of being wrong? i thougt it was because of the crimson mantle :redcloak:

[BRC]

so you are saying that its because hes afraid of being wrong? i thougt it was because of the crimson mantle :redcloak:
That's certainly what Right-Eye Says. He's afraid to ADMIT That he was wrong.

[Mina Kobold]

fine, but when he got the mantle he acted like he was charmed or something. :redcloak:

[Nerdanel]

I think the Crimson Mantle definitely had an effect, although we don't know exactly what it was. I think it might have changed Redcloak's alignment from Lawful Neutral to Lawful Evil.

[Linkavitch]

I think that Xykon could have charmed the cloak, but it seems to me, it's more likely that he doesn't want to admit that he was wrong, or maybe his brother really ticked him off.

[Ramien]

The cloak gave him knowledge of the plan, but it did not change his fundamental outlook. His work on behalf of the goblin people, particularly after meeting Xykon, have made him willing to sacrifice everything to the plan, though.

I do think Right-Eye was correct about Redcloak's unwillingness to admit guilt about his mistakes adding to his willingness to go deeper and deeper into darkness, shoving more goblins of all kinds into the furnace of the plan. The recent events in the Azure City war shows that he might be turning around, but only time will tell how much he can 'redeem' himself.

[silvadel]

Thing is redcloak is punishing himself over something that would have happened anyway...

Lets say that he did NOT blast his brother....

Right-Eye floats up and is 100% ineffective and Xykon kills him.

Only real difference here is Xykon no longer trusts Redcloak.

[busterswd]

Thing is redcloak is punishing himself over something that would have happened anyway...

Lets say that he did NOT blast his brother....

Right-Eye floats up and is 100% ineffective and Xykon kills him.

Only real difference here is Xykon no longer trusts Redcloak.

This falls under the whole chit chat he had with Xykon right afterwards though, which is acknowledging the weight of your own choices. Right-eye knew this, but Redcloak wants to deny responsibility and pretend the choices he made were not his to make.

[Chronos]

I think that Xykon could have charmed the cloak...Not a chance. That cloak is a major artifact, and there's damned little that mortal spellcasters (even epic ones) can do to mess with those. The only person who's done anything significant to the Crimson Mantle is the Dark One, who created it.

[Mina Kobold]

but as soon he gets the mantle he says: must continue the plan. or something like that I just thought that has something to do with it (maybe the dark one controlls him)

[factotum]

At that point Redcloak was suffering from the aftereffects of having a huge amount of info dumped straight into his brain. You'll note that he "woke up" as soon as he realised his little brother was in trouble--not something that would have happened if he was fully controlled by the Dark One. (Besides, from what we know of the way the OotS world works, it wouldn't be allowed for a god to directly control one of their clerics in that way--it's strictly hands off!).

[Teatime]

There is no "secret" behind Redcloak's evil. Start of Darkness was brilliantly done, so that on a first readthrough, Redcloak seems an entirely sympathetic character. I, along with many other people, I've noticed, was struck with "Redcloak is a good guy! He should ditch Xykon and join Roy's gang!" syndrome.

On follow-up readthroughs, though, it's obvious that Redcloak is not just some shining knight made into a villain by society. He's willing to do absolutely horrible things to achieve plans he refuses to question, and while he may feel bad about it at times, he is too stubborn and too weak willed to turn back and make things right. Right-Eye was more or less put through the exact same situations as Redcloak, yet he did the right thing; Redcloak, while being perfectly capable of going along with it and doing what is good to try and stop Xykon, did no such thing. In fact, he did the opposite, murdered his own brother, and remains by Xykon's side so that he doesn't have to admit to himself that what he did was wrong. These are all the traits of an inherently evil person, and they can't be blamed on a magical cloak.

[Jorrath_Zek]

Many psychopathes refuse to take responsibility for thier own actions.

Redcloak is evil. It's a common trait.

The Crimson Mantle fed Redcloak's belief that he was somehow special. another common trait in psychopathes... It could not, and thus did not, create the belief in Redcloak.

[Kaytara]

Thing is redcloak is punishing himself over something that would have happened anyway...

Lets say that he did NOT blast his brother....

Right-Eye floats up and is 100% ineffective and Xykon kills him.

Only real difference here is Xykon no longer trusts Redcloak.

I fail to see how that is relevant. Redcloak has to deal with the knowledge that he has it in him to have killed his own brother. He made a choice. Any information regarding that choice that he received afterwards has no bearing on the initial significance of his decision.

Personally I don't see Redcloak as purely evil... For one thing, we've got Xykon to contrast him against. But mostly, for me evil implies a deliberate side to it, being evil by choice. Redcloak certainly does have evil tendencies; he shows no concern for the suffering of other creatures and while he may not particularly enjoy torturing a paladin or sending people to their deaths into the Snarl, it doesn't particularly bother him either, or at least not for any reason that would matter. "...because of how hackneyed a trope it is. No matter, I'll just do something wildly original to make up for it afterwards."
Still, as I said, I think an evil decision - such as continuing to support Xykon in spite of his evil schemes - has to be somewhat more deliberate to really count. In the case of Redcloak, he's not as much evil as he is simply too much of a wimp to just say no and turn around. THAT is the sympathetic side of him, to me... Not sympathetic as in making me like him, but as in feeling sympathy for him. Whether it was his fault or not, when a person is flawed like that you often just feel sorry for them.

Besides, he's very sympathetic in his realism that way. Standard fantasy stories feed us so many strong-willed, courageous, determined heroes and likewise formidable infallible, confident and secure villains that it makes us forget just how rare and prized a virtue it is when you're willing to face your mistakes and try to repair the damage you've done rather than sinking deeper and deeper.
Initially strong-seeming but weak and flawed characters like Redcloak are a very refreshing change.

[Zordrath]

To me, Redcloak's 'evil' is mainly a matter of DnD rules. Just because he was born into a race considered 'evil', his family was butchered by people considered 'good'. Had the same thing happened in reversal, and RC was a paladin trying to get revenge on the evil Goblins who killed his parents, he would be considered a hero, or an neutral anti-hero at best (someone who gets grudging respect for his abilities, even though altruism is not one of his strong sides).

Of course, allying with Xykon is an deliberately evil choice, but that came later on, after his initial motivation to be 'evil' had already been established by the rules telling him what alignment he needs to be to oppose those he hates.

Seriously, what would you do if you had been created for the sole purpose of being butchered by people the gods consider 'good'?

[Kish]

Seriously, what would you do if you had been created for the sole purpose of being butchered by people the gods consider 'good'?

Well, I can tell you what I wouldn't do. I wouldn't kill my brother. I wouldn't ally with someone who treated all my people as disposable cannon fodder. If I discovered that one of my allies had that attitude, I would certainly not oppose a plan to destroy him.

[Zordrath]

Of course you're right, and I did say he made some deliberately evil choices. But it all started with almost everyone he knew being killed because they were considered evil from the day they were born. Redcloak, in my opinion, is not so much evil as deluded and insane - which he might not be if the Paladins hadn't looked at his village and deemed even the small girls irredeemably evil. He still wants to get revenge for that, and it's dominating him more than anything else, to a point where he doesn't care about the means anymore. I don't share his opinions, but I can see where he got them from, and the 'good' guys and the 'good' gods played a large part in that.

[dps]

remains by Xykon's side so that he doesn't have to admit to himself that what he did was wrong. These are all the traits of an inherently evil person, and they can't be blamed on a magical cloak.

The other things you mention are evil traits, but being unwilling to admit that you're wrong isn't confined solely to evil people.

[thereaper]

Redcloak is evil. It's sad but true. I haven't even read SoD and I can tell you that. He even knows he's evil. His evil comes from the extreme "Greater Good" philosophy that is warned against so often in literature.

RC wants things to be better for his people. He doesn't really care about them individually (another flaw), but as a whole he cares about them dearly. And he's willing to sacrifice anything to make things better for the goblin people, including destroying them by the release of the Snarl (so that the Dark One could make things better for the goblins in the world 3.0). He even sacrifices his own morality. And that's where the hole starts. As he commits more and more evil, he can't turn back, because if he does then all the evil he has commited up to that point will have been for nothing. That's why he kills Right-Eye. And subsequently, that's why Xykon trusts him. He knows that RC would never dare betray him, lest Right-Eye's murder have been for nothing.

He's a likable character, a noble character (nobler than any hero perhaps, it doesn't get much more noble than sacrificing your own morality for your cause, now does it? :smallwink:), and a sympathetic character. But he's an evil character. A tragically evil character, because his evil is a direct result of the Gods' evil. Unfortunately, this doesn't change the fact that he is evil; it only explains why he is.

That's why we can watch him and cheer for him, yet simultaneously hope he doesn't succeed. We want him to achieve his objective (making things better for the goblin people), but not his goal (taking over the world or releasing the snarl). Ideally, we would want him to see the light, realize that there might be another way, and help in some way to defeat Xykon. It's most likely a false hope, but it's a hope that many of us nonetheless have somewhere deep down.

[Zordrath]

Couldn't add anything to that, exactly my feelings about him :smallsmile: