Quote Originally Posted by 2323mike View Post
So you aren't going to take Tarquin's words for granted. OK. Whatever.

Seems just wierd to me that you assume a man with a black hole sized Ego doesn't pamper it further by adopting No-Matter-What-Happens-I-Win ideology.
His ego demanded he say that. And possibly it demands that he believe it, I don't know. That doesn't mean he'll stick to it if/when he's actually losing.

Let me give you two examples. One is from the actual comic but involves Start of Darkness spoilers. The other is hypothetical.
Xykon said that it was better to be a brain in a jar than to let yourself die, and that if you die you're a loser.
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However, this does not go with his actual behavior when he was alive. He was thinking about leaving a legacy after his death. With some of the most powerful magic in his world, he wasn't thinking about immortality at all. The only reason he ever became a lich, was because Redcloak suggested it as an alternative to living out his waning years in Lirian's prison.

So why did he say it? Because his philosophy changed after his death? Maybe, but mainly because the point of what he was saying was to Score On Spliced-Vaarsuvius. If that involved saying things he believed, or things he didn't believe, not really the point.

Now, the hypothetical. Suppose that Haerta ruled over a continent with an iron fist for a thousand years (assume she extended her lifespan, or even became a lich). Suppose, after those thousand years, she was slaughtered by a group of good-aligned adventurers who systematically destroyed every trace of her legacy. Suppose she got into an argument with Tarquin about which of them was a better tyrant, and she said, "My rule lasted for a thousand years!"

Do you suppose Tarquin's response would be, "All right, you win"?

I sure don't. No, he'd come up with some card to play. And maybe he'd come up with a card other than, "But you lost at the end, and I won't lose!" But I would not be at all surprised if that was the card he played.

And that that contradicted what he told Elan?

Irrelevant. Because the point of what he said to Elan was to demoralize Elan, which it proved very successful at. And the point of what he said to Haerta, similarly, would be to serve his ego--not to communicate anything genuine other than, "I, Tarquin, am superior."