Comic 409# actually switched my opinion on the debate

[Charles Phipps]

Weird, I am a die hard Miko supporter usually but Hinjo just utterly ripped my support of her to shreds. I could have supported Miko under pretty much any circumstances but the guy gave the whole Luke Skywalker speech up to and INCLUDING the offer of redemption plus complete pardon.

And she just brushed it off.

Hell, it even sinks my hope for Hinjo/Miko. Though Hinjo probably has to feel SOMETHING unless he's the nicest paladin in the universe.

[Haruki-kun]

He is the nicest paladin, I guess. Well, at least now that Shojo's gone he is.

As for Miko: I never liked her much, even though I did think she wasa cool character. but you know what?

SHE IS TOTALLY LOSING IT!!!!!!

[Charles Phipps]

Yeah, it's an "eyes wide open" moment from this point. Hinjo not only pointed out all the flaws in her logic, he pretty much ripped them to pieces To Kill a Mockingbird style.

He didn't condemn her further for it but even offered her a graceful way out.

[theKOT]

She is having a psychotic episode. Right after Miko almost killed Belkar, the Giant posted that Miko was bordering on psychotic break. I'd say the Shojo thing was her breaking point. She's gone insane. Not that that justifies what she has done, I'm just explaining her motivations.

[TinSoldier]

I still support Miko, and while many have seen her as this deluded for a long time, I never thought that she was this insane.

Not until the Along the Watchtower leap to judgment and the current story arc.

I still hold out hope for her and will keep her in my heart for awhile longer.

However, I am angry at my heroine for attacking Hinjo. She needs a serious time out!

[BardicLasher]

For a moment, I was like "Okay, I can forgive Miko... Maybe she's not all bad..."

And then, that big "NO!" I feel pity for her, but she just shoved herself into a deeper pit.

[Charles Phipps]

Let's face it.

Miko, unlike Shojo, KNOWS that Hinjo is innocent.

Yet she still attacked him.

[chibibar]

Yea... it pretty much kill the debate on Roy attacking her instead of talking. Hinjo was an ally to her (Miko said so herself) and she attack him!!!! he even put his weapon AWAY so there is no "intention of attacks" until Miko just unleash on him.

Hinjo tried. He really did in the most peaceful manner possible considering the situation that is going on. I like the part that Hinjo agrees with Miko that Belkar WILL also be arrested AND even considering Roy's involement.

Miko has gone to the deep end.

[Porthos]

Right now the only person who can help Miko is Miko herself. And I think it's fairly obvious that it is going to take a long time (if ever) for her to work out her issues/demons.

As the old saying goes: Da Nile - It ain't just a river in Egypt.

And as long as Miko is in denial, she will never get "better", no matter who tries to intercede in her behalf. Heck, it's gotten to the point that the Gods Themselves can't get through her Mental Barriers.

[Charles Phipps]

Yes, Miko passed from "lovable overthetop Paladin" here to "bad guy" for me.

Like Anakin Skywalker and the younglings, you can say temporary insanity with the Tuskens...but that was eyes wide open.

[FelixZ]

He is the nicest paladin, I guess. Well, at least now that Shojo's gone he is.

As for Miko: I never liked her much, even though I did think she wasa cool character. but you know what?

SHE IS TOTALLY LOSING IT!!!!!!

Shojo was never a paladin. I believe about 100 comics back, he stated he is a med-high level aristocrat.

Once I get my homebrew world done, I'll have to stick Hinjo in as the head of the Plat. Knights.

As for Miko, she's dead. Roy just swung at her with full force baseball style, sending her in a line drive towards the stands. She ain't comming back no more.

[Charles Phipps]

That's why they have hit points friend.

[Porthos]

As for Miko, she's dead. Roy just swung at her with full force baseball style, sending her in a line drive towards the stands. She ain't comming back no more.

Nope, Miko is alive. If you see her eyes, they are the "---" that represents being unconscious. If a character is dead, they have "X"'s where their eyes used to be.

[theKOT]

Yea... it pretty much kill the debate on Roy attacking her instead of talking. Hinjo was an ally to her (Miko said so herself) and she attack him!!!! he even put his weapon AWAY so there is no "intention of attacks" until Miko just unleash on him.

Hinjo tried. He really did in the most peaceful manner possible considering the situation that is going on. I like the part that Hinjo agrees with Miko that Belkar WILL also be arrested AND even considering Roy's involement.

Miko has gone to the deep end.

Actually, It doesn't change anything about what Roy should have done. It's nuetral to "offer surrender when it's convenient", but it is the epitome of good to offer surrender when it carries a risk. It isn't about results, it is about intentions and always attempting to give people another chance. Everything Miko has done since the moment she entered the scene has been wrong, but Roy had no grace or mercy, just a grudge and justification.

But yes, she probably belongs in an asylum more than a jail cell. Perhaps some mixture of the two? I honestly think she could be executed for what she has done, and no one could really get too upset. If she doesn't recover from her condition, I can't see her ever doing real good again, which is very sad.

[Haruki-kun]

Shojo was never a paladin. I believe about 100 comics back, he stated he is a med-high level aristocrat.

Oh, right..........forgot abou that.......... then yeah, Hinjo is the nicest paladin.
Of course it's not like there are many other choices...... How many paladins do we actuallyt know? O-Chul, Miko, Hinjo........ Belkar's guards....................

[chibibar]

Actually, It doesn't change anything about what Roy should have done. It's nuetral to "offer surrender when it's convenient", but it is the epitome of good to offer surrender when it carries a risk. It isn't about results, it is about intentions and always attempting to give people another chance. Everything Miko has done since the moment she entered the scene has been wrong, but Roy had no grace or mercy, just a grudge and justification.

But yes, she probably belongs in an asylum more than a jail cell. Perhaps some mixture of the two? I honestly think she could be executed for what she has done, and no one could really get too upset. If she doesn't recover from her condition, I can't see her ever doing real good again, which is very sad.

well as someone has posted before that Roy is a soldier. He probably did a quick analyze of the situation (also as a player would look at his options before telling the GM what he is going to do) and well.. consider he wants the best result (and live to talk about it)

Hinjo did the thing cause he is a leader.

[dunbar]

If she doesn't recover from her condition, I can't see her ever doing real good again, which is very sad.

Actually, I think she can do good in the future. Her problem always was, and still is, arrogance. First it was her sheer arrogance in believing she is always right, but now I see it is her arrogance in believing that she is chosen of the gods.

She isn't really evil, even now. I believe she would still do good if she had escaped...helping people, like she did the dirt farmers so many strips ago. But she strongly believes that she is destined for greatness, and will cut down anyone she sees who stands in the way of that.

Everone should watch the Babylon 5 episode called "Comes the Inquisitor." I'm certain Rich is a fan of the series, and there are direct parallels between the inquisitor's questions and Miko's character. I'll have to see if I can find a clip to link to...

[Piedmon_Sama]

Any Paladin I've ever played wouldn't have given Miko a chance, either. And while I would laud Hinjo's intentions, as his DM I'd have to roll my eyes and say Miko automatically wins initiative. Sorry, but you don't have to be a Saint to be a Paladin--and to me, the Greater Good is about protecting people, not making noble gestures.

[Skippy the Dire]

Real quick rundown -

Hinjo - LG and a wonderful example of a Paladin. (Dump stat probably Dex).

Roy - LG, as he would have been well-justified to bisect Miko when she tried to Waring-blender Hinjo at the end

Miko - at best N/CN, probably NE/CE (as in, I, the DM, just took the character sheet away, changed the alignment, and told the player to start rolling or start walking). It really IS all about her now.

Belkar - still CE, but not irredeemable - his problem is he has Wis as a dump stat. He LIKED the wacky old guy and doesn't seem to be eying Hinjo for kidneys even though Hinjo has promised a trial, so the heavy CN tendencies are showing through.

Shojo - still dead - settling in at Bytopia now

Actual player alignments? Miko - Lawful Deranged, [Scrubbed]

[Porthos]

How many paladins do we actuallyt know? O-Chul, Miko, Hinjo........ Belkar's guards....................

I don't have it in front of me, so I can't supply the name, but there is a paladin in On the Origins of PC's.

[Drandom]

You get the impression that that's the reason for 409? After 408, some people were still sympathising with Miko and condemning Roy. That's not the way it's supposed to be. From a narrative perspective, we are supposed to sympathise with Roy and oppose Miko.

Being a Miko fan myself, and feeling that Roy's recent actions have been, frankly, rather self-centred, I find it a little galling. Hinjo has been quite reasonable. Miko is, though rather blunt and unwilling to compromise, basically a good person. To go through this process...
1/ Miko wants to kill Belkar. She has for quite a while. This is fine, for Belkar is a psychotic, sadistic, evil little monster who probably deserves it.
2/ She listens to Shojo and Roy talking. In this Shojo admits that he a) staged an entire trial to recruit some mercenaries, b) is paranoid, and c) has been consistently deceiving the paladins that serve him.
3/ Shojo is confronted. He knowingly and to their face calls paladin morality 'obsolete', states that the ends justify the means, and that he has been manipulating the paladins for the good of the city.
4/ Miko, then faced with self-confessed betrayal by her leader, makes a connection between Shojo and Xykon. She jumps to a swift conclusion that is consistent with Xykon's words and what Shojo has just said, finding a circumstantial link.
5/ She then attacks Shojo to prevent this evil. Shojo's words - 'Everything I did, I did for my people' - apply to Miko just as strongly. She may be wrong, but she believes Shojo is evil and carries out her paladin's duties immediately and uncompromisingly.

Okay, so, all in character so far. Miko has done what she believes to be the right thing, and from her perspective, it's not so crazy. Leaving aside what we, the readers know about the overall plot and considering only her personal knowledge... yeah, I can understand how she came to the conclusion she did.

6/ Having deliberately committed an evil act and made a mistake, she then falls.
7/ Roy promptly attacks her. She has already concluded that Roy is evil, and working with both Shojo and Xykon, and so defends herself. As she believes Roy to be an agent of evil (wrongly, of course. Agent of jerkery, maybe, but he's not evil), she attempts to make up for the mistake of killing Shojo by slaying the true criminal.

Again, this is fine and in character. Miko is still LG, though fallen, and is simply confused. I still have sympathy for her at this point.

8/ Hinjo, her long-time comrade and fellow paladin, speaks to her and tries to defuse the situation. She listens and agrees, noting her confusion and agreeing that she has to pray for guidance.

It's the 'NO!' moment I don't get it. It doesn't feel as in-character as the previous actions, but more as if Burlew needs her to be a bad guy and so is taking liberties to make that happen. No offence to him intended, but it does not seem right to me. Refusal to submit to the 'tainted courts' of Azure City, I get that (since she has just repudiated the laws of Azure City as having been orchestrated by evil), but outright attacking her companion, whom she knows is LG and a paladin? That goes against everything she believes.

Gah, I don't know. It's like I can see the strings behind the stage. Miko needs to turn into a villain and so she has to be nasty. We have to sympathise with Roy because he's the 'hero', and so her villainy needs to made clear, hence Hinjo. It all ends up with Miko not acting like Miko, as I understand her character.

[Charles Phipps]

Any Paladin I've ever played wouldn't have given Miko a chance, either. And while I would laud Hinjo's intentions, as his DM I'd have to roll my eyes and say Miko automatically wins initiative. Sorry, but you don't have to be a Saint to be a Paladin--and to me, the Greater Good is about protecting people, not making noble gestures.

My take was that Hinjo and Miko were friends and possibly something more. At least on his part. If nothing else, Hinjo was Miko's comrade at arms and his reaction to his Uncle's death was probably coated by his own distaste at the man's manipulations combined with knowledge he could be restored to life.

I think Hinjo acted appropriately for a close friend.

Gah, I don't know. It's like I can see the strings behind the stage. Miko needs to turn into a villain and so she has to be nasty. We have to sympathise with Roy because he's the 'hero', and so her villainy needs to made clear, hence Hinjo. It all ends up with Miko not acting like Miko, as I understand her character.

This is what I consider the "Temple Massacre" moment as I mentioned above. It's the moment where George says upfront that our assumptions about the character were wrong. In the end, it says Miko isn't misguided but would prefer to have her belief in her perfection untainted than redemption.

That's where it goes from lovable to villain.

[Deper]

Drandom, the reason that Miko is doing this is because it is completely in line with her character. The connection to Xykon and Shojo was not that good, and she said that he had been undermining and corrupting the city for the past 47 years. When Roy attacked she didn't turn to defend herself. She put the blame on him and attacked because it was all his fault. She irrationally hates the entire Order.

This is what she has building too. All we see is how she makes judgements between her version of good and evil, and refuses to shift those judgements at all. Even the other paladins think she goes to far. It was established far beyond this point that Miko was incapable of the introspection necessary to accept responsibility for what she did. That's because she was a paladin and a servant of good, which meant that anything she did would always be right.

Even after being attacked by Roy she insisted that Shojo deserved it and was still in the wrong, showing that she didn't acknowledge her crime. She tried to tie Roy in and blew holes in her own logic, but refused to accept that. And when talked down, when given the best and most understanding offer possible, she threw it away. And look at what she said while she did it. Not that Hinjo was wrong and that Roy was tricking them, but that she was a Paladin, the best one there ever was, and that she couldn't be wrong.

Her haughty, self-assured and arrogant attitude has been well established. You won't find anything that shows she is capable of admiting that she was truely wrong. Roy attacking her after the fall meant nothing in her thought process. She would have blamed him anyway, and the fact that accepting Hinjo's offer would mean accepting that she was wrong was what caused her to attack.

This is what I consider the "Temple Massacre" moment as I mentioned above. It's the moment where George says upfront that our assumptions about the character were wrong. In the end, it says Miko isn't misguided but would prefer to have her belief in her perfection untainted than redemption.

When did Miko show she wasn't the type of character to slaughter Younglings if she thought they were evil. Anyone who believed that Miko was above these types of self-righteous delusions was ignoring key aspects of her character (shown by her behaviour, words, and the way others, other that the Order, spoke of her).

[Kalexon]

Okay, here's the way I see it. Miko has completely fallen off her rocker. End.

I suspected she had for sometime though just how crazy she is and is being kind of surprised me. I never liked her as a character, she was an arrogant, stick in the @**, head up her butt, fighter as far as I was concerned. She did provide some funny dialogue from both her and Roy (and the rest of the gang) but other then that I was wondering when they would be able to dump this character off the wagon. But yeah, she's crazy end of story. And I don't think that Roy is driven by self-interest. He's seen how she's been behaving more then the Paladins have, so leading up to Shojo's death I think Roy knew she was more then unstable, killing and post-killing, he knew she was completely insane. I think the last line in 409 supports this

"is now a good time to be battering things into submission? I wanted to be clear on this though since I'm just a big dumb fighter"

I hope Miko is either exacuted(sp) or locked in one of those pit cells for a very long time, because I don't want her coming back.

[kerberos]

Actually, It doesn't change anything about what Roy should have done. It's nuetral to "offer surrender when it's convenient", but it is the epitome of good to offer surrender when it carries a risk.

And offering surrender when it gives away an advantage and has no chance of being accepted is the epitome of stupidity. While not giving her that chance might not be actively good, it's perfectly consistent with goodness or even paladinhood. A good character is not required to pick the absolutely most saintly/stupid option every single time. You might have had a point if he was a Book of Exalted Deeds character, but he isn’t.

[theKOT]

And offering surrender when it gives away an advantage and has no chance of being accepted is the epitome of stupidity. While not giving her that chance might not be actively good, it's perfectly consistent with goodness or even paladinhood. A good character is not required to pick the absolutely most saintly/stupid option every single time. You might have had a point if he was a Book of Exalted Deeds character, but he isn’t.

But he announced his attack before he made it, he could have readied an action and called on her to surrender. Or just included a chance to surrender in his pre-fight justification speech.

[dunbar]

It's the 'NO!' moment I don't get it. It doesn't feel as in-character as the previous actions, but more as if Burlew needs her to be a bad guy and so is taking liberties to make that happen. No offence to him intended, but it does not seem right to me. Refusal to submit to the 'tainted courts' of Azure City, I get that (since she has just repudiated the laws of Azure City as having been orchestrated by evil), but outright attacking her companion, whom she knows is LG and a paladin? That goes against everything she believes.

Hear me out here: Miko's problem, her big character flaw, is her arrogance. For a long time, I thought it was merely her arrogance that she must best know right from wrong, good from evil. Actually, I had mentioned this in a thread ages ago:

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...or#post1524159

Only I was wrong, and now I have had a greater revelation into her character. Her arrogance about her knowledge of right and wrong stems from her true flaw, her arrogance that she is a chosen of the gods, that she is meant for greatness.

THAT is what she believes. Hinjo told her she was wrong in that, that she should go to prison, and (I'm sure in her mind) she realizes that means a trial, a guilty verdict, and being reviled by history. That is in direct conflict with what she "knows" to be true: that the gods have chosen her for greatness. And no one, not even a LG paladin, is going to stand in the way of that.

So her actions are in character, when you realize the depth of her character flaw and delusions of grandeur.

[Deper]

But he announced his attack before he made it, he could have readied an action and called on her to surrender. Or just included a chance to surrender in his pre-fight justification speech.

Roy had no reason to believe that she would back down or even act rationally. Why waste the time on something he knows she isn't going to accept, especially coming from him? All he could do was knock her out quickly, and if he could get out some aggression while doing it then so much the better.

[theKOT]

Don't forget Dunbar-she has also gone insane now too. Her actions aren't consistent with a sane person, plus the Giant said back when she almost killed Belkar that she was bordering on psychotic break. I'd say overhearing Shojo was the breaking point.

Roy had no reason to believe that she would back down or even act rationally. Why waste the time on something he knows she isn't going to accept, especially coming from him? All he could do was knock her out quickly, and if he could get out some aggression while doing it then so much the better.

Because he didn't know that she wouldn't respond. She was looking dazed and introspective and had her back turned to him. Besides, she almost escaped even though he fought her. You have gotta give people a chance. And he ALREADY WASTED THAT TIME ANNOUNCING TO HER WHY HE WAS ATTACKING! It would have taken no additionaly effort on his part. "Throw down your weapon or I will be forced to attack you" instead of his opening rant would have been a good choice.

[Yzorth]

Wow. She's going to become a blackguard, just because of messed up logic and the fact that she can't get over the fact she made a mistake.

I'm saying Miko WILL become a blackguard. I don't see many other options plot/character development wise.