Hypothetical scenario

[Counterpower]

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]

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]

Surely you're missing the all-important option #6

Get a bunch of adventurers to deal with it.

[PaladinBoy]

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]

Option 1 has a distinct problem: what if the ritual doesn't care who does the killings?

[Solo]

hire a bunch of Diviners to get intel and send a pack of adventurers to handle the problem.

[Fireball.Man.Guy.]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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

Shock value?

[Counterpower]

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."

If that was the goal, he certainly succeeded.

[Fireball.Man.Guy.]

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]

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."

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.