OOTS #1208 - The Discussion Thread

[B. Dandelion]

Aren't they, though? The gods are depicted as being perpetually swamped with paperwork. For instance, every soul in Hel's domain was subject to an appeal for their 'dwarven bravery'. They didn't get instant tribunals for it... their cases went into a stack the size of Odin and they were resolved at the speed of bureaucracy (that is, they were ignored until it was actually important to address them).

That's where I make the conclusion that paladins and clerics are handled in a similar fashion. That is, unless there's a fast-form to sort it all out, like the cut-and-dry case of Miko.

Those are intra-pantheon debates, which carry no risk of creating a new Snarl. They share the same quiddity. You explicitly cited the risk of creating a new Snarl as the reason for there not being more inter-pantheon disputes, you can't point to intra-pantheon arguments where there's no risk as evidence that inter-party disagreements that require godsmoots to settle safely are common.

You claimed that if a paladin from the Southern region attacked a non-aligned goblin in the Northern region, that the gods of the Western region should get a say in what happens, and that would forestall the gods from the Southern region from denying their powers to their own paladins, for fear of creating a new Snarl. How does the bickering between Loki, Thor, and Hel (all Northern) help this case in the slightest?

[Mariele]

I just spent three hours reading this entire thread. Long post with quotes ahead!

Just wanted to say that I thoroughly enjoyed Anansiil's and Yarrun's comments throughout this thread and agree with them.

One thing re: dwarves have it rough because mining is dangerous! Sir, it's the medieval ages. Just about every career is dangerous. I won't disagree that dwarves have it rough because of their afterlife situation, and that mining is a relatively dangerous occupation (even in a medieval age setting), but it seems a little silly to be calling out mining like it's SO abnormally dangerous. Farming is dangerous. Sailing is dangerous. And on.

You know, it seems very funny that people think slaughter of goblin's village by some paladins justifies slaughter and enslaving men and women who were not paladins, never had any knowledge of this, and never had any power of influencing said paladins. It's not like Azure City is a democracy, you know?

Leavind Azure City in hands of goblins may be a practical decision in order to save the world, but it is not and can not be an ethical decision. It is a lesser evil, no less, no more.

Agreed. Just because the FBI* did something awful that the rest of Americans* don't know about , doesn't mean that Americans deserve to be enslaved and slaughtered in "retribution". Take it out on the FBI, man!

*Absolutely not making this about a ~discussion about real-world politics~, just using a very loose analogy to make this point more obvious from a "not-Sapphire Guard and not-Azurite" point of view.

That extra pucker factor this time around is TDO and his plan, if a rift gets relocated to one of the outer plains it is going to get remarkably ugly and fast and the implication is that it would be the end of everything forever because the outer plains stay between worlds. Hence the need to mindwipe the outsiders every now and then.

Not really? There is no extra pucker factor that you're describing, if what we've read in the comics is true. The ritual takes weeks. Loki says that the world can be blotted out in less than half an hour. Even if Loki was fudging and it really took more like three hours, that's still plenty of leeway. We know it has to be done in a fairly short amount of time or else the gods would have been destroyed by the Snarl ages ago.

When I teach classes about literature -- like asking "What attitude do Disney movies have about gender roles?" -- I often hear the attitude "We just read this for entertainment -- why do you always have to analyze everything?" Or "Those are just kids movies -- they don't have to MEAN anything."

How do we absorb the dominant culture, if not through entertainment? How else does it get passed from generation to generation? When public attitudes towards homosexuality changed drastically in a single generation, for instance, can you really argue that shifts in popular culture had nothing to do with that change?

I don't think WotC changing its tune on race is a small thing. It's the sort of thing that can have ripples. It raises a difficulty too, though -- if a fantasy world has different races, even if every race has a full range of alignments, there's going to be racism. Anything else wouldn't be realistic. And I'm not sure racism is a topic I want to deal with in a campaign. It kind of makes me want to steer clear of fantasy as a genre altogether.

Agreed. But in regards to "there will always be racism in fantasy with different races", I think that after a point you really do have to stop and go "OK, now I'm just looking for things to be bothered by". If we had, I don't know, orcs/lizardmen/kobolds/ogres/gnolls/goblins/take yer pick, that had varying cultures in one race and could interact with them in a variety of ways (your party can stop in a local kobold settlement and trade and maybe do a sidequest for them relating to another tribe harassing them, and you can see them integrated in human/dwarf/elf/gnome/take yer pick settlements in some sort of way, and you can intimidate/kill the group that's been attacking farmers, or whatever the heck else you want) AND did this with less traditional "bad guy" races (elf bandits! gnome slavers! dwarven cultists! whatever), I don't think there'd be an issue at all. You'd just be showing that all of these creatures have agency and some decide to do Bad Stuff. You wouldn't even have to make this a morally complex game. Just because the questgivers in danger are orcs and your evil necromancers are elves doesn't mean it's any more morally complex than the opposite, and I don't know where people are getting that idea. At best, it allows you to have fun, simple adventures without going off a racist basis. At worse, you're just using different characters models, so what gives?

You don't have to make them completely homogeneous, either. Just give them different flavors if you want. Maybe this tribe of gnolls practices cannibalism, but that's not an Evil act and that's just because they're nature-loving (like elves or whatever) and that's a part of how they represent it. It's not like the dwarf, elf, gnome, halfling, etc etc etc, are exactly like humans or are particularly complex either. They can be fairly flat fantasy cultures, but just like different tribes of dwarves have cultural differences, so would goblins. It just doesn't need to be this big, morally complex, deal. And if you're still bothered by racism in this sort of scenario, I dunno, sorry, that's kind of on you? I don't really like saying that it's ever the person who's offended fault that they're offended, but in a simple fantasy tabletop game that isn't telling some sort of grand story and is still just meant to entertain the fellows around you in a "woohoo let's get chips and go have a silly escapist fantasy" way, you ARE going to boil the intricacies of race and culture down (even if you did a human-only campaign!) so you kind of have to realize the fault isn't in the participants, just in the limited intricacies of the game.

Clearly, you can make the story as complex as you want, but I'm aiming this directly at the "I just want to have a silly adventure and not think about morally complex stuff" and the "fantasy is always racist" crowd.

I'm also on the weirdo's side in the scenario, the kind of logic of 'they look like something that hurt us so we should hurt them' has been used to justify a lot of horrifying things in history and still does to this day. Even if goblins are all bastards in this universe being a bastard doesn't mean you deserve to be hurt or even killed. The paladin could have just as easily tried to at least talk to the goblin first! It wouldn't be hard just to politely stop the goblin to inform them that people up ahead might attack them to open up a conversation. You're a paladin with likely a party behind you and that is one single goblin, there is no threat here even if this goblin might be a part of the Evil Goblins. Not to mention the goblin isn't even in a sketchy place, it's just, on the road, walking on it, as you do with roads. At worst the goblin is 'approaching them' but that just means the goblin is coming closer because y'know, it's walking on the road. All the goblin is doing is heading to where they were leaving, as travelers often do.
Not to mention in the original example it was just "You see a goblin approaching you on the road." that is all the detail you gave about this goblin and the backstory of the scenario, a random person was walking on a road so a holy warrior attacked them, that is the example you gave. You can't give people a scenario, change the scenario entirely, then expect people to take that as an actual argument, it screams of backpedaling.

Couldn't agree more, that was a really weird example and argument. I also agree with The_Weirdo's comments there and it's weird, lol.

I believe I have already said this at least once if not twice and at least a few other guys probably have as well, but unless the specific context demands otherwise the only reason I would consider species a factor for stabbing something in the face would be strictly mechanics-based; for example giants are far more physical strong than most humanoids and in any case my character probably won’t be able to reach their face anyways.

Does the story require it? Sure, I’m probably going to stab them in the face. And the narrative might have problematic aspects, yes. But ultimately, to me, what they ARE - goblinoid, aberration, humanoid, undead, outsider or what not - matters far, FAR less than what they are doing, and what they are capable of.

Wait, did you just say that it's fine to attack giants because they're physically stronger than most humanoids? I feel like I have to be reading that wrong.

No, it doesn’t. Justice is given through reparations, the harm can’t be undone but its consequences can be nullified or mitigated. Closure is trickier but generally punishment of a wrongdoer doesn’t bring it, you either move on with your life or you don’t.

Lots of people would disagree with that. Accepting what happened and choosing to make peace with it, and the perpetrator going unpunished, is an emotional/mental state. So is feeling righteous justice/revenge at knowing that someone who has hurt you has been hurt. I'm not saying it's a good thing, but yeah, closure and justice is exactly that for a lot of people.

Where this gets uncomfortable/challenging is that we're in a setting with absolute alignments, and the group rising up against systemic (pun intended) oppression is also the Evil group.

Yeah I won't lie, this one bothers me a lot too.

Is Redcloak asking for things the gods are capable of giving the goblins?

Thor can’t even get *his own clerics* to stop attacking a *trees*.

How’s he going to make people who don’t listen to him at all stop attacking goblins?

Fhahhah. Excellent point!

[Inst]

Redcloak is cheesed off at the lands and resources and whatnot, but it's the racial part that's driving his point here.

Spoiler: SOD

Show

His village was killed by paladins, and from his point of view absolutely none of them were punished for it -- no one meted out justice for his village, nothing divine intervened, etc.

***

Referencing other previous posts brought up, calling Redcloak's point a "self-victimization" plot seems a bit unfair -- he has a very legitimate precedent for it, and it's something that hasn't been addressed in the comic proper either. Shojo doesn't brinng it up, many paladins of the Guard kept their status, etc.

(the usual addenum here that it doesn't justify Redcloak's actions, doesn't make him right, etc. etc)

This is where what was scrubbed out applies. I won't point to real-world examples, but one of the defining traits of a nationalist is that s/he does not accept that s/he has reality both as a victim and a victimizer. What Redcloak has amounted to is that simply because Paladins are jerks to Goblins, the Goblins can do whatever they want as reprisal, and more importantly, Redcloak can do whatever he wants as reprisal.

The entire point of the victim narrative is that you're absolved from guilt, it's all what the other guy did.

[danielxcutter]

I absolutely must know: does that expression exist in Korean? I mean, it can be translated into Korean, sure, but is it an actual, bona fide ready-made expression in what I would assume to be your mother tongue?

To be sure, it's hard to tell that he has Evil as another domain, if only because he did exactly what humans do: gather an army to try and get humans to at least negotiate on his demands.

Well... technically that actually is in my mother tongue, as I was born in the States.(Dad got his PhD at Purdue.) Sadly, I do not think it would translate over well.

Also, while it’s not an entirely unreasonable guess for TDO to have the Evil or evil-leaning domains(I mean heck, he’s basically Goblin Hextor), I admit there’s no direct evidence that he does either. I don’t remember if his ascension was told in crayon drawings or not(and therefore somewhat ambiguous), but there’s not much context as to how he got assassinated after being baited with peace talks.

Was he LE in the sense that he cared for his people but was cruel towards his enemies, or was he stabbed because he didn’t hear the assassins over the sound of his fat buttcheeks clapping together?

And either way, does that render him now as a god unwilling to engage in diplomacy because it got him killed, or is a large part of his anger derived from the fact that he feels betrayed again?

I think... I think it’s rather unambiguous that Redcloak and goblinkind in general really have been majorly shafted. The game has been stacked against them, and even if it’s not on a cosmic scale Rich has explicitly stated that Redcloak was wronged on the day the Guard destroyed his home and most of the people he knew and loved.

At the same time... not many people here are thinking that Redcloak is justified, if any. The Guard is different from what it was; I remember hearing that half of them quit as soon as O-Chul joined. Aside from Miko - who I also believe was heavily influenced by a member of that very bad old Guard - most probably were proper, LG paladins. To say nothing of the many civilians who were killed, enslaved, or driven out of their homes when Redcloak brought Xykon and an army of hobgoblins in.

Is that good enough for everyone?

[Larsaan]

Oooh, so it's "their fault." Never mind that Redcloak didn't even know about the plan until he put on the mantle, and that it's been established in GDGU that even other clerics don't even know about the existence of the cloak. Civilians sure as hell don't. But hey, they should've known amiright??

Well, maybe at least a little bit of the blame should go to the previous Redcloak, for putting them in the line of fire? Even if the village didn't know the risks involved in sheltering him, he should have known the risks of sheltering with them. He was the head of a conspiracy to unravel the fabric of reality!

To put it simply, though:
Was attacking the village justifiable? Yes.
Was killing children/civillians justifiable? No.

Which is why, after the attack, some paladins fell and others didn't - not that Redcloak knows about that.

Spoiler: SOD

Show

So the "Sweet! I get to use my cleave feat 3 in a row!" is of a righteous warrior. Gotcha.

No, that's the equivalent of a guy who joins the army just because he wants to play with guns and kill people. Some militiaries are better at weeding them out than others.

If we're getting down to specific lines, though... I wish my copy of SoD wasn't stowed away in the attic. I'm working off memories that are almost a decade old here!

[LadyEowyn]

I don’t see how anyone can say “The massacre of Redcloak’s village was the fault of the Bearer of the Crimson Mantle (for existing)” and not “The fall of Azure City was the fault of the Sapphire Guard (for provoking Redcloak by massacring his village)”.

[KorvinStarmast]

Redcloak is directly threatening the gods with violence to get what get what he wants (by siccing the Snarl on them), what he wants here being a clearly political goal (for both himself and The Dark One). Also, actually releasing the Snarl would endanger every civilian there is, well beyond any real-world parallel, so... Yeah. Terrorism.

In the old days, that was also (sometimes) called extortion. But the mechanics are similar.

Is Redcloak asking for things the gods are capable of giving the goblins?

Thor can’t even get *his own clerics* to stop attacking a *trees*.

How’s he going to make people who don’t listen to him at all stop attacking goblins?

That's a fair point. The gods (Hel excepted) in OoTSworld for this iteration do not seem to be interventionist beyond giving powers to, and prophecies to, their clerics.
And zapping the occasional tree.

[Worldsong]

Aren't they, though? The gods are depicted as being perpetually swamped with paperwork. For instance, every soul in Hel's domain was subject to an appeal for their 'dwarven bravery'. They didn't get instant tribunals for it... their cases went into a stack the size of Odin and they were resolved at the speed of bureaucracy (that is, they were ignored until it was actually important to address them).

That's where I make the conclusion that paladins and clerics are handled in a similar fashion. That is, unless there's a fast-form to sort it all out, like the cut-and-dry case of Miko.

You're putting too much weight into the divine aspect of divine intervention. As I was saying to Dandelion, the case of the atrocity probably would have been added to a pile of cases awaiting decision, and would have been resolved eventually. The gods are swamped as it is... Thor had to use an answering service for prayers and he kept giving people colon tumors.

I came to this conclusion from two sources: Loki swamping Hel with paperwork for contested souls, and Thor explaining that even getting into an argument with a god of another pantheon could create a two-color snarl. This leads me to believe that the gods are overly cautious, especially when it comes to stepping on each others' toes. If they can't claim direct ownership of a creature (its soul in their afterlife purview) then they basically avoid getting involved at all.
Is it a bad rule? Yes. But these gods are basically making it up as they go along. It is something that could be revised, and that could be part of the resolution of Redcloak's and Durkon's negotiations.

Pile of paperwork. We don't know what happened to the paladins who survived the encounter, because we only see it from Redcloak's perspective. They could have been punished later. Not everything is 'snap your fingers' instantaneous.

So if I'm understanding this correctly... the reasonable course of action for Redcloak would have been to sit on his hands and wait for the gods to finally decide what to do with the paladins, years or decades later?

Because any argument that Redcloak serves as the divine retribution falls apart the moment you bring back the fact that the Dark One is essentially a rogue deity who is not responsible for the behaviour of the paladins. The Twelve Gods are, and I'm just going to flat out disagree with any line of reasoning which implies that Redcloak is their agent at the end of it all.

[Larsaan]

I don’t see how anyone can say “The massacre of Redcloak’s village was the fault of the Bearer of the Crimson Mantle (for existing)” and not “The fall of Azure City was the fault of the Sapphire Guard (for provoking Redcloak by massacring his village)”.

Because they didn't go after the Bearer "for existing", they did it because they knew he's the head of a conspiracy to destroy creation. Now, that certainly doesn't justify the war crimes done to the civilians of the village, but the Bearer should know that he has enemies because of his mission, and the danger he represents to those around him because of it.

[Worldsong]

Because they didn't go after the Bearer "for existing", they did it because they knew he's the head of a conspiracy to destroy creation. Now, that certainly doesn't justify the war crimes done to the civilians of the village, but the Bearer should know that he has enemies because of his mission, and the danger he represents to those around him because of it.

Yeah and Redcloak didn't attack the Sapphire Guard for existing, he attacked Azure City (and them with it) because they slaughtered his people.

EDIT: also from Redcloak's perspective the Bearer isn't some omnicidal maniac who's trying to destroy reality, the Bearer is the direct servant of the Dark One who's playing a high risk/high reward game in an attempt at giving goblinoids the rights they've been denied for so long. Which by extension means that the paladins aren't protectors of the fabric of reality, they're murderers who are using their license to kill to slaughter his people for the sake of preserving the status quo and continuing the oppression of goblinoids.

[Larsaan]

Yeah and Redcloak didn't attack the Sapphire Guard for existing, he attacked Azure City (and them with it) because they slaughtered his people.

Strictly speaking, he attacked Azure City because of the Gate there. You know, one of the Gates that the Bearer of the Crimson Mantle was plotting to destabilize or destroy the world with, hence why the Sapphire Guard was hunting him.

Look, it's not that I don't understand Redcloak's grudge towards the Sapphire Guard, or why he took so much satisfaction in crushing Azure City. It's just that it's not justice, just a regular old cycle of revenge.

Spoiler: Again with the SoD

Show

It's only a matter of luck that the hobgoblins are even benefiting from it anyway (not even counting the huge number of deaths they suffered, not just from the battle but from the march to the city). If it wasn't for the distance and power levels involved, the hobgoblins would have been uprooted again, and slowly whittled away just like Right-Eye's tribe.

[C-Dude]

Those are intra-pantheon debates, which carry no risk of creating a new Snarl. They share the same quiddity. You explicitly cited the risk of creating a new Snarl as the reason for there not being more inter-pantheon disputes, you can't point to intra-pantheon arguments where there's no risk as evidence that inter-party disagreements that require godsmoots to settle safely are common.

You claimed that if a paladin from the Southern region attacked a non-aligned goblin in the Northern region, that the gods of the Western region should get a say in what happens, and that would forestall the gods from the Southern region from denying their powers to their own paladins, for fear of creating a new Snarl. How does the bickering between Loki, Thor, and Hel (all Northern) help this case in the slightest?

It absolutely does, as it points to the level of contention that exists. If the gods have that many disputes within their own pantheon (where there are no risks), do you really think they have FEWER disputes with the other pantheons?
https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0453.html
For instance, in this comic Tiger is furious that Thor might have granted a northern cleric one additional spell while in southern lands, literally defending their capital city.
https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0987.html
The pilgrim here says that the godsmoot was supposed to happen on the winter solstice. That implies they hold them once a year, or possibly even once a season (the comment about three years was a Kickstarter reference). Wrecan not knowing that the gods were voting on the destruction of the world also implies that these meetings are usually tedious and boring.

So if I'm understanding this correctly... the reasonable course of action for Redcloak would have been to sit on his hands and wait for the gods to finally decide what to do with the paladins, years or decades later?

Because any argument that Redcloak serves as the divine retribution falls apart the moment you bring back the fact that the Dark One is essentially a rogue deity who is not responsible for the behaviour of the paladins. The Twelve Gods are, and I'm just going to flat out disagree with any line of reasoning which implies that Redcloak is their agent at the end of it all.

No, I didn't say Redcloak should have sat on his hands. And no, I didn't say Redcloak was the agent of the Twelve gods. He was the agent of divine intervention for the unincorporated goblins. The paladins weren't (immediately, sufficiently) punished by their gods, so Redcloak administered the punishment... and it took him decades to do so. That said, he wasn't any more choosy about his targets than the raid party was; he didn't vet his victims.
As Bravelove pointed out from "On the Origin of PCs", there are plenty of paladins who don't get smacked down by their own gods, even with ample justification. Not every jerk gets their comeuppance.
Is it wrong to kill a child? Well, that depends. An adolescent dragon is a child, but is freely perceived as a monster. Tiamat doesn't object that parties of adventurers charge in and kill baby dragons, despite the fact they are obviously sentient and sapient. Conversely, a dwarf child isn't considered fair game, because Freya would have argued in their defense. The goblins have no such divine champion arguing in their favor. By the letter of the gods' law, there's no decision protecting their children. Was it a tragedy? In this case, yes. Can that ruling be changed? Yes. Can it be changed retroactively? Of course not, that violates causality.

V wasn't struck by lightning for killing a child dragon. Yet there were consequences to the actions--the breaking of her own children's legs and the threat of their death and damnation in a soul prison. V resorted to vengeance, went for the overkill, and caused even MORE damage to her family and to the world with "Familicide". Tiamat didn't smite V, though, because Tiamat doesn't care if a few dragon children die.
The paladin raiders were similarly not zapped by their gods for killing a child, but their actions directly caused the downfall of Azure City. I'm not commenting on the retribution, I'm commenting on the overkill. "Wrong Eye"'s overkill has put the hobgoblins (and now the bugbears) in front of him like a meat shield,

Spoiler: Start of Darkness

Show

just as it did his brother's family, and just as he and his family were a meat shield for the previous Redcloak.

Like I said, he wasn't choosy about his targets; he basically cast "familicide" on the Sapphire Guard, and that has weakened the diplomatic position of the goblinoids in the eyes of the world. While Redcloak remains associated with them, the weight of his overkill will hold them down like a stone around their necks.

[The_Weirdo]

Look, it's not that I don't understand Redcloak's grudge towards the Sapphire Guard, or why he took so much satisfaction in crushing Azure City. It's just that it's not justice, just a regular old cycle of revenge.

If the Azurites don't react (or are forced not to by the circumstances), it won't be a cycle. Sure, it wouldn't have been revenge in the first place is Redcloak had simply let it go and accepted the genocidal subjugation of his entire race. It might even have made things more comfortable for the Azurites, the world and the gods.

But did they deserve this comfort?

[understatement]

Aren't they, though? The gods are depicted as being perpetually swamped with paperwork. For instance, every soul in Hel's domain was subject to an appeal for their 'dwarven bravery'. They didn't get instant tribunals for it... their cases went into a stack the size of Odin and they were resolved at the speed of bureaucracy (that is, they were ignored until it was actually important to address them).

That's where I make the conclusion that paladins and clerics are handled in a similar fashion. That is, unless there's a fast-form to sort it all out, like the cut-and-dry case of Miko.

If this is so, (and above posts have touched upon this), then...the gods saw the case of slaughtered civilians and decided to ignore it until they remembered it. Which they didn't.

I came to this conclusion from two sources: Loki swamping Hel with paperwork for contested souls, and Thor explaining that even getting into an argument with a god of another pantheon could create a two-color snarl. This leads me to believe that the gods are overly cautious, especially when it comes to stepping on each others' toes. If they can't claim direct ownership of a creature (its soul in their afterlife purview) then they basically avoid getting involved at all.
Is it a bad rule? Yes. But these gods are basically making it up as they go along. It is something that could be revised, and that could be part of the resolution of Redcloak's and Durkon's negotiations.

Not the most related to the topic, but this does lend some credence to Redcloak's "GaXP" story. So yes, I do hope that Durkon and Redcloak can discuss about that.

He's not trying to negotiate with the other gods, that's my point. If he had maintained his relationship with Rat, he could have said "Hey, what the fudge, your pantheon's paladins just ripped through my settlements like paper!"
Then Rat could have gone to Dragon and gotten those paladins punished.
That wasn't an option because like Ian Starshine, the Dark One perceives EVERYONE as an enemy. This is detrimental to his people.

Perhaps Rat and Dragon shouldn't have let the paladins commit the actions in the first place?

Cool down, okay? I did say that they might not have known the cloak was the source of the power. That doesn't change the fact that the Sapphire Guard has scuffled with "the Redcloak" several times. They've probably killed him several times too, only to see another 'Redcloak' rise to power. That makes--in their eyes--every goblin a potential Redcloak (like every cell in a liver can become cancerous). Yes, she was ten then. Had they left her alive, she could have grown up to become another Redcloak. THAT might have been their motivation.
I can't give you real examples of children who posed palpable military dangers (as that's against the rules here) and I can't give you another example from the comic (as the scene in Start of Darkness is the only instance of this), but that may have colored the actions of the paladins.
Plus, some of them were jerks. Some of them being jerks doesn't mean all of them are jerks, or that some of them weren't justified in their actions.

First, you keep using words like "stupid" (previous post) or "jerks" -- which seems a strange choice, since it implies their actions were made out of stupidity or ignorance in the act of the greater good. Words like "evil" or "malicious", I feel, would fit better.

I'm not even sure what my original point had been, but there is a clear racial stigma driving the paladins as well. The "liver cancer cell" would've never flown with a human settlement. If the paladins had bothered to do more research, then these goblins could be still living.

And rule of thumb: you don't kill people for what they might do later.

Pile of paperwork. We don't know what happened to the paladins who survived the encounter, because we only see it from Redcloak's perspective. They could have been punished later. Not everything is 'snap your fingers' instantaneous.

Why not? This is one of the most important missions the Sapphire Guard ever had. Why won't the gods focus more on this than maybe anything else in the world?

This is where what was scrubbed out applies. I won't point to real-world examples, but one of the defining traits of a nationalist is that s/he does not accept that s/he has reality both as a victim and a victimizer. What Redcloak has amounted to is that simply because Paladins are jerks to Goblins, the Goblins can do whatever they want as reprisal, and more importantly, Redcloak can do whatever he wants as reprisal.

The entire point of the victim narrative is that you're absolved from guilt, it's all what the other guy did.

Huh, okay. I thought the "self-victimization" idea was similar to "victim playing," meaning "the fabrication or exaggeration of victimhood for a variety of reasons such as to justify abuse of others," which I thought would be an unfair label on RC's actions. Other than that, I don't think there's disagreements here.

Redcloak will get his karmic desserts, but at this moment -- at this table -- is not the time.

[Worldsong]

Strictly speaking, he attacked Azure City because of the Gate there. You know, one of the Gates that the Bearer of the Crimson Mantle was plotting to destabilize or destroy the world with, hence why the Sapphire Guard was hunting him.

Look, it's not that I don't understand Redcloak's grudge towards the Sapphire Guard, or why he took so much satisfaction in crushing Azure City. It's just that it's not justice, just a regular old cycle of revenge.

Spoiler: Again with the SoD

Show

It's only a matter of luck that the hobgoblins are even benefiting from it anyway (not even counting the huge number of deaths they suffered, not just from the battle but from the march to the city). If it wasn't for the distance and power levels involved, the hobgoblins would have been uprooted again, and slowly whittled away just like Right-Eye's tribe.

Yes, except for two things.

1. The Bearer isn't seeking to use the gates to destroy the world. The plan is to use the Snarl as a bargaining chip. The destruction of the world is only if things go wrong or if literally every other method fails (translation, if the gods are more willing to destroy the world than to accept the Dark One's demands). Once again, the Bearer isn't meant to be an omnicidal maniac by the Dark One's plan and shouldn't be described as such.

2. Redcloak did his best to convince Xykon to attack the gate over Azure City specifically because the Sapphire Guard is there. That was definitely on purpose. And the reason why Redcloak would steer Xykon towards destroying the Sapphire Guard is because they killed his people and loved ones.

I believe there's a post from The Giant somewhere that nobody knows whether the goblins started the cycle by attempting to harness the Snarl, or if the humans started the cycle by killing goblins. But that means that the argument 'What the paladins did was wrong but they did it to protect the world' has the issue that for all we know the only reason the world is in danger is because in the far past the humans/paladins decided to oppress the goblins to the point that the goblins were willing to rely on a cosmic horror to get out of their disadvantageous situation.

No, I didn't say Redcloak should have sat on his hands. And no, I didn't say Redcloak was the agent of the Twelve gods. He was the agent of divine intervention for the unincorporated goblins. The paladins weren't (immediately, sufficiently) punished by their gods, so Redcloak administered the punishment... and it took him decades to do so. That said, he wasn't any more choosy about his targets than the raid party was; he didn't vet his victims.
As Bravelove pointed out from "On the Origin of PCs", there are plenty of paladins who don't get smacked down by their own gods, even with ample justification. Not every jerk gets their comeuppance.
Is it wrong to kill a child? Well, that depends. An adolescent dragon is a child, but is freely perceived as a monster. Tiamat doesn't object that parties of adventurers charge in and kill baby dragons, despite the fact they are obviously sentient and sapient. Conversely, a dwarf child isn't considered fair game, because Freya would have argued in their defense. The goblins have no such divine champion arguing in their favor. By the letter of the gods' law, there's no decision protecting their children. Was it a tragedy? In this case, yes. Can that ruling be changed? Yes. Can it be changed retroactively? Of course not, that violates causality.

V wasn't struck by lightning for killing a child dragon. Yet there were consequences to the actions--the breaking of her own children's legs and the threat of their death and damnation in a soul prison. V resorted to vengeance, went for the overkill, and caused even MORE damage to her family and to the world with "Familicide". Tiamat didn't smite V, though, because Tiamat doesn't care if a few dragon children die.
The paladin raiders were similarly not zapped by their gods for killing a child, but their actions directly caused the downfall of Azure City. I'm not commenting on the retribution, I'm commenting on the overkill. "Wrong Eye"'s overkill has put the hobgoblins (and now the bugbears) in front of him like a meat shield,

Spoiler: Start of Darkness

Show

just as it did his brother's family, and just as he and his family were a meat shield for the previous Redcloak.

Like I said, he wasn't choosy about his targets; he basically cast "familicide" on the Sapphire Guard, and that has weakened the diplomatic position of the goblinoids in the eyes of the world. While Redcloak remains associated with them, the weight of his overkill will hold them down like a stone around their necks.

If the paladins weren't punished by their own gods that means that their gods don't feel like what the paladins did was awful enough to deserve punishment, and that the system doesn't require them to take action either. Which means that Redcloak is justified in considering the system broken and rebelling against it, because what the paladins did was pretty terrible.

And no Redcloak shouldn't have taken it out on the entirety of Azure City but that only puts him on par with the paladins rather than being worse than them, given that they have zero compunctions about taking their fued with the Bearer out against the entirety of the goblinoid... genus? Family? Whatever.

Also I'm pretty sure I read a post of The Giant at some point about how he's bothered that there's a statblock for child dragons because it implies that it's within the realm of realistic possibility that adventurers are going to be fighting child dragons. What we have to remember is that the story is written by a man who 1) believes that goblinoids are regularly treated as nothing more than XP fodder despite being sentient beings, 2) believes that adventurers are expected to fight children, even though they're dragons, and 3) considers both 1 and 2 to be bad, which by extension means that within the story written by that man those things will be considered and depicted as wrong.

The fact that there's no officially instated deity protecting the goblinoids (the Dark One being considered a rogue deity) doesn't mean it's okay to kill children. It just means that the system is borked.

As for the example that Tiamat didn't immediately punish V for attacking a child dragon, the more reasonable explanation for me is that the reason that Tiamat didn't punish V is because the gods have rules about not doing that. Not "You need approval from the other pantheons before you can do it", but instead "gods don't go around attacking mortals".

The situation with the paladins is different both because the Sapphire Guards are not only in the territory of the Twelve Gods, but are direct servants of the Twelve Gods, and punishing them isn't just whacking a mortal, it's telling your employee that they messed up bad. Also removing their power isn't an attack, it's removing the powers you are granting them.

Stripping a paladin of their powers is like cutting funds from a company you've been investing in because you don't approve of the new direction they're taking.

Smiting a wizard because they killed one of your mortal spawn is like burning down a company because they've been outcompeting one of your own businesses.

And you're correct that there's more than a couple of examples of paladins not getting their comeuppance but that's also most likely an indication of the system being borked and Redcloak's cause of rebelling against the system being just even if he's going about it the wrong way.

[hamishspence]

I believe there's a post from The Giant somewhere that nobody knows whether the goblins started the cycle by attempting to harness the Snarl, or if the humans started the cycle by killing goblins.

It was War & XPs commentary

Spoiler: War & XPs

Show

The immediate hatred displayed by Redcloak and Miko toward each other is part of the idea that the two groups- goblins and humans, particularly Southern humans- have been battling back and forth for centuries. At this point, it has become impossible to tell who started the hostilities; each side remembers nothing so much as their last defeat by the other.

And so the cycle of violence continues, generation after generation. Did the humans start it by crusading against the goblins, or did the goblins start it by trying to harness the rifts? Or did the humans start it by putting the goblins in a position where they felt they had no recourse but to harness the rifts? Who can say? Well, I suppose I could, but I find it much more interesting to keep it ambiguous.

[Peelee]

Those are intra-pantheon debates, which carry no risk of creating a new Snarl.

[citation needed]

[Jacky720]

V resorted to vengeance, went for the overkill, and caused even MORE damage to her family and to the world with "Familicide". Tiamat didn't smite V, though, because Tiamat doesn't care if a few dragon children die.
The paladin raiders were similarly not zapped by their gods for killing a child, but their actions directly caused the downfall of Azure City.

Tiamat didn't smite V because that would be against the rules. Making your own paladins Fall is not.

[C-Dude]

Tiamat didn't smite V because that would be against the rules. Making your own paladins Fall is not.

With no one advocating "these are okay to kill, these are not", the twelve don't have any context to warrant looking into a Fall.

Until a universal rule adjustment is made that "killing neutrals" or "killing entities under age category X" is made, there is no reason for that pantheon to investigate the matter any further. The entities slain were in the gods' list of acceptable targets.

Redcloak is seeking to amend that list, but even if he does, that amendment doesn't apply retroactively. Redcloak also hurts his position by lowering himself to the tactics of those who wronged him. Jirix would be a more effective choice for these negotiations, but he's not available.

First, you keep using words like "stupid" (previous post) or "jerks" -- which seems a strange choice, since it implies their actions were made out of stupidity or ignorance in the act of the greater good. Words like "evil" or "malicious", I feel, would fit better.

"Lawful Stupid" is a d&d trope, it refers to the kind of player who plays Lawful Good like nothing has any depth, and any creature flagged "evil" in the monster manual is fair game to smite, even if it makes no sense to do so. A team with a Lawful Stupid player might wander into a lizardfolk village to trade, only to end up running for their lives because the Lawful Stupid saw 'monsters' and started attacking.

I use the term "jerk" because this message board doesn't allow any stronger language than that. Someone can be callous, violent, and impulsive without being "evil" because "good" and "evil" are relativistic terms: they depend on the perspective of the observer. For Wrong Eye in the events where he was the victim, he was good and the attackers were evil. From their perspective, they were good and he was evil. Neither perspective is correct, which is why both terms need to be assessed and discarded. Not everybody can carry traditional halfling lead sheets, and they shouldn't have to.

I'm not even sure what my original point had been, but there is a clear racial stigma driving the paladins as well. The "liver cancer cell" would've never flown with a human settlement. If the paladins had bothered to do more research, then these goblins could be still living.

You were saying that looking at Redcloak as something other than a victim was unfair, because he was victimized in his past by the attacks of the Sapphire Guard. While I agree that what happened to him was terrible, his inability to build on what transpired and become a better person for it scrubs him of warranting further sympathy. He is petty and childish to the detriment of his goals and his people.

[Jasdoif]

Those are intra-pantheon debates, which carry no risk of creating a new Snarl.

[citation needed]

Seeing as preventing "Snarl Jr" is explictly why gods of different pantheons don't meet in person, a new Snarl caused by "the slightest disagreement" between two gods of different pantheons would result in a "two-color Snarl", a single color creation could be trivially dismissed by a god, and a disagreement well above "slight" between gods of the same pantheon did not result in a new Snarl....The onus would be on you to cite/explain/theorize why that wouldn't apply.

[hamishspence]

"Lawful Stupid" is a d&d trope, it refers to the kind of player who plays Lawful Good like nothing has any depth, and any creature flagged "evil" in the monster manual is fair game to smite, even if it makes no sense to do so. A team with a Lawful Stupid player might wander into a lizardfolk village to trade, only to end up running for their lives because the Lawful Stupid saw 'monsters' and started attacking.

That's one facet to it, but it's not the only one:

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.p...n/lawfulstupid

[understatement]

"Lawful Stupid" is a d&d trope, it refers to the kind of player who plays Lawful Good like nothing has any depth, and any creature flagged "evil" in the monster manual is fair game to smite, even if it makes no sense to do so. A team with a Lawful Stupid player might wander into a lizardfolk village to trade, only to end up running for their lives because the Lawful Stupid saw 'monsters' and started attacking.

I use the term "jerk" because this message board doesn't allow any stronger language than that. Someone can be callous, violent, and impulsive without being "evil" because "good" and "evil" are relativistic terms: they depend on the perspective of the observer. For Wrong Eye in the events where he was the victim, he was good and the attackers were evil. From their perspective, they were good and he was evil. Neither perspective is correct, which is why both terms need to be assessed and discarded. Not everybody can carry traditional halfling lead sheets, and they shouldn't have to.

I think the reader's POV matters more than what the paladins and goblins thought. And in the specific case of the village scene, the paladins are commiting evil acts -- maybe they're not "Evil" in the sense of alignment and cosmic scale, but they are definitely evil in how we'd apply it to the real world. And it's clear that in this specific case the gods' sense of morality doesn't match the reader's sense, which led to the loss of an innocent village.

(here I mean the reader as in me, since I can only speak for myself here, but I think I can safely say I'm not unique on this viewpoint)

You were saying that looking at Redcloak as something other than a victim was unfair, because he was victimized in his past by the attacks of the Sapphire Guard. While I agree that what happened to him was terrible, his inability to build on what transpired and become a better person for it scrubs him of warranting further sympathy. He is petty and childish to the detriment of his goals and his people.

Interesting, because here's my original statement:

• Redcloak is cheesed off at the lands and resources and whatnot, but it's the racial part that's driving his point here.
  Referencing other previous posts brought up, calling Redcloak's point a "self-victimization" plot seems a bit unfair -- he has a very legitimate precedent for it, and it's something that hasn't been addressed in the comic proper either. Shojo doesn't brinng it up, many paladins of the Guard kept their status, etc.
  
  (the usual addenum here that it doesn't justify Redcloak's actions, doesn't make him right, etc. etc)

This is what the Internet tells me "self-victimization" is: "the fabrication or exaggeration of victimhood for a variety of reasons such as to justify abuse of others, to manipulate others, a coping strategy, or attention seeking." I said I disagreed with that description, because it suggests Redcloak suffered something relatively minor and blew it out of proportion. And my addendum that I wrote for multiple posts states Redcloak isn't justified in his actions.

tldr; Redcloak has a valid cause for his argument, regardless of his own personal flaws. The solution is not to dismiss it as "Self victimization," because that doesn't address the root of the problem at all.

[C-Dude]

This is what the Internet tells me "self-victimization" is: "the fabrication or exaggeration of victimhood for a variety of reasons such as to justify abuse of others, to manipulate others, a coping strategy, or attention seeking." I said I disagreed with that description, because it suggests Redcloak suffered something relatively minor and blew it out of proportion. And my addendum that I wrote for multiple posts states Redcloak isn't justified in his actions.

tldr; Redcloak has a valid cause for his argument, regardless of his own personal flaws. The solution is not to dismiss it as "Self victimization," because that doesn't address the root of the problem at all.

Ah, then I misunderstood you and we're now on the same page. I thought you were saying that subsequent tragedies Redcloak encountered were not self-inflicted, whereas my perception of him 'crawling into bed' with Xykon was a self-inflicted source of misery. You were instead saying that the core of Redcloak's grievance is legitimate, even if his later efforts backfired because of his personal flaws. I can agree with that.

[Fyraltari]

Redcloak [...] 'crawling into bed' with Xykon

I want these images out of my skull.

[C-Dude]

I want these images out of my skull.

"Lie down with liches, wake up with demon roaches."

[understatement]

Ah, then I misunderstood you and we're now on the same page. I thought you were saying that subsequent tragedies Redcloak encountered were not self-inflicted, whereas my perception of him 'crawling into bed' with Xykon was a self-inflicted source of misery. You were instead saying that the core of Redcloak's grievance is legitimate, even if his later efforts backfired because of his personal flaws. I can agree with that.

Gotcha, then. He's certainly a character that provokes a lot of different interpretations.

I want these images out of my skull.

I do have to agree with this.

[B. Dandelion]

Seeing as preventing "Snarl Jr" is explictly why gods of different pantheons don't meet in person, a new Snarl caused by "the slightest disagreement" between two gods of different pantheons would result in a "two-color Snarl", a single color creation could be trivially dismissed by a god, and a disagreement well above "slight" between gods of the same pantheon did not result in a new Snarl....The onus would be on you to cite/explain/theorize why that wouldn't apply.

You pretty much covered everything I would have, plus a Word of Giant quote I'd completely forgotten about. Thanks.

The whole idea that is being pushed by C-dude about how goblins work is just fascinatingly weird to me. The goblins aren't covered by any of the three original pantheons, but it doesn't logically follow that someone who is covered by one of the three pantheons is thus under some new special set of circumstances when they come into contact with a goblin. Why wouldn't they just be judged by their ordinary pantheon given that we've been told that's the whole point of how divine casters work?

Nothing has ever indicated that gods of pantheon A get a say in whether paladins of pantheon B Fall. It's not hard to imagine circumstances where they might want to see a paladin of another pantheon Fall for their treatment of a person falling under their own jurisdiction, but while I do find that a kind of interesting scenario to wonder about, it's basically a digression from the much more extreme position that C-dude takes by saying Marduk could demand the Twelve not punish their own paladins for committing atrocities against a goblin. Marduk has no jurisdiction over the goblins or over the paladins of the Sapphire Guard, so why in the world would he ever get a say in whether a Sapphire Guard paladin Fell for killing a goblin? It's apparently conflating goblins being "under no one's jurisdiction" with "potentially under everyone's jurisdiction, and also that status extends outwards to anyone who interacts with a goblin".

The point is, the Twelve were not powerless to stop the Sapphire Guard. They didn't stop them, not because goblins have some weird status that makes everything a thousand times more complicated and scares away the gods from acting, but simply because they didn't want to. The War and XPs commentary says the paladins acted "at the behest of their gods" in committing massacres, which puts the gods firmly at the helm of the operation, not skittishly off to the side.

[The MunchKING]

Is Redcloak asking for things the gods are capable of giving the goblins?

Thor can’t even get *his own clerics* to stop attacking a *trees*.

How’s he going to make people who don’t listen to him at all stop attacking goblins?

Do Dwarves still get bonuses for attacking Goblins in 4+Ed?

For instance, in this comic Tiger is furious that Thor might have granted a northern cleric one additional spell while in southern lands, literally defending their capital city.
https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0987.html

I didn't think that was supposed to be an extra spell so much as enhanced move speed. Do Clerics even GET Expeditious Retreat?

You've missed my point. It wasn't that it was "A paladin killing her leader". It was "A southern gods paladin committing an atrocity against a southern gods creation".

You know an interesting thing? IIRC the RAW doesn't say Paladins get their powers from Gods. They are just powered by primal Law and Good, or possibly their conviction to them. Which means unlike Clerics or Favored Souls, they don't HAVE to remain in any particular God's good graces in order to retain their powers.

[C-Dude]

Nothing has ever indicated that gods of pantheon A get a say in whether paladins of pantheon B Fall. It's not hard to imagine circumstances where they might want to see a paladin of another pantheon Fall for their treatment of a person falling under their own jurisdiction, but while I do find that a kind of interesting scenario to wonder about, it's basically a digression from the much more extreme position that C-dude takes by saying Marduk could demand the Twelve not punish their own paladins for committing atrocities against a goblin.

Okay, it was a bad example that I refined in further posts. Let me turn around the original example so it makes sense.

Switch the roles of Ox and Marduk. Marduk says that Ox's followers deserve to fall for their actions against his creations, whom Ox previously viewed as monsters. Ox is now obliged to address the actions of the paladins or put it on the agenda of the next vote... does Marduk's claim that these are not monsters hold up to the general consensus of the gods?

Except in the case of the goblins, there's no god on their side saying "Hey, this needs to be addressed". The Dark One is the only god in their pantheon and he doesn't know what he's doing (to be fair, he didn't have other gods to guide him like everybody else does; this is world one for him). With nobody to stand up for them, the status quo of 'these are monsters' is not challenged... unless another god happens to review the case and say "Hey, why'd they kill the children?". That could take months or years, and with no one talking on the goblins' behalf could easily end with "because they're monsters".

The length the world has been running also factors in to this. Some of their worlds only last a few months or a few years, which raises fascinating complications like the fact that that's not long enough for an elf to advance to the adult age category. Were they popped into existence fully grown? Or were elves in earlier worlds perpetual children, unable to fend for themselves and plopped into the forests? What injustices did other humanoids suffer from previous oversights in the gods' rules?

You know an interesting thing? IIRC the RAW doesn't say Paladins get their powers from Gods. They are just powered by primal Law and Good, or possibly their conviction to them. Which means unlike Clerics or Favored Souls, they don't HAVE to remain in any particular God's good graces in order to retain their powers.

I think Rich's setting is overriding this, because Miko's fall is directly depicted as her gods punishing her. Being the only fall in OotS we were able to witness, there's a lot of missing data.

[Peelee]

Seeing as preventing "Snarl Jr" is explictly why gods of different pantheons don't meet in person, a new Snarl caused by "the slightest disagreement" between two gods of different pantheons would result in a "two-color Snarl", a single color creation could be trivially dismissed by a god, and a disagreement well above "slight" between gods of the same pantheon did not result in a new Snarl....The onus would be on you to cite/explain/theorize why that wouldn't apply.

Not if I accept those citations.