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The Lone Badger posted:One advantage of Ashe's need for self-justification is that once he decides to betray you he'll need to spend time coming up with a suitable excuse, giving you a chance to notice and form a counterplan. Whereas Nerat probably doesn't even know himself until ten seconds before he does it, making him harder to predict. Nerat knows exactly when he's going to kill the Fatebinder, and it's three seconds after he's confirmed that he can get away with it. He is always plotting against us, and is never to be trusted under any circumstance. Nothing he says can be taken at face value, and his motives should be questioned at every turn, but as long as you make sure he knows that he can't harm you without consequences, he'll bide his time. Ironically, this makes Nerat rather predictable. On the other hand, there's never any telling what perceived slight or imagined moral failing will cause Ashe to turn on you and decide it's time to declare you a rabid dog in need of putting down or some other high-handed nonsense, and once he's made up his mind, there's no reasoning with him, consequences be damned. This, in turn, makes him much more unpredictable. I have to imagine that's intentional on the part of the writers.
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Sep 21, 2020 04:50
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chiasaur11 posted:Yes, but that doesn't make it wrong. Right now we're caught between two armies that are, at best, neutral on the subject of our continued survival, with Graven Ashe's racist bullshit acting as an active impediment to our goals and Nerat compensating for a lack of racism by doubling down on every other kind of bullshit asshattery. On top of that, the boss is maybe trying to get us killed. There is no honor within someone who took up arms against you after previously choosing surrender, if you try to be merciful after they rejected mercy you aren't making friends you are showing everyone how weak you are. Letting the Guard live is the worst of all outcomes because it makes Kyros look like he has no authority and you have two armies looking for a reason to dispose of you that now have a reason.
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Sep 21, 2020 05:46
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logger posted:There is no honor within someone who took up arms against you after previously choosing surrender, if you try to be merciful after they rejected mercy you aren't making friends you are showing everyone how weak you are. Letting the Guard live is the worst of all outcomes because it makes Kyros look like he has no authority and you have two armies looking for a reason to dispose of you that now have a reason. Expecting anyone to uphold an oath sworn at swordpoint makes you the idiot and accepting mercy from a tyrant is simply choosing to die slower. Let them go One of my favourite things so far is these gangs of psychopaths and racists burned their way across the continent slaughtering thousands, forced these people under heel to an armed peace and now go around calling them oath breakers like that's a bad thing for them to be some plague rats fucked around with this message at 06:18 on Sep 21, 2020 |
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Sep 21, 2020 06:15
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Let them go.
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Sep 21, 2020 06:23
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logger posted:There is no honor within someone who took up arms against you after previously choosing surrender, if you try to be merciful after they rejected mercy you aren't making friends you are showing everyone how weak you are. Letting the Guard live is the worst of all outcomes because it makes Kyros look like he has no authority and you have two armies looking for a reason to dispose of you that now have a reason. Under normal circumstances, where you're in the command chain of one of those two armies, that would be a great argument. However given that both armies are already looking to dispose of you, endangering yourself on their behalf for no gain is pointless. Also, the rebels are the most sympathetic group so far. Note that the edict just requires us to capture their HQ, it says nothing about actually beating the rebels, and there's virtually no chance that capturing the hall will stop the rebellion since these people have deep and very valid grudges against Kyros. Also, regarding Kyros' authority, he's the ruler of the world and is about to flood the valley with fire. Everyone knows exactly how strong he is and neither he nor the player have anything to prove to anyone.
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Sep 21, 2020 06:52
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Crane Fist posted:Expecting anyone to uphold an oath sworn at swordpoint makes you the idiot and accepting mercy from a tyrant is simply choosing to die slower. Let them go If you were the one who's life was on the line from your decision here you would look at the matter differently. The character you are playing as in this game is not a good person, you are given an ultimatum that you will die if you do not solve this problem and this is not a threat to take lightly. The most mercy you can give is to the villagers, if you let the Guard go they will fortify the place you are supposed to conquer because you already have a precedence of letting them live after defeating them once. Your allies are bloodthirsty backstabbers and incompetent racists that constantly get in each others way that will turn on you if they believe they have an excuse to off you, you can not afford to make the situation worse for yourself or else you lose the protection Tunon affords you.
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Sep 21, 2020 07:00
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Crane Fist posted:Expecting anyone to uphold an oath sworn at swordpoint makes you the idiot and accepting mercy from a tyrant is simply choosing to die slower. Let them go look, Graven Ashe was willing to forsake everything he ever believed before to save his men's lives. and look at him now! don't you want to be like Graven Ashe, someone whose only reason to continue to live is to kill in the name of the person who destroyed everything he cared about before? what kind of stupid rear end in a top hat would think there's a reason to exist other than "kill those who are less good at killing than you"
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Sep 21, 2020 07:00
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The title of the game is Tyranny, not Mercy, hth.
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Sep 21, 2020 07:10
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That's why we should tyrannically impose our will and spare their lives despite the fact that doing so will piss off literally everyone around us.
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Sep 21, 2020 07:13
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EclecticTastes posted:Nerat knows exactly when he's going to kill the Fatebinder, and it's three seconds after he's confirmed that he can get away with it. He is always plotting against us, and is never to be trusted under any circumstance. Nothing he says can be taken at face value, and his motives should be questioned at every turn, but as long as you make sure he knows that he can't harm you without consequences, he'll bide his time. Ironically, this makes Nerat rather predictable. On the other hand, there's never any telling what perceived slight or imagined moral failing will cause Ashe to turn on you and decide it's time to declare you a rabid dog in need of putting down or some other high-handed nonsense, and once he's made up his mind, there's no reasoning with him, consequences be damned. This, in turn, makes him much more unpredictable. I have to imagine that's intentional on the part of the writers. Ashe already threw his entire concept of honor and moral system away once to keep his men alive. I think he's quite concerned with consequences, he just feels the need for an ex post facto justification.
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Sep 21, 2020 07:18
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logger posted:If you were the one who's life was on the line from your decision here you would look at the matter differently. Okay then let's look at this pragmatically: if we let her leave, she will continue to cause trouble and present a distraction to the two dumbfucks who are currently doing their level best to get us killed, leaving them less time and room to scheme against us
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Sep 21, 2020 07:34
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Kill the guard, let the villagers live. Leaving enemies that can and will reinforce a fortress you absolutely need to take is just bad, well, everything. If you don't kill them here you're just delaying their inevitable execution anyway.
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Sep 21, 2020 07:36
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Let
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Sep 21, 2020 07:50
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chiasaur11 posted:I think some of it can be chalked up to bad writing in other games, movies, and the like where that's true, of course. The villain plotting to be put in prison then executing a ten million step gambit was an outright cliche in the 2000s, with films like the Saw franchise relying on outright omniscience to explain how their plots succeeded. But another factor might be intellectual laziness. It's easier to go "Oh, this guy's a genius" and move on than go "Oh, okay, this guy's pretty clever, but he hosed up here, and had to scramble to fix it, and then here, it was just a lucky break, but he capitalized on it pretty well..." On some level I believe it to be a manifestation of the Just World fallacy and/or the Great Person theory of history. After all, this person is in charge of planning poo poo, and the plan worked (for some variable value of worked), therefore they must be master planners and it is by dint of this that they were put in charge of planning poo poo. Any evidence to the contrary MUST be dismissed or folded into a deeper, N-dimensional chess gambit. Kinda like how Bill Gates/Elon Musk/Jeff Bezos/Donald loving Trump *must* perforce be singular geniuses of Moneymancy, sociology, predicting world trends etc... since they demonstrably have more money that can even be conceived by the average human. This despite their regularly and plainly demonstrating what giant blind idiots they are. Or, you know, any conspiracy theory ever.
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Sep 21, 2020 12:13
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I think I read an odd little book from the 70s like that. It was completely dedicated to explaining how Hitler had paranormal abilities and could foresee the future. Every single success or gambit that paid off could only possibly be explained by those abilities and every failure was because of misinterpreting the visions. It was kinda fascinating in how utterly bizarre it was. I believe it was called Occult Reich.
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Sep 21, 2020 12:29
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Let everyone go, things are going to go pear shaped no matter what we do so let´s keep our options open for as long as possible.
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Sep 21, 2020 12:34
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As a loyal servant of Kyros, we should keep in mind their strategic goal for this campaign, which is very obviously the opportunity to get rid of two troublesome Archons moreso than the rebels. As such, our best* option is to let everyone go to strengthen the forces at Ascension Hall and cause the maximum number of casualties in the assault. *The best option would actually be to do nothing for the next week so everyone in the valley dies in a demonstration of incompetence that neatly justifies their deaths, but that would make for a rather short LP
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Sep 21, 2020 12:41
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EclecticTastes posted:Also, nobody has brought up how the dude whose penchant for subterfuge is literally supernatural was given command of the least subtle people on the continent. Almost as though someone was deliberately preventing Nerat from placing spies in any remotely organized or respectable institution by making his only underlings a bunch of murderous psychopaths and terrified peasants, and Nerat's such a sadistic egomaniac that he's having too much fun to notice. I may have missed something, but I'm pretty sure Voices wasn't given anything and created the Chorus themselves ? The rules (and behaviour, and composition) of his Happy Happy Murder Brigade are exactly what... they (?) want them to be, Kyros isn't responsible for any of that. Then again, while I admittedly haven't played super far into the game (I keep wanting to, but being interrupted by some other game) and don't know for sure, I doubt Voices is actually very smart... or sane. From what we've seen so far, they don't seem all that much in control of their umpteen Voices, rather they seem to come and go and take control randomly. IMO they're unpredictable and capricious because they're not "one terrifyingly strong mind controlling a million slave minds" but rather "a million slave minds constantly duking it out for who's got the pilot seat with nobody in charge at all", and the temporarily controlling Voice has its own plans and goals, separate and different from any gestalt volition. Plans that may or may not be ignored or subverted by the next Voice, or revived when a deposed Voice climbs back on top. The Scarlet Chorus' ever-fluctuating structure and lack of forward planning very much mirrors this : they're all constantly improvising in the moment, and constantly paranoid that one of their underlings could happen to seize said moment for themselves.
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Sep 21, 2020 13:16
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rastilin posted:Also, regarding Kyros' authority, he's the ruler of the world and is about to flood the valley with fire. Everyone knows exactly how strong he is and neither he nor the player have anything to prove to anyone. Her*
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Sep 21, 2020 14:06
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Can't believe Kyros hasn't invented the singular they yet.
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Sep 21, 2020 14:22
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Deadmeat5150 posted:Her* Kyros' gender is never stated. Nor indeed any identifying information. Speculating on it is a topic of some debate among subjects who do not fear death.
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Sep 21, 2020 15:04
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Tenebrais posted:Kyros' gender is never stated. Nor indeed any identifying information. And everybody who could actually confirm it thinks it's a stupid thing to care about.
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Sep 21, 2020 15:36
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Open your eyes, Kyros isn’t even real!! Kill the guards for putting up a fight, using your iron, and being ugly.
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Sep 21, 2020 15:37
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Maybe the real Kyros was inside us all along.
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Sep 21, 2020 15:41
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Kill the guards, let the villagers live. Someone has to clean the bodies up afterwards and the Chorus isn't yet to the point where they'll eat them, bones and all.
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Sep 21, 2020 15:48
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The real Kyros was the friends we made along the way.
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Sep 21, 2020 15:48
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I love how much discussion this thread generates.
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Sep 21, 2020 16:22
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Tenebrais posted:Kyros' gender is never stated. It's not just unstated, it's deliberately obfuscated. The only thing anyone or anything that might reliably know (including the Archons and the Laws) have to say on the subject of his gender is "Kyros is both Mother and Father." And it's traditional to refer to her using alternating pronouns.
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Sep 21, 2020 17:01
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Tenebrais posted:Kyros' gender is never stated. Nor indeed any identifying information. There's a great argument between your companions about it, though. I don't remember how to trigger it.
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Sep 21, 2020 17:15
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Kyros is bigender.
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Sep 21, 2020 17:51
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Kill the guards, let Villagers live. The VG wouldn't spare the fatebinder if the situations were reversed.
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Sep 21, 2020 17:59
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Kill the guards, let the rest go. The guards have already surrendered and started fighting again once, letting them go again is simply foolish.
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Sep 21, 2020 18:11
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Stroth posted:It's not just unstated, it's deliberately obfuscated. As far as I'm aware, the only person who uses alternating pronouns is Sirin, who is doing it deliberately to troll the Fatebinder since she's one of the few people to know the answer. Most people pick whichever pronoun they think it is and stick with it.
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Sep 21, 2020 18:40
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Eh, let them all go. I say.
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Sep 21, 2020 20:00
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Funny thing about archons; Ashe is comparatively young as archons go and has started to become a bit glowy. The Voices of Nerat is much older and is basically animated flame. Tunon is second in age to Kyros and basically consists of smoke. To say that Kyros has a gender is to assume facts not in evidence.
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Sep 21, 2020 20:41
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Complications posted:Funny thing about archons; Ashe is comparatively young as archons go and has started to become a bit glowy. The Voices of Nerat is much older and is basically animated flame. Tunon is second in age to Kyros and basically consists of smoke. To say that Kyros has a gender is to assume facts not in evidence. objection: the law is quite clear all things, up to and including your life, are possessed by Kyros. helping someone else commit suicide is a conspiracy to destroy government property and is punishable by fine. as such, Kyros by necessity has all of the genders, and may distribute them as is judged necessary. may you never witness the terrible, sky-darkening power of an Edict of Revelation.
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Sep 21, 2020 21:04
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Sum Gai posted:And everybody who could actually confirm it thinks it's a stupid thing to care about. Out of context, this is a slightly creepy passage, but it came to mind. From Glen Cook's The Black Company, describing one of the Taken: "Small, soft curves interrupt the flatness of Soulcatcher's chest. There is a feminine flair to his hips and legs. Three of the Taken are female, but which are which only the Lady knows. We call them all he. Their sex won't ever mean a thing to us." Those familiar with the whole series will read that passage a bit differently, but it seems equally applicable here. Perhaps additionally, if it ever did matter it would be catastrophic for you.
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Sep 21, 2020 21:23
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Complications posted:Funny thing about archons; Ashe is comparatively young as archons go and has started to become a bit glowy. The Voices of Nerat is much older and is basically animated flame. Tunon is second in age to Kyros and basically consists of smoke. To say that Kyros has a gender is to assume facts not in evidence. Both Nerat and Tunon retain their gender identities from when they had physical forms (Nerat also retains several other people's gender identities, when their minds surface), so while one can't discount Kyros being potentially genderfluid, lacking a physical form would not preclude Kyros from having a gender identity.
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Sep 21, 2020 21:27
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EclecticTastes posted:Both Nerat and Tunon retain their gender identities from when they had physical forms (Nerat also retains several other people's gender identities, when their minds surface), so while one can't discount Kyros being potentially genderfluid, lacking a physical form would not preclude Kyros from having a gender identity. I don't think that's what they meant. Kyros' dictates suggest that they're aware of how the Archons work, and that one of the main themes of this setting is how a person can become a symbol and turn their reputation into fact. Likely as not, Kyros in person deliberately has a fluid gender, or perhaps appears differently to different people. Put another way, Kyros might be the dream of good (or at least tyrannical) government.
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Sep 21, 2020 21:48
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We will get more into Kyros' odd gender as the LP goes on, but I'm enjoying the discussion! The Archons tie into the theme of power and belief. We will get there. There's a lot of meat in this game.
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Sep 21, 2020 21:49
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