Imrix
Periodically Malevolent QM
It's a coherent position, yes, but it's not a universally agreeable axiom. Hence "morality is more complicated than," rather than, "the conclusion of morality is not."
General Exalted Thread
I was also not, to be clear, arguing that you'd need to fix all soulsteel. Just...it's hard to play a paladin with an actively suffering sword you could fix, you know? That's more my position. "Evil" was too hyperbolic, but it would be unconvincing, at the tables I play at, to be an Abyssal Paladin using soulsteel if you can free the souls by dissolving the material or something.
Like Shields said. An asshole tax.
All souls are innocent. Every single one. Locking someone into soulsteel is killing everyone they will ever be. Countless murders, countless losses to the world, because one iteration of a soul did evil. Like, what you are describing is like, the worst sort of crime against humanity possible, given Creation's rules and afterlife. Not that 'torturing someone forever' isn't always a crime against humanity, no matter who they are or what they did. But stealing countless people from the world to spite one iteration of a soul is that extra whip cream and cherry on top that makes it particularly horrifying.
Needless to say, I don't believe most people in Creation would do such a thing, unless personally, horrifically wronged. It takes something more to torture someone forever.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Damnit guys, can we not do this? It's not going to end well.
I like this. It makes sense, it's thematically appropriate and it means this damn morality discussion can stop.
I, on the hand, would believe it all too easily. People simply don't think about the consequences of their actions on a regular basis. Even when they're in front of their eyes, screaming for help.
People follow orders. Even when there isn't supernatural power and charisma backing them.
People follow orders. Even when there isn't supernatural power and charisma backing them.
I think a soldier ordered by their Abyssal master would do it
I don't think, apropos of nothing, agree that a rapist should be smelted into soulsteel unless they were prompted by their society to believe such a thing is just. Most of Creation lacks that prompting, and believes in the sanctity of reincarnation, if they are Immaculate, or just reincarnation if not. It's like...
If you went around asking people in America if someone should be forcibly stolen from God's Light so that there's never any chance they could come to love Him. Some people might say yes, some of them might think Hell, as dictated by God, is just and right, but wouldn't be on board with a dark ritual that sends someone right to Satan so that there's no chance of repentance.
Yes - but I do not believe it would be all that difficult to invent a society that believes such a thing is just.
Witness the existence of Christianity, where a significant number of people in history have thought that "no, burning people in Hell for eternity is not in fact sufficient reason to reconsider calling our god 'omnibenevolent.'"
And that's without the whole "you literally get impossibly good magic steel out of it" business. That's without inherent material incentives.
Witness the existence of Christianity, where a significant number of people in history have thought that "no, burning people in Hell for eternity is not in fact sufficient reason to reconsider calling our god 'omnibenevolent.'"
And that's without the whole "you literally get impossibly good magic steel out of it" business. That's without inherent material incentives.
Sure, but as written there aren't, so I don't buy that it's a normal, excusable position in Creation, rather than a blasphemy?
Yeah, but like... if you're an Abyssal (or anyone else who Matters, aka "not a mortal") trying to get soulsteel for your Artifacts, it's really, really not hard to pick up the few social Charms you need to make everyone involved in the process OK with it. It's not even an overpowered abuse of those Charms, because again, reality has demonstrated quite thoroughly that such beliefs can spread with impressive speed even without supernatural charisma backing them.
-- Like, I'm not sure what we're arguing about anymore? I don't believe that making soulsteel is ethically defensible unless you have some weird alternate way of getting the souls (I don't particularly mind torturing non-sapient spiders or whatever for eternity, for example), but I don't think the people of Creation would share my opinion or defend it with any real force.
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Imrix
Periodically Malevolent QM
Ehhh... Strictly speaking, souls are neither innocent nor guilty because souls aren't people, in Exalted metaphysics. Souls are more akin to one of the raw materials that goes into making a person. They're a spiritual fetus or zygote. By themselves they have no personhood, and so have no moral weight.
I mean yeah, strictly speaking I suppose you can interpret some moral weight in all the potential people a soul might become, as it goes through the wheel of reincarnation, but... if you take that soul out of circulation, those people will still happen. They'll just have a different spiritual AAA battery plugged into them instead, to no practical difference.
It's kind of an academic point, mind you, since in practice you're basically going to encounter human souls either as humans (and therefore people), or as ghosts (and therefore at minimum a facsimile of people), either of which has at least a claim to personhood. (Innocence is a rather higher bar.)
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That's true, pretty much, on the high levels of the settings metaphysics. I'd definitely expect someone like Chejop to consider it like this, though I do suspect he's looking forward to becoming a mortal with less responsibility on the next go around. I do think the souls are meaningfully distinct. Me and you aren't the same people, afterall, considering we came from different eggs and zygotes. Swap us as babies, and we wouldn't be mirrors of each other, you know? But that's not the same as souls being people, it's true.
But for this debate, I'm talking more like, as someone in the setting, I guess? I do think the weight of the people a soul becomes should be considered, when deciding whether or not to like, throw a criminal in Oblivion. A pointless waste, you know, when you could get a new, and better person? But for an Immaculate, not even a monk, just, someone faithful, I think they'd see destroying a soul like that as a far worse crime than any temporal sin, you know? It's murders without count, a crime that can never be redressed. What price can you put on a soul, after all?
EDIT: I think I'm a bit more invested in this than I realized. Reincarnation is an idea I really wish I could believe in, as are souls, so I think I may have been too intense about it.
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I...would still call that a pretty big dick move? It's not as bad, but in the sense that like, torturing an animal to death isn't as bad as torturing a human to death. It's still not anything a good person would do.
If we assume that a) moral-okayness of using a soul for soulsteel is inversely correlated with its sapience and b) a soul's cognitive capacity mirrors that of its living body by default, then the most morally optimal of animal souls would be that of... jellyfish?
Hmm.
Does that even work?
I think I'll leave that for PCs to find out for themselves in-universe.
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I'll be honest, I just wouldn't give animals souls
But yes, leave it to the PCs is wisest 
Quantumboost
Now with 50% more dots in Dimensional Science
- Location
- Ensemble Space
...I'm not sure exactly how that is supposed to work? Heck, I'm not aware of any religious metaphysical system that just plain declares animals-in-general soulless (I'm sure some exists somewhere, but the major ones and those we draw thematics from for this setting...), and Exalted gives random objects souls (least gods). Animals not having something that is soul-like is... not really coherent within the metaphysics.I'll be honest, I just wouldn't give animals souls
That you can even entertain the idea seems like a pure modernism.
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It is not only possible, but extraordinarily likely that most people in Creation hold false views about important elements of the setting's metaphysics. One culture might consider cremation a means of destroying the soul and employ it for that reason as a followup to capital punishment. Another might practice ritual cannibalism on the belief that those who eat the body are becoming the reincarnation of the dead person. Some might not believe in souls at all and assume that ghosts are made from dead people's reflections being worn by demons.
Most people are incapable of checking if their beliefs are true. Communication is poor, education is rare, and most spirits that people deal with will neither know nor care. A field god or a blood ape doesn't ever get handed a copy of "The Way Things Work". Even places like the Realm that have intact sources from the First Age or from powerful gods are going to slather what they put out with propaganda to promote their political agenda. Ahlat explicitly does this by transforming the souls of his brides into tassels, which is a crime against Heaven he doesn't get punished for. This is considered an honor by those brides.
End of the day, most people don't care. The fact that the Lookshy needs a soulsteel part to keep a suit of Gunzosha armor working is more important to basically everyone in the city that the origin of that soulsteel. Obviously, no one wants to be the one beaten into it, but if it has to be someone it might as well be an enemy. (The same applies to slavery. No one wants to be slaves, but very few people have any problem with slavery as an institution. Its like farming, no one wants to do backbreaking labor in the sun all day, but they all recognize that it is necessary for society to exist.)
If you are a Deathknight and you only want your artifacts made from "bad people" your Deathlord will almost certainly indulge you. They don't care about the ethics of it, and it is just much easier to give the new Exalt what they want rather than found that relationship on enmity. Powerful servants with a chip on their shoulder are just a recipe for instability, especially when loyalty can be had so cheaply.
There is also another "ethical" solution, Nemesaries. They are all violently and nihilistically insane, warped forever by the whispers of the Neverborn, and incapable of reincarnation. Capturing a few hundred of them to make yourself a daiklave is honestly a public service, since the sword isn't actively evil and has some potential to do something good unlike the horrible murder ghosts. The sword probably can't do as much harm as the Nemesaries almost certainly would as even a murder focused deathknight can only be in one place at a time.
Thanks to Unbanshee for several of the ideas in this post.
Most people are incapable of checking if their beliefs are true. Communication is poor, education is rare, and most spirits that people deal with will neither know nor care. A field god or a blood ape doesn't ever get handed a copy of "The Way Things Work". Even places like the Realm that have intact sources from the First Age or from powerful gods are going to slather what they put out with propaganda to promote their political agenda. Ahlat explicitly does this by transforming the souls of his brides into tassels, which is a crime against Heaven he doesn't get punished for. This is considered an honor by those brides.
End of the day, most people don't care. The fact that the Lookshy needs a soulsteel part to keep a suit of Gunzosha armor working is more important to basically everyone in the city that the origin of that soulsteel. Obviously, no one wants to be the one beaten into it, but if it has to be someone it might as well be an enemy. (The same applies to slavery. No one wants to be slaves, but very few people have any problem with slavery as an institution. Its like farming, no one wants to do backbreaking labor in the sun all day, but they all recognize that it is necessary for society to exist.)
If you are a Deathknight and you only want your artifacts made from "bad people" your Deathlord will almost certainly indulge you. They don't care about the ethics of it, and it is just much easier to give the new Exalt what they want rather than found that relationship on enmity. Powerful servants with a chip on their shoulder are just a recipe for instability, especially when loyalty can be had so cheaply.
There is also another "ethical" solution, Nemesaries. They are all violently and nihilistically insane, warped forever by the whispers of the Neverborn, and incapable of reincarnation. Capturing a few hundred of them to make yourself a daiklave is honestly a public service, since the sword isn't actively evil and has some potential to do something good unlike the horrible murder ghosts. The sword probably can't do as much harm as the Nemesaries almost certainly would as even a murder focused deathknight can only be in one place at a time.
Thanks to Unbanshee for several of the ideas in this post.
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- Pronouns
- They/Them
Tassels... as in fabric tassels? Da fuck?
mothematics
How wide is the concept of "you"?
- Location
- the bottom of a coffee cup
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Ignominy's Last Word, Shame of Yesterday
Lord of Death
Creature of the All-Consuming Shame
At the bottom of the world there is a sucking wound where things get stuck at the end. There is a thing that is almost like a woman that does not have a story. She is a charred forest of sticks and bones, vined with cinders and threaded with books and scrolls. She is swaddled in a mountain of filthy fabric. She is white-soot hair and coal-eyes that burn with ferocious intelligence and madness. She is a sandpaper tongue swinging from a jawless mouth. She is mouldering.
She curls in on herself in shame or in regret, trying to reduce herself to a single point. She does not want to be noticed. She is unignorable, and, if she should notice you drowned in death at the bottom of the world, she may babble to you, in spite of how she claws at her tongue. She may tell you a story. She will say with a voice that scrapes low like suicide,
"This is a story that didn't happen. This is a true story.
There was once in the land of Mautrana a proud woman named Azu Ajeet who became the greatest of all scholars in her home, and as there is no finer place than Mautrana, there could be no finer scholar in the world. Azu Ajeet knew this well. Her mind stood as a mountain and from its peak recieved of all Heaven's lights and wisdom. There was nothing she could not learn and nowhere she would not go to learn it. She was destined to be great and to be remembered.
This was good, for there was nothing that Azu Ajeet feared more in her heart of hearts than being forgotten. Not the wrath of her ancestors, nor sickness of the self without panacea, nor ill karma from a life lived poorly, nor loss of face. She could not stand the thought of being forgotten. She would not sit idly by without procuring her legacy in her own two hands. She took action.
History would favor her; she intended to write it. When Mautrana began to unite against the Scarlet to the east under Maharaja Akas Yi, Azu Ajeet knew she had a liege, and a pupil. She gave consul. She gave lessons. When tensions rose to a boiling point, she proposed a course of action to combat the Realm and begged the Maharaja trust her. It would be the most glorious moment of her life, that would go down in legend.
You may know what happened next. I hope you don't.
The Maharaja struck. The Realm struck back.
The land was desolated, and it was all her fault.
Something broke in Azu Ajeet. She could not be remembered like this. She could not be remembered as Mautrana's greatest failure. She could not be remembered. She burnt her histories. She arranged the slaughter of those that knew her part in the murder of her home. Then, for she was a great sorcerer and necromancer as well (for was there ever a scholar of repute who would shy from the greatest of heterodox perspectives?), she walked down the banks of death, as far away from Creation as could be. She required the ultimate oblivion.
She walked, and she required more. None could remember her. Her tongue grew as she murmured her story to herself, until it sloughed her jaw off her skull. Her clothes frayed, rags dressing a skeleton. Her eyes were coals that burnt her hair into white dust.
She found the Neverborn rotting at the bottom of the world and she drank deep, babbling all the while, and never stopped. She looked up to the world that shamed her, that she hated. That she needed to forget her. She looks to her old homeland above her, humiliated in the heart of the Sunset Isle.
Slowly, she builds her means. Slowly, she moves to bring it down, down, down with her, until no one can see the legacy of her shame. Then the rest of Creation will follow, and then she must find her end.
None shall remember her."
Then Ignominy's Last Word, Shame of Yesterday, unceasingly babbling her story, will bend you to her purpose, or she will destroy you. She will destroy you no matter what.
None shall remember.
Last Word as Liege: Last Word wishes to sink her old homeland in hate and shame, but a close contender for her ire is the Realm. She is volatile, often surrendering to her anger and acting in inefficient ways, for while she is intelligent and canny, she is often blinded by her spite and shame.
The few Abyssals that serve her tend to act out of similarly held vendettas; they are not always happy with their Liege's efforts)for impatience is Last Word's mightiest foe), and would love to see more meaningful progress made. They would love it more than anything.
Lord of Death
Creature of the All-Consuming Shame
At the bottom of the world there is a sucking wound where things get stuck at the end. There is a thing that is almost like a woman that does not have a story. She is a charred forest of sticks and bones, vined with cinders and threaded with books and scrolls. She is swaddled in a mountain of filthy fabric. She is white-soot hair and coal-eyes that burn with ferocious intelligence and madness. She is a sandpaper tongue swinging from a jawless mouth. She is mouldering.
She curls in on herself in shame or in regret, trying to reduce herself to a single point. She does not want to be noticed. She is unignorable, and, if she should notice you drowned in death at the bottom of the world, she may babble to you, in spite of how she claws at her tongue. She may tell you a story. She will say with a voice that scrapes low like suicide,
"This is a story that didn't happen. This is a true story.
There was once in the land of Mautrana a proud woman named Azu Ajeet who became the greatest of all scholars in her home, and as there is no finer place than Mautrana, there could be no finer scholar in the world. Azu Ajeet knew this well. Her mind stood as a mountain and from its peak recieved of all Heaven's lights and wisdom. There was nothing she could not learn and nowhere she would not go to learn it. She was destined to be great and to be remembered.
This was good, for there was nothing that Azu Ajeet feared more in her heart of hearts than being forgotten. Not the wrath of her ancestors, nor sickness of the self without panacea, nor ill karma from a life lived poorly, nor loss of face. She could not stand the thought of being forgotten. She would not sit idly by without procuring her legacy in her own two hands. She took action.
History would favor her; she intended to write it. When Mautrana began to unite against the Scarlet to the east under Maharaja Akas Yi, Azu Ajeet knew she had a liege, and a pupil. She gave consul. She gave lessons. When tensions rose to a boiling point, she proposed a course of action to combat the Realm and begged the Maharaja trust her. It would be the most glorious moment of her life, that would go down in legend.
You may know what happened next. I hope you don't.
The Maharaja struck. The Realm struck back.
The land was desolated, and it was all her fault.
Something broke in Azu Ajeet. She could not be remembered like this. She could not be remembered as Mautrana's greatest failure. She could not be remembered. She burnt her histories. She arranged the slaughter of those that knew her part in the murder of her home. Then, for she was a great sorcerer and necromancer as well (for was there ever a scholar of repute who would shy from the greatest of heterodox perspectives?), she walked down the banks of death, as far away from Creation as could be. She required the ultimate oblivion.
She walked, and she required more. None could remember her. Her tongue grew as she murmured her story to herself, until it sloughed her jaw off her skull. Her clothes frayed, rags dressing a skeleton. Her eyes were coals that burnt her hair into white dust.
She found the Neverborn rotting at the bottom of the world and she drank deep, babbling all the while, and never stopped. She looked up to the world that shamed her, that she hated. That she needed to forget her. She looks to her old homeland above her, humiliated in the heart of the Sunset Isle.
Slowly, she builds her means. Slowly, she moves to bring it down, down, down with her, until no one can see the legacy of her shame. Then the rest of Creation will follow, and then she must find her end.
None shall remember her."
Then Ignominy's Last Word, Shame of Yesterday, unceasingly babbling her story, will bend you to her purpose, or she will destroy you. She will destroy you no matter what.
None shall remember.
Last Word as Liege: Last Word wishes to sink her old homeland in hate and shame, but a close contender for her ire is the Realm. She is volatile, often surrendering to her anger and acting in inefficient ways, for while she is intelligent and canny, she is often blinded by her spite and shame.
The few Abyssals that serve her tend to act out of similarly held vendettas; they are not always happy with their Liege's efforts)for impatience is Last Word's mightiest foe), and would love to see more meaningful progress made. They would love it more than anything.
-
With thanks to @TenfoldShields for letting me yell at him and @EarthScorpion for the Underworld setup and formatting. I got stuck listening to the Hamilton soundtrack. This is what happened.
Gonna edit it when I wake up (it needs cleaning up and tightening) and poke at it periodically but I'm pretty happy with this (especially considering this came from one 50 minute burst). Critique is welcome! There we go, basically done
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- Location
- Pittsburgh, PA
The counterargument here is that "ethical soulsteel" would either be, well, an actual knockoff (i.e., not nearly as good; probably the lesser magical material equivalent to true soulsteel), or it'd involve much higher levels of investment, time, and resources to produce.
At the end of the day, Emperor Shitbiscuits with his Holocaust Forge where the souls of thousands are smelted each day is going to have way the fuck more soulsteel than Jeremy Jimmyjambles and his complex assembly of Sorcery and manse-crafting which lets him render up to one ghost's worth of cruelty-free lobotomite soulsteel every 30 hours, or Scrumples the Grump Hunter and his soulsteel distillery which needs dozens of carefully-processed Underworld beasties and a season's fermentation per ounce of product.
You can get 'ethical soulsteel', but only if you either accept a shittier quality than the leading brand or pay a lot more in time and money.
shepsquared
Erratic Aussie
- Location
- Melbourne, Australia
How about a genuine alternative? Hecatoncheir Bone! Not made from anything that's been intelligent for the last 5000 years! It doesn't scream or moan or make silly looking faces when you're in the middle of giving an intimidating speech! All for the low low cost of having to be recovered from the Labyrinth or hecatoncheir corpses and an innate Whispers rating!
I honestly don't understand why everyone's making such a big deal about wanting "ethical soulsteel", honestly.
Like... if you want a necrotic-aspected magical material that isn't soulsteel, go justify one and as long as it's exotic and fun enough, it'll pass. The artefacts chapter of Infernals had mechanical problems, but it was refreshingly free about unchaining itself from the "THERE ARE FIVE MAGICAL MATERIALS" stuff.
Like... if you want a necrotic-aspected magical material that isn't soulsteel, go justify one and as long as it's exotic and fun enough, it'll pass. The artefacts chapter of Infernals had mechanical problems, but it was refreshingly free about unchaining itself from the "THERE ARE FIVE MAGICAL MATERIALS" stuff.
- Collect pitch-black sand from the cold seas of the lands of the Dead, and smelt it with pyreflame into something akin to obsidian that hungers for life.
- Hunt down monstrous behemoths and take their bones and make your armour from it
- Pluck the white poppies that grow on the sites of ancient massacres, burn the petals to ash, mix it with grave ash and use them to make a fine and strong white porcelain.
- Collect the copper coins that the poor lay upon the eyes of the dead, and let them tarnish in the rivers of death, then file off the tarnish and make your blade from it.
- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Honestly, I have a bigger beef with the concept of Soulsteel than the ethicality or unethicality of Soulsteel. It has nearly no mythological basis at all, and is basically just a pastiche of the much cooler Soulsteel from Wraith without the ethical point that Wraith was trying to make. We've talked about this before, but I really feel it's a point that I have to keep making because Soulsteel is boring.
Oh shit, I have holocaust metal, that's totally rad dude lol. Except it isn't, it's boring and at most a cheap shock if even that. If Deathlord Sauron is objectively disadvantaged by making his rings out of something that isn't holocaust metal, then Soulsteel can get fucked.
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Well, yes. As I made the point above, Infernals does it much better because it just goes "yeah, there's lots of cool stuff in Hell that you can use to make neat artefacts, plus you can corrupt existing magical materials with vitriol for those cases where you want to be wielding the corrupted weapon of a hero".
So, honestly, in that case Abyssals should basically just be allowed to use grave good artefacts without them falling apart in sunlight, which means you can wield the now-tarnished blade of a champion of the First Age, that's taken on a deathly caste and longs for the blood of the ones who killed its former wielder.