On the oath? Honestly I like the sentiment behind the no oath option the most, but I don't think that has a hope of winning, so preemptively cutting my losses on that one.
You can vote for both, and both will be counted! If by some chance "no oath" gets a bunch more support, your vote will be part of it; if not, you can still vote against the Stone Oath.
I mean, we can
vote for it, but even if manakete society was open about the existence of lesbians, that doesn't sound like a joke Ryza would—
Like, maybe not with this phrasing specifically, but could we add "this is the strongest oath I can swear that doesn't have implications of marriage" as a caveat on the "Swear on the Mother" vote? It satisfies the "don't bind us as strongly" condition that a lot of voters seem to want, while also being completely truthful that our one direct example of the stronger oath is a marriage oath and therefore wouldn't be quite appropriate in this instance.
Oh. Yeah, that makes more sense.
Please people, don't be afraid of swearing by stone. It's worth it .
I'm not
afraid of swearing by or on the stone. Or possibly both? The mechanics of the oath are important to Ryza, but not to me.
Sure,
Ryza knows that a Stone Oath is super meaningful, and knows why. But
nobody else does. Robin can probably guess, but to everyone else it would look as significant as a mage swearing on her tome or a swordsman swearing by his blade. Which isn't
nothing, of course, but it's also not
much.
The idea behind an oath is that you're basically making your promise known to some higher power, and asking them to hit you with some relevant punishment if you break it. There are some additional complications (like how swearing on an object connected to the power you're swearing by makes the oath more...certain, I guess?), but that's the gist of it.
Even though the humans probably don't know who The Mother is, it won't be hard for them to figure out from context that she's some kind of divine figure. It's straightforward. But what will they make of a Stone Oath? Maybe they can intuit that it's super important, maybe it'll make the oath seems more frivolous. Especially if the power the Stone Oath is sworn
to is, like, Ryza's Dragon or something else connected to the stone. "If I break this oath, may my stone lose break" or something like that.
Now, Ryza and all manaketes recognize that this would be a Very Bad Thing, and something that whatever inner entity the oath was sworn to can and would do under such circumstances. But it's not going to sound like that to people who are placing bets on whether Ryza's a demon, changeling, or artificial mage. If we're unlucky, they'll interpret it as a pinky swear that she'll ruin herself if she breaks the oath.
Even if it's not
that bad (aside from Sir Ector, I don't think anyone here thinks lowly enough of Ryza to expect her to swear a fake oath), I don't think there's any reason to assume they'd understand the true gravity of a Stone Oath. It's an extra-binding oath, but I'm not confident it'll be seen that way. Add in extra risks from things like showing off the Dragonstone and malicious interpretation of the Oath, and it's a significant risk for
severely uncertain gain.
-It really doesn't appear to be the proper analogue. Bernard says he swears by the Emblem.
No, he says he
would swear
on the Emblem. The Fire Emblem is not, I assume, the sort of higher power which can enforce a penalty. However, in most continuities, it's a physical object directly connected to a divine power of the sort which might do so. For instance, the Archanean Fire Emblem was created by Naga to seal the Earth Dragons. It's an item of great power, and that power is divine. Physically touching the Fire Emblem, even if it didn't have a supernatural influence on the oath, would make Naga's presence more immediate, lending additional...legitimacy? to the oath.
(I don't study this stuff, I just read
people who do.)
It's hard to say whether a Stone Oath would be properly analogous to an oath sworn on the Emblem. But this is a moot point, since
no such oath was sworn. (It'd be awful hard for him to do so, since the Emblem would need to be physically present.) As far as analogy goes, the
intent of the oaths matters more than the mechanics.
