And Should the Soil Not Take You (A Wight Quest)

Now this is cruel. Bell's being so nice and considerate that just saying that she has the wrong idea hurts my heart.

We should tell the truth. Ythona's a honest girl, and I feel like Bell woudl interpret the truth as Ythona trying to cope with being a murderer.

However, I don't want to strain this budding partnership so early.

[X] Tell the whole truth. It's stupid. You know it's stupid. It will make her hurt you. Maybe she'll even tell Fleshrender and give him that excuse he's looking for. But you can't stand this. You can't sit here in the ruins of your old life and watch your new life threaten to tear it apart and stay silent. Maybe she'll understand, maybe she won't, but you can't handle having nobody who even knows.

It's a hard choice, but I'm putting my faith in Bell's understanding. She's perceptive enough to know when Ythona's lying, so falsehood is never going to get us anywhere.

[X] Correct her. You can't stand being thought of this way. You've never eaten anyone, never killed anyone. You want Bell to know this. You need her to. You'll dodge the question of what actually happened, or think up a lie to explain your silence as an act of fear, the person's escape a simple failure. But you have to do your best to make that much clear.

Agrees just asks for trouble in the future, this can cause a lot of pain to both parties.

Denial simply offers to do it here and now, to destroy this nascent friendship. Sounds too sad to consider for me.

Revealing all the circumstances sounds incredibly risky. There's probably a limit to how understanding Bell can be. And I mean, it's not even fair to her - she definitely doesn't have the knowledge to understand why her comrade did what she did.

So it's half true. I mean, if Bell missed a person, she almost certainly wouldn't tell Fleshrender about it. Right now, he's just taking out his anger on his subordinates, but if he knew that one of them was actually guilty...

I really don't know how sympathetic she's likely to be, since she doesn't have living memories or anything? So this is tricky.

[X] Correct her. You can't stand being thought of this way. You've never eaten anyone, never killed anyone. You want Bell to know this. You need her to. You'll dodge the question of what actually happened, or think up a lie to explain your silence as an act of fear, the person's escape a simple failure. But you have to do your best to make that much clear.

I think we need to tell more of the truth for the simple reason that Bell is going to notice stuff. Like the fact that Ythona has absurdly good control by all appearances.

She's honestly the most dangerous to Ythona right now because she pays attention. She understands that Ythona isn't prone to Fleshrender's simple cruelties nor whatever she thinks is Bonecrusher's rule following.

Bell is also very loyal to the necromancer. Ythona admitting to not be will turn Bell on her immediately.

We need to keep things as consistent as possible with Bell because she is going to notice when Ythona deviates from that.

[X] Correct her. You can't stand being thought of this way. You've never eaten anyone, never killed anyone. You want Bell to know this. You need her to. You'll dodge the question of what actually happened, or think up a lie to explain your silence as an act of fear, the person's escape a simple failure. But you have to do your best to make that much clear.

[X] Correct her. You can't stand being thought of this way. You've never eaten anyone, never killed anyone. You want Bell to know this. You need her to. You'll dodge the question of what actually happened, or think up a lie to explain your silence as an act of fear, the person's escape a simple failure. But you have to do your best to make that much clear.

[X] Tell the whole truth. It's stupid. You know it's stupid. It will make her hurt you. Maybe she'll even tell Fleshrender and give him that excuse he's looking for. But you can't stand this. You can't sit here in the ruins of your old life and watch your new life threaten to tear it apart and stay silent. Maybe she'll understand, maybe she won't, but you can't handle having nobody who even knows.

It will hurt us. But that's the point, isn't it?

[X] Correct her. You can't stand being thought of this way. You've never eaten anyone, never killed anyone. You want Bell to know this. You need her to. You'll dodge the question of what actually happened, or think up a lie to explain your silence as an act of fear, the person's escape a simple failure. But you have to do your best to make that much clear.

Half Moon said:

It will hurt us. But that's the point, isn't it?

Click to expand...

Click to shrink...

The thing is that Bell is very much the watchdog essentially of the Necromancer.

DoobleDeeDooble said:

"If you get in a fight, you should be honest. Maybe telling Fleshrender doesn't do much good, but unless you have a better channel to get back to the master.

Click to expand...

Click to shrink...

So here is Bell saying that Fleshrender should be told because it's the only way they have for telling the necromancer in charge about stuff.

DoobleDeeDooble said:

And then Bell speaks up. "No, but what will matter is that the master might want to see it."

Fleshrender snaps his gaze towards her. "He isn't going to find out!"

"Really?" Bell takes a step towards him, and then spreads her arms out. "When you suddenly left with all of us, after making such a fuss calling out to us? He's going to ask why, and then—"

Click to expand...

Click to shrink...

Again Bell's priority is alerting the master.

Honestly, the big reason to clear up the misconception is that I can't see Bell not noticing Ythona having decent control later on. Ythona could have not eaten animals either out there we know. She appears to have absurdly good control for a Wight.

And if it wasn't for the fact that I don't see Bell considering the idea that Ythona would let someone get away because it makes zero sense for a Wight with ghouls from her perspective going with the lie with Bell eventually realizing that Ythona was lying would be the better option for delaying the reveal until Bell was more able to survive the reveal.

Other thing with Bell - I'd be utterly unsurprised if she's 2nd in strength with the Wights. Just not overly specialized in combat - she was withstanding Fleshrender's shenanigans. It's just that she can't take him in a fight I think.

[X] Tell the whole truth. It's stupid. You know it's stupid. It will make her hurt you. Maybe she'll even tell Fleshrender and give him that excuse he's looking for. But you can't stand this. You can't sit here in the ruins of your old life and watch your new life threaten to tear it apart and stay silent. Maybe she'll understand, maybe she won't, but you can't handle having nobody who even knows.

[X] Correct her. You can't stand being thought of this way. You've never eaten anyone, never killed anyone. You want Bell to know this. You need her to. You'll dodge the question of what actually happened, or think up a lie to explain your silence as an act of fear, the person's escape a simple failure. But you have to do your best to make that much clear.

If we do say more, don't phrase it like, we "let them get away". Say we hesitated, and imply that this was a mistake (even though we don't think it was one). Could feed into the whole "never eaten anyone, never killed anyone" thing; saying that isn't just a correction, it's also an explanation.

[X] Correct her. You can't stand being thought of this way. You've never eaten anyone, never killed anyone. You want Bell to know this. You need her to. You'll dodge the question of what actually happened, or think up a lie to explain your silence as an act of fear, the person's escape a simple failure. But you have to do your best to make that much clear.

[X] Tell the whole truth. It's stupid. You know it's stupid. It will make her hurt you. Maybe she'll even tell Fleshrender and give him that excuse he's looking for. But you can't stand this. You can't sit here in the ruins of your old life and watch your new life threaten to tear it apart and stay silent. Maybe she'll understand, maybe she won't, but you can't handle having nobody who even knows.

DoobleDeeDooble said:

"Just what I thought!" He cackles, and stands there, gloating. Making a show of how effortlessly he has you cowed, how he really could follow through on his threat. He may as well have actual claws pointed at all of you.

Click to expand...

Click to shrink...

Killing him when we finally are able to will be oh so satisfying.

He really is asking to *accidentally fall down some stairs* as they say, except in his case it'll be *accidentally drown in the bog*.

DoobleDeeDooble said:

"I mean, killing someone you were supposed to catch happens. And then afterwards, giving in to instincts and eating... I can't blame you for that. Especially not a natural still settling in, like you. Is that how you lasted three whole years out here?"

Click to expand...

Click to shrink...

She got it completely wrong, hey? In a very believable way, especially for one who explicitly don't grok natural ghouls and having past relationships still haunting you, past humanity still there even if reduced and warring with hunger.

[X] Tell the whole truth. It's stupid. You know it's stupid. It will make her hurt you. Maybe she'll even tell Fleshrender and give him that excuse he's looking for. But you can't stand this. You can't sit here in the ruins of your old life and watch your new life threaten to tear it apart and stay silent. Maybe she'll understand, maybe she won't, but you can't handle having nobody who even knows.

It is stupid, it is dangerous, it will probably kills us, but damn, I still want to, on the little chance she understand, on the little chance we can make her understand, for a life that is not just what our clearly omnicidal master wants, for a chance at being a person again.

This quest was inspired by Number none, and as someone who did read it in its entirety, I want to follow some of the strongest themes of this past quest, about finding your own humanity back, about being accepted, and this is a step in that direction, a stupid, dangerous one, one that may not even be necessary, but one all the same.

I also think just going for correct her may be more dangerous in some ways, if we confess outright, we are right there to try and plead with her to not tell, if we only tell part of the truth and she realize the rest later for whatever reason, not only will we not be there to explain when she does, she will also know we lied to her.

Better be honest to a fault here IMO.

The more I think on it, the more that I'm convinced telling the truth is the best option. The other options leave some ambiguity in the air, and paranoid as Bell is, she might come to an even worse conclusion than the truth. We know she's perceptive, so any attempt at vagueness or misdirection will be noticed quickly.

Instead, it'd be best to control how and when she receives the truth rather than let her come to her own conclusions.

Tally:


Still think the whole truth is less dangerous than just correcting her, as Lucid pointed out, just correcting is liable to have her comes to wrong and probably worse conclusions due to her paranoia, while telling the whole truth allows us to explain what she didn't understand. It also reduces the feelings of betrayal in the very likely case she learns of it later.

Edit:

Basically, just correcting her is making quite clear we're hiding something to someone that is already suspicious of us by nature, it's feeding her paranoia instead of reducing it.

Telling the whole truth is dangerous, but it is also a show of trust, a way to try and break her suspicions, to change her worldview, it's obviously not going to do so instantly, but its still a new point of data both for her and us. If she's going to betray us and tells all to our master now, she would have done it later anyway and when we would have more to lose.

[X] Tell the whole truth. It's stupid. You know it's stupid. It will make her hurt you. Maybe she'll even tell Fleshrender and give him that excuse he's looking for. But you can't stand this. You can't sit here in the ruins of your old life and watch your new life threaten to tear it apart and stay silent. Maybe she'll understand, maybe she won't, but you can't handle having nobody who even knows.

[X] Tell the whole truth. It's stupid. You know it's stupid. It will make her hurt you. Maybe she'll even tell Fleshrender and give him that excuse he's looking for. But you can't stand this. You can't sit here in the ruins of your old life and watch your new life threaten to tear it apart and stay silent. Maybe she'll understand, maybe she won't, but you can't handle having nobody who even knows.

bell seems kind.

if we correct her and lie, i feel that she'll be caught up worrying what the actual truth is and hold us in suspicion too much.
i think it's okay if she doesn't fully understand, too. she doesn't have to understand everything. how could she? what matters is that she listens and can tell that this is important to ythona. when bell found out that ythona had some of her memories, she seemed really sympathetic, or maybe a little pitying. i think she would at least try to be considerate about this situation, and that she would really value ythona telling her the whole truth. it would be a sign of trust for her, and i think bell would take it as ythona putting herself out there and really appreciate it. they both need friends. the fact that bell came over after everyone had separated just to talk to ythona makes it clear that she's probably willing to hear her out and not react too horribly too, to me.

Guys, Bell is hyper loyal to the necromancer. And she literally named herself after an alarm bell.

She's being friendly because she thinks Ythona messed up - albeit by eating the person instead of bringing them back to be made into a wight.

The one thing that can't be said at this time is that Ythona let the person go. Because that's disloyalty. That's choosing a side that isn't theirs.

Could Bell eventually be talked down and around, honestly I think yes. Given an example of Wight life that isn't serving someone that creates Wights and Ghouls on purpose.

Nyarky said:

Still think the whole truth is less dangerous than just correcting her, as Lucid pointed out, just correcting is liable to have her comes to wrong and probably worse conclusions due to her paranoia, while telling the whole truth allows us to explain what she didn't understand. It also reduces the feelings of betrayal in the very likely case she learns of it later.

Edit:

Basically, just correcting her is making quite clear we're hiding something to someone that is already suspicious of us by nature, it's feeding her paranoia instead of reducing it.

Telling the whole truth is dangerous, but it is also a show of trust, a way to try and break her suspicions, to change her worldview, it's obviously not going to do so instantly, but its still a new point of data both for her and us. If she's going to betray us and tells all to our master now, she would have done it later anyway and when we would have more to lose.

Click to expand...

Click to shrink...

You are saying that like Bell actually knows Ythona now. Like there's an actual understanding of any type of life except as the Necromancer's guard dog.

Bell being told now and being told/figuring it out later is not automatically the same position. That's like arguing that Pepin would have backed Ythona up always and her at least trying to shield him from Fleshrender has nothing to do with his decision to help.

I mean Bell isn't a natural wight. She was probably captured, dragged back and resurrected as one by the Necromancer she's ultimately loyal to. Is she an evil person invariably? No but with no memories she's essentially a cultist.

And even if Bell is someone we can't shift - more time gives Ythona more time to strengthen with a stable source of food and to convince the Natural Wights that she's genuine.

The first is important for surviving Fleshrender and possibly Bell, the second for companionship.

[X] Correct her. You can't stand being thought of this way. You've never eaten anyone, never killed anyone. You want Bell to know this. You need her to. You'll dodge the question of what actually happened, or think up a lie to explain your silence as an act of fear, the person's escape a simple failure. But you have to do your best to make that much clear.

Storyteller said:

You are saying that like Bell actually knows Ythona now. Like there's an actual understanding of any type of life except as the Necromancer's guard dog.

Click to expand...

Click to shrink...

Storyteller said:

No but with no memories she's essentially a cultist.

Click to expand...

Click to shrink...

Thing is, we can't get her actual trust without taking actions that break her paranoid point of view, if she's a cultist, we're the outsiders showing her she's in a cult.

But if you want another type of argument, let me show you why I think correcting her is more dangerous than telling the truth by trying to see what are the worst case scenarios, best case scenarios and what I think as most likely scenarios from each:

-With telling the truth, worst case is easy: she tattle to the necromancer or fleshrender about us. Best case is almost certainly not happening: it's her understanding us and leaving the cult with us right there right now. Most likely runs the gamut from her not understanding us and thinking of selling us out, allowing us to explain things to try to steer it towards her not doing that, to her finding is strange and deciding to study us more.

-Correcting her worst case scenario is where we get the first problem: it's her not accepting our lie but hiding it and selling us out while we think we're safe. The best scenario is her believing the lie, which can still create tensions later because we lied to her. And the most likely are things like her deciding we are too soft and that she should harden us, her seeing our obvious lie and pushing till we give the entire truth anyway, but this time she is less disposed towards us than if we gave a show of trust, or her seeing we lied and deciding we're just as untrustworthy as she thinks Bonecrucher is and not helping us anymore.

Edit:

In short, the problem here is not that telling the truth is safe, it is dangerous, it's that correcting her is the worst of both world, we both lie AND we admit to being sentimental, plus we try to deflect, this invites scrutiny, it makes the paranoid person wary.

There is a very high chance that trying to go for correcting her will just lead to a new vote with similar options as this one, but this time Bell knows we have something to hide and will examine the lies even more closely, leading to telling the truth being the best thing to do again but with less of the benefits of doing it now.

[X] Tell the whole truth. It's stupid. You know it's stupid. It will make her hurt you. Maybe she'll even tell Fleshrender and give him that excuse he's looking for. But you can't stand this. You can't sit here in the ruins of your old life and watch your new life threaten to tear it apart and stay silent. Maybe she'll understand, maybe she won't, but you can't handle having nobody who even knows.

Nyarky said:

Thing is, we can't get her actual trust without taking actions that break her paranoid point of view, if she's a cultist, we're the outsiders showing her she's in

Click to expand...

Click to shrink...

What do you think cooking is, slow interactions? Big direct shot towards world View will not work without preparation. Given time and friendship I honestly think this option could work but this is at the start of the relationship.

Doing it now? I think it just closes the door to that.

And again - not having the realization be immediate buys time for Ythona to get stronger.

And yeah, you nailed exactly why doing a correction is risky.

But it threads the needle because I don't think Ythona could sell the lie long term of eating the guy. Her control is just noticeably too good On top of possible complication of him coming back.

Bell's magnanimous behavior right now is rooted in her seeing Ythona as having made a mistake. Not that she's sympathetic.

The correction is all about threading the line between keeping Ythona on team without lying due to the two complications of

1. Ythona's demonstrable control which Bell will notice
2. That the guy is actually alive - which possible complications include word getting back to any survivors of Ythona's siblings. And in a,way that Bell will find out about because she's the alarm bell and hamper us preventing getting someone we actually like dead dead.

Nyarky said:

Most likely runs the gamut from her not understanding us and thinking of selling us out, allowing us to explain things to try to steer it towards her not doing that, to her finding is strange and deciding to study us more.

Click to expand...

Click to shrink...

So the best things you are actually hoping for is in the gamut of the not horrifically Bad to the Correction vote.

Nyarky said:

Correcting her worst case scenario is where we get the first problem: it's her not accepting our lie but hiding it and selling us out while we think we're safe. The best scenario is her believing the lie, which can still create tensions later because we lied to her. And the most likely are things like her deciding we are too soft and that she should harden us, her seeing our obvious lie and pushing till we give the entire truth anyway, but this time she is less disposed towards us than if we gave a show of trust, or her seeing we lied and deciding we're just as untrustworthy as she thinks Bonecrucher is and not helping us anymore.

Click to expand...

Click to shrink...

1. Is different from her doing that in Truth how?

2. Best scenario is indeed the lie for buying more time - especially as above describes the full out lie has problems that are fairly likely to reveal the lie.

3. You put forward it as most likely for Bell to think Ythona is lying when she's looking at things from a Wights' perspective. As opposed to Ythona revealing that she's operating from an entirely different perspective.

Bell is already looking at this as Ythona having messed up due to inexperience and lack of real guidance from Fleshrender. Correction is trying to preserve that depiction but with being bad at killing. It's not like a hungry murderous undead would let someone get away.

The biggest advantage Ythona has in lying is that letting someone get away is essentially unthinkable because of how Wights are. Telling the truth gives that away explicitly

Bell's perceptive, she'll see through Ythona's lies pretty easily I believe.

Besides, a relationship built on a lie is one that's very fragile. If Bell shuts Ythona away because of it, then the partnership was likely bound to never work out since this is who Ythona is, and she's unlikely to change for a long while yet.