LordOfMurder
Bhaal
- Location
- Australia
By that same metric we could derive that the accursed slightly approves of vengeance.
A Simple Transaction I
- Thread starter Rihaku
- Start date
- Original
- Location
- a place
Yes, but have you considered: Hunger is, in fact, a nutjob.
[X] Vengeance
- Location
- Europe
Yes, but be prefers freedom, which is my point.
Yes, I'd rather he not become a cosmic tyrant so terrible the Accursed kills him a second time.
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He has all the time in the world to rebuild their relationship around their new parameters, and she is still fundamentally the same person who he was so compatible with before. If it worked under wartime conditions, in open rebellion against her own father and rightful ruler, then I'm pretty much certain they can make it work with the help of every single facet of hyper-advanced human existence at their fingertips.
Due to the splice, the time in-between isn't even a factor for Catherine. To her, her husband has just been questing to resurrect her after getting amnesia. This is a normal pair of problems for adventurers in high-fantasy worlds, probably not even unheard-of in the Voyaging Realm.
Birdsie
Sharp Talons Cleave The Worthy
- Location
- Poland
This is your chance to vote Freedom and contribute to the Forebear Dissociative Syndrome fund! Many Hungers like this one are out there, attempting to pursue Vengeance and dying to the Apocryphal blight! Only your vote can cure them!
LordOfMurder
Bhaal
- Location
- Australia
Similarly my point is Gisena prefers Vengeance. I also care a lot more about Gisena's opinion than the accursed's. She's been by our side actively helping us the entire quest. The accursed may have given us the power to start our quest but it was nothing more than a simple transaction.
Gisena has helped us unfailing of her own free will asking for nothing in return the entire time. She literally just gattai'd with half the cast in order to bail us out during the final fight.
Hunger might look upon the accursed favourably but he is in the end a tyrant, and a tyrant's actions are not dictated by others.
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Both options grant Accursed Favor. Obviously he prefers Freedom, but to say he disapproves of Vengeance is I think incorrect. Asking this of Hunger is his kindness to him, but how often are people kind to the Accursed? Nobody (or at least very few people) take extra Curses for Favor alone. If the Victorious World is ever to be more than a distant dream, someone must sacrifice to bring it about. Perhaps Vengeance will result in Hunger's death. Yet looking at... basically every decision made in this thread, that's obviously not going to dissuade him.
We know relatively little about the omniversal strategic situation, but the inability to cooperate is a liability in many interpretations of it. Entities who might otherwise favor the Accursed would be wary of elevating someone Doomed to Tyranny to a position of unquestionable preeminence. While the Maiden is irrelevant at his level, given the lack of a totalizing paradigm it's likely beings with similar values hold sway. This could assuage their concerns.
Hunger's Catherine is already dead. Even the Human Sphere's teenage version of her is nothing more than a cored-out husk inhabited by the Maiden. Refusing to resurrect her when it comes at too high a cost is a far cry from execution.
- Location
- Europe
Why do you believe it is a kindness to the Accursed to ignore his preference and explicit request?
LordOfMurder
Bhaal
- Location
- Australia
Because freedom helps Hunger by putting down his burden, while Vengeance helps the Accursed by retaining the burden of the apocryphal curse and perhaps even fully lifting the Doom of Tyranny.
The wording of Vengeance makes it clear that we have good odds of lifting the Doom of Tyranny before dying. Sure we probably die to the apocryphal curse eventually, which sucks. But pretty much everyone dies eventually, and not many of them manage to make as much of an impact on the multiverse as removing the Doom of Tyranny from the Accursed would.
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The Accursed suffers the Curse of Hubris as well as the Dooms of the Tyrant and Martyr, the Brand of the Champion, and countless others. His power is without equal, but he's constrained both in judgment and ability to act. We have the chance to lift one of those, thus increasing the odds of fulfilling his dream of fairness. Fractional freedom for the Accursed is more important than total Freedom for Hunger.
It's more complicated than that, of course, given the chance of failure for Vengeance and remaining complications with Freedom. But that's what it boils down to.
I would like as well to point out that, when the Apocryphal Curse tells you something is outright interesting enough that she's willing to back down permanently and walk away? The alternative is going to be a slog. A boring, straightforward grindstone comparable to whiling away eternity, trying to kill one Curse-bearing cockroach by poking at it with chopsticks that each seem just barely too short to easily kill it.
Is surviving an endless travail for its own sake really an example of heroism? I don't buy that the Hunger that takes that path would be of the right mindset to rescind the Doom of the Tyrant anyway. How does chasing absolute self-surety lead to requiring less of it from others? The Doom embodies his might-replacing-right mindset, where supremacy reverses all ideals save feudal dominance hierarchy. You can't be King and have nothing else matter, and then expect others to just not realize that nothing else matters.
Is surviving an endless travail for its own sake really an example of heroism? I don't buy that the Hunger that takes that path would be of the right mindset to rescind the Doom of the Tyrant anyway. How does chasing absolute self-surety lead to requiring less of it from others? The Doom embodies his might-replacing-right mindset, where supremacy reverses all ideals save feudal dominance hierarchy. You can't be King and have nothing else matter, and then expect others to just not realize that nothing else matters.
- Location
- Europe
The Accursed thinks he might have to fight Hunger again if he chooses Vengeance. He doesn't want to do this because it was hard enough the first time. It could not be more clear that he has weighed his options and concluded Freedom is the more worthwhile route.
Perhaps fighting Hunger will cost him more than he would gain, perhaps he believes Hungers chances are sufficient even without Progression if he will not have to fight after he reaches High Cursebearer, maybe the Accursed knows what he is talking about.
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LordOfMurder
Bhaal
- Location
- Australia
That's not why we're losing the Apocryphal Curse though? Freedom loses the Apocryphal because in it Hunger ceases to be a progression Cursebearer.
In fact the endless boring slog is likely to be Freedom. We'll still have the geas of Indenture so we still have another 937 octillion years of endless busywork.
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Specifically, it says:
Since Combat-classes can have the Apocryphal Curse (as we saw with one of the alternatives to Haeliel we didn't pick) I think the phrasing merely indicates the coincidence of his relinquished Progression and Apocryphal status. They aren't necessarily causing one-another.
The latter half, on the other hand, provides a rationalization completely in alignment with the behavior of the Curse, which has been consistently fluid and willing to ignore expectations of it in favor of novel and complex interpretations of its role. Especially since this simple transaction is mentioned to be backed by the Apocryphal Curse here:
-Implying that the Freedom option is sponsored explicitly by her. Supporting this, it's in her color as well.
That's part of the chance of failure. However, given the pro-Accursed sentiments that Hunger himself has expressed and the consensus of the thread, I think it's unlikely that such a situation will transpire. Again, Vengeance gives Favor too. The Procession of Worlds was the crucible that produced the Forebear in the first place; this time, Hunger has Indenture and the Apocryphal Curse. Equally dangerous, but less unrelentingly awful. He has periodic Haeliel visitations to keep him on the straight and narrow.
The coloration's more of a callback to the opening vote of the quest. "Every story has been told before," and all that.
[X] Freedom
The Forebear had a crappy life and he sucked so bad he cursed the Accursed. Let's not be him again, let's be a new, better, person.
The Forebear had a crappy life and he sucked so bad he cursed the Accursed. Let's not be him again, let's be a new, better, person.
- Location
- Europe
Hunger refusing to grant the Accursed the favor he explicitly offered him at the start of this quest is not a good sign, at all. Further, the greater danger is that Hunger becomes an umitigated Tyrant so terrible the Accursed is forced to intervene, since that is explicitly what he says his worry is.
Chosing Vengeance isn't the pro Accursed choice.
Thus why it's only supporting evidence. Believe me, I wish it was stronger.
No one deserves to suffer through the Apocryphal curse, and yet, I think we can agree that for the Acursed, some people have to suffer it to alleviate him. With that in mind, I can't think of a better candidate than someone like Hunger. Does Hunger intend for some hapless youth like Aoboru to carry the burden? some other plucky hero? This is Hunger, the man who takes everything onto himself; How would he in good conscious pass this on?
It's a legitimate question I'm wrestling with; with every choice he's made, all his self sacrifice, after everything, would he now choose to pass the mantle of the greatest weight he's ever carried? The man who stood toe to toe with an Armament, unwilling to even back down for a day and a night, fully ready to risk everything to save the lives of a few mages he could inevitably return. Would that man subject someone else to the Apocryphal Curse now knowing what it entails?
Using his character and the choices he's made, what do you believe he would do. I'm not necessarily asking you to change your vote, but to look from his perspective.
It's a legitimate question I'm wrestling with; with every choice he's made, all his self sacrifice, after everything, would he now choose to pass the mantle of the greatest weight he's ever carried? The man who stood toe to toe with an Armament, unwilling to even back down for a day and a night, fully ready to risk everything to save the lives of a few mages he could inevitably return. Would that man subject someone else to the Apocryphal Curse now knowing what it entails?
Using his character and the choices he's made, what do you believe he would do. I'm not necessarily asking you to change your vote, but to look from his perspective.
- Location
- Europe
Hunger would keep his word to the being who saved his life, whom he respects, who's values seem aligned and who he offered a favor to.
It's choosing the Accursed's cause over his wishes. A different interpretation of Hunger's debt to him is not a rejection of it. Besides, Vengeance gives Haeliel favor alongside the smidgen of Accursed approval, which means it can't be that awful. The Forebear of Dynasties was alone on his Bleak Procession; Hunger has a literal shoulder Seraph! Who would've shown up again already, if not for that damned macaw...
The way it's framed here strongly implies a causal relationship between Hunger losing Progression and the Apocryphal Curse being lifted:
This does make Wolber that much more hardcore, to take on a Crowning Curse as a 'mere' Combat-type.
- Location
- Europe
Why would Hunger know the Accursed's cause better than the Accursed himself. How?
That particular line was me quoting the author:
As for IC knowledge: his conversations with the Accursed and Haeliel, the implicit structure of the Praxis in which effort is inextricable from attainment, meditations on the Lathe of Heaven, study of Foremost Cursebearers, etc.
We'll have to agree to disagree then.
And yeah, Wolber would have totally aced any other single Curse trivially. The Apocryphal is literally the only one that would have challenged him at all.