This simply says that cutting though her would be painful for Hunger.
The Accursed Favor of freedom means he wants it most- but not that it benefits him most. It matches his ideals, not the cruel realities of the world, so of course he who wields the dream of fairness approves- Emotionally, not as a strictly pragmatic action.
Emotionally, it's not equivalent; I imagine he'd be rather more disinclined to cut her if it was actually her. Logic does not rule emotion, but still it has its place in determining it.
Such an absolute denial of others' agency! Accepting that position would be much more tyrannical than anything Hunger's done in the quest. But people do in fact have children and consider their actions morally relevant, despite the fact that the kids' existence is a product of their decisions. How to assign blame for Apocryphal actions is an interesting question, however. Aobaru's stance was understandable in many respects.
You could posit a coherent moral framework wherein Vengeance is tantamount to killing them, it's just not one that's remotely consistent with Hunger's actions. All paths other than Forsaken Mask would be guilty by default under such a paradigm. Hunger has already made this choice; the Maiden's chosen guise that the text of Vengeance references is tragic window dressing for added drama.
That's an assertion not backed up by historical evidence, which is that the Accursed Favor is accrued via Curse Mitigation and things which provide tangible benefit to him.
I would assert that the critical perspective here is Hunger's own, which is that he is morally culpable in this case. As far as Hunger is concerned, he is killing them. Additionally, both Balance and Vengeance could, at the time of character creation assert that with sufficient power they could resurrect Catherine afterwards, especially when taken from an implicit belief that the Hidden Ones were practically surmountable, instead of in truth being a virtually hopeless cause.
No, Hunger and Ceathlynn both regard the latter as inhabiting a vessel.
This isn't true. Its a lower chance than Vengeance, probably by a lot, but it isn't impossible.
Counterpoint: Accursed Favor is also accrued during character creation by not spending remittance value, but the Accursed has been explicitly stated to prefer for his Cursebearer to take all they can and survive, rather than leave some value behind and die. It's true there's some tangible benefit to him, but it's not the path of most benefit- yet, favor it still grants.
What is your evidence for the claim that Hunger considers not accepting the maidens [offer] tantamount to murdering his wife and child? (or for that matter, that Hunger would balk at odds of merely 99 to 1.)
This is misleading. The odds were given as 0.1 to 1%, and only after badassery et al was included.
The evidence even there is that Curse Mitigation = Accursed Favor. In fact, the fact that taking the path that he doesn't prefer gives more Accursed Favor is yet more evidence that Freedom is in fact more beneficial to The Accursed than Vengeance. Perhaps because The Forebear fully dying and rejecting the Tyrant's Doom itself may in itself weaken the Doom of The Tyrant. As opposed to, uh, embracing The Tyrant's Doom which frankly seems very unthematic for purposes of truly mitigating it.
We specifically spent 5 Picks, Defining Advancement and 25 Arete on FK to get Favor for super long term considerations, this proving this line a lie.
aside from the argument 'The Accursed asked for that and Hunger owes him a solid, which it is his right to decide the nature of because that is how owing people a solid works'?
How is that evidence? Seeing that Accursed Favor can be given from a path which, tactically, the Accursed does not prefer, (but presumably feels sympathy for, since it involves the Cursebearer taking up greater burdens for lesser reward out of misguided hope for his benefit) does not imply that Freedom, which gives more Favor, is tactically superior to Vengeance- if anything, it quite clearly permits the opposite.
Accursed Favor can be equated to 'Is what you are doing of net benefit to The Accursed?' Taking on more burdens than normally does give the Accursed more benefit, thus, Accursed Favor. Hour of Destiny removes Accursed Favor because he's doing something which costs him. Much of the argument that Freedom is suboptimal for The Accursed is based on the argument that the Accursed is sympathetic - But we've established now that Accursed Favor is based in large part or in whole on expected value.
But it doesn't, is the thing. Taking on an extra curse only gives more benefit If your odds of survival are not negatively impacted thereby and you miss out on no future benefit-giving opportunities. Tactically, it's a bad move to take more curses without spending the Remittance Value you're allotted for them. If Hunger had not picked up the Ring Hunger, he wouldn't've been able to take, say, Blood Halo, which gave +5 Accursed Favor, 3 more than the runner-up option. If Accursed Favor is benefit to the Accursed, you're stating that the choice of not taking the Ring- granting +1 Accursed Favor, and subsequently providing at least an additional -3 Accursed Favor relative to the alternative- would've benefited the Accursed, despite, on net, having lower Accursed Favor.
Because Haeliel is tricking Accursed into thinking that Vengeance has merit, clearly. It is obvious at this point that Haeliel is literally Lucifer.
Character creation was a semi-unique circumstance where we could acquire Accursed Favor from, of all things, participation. Accursed Favor was 'the Accursed does something nice for Hunger' at that point, effectively. Hunger didn't pick the Ring Hunger - The Accursed empowered it.
It seems unlikely to me that Freedom will mitigate the Doom of Tyranny more, for the Accursed, than Vengeance. I'd need more solid evidence for that, than quester supposition.
I don't think it's been confirmed, but I thought Haeliel was Caroline. Wasn't Lucifer Arthur's arm? I haven't reread Terrascape Academy in ages, so I might be misremembering.
I think The Strategist was technically the amoral strategic side of a shattered 26th Ordinal Ordinalist or something in spite of their Lucifer thematics.
I'm making fun of "Haeliel is secretly evil" cope people came up with to explain why Heroism itself would favor option that has Hunger self sacrifice for the greater good.
I'm pretty sure the 'gaining Accursed Favor from participation' is nondiagetic, unlike the 'gaining accursed favor from not using RV', so this is irrelevant. Also, character-creation Accursed Favor is mutually exclusive with Hunger gaining more selections in character creation where they relate.
Is there any reason to believe the Accursed is more able to extrapolate Hunger's future actions from this point than he would've been at the start of the quest? Diagetically, that is. And even if Hunger's will is absolutely known, his point of death is unset as of when we decide, and could occur at any point in his journey, be it 1% along or 99% along, so the future curse mitigation is uncertain.
First of all, definitely not. If one hundred instances of mitigation like Fisher King was enough to fully mitigate a Curse, then the Accursed would not be Accursed for any appreciable span; and if they are not, then a 0.1-1% chance of fully mitigating Tyranny is greater on average. As you'd expect, on account of it being the full mitigation of a curse. Second of all, it's not all or nothing- Vengeance Hunger on average still lives for plentiful untold millennia of time, and probably outstrips Freedom Hunger in raw power within a week. For the entire time from then to his probable death, he gives more Curse Mitigation than Freedom Hunger- at minimum, he reaches higher power levels, shoulders larger fragments, and gets more fractional stages Stage per, and that's ignoring other unusual mitigations like devouring war and fisher king he'd eventually unlock.
Bloodshed? Yep. Death? You betcha! Suffering? debatable at best. In the option where Hunger has soldiers help him in combat against the maiden, the fighting force is 99.99% subsentient constructs, with the remainder willing volunteers who spend millennia happy and only moments in battle; I see no reason to believe this would change. Similarly, judging by how fights have gone in the quest so far, Hunger will usually be sweeping effortlessly over the entire armies of his opponent whenever they're not one really strong person (and one strong person per battle isn't exactly 'huge amounts of suffering' except in that the length of Hunger's life scales all the consequences up.).
It kind of seems like this is a reiteration of the choice that started the quest. Do you think the world would be in a better state at this stage if Hunger hadn't chosen Vengeance then?
