Remove ads

A Sword Without a Hilt: A Song of Ice and Fire/D&D 3.5 Crossover

Reader mode
DragonParadox said:
A benevolent tyrant (or to use the slightly more common form an enlightened tyrant) can in fact do a lot of good. For an example look at Napoleon, a man whom few can call a champion of the people with a straight face but whose deeds both within the French Empire and the rest of Europe did everything from spreading the metric system to aiding in the formation of national and democratic ideals.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I wanted to make a joke about the creation of Germany... But there's no point now that Azel is gone :cry:

DragonParadox said:
And that was a failure of world-building on my part, making everyone idiots or demons. I obviously can't rectify things perfectly, but what I can do is at least stop doing so from now on.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Hey, the Sealord was great for the whole quest!
More Sealord content ! Have him be inconvenient for us! Have him be awesome! Have him be a beautiful, beautiful institutionalist!

zxzx24 said:
Write a crack interlude at Viserys being the headmaster of a university that Lucan teaches at and Danelle goes too :V

Edit
Also yeah. Secret police+art tends to end poorly.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
No, no!
We would give Azema the authority to handle the secret police for art. She would have none of the usual problems!
There would be ethical ones instead :D
 
DragonParadox said:
Rina interlude next and fair warning I'm going to do something fluffy and silly because that's what I feel I need right now.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Write what you need to, and only you can be the final judge of what that is.

Edit: and where did the 'qm murderhobo' tag come from? And what is its context? *Is confused*
 
Last edited:
Duesal said:
I don't know what to tell you, DP. Now we can't even trust volunteers because they're too loyal and might not be thinking objectively? Should we start relying on divinations to weed out the ones who would later regret it?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Also those who would become sociopaths.

But that's an amazing idea!

Also very minority report.

Denying people opportunities based on divination is... Uncomfortable?
 
zxzx24 said:
Also those who would become sociopaths.

But that's an amazing idea!

Also very minority report.

Denying people opportunities based on divination is... Uncomfortable?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
This is kind of why I'm annoyed by the whole thing. We should be able to trust volunteers after they're appropriately informed. If we need a more rigorous screening process then so be it, but to say this is still immoral even after taking all these precautions is grating.

I really don't want to have to resort to divinations for this.
 
Duesal said:
This is kind of why I'm annoyed by the whole thing. We should be able to trust volunteers after they're appropriately informed. If we need a more rigorous screening process then so be it, but to say this is still immoral even after taking all these precautions is grating.

I really don't want to have to resort to divinations for this.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Immoral isn't exactly what I'm thinking here.

I'm concerned about them becoming a danger. To themselves or others.

That's why I want psych screening basically.
 
Duesal said:
This is kind of why I'm annoyed by the whole thing. We should be able to trust volunteers after they're appropriately informed. If we need a more rigorous screening process then so be it, but to say this is still immoral even after taking all these precautions is grating.

I really don't want to have to resort to divinations for this.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Agreed.
If we can't use Divination to target-search for people carrying Mindblank item, we shoudln't drop it at useless minor stuff like this either.

I recon, our program as written is already quite damn good.
Trying to fine-tune it further, without having seen any results yet, is going to just make it more costly, long, or just scrap the plan entirely.
 
Alright, alright I was just trying to explain myself sorry.

Convos done, it looks good yeah?

@Snowfire I might ave...

Forgotten about that. Just a little.
 
Last edited:
Alright. I'm going to sleep now.
Please don't drop me another 35 pages to read through in 10 hours.
[:V]
[but really, don't]
 
Crake said:
Okay, but what?

In real life, Government could posit that it is fine and dandy to censor the press, because seditious or critical talk could be damaging to the government, which in the most benevolent parlance could mean it would hurt "the people" or the state.

Or just upset the status quo.

In your example you state "so what do you do, keep away the advanced True Speech tech from the Press and screen all news releases for memetic hazards?"

If Chaos Corruption stand-ins are a natural state in the world, authoritarianism is necessary for survival. 40K is an extreme example, but it's often shown that for as many barbaric and savage and ultra-conservative narrow-minded policies and decrees exist, a lot of them end up being absolutely the difference between a Solar Sector existing and being eaten by soul devouring monsters.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Which is why we should do a compromise, all releases get checked by the inquisition, but unless there's proof of Fiendish or other corruption, the inquisition only has the right to send it to be reviewed, by a department staffed specifically with people, we know will only consider whether this text is a danger, not whether this text might cause problems for the government.
 
Evaunit02mark1 said:
Well, this is going to keep me up tonight.

Also if Viserys ever follows this line of thought in an IC perspective/way it'll cut deeper than anything else he's had to deal with so far.

It's one thing to be effective as possible, it's quite another to become a Tyrant and even worse, having the populace praise you for it.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

DragonParadox said:
That's the thing, the difference between effective and tyrant is a matter of degree. To give an example: if someone make a broadsheet with the tech you are using for propaganda and that paper is then critical of Viserys would you have it censored? I suspect most would say no, but what about the danger of memetic corruption? Shouldn't you have it checked over to see it does not drive someone insane? Better to keep printing tech only for the state, right?

That is how tyranny happens.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

egoo said:
...What is wrong with being a (benevolent) Tyrant?
:confused:
This feels like a morality issue, but I geninely not see the problem if we are the best person around to rule, and are following the most efficient methods (of keeping everyone alive in the long run).
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

And I suppose that's the crux of the issue - the divide between safety and tyranny is even murkier than in real life. We are perhaps the only dictator in history, both OOC and maybe even IC to have our 'evil that not only threatens the security but survival of all humanity' narrative that rationalises our consolidation of power and morally questionable, even repugnant policies while any other option either sells out or otherwise fail the everyman narrative be completely objective.

We have the justifications of a strongman's wet dreams.

Hell, we even have an actual 'evil inhuman conspiracy that could subvert anyone, including your neighbors, friends family, and my political opponents that forever seeks to destroy the regime to further their goal to enslave our civilization' that justifies our secret police and surveillance state as well as teaching citizens to consider whether or not those who oppose or so much as question the Dragon are agents of the evil that will enslave (and do far worse) everyone they love or even remotely know.

And once the possibility is planted, it becomes easier and easier to believe.

But alas, the consequences for not taking extreme measures, unlike most times these prophecies are told, could be far worse than the warnings we have given.

There is much irony and perhaps some comfort, in that most dictators sell tales of 'only I can save us through my vision for our people' to protect themselves, and here we are that exact position, except we want to save our people too.

I think that's ultimately the difference between us and the villains of history that we must strive for in the times ahead - to ask ourselves what our actions give and take away from the common people, to ask ourselves if what we are doing is making their lives better overall, and in what ways? Although it is hard to answer in the long term, when even if every quality of life goes down under us, the alternative to our rule is often extinction or far, far worse.

I suspect we will still be grappling with this question for a long, long time to come. And I think that's a good thing, even if we end up acting on our hesitations a lot less than we are comfortable with.
 
tarrangar said:
Which is why we should do a compromise, all releases get checked by the inquisition, but unless there's proof of Fiendish or other corruption, the inquisition only has the right to send it to be reviewed, by a department staffed specifically with people, we know will only consider whether this text is a danger, not whether this text might cause problems for the government.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I was less commenting on the whole "free press" issue, and more just a general comment that the two situations aren't equal.
 
tarrangar said:
Which is why we should do a compromise, all releases get checked by the inquisition, but unless there's proof of Fiendish or other corruption, the inquisition only has the right to send it to be reviewed, by a department staffed specifically with people, we know will only consider whether this text is a danger, not whether this text might cause problems for the government.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Or we just do the easy thing: Is whatever you're evaluating dangerous in a magical sense? If yes it goes into the bin, if not it goes into public view.

We might need some other laws later, like libel and such, but those have nothing to do with the Inquisition. As far as I'm concerned our need for censorship of political texts is zero.
 
Last edited:
065tdsa said:
Or we just do the easy thing: Is whatever you're evaluating dangerous in a magical sense? If yes, it goes into the bin, if not it goes into public view.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Well yes, except we need the evaluators to be impartial, as there's 2 forms of dangerous in the magical sense, and while a blank no on actually enchanted things work, it's not so simple, when it comes to knowledge about magic, as a blank no on that, could have an overzealous inquisitor ban a detective novel, because it has a vague description of a summoning circle, but not being cautious enough, could allow people to spread ritual knowledge, by making a too accurate description of it in said detective novel, which is why we need evaluators, and we need those evaluators to be as impartial as possible, so they don't judge the novel with the vague ritual description, as dangerous and to be banned, because part of the story is critical of an aspect of our government.

There will always be borderline cases, as we don't want to just prevent enchanted things from getting out, we also want to prevent knowledge, of how to summon fiends and the like to get out, which mean the evaluators need to evaluate, whether a book hold too much dangerous information, and they need to be impartial so they don't pull false positives or negatives, due to opinions on other parts of the book.
 
Last edited:
tarrangar said:
Well yes, except we need the evaluators to be impartial, as there's 2 forms of dangerous in the magical sense, and while a blank no on actually enchanted things work, it's not so simple, when it comes to knowledge about magic, as a blank no on that, could have an overzealous inquisitor ban a detective novel, because it has a vague description of a summoning circle, but not being cautious enough, could allow people to spread ritual knowledge, by making a too accurate description of it in said detective novel, which is why we need evaluators, and we need those evaluators to be as impartial as possible, so they don't judge the novel with the vague ritual description, as dangerous and to be banned, because part of the story is critical of an aspect of our government.

There will always be borderline cases, as we don't want to just prevent enchanted things from getting out, we also want to prevent knowledge, of how to summon fiends and the like to get out, which mean the evaluators need to evaluate, whether a book hold too much dangerous information, and they need to be impartial so they don't pull false positives or negatives, due to opinions on other parts of the book.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
But what we need are magical evaluations. Not political, magical. We don't even need the Inquisition honestly, we could make it an Scholarium department if the Inquisition turns out to be too dense to distinguish magical from political on such a basic level.
 
Oh i missed a lot of chatter.
I vote for the retcon i guess.
[X] Ret-con the last update to give you guys the chance to speak up better
 
065tdsa said:
But what we need are magical evaluations. Not political, magical. We don't even need the Inquisition honestly, we could make it an Scholarium department if the Inquisition turns out to be too dense to distinguish magical from political on such a basic level.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The inquisition would mainly need to be on the job, to make sure no underground publishers are publishing dangerous things, as while the Scholarium can vet everything submitted for review, but it's not particularly good, at seeking out people who try to avoid the review process.

So the Scholarium can do the vetting for everything official, but the inquisition will need to watch for things like a pub printing advertising pamplets, to avoid such things being tainted.
 
Last edited:
[X] Ret-con the last update to give you guys the chance to speak up better

Before I go to bed I'll resubmit my vote as it didn't appear in the vote tally.
 
@DragonParadox, I'm hyped for the upcoming interlude though.
This isn't a "please write faster" (take your time, I'm hungover and in post-party recovery anyway and may fall asleep any moment), this is a "I'm totally in the mood for that interlude, you're amazing and your interlude choices are amazing too"
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top