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Even Further Beyond [Complete]
- Thread starter Rihaku
- Start date
- Original
- Location
- The Surface Of A Hostile Planet
[X] Vengeance
I'm feeling something welling up inside me...
I feel the need to write up another Baelixnaire rap, as our old boy finally gets to gloat at his keikaku's complete and total success.
I'm feeling something welling up inside me...
I feel the need to write up another Baelixnaire rap, as our old boy finally gets to gloat at his keikaku's complete and total success.
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- Location
- Actually pretty lost
It's pretty obvious that the answer is that both the provider and the user are responsible here. Both the Fates and Baen are assholes, who deserve proportionately bad things to happen to them. We just like Baen more because he's on our side. It's basic human nature.
It's a shiny that you've conditioned the players to covet over the course of the quest, it's not that surprising.
Your analogy doesn't have anything to do with the situation. The people of the Age before the Diagram weren't terrorists bent on genocide, they were provided a weapon and they took it's use far beyond what was reasonable.
That's on them.
And even then, in your example the Terrorists don't stop being evil because they had an enabler.
- Location
- Vestiges of Yesterday
I feel that this vote suffers of a critical failure to understand the difference between Justice and Vengeance on the part of voters. Somehow, despite explicitly being provided with explanation that no, Fates don't deserve the Vengeance, and no, our puny mortal minds cannot grasp the scale of eternal torture it entails, people are still arguing that it's a suitable punishment. Not that the BP value overweights the risk of the consequences, not that it is a narratively neat turn of events - those arguments are good. No, people insist that Vengeance is reasonable.
Really.
Really.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
[X] Justice
I wanted Mercy, but that's clearly not going to happen. So let's not go quite so far as making "majority of the experiential content of our post-victory reality be suffering." Also, it doesn't make all of the new artifacts that our Blood Elves are going to make be creepy and horrifying.
I wanted Mercy, but that's clearly not going to happen. So let's not go quite so far as making "majority of the experiential content of our post-victory reality be suffering." Also, it doesn't make all of the new artifacts that our Blood Elves are going to make be creepy and horrifying.
- Location
- England
[X] Justice
Much like Suizhen, the Lich can learn to deal. He'll be more salty, but I mean he's Baelixnaire of course he's going to be more salty.
Much like Suizhen, the Lich can learn to deal. He'll be more salty, but I mean he's Baelixnaire of course he's going to be more salty.
It's one of the natural quirks of questing @Malorius, you have multiple people engaging in multiple arguments on multiple levels of good faith, all at once, in a big useless mess! One of the advantages of Rihaku's method of quest-running is that he reads the arguments himself, and decides how they weigh in on the discussion and the vote metrics. This means that shouting into the crazy-box isn't useless, but rather you can meaningfully contribute to your cause even when you're trying to reason with the unreasonable.
Personally, I think it's far more useful and engaging to pick someone who's arguments you can address, and debate them specifically (in my case meme at them specifically). Most everyone here is happy to argue about basically anything, so they're sure to engage with you if you give them a quote or an @ to let them know you're interested in a verbal slap fight.
As to your specific point, you're absolutely right! I want Nameless to be a passionate unreasonable actor driven to wild extremes, so this suits me fine, but it's certainly absurd to claim there's anything fair or just about Vengeance.
Personally, I think it's far more useful and engaging to pick someone who's arguments you can address, and debate them specifically (in my case meme at them specifically). Most everyone here is happy to argue about basically anything, so they're sure to engage with you if you give them a quote or an @ to let them know you're interested in a verbal slap fight.
As to your specific point, you're absolutely right! I want Nameless to be a passionate unreasonable actor driven to wild extremes, so this suits me fine, but it's certainly absurd to claim there's anything fair or just about Vengeance.
Rihaku
The Internet
Thanos didn't construct the Infinity Gauntlet, he just benefited from it! And he acquired the stones through the death and random hostage-taking of innocents, which somehow worked every time.
It's a perfectly reasonable stance to say, hey, Baenlixnaire's nuts, maybe it's not healthy for any parties involved to give him exactly what he says he wants given that what he wants is quite abhorrent on most moral scales. Whether you even promised anything of this scope is debateable, and to be frank the very possibility of your victory was a long shot in his eyes, so the benefits on top should be seen as just gravy.
And besides, what about all your other mentors? Do you really want to have proven Tyranshal wrong on almost every relevant metric, only the flip the moral calculus the other way entirely with this one pragmatically irrelevant yet horrifying act? Is this not the very excess and hubris for which the Diagram Age was cast down in the first place?
And what about your wife, or Suizhen? Can the elves countenance such pointless horror or will they be forced to work ceaselessly to free the Fates? Can Suizhen in good conscience remotely consider herself a swordswoman of virtue when her fealty has lead to such gratuitous horrors? She will do as Nameless asks. Should you not choose wisely what you ask?
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We tried so hard and got so far, so in the end every ounce of future happiness matters.
Nameless deserved his gooder end.
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TwistedJester
Tired Lurker King
- Location
- Hell
[X] Justice
ThatGazzer
Minds Eye Bind
- Location
- PNW
- Pronouns
- They/Them
[X] Justice
- Location
- Actually pretty lost
We aren't getting anything out of it except some Beyond Points, which are almost worthless now - their ability to instantly improve choices doesn't matter since we A) aren't making any more choices, and B) Nameless doesn't need instant powerups anymore now that he has the time to get them the long way.
In return, we commit literally the greatest atrocity this Quest's setting has ever seen to indulge an insane lich's lust for vengeance. Under almost every philosophy of ethics I can think of, this would make Nameless the most evil being to exist in this setting, all the more so for the pointlessness of the act. We aren't even deriving some great personal benefit from it, just a feeling of satisfaction.
Like, I sympathise with wanting to play a character who isn't another cookie-cutter do-gooder, but we've done that. This is just... too much.
In return, we commit literally the greatest atrocity this Quest's setting has ever seen to indulge an insane lich's lust for vengeance. Under almost every philosophy of ethics I can think of, this would make Nameless the most evil being to exist in this setting, all the more so for the pointlessness of the act. We aren't even deriving some great personal benefit from it, just a feeling of satisfaction.
Like, I sympathise with wanting to play a character who isn't another cookie-cutter do-gooder, but we've done that. This is just... too much.
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Wait, we don't get to see Immortal Ascension? I guess it makes sense to not have it happen on-screen, given valid points about how Tribulation might actually hurt us, but do we not get to see what the aftereffects would look like? This makes me sad.
Alright, so we don't have to pick things based on being able to win. We do that regardless. (It is worth noting that the Heroine is still around, though. Yay omnicompetent geniuses, even if they don't have Fate's support.) And also, the loss condition just falls off! That's rather convenient. Didn't expect it to be that easy. And ZK no longer has the option to just incidentally murder us, which makes that easier.
I really can't find any justification for this. 0 BP means it doesn't help us in the endgame, killing them is kind of the easy way out, and completely losing Artificing and one of our Ascendant Signs is just added insult with your free injury. The only upside this has over any other choice is that it means we don't disappoint Baenlixnaire as much as Justice, and personally I don't find that all that much of an issue relative to the rest. (That's likely because I wasn't voting back when he was around, but still, gaining the ability to lie to him? Not really worth it, I would say.)
It's a BP, and, well, I have no idea how useful those will be, but given how strong BP options have been in the past they're probably going to be relevant to whatever we use them for. On the downside, Baenlixnaire is very sad. On the upside, we get to play around with the machinery of Heaven by using beings which actually know how it works, we gain in capability to fiddle with things even beyond that (if not much), we don't add a spare supply of infinite misery to the world, and we get fully-functioning Artificing. Plus there's one less point over which a hypothetical future hero (from outside the world, probably, but hey, we know those happen) might try to murder Nameless. And also score a hit against a Heroic Passion! Given how much of an issue we've had with Spoiled, potentially dropping a noticeable portion of Vengeful would probably be pretty nice!
Well, the whole "7 BP" thing is big and obvious, and I'm sure it'd be useful wherever we put it. Plus we make Baen happy, which is always nice. And also the ability to spend 3 of that 7 BP to get 0.75 Stages (...yay? I guess Suizhen will be 1.5 Stages ahead of Zang Kong for the "negotiations", such as they'll be if we establish that Nameless is willing to inflict infinite quantities of suffering on the grounds of "having slighted someone I like") and the full set of Signs, allowing us to do things like, say, devour the omni-disciplinary genius of the Heroine. Just in case we wanted to be good at everything, rather than the oh-so-restricted set of things we're amazing at now --- being a master of only three magic systems (plus combat and trade, because Signs) can't possibly be enough, that would be silly. (Honestly, eating the Heroine's soul with our Scythe and using Necromancer to res her and eat her again whenever we need a new talent would be pretty neat, though the Heroine as she is probably doesn't deserve that.)
On the other hand, explicitly infinite quantities of added misery, well beyond any definition of just retribution. (Well, presumably. I guess Nameless might have a rather distorted view, given the whole "Heroic Passion" thing. Still, beyond any functional definition of just retribution.) Plus free edge with our Artificing in the future, which we're told will only slightly warp the functions. (I know some game systems don't consider things like, oh, required horrible murder and blood sacrifice to be a notable warping of functionality, so I'm somewhat skeptical that's compatible with having any elf-based civilization be the sort of place that doesn't actually need the sort of Hero the Fates throw at things. If they can even use Artifice again after that, given the whole incorruptible perfect morals they have, which may have an issue with gaining power with potentially morally massive drawbacks from essentially the tortured not-corpses of gods. Some people take issue with that sort of thing.
Oh right, and we also just voted on a similar idea, with [ ] Annihilation versus [ ] Negotiation. As in, we literally were voting on whether to inflict an infinite (trans-finite? Uncountable? I don't actually know the extremes of the Rihakuverse, I can't tell which of those I should be using) quantity of suffering in exchange for getting vengeance for one of our strongest allies, someone whose aid has defined this entire quest. Except there it was someone who actually has all-but-maximum loyalty to us, maximum while wearing the Suit, rather than someone who wanted to use us as an implement to strike against others. And even so we decided it wasn't worth going straight to the "make all the misery forever" option. Given that, I don't think I can justify making the Fates suffer infinitely and perpetually. Sorry, I can see the appeal (and I want that Further Beyond), but I think I have to vote for
[X] Justice
(Also, this is over 900 words, outside the quotes. 902. That's utterly absurd.)
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Lealope
Not yet invincible
- Pronouns
- She/Her
[X] Justice
Yeah, gloating + Suizhen/Aurelia + it not having too big of a difference means i'm probably not going to pick the hyperatrocity option. Bonedaddy can learn to deal, especially if he gets to personally administer the symmetrical punishment Justice represents.
Yeah, gloating + Suizhen/Aurelia + it not having too big of a difference means i'm probably not going to pick the hyperatrocity option. Bonedaddy can learn to deal, especially if he gets to personally administer the symmetrical punishment Justice represents.
Shard
One and Many
- Location
- Malaysia
...Why do being gods give them greater capacity to suffer? Do they have a super-upgraded version of Heroic Passions?
I really don't like any option that leaves the Fates alive. Let's not forget that we are talking about the beings that designed each and every magic system that this world, and we ourselves, use. They might be weaker than us right now, but if we keep them around for torture or "justice", who is to say that they cannot use the time we give them to rise above their current station? It seems like the only reason they failed to prevent our rise is because of their stupid limitations on interacting with the world, which seem to stem mostly from internecine strife as well as their overbearing arrogance and sloth.
The heroine is a member of the Fates, and it was planned for her to handily become more powerful than Zang Kong is right now, so it seems likely that she would have managed to surpass the current power-limits of the Fates. The Fates thus have all the tools they need to become stronger and stronger if only we give them time. By dealing them a grievous, but recoverable injury, we force them to cast of their limitations, arrogance and laziness. And Nameless is very much guilty of those same sins, which could be used to make him overlook the rise in power of an opponent he thought conquered.
Machiavelli says to never do an enemy a small injury, so Mercy or Further Beyond Vengeance are the only possible answers to this vote for me. And even FB Vengeance makes me uneasy, because a future enemy could free the fates from their infinity stones and use them against us.
The heroine is a member of the Fates, and it was planned for her to handily become more powerful than Zang Kong is right now, so it seems likely that she would have managed to surpass the current power-limits of the Fates. The Fates thus have all the tools they need to become stronger and stronger if only we give them time. By dealing them a grievous, but recoverable injury, we force them to cast of their limitations, arrogance and laziness. And Nameless is very much guilty of those same sins, which could be used to make him overlook the rise in power of an opponent he thought conquered.
Machiavelli says to never do an enemy a small injury, so Mercy or Further Beyond Vengeance are the only possible answers to this vote for me. And even FB Vengeance makes me uneasy, because a future enemy could free the fates from their infinity stones and use them against us.
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