Gravedigger Quest

[Sentient Tree]

Nothing can prepare you against an AL-Wahid.

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When Al-Wahid does pushups, she doesn't push herself up, she pushes the world down. With. One. Arm.

"Go on, run along," Aida said lightly. "Ah, and unlike for the other exercises, if you don't show enough spirit or try to low ball it..." Looking at Tanwen, she took out a folded spear from her back and straightened it in a flick of the wrist. "I'll poke you with a stick."

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Dragons are terrifying creatures, who can kill dozens of adventurers in a single instant. When Al-Wahid met one, she poked it into submission with a stick.


The gods are eldritch beings of unimaginable power who have kept humanity safe for countless millennia. Al-Wahid does their job better than they do.

Lirra eats dead people, and has witnessed the final moments of hundreds of adventurers. She is terrified of Al-Wahid.

You may face a thousand dragons, or lay waste to dozens of undead armies, but NOTHING can prepare you for the wrath of an Al-Wahid who thinks you're slacking off on training.

 

[Renu]

The gods are eldritch beings of unimaginable power who have kept humanity safe for countless millennia. Al-Wahid does their job better than they do.

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Fun fact: she's actually a Paladin.

We're working on whatever day we go as well, right?

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Not necessarily. You'll go and decide on the particular days (every Saturday, every each Sunday, the mornings,...) and then you'll have to come these days, because... well, it's a job.

@Renu, question: this next update will be Saturday, right? And if we take the job from Melissa we'll work on Saturday we'll work on Saturday and have Sunday for something else (like talking to Chloe)? Also, we'll still be training barter while working?

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See above. Sorry for the delay.

[X] Do some research in the library
- [X] Gravediggers

Determination

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[X] Do some research in the library
- [X] Gravediggers

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There's an even sub-er vote if you want to search for something in particular about Gravediggers, if you missed it.

 

[Sentient Tree]

Not necessarily. You'll go and decide on the particular days (every Saturday, every each Sunday, the mornings,...) and then you'll have to come these days, because... well, it's a job.

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In that case, we should either make sure we take Saturdays, or we'll pretty much be wasting half the weekend. Unless everyone changes their votes and decides to go in on Sunday instead.
Does anyone have any objections to work being on Saturdays? I can't think of any reason why it would matter.

Fun fact: she's actually a Paladin.

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Hmmm, Paladins exist. That's interesting. Do they get divine spells? Smites? Something else?
You can't get much more knightly than a Paladin. And it would be pretty cool to have the Gravedigger be a Paladin. That would be pretty counter to most people's expectations.

 

[TaliesinSkye]

I think telling her about us being a Gravedigger is a bit premature for now, unfortunately. However, we'll be needing to hang out with her a lot in order to learn more about the different types of magic, so hopefully we'll be getting to know her well enough for that soon. I think that getting her help with the bowl could be a good idea, if we want to keep digging into our past. It could be a sort of lead up to telling her about us being a Keeper. If we really want to dig deeper, Chloe is probably the best person to get help from for that.

I'm not sure about the debt. I think she already knows about us saving her life, but I'm not sure what effect telling her about the debt would have.

Soooo, does anyone have any ideas about what to do about the Furuta situation? I'd like to become friends with her again, since she's awesome (and we can hang out with her while training).
We could ask Tanwen who that nice girl who talked to us before class was?

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Telling her about the debt means that if we need her help when it's called in she'll be prepared. Also it might help foster trust.

 

[Grigori]

Telling her about the debt means that if we need her help when it's called in she'll be prepared. Also it might help foster trust.

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Feels too manipulative to me. We made the choice and we paid the price, I'd rather not involve her/guilt her into feeling she owes us.

 

[Sentient Tree]

Feels too manipulative to me. We made the choice and we paid the price, I'd rather not involve her/guilt her into feeling she owes us.

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Unfortunately, I have to agree. On the other hand, I am in favor of telling her we're a Keeper, once we get to know her better. And I suspect that we'll get her to open up a lot more when we ask her about magic. It gives her something to talk about that she's obviously passionate about, and my write in will suggest she use telepathy, so she won't have to struggle to make herself heard. I really want us to become better friends with Chloe. She's awesome.

Edit:
Something to note, is that Chloe knows we saved her life, and seems pretty grateful for it. So I think she trusts us quite a bit anyway? We just need to get know her well enough that when we reveal we're a Keeper, she knows that Lirra wasn't just trying to nom her. She probably knows this already, but there might be some doubt if we tell her too soon, before she's really had a chance to get to know us.

Any ideas on what Tanwen might want from us with the life debt? I don't think she wants to use us as a scapegoat for something, and we'd make a pretty poor one anyway, since we can't lie.
Going off the Tanwen Is Traumatized hypothesis, I think she might just want to be friends with us, but has been hurt enough before that she can't trust anyone who is physically capable of lying. She finally meets someone who isn't capable of lying, but she still is afraid of being left alone or somehow betrayed by them. So she takes the opportunity she's presented to get a contact from them. Now the person can't run away for the next 3 years, and at the end she can ask us to continue being her friend or something. Maybe not worded like that exactly, but she can at least ask for something that she thinks will keep us around or make us want to be her friend. Better yet, if we do decide to betray her she can just tell us to kill ourself. So she doesn't have to worry about us betraying her or intentionally leaving her for the next 3 years.

This hypothesis predicts that Tanwen will not call in our debt until near the very end of the 3 years. If she calls in the favor much earlier than that, that would be strong evidence against the hypothesis.

 

[Jiven]

[X] Spend some time with your classmates.
- [X] Pupa wanted to go visit the harbor town. See people, go shopping… the boats probably bring all sorts of stuff.
-- [X] Take advantage of the outing to ask her what was going on in the baths.

 

[TaliesinSkye]

Unfortunately, I have to agree. On the other hand, I am in favor of telling her we're a Keeper, once we get to know her better. And I suspect that we'll get her to open up a lot more when we ask her about magic. It gives her something to talk about that she's obviously passionate about, and my write in will suggest she use telepathy, so she won't have to struggle to make herself heard. I really want us to become better friends with Chloe. She's awesome.

Edit:
Something to note, is that Chloe knows we saved her life, and seems pretty grateful for it. So I think she trusts us quite a bit anyway? We just need to get know her well enough that when we reveal we're a Keeper, she knows that Lirra wasn't just trying to nom her. She probably knows this already, but there might be some doubt if we tell her too soon, before she's really had a chance to get to know us.

Any ideas on what Tanwen might want from us with the life debt? I don't think she wants to use us as a scapegoat for something, and we'd make a pretty poor one anyway, since we can't lie.
Going off the Tanwen Is Traumatized hypothesis, I think she might just want to be friends with us, but has been hurt enough before that she can't trust anyone who is physically capable of lying. She finally meets someone who isn't capable of lying, but she still is afraid of being left alone or somehow betrayed by them. So she takes the opportunity she's presented to get a contact from them. Now the person can't run away for the next 3 years, and at the end she can ask us to continue being her friend or something. Maybe not worded like that exactly, but she can at least ask for something that she thinks will keep us around or make us want to be her friend. Better yet, if we do decide to betray her she can just tell us to kill ourself. So she doesn't have to worry about us betraying her or intentionally leaving her for the next 3 years.

This hypothesis predicts that Tanwen will not call in our debt until near the very end of the 3 years. If she calls in the favor much earlier than that, that would be strong evidence against the hypothesis.

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I hear you on the too manipulative thing, so I was thinking about how we might approach it without giving that vibe. How's this?

"So um, this is awkward but in order to save your life I had to swear a debt to Tanwen. I don't know what she'll ask for or when, and I'm worried about it, because I can't say no. I was wondering if you'd be willing to help me if it's not something bad, or if it is, if you'd find a way to stop me?"

I think that's something we might just really, really want to have in our back pocket when the time comes, and I think it's something she would be happy to do.

 

[Sentient Tree]

I hear you on the too manipulative thing, so I was thinking about how we might approach it without giving that vibe. How's this?

"So um, this is awkward but in order to save your life I had to swear a debt to Tanwen. I don't know what she'll ask for or when, and I'm worried about it, because I can't say no. I was wondering if you'd be willing to help me if it's not something bad, or if it is, if you'd find a way to stop me?"

I think that's something we might just really, really want to have in our back pocket when the time comes, and I think it's something she would be happy to do.

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My thoughts:
First off, if Chloe agrees to help us, and Tanwen knows about it, that just means that Tanwen has that much more power from the debt, and therefore can ask for harder things if she wants. If we want to make this helpful for us, we would need to not let Tanwen find out that Chloe agreed to help us (rather difficult for Lirra), or only ask her for help after Tanwen tells us what she wants us to do (I think this is better, but has the problem that if the request is urgent we may not have enough time to ask Chloe).
Admittedly, if Tanwen wants something specific from us, she's unlikely to raise the difficulty level just because she can. In that case the only problem would be whether it drags Chloe into a situation that could be bad for her (like if Tanwen wants us to help fight a really tough monster. Or if she's not actually a dragon, and wants our help fighting the dragon we think killed those adventurers we pyred in the forest).

I really like the idea of getting her to stop us if it's something bad. A potential failure mode is if Tanwen finds out and tries to stop Chloe from stopping us. That could potentially put Chloe in danger.

Perhaps we could learn Mind Magic (or figure out how to lose specific memories from meditation?), and then erase our memory of asking Chloe to help or stop us? Come to think of it, with Mind Magic to alter what we believe is true, we could become the most believable lier in the academy. No one is going to doubt what the changeling says she saw with her own eyes. Not that I think we should do this for anything that isn't completely necessary(mostly because I like the characterization of Lirra as unable to lie), but it is an option if we ever need to out-bard a bard.

One more thing to note, is that if we do use deception in regards to Tanwen or our debt to her, it might have extremely bad effects on our relationship with her. One hypothesis is that she likes us because we are incapable of lying, so if she finds out that we deceived her, she might tell us to kill ourself and then she'll never trust anyone ever again. I'm not sure how likely it is that we would actually talk about whether we told anyone to stop us or not though, so maybe we'd be fine? If it doesn't come up anyway we might be able to get away with not wiping our memories of asking Chloe to stop us.


My recommendations:
Don't lie. As cool as I think my idea with the memory alteration is, it runs the risk of making Tanwen severely unhappy. I like Tanwen (though not as much as Chloe), and it's also a very bad idea to antagonize someone who can simply order you to die.
Determine how likely it is that Tanwen would ask us to do something that needs stopped. If we think she's likely to, strongly consider setting up Chloe as a sleeper agent, and decide whether lying is necessary to keep her safe. If Tanwen is not likely to ask us to do something bad, then I think we should wait until Tanwen tells us what we'll be doing, and ask Chloe for help(possibly just as a friend) if it is something difficult.

Inb4
Tanwen: *asks us to be her waifu*
Chloe:
Lucilia:

 

[TaliesinSkye]

My thoughts:
First off, if Chloe agrees to help us, and Tanwen knows about it, that just means that Tanwen has that much more power from the debt, and therefore can ask for harder things if she wants. If we want to make this helpful for us, we would need to not let Tanwen find out that Chloe agreed to help us (rather difficult for Lirra), or only ask her for help after Tanwen tells us what she wants us to do (I think this is better, but has the problem that if the request is urgent we may not have enough time to ask Chloe).
Admittedly, if Tanwen wants something specific from us, she's unlikely to raise the difficulty level just because she can. In that case the only problem would be whether it drags Chloe into a situation that could be bad for her (like if Tanwen wants us to help fight a really tough monster. Or if she's not actually a dragon, and wants our help fighting the dragon we think killed those adventurers we pyred in the forest).

I really like the idea of getting her to stop us if it's something bad. A potential failure mode is if Tanwen finds out and tries to stop Chloe from stopping us. That could potentially put Chloe in danger.

Perhaps we could learn Mind Magic (or figure out how to lose specific memories from meditation?), and then erase our memory of asking Chloe to help or stop us? Come to think of it, with Mind Magic to alter what we believe is true, we could become the most believable lier in the academy. No one is going to doubt what the changeling says she saw with her own eyes. Not that I think we should do this for anything that isn't completely necessary(mostly because I like the characterization of Lirra as unable to lie), but it is an option if we ever need to out-bard a bard.

One more thing to note, is that if we do use deception in regards to Tanwen or our debt to her, it might have extremely bad effects on our relationship with her. One hypothesis is that she likes us because we are incapable of lying, so if she finds out that we deceived her, she might tell us to kill ourself and then she'll never trust anyone ever again. I'm not sure how likely it is that we would actually talk about whether we told anyone to stop us or not though, so maybe we'd be fine? If it doesn't come up anyway we might be able to get away with not wiping our memories of asking Chloe to stop us.


My recommendations:
Don't lie. As cool as I think my idea with the memory alteration is, it runs the risk of making Tanwen severely unhappy. I like Tanwen (though not as much as Chloe), and it's also a very bad idea to antagonize someone who can simply order you to die.
Determine how likely it is that Tanwen would ask us to do something that needs stopped. If we think she's likely to, strongly consider setting up Chloe as a sleeper agent, and decide whether lying is necessary to keep her safe. If Tanwen is not likely to ask us to do something bad, then I think we should wait until Tanwen tells us what we'll be doing, and ask Chloe for help(possibly just as a friend) if it is something difficult.

Inb4
Tanwen: *asks us to be her waifu*
Chloe:
Lucilia:

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It's been a few weeks since I read through the story, has it been mentioned whether promises can force Fae to do things that are suicidal? That's a pretty common loophole in magical promises.

Chloe of course has the benefit of not having to keep any literal promises; if she promised to help and then Tanwen tried to take advantage of that, she would have flexibility. She could not help or tell other people what Tanwen's trying to do so they can stop her and save us or whatever else her best judgment tells her to do. I think that's what we need as an insurance policy, someone aware of the situation that's free to act in a way that we explicitly aren't free.

Hopefully Tanwen won't abuse her position but just in case she does I'm certain we need someone in our corner. Preferably several someones, but at least one.

So, what if we tell Chloe about the debt but fall short of asking her to do anything specific, simply say that we hope Tanwen doesn't force us to do anything bad but just in case we'd feel better if we knew Chloe was keeping an eye out and would use her best judgment?

I think that avoids being manipulative towards Chloe ('I want you to be aware of the situation so you can do whatever you think is best' is different from 'I saved your life so I want you to do something for me because you feel indebted') and avoids betraying Tanwen in any way, since we're not instructing Chloe to do anything in particular and can be honest about that. (Yes, telling Chloe might result in bad things happening to Tanwen, but only if Tanwen tries to do bad things to us first, at which point she's betrayed us.)

The memory alteration option is clever but I feel like it isn't necessary at this point. If we were to come to believe that Tanwen would use the debt to do bad things then it might be a justified level of paranoia.

There's also the point that we don't know if mind magic can do that, and if it can whether anyone we know could do it, and if they can whether it'd have any nasty side effects. And even if it all that works out in our favor it'd probably come with the problem that we'd still be the same person and be inclined to go and tell the same people we told again, repeatedly voiding the whole purpose of the maneuver unless we could somehow compel ourselves not to or something.

 

[SolipsistSerpent]

It's been a few weeks since I read through the story, has it been mentioned whether promises can force Fae to do things that are suicidal? That's a pretty common loophole in magical promises.

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Is it? I'm pretty sure I remember a lot of stories about magical promises forcing people to do things that are pretty much suicidal. Especially if Fey are involved.

 

[TaliesinSkye]

Is it? I'm pretty sure I remember a lot of stories about magical promises forcing people to do things that are pretty much suicidal. Especially if Fey are involved.

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It depends on the world and so on. Usually in faerie tales where someone's hoist by their own petard using an oath it's something indirect, not an order to kill themselves. Like there's a famous one where someone takes an oath to obey the rules of hospitality and another oath never to consume the flesh of men, and then they're forced to break either one oath or the other when their conniving host serves them human meat pie and lose all their power as a result. Stuff like that.

It occurs to me that depending on how fae oaths work in the setting when they collide we might be able to use an additional oath to our advantage to limit what Tanwen can ask us to do if necessary. Depends on how it all works though.

 

[Nevill]

It's been a few weeks since I read through the story, has it been mentioned whether promises can force Fae to do things that are suicidal?

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Yes? I mean, the pact we are under is called a Life Debt. It's as transparent as it gets.

At that, Lirra was taken aback. True, it was fair, but… a Life Debt was no small thing. It wasn't that she'd be her servant for the rest of her life, but she would owe her a favor that was pretty much without limit. She could avoid something that would kill many if that came for some reason, as the balance of life would be uneven, but at the same time, the owner of the debt could very well order her to die and she would be supposed to do it.

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Other, lesser promises probably have more wiggle room.

 

[Sentient Tree]

It's been a few weeks since I read through the story, has it been mentioned whether promises can force Fae to do things that are suicidal? That's a pretty common loophole in magical promises.

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She could avoid something that would kill many if that came for some reason, as the balance of life would be uneven, but at the same time, the owner of the debt could very well order her to die and she would be supposed to do it. Then again, it's not like she couldn't kill her right away, or have killed her when she caught her before, so there was no reason to think it'd be asked. It was just an example to show how much she could ask and be in her right. And on top of that, this favor could be called at any point, even fifty years in the future, if the both lived up until then.

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This seems to indicate that they can if they're life debts.

So, what if we tell Chloe about the debt but fall short of asking her to do anything specific, simply say that we hope Tanwen doesn't force us to do anything bad but just in case we'd feel better if we knew Chloe was keeping an eye out and would use her best judgment?

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That doesn't seem manipulative to me, which I like. The problem is that it would probably accidentally set Chloe to be more suspicious of Tanwen than she otherwise would be, which seems like it would make it even harder to get more friends for Tanwen that aren't just Lirra. If we're fine with making it harder for our friends to be friends with each other, then it sounds good. In fairness, it would probably take a lot of work anyway to get Tanwen to not hate someone who isn't Lirra.

There's also the point that we don't know if mind magic can do that, and if it can whether anyone we know could do it, and if they can whether it'd have any nasty side effects. And even if it all that works out in our favor it'd probably come with the problem that we'd still be the same person and be inclined to go and tell the same people we told again, repeatedly voiding the whole purpose of the maneuver unless we could somehow compel ourselves not to or something.

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True. We'll hopefully learn more when we talk to Chloe on Sunday.

 

[TaliesinSkye]

My most charitable theory of Tanwen is that some horror occurred to her that she reacted to by hardening herself into just another horror, taking her from victim to perpetrator. Her callous disregard for life and efforts to enslave others force me to place her firmly into the 'assumed villain until proven otherwise' column. I think it's most likely that Tanwen's had people betray her and doesn't have any friends because her actions have resulted in those outcomes, and she's richly deserved them. A person who just had bad things happen to them once but didn't let those bad things make them treat others badly wouldn't act like Tanwen acts.

Just attempting to enslave another person is a crime worth a death sentence in my book. It's a don't mess around, kill them because the world is better off without them level of irredeemable. Refusing to help someone who's dying isn't quite death sentence material, but it's pretty damn bad. And the way she didn't care at all about the deaths of others showed that she doesn't form emotional attachments with other people, which means she views other people purely in an instrumental fashion, as tools and obstacles. After seeing all that in our brief time around her it wouldn't take much more villainy out of Tanwen for me to support murdering her in her sleep as an ethically robust option both for making the world a safer place and for personal preservation.

So I guess what I'm saying is that while it's nice to hope for the best, we need to be very sure to have insurance policies around that woman.

 

[Nevill]

Let's see if I got the above-Lirra's mindset right.

"So I know you've done me a huge favor and basically trusted a complete stranger with an extremely valuable ingredient that saw an entire species - which may or may not be yours - hunted down to extinction, but after getting it my way I am starting to have seconds thoughts about repayment. See, I needed it, and that means I was owed it, and asking to repay something that I would not otherwise get in a hundred years is asking for too much, and thus trying to ensure it is almost equal to slavery, which makes you a slaver, which makes you evil, which makes me searching for a justification to murder you in your sleep not at all morally flexible, and if I get to profit off of it and get everything for free, it's merely a just reward for ridding the world of a villain."

...did I miss anything?

My thoughts on the matter are extremely simple. If you take on a debt, you take on the obligations of payment. If you are not prepared to pay, don't get in debt.

Even if Tanwen were the lowest of the low, she has dealt with us fairly. No hidden clauses, all conditions laid out beforehand. You don't want it, you don't take it. You take it, you don't complain.

But she went farther than that, basically betting her own life on the deal. If Tanwen is a dragon, she just entrusted Lirra with a secret of her nature. Something as valuable as dragon blood would see a lot of people wanting to get it, and with no small amount of justifications which would place their concerns above her life. If Tanwen isn't a dragon, she just gave away the invaluable, nigh-irreplaceable (the species are nearly extinct, remember?) potion that could have been used to save her own life, but is now gone. To a complete stranger, based on a promise.

...which we are now trying to seek a way around?

I know a favor of that nature is unsettling simply because of how open-ended it is, but we should never forget that what we were granted was similarly massive. I would be against looking for loopholes and trying to possibly sabotage the payment by inserting someone else in-between. If you are unsure of the nature of the favor, go talk to Tanwen, become her friend or at the very least someone she has a reason to listen to, and if you have suspicions her intentions are less than noble (which we don't), do your damnedest to talk her out of it. Because we owe her, and we owe her big.

Then again, the lack of basic gratitude is certainly a theme with the setting. I just hoped that having been on the receiving end of it, Lirra wouldn't be too eager to jump on the other team so quickly.

One more thing to note, is that if we do use deception in regards to Tanwen or our debt to her, it might have extremely bad effects on our relationship with her. One hypothesis is that she likes us because we are incapable of lying

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I know, right?

"I know I really shouldn't be doing this for someone who at this point in time means nothing to me, but hey, at least a Fae won't try to screw me over if I make her swear it?"

That's the kind of thing that ruins whatever tiny hope for mutual trust there can be.

 

[Sentient Tree]

I think it's most likely that Tanwen's had people betray her and doesn't have any friends because her actions have resulted in those outcomes, and she's richly deserved them. A person who just had bad things happen to them once but didn't let those bad things make them treat others badly wouldn't act like Tanwen acts.

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It's possible that it wasn't just one time. I would suggest that it's fully possible that she was betrayed many times, or by someone that then tormented her for a long time. I don't see the life debt as her trying to enslave us, so much as her trying to get insurance that we can't betray her. As far as I can recall, she hasn't been taking pleasure in the fact that she has power over us or anything. If she was the type to treat innocents badly because of her past, then she would likely be telling us to do things while holding the fact that she can kill us anytime over our head if we don't comply. My read on Tanwen is that she had a lot of people betray her, and because of that she's acting extremely cautiously. That she sees the life debt as insurance against betrayal, rather than a means to control us, and that she is intentionally trying not to care about others as a way to protect herself emotionally because everyone she's ever cared about has either died or betrayed her.
Now, I could be wrong here. Maybe she killed her party in the forest, and did it without reason. Maybe she's intending to get us more invested in being friends with us before she starts trying to control us. But we don't actually know whether this stuff is true, or what circumstances may have happened to cause her to kill her party. If she does start acting abusive to Lirra, then we'll know that I'm wrong, and we should start making plans to destroy her. Until then, I would like to try to give her the benefit of the doubt.

If you are unsure of the nature of the favor, go talk to Tanwen, become her friend or at the very least someone she has a reason to listen to, and if you have suspicions her intentions are less than noble (which we don't), do your damnedest to talk her out of it. Because we owe her, and we owe her big.

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That is a good point that we owe her a lot, and I hadn't thought of how dangerous this could be for Tanwen. Particularly since Lirra is incapable of lying if anyone asks her how she saved Chloe. If anyone hears about this, people are going to start thinking that Tanwen's pretty rich, and start wondering what other rare and valuable stuff she might have hidden away.
Becoming better friends with her sounds like a good idea (while still focusing on Chloe, because let's face it, Chloe is best girl). It seems likely to be why she did the life debt thing in the first place, and it would give us a better chance of getting her to not do anything rash, or asking us to do anything that would harm us. On the other hand, if she DOES start abusing us like TaliesinSkye seems to think, then I'm behind what TaliesinSkye is saying. We owe her one favor, we do not owe her anything that isn't part of the agreement.

In short, my position can be summed up as this:

Telling us to kill ourselves if we betray her=fine

Abusing us=Time for murder and backup plans

 

[Nevill]

We owe her one favor, we do not owe her anything that isn't part of the agreement.

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Uh, yes? But you do owe her whatever is in the agreement, and you should pay it back, or the equivalent value.

Given the way Tanwen acted during the second forest excursion, I can not see her being abusive towards Lirra. Character considerations aside (since it does paint our first encounter in a different light from what we initially suspected about her), there is simply no point in it, since we are under no obligation to do anything but the favor. What would antagonizing us achieve?

We've been roommates for a couple months now and not once did she give us a reason to think ill of her when it comes to our personal relationship.

 

[Sentient Tree]

Given the way Tanwen acted during the second forest excursion, I can not see her being abusive towards Lirra. Character considerations aside (since it does paint our first encounter in a different light from what we initially suspected about her), there is simply no point in it, since we are under no obligation to do anything but the favor. What would antagonizing us achieve?

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I agree that she's unlikely to be abusive, I'm just stating what my position if she does turn out to be. It isn't exactly easy to spot abusers, so it's just something to keep in mind with anyone who has power over someone else.

On an unrelated note,
@Renu, I'm not sure if I've asked before, but what exactly does Battle Tactics do? Does it give some kind of mechanical bonus? Give us suggestions or better options to vote on in battle? Give us more control of what Lirra does in battle? Tell us what enemies are likely to do next?
This looks really interesting to me, and I'd like to know what it does.

 

[Renu]

@Renu, I'm not sure if I've asked before, but what exactly does Battle Tactics do? Does it give some kind of mechanical bonus? Give us suggestions or better options to vote on in battle? Give us more control of what Lirra does in battle? Tell us what enemies are likely to do next?

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Mostly more control over your teammates in battle, as well as more clues during narration.

 

[TaliesinSkye]

Let's see if I got the above-Lirra's mindset right.

"So I know you've done me a huge favor and basically trusted a complete stranger with an extremely valuable ingredient that saw an entire species - which may or may not be yours - hunted down to extinction, but after getting it my way I am starting to have seconds thoughts about repayment. See, I needed it, and that means I was owed it, and asking to repay something that I would not otherwise get in a hundred years is asking for too much, and thus trying to ensure it is almost equal to slavery, which makes you a slaver, which makes you evil, which makes me searching for a justification to murder you in your sleep not at all morally flexible, and if I get to profit off of it and get everything for free, it's merely a just reward for ridding the world of a villain."

...did I miss anything?

My thoughts on the matter are extremely simple. If you take on a debt, you take on the obligations of payment. If you are not prepared to pay, don't get in debt.

Even if Tanwen were the lowest of the low, she has dealt with us fairly. No hidden clauses, all conditions laid out beforehand. You don't want it, you don't take it. You take it, you don't complain.

But she went farther than that, basically betting her own life on the deal. If Tanwen is a dragon, she just entrusted Lirra with a secret of her nature. Something as valuable as dragon blood would see a lot of people wanting to get it, and with no small amount of justifications which would place their concerns above her life. If Tanwen isn't a dragon, she just gave away the invaluable, nigh-irreplaceable (the species are nearly extinct, remember?) potion that could have been used to save her own life, but is now gone. To a complete stranger, based on a promise.

...which we are now trying to seek a way around?

I know a favor of that nature is unsettling simply because of how open-ended it is, but we should never forget that what we were granted was similarly massive. I would be against looking for loopholes and trying to possibly sabotage the payment by inserting someone else in-between. If you are unsure of the nature of the favor, go talk to Tanwen, become her friend or at the very least someone she has a reason to listen to, and if you have suspicions her intentions are less than noble (which we don't), do your damnedest to talk her out of it. Because we owe her, and we owe her big.

Then again, the lack of basic gratitude is certainly a theme with the setting. I just hoped that having been on the receiving end of it, Lirra wouldn't be too eager to jump on the other team so quickly.


I know, right?

"I know I really shouldn't be doing this for someone who at this point in time means nothing to me, but hey, at least a Fae won't try to screw me over if I make her swear it?"

That's the kind of thing that ruins whatever tiny hope for mutual trust there can be.

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Ethics and law both agree, property rights come second to lives. There are people in the real world who don't understand this and it's caused a multitude of horrors over the course of human history. The minute you start holding property rights before people you've walked away from the realm of ethical conduct and into the realm of deplorable evil.

And what Tanwen did wasn't even some sort of voluntary contract, it was extreme coercion. "Give me literally anything I want including your life or this person dies." That would never, ever be enforceable in an actual court for very good reason. Look up Crassus fire brigades if you'd like an ancient example of the sort of abuses that allowing that kind of thing leads to.

By the current logic we could hold a knife to Tanwen's throat and demand that she give back the debt for the 'favor' of not murdering her.

 

[Grigori]

Ethics and law both agree, property rights come second to lives. There are people in the real world who don't understand this and it's caused a multitude of horrors over the course of human history. The minute you start holding property rights before people you've walked away from the realm of ethical conduct and into the realm of deplorable evil.

And what Tanwen did wasn't even some sort of voluntary contract, it was extreme coercion. "Give me literally anything I want including your life or this person dies." That would never, ever be enforceable in an actual court for very good reason. Look up Crassus fire brigades if you'd like an ancient example of the sort of abuses that allowing that kind of thing leads to.

By the current logic we could hold a knife to Tanwen's throat and demand that she give back the debt for the 'favor' of not murdering her.

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Our laws also don't look fondly on schools sending prospective students into deadly forests but that's the setting's reality and what the kids signed up for. No one was entitled to having peers save them, though they were meant to work in teams, and they certainly aren't entitled to each other's valuable restoratives.

 

[TaliesinSkye]

Our laws also don't look fondly on schools sending prospective students into deadly forests but that's the setting's reality and what the kids signed up for. No one was entitled to having peers save them, though they were meant to work in teams, and they certainly aren't entitled to each other's valuable restoratives.

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Let me try to clarify. We're operating on two different levels at the same time when we talk about these sorts of issues. There's the legal level and the ethical level. On the legal level, all this nonsense appears to be acceptable in the setting, although it wouldn't be in our world. Sometimes laws allow stuff that's evil, like slavery and honor killings and a whole parade of other horrors that fill real world human history.

That brings us to the moral or ethical level. Ethics are the what is right, and are independent of what is legal. This is because what is right is what's right regardless of where you are or what anyone else says. If I found myself in a society where slavery was lawful, I would still be an evil being if I started engaging in slavery, just as I would be if I were engaging in slavery in our real world society where it's unlawful. Similarly, in both societies stopping slavers (even with death if no other means are available) and freeing slaves is the ethical choice in both societies. It may not be the practical choice in a society that accepts slavery and reacts with violence toward anyone who opposes it, but what's right is not always practical.

What Tanwen did, refusing to save someone's life when it was within her capability to do so unless someone swore themselves into an arrangement that amounted to slavery, may have been legal in her society. It was not ethical, on several counts. One, refusing to save someone else's life when it is easily within your capability to do so is generally wrong. Two, taking advantage of circumstances to coerce other people to gain something for yourself is wrong. Three, enslaving people is wrong.

Regardless of the laws of this place, the fact remains that Tanwen is a person who didn't think twice about committing these three grievous wrongs that hurt others to better herself. This tells us that Tanwen is the sort of person who hurts others to benefit herself whenever she can get away with it, and feels no guilt at mistreating others.

This is the description of a person of villainous character. A person who feels no empathy for others and sees people only as obstacles and as tools. Psychologists describe these people as sociopaths. These are the people who inspired the creation of the concept of evil because of the ways they are capable of treating others, with utter and complete disregard, are horrifying to the rest of us. There is no cure for their condition; once the changes in the brain occur that bring about sociopathy, it's permanent. It is possible to create sociopaths. Expose children to enough violence, physical or sexual or both, and a substantial number of them will lose their senses of empathy and think nothing of spending their lives repeating or one-uping the horrors they witnessed or experienced when they were young whenever they see a benefit for themselves in doing so.

This incidentally is why a number of third world countries find it so difficult to escape violent episodes and turn into thriving civilizations despite the benefits of modern technology. Widespread violence with child soldiers and mass rape as a weapon of war and massacres produce a generation rich with sociopaths who continue the violence and in turn produce more sociopaths. It's a very difficult cycle for a nation to get out of once they fall into it.
ts of victims, with tolerance and compassion out of a naive hope she'll get better and become a regular person again. To do so could very well be a fatal error.

Perhaps this is what happened to Tanwen, but because her actions are consistent with those of a well known type of irredeemable monster we may not be able to afford to treat her like we would other victims of tragedy, with compassion and tolerance in the naive hope that they'll become good people in time with enough support. A sociopath sees a person with a belief like that as an easily manipulated chump to take as much advantage of as possible. Falling into that trap can be a fatal error.

 

[Grigori]

What Tanwen did, refusing to save someone's life when it was within her capability to do so unless someone swore themselves into an arrangement that amounted to slavery, may have been legal in her society. It was not ethical, on several counts. One, refusing to save someone else's life when it is easily within your capability to do so is generally wrong. Two, taking advantage of circumstances to coerce other people to gain something for yourself is wrong. Three, enslaving people is wrong.

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I think you're being far too simplistic in terms of ethics and evil but specifically looking at the three points. We have no idea of the ease in which she saved Chloe's life or what it cost her. Self interest is completely natural. Having someone owe you a debt is not making them property and so is not enslavement.

 

[TaliesinSkye]

I think you're being far too simplistic in terms of ethics and evil but specifically looking at the three points. We have no idea of the ease in which she saved Chloe's life or what it cost her. Self interest is completely natural. Having someone owe you a debt is not making them property and so is not enslavement.

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A normal debt, sure. Not a magically enforced debt to give up anything, including one's life. That's the moral equivalent of slavery, pure and simple. And slavers deserve death.