Gravedigger Quest

[Sentient Tree]

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

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Awesome. So it would help us get more info, and help prevent Leeroy Jenkins-ing. Plus make battles more interesting and tactical.

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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The problem with that example is that she didn't actually cause the situation. And I think it would be good to wait and see whether she has any ill intentions before doing anything rash.

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

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I would like to chime in that I don't think it's quite the same as slavery, unless she uses it that way. If at any point she starts being abusive, then yes we should stop her. But I suspect she might not even call in the debt if we become her friend, much less do anything bad with it.

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 don't believe that 3 is happening here (pending new information from Tanwen), 2 is wrong (and should probably be talked about further), and for 1 that's not quite the situation. Nevill pointed out that she actually took on quite a bit of risk for us, and as far as I know it isn't ethical to force someone to do stuff like giving blood or liver to people, even to prevent them from dying. I might be confusing lawful with ethical though.
As for 2, taking advantage of circumstances to coerce people is wrong, and that seems to have happened, I think. My favored hypothesis states that she wanted the debt from us in order to protect herself from us, and that she is unlikely to use it for anything objectionable if we become friends with her. This doesn't make it right, but perhaps more understandable at least?

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.

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I believe we need more evidence to make this assumption. Right now we only have this one piece of evidence. If we find out that she murdered her party, and did so for a bad reason, then we should definitely consider this a likely possibility.

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.

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While I agree that such conditions probably create more sociopaths than other conditions, I believe that it is too simplistic to say that this is the only reason, or even necessarily one of the largest ones. Yes, these places don't have the laws that in modern countries incentivize sociopaths to not commit the same crimes so common in developing countries. However, sociopaths are not the only type of human that can commit these atrocities. Normal humans are also quite capable of it, and since sociopaths are a small percentage of the population, there's a lot more atrocities committed by non-sociopaths. In developing countries, poverty, desperation, and not having good role models (after all, if you're a child soldier your best role model is probably the guy that just told you to kill someone), along with many other factors, all combine together to incentivize normal human beings to be absolute pieces of crap to each other. If you have the choice between killing your neighbor and stealing their food, or watching your family starve, most people are going to try and not let their family starve. Sorry that this rant is a bit off topic, but the point is that while I'm sure sociopaths contribute to the horrors, even if we got rid of every single one of them those countries wouldn't suddenly start being nice places.

More important to your point, right now Tanwen being a sociopath is actually one of the less likely hypotheses. We did some analysis of this further up the thread, and it's more likely that she's emotionally traumatized, racist, a dragon, or some combination of these.
I can see if I can find the posts to quote/summarize them, if you want? I think it was spread out over multiple quotes and posts.

Edit:
Does anyone have anything to contribute on the idea that Tanwen coerced us, and the ethics of this if she did? I'm not sure what I think of it.

 

[Grigori]

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.

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But a magically enforced debt is a tool and tools aren't inherently evil. You can also enforce slavery with a gun and chains but you aren't a slaver until you use them to do so.

Also, your calls for death do your arguments no favour. Personally, I consider such extreme behaviour more of an ethical concern than coercion.

 

[Sentient Tree]

But a magically enforced debt is a tool and tools aren't inherently evil. You can also enforce slavery with a gun and chains but you aren't a slaver until you use them to do so.

Also, your calls for death do your arguments no favour. Personally, I consider such extreme behaviour more of an ethical concern than coercion.

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While I agree that the magically enforced debt is not itself evil, and I think it's best to not jump to extremes at least until we find out whether Tanwen plans to use manipulation again, coercion is bad. You don't seem to be denying that coercion occured, do you say it isn't a problem in this circumstance?

 

[TaliesinSkye]

But a magically enforced debt is a tool and tools aren't inherently evil. You can also enforce slavery with a gun and chains but you aren't a slaver until you use them to do so.

Also, your calls for death do your arguments no favour. Personally, I consider such extreme behaviour more of an ethical concern than coercion.

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Perhaps you guys can make Tanwen a decent person through the power of friendship. It's a story, and a fantasy, things like that can happen. But so far? She's a horrible person. So horrible that even the utterly extreme sanction of violence wouldn't be entirely unjustified if it were to come to that. We need to be prepared for her to continue to be a horrible person, or we risk horrors. "Go kill those people that are in my way." "Go steal that." "Go confess to a crime I committed."

I think the most likely scenario where we get out of this is we wait until Tanwen is in a situation where either we either help her or she dies horribly, and then we reverse the script. Normally I'd give someone help without any expectation of reward, but for Tanwen turnabout is fair play.

The problem with that example is that she didn't actually cause the situation. And I think it would be good to wait and see whether she has any ill intentions before doing anything rash.

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This is a common misunderstanding of coercion. Taking advantage of a situation where someone is compelled to agree to literally anything isn't quite as bad as causing the situation yourself, such as in the way a mugger does ('Your money or your life!') but it is still coercive and deeply wrong. The reason for this is that a person who has no choice hasn't actually given meaningful consent to any bargain.

If you'd like legal mirrors to the ethical principle, this sort of behavior is why we have laws against price gouging in disasters and emergency situations. It's also present in contract law, where any of a whole constellation of potentially even slightly coercive factors means that two parties cannot form an enforceable contract. These laws were necessary because there have been many people over the millennia who saw coercive situations and thought they could take advantage of them for outsized personal gain, and because they didn't create the originating situation they would be somehow blameless. They're just businessmen who saw an opportunity, they like to say, uncomprehending or ignoring that people in a situation where they can be compelled to agree to anything aren't engaging in fair and consentual commerce.

Marcus Licinius Crassus is history's most famous example of this. In the last years of the Republic he became the richest man in Rome - today he would have been a multi-billionaire - in no small part by owning a monopoly on fire fighting and leveraging outrageous sums from people whose homes or businesses were burning down. They could pay Crassus nearly all the value of the building or they could lose it entirely, so people paid. But Crassus was far from alone in doing this sort of thing over the years since. We've even had to make laws against people with potential undue influence over others like doctors, lawyers, priests and parents from making contracts with their clients, parishioners, or children respectively, because a long list of morally bankrupt people took advantage of those positions to loot others who trusted them for unearned cash.

 

[SolipsistSerpent]

This is a common misunderstanding of coercion. Taking advantage of a situation where someone is compelled to agree to literally anything isn't quite as bad as causing the situation yourself, such as in the way a mugger does ('Your money or your life!') but it is still coercive and deeply wrong. The reason for this is that a person who has no choice hasn't actually given meaningful consent to any bargain.

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True. Most people, however, consider it less wrong than the murder you've been suggesting.

 

[Renu]

Funny enough, I did write Tanwen fully aware of all the implications of what she did, but I still can't help being all "hey, screw you all, stop saying bad things about my daughteru".

Which probably proves I'd be a terrible parent.

Still, since I wrote her as kind of morally gray, I'm happy about the discussion.

 

[Sentient Tree]

But so far? She's a horrible person. So horrible that even the utterly extreme sanction of violence wouldn't be entirely unjustified if it were to come to that. We need to be prepared for her to continue to be a horrible person, or we risk horrors. "Go kill those people that are in my way." "Go steal that." "Go confess to a crime I committed."

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That's part of what the analysis was about, to see what makes her tick, and thereby determine if she is likely to tell us to do something bad. If you have any more evidence for her being a sociopath, horribly racist, or a demon king, I'd be interested in hearing it.
So far, to my knowledge, the only crime she definitely committed is coercion. My personal belief is that she did it more out of desperation rather than a lack of caring or any ill will, but I'm willing to update my belief from new evidence.

I think the most likely scenario where we get out of this is we wait until Tanwen is in a situation where either we either help her or she dies horribly, and then we reverse the script. Normally I'd give someone help without any expectation of reward, but for Tanwen turnabout is fair play.

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I would prefer not to become as bad as she is unless she continues manipulating us or others.

This is a common misunderstanding of coercion. Taking advantage of a situation where someone is compelled to agree to literally anything isn't quite as bad as causing the situation yourself, such as in the way a mugger does ('Your money or your life!') but it is still coercive and deeply wrong. The reason for this is that a person who has no choice hasn't actually given meaningful consent to any bargain.

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Fair enough. I can agree with that. I do want to wait and see if she continues doing it though. Preferably I'd like to also find out her motivations for doing it in the first place. Depending on her motivations, we may very well be able to redeem her. Which would certainly be nice, since she is obviously interesting to the thread and seems to be an able combatant (and may be even better than if she turns out to actually be a dragon).

Perhaps we could think up non-murdery ways to deal with her if she starts being abusive or coerces us again? As long as we don't actually implement them without having more evidence that she's going through continue being bad, it probably wouldn't hurt. Have a plan to kill everyone in the room, and all that. Just without the killing.

Funny enough, I did write Tanwen fully aware of all the implications of what she did, but I still can't help being all "hey, screw you all, stop saying bad things about my daughteru".

Which probably proves I'd be a terrible parent.

Still, since I wrote her as kind of morally gray, I'm happy about the discussion.

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Welp. That's not a good sign.
So she's fully aware of what she's doing. Now, the question is, why does she think they're acceptable for her to do anyway? My favored hypothesis is that she was desperate for a friend who wouldn't betray her (and she seems to think we won't die on her either, although I don't know why she thinks that), and was just desperate enough to do something morally wrong.
If she's morally gray, instead of black, then she's probably redeemable.

 

[SolipsistSerpent]

So she's fully aware of what she's doing. Now, the question is, why does she think they're acceptable for her to do anyway? My favored hypothesis is that she was desperate for a friend who wouldn't betray her (and she seems to think we won't die on her either, although I don't know why she thinks that), and was just desperate enough to do something morally wrong.If she's morally gray, instead of black, then she's probably redeemable.

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You're over-reading the line. @Renu said they were aware of the implications when writing Tanwen, not that Tanwen was aware of the implications. I'd lay odds Tanwn probably is aware, but that's not what Renu said.

 

[TaliesinSkye]

Perhaps we could think up non-murdery ways to deal with her if she starts being abusive or coerces us again? As long as we don't actually implement them without having more evidence that she's going through continue being bad, it probably wouldn't hurt. Have a plan to kill everyone in the room, and all that. Just without the killing.

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My best playing hardball idea that doesn't involve murder (and I agree that murder is absolutely a last resort for practical and moral reasons, even in the rare circumstances that killing someone is justified) if we wind up needing to get rid of the debt is to engineer a situation where Tanwen has to call it in in a way that we control.

There's an infinitude of ways that could be done, from the straightforward and obvious ('Behold! You are standing on a trap door, below which is a bit filled with poisoned stakes and angry alligators. This lever I'm leaning on right here opens the trap. Would you like me to do you the favor of not throwing it? Take your time thinking about it, I shall stand here twirling my moustache.') to the opportunistic ('Oh dear, you appear to be injured, someone has sabotaged all your weapons, and you're cornered by monsters because you're covered in their pheromones. I wonder how that happened. Would you like me to rescue you?') to the winding and subtle. ('Wow, someone framed you for killing the rest of your group in the woods and you're stuck here in the brig? Well, I could go find evidence to exonerate you if you want to call in your favor...')

Subtle is good because people who don't suspect you're behind their misfortunes don't seek revenge, but sometimes you're in a rush and don't have time to assemble a good plot.

 

[Sentient Tree]

My best playing hardball idea that doesn't involve murder (and I agree that murder is absolutely a last resort for practical and moral reasons, even in the rare circumstances that killing someone is justified) if we wind up needing to get rid of the debt is to engineer a situation where Tanwen has to call it in in a way that we control.

There's an infinitude of ways that could be done, from the straightforward and obvious ('Behold! You are standing on a trap door, below which is a bit filled with poisoned stakes and angry alligators. This lever I'm leaning on right here opens the trap. Would you like me to do you the favor of not throwing it? Take your time thinking about it, I shall stand here twirling my moustache.') to the opportunistic ('Oh dear, you appear to be injured, someone has sabotaged all your weapons, and you're cornered by monsters because you're covered in their pheromones. I wonder how that happened. Would you like me to rescue you?') to the winding and subtle. ('Wow, someone framed you for killing the rest of your group in the woods and you're stuck here in the brig? Well, I could go find evidence to exonerate you if you want to call in your favor...')

Subtle is good because people who don't suspect you're behind their misfortunes don't seek revenge, but sometimes you're in a rush and don't have time to assemble a good plot.

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Well, if she starts being abusive, I would go with subtle, since we might not even have to frame her. If she's that bad of a person she very well might have been the one to do it. Also, we really wouldn't want her to find out it was us.
What about finding out she's a dragon (or a demon lord or whatever she is), and finding evidence that we can show to the teachers? They would go and eject her from the place, while we stay away so she can't tell us to die. We just have to make sure she doesn't find out it was us.

 

[Nevill]

Does anyone have anything to contribute on the idea that Tanwen coerced us, and the ethics of this if she did?

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Sounds like a lot of bull to me.

Lirra's desperation to save Chloe was nothing more than her mental and/or moral hiccup. She was under no pressure to accept the contract but the one she imposed on herself, and that is hardly Tanwen's problem, is it?

That you think you need something in no way necessitates that you are owed it, and that not providing it is in any way evil, or extortion, or anything of a kind. Lirra wanted an equivalent of a million gold miracle, and setting aside the fact that Tanwen wasn't obliged to the deal at all, she was asked for an equivalent price. You can hardly think of something more fair than 'life for life'. Blaming someone they didn't just give you a miracle that other teams may have killed for for free is the height of entitlement.

You know what does sound like coersion, to me? If you think you really need money, and happen upon someone with wads of cash, and tell them that they should just give it to you, and if they ask for something of equal value in return, tell them that they are getting advantage of poor you, and that means they are coercing you, and that you will be contemplating killing them if they don't cough up money real quick. Or, as the case may be, blood.

Sounds a lot closer to the textbook definition, to my ears.

Like I said, Tanwen has done us a favor none of the other teams were lucky to get. Most of them would leap at the chance to save their friends or themselves (but I don't think Tanwen would humor them). Not acknowledging this strikes me as unspeakable, monstrous ingratitude and diminishing the value of Chloe's life. If Lirra really contemplated half the things said here, I would not think her deserving of being helped by anyone ever again.

 

[TaliesinSkye]

Well, if she starts being abusive, I would go with subtle, since we might not even have to frame her. If she's that bad of a person she very well might have been the one to do it. Also, we really wouldn't want her to find out it was us.
What about finding out she's a dragon (or a demon lord or whatever she is), and finding evidence that we can show to the teachers? They would go and eject her from the place, while we stay away so she can't tell us to die. We just have to make sure she doesn't find out it was us.

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Another approach would be to tell other people who'd get really upset with Tanwen on our behalf and force the issue one way or another. Friends are good to have.

@Nevill - There are people who agree with you that property rights are absolute and trump even people's right to live, and that contracts are absolute things as long as a person signs on the dotted line whatever the circumstances. These positions haven't been much of a thing in the legal arena since the idea of privity of contract came into disrepute in the early 20th century after the Supreme Court of the turn of the century flirted with the idea and their consequent attempts to abolish labor laws ended disastrously, but politically these things persist among some libertarians and fans of Ayn Rand. Today these things aren't considered to be defensible positions by any significant number of legal philosophers or ethicists anywhere in the developed world though, and they're the people who spend their professional lives examining and critiquing these ideas.

 

[Nevill]

This has little to do with my position and my RL views. But even so.

Bad things come from letting people decide what they are entitled to or not in a dark forest. Some would think the life of their friend is more important than your invaluable treasure. Some would like to help themselves to your wallet. You need an arbiter to judge and control these things. A law and a state, or in this case, the Academy. And the Academy has spoken. Lives are something that their students can do without.

At this point you lose all claims to life being your immutable right, and start depending on people's goodwill - or your sword - to keep it.

Lirra went with goodwill. I would rather not repay it with what by all means I consider treachery.

 

[Nottheunmaker]

What the Supreme Court thinks has about as much relevance on the matter as my cats opinion on the vet. None. This is a favor for a favor situation, outside any kind of legal authority, let alone ones that don't exist in this universe. The deal is enforced by a kind of magically bound duty that means Lirra has to see it through or face the consequences.

 

[TaliesinSkye]

This has little to do with my position and my RL views. But even so.

Bad things come from letting people decide what they are entitled to or not in a dark forest. Some would think the life of their friend is more important than your invaluable treasure. Some would like to help themselves to your wallet. You need an arbiter to judge and control these things. A law and a state, or in this case, the Academy. And the Academy has spoken. Lives are something that their students can do without.

At this point you lose all claims to life being your immutable right, and start depending on people's goodwill - or your sword - to keep it.

Lirra went with goodwill. I would rather not repay it with what by all means I consider treachery.

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I cautioned against this earlier. Laws don't make a thing moral or immoral. Consider that an authority can say that murder and slavery are right, but that obviously wouldn't make it true, it would just make the authority in question dangerously insane.

The wide variety of different legal and philosophical traditions out there today broadly agree that property rights don't come before people's lives. This is a hard won insight of many horrors of human history that an absolutist idea of property rights above all other rights brought about. Everyone in the field today agrees that property rights are not and cannot be absolute in any society you would want to live in. It comes down to a fundamental value, that people's lives are more important than objects and wealth.

This is why morally - and in a modern society legally - if someone is bleeding out and another person has a first aid kit (or whatever) that they don't want to share, it is a moral imperative to take it and use it to save the person who is dying whether the owner likes it or not.

I've noticed at times that the people who espouse an absolutist view of property rights haven't been aware of what the actual consequences were when their ideas were adopted as public policy, as they hadn't done the necessary reading in depth themselves on the history or legal and ethical philosophy. I get that some people are scared by the idea that their right to own things has caveats, but the caveats really are limited rarities and the alternative policy produced situations that oppressed millions of real people horribly for a long, long time.

Consider slavery, serfdom, tenant farming, payment in scrip, indentured servitude, 16 hour a day seven day a week work weeks, the illegalization of collective bargaining, and a thousand other abuses that oppressed much of society. These abuses were perpetrated because they benefited of a tiny number of very wealthy people who used their absolute property rights to extract the benefit of everyone else's labor. That's what really happened and why we moved away from it in the real world at the cost of lakes of spilled blood to make the change possible.

What the Supreme Court thinks has about as much relevance on the matter as my cats opinion on the vet. None. This is a favor for a favor situation, outside any kind of legal authority, let alone ones that don't exist in this universe. The deal is enforced by a kind of magically bound duty that means Lirra has to see it through or face the consequences.

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I feel like you must have somehow missed nearly everything I've written today, to be so confused about my argument to have replied with this. I'm especially perplexed at how you could have come to the conclusion that I was unaware of the basic facts of the situation.

The legal discussion was included for those who are interested and because it served as an illustration of how the ethics that were the central point of the discussion were applied in our world in a concrete way.

 

[Nevill]

This is why morally - and in a modern society legally - if someone is bleeding out and another person has a first aid kit (or whatever) that they don't want to share, it is a moral imperative to take it and use it to save the person who is dying whether the owner likes it or not.

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Ignoring the fact that dragon blood potions aren't as readily available as first aid kits, and that - if Tanwen really is a dragon, - that logic ends with her chained to a slab to bleed out into vials as people with better moral imperatives take it and use it to make a fortune save lives whether she likes it or not...

Correct me if I am wrong, but the argument comes down to the sanctity of life, right? Tanwen had no ethical right to ask for anything in return when Chloe's life was on the line, and she had no ethical right to offer a contract that stipulates she can demand ours - or anything of lesser value - if she so desires. That's the crime she committed to earn your ire?

While I disagree with both of those assumptions in-setting, I can't help but notice an inconsistency in Lirra's mindset if she were to accept the above as one. Namely, there is a much bigger offender in that regard, and that is the Academy that outright put them in this situation, sending a third of the ill-prepared students to die. Were Lirra that principled, shouldn't she hold it in contempt and drop out in disgust in the face of unbelievable cruelty and callousness that offends her sensibilities so much? But no, she chooses a much easier and more acceptable target for her anger - not before helping herself to the offer, though. What is the difference between Tanwen and the Headmaster when it comes to the ease with which they doom people to their deaths, that makes Lirra resent the former to the point of considering murder, while remaining a model student keen on continuing her studies?

Why, the minor fact that Lirra owes Tanwen money favors, of course!

I could probably see where the argument comes from, if its ideological/religious/ethical part was separate from the economical one. I wouldn't be as instinctually opposed to Lirra resenting Tanwen for her views and actions if she were resigned to come through on her obligations anyway. That would just be the matter of Lirra's personal beliefs. But right now it smells as a good Catholic gutting his less good Huguenot neighbour because the latter had the poor foresight to loan him a few coins.

 

[TaliesinSkye]

Ignoring the fact that dragon blood potions aren't as readily available as first aid kits, and that - if Tanwen really is a dragon, - that logic ends with her chained to a slab to bleed out into vials as people with better moral imperatives take it and use it to make a fortune save lives whether she likes it or not...

Correct me if I am wrong, but the argument comes down to the sanctity of life, right? Tanwen had no ethical right to ask for anything in return when Chloe's life was on the line, and she had no ethical right to offer a contract that stipulates she can demand ours - or anything of lesser value - if she so desires. That's the crime she committed to earn your ire?

While I disagree with both of those assumptions in-setting, I can't help but notice an inconsistency in Lirra's mindset if she were to accept the above as one. Namely, there is a much bigger offender in that regard, and that is the Academy that outright put them in this situation, sending a third of the ill-prepared students to die. Were Lirra that principled, shouldn't she hold it in contempt and drop out in disgust in the face of unbelievable cruelty and callousness that offends her sensibilities so much? But no, she chooses a much easier and more acceptable target for her anger - not before helping herself to the offer, though. What is the difference between Tanwen and the Headmaster when it comes to the ease with which they doom people to their deaths, that makes Lirra resent the former to the point of considering murder, while remaining a model student keen on continuing her studies?

Why, the minor fact that Lirra owes Tanwen money favors, of course!

I could probably see where the argument comes from, if its ideological/religious/ethical part was separate from the economical one. I wouldn't be as instinctually opposed to Lirra resenting Tanwen for her views and actions if she were resigned to come through on her obligations anyway. That would just be the matter of Lirra's personal beliefs. But right now it smells as a good Catholic gutting his less good Huguenot neighbour because the latter had the poor foresight to loan him a few coins.

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Oh the Academy's actions are utterly indefensible, you're absolutely right. True, these are people who want to be heroes and they'll need to face monsters eventually, and some of them aren't going to survive that meeting, but making them do so before they're trained is a callous and stupid waste of human life. Only a desperate or short-sighted general doesn't train his soldiers before sending them to war.

 

[SolipsistSerpent]

The wide variety of different legal and philosophical traditions out there today broadly agree that property rights don't come before people's lives. This is a hard won insight of many horrors of human history that an absolutist idea of property rights above all other rights brought about. Everyone in the field today agrees that property rights are not and cannot be absolute in any society you would want to live in. It comes down to a fundamental value, that people's lives are more important than objects and wealth.

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Your statement of broad agreement ignores a common position on 'paying for medical services' however that while it should be provided even if you can't pay, you should still pay if you can, which you seem to be ignoring, since Lirra can pay the price that has been asked.

 

[TaliesinSkye]

Your statement of broad agreement ignores a common position on 'paying for medical services' however that while it should be provided even if you can't pay, you should still pay if you can, which you seem to be ignoring, since Lirra can pay the price that has been asked.

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A monetary debt would be reasonable, but 'spend your life on my whim if I feel like it and you can't refuse' is objectionable. Slavery is an immoral obscenity, not a valid form of repayment for a debt. Further, lives are worth more than property, so it would be a gross overpayment even if slavery were acceptable, which it isn't.

 

[Nevill]

Lirra can pay the price that has been asked.

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That's a bad argument.

No one asks for a price that can not be paid if they want the deal to go through, this is contrary to the nature of the negotiation. However, that a price can be paid does not mean it should be, or should be featuring as a price in the first place. Lirra can promise someone her freedom, her firstborn, someone else's firstborn, or to ritually murder a dozen students in the Academy - those are all, technically, prices she can pay if she wanted something badly enough. But that would prompt a very different evaluation of the deal from us. Why is that?

I think that's where the fairness of a deal enters the picture. A man dying of thirst would give anything for a cup of water, but upon review, the deal would not be considered fair. Similarly, trading in babies would be frowned upon by virtually everyone, since you would be hard-pressed to put a price tag on that - and so it remains the domain of demons and evil spirits in mythology.

TaliesinSkye's point, if I understood them correctly, is that a life is an immutable personal right that you can not put a price to, and therefore can not bargain for/with, making any such deals unfair and thus not binding. Tanwen can not demand a Life Debt, as it would be twice immoral - first, setting a price for Chloe's life, and second, holding Lirra's life as a collateral.

To me, there appear to be several problems with that view, some of which I have with the outlook itself, some of them with this type of concerns appearing after the deal was made, making it look extremely skeevy, and some having to do with Lirra of all people holding that opinion. She by her very nature can not lie, and can not enter a deal with the intent to deceive. I would have a hard time interpreting her position as something other than buyer's remorse and thinking that Chloe's life wasn't worth the debt she got saddled with.

 

[TaliesinSkye]

TaliesinSkye's point, if I understood them correctly, is that a life is an immutable personal right that you can not put a price to, and therefore can not bargain for/with, making any such deals unfair and thus not binding. Tanwen can not demand a Life Debt, as it would be twice immoral - first, setting a price for Chloe's life, and second, holding Lirra's life as a collateral.

To me, there appear to be several problems with that view, some of which I have with the outlook itself, some of them with this type of concerns appearing after the deal was made, making it look extremely skeevy, and some having to do with Lirra of all people holding that opinion. She by her very nature can not lie, and can not enter a deal with the intent to deceive. I would have a hard time interpreting her position as something other than buyer's remorse and thinking that Chloe's life wasn't worth the debt she got saddled with.

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That's a reasonable representation of my point, or at least that part of it. I did cover a lot of ground.

You make a valid point about Lirra's perspective being limiting as to what she would actually think and do. My objections are from the perspective of someone who's studied law and ethics in our world and is outraged by horrors that might well be simply accepted in Lirra's still brutish world.

I think it'd probably be reasonable for Lirra to go as far as 'it was unfair to demand a life debt in those circumstances when I couldn't say no without an innocent person dying' and 'I'm really worried about the way Tanwen doesn't seem to care at all about the lives of others and what that says about the kind of person she seems to be'.

What she'd do about those thoughts is open to interpretation. Telling someone she trusts about her worries so she's not in it alone seems like a good option.

 

[Nevill]

I am glad that we are back in the realm of what's reasonable, and I would be pretty down with these particular thoughts... Still, keep in mind whom you are dealing with.

I think it'd probably be reasonable for Lirra to go as far as 'it was unfair to demand a life debt in those circumstances when I couldn't say no without an innocent person dying'

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I don't think you can get even that much out of Lirra, because here it is, straight from the horse's (sheep's?) mouth:

"A Life Debt. After all, a life for a life seems like a pretty fair deal, no?"

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.

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'A life for a life' is considered fair by Lirra herself. And there are no other circumstances that a Life Debt would be invoked but the ones where a person would die otherwise. Wouldn't be much of 'a life for a life' if there were no lives at stake, would it?

So even that line of thought would be a stretch.

Similarly, Lirra herself does not consider the deal equal to a life of servitude. And she does express concern over Tanwen's seemingly uncaring attitude.

...I think we are pretty much back to square one, in that the conclusion to the last two pages of arguments is that it is reasonable for Lirra to behave exactly in the way she's been doing up until now.

 

[Sentient Tree]

Another approach would be to tell other people who'd get really upset with Tanwen on our behalf and force the issue one way or another. Friends are good to have.

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I really like this idea. Make as many friends as possible. Then, if Tanwen DOES start abusing us, tell them about it. Particularly if we make friends with the elf or Pupa, they seem likely to be pretty powerful. Or if we (re)make friends with Furuta.
Out of them, I get the feeling that Furuta would literally kill someone for a friend, if it was required. Also, she's just plain awesome. Therefore, I propose that we schedule the week for trying to find some way to get to know Furuta again without her getting upset that we don't remember her.
Schedule:
Saturday = Work
Sunday = Talk to Chloe about magic
Week = Meet Furuta again, and train with her

Any thoughts?

Bad things come from letting people decide what they are entitled to or not in a dark forest. Some would think the life of their friend is more important than your invaluable treasure. Some would like to help themselves to your wallet. You need an arbiter to judge and control these things. A law and a state, or in this case, the Academy. And the Academy has spoken. Lives are something that their students can do without.

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I will note that nowhere did the Academy say that contracts were absolute. Technically, the only thing enforcing this contract is the fact that Lirra can't lie. While I very much want to fulfill the contract (assuming Tanwen does not become abusive or manipulative), holding up the Academy as a source of ethics is probably a bad idea. They're fine with us doing pretty much whatever we want, short of 'a few things which were illegal pretty much anywhere,' so I doubt they would much care if we broke a contract or ten. I suspect that they would not like it if we murdered a classmate, but I wouldn't actually put money on it. They might just consider it more training.

Ignoring the fact that dragon blood potions aren't as readily available as first aid kits, and that - if Tanwen really is a dragon, - that logic ends with her chained to a slab to bleed out into vials as people with better moral imperatives take it and use it to make a fortune save lives whether she likes it or not...

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That is actually something that we aren't allowed to do in real life, force someone to give blood or organs, even if it is absolutely necessary to save a life. As you've noted, there's a very good reason for this.
I think the discrepancy here is that Tally is considering the blood to have been a piece of property, while you are considering it to be a piece of her, like in your example of giving blood.
I would also like to note that in universe, the exact thing that you mentioned is happening. Dragons were hunted to extinction, and we benefit from it by draining them of blood. The assumption was that they were evil and would have been eating people if we didn't kill them, but I now have to wonder how much of that is true? Food for thought.

While I disagree with both of those assumptions in-setting, I can't help but notice an inconsistency in Lirra's mindset if she were to accept the above as one. Namely, there is a much bigger offender in that regard, and that is the Academy that outright put them in this situation, sending a third of the ill-prepared students to die. Were Lirra that principled, shouldn't she hold it in contempt and drop out in disgust in the face of unbelievable cruelty and callousness that offends her sensibilities so much? But no, she chooses a much easier and more a

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Good point. Combined with the dragon genocide, do we really know that 'good' is actually quite so good here? The Academy throws its students to the wolves (or rather, shades), and adventurers have hunted a possibly sentient species to extinction. Do you have any ideas for fixing this?
Also, I'd like to note that Lirra isn't considering murder. We are. Lirra isn't considering it until we vote to consider it. Otherwise I'd be probably be arguing pretty strenuously against talking about this, since Lirra would probably spill the beans pretty fast.

Tanwen: Whatcha thinkin 'bout?
Lirra: *absently* Reasons and methods for murdering you.
Tanwen:

A monetary debt would be reasonable, but 'spend your life on my whim if I feel like it and you can't refuse' is objectionable. Slavery is an immoral obscenity, not a valid form of repayment for a debt. Further, lives are worth more than property, so it would be a gross overpayment even if slavery were acceptable, which it isn't.

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I would like to note that it's not slavery. It's one favor, which happens to be a pretty big one. Perhaps Tanwen could ask us to be her slave, but if she was going to do that she would have done it by now.

...I think we are pretty much back to square one, in that the conclusion to the last two pages of arguments is that it is reasonable for Lirra to behave exactly in the way she's been doing up until now.

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*deletes half of my reactions*
Well, now that that's settled, can we get back to talking about how to maximize our number of friends while minimizing the likelihood of them dying? On Sunday we're planning to talk to Chloe about magic, which lets us hang out with Best Girl while getting more information about a potentially huge addition to our power level. I think we should also figure out how to get to know Furuta again over the week, and rob graves with Tanwen at some point in the future if she wants. All of these options help us make friends while increasing our personal power (and thus ability to protect our friends).
Right now, learning about magic is time sensitive because we need to figure out what magic we want to take classes on in time to sign up for classes.

What forms of magic do you think would be best to look into?


@Renu, does the Stay General option when talking to Chloe mean that we ask for an overview of what each type of magic does? Or does it mean we just talk about stuff like the limitations of magic and how often you can cast per day?

 

[Renu]

@Renu, does the Stay General option when talking to Chloe mean that we ask for an overview of what each type of magic does? Or does it mean we just talk about stuff like the limitations of magic and how often you can cast per day?

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It's an overview of magic in general. She might talk about the different types but she might also not.

 

[Sentient Tree]

It's an overview of magic in general. She might talk about the different types but she might also not.

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In that case, I'd suggest we just say to ask about everything.

[] To try to learn about magic from Chloe
- [] That telepathy spell she used when we first met was really neat. If she would rather use that to talk, you wouldn't mind another demonstration.
-- [] About Elemental magic
-- [] About Illusion magic
-- [] About Alteration magic
-- [] About Mind magic
-- [] About Creation magic
-- [] About Forbidden magic
-- [] Are there any spells that Swords often take to defend themselves better or help their attacks slay enemies more easily?

I expect we'll learn about the general basics of magic in classes, the same way that pretty much every Biology class has a section in the beginning about how evolution works. The advanced students will just skip over it, but the newbies like Lirra will find it invaluable.
Added a section at the end to ask about whether she knows any buffing spells. Al-Wahid's attitude towards spells implies that Swords aren't bound by tradition or anything to ignore something that could let them fight better, so I would expect that if self-buffing spells exist there are probably many Swords that choose to learn them.
I'm assuming that Lirra probably wouldn't know the word 'buff' though, at least in the context of what we want. If I'm wrong, please tell me so I can fix the proto-vote, that section is cumbersome.