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Harry Potter and the Scabbard of Excalibur [AU]

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Genhack said:
And there's a chance that Harry accidentally commanded his rat buddies to eat someone alive, Salem's Lot style, or that one of his spontaneous magic outbreaks at an inopportune time caused a car crash. After all, wizards are more powerful in this universe, right? But all the other options gave Addams Family antics at worst, so that was what people expected.

I don't really have a complaint about Birdie running the quest as they wish, I just don't really agree with your arguments presented in the thread. Powerscaling exists as a contributing part of the narrative, not to dominate it.
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How can you accidentally command someone to kill someone else?
But yes, there exists a chance that a random bout of accidental magic will kill someone. It is an option that, if there's anything to it, should be at least hinted at.

I don't understand what in the idea of choosing a scenario where it's specified that open magic combat breaks out between two groups of wizards that are cramped in a single house is in any way not indicative of potential risk for everyone involved dying (including Harry)? Did the scenario perhaps seem to you suitably innocent, like choosing a new favorite movie?


Powerscaling *is* part of the narrative.
In this case, it describes the agency of the Dursley family.
If they had more "power" or protection then they might have been able to endure having their house nuked without anyone covering for them.

But they didn't, they weren't protected and they had no way to prevent any single wizard in their house from blowing them up to hell along with their house with a single spell and thus they died.

WillRobinson said:
You're responding to Doylist commentary with a Watsonian answer.

The issue isn't how much we got screwed over, it's how ill-telegraphed the risk of being screwed over was.
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What do you mean by ill-telegraphed?
Wizards break in open magical combat in an unsuspecting muggle household in which they can all destroy said house with a single spell.

What did you expect would happen? Does this series of events seem so sincerely unreasonable to you?

KreenWarrior said:
So, just to be clear.

The update does tend to lead to the impression we are sacrificing our Gnosis.

We are not, this is a trick of phrasing and emotion.

We are actually *spending* our Gnosis.
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Well yes - it's outright stated that Death would accept only something of equal value in return for Dudley's life.

Keywords being "equal value" - we are getting something out of it.
 
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KreenWarrior said:
Personally I would much rather save Dudley for narrative reasons - I just like the way Birdsie has been writing the Dursleys. Also, it will soften the blow to Harry, and Dudley may have some connection to Arthur and the greater metaplot, both important factors. However, there are non-narrative reasons to do so as well. If we must do the cold calculus, we must recognize it as a bargain and see both what we are spending and gaining accurately.
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While I'm perfectly willing to "sacrifice" Dudley for power, I'm also disliking the narrative implication that saving him has. We would basically get divine intervention just so these aurors don't look like the biggest assholes to Harry, which they seem to be. If they rescue him there was just that one who basically tried to kill everyone, including Harry, but she had a head injury. But we would never find out that not one of them was willing to not completely destroy their relationship with the boy who lived, just because they couldn't be arsed to heal his brother, even just enough to not let him perish very soon after. And totally willing to let a child die thanks to the actions of one of their own. Let's not risk having to thank to them for something they wouldn't have done if this Chooser of the Slain wouldn't have intervened.
 
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[X] Beg On Your Knees

I'm honestly rather interested in what denying Death might lead to in the future.

Historically, advancements have been related to your actions, after all, so this'd work too.

[X] Headmaster Albus Dumbledore
 
[X] Rest In Peace
[X] Mr. Auror Kingsley Shacklebolt

I thought Geist didn't remember who he was before he became a voice in Harry's head.
 
I don't mind the loss of gnosis but I don't want to deny Death. I also don't want Dudley to live on in a state that resembles survival. It's too cruel on Dudley. He could be brain dead or in a similar state for the rest of his life.
 
Urit said:
I don't mind the loss of gnosis but I don't want to deny Death. I also don't want Dudley to live on in a state that resembles survival. It's too cruel on Dudley. He could be brain dead or in a similar state for the rest of his life.
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He's assured to survive in a meaningful capacity, still able to live a normal life, but requiring substantial time and effort to recover both mentally and physically.
 
Either actions have consequences or they don't. Resurrecting Dudley just feels like a half-assed attempt at walking it back.
 
Nobody134 said:
What do you mean by ill-telegraphed?
Wizards break in open magical combat in an unsuspecting muggle household in which they can all destroy said house with a single spell.

What did you expect would happen? Does this series of events seem so sincerely unreasonable to you?
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No need to be sarcastic. This series of events in response to a vote about what childish hijinks kid Harry gets into, where every other vote is minor and predetermined to be mostly harmless, does sincerely seem unreasonable.

I'm not complaining that it doesn't make sense for this to happen in-universe. But it would make just as much sense for the angry rottweiler vote to end in Dudley getting his throat torn out, or the Wraith vote to end in Vernon being possessed by the shade and I would have roughly the same tonal complaint.

Some people are talking about powerscaling, but I think that's a complete red herring here. Aside from nonverbal Unforgivables and maybe casting spells a little faster, nothing we've seen is outside the realms of canon wizard fights in terms of sheer power.
 
WillRobinson said:
No need to be sarcastic. This series of events in response to a vote about what childish hijinks kid Harry gets into, where every other vote is minor and predetermined to be mostly harmless, does sincerely seem unreasonable.

I'm not complaining that it doesn't make sense for this to happen in-universe. But it would make just as much sense for the angry rottweiler vote to end in Dudley getting his throat torn out, or the Wraith vote to end in Vernon being possessed by the shade and I would have roughly the same tonal complaint.

Some people are talking about powerscaling, but I think that's a complete red herring here. Aside from nonverbal Unforgivables and maybe casting spells a little faster, nothing we've seen is outside the realms of canon wizard fights in terms of sheer power.
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I expected the shade to be much more dangerous than it has so far been. I also expected the geist to be manipulative and abusive towards Harry. It's because the stupid risks we had previously taken that I wasn't surprised when this happened.
I don't like deus ex machina in a narrative. If Bellatrix had been killed I would expect her to stay dead. It kills narrative tension if death can be simply reversed.
 
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WillRobinson said:
Strictly speaking, Dudley isn't actually dead yet. He's mostly dead, and we're voting on whether or not a wizard saves him.
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I think I would have been ok with it if Harry had to provide gnosis regularly to Dudley to keep him alive, like a blood transfusion. But bringing in a god(Death) to save Dudley is quite literally "deus ex machina".
 
Urit said:
I think I would have been ok with it if Harry had to provide gnosis regularly to Dudley to keep him alive, like a blood transfusion. But bringing in a god(Death) to save Dudley is quite literally "deus ex machina".
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We're bribing the god with magic though.

It's arguably less of a Deus Ex Machina than Dumbledore Apparating in and beating the Death Eaters would have been, and I don't think anyone would complain the same way about that.
 
Corvus Black said:
Either actions have consequences or they don't. Resurrecting Dudley just feels like a half-assed attempt at walking it back.
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Are you assuming that the Gnosis tithe wouldn't be a more severe consequence than Dudley's death? Because it looks a lot like that's a thing you're doing right now.

More interesting to me is why Dudley's survival is something a god is willing to offer at all. Sure, the god stat is always nice and having more is always on the table, but any Power able to transcend death isn't going to be playing checkers. There's got to be another angle here.
 
Box Lunch said:
Are you assuming that the Gnosis tithe wouldn't be a more severe consequence than Dudley's death? Because it looks a lot like that's a thing you're doing right now.

More interesting to me is why Dudley's survival is something a god is willing to offer at all. Sure, the god stat is always nice and having more is always on the table, but any Power able to transcend death isn't going to be playing checkers. There's got to be another angle here.
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If I had to guess, The Dark Lord has so spectacularly annoyed Death that Death is willing to bend the rules a bit to ensure that another piece of You-Know-Who is killed. In our case it wouldn't be the Gnosis that's important, but rather who the Gnosis comes from - Death is willing to grant a mortal's life back if we're willing to give up the trickle of knowledge we get from He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. That's just my theory, though.
 
WillRobinson said:
We're bribing the god with magic though.

It's arguably less of a Deus Ex Machina than Dumbledore Apparating in and beating the Death Eaters would have been, and I don't think anyone would complain the same way about that.
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My guy, a literal god is taking your Source points to bribe Death into looking the other way. Dumbledore intrupt has nothing on this, this is literally Deus Ex Machina.
as in: if you were to look up the definition as a plot device it would point you to this.
The two scenarios don't even compare.
 
Kufufu said:
My guy, a literal god is taking your Source points to bribe Death into looking the other way. Dumbledore intrupt has nothing on this, this is literally Deus Ex Machina.
as in: if you were to look up the definition as a plot device it would point you to this.
The two scenarios don't even compare.
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Just because the trope is named after plays how plays used Greek gods to solve problems doesn't mean every instance of benevolent divine intervention is necessarily a Deus Ex Machina. The gods in this situation aren't solving the problem or unfucking the situation, they're just blunting one of the many consequences.
 
It's gods and machines all the way down. Birdsie controls all aspects of this, both the consequences and methods of mitigation. No aspect is more artificial than the other.
 
Birdsie said:
It does, however, say much about your willingness to sacrifice people on the altar of clinging to power.
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Well, he's a fictional character with the actual protagonist having nothing to do with this decision and you've kind presented the build vote style stuff that Gnosis allows as a major draw of the quest, so i'm not sure that level of sanctimony is warranted.

[X] Rest In Peace
[X] Headmaster Albus Dumbledore
 
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