So, getting an insight into the Gods with Truth would be great and that was my knee-jerk reaction, but the more I think about, the more problems it has.
1. We'd be going behind Ranald's back.
- Now he will probably not care about this, even if he knew, after all, he too stole the secrets of divinity from the Gods, but if we ever get caught, you can bet he'll disavow us and claim ignorance.
2. Sanity checks
- At the same time, treating Gods as collectibles, not even considering the hidden deeper uses of such crystals and just wanting a collection for the shines, when paired with the prior caution and methodology of Mathilde, really strikes me as suspicious and concerning. Mathilde's always been a magpie but she's been a cautious magpie, and near single-minded consideration of how she make poke-crystals out of different Gods is very concerning.
3. Detection
-Ranald may not have been watching us then but it's very possible we may be getting watched while we try to acquire the artifacts of other Gods. Especially those of the future-telling variety. It's practically a given we won't be able to do it undetected at least once and if the God gets pissed at that, we're done for. The reason for this brings me to number 4.
4. Chaos. Just....Chaos.
- If
anyone finds out about this, we'll get declared rogue so fast. Because the first thing our peers will think about is "what if she or someone who gets their hands on her research does this with an artifact of the Chaos Gods? Worse, what if they've already done so?"
- We also know Gods can have differing names and mannerisms but still probably be one and the same. What if we crystallize an artifact from a God we think is separate but turns out to be one of the Four or Hashut or something?
- If one of the non-Chaos Gods find out about this, and if a single mortal finds out or gets suspicious about us and what we want with some holy artifact we got detected trying to steal, and then sends up a prayer, they'll almost certain know, we're so screwed and not just in the smiting way. Visions to their faithful in power, telling the other Gods, visions to
their faithful in power...even if they don't mind it in principle, they'll be very very worried about the potential for abuse and probably about the non-consensual manner we did it in.
5. Sanity + Chaos
#3 and #4 together have me very concerned. The possibility of crystallizing Chaos along with Mathilde's sudden fixation on crystallizing parts of Gods, however "well-akshually-it's-a-copy-of-a-part-and-not-really-the-God" it may be, is terrifying.
Ranald may have stolen the secrets of divinity and I'd like to do the same one day, but not this way. Pirating and bottling up Gods' divinities just to have a collection like Mathilde wants to do, where the bottling is the goal and not simply a method to achieve her goal, is not something I want to vote for.
Faith on the other hand, is us trusting our oldest friend, an apology, and a demonstration of our own trustworthiness at the same time. It is also a step back from the precipice of recklessness, avarice, hubris and self-sabotage. Even if there was a fourth "[ ] Study it further" option without going to the extreme "Bottle the copies of the fingerprints of the Gods" option (a copy of your fingerprint is still your fingerprint), I'd probably vote for Faith over it. Ranald may prohibit us from studying it, or he might not. He may reward us, or he might not. We may in the future make ourselves a God or we might not. But I don't want to do it without or at the cost of Mathilde's oldest friendship. Power and knowledge, whatever the cost, where that power and knowledge is the aim and not the method to achieve your goal? That's Lex Luthor levels of nope. Even ignoring how ripe for Chaos corruption such a stance is, that's not the kind of person, friend or God I want Mathilde to be.
[ ] Faith
Edit: So Boney posted this after I had started typing this out.
Truth will allow the voters to steer where Mathilde turns her attention, but there's no guarantee that the vote will go the way you want it to. If you're against even the possibility of investigating the Ancestor Gods or Ranald further, go Faith or Prudence.
This implies Truth may not be as extreme as I was considering. So now I'm unsure again because it also says Faith would shut down any paths to investigating into the Gods. Fuck
Edit 2: Ahh fuck.
If your main priority is continuing the research, there's no benefit to telling Ranald. Either He's against it and bad things happen, or the consequences for what happens if it gets found out just got a whole lot worse for everybody because now Ranald is implicated.
