NuclearConsensus
Herald of the Thorned One
- Location
- the Philippines
Dwarfs liked Sigmar? So much so that the Empire still benefits from his Dwarf rep to this day.Is there really a difference between the two gods?
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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest
- Thread starter Boney
- Start date
- Fantasy Users' Choice!
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- Tags
- warhammer warhammer fantasy fantasy be gay do crimes (gay) female protagonist pansexual protagonist ck2 quest divided loyalties mountain vietnam ranald is real this is a dwarf quest (dwarfs) this is maybe an elf quest this is not a vampire quest this is not an empire quest try it and find out open voting
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
Lets avoid a no win scenario.
Like:
If she is bothered and unstable after this, we will be not trusting her with power. Who gives a doomsday weapon trigger to a depressed and unstable person?
But if shes not bothered then she's not supposed to have that much power. Being not bothered is taken as a sign of moral callousness.
- Location
- Before the Ninth Gate
If you argue that they are a unthinking force of nature, then it is not wrong to kill them, as they are animals that threaten humans. Otherwise, they have the capacity for choice, and when presented the choice, they always choose killing, unless less killing now means more later. Thus they are evil.
There are a number of good reasons for the stereotype. On a nation level, it is required to self organize against attacks, so that villages can function if a small number goblins wander nearby. On a personal level for Mathilde, it is required to stay sane, so we can keep fighting.
But this only makes the argument that Mathilde needs this belief to function, not that it is right to hold this belief. And I have never heard of a greenskin that won't kill an innocent in canon, so I don't think that it is even wrong to hold that all orcs are evil. I am even more sure that Mathilde hasn't heard of an example. Similarly, I think that the following quote might be relevant:
So the Orcs are born violent towards all. This makes them an evil race which Mathilde should just other and not care about killing. In contrast, Skaven can occasionally be sad to kill, as some of them might not be evil, notably some of the slaves might not have committed evil acts yet, skaven children don't start evil, and the Breeders don't seem to have choice. This is where the stereotyping might go bad.
Wiadi
Uncompromising Radical Leftist
- Location
- Something Clever
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Is there really a difference between the two gods?
One of them is the keystone of a vast empire riven by internecine squabbling and exists only to betray their followers. The other, of course, has whiskers and a tail.
Ericwinter
Definitely not a Skaven Infiltrator
- Location
- America
Oh goody, now we're debating morality. How quaint.
Alright, let me put this simply, since i really don't feel like getting into an actual argument right now, but the point should be made. To put it simply: nobody, not a single person on this thread with the lone exception of BoneyM himself, has the real ability to debate whether any person or action could be considered good or evil for a simple reason, namely that this is not our world. A few people have touched on it, but failed to go the distance. We cannot know whether something is good or not, because we live in very different circumstances, with a very different context for everything done by each person, even if it is somewhat relatable on the surface. We do not live in a constant war of extinction on multiple fronts, we do not live in a world with blatant and provable divine existences, and we do not live with different races possessing completely different mindsets, physiology, and psychologies which make them alien to our perceptions. The only reason even Boney could make a decisive claim one way or another is simply because he is the GM, and he shapes this world in ways that even GamesWorkshop might not understand or agree with. So how about we stop trying to interject our morality and perceptions on a fictional character in a foreign world, and debate the more easily predicted fallout of this event, such as the political implication of burning half a million orcs into ash just like that. Mathilde's own reaction will come when Boney writes it.
Alright, let me put this simply, since i really don't feel like getting into an actual argument right now, but the point should be made. To put it simply: nobody, not a single person on this thread with the lone exception of BoneyM himself, has the real ability to debate whether any person or action could be considered good or evil for a simple reason, namely that this is not our world. A few people have touched on it, but failed to go the distance. We cannot know whether something is good or not, because we live in very different circumstances, with a very different context for everything done by each person, even if it is somewhat relatable on the surface. We do not live in a constant war of extinction on multiple fronts, we do not live in a world with blatant and provable divine existences, and we do not live with different races possessing completely different mindsets, physiology, and psychologies which make them alien to our perceptions. The only reason even Boney could make a decisive claim one way or another is simply because he is the GM, and he shapes this world in ways that even GamesWorkshop might not understand or agree with. So how about we stop trying to interject our morality and perceptions on a fictional character in a foreign world, and debate the more easily predicted fallout of this event, such as the political implication of burning half a million orcs into ash just like that. Mathilde's own reaction will come when Boney writes it.
- Location
- The Middle of the Howling Wilderness
I guess we should just randomly assign Mathilde's actions now? Since there's no way we can determine whether something is good or not?
1) They aren't described as unthinking.
Unfeeling, incapable of compassion or empathy, but not unthinking.They can be cruel, but they're not actually malicious.
No Ork will strap you into a table for dissection, or torture you, or infect you with a disease just because.
They treat their enemies much the same way they treat other Orks.
2) I've never argued it's wrong to kill Orks.
But even blameless actions can exact a cost on the actor.
Killing that many sapients is a Big Deal for a human.
Doing it while basically looking each and every Ork you are condemning to death in the face individually is something that I'd worry about how a normal person would feel about it.
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Thats why I just stick to Mathilde's beliefs:
-Grey College - Professional/Indoctrinated - Enemies of the Empire and the Empire's allies should die. Orcs, especially Black Crag orcs, are enemies of the empire.
-Ranald - Religious - Fight to protect the common people from those who would harm them. Eight Peaks is full of common people taking shelter from the orcs. Black Crag Orcs were actively in the process of attempting to harm them..
-Honor - Personal - This is a vaguer set, but we know she has no issues with killing masses of ghouls without any feeling but satisfaction, and while the scale is larger, she doesn't really consider them as people(even if they are), even when she's seeing them one by one when she executes them via the Eye, because these are orcs in combat mode.
She might be able to empathize a bit with greenskin squig herders or mushroom farmers, but when they're on the warpath its really easy to unperson them in her head.
-Grey College - Professional/Indoctrinated - Enemies of the Empire and the Empire's allies should die. Orcs, especially Black Crag orcs, are enemies of the empire.
-Ranald - Religious - Fight to protect the common people from those who would harm them. Eight Peaks is full of common people taking shelter from the orcs. Black Crag Orcs were actively in the process of attempting to harm them..
-Honor - Personal - This is a vaguer set, but we know she has no issues with killing masses of ghouls without any feeling but satisfaction, and while the scale is larger, she doesn't really consider them as people(even if they are), even when she's seeing them one by one when she executes them via the Eye, because these are orcs in combat mode.
She might be able to empathize a bit with greenskin squig herders or mushroom farmers, but when they're on the warpath its really easy to unperson them in her head.
Humans are wired to feel empathy towards other beings, especially human-shaped beings. There's a whole lot of ways to say that pressing the button five hundred thousand times was the right thing to do, but she still looked at five hundred thousand beings and had to silence the part of her brain that said 'this is a person', every time.
Ericwinter
Definitely not a Skaven Infiltrator
- Location
- America
No, what I'm saying is that we can try to be good. Everybody does, to a certain degree. But arguing whether it is good or not, especially in a world and context none of us can understand, is even more difficult than trying to argue it in reality. Trying to argue whether a specific fictional character in that world would also react in accordance with their common sense of morality, let alone our own, is worse. Sure, Mathilde might grow depressed from this, she might not, but trying to figure it out either way is impossible for anyone except the person who created her and writes her story. At best we can decide what we want to do if she gets a nega-trait, but whether she should or will is not up to us. That's up to Boney, and I would personally prefer to spend my time and effort on things that we can actually influence.
- Location
- The Surface Of A Hostile Planet
Morality debates are well known poison to thread discourse, so it probably would be best to drop the topic.
That said, it absolutely is possible to consider the actions people take in stories ethical or unethical, based on whatever moral framework you happen to subscribe to, and you shouldn't be dismissive of people for doing so. Fiction reflects reality and so on.
Sniping at people like this isn't helpful.
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- Location
- Diamond City
Holy shit, we don't have a dwarf infection, we have an elgi infection.
Also we've got 2500 years of recorded philosophical debate on the nature of good and evil IRL and the debate is still going, so I'd ask that nobody becomes so sure they have The Correct Answer in regards to this fictional universe that they start talking down to anyone else for disagreeing.
What about a Waaghbane upgrade? It would be extremely thematic to gain a trait that makes orcs freeze up in terror. We just killed half a million of them, after all.
Ericwinter
Definitely not a Skaven Infiltrator
- Location
- America
eeeh~ I wanna say fair enough, and I do agree that simply debating ethics isn't neccessarily the problem I was having. It was the application of our--multiple, even--moral framework/s to a character who not only possesses a different positiion in society and different experiences, but lives in an entirely alien context altogether due to the many many different social, religious, political, and cultural factors their society possesses that we don't, and vice-versa. I personally believe I'm really good at modeling other people and their emotions, but even I wouldn't want to try and guess just what Mathilde went through and how much it may have affected her, especially since there were about half a dozen other things going on that may have influenced it.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Waaaghbane is based on a unique understanding gained through experience and exposure to their magic, and determining ways to counter it.
That said, while it's extremely different, it's possible given we seemed to feel their (Greenskin) souls being severed from the Aethyr.
But I'm not even sure we'll get traits and don't intend to assume.
Your joking, but your kind of right.
Mathy really does suffer from the problem of being more advanced then her peers. (Thanks to the threads forcing on skill training)
Mathilde... might actually be suffering from under stimulation in her day to day live. There are big events and projects... but in a day to day basis she is dealing with people who, not to be mean, are not in her level. She tries to not think about it like that as they are her friends... but she is actually better then them.
Like a elf in the empire feels.
Maybe one of the reasons she clings to Kragg subconsciously. He is mentally simulating.
Ganurath
Literal Enthusiast
- Location
- A Valid Location
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Point of order, as I understood things the snotlings are less like people and more like people-shaped puppies.
I don't think that that helps, at least as far as how Mathilde might feel on dropping an WMD on thousands of homicidal green puppies, but I feel that it might impact things if a considerable percentage aren't of an intelligence level needed for speech.
Ericwinter
Definitely not a Skaven Infiltrator
- Location
- America
I recall Boney mentioning he planned to give us a trait option once we recovered the last Karag, and think he's only holding off since we're still in the middle of the campaign.
Trying to cordon off what does and doesn't 'count' as a being worthy of empathy is not a conversation I want to see happening in this thread.
chocolote12
A Penguin Flailing Against The Keyboard Of Life.
I have multiple reactions to this post. The first serious one is a general 'yeah, that makes sense'. I agree with it.
This part: (
) Says that if something gets told to shut up five hundred thousand times in a row it should probably be pretty quiet at the end.The second serious part of me says that that probably is true, to some extent, and might be its own issue.
Note that we see the forces of Destro inflict mass deaths on the scale of tens of thousands without triggering divine intervention.
Praag was outright murdered in a night. Nagash did worse to Nehekara. The Slann topped him by orders of magnitude.
I'm not especially worried about undirected mass deaths letting something through. Especially when the weapon used has a god's attention.
If anything, precedent on the subject of sacrifices suggests that any such sacrifice would go to the god of the sacrificer's choice.
For Matty, that would be Ranald or Gazul.
Good thing neither of them is interested in that sort of sacrifice.
E.g. replace snotlings with hundreds of thousands of tigers and its still as bad.
Even if they're trying to kill you
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Something that has been bothering me. Did we not have to contest that roll at all with any Shamans? No one tried to counterspell that? The only wrestling we saw was (presumably) Gork & Mork v Gazul, in which the chucklefuck brothers couldn't be bothered, and Gazul got away with his shit roll. I was seriously anticipating the much-awaited Waaaghbane Mathilde Weber Magical Cage Match, and then the whole thing just happened and the actual battle was occurring between gods.
- Location
- The Surface Of A Hostile Planet
Let's move on to happier topics.
