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Re: Yet another thread on Hilgya's alignment
the azure city guatd murdered by Belkar, most likely, went to Celestia, and people knew that, but still no one acted as if Belkar did the guy a favor.
As to resurrecting a baby, if you are incapable of understanding the invitation, you are probably incapable of accepting it too. Even if he does accept it, it causes permanent Constitution damage.
But it is true that taking her baby into battle is more stupid hubris than evil; unlike her other known acts, which are just evil.
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Re: Yet another thread on Hilgya's alignment
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Originally Posted by
diplomancer
the azure city guatd murdered by Belkar, most likely, went to Celestia, and people knew that, but still no one acted as if Belkar did the guy a favor.
As to resurrecting a baby, if you are incapable of understanding the invitation, you are probably incapable of accepting it too. Even if he does accept it, it causes permanent Constitution damage.
But it is true that taking her baby into battle is more stupid hubris than evil; unlike her other known acts, which are just evil.
I don’t disagree, but wanted to chime in to say that babies might also have Constitution scores of 1 or 2. So without True Resurrection, it might be impossible to bring them back, no matter how much they understand.
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Re: Yet another thread on Hilgya's alignment
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Originally Posted by
Fyraltari
How do you justify "being physically dragged into combat by his mother when he's too young to do anything about it" as honorable? The way things are, it looks like dwarf infants go to Hel every time.
Why the quotes?
I mean a whole lot of people are pretty damn convinced of a definite afterlife in the real world and if you look at history the proportion who weren't is probably statistically insignificant.
Leaving that pile of potential thread-lock aside, I'd like an explanation of how the certainty of afterlives effect say the golden rule? Or why you shouldn't judge people by their birth? Or the Kantian Imperative or any other moral system ever?
Again, a lot of people I know are convinced that's what await them if they act right, and I haven't noticed any difference in ethics more significant with them than with others.
1. On honorable:
I don't know. I find the entire "honor" concept the Dwarves have going pretty silly, so I am not the right person to tell what would be honorable and what not.
Thats my point: for me, drinking yourself into coma (potentially leaving starving kids) doesn't seem any more honorable than dying as meatshield for your axe-crazy mother, although involuntarily.
But again, the logic of this honor-business eludes me almost as much, or more, than certain honor codes from RL.
So.....
2. Convinced is not the same as proven, simple as that.
3. I don't know what you mean with Golden Rule, but all Evil (and Good) actions are judged by the effect they have on the victims.
Death in our world is irreversible, AND we don't have ANY proof that we have any afterlife.
Death in OotS is easily to moderately easy to reverse in a lot of cases, AND there is an afterlife for almost everyone except for soulbinded people and people eaten by the Snarl (for the first, only temporarily, for the second we aren't even sure about that yet).
Ergo, a crime that causes someone to die is much more impactful on RL people than OotS characters, and thus, if you really want to compare, RL murder is a really really big orange while OotS murder is a medium sized apple (for example).
Note that direction is not changed (evil=evil), but certainly the magnitude.
In OotS, murder is a crime you can potentially compensate for (pay for Resurrection, plus some money for the pain, make sure you are REALLY sorry, go to Jail, and maybe all parties will be content with the outcome in the end. Peace restored.
In RL, you can never right the party who was wronged.
Thus, fundamentally different, by the logic that follows from the laws of nature in the setting.
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Re: Yet another thread on Hilgya's alignment
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Originally Posted by
pendell
AD&D did.
Respectfully,
Brian P.
I didn't say anything about AD&D, or Basic, the quote you give indicates clearly that neither was the original game.
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Re: Yet another thread on Hilgya's alignment
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Originally Posted by
diplomancer
... taking her baby into battle is more stupid hubris than evil; unlike her other known acts, which are just evil.
Yeah, that's a good way to put it.
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Re: Yet another thread on Hilgya's alignment
Given some of the other shenanigans we saw Thor pulling along the edges when fighting for dwarven souls, I can see the discussion about babies/children going something like:
Thor: What about babies and children?
Hel: Don't want them, they get a pass.
Thor: Kind of expected you to put up more of a fight there.
Hel: It's no fun when they don't understand enough of what is going on to bother tormenting them--and them not understanding means that I don't get much juice from them anyway. Besides, the adults will be tormented even more by being separated from their children.
I figure that if the gods blew up the world, the souls of the dwarven chldren would go straight to the afterlife where their parents would have gone if they'd died honorably.
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Re: Yet another thread on Hilgya's alignment
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Originally Posted by
KorvinStarmast
Quote:
Originally Posted by
diplomancer
But it is true that taking her baby into battle is more stupid hubris than evil;
Yeah, that's a good way to put it.
If the choices are "go to battle with kid" or "leave kid with distrusted entities while going into battle," maybe (and I'm really stretching that maybe here). If the extra choice of "don't go into battle" exists, then no, it's Evil. I see blatant and reckless disregard for life as Evil.
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Re: Yet another thread on Hilgya's alignment
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Originally Posted by
Peelee
If the choices are "go to battle with kid" or "leave kid with distrusted entities while going into battle," maybe (and I'm really stretching that maybe here). If the extra choice of "don't go into battle" exists, then no, it's Evil. I see blatant and reckless disregard for life as Evil.
I read diplo's case as the former, and it seems that from a narrative PoV, that battle isn't one that could be avoided ... the narrative imperative, as it were.
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Re: Yet another thread on Hilgya's alignment
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Originally Posted by
Peelee
If the choices are "go to battle with kid" or "leave kid with distrusted entities while going into battle," maybe (and I'm really stretching that maybe here). If the extra choice of "don't go into battle" exists, then no, it's Evil. I see blatant and reckless disregard for life as Evil.
I'll also add that her reasons for distrusting them don't hold up at all, either. So that's another strike against her.
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Re: Yet another thread on Hilgya's alignment
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Originally Posted by
KorvinStarmast
I read diplo's case as the former, and it seems that from a narrative PoV, that battle isn't one that could be avoided ... the narrative imperative, as it were.
The battle is absolutely one that could be avoided by Hilgya. She has one and only one reason for joining the battle: the get revenge on Durkon. She valued that more than her child's safety, as evidenced by going into the battle.
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Re: Yet another thread on Hilgya's alignment
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Originally Posted by
Peelee
The battle is absolutely one that could be avoided by Hilgya. She has one and only one reason for joining the battle: the get revenge on Durkon. She valued that more than her child's safety, as evidenced by going into the battle.
In support of this, the last panel of this stripe: www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1113.html has her saying she's doing this for petty, self-serving reasons. Any arguments for Hilgya having any actually good reasons for doing this have already been shot down, by Hilgya herself, no less.
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Re: Yet another thread on Hilgya's alignment
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Originally Posted by
Peelee
The battle is absolutely one that could be avoided by Hilgya. She has one and only one reason for joining the battle: the get revenge on Durkon. She valued that more than her child's safety, as evidenced by going into the battle.
She does get another reason though: Prevent the world from being blown up.
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Re: Yet another thread on Hilgya's alignment
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Originally Posted by
Rrmcklin
In support of this, the last panel of this stripe:
www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1113.html has her saying she's doing this for petty, self-serving reasons. Any arguments for Hilgya having any actually good reasons for doing this have already been shot down, by Hilgya herself, no less.
And yet.
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Re: Yet another thread on Hilgya's alignment
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Originally Posted by
RatElemental
She does get another reason though: Prevent the world from being blown up.
She knows nothing about that, and no-one filled her in.
So no, that's not one of Hilgya's reasons.
Grey Wolf
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Re: Yet another thread on Hilgya's alignment
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Originally Posted by
Grey_Wolf_c
In that comic they save they're trying to save the world and in the very next one explain that Durkon is trying to destroy the world.
She may have had petty self-serving reasons for being in Firmament in the first place, but she'd have to be a few notches above Elan on the obliviousness scale to not realize the world is at stake, or at least that these guys think it is.
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Re: Yet another thread on Hilgya's alignment
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Originally Posted by
Peelee
The battle is absolutely one that could be avoided by Hilgya. She has one and only one reason for joining the battle: the get revenge on Durkon. She valued that more than her child's safety, as evidenced by going into the battle.
I am going to ask you to channel Elan for a bit, and reconsider that post. The premise that Hilgya can reject the narrative does not strike me as valid. She's not a real person, she's a character in a comic.
None of the above answer or excuses the point, that is made by the usual Greek chorus, that when offered a wide open and utterly valid chance to find and kill Durkon while leaving Kudzu in safe hands, she responds in a self centered and, to most common sense perspectives, irrational manner. That's a sign, as I see it, from Rich that she's not quite right in the head. (A few bricks shy of a load ... not playing with all 52 cards in the deck ... has a screw loose ... bats in the belfrey ... a d12 in a d20 world ... _fill in your own quaint expression here_)
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Re: Yet another thread on Hilgya's alignment
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Originally Posted by
KorvinStarmast
I am going to ask you to channel Elan for a bit, and reconsider that post. The premise that Hilgya can reject the narrative does not strike me as valid. She's not a real person, she's a character in a comic.
Indeed. Which means one of the clerics on the night shift could have been higher power, but instead Hilgya re-appeared with her baby strapped to her. Coulda been someone else, coulda had her baby stashed away during the fight, coulda been a lot of things, but it wasn't. It was her bringing a baby into a battle for revenge. That's the narrative.
[/Elan]
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Re: Yet another thread on Hilgya's alignment
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Originally Posted by
KorvinStarmast
I am going to ask you to channel Elan for a bit, and reconsider that post. The premise that Hilgya can reject the narrative does not strike me as valid. She's not a real person, she's a character in a comic.
Couldn't you, uh, make the same argument for any action made by any character? Redcloak, Tarquin, Xykon... None of them have free will, they all must take precisely the actions that the Giant writes them as taking. And without free will there is no choice, and with no choice no evil!
(Of course, this argument doesn't work because we aren't judging them in the context of their existence as characters in a real-world webcomic, but rather as people talking the depicted actions in their own world.)
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Re: Yet another thread on Hilgya's alignment
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Originally Posted by
MartianInvader
And without free will there is no choice, and with no choice no evil!
1. Rich has been poking fun at, and poking holes in, the mess that is D&D alignment since over a decade ago, and
2. has made very clear in his writing, and in his commentary, that he considers personality characteristics and motivations, and actions, as a hell of a lot more interesting to tell a story than the labels assigned for (pick a reason). And he also explains his various alignment choices.
To use a RL parallel that we discussed when Hilgya first declined the (rational) suggestion that Kudzu be watched over by clerics while she joined the party for a battle ... if I were to discuss a combat mission I was on IRL with my wingman (where my crew were subject to real hot lead heading our way) and my wingman said "Today, my son will be flying with me since it is bring-your-kid-to-work-day" my response would not be
You are evil!
my response would be
Are you nucking futz?!
That was some of what was behind my original objection to the name calling I saw in the original discussion on this sub-topic, and it got a few panties in a bunch during that particular thread.
A few pages back in this thread, the point was made 'being wrong does not (necessarily) equal being evil' although the two can certainly coincide. I feel that diplo's point was along those lines. And the narrative imperative to have Hilgya in the battle was that they needed a chaotic high level cleric to oppose a group of lawful evil mid and high level vampire clerics. Narrative imperative. (And it still wasn't enough). And the Order went along with it.
PS, clerics are Tier 1 in D&D 3.5e.
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Re: Yet another thread on Hilgya's alignment
I... guess I don't understand the point you're trying to make, it at least how you're addressing my post (that you quoted). If there's narrative imperative that Hilgya join the fight, that could be expressed either through Hilgya being evil *or* Hilgya being wrong (or maybe she's right and we're all wrong, Kudzu did survive the battle just fine after all).
The point I was making was that we can't say that narrative imperative absolves characters of responsibility of their actions. It can define their alignment, personality, etc., but those are still part of the character.
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Re: Yet another thread on Hilgya's alignment
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Originally Posted by
RatElemental
In that comic they save they're trying to save the world and
in the very next one explain that Durkon is trying to destroy the world.
And what does she get from the explanation? "Oh, a chance to save the world"? No. Something about how Durkon is depraved, and something about getting to break a few skulls of the undead. Saving the world is never uttered by her as a reason for her actions, and thus declaring it is to make her look better is at best your headcanon, not something universally true.
Grey Wolf
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Re: Yet another thread on Hilgya's alignment
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Originally Posted by
MartianInvader
I... guess I don't understand the point you're trying to make, it at least how you're addressing my post (that you quoted). If there's narrative imperative that Hilgya join the fight, that could be expressed either through Hilgya being evil *or* Hilgya being wrong (or maybe she's right and we're all wrong, Kudzu did survive the battle just fine after all).
We agree, to the point where I think we see eye to eye on that point as you expressed it.
Quote:
The point I was making was that we can't say that narrative imperative absolves characters -
Since I have not said that, I don't know why you are telling me this.
As I understand Hilgya's character, her soul and her afterlife are in the hands of Loki, or, if she runs afoul of dwarf rules (which she detests as much as many forum posters do) in the hands of Hel. I am under the impression that only Loki can grant her absolution (in character/in world) if he even does such things. As the conversations have progressed, I have been somewhat surprised at how the discussion of Loki's alignment went such that there is an open question as to whether or not he is stamped with Chaotic Neutral or Chaotic Evil (there appears to be few to no voices advocating for him as Chaotic Good) ... but the ambiguity on Loki's alignment seems to me intentional on the Giant's part. Loki isn't a PC. (See also the discussions on Thor CG or NG with Durkon's LG ... in other threads).
@GreyWolf
Hmm, this prompted me to go back and read carefully again
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Saving the world is never uttered by her as a reason for her actions,
Indeed, her motives are utterly self centered.
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Re: Yet another thread on Hilgya's alignment
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Originally Posted by
Rrmcklin
I'll also add that her reasons for distrusting them don't hold up at all, either. So that's another strike against her.
I have to disagree on that one. Thor clerics are mostly Good aligned, so they would definitely try to keep Hilgya's baby away from her for the kid's safety and well-being, and the process would also include indoctrination into the honor system that she despise. So she's actualy perfectly justified in distrusting them.
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Re: Yet another thread on Hilgya's alignment
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Originally Posted by
Cazero
I have to disagree on that one. Thor clerics are mostly Good aligned, so they would definitely try to keep Hilgya's baby away from her for the kid's safety and well-being, and the process would also include indoctrination into the honor system that she despise. So she's actualy perfectly justified in distrusting them.
Alignment is the result of actions, not the dictator of actions. This isn't a video game from 15 years ago, there are more than two options they could take.
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Re: Yet another thread on Hilgya's alignment
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Originally Posted by
Peelee
Alignment is the result of actions, not the dictator of actions. This isn't a video game from 15 years ago, there are more than two options they could take.
Well, yeah. And the result of not taking the baby away from that murderous psycho is a shift toward Evil for complicity in the criminal negligence Hilgya is engaging herself in.
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Re: Yet another thread on Hilgya's alignment
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Originally Posted by
Cazero
I have to disagree on that one. Thor clerics are mostly Good aligned, so they would definitely try to keep Hilgya's baby away from her for the kid's safety and well-being, and the process would also include indoctrination into the honor system that she despise. So she's actualy perfectly justified in distrusting them.
Those clerics know absolutely nothing about Hilgya, so you have no basis to say this. Unless you're working under the logic of "cleric of Loki, must keep child away!" which you also have no evidence for, so it doesn't actually change anything.
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Re: Yet another thread on Hilgya's alignment
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Originally Posted by
Cazero
Well, yeah. And the result of not taking the baby away from that murderous psycho is a shift toward Evil for complicity in the criminal negligence Hilgya is engaging herself in.
And they would know about any of that how? Your knowledge is not any given character's knowledge.
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Re: Yet another thread on Hilgya's alignment
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Originally Posted by
Rrmcklin
Those clerics know absolutely nothing about Hilgya, so you have no basis to say this. Unless you're working under the logic of "cleric of Loki, must keep child away!" which you also have no evidence for, so it doesn't actually change anything.
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Originally Posted by
Peelee
And they would know about any of that how? Your knowledge is not any given character's knowledge.
They don't need to know anything. Hylgia assumes the worst of people she doesn't like, so she'll assume Thor cleric would invoke children protection to take her baby away from her.
edit : gosh, and that slightly alters my initial point from Hylgia being justified, to Hylgia being justified only if she disclose information to the babysitters.
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Re: Yet another thread on Hilgya's alignment
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Originally Posted by
Grey_Wolf_c
And what does she get from the explanation? "Oh, a chance to save the world"? No. Something about how Durkon is depraved, and something about getting to break a few skulls of the undead. Saving the world is never uttered by her as a reason for her actions, and thus declaring it is to make her look better is at best your headcanon, not something universally true.
Grey Wolf
Please don't accuse me of trying to make Hilgya look better. She's evil enough without ascribing her delusional reasoning for taking Kudzu with her into battle as malice. I was just pointing out that not going into battle at all is an option that had pretty good odds of ending up in the order, Hilgya, Kudzu, and the entire world all dead.
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Re: Yet another thread on Hilgya's alignment
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Originally Posted by
Cazero
They don't need to know anything. Hylgia assumes the worst of people she doesn't like, so she'll assume Thor cleric would invoke children protection to take her baby away from her.
edit : gosh, and that slightly alters my initial point from Hylgia being justified, to Hylgia being justified only if she disclose information to the babysitters.
You were arguing that Hilgya was totally justified in mistrusting them. I pointed out, no, she was not. That Hilgya thinks she was justified doesn't mean anything.
Don't act like pointing out why you're wrong is some grievous attack.
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Originally Posted by
RatElemental
Please don't accuse me of trying to make Hilgya look better. She's evil enough without ascribing her delusional reasoning for taking Kudzu with her into battle as malice. I was just pointing out that not going into battle at all is an option that had pretty good odds of ending up in the order, Hilgya, Kudzu, and the entire world all dead.
The thing about that is that Hilgya admitted she doesn't care. I see no reason to give Hilgya points for helping them when she admits she's only doing it for petty and self-serving reasons.
Also, how much Hilgya's presence even ultimately affected the outcome is debatable.