OOTS #857 - The Discussion Thread

[Mordaenor]

"Me and 23 friends are going to see if we fit in a pie..."

Tee-hee. Classic.

[Bulldog Psion]

What gets me is that V actually prepared a Quickened Expeditious Retreat. That is something that I rarely see in a D&D (or Pathfinder) campaign.

Interesting question -- being a member of the OotS, did V prepare only one of them? Perhaps there are a couple more Expeditious Retreats hanging around, too...

[FujinAkari]

ya but being told specifically by your leige lord to bring the halfling to his chambers alive then trying to kill him after you had subdued him and he was unable to fight anymore would be a pretty gross violation

Relevant point... or at least it would be if Miko had brought Belkar to the chamber or if Belkar had been subdued.

Belkar was armed, dangerous, and in the act of escaping. We simply do not know enough about the Paladin Code to know if Paladins are authorized to use lethal force against those actively resisting arrest, or if they are required to attempt to capture. We furthermore do not know if such a tenant, if it DOES exist, constitutes a gross violation.

So I am afraid I will have to echo dang near everyone else and point out that you are assuming a certainty which you do not have.

[Forikroder]

Relevant point... or at least it would be if Miko had brought Belkar to the chamber or if Belkar had been subdued.

Belkar was armed, dangerous, and in the act of escaping. We simply do not know enough about the Paladin Code to know if Paladins are authorized to use lethal force against those actively resisting arrest, or if they are required to attempt to capture. We furthermore do not know if such a tenant, if it DOES exist, constitutes a gross violation.

So I am afraid I will have to echo dang near everyone else and point out that you are assuming a certainty which you do not have.

except she had Belkar lieing on the ground completely helpless as she stood over him about to deliver the Coup de grace

there was nothing stopping her from jsut picking him up, taking off his weapons and handing him over to a guard he was completely helpless

[Math_Mage]

And I will always roll my eyes at, "You don't know you wouldn't commit genocide for revenge unless you've been in the same situation as that character who did!" The world is full of people who have had their lives threatened without turning into monsters.

Very few people have the power to commit genocide in the first place, which was a premise of Werekat's argument. I can't discuss the latter part of your post without diving into the real world. Suffice to say that many people have been pushed into 'eye for an eye' territory.

[Werekat]

And I will always roll my eyes at, "You don't know you wouldn't commit genocide for revenge unless you've been in the same situation as that character who did!" The world is full of people who have had their lives threatened without turning into monsters.

And also full of people who turned into monsters with far less instigation. I do wish we were allowed to bring social science into this, but without pointing at any particular study: V's average in this regard, nothing more. Average Wisdom (or average sanity), instincts that say "fight," not "flee" or "freeze," and the absence of a strong cultivated mental block on killing - that's pretty much all it would take to commit genocide under pressure. In anyone. In you or me.

People for some reason seem to think human behavior is a purely moral exercise. It isn't. There are a lot of factors involved, many of which involve physiology and instinct. Culture can place some restraint on those instincts, but if your culture does not have a "though shalt not kill" as an active position, you're pretty much out of luck for stoppers in a situation like V's.

I think Rich did a great job of showing how that happens, how someone who hasn't ever given a damn about good and evil will do great evil when two factors combine - 1) a situation will come up wherein they are pressed for time and resource, 2) they have have the power to screw up greatly. V didn't care - and thus didn't have a stopper that said "you're just wrong, don't do it." You have to have an active moral position to have any hope of preserving it in a crisis.

[Bulldog Psion]

"Me and 23 friends are going to see if we fit in a pie..."

Tee-hee. Classic.

Definitely classic! If only we could get a comment from the Giant about whether it's a reference to the telephone booths as well as the nursery rhyme.

(I'm not old enough for the telephone booth thing, but I saw it referenced several times in Gary Larson's "Far Side" cartoons when I was a kid, asked my parents about it, and they explained where it came from.)

[Sweet_Goddess]

Planescape: Torment is a remarkable game, which can be made richer for avoiding fights as much as possible. The cast they assembled for it is also amazing.

As for V's "realization"... if I were to acknowledge a responsibility in the death of hundreds, only to discover it might have ranged to hundreds of thousands, I doubt I would communicate my horror effectively either. I've no doubt V is being humanocentric, but the elf is being forced to confront the implications of a line many of us find hilarious:

"As the size of an explosion increases, the number of social situations it is incapable of solving approaches zero."

Well, this explosion's size has outpaced V's expectations considerably, and now we see that the formula was incomplete. It might be correct to state that, "With infinite size, the number of social situations it is incapable of solving is zero," but V's forced to acknowledge that anything short enough of that goal that it leaves survivors can't be called a solution when it creates problems like the one here.

I'm sure V is still displaying humanocentric bias... bigotry, if you prefer. That's nothing new. Most (if not all) of the characters have that problem. None of the Order think of that first dragon V killed as a person, and I'm not sure how much consideration they'd have given to his mother's death either. Elan, yes, and his reaction to letters of fire and V's two-spell combo indicates how much the genocide would likely horrify him. Some of the others would likely find the latter horrifying if they gave it any thought, as Haley and Roy might.

On the other hand, if you gave Durkon the option to do this to trees, do you think he'd agree?

V already acknowledges that this was an evil act, the one that can't be disputed. (And yet, it is.) Still, consider what genocide is. If you kill one human for being human, you are committing it. You'll only be charged with murder, even if you did it to prevent the individual from breeding, but the intent matters.

Then again, if there were only a total of four black dragons in all the world and V had stopped at killing only the mother and her son, is that not also genocide?

Now imagine if she was the last dragon. Could you kill her, knowing it would be the end of her species? In a D&D game, you probably wouldn't get time to finish that question before a reply of yes was delivered by the most emphatic means available.

In real life, most of us were raised to generally find that sort of accelerated extinction unacceptable. If it comes down to you or her, some will understand. Some will not.

The Giant has taken the observation about a million lives being a statistic and done his level best to kick it in the ribs until it goes down. He's done so by repeatedly showing the ones that feature within those millions.

He's also taken pains to show that V's perspective is not entirely unique. The elves in Azure City weren't showing much more consideration for hobgoblins than V did for dragons... and of course there's Redcloak. There's a lot of contrast between monsters, by which I mean the monstrosity of action, not appearance.

Miko was a monster. Given the option (as long as fiends weren't involved), I doubt she'd have hesitated to do the same thing V did, and I doubt she'd have stopped there. I like Miko, but she would not have handled that power well.

I bring up Miko because there's one other thing she's got in common with both V and Redcloak. Like them, she sought redemption without first truly appreciating what she'd done to fall or what atonement would require. I doubt Redcloak will fare any better in the end, but the wizard's fate remains to be seen. There's still hope, and that might be the cruellest part of V's situation.

For Durkon, it would be equivalent to using Familicide on an Ancient Oak Tree, and then discovering somewhere down the line a few Trees cross-pollinated with the various grains that are used for alcohol, thereby he killed all the Trees which are evil, but he also has now destroyed on the grain on the planet so no more bread and beer.

People seem to think Familicide was the evil act... it was not. Try casting Familicide on a Tarrasque... it will be epic... it will kill a family of... 1... the spell is bound and constrained by its perimeters, and is only as devastating as the target. Heck, there is even a biblical commandment to commit Familicide to a specific family... This is not Star Wars themed, where certain powers and spells are specifically evil, this is a genre where killing evil is a good act, and killing good is an evil act. What Giant is addressing is Good and Evil and Law and Chaos and everywhere in between aren't so cut and dry, Elan is the son and Brother of Evil but is arguable the purest Good Guy in the series, and unlike V, Elan is also Genre Saavy and a Bard with Bardic Knowledge, so of course Elan would be appalled and never have even considered casting such a spell on anyone, because he has the comprehension that Dragons shape-shift and interbreed with other species and the awareness that a Good Person can have Evil Family... V is a very classic Elf that believes Magic is Power, Power can be used for Good, Evil is Evil, Good is Good, and the two never intermix socially, and only intermix occupationally when absolutely necessary or Evil is faking being good. Remember, that Z being a Drow Dark Elf which made him automatically evil was addressed by Haley and then discounted by Elan whose discounting even inferred they were still evil anyway. When V cast the spell, he was casting it under the misguided pretense that all Black Dragons are Evil (Check your Monster Manuals, not only are all Black Dragons Evil, but so are all Shadow Dragons, and actually all Dragons that are not Metallic: Gold, Silver, Copper, Bronze, Platinum, Steel, Adamantine, or Crystalline: Amethyst, Emerald, Sapphire, Diamond, Quartz, Ruby, Amber, so if it is Sand, Deep, Blue, White, Red, Green, Yellow, or even Purple with Pink Polka dots, then by the Manual, it is EEEEEEEEEEEEEEVIL!!!), and Evil Dragons only have eggs with their own kind and maybe a few other Evil Dragons... so he'd only be killing Black Dragons, and maybe some half-breed Black and Blue Dragons or a Black and White Dragon, or a Shadowy Black Dragon (Could you really tell?), or a Deep Black Dragon, or a Black Sand Dragon. Now, we as the readers got hints that that was not the case from square one (Dracotaur 4th row from the bottom on the far left, the fact that we see half-breeds with red, blue, green, and darker purple wings implying they're part of the other breeds of evil dragons, and of course the wingless Draconic Wizard in the middle on the 3rd row from the bottom, and if you look closely... the Draketooth family mark is on the bottom row...), but V and to a lesser degree Blackwing were accepting of the Deaths as killing evil and protecting V, hir family, and the Order from retaliation from anyone from MBD's family.

Those who are condemning V, ask yourselves, would you care about killing all the members of a family with a magic spell if a member of the Manson family or one of the Borgia's was threatening your spouse and children? For those of you without a spouse and children, what if it were you parents and siblings, your boy/girlfriend/fiance? I use those families as examples because we know that Charles Manson and his 'family' are psycho killers, and the Borgia's were some of the most corrupt, sick, and evil people of their time (maybe all time), now. Most people wouldn't hesitate to do so... their family matters more to them then some psychos/sickos and their faceless psycho/sicko family. Not that it is a great distinction, but while I think what V did was seriously lacking in 2 mental stats (Intelligence and Wisdom), since it was neither smart nor wise, I refuse to condemn someone for wanting to protect their friends and family, even if they chose 'by any means available'.


BTW Shattertower, the rant was less directed at you, just using your mention of Durkon vs the Trees and expanding on it to show a comparison... I agree with most of your points :)

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Now that I've done my rant of excessiveness... I want to point out my other comment...

"your fault" was sooooooooo hysterical... I was typing the rant and still having to stop to giggle at it every so often. Funny and dramatic... Rule of Awesome

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Oh, BTW, Belkar would never have used Familicide... he'd have wanted the XP, and all the XP would have been negligible due to the ECL needed to cast Familicide.

[Kish]

I think Rich did a great job of showing how that happens, how someone who hasn't ever given a damn about good and evil will do great evil when two factors combine - 1) a situation will come up wherein they are pressed for time and resource, 2) they have have the power to screw up greatly. V didn't care - and thus didn't have a stopper that said "you're just wrong, don't do it."

This renders your entire argument, "Someone who is already a monster will act monstrous when it is convenient to do so." No, the person who shrugged, "It seems like a reasonable response to me. As the size of an explosion increases, the number of social situations it is incapable of resolving approaches zero," was not acting particularly out-of-character who s/he committed mass murder.

No, that person is not average by any means. And any argument that s/he merits any sympathy, requires claiming that s/he normally has morality.

I boggle at how many people are arguing for the validity of killing uninvolved innocents for being related to the wrong person. The post directly above this one says what amounts to--though the poster doesn't seem to realize it amounts to that--"Those who are condemning V, ask yourselves, are you actually not a horrible monster? Most people are."

[Werekat]

This renders your entire argument, "Someone who is already a monster will act monstrous when it is convenient to do so." No, the person who shrugged, "It seems like a reasonable response to me. As the size of an explosion increases, the number of social situations it is incapable of resolving approaches zero," was not acting particularly out-of-character who s/he committed mass murder.

No, that person is not average by any means. And any argument that s/he merits any sympathy, requires claiming that s/he normally has morality.

Not out of character, agreed. And I also agree that Vaarsuvius didn't have anything resembling a moral stance prior to the genocide, which I believe to be part of the reason they committed it in the first place. But not having a moral stance and being a monster are two different things, as I see it. You, though, seem to have a broader definition of "monster."

The post directly above this one says what amounts to--though the poster doesn't seem to realize it amounts to that--"Those who are condemning V, ask yourselves, are you actually not a horrible monster? Most people are."

Strike the "horrible monster" from your sentence, and you will have it right.

[Sweet_Goddess]

Not out of character, agreed. And I also agree that Vaarsuvius didn't have anything resembling a moral stance prior to the genocide, which I believe to be part of the reason they committed it in the first place. But not having a moral stance and being a monster are two different things, as I see it. You, though, seem to have a broader definition of "monster."

They all have an entry in the Monster Manual, V's falls between Elemental and Ethereal Filcher.

I feel V portrayed the Neutral Alignment well, not about law, not about good, not about evil, not about chaos, just about personal improvement, the means to reach those, and to a lesser degree about caring for one's family.

Not the path I would go, but I can accept it.

I don't pity V, but I don't condemn V either. I accept that the ends justified the means to V at the time... it was a mistake, it was very foolish, we all get that, we can move on... V has to live with the guilt and is paying for the actions in his/her own way.

[Werekat]

They all have an entry in the Monster Manual, V's falls between Elemental and Ethereal Filcher.

I feel V portrayed the Neutral Alignment well, not about law, not about good, not about evil, not about chaos, just about personal improvement, the means to reach those, and to a lesser degree about caring for one's family.

Not the path I would go, but I can accept it.

I don't pity V, but I don't condemn V either. I accept that the ends justified the means to V at the time... it was a mistake, it was very foolish, we all get that, we can move on... V has to live with the guilt and is paying for the actions in his/her own way.

In the sense of the Monster Manual, yes indeed. :D

And in total agreement about the neutrality.

[Sweet_Goddess]

You're mixing DnD mechanics with real life here. In DnD world, each soul has a real, empirical alignment that can be discerned. If a God looks at the soul, they presumably see the actions the soul has taken in life and, in summation, what alignment they eventually balance out to be. When we're talking about a black mark on the permanent record, that's what is meant - that V has done something seriously bad that will be evident to whoever ends up having the final say over where her soul ends up.



Okay, you're making two arguments here, and they can't both be true at once.

1. Actions and their motivations are important for determining your alignment, and your motivations count at least as much as the actions themselves. I agree with this... in my earlier post, I was including the motivation behind the actions as part of the action itself, but I can understand wanting to split them out.

2. Miko's actions had an evil intent to them, and therefore, her proper alignment is lawful evil.

But we know that can't be the case. Miko didn't fall long before she met the Order, so we know that one of two things must be true: either your motivations for your actions don't actually effect how your actions influence your alignment (which results in the very strange prospect of Belkar going to a Good afterlife) or Miko's actions weren't motivated by evil (at least, not strong enough evil that her other good actions didn't counterbalance it). You can't have it both ways: either motivations have no bearing on alignment, or Miko was well and truly lawful good all the way up to (and possibly even after) her fall, no matter how much you may personally dislike her actions. I find the latter to be more likely, as the worst examples of Miko's supposed "evilness" that you could bring out were:

1. Her attempt to kill Belkar: This is really more chaotic than it was evil. Yes, she disobeyed a direct order to capture him alive, but her killing Belkar after he brutally murdered his cell guard would probably have been a neutral act at worst on the good/evil axis.

2. Killing the evil people she detected evil on: We don't have any specific situations that we can really appraise to determine whether her actions were appropriate or not, so there can be no substantive debate on this point.

But, in summary, it really doesn't matter what the argument is, because, at least in the eyes of the Twelve Gods, Miko really was Lawful Good right up until the moment she cut down Shojo. If her motivations really can effect her alignment, then she would have fallen much earlier if her motivations had been Evil enough to cause an alignment shift. So, only one of these two arguments can be true at once. Pick one.

Miko condemned people by association, she wanted to kill anyone whether she detected evil or not, she killed a very nice, kindly, non-evil, quite brilliant, old man and orphaned his awesome cat to the clutches of Belkar. Miko only got to claim to be good because she deludes herself. I got real news for everyone, as we've been shown, unlike D&D where your actions decide what alignment you are, generally it seems that Orderverse alignment is self-chosen. Belkar knows he's evil, thinks of himself as evil, and carries a lead plate to protect himself from the violating detect evil glare of Paladins, meanwhile Miko thinks herself good and lawful, and as long as she could justify her actions as good and obeyed the laws, she was counted as Good and Lawful... Miko died thinking she was Good and Lawful, but Miko did not rise up... she went down... cause she was Evil and Lawful, she just thought she was Good, but her actions in the afterlife got her transferred after her record review... and she didn't fall because of an evil deed, she fell because she killed her leader, an Unlawful deed, which is why she could never repent, because she could never see her own evil, nor accept she had performed an unlawful deed.

Belkar may end up going to Heaven (or at least some place unpitty, like wherever Neutrals go), because, despite his intentions being generally evil (actually, his intentions are fairly neutral... he doesn't seek to do evil for evil's sake like Xykon, he just wants to be a better Ranger, and has not constrained himself to be limited to killing only evil creatures...), he has been fighting on the side of Angels since comic #1... the only argument for an actual Evil deed is he killed someone whose story didn't add up, and most likely was actually evil anyway, supposedly over a bar of chocolate... on a supposedly failed Sense Motive check... or perhaps he is the only one who succeeded in his sense motive check...

That brings up a question... You have a party, someone comes up to you, is actually a spy and enemy in disguise, they try to get information from you by acting friendly, the whole party fails sense motive checks except the usually least observant guy gets a natural 20 and thereby succeeds on it... Would the party believe their teammate or the spy who has succeeded in making them accept him as a friend/ally?

Yes, I know Orderverse characters have repeatedly made jokes about knowing something is wrong because they failed a check, but those were only when it could be played for laughs... "I don't see anything" "Exactly" or "I GOT A 4", otherwise they generally just acknowledge improvement when they started all noticing traps or showing competence.

[Forikroder]

That brings up a question... You have a party, someone comes up to you, is actually a spy and enemy in disguise, they try to get information from you by acting friendly, the whole party fails sense motive checks except the usually least observant guy gets a natural 20 and thereby succeeds on it... Would the party believe their teammate or the spy who has succeeded in making them accept him as a friend/ally?

depends on sooooooo many factors and how good roleplayers the characters are but in most scenarios theyd just metagame and instantly believe the party member

also im pretty sure natural 20s dont work on skill checks

[Sebastrd]

I love it. The pity party joke had me cracking up.

[Emperordaniel]

This is not Star Wars themed, where certain powers and spells are specifically evil, this is a genre where killing evil is a good act, and killing good is an evil act.

I'm pretty sure that according to the rules, killing an Evil creature just for being evil is an evil act; also, there are quite a few spells and items with the specific [Good] or [Evil] descriptor, of which Familicide almost certainly falls in the latter category.

Check your Monster Manuals, not only are all Black Dragons Evil, but so are all Shadow Dragons, and actually all Dragons that are not Metallic: Gold, Silver, Copper, Bronze, Platinum, Steel, Adamantine, or Crystalline: Amethyst, Emerald, Sapphire, Diamond, Quartz, Ruby, Amber, so if it is Sand, Deep, Blue, White, Red, Green, Yellow, or even Purple with Pink Polka dots, then by the Manual, it is EEEEEEEEEEEEEEVIL!!!

We discussed this a few pages ago; "Always _____ Evil" means evil only 95% of the time, which means that there's always the chance that a Chromatic Dragon has bucked the trend and is of Neutral or Good alignment.

Oh, BTW, Belkar would never have used Familicide... he'd have wanted the XP, and all the XP would have been negligible due to the ECL needed to cast Familicide.

Now this is something I think we both agree on.

[Kish]

Indeed, "Killing any evil character is a good act" is both insupportable from the D&D rules, and manifestly absurd in OotS specifically (if it were true, Xykon would be the most Good character in the comic by a distance; he's killed orders of magnitude more evil characters than good ones).

[lio45]

yes he would have, him being neutral only enforces that position because as neutral he is equally against "good" and "evil" if someone who wass 'good" did exactly what the ABD did Vaarsuvious would respond in the same way

That comes close to being the craziest thing I've ever read on here (which is no small feat).

Recap: you are saying that Neutral "is equally against good and evil" and that therefore, to a Neutral character, killing a Good person is equivalent to killing an Evil person, all other things equal.

(Conclusion: you don't get what Neutral alignment means.)

[FAD!]

Very few people have the power to commit genocide in the first place, which was a premise of Werekat's argument. I can't discuss the latter part of your post without diving into the real world. Suffice to say that many people have been pushed into 'eye for an eye' territory.

This. Seriously, Kish, how many people do you know whose children's souls were threatened?

[Narren]

This may have been answered already, but I don't get Blackwing's pie joke. Am I missing something?

[Forikroder]

This may have been answered already, but I don't get Blackwing's pie joke. Am I missing something?

its from a rhyme you can find the verse in the thread somewhere

[Kish]

This may have been answered already, but I don't get Blackwing's pie joke. Am I missing something?

"Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie..."

[Math_Mage]

This renders your entire argument, "Someone who is already a monster will act monstrous when it is convenient to do so." No, the person who shrugged, "It seems like a reasonable response to me. As the size of an explosion increases, the number of social situations it is incapable of resolving approaches zero," was not acting particularly out-of-character who s/he committed mass murder.

No, that person is not average by any means. And any argument that s/he merits any sympathy, requires claiming that s/he normally has morality.

I boggle at how many people are arguing for the validity of killing uninvolved innocents for being related to the wrong person. The post directly above this one says what amounts to--though the poster doesn't seem to realize it amounts to that--"Those who are condemning V, ask yourselves, are you actually not a horrible monster? Most people are."

Milgram and Stanford present pretty good cases that humans are irrational creatures easily led to perform monstrous acts by the right set of circumstances. If that makes most humans 'horrible monsters', then sure.

I'm not going to argue that Familicide wasn't a monstrously Evil act, or that it doesn't send V's alignment plummeting, but she's far from rock bottom.

[FujinAkari]

except she had Belkar lieing on the ground completely helpless as she stood over him about to deliver the Coup de grace

there was nothing stopping her from jsut picking him up, taking off his weapons and handing him over to a guard he was completely helpless

The strip shows Belkar getting up without assistance and no one rushes to check on him, meaning that he is not hurt anywhere near as much as you are trying to claim. Additionally, we can note that Coup de Graces don't work like that. You don't get to coup an opponent just because they're prone.

And Belkar's endless supply of daggers seems as good a reason as any not to bend down and get close to him. You have to recall that Miko was very low on hit points as well, so expecting her to take any unneccessary risks on behalf of an escaping criminal is demanding too much.

There is no question that Miko could have handled the situation better, but it is quite the leap to go from "non-optimal" to "grossly chaotic and evil."

[Forikroder]

The strip shows Belkar getting up without assistance and no one rushes to check on him, meaning that he is not hurt anywhere near as much as you are trying to claim. Additionally, we can note that Coup de Graces don't work like that. You don't get to coup an opponent just because they're prone.

And Belkar's endless supply of daggers seems as good a reason as any not to bend down and get close to him. You have to recall that Miko was very low on hit points as well, so expecting her to take any unneccessary risks on behalf of an escaping criminal is demanding too much.

There is no question that Miko could have handled the situation better, but it is quite the leap to go from "non-optimal" to "grossly chaotic and evil."

i wasnt using coup in the literal rules definition >.>

she was straddling him with her sword raised, in a room full of guards, there was no longer any way for him to escape there was any numbers of ways to prevent him from escaping aside from chopping his head off

she even has monk levels so shed be able to knock him out pretty easily with just her feet, or jsut step on him to stop him moving while someone cuffed him

at that point Belkar was no longer a threat, he barely counted as concious

[Smolder]

A side note regarding Miko vs. Belkar, I found what the Giant said in the printed books to be very informative:

1) Miko was designed to be a Lawful Good antagonist. She's an enemy of the Order who proves that Lawful Good doesn't always mean ally (or even sane).
2) Belkar is a protagonist. Like him or not, he's still one of the heroes of the story, albeit an inherently unlikable one.

These characters serve to remind us that the D&D axes of alignment are not predictors of behavior.

[Mike Havran]

For Durkon...

...and the long post afterwards.

I actually don't even know where to begin.

1. Durkon would have never cast such a spell. He thinks Speak with the dead is rude, so what would he think about Familicide? If anything, trees are there to provide a threat, against which even a sick dwarf can pick a fight and die with honor. He does not want them to be exterminated. He would either kill the AOT if needed, or die trying. But no evil spell.

2. Familicide is Evil in spades. I recall that one of the main ideas that permeate the entire comics is that judging one's character/allignment from nothing more than his species/race/religion is completely wrong and should be condemned.

3. Hell, V herself should have known in the first place that blood relation itself doesn't necessarily interfere with personal ties. She lent her very soul to protect her adopted children. Did she really believe that killing blood-relatives will keep her family safe? No. V was mad with evil power and went to cause anquish. Nothing more noble than that. "This - and no less - is the price of threatening my family.". Her spell was a punishment, not a precaution.

4. Aside from real-world examples (I really doubt you met the Borgia's personally and know first-handedly they were all completely rotten. You know, medieval history is not always completely truthful and I would not eliminate a family just because somebody told me they were all sicko), they are not a good argument either. V knew squat about ABD family and their allignment. And as I mentioned before, after the splice she was led by fury, not concern for her relatives. She actually did not address a single glance to the kids she gave up her soul for, did she?

Edit: some grammar and slips.

[rewinn]

Back to the comic ... from a purely tactical standpoint, now would be a good time for Durkon to try a Sending to V. Nothing says "Successful Ambush Preparation" like a long-winded wizard, and I'd like to find out whether an X-Eyed Mummy can read Explosive Runes.

[Belkster11]

Those who are condemning V, ask yourselves, would you care about killing all the members of a family with a magic spell if a member of the Manson family or one of the Borgia's was threatening your spouse and children? For those of you without a spouse and children, what if it were you parents and siblings, your boy/girlfriend/fiance? I use those families as examples because we know that Charles Manson and his 'family' are psycho killers, and the Borgia's were some of the most corrupt, sick, and evil people of their time (maybe all time), now. Most people wouldn't hesitate to do so... their family matters more to them then some psychos/sickos and their faceless psycho/sicko family. Not that it is a great distinction, but while I think what V did was seriously lacking in 2 mental stats (Intelligence and Wisdom), since it was neither smart nor wise, I refuse to condemn someone for wanting to protect their friends and family, even if they chose 'by any means available'.

I'd find a way to eliminate only the guilty party. Offing a distant second cousin of Charles Manson just because that person happens to be related to him is...well...

...I'm sure that topic has been discussed to death already. Needless to say, I'd try to find a solution that didn't make me look just as monsterous if not worse than the people I'm trying to eliminate.

At any rate, I hope either V or Durkon can contact the other soon. This does not bode well at all for them.

[Gusion]

Those who are condemning V, ask yourselves, would you care about killing all the members of a family with a magic spell if a member of the Manson family or one of the Borgia's was threatening your spouse and children?

Except, as I pointed out earlier, V was offered a method of saving her family without leasing her soul to the IFCC - and she refused to take it due to her pride.