OOTS #918 - The Discussion Thread

[zimmerwald1915]

Should V restore the ones that are a genuine danger to what is good and righteous for the sake of the few who were not worthy of death?

For the sake of one innocent soul? Yes.

That said, I'm less sure than Kish that this is actually possible. The only way V could actually do this would be to cast wish several thousand times, or to develop an Epic spell. One of the big problems with either approach is that the Giant is unlikely to grant V access to either wish or Epic spellcasting within the scope of the story. He might hint at the possibility in an epilogue and then never show it happening because it's not important to Roy's story, but that hardly counts. The other big problem is that wish requires XP to cast, and V doesn't have enough XP to spend several thousand times. She'd need to farm XP to revive her victims, said farming likely involving creating more victims.

Oh, and another problem would be that the dragons would have to want to be resurrected. I'm not sure we can take this as a given; the ABD seemed quite content in the afterlife.

[Paseo H]

Souls?

You mean like the ones of V's children, that the ABD wanted to use necromancy to steal and take with her, out of V's reach?

Reinviting such evil should give one pause, I think. Handwringing about "cold calculus" or not.

[luc258]

Cedric - Chaotic Evil does reside in Cedric

[zimmerwald1915]

Reinviting such evil should give one pause, I think. Handwringing about "cold calculus" or not.

Should we condemn the innocent for the sake of punishing the guilty? Particularly when we have no authority to make the judgement as to guilt or innocence or data on which to base it?

[jere7my]

I know it is. And I'm absolutely horrified by the attempts, even after all this time, to defend V's actions.

I'm not going to defend Vaarsuvius's Familicide, but let's not kid ourselves: maybe nine out of ten of those black dragons were multiple mass murderers. We shouldn't excuse Vaarsuvius's actions on the basis of "black dragons are evil, so it's okay," but we also shouldn't imagine that most of her victims were innocent fluffy bunny-dragons who never hurt anyone. Based on D&D as written—and we haven't been given any evidence, in the strip or in Rich's comments, to assume otherwise—we should imagine that the bulk of the black dragons she killed had tortured, murdered, and eaten other sentient beings.

Vaarsuvius's Familicide was horrific because she used it to kill indiscriminately, without taking into account whether any individual dragon had committed any crimes. But if she had taken the time to go through the dragons one by one, it's almost certain that the vast majority would indeed deserve to be slain*, unless black dragons in OotS are very different from black dragons in ordinary D&D, which are, by default, petty, cruel psychopaths. Sure, it's possible that 99% of the OotS black dragons live on a faraway continent without sentient life and eat only dumb kangaroos, but absent evidence to the contrary we the audience should assume that any given black dragon is probably guilty of murder.

* In the moral sphere laid out in the strip, not any specific real-world morality.

[Dalek Kommander]

All those strips, the strongest of which I already cited, establish recognition of sin (anagnorisis), not capacity for good. The two are not connected; one can condemn wrong without being themselves able to do right. Miko is a fine example of such a person.

Miko never recognised that ANYTHING she did was wrong. Even after having plenty of time to sit in prison and think about why murdering Lord Sojo on the eve of a goblin army invasion might have not been a perfect act of lawful goodness, she reasserts that she KNOWS that the gods have some grand destiny for her, and dismisses the baffling loss of her paladin powers as mere "mixed signals":

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0460.html

This unfounded belief in her grand destiny, which is a shoddy MOCKERY of true anagnorisis, led her to make a second dramatic and extremely unfortunate mistake in as many days:

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0462.html

Afterwards, she expected Lord Soon to congratulate her for her impeccable judgement and reward her by restoring her paladin powers:

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0464.html

Only to be told by Lord Soon that redemption requires three things, one of which is at least realizing that you've made a mistake, and NONE of which Miko had done.

It remains to be seen if V will ever be redeemed for his sins, but he's realized he's made a mistake he needs to atone for, and that's one step closer than Miko ever got.

[Kish]

Kish.

Obviously, it was wrong for V to kill all the black dragons out of revenge, and it would be wrong to kill them because they're all evil.

Regardless, I question the wisdom of restoring them to life, because 9 out of ten probably are genuinely evil and dangerous. Should V restore the ones that are a genuine danger to what is good and righteous for the sake of the few who were not worthy of death?

As Vaarsuvius said, the judgment was never hers/his to make. And if s/he wavers from that position, if s/he thinks, "Well, maybe I'd better judge whether leaving the dragons dead would be better"...

I'd cut the "redemption" possibility off entirely and dump her/him into the bottom of Hades, not to return. Because that would be undoing what progress s/he has made, rejecting the fact that s/he was wrong, utterly wrong, that what s/he did was an atrocity.

Just because you shouldn't judge the rightness of your actions by the 'cold calculus' doesn't mean you should throw out the cold calculus either.

Yes, that's exactly what it means. What Vaarsuvius said about "by some cold calculus" did not indicate a slightly suboptimal way of thinking--it indicated a wrong way of thinking. To be thrown with great force.

[Paseo H]

Should we condemn the innocent for the sake of punishing the guilty? Particularly when we have no authority to make the judgement as to guilt or innocence or data on which to base it?

Let's interrogate this from another angle.

Let's say that V had certain knowledge that most of the black dragons who would be revived would go on to continue to despoil and destroy. Some even to the horrifying lengths that ABD was willing to do to V's own children.

Should V, then, still seek to revive them for the sake of the few innocents?

[zimmerwald1915]

stuff

All of this is true, and all of it is tangential to my point: it is possible to conceive of a character that is able to condemn wickedness, even in themselves, without themselves being able to do good. Miko was able to condemn wickedness in others without being able to do good herself. Redcloak is able to condemn wickedness in himself and yet is unable to bring himself to do good, and he reached that point earlier in the strip than V did. The question is, can V go farther than Redcloak? I don't see a reason, beyond wishful thinking, to believe that she can.

Of course, some folks believe Redcloak's on a redemption arc as well, so maybe the board just has really lax standards.

Let's interrogate this from another angle.

Let's say that V had certain knowledge that most of the black dragons who would be revived would go on to continue to despoil and destroy. Some even to the horrifying lengths that ABD was willing to do to V's own children.

Should V, then, still seek to revive them for the sake of the few innocents?

Yes. If she doesn't have the right to decide who dies, she doesn't get the right to decide who lives either. Of course, she cannot ever have such perfect certain knowledge. What's more, that is an assumption you're making, not one backed up by the comic. Of the dragons we saw murdered, only a few of them were even interacting with other creatures in or near their own homes, let alone "despoiling and destroying" other people's.

[Paseo H]

You're right, V doesn't have certain knowledge, but we do. And thus, I don't think it's fair to say that V has to blithely throw out his copy of Principles of Cold Calculus (1st Ed) and seek the restoration of every black dragon he killed in order to be worthy of the chance of redemption.

[zimmerwald1915]

And thus, I don't think it's fair to say that V has to blithely throw out his copy of Principles of Cold Calculus (1st Ed) and seek the restoration of every black dragon he killed in order to be worthy of the chance of redemption.

The better objection is the practical one that I outlined above. V can resurrect her victims in two ways, neither of which she will ever be granted within the scope of the story, and one of which (wish) has serious bodycount problems of its own.

[Ghost Nappa]

Let's interrogate this from another angle.

Let's say that V had certain knowledge that most of the black dragons who would be revived would go on to continue to despoil and destroy. Some even to the horrifying lengths that ABD was willing to do to V's own children.

Should V, then, still seek to revive them for the sake of the few innocents?

Again, you are not just talking about Dragons as innocents. You are talking about anyone who can claim to be evenly remotely related to them. This includes half-humans, half-elf/half-dragons, half-dwarf/half-dragons...

I would imagine that the Familicide averaged off to at least 33% Good/33% Neutral/33% Evil by the law of large numbers.

[Gorbad Ironclaw]

To add to the above point, what about the non dragon descendants of those black dragons? Not only did familicide kill all of the draketooths, it killed anyone they had kids with, and ALL of those people's relatives. Even with the cold calculus, V casting a spell to resurrect the victims of the spell would certainly be better than not doing it for those reasons.

[jere7my]

I would imagine that the Familicide averaged off to at least 33% Good/33% Neutral/33% Evil by the law of large numbers.

That is the worst misapplication of the Law of Large Numbers I have ever read. That's like saying "Albinism is a common mutation, so by the Law of Large Numbers half of any species is probably albino."

Crossbreeds are rare; per Word of Rich, the ancestral Draketeeth were the first and only human-black dragon pairing. Most of the beings killed by Familicide were therefore black dragons (which is, incidentally, reflected in the art). Nearly all of the black dragons in the world (and thus nearly all of the black dragons killed), absent any evidence to the contrary, were sadistic multiple mass murderers, because black dragons in D&D are nearly always sadistic multiple mass murderers. (Rich would of course be free to make his black dragons behave differently, but we have seen no evidence that they are anything other than D&D's default black dragons.) The great majority of the victims of Familicide were almost certainly Chaotic Evil, and almost certainly guilty of terrible crimes.

Again, this doesn't excuse Vaarsuvius's crime, but we shouldn't sugarcoat the victims.

[Dalek Kommander]

All of this is true, and all of it is tangential to my point: it is possible to conceive of a character that is able to condemn wickedness, even in themselves, without themselves being able to do good. Miko was able to condemn wickedness in others without being able to do good herself. Redcloak is able to condemn wickedness in himself and yet is unable to bring himself to do good, and he reached that point earlier in the strip than V did. The question is, can V go farther than Redcloak? I don't see a reason, beyond wishful thinking, to believe that she can.

Redcloak is a far better example of your point than Miko, and for what it's worth as far as it applies to Redcloak, I agree completely. He sees his sin perfectly clearly, and yet he's quite set on his path of only compounding it, to make sure that everything he's already sacrificed for his big plan "wasn't for nothing".

V has yet to settle on a clear plan for how he intends to atone for casting familiacide, but as long as he doesn't dedicate the rest of his life to exterminating the black dragons he missed the first time, he has better prospects for redemption than Redcloak.

[Sir_Leorik]

Too late (panel 8). Ironically, this was the position Blackwing - who V apologists like to say will serve as her conscience - was pushing.

You're completely missing Blackwing's point. Blackwing argued that lying in a pit in a dungeon, stricken with depression, would not undo the serious harm that V's actions caused. Besides the mass murder V engaged in, V murdered the Draketooths, allowing actual villains like the Linear Guild, Team Tarquin, and of course Team Evil, free reign to saunter into the pyramid at their leisure. Blackwing was reminding V that she had a duty to set right at least part of the harm she'd caused, regardless of whether that would atone for the mass murder or not. Vaarsuvius recognized the sense in Blackwing's words and was ready to rejoin the Order, before a Mummy fell on her.

[Sir_Leorik]

Regardless of what individual readers may desire, V is currently on an arc that involves atoning for making a deal with the IFCC directors and for casting Familicide. Whether she can actually achieve redemption is a separate concept from whether she is atoning for her sins. The fact that V acknowledges the magnitude of the wrong she did by casting Familicide in the first place is a major step, and it is one that Miko never took. As far as Miko was concerned, everything she did was righteous. V now realizes that indiscriminately murdering sentient creatures is wrong, whether they are Elves, Humans or Black Dragons. She is also now aware of the consequences of both casting Familicide and of her deal with the IFCC directors. Where she decides to go from here is a separate question. In the meantime, I look forward to her bursting forth from the sand or the rubble and blasting away with extreme prejudice at Tarquin's troops. V has been separated from the Order for seventy five strips, and I feel she deserves to play the part of the Cavalry.

[zimmerwald1915]

V now realizes that indiscriminately murdering sentient creatures is wrong

...

I look forward to her bursting forth from the sand or the rubble and blasting away with extreme prejudice at Tarquin's troops.

Just a juxtaposition that amuses me.

[Tragak]

Before we get further into "Morally Justified" territory, can I just say how funny it was that the joke about some people over-templating everything in a game (ex: axiomatic half-dragon half-fiendish ... vampire minotaur) was applied to an inanimate object

[LadyEowyn]

Should we condemn the innocent for the sake of punishing the guilty? Particularly when we have no authority to make the judgement as to guilt or innocence or data on which to base it?

That's already over and done now, though. And in D&D, all the characters can at least know that the innocent are in good afterlives and the evil are in bad ones. If an entire innocent family is in Celestia I'm skeptical that they'd want to come back.

And at any rate, I don't thing there's any "Undo" button for Familicide.

[Scifne]

About the recent strip -- I also loved Elan's song, Haley's aim, and Tarquin's glare !

[Dalek Kommander]

Another question to ask is, if V doesn't get redemption, who will?

Miko's character arc was a textbook study in how to fall from grace and then NOT achieve redemption. Her death was an elaborate excuse for Soon to deliver some thought-inspiring expostion on how redemption is rare and precious, and shouldn't be taken for granted. To go through all that effort to establish how easy it is to fail to achieve redemption, and then not have anyone SUCCEED for the entire rest of the series, would be kind of a bummer.

Does that sound like an ending that Elan will be happy with? I say NO, sir! A thousand times no, drizzled in no-way sauce!

So who, aside from V, is even remotely a candidate for redemption? The next best person is Belkar, and honestly when the words "The next best person is Belkar" come out of your mouth, it's time to stop your train of thought and seriously ask yourself if you're going the right direction.

To be fair, I can picture Belkar dying in a way that's so undeniably BADASS that his teammates can't help but admire him for it, but it wouldn't be a very pure example of the sort of rare and precious redemption that Lord Soon forshadowed with such gravitas.

After Belkar, who else is left? Redcloak? He's known for years what sort of bed he's made, and he's made the deliberate choice to keep lying in it.

Then there's Durkon. The problem here is that becoming a vampire isn't a sin he deserves to atone for, it's merely a condition that he was afflicted with, arguably because in life he was too GOOD to comprimise with Malack. De-vampirising him and then trying to pass that off as "redemption" would be missing the point of redemption.

No, whoever's going to be redeemed has to be someone who willingly committed some horrible act, fully realizes how horrible it is, and then honestly and humbly strives to make up for it despite the daunting, seemingly impossible task of making up for something that terrible. V isn't just one of several characters who might fit that description, he's the ONLY character who fits that description. He'll be the first across the finish line simply because he's the only one in the race.

[Warren Dew]

Oh, and another problem would be that the dragons would have to want to be resurrected. I'm not sure we can take this as a given; the ABD seemed quite content in the afterlife.

She should be all the more content now that all the rest of her relatives are with her, I imagine.

[Paseo H]

Yes, that's exactly what it means. What Vaarsuvius said about "by some cold calculus" did not indicate a slightly suboptimal way of thinking--it indicated a wrong way of thinking. To be thrown with great force.

The 'cold calculus' is neither right or wrong. It just is. In this particular case, it is the objective value of whether the future evil prevented by the destruction of the evil black dragons outweighs the evil of having heedlessly killed innocents with the same spell.

The matter is whether or not one makes decisions based off of it.

[Forikroder]

Should we condemn the innocent for the sake of punishing the guilty? Particularly when we have no authority to make the judgement as to guilt or innocence or data on which to base it?

how are we to judge one innocent then? whos to say anyone killed by Vs spell was innocent?

if you can judge someone innocent you can judge another guilty

Does that sound like an ending that Elan will be happy with? I say NO, sir! A thousand times no, drizzled in no-way sauce!

Elan doesnt even know V has done anything bad enough to need redemption for

and it would take alot of time to even explain it to him enough for him to understand

[Paseo H]

Also...aside from morality, V's action was probably the single most stupidest act ever done in this strip.

Were it not for the IFCC being able to fast talk Tiamat, V would be slowly digesting over a million rounds in her stomach.

[Forikroder]

Also...aside from morality, V's action was probably the single most stupidest act ever done in this strip.

Were it not for the IFCC being able to fast talk Tiamat, V would be slowly digesting over a million rounds in her stomach.

Tiamat cant do that if the gods were allowed to jsut kill mortals they didnt like the 12 gods would ahve just killed Miko and let Soon finish off TE

[Oko and Qailee]

You're right, V doesn't have certain knowledge, but we do.

No, we don't. The entire POINT of the black dragon slaying was to challenge the presumption that things are just evil. We DON'T KNOW within the universe of OotS how many dragons are good or evil.

This isn't D&D. In order to make the claim that most of them are evil you must provide evidence that they are, and there is no such evidence within OotS.

As a matter of fact, when blackwing brought up the same point you're making, the only thing V would say is that Tarquin would think the same.

Even then, even if they're evil, you need some infalliable way to prove that more lives will be lost by returning the dragons, another thing you can't prove. And keep in mind not just dragons died, but a lot of humans as well.

[jere7my]

No, we don't. The entire POINT of the black dragon slaying was to challenge the presumption that things are just evil. We DON'T KNOW within the universe of OotS how many dragons are good or evil.

This isn't D&D. In order to make the claim that most of them are evil you must provide evidence that they are, and there is no such evidence within OotS.

OotS is based, pretty closely, on D&D. Barring evidence to the contrary, our assumption should be that things behave more or less as they do in D&D. If the Order were to meet a gold dragon, while Rich is of course free to do whatever he wants, it'll probably be good unless he has a particular reason for it to be otherwise. It's part of the toolset he's using. They probably won't encounter any chaotic modrons, unless it's for a joke. D&D black dragons are, for the most part, sadistic, evil killers, and the majority of OotS black dragons are probably sadistic, evil killers. Certainly the two we've met have been.

Is it possible that the OotS world is full of black dragon paladins, or black dragon vegetarians? Sure, and in that sense you're right that we can't know. But we have no evidence that they're any different than their D&D counterparts, and without that evidence the most likely assumption is that they're "always evil" (which means, in D&D terms, "almost always evil").

The point of Familicide was not that black dragons aren't bad news; the point was that you can't go around killing things just because their stat block says they're (most likely) bad news. You have to have evidence of individual wrongdoing—but that doesn't mean that such evidence wouldn't be forthcoming if we went looking for it.

Even then, even if they're evil, you need some infalliable way to prove that more lives will be lost by returning the dragons, another thing you can't prove. And keep in mind not just dragons died, but a lot of humans as well.

From a practical standpoint, apart from the Draketeeth there's not a lot of difference between undoing Familicide and summoning a few thousand black dragons and scattering them around the countryside. The moral implications of that are by no means clear.

[choie]

All those strips, the strongest of which I already cited, establish recognition of sin (anagnorisis), not capacity for good. The two are not connected; one can condemn wrong without being themselves able to do right.

WHAT, in the name of the Oracle's orange balls, was Vaarsuvius's going back to heal O-Chul if not an act that was not just "right" but utterly selfless good? Hell, I can't think of any act by a non-Paladin in this strip that comes close to it.

Let's just stick with the Order: who else has done something so completely terrifying, something so completely beyond his or her capabilities for self-defense, for quite literally no benefit to him/herself?

Roy? He's a powerful fighter--any risk he takes, he quite genuinely thinks he has a decent chance of surviving; plus, this whole quest began for his own family's debt. He has something to gain out of it. NOT that this isn't a noble and good act, but it's still something he (and those he loves) gains from.

Elan? I love him like nobody's business, but he is saved by plot armor. He knows he's getting a happy ending, plus he's too plot savvy to think he's ever really in danger. Oh, I think he has the capacity for selflessness and hsa done some selfless things. But not on a par with the O-Chul Rescue.

Haley? Hmm. I don't think anything she does is purely selfless. And that's fine, she's still a good (or as she would say, goodish) character despite her desire for XP and gold. I suppose helping the Resistance was a noble deed. But again, she's a hella powerful character and while I don't doubt she feels fear, she knows she's one of the best there is.

Durkon comes closest, by going after Belkar and having his final wish be the safety of his companions. But his fight with Malack was still nearly a match among equals; Durkon had a great deal of power, he thought he had a damn good shot at winning that fight. So: selfless, yes, but not astonishingly brave.

Nope, it was the elf you despise so much, without any spells worth mentioning (probably a Feather Fall and Explosive Runes, but what good would they do against a lich?), who was THISCLOSE to escape and freedom when s/he turned around, fought terror, and forced his/her way back to get within mere inches of Xykon in order to heal a guy V barely knew... simply because V knew O-Chul needed help and might have a chance at escaping himself if he was healed.

And that was post-Familicide.

If that wasn't showing "the capacity to do good" (an act that dwarfs--um, pun not intended--anyone else's in the Order) then I say the definition of "good" needs serious tweaking.

If the ONLY definition that will satisfy you is "restore all the dragons to life," well, we know that's not likely in this strip due to the rules of good storytelling Rich has set up. If it were an act that could be undone, it wouldn't be as heinous, would it? No, I'm sure Rich meant it to be permanent and horrifying, and it was.

Plus, even if it were possible (but it ain't), can we please remember that there are a few other things on V's mind at the moment, like y'know saving the whole freakin' world? Now, I would not be surprised if, given the fact that we know V acknowledges that all the victims of familicide weren't evil, once the pesky saving the whole freakin' world thing is over with, V does make some effort, expresses some desire, to rectify that spell--or at least to learn if it's possible.

But it won't be, because the story is better than that. If by some miracle Vaarsuvius survives both the quite likely Dramatic Noble Price to Pay that lies ahead as well as the curse of Being Choie's Favorite Character (which is a state that's way more dangerous than anything Xykon can come up with), the dragons will certainly remain dead, because as I said, the act was meant to be horrifyingly awful and making it reversable totally nerfs that message that Rich took pains to set up. And Vaarsuvius must live with that knowledge and will likely spend the rest of his/her life trying to be a better Elf. That's the best future I can hope for.