So who killed Penelope?

[a_flemish_guy]

the main thing what people seem to stumble upon is the scope of familicide

if you'd follow the rules of familicide as written in our world then you'd kill everyone since everyone is sort of related to each other once you go far back enough
since that didn't happen they think that it has a limit of people it kills within a chain

except that isn't what happened in the OOTS's universe: the gods created a certain number of humans and those humans weren't related, just like tiamat created a certain number of black dragons who weren't related so there are still black dragons, only not so much

in our world V would have murdered the entire planet
and in the OOTS's verse if penelope had a child of tarquin then she, the child, tarquin, elan, nale and their mother would have died, if haley had been pregnant then both she, ian, geoff and jiminy would have died as well

[Peelee]

in our world V would have murdered the entire planet and in the OOTS's verse if penelope had a child of tarquin then she, the child, tarquin, elan, nale and their mother would have died, if haley had been pregnant then both she, ian, geoff and jiminy would have died as well

No? Penelope and Tarquin could have copulated like bunnies, and that would never make Tarquin a target for Familicide. Or Elan, Nale, etc. etc.

[Theshipening]

in the OOTS's verse if penelope had a child of tarquin then she, the child, tarquin, elan, nale and their mother would have died, if haley had been pregnant then both she, ian, geoff and jiminy would have died as well

That’s not true. As V says in 843, if Penelope had a child, only the child would have died. The reasoning is :
A Draketooth is blood related to the dragon, so he is killed as part of Step One. Penelope is related to him by blood, being his mother, so killed as part of Step Two. Her child, being his brother, is killed as part of Step Two too. However, Tarquin, Nale and Elan had no blood relation to a Draketooth and thus wouldn’t be killed.

[hamishspence]

As a reminder - this was The Giant's formulation:

Step 1: Kill everyone with the original target's blood. This is a simple yes/no effect: Is a creature (the secondary target) related by blood to the original target at all, in any way? If yes, kill it. If no, move on. Number of generations or percentage of blood or direction doesn't matter.

Step 2: Kill everyone who shares blood with any of the people killed in Step 1. Think of it as killing everyone descended from (or siblings to) any and all still-living ancestors of each secondary target. So if Penelope had a grandfather on one side and a great-grandmother on the other side who were still alive, every person who could trace their blood back to either of those people would be dead, because Penelope's daughter carries both of their bloods. If a person can only trace their blood through (say) Penelope's already-dead great-great-great-grandfather, then they're safe. Thus cousins and second-cousins and the like are all dead, but more distant genetic relations are not. It is possible for some cousins to survive if all older generations were already dead, yes, but Vaarsuvius wasn't really likely to take the time to make that distinction while sobbing on a dungeon hallway floor.

Now for some anticipated FAQs:

That's not exactly what Vaarsvuius said when the spell was cast, though.
First, Vaarsvuius is prone to poetic word choice and had no particular reason to include various exceptions or inclusions while in the middle of punishing the dragon. Second, as the author, I also had an interest in not necessarily giving away the twist that the Draketooths would be killed two years ahead of time (leading me to choose words that maybe implied one thing while allowing for another). In other words, don't try to parse the language too precisely.

Wouldn't that spell kill everyone of the original target's species?
In our world? Maybe. The OOTS world is not ours, though. It was created fully populated, even with black dragons. So there could be 100 original black dragons who (as V noted) breed slowly over the relatively-short span of time the current world has been in existence, leading to one-quarter of them being wiped out. If it had been cast on a human first, it may well have taken half or more of the population with it, depending on how many Original Humans there had been and how much interbreeding had occurred. Good thing that's not what happened, right?

But if it worked like that, it would have [insert obscure effect proven with math]!
Yeah, well, it didn't. Why? I don't know. But it didn't. I guess that makes me a crappy writer because I didn't think of whatever implication you just thought of, but there it is. I'm not a biologist or a mathematician. If it makes you feel better, just assume that all the laws of heredity and genetics work differently because It's Magic™.

I hope this will end the endless debates. It's really quite simple, and if you're getting to a point where it seems utterly complicated or recursive or whatever, you're probably thinking about it more than I did.

[Dr.Zero]

That’s not true. As V says in 843, if Penelope had a child, only the child would have died. The reasoning is :
A Draketooth is blood related to the dragon, so he is killed as part of Step One. Penelope is related to him by blood, being his mother, so killed as part of Step Two. Her child, being his brother, is killed as part of Step Two too. However, Tarquin, Nale and Elan had no blood relation to a Draketooth and thus wouldn’t be killed.

Ha! If the debate was endless, there was a reason! This mechanic is soooo confusing and recursion, while being kicked out of the door, is ready to jump back in from the window.
Better to follow the author's suggestion and just handwave it. :D

[a_flemish_guy]

That’s not true. As V says in 843, if Penelope had a child, only the child would have died. The reasoning is :
A Draketooth is blood related to the dragon, so he is killed as part of Step One. Penelope is related to him by blood, being his mother, so killed as part of Step Two. Her child, being his brother, is killed as part of Step Two too. However, Tarquin, Nale and Elan had no blood relation to a Draketooth and thus wouldn’t be killed.

hmmh, I was under the impression that step 2 was recursive, that it would also kill those targetted by step 2, it doesn't even go through dead people, makes me wonder how it could even kill that many people

[factotum]

hmmh, I was under the impression that step 2 was recursive, that it would also kill those targetted by step 2, it doesn't even go through dead people, makes me wonder how it could even kill that many people

As V pointed out when asked by Blackwing, the Draketooth clan spent 60 years getting children by mating with random strangers and then disappearing with the child. Given how many people we saw dead in the pyramid that's going to be a lot of children, and because of step 2, the mothers and fathers of those children were all killed, along with any of their other family who were still alive. That's a lot of people no matter how you slice it.

[Cazero]

No? Penelope and Tarquin could have copulated like bunnies, and that would never make Tarquin a target for Familicide. Or Elan, Nale, etc. etc.

Actualy, in our world, yes, it totaly would have.
Step 1 registers long dead targets all the way to original protocells and mark all of those that had descendants (we're all very, very distant cousins, so all of them are related to anything alive today), then step 2 eradicates all still living descendants of those protocells, ergo all life on the planet.

[hroþila]

Actualy, in our world, yes, it totaly would have.
Step 1 registers long dead targets all the way to original protocells and mark all of those that had descendants (we're all very, very distant cousins, so all of them are related to anything alive today), then step 2 eradicates all still living descendants of those protocells, ergo all life on the planet.

But that means Step 2 would get them regardless of whether Tarquin and Penelope had a child. Which was the point.

[Cazero]

But that means Step 2 would get them regardless of whether Tarquin and Penelope had a child. Which was the point.

Pretty much.
Fortunately, OotS has creationism and life-making gods somehow don't count as living things.

[HorizonWalker]

Pretty much.
Fortunately, OotS has creationism and life-making gods somehow don't count as living things.

Freya may have created you and given you life, but unless she literally gave birth to you, she's not your mom and you two aren't related by blood.

[Peelee]

Actualy, in our world, yes, it totaly would have.

But no one said "Tarquin in our world." That's like saying that in Nightmare Before Christmas world, Tarquin Skellington would survive because it appears that they don't even have blood. True, but nobody was calling that out to begin with.

[The Pilgrim]

Meh. It in that way you endanger your own surviving family members, that is a bit too risky. But, as I said at the time, I can grant that Mafia (I mean the RL, not the game; and a lot of RL tyrant, too) worked for centuries on that principle, with highs and lows, of course. It has shown to be pragmatically effective.

Yes. But the Mafia also operated under the principle of not allowing anyone else to do that to the people under your "protection". A Feudal Structure is nothing but the biggest Mafia of all. You touch a peasant, the lord will send his knigths after you. You touch one of the knights, the Baron will come. You touch the Baron, the Count sends his men to tail you. You touch the Count, the Duke steps in. Then the King. Then other Kings. And the Emperor (if any).

I'm not talking hypotetically. Were I come from, there was a full feudal war in as late as the second half of the XVII Century, because two Joe Nobodies who weren't even landed nobles got into a brawl that ended bad, asked for help to their lieges, who in turn asked their own lords for help, and so on until the two Dukes of the Realm were involved in a full open turf war and the King had to step in, forced the Dukes to make peace, and killed both Joe Nobodies for good measure. And the King managed to stop the war cold because it was the late XVII cent. A hundred years before, the King would have had to bite it and wait until the dukes fighted it out and got tired of it. Like happened often through all Medieval Europe.

Applied to Familicide, it would be like if a lone wanderer got into town, killed a mafia goon, then slaughtered all his relatives. That doesn't ends well for the lone gunman, even if he is the protagonist of the movie.

[Dr.Zero]

Yes. But the Mafia also operated under the principle of not allowing anyone else to do that to the people under your "protection".

As long as that either didn't endanger too much the group or was needed for the group survival, I'd like to add.
Usually mafia wars starting because a low level gangsta is killed, are not started to avenge that low level gangsta (even if they are sold like that), but because the action is a threat to the whole group (like: "if we show ourselves weak here, our people will desert us, and WE -the bosses- will be killed easily.").

Granted, you have a point about the fact that that could happen even in retaliation for a Familicide, but if we are talking about people interested to keep their power, that could happen only if the Familicide can be seen as an indirect attack to the (power or prestige of the) big boss or that doesn't endager that same big boss more than inaction would be.

Now I digress a bit, here, with a real history fact, hoping that rules permit it, linking a page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cesare_Mori which I deem worth to be read. Basically the war between some necromancers who will kill you and your little dog too, and between a lord, with even more power... whose practically did the same, adding to the list "and your whole town" (even if not specifically mentioned there, Mori in one occasion besieged Gangi, the village where some mafia's bosses were hiding, forcing 400 of them to surrender, eventually).
Which is an example that proves your point is indeed right, as long as one of my points is checked (in this case, being much stronger than "the Haerta" of the situation).

[The Pilgrim]

Which is an example that proves your point is indeed right, as long as one of my points is checked (in this case, being much stronger than "the Haerta" of the situation).

We seem to be more or less on the same page here. As you point out, I assume that between a King and a Necromancer, the King is the big dog there. If only because his court jester can hire an adequately-leveled team of adventurers in any random tavern of his realm to take on the Necromancer, specially if she is Epic Level.

I mean, Tarquin did once point out to Elan how extremely trivial is to find adventurers of an adequate level to take on an Epic Necromancer.

The key to survival for a Villiain is to keep a low profile, like Xykon did for almost all his life, and like Tarquin has been doing.

[Dr.Zero]

We seem to be more or less on the same page here. As you point out, I assume that between a King and a Necromancer, the King is the big dog there. If only because his court jester can hire an adequately-leveled team of adventurers in any random team of his ream to take on the Necromancer, specially if she is Epic Level.

I mean, Tarquin did once point out to Elan how extremely trivial is to find adventurers of an adequate level to take on an Epic Necromancer.

The key to survival for a Villiain is to keep a low profile, like Xykon did for almost all his life, and like Tarquin has been doing.

Yes, the distinctions seems to be more on how strong we think an epic character in OOTS. My bad, because I assumed, without stating it, that epic characters are extremely rare in OOTS world, and my whole point was based on that hidden assumption.

Well, now that seems a fine compromise! And I, for one, look forward to the possibility to be proven assuming too much in further discussions. After all, we are reasonable adults who can talk out their differences.

[The Pilgrim]

Epic-Level characters may be extremely rare in the world. But you do not need an Epic-Level hero to take down an Epic-Level villiain.

The problem with epic level villiains is that they operate alone*, instead of in teams of 4-6 characters of similar level whose skill sets compliment each other. That flaw makes them vulnerable to bands of high-level adventurers, who are a lot more common than epic-level characters, and are an easily available commodity for kings and equivalent rulers. After all, the main, perhaps the only, motivation for a band of high level adventurers, is to find a challenge big enough to let them win experience. So even if you are just a lowly baron being pestered by an Epic Level Necormancer, you can manage to attract high level adventures just by giving them the information. You don't even need to pay them, they will bring him down for you just for the XP and the l00t.

Epic Level adventurers do not fight Epic Level Villiains. They fight Evil Gods and other Cosmic Horrors.

* For example, take Team Evil. Xykon is the only epic level character there. And his relationship with Redcloak is getting more and more tense as Redcloak approaches the Epic treshold. The Vector Legion aren't Epic Level, but they are already operating splitted.
Even the Scribblers splitted up soon after hiting Epic, and they were Heroes, not Villiains.

[Roland Itiative]

Actualy, in our world, yes, it totaly would have.
Step 1 registers long dead targets all the way to original protocells and mark all of those that had descendants (we're all very, very distant cousins, so all of them are related to anything alive today), then step 2 eradicates all still living descendants of those protocells, ergo all life on the planet.

Not quite. Step 2 only affects people related to those killed by Step 1. So, all the ancestors of the target who are already dead will not propagate the "wave" of killing. If used on a world like ours, it'll go back two or three generations at most before stopping. Heck, if the target's direct ancestors are already dead, the spell will not even kill cousins or uncles.

The Giant specifically states that caveat in his explanation, even.

The Familicide spell, while still very obviously atrocious, is not as damaging as V's casting makes it appear to be, because he happened to target somebody with three traits that make the spell specially effective:

1- The target is from a very long-lived race, making the Step 1 go back a lot of generations.

2- The target's race is a particularly closed community, making a very high percentage of the entire species a target.

3- V unkowingly targetted a family that makes it a mission to spread their heritage through promiscuity, casting a wide net of Step 2 targets.

[hamishspence]

If used on a world like ours, it'll go back two or three generations at most before stopping. Heck, if the target's direct ancestors are already dead, the spell will not even kill cousins or uncles.

Step 1: "Is the creature related by blood to the original target, in any way? If yes, kill it"

And the Giant makes that point:

Wouldn't that spell kill everyone of the original target's species?
In our world? Maybe.

[Theshipening]

Not quite. Step 2 only affects people related to those killed by Step 1. So, all the ancestors of the target who are already dead will not propagate the "wave" of killing. If used on a world like ours, it'll go back two or three generations at most before stopping. Heck, if the target's direct ancestors are already dead, the spell will not even kill cousins or uncles.

As said above, you misunderstand. The spell also goes through dead people. Otherwise Girard’s family wouldn’t have been affected, since he was the blood link with the dragon’s family and was already dead.

In our world, your ‘blood’ goes back to great-great-...-great-grandparent, the first human, and by extension everyone is somewhat your cousin and shares an extremely small amount of your ‘blood’ and thus would be killed as part of step 1.

[a_flemish_guy]

seeing as how the spell spreads it could easily kill all life on earth IRL since we're all related to the first cell that swam around

[D.One]

seeing as how the spell spreads it could easily kill all life on earth IRL since we're all related to the first cell that swam around

Depends on how literal the need for having "blood" is...

Edit: Which leads me to the question. Suppose a vampire drinks someone's blood, but that person escapes and is immediately after killed by Familicide. Does the vampire counts as "sharing blood"?

[Roland Itiative]

Step 1: "Is the creature related by blood to the original target, in any way? If yes, kill it"

How can you kill something that is already dead (and I mean legit dead, not undead or anything similar)? That's right, you can't.

He did give a "maybe" on the other part, but that directly contradicts what was said right before, and he used it as grounds to explain another key difference between our world and the OotS world.

As said above, you misunderstand. The spell also goes through dead people. Otherwise Girard’s family wouldn’t have been affected, since he was the blood link with the dragon’s family and was already dead.

In our world, your ‘blood’ goes back to great-great-...-great-grandparent, the first human, and by extension everyone is somewhat your cousin and shares an extremely small amount of your ‘blood’ and thus would be killed as part of step 1.

Girard's family was targetted because they're all descended from (aka, share the blood of) the dragon. Your direct bloodline does in fact go back to the first living organism in the world, but it doesn't include any of the branches that didn't result in your birth, that's what Step 2 is for. And Step 2 only starts for a given target if Step 1 killed them (which can't happen if they're already dead).

[Schroeswald]

How can you kill something that is already dead (and I mean legit dead, not undead or anything similar)? That's right, you can't.

Just because you can’t kill the dead doesn’t mean anything, I share blood with my second cousins even though my great grandparents are all dead, if you cast familicide on me they would die, because they share blood with me, it doesn’t care about the dead relatives (in step 1), all my blood family is now dead, and since that applies to the whole human race, they’re all dead too.

[Theshipening]

Girard's family was targetted because they're all descended from (aka, share the blood of) the dragon. Your direct bloodline does in fact go back to the first living organism in the world, but it doesn't include any of the branches that didn't result in your birth, that's what Step 2 is for. And Step 2 only starts for a given target if Step 1 killed them (which can't happen if they're already dead).

First, what Schroeswald said.

Second, it is very likely Girard wasn’t a direct descendant of Moma Dragon, but rather of a who-knows-how-many-time removed cousin/nephew, thus proving that cousins count as step 1. It’s not about a direct bloodline, it’s about sharing blood. Otherwise siblings wouldn’t be affected by step 1, since they’re not part of your direct bloodline, and that would be pretty mental.

[HorizonWalker]

First, what Schroeswald said.

Second, it is very likely Girard wasn’t a direct descendant of Moma Dragon, but rather of a who-knows-how-many-time removed cousin/nephew, thus proving that cousins count as step 1. It’s not about a direct bloodline, it’s about sharing blood. Otherwise siblings wouldn’t be affected by step 1, since they’re not part of your direct bloodline, and that would be pretty mental.

One, the Dragon seems to be male- at least, the Dragon's wife is drawn with long hair and boobs.

Two, Girard is a grandson of the Dragon.

[Quebbster]

One, the Dragon seems to be male- at least, the Dragon's wife is drawn with long hair and boobs.

Two, Girard is a grandson of the Dragon.

Even Vaarsuvius noticed the human mother, so it's a safe assumption.

[The MunchKING]

One, the Dragon seems to be male- at least, the Dragon's wife is drawn with long hair and boobs.

Two, Girard is a grandson of the Dragon.

Now that it's been pointed out, I like how all the women in the picture are drawn sideways so you can see they have boobs.

[brian 333]

I killed Penelope and I'll tell you why: she wore the dress I wanted to wear to the ball and it made me mad! Mad I say! So I killed her with the candlestick in the ballroom!

[Kardwill]

Meh. It in that way you endanger your own surviving family members, that is a bit too risky.

But the way the spell is designed, it will create people who just lost their entire family, and don't have anything left to lose : If your spouse was a stage one victim, then stage 2 just killed every one of your children, but left you alive.
Sounds nasty? Mutliply that for every stage one victim...
Then add friends, partners, associates, lieges, lovers.
It's a spell that will ensure that there are plenty of people out for blood.

We didn't see reprisals yet because people have to understand what the hell just happened (we know Tiamat knows the truth, but the IFCC were in a position to bribe/convince her not to intervene), find out who is responsible (some spellcaster noboby from a random adventuring party), find out were they are (and the OOTS moves A LOT), muster enough power to take them down without leaving them a chance to strike back (and yeah, going against a lv 17 adventuring party is an intimidating perspective), and then get their hands on them and exert vengeance or justice.

It's not been that long since **** hit the fan, so it's not that strange nothing happened yet. But seing reprisal (attacks, lawsuits or family feud) afterward would not surprise me. We've seen half-dragons, mages, adventurers and royal families in that familicide sequence.