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Iomedae in the Eastern Empire!
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Then they are somewhere else, not Alfirin’s usual demiplane, but floating weightless in an orb of force suspended between gates to the positive and negative energy planes. It’s bright, even through the permanent deeper darkness.

She releases Iomedae’s hand. “...I would prefer that you consider the location of this conversation part of the promised confidentiality.”

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“First of all, I am not going to be worrying about old age. As far as anyone knows reincarnate just fixes it and I - don’t even need druid friends, I can hang it myself, and put it on a contingency, and cut my own throat.” She could stop here. Iomedae’s not-fears would be assuaged, somewhat. And she’d be safe. But - that wouldn’t have justified coming here. And she said ‘first of all’. She did not leave herself a way out of what comes next, because she knew she’d be tempted to take it and - Altarrin is fine, actually.

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“But also I - did it already. I cannot be killed, even if all my clones are gone. It’s not lichdom, I’m not undead. It does kill someone else, each time. And - I killed a lot of people to do it.”

“I don’t actually know which parts of lichdom you thought were categorically different. From other things I’ve done. Possibly I should have asked, thirty years ago, but - I wasn’t sure asking was definitely safe, if I was going to do it anyways no matter what you said.”

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Iomedae is going to - shut down all of her emotional processing, actually, it’s going to show on her face and she doesn’t - want those inputs right now, right here - of course, when they’re gone, there’s mostly just a curious blankness and a sucking hole underneath it. 

 

Was there a question. Did Alfirin ask a question. 

 

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“I guess I could attempt to produce an analysis of different immortality methods and in what other than involving-lots-of-murder respects they strike me as objectionable,” she says. A little tonelessly. “I think it seems important whether a person - gets worse, either directly because the magic literally makes them evil or because it - degrades them a bit every time, which matters a lot if they started out pursuing a sort of high-precision strategy where many nearby states are - just being incredibly evil without the redeeming thing it was all for. I think it also seems important whether a person - is affected over time by the thing where, having definitely made sure they’ll be Evil forever, they’re constrained to those allies who don’t mind that or manage to fail to notice, and having already paid the most obvious cost of doing Evil things they do lots more Evil things they don’t actually need to do and adopt it in their self-image."

 

 

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"And whether, having definitely made sure they’ll be Evil forever, should the method fail they would be terrifyingly desperate, which matters in proportion to the odds that the method could fail, but I’d expect people to underestimate that because there’s just so much nonsense out there.

 

And I’d worry about - the thing I also have to worry about with respect to myself when I ascend, uncarefully disrupting the mechanisms by which people learn from mistakes and grow over time and have the chance to get better - it seems specifically extremely hard to preserve that without also chancing a very high probability of at some point for situational or interpersonal reasons like the ones I just mentioned getting much worse, and - then not wanting to be better, because that’s a lot of what getting much worse is. 

 

I think those would be most of the large factors in my assessment of how harmful it is to become things that are technically not liches, murders aside. The murders also aren't - really an aside, but. You asked about lichdom.”

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“I do not expect it to change me, directly. And I won’t get stuck, the way people do when they’re undead, or constructs, or ensouled swords, or other things like that. Those were concerns of mine too and I wouldn’t have done it if those had been the only options.”

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“Finding Good allies was - I don’t think this makes it much harder. I have mind blank. I can pretend to be deafened by a dictum, not that there’s many who could affect me with one even if I weren’t lawful, and claim true neutral. I have - other ways to fake lawful neutral, or lawful good, if I wanted. Karlenius wouldn’t be happy to work with me even if I’d only done the Evils he’s seen with his own eyes and there are a lot more Karleniuses in the world than there are people like you. So - it is a cost, yes, there is a - risk - of me becoming more Evil over time, just because of who is willing to associate with me. I don’t think that’s something I’ve made worse, with this, than I have with everything else I’ve done in my life.”

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“If it fails, I will not be any more desperate than I was before I put it into place. I was not any more eager to be Judged when I would have made Axis, or Heaven. I do not want Hell, but if that ever seems like a risk - “

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“It doesn’t have to be Hell. I can maledict myself. My choice of Evil afterlives. I tested it on rabbits. I wanted to be sure.”

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“ - you can Maledict rabbits? - sorry, that’s not really the most important thing, there. Does Hell torture the rabbits?”

 

That is also not, remotely, the important thing.

Nonetheless her brain is expanding the question.

Are rabbit-petitioners immune to damage from the fires of Avernus, or do they promptly cook?

 

Focus, Iomedae. 

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“If you were Lawful Neutral and let Karlenius see it then he’d lighten up substantially,” she says, a bit distantly. “It’s gotten worse in the last decade and it’s because he did note that - we didn’t even occasionally get a glimpse anymore. 

And - I am….planning to found an entire Church of being Good my way which is fine with hard tradeoffs and actually thinking about all of your options even the Evil ones, and ...not fine with murdering huge numbers of people to arrange the option of killing more people to arrange to not die. Because - because even if, even if I could believe that the world will be better than if you didn’t do it, that’s - false, for almost anybody doing it, and - building stronger coordination against people ever doing it would make things better....

I guess they could be volunteers. - I know they aren’t. But in principle. I think - it’d be fine if they were volunteers, and if you were - more careful than almost anyone ever is, maybe more careful than you in fact were, I don’t know. The volunteers not because - not because I am specifically treating murder as a strict bright line, though it comes closer than most things, but because it takes the sails pretty spectacularly out of several of the listed concerns. And it would be possible. It would be annoying and expensive but it would be possible, and so it’s - a strong indication, of how hard someone is willing to try to do the least bad thing that works….

Faking being a different alignment is in the category - restricting yourself to allies who aren’t very clever or very careful. I - if I didn’t know you very very well, if I met you adventuring hundreds of years in the future, a stranger, and you seemed Lawful Neutral and I got suspicious and did something clever to figure out your alignment, with a Forbiddance or something - and I would - 

I wouldn’t trust you at all, after that."

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“I don’t think volunteers would work. I did try, but -

There are factors I was considering that I am not going to tell you. And they ruled out volunteers."

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"This is also - it’s a backup. I expect to use it many times but - I have clones, I haven’t stopped keeping clones and those will kick in first. I have reincarnate for old age. The way that kills people - It’s not going to happen every time someone gets really lucky with a fireball, or an antimagic field.”

“...and yes, I know, that hiding my alignment would destroy trust. I haven’t tried hiding it at all, really. And - I think I could hide it really well, if I tried. It rules out the absolute cleverest allies, but - look around you. Right now in the world there’s me and there’s Tar-Baphon and - Nex and Geb wherever they went - and there's you, but - I don't know if you'd be able to tell, if I'd been lying the whole time, if you didn't know me.

I could hide it from a forbiddance, if I were trying. From a forbiddance or a holy word or a chaos hammer or - almost any way of testing I can think of now. “

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“...Also, technically speaking, I don’t actually know that I’m Evil, right now. I don’t have a good way to check, on my own.”

“...Would you like to check?”

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Iomedae had indeed been opening her mouth to point out that one perfectly good way to check is to not be Mind Blanked in Iomedae’s presence for two seconds.

 

“ - I don’t actually know that it’s worth the eighth circle spell slot,” she says, though, once she’s actually thought about it. “What Pharasma thinks of you doesn’t, I think - isn’t actually the -”

 

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“I know.”

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“Do you in fact think the world is going to be better because you did this or just - that, not being Lawful Good, you are not obliged to choose all your actions off what makes the world better -”

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“Yes. And yes.”

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She in fact had known that answer as soon as she posed the question.

 

She closes her eyes. “What do you expect you’ll think at higher Intelligence and Wisdom, of - your own thinking, about this -”

 

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“...That I missed some key facts that cannot expect myself to have seen. That’s always what I think about my own thinking, when I look back on it with that much more intelligence and wisdom.

Honestly that’s what I think of it now, with just twenty years more experience. But - mostly what I missed was not talking to you sooner. I think, now, that you wouldn’t have killed me for it preemptively.

But I don’t know whether the things I’m missing are wildly better alternatives, or marginal improvements, or just - things I should have been thinking of, but do not change the end result.”

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“ - I wouldn’t have killed you. Even if you didn’t ask for inaction, I -

 

I need you, and I - I want you to be right that what you’re doing will be good for - everything we care about, and -"

 

 

 

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"Actually, I’m sorry, saying more about this topic is a bad idea."

 

 

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" ...


Does Avernus cook the rabbits."

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