Acceptable behaviour
Jan. 24th, 2008 05:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackSuppose Viking raiders have been terrorising your coast. A few Vikings have previously settled here and become accepted. You know one noble in the capital city is a Viking, but this is generally unknown, and you suspect him to have *some* nefarious purposes.
However, you have some dealings with him, partly because he's rich and powerful, and partly to find out more about him, and he hires you to assassinate the leader of a band of Vikings who have settled in the nearby countryside.
However the leader is still a boy, just old enough to go into battle, but young enough you don't feel right about holding him culpable. Killing non-resident Vikings is generally regarded as a good thing, but you don't know if this specific band has been raiding anyone, or just settled there.
Do you:
(a) Find out if they have been raiding, and if so feel no compunction about one more regrettable but necessary death?
(b) Go ahead with the assassination anyway, them being here is problem enough
(c) Talk to the boy, find out if he's as malicious as Vikings in the country generally are, or if he might find allegiance with this country.
(d) Refuse to assassinate a boy whatever the circumstances, and try to expose the secret Viking noble who instigated it?
(e) Refuse to cooperate with the noble in any way, cooperating with an evil enemy is wrong even if the specific cause is valid in itself.
(The metaphor I'm seeking is Viking <=> DnD Dragon. And "leader of band" with "30-ft-long and breathes fire". Dragons are invariably but not in this campaign necessarily evil. Killing enemies is necessary. But this young dragon could be entirely innocent, his enemy, the dragon we became embroiled with, has politicl reasons for targetting him)
However, you have some dealings with him, partly because he's rich and powerful, and partly to find out more about him, and he hires you to assassinate the leader of a band of Vikings who have settled in the nearby countryside.
However the leader is still a boy, just old enough to go into battle, but young enough you don't feel right about holding him culpable. Killing non-resident Vikings is generally regarded as a good thing, but you don't know if this specific band has been raiding anyone, or just settled there.
Do you:
(a) Find out if they have been raiding, and if so feel no compunction about one more regrettable but necessary death?
(b) Go ahead with the assassination anyway, them being here is problem enough
(c) Talk to the boy, find out if he's as malicious as Vikings in the country generally are, or if he might find allegiance with this country.
(d) Refuse to assassinate a boy whatever the circumstances, and try to expose the secret Viking noble who instigated it?
(e) Refuse to cooperate with the noble in any way, cooperating with an evil enemy is wrong even if the specific cause is valid in itself.
(The metaphor I'm seeking is Viking <=> DnD Dragon. And "leader of band" with "30-ft-long and breathes fire". Dragons are invariably but not in this campaign necessarily evil. Killing enemies is necessary. But this young dragon could be entirely innocent, his enemy, the dragon we became embroiled with, has politicl reasons for targetting him)
no subject
Date: 2008-01-24 11:47 pm (UTC)So far we've been slaughtering orcs and ogres with fair abandon, but only ones that are actually doing something evil. *I* always do non-lethal damage, but it doesn't make much different in the long run. It says "lawful good" right there on our character sheets! :) And most people respect that, though we're a bit freewheeling.
I think we're *supposed* to kill the dragon, and hopefully the DM will smooth over the plot by making it actually evil, but if not my character might not be able to go along. (And as interesting as moral dilemmas are, that probably makes it unfun for everyone as any more talking would start to be too much, it's not the sort where the characters are yet well enough developed its fun just being them.)
But in any universe I have a stake in, it's never going to be that facile, even if there are things that do have to be killed.
Dragons are cool. The dragon noble is really cool, I like her an awful lot, but don't want to sell out my morality. The *last* game I was in my character was good but less virtuous, and his lover turned out to be the ancient evil lord behind half of the historic destruction on the worlds we'd visited, and plotting the final attack on him in the company of a college of wizards (including diviners) I had to warn the DM my character was going to take the other side, and was prevented just in time.