A Reminder to All

Not to worry, Annora! I had my answer long before I initially penned my words. I will tell you why I will not - can not - act on my aforementioned thoughts.

The fun fact is, I never said that those thoughts were pointed at the Blazing Suns.

They were pointed at you, Moostrav. At you, Victor. At you, Swyft. At those advocating brutal, relentless violence.

Ironic that you should advocate it against yourself, Swyft.

The thought to simply crush our foes is tempting. I know that we can sweep over the Blazing Suns like a bloody tide, and throwing my own magic into the rush will only churn those waters even more viciously. And then the next time, it’s going to be easier to use the power I have cultivated over the years. And easier. And easier. It would be so easy to simply prime up my magic and bring it to bear against the wills in this world that seek to do it and its people harm.

And then it would be so, so easy to bring it against any one of you if you endanger the lives of those I care about more than yours. Or if in your rush for vengeance, you end up swaying more to an enemy’s point of view, particularly those who would never considered such elsewise. Or cause innocents to come to harm.

I intend to stop the Blazing Suns, make no mistake, and despite temptation, I refuse to raise my hand against a fellow Travancian lest it is forced. But I will stop them by striking their ideals, the thoughts of their followers, and, ideally, the thoughts of their leaders. I would rather see them toil to redeem themselves for the suffering they caused rather than see their blood wasted upon the ever-thirsty soil of Travance. They are but mere mortals, and I have seen immortal beings that have been steeped in evil FAR worse than they turn their heart.

And if, at the head of this cult, beyond the backdrop, there IS some immortal force? Be it some malign devil or fallen angel of Valos bent on taking revenge against the Dark by using mortal followers as its weapon?

I would offer it one chance. After all, I have seen immortal beings steeped in dread evil turn their heart.

And if it refused, I would see it turned to dust.


You know. Once upon a time, long before I was Sindarion, a group of Aguarrans used me as a weapon for their own violent causes. To use me as a tool to harm many. I had once considered many Aguarrans I lived with and known to be... different.

Turns out I was wrong. Oh well.

Sindarion,
Stop trying to sound older, wiser, more disturbed then your years.

Write your song, do as you do. If you wish to fight us or oppose us, we open welcome the brawl.

It saddens us to see you so stupid. Think harder, you only proposed a paradox.

Seth,
We cannot deny those who where present their views.

Also Seth, we enjoy these hypocrisies. It is entertaining to say the least, we are not religious. Yet some of us may be hypocritical.

____

Hey, you wanted an answer.

And it is not my place to question what God wants. I tried that before, and boy did it go south.

I was hoping on being surprised, but alas.

I'm tired.

Oh you want to be surprised?

What makes you think I would turn on a Travancian and kill them? Perhaps in self defense, but for a difference of opinion? That's a bit extreme, but I do reserve the right to yell about how wrong I think they are.
I've saved far more lives than I've taken. And probably will continue to. Many of those lives saved were at great risk to myself. I never asked for compensation. I never asked to be held on a pedestal for my sacrifice. Such is the life of a healer. Dark or Light. Those of us true to the art heal and we don't demand tribute.

But we can kill when we need to. So let me tell you something, my sweet voiced warrior. If you had seen what these Blazing Sun cretins do... if you had seen them do it to someone you loved... would mercy still stay your hand? Would you not seek to rip the life from them at the closest chance? If I saw them come for you... or any hostile thing really... I would stop them however I could. And if that surprises you well, I guess you never really knew me all that well from the beginning.

Perspectives change, Sindarion. But if you really do want to kill me, have at.

I'd like to recant my previous statement. I am surprised. And you're not wrong - I haven't really known you all that well, aside from casually, in passing. We have never really had an honest, one-on-one conversation with one another... especially not in recent years. We've both have changed a lot since our first forays into Travance.

Again. You're not wrong. If I'd seen them maim someone I loved, I would want to crush them - and I have in the past, especially when I was newer in Travance. Things were fresh and terrifying, and I could use my powers freely for the first time. But it's a slope, and I've seen it happen to so many people around me. Killing just gets easier and easier and easier and easier, and people can run a man through without even blinking or worse, start to enjoy killing people. And the temptation is there to become one of those people, I know it, and I can't. I can't, I can't, I can't. I don't know if it's because of the wretched demon in my lineage or it's a side effect becoming stronger in my magic, but unlike how I was back in my earlier days, it's just become so easy. I can walk onto a battlefield with nothing but a guitar because I usually have no need to fear for my life in pitched battle. I can skip and hop and laugh while surrounded by people fighting and bleeding because I know I'll be fine. I can laugh right after being stabbed in the back or getting flat-out eviscerated because more than half the time, I'll be back to perfect health in a few heartbeats. It's hilarious, right? I can take a look at a blade jutting out of my chest thrust by a goblin and not have my life flash before my eyes. THAT'S NOT NORMAL. But there are so many people who don't have that luxury and who are never coming back. I never knew most of their names. But they died up on that wall, defending the city, and I was there, and it was so easy to bring the skies down on the people who killed them because even though I knew they would just come back and be just fine because they, too, had that luxury, parading into battle with the knowledge that they will just come back and their enemies, us, wouldn't. The land was despoiled and it took so much work to bring it back and everything was just gone and over so quickly.

I don't want to kill anyone. I don't want to want to kill anyone. I don't, I don't.

I'm tired of war, I'm tired of extremists, I'm tired of fighting mortals who won't come back. I'm tired of leaders sending people to die. I'm tired of people advocating for death and death and more death. Give me the Null, give me Xualla, give me the Blight, give me Necrophitus, give me another crisis that could end existence as we know it because those are easy, do not give me the people I fought those things to protect. There's more at hand than just people here, don't give me the people, give me the thing manipulating them for revenge against the Dark and causing so many other people who won't come back to die and not come back.

I'm so tired.

Why did the dwarf save up to buy his own quarry?

So he could mine his own business.

Sindarion,
You don't have to kill. You don't have to make that choice. It's ok to not want to hurt someone, or kill someone. You don't have to risk your integrity as a person. Do what you will, or don't do what you will not. You have freedom of choice. You create your own path. Do not think because I choose to fight you have to make the same choice as me. Choose to protect your friends, choose to save the young ones.

While our choices may vary and clash, that is the nature of mortality. Mortality is strife, existence is strife. You have the choice to choose who you are and what you do. If you are tired then rest, or don't it's your choice.
-V.Wainwright

that pun is horrible

I needed to ground the situation somehow.

Okay. I think I'm feeling like myself again. Sindarion memo to Sindarion: when things look bad, tell bad jokes.

You know, there's a lot of good points here, healthy debate, and solid discourse (and not so solid. Which I dunno, seems a bit like that's what they want right? People resorting to the extreme?)

And while there's nothing in particular I disagree with. I do feel like I'd like to suggest a small clarification. Specifically it's the suggestion that these aren't people, that they're monsters, as an argument for why they don't deserve mercy. It's really easy to say someone who would do this is a monster, because we want to believe that people would never do the kinds of things they do.

That's inaccurate, these are still people, the things they've done are things people are very much capable of doing. It's things a lot of us are capable of doing if we choose to. Whether you do chose to or not is a very important distinction. And what you choose to do in response to those people is up to you.

I am a monster and know what they look like.

If these things where people, which the lack of acknowledgment servers to insult and berate. We would still kill them non the less. We will not claim to be a good person, only we will do as we wish and what is necessary. Victor is right that you each have your choices, some have chosen not to read the entire message, and only pick out bits and pieces that anger them so passionately, or work to their personal viewpoints.

We feel we are rather generous in our offer to these youth; if the individual is of or below the age of sixteen we will give them a chance, so long as they hear us and submit. If not they join the pit, simply put. We do this as a sign of good faith to the likes of the inconsolable you, in general; test us and they get nothing.

Sindarion, your words evoked something in me I haven't felt for a while. I remember.

We knew each other a little better then. But in the course of five years, things changed. A lot. Too much. Too fast. Too brutal.

It is crushing, to submit to the idea that it's never going to be fair. Why should anyone experience suffering at all? If happiness is us at our best selves, shouldn't we strive to avoid it? I tried to. And I tried to lead others to. But that is simply not the way of things. The challenge was too great to hide from the eyes of the Gods, and they were wrathful in their lessons to me. Suffering cannot be avoided. It is essential to the evolution of our perceptions. And now it is my lot to preach that.

It is never going to be fair, Sindarion. This is the way of things, as the Gods see fit. As the Anastazi saw fit in their little cosmic experiment. The strong will oppress the weak. The weak will obey the strong. It is still the law of the wild, no matter how civilized we seem to think we are.

I am sorry, friend.

If that is how the story of this reality is written, then it a tragedy that its script suffers from such forced conflict born of lazy writing. Alas, someone find an editor, for I am naught but a critic.

Perhaps.
When the world is wiser. And the Gods are kinder.

Well....... Hello everyone.

I have not been around in a very long time, but for the children who are dying i need to be here. Mercy is something that is needed in this world but for children who are being killed this is different. In my eyes this justice needs to be swift. We need to think about these kids, not these monsters that are killing these kids. They deserve to live. If diplomacy is what some think is needed I understand that but remember that kids are involved.

Moostrav, I am very impressed by your generosity in declaring that you will graciously refrain from killing children in this time when everyone is upset about the blazing sun killing children.

Crow, and Swyft, I'm sorry that you're both struggling with the world sucking, but I pose you this thought: Happiness isn't us at our best, it's us at our well, happiest. Your best self is who you are when faced with suffering, either to you or the people you care about. Like I said before, we each have a choice. You can either let it crush you and shape you, you can get mad and lash out, or you can choose to respond to it by trying to make it better.

Characters who never have to face hardship are boring, it's when they hit that moment where they have to choose that they either choose to become better, or choose to become worse and that's what make them good characters. Triumph or Tragedy isn't determined by the the circumstances of the story, but by the choices of the characters and how you look at it.

I intend to treat these assailants as I do all my enemies. Those who wish to win over hearts and minds; I wish you luck in that endeavor, I fear you will need it. Zealotry absent reason is, by its nature unable to see reason.

You’re right, Jackdaw.

All right. For those who intend to talk people down, I think Adalia, in her original missive, is right. These are still people, and likely they see themselves as desperate, lone bearers of truth in this world. Fanaticism isn’t born from nothing, something must have shaped their belief to think that the only course of action is to forge themselves into blades. Swaying their minds is one course of action, but they have their own bent form of logic. For those who intend to sway innocents from joining their cause, target their heads with your words. However, for those who wish to convince the zealots themselves... you’ve got to aim for the heart, so to speak.

For those who fight... well. The most I can say is use prudence. Do not make these men into martyrs, as the pontiff has stated. To chase more minds into their welcoming arms would be to condemn them to bloodshed. I can only beg of you to fight not out vengeance, but to protect those the Suns seek to prey on.

We can do this. We will do this.

No matter which course of action you choose to take, zealotry is so often a pyramid scheme. There’s bound to be one root at the cause of this, and be it mortal or moreso, it assuredly has the cunning and power to instill conviction. If we can find the root of this cult and end it at the pyramid’s peak, then we need not quibble nearly as much.

Secondly, again: no matter which course of action you prefer. If they refuse to listen or stay their hands?

Do me a solid and make them into the biggest godsdamned laughingstocks you can while doing so.

A necessary reminder, as Jackdaw said.
If you would strike them down without even giving these people a chance to surrender, you are absolutely no better than them.
They judge you based solely on your faith or your alignment.
Don't do the same to them.
Be better.
Show them why they're wrong.

To be fair, I don't have a lot of legs to stand on for moral condemnation, and my comments were about addressing what seemed to be odd word choice.

But if you want my two silver:
It seems like a lot of people in all of these discussions are looking at the Blazing Sun like its a monolith. Anyone wearing sun affiliated paraphernalia is definitely a crazy zealot. And even when we start breaking them down for the purpose of compromise and figuring out who deserves a chance to be talked to, and who should be fought it's still "newer members" and "leadership" "monsters" and "people" or in some cases "people below the age of sixteen" and "people above it."

And really.... people don't work like that. There's no good people and bad people here, there's just people, and what they choose to do. Look at Travance, can you honestly say that there is any one thing everyone in this town believes in? Taken even one sect of religious folk, look at everything said on this group by someone who speaks in the name of Aguara. Even within that faith alone, we have still seen different opinions, different methods.

The Blazing Sun isn't gonna be any different. Some will think it's Valos will, some will be desperate and think they needed to, some will believe destroying evil is the right thing to do and have an odd idea of what evil is.

If someone is coming at you with a weapon or a spell or what not, yeah defend yourself, kill them if you have to, because they'll probably kill you, but remember its a person you're killing. Don't give them the satisfaction or proving them right before they die, or even the satisfaction of sharing their mindset with the nouns swapped.

Those that aren't trying to kill you, yeah, I'd say talk to them. They're all gonna shout "For Valos!" ask them what they're doing for Valos and why exactly they're doing it. Those of you who seek mercy, it's a good way to find the people who have been convinced they have to do this. Those of you who seek vengeance, if nothing else people who believe what their doing is for the right reasons love to proselytize about it, and you'll can almost certainly use that to find out what their plans and motivations are so you can start working up ways to thwart them.

We never claimed to be better then them Annora,
Thank you for making that point,
but its useless.

You hold the lives of "People" so dear, but if goblins come or demons attack, we do the same thing every time.
Just as these are not "People" nether are we, or you, or anyone here.
At the end of the day we are all piles of flesh and metaphysics.

So let us rephrase,
We stand with Travance here and now, but will show no mercy while we get rid of the rotten meat. We are better then them, because we say we are.
What if we called trees "People" would you then persecute lumberjacks? You may say no but if it was your idea we assure you, you would.

Captain Jackdaw,
I am somewhat embarrassed that this Valosian could not say the same thing with as much eloquence and accuracy.
All jest aside, thank you.

[erased text that can barely be read]
Are you sure you're not a Valo......

Yours Sincerely,

If we did that, which strawmen would burn first? A riddle for the ages.

~Nalick

I feel like that's the kind of problem where whichever side wins, they get to claim they deserve to be here even more, and then we either get undead versions of the Blazing Sun, or some how Blazing Sun controlled undead. Besides, fuck it, we did work to beat Fallow.

And sorry to disappoint there Ephrem, but Valosians have to advocate for the rule of law, and I've seen too many try to use the rule of law to demand everyone understand how important they are. And the world you want to make is fascinating to me, one where a greater power is dedicated to making things right, to making sure everyone gets what they deserve. It's a novel concept, but I don't think there's a spot for me in that world. I like mistakes, and burden, and confusion too much. I kind of live in abject terror that one day I might get exactly what I deserve.

I run around trying to make sure people who've been wronged have things work out for them because the world is a terrible place, and fighting against that seems like an interesting personal challenge.

Ah, Jackdaw.
This is probably why I do respect you so much.
We're not that far off from each other.
Though I do believe in a greater power that is dedicated to making things right,
but if I don't accept the mistakes, and burden, and confusion, and (I will throw in) paradox,
if I don't accept the fact that I am not always right and should be willing to be corrected,
despite the fact that I am sometimes right and can contribute to the common good,
then I am no better than the Blazing Sun.

Though we jest sometimes with each other, your words and your own beliefs are no disappointment to me.
Keep fighting the good fight.

Sindarion,

I believe you are wise.
I believe you are correct.

I caution you to disregard the masses if they attempt to sway you from the truth.
Popular belief doesn't change the truth.

We should speak, for we may have similar ideals concerning achieving peaceful and righteous solutions without bloodshed.

Jackdaw,

Maybe you enjoy fixing mistakes and doing the right things when bad situations occur.
You should enjoy doing the right things, but maybe that shouldn't be confused with enjoying bad things.

Bad things are bad and if bad things happened to any one of us then maybe we would't like it.

Let's hope for the best, yes?