A Reminder to All

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.