Having been granted rulership over the city of Vanhoover, and confessed their feelings for each other, Lex Legis and Sonata Dusk have started a new life together. But the challenges of rulership, and a relationship, are more than they bargained for.
“…to become the degenerate that you acted like.”
A purple aura flared to life around Lex’s horn as he spoke, his eyes turning green-and-purple to match, and he reached out a hoof toward Spit Polish. The sight was enough to shatter what little self-control the other stallion had left, his eyes going wide as a scream of pure terror erupted from his throat. Desperately, he flung himself backward, out of Lex’s reach, before stumbling to his bandaged hooves and trying to run for it.
He needn’t have bothered. He hadn’t made it more than two steps before black crystals sprouted along his legs, forming cuffs that instantly stretched out and attached to each other, becoming fetters and sending him sprawling into the dirt. Even then, he tried to crawl away, wriggling and rolling along the ground in a futile effort to put more distance between himself and what was about to happen.
Behind him, Lex slowly stalked forward, relentless. “You’re only being sentenced for your attempt on my life,” he said darkly as he advanced on the helpless stallion. “But the things you did here, in this camp, mark you as being among the worst of ponykind.”
“No!” sobbed Spit Polish, still trying to crawl away.
But even in his weakened state, Lex was able to catch up to him easily, and it took only a few seconds before he was standing in front of Spit Polish again. “So now you will be the worst pony here, in every way imaginable.” With that Lex raised his hoof again, and before the other pony had a chance to react, he pressed it against Spit Polish’s forehead.
Instantly, the purple aura around his horn flared as he channeled additional magic through his body, enhancing the curse to the level he needed it to be. The effort sent an ache through him that almost made him sway, but he fought the urge down, striving to eliminate any appearance of weakness. “Every part of you will be debilitated,” he intoned, speaking as much to the crowd – whom he could see out of his peripheral vision, still watching closely – as to Spit Polish. “Muscle tension. Reflexes. Stamina. Cognitive function. Perception. Wit. You will spend the rest of your life with all of them dampened. Only your memories will remain unimpeded, so that you can remember how you brought this upon yourself.”
Lex removed his hoof from the other stallion then, stepping back from him. A thought was all it took to make the black crystals binding Spit Polish’s legs turn to dust, and a moment later the other stallion started to get up, shaking like a leaf. “Wha…wha’d yoo doo ta me?” The words were slurred, as though he’d had too much to drink, and the sound of his own garbled voice caused Spit Polish’s eyes to go wide with alarm. “Wha’d yoo doo ta me?!” He lifted a hoof to his throat, as though the problem could be found there, and that alone was enough to send him sprawling, limbs flailing in a failed attempt to keep his balance.
Murmurs broke out from the ponies gathered around them, and that seemed to remind Spit Polish that he wasn’t alone. “Th-thome pony halp me!” he wailed. “Pweathe!” But no one approached him, and a moment later his eyes filled with tears again. “Th’not fair,” he moaned, making no move to get up. “Th’not fair! I juth…I juth din’ kno wha’da do…I din’ kno wha’da do…” The last part came out even harder to understand, a fresh round of weeping slurring his words even worse.
“I know you didn’t,” replied Lex, his eyes returning to normal. The crowd instantly quieted down as he moved toward Spit Polish again, not that the stallion noticed, having covered his face with his forelegs as he cried. “Look at me.” The words were unmistakably an order, and yet they lacked the harsh edge that he’d had just a moment ago. “Look at me, Spit Polish.”
The sound of his name made the other stallion lower his forelegs, sniffling as he looked up at Lex, who stood over him with a neutral look. “I am not indifferent to the harshness of what you went through, nor to the full scope of the forces that were arrayed against you. While the things you did were horrible, and your punishment is fully deserved…overcoming your circumstances required strength of will that was quite clearly far beyond you. To that end, I have elected to show you leniency.” As he finished, Lex lifted a hoof again, lightly placing it on Spit Polish’s belly.
The earth pony’s eyes flickered between the hoof on his belly and Lex’s face, finally settling on the latter. “What sort of len-” Spit Polish’s eyes widened as he realized that he was speaking normally again. “I-, I’m okay!” He almost laughed with relief, looking up at Lex with eyes full of gratitude. “Oh, thank you thank you thank-” Lex removed his hoof from the other stallion’s body. “-yoo fank yoo fa-, huh? Wha’ happent?! Wy’m I- Noo! Yoo thaid wenienthy! Yoo…yoo thaid-”
“I did,” nodded Lex. “But its application will not be decided by me.” He kept his eyes on Spit Polish, but raised his voice as he spoke again, wanting to be sure everypony nearby heard this. “You are hereby condemned for your crime, and your curse will follow you for the rest of your life. But so long as a living, sapient being is touching you, its effects will be suspended until they cease to do so.” He swept a hoof outward towards the assembled ponies watching them. “How much leniency you receive will be decided by those ponies that you’ve wronged. They will be the ones who determine whether you live as one of them, or as a wreck that can barely function.” With that said, he turned to the crowd as he made his final pronouncement in the matter. “Justice is served.”
Lex deliberately turned and walked away from the crowd then. Despite what he’d said to Nosey about not caring about what everypony thought of him, he couldn’t help but want to glance back and try and gauge their reaction. But he didn’t bother, knowing it would be futile anyway; he’d never been any good at reading others, as his embarrassing misinterpretation of everyone’s reaction to his cursing Garden Gate had so recently reminded him. Instead, he stalked back over to where the newsmare was waiting, trying to conceal just how exhausted he already felt. “Go find out where Garden Gate is being treated,” he ordered her tersely, not wanting to continue the conversation they’d been having. “It’s important that I check on her status before I go into Vanhoover.”
Nosey didn’t immediately reply, looking at him with a small smile, and Lex felt himself tense up. Was she laughing at him? Or was that a look of pity? “What?” he snapped, suddenly feeling defensive.
He was taken completely by surprise when her response was to lean over and press her lips softly against his cheek. It was so completely unexpected – given how acrimonious their previous interaction had been – that it left him nonplussed for a moment, which was all the time Nosey needed to settle back into her place beside him, her side against his once again. “Thank you for listening to me,” she murmured warmly.
It took Lex several seconds to respond, struggling to evaluate and interpret Nosey’s actions. Was she declaring that she’d won the adversarial exchange they’d just been having, and was trying to be magnanimous about it? If so, that made no sense; her position had been that he should forgive Spit Polish, and he had still condemned and cursed him. Or was she attempting to be conciliatory, pleased at the idea that her opinion had been taken into account in any regard? Or maybe she was being congratulatory, and her statement about his listening to her was meant to be ironic in some regard? Or perhaps all three of those ideas were wrong, and something else altogether had prompted her unexpected reaction. There was no way to be sure, especially with how she had been acting since he’d rescued her, and that inability to understand her motivation left him feeling awkward and frustrated. “I’m open to all input regarding the workings of my administration,” he muttered.
“Oh yeah?” grinned Nosey, her voice sounding something like her usual outgoing self. “Glad I could help out, then.” She nodded back toward the series of outpatient tents. “C’mon, Garden’s being treated back there.”
Lex frowned, finding something else to think about and immediately latching onto it. “How do you know that? You haven’t moved since House Call was here.”
Nosey seemed pleased by the question. “Ace reporter, remember? While we were talking before, I was looking around to see where most of the doctors were going, while also listening to nearby conversations to see if I could pick up any interesting tidbits, not to mention sniffing the air for anything with an antiseptic scent.” She paused for a long moment before continuing. “Plus, I saw where they took her last night before I went to go join you and Sonata.” That last part was punctuated by sticking her tongue out playfully.
Lex rolled his eyes. “Of course,” he muttered irritably, upset at not having figured that out on his own.
“Just tell me you’re not going to curse her for not obeying your orders to stay inside your big illusion-thing from last night.” That statement earned Nosey a glare, and she gave him an apologetic smile in response. “That was a joke.”
“I already removed the maledictions I laid on her,” answered Lex humorlessly. “The circumstances were extenuating enough that her actions warranted an act of clemency on my part, both for her sake and that of everypony else. There’s no need to reapply them.”
“You should tell everypony that, you know. You made a big spectacle out of cursing her; after what just happened with Spit Polish, letting them know that you’ve forgiven one of the ponies who helped you save everyone’s life last night isn’t a bad idea.”
Lex glanced at her sidelong. “The implication being that everypony disapproved of the sentence I handed down?”
“Oh, I don’t think you have to worry about that,” smiled Nosey, giving a pointed nod back at where they’d left Spit Polish.
His brow furrowing, Lex couldn’t help himself, looking back at where he’d left the criminal. A pair of doctors were around him, changing the dirty bandages wrapped around his hooves. They were both speaking to him, and Spit Polish was shaking his head in response as he said something back. But he wasn’t looking at them as he spoke. Instead, he was looking off into the crowd of nearby ponies, which was already starting to disperse. Following his gaze, Lex saw that he was looking at a familiar-looking unicorn mare with a bright orange coat and a soft yellow mane and tail. For a moment he couldn’t place her, but then he saw her cutie mark – a pair of peaches – and he recognized her as the pony who had been the first to castigate Spit Polish for trying to kill him. Peachy Keen.
As Lex watched, she hesitantly made her way over to where Spit Polish was, saying something. When the doctors lifted him up and started carrying him off a moment later, she kept pace with them. Lex watched them go, before turning a questioning glance toward Nosey, not sure what he’d just witnessed.
She shrugged, but was still smiling. “I don't know if the ponies here will ever forgive him or not, but that's not as important as the fact that you gave them a chance to. Now it's not about you cursing him, or even his dealing with it, but about what everypony else will do, deciding for themselves whether or not they want to help him out."
Adjusting her glasses, Nosey gave him a warm look before continuing to lead him toward Garden Gate's tent. "Now that's what I call justice."
Lex hands down his sentence on Spit Polish!
Was his sentence appropriate, or will this come back to haunt him later?
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Harsher than I would have given, but more lenient than he would have given. It seems appropriate.
Seeing Lex not being able to comprehend social intuition is amusing as always and it seems Nosey is becoming a bit bolder with her appreciation of Lex now. I'm having a hard time trying not to ship these two this chapter...anyways, on to the chapter's main topic, Spit's punishment.
The sentence wasn't as foreboding and shocking to the ponies in the audience as Garden's sentencing was. Though it's probably due to them actually seeing Spit being caught in the act and his crime being announced to them unlike Garden's case where she was sentenced moments after returning from an excursion that not many were witness to, Regardless, I think Block/Xiriel's former lieutenants/test group, has gotten a clear message from this, whether Lex had intended it or not.
Still, the cynical side of me feels like the curse could be circumvented if Spit ties a foal to his back since the curse implies that only physical contact from a sapient being is required, not if it was made willingly or not. Though the effects of the curse would make such an action highly improbable and the idea of Lex making the punishment worse alone would be enough to deter entertaining such a notion.
He could alleviate the curse by helping care for the weakened and feeble members of the camp since he's just got a taste of their suffering while he had been relatively well fed under Block/Xiriel's rule. Though this requires that the ponies would let him, a 'criminal' and a former 'lieutenant' of the oppressive Block Party, do so in the first place but at least Peachy Keen seems to have found a way to get her friend back until a permanent solution can be found.
Lex just gave Spit Polish acute clinical depression.
Id prefer the shovel.
vary interesting and unexpected i never saw this coming.
9063164 i.imgflip.com/2ek03g.jpg
9063504 Well, the idea is for him to think about what he's done, and what it's done to him. It's not as revolting as being made to bury the dead, but Lex is still a pony, and wants to encourage rehabilitation over mere punishment.
9063765 Glad you like it!
9063437 Nosey does seem to be taking a few more liberties with Lex, doesn't she? You have to wonder just how far Sonata's largesse will extend before she starts to get upset. Aria will likely only distract her for so long, as will the excuse that Nosey is just shaken by what happened to her. At some point, if Nosey keeps pushing the boundaries, Sonata will have to get in her face...right?
Lex's demonstration quite likely sent a message to everypony else, though precisely how the public is taking it remains to be seen. In fact, we really haven't seen much of how the camp ponies are reacting to the events of the last day or so, save for what Disc Jockey thinks of Sonata a few chapters back. I might need to rectify that soon...
As for Spit Polish himself, you're not wrong that he could just find some way to be in contact with some living, sapient being 24/7 and avoid the effects of his curse (i.e. glue a breezy to himself), but as you noted that'd be hard for him to do in his cursed state. Moreover, that's not really practical; even if the other person was willing, they wouldn't find that to be very pleasant after more than a few hours, and that's really the only viable method to go about it, since he can't really tie a foal to his back without everyone seeing it. That kind of defeats the purpose, since even if he was able to force someone else to assist him like that, it'd be immediately obvious to everyone else, and they wouldn't exactly let that go.
All of which is to say, the "temporary escape clause" Lex built into the curse can be gamed, but making it ironclad was never really the point. The point was to make the punishment fit the crime, while simultaneously rehabilitating the offender (and serving as a deterrent to others). If Spit Polish wants to try and leverage the loophole, well, that's likely to be difficult and will likely come back and bite him in very short order, all of which Lex was aware of.
9064192
I don't think that's really about the nature of artifacts, just their current circumstances. Broadly speaking, artifacts have a sort of life cycle. First they are created by a powerful being, who makes use of them (stage A). Then said being dies/loses the artifact, and often the artifact is lost in an obscure space (stage B). Then someone finds the artifact, and either they are able to hold onto it because they are immensely powerful or it is taken by someone else more powerful, but either way it is back to stage A.
I see your point that it's an intriguing question why Heaven isn't seeking out all the stage B artifacts and destroying them by their traditional means, especially since a Mage's Disjunction on a stage B artifact will still probably piss off someone really powerful, whereas destroying an unclaimed artifact by traditional means doesn't seem like it will anger anyone.
Of course, Visineir and Severance are stage A artifacts. If Severance had gotten thrust into some kind of demiplane where magic would not let it free itself, it might have become a stage B. (I bet a lot of the reasons divine artifacts become lost and obscure is because a god loaned them out to a follower who lost them).
It's a bit like the story of the two economists. Two economists are walking down the street. Junior economist looks down and says "hey look, a $100 bill!" Senior economist doesn't even look down, just keeps walking and says "that's impossible. If there was a $100 bill on the street someone would have already picked it up."
Artifacts are so incredibly useful, especially if you are a god or demonlord and can wrangle them easily, that it's hard to believe many artifacts are floating out there unclaimed for that long. Of course, I agree with you that whether artifacts can be the subject of divination like detect magic has a big effect on this.
Certainly not from asking them. A big part of divination magic is magically knowing things that you don't have the ability to know, from Legend Lore and Vision to humbler spells like Augury. I could see heaven just having a bunch of scholars fill up books by legend loring and then writing it down.
I can't remember much, but when ol' Mordy wrote it, did it even affect artifacts at all before 3rd edition? What I was able to find online makes it look like it doesn't affect artifacts.
A key component of any fantasy RPG setting is that institutions are either corrupt or weak, thus they need adventurers. Most low-level quests that the party takes on would be done by the police or military in the region ideally.
I guess the question is, do we think this rule extends to Heaven as well? I could see them having quite a handle on threats most of the time, but wanting to involve mortals in the defense of the multiverse as well, so they set aside certain quests or tasks for mortal heroes to undertake.
It'll be interesting to see how this plays out in 2E. It looks like classes themselves are going to be a lot more modular, almost everything is a class "feat" instead of a class "feature."
I profoundly agree. Let's say that what I said is what Aria would have thought of if she had thought about it.
I have to admit, I'm immensely shocked. That curse seems way worse than I thought it would be. I expected the physical damage, but permanent mental damage seems far worse, and it seems like something I would never have expected of Lex, as his views on the freedom of the mind seemed pretty ironclad. Honestly this seems so much worse to do to someone, anyone, than the suggestion spells Sonata was throwing around. Sonata was changing someone's mind on a single subject, this is degrading someone's mind on all subjects (and effectively making them highly suggestible).
The curse abeyance is also interesting. Lex has figured out that ponies interacting with each other is a good thing, and probably helpful for rehabilitation (though he has said nothing about how Spit Polish might ever rehabilitate himself). That said, this seems like it will have some unforeseen consequences. To a caring compassionate pony, letting Spit Polish be untouched at all is an act of incredible cruelty, so they will probably feel guilted into assisting him. This may well create a burden on the innocent ponies around Spit Polish.
Had another thought about Aria: Her original loss of voice was a lawful punishment from the government of Viljatown, right? Is Lex aware of this? By fixing her voice, he's arguably helping her evade her punishment. But I don't think Aria has ever informed anyone in this world about why her voice is gone.
9064504
I was speaking with regards to the meta-game use of them; most divinities tended to have powerful magic items that weren't artifacts per se, if and when you encountered them. Which sort of set the tone for things: artifacts were something that came into being in unusual circumstances that even gods couldn't artificially duplicate, and weren't something that could be deliberately manufactured (what few artifacts were deliberately made were always the product of some sort of unique circumstance that was since lost or otherwise impossible to duplicate). The weapons of the gods were exceptionally notable - looking in the AD&D 1E Deities & Demigods book, Hachiman (the Japanese god of war) had a throwing dagger that could turn into an ancient red dragon for 100 rounds per 48 hours (not subdividable, apparently) and two-handed sword +3 with the properties of a sword of sharpness and did 4d10 points of damage - but that wasn't the same as Baba Yaga's Hut or Heward's Mystical Organ.
(Actually, that sort of set another tone for a lot of artifacts: they quite often weren't weapons, but rather utility items that were difficult to control and had dangerous side effects, but tended to be more powerful than what conventional spells and magic items could duplicate. The fact that magic items were more difficult to manufacture, and couldn't have their properties chosen a la carte the way Third Edition's magic items could be tended to magnify the notability of this. Likewise, drawbacks and side effects were virtually mandatory parts of an artifact's nature, whereas now such things tend to be rare.)
My point about Heaven not just going around destroying whatever evil artifacts they find is that them not doing this, if we presume that they have the motivation, means that they either lack the means or the opportunity. You seem to be leaning towards "lack of opportunity," whereas I don't necessarily disagree with that but also think that "lack of means" as a not-unimportant factor. The problem is that it's one that's very difficult to quantify, as it gets into their numbers, deployment, code of conduct, resources, and numerous other world-building aspects that the game doesn't feel are important.
The thing of it is that artifacts weren't always that way. The entry for the Queen of Air and Darkness in the old DMGR4 Monster Mythology says that she was a benevolent deity before she touched the Black Diamond (an artifact about which little is known) and it destroyed her mind and made her into a corrupt shell of her former self. Cyric read the Cyrinishad, and it drove him mad (and hearing it read would have done the same to the rest of the pantheon, which is why they almost went to war to avoid that). Contemporary editions have artifacts without side effects or drawbacks at all, let alone state that such things could potentially affect gods. (Which isn't to say that the gods still didn't want to acquire such things; they did, it just tended to either be to contain them rather than use them, or they used them and suffered the consequences just like everyone else.) There was no "wrangling them easily."
I knew you'd say that. See, the thing about casting divinations is that most of them are the equivalent of picking up the phone to ask someone else if they know what's up about subject X. And if they don't know, well...that avenue isn't really helpful anymore. Sure, you've got a few divinations that work like hypercognition, where you're processing information at incredible levels, but that's still dependent on that information being present. For the most part, if you're asking for a legend lore or a vision, then someone still has to be on the other end feeding you those things. (I have a vague memory of a rule in 1E or 2E about casting divinations on the Outer Planes being tricky, since those spells were likely to be intercepted by local powers who had an interest in whatever you were asking. Even D&D Third Edition - in a section of the Epic Level Handbook that didn't make it into the SRD - said that a wish spell gave you a 50% chance to intercept any divinations about which you were the subject.)
I'm a little surprised by that; I went back and looked it up, and the language about it affecting artifacts hasn't really changed much at all between editions. It's always a 1% chance per caster level, with a 95% chance of drawing angry attention because of that, and a save ("save vs. spell with a -4 penalty") or lose your spellcasting ability as a backlash.
This is why I like the idea of the celestials being stretched too thin, and so are trying to play the long game by inspiring mortals where at all possible instead of just jumping in and doing everything themselves. That's literally the only winning plan they have, and it's one that's not going to pay off for a long time (in the cosmological sense of "time"). That explains why they're so often absent, even to the point of the bad guys winning; the loss of an entire world to a thousand years of darkness is too small an issue to deal with for them. I suppose that falls under the "weak" area of things, but I think it's more of the old "the good guys have quality, the bad guys have quantity" trope that we've talked about before. The celestials are out there fighting the battles that they can't afford to lose, and are barely able to drop a dime and call to let the heroic mortals on hand know about everything else.
You know, I read what you wrote there several times, confused as anything, because to me "2E" means "AD&D Second Edition." I'll never look at that and think "Pathfinder Second Edition," which I realize now is what you meant.
9064533
There are two very important points that need to be taken into account. The first is that Lex's punishment does not impinge on Spit Polish's mental autonomy. His consciousness, personality, thoughts, feelings, and memories are not only completely intact, but have not been tampered with or compromised. In other words, neither his free will nor his identity have been abrogated. What's been impacted is his mental acuity, in terms of cognition (i.e. his ability to process new information, integrate it into the information he already has, and make adjustments accordingly), sensory awareness (i.e. sorting potentially salient data from "background noise"), and intuition (i.e. extrapolating the the meaningfulness of said data beyond what's readily obvious). Even then, none of those have had their functionality hijacked or altered; they've simply been somewhat impeded. That's an extremely far cry from doing something like altering his alignment or reducing his intellect to the point where he was no longer sapient (i.e. reducing his Intelligence score to 2 or less).
Secondly, Lex's dislike of mental tampering is ironclad, but not absolute. He views that power as one that needs to be wielded with extreme care and responsibility, but that doesn't mean never using it at all. Remember, he signed off on Sonata using a charm person spell on Fencer in order to make her tell them what happened to Pillowcase. He also had no problem inflicting horrible nightmares on her (Fencer) when he sentenced her; that's a mind-affecting effect too. In this case, the reduced mental ability is meant to function as a punishment: Spit Polish is still conscious enough to be aware of the fact that it's harder to think now, which drives home the awfulness of what's happened to him (with the reduced physical prowess complementing that). It also makes him more reliant - along with the built-in suppression clause - on his fellow ponies, which fits with the fact that he was complicit in their oppression before.
To put it another way, nothing in Lex's punishment violates his views or his moral code. Spit Polish isn't any more suggestible than he was before, unless you mean with regards to someone using mind-affecting magic on him or attempting to deceive or bamboozle him. That's not really suggestibility, though; there's a difference between being less able to discern subtleties of behavior and being more open to (non-magical) influence.
The idea of other ponies suffering from an undue burden to help Spit Polish because it's morally impermissible not to is an idea that I find iffy. Spit Polish isn't in any particular pain or discomfort, nor is he unable to function on his own; he's just not able to function as well as an ordinary pony. If we accept that there are ponies whose mental capacity is less than average in Equestrian society (for some reason, I always think of Fluffy Clouds for that), then Spit Polish is no worse off than them in terms of his mental state, save only for the fact that 1) he wasn't always that way, and 2) he can return to how he was with a touch. Even those are largely existential problems, rather than practical ones.
Now, we've seen that existential problems tend to be the sort that most ponies tend to deal with in their everyday lives (in terms of the "friendship problems" that we see in the show), and I can certainly see other ponies wanting to help - that seems to pretty much be their default state - but that's an inclination, not an overriding urge. When one of the Mane Six have some sort of problem, all of Ponyville doesn't come to a halt as everypony tries to fix it; only those ponies that already have a close relationship with them do. I suspect it will be much the same here; some ponies might want to help Spit Polish out, but it won't eat them up inside every minute that they can't. That's without taking into account that this is a lawfully-rendered, and completely deserved, punishment for his having done evil things. So the moral compulsion to help him out doesn't seem to be as strong as you're making it out to be.
By the by, the game mechanic for this is basically that Lex has slapped the degenerate creature template on him, which is suspended whenever a living creature with an Intelligence of 3 or more is touching him. That's why he called him a "degenerate" in the first line in the chapter; that was my way of dropping a hint.
I seem to recall that Aria told him something of the circumstances of her punishment, though I can't recall offhand if she went into the full details; nevertheless, I think Lex was able to put it together. But the fact that he's going to restore her voice doesn't mean that Lex isn't acting lawfully; quite the contrary. When Aria was expelled from Everglow, she left the jurisdiction of Queen Iliana, who pronounced that judgment upon her. She's now in Lex's territory, where he regards himself as the reigning authority, which gives him full right to administer justice as he sees fit over those in his domain. If he wants to overrule Iliana's judgment, that's completely within his right to do; if she wants her justice enforced in his domain, that's a subject for a treaty. Without one, there's no prerogative for rulers to enforce a foreign power's edicts.
9064863
That's a good point. "Divine Weapons" in old editions weren't artifacts, they were promoted in 3.5 (and much more so in Pathfinder). And because its a lot easier game balance wise to give an artifact to Mephistopheles in a Bestiary than to make an artifact players can use, at this point the "Divine Weapons" have outnumbered the original type of artifacts, bizarrely powerful magical mistakes that no one can really control, even the gods.
Of course, that means that a 2nd Edition Vesineir or Severance wouldn't be an artifact...
Yeah, I have to admit we've kind of run to the ground what we can infer and estimate here.
Just wanted to bring up the fact that Cyric was and has always been a total loser of a god. I thought one of the running themes of his arc was that the gods of good eventually realized they wanted to keep him around because otherwise evil mortals would just worship someone competent like Shar or Bane (or whoever Iyactu Xvim) instead. Dude went madder from reading his own book and then became the fall guy for Shar in offing Mystra.
Nice work on your Augury!
A lot of them, yes. And usually the someone else is an outsider who is presumed to have all the answers. But Legend Lore and Vision are not really being answered by a being, they're just pulling info out of the ether. Heck, Legend Lore is more likely to work the more powerful an object or spell is, so artifacts should be like catnip to it.
Though yeah, I do remember for commune things you could interfere with the frequency if you were nearby. I think the 3rd edition adventure Lord of the Iron Fortress had something cool about that. The outsider in question had to use a wish to set up the interference though.
I guess it depends on how thin is "thin?" Clearly, the celestials aren't as powerful or numerous as they'd like, or they probably would have gone to war on the fiends by now. And considering they could coordinate with each other more reliably than even non-Blood War fiends, they fact that they still don't do so indicates weakness. But there's a big difference between "too few to wage a crusade to exterminate all fiends" and "too few to send a few strike teams to wipe out evil artifacts when they know where they are."
Sorry. They're already training us to call it Pathfinder 1E.
9064971
This feels like it could get into a very thorny debate about what makes Spit Polish Spit Polish. I feel like having one's intellect significantly impeded is the same as altering it, really. Certainly his lower charisma and wisdom would make him much more susceptible to diplomacy, bluff or intimidate checks from others. I feel like this version of Spit Polish is significantly more different as an identity than say, a charmed or suggested Spit Polish would be.
When I read the text, it seemed like from the way he was speaking and acting that Spit Polish had an Int of 3 or something, I figured it was closer to Feeblemind than anything else.
The question of whether the ponies around Spit Polish are now burdened is probably more about where he stands compared to say, Forrest Gump. From the way I was reading the chapter I figured someone was going to have change diapers if he wasn't being touched. If he's a functioning member of society there's much less of a burden. That said, if someone has the ability to make you think normally by touching you and chooses not to use it, that becomes an interesting moral dilemma.
Sure, Spit Polish is suffering this problem as a punishment, but prison doctors have the same level of duty to care for their patients.
I am interested in seeing what Lex thinks rehabilitation looks like. Garden Gate essentially seized hers from Lex as a side effect of her trying to commit suicide by ghoul, and it is hard to imagine Spit Polish being able to do something similar.
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That was easier to get away with back in the day when magic items - particularly weapons and armor - weren't presented as having a la carte abilities that could be mixed and matched at will so long as you could afford the end result. Rather, they were each discrete (although not unique) creations. Back then, a vorpal sword was what it was; the enhancement bonus (which wasn't called that back then) was set, and if you wanted to add flaming or holy properties to it...well, you couldn't. The best you could hope to do was somehow build a unique weapon that combined those properties (which was likely to be a series of adventures of procuring exotic ingredients, and came with no guarantee of success), or to somehow discover such a unique item that someone else had made (and was probably wielding now). That's what made the weapons of the gods so potent, as well as so easy to write up; you just had weapons that combined two or three other weapons' abilities, maybe with a higher enhancement bonus, and that was that.
Even in 3.5, the gods didn't usually have artifacts. If I remember correctly, the gods in the 3.0 Deities and Demigods, and Faiths and Pantheons, had powerful weapons that were just that...powerful magic weapons, of the kind you'd find with any high-level adventurer. Giving them out-and-out artifacts wasn't really something that you had becoming a thing until Pathfinder, and even then that was more along the lines of them slipping in "epic-level" weapons without having to call them that, since they were essentially just that with one or two unique properties, having no real curses, drawbacks, or really any thematic connection to classical artifacts besides "power" and "uniqueness."
I keep seeing this sentiment, and for the life of me I can't figure out the reasoning behind it. Cyric got stuff done. He was responsible for killing Bhaal while he was still a mortal (even if he didn't realize that he was using an avatar of Mask to do it), and then, upon becoming a god, immediately killed Leira. He then shook up the entire pantheon by making the Cyrinishad, and later did what Bane was never able to do and actually killed Mystra (albeit with Shar's help). Say what you want about his win/loss record, but he was an active, dynamic force in the Realms, razing Zhentil Keep and leading religious purges (i.e. the Banedeaths). He even overcame his madness with the help of his most devoted worshiper.
Bane? He had exactly two deeds of note: he teleported a bunch of cities underground, for reasons (i.e. the events of the novel Pool of Darkness) and which accomplished nothing at all, and he inadvertently caused the Time of Troubles, getting himself killed in the process. Sure, he later came back, at which point he...did nothing. He talks a big game about tyranny but in terms of what victories he actually had? Zilch. So yeah, I find Cyric to be the much cooler deity.
I'm not convinced that's the case. I understand the reasoning here: it works the way it does because the spell description says it works the way it does, and that's that, but I find that to be another instance of the game being too focused on the mechanics involved and not on how or why things function the way they do, from an in-game standpoint. Even if we overlook that the very nature of divinations is to divine (a word that can mean both "perceive" and "godly"), and disassociate those spells from anything related to gods or Outsiders, the idea of the information just coming "out of the ether" has its own problems, since the spell has to find that information in the first place and determine that it's relevant to what you're looking for. Moreover, those legends aren't something it generates from nothing: they have to be pre-existing. So it's quite clearly tapping into some repository of information, but failing to say what, which deprives us of a lot of interesting material to play around with. (The typical response to this tends to be something along the lines of "well, that's blank space that you're supposed to fill in yourself," which is an answer that sits awkwardly with the idea that such a thing shouldn't interfere with the game mechanics, despite being the thematic rationale for why the game mechanics work the way they do to begin with.)
Even if you leave aside the political considerations (e.g. "don't start a war by wiping out this high-profile target") and the long-term considerations ("letting these mortals do it will raise them up to be heroes, who will inspire goodness in others for generations to come") that we've discussed so far - which showcase that "lack of resources" isn't the only reason not to do this, but rather a contributing reason - this also overlooks issues of the stratification of powerful celestials versus weaker ones (i.e. that the only celestials who could pull off what you're talking about are also the stronger, and therefore even fewer, ones), which likely causes risk:reward ratios to skew towards a conservative stance. It's taken as a given that the celestials in question wouldn't mind self-sacrificing, but this overlooks the fact that they'll have fellow and superiors who won't want them to do so; dying for your cause is all well and good, but it's predicated on the idea that what's gained more than counterbalances your loss...in the case of outnumbered celestials, who would otherwise live for eternity, that's a very heavy price to consider. Is potentially losing one of the comparatively fewer solar angels forever really worth Mephistopheles not having his signature weapon anymore? (Of course, this dovetails into "well just use a wish to bring them back," which we've also discussed before.)
Which is presuming that they even succeed to begin with. They might be captured or killed in action (or even corrupted) before they even succeed, at which point it's a total failure. Now fold that into the other issues regarding potential political fallout and potential long-term gains, and you can make a compelling case for why the celestials don't just go around fixing everything all the time. Again, really life provides the template for answering questions like this: just because a particular country has the most money, the largest army, and the best weapons doesn't mean that they can stop everything bad happening around the world. It's the same thing, writ large, for the celestials.
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Sure, but this is an area where Lex is quite confident in his reasoning; philosophy (like most conceptual disciplines) is an area where he excels. What this ultimately comes down to is a question of identity, and in this regard both his repository of experiences (i.e. his memories) and his contemporary set of personal interpretations (i.e. his attitudes and beliefs) are both untouched by what Lex has done. Rather, he's now suffering from a comparatively mild set of hindrances with regard to acquiring new data, processing it, and extrapolating new knowledge from it. That's not changing who he is, or even what he can do; it's impeding how well he can do it. Insofar as his mentality goes, it's the mental equivalent of having ankle cuffs around his legs.
Things like this are why the game terms are so helpful, even if they're far from being a perfect resource for this sort of thing. Spit Polish is taking a -4 adjustment to all of his ability scores. He hasn't lost any experience points or levels (which are probably the closest the game can come to a mechanical representation of memory, even if they're not typically portrayed that way) nor had an alignment change. He's certainly not subject to any sort of mind-affecting effect, as the [curse] effect Lex utilized only imposes a template under conditional circumstances. So there's really no basis for saying he's not who he is, at least under the game rules.
I disagree. Even leaving aside quibbling over what constitutes "significant," this is an imposition on what he can do, not who he is. I suppose there might be some existential angst involved in a loss of personal puissance (i.e. what happens when you define (part of) yourself by what you can do, and then are no longer able to do it), but that's an issue of self-esteem being connected to external accomplishments. Beyond that, there's little function for saying that Spit Polish isn't who he was before if he has trouble performing arithmetic functions, for example, or tends to trip and fall more than he used to.
Again, "much" is a questionable term, since we're talking about a difference of -2, or 10% on a d20. Even then, that doesn't represent an alteration of his personality; to suggest otherwise would mean that every instance of an alteration to one's social skill modifiers would be an alteration of who they were on a fundamental level, which strikes me as a hard case to make. You're still you if you have an eagle's splendor dropped on you and gain a +2 bonus to those checks; you're just slightly better at engaging with other people now, is all.
Feeblemind reduces your Intelligence and Charisma scores to 1 each, and expressly says that you can't understand language or communicate coherently; by contrast, I had his speech being slurred but still very clearly intelligible. I did that as a shorthand not only for his impeded mental state his Intelligence having dropped from 10 to 6, representing an IQ drop from 98 to 78, but also for the fact that he's lost a degree of fine motor control (i.e. his lowered Dexterity), which included clear pronunciation; the two of them together are why he was having trouble talking clearly.
Spit Polish is still able to function independently, even with his ability scores now all being 6 and 7 instead of 10 and 11. The doctors picked him up and carried him away because his hooves are still injured (hence why I made sure to mention that in the chapter) and he shouldn't be walking at the moment.
Insofar as the moral dilemma with regards to everypony else, from a deontological standpoint it comes down to whether or not you feel that relieving him of that burden falls under a positive duty or if it's a supererogatory act. Obviously, that will vary from person to person, but the fact that Spit Polish is still able to function independently, isn't in any physical pain or discomfort, and any mental/emotional turmoil he might be feeling is likely due to remorse (and therefore is a consequence of his own actions, which is exactly the state of mind that his punishment is supposed to invoke), then I'd say there's a strong case to be made that they don't have to help him out lest they risk immorality (even if it is virtuous to help him).
No, they don't. First of all, the duty of care between a doctor and their patient is far greater than between two people who simply happen to be members of the same community; that's why a layperson who misdiagnoses a friend's medical condition ("eh, sounds like you've got that bug that's been going around") can't be held responsible for that, whereas a doctor could (depending on the circumstances) be held liable for negligence or even malpractice, in the case of their patients. Secondly, the use of a lawful punishment in order to inflict personal distress as encouraging behavior modification in the future (i.e. negative reinforcement) - so long as that punishment, and the distress inflicted, is restricted to humane levels - does not justify intervention on medical grounds; someone who proclaims to be exceptionally miserable from being locked up for having committed a crime does not mean that a doctor is therefore morally obligated to free them.
I suspect that Lex thinks that rehabilitation looks like Spit Polish being a functional, well-adjusted member of his community (and having been forgiven by his community, though that's a signal rather than a goal in and of itself). However, I should note that Lex's removing Garden Gate's curses was specifically called out as an act of clemency on his part. That is, he elected to pardon her in recognition of what she'd already done, and could do immediately thereafter. Although Spit Polish's sentence was openly stated to be for life, the possibility of Lex doing the same for him remains open (and, technically, such a thing could lawfully be done by any other individual with both the authority and the means to do so...), though that depends entirely upon his (Lex's) personal judgment.
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True. I think I remember a piece explaining how the mace of St Cuthbert was the almost identical to an epic level disrupting mace in the Epic Level Handbook.
I think when 3.0 codified how magic items could be created, the artifact label was repurposed to make certain powerful magical items uncraftable, for the most part.
Then Pathfinder Bestiaries decided every unique outsider needed an artifact as a status symbol. I think for Demon Lords, a major artifact is the equivalent of gold rims.
I'll give him credit for Bhaal (I really hate how they tried to retcon the idea that mortals can't kill gods by shifting credit away from him and Finder). But mostly Cyric just came off as lucky. Ao grabbed the nearest evil mortal and handed him Bane's power, and Cyric inherited the church that Bane had spent centuries building, which he promptly weakened with infighting. The entire Cyrinishad chronicles he doesn't really come off as that bright, just lucky enough to have randomly picked a follower who in turn stays insanely loyal to him. I'm sorry to use Forrest Gump twice in a row, but Cyric comes off as the evil deity version of Forrest Gump, just constantly lucking into being in the right place at the right time. He did manage to take out Leira, which is pretty amazing that he could pin her down.
Regarding Mystra though, Cyric killed Mysta and has been locked in his throne for a 1,000 years, while Shar was ready and benefited the most.
And as soon as Bane returned, he promptly yanked back most of his followers from Cyric. And Bane did pretty well striking good bargains with Szass Tam in Thay. As far as I remember, the Church of Bane is now the sole legal religion in Thay for 1,000 years.
One of the inherent ideas of magic is that it's kind of sapient and works of intent in a way technology never can. I can see the idea that information can "come from nowhere" can be tricky to some. I think it's like prophecies. Where are prophecies coming from, if not nowhere? If we say "the gods," are gods allowed to have knowledge that just comes from nowhere?
Is all magical information that seems to come from nowhere actually from the future?
Not at all, the objects just have to be powerful, no one has to actually write the legend before legend lore goes around revealing it to you. The only time I have ever seen Legend Lore used, in a FR novel, Danilo Thann conjured a bard of pure magic who made up some kind of rhyme on the spot telling him about the object he was studying, but it didn't seem like the rhyme or information was based on any kind of previous recorded knowledge.
Yeah, this is probably all a blank space we're supposed to fill in I suppose.
That makes total sense. In the more specific context of evil artifact destruction, almost all "artifacts" are either A)Divine Weapons like Vesenier or B)Obscure artifacts lost to time like the Rod of Seven Parts. In the former, evil beings don't really USE their personal weapons most of the time. How many times in the past thousand years do we think Mephistopheles has actually gotten into physical fight where he preferred to use his artifact over all his other powers? And of those fights, how many were squabbles with fellow devils or demons? In that same thousand years, how much good has a solar done across the multiverse?
For B) During the last thousand years languishing artifacts like the Rod of Seven Parts have, well, languished. They haven't effected anything.
So yeah, I agree celestials cannot spend their resources recklessly to destroy evil artifacts all willy-knilly, even if they know their means of destruction.
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Now I wish Lex would give us his opinion on Flowers for Algernon, since this seems kind of like a reverse of that.
I guess I was surprised because Lex in particular seems so proud of his own intellect. Would he rather have his mental scores reduced below average, or lose levels, or be permanently charmed? I would have guess the first option seems like the most terrifying to him, but it sounds like not so.
Ah. We'll have to see how he's adapting in the future before making judgements then.
No they don't. I misspoke, I meant to say that prison doctors have a same duty of care to their patients as regular doctors do to their patients, i.e. to alleviate suffering, even though some prisoners in theory could be said to be more deserving of suffering than the average individual. Of course most of those around Spit Polish aren't doctors.
That's the big question here, isn't it. Is cursing an individual a humane punishment? And who gets to define that? Luna and Celestia probably set the baseline, at least in the minds of doctors. What do they do to serious criminals who are not a national security threat that needs to be stopped by any means necessary like Discord? They still have to rule on that for Canterlot criminals, supposedly. Do they use curses, or just throw them in a jail, or hit them with "reforming" spells?
It will be interested to see what the doctors think of curses as punishment.
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I vaguely recall that; it was saying something to the extent that epic magic items weren't quite the same as artifacts due to how the latter were almost indestructible.
I'm not sure I agree. To respond to the points you raised:
Bane, by contrast? Yeah, a lot of former Banites (and Xvimlar) ran right back to him. But after that? Nothing. Remember, he didn't bargain with Szass Tam; Tam bargained with him, and Bane only accepted (after initially outlining that he didn't care about Thay) out of amusement more than anything else. Even then, making Thay into a monotheistic state is Tam's accomplishment, not Bane's, and it'd be more impressive if it wasn't a wasteland of a nation after Tam's turning it into a giant dread ring.
No, I don't think that idea is inherent, and as for "working the way technology never can," well...that's kind of a distinction without a difference when the game mechanics deliberately try to equate the two (the old "how do you put science fiction in your fantasy game? By making a blaster rifle use the same game rules as your wand of lightning bolts!" idea).
I'm not sure about "allowed," but the implication is that the gods have some sort of (conveniently undefined) abilities related to seeing through time, or at least not perceiving it as linearly as mortals do. Alternatively, it's that they're familiar with the underlying "mechanics" of the universe (i.e. fate or destiny) and so are able to perceive the flow of cause and effect to a greater degree than mortals are able. I suppose if you want to bypass the divine aspect of it, you could presume that powerful divinations are doing the same thing (which ties nicely into the spells that have the [fate] descriptor in Paths of Power, or maybe it was Paths of Power II), which would also explain why they sometimes get it wrong, either because of a lack of ability to fully utilize that particular stream of data, or that data itself isn't entirely conclusive.
They can be oral legends, but that's beside the point; my reading of what it says in Ultimate Intrigue implies that the legends are pre-existing ones, rather than made up on the spot (emphasis mine):
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They'd all terrify him; that's kind of the point. Whenever someone invents a punishment, they're inadvertently declaring that it's what they'd dislike happening to them; it's no coincidence that he cursed Garden Gate with the same nightmares he has, a loss of magic (which he relies on quite a lot), and physical weakness (since he hates weakness in himself of any sort). The thing to remember is that "not wanting it done to me" doesn't mean that it shouldn't ever be done under any circumstances. I doubt most people would want to be fined, locked up, or executed, but those punishments are handed down all the time.
The key here is that Lex is utilizing the punishment he leveled against Spit Polish in a way that doesn't contradict his own ethical framework regarding mind-affecting magic. He's utilizing it under just circumstances (i.e. for punishing someone guilty of a serious crime) in a humane manner (i.e. not violating their free will or sense of self). Admittedly, he's coming close a metaphorical line here; by cleaving specifics about what kind of mind-affecting magic is invasive and violating, he's splitting some very fine hairs. But this story has long been based on the game rules for the d20 System, and by those he hasn't done anything wrong per se. Now, there's more to it than just the game mechanics, but I think the course of our discussion has made it clear that there's an argument to be made that he hasn't abrogated his own sense of morals.
It might not be very well, but he's far from being crippled...at least to the point of needing assistance just to get through the day.
The duty to alleviate suffering has limits; doctors cannot force patients to undergo procedures that they don't want to, for instance. But the more germane argument here is what constitutes "suffering" per se and whether or not Spit Polish's current state falls under that term. Punishment is supposed to be unpleasant, since it carries a punitive aspect to it. The question becomes whether a given punishment is inhumane unto itself, and the degree to which it causes the prisoner harm, be it physical or otherwise (notice that those two are not the same thing; a punishment that is considered humane might still cause an unacceptable degree of suffering if inflicted on someone with particular circumstances, e.g. putting someone with claustrophobia in a small cell). In this case, however, I question if a doctor would feel that Spit Polish's case met either of those criteria.
The problem with this, of course, is that we don't really get to see criminal justice in Equestria. In fact, there doesn't seem to be much crime at all. Notwithstanding the major threats to Equestria, the worst we ever see is Troubleshoes, who is held to be a notorious criminal despite the fact that he's just "unlucky," i.e. he's inadvertently fulfilling his destiny of being a clumsy rodeo clown (which is also the only episode where we ever see a mundane jail). Moreover, he's easily forgiven without so much as a trial by everypony after he makes them laugh and the CMC explain the situation. Given how (again, not withstanding guys like Tirek) that seems to be how famous criminals are treated, I expect most "normal" crime is nonexistent; the Flim-Flam Brothers were hucksters who stole money from sick and injured ponies, and they never paid for it at all save by leaving Ponyville, nor was there any expectation of any sort of punishment being levied against them. By the time Applejack met them again, she was helping them out.
All other instances of serious offenses, from cursed-Rarity transmogrifying Ponyville to Starlight Glimmer's cult-like village, are similarly forgiven upon the "evildoer" mending their ways. For ponies, intent seems to be paramount, and once it's solved there's no need for further corrective action by the authorities. In fact, Rarity (and Trixie with the Alicorn Amulet) makes a good point here: a not-insignificant instance of "evil ponies" seems to be them falling prey to magic that makes them run out of control. So a "reform spell" makes a lot more sense if you think about a creature like Discord as being controlled by his chaos-based magic rather than, or as much as, controlling it! (Though, given the events of season seven's Discordant Harmony, it's implied that Discord would cease to exist if he stopped being so chaotic!)
As for "who gets to decide" what's humane and what's not...well, there are two answers there. Insofar as the official punishments go, that's up to the leader, which here is Lex (though this might become a conflict if Celestia and Luna show up and he makes an issue out of who's in charge). But insofar as how people feel, well...public morals are decided upon by the public. The leader can try to sway those, of course, but it's up to the people how much they by into the leader's example. That said, ponies seem passive by nature in this regard, and almost seem to want to be swayed (just look at the crowd during season seven's Daring Done), so long as the speaker is at all competent in addressing the public. Of course, that's Lex's weakness, but also why he has Sonata. Between that, and what Vanhoover has gone through, this might not go over as badly as Garden Gate's punishment did.
Will of the people is much better.
And I was right about friendship and rainbows. He has to make friends to make up for what he did.
9221522 I wonder if the alicorns would be a positive about Spit Polish's punishment as you are?