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.
Aisle was in a state of controlled panic by the time he and Cozy reached the field hospital.
Okay, calm down, he told himself silently as he followed Cozy around the medical tent, heading toward where Pillow’s body was stored among the boxes of medical supplies. All we have to do is figure out how to make a trek of several hundred miles, with no provisions or equipment, while carrying a dead body. Despite the warm temperature, a shudder rolled down his spine, knowing that their problems didn’t stop there. And we need to get underway as soon as equinely possible, before Lex figures out that Cozy was the one who turned everypony against him.
The thought made him glance backward nervously, half-expecting to see Lex advancing on them in a rage. Although the perpetually-dour unicorn had, to Aisle’s considerable relief, allowed them to leave even after Cozy had all but spit in his face, he had no desire to keep pushing the limits of Lex’s forbearance. Unfortunately, he was sure that was what would happen when Lex finished up whatever business he had with Sonata and Nosey and exited the train station. At that point, he’d come into contact with everypony else, and it probably wouldn’t be long before he heard about Cozy’s tirade…and Aisle had no idea what would happen then. Lex clearly had some sort of code of honor, but whatever rhyme or reason it operated on was beyond Aisle’s ability to figure out, and he didn’t want to take the chance that “potentially stirring up an angry mob” was a punishable offense. Which means we have to go right now, but how t-
His thoughts were interrupted as he crashed into Cozy, who had suddenly come to a complete halt. “Oof!” he gasped, hearing a similar exclamation from his girlfriend as they nearly collapsed. Barely managing to stay upright, Aisle immediately moved to help Cozy up. “Sorry! You suddenly stop-” He cut himself off in mid-sentence as he glanced ahead, seeing what had made her freeze in place.
Lounging amidst the boxes, Aria was looking at them with an expectant smirk on her face.
“Hi there,” she whispered, clearly enjoying their shock. “I heard you guys were planning on skipping out on us. Kinda cold, don’t you think?”
Aisle felt his blood run cold at the words. He hadn’t personally interacted with Aria since she’d joined them back at the shelter, and everything he’d seen of her – along with what Sonata had told them – suggested that had been a wise decision. That she was here, now, could only be a bad thing. What else can go wrong?
His question was answered a moment later as Cozy took a step closer to Aria, her body language radiating malice. “Get away from him,” she growled, her voice threatening.
The statement made Aisle blink, since Cozy was between Aria and himself. It was only a moment later that he realized he’d misunderstood, looking back at Aria and seeing what he’d overlooked before: the cloth-wrapped body of Pillowcase lying on the ground right in front of her. She was close enough that she could easily have reached out and touched it, and Aisle knew immediately that her proximity to Cozy’s late husband was no coincidence. “Listen, we don’t want any trouble,” he said lamely, hating the pleading tone in his voice. But he couldn’t help it: he was at his limit for handling disasters. Trying to be a stabilizing influence on Cozy had left him emotionally drained, and being cursed in such a shameful manner hadn’t helped. He’d had no time to process that two of his closest friends were dead, and now he had to figure out a way to manage an utterly impossible journey that Cozy was dead-set on. He couldn’t handle Aria on top of everything else.
But the whispering Siren’s only response was to laugh at them both, her mouth falling open as she gave a series of rapid breaths. “You mean besides what you already stirred up back there?” she asked sarcastically, glancing at Aisle. Her eyes turned to Cozy a moment later. “I have to say, I didn’t think you had the guts to try something like that. Getting everyone all riled up so that they’ll keep Lex busy while you two make a break for it? It’s a halfway decent plan. Though you would have been smarter to just take off instead of coming back for this.” She snorted the last word contemptuously, one hoof waving toward Pillow’s bound body.
Although her gesture didn’t make contact with the corpse, Cozy nevertheless darted forward with a strangled snarl of outrage. Aisle was about to fling himself after her when the crystal mare came to a stop, aborting her charge as suddenly as she’d started it. “Don’t you touch him!” she shrieked, sounding angrier than Aisle had ever heard her. “I’m taking him back home with me! Princess Cadance is going to bring him back to life!”
Aria’s eyebrows rose at that, but it was amusement, rather than amazement, that colored her features. She glanced at Aisle then, as though silently asking if she’d heard right, before looking back at Cozy. “Well that explains it,” she whispered, still smirking. “I thought it was weird that you’d suddenly be brave enough to try something like this. Turns out you’ve just gone completely crazy.”
“You’re wrong!” Cozy lifted her holy symbol in one hoof and thrust it as far as she could toward Aria, drawing the necklace taut. “Princess Cadance has more of Lashtada’s greatest blessings than I do! She can perform all sorts of miracles! If there’s anypony who can resurrect Pillow, I know it’s her!”
“The dead can’t be brought back to life,” snorted Aria, her look of amusement fading. “Now, I’m taking you two back to Lex. He’s going to-”
“Yes they can!” interrupted Aisle as a sudden, desperate idea occurred to him. He just hoped that what he’d heard about Aria had been accurate. “Lex said so!” He tried to think back to the conversation they’d had on their way back to the shelter, when Cloudbank had all but picked a fight with Lex after the incident with the dummy lights. “He said…I heard him say that divine magic is capable of resurrecting the dead.” He took a step forward, forcing himself to sound confident. “I don’t know if Princess Cadance has that power, but there’s a chance that she might.”
“Hm.” Aria paused at that, a look of doubt crossing her features. But it passed a moment later, and she waved a hoof in front of her face in a dismissive gesture. “Well, I don’t really care either way,” she whispered with a shrug, glancing at Cozy again. “I mean, I get that you want to have two guys hanging off of you instead of just one, but that’s not my problem. All I care about is getting my voice back, and if I drag you two back to Lex, then he might finally hurry up and give me what I want.”
“Or,” countered Aisle, “you could come with us to the Crystal Empire.”
For a moment silence reigned, both females staring at him.
“What?” scoffed Aria, her face screwed up in skepticism, as though wondering if he’d misspoken.
“What?!” gaped Cozy, her features warring between horror and incredulity.
“You should come with us to the Crystal Empire,” repeated Aisle, keeping his eyes focused on Aria. “Think about it. If Princess Cadance can raise the dead, then healing the damage to your voice,” he pointed at the scar at the base of her neck, “should be no problem.”
Another look of uncertainty flashed across her face then, one hoof moving to touch her scar reflexively, and Aisle knew that she was listening. A sudden surge of hope filled him then, and he shot a glance at Cozy, silently willing her to understand what he was trying to do. He immediately returned his eyes to Aria, though. If she caught him sending knowing glances to Cozy, she’d think they were trying to fool her, and that would be the end of her listening to him. I can do this, he told himself silently, thinking of all the times he’d closed deals with ponies in his family’s grocery store. This is just like talking Grapevine into buying peanut butter and celery to go with her raisins, or convincing Grand Pear that it’s okay to have apples and pears together in a fruit salad. Letting out a slow breath, Aisle steadied himself, knowing that this might be the most important negotiation he ever conducted.
Aria was already starting to regroup, frowning as she shook her head. “Uh-uh. No way. She,” she thrust a hoof toward Cozy, “already used her healing magic on me before, after the battle at the docks, and it didn’t do a thing for my voice! You know why?!” She slammed her hoof down in frustration. “Because there’s nothing there to heal! Those butchers didn’t just cut my throat, they cut my voice out of it!” Despite her only being able to whisper, Aisle could hear the undercurrent of anguish beneath her anger. “Can your precious little princess fix that?!”
“She might.” Cozy stepped forward, her features softer than they had been a few moments ago, and it was all Aisle could do not to faint in relief. “I don’t know if she can regenerate your vocal chords, but it wouldn’t surprise me.” She smiled slightly as she spoke next. “I was at the hospital once, donating some mattresses, when Princess Cadance was called there. A baby had been born with a defective heart. The doctors said that there wasn’t anything they could do, and they didn’t think he was going to make it. The parents were beside themselves, and begged the princess to fix their son, and you know what she did?” Cozy’s smile widened at the memory. “She took the baby in her forelegs, and sat down with the parents and told them to pray with her. They all sat down together and closed their eyes, and I saw the Princess’s lips moving, and suddenly that little baby – who had been so quiet and still – started crying at the top of his lungs, healthy and loud.”
She paused then, wiping a foreleg across her eyes. She’d witnessed the entire thing through a hallway window, not just the miracle but the way Princess Cadance had cried with the parents when their baby was healed, embracing each of them in turn. Seeing that had affected Cozy profoundly – more than getting her cutie mark, more than falling in love, more than anything she’d ever imagined – and she’d gone to the Crystal Palace the very next day and asked to become a priestess of Lashtada. “The doctors checked the baby later, and they said his heart was as strong as any they’d ever seen. So you see, if she can fix a newborn’s broken heart, I bet she can fix your voice as well.” Her eyes fell to the cloth-wrapped body on the ground then, her further hope unspoken but obvious.
Aria was silent for a long moment, wearing a pensive look. “…and you really think she’d do something like that for me?”
“She will,” nodded Cozy, pausing for just a moment before adding, “if we tell her you helped us.”
“Yeah, well…if I stay here, Lex will fix my voice in a couple days anyway, without me having to go wherever it is you’re heading.”
“Why a couple days?” This time it was Aisle that spoke up. “If he has that power, why doesn’t he just use it on you right now?”
“That…” Aria trailed off, biting her lip as she looked away. “…this is stupid. Even if I said yes, he might be able to track us down with his magic before we ever got away.”
“Maybe,” admitted Cozy. “But aren’t you tired of living like this? Of feeling terrible for so long that you can barely remember what it feels like to be happy? Of having your hopes dashed over and over again until you can’t keep bringing yourself to hope for anything at all? Don't you want to at least try for something more?” She walked around Pillow’s body then, until she was right next to the crippled Siren, who tensed but didn’t back away. Raising a hoof toward her, this time without brandishing her holy symbol, Cozy looked her right in the eye. “Please, Aria…come with us.”
Both ponies held their breath as they waited for her answer.
Aria confronts Cozy and Aisle, only for them to make her a surprising offer!
Will she accept? Or will she refuse?
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Now this is quite a twist. I bet Cadance probably could heal Aria's voice with divine magic if she really wanted, though she'll probably be highly suspicious.
On the other hand, with Aria along the group should probably make it back to the Crystal Empire at all.
This kind of brings up a larger point. Do governments in worlds with divine magic have an obligation to bring back the dead? Lex didn't seem to think so, which is surprising.
Lex can not lead people.
He wants to build a better equestria but he does not care about the ponies.
He just wants to prove that he can do something better than the princesses.
Rather clever of Aisle and impressive too since he was able to convince Grand Pear to buy apples. If he succeeds the diplomacy check, they'll have someone that can protect them on the pair's admittedly, ill-planned journey to the Crystal Empire. Plus after suffering defeat after defeat all because she followed Adagio and her plans, a part of her, especially after what Aisle told her, might be worried about Lex not following through on his side of the bargain which is possible given the problems on his plate.
On the other hand, while Cozy did witness a miracle in that flashback, Aria can only take her words at face value, which is something I doubt Aria would do. Cozy can promise all she wants but there is no guarantee that Cadence would be able to perform the miracle or be willing to, especially if Twilight had told her about her experiences with the Sirens. And as she said, she's just a few days away from having Lex restore her voice so throwing that chance away over a desperate couple's words is foolish.
I'm sure there are plenty of other reasons for Aria to either stay at the camp or leave but it could go either way.
Though if Cozy and Aisle do manage to convince Aria to go with them, her method of locomotion might slow them down if they have to traverse rough terrain and I'd doubt she'd be willing to carry Pillowcase for them without another diplomacy check(in the form of some platitudes)
Regardless of whether or not Aria joins them I'd imagine that they'll head for Tall Tale since it's the closest city with, to their knowledge, an operating train station and their best bet to have a straight shot to the Crystal Empire. Plus, they might meet Fireflower and his siblings again though any news of their 'mayor' from Cozy would be unwelcome after what he did for them.
Of course, all of this depends heavily on whether Cozy and Aisle make it out of the camp before the next problem hits the camp.
Edit: I just realized my comment is just an over complicated wall-o-text version of howard035's comment when I saw it.
Come to the crystal side, we have love cookies.
i get the feeling Aria is just stalling.
or she is just super stupid witch she is not.
8817965
Thanks! This came to me out of nowhere as I sat down to write this chapter. It's the epitome of what I've spoken about, where I'm surprised by how the story progresses (what's apparently called "discovery writing"). I literally couldn't have told you that this was going to happen before I wrote it.
This chapter gives a hint as to the powers that Cadance has received from Lashtada. But the full scope of what she can do now remains ambiguous. That said, there was an extremely subtle aspect to this particular hint: The sequence Cozy remembered, with Cadance fixing a child's congenital problem, is representative of the Touch of Hathor feat (and, for that matter, a shameless rip-off of the in-character narrative given in conjunction with the feat), from The Practical Enchanter, page 143.
Well, there are still some practical problems regarding travel and carrying a body and all, but in general having a spellcaster of her caliber at their side would be helpful.
There are two questions here, which are 1) the governmental stance on resurrection magic, and 2) Lex's attitude with regards to the first question.
With regards to the first question, there's quite simply no way to easily answer it. It's going to be dependent on the government in question, the religion(s) in question, and numerous other factors (e.g. how many divine spellcasters of sufficiently high level are available to begin with? So the issue of character level vs. demography is likewise extremely relevant here).
Unfortunately, there's simply no good model for this. When you get right down to it, the d20 System's basic presumptions regarding magic – that it's relatively ubiquitous, can be used without any sort of drawbacks to the user, and functions reliably according to understandable rules – means that it's essentially going to be treated like any other science if the creatures utilizing it are even remotely of the same mindset as humans...and given that humans tend to populate most d20 worlds, alongside various "humans in funny hats" races, that's typically taken to be implicitly the case. What that means is that the quasi-medieval nature of most d20 worlds simply wouldn't be how we could likely expect places with that degree of magic to actually function. At some point, someone is going to realize that unlimited-use use-activated magic items will eventually pay for themselves and raise the common standard of living (which is ultimately to your own benefit, as per the principle of enlightened self-interest), and since those items generally exist until they're stolen or destroyed, that means that there's really no reason not to engage in such projects other than issues of finding someone high-enough level with the right feat(s), and procuring the necessary funding. Given how many high-level characters most settings seem to have, let alone treasure, those aren't really "problems" so much as they are "speed bumps."
For example, suppose you wanted to build a magic item that can cast raise dead and restoration at will, so that you can bring someone back and restore the negative levels associated with doing so. Under the standard magic item creation rules, and using minimum caster levels where possible, such a thing would cost 590,000 gp for the raise dead effect, plus another 117,000 gp (the cost for restoration, using the 1,000 gp material component, multiplied by 0.75 for the "multiple similar abilities" clause), for a total cost of 707,000 gp. That's incredibly expensive, but not more than a 20th-level PC could afford on their own. It'll take up a body slot, but there's no reason to say this isn't affordable (and if you still need to bust the price down further, just give it a set of only so many charges usable per day).
This, however, isn't what we see on virtually any d20 worlds, and it's not too surprising why. The ease and reliability of resurrection magic (particularly when held by the PCs who are the "stars of the show") means that a lot of the potential drama around death and dying are strained, if not negated altogether. Being slain is reduced to any other wound, and ceases to have any particular narrative weight associated with it. Now, expand that from a small group of elite individuals to an entire society, and you're well on your way to representing a culture that will have norms and values that are hard for most readers to understand. This is why previous editions of D&D threw additional restrictions and failure modes onto resurrection magic, including a percentage chance that any given use would fail (and if it did, you were forever dead) and a hard limit on how many times you could be brought back (i.e. your Constitution score).
Hence, most game designers don't really take these sorts of things to their conceptual end point. Doing so might be a fun exercise in world-building, but raises issues of actually having to play in those worlds. Instead, when they acknowledge the ubiquity of resurrection magic at all, they'll typically ignore the possibility of magic items altogether, and lean toward some hodgepodge of excuses around relatively rarity of high-level divine spellcasters (which really doesn't work very well, since we're talking 9th-level and up) and issues of material component costs (which is iffy, to say the least, considering how much treasure typically gets thrown around in your standard d20 game). I suppose one could make up an issue of there being a perennial shortage on diamonds (since those are the material component for such spells) of requisite value, but I suspect that creative uses of the fabricate spell will obviate that anyway. And that's presuming that the standard magic in the Pathfinder Core Rulebook is all the magic that's available, let alone something more flexible (e.g. how the magic in Eclipse: The Codex Persona recognizes that you can use a higher-level version of a spell with expensive material components to just ignore the need for said components).
This is really just a subset of the larger issues with the availability of magic in a d20 setting anyway. The idea of pay-for spellcasting already democratizes the availability of magic a great deal, even if you ignore the idea of "why hasn't someone made an unlimited-use magic item for this already?" Given that a significant amount of restorative magic (and other divine spells that would be useful to a given community, such as zone of truth) don't have expensive material components, the only practical limits are on the number of individuals of sufficient level, and how many spell slots they have. Given that these cost them nothing to actually use, and that churches are supposedly trying to win converts over, you'd expect the basic rule of economics to have kicked in, whereby clerics would have tried to underbid each other to the point where they're offering spellcasting services for free (presuming that there's no material component costs) in hopes of winning people over to their church instead of that guy's church. (In this regard, Ponyfinder is a step ahead of a lot of other settings, since Viljatown – Jewel of the Empire not only has a major temple devoted to the entire pony pantheon, but flat-out says that anyone who seeks magical aid will be given it. The place runs off of donations, rather than fees.)
Still, for most people, the prima facie excuse that "expensive material components (which can't be easily waived) are passed on to the consumer" is good enough, as this at least explains why most of the poorer people simply can't afford to purchase resurrection magic. Instead, it becomes reserved for the wealthy, and presumably those with the social significance that they can sidestep issues of wealth (i.e. members of the nobility, high-ranking clergy, etc.).
Ultimately, this particular issue is treated as one of those issues that the designers, audience, and everyone else ignores because it doesn't really work for what they want to do...which, ironically, fits with the incredibly loose and self-contradictory canon of MLP:FiM anyway.
As for Lex, he's not treating it as a given that his government should resurrect citizens that have died untimely deaths because it hasn't fully occurred to him to think that way. This is something I've been very careful to lampshade, both with regard to his stats and his presentation. Remember, he can't make Everglow-style magic items anyway (though he can make various other kinds of items, including "scrolls" (gemstones), charms and talismans (see The Practical Enchanter, pg. 189-205), and unique items made by his Create Artifact ability (which are not literal artifacts, per se)...though I've paid very little attention to these throughout the story), and while he knows that resurrection magic – like healing magic – is primarily a function of divine magic, that's not his forte (i.e. he has no ranks in Knowledge (religion)), and so he's not sure what's required to make that viable. He just knows that only powerful divine spellcasters have access to it, and that there are some limitations to it that he's not sure about (and, more subtly, that since the ponies on Everglow don't resurrect everyone who dies of anything other than old age, those limitations must be considerable). He doesn't, at this point, know the difference between raise dead, resurrection, and true resurrection, for instance; his only personal interaction with life-restoring magic was Waterlily, and she was brought back as part of a deal with a goddess, who has (for all intents and purposes, at least from Lex's perspective) magic enough to do whatever she wants. That, and he's still a product of the culture he grew up in; he tends to react to the concept of death as being final, even if he knows intellectually that there's magic out there that can defeat it.
I suspect that Lex will end up confronting these issues head-on if and when he goes to bring Cloudbank and the others back to life.
8818055 Lex cares very much about ponies, he's just terrible at making that known. Of course, that doesn't mean he's not also invested in one-upping the princesses; they're not mutually-exclusive goals.
8818247 For all we know, Aisle is the reason that Grand Pear decides to move back to Ponyville and reconcile with his family.
As it stands right now, Aisle and Cozy managed to make a shockingly-persuasive argument, and Aria honestly looks like she's considering what they have to say. On the other hand, it's not exactly a slam dunk, since Aria's also somewhat afraid of Lex (not incorrectly), and would need to make the trip back to the Crystal Empire with Aisle and Cozy anyway. So this one really is a toss-up, as you noted. Though you weren't wrong to note that something else might happen before this particular turnabout gets underway. There's really never a dull moment here.
8818433 Well that just sounds dirty.
8818749 You didn't think that Aisle and Cozy made a good argument? To me it seemed like Aria was genuinely tempted.
8818849
I aim to please?
Sorry I can't do it more often :(
8818991
it sounded like window dressing to me.
8819225 Well, I'm just glad you do it at all.
8819229 Aww.
8818977
110% This. A while back I was having a discussion about the anime Gate, which is a story about how a portal opens up between modern day Japan and a cliched RPG fantasy setting, and this leads to war.
Logically governments that have have magic and equal access to the basic rules of physics as we know them, should have a huge advantage over nations that only have technology. So why does it look like modern ordinary earth nations would prevail? Because those RPG settings don't just have magic, they are all supposed to be fantasy medieval, with weak, broken-down governments and institutions. Why is this apparent in almost every classic fantasy RPG? Because strong governments wouldn't need heroes. An adventurer as an occupation is basically an admission that your society has completely failed.
It's why all these settings have an ancient magically powerful kingdom, not only to explain the treasure piles, but making the setting in the early rebuilding phase a post-apocalyptic scenario explains why ordinary people have almost nothing but with hard work and questing adventurers can gain fantastic wealth, power and magic.
8820302
Honestly, my problem with Gate wasn't just how easily contemporary Japan steamrolls the Empire, but with how the series' fidelity to realpolitik was trumped by its overt nationalism, especially with regards to the JSDF. That scene where the beast-girl prostitutes are saying "Wow, those Japanese soldiers are sooo suave, but they just won't rent us even if we say we'll do it for free!" – combined with a scene of the camera panning over a report entitled "STDs in the Special Region" (the implication being that was why the soldiers weren't "mingling" with the locals) – had me rolling my eyes so hard. As though a bunch of young men, stationed for months at a time in a foreign land, would unilaterally refuse to have sex with attractive young catgirls, bunnygirls, etc. dressed in nothing but diaphanous gowns because of the possibility of diseases? Nevermind that we see them handing out prophylactics to the prostitutes, which means that condoms are likely available also. The very idea that any army would be that disciplined utterly flies in the face of the "realism" that Gate otherwise presents itself; certainly, Japan has no particular history of restraint in that area.
Well, yes and no. There are legitimate reasons for divergent technological levels between civilizations, particularly when comparing areas that don't have easy methods of trade between them. We need only look at our own world to find examples of different civilizations that have had wildly different levels of technological development at various points in time. Clearly, operating under equal conditions of reality isn't enough to suggest that there'd be technological parity; in fact, even suggesting that there are relatively equal access to resources isn't quite enough to say that all nations should have equal development. The deterministic idea that various technological developments are inevitable isn't one that I have a lot of faith in; it might still be true, but it's clearly not true with regard to any sort of set timescale.
Moreover, this also depends on just how magic operates within any given setting. Pathfinder allows for high-level magic (though it still relatively localized, which is why you don't typically see magic that affects entire cities, nations, or worlds as being anything except background material for various stories and in-game legends), and suggests a comparatively high level of ubiquity, even if it becomes cagey when you try to start nailing down the specifics. There's still a general presumption that there are enough high-level spellcasters, as well as a large number of magic items, that an attack from a magic-less country, albeit one with high technology, could be fought on relatively equal ground. (Of course, there's a reason for that; as a playable game, Pathfinder needs to define everything under its game engine, the d20 System, and so isn't going to flat-out declare that certain things are better than others. That means that anything high-technology can come up with will still be written to be "balanced" against high-level spells and magic items. Hence why a rocket launcher really isn't that much better than a fireball cast at 12th level. That's an important distinction, because it demonstrates that the process is "fit everything under the rules" rather than "have the rules represent what would 'really' happen.")
Well, I wouldn't say "completely" failed.
More seriously though, the issue with regards to governments being comparatively weak (at least in terms of military power), and the proliferation of adventurers who are barely aware of little things like "laws," let alone "government regulations" – at least with regard to Pathfinder/D&D 3.5/the d20 System – can be chalked up to the overall scale of power between levels 1 through 20, which is massive. There's a reason why it's taken as a truism (not wrongly) that levels 1-5 are "gritty" adventures, levels 6-10 are "wuxia," levels 11-15 are "superheroes," and levels 16-20 are "demigods." The scope and scale of powers that characters gain is significant enough that, quite simply, the overall feel (if not genre) of what they can do changes significantly, to the point where what worked at the earlier levels doesn't work later on, and vice versa.
The significance of this cannot be understated, because it means that, where military conflict is concerned, sheer numbers cease to be the most important factor in figuring out how a conflict will go. While Earth's history is full of stories where a smaller force overcomes a larger one, those are notable specifically because that's not how it usually goes; even then, those are notable because someone was smart enough and/or lucky enough to utilize brilliant tactics, favorable terrain, helpful weather, some unexpected (new) weapon, or something else to overturn how things should, by all conventional wisdom, have gone. In Pathfinder, that wisdom cannot be said to be conventional. A 20th-level fighter, with level-appropriate gear (particularly PC-level gear) is going to be able to defeat virtually any number of NPCs with one level in the warrior class. A wizard will do better than that, since a smart application of spells, summons, animated undead, etc. will quickly change the odds even more than simple blasting; there's a reason that style of play for wizards is called "battlefield control," after all.
What all this means is that, in a d20-based world, the PCs and those like them (at least, toward the higher levels) will naturally be beyond the power of any government to easily control, and they'll likely know it. Hopefully, their alignment and social attachments (i.e. they haven't played "murderhobos") are such that they want to be good members of society – or at the very least, not actively disrupt it – but if they act out then there's very little that can bring them to heel except for another character, or group, of equal or greater power. When the 18th-level wizard decides he doesn't want to pay taxes anymore, who are you going to send to make him do it? At best, you can inconvenience him via nonviolent means, but that just runs the risk of ticking him off and turning him against you. And even if you can find someone willing to help, they're likely to be hesitant about it; they'll be fighting someone who is as powerful as they are, and so could potentially kill them, after all.
Even magic items won't help to turn the tide of this very much, since they're only able to compensate for a weak wielder so much. Putting that holy avenger +5 in the hands of the captain of the guard, a 4th-level warrior surrounded by his 1st-level warrior squadron, and he's still going to be carved up by that 20th-level fighter very quickly.
At the end of the day, it's not surprising that the local governments don't have a military composed of high-level characters. Getting characters up that high requires them to face death again and again and again, and since those settings go with the aforementioned presumption that resurrection magic isn't common, that means that most of the people who reach each level will be (as a general rule), progressively fewer and fewer. Hence, you're going to end up with various individuals and cabals who are beyond the power of most terrestrial governments to easily control. The best that most governments would probably do, in that case, is to recruit individual youngsters and try to inculcate them in your society's norms and values, creating strong social bonds while putting them in small groups (adventuring parties) and dispatching them on deadly missions that are appropriate for their skills (rather than being too easy or too hard) and hoping that they survive and grow stronger.
In other words, your average Pathfinder world is going to have a military that looks a lot like something out of Naruto.
Yeah, that part is a truism, along with the idea that such finds won't be seized by the powers that be (or even taxed, for that matter) once the characters start waving them around. But at least in those cases, there's a built-in excuse that governments can't control the most powerful of individuals, and so aren't willing to make enemies out of them by trying.
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Yeah, I disliked that as well. The JDF is somehow miraculously better and more disciplined than every other army on both earth and magic land?
Sure, the governments as they stand now. But that's why in most places in Golarion, the characters with the most class levels around run the governments. Most high level adventurers are either recruited into or take over the government, sooner or later. That fits with the existing system, what doesn't is, as you eloquently pointed out, why those characters don't just mass-produce magic items. (Between Master Craftsman and UMD, non-spellcasters are not exempt from this).
A world with magic that was not compelled by narrative to uphold the status quo would involve the extermination of most monstrous creatures, using a combination of alliances among high level characters and liberal use of magic items among lower-level characters. There would be almost no dungeons, government agents would investigate all dungeons rapidly and systematically, killing anything dangerous and confiscating anything valuable.
Mass magic item production, and the removal of various types of monster attacks, would lead to a rapid magical-industrialization as you pointed out earlier. Heck, most of the time the ancient advanced civilization that was wiped out long ago in the RPG setting was only prevented from doing this because the writers handed them an idiot ball.
(BTW, when I said fantasy setting should be able to beat a modern nation, that's what I meant, fantasy settings if they were allowed to break free of narrative tropes and run for a century or two to mass-produce magical items).
before Lex figures out what Cozy was the one -- before Lex figures out that Cozy was the one
8822771 Whoops! Fixed now! Thanks for catching that!
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Not even a problem, well worth the price of fine fanfic reading material.
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It's true that top-tier government functionaries tend to be higher-level characters, but I don't know that I'd go so far as to say that they have the most class levels of everyone in the nation (or even their general area), as a rule. Even if they do, the written material sidesteps this particular issue by introducing creatures of comparable (or greater) power into the equation (typically creatures with a high CR and/or a mixture of their natural CR and class levels/templates/advanced natural Hit Dice), with the unstated (taken as obvious) explanation that their non-governmental position is because they're an alien being that can't really fit into (demi)human society (and quite often, has an alien mindset, an incompatible alignment, and/or something else). Back in 3.5, this was referred to as "power centers" in the DMG. With that said, I'm still of the opinion that there are a lot of comparatively higher-level characters in the Pathfinder materials that are completely uninvolved with their government.
I'm honestly not sure it would go this way, simply because most high-level adventurers would be used to operational independence, and because there's no real mechanism by which they could be forcibly recruited if they turned the government down. Quite a few others simply wouldn't want a place in the government, since that involves work that they might not be very keen on.
While I agree that a strong government would engage in controlling power, and that higher-level characters are defined by having great amounts of power (especially compared to the lower-level people who make up the rank-and-file members of the world), there's no real way to exercise that sort of control over those groups, and trying is quite often the quickest way to get them to fight back. I suspect that, unless they're actively groomed for government from the beginning (which essentially involves shepherding them through challenges designed to level them up), most high-level characters who become involved in anything that remotely involves governance will be because they simply end up finding that decisions and issues start to revolve around them of their own accord. When everyone knows you have the power to wipe out their city in a few minutes, they tend to start taking you into account regardless of your intent. (That's part of why Ultimate Charisma is such a highly-regarded product, since it molds a lot of Paizo's disparate social rules into a cohesive whole, and recommends that all of the PCs receive Leadership for free (or, as an alternate rule, that they receive it collectively, for their group)).
Again, that's the ideal for a government that's concerned with controlling power, but I question the implementation. A significant portion of the monsters are powerful, intelligent, and magically-proficient in their own right, and an organized extermination campaign tends to involve significant opposition. A lot of those creatures are "high-level characters" unto their own right, and they quite often have their own gear as well. Plus, there would be some higher-level characters who would fight on the monster's side, whether they're evil characters, hard-line druids, etc.
The issue of mass-produced magic items is a little easier to go forward with, as it's largely an issue of time, manpower, and funding. The trickier issue there is that the lowered requirements for creating magic items means that the issues that come up would be problems of regulation, rather than creation. Magic items are already everywhere, and that would only be more true in a world that had greater stability and moved to standardize their creation. Using detect magic might help somewhat, but we've already seen spells and effects that can potentially defeat that, such as magic aura.
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Maybe in modules, but in the Campaign Setting whenever you read about a city or settlement the two or three highest levels characters are usually the ruler, the head of the city watch/military, and the head of the dominant local church, which is pretty closely tied into the local government. Of course, there are some high level NPCs out there who don't live anywhere near human settlements, but for that reason they can also be ignored most of the time. In Golarion the designers usually want NPCs to top out at around 15th level, which is why you will see most national rulers at around that level.
You're right that "monsters" can fight back, but the reason they get labeled "monsters" is that they are usually isolated from other powerful monsters, either living alone or ruling over some minor cult of monstrous humanoids. That makes them vulnerable compared to the coordinated efforts of dozens or hundreds of high-level NPCs.
Keep in mind, I'm suggesting what they would logically do would be first mass-produce magic items, not just for the common folk but so every 15th level character has the WBL of a 20th level PC. Only then would large groups (say 20-30) of NPCs seek out individual high CR monsters and gang up on them.
8823731 I suspected that you were speaking with regards to the Campaign Setting materials; you're right that settlement stat blocks are going to typically list a given town's rulers, and that those rulers are going to be higher-level characters. But as you noted, Golarion has a lot of other development; one need only flip through the Adventure Paths to find various high-level characters who aren't part of a formal government, even if they soften this somewhat with high-CR creatures as well. They often still have some sort of leadership position, but as I mentioned previously, that's a typical consequence of them being so powerful in the first place, and they're not going to be involved with formal political institutions.
That said, even if you could coordinate such a large number of high-level NPCs to begin with, I doubt that you'd find powerful monsters unable to react. While some of them lack the intelligence to properly respond, and others are simply unable to coordinate on any larger scale, I honestly can't imagine that a campaign of the scope you're laying out wouldn't experience massive blowback. Even leaving aside that more than a few characters would fight on the side of the monsters (i.e. servants of monstrous deities, chaotic crusaders who dislike the organized extermination campaign, druids who are opposed to genocide, etc.), there are plenty of creatures with the intelligence, organization, and power to formulate an organized response. Rakshasas, liches, evil dragons, ruling members of the orcs and goblinoids (who would most likely be considered "monsters" also), demons (who wouldn't want that mortal world being so organized and safe), and numerous other monsters would very quickly realize that they're facing an existential threat, and would be able to react appropriately.
That wouldn't necessary be symmetric either. Orthogonal tactics are a time-honored method of fighting. Characters engaging in pogroms against monsters would not only face attacks in kind (often tailored to hit them at their weakest), but would find their friends and allies killed in their sleep, the water in their local town poisoned, rumor campaigns being started about them, their associates and animal companions cursed, the local area blighted, etc. Even if they spent most of their time trying to deal with this persistent harassment, it's questionable if anyone would want them to keep it up. People tend, at the macro level, to be in favor of short-term relief at the cost of long-term improvements (which is sort of why the government tends to make those decisions for them in the first place).
To put it another way, the sheer number of monsters that we tend to see in most d20 worlds means that the ability to kill them all off has long since passed the point of feasibility. Even coordination between high-level characters of a like mindset will only achieve limited results before the monsters respond in kind; that will often formalize hostilities between them, but it's highly doubtful that this will lead to any sort of decisive victory. After all, high-level "characters" exist among the monsters too, and there isn't really any rule that says that the (demi)humans will have access to much of anything that they don't. (Ironically, this would have been more feasible before Third Edition, when demihuman level limits were a thing, and monstrous creatures couldn't really improve themselves very much at all.)
Yeah... Aria won't leave. Lex has promised he will fix her, and Cadance doing it is iffy, if she finds out what Aria is.
9218556 That's a logical take on it, but Cozy and Aisle's appeal isn't made with logic, but emotion.