Shattered Kingdoms

Big D, thanx. The new scrupulous def is much better now.

*Wears his "I've PKed Halcidan into the Dirt T-shirt*

Actually, the duel we had was pretty decent. He agreed on not using magical augmentations, and we had a nice fun. He was a -great- RPer, although I do think he would be a "proper" RPer too if he had given Halci a grey alignment.

See, this is where I disagree. Yes, Halcidan was bloodthirsty, but IMO, he was a very well played knight of purity. He took his religion very seriously, and carried out purifying the lands. My characters all hated him, but I thought that he was one of the best paladins ever to grace this game, if wildly different from say Lorias or Tahl.

The change in alignments, IMO, kills the hammer, who in my opinion should resemble a cross between the Knights Templar, and the "Children of the Light" from Robert Jordan's "Wheel of Time" series. For those of you who havent read it, The CoL are basically a group of priests who preach against the dark side, and a military wing that backs them. The military goes about expunging anything considered impure, and this often included violating local laws to do so. The rationalization was that 'The Light' was superior in importance to 'being lawful', and anyone who got in their way, regardless of who it was, was aiding the dark, and similarly eradicated.

I agree with Gilgon on this. If an elf talon is 'harboring' darkies in the Inn,and letting them be protected under the law, in the hammer's vision, he is aiding the dark, and should be similarly eradicated. The law does not matter, only killing the darkies is. I've BEEN that talon, who got PKd by hammer for sheltering darkies. It was GOOD RP, and it was valid within alignments. [/quote]

I never had any problem the Hammer not caring about anyone else's laws. That is the Hammer. I had an issue with them just killing everyone in the room just because they were in the room with supposed "darkie." It didn't matter if they were newbs or were just going through there. The Hammer will actually have to use their heads instead of just, "letting the Gods/Goddesses figure it out."

1. Being a newb never protects you from anything.

2. In SK, as in real life, some people are in the wrong place at the wrong time. If you happen to be passing through when a fight erupts and you end up getting killed, that's tough, but it's no one's fault. Forcing the hammer to do perfect target acquisition would severely cripple their efforts.

Gee, I thought it was obviously the fault of the person who murdered me.



There's a difference between accidentally killing someone by mistake, and intentionally murdering him for your convenience. The first remains acceptable scrupulous behavior. The second is obviously evil, and now that's been spelled out.

I can understand the appeal of an aberrant Hammer, but then it has to accept the burden of being at least partly dark-aura. Pushing the Hammer in that direction could be fun RP, assuming the immortals let you. But you certainly shouldn't get the benefits of being evil without the costs.

I don't know where people get the idea that being good is easy. Being good is never easy.

My interpretation has been that there is always a reasonable amount of collateral damage that will occur.

However, seeing as how this whole 14 page basically culminated in me being wrong, I guess that whole line of argument is now pointless.

I'll just keep this brief by saying that I don't think D's line of thinking is valid because I believe that lighties can find legitimate reasons to defend darkies, even to death, and that there should be some recourse allowed to avoid this to prevent abuse.

Adder, no one ever said that you couldn't, as a lightie, defend a darkie. Like people has said already. It has happened in Nerina before. What the point of this was is the whole scale slaughter that some lighties has been doing to get to the darkie.

I don't know what has made you so callous, Adder, but by your reasoning, it would be OK if I just killed you as long as I had a reason, say, take your wallet. No one is "wrong" or "right" though. We're all just expressing opinions. D's decision isn't necessarily "better" either. We will find out in time.

Let's just wait and see. I seriously doubt the Hammer is under a "Woe is us" situation. They'll just become better persons, and generate more RP while at it.

Both Lighties and Darkies have a big advantage and a disadvantage each. The advantage and disadvantage is not really a distinct thing, just the twin results of a particular lifestyle.

Good people have each other, most of the time, after some disagreements and such, perhaps... There is often trust, love and true friendship, two of the strongests forces in the world (of SKs and elsewhere). Lighties must indeed find harder paths to tread as far as innocents are concerned, but they'll never see this as a weakness, but always as as strength. That is what makes them have faith in Good and others.

The unified strength of Lighties when the need comes will never belong to Dark auras. That's why they use tyranny, violence and domineering behavior. Evil bites its own tail, and it's a hard thing to accomplish anything worthwhile that way. They cooperate only when it is advantageous in the short term. There is no trust. They'll never unify as Lighties do (not counting Ultimate End of the World situations, for some of them). But then again, evil can do just about anything to accomplish its goals, take advantage, manipulate others horribly and so son. Ruthelessness.

Greys combines bits of both.

PS: Tioras, the CoL sounds like the typical bloodthirsty inquisition thing. It's never really a "good" group, just uses the guise of the Light to back its beliefs. Might not be as bad as the Dark ones in WOT, but they sure sound quite bad themselves (aka. grey). Do we want that kind of hypocricy in SKs, where the Gods of Light actually monitor their champions and make sure they behave according to their mandate?