Lex couldn’t help but feel the corners of his mouth turn upward ever so slightly as he watched everypony finish preparing to leave.
Seeing his response to criminality had apparently encouraged everyone even more than he’d dared to hope; several times in the last few minutes he’d given various ponies instructions, and they’d immediately rushed to fulfill them with all possible haste. Each time it happened he felt a rush of achievement, certain that their eagerness to carry out his directions was both a demonstration of faith in his guidance as well as a statement of gratitude for all he’d done for them. At first he’d pushed those feelings away, finding them to be self-indulgent, but then he’d remembered what Sonata had said earlier in the day about engaging with the ponies that he was responsible for – and how well his earlier experiment had worked when he’d spoken with everyone at the party, before the newcomers had arrived – and he’d reluctantly allowed himself to enjoy the resulting sense of satisfaction. Now he was glad he had.
For the first time in a while, he felt like he’d genuinely contributed something towards the betterment of his fellow ponies’ community. Slaying monsters was a self-evident necessity, of course, but dealing with imminent threats was the absolute lowest level of leadership. After all, anyone could intuitively understand that hostile creatures and dangerous situations needed to be dealt with; actually governing consisted of so much more, such as reinforcing public order by punishing those who transgressed it.
Admittedly, meting out criminal justice was only a minor aspect of the great society he envisioned, but at least now he was making some sort of progress toward it, rather than simply trying to staunch the ongoing damage afflicting Vanhoover. After being unable to implement any long-term policies with regard to Tall Tale, and needing to spend so much time fighting hordes of monsters – to say nothing of being unable to save Pillowcase’s life – it felt good to actually accomplish something, and it had left him hungry for more.
I need to work harder, he decided. There’s still so much more good that I can do for everypony…even that criminal, Fencer. The thought made him glance over at where a pair of medical ponies were gently ushering her into the cage that C. Shell’s crew had thrown together.
As he watched, silently chastising himself for using her old name, they gingerly helped Garden inside, and she almost collapsed onto the blanket that lay on the floor, panting with the effort of straining her curse-weakened muscles. One of the medical ponies said something, probably asking her if she needed anything, and Garden silently shook her head in reply. In response, the pony that had spoken closed the cage’s door, and then adjusted the latch to seal it…causing the smile to immediately drop from Lex’s face. He scanned the crowd, and a moment later found the pony he was looking for. “C. Shells!” he barked, causing the mare in question to jump as she heard him call her name.
Giving a visible gulp, she crept towards him, and Lex saw more than a few ponies stop what they were doing to watch her approach him. The spectacle was enough to make him frown in confusion, but he put it out of his mind as she reached him. “Yeah?” she asked, taking a deep breath.
Lex pointed at Fen-, at where Garden was imprisoned. “Her cage is only sealed with a latch. I wanted you to use something more secure.”
C. Shells licked her lips and swallowed before replying. “That was the best we were able to do. We have some padlocks, but none that were big enough to fit around the bars, so we jury-rigged the latch together.” She paused for a moment, then added. “The spaces between the bars are thin enough that she won’t be able to get her hoof through to get at it.”
“An external latch won’t be any kind of barrier to something that tries to get at her,” replied Lex disapprovingly.
Now it was C. Shell’s turn to look confused. “Huh? Wait, I thought this was supposed to be some kind of…I don’t know, makeshift prison cell. Are you saying you wanted this built to protect her?” There were more ponies looking at them now, and almost all activity had come to a stop as they watched the exchange.
Lex huffed, fighting down the familiar irritation that came with having to explain something he felt was obvious. “We’re about to venture out into a city that’s still infested with ghouls, to confront a group of ponies that will, according to what I’ve been told, meet us with hostility. She,” he pointed at Garden, “is completely unable to defend herself in her current state. A wooden cage might not be much of a barrier if something attacks her, but it’s far and away better than nothing, something that won’t be true if an assailant can simply unlatch the door.”
C. Shells just stared at him for a moment, caught completely by surprise, until she managed to recover her poise. “Okay, um…we could do some quick work on it and move the latch inside. That way she’d be able-”
“No,” interrupted Lex. “I don’t want her to be able to leave at will. Confinement might not be part of her sentence, but I don’t trust her not to do something stupid like fleeing into the city while we’re moving out.” He didn’t think that was likely, of course; Garden had to know that going out alone in her current state would be utterly suicidal. But her conduct up until now had driven home that she was dangerously unpredictable, and he wasn’t going to take any chances. After all, his placing those debilitating curses on her meant that he had a heightened duty of care to her while she labored under them. Since he hadn’t appointed any sort of correctional official to see to her rehabilitation, her well-being was his responsibility.
“In that case, a lock is definitely what you need,” C. Shells admitted. “We’ll need a little bit of time, but we can go adjust it so that one of our padlocks fits.”
“Don’t bother,” answered Lex as he turned away from her. “I’ll do it myself.”
He withdrew a gemstone from his bag as he approached the cage, idly noting the way Garden shrank away from him as he got closer to her. Embedding a spell in a gemstone took enough time and effort that he didn’t like to use them idly, but it was already late afternoon; any further delays would make it difficult for them to reach the edge of the city by nightfall, and Lex had no intention of loitering here another night. If he had to expend a minor resource to avoid another delay, then it was well worth it.
Reaching the cage, Lex placed a hoof on it. Telekinetically raising the gemstone – a small peridot – to eye-level and began to chant. As he released the spell, the peridot crumbled away to nothing, but when Lex removed his hoof from the cage there was a large padlock around the edge of the door, keeping it securely closed. Heedless of the hushed murmurings that were now going on around him, Lex eyed the magically-created lock for a moment before deciding that it would have to do. He would have preferred to have channeled additional magic into it just to be safe, but even if he hadn’t already pushed what his body could handle by enhancing the curses he’d laid on Garden, that wouldn’t have been possible. Once a spell had been stored in a gemstone, it was externalized, and so any additional magic he pulled in through his body wouldn’t be able to reach it.
“Lex?”
C. Shell’s voice pulled him out of his thoughts, and he glanced over at her disinterestedly. Now that he’d taken care of this altogether minor issue, he was ready to move on to other things. “What?”
She flinched a little at the question, and again he frowned at her odd behavior. “Um, I’m sure you’ve thought of this already, but that lock…” She trailed off for a moment, but then seemed to get over whatever was holding her back. “It has a keyhole, but I didn’t see any key when you made it.”
“It doesn’t require one,” answered Lex flatly. Now that he’d confirmed that her question was trivial, he let himself start to concentrate on other things as he spoke, barely paying attention to her. “The lock is a product of my magic, so it will open when I touch it and close when I release it. The only reason it has a keyhole at all is because the spell’s framework was modeled off of normal locking mechanisms.”
“Oh.” Lex heard the half-hearted response from C. Shells, and it was enough – in conjunction with how oddly timid she’d been acting – for him to wonder what was going on with her. Usually he’d ask Sonata what was going on with somepony, but she wasn’t around at the moment, which…come to think of it, he hadn’t seen her since he’d finished handing down Garden’s sentence. Where was she?
“But you gotta admit,” pressed Sonata, trying to keep the pleading tone out of her voice, “Lex totes did a terrific job saving everybod-, er, everypony. Like, a whole buncha times.”
“I know,” answered Scrubby uncomfortably, “but he just…”
He hesitated, giving her a worried look, and Sonata immediately spoke up. “Seriously, I won’t get upset by whatever you say about Lex. Trust me, I’ve, like, heard it all before.”
“And you won’t tell him?”
Sonata shook her head. “Cross my heart, hope to something something cupcake in my eye,” she assured him, using that half-remembered rhyme she’d heard Pinkie say a couple of times.
“Er, okay…” Pausing to glance around nervously – just because they were in the far corner of the warehouse didn’t mean they couldn’t be overheard – Scrubby continued in a low voice. “The way he looked when he was punishing that mare…it was like he was enjoying it! I mean, she looked so sad and heartbroken, but he was smiling while he cursed her!” He shivered at the memory. “It made me wonder, you know? What if he-, I’m just saying, what if he killed all those monsters because he just likes doing things like that? He sure doesn’t seem interested in making friends, so I wasn’t sure what to think before, but now I’m wondering if he’s doing all of this because he gets a kick out of hurting things and knows that monsters and criminals are acceptable targets.”
Sonata bit her lip. In the last couple of minutes, she’d spoken with three other ponies to try and get a sense of just how badly Lex had screwed up his image, hoping against hope that it wasn’t as bad as it had looked to her. But no, it had turned out to be exactly that bad, or maybe even a little worse; Scrubby hadn’t been the first pony to wonder if Lex had been pleased to hurt such an obviously-grieving mare. This is going to be totes hard to fix, she knew. But she had to try. “You know that’s not true,” she said slowly. “Lex healed you after those fish-monster-thingies hurt you, remember? And if he liked hurting things, he totes wouldn’t have worried so much about everyone staying safe when we were all out there fighting together.”
“All I know is, he keeps going on about how this is ‘his’ city, but after what I just saw I know I wouldn’t want to live here if he’s in charge,” retorted Scrubby with another nervous glance around. “Listen, I’m gonna go back. I don’t really want him wondering why I’m having secret meetings with his girl.” Sonata nodded, but he was already trotting back, leaving her to hang her head and sigh.
Sonata knew that, underneath all of his scowly grumpiness, Lex adored her more than anyone else ever could. That was what had caused her to fall in love with him, after all, and it was because she loved him so much that she wanted him to be adored too. But in that regard Lex was his own worst enemy, since he didn’t seem to understand why everything he did made people uncomfortable. That was why she’d volunteered to help him out, and sure enough they’d started to make some progress. But now they were back to square one, and turning this around was going to be even harder than before.
I won’t let him tell me not to help out again, she decided, but that’s not gonna fix things right now. If everypony lost faith in him now, Sonata knew Lex could kiss his dreams of ruling Vanhoover bye-bye. Worse, if the ponies here went back to Tall Tale and started telling everypony there about what had happened with Fencer (whoops, I mean Garden, she reminded herself), he might lose that city too. I, like, totes need to do something! But what? After all, she’d already sang and danced a whole bunch before, but everypony was still turning away from Lex now, so clearly that wasn’t enough.
So what would be?
The last few minutes had shown her that trying to talk people down wasn’t a promising solution. And Lex would completely blow his stack if she tried to enchant everyone. But if entertainment wasn’t enough, reason didn’t work, and magic wasn’t an option, then what was left?
She didn’t know, but maybe there was someone else who would…
Now, this part of the cave system looks to be fairly large, judging by the paths leading out of here.
I read 'preparations' instead of 'preparing'.
Monetarily using someone's name is indeed horrible, and I implore you to refrain from it in the future.
And then comes the time when he is unable to unlock it, and it needs to be.
Of course, a fun solution would be to have a latch on both the inside and outside.
Now, Lex needs to start seriously listening to Sonata. He already at least respects her opinion, even if he has no idea why she is saying what she does. Maybe she can try explaining that Lex was happy to have justice served, instead of being a sadistic bastard.
It's quite the conundrum. But I think the best pony to speak for Lex might actually be Garden Gate. Which i turn might help Lex to understand what everyone else see's that he doesn't, that she really *is* repentant, and would probably be the last to say that his sentence was unfair.
Looks like Sonata was busy assessing the damage Lex did to his image while he's deluded that everyone is doing what he says out of a sense of duty(Which is to be expected of him) And you know it's bad when Sonata admits she's not able salvage Lex's public image on her own, siren song aside.
Nosey might be a good candidate to help Sonata with damage control by spreading the truth of his actions and the reasoning behind it though given her current track record, I'm worried she might say something that could make this worse down the line.
Due to Cloudbank's encouragement, Drafty still respects Lex so she could be useful in reminding everyone of what Lex has done for everyone though quite a few ponies might share Scrubby's sentiments and any refusal to listen to her would likely earn them the ire of her marefriend, which won't help Lex.
C.Shells might be helpful since she sort of understands Lex's desire to protect those under him and since her crew is part of the group, having her speak up for Lex would help bring her crew to see things her way. Plus, she just saw that despite what Lex did to Garden Gate, he still cares for her safety. Of course, this risks dividing her crew in two due to their own personal feelings about Lex.
I'm intrigued by Kiki's comment about having Garden speak for herself though given her unwillingness to go into details and the sorry state she's in, she might be unable to talk about it due to her shame. In addition, I doubt the group would trust any words she says in that state since they would likely believe that she was coerced into doing so. Still, it's an interesting point.
p.s: I like the allusion you put here, showing how your readers are divided on what to call Garden Gate/Fencer. To me, this also shows how the ponies still see her, Fencer, the mare that did whatever it took to survive, even at the cost of others. Or Garden, the mare filled with loss and regret of the things she did in the name of surviving.
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I disagree for 2 reasons.
1: if Garden tries to tell Lex that she really is repenting, he still wont believe her (Since Lex don't know how to read emotions).
2: If garden tries to talk to the other ponies in defense of Lex. Then the others would most likely fear that she have been brainwashed, or mentally broken to the point where she don't dare to anger Lex any further.
Lex wont take Gardens claim of repentance, because he only has himself to go off and if he was wanting to get through things, thats exactly what he would be doing, especially so if he was quite definitely of chaotic and evil alignments?
There has to be an existing mechanism for Level 2 spell, Lock, to work, or is that what Lex embeded in that gem, which shouldnt have been all that expensive?
Well, Lex is quite definitely exploring Overlord region now as far as the others are concerned. Good thing they havent quite placed him on th same level as Aboleths and Kraken yet?
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I think Lex used Arcane Lock, which states:
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Yeah, I guess I never realized how literal that spell was until I read this chapter, then remembered that there had to be some way that it could be disabled by lockpicking since it has a DD DC check.
"Finished preparations to leave" sounds a bit awkward. I used present-continuous tense there to indicating that the preparations to leave are in the final stages, but not done yet.
Wow, that's one heck of an error. It was supposed to be "momentarily," but I decided to just delete the word altogether with no replacement.
Actually, the nature of the spell is that the lock will open itself when he touches it (as per the link that Randomname1 posted above).
That would be fun; if only d20 magic wasn't so exacting in what it did!
Yeah, this incident really drives home that he can't afford to disregard her advice when it comes to public relations. He's so incredibly bad at it that going it alone is just asking for a self-inflicted wound to his reputation.
8398508 An interesting guess...
8398763 Also some very good points...
8398685 One of the key points I wanted to raise regarding the impact of Lex's punishing Fencer/Garden Gate and what it's done to his popular support is the question of whether or not everypony is right to lose so much confidence in him because of what he did. (This is technically a subset of the larger point I wanted to raise with this fic, which is the question of how people react when someone presents a very good idea in a very unpalatable way.) That is to say, I wanted to create ambiguity as to whether or not the ponies are right to be so fearful of him now; not whether or not their fear is "understandable" per se, but rather whether or not it's a justifiable response.
To that end, I'm not sure how well I've put the question forward. I think the story has done a decent enough job of showcasing Lex's dedication to his community-oriented ideas, to say nothing of his being willing to put his life on the line for total strangers, but I'm not sure how well I've presented the other side of the equation. That's because public morals in Equestria are different from those of twenty-first century Western countries, but with almost everyone in this fic being from Equestria, it's hard to throw that contrast into stark relief in a manner that's in-character for everyone. Natives won't explicitly state something like "you know, I quite like how our concept of justice is focused entirely on rehabilitation, such that anyone who demonstrates remorse and asks for forgiveness can be immediately allowed back into society no matter what they did and without any punitive measures being leveled against them. Boy, I sure do love that."
To be fair, not every character a product of Equestria - hence why I had Aria say what she did to Nosey last chapter, and Sonata was the one conducting the informal polling of public opinion here (although they were born there, I see the Sirens as having embraced Earth values far more than those of Equestria, or Everglow for that matter) - but there's only so much I can do, there.
That aside, it remains an open question to whom Sonata will turn to try and salvage Lex's public reputation. You've made some very good guesses, though I'm going to keep mum so as not to give anything away.
Also, I'm glad you like the dichotomy around Fencer/Garden's name! I initially threw that bit about her name in on a whim during the early parts of drafting her character, and I'm glad I did now!
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Lex did indeed use arcane lock. I always make sure to read spell effects over again before I use them in the story, precisely because of little details that I might otherwise gloss over. For example, I didn't recall the spell actually creating a physical, pick-able lock in earlier editions, and as it turns out, that's because it didn't; Pathfinder added that particular clause so as to rein in the spell's overall power.
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I think you've done a good job of it. Before he took on Severance, I was quite sure Lex was Lawful Neutral. It's was really only Severance's line about "I wouldn't change a thing" that made me think it, though the fact that Lex seems to have no reservations about the long-term effects of introducing the worship of the Night Mare to Equestria also made me wonder...
It was a bit more common back in the day, sure, but a lot of the evil artifacts in Pathfinder's 2012 Artifacts and Legends also turned you evil. Not all of them, to be fair. However, I would guess that as a divine servitor/artifact, Severance would be even more likely than your average evil major artifact to change the alignment of its bearer. (I don't have the book in front of me, but I believe it may have had some guidelines on artifacts corrupting the user).
Yeah this is fair, that's why she's not Neutral Evil.
I totally agree with you that this fits Night Mare's beliefs, but to me that sounds very similar to what most other Lawful Evil deities say as well. Yes this fits neatly with Asmodeus, but I feel like I've dipped into that well quite frequently, so I'll bring up another one: Bane, from Dungeons and Dragons 2nd edition through their current edition. Bane's beliefs and attitudes seem to mirror the Night Mare's quite closely.
Ah, here is where I agree that the doctrine you are proposing is different from the traditional LE deity, where they believe that you can/should draw one gigantic org chart of all creation with themselves at the top and everyone else on a lower level.
I will say that your logic of her wanting to empower her "strong" followers to rule over others rather than all following her directly flow neatly, and ties into your ideas of orthopraxy.
I'm just not sure that actually is what she wants. I think she is perfectly fine with powerful, confident priests/servants who also are considered her slave, based on the very limited amount I have seen of her. I think we may have to agree to disagree on that particular question.
I agree, that's what the Night Mare would think, and to a lesser (and more compassionate) degree, how Lex would interpret it. It's part of why I'm so glad Aria is there. Does Lex consider Aria more or less of a pony than say, someone born a human or elf? His judgement on this one is probably heavily affected by Sonata, but it will be interesting to see more of how Lex interacts with distinctly non-equines (Zebras and Saddle Arabians are close enough, as are those araneas who turned into ponies) when he's not just blasting them to bits for trying to kill ponies.
And let's be fair to Lex, the average Equestrian pony themselves seem to put at least as much disparity in value between Equine and non-Equine life as Lex does, if not more.
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Well, yeah, but the feat says that
, not that the additional caster levels specifically provided by this feat are the only ones that matter.
On second thought, I feel like you specifically worded the order of how the abilities apply and what you said so we are to assume that...
Yeah... Fairly sure by this point :3
On another note, the feat specifically allows you to exceed normal level-fixed limits of a spell, it never even mentions that you have to use it... So yeah, we could totally drop the banner :P
I dunno, I'd say Blasting (as in, the concept of a character built to have the primary modus operandi be dealing direct damage and thus focusing on Evocation) is somewhat of an advanced class, so even "Blasting Basics" would require someone absolving the spellcasting-course first. Now Incantrix, Invisible Spell and Arcane Thesis, THAT is where I'd draw the hard line. Though I guess that's really just a matter of where you draw it.
'Tis fair :sadlynonexistantlunaemoji:
Indeed I did.
I assume we can pull Eclipse out of the picture entirely, though I have to say that we then look at a game which was made to be played with Immunities and where not many creatures have a fire resistance that matters too much (the highest I can think off from the top of my head that isn't well within Epic is Fire Res 30) and when it's not a big issue, why counter it.
With that in mind, I DO have to say resistances have a higher appeal: Most things aren't designed to counter them and the class-restrictive nature prevents you (mostly) from really punching through resistances which weren't originally in-game.
Now that I read it again, I think I may have confused his rant with this one.
I feel like these two sentences make up most of it, but the problem I have with realizing it is the fact that... Well, it works. "Darwinism" is "survival of the fittest" (well, most adapted really), so the most adapted should be the one coming out on top, right? And when Energy damage becomes irresistable (after the threshold of 120), wouldn't pumping up said damage BE the most adapted method of fighting?
I don't intend to "metagame"-consider things, I like them internally consistent whenever I can manage, which is also why I refrain from banning things when possible if I don't have a reason as to why it should be impossible. And I mean, what else is actively and artificially restricting a character in the making than a "metagame"-consideration?
... I'd at least say the resistance should be around 200 if it were to replace an immunity.
Well, you could drown a fish in... oh, wait... uhm...
...
Jokes aside, I feel like there's another difference of expectation here: In your view, the language deals damage because it's naturally evil ad so shouldn't harm Asmodeus, as he's pretty evil according to most standards. The view I have is related to the fact that the language is designed to stop functioning when it can't deal damage to it's user, meaning that Asmodeus made the choice to have it harm him, as the language would be nonfunctional if it couldn't.
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What I meant is to just replace "preparing" with "preparations", so it would look like this instead.
I like it that way, but that's just me.
And, sorry this took so long, but it seems you didn't reply to me.
As well, I am looking at your wordpress, and was wondering if you could give a link to the first post.
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I believe this is the first post on his wordpress.
If you mean the first story-relevant one, I believe it would be this, because I think he doesn't use his Celestia-build in this story, prefering to make them similar to power to the Everglow-Deities instead.
8399735 Okay, after barely finding enough time to write up the most recent chapter (due to work-life balance issues), I'm finally able to get back and start replying to comments. (Which is the least I feel I should do, since I'm very grateful for everyone who takes the time to comment on my story.)
I'm glad to hear that Lex's alignment is coming across the way I intended.
That said, Lex's reason for introducing the Night Mare's worship to Equestria was a calculated trade-off on Lex's part. He knew that Everglow's divinities were looking to make inroads to Equestria (e.g. the bit with Kara at the end of The Apple Falls Far From the Tree), and that at least one - Lashtada - now had a worshiper there (i.e. Soft Mane). There was also the fact that he knew how useful the Night Mare's powers were, and keenly felt the loss of the supportive magic she had granted him up until then.
The biggest factor in his thinking, however, was the lesson that Sonata taught him. A Dangerous Sparkle ended with her telling him that it was better to start small and work his way up from there, rather than getting everything he wanted all at once. Given that, Lex came to the conclusion that - since he (currently) lacked the power to simply "fix" all of Equestria immediately - he'd need to tackle the problem of planar encroachment and its consequences a little bit at a time. Since the issue couldn't be stopped, it could at least be controlled and used to his advantage. So he contacted the goddess he most respected, the Night Mare, and cut a deal so that he could use her power to bolster his own. He'd still prefer an Equestria without her in it, but right now he's at least made the situation work for him, rather than be another obstacle. In other words, introducing her worship was purely pragmatic on his part.
That's probably the single greatest bit of finesse he's shown to date, now that I think about it.
I glanced through the book, but didn't notice anything on that subject. To be fair though, I didn't look very hard; I have a PDF copy, but I much prefer physical copies of books, to the point that if it's a title that I like I'll often seek out a paper copy even if I already have the PDF. Of course, this has cost me in shelf space, which clearly means that I need to go and buy more shelves.
True, though she does accept Neutral Evil clerics.
Well sure, that part of her is a perfect fit for the classic archetype, which isn't surprising. She is still a Lawful Evil deity of tyranny, after all. Likewise, I think that Bane is a better comparison, since Asmodeus has the whole "infernal temptation via a seemingly-innocuous bargain" thing going on (though the Night Mare did try something like that with giving Severance to Applejack). Bane, on the other hand, is a pure autocrat, trying to undermine or overwhelm everything around him.
I should mention that I much prefer the Ravenloft incarnation of Bane (as the state religion of the domains of Nova Vaasa and Hazlan) to his Forgotten Realms version. Although there's no indication that his Ravenloft religion actually reached the deity (particularly with the retcon introduced in the 3rd Edition version, where his name was changed to "The Lawgiver," and it was said that no mortal could know his true name), the social effects of his religion were fun to read about, particularly with regards to how it regarded all other religions as being subordinate (or heretical, depending on the interpretation).
Of course, my dislike of the Forgotten Realms' Bane is notwithstanding one big exception: Bane's appearance in chapter eight of Richard Lee Byers' book Undead (book two of the Haunted Lands trilogy), when Szass Tam summons him and offers to make Bane the only god worshipped in Thay, as well as his own soul, in exchange for enhanced magical power and knowledge. Does that sound familiar at all?
Yeah. Given that her official write-up in books like the Ponyfinder Campaign Setting and Prince Luminace's Guide to the Pony Pantheon push the idea that she encourages worshipers to act ambitiously, rather than demanding they dedicate themselves to her - while still hinting that aspect was present - that was the best way I could think of to resolve the apparent contradiction.
Or we could just wait for our own David Silver to step in and clear things up, maybe with an expanded book about the various deities, though I'll admit a new book in that regard doesn't seem likely.
Of course, the easier answer is that the Night Mare can allow for both simultaneously. As I said before, under the game rules deities can allow for several different religious institutions that worship them, even when those institutions have notable doctrinal differences from each other. So there's no particular reason why, say, her Lawful Evil church can't function the way I outlined above, whereas her Lawful Neutral church would have the "organizational hierarchy" that you mentioned. In fact, come to think of it, that's exactly the sort of line that causes a religion to develop into different denominations in the first place!
...I may need to use this later.
I'm a little surprised - in a good way - that you're calling out Aria as shocking Lex out of his supremacist mode of thinking. Which, to be fair, is exactly what she did, but he did what a lot of super-smart people do when faced with something that threatens a belief that they don't want to give up: he invented a rationalization in order to fit the new data into his existing framework without disrupting it. Which, in this case, means his coming up with the idea that Sonata and Aria were always ponies, and were simply born mutated. (The irony, of course, is that he may be right.) It's things like that which make intellectualism seem duplicitous to a lot of people, because the more knowledge you have the more you can subvert things that seem plainly obvious to other people.
Well...I'm not sure I'd phrase it quite like that. I don't think that your average Equestrian pony puts any disparity in value between pony and non-pony life. Rather, I think that they don't assign their culture's values as being, well, cultural in nature. To them, things like generosity, honesty, loyalty, kindness, laughter, and magic are self-evidently virtues, and so simply think that everyone should strive for them, without any particular awareness that the ones that typically do - and have the most success - just so happen to be ponies. The idea that other cultures might value other things, and having that be okay, is near-totally lost when those countries are quite obviously worse places to live, not just for ponies but even for the people living there, and that introducing the values that ponies hold just so happens to fix their problems.
And therein lies the issue: is it racism when one race/culture actually is right about something, and wants to export that to another race/culture (particularly when the place they want to introduce it to has institutionalized values that are quite clearly not good)?
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No. I'm sorry, dude, just no. The idea that using that feat means that ALL additional caster levels you may gain, from ANY source, may be applied towards the spell's damage dice, effectively removing the cap on damage dice altogether, is flat-out wrong. It's self-evident that the feat is referring only to the one-to-three additional caster levels you can gain from the feat itself, and not from any caster levels gained from other sources. The very idea that this feat will let you waive the damage cap so completely is completely beyond the pale for what anyone can reasonably countenance.
The basics of an advanced idea are, necessarily, still advanced. It's one thing if you're using something like The Power Gamer's 3.5 Wizard Strategy Guide, which taught you how to get the best you could out of the 3.5 PHB alone. But if you're pulling resources from a half-dozen different sourcebooks, some of them campaign-specific, and mix-and-matching them to get the best results you can (I won't even get into that wild interpretation you mentioned above), then that's pretty clearly going beyond any sort of introductory ideas about how to play a given role.
Hm, we really do need one of these, don't we?
Fair enough, then.
Well, yeah. The original article was discussing how Sean K. Reynolds thought it should have been and why. Sometimes I agree with his rants, and other times I disagree wildly, but in this case I found myself sympathetic to what he was saying, not so much for issues of mechanics (which strike me as overblown, though not necessarily completely wrongheaded), but for issues of flexibility with regards to implementing simulationism.
This is true, though I have to admit I don't care much for thinking of the inherent restrictiveness of character classes as being a good thing, mostly because they tend to restrict effective representation of particular character ideas far more than they do any attempt at mechanical optimization, at least where games like 3.5/Pathfinder are concerned.
It's funny, I remember getting into quite the debate with the author of that link you posted back when he first posted it. Ironically, I was on the other side of things, saying that immunities were the way to go. After giving it a lot of thought and doing some reading, I eventually changed my mind. Though I still love to go back and read his writings. The IH books were really something special.
Only with regards to solving that particular problem. If you've super-specialized to beat a particular issue, then the opportunity costs will inevitably leave you ill-equipped to deal with some situation that's orthogonal to what you can do. Given the multiplicity of monsters, as well as magic, that most d20 worlds seem to have, hyper-focusing around one particular counter-resistance build means that there are a lot of other creatures with other abilities that you're not going to be equipped to handle. High-spec generalists (or rather, variable specialists) tend to have it a lot easier.
I'll point out that "gamism" is still a valid concern, at least to a degree. Thoth himself noted that there's a social contract inherent in sitting down to play an RPG with everyone else, and that if you're impinging on everyone's fun, then there's really no in-game excuse that you can make; everyone hates the "I'm Chaotic Neutral! I'm just playing my alignment" person, after all. (Obviously, this can be abused by a tyranny-of-the-majority group of players as well, but that seems to happen a lot more rarely than one person acting out.)
There's also the fact that, from an in-game standpoint, if we consider that certain things haven't happened - presuming that the PCs aren't particularly special and aren't breaking major new ground in terms of their abilities, spells, etc. - then there's probably a reason for it. After all, if other people live in the same world and have the same general intelligence, capabilities, and access to resources, then if there's some sort of super-win build, they should have access to it already. Ergo, you could infer that such a thing doesn't work - or at least, comes with some sort of drawback that makes such a thing undesirable (even if that's massive opportunity costs) due to the consequences it evokes over time - and work backwards from there.
Most obviously, though, is that - while this tends to run counter to current modes of thought regarding the presentation of d20 game worlds - the rules are there to emulate how things work in the setting, rather than having the setting conform to how the rules work. This is why it's so important to come up with the in-game explanation first and then figure out how to make the rules reflect that, which the d20 System (which is strongly focused on gamism) doesn't do very well, often to the point of effectively reversing the process, as I mentioned before. Trying to come up with an internally-consistent reason for why a particular mechanical build doesn't work when the combination of feats, spells, and prestige classes are all valid choices is the wrong way to go about it; far better to sit down and think about how you want magic to function in your setting, and then outline what game mechanics adequately model that (and why) and allow those and only those, looking at proposed exceptions on a case-by-case basis and not being afraid to disallow ones that don't fit.
Of course, that's fairly rare these days (that I've seen). Most people don't have the time to sit down and build worlds from scratch, figuring out how and why things work the way they do and then tinkering with the rules in order to model that to their satisfaction. But letting the game rules be the be-all end-all of the "how things work" for the world is rapidly going to lead to things going out of control if the players want to start pressing the boundaries, particularly when there's a huge body of work for them to freely mix-and-match. I've seen builds where characters could, using legal first-party 3.5 builds, gain millions of hit points, or cast spells that dealt thousands of points of damage with spells that covered hundreds of miles, and I honestly can't imagine that any sane GM would think that such a thing was allowable, regardless of what the rules said. "Unintended consequences" are part of what the GM is supposed to manage.
I think that "he's pretty evil according to most standards" is an extrme understatement, but yeah, that pretty well sums it up. That said, I understand that you view it differently, and I won't say that this isn't a legitimate take on the situation...unlike your take on Reserves of Strength, which was completely illegitimate.
8402594 D'oh! Sorry about not replying to you! My mistake there.
8403953 Actually, I'm basing Celestia pretty much directly off of that particular build. I'm still not sure if I want to make use of the Superheroic world template that Thoth prescribed for Equestria, but I'm definitely not positing that Celestia and the other alicorns are deities. David Silver is of that particular opinion (and I suspect that he's not alone) which is why he had Luna gaining divine spellcasters, but I don't share that particular viewpoint. As I outlined in the linked post (thanks for that, by the way), I think that Celestia is a character whose level is in the high single-digits.
8405661 I'm not as up to date on the Pony Pantheon as I should be, so I will take your word on her doctrines. I've mostly been basing it on Silver's own stories, plus his "ask blog of the gods" (which is awesome).
That does make a lot of sense. There was actually a very similar schism with Bane in Forgotten Realms. The traditional church of Bane, headquartered in Mulmaster, believed all mortal men should be slaves to Bane, including the priests themselves. They tried to kill Fzoul Chembryl because he interpreted the will of Bane as "serving a mortal tyrant" instead. Of course, eventually Bane gave Fzoul the power to overthrow the High Priest in Mulmaster and Fzoul became the new head of the church. (Lawful Evil gods like to pick winners). But definitely a similar process to what you are describing here.
And yeah, read that trilogy, that entire scene from beginning to end was awesome. Szass Tam played Bane, but then Shar and her follower really played Szass Tam!
I'm not quite doing that, because I'm not saying I agree that Aria is right and Lex is wrong. What I meant is that even if Aria is evil and wrong, Lex having to deal with a non-pony on a recurring basis lets us see how his worldview treats non-ponies, which he doesn't really spend a lot of time thinking about. The reason I didn't really disagree with Lex is that as far as I know, in Ponyfinder Lex is correct: Sirens are just corrupted versions of seaponies, who themselves are just an altered version of land-ponies. I admit however, I may be wrong on the lore here, in which case Lex is as well. The more I think of it though, the direct comparison of Lex making sure Fencer still has her horn, but slow-rolling getting Aria her magic back, is pretty telling.
I'd have to disagree here, based on the common pony in Vanhoover right now. They were capable as a whole of cutting down swathes of attacking sahuagin when pushed to by Sonata, and I don't blame them. But when Lex hands down a harsh punishment to almost a pony murderer, the audience is shocked and appalled. Yes, obviously those are very different circumstances. Ponies were fighting to defend themselves in the heat of battle against an evil invading army on one hand, and Lex was handing down a punishment on the other hand. But the way the ponies react emotionally suggests they view the value of the lives in question very differently. None of the Vanhoover ponies seem to show any remorse or regret for killing the various servants of the Kraken. Not that they should, but I am surprised they didn't. I suspect if a band of rogue Sahuagin had captured and crippled a pony and left them to die and Lex had hit them with a couple of powerful but non-lethal curses in a formal punishment setting, they would totally forgive Lex, if they even cared.
What would be really instructive is if the mass of common ponies find out the details of Aria's circumstances and her deal with Lex, and how they react to that.
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I'd recommend checking out (the updated) Princess Luminace's Guide to the Pony Pantheon for more on that. It's not too expansive on the Night Mare compared to what's in the Campaign Setting guide (though there is a lot of expanded crunch for other divine spellcasters who worship her), but it does drive home the point that she pushes the self-reliance angle more than a little bit.
Very true! I see you're up on your Realms-lore! Though as I recall, Fzoul shifted his position slightly after he became the Chosen of Iyachtu Xvim (detailed in Cloak & Dagger, if I recall correctly), electing to be a tyrant himself rather than aiding and abetting another tyrant, taking over the church and, effectively, the Zhentarim both. Bane effectively signed off on this interpretation after his subsequent resurrection.
Yeah, it was a pretty epic series all around. I particularly enjoyed the intensely-pragmatic depiction of Szass Tam (particularly compared to how some earlier authors wrote him).
Well, that's somewhat subverted by the fact that Lex has mentally placed Aria in the "pony" category. So effectively he's not around any non-ponies insofar as he's concerned (Severance, quite obviously, is the exception here, but its status as a living artifact is somewhat outside of the pony/non-pony dichotomy). But you're right that at the moment he isn't really concerned with issues of non-ponies; this would be another issue entirely if some of the non-pony cast from the previous stories - such as Willow or Soft Mane - were to return, but at the moment that doesn't seem very likely.
Ponyfinder holds that "deeptide horses" are effectively corrupted sea horses, which are the aquatic breed of pony. I'm somewhat waffling on the issue of how much to hold Everglow classifications true for creatures that are native to Equestria, though. It's an issue which is further clouded by the fact that the Sirens have had two or three different forms throughout their existences, making such things somewhat mutable. So there isn't a clear answer on that, at least at this point.
As for Lex fast-tracking Fencer's horn compared to Aria's being granted a pony form...I would agree with you there, but it's not quite an apples-to-apples comparison. For the former, he knew he could just pass her over to the doctors and say "fix her." For the latter, he's effectively having to invent a major spell effect from scratch, all the while juggling several other issues.
Well, obviously the ponies of Vanhoover aren't "common" ponies anymore.
But all kidding aside, you're making an excellent point here. The ponies didn't have any sort of emotional reaction to killing the monsters that they faced during that gigantic battle, which might indeed come across as hypocritical when compared to their horror at Fencer/Garden Gate being cursed for what she did to Pillowcase. So why the seemingly-universal disparity in their reactions?
The answer is that the ponies regard Fencer/Garden Gate as being a member of the moral community, whereas those monsters were not.
To be clear, the moral community is a mental designation whereby members of said community are deserving of consideration from a moral standpoint (i.e. they're thought of as being "people"), whereas those that are not are not considered to have any moral rights at all. Typically subconsciously intuited rather than overtly defined, this classification is important because it forms the foundation of whether a particular action is "right" or "wrong" with regards to a particular entity. Murdering a member of the moral community is "wrong," and even if you choose to do it anyway you're aware that you've done something bad (or at least something that requires you to explain and justify your actions, because you know they won't be accepted by any society that shares your values). By contrast, killing something that isn't a member of the moral community isn't murder at all, and as such requires no particular justification; after all, such things have no inherent value attached to their lives.
(There are various minor issues that come up with entities that exist on the proverbial "edge" of the community, such as animals and pets, but for the purposes of this discussion we can limit things to members and non-members.)
What happened with ponies of Vanhoover is that they didn't recognize the monsters attacking them as being members of the moral community. They were things (i.e. "monsters"), not people, and as such were never thought of as having any kind of moral weight attached to their lives. The idea of empathizing with them simply never occurred to anypony, and in all honesty it's not hard to see why, given that those monsters gave no recognizable signs that they were members of the moral community, whether it was a gesture indicating a shared moral value, engaging in a line of dialogue to indicate the possibility of mutual understanding, or even appearing to share a compatible mindset rather than being some sort of dangerously alien beings. Throw in that they were overtly hostile without provocation, and it's not surprising that nopony thought twice about killing them.
On the other hoof, Fencer/Garden Gate is quite clearly a member of the moral community, as she's not only recognizably a pony, but made an impassioned statement that she shared everyone's values and regretted transgressing them. Given that Lex then transgressed the cultural norm of complete and total forgiveness towards those who show that level of remorse, they were horrified that he abrogated what they viewed as proper conduct towards a member of the moral community. You don't hurt somepony that's said they're sorry!
Lex, of course, doesn't see it that way, since he's come up with a doctrine of criminal justice that he feels is superior to the existing standard used up until now. And like everything else, he's taking it that the virtue of his idea will be self-evidently superior to the way it's been done up until now, not questioning what he sees as evidence of that (though, given his inability to read people, that's not surprising).
Hm...that could be interesting indeed...