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.
Lex was still in his shadow-form when Sonata entered his tent.
She hesitated upon seeing that, frowning in mild confusion as she walked in. “Lex? Is everything okay?” As far as she knew, he never turned into a shadow unless it was in response to a threat, and always turned back to normal as soon as things calmed down. So why was he still that way now? “The doctors are taking care of Spit Polish, and I totes got two of C. Shells’ crew to keep an eye on him while they do. Ocean Spray and-”
“Did you enchant that mare?” he asked abruptly. “The one who came to inform me about Block Party’s body?” His eyes hadn’t been visible when she entered, but they opened now, regarding her darkly.
The question made her wince. “Look…I can explain.”
“So it was you.”
“Wait, you didn’t know for sure?!” Her eyes widened as she realized that he’d tricked her into giving herself away, and for a moment she felt a mixture of anger, exasperation, and amusement. Hadn’t she seen things like this on TV before, back on Earth? For a moment she could have kicked herself for falling for that – briefly recalling how often Aria and Adagio, and Lex himself for that matter, had called her dumb – before deciding it didn’t matter. I mean, I guess I’d be suspicious of a Siren too, if I were him. It wasn’t like Aria could enchant anyone with her voice all messed up, after all.
“I can’t believe you did that, Sonata.” His voice came out as a growl.
“Lex…”
“I can’t believe you did that!”
She cringed at his shout, her ears folding back. The edges of the shapeless black mass that was his shadow-self had always flickered and fluttered, but now they roiled and thrashed, telegraphing his anger. “Look, can you change back?”
He ignored her request, his green eyes staring into hers as he continued. “I’ve told you over and over that manipulating somepony else’s mind with magic, outside of very specific circumstances, is hideously immoral!” He floated closer to her then, and in the close confines of the small tent, there was no way for her to back away as he moved his eyes closer to hers. “Altering someone’s thoughts is a violation of egregious proportions! It abrogates the most fundamental aspects of who they are! It’s a power that must be used with the greatest of responsibility, and you abused it! And for what?! So that you could cover up Cozy’s own irresponsible lack of assistance for the ponies here?!” His eyes narrowed then. “Was this her idea? Did she convince you to do this?”
Sonata shook her head. “No, she didn’t,” she sighed. “Aisle did.” She felt a twinge of guilt for admitting that, but the feeling was easy to ignore. Aisle was a nice guy, but as far as Sonata was concerned it was his fault that she was in this position in the first place. Besides, it was bad enough that she’d tried to deceive the stallion she loved; doing it a second time, and for a guy who was only kind of a friend, was too much. “He came to me earlier this morning, all freaked out, and asked if I could do that for him. I wasn’t going to at first, but-”
“I’ve heard enough,” snapped Lex. “Bring them here."
“Huh?” Sonata blinked. “Wait, you don’t want to know why I did it?”
“You’ve made it obvious that there were no exigent circumstances that could possibly justify your actions.” He turned away from her then, his eyes disappearing as he moved back towards his side of the tent, apparently done with her. “Beyond that, I don’t care about whatever excuses you have. Go and bring those two here. Now.”
For a moment Sonata simply gaped at the abrupt dismissal, then she frowned – this time in anger – and stomped her hoof. “I did it because he said that you would punish Cozy if you found out she didn’t help. That you’d put a curse on her or something, like you did with Garden Gate.”
“He was entirely correct, as I’m about to demonstrate,” replied Lex coldly. “Now do as I told you.”
“No!” Sonata wished he was solid so that she could grab him and shake some sense into him. “Lex, you screwed up the thing with Garden Gate really bad! That’s why I tried to help Aisle cover for Cozy!”
“What kind of nonsense is that?!” He turned to look at her again, his eyes filled with outrage at the accusation. “The punishment I gave her was entirely appropriate! It inflicted a serious blow to her quality of life as just desert for the life she took, it places severe limitations on her ability to hurt anypony else, it includes a rehabilitative aspect by making her confront what she did every night in her dreams, and it all happened in public so as to both deter anypony who would dare commit similar offenses while simultaneously reassuring everyone else that I will protect them from anyone who would harm them, even if they are another pony! It was justice by any measure!”
“You scared everypony, Lex.” Sonata stated the words in a flat, resigned tone. “What you did to Garden Gate made them all afraid of you.”
For a moment he was silent, and Sonata saw confusion and disbelief in his eyes, followed by a moment of uncertainty before they narrowed again. “You’re wrong. I saw how everyone was acting in the wake of my sentencing her. They were reassured.”
“They were terrified,” countered Sonata. “I spoke to a bunch of them right after it happened, Lex. They all said the same thing: ‘I can’t believe he did something so awful.’ That was everypony’s reaction.” Her anger was completely gone now, replaced with a sick sense of weariness. She knew him well enough to know that this would be a blow to his confidence, and she hated that she had to do this to him. But there’s no other way, she knew. She’d been able to stop him from going all curse-happy on Spit Polish right in front of everyone with some quick thinking, but this was all she could think of to keep him from doing that to Aisle and Cozy. “If you do something like that again, you’ll, like, totes ruin any chance of being seen as a hero. And you are a hero, Lex. You just…you have to let me help you make that clear to everyone.”
“This is preposterous!” His voice was still angry, but Sonata could hear the desperation underneath it. “Garden Gate killed Pillowcase, and everypony is scared of me for punishing her for it?! What kind of sense does that make?!”
“Look…why don’t you just, just turn back to normal and we can talk about it, okay? We need to talk anyway…” The memory of what had happened earlier that morning, when she’d lost her temper over Lex’s treatment of Nosey, was enough to make Sonata shift in place, uncomfortable with the knowledge of how she’d acted back then, even if Lex had been horrible too. Maybe we’ll be able to call that one a draw or something. Just say that we were both wrong and let it go. But, somehow, she couldn’t bring herself to seriously believe there was any chance of that happening. “We’ll talk, and then-”
“No. I refuse to accept this.” His voice had hardened by then, solidifying in that controlled rage that he seemed to spend so much time in. “I just spoke to Cloudbank and Thermal Draft this morning, and they were not afraid of me. Your analysis is flawed.”
Sonata rolled her eyes. That’s because Cloudbank wants to be like you, and Drafty just likes you period. “That’s because they’ve gotten to know you. How many other people here can say that?”
“They don’t need to know me! They just need to know that I did the right thing!”
“Well they don’t!” Sonata was reaching the end of her patience. “They don’t know that because you won’t let me do my job and explain it to them! For the last twenty-four hours you’ve just been ignoring everyone or talking to them on your own or saying you’ll let Aria do it for you! What part about me being your spokespony do you not get?! I keep trying to help you and you won’t let me!”
“If you’re so unhappy with the state of our relationship, then leave.” His eyes, as he looked at her then, were completely full of spite. “Just leave me, the way you did before. You had no problem abandoning me then, so why should now be any different? You think I care about how my ideas sound to everypony? I care about the fact that they’re what need to be done to secure the safety and prosperity of everyone here! I don’t care if these ponies afraid of me, and I don’t care if they think I’m a hero or not! I’ve lived my entire life with everypony thinking the worst of me no matter what I said or what I did even when I was trying to help them! I didn’t care then and I don’t care now because I’m right!” His eyes were blazing then, and his shadowy form was churning so heavily it looked like he was going to tear himself apart. “I don’t need you anyway! You’re a burden more often than you’re helpful, so if you don’t like how I’m doing things here then YOU SHOULD JUST LEAVE!”
As his last angry shout died away, Sonata just looked at him in silence. Long seconds passed before she finally spoke again. “No.”
Fireflower.
Sonata had thought, when she saw Lex lashing out at Spit Polish a few minutes ago, that it was going to be Garden Gate all over again. But the reason she’d thought that was because she was worried about what everypony else would think. But from Lex’s point of view, she was suddenly certain, the sight of her jumping between him and his enemy followed by her chastising him now had seemed like something else. He thinks that this is going to be like what happened when he tried to kill Fireflower and I stopped him. That was ridiculous, of course, but with everything that had happened today – with Block Party’s weird death, her fighting with Lex this morning, his injuring himself, and now that attempt on his life – was it really so hard to believe that he wasn’t at his best, and so was anticipating the worst?
“No,” she said again, shaking her head slightly. “I’m not going anywhere.” She forced a smile onto her face then, even though she felt guilty and sad for how awful she knew he felt right then. “I know I’m dumb. I mean, my sisters told me all the time, like when I tried to microwave my underpants or put our toothbrushes in the washing machine or stuff. But the dumbest thing I ever did was leave you, and I’m totes not making that mistake again.”
He didn’t answer, and she kept speaking, letting the words pour out of their own accord. “You’re the love of my life, Lex. I know you care a whole lot about everypony here, but the one I care about is you, first and foremost. That’s why I want you to succeed at what you’re doing, and I want everypony else to appreciate you as much as I do. But I can’t think up all those super-detailed plans like you can, and I can’t use such incredible magic either. So this is all I can do. Talking to people, getting them to understand what you’re saying and realize why it’s good and being impressed that you thought of so much stuff and can make it all happen…that’s what I can do.” She held out a hoof toward him imploringly. “I love you, and I’m not leaving, so please, just…change back to normal, okay?”
When he did a moment later, she knew that they were going to be alright.
Lex and Sonata begin to patch things up between them.
Does this mean that Aisle and Cozy have been given a reprieve?
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Dawww, Sonata managed to get though to Lex's frosted side.
8601019 The two of them are, slowly but surely, figuring each other out.
Telling someone your ridiculous opinion over and over is not the same thing as convincing them.
8601128
How is his opinion ridiculous? Using magic to mentally manipulate people outside of something like a life or death situation and/or without their permission IS hideously immoral.
8601192
It's only immoral if you do immoral things with it. There's nothing inherently harmful about it. Especially the D+D versions which basically have no side effects. You have to go up pretty far (to Domination, basically) before you get to a spell that can't be used without hurting someone.
While I am glad that Sonata is seemingly getting through to Lex, the fact that Aisle's worries were entirely justified as Lex intended to curse Cozy for not helping out actually shocked me. If the ponies were terrified for him cursing a murderer(though I wonder if the ponies actually comprehend the weight of Garden's crime.) then him cursing a widow for not helping out would cause outright terror and outrage(especially for the ponies from Lex's group who would feel that their fears were justified). Of course, Lex probably included the perceived crime of conspiracy to mind control an individual may have contributed to that decision.
Regardless of the outcome of their talk in the next chapter(at least I hope it's the next one) I doubt Lex would forget that Aisle had Sonata use her magic to mind control someone for her own ends, even if it was a toned down variant. Forgiving the crime is most likely out of the question so the best I can hope for the punishment to be lessened so that it wouldn't negatively affect Lex's reputation and the currently good morale in the camp.
Of course, this leaves me wondering how 'Nosey' is doing on affecting the latter since she's likely unable to control the ghouls(unless she's actually powerful enough to accomplish this feat) so the only other targets she could manipulate would be the ponies in Cloudbank's party.
8601306
And where would you say the line is for what is immoral or not?
Altering a persons personality? Sure, thats immoral.
Altering a persons opinion? Thats jus a small scale version of the previous.
Altering a person to tell a lie? Thats an even smaller version.
Sutr, altering the small dosnt seem to bad when compared...
But how many of the small things can you alter before its no longer just a 'small thing'?
I wonder where on the permanent mind alteration scale, Lex would place Advertising consultant, politician, teacher, etc?
This statement is now permanently lodged in your mind.
8601306 If I'm understanding you correctly, you're looking at this issue from a pragmatic perspective; that since the mind-affecting spells in Pathfinder are (mostly) short-term, with no side effects and no inherently damaging aspects (in terms of causing hit point loss, ability damage, etc.), then there's really nothing "wrong" with them per se. Certainly Sonata seems to see things that way.
Lex, however, is looking at things from a standpoint of principle, rather than practicality. To him, a person's thoughts and feelings are nothing less than the defining characteristic of who they are as individuals; to forcibly alter that with mind-affecting magic - regardless of what it's used for or how long it lasts - is nothing less than reaching in and altering their very identity. Such a thing is a complete violation of their free will, since (presuming they can't shake it off) such magic bypasses any sort of internal review or evaluation that they'd normally undertake when exposed to mundane attempts to alter their opinions. That is to say, when someone tries to change your mind with arguments and debates, you can think on what they say and make up your own mind; when they use magic, you can't do that, and are basically forced to change some part of yourself for their sake - regardless of how long it lasts or how far it goes, Lex finds that abhorrent.
Of course, like all issues of principle, this has areas where it runs aground against concerns of practicality (and vice versa), which is why Lex's stance on this isn't quite absolute. He's willing to allow for specific abrogations of this principle under very strict circumstances, the major example being when he allowed Sonata to charm Garden Gate (i.e. Fencer, at the time) to provide her with information about Pillowcase - in that situation, Garden Gate had admitted to criminal activity and was refusing to provide information that was required to save someone else's life. As such, Lex was willing to allow for a breach of her mental autonomy that was limited in scope, and had a limited duration, in order to save that life. That wasn't the case with regards to Cozy, however.
This essentially highlights the strongly deontological nature of Lex's moral philosophy (which he name-dropped back in chapter 163, for that matter), in that he judges the morality of an action based on the nature of the action unto itself, rather than the intentions that drove it or the consequences that resulted from it.
8601384 I mentioned in my other response, Lex doesn't judge those by the same metric because they don't forcibly bypass an individual's ability to personally evaluate and critique what they're told. When someone tells you something, you get to decide how you react to it. That's not the case where magic is making you react in a way that someone else wants.
8601329 One thing that's important to remember is that curses are a spectrum of potential punishments. Even leaving aside issues of duration, their severity can vary wildly, which means that they can be used to inflict punishments that are only mildly inconvenient to those that utterly destroy someone's quality of life (and beyond that, can inflict death, multigenerational maledictions, or even worse!). You can curse a thief to have shaky hands, for example, or a wild animal with domestication. As such, while Lex might be willing to use a curse on Cozy for her inaction, that doesn't necessarily mean that he's going to hit her with anything like what he used on Garden Gate.
To be fair, that's looking at things from a practical standpoint. Unlike with mind-altering magic, Lex has no philosophical opposition to using curses in the first place, though I suspect that a lot of other ponies would be ideologically opposed to using "dark magic" in any capacity. For Lex, however, it's just a tool to be utilized, and he doesn't have much else in the way of penalties that he can leverage against bad actors at the moment. It's not as though he can fine Cozy or throw her in jail, after all. While I suppose there might be some debate over whether or not Cozy actually did anything wrong, however, that's not an area where Lex is liable to give much ground - as far as he's concerned, if you have the ability to help someone, and deliberately don't do so, you've done something wrong. He knows that Cozy was shattered by grief, he just doesn't really care.
That doesn't necessarily mean he won't take it into account, of course. Lex has no problem with the idea of leniency when sentencing someone; we just haven't seen that in action yet (and neither has anypony else, to the point where they can't really connect him to the idea of "leniency" in their heads). Hopefully, now that Sonata has gotten through to him, he'll be willing to do exactly that, since being overly harsh won't serve his reputation, which is essential for what he wants to accomplish, whether he likes that or not.
As for Nosey...well, we'll just have to see.
8601463
I've been in the presence of genuinely charming people and you don't get to decide whether to be charmed by them. You like them and have no choice, until you're out of their presence and can evaluate their actions and attitudes after the fact. The experience was exactly like the description of a Charm Person spell.
Arguments are similar. You don't decide to be convinced and no, logic isn't especially convincing so there's barely any correlation between someone being right and someone being convincing. Magic is 'cheating' because it lets you succeed at these tasks more often but there's no free will involved either way.
I guess you do have free will around people who aren't charming and arguments that aren't convincing? So magic is reducing the total amount of free will by reducing those failure states.
Drawing a bright line and saying 'magic bad!' just seems like caveman-level superstition, though.
8601693 If you're suggesting that there's no free will involved on your part with regards to whether or not you find someone charming, likeable, or convincing, then we've reached a point of fundamental disagreement.
From what I can tell, you're suggesting that there are some people who are so charming, persuasive, or have some similar attribute, that you can't help but be affected by them in the manner of their choosing when they interact with you. That strikes me as self-evidently false, since such individuals would be able to influence anyone they met in any way they wanted at any time they felt like it, and effectively be able to rule the world (particularly in this age of social media). After all, there are a lot of intensely charismatic individuals who have done horrible things, and if you know that before you meet them then you're not likely to find yourself being swept off your feet.
As I see it, you are still making a judgment call and determining your own actions with regards to that person accordingly. Simply because the evaluation process tends to be quick, emotionally-intuitive, and largely subconscious doesn't mean that you're not exercising your own free will in the matter. It just means that you're not examining the process very closely, weighing some factors differently than others, and using only the information you have on hand even if you know it's incomplete. The decision is still entirely your own, regardless the method, criteria, or speed which you use to make it.
Mind-affecting magic bypasses all of that, forcing you to reach a predetermined condition (if the spell successfully affects you) without any internal evaluation on your part. That actually is an abrogation of free will; whereas a charming or persuasive individual will try to intuit the qualities or beliefs you find important/worthwhile/convincing and leverage that to weight your judgment in their favor, mind-affecting magic will simply interfere with your ability to make such a judgment in the first place.
To make an analogy, someone trying to be charming or persuasive is like presenting an artfully-arranged plate of food that smells delicious and is made with fine ingredients. It's much more alluring than someone simply tossing you a happy meal, for certain. But even though it might be mouth-watering, to the point where you want to devour it...you might already be full, or be allergic to that sort of food, or feeling particularly nauseous from being sick, etc. Mind-affecting magic, on the other hand, simply forces the food down your throat while you struggle and choke.
8601746
Ironically, in D+D if someone is charming naturally they make a skill roll against a target DC with no interaction on your part, while if they're trying to use magic you get to attempt to resist. So it's basically the opposite of what you're suggesting if you take the mechanics as being directly representative of reality.
And I'm not saying that they can charm everyone, I'm saying that when it works on you you don't get a choice. You can infer that there's some internal subconscious struggle but it really doesn't feel that way.
Also, considering the subconscious as part of your 'free will' seems really strange. I've usually heard it described as an obstacle to your will being free. Would Lex consider his subconscious a valid source of decision-making? He seems to want everything to be explicit and rational.
8601766
To be slightly pedantic, this depends on which version of D&D you're referring to. Original D&D (1974), for example, had no social skill rules at all besides periodic loyalty checks for any henchmen you retained or monsters that you managed to convince to serve you, and even then those were made in secret by the DM and largely depended on various in-game factors such as the amount of treasure you gave them, the amount of danger they were exposed to, etc. D&D 5E (2014) - from what I've read - has a standardized set of DCs for all skills, and also notes that some skills might be contests (i.e. opposed roles), with skills like Persuasion having no explicit listing for whether they should use the former or the latter.
But presuming you meant D&D 3.5/Pathfinder, then you're correct that Diplomacy uses static target DCs, whereas spells such as charm person allow for a saving throw on the part of the target. However, I don't believe that you can characterize a Diplomacy check as "no interaction" on the target's part. That's largely because - leaving aside issues of their initial attitude, Charisma modifier to the DC, and their determination of how the factors under the request modifiers apply (e.g. they decide what's "dangerous aid" means) - the target sets the parameters for what a successful Diplomacy check can convince them to do. That's why the expanded guidelines for what Diplomacy can do says "Some requests automatically fail if they go against a creature’s values or nature. In this vein, it is important to remember that no matter how high a Diplomacy roll may be, the target still has free will and won’t accept certain requests." By contrast, the guidelines on using magical enchantments (scroll down slightly) says "The main danger with enchantments lies in removing agency from a character, either a PC or NPC, and the main difficulty in running them is adjudicating just how much they do so."
If we make the reasonable interpretation that "removing agency" means "violates free will," then that's a pretty clear admission that such enchantments remove (at least in part) free will, whereas the Diplomacy skill does not, even if the former allows for a saving throw while the latter is not an opposed roll.
Any process that's performed intuitively, based on criteria that is at least partially subconscious, and happens relatively quickly isn't going to feel the same as a rational, considered decision where you're actively concentrating on weighing variables, deliberately looking for data, and mulling the consequences. Both, however, are expressions of your free will in action. You do have a choice, even if you've effectively limited yourself beforehand - if you're already in a bad mood, it's more likely that you'll get upset when you step in a puddle and get your socks wet...or you might suddenly find the whole thing so overblown that you start laughing. That's up to you, even if you don't feel that way, and the same thing is true for how you perceive someone else.
The issue of subconscious desires versus conscious decision-making in a person's choices is certainly an area where there's a lot of debate to be had, but I'm not sure I'd say that your own subconscious is a barrier to your free will. It's part of you, yourself, after all. Just because you make decisions via a process that's invisible to your conscious mind doesn't mean that they're not your decisions, made via criteria that you consider to be important.
The thing to remember, however, is that a person's subconscious is only a part of the process, and that ultimately people aren't helpless in the face of those urges; while I won't state this as a categorical, your consciousness usually gets to have veto power over your subconscious decisions and desires. Even if you really want to do something - where that wanting is an expression of a subconscious desire to go forward with a particular action, appetite, etc. - you still get to make the decision whether or not you actually go after it. That's the part that Lex would find to be paramount. Subconscious determinations are still acted upon with conscious approval, and regardless of whether or not you fully understood what your subconscious was telling you, you made conscious decisions in response to it, whether in agreement, disagreement, etc. You can hate someone as much as you want, for example, but trying to kill them for it is you deciding to go along with that hate and deliberately acting upon it.
Of course, Lex's desire to operate entirely from conscious decision-making isn't exactly serving him well either, if for no other reason than because that's not how everyone else approaches life.
you made a funny.
Lex is still going to cloud up and rain all over them.
a chapter full of stress but at the same time things are just starting to work out.
8602504 I suppose you're right; that's a question we know the answer to.
This chapter was a necessary turning point with regards to how rough things have been for Lex and Sonata lately. They've been having a lot of trouble with each other ever since that morning, and now they're finally starting to come around.
Sonata gets a Nat 20 on her Sense Motive! It's very effective!
8601830 Way to nail the difference between skill checks and mind magic. I've heard that argument used before, that "Diplomacy is basically charm person." People who say that usually haven't read the entire version of the skill. It's like when people say the moon should be invisible in Pathfinder because of Perception distance penalties.
8606346 With a natural 20, she'd get a total result of 30 on her Sense Motive check, which is enough to figure out what's going on with Lex's extreme reaction. Yay for high rolls!
As for Diplomacy, to be fair that's one of quite a few arguments that Pathfinder inherited when they picked up the mantle of 3.5 and made it their own. That's why it was so great when they published those expanded guidelines, since they helped to expressly lay out that the extreme-literal interpretation was, expressly, not the correct way to use the skill. I can understand "skill monkey" characters wanting to compete with spellcasters, but that doesn't strike me as quite the way to do it. (Also, dumping the skill's ability to inspire fanaticism, albeit with epic scores, certainly helped.)
And yeah, that whole thing about not being able to see the moon (or, as I heard it, the sun) is a true *headdesk* argument.
You missed a quote.
9112576 Thanks for catching that. Fixed now.