237 - Invisible Scars
One of them was a liar.
Nosey knew that one of the ponies around her was just pretending, going through the motions of being normal. Slowly, she swept her eyes over everypony in the café, looking at each of them for only a fraction of a second before moving on. She couldn’t stare at any one of them for too long, couldn’t let her eyes linger to the point where they’d make eye contact, or they’d know that she knew. They’d know that she knew what was going on, and then whichever one of them was that monster would come and get her…
Just the thought of that happening made her stomach churn in terror, and she lightly pushed her half-eaten lunch away, the sight of it nauseating her. For an instant she thought of getting up and heading to the bathroom, but she couldn’t move, couldn’t draw attention to herself. Not if she wanted to avoid its notice. Instead, she choked her discomfort down, taking deep breaths and shakily sipping some water as she fought to regain control over herself. Normal. I just have to act normal and it won’t see me.
One of them was that monster in disguise. One of them was another pony, trapped in their own body and screaming silently the way she had been, unable to do anything as they were used for its plans, its enjoyment. Which of them was it? She knew that it was one of them but which one?! She had to know, had to figure out which of them she needed to get away from…
There was an elderly unicorn stallion on the balcony, reading his newspaper as he sipped his tea. Was it him? Had he been staring at the same page too long, just pretending to read? Or was it the mare across the room, talking to some friends of hers? Her smile seemed just a touch too wide, her laughter slightly too loud to be natural. Or maybe the waiter, going around to each table to check on the patrons. Hadn’t he just made his rounds a few minutes ago? Wasn’t he more interested than he should have been, lingering at each table just a moment longer than was polite? Or maybe the colt eating his lunch a few seats away…had he just glanced at her?
A moment later she realized what was happening, and the sense of horror that enveloped her then was so overwhelming that she couldn’t even scream. It was toying with her, and had been all along! It wasn’t just one of the ponies here, it was all of them! They were all under its control, and it was making them pretend to act normal while introducing just enough flaws in their actions to let her figure it out, all for its own amusement!
I have to get out of here! All of a sudden her limbs worked again, primal instincts kicking in as she scrambled to get up. What had she been thinking? She’d deliberately sat down in a booth tucked into the back corner of the café so that she’d have her back to a wall, but now she felt trapped. Cornered. The space around her felt so cramped that she could barely breathe. Reflexively, she reached for her purse, trying not to pant in terror as she hastily drew out some coins and tossed them on the table. She had to go NOW! The door to the stairwell was on the other side of the room, too far to get to, but there was a window nearby. They were only on the second floor; if she leaped out it, she’d be able to get away. Lurching to her hooves, she took a step-
They were looking at her.
Each and every one of them was staring at her. All conversation, all movement, had stopped. Instead they were simply looking at her with blank expressions. Somehow that was more frightening than if they had been frowning or leering, and she froze again even though she knew it was the wrong thing to do. No no no please sweet Celestia no!
“Where do you think you’re going, Nosey?” the elderly stallion on the balcony asked. It took her a moment to realize that he was speaking in the voice of the monster’s left head.
When she didn’t respond, the mare sitting at the table with her friends spoke up next. “We have so much to catch up on,” she said in the feminine tones of the right head, a long black tongue snaking out to lick her lips.
“And once you’re done telling me everything,” smiled the waiter, his voice androgynous just like the middle head, “you know what’ll happen next?”
“No…!” Her sob was one of protest rather than denial. She wanted to lunge for the window, wanted to jump out it and run for all she was worth, but she couldn’t bring herself to move. She knew that if she tried it would get her, and she’d give anything to stop that from happening again, even for just another few seconds. She knew it was foolish, knew it wasn’t rational, but rational thought was beyond her now, leaving her unable to do anything but shake and whimper as tears spilled from her eyes. “No no no!”
“yES yOu Do,” screeched the colt, slowly standing and moving toward her. His face wasn’t that of a pony anymore. Instead, his entire head had transformed into a fang-filled ringed maw, the orifice contracting and releasing as it spoke. “yOU rEmeMbEr fROm lAsT tIMe.” It moved closer, until it was right in front of her, leaning in until its teeth were only inches away from her. “aNd nOW iT’S gONnA hAPpeN aGAiN.”
The scream that tore itself from Nosey’s throat then wasn’t that of a pony. It was the sound an animal made when it was trapped and knew that something unspeakable was about to happen to it. She screamed and screamed and screamed, not seeing the other ponies in the café closing in on her, not seeing the colt in front of her transforming into the monster she feared the most, not seeing the sudden and incongruous appearance of Princess Luna, until screaming was all there was in her universe…
Nosey was still screaming as she woke up.
There were ponies all around her, and she thrashed wildly, trying to escape from what had to be that monster’s thralls bearing down on her. “GET AWAY FROM ME!” she screamed at the top of her lungs. “GET AWAY FROM M-”
Suddenly something heavy landed on her, knocking her to the ground just as she’d gotten her legs under her, and she struggled harder as she recognized it as a body. “Miss Newsy! Stop!” yelled a male voice, and she only dimly recognized it as being different from the monster’s. She tried to scream again, but a hoof covered her mouth before she could. “Stop! You’re safe now!” yelled the voice of the pony on top of her. “Miss Newsy! You’re safe!” She heard the words, but they barely registered to her. She obviously wasn’t safe, so why was it taunting her like this?!
She put everything she had into breaking free then, wrapping her telekinesis around the stallion on top of her and pushed upward while simultaneously trying to get her legs under her. In response, she felt her attacker struggle harder, trying mightily to stop her from getting up. “Help me hold her down!” he yelled, and a moment later she felt several more bodies press down on her, their combined weight easily forcing her back to the ground. For an instant she kept struggling, trying to scream again, but it was useless, and then she went limp, squeezing her eyes shut to try and block out what was about to happen as sobs began to uncontrollably spill out of her, muffled by the hoof over her mouth.
But as the seconds ticked by, she didn’t feel the horrible sense of something evil slipping inside her, nor the expected loss of control over her body. Instead, the ponies keeping her pinned down just…held her there. “I think she’s calming down,” announced the voice again. “Miss Newsy, can you hear me? Do you know who I am?”
Somehow managing to stifle the pitiful sounds coming from her throat, Nosey – more certain now that she knew this voice from somewhere, and that it wasn’t that monster’s – tentatively cracked one eye open. For a second she couldn’t focus on anything, her vision blurred by tears. Blinking, she looked up at the stallion on top of her, and for a moment didn’t recognize him. But then comprehension came back to her, and she realized that he was the doctor that had been treating her before… House Call she suddenly remembered. Doctor House Call.
Suddenly it all came rushing back. Lex had saved her, he’d killed the thing and brought her back, and then Sonata had calmed her down, and they’d handed her off to the doctors. It had been going alright, just a routine exam like any she’d ever had, until one of the nurses had smiled at her in a way that – because of the bad light inside the medical tent – had made her face look vaguely like that horrible thing. Nosey shuddered as she remembered going into a panic then, everyone telling her to calm down and not understanding that she wanted to calm down but couldn’t! Then House Call had injected her with something and then…
Going limp, Nosey somehow managed to make eye contact with the doctor, giving a small nod. He paused, weighing her response, then spoke. “I’m going to withdraw my hoof from your mouth. Please don’t scream.” She nodded again, and a moment later he uncovered her mouth. “I’m sorry. Normally it’s a terrible idea to obstruct a hysterical patient’s mouth, but we can’t have you screaming under the current circumstances.” He motioned to the ponies around them, and they slowly released Nosey, stepping back to give her a little room.
For a moment, she just laid there, not trusting herself to move. It was only after several seconds’ worth of deep breaths that she started to sit up. “Where am I? What hap-” She couldn’t finish, her stomach suddenly clenching harshly as her adrenaline surge ebbed. Doubling over, she started to dry heave, retching as her stomach tried to expel its contents even though it was empty. It took several seconds before the episode ended, and it was with a pained moan that she flopped onto her side, deciding that standing up was a bad idea right now. “What happened?” she tried again.
“You became hysterical while we were treating you, so we had to sedate you,” explained House Call, making sure to keep his voice as level and soothing as possible.
“No, I mean…” She limply waved a hoof toward the night sky. It had been daytime last she remembered. “What’s going on?”
House Call paused just for an instant before answering. “You shouldn’t worry about that right now. You need to focus-”
“Don’t,” she croaked, giving him a pleading look. “Just…tell me what’s happening right now. Please.”
Biting his lip for a moment, House Call sighed. “Lex Legis announced that the ghouls in Vanhoover are about to attack the camp. He and Sonata Dusk are going to intercept them. They gathered everypony here so that he can use a spell to hide us all in the meantime.”
Lex… Just hearing his name made her feel better, and Nosey felt her stomach unclench just a little. He killed it. It’s dead, and it’s not coming back. Repeating the mantra to herself a few times, Nosey unsteadily stood up. “Where is he? I have to see him.”
“He’s over there,” House Call canted his head behind her, “but you can’t go to him right now. He’s casting the spell to protect us. Listen.”
Turning in the indicated direction, Nosey pricked her ears up. Sure enough, she could hear Lex’s voice raised in a chant. Although the words themselves were in some language she didn’t understand, just the sound of him sent waves of relief through her, making her gasp and shudder as her anxiety lessened. House Call was saying something else to her then, telling her what Sonata had told them about needing to be very still and quiet in order for his illusion to fool the undead ponies, but she barely heard him.
All she could think about right then was how badly she wanted to be by her savior’s side.
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Yah, in-flight entertainment.
8931359 Always glad to help out!
8931423
Tolkein was deeply Catholic, and a lot of the stuff with Gollum and the ring and redemption and corruption come from that. But he also studied Norse mythology extensively, and his pantheon work comes from that. (Part of the reason angels in the Catholic church are set the way they are is that a lot of them, like Saint Patrick, were pre-Christian demigods in the first place). Gandalf in his wanderings and requests for hospitality is in many ways a lot like Odin.
That's true. It's often the idea that the evil goods are physically prevented from fully manifesting their power, while the good gods know it would be a bad idea to do so.
Yup. Saruman's collapse at the end of Lord of the Rings is probably a big example of this.
Yeah, I think that's a good point. Perhaps the difference between Lovecraft, Tolkein, and most other pulp authors, was that Tolkein fits your description, while Lovecraft assumes the exact opposite, that the universe is inherently malevolent and chaotic, and most pulp writers think the universe just doesn't care.
I can see that, it's less cool to be the chosen one than to be the choosing one, IMHO. I think that's why in 4E they shook up Forgotten Realms so much. Elminster, his fellow Chosen, and Mystra herself were very Tolkeinsien in that regard.
I'm going to have to disagree with that. It's another very Tolkeinsien idea, that the few brave good souls of quality will stand against the nameless hordes of evil cannon fodder, and I'm generally not a fan of evil being weak. (And from most RPG's mechanical perspectives, as well as narrative perspective, being numerous but non-special means being weak).
Imagine if Lex's big battle hadn't been against Xiriel, but against a dozen Erinyes without names. Would it still have been a tough fight? Sure, but who cares, I got bored just thinking about it.
Great stories and great RPGs need villains who are just as special as the heroes, with their own compelling backstories and unique powers. One of the reasons I like this story so much is that just about every antagonist Lex fights has interesting powers and relationships with others that come with those powers, from the aranea siblings to Aria and her sahuagin squadmates to Xiriel and Nosey.
Wow, poor Nosey. Sounds like Luna tried to help her at the end but was too late. Don't mess up the screen, Nosey!
The medical tent is now being used as area of effect? Pity Lex didnt have any defensive spells that would work with the fabric. Depends how large his pocket universe could get or how air worked in it etc?
So Luna makes an appearance, albeit a brief one. Guess the distress Nosey was giving off was high enough to attract Luna's attention amongst all the other ponies having nightmares across Equestria. Then again, while the elemental bleeds did affect the ponies enough to have nightmares, even more so for those that witness the arrival of demons, being specifically possessed and toyed with by a malevolent being would leave scars that run deeper than others.
Given how overworked Luna is, I wonder if she'll give her small gathering of followers the ability to enter dreams to aid others and lessen her workload, provided that it's able to be bestowed upon others...then again, such an ability is open to abuse. Ponies or not, power can still corrupt.
Regardless, witnessing a demon such as Xiriel within Nosey's nightmare ought to have raise some red flags for the princess so outside help might be on the way, though given how abruptly Nosey woke up, I wonder if she even knows where the dreamer was.
edit:apologies for the extra posts I deleted, my nephew was being cheeky.
8931628
I can't help but nitpick here: Tolkien was a scholar of English language and literature, which included a heavy focus on Anglo-Saxon languages and writing, necessarily tracing it through Germanic and Norse roots. To that end, he incorporated a lot of it into the background of his world, particularly with regards to various creatures, and other aspects of his legendarium. But notwithstanding issues of the Catholic Church itself amalgamating local religious beliefs into its own structure, I'm skeptical of saying that Tolkien's structure of celestial beings - Eru Ilúvatar and the Ainur (the collective name for the Valar and Maiar) - were based on Norse mythology rather than Christian monotheism. Certainly, Tolkien himself seemed fairly straightforward in suggesting that the former was indeed capital-G God, which in turn implies that the Ainur are angels (particularly with Melkor's status as both the "strongest" Ainur and his subsequent fall being clearly Satanic in inspiration).
Now, there are areas of overlap (which as you noted seem to be from areas where the various religions share imagery, for whatever reason). The Dagor Dagorath - with its scope as a final battle that destroys and ultimately renews the world, making it better than the current world - could very well be taken as an allegory for Ragnarok or as the Book of Revelations. But aside from such things, the presence of an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent God who creates legions of celestial beings from his thoughts seems fairly divorced from Norse mythology.
Gandalf's inspiration does seem to have some connection to Odin, but this is largely with regard to the formulation of Gandalf's personal characteristics, rather than with regard to his role in the divine hierarchy of Tolkien's work.
I was thinking more of Morgoth's gradual degeneration as a guy who smashed large swaths of the universe to being a guy who could be credibly challenged by notable elven heroes. But close enough.
Lovecraft's conception of the universe wasn't inherently "malevolent" (or even that "chaotic" per se, though from our standpoint is certainly was), but rather wildly amoral and uncaring. Moreover, it was filled with powerful and alien intelligences to whom we humans simply aren't significant or notable. It was basically "everything you think you know is wrong" writ large.
I'm absolutely certain that the D&D Fourth Edition of the Forgotten Realms was made to try and make it - what the designers thought of as - more "game-able." While I'm not sure that I'd describe Mystra and her Chosen as "Tolkienesque," there's enough room for arguing that their effective role was somewhat similar in terms of being powerful moral agents. That said, their stereotypical depiction as being almost contemptuous of those who opposed their morals and attempted to challenge them quickly made them hated by a lot of gamers, which is why you had lots of stories back in the day about groups that killed Elminster. Needless to say, this illustrates the differences between Tolkien and Ed Greenwood; the former at least tried to showcase his heroes acting as God's/the universe's agents in bringing about what (quite literally) needed to happen, whereas the latter's characters came across as haughty busybodies (to a lot of people). That doesn't mean that the 4E Realms was the right way to try and fix things, however; changing something to appeal to people who already hate it tends to alienate your existing fan-base.
You're not wrong, but it's worth reiterating the mode in which we're discussing that idea. Namely, I was referring to it in terms of simulationism (for how examples of non-parallel alternates of various opposing forces would work) and gamism (i.e. why there are paladins and not "religious knights" for other alignments). What you're talking about with regards to my story is narrativism, however, and that's a different angle of critique. Even overlooking that I don't think it's a truism that every great story or RPG requires a great villain (though it certainly helps), this highlights the different aspects of design philosophy, whereby one looks at things in terms of pure world-building, one looks at it in terms of what's useful/fun to play, and one looks at it in terms of what sort of storytelling can be told and how easy it is to tell.
8931685 Yeah, Luna got there right at the end; by the time she showed up, Nosey had already descended into hysterics, collapsing the dream as it became untenable.
8931901 The problem there is that rope trick is very specific in what it can do, so there isn't really much that Lex can do with it, besides use it as a template for inventing a different spell.
As for the tent fabric spread over the ground, it's basically working in conjunction with the holes Sonata had dug to make the battlefield into difficult terrain.
8931903 Luna did indeed detect the incredibly high level of stress and fear that Nosey was experiencing, even if she did arrive just in time to see it end. But does that mean that she didn't take away any useful information from it? Maybe nothing direct, but perhaps something a bit less obvious...?
I'm skeptical of whether or not Luna could bestow much power on her followers, besides a few low-level spells. I've talked before about how I don't see the Royal Sisters as being gods, or even very high in terms of their Challenge Rating. To that end, I can see Luna possibly being able to grant spells of up to 3rd-level to her worshipers (most of whom won't even be of a high-enough level to cast 3rd-level spells yet), but insofar as the direct infusion of power that the Night Mare gave Lex, I'm extremely disinclined to suggest that Luna has anywhere near that level of divine power. Actually imbuing someone else with power reminiscent of her own would, as she is now, essentially deplete her (a la her giving Twilight her alicorn magic), assuming she could do it at all to someone who wasn't an alicorn.
8933025
Oh yeah, I forgot I asked a similar question before...oh well, at least the answer you gave me provided a bit more insight of how different the alicorns are to the deities of the Everglow. Given that Luna only recently started pursuing a path to godhood so while it is possible she'll achieve that goal, it will take a long while. Good thing she has all of eternity to do so.
This makes me wonder what Celestia would have been like if she had done the same after banishing Nightmare Moon, would she have been on the same level as the other deities of the Everglow? Of course, given her reluctance at such a suggestion, makes me wonder if Daybreaker has anything to do with it...then again, that concept came from Starlight. Heh, wonder if any other ponies ever imagined Princess Celestia in such a manner.
Xiriel really did a number on Nosey, Nosey has a long road of recovery before sh is close to normal.
8933631 The issue of making the transition from "not a god" to "god" is that there's no real guidelines to go on. Now, from an in-character standpoint, that's just fine; extremely few are the settings where there's a dedicated "how-to" guide for mortals to undergo apotheosis (though Mystara, rather interestingly, had such a method by which powerful characters could become Immortals, who were gods in all but name). The problem is that there's no real meta-game understanding as to the nature of what gods fundamentally are and how they operate to help us out when we want to generate an instance whereby someone actually does make the transition.
Pathfinder, to be fair, has a few scattered clues as to this...but overall they're not very much, and are of very limited help to understanding how that game measures and defines the nature of the divine. Ponyfinder, ironically enough, gives us similarly little to work with while still managing to disagree with Pathfinder on several elements. And of course, each edition of D&D has differing definitions as well, so there's no wider consensus to draw upon there.
Given all of that, there's little that can be done except to treat this as a "cross that bridge when we come to it" issue. Fortunately, given that Luna is less than six months into her attempt to ascend, this probably isn't something we'll need to deal with now. Given that I see her as being comparatively low-level, she likely has a long way to go before we need to start getting into the nuts and bolts of measuring her progress. For the moment, she's managed to begin granting low-level spells to worshipers, but that's an accomplishment that she's gotten largely by leveraging her current status towards divine ascension; any further progress is going to require a lot more of her.
As for Princess Celestia...I doubt she'd make much more progress than Luna if she went down the same path. She's slightly more powerful than her sister, and much more popular, but her power still isn't very impressive, and there's more to ascension than simply being worshiped (though that certainly helps, particularly if it's widespread and sustained over a long period of time). But that's purely hypothetical, since she seems adamant in not wanting that for herself.
8933738 Yeah, this chapter further drove home the point that Nosey's identity has been severely damaged. That's not something that heals quickly or easily.
8933000
That's another great example. It's also the first real story I can think of where mortals killed essentially a demigod, without the direct aid of another god, as usually happens in mythology. I think a lot of high level PCs who want to kill a god themselves can kind of trace the idea back to here.
Sometime I'd love to read a Lovecraftian story from the point of view of the Eldrich Abomination. I realize that would in some sense be a contradiction in terms. but it would also be interesting to see it tried.
Oh it totally was. They called it "points of light" or something. The idea is that civilization has to be made much smaller and more fragile so players will feel like they are absolutely necessary and the real heroes of the setting.
Yup. It took away all the work the heroes had done into protecting Cormyr and other places, so the new threats would feel scary. Rather like the new Star Wars movies made the brand new bad guys immensely more powerful than the galactic government, for the same reason. I understand the point of view of players who wanted to whack Elminster for being annoying, I just think they should do it in their campaign! (They let you do that in the Baldur's Gate franchise if you were fast).
I think the gamism effects the simulationism when the effects in question make you question the setting. Like, if only LG have these special elite holy warriors, the gaming world (which is usually broadly depicted as being balanced between competing alignments) shouldn't be so balanced.
Every story or RPG that is "man versus man" needs a great villain. Stories that are more "man versus nature" or "man versus self" don't require a great villain as much.
Yup. As much as I care and value the setting of an RPG (as I'm sure you've picked up at this point), I generally think setting should follow the mechanics of the game, rather than the reverse. Good writers for the games lore and fluff should be able to justify just about any mechanical change or addition to the game. What I sometimes find that drives me nuts is when such a mechanical change occurs that logically invalidates a lot of setting lore, but the story team continues on as-is, ignoring or hand-waving the mechanical changes.
8939451
Well, not so much. Morgoth slew Fingolfin (the "notable elven hero" that I mentioned before) when the latter challenged him to a duel. It was just that he left Morgoth with several wounds which never healed, and which ultimately contributed to his further decline. That was a classic part of the degeneration of evil in Tolkien's universe; that wounds delivered by virtuous heroes had a tendency to be permanent, leading to the gradual debilitation of great evils. Morgoth was actually defeated by a great host of the Valar in the War of Wrath.
Notwithstanding outright comedy, the closest I've ever seen to this sort of thing being done is Peter Watts' short story "The Things", which retells the plot of John Carpenter's The Thing (1982) from the point of view of the alien. It's a great read, and I heartily recommend it.
As I recall, "points of light" was both a reference to the Nentir Vale "setting" (and I use the term disdainfully) as well as a reference to the overall tone that 4E itself wanted to present, which was that of a world that was essentially on the edge of disaster, and so needed heroes to act as "points of light" in the face of overwhelming darkness. Personally I think that the Greyhawk setting did that much better.
I could have dealt with some new "Realms-shaking event" by itself; what ticked me off was the hundred-year time-skip that went along with it. That part seemed to have been done deliberately to make absolutely sure that old sourcebooks wouldn't be usable anymore (and so a lot of NPCs would be gone). Throw in that they did blow up the Realms again, and you basically had a different campaign setting altogether. This really ticked off a lot of people, including novel authors who didn't like that they take this into account when writing about their characters! It's no coincidence that the post-Sundering Realms looks so much like the 3E version.
Well, that's presuming that you can't rationalize the issue in question, which is largely a question of 1) having an explanation be present, and 2) making sure that it's consistently applied. In the case of reconciling issues of "alignment parallelism" with "paladins can only be Lawful Good," I think you're already halfway to the answer when you note that the game world wasn't balanced: namely, that it indeed wasn't. But I suspect that we're talking about something different with regards to what "balance" means here.
Rather than "having parity of combat options/effectiveness with other PCs of the same level," balance tended to be viewed in a much less granular lens back in earlier editions. In terms of world construction, the balance between alignments didn't rely nearly as much on overt parallelism as it does today. Rather, it tended to be manifest in the previously-mentioned issue of "evil has the numbers, good has the edge." It was the reason why evil humanoids were seemingly breeding like mad and just waiting in the hinterlands to overrun civilization, whereas overtly good humanoids such as elves and dwarves were largely in decline (and that part, like most of D&D's presentation of demihumans, was lifted from Tolkien). Undead were near-universally evil, and demons and devils were quite happy to personally intrude on the Prime Material Plane whenever they could while angels and other celestials were much more reluctant to do so.
In other words, the issue between keeping the alignments balanced (at least insofar as good and evil were concerned) was that it was satisfied on a macro-scale, which is why you had a world where civilization, hope, and goodness hadn't already been smashed despite how the Monster Manual had far more evil creatures than good. It was because you had heroes who, pound for pound, tended to be worth much more than an equal number of monsters. Indeed, this was part of the reason why classes had ability score requirements; you couldn't even be a paladin unless you had numerous high ability scores (and this in a time when the recommended methods of ability generation were all rolling, with no point-buy options), since that represented that you were one of the elite that championed the forces of good against a veritable sea of enemies.
"Balance" in this case wasn't an issue of "identical options" so much as it was "overall results," and in that case the game world tended to be one that was very much in balance between paladins and numerous evil entities that didn't have their own "good equivalent" (at least not originally; this message was lost as the game marches forward, and it wasn't too long before we got good-aligned arch-liches and baelnorns).
To be fair, you can still have great villains without them having to necessarily having to violate the "evil has numbers, good has standards" guideline. It's just an issue of presentation, which is to say, it's a question of "how" you make the villain be a match for the protagonist. It's no coincidence that the original editions of the game had very little to say on the rules of monster advancement, for instance; other than some very off-the-cuff guidelines about humanoid leaders, there wasn't much on the subject of having monsters with "advanced natural Hit Dice" or class levels. That was because, unlike demihumans in general (and humans in particular), monsters basically were what they were. They received their power due to their biology, requiring no real training or effort, but subsequently could not improve. An ancient dragon was an ancient dragon by virtue of having lived long enough to come into its power, not by making an effort to get stronger.
Contrast this with how humanity had unlimited potential for improvement. Most (but not all) classes were open-ended in the levels that could be taken, which meant that humans could eventually produce exemplars who could conceivably challenge the very gods themselves. It's what made them the hope for the future, and why the game world tended to put them front and center: they were the ones who could determine how things would be going forward. The issue of having a heroic character versus a powerful monster was that the monster - even if presented as a singular "big bad evil guy," such as a beholder or a dragon - was essentially just another of its kind (even if those kind were rare, and this one was the only one in the area), whereas the hero was an individual who had built themselves up into something more than they were and who now had the power to challenge them. To put it another way, 100% of adult beholders are beholders; far less than 100% of adult humans are 10th-level paladins.
That's what the "quality versus quantity" paradigm was all about.
The issue at stake here is trying to avoid a disconnect between our understanding of how the game world function (i.e. the game mechanics, though it's worth noting that more narrative-focused, rules-light games tend to eschew the idea that the mechanics are the physics of the game world in the first place) and direct depictions of the game world in action (i.e. novels and other media set in the world, sourcebooks that showcase various aspects of it, etc.). The point of contention is that, should a disconnect occur, which should be given primacy.
What's notable here is that primacy is often showcased according to which one came first, the setting or the game rules. If you're designing an independent game, for example, then you're probably going to figure out what sort of setting (with attendant factors like tone, style, genre, etc.) first and then design rules around them (a la the King Arthur Pendragon RPG). On the other hand, if you start out wanting to make a new setting for D&D, then you're signing on to the mechanics first, and those will shape how the setting functions. You can add some campaign-specific rules, but those are almost certainly going to be little more than tweaks and additions to what's already there rather than anything hugely game-changing.
The reason why I keep mentioning Eclipse is that I feel it offers the best of both worlds. The mutability of options (mostly for characters, but some of them for the game world also, such as the Superheroic World Template) allows for various settings to be designed for a familiar game system (the d20 rules) while simultaneously modulating what game rules are used (and how) in order to better represent the whatever intricacies your game world happens to have. It's why I find it (comparatively) easy to bridge the mechanical gap between Equestria and Everglow in this story, since normally trying to depict someone like Rainbow Dash under the d20 rules would be very difficult.
Cereal shouldn't trouble Nosey like that.
9219883 It's not really something she can help, at this point.