2019-02-21- [DMFA #1971] - What if?

[Tapewolf]

Yes, the 'Cubi trait of being flightly and emotional probably isn't going to help if you discover that your lord and master is actually a criminal mastermind.

[Ixal]

Cyra sounds more regretful than in the last page. It is still a giant hypocrisy to say that she would have flown into a rage if she had found out M'Chek was eating souls when she planned (and did) murder him in cold blood to eat his soul. Pot, meet kettle.

Lets see if Cyra is aware of that or not when she answers Dans question for real.

[Grey Wolf]

Cyra sounds more regretful than in the last page. It is still a giant hypocrisy to say that she would have flown into a rage if she had found out M'Chek was eating souls when she planned (and did) murder him in cold blood to eat his soul. Pot, meet kettle.

Lets see if Cyra is aware of that or not when she answers Dans question for real.

Well, yes and no. What Cyra did was Wrong with a capital W (I know morality is...different in Furrae, but let's run on being morality for right now as it's the closest to that of most human societies).
However, Cyra planned on assassinating and devouring the soul one person. M'Chek was consuming the souls of hundreds of thousands of people (including the souls of his own family). Now, it looks like he was allowing everyone to live out their normal lifespans beforehand, so that should count for something. But that knowledge apparently crossed a line for Cyra. Which is interesting.

So, I don't think I understand entirely, but I'm hoping I figure it out as we go along.

[Ixal]

The way Dan phrases his question is also interesting. It is very suggestive which imo indicates that in some way he believes that it is possible that Cyra would do it again.

What would the possible answers be?
- Yes, I would do it again.
- No, I wouldn't do it because killing/eating souls is wrong
- No, I wouldn't do it because I want to save Hishaan
- No, I wouldn't do it exactly the same and instead bring by family to safety first and find a way to keep Hishaan intact so I can rule it.

[Eboreg]

Cyra sounds more regretful than in the last page. It is still a giant hypocrisy to say that she would have flown into a rage if she had found out M'Chek was eating souls when she planned (and did) murder him in cold blood to eat his soul. Pot, meet kettle.

Even a hired assassin has a right to be disgusted at the actions of a genocidal maniac.

[Tapewolf]

The way Dan phrases his question is also interesting. It is very suggestive which imo indicates that in some way he believes that it is possible that Cyra would do it again.

He does barely know her, but that said, Dan's objective here is to try and calm her down.  That's really not in his job description, so he might not necessarily be doing a very good job of it, but a shoulder to cry on is the context in which his questions should be taken.
There will be a time for him to consider the morality of it all afterwards, and there may be more probing questions about her ethical standards then, once she's less likely to inadvertently kill her allies.  Unless he botches this, of course, in which case there may not be an afterwards.

[Ixal]

The way Dan phrases his question is also interesting. It is very suggestive which imo indicates that in some way he believes that it is possible that Cyra would do it again.

He does barely know her, but that said, Dan's objective here is to try and calm her down.  That's really not in his job description, so he might not necessarily be doing a very good job of it, but a shoulder to cry on is the context in which his questions should be taken.
There will be a time for him to consider the morality of it all afterwards, and there may be more probing questions about her ethical standards then, once she's less likely to inadvertently kill her allies.  Unless he botches this, of course, in which case there may not be an afterwards.

Speaking of which, considering that mentioning Hizell send her into her mental break isn't it a bit strange that in her headworld its about Hishaan and not the war later?

[e_voyager]

Honestly I don't think the mental break taking her back to Hassan and not the war would not be that unusual. Remember Hassan is basically where everything went wrong for her. It is where she wound up killing off part of her family and entire city while trying to kill and siphon the soul of one person with the intent of replacing them as the cities protector instead she accidentally trigger the Doomsday scenario

[PhycoKrusk]

Look at the caption again, because it underscores the worst part of this event: It doesn't matter.

Cyra killed M'chek to devour his soul, triggering the failure mechanism that turned the city to glass and prevented the souls of everyone in the city from reaching the Elysium Fields, and most likely setting into motion the events leading to the Dragon-Cubi War. How many more lives destroyed? How many more souls lost? Thousands? Tens of thousands? Millions? What's done is done; it doesn't matter.

If Cyra didn't kill M'chek, never followed through on the plan, would that have prevented the war from ever starting? Maybe. And M'chek would have been left as Hishaan's "guardian" for as long as he cared to. How many souls lost then, over 7,000 years? Hishaan was safe. The citizens there would have stayed. More from outside would have come. Who can say how many more, if M'chek lived even longer? Can we truly reckon the final cost? What would it change if we could? Nothing; it doesn't matter.

Or perhaps it wasn't Cyra at all. Another creature or even a being slays M'chek. The fail-deadly still triggers, and it must be a fail-deadly because that is the only explanation that truly makes sense. Hishaan becomes glass and all those souls are ripped a way by a mechanism that transfers them to a storage vessel that no longer functions. Do they make it to Elysium, or just stay in M'chek's corpse for eternity? Does it revive him, to pin the blame on someone else, or does the blame stay with him, driving demons or angels or whoever to declare war instead? Hishaan is destroyed, and the ground is fertile for the start of a world war all the same; it doesn't matter.

None of it matters, not to Cyra.

[Tapewolf]

Speaking of which, considering that mentioning Hizell send her into her mental break isn't it a bit strange that in her headworld its about Hishaan and not the war later?

Yes.  I have been wondering if, supposing Dan calms her down in Hishaan, he'll then find himself elsewhere, dealing with another aspect of Cyra's breakdown afterwards.  The situation with Destania, perhaps, and finally the fact that Hizell wiped out her family.  Doing that would drag the scene out a bit, though.

[joshofspam]

I wonder if we're going to get more of an idea of what is a soul?

For a few threads it seems like some people don't see what the big deal in using a soul in general if it's collected after death.

But if they is an existence for those individuals as the soul passers on, then that means that you could potentially denying them their final rest after their life is over. In a way it could be the worst form of murder murder after death.

I certainly hope we go into that soon. I don't think I or Dan really understand the weight of tragedy that has happened here.

[Nightmask]

I'm not sure if calling it greed or shortsightedness really makes sense (but admittedly what we think of as our flaws or failures and how we describe them isn't always going to be accurate).  She wanted power to improve the condition of her clan and herself, her problem was she needed to kill someone and consume their soul to do it.  It's not shortsighted to fail to consider something completely unforeseen or predictable occurring.  Shortsighted would be killing him and consuming his soul KNOWING the soul-eating array existed while assuming he didn't have safeguards against a feedback loop occurring at his death inside the reach of the formation.  She operated on available information and the idea that he couldn't possibly have been so evil as to have a soul-eating array set up to devour even the souls of his own children and grandchildren and later descendants.

Hopefully this will prove cathartic and she can finally deal with things that she hasn't been able to in over 7000 years, as the only reason for her mindbreak is because despite all that time she's never dealt with the trauma to move beyond it.

[Radagast]

I wonder if we're going to get more of an idea of what is a soul?

For a few threads it seems like some people don't see what the big deal in using a soul in general if it's collected after death.

But if they is an existence for those individuals as the soul passers on, then that means that you could potentially denying them their final rest after their life is over. In a way it could be the worst form of murder murder after death.

I certainly hope we go into that soon. I don't think I or Dan really understand the weight of tragedy that has happened here.

Actually, that was hinted at some time ago, back when Nitemyste was explaining why they believed Merlitz was dead.  Long story short, we got a blurb from the author explaining the crystals used to track adventurers.  Glowing meant that they were alive, dull meant that they were either dead or something was running strong magical interference on the tracking spell, and - most importantly for this discussion - if the stone was shattered that meant that "not only were they dead, they were mega dead in that their soul was destroyed".  So we can reasonably presume that under normal circumstances the soul persists after death.  This is further corroborated through Dark Pegasus's resurrections and the creation of the undead 'race'. 

At our current understanding of the soul consumption process, it seems most probable that it's exactly as it sounds and renders the person "mega dead". 

[joshofspam]

I wonder if we're going to get more of an idea of what is a soul?

For a few threads it seems like some people don't see what the big deal in using a soul in general if it's collected after death.

But if they is an existence for those individuals as the soul passers on, then that means that you could potentially denying them their final rest after their life is over. In a way it could be the worst form of murder murder after death.

I certainly hope we go into that soon. I don't think I or Dan really understand the weight of tragedy that has happened here.

Actually, that was hinted at some time ago, back when Nitemyste was explaining why they believed Merlitz was dead.  Long story short, we got a blurb from the author explaining the crystals used to track adventurers.  Glowing meant that they were alive, dull meant that they were either dead or something was running strong magical interference on the tracking spell, and - most importantly for this discussion - if the stone was shattered that meant that "not only were they dead, they were mega dead in that their soul was destroyed".  So we can reasonably presume that under normal circumstances the soul persists after death.  This is further corroborated through Dark Pegasus's resurrections and the creation of the undead 'race'. 

At our current understanding of the soul consumption process, it seems most probable that it's exactly as it sounds and renders the person "mega dead".

In that case, at least we get an understanding of just how terrible soul eating is.

For Cyra, it's just one big tragedy. With the hollow bonus of at least learning M'chek was a monster that she shouldn't feel sorry about killing. A really hollow confort when you considerall the lives he took with him when his soul stealing scheme imploding in on itself.

While M'chek was a monster that was popping peoples souls in his mouth for generations. Eating his citizens and his children.

Just as a side. It's been hinted in the past the eating souls has the possibility to cause possibly long term side effects to the eaters of said souls. I do have to wonder, if dragons are so long lived, how was he consuming his children as well?

I'm sort of expecting this twist that M'chek sort of weakening himself in a way that cubi reproduction trumped his dragon power and started having children that took after the mother of his children. Maybe even Destania might be possibly be one of those children. Cyra's father lived and died in this city after-all.

[Radagast]

We don't really have enough information to speculate on the how of it with any degree of confidence.  We know that the souls of M'Chek's children were consumed, but we don't know if that was S.O.P. or something that only happened when M'Chek's death caused that cascade effect.  The system might have worked to slowly poison everyone in the city other than M'Chek, or it could have been wholly on standby until there was a soul to collect.  There are many possible explanations, with a great deal of them being quite mundane. 

[Tuyu]

Another creature or even a being slays M'chek. The fail-deadly still triggers, and it must be a fail-deadly because that is the only explanation that truly makes sense. Hishaan becomes glass and all those souls are ripped a way by a mechanism that transfers them to a storage vessel that no longer functions.

This bit I think unlikely. The feedback loop happened because Cyra consumed enough of M'chek's soul that the mechanism retargeted to her, and the radiating effect was apparently spillover--energy she released as the souls kept pumping into her.

If someone managed to kill M'chek without feeding on his soul, we really don't know where the souls would go, but they probably wouldn't be converted to destructive energy.