Evil Companions

[Ymarsakar]

 

 

 Don't think of it as trauma. Think of it as TBI resulting in major personality changes resulting in what you see today.

I am still waiting to hear the part where you guys explain how this makes it so his actions aren't reprehensible, he is somehow not morally bankrupt, and is redeemable in some way.  In fact the way you guys phrase it he is basically a dog with rabies and the only option now is to put the poor bugger down.

 

His actions are reprehensible, but he's not morally bankrupt because he's not capable of making good, rational, morally upright decisions. He is *broken*. The thoughts, ideas, concepts, and actions that he takes *seem* reasonable to him *because his soul is damaged and he's no longer functional*. He *might* be redeemable, if there were some way to repair the damage that was done to him so that he he's capable of making sane, rational decisions again.

 

Durance is no more culpable for the things he says and does than a man in a deep, permanent psychotic state would be.

 

 

That means Durance isn't a human, he's just a tool. Which he is, of course.

 

Humans with moral agency have free will, and thus moral agency. The good or evil of a tool is up to the user. The question then becomes, if anyone can be transformed from person to tool by the Authorities, what makes anyone else immune to the proscription?

 

Any Authority, the State included, has the power to determine who is psychotic and what penalties that requires. Which merely means that might makes right.

Edited March 3, 2016 by Ymarsakar

[Katarack21]

 

 

 

 Don't think of it as trauma. Think of it as TBI resulting in major personality changes resulting in what you see today.

I am still waiting to hear the part where you guys explain how this makes it so his actions aren't reprehensible, he is somehow not morally bankrupt, and is redeemable in some way.  In fact the way you guys phrase it he is basically a dog with rabies and the only option now is to put the poor bugger down.

 

His actions are reprehensible, but he's not morally bankrupt because he's not capable of making good, rational, morally upright decisions. He is *broken*. The thoughts, ideas, concepts, and actions that he takes *seem* reasonable to him *because his soul is damaged and he's no longer functional*. He *might* be redeemable, if there were some way to repair the damage that was done to him so that he he's capable of making sane, rational decisions again.

 

Durance is no more culpable for the things he says and does than a man in a deep, permanent psychotic state would be.

 

 

That means Durance isn't a human, he's just a tool. Which he is, of course.

 

Humans with moral agency have free will, and thus moral agency. The good or evil of a tool is up to the user. The question then becomes, if anyone can be transformed from person to tool by the Authorities, what makes anyone else immune to the proscription?

 

Any Authority, the State included, has the power to determine who is psychotic and what penalties that requires. Which merely means that might makes right.

 

Anybody, including you and all other humans, can lose their free will when damage to the brain directly causes personality shifts and other problems--such as delusions, paranoia, mood lability, etc. In these situations the person isn't controlling their thoughts, ideas, actions, beliefs, etc--they are being directly caused by an organic dysfunction in the physical make up of the brain. In a psychotic state, you do not control your actions--your psychosis does. In the same sense, a TBI can cause a complete personality shift, and the new personality--it's feelings, it's thoughts, it's opinions, etc--is not something the person chooses.

 

In the world of Eora, the soul is a real, quantifiable, measurable object with a direct impact on a persons thoughts, actions, beliefs, personality, etc. *just* like the brain is in the real world. In Eora, you can *directly* cause people to develop different beliefs, thoughts, etc. by screwing around with that persons soul. This is, in part, what animancy is about and part of the reason for the distrust and general dislike of animancers. This is, in fact, how magical spells effects like "charmed" and "frightened" are achieved. Durance is not culpable because so much damage has been done to his soul that he is now being controlled by that damage--his thoughts, beliefs, and actions are no longer those of a sane, cohesive personality.

 

Your comment about him being a tool is in some sense appropriate. Magran used him exactly as such--as a tool to achieve her ends, a tool that she used carelessly, damaged beyond repair, and then lost before she could destroy it.

Edited March 3, 2016 by Katarack21

[FlintlockJazz]

 

 Don't think of it as trauma. Think of it as TBI resulting in major personality changes resulting in what you see today.

I am still waiting to hear the part where you guys explain how this makes it so his actions aren't reprehensible, he is somehow not morally bankrupt, and is redeemable in some way.  In fact the way you guys phrase it he is basically a dog with rabies and the only option now is to put the poor bugger down.

 

Oh gods no.  I hope no one does say that like certain other boards do with characters like these.  His actions are reprehensible, it's just a question of whether he does it because he is Evil or because he is insane.  And yes, it may be the only option is to put the guy down for his own good, except that the chances are his soul will stay broken and will reincarnate into some other poor sod.  My characters tend to keep him around partly because he is useful and they can at least try to get some good out of him but also because they can keep an eye on him and keep him on a leash while they figure out what they should do with him.  In Eora the options there do seem limited.

[asnjas]

if i remember correctly, in bg2 companions would leave your party if your reputation strayed to from theirs.

 

this has a down side of limiting who you can take along in your journey. if you plan to play evil than that limits you to only evil characters.

 

poe lets you use everyone because no one is lawful evil or lawful good etc. i would think its a trade off.

[Hayzeus]

if i remember correctly, in bg2 companions would leave your party if your reputation strayed to from theirs.

 

The reputation mechanic in bg/bg2 was poorly implemented. One would think that evil characters would appreciate the benefits of having a good reputation, e.g. discounts in stores. But, being stupidly evil, they basically throw a hissy fit and leave if player saves one kitten too many, never mind the rewards. Failing or declining to do their npc quest is a more justified reason to take off.

 

I think that companions should give a fair warning before leaving if the player is about to do something that really, really bothers them, on a case by case basis.

[HawkSoft]

Your comment about him being a tool is in some sense appropriate. Magran used him exactly as such--as a tool to achieve her ends, a tool that she used carelessly, damaged beyond repair, and then lost before she could destroy it.

My view is that Magran had got her use out of Durance and then simply discarded him like a thrown stone.

The fact that the stone shattered when it hit a rock was of no concern to her.

[Karkarov]

Oh gods no.  I hope no one does say that like certain other boards do with characters like these.  His actions are reprehensible, it's just a question of whether he does it because he is Evil or because he is insane. 

I am pretty sure you can be both at the same time.  Being insane is not a pack of mentos, you don't get to say "sorry", shrug, then everyone laughs and it is all okay.

[FlintlockJazz]

 

Being insane is not a pack of mentos, you don't get to say "sorry", shrug, then everyone laughs and it is all okay.

Bit of a strawman, I never said you get to shrug and say sorry.  In fact, I think my entire post made it clear that was not the case.

[Katarack21]

 

Oh gods no.  I hope no one does say that like certain other boards do with characters like these.  His actions are reprehensible, it's just a question of whether he does it because he is Evil or because he is insane. 

I am pretty sure you can be both at the same time.  Being insane is not a pack of mentos, you don't get to say "sorry", shrug, then everyone laughs and it is all okay.

 

Again, as I said earlier, being "evil" requires that you be be culpable for your decisions. It requires that you willingly make choices of which you understand the consequences. Being insane doesn't make it so it's "all okay", it just makes it so that you yourself are not personally responsible for your actions. In the adult world, complex situations require more than "good" or "evil". Sometimes nobody is either, more often everybody is a little bit of both. Durance may be morally reprehensible, and even irredeemable, *without* being evil *because of the nature of the damage he's went through and how that damage is directly affecting him*.

[physicalist]

 

Durance is very, very close to flat out evil.  His hands are super not clean.

Depends on how you characterize evil. That's the whole point of the companions; pretty much all of them are doing--or have done--only things that *they* felt were good, necessary, and required to be moral at that moment. And they all have good reasons for thinking and feeling that.

 

Durance, the Devil, and Eder are the easiest examples. All of them did super wrong things--building a weapon of mass destruction that needed human sacrifice to work, serial murder, and traitorous sedition and helping a foreign enemy to invade their homeland.

@Eder: What an American thing to say. Seriously.

Also, evil characters usually think they're in the right. Those "Evil League Of Evil"-characters might be a dime a dozen in comic books, but very few people actually embrace "EVIL" in this way. It's 99% lazy writing, born out of cultural narratives we usually use against enemies.

Edited March 3, 2016 by physicalist

[illathid]

 

 

The guy is not evil.  He needs to be locked in a padded room, pumped full of drugs, and subjected to a series of therapy sessions.  Unfortunately, playing the game we find out just what the sanitariums in Eora are like...

 

 

I'd contend that "Evil" and "Crazy" are not mutually exclusive conditions.

I would disagree. I think that in order to be evil, you have to consciously choose an action and be capable of understanding that the act in question is morally wrong. If you're crazy, you don't qualify under at least one of those requirements.

The thing is by this standard absolutely no one would be Evil. No one actually thinks what they're doing is evil. Try to think of the worst people in history, not one of them would say the actions they committed was morally wrong.

 

No, I think for insanity to excuse ones actions it needs to rise to an elevated level. Like they didn't intend to behead their wife, but they actually though her head was a hat (to mangle a famous example).

[Ymarsakar]

The sanity check is usually the breathing test for alcohol. Meaning somebody crazy doesn't know right from wrong because they think they can breathe in water or fly in the air. There's an unreality to their train of thought of behavior.

 

However, that doesn't explain how psychopaths and sociopaths, or people likeDurance, know how to function in a normal or even abnormal society. If these people were truly crazy, they would be spotted and they would end up in jail, in a fire, or just accidentally "falling" off a pier thinking they are going into their god's embrace. But they don't do that, because they are still rational, rationalizing, and thinking logically about this reality. If they understand that fire hurts and using fire shatters a soul, that's logic. Tools don't have those thoughts on their own, somebody would have to program it in to them. If a tool suddenly figures out the best way to "protect me" without my input, that's no longer a tool, but some kind of autonomous spirit.

 

Even if a person's ideas are crazy by this society's standards, put them into another time and place, like Aztec supremes, and they would fit right in and be hailed as "virtuous". It is not so easy to get into a person's head and figure out what they are thinking of or not at all, but one can see how rational and correct their actions were. A person that puts his hand in the fire, thinking it is cool like water, really is crazy and incapable of being responsible, because he has become detached from this reality. He's in some other reality. However, what people normally call serial killers, mass murderers, sociopaths, psychopaths, are middle to high functioning. They know how this reality works. They play within the rules to exploit the rules. They know what the rules are. Thus they know by our standards, what they are doing is wrong. But by their hierarchy's standards, it may be righteous. A person that couldn't tell the difference, would be incapable of functioning, even in self survival.

Edited March 3, 2016 by Ymarsakar

[Nonek]

It's much simpler than you ladies and gentlemen are making it out to be, a character is evil if he has an English accent, though at a pinch German or Russian will do.

 

You're welcome.

[Katarack21]

 

 

 

The guy is not evil.  He needs to be locked in a padded room, pumped full of drugs, and subjected to a series of therapy sessions.  Unfortunately, playing the game we find out just what the sanitariums in Eora are like...

 

I'd contend that "Evil" and "Crazy" are not mutually exclusive conditions.

I would disagree. I think that in order to be evil, you have to consciously choose an action and be capable of understanding that the act in question is morally wrong. If you're crazy, you don't qualify under at least one of those requirements.

The thing is by this standard absolutely no one would be Evil. No one actually thinks what they're doing is evil. Try to think of the worst people in history, not one of them would say the actions they committed was morally wrong.

 

No, I think for insanity to excuse ones actions it needs to rise to an elevated level. Like they didn't intend to behead their wife, but they actually though her head was a hat (to mangle a famous example).

 

I didn't say "believe that the action is wrong", I said "be capable of understanding that the act is morally wrong". The two aren't the same; I'm say the person has to *have the capacity* to understand the moral relevance of their own actions. Not that they judge their own actions a certain way.

[Katarack21]

 

 

Durance is very, very close to flat out evil.  His hands are super not clean.

Depends on how you characterize evil. That's the whole point of the companions; pretty much all of them are doing--or have done--only things that *they* felt were good, necessary, and required to be moral at that moment. And they all have good reasons for thinking and feeling that.

 

Durance, the Devil, and Eder are the easiest examples. All of them did super wrong things--building a weapon of mass destruction that needed human sacrifice to work, serial murder, and traitorous sedition and helping a foreign enemy to invade their homeland.

@Eder: What an American thing to say. Seriously.

Also, evil characters usually think they're in the right. Those "Evil League Of Evil"-characters might be a dime a dozen in comic books, but very few people actually embrace "EVIL" in this way. It's 99% lazy writing, born out of cultural narratives we usually use against enemies.

 

You mean "what an American way to write a character".

[Katarack21]

The sanity check is usually the breathing test for alcohol. Meaning somebody crazy doesn't know right from wrong because they think they can breathe in water or fly in the air. There's an unreality to their train of thought of behavior.

 

However, that doesn't explain how psychopaths and sociopaths, or people likeDurance, know how to function in a normal or even abnormal society. If these people were truly crazy, they would be spotted and they would end up in jail, in a fire, or just accidentally "falling" off a pier thinking they are going into their god's embrace. But they don't do that, because they are still rational, rationalizing, and thinking logically about this reality.

 No. They are thinking rationally, rationalizing, and thinking logically *within their reality*. If one is delusional, and is under the paranoid and delusional belief that the McDonalds down the street is a front for a secret CIA mission whose goal is to slowly sabotage your life to such a degree that it drives you to suicide, then bursting into the McDonalds screaming "ALL YOU SORRY SACKS OF **** CAN BURN IN HELL, I AIN'T GONNA DIE, YOU CAN TAKE YOUR SORRY SACK OF CONTRIVED BULLYING AND **** YOURSELVES!!" may *seem* like a logical, rational thing to do. It's rational decision making from an inherently absurd premise, the product of mental illness.

 

There is no "think you can breathe in water or your not crazy" sanity check. That doesn't exist.

[illathid]

 

 

 

 

The guy is not evil.  He needs to be locked in a padded room, pumped full of drugs, and subjected to a series of therapy sessions.  Unfortunately, playing the game we find out just what the sanitariums in Eora are like...

 

I'd contend that "Evil" and "Crazy" are not mutually exclusive conditions.

I would disagree. I think that in order to be evil, you have to consciously choose an action and be capable of understanding that the act in question is morally wrong. If you're crazy, you don't qualify under at least one of those requirements.

The thing is by this standard absolutely no one would be Evil. No one actually thinks what they're doing is evil. Try to think of the worst people in history, not one of them would say the actions they committed was morally wrong.

 

No, I think for insanity to excuse ones actions it needs to rise to an elevated level. Like they didn't intend to behead their wife, but they actually though her head was a hat (to mangle a famous example).

 

I didn't say "believe that the action is wrong", I said "be capable of understanding that the act is morally wrong". The two aren't the same; I'm say the person has to *have the capacity* to understand the moral relevance of their own actions. Not that they judge their own actions a certain way.

 

 

Ah, my mistake then. In that case then Durance is clearly not crazy but evil. Durance clearly has the capacity to understand the moral relevance of his actions.

[Katarack21]

 

 

 

 

 

The guy is not evil.  He needs to be locked in a padded room, pumped full of drugs, and subjected to a series of therapy sessions.  Unfortunately, playing the game we find out just what the sanitariums in Eora are like...

 

I'd contend that "Evil" and "Crazy" are not mutually exclusive conditions.

I would disagree. I think that in order to be evil, you have to consciously choose an action and be capable of understanding that the act in question is morally wrong. If you're crazy, you don't qualify under at least one of those requirements.

The thing is by this standard absolutely no one would be Evil. No one actually thinks what they're doing is evil. Try to think of the worst people in history, not one of them would say the actions they committed was morally wrong.

 

No, I think for insanity to excuse ones actions it needs to rise to an elevated level. Like they didn't intend to behead their wife, but they actually though her head was a hat (to mangle a famous example).

 

I didn't say "believe that the action is wrong", I said "be capable of understanding that the act is morally wrong". The two aren't the same; I'm say the person has to *have the capacity* to understand the moral relevance of their own actions. Not that they judge their own actions a certain way.

 

 

Ah, my mistake then. In that case then Durance is clearly not crazy but evil. Durance clearly has the capacity to understand the moral relevance of his actions.

 

Durance can barely understand what's happening to him or the world around him on a day-to-day basis. I doubt he has the capacity to understand why he's doing anything, let alone what any of it means or the purpose behind any of it. Thoughts and ideas just occur to him as right or wrong; as do or don't. The meaning behind it is long gone. That's part of what the Godhammer did to him.

[illathid]

Durance can barely understand what's happening to him or the world around him on a day-to-day basis. I doubt he has the capacity to understand why he's doing anything, let alone what any of it means or the purpose behind any of it. Thoughts and ideas just occur to him as right or wrong; as do or don't. The meaning behind it is long gone. That's part of what the Godhammer did to him.

That's a silly thing to say. He's damaged, yes, but it's not as if he has no will.

[FlintlockJazz]

 

The thing is by this standard absolutely no one would be Evil. No one actually thinks what they're doing is evil. Try to think of the worst people in history, not one of them would say the actions they committed was morally wrong.

 

No, I think for insanity to excuse ones actions it needs to rise to an elevated level. Like they didn't intend to behead their wife, but they actually though her head was a hat (to mangle a famous example).

 

You assume that everyone is doing what they believe in.  Do people work jobs because they believe in the company?  Or because they need the money?  Do people only rob others because they need to?  Or do some just not care about their victims?  If someone is doing something because they genuinely believe it needs to be done then that's one thing, if they are doing it because they got paid to do it then that's another.  People do things every day that they know is wrong, yet they do it anyway.

 

Regarding sociopaths (or psychopaths, I always get those two mixed up, think it depends on the country you are in as to which is which), they are capable of coherent thought unless they have other compulsions or issues (which is the case with most serial killers, they are usually sociopaths with compulsions that drive them to kill over their own deeply ingrained sense of self-preservation), they just don't care about anyone other than themselves.  They are the closest thing to evil in real life, because they can sit there, know what they are doing is wrong and still do it anyway (and cover up after themselves) or not depending solely on a cost-benefit analysis.  There is a reason why so many CEOs and politicians are sociopaths, and there is a reason why you should be afraid of them.  And unfortunately, most of them are good at covering it up, passing the blame onto others, and come out smelling of roses.  If Durance was a sociopath, you wouldn't know it, you'd think he was The Best Guy Around, he'd be like Eder (they are good at pretending to be what they are not because they don't care about lying to and manipulating people), and everyone would consider him a bro right up until he slit your thought in your sleep because he decided your continued existence was a burden.

[Katarack21]

 

Durance can barely understand what's happening to him or the world around him on a day-to-day basis. I doubt he has the capacity to understand why he's doing anything, let alone what any of it means or the purpose behind any of it. Thoughts and ideas just occur to him as right or wrong; as do or don't. The meaning behind it is long gone. That's part of what the Godhammer did to him.

That's a silly thing to say. He's damaged, yes, but it's not as if he has no will.

 

I don't think it's a silly thing to say at all. Durance has been a wandering, homeless ranter since the day Eothas died. He no longer controls any of his actions. No longer understands what he does or why he does it.

[Rosbjerg]

In truth we don't know how -and in what way, beyond 'different', a person's reasoning is affected when the soul is damaged.

 

I think there's ceartinly precedence, in regards to Durance's actions and words, to call him crazy and/or evil.

 

He can easily enough be seen as a bigoted zealot, a crazy hermit or even a tool for higher powers..

 

I personally prefer to view his actions as disjointed, as a a result of damage - a sort of critique of what happens to the mind when we surrender to conflicting morals and 'doublethink'.

[Ineth]

Durance can barely understand what's happening to him or the world around him on a day-to-day basis. I doubt he has the capacity to understand why he's doing anything, let alone what any of it means or the purpose behind any of it.

 

I think you're way exaggerating.

 

He functions just fine on a day-to-day basis, and in some interactions with NPCs his observations/interjections actually indicate above-average clarity and even wisdom.

 

Sure he lives in a separate reality in a sense, but it seems to me that that's more due to his refusal to come to terms with Magran's rejection of him and his attempts to rationalize an evil philosophy, than a result of clinical illness.

 

You seem to be arguing from the premise that if someone has just a pinch of craziness in them, their free will and capacity to be responsible for evil acts immediately drops from 100% to 0%.

I'd say it's more of an overlapping spectrum, and I'd put Durance at about "15% crazy, 85% evil" in that spectrum.

[Karkarov]

Again, as I said earlier, being "evil" requires that you be be culpable for your decisions.

So you think Durance isn't culpable?  You think because his soul is damaged that he has lost all free will?  Okay, well the game makes it painfully obvious that he has not lost free will and he very much so understands everything he is doing.  He just doesn't care about the moral context and feels "I am in the right so it doesn't matter".  So yeah, evil, sorry. 

[Karkarov]

Regarding sociopaths (or psychopaths, I always get those two mixed up, think it depends on the country you are in as to which is which), they are capable of coherent thought unless they have other compulsions or issues (which is the case with most serial killers, they are usually sociopaths with compulsions that drive them to kill over their own deeply ingrained sense of self-preservation), they just don't care about anyone other than themselves.  They are the closest thing to evil in real life, because they can sit there, know what they are doing is wrong and still do it anyway (and cover up after themselves) or not depending solely on a cost-benefit analysis. 

What you are describing is not a psycho, it is a sociopath.  A sociopath is a person who simply has no moral values or conscious.  They can walk up to a guy selling hot dogs on the street with no money, ask for a hot dog, then pull a knife and kill the hot dog vendor when they refuse to sell them one, or just wait tell he isn't looking and steal one more likely.  Either way they won't feel bad, they didn't have money sure, but they wanted a hot dog anyway.  Durance is very much a sociopath, you ask him why he killed tons of women, children, etc etc just because he "thought" they were Eothasians he will spew some might makes right, the ends justify the means, Eothas caused the stillborn (he knows this is highly unlikely) BS.  Sociopaths need to justify their actions, Durance repeatedly tries to justify his.  He isn't a Wicht, he knows exactly what he is doing.

 

Also I would scale back the liberal agenda CEO nonsense.  Or do you think Obama is a sociopath because he has ordered actions that has caused the deaths of hundreds yet can still sleep at night?  Also for all the smelling like roses comments high powered corporate america executives on the grass roots level are hated and distrusted by most people so yeah.  Just don't confuse "I made a cost benefit analysis that cost 5 thousand people their jobs but improved company productivity and long term viability/health" with "I knifed a guy in an alley because I wanted to make a play for his girlfriend"  They REALLY aren't the same thing.