Did you kill Harmke?

[InsaneCommander]

In the game context you play an outsider, someone who came from another country and culture and who could not care less about the story of Cold Morn.

You are not from Raedceras or Dyrwood, so unless you are a first world hippie pacifist from Earth or a lawful good paladin teleported from Forgotten Realms you should not be too emotionally invested in this situation.

 

Well, there was a massacre in that village and the Devil is a murderer. If you are not near them, you may not be invested, just like most people irl aren't affected by wars and disasters in other countries. But being there and having heard Durance talk about the purges... I think it would have a serious effect. But that doesn't mean everyone would side with the Devil.

 

Yes, Harmke is guilty, but what happened in Cold Morn has absolutely no relation to your personal story. So when you go out of your way and travel for eight hours into the cold wilderness to dispense some justice on a person you've never heard of before (and murder a dozen woodcutters some of whom may have never set foot in Cold Morn in the first place) - admit it: you do it because it is a quest that you feel a compulsion to complete in a Role Playing Game. There is no personal gain in this - you just randomly travel to a distant location to kill someone just because you can.

As a boreal dwarf or a pale elf from the edge of the known world why would you even care about something that happened years ago during some war in some country a thousand miles away from your homeland?

Yet when a murderous animat (who hypothetically would have no moral qualms to capture you in your sleep and bring you to Galvino for some horrible experiments) asks you to go stab a guy just because the latter is "guilty" - you eagerly oblige.

 

Realistically, who would risk travelling with her? In a more complex game there could be quests with no apparent consequence or npcs/companions who would turn against you (imagine the Devil attacking you at night if you didn't side with her against Harmke...). But as you said, it's just a game and we will do quests like this for experience and to find out what happens.

 

But in my case it made sense. My character was cruel and aggressive and the Devil was her best friend. The only other person in the group that shared her tendencies. In fact, the unofficial story of my character was that she committed a murder in the Living Lands and escaped to the Eastern Raech. So of course she would side with the Devil and have a great time executing Harmke and any fools who happened to be there with him. Btw, I thought they were not involved in Cold Morn, that they were just woodcutters from Stalwart.

 

If I had played with my first character (benevolent/diplomatic) I would not kill him though.

 

Do you also return to Defiance Bay in Act 3 and kill all Dozens members just because they participated in mob justice? Do you go on a rampage in the Doemenel's mansion on every playthrough beacause they are terrible people?

 

Good idea. I Should have done that with my evil character.

 

 

(And by the way - you don't even have a 100% proof that all the woodcutters, that you slaughter just because they have chosen to protect their fellow worker from a random adventurer with a magical sword, are members of the lynching mob from Cold Morn. You base your judgement against them on hearsay - some hardcore justice right there.

 

That is true. When I played I thought they had nothing to do with Cold Morn. They just were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

 

 

There is a similar problem with Raedric - you pass through a village terrorized by the local lord and decide that you absolutely have to take on an entire castle full of armed guards because some guy named Kolsc asked you to sympathize with him for greater justice.

 

I think Raedric is a different case. He may have had his reasons, but he did kill his wife and was terrorizing the Vale. So why not try an alternative? My good character avoided killing the guards but killed him. My evil character was a Bleak Walker, so she had to kill everyone there (I think the priest survived though). And she wanted all their equipment to sell.

[smilehigh]

I like your approach to roleplaying, InsaneCommander. 

[InsaneCommander]

I like your approach to roleplaying, InsaneCommander. 

 

It was a nice experience with the Bleak Walker. And there was some unexpected moments like the quest with the baby. The character would have no problem killing her, but then I thought: "wait a moment, this guy is the leader of the most feared tribe here and he can't kill a f****** baby?" Then I killed him instead.

 

It was good because I (the player) wouldn't feel good doing that, even in a game... And I know that the reason he didn't kill the baby was to avoid complications, but my character didn't consider that. She assumed he was a coward and attacked him.

Edited July 7, 2016 by InsaneCommander

[qEin]

I've read through this thread and feel like sharing my opinion on this because this decision drove me to great lengths. 

 

Presented with a choice between:

 

1. "He burned down your house"

 

2. "He's not responsible for what happened to your family"

 

I initially really didn't want to click the first option because I try to spare as many lives in the world as i can as long as they aren't inflicting any short-term harm to others.

 

That's why I turned to the second option - it says that he isn't (even a little?) responsible for the family's death. This reply is not marked as lie so by saying that you aren't just trying to save the villager with a necessary lie, but you actually judge him to be innocent on the matter.

 

Naturally I asked myself, if I were to judge him innocent, who is responsible then?

Is it the man who mistook him for his enemy? - Not really.

Is it the mob as a whole? - He was part of the mob of his own free will, so that doesn't make him not responsible. 

 

Let's remind us that we are talking in absolutes here (since he is NOT responsible as the dialogue option implies). And the only way i can think of to justify that position is to say that all we do is already predetermined. Every decision in the future is already made for us and we have no choice on the matter. Only then can you say that he is "not responsible for what happened".

 

I found it to be the second hardest decision of the game after the adra dragon quest so far. Made even harder by the circumstances on how shortly you met your companion and how hard it is to sympathize with her due to lack of understanding. I think they made her with intent to feel "alien" to you.

 

Anyway, sorry for resurrecting such an old thread.

Looking forward to play Deadfire!

 

Regards

[Juodas Varnas]

I did end up killing him, despite playing an Eothasian priest and preaching forgiveness and redemption for the entire game, but i also never lied and when 'It's complicated' didn't suffice, i told the truth - that he did, indeed, burn her house down.

 

When the fight started, I was hoping that we would've beaten Harmke half-to-death and then gotten another prompt on what to do with him (like with a lot of guys like Gramrfel), getting a chance to put him in my dungeon or just having Devil realize that 'vengeance is pointless' or whatnot... Instead she just brutally finished the guy off.

Though, she did sorta realize that vengeance was pointless, but it was a tad too late for my tastes.

[Messier-31]

I found it to be the second hardest decision of the game after the adra dragon quest so far. 

 

What part of the decision with the adra dragon is hard?

[Juodas Varnas]

 

I found it to be the second hardest decision of the game after the adra dragon quest so far. 

 

What part of the decision with the adra dragon is hard?

 

Fighting it on POTD Ironman and risking losing the 100 hours of your campaign vs helping the... uhm... poor dragon that has been imprisoned in a dank cave for millennia finally achieve freedom it so sorely wishes (at the cost of a life of some racist dragon-hating dragon slayer nobody)

[Messier-31]

Ah.

 

I fancy befriending such individuals myself.

[qEin]

 

I found it to be the second hardest decision of the game after the adra dragon quest so far. 

 

What part of the decision with the adra dragon is hard?

 

 

You have to choose between saving an ancient and magic creature that the world will unlikely ever see again (even if it is a little cruel) and killing an innocent bystander that didn't do anything wrong in his life.

I wish they would make this decision easier by at least giving you an option to use someone else as a vessel who is at least remotely evil. 

 

I also didn't kill any other of the 3 dragons so far even though the alpine one seemed not very "nice".

[pecbounce]

On 4/5/2016 at 12:59 AM, house2fly said:

He isn't a psycho killer who just loves burning down houses. If you want to punish a dangerous serial killer, punish Devil Of Caroc.

Necro-ing a thread here but I need to add that none or very few actually mentions that Harmke didn't just burn the Devil's house down. He spent several hours burning and killing everyone in the village. "The next few hours are painted in colors more vivid than life. You put your torch to anything that stands and your sword to anyone who runs..." It wasn't cowardice that made Harmke burn the last house. He cooled off a bit and needed to do something before he was killed by the other guy who mistook him for a villager. 

 

[pecbounce]

On 7/6/2016 at 8:44 PM, smilehigh said:

In the game context you play an outsider, someone who came from another country and culture and who could not care less about the story of Cold Morn.

You are not from Raedceras or Dyrwood, so unless you are a first world hippie pacifist from Earth or a lawful good paladin teleported from Forgotten Realms you should not be too emotionally invested in this situation.

 

Yes, Harmke is guilty, but what happened in Cold Morn has absolutely no relation to your personal story. So when you go out of your way and travel for eight hours into the cold wilderness to dispense some justice on a person you've never heard of before (and murder a dozen woodcutters some of whom may have never set foot in Cold Morn in the first place) - admit it: you do it because it is a quest that you feel a compulsion to complete in a Role Playing Game. There is no personal gain in this - you just randomly travel to a distant location to kill someone just because you can.

As a boreal dwarf or a pale elf from the edge of the known world why would you even care about something that happened years ago during some war in some country a thousand miles away from your homeland?

Yet when a murderous animat (who hypothetically would have no moral qualms to capture you in your sleep and bring you to Galvino for some horrible experiments) asks you to go stab a guy just because the latter is "guilty" - you eagerly oblige.

 

Do you also return to Defiance Bay in Act 3 and kill all Dozens members just because they participated in mob justice? Do you go on a rampage in the Doemenel's mansion on every playthrough beacause they are terrible people?

 

(And by the way - you don't even have a 100% proof that all the woodcutters, that you slaughter just because they have chosen to protect their fellow worker from a random adventurer with a magical sword, are members of the lynching mob from Cold Morn. You base your judgement against them on hearsay - some hardcore justice right there.)

 

There is a similar problem with Raedric - you pass through a village terrorized by the local lord and decide that you absolutely have to take on an entire castle full of armed guards because some guy named Kolsc asked you to sympathize with him for greater justice.

There are absolutely roleplaying reasons why someone not emotionally invested in it would still want to know the truth or punish a mass murderer, even if that meant trekking for 8 hours. You mentioned one of them. You don't really get to determine for others what their characters are like. How would you know? So what if you have no personal gain in it? What's your point exactly? That Watchers who have the ability to know every sin in anyone's life have no authority to "dispense justice?" I'd say they have a little more authority to do it, based on how they have more accurate information than any jury.

But you make a good point about having no evidence suggesting that all of the other woodcutters participated in the purge. Same for the Dozens, not all of them participated in mob justice. Nor are all Doemenels assassins, though I think it's a perfectly valid reason to storm and massacre the base of the gang who sent assassins after you. But, this is why I chose to lie to the Devil. 

As for Raedric, you don't have to sympathize with Kolsc to want to kill Raedric. I wanted him dead before meeting Kolsc. But I didn't kill any guards doing their jobs. You could sneak your way in and kill just Raedric and his personal guards. They had a choice to defend a mass murderer or leave. They chose to stay and fight.

Edited February 11, 2020 by pecbounce