134 réponses à ce sujet

[Exodus]

You're all wrong. The reason of life is simple. Forty-Two. That's why the Demon must die.



I'm sorry what was the question?

[Rugaru]

Don't know as the computer was destroyed a second too soon.

[IPerrin]

One point that seems to have been missed so far in this thread. There is evidence available in that room that connects this desire demon with Connor's desire demon. There are corpses that look suspiciously like corpses that have reanimated to attack your character in Redcliff castle. Perhaps your character cant be sure until you start a fight and the undead attack, perhaps your character does not have the redcliff experience with desire demons to draw that evidence from, but there is no way this desire demon is any different from that one.

[RunCDFirst]

Just think of this as sweet justice for all those years the Templar has spent shoving demons into young mages and killing the ones unable to resist. My mage thought it rather fitting that these holier than thou warriors succumbed to the first demon that set their eyes on them.

[Rugaru]

Templars don't shove a demon into young mages. For one the templars are there just to kill them if they turn into an abomination. The other mages send the apprentice into the fade to face a demon.

[Dark83]

Re: Real vs Illusory Happiness.

Red Pill or Blue Pill?

[Lianaar]

Original182 wrote...

Flemeth used you for the chance that Morrigan may have an offspring containing the essence of the Old God, as what Morrigan confessed near the end. The stopping of the Blight was just a cover story.
So no, she didn't do a good thing. If there was no value for you, she would have left you to die in the tower.

Flemeth helped stop the blight. You say the BLight is evil. She helped stop it. But she is evil too. So stopping evil by evil is by default evil? That makes little sense to me.

Ethics and people making thoughts on it have been occupied on what is evil and good or right and wrong for thousands of years now. One thing is sure, it is not an easy question to answer.

What is right and wrong you suck in with your growing up. Your surrounding, your parents, your environment, your friends, they all let you simply KNOW what is right or wrong. Usually what is doing wrong is considered evil. But is it really that simple? 

I admit, I don't know enough about the blight. But if you do, I welcome clarification. I don't know WHY the blight is there. I see what it idoes. I see what the Chantry claims to be reason for it. But I can not even come up with simple explanations on darkspawn. People don't even seem to be clear on what was first, archdemons or darkspawn. If the Maker did the taint or human mages did the taint. The lore is imperfect and I believe it is deliberate that it is so.
Why would an archdemon kill every living? There is no point in it. 

But to pull you examples about good or evil.
A sinking ship has only a single more place left in the boat that saves people and there is a man and a pregnant woman to take it. Both can't. The man shoves off the woman and takes the place. He survives. Pretty evil, isn't it? 
The man goes home, and provides food for his 6 kids who would have died if he doesn't shove off the woman and basically provides for her death. Is he still evil? Some cultures would say, yes, he is. Some would say, no, he did what he had to.
See? Without the why it is hard to determine if an action is evil.
Now, that would lead to the tough, if an action has NO reason whatsoever, is it evil? Can it be even considered evil, while being entirely harmful, if there is no intent of harming behind it? Or any intent at all? 

If someone forgets the fire on and it burns down the house killing your family, was it an evil deed? It killed everything you loved. Still, many might not consider it evil. There was no evil intent behind it. There was no wish to harm in it.

Does then really intent differenciate evil from good? But good intent, does good intent not lead to harm? Communism was made with the best of intents. To help the poor and provide for a just society. What came of it? Millions of people dying in social concentration camps. Which might be considered evil, but the intent behind it was pure and good.

So yes, I might not know what evil is. But I believe knowing what evil is isn't that easy. There is a gut feeling, that tells you if something is right and or wrong. That is your cultural ethics you follow. But that doesn't exactly gives an ideal of evil or good.

Not to mention that creatures who did bad things might do good things too. If someone grabs my kid from the above burning house and saves it, then that person did good. Even if he did it to get rewrad for it. I don't care why he did it. My kid lives and for me that is right and good. He did risk his life (which we tend to count as increased good for some reason) and did something good for me. If good has a price, does it make it less good? Why? 

I said the Blight must be stopped.
The darkspawn must be stopped.
Many demons must be stopped and the demons are likely to be evil. But demons might do things which are not evil. Just because someone you consider evil does something, it might be non evil too.
I don't know enough about the motivation of the arch dragons (or if they are the old gods or not, if it is only the Chantry teaching it and the whole 1st blight and the taint started as something entirely different), I don't know what level of intelligence the darkpawn possess (do they have a free mind? How can I call something evil, who has no free mind or will? A table can't be evil. It is just a tool.) I don't know if and when they would stop and what they would do with the ruined world. My char doesn't care. She doesn't wait out until all she knows is gone just to prove or counter prove theories.

It is apparent that the word "evil" doesn't exist in your vocabulary. I believe further discussion is futile.

As seen above. It does. It just isn't something others told me is. It is something I ask about and wonder about. It has more layers and perspectives. Generally, not a simple thing to answer.

[Herr Uhl]

Isn't all happiness illusionary though. All of it it made up for you by electric signals in your brain.



And choosing between getting enjoyment and getting food (2 buttons) mice chose getting enjoyment and starved to death.



And I see the maker as being a pride demon, who survives discworld-style

[ReubenLiew]

Maria Caliban wrote...

ReubenLiew wrote...

Yes the problem however the old Gods are already considered evil. And anything that can or will teach Blood Magic is also evil, in the eyes of the Chantry. So if all daemons can teach Blood Magic, ergo a devout follower of the Chantry would therefore summarize that all daemons are evil!
So, you know, devout??

You're just making this up as you go along, aren't you?

The Chant says that blood mages are malificarium and are to be hunted down and killed. At no point does it say that every creature in creation or the Fade that can teach blood magic is evil or should be killed. If that were the case, then spirits of knowledge, compassion, and faith would be considered evil.

I am simply trying to go through the logical mindset of the Chantry. Blood Mages are maleficars, yes? Is that simply why we must hate them? Thats about as shallow as saying we must kill a (insert race here) because they are, you know?
Blood Mages are hunted down because they practice blood magic. The reason they hate blood magic is because it can control people's minds, which I'm sure you agree has an entire chapter dedicated to why that's wrong, which is also another reason why Andraste launched an Exalted March on the Tevinter Imperium.
Whilst spirits may be neutral, Daemons are given the definition of daemon because they are the most destructive of all the daemons in the Fade, which is why I gather they are called daemons in the first place, instead of maybe ghosts or whatever, and they almost always end up mind controlling their victims or even absolutely overwhelming their conciousness to become their own.
And as a devout Chantry follower, all Daemons must therefore be evil, because they are controlling people's minds. Which was exactly what the Desire daemon was doing, which is why it had to be destroyed. Not to mention it's feeding on the templars soul, which is just bad all round.
Not all spirits are bad, but all Daemons most certainly are.

[Arkwright99]

FWIW, my human noble rogue let the Seduced Templar & Desire Demon live (and leave?); had I been playing a different character - a Templar, say - then I might have killed it (her?). I think players should be free to decide what they want to do in any particular game and not be dictated to that one decision is "better" than another.

My only issue with whether it's possible to say that there's a 'right' or 'wrong' action is if there's a time in the game where your character comes to regret letting the Desire Demon live - say, you meet it again later in the game and it - or the seduced Templar - has committed some heinous atrocity because you *didn't kill them in the Circle Tower* then I would be more persuaded that one course of action is better than the other, but in the absence of that information I see the whole incident as a one-off event without any particular consequences. (Equally you could come across them and find them living out some tiny idyll away from all the horror of the Blight that beseiges the rest of Ferelden. )

In any case, I'm happy to play a character that makes mistakes in the game; it's certainly more interesting to play a fallible character who maybe screws up from time to time (if there are genuine consequences) than a insufferably self-righteous know-it-all who never deviates from the straight-and-narrow. And while it's possible to play the game with an 'all demons are evil and must be destroyed' mindset, I think it makes for a more complex universe for there to be one or two who are not so one-dimensional and have some ambiguity to what motivates them.

And like I say, next time I play through the Circle Tower with a different character I'll probably make a different decision.

Modifié par demos99, 26 novembre 2009 - 05:59 .

[ReubenLiew]

Nobody's telling anybody what they should do with their character or not, perish the thought!

We're just saying you're a heretic and therefore MUST BURN! BURN HERETIC BURN!!! Bring more promethium, men, this one's not burning hot enough!

[Soepkommetje]

I've been following this discussion for a while, and I have to say it's gotten quite interesting. It'll be hard to add anything to it, but I am going to try anyways.

First off, I'd like to say that there are some very distinctive different mindsets someone could try to answer this 'dilemma' in. And each one has valid reasons for either choice. Each player is free to choose whatever they want, and for whatever reason they want.

It can be a pure metagame reasoning, for instance killing them because it yields more loot and XP.

It can be a partial metagame reasoning, for instance a character that hasn't met any other Desire Demon yet attacking it outright because it is a demon.

Then, there are the moral choices, based on either the player's or the character's 'moral code'. I might be mistaken about this, but I have the feeling a lot of people participating in this discussion blur the line between their own and their character's morals. I can think of dozens of character concepts that would slay the demon, and just as much that would let it be, and all of their choices would be the right one.

As for what I personally would do if I was in the position of my character facing the choice... I truly do not know. I do know both options have definite advantages and drawbacks. On one of my playthroughs my character killed the Desire Demon and consequently the templar, but also told Cullen just before the final battle in the tower she would rather risk letting a blood mage or abomination go free than slay an innocent. In hindsight wildly hypocritical, but at the time both choices made sense.

I would also like ro raise a new point: What do we really know about Desire Demons in this game?

There is information from the codex; by definition biased, but also assumed to be written by experts. (for the most part)
There is information from loading screen tips; probably the closest we get to an objective narrative.
There are a handful Desire Demons without dialogue, they attack on meeting.
And there are three (I think, always a chance I'm forgetting one or two) that come with conversation and choices.

In my opinion, those three are the most interesting, as you can draw your own conclusions from their behaviour and speech.
Kitty is curious to the world, and will go through any means to reach her end: seeing the world through human eyes. Connor's demon is even more interesting, if you delve into the many conversation options with Connor and the demon (both in the real world and the fade) you find out she doesn't kill people and raise them as undead for 'evil' means. She just wants to play. She's not trying to get everyone dead, or rule the castle/village/world, but she is attacking Redcliffe for the sake of entertainment. In essence not that different from any gamer playing any of the Total War games, except she does it for real because she has no computer...
What I'm trying to get at is that the demon that possesses Connor is basically acting like a child with far too much power.
Both demons that actually possess anything display traits of the being they possess.

This actually reinforces the theory that they are beings of a single mindset feeding off of a living soul; everything that falls outside their domain (rage, hunger, sloth, desire or pride) is their interpretation of what they find in that soul.

If this is true, then I dare say they are not evil; but merely animalistic. They don't have a full set of feelings to base their actions upon, and instead take the morals of the being they possess, altered by the overpowering presence of one of those five emotions. And any good man or woman driven by  an overabundance of one of those emotions will resort to bad actions. Many people do not define that as evil though, instead relativising to a thing of necessity. The most common example is the starving man stealing a bread to survive.

I am one of those people, and as such I think I do not call the actions of any of those three Desire Demons evil; just misunderstood.
Not that that means I let them be, because I am not impervious to the suffering they cause. I do not stop them because they are evil however, and would probably let the Desire Demon in the templar quarters be, because she does not cause real immediate suffering.
In my opinion.
I hope that's not too controversial...

[xCirdanx]

Couldar wrote...

I think you are also forgetting that demons feed on emotion...desire demons feed on desire. You letting it go because all it wants is to "experience the world" you are just feeding it and making it stronger

that´s why my evil mage let them live it was realy fun to play the "bad" guy with the demons. too bad it has nearly zero impact in the epilouge.

[IPerrin]

it is hard to play an evil character in a game where your role must include saving the world from the darkspawn. you should have been able to make darker pacts to accomplish that goal. an army full of uldred's abomination mages, redcliff zombies, etc

[Alynna_tp]

IPerrin, I thought exactly as you did. How evil a character can you play when your ultimate acts save the world? Everyone regards you as a hero no matter how you got to be there. Makes you pause to think about characters like Loghain. But that's for another thread.



The Desire Demon is acting on the Templar's inner most desires, and giving him an illusion that he craves. She has no wish to fight your PC, but will defend herself if you attack. She is fulfilling his every wish and making him "feel" happy. He is in a state where he doesn't know the difference between this illusory happiness and real happiness. We may also assume that he has fallen to her powers against his will, though we are not certain.



The demon is however, using the Templar for her own agenda - to experience the world. When he is "used up" she will move on to another victim. If you don't stop her, then you are partially at fault for the lives of those victims she takes. If your PC doesn't really care about any of that then I can see how you might leave them alone to be happy together.



However, I myself always choose to defeat the demon and the Templar. His happiness is not real, the demon is lying to him. She is playing on your sympathies towards the Templar to survive. I guess in the end, I'm making the choice for the Templar too, without his permission. What a bitter red pill to swallow.

[OrtRestave]

Lianaar wrote...

Original182 wrote...

Flemeth used you for the chance that Morrigan may have an offspring containing the essence of the Old God, as what Morrigan confessed near the end. The stopping of the Blight was just a cover story.
So no, she didn't do a good thing. If there was no value for you, she would have left you to die in the tower.

Flemeth helped stop the blight. You say the BLight is evil. She helped stop it. But she is evil too. So stopping evil by evil is by default evil? That makes little sense to me.

Ethics and people making thoughts on it have been occupied on what is evil and good or right and wrong for thousands of years now. One thing is sure, it is not an easy question to answer.

What is right and wrong you suck in with your growing up. Your surrounding, your parents, your environment, your friends, they all let you simply KNOW what is right or wrong. Usually what is doing wrong is considered evil. But is it really that simple? 

I admit, I don't know enough about the blight. But if you do, I welcome clarification. I don't know WHY the blight is there. I see what it idoes. I see what the Chantry claims to be reason for it. But I can not even come up with simple explanations on darkspawn. People don't even seem to be clear on what was first, archdemons or darkspawn. If the Maker did the taint or human mages did the taint. The lore is imperfect and I believe it is deliberate that it is so.
Why would an archdemon kill every living? There is no point in it. 

But to pull you examples about good or evil.
A sinking ship has only a single more place left in the boat that saves people and there is a man and a pregnant woman to take it. Both can't. The man shoves off the woman and takes the place. He survives. Pretty evil, isn't it? 
The man goes home, and provides food for his 6 kids who would have died if he doesn't shove off the woman and basically provides for her death. Is he still evil? Some cultures would say, yes, he is. Some would say, no, he did what he had to.
See? Without the why it is hard to determine if an action is evil.
Now, that would lead to the tough, if an action has NO reason whatsoever, is it evil? Can it be even considered evil, while being entirely harmful, if there is no intent of harming behind it? Or any intent at all? 

If someone forgets the fire on and it burns down the house killing your family, was it an evil deed? It killed everything you loved. Still, many might not consider it evil. There was no evil intent behind it. There was no wish to harm in it.

Does then really intent differenciate evil from good? But good intent, does good intent not lead to harm? Communism was made with the best of intents. To help the poor and provide for a just society. What came of it? Millions of people dying in social concentration camps. Which might be considered evil, but the intent behind it was pure and good.

So yes, I might not know what evil is. But I believe knowing what evil is isn't that easy. There is a gut feeling, that tells you if something is right and or wrong. That is your cultural ethics you follow. But that doesn't exactly gives an ideal of evil or good.

Not to mention that creatures who did bad things might do good things too. If someone grabs my kid from the above burning house and saves it, then that person did good. Even if he did it to get rewrad for it. I don't care why he did it. My kid lives and for me that is right and good. He did risk his life (which we tend to count as increased good for some reason) and did something good for me. If good has a price, does it make it less good? Why? 

I said the Blight must be stopped.
The darkspawn must be stopped.
Many demons must be stopped and the demons are likely to be evil. But demons might do things which are not evil. Just because someone you consider evil does something, it might be non evil too.
I don't know enough about the motivation of the arch dragons (or if they are the old gods or not, if it is only the Chantry teaching it and the whole 1st blight and the taint started as something entirely different), I don't know what level of intelligence the darkpawn possess (do they have a free mind? How can I call something evil, who has no free mind or will? A table can't be evil. It is just a tool.) I don't know if and when they would stop and what they would do with the ruined world. My char doesn't care. She doesn't wait out until all she knows is gone just to prove or counter prove theories.

It is apparent that the word "evil" doesn't exist in your vocabulary. I believe further discussion is futile.

As seen above. It does. It just isn't something others told me is. It is something I ask about and wonder about. It has more layers and perspectives. Generally, not a simple thing to answer.

Ugh, there's one in every thread on good or evil.

Evil is a will which causes harm, physical or metaphysical, to another being in contravention to its will. There are degrees of evil which depend on degree of harm as well as intent, but largely intent is not as relevant as the actual consequences.

Demons universally have a single motivation--to promote their corresponding emotion by twisting the perceptions and intents of human beings such that they can feed upon those emotions. This is the nature of demons. Demons are not however autonomous, instinct-driven animals. They possess an intelligent will to achieve their ends; thus they have a will, and because this will is to knowingly exploit another self-willed being, their will is malevolent.

The Blight consists primarily of savage, almost mindless darkspawn, as well as intelligent darkspawn, ultimately controlled by the Archdemon. The nature of the intent of the darkspawn and the archdemon is really unclear. However, it is clear that the Archdemon at least has a malevolent will as well. The fact that the nature of the blight, (feasting on people and twisting them into its servants) is repellant is only tangential to whether the Blight is evil. These aspects are morally repellant but clearly acceptable to the darkspawn. That doesn't change the fact that the blights are driven ultimately by self-willed creatures whose goal is to kill, eat, and taint everything else in the world.

Clearly moral schema are not universal, thus they must be irrelevant to determining the nature of evil. Both demons and the Blight are significant evils, not because of moral wrongness, but because they willfully deprive others of their will by enslaving their minds or outright killing them.

[Original182]

Alynna_tp wrote...

The demon is however, using the Templar for her own agenda - to experience the world. When he is "used up" she will move on to another victim. If you don't stop her, then you are partially at fault for the lives of those victims she takes. If your PC doesn't really care about any of that then I can see how you might leave them alone to be happy together.

However, I myself always choose to defeat the demon and the Templar. His happiness is not real, the demon is lying to him. She is playing on your sympathies towards the Templar to survive. I guess in the end, I'm making the choice for the Templar too, without his permission. What a bitter red pill to swallow.

If there was any chance to save the Templar, you would have done that.
But there is a lot of evidence that shows that demons who use their victims end up killing them in the end.

Look at what the Sloth Demon did to Niall. In the end Niall died, and all the while in the Fade the Sloth Demon constantly tries to trick you into putting down your weapons. You would have died if you had not fought back.

Unfortunately, the Templar was not strong enough to fight the illusions. He would have been dead anyway just like Niall. Better for you to kill them both and prevent the Desire Demon from harming other people.

[Basher of Glory]

Honestly, I didn't really feel sorry for the templar. I have conflicting feelings about this order anyway.
Aren't the lot of them just cruel zealots, fullfilling blindly any order of an absolutistic church, even when killing of children is involved?

Don't get me wrong: I like the one side of the religion about the founder and his prophet. But I DO hate the institutional clergy, which seems to be very similar to the medieval catholic church in regard of inquisition, torture and sentencing people to the stake.
In this analogy the templars would be the inquisitors and the bloodmages the hunted heretics.

I just wonder, what other templars would have done to their comrade, should they have seen him in his bewitched state.

Modifié par Baher of Glory, 27 novembre 2009 - 07:05 .

[Rugaru]

Another templar would kill the demon outright, if the charmed templar didn't snap out of it they would have killed him as well.

[ComTrav]

Baher of Glory wrote...

Honestly, I didn't really feel sorry for the templar. I have conflicting feelings about this order anyway.
Aren't the lot of them just cruel zealots, fullfilling blindly any order of an absolutistic church, even when killing of children is involved?

Don't get me wrong: I like the one side of the religion about the founder and his prophet. But I DO hate the institutional clergy, which seems to be very similar to the medieval catholic church in regard of inquisition, torture and sentencing people to the stake.
In this analogy the templars would be the inquisitors and the bloodmages the hunted heretics.

I just wonder, what other templars would have done to their comrade, should they have seen him in his bewitched state.

I had the opposite. RP'ing as a mage who respected the necessity of the Templar and their role, I found it particularly sad and tragic that a demon had corrupted one. I also felt sorry that he had to sacrifice everything he wanted to be a Templar. It matters a lot if you see the Templar as the oppressive military arm of the Chantry or a self-sacrificing warrior order that exists to prevent the sort of situations at Redcliffe and the Tower from happening.

(RP'ing on my dwarf warrior, I just saw "Demon? IT'S CLOBBERING TIME!")

I suppose it's unfair to judge him just because he's a Templar--we don't know much about him, personally. He could been a cruel, bloodthirsty inquisitor. But there are a number of Templar who seem like pretty good guys. For example, "the Exorcist" in the alienage seemed to be the only human who cared about the elves at all. (I wonder if next time I won't take him with me in the orphanage, so he'll survive...but then I won't get to see "THE POWER OF THE MAKER COMPELS YOU!")

I'm sorta inclined to believe the enthralled Templar was a little more on the good side, as a zealot seems less likely to regret giving up normal life when there's apostates to be burned.

[Basher of Glory]

Of course my generalisation is not fair in regard of single individuals like the said blind templar and some others.

But IMO this is a persistant problem, when we judge organisations (repectively orders in this context).



Even the worst bunch of terrorists and / or criminals certainly have some liekeable guys, but this would not make the "evil" organisations less "evil".

[Rugaru]

hmm it doesn't matter how "good" a person is if they throw there lot in with a "bad" organization. If they were truly good then they wouldn't join up.

[Lianaar]

OrtRestave wrote...
Ugh, there's one in every thread on good or evil.

As in answer for what is good and evil? Correct. It shows how many -different- answers you can give on what is good, evil, right, wrong. All four mean something else. Good isn't necessary right.

Evil is a will which causes harm, physical or metaphysical, to another being in contravention to its will. There are degrees of evil which depend on degree of harm as well as intent, but largely intent is not as relevant as the actual consequences.

So it is the consequence that determines what action is good or evil? 
Great, so if a car slips on ice and kills someone, then the person driving the car is evil. Fair enough. Though neither continental, nor anglo-saxon law agrees with you.

Demons universally have a single motivation--to promote their corresponding emotion by twisting the perceptions and intents of human beings such that they can feed upon those emotions. This is the nature of demons. Demons are not however autonomous, instinct-driven animals. They possess an intelligent will to achieve their ends; thus they have a will, and because this will is to knowingly exploit another self-willed being, their will is malevolent.

That is your reading of the demons. I stick to the statement, that while you -might- be right, there are other readings to the demons. And the game makers don't provide proof of either. Thus you walk in the field of belief. What you believe, and within that system you are right. But only within that system. There are other plausible systems perfectly applicable, in which you are wrong.

The Blight consists primarily of savage, almost mindless darkspawn, as well as intelligent darkspawn, ultimately controlled by the Archdemon. The nature of the intent of the darkspawn and the archdemon is really unclear. However, it is clear that the Archdemon at least has a malevolent will as well. The fact that the nature of the blight, (feasting on people and twisting them into its servants) is repellant is only tangential to whether the Blight is evil. These aspects are morally repellant but clearly acceptable to the darkspawn. That doesn't change the fact that the blights are driven ultimately by self-willed creatures whose goal is to kill, eat, and taint everything else in the world.

I have been trying to find proof on this in so many ways, but nothing came through as unquestionable proof. It is not clear why the Blight happens, why the archdemon does what he does, There are different theories, some even include the elven gods. All of them have valid points in the ideas behind them. If the arch demon is indeed an old dragon cursed by the Maker (which is possible) then their wish to throw off the Maker from his throne might sime rightous. If they seek redemption from their state and killing the Maker would bring them to it, then it is quite understandable that they do what they do. Once again.. IF. But we are mostly facing information provided by the Chantry in a country dominated by Chantry. I wonder if other areas, less ruled by the Maker's follower would have the same codex entries. And please don't tell me yes, because we can not know. We can say: maybe. Or even likely depending on what you believe. Oh wait, that word again... believ.

Clearly moral schema are not universal, thus they must be irrelevant to determining the nature of evil.

Moral shema of today claims that slavery is evil. Moral schema of Roman Empire claims it is good. The schemas are neither universal nor something you can step over. They are -always- relevant in respect of moral choices. You can not bypass them. You can merely presume and believe your schema is the universal one and the rest is wrong anyway.

Both demons and the Blight are significant evils, not because of moral wrongness, but because they willfully deprive others of their will by enslaving their minds or outright killing them.

Provided you define evil by the consequences being harmful to -YOU- and things you value.
Blight is harmful to you and things you value as are demons. Against you they commit acts which you can not tolerate, thus you flag them evil.

I still am not convinced that killer bees are evil, though they are aggressive, territorial and approaching them almost always ends in human death. The consequences of their existence is fathal and harmful. I just can not see them as evil. I must be too 'tainted' by law and how law sees sinners. Which makes the will to harm necessary. The will should however be directed at harming itself, the consequences should be desired, not achieved out of negligence. Imho.

[ComTrav]

Couldar wrote...

hmm it doesn't matter how "good" a person is if they throw there lot in with a "bad" organization. If they were truly good then they wouldn't join up.

This assumes you (or your character) regard the Templar as a bad organization. Which is a whole other thread.

After fighting almost as many blood mages, demons, and abominations in the game as darkspawn, it's hard to deny that there's some legitimacy for the Templar's existence, and it's certainly preferable to the Qunari treatment of mages. (PC: What do you mean, Mages are beasts that do tricks? Sten: I was wrong. Beasts eventually learn.) Wouldn't have been nice if some Templar had found and killed Uldred BEFORE he trashed the tower? Wouldn't it have been nice if Arlessa Isolde had done what she was supposed to and sent Conor to the Circle for training instead of bringing in a maleficar to tutor him? Maybe if he was taught by someone who was not a blood mage, he would not have attracted demonic attention. It's easy to criticise the Templar as witch hunters, but the stakes are different when the witches are real.

[OrtRestave]

[quote]Lianaar wrote...

[quote]OrtRestave wrote...
Ugh, there's one in every thread on good or evil.
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As in answer for what is good and evil? Correct. It shows how many -different- answers you can give on what is good, evil, right, wrong. All four mean something else. Good isn't necessary right.
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Well, we're in agreement so far. Moral rightness and wrongness are not directly dependent on whether something is good or evil.

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[quote]
Evil is a will which causes harm, physical or metaphysical, to another being in contravention to its will. There are degrees of evil which depend on degree of harm as well as intent, but largely intent is not as relevant as the actual consequences.
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So it is the consequence that determines what action is good or evil? 
Great, so if a car slips on ice and kills someone, then the person driving the car is evil. Fair enough. Though neither continental, nor anglo-saxon law agrees with you.
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This is bizarrely selective reading. As I said, evil requires a will to do harm.

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Demons universally have a single motivation--to promote their corresponding emotion by twisting the perceptions and intents of human beings such that they can feed upon those emotions. This is the nature of demons. Demons are not however autonomous, instinct-driven animals. They possess an intelligent will to achieve their ends; thus they have a will, and because this will is to knowingly exploit another self-willed being, their will is malevolent.
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That is your reading of the demons. I stick to the statement, that while you -might- be right, there are other readings to the demons. And the game makers don't provide proof of either. Thus you walk in the field of belief. What you believe, and within that system you are right. But only within that system. There are other plausible systems perfectly applicable, in which you are wrong.
[/quote]

There are other plausible reads of other demons in other fiction, but in Dragon Age it is without exception that actual demons possess malevolent wills. They are evil because they do evil. There is no exception to this, based on their nature and every single instance where we can witness their actions. The only area in which this is less defined is with regards to abominations, which may possess some capacity for doing things which are not evil.

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The Blight consists primarily of savage, almost mindless darkspawn, as well as intelligent darkspawn, ultimately controlled by the Archdemon. The nature of the intent of the darkspawn and the archdemon is really unclear. However, it is clear that the Archdemon at least has a malevolent will as well. The fact that the nature of the blight, (feasting on people and twisting them into its servants) is repellant is only tangential to whether the Blight is evil. These aspects are morally repellant but clearly acceptable to the darkspawn. That doesn't change the fact that the blights are driven ultimately by self-willed creatures whose goal is to kill, eat, and taint everything else in the world.
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I have been trying to find proof on this in so many ways, but nothing came through as unquestionable proof. It is not clear why the Blight happens, why the archdemon does what he does, There are different theories, some even include the elven gods. All of them have valid points in the ideas behind them. If the arch demon is indeed an old dragon cursed by the Maker (which is possible) then their wish to throw off the Maker from his throne might sime rightous. If they seek redemption from their state and killing the Maker would bring them to it, then it is quite understandable that they do what they do. Once again.. IF. But we are mostly facing information provided by the Chantry in a country dominated by Chantry. I wonder if other areas, less ruled by the Maker's follower would have the same codex entries. And please don't tell me yes, because we can not know. We can say: maybe. Or even likely depending on what you believe. Oh wait, that word again... believ.
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It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if their intent is righteous to them, or even to others if it were known. It may perhaps slightly lessen the evil of the Blight, but the consequences of the Blight are still a monstrous evil.

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Clearly moral schema are not universal, thus they must be irrelevant to determining the nature of evil.
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Moral shema of today claims that slavery is evil. Moral schema of Roman Empire claims it is good. The schemas are neither universal nor something you can step over. They are -always- relevant in respect of moral choices. You can not bypass them. You can merely presume and believe your schema is the universal one and the rest is wrong anyway.
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I am so glad you brought this up, because slavery is a perfect example of evil done by those who do not consider it evil. It's also very clear that you don't understand what I'm saying. Of course slavery was not wrong in the eyes of those who practiced it, though most see it as a grave evil today. It is not that slavery wasn't evil when it was practiced by those who had no moral disagreement with the practice, nor is slavery evil today because now it is morally repugnant to us. The morality of the act to a given people is irrelevant. It is always evil. It is the practice of people willfully denying the freedom of others, and whether the practitioners consider it right or wrong it is still evil.

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Both demons and the Blight are significant evils, not because of moral wrongness, but because they willfully deprive others of their will by enslaving their minds or outright killing them.
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Provided you define evil by the consequences being harmful to -YOU- and things you value.
Blight is harmful to you and things you value as are demons. Against you they commit acts which you can not tolerate, thus you flag them evil.
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Their actions are evil. They're not "flagged" as evil, because evil isn't a state that something either is or is not. There is no essence of evil except in the consequences of actions. One being can do both good and evil, and committing an act of one type doesn't make it impossible to do the other. This is the sense in which you have latched onto this possibility of moral equivalence with regard to the demons and the Blight. They have not done any single thing, however, which is not evil; and as soon as they do something which is not evil, that doesn't change the fact that they have also done great evil.

We're talking about observable phenomena here, and the theoretical possibility that either the demons or the Blight could do something which is not evil is once again irrelevant. They have done and are doing evil.

[quote]
I still am not convinced that killer bees are evil, though they are aggressive, territorial and approaching them almost always ends in human death. The consequences of their existence is fathal and harmful. I just can not see them as evil. I must be too 'tainted' by law and how law sees sinners. Which makes the will to harm necessary. The will should however be directed at harming itself, the consequences should be desired, not achieved out of negligence. Imho.
[/quote]

Wait, what? Killer bees? Killer bees can't be evil, because they are not self-willed. Like the car accident. Once again I'm not entirely sure that you're reading me clearly. Killer bees can certainly do harm, as can car accidents, hurricanes, and all sorts of natural phenomena. But none of these things are evil, because they possess no will. A swarm of killer bees killing a person is not evil; a person killing a person is evil.

Modifié par OrtRestave, 27 novembre 2009 - 01:04 .