290 réponses à ce sujet

[KnightofPhoenix]

Beerfish wrote...

KnightofPhoenix wrote...

Jory was a soldier, so he is expected not to be a coward. I don't see why people who haven't risked their lives can't call him a coward. We don't have to be soldiers and warriors to expect those who are to be brave, especially one who is aspiring to be a Grey Warden.
He should have known his limits and stayed home. That owuldn't have made him a coward.

Pretty well impossible to 'know your limits' when the limits are not communicated to you. 

Come sign up for this prestigous group that fights evil. 
We want you becausee you have proven to be a good warrior/knight.
Go out for a test quest to fetch some things.
You have passed the test, now it is time for our ceremony.

Oh we forgot to tell you to get into the prestigious group you have to drink a potioin that kills half of the people who drink it.....did we fail to mention that?

There is a big difference between being a coward and tossing your life away for no good reason.  Which is the wway I'd look at it and probably how he looked at it.  If jory had been 1st rather than after Daveth he probably would have taken the drink.

Jory knows perfectly well that the Grey WArdens fight the blight, aka the most terrifying enemy and the Archdemon, whom they kill personally. Jory had no excuse. He knows what a Grey Warden means and what they have to face. The drinking of the vial is only the last test.

[KalosCast]

Roxlimn wrote...

KalosCast:

Actually, that's part of what makes me wonder at the whole thing. Jory has killed Darkspawn - he knows what death is like. He knows that if he were to fall in battle, it would be to a horrific wound, and he could just as likely be killed off, hauled off to some Darkspawn ritual, or left to be eaten alive by the Wolves.

He's faced worse than that cup. Why's he acting all stupid all of a sudden?

He was trained to be ready for those things, he was not trained for his superior officer to go all creepy-stare cultist on him. It's a completely different kind of setting that he'd probably had no experience with. Using what little ingame knowledge that we're really given of him, that's the best explanation I can come up with without settling on meta-game principles like calling him various forms of plot device.

Modifié par KalosCast, 06 décembre 2009 - 07:47 .

[Akka le Vil]

Roxlimn wrote...

Akka le Vil:

Actually, fighting horrible monsters makes combat LESS horrific, not more - because you're not killing people - just monsters and targets. It's when you start thinking of them as people that it really gets to you.

Yeah, right. I'm pretty sure you've a lot of experience fighting Darkspawn to confirm that

And no, just fighting hand to hand isn't all that bad, even if the other guy is out to kill you - if you always clearly and solidly have the upper hand, which you do in the Korcari Wilds. It's not the intent to kill that's scary - it's the possibility that it can actually happen.

Do you have as much experience about fighting hand to hand someone that is really going to harm you than fighting darkspawn, or have you been robotized into blocking every emotion ?

KnightofPhoenix wrote...

Jory was a soldier, so he is
expected not to be a coward. I don't see why people who haven't risked
their lives can't call him a coward.

Because you don't look
down on someone when you don't even have an idea of what he's facing ?
Seems pretty basic behaviour to me ?

[Obliterati]

KalosCast wrote...

Roxlimn wrote...

KalosCast:

Actually, that's part of what makes me wonder at the whole thing. Jory has killed Darkspawn - he knows what death is like. He knows that if he were to fall in battle, it would be to a horrific wound, and he could just as likely be killed off, hauled off to some Darkspawn ritual, or left to be eaten alive by the Wolves.

He's faced worse than that cup. Why's he acting all stupid all of a sudden?

He was trained to be ready for those things, he was not trained for his superior officer to go all creepy-stare cultist on him. It's a completely different kind of setting that he'd probably had no experience with. Using what little ingame knowledge that we're really given of him, that's the best explanation I can come up with without settling on meta-game principles like calling him various forms of plot device.

That's right. It's not like Jory flipped out because Duncan was serving him cheap beer.

Duncan wants Jory to drink the blood of a darkspawn, which is, as far as Jory knows, instantly fatal. Not to mention that Jory seems to be a dedicated...uhh, Chantry-worshipper...Chantryite? Chantrist? Anyway, he's religious. I'm relatively sure the Chantry would frown on the Warden's extremely blasphemous use of blood-magic rituals. To make an analogy, try telling a dedicated Muslim soldier he needs to take part in a secret magic ritual that involves drinking a cup of arsenic-laced pig's blood. I'm thinking he might react emotionally as well...and it's hard to argue that he's wrong.

I don't think the developers intended for Jory to be a throwaway Redshirt, and this controversy is, in my worthless opinion, proof of their success.

[Vicious]

This discussion is moot anyway. He gets stabbed by Duncan and dies an ignoble death which actually befits him more than the blaze of glory he probably wanted.

It's a lot easier to fight the always chaotic evil enemy when you have an army at your back and are led by King "Rousing Speech Machine" Cailan than it is to face the man you initially trusted to serve under after watching him poison someone and then start speaking to you in crazy cult talk while staring at you wide-eyed holding a chalice the size of downtown Chicago.

This post won the thread.

I think we can all agree that street vagabond Daveth showed a lot more courage than the knight Ser Jory.

Modifié par Vicious, 06 décembre 2009 - 08:41 .

[mikeet207]

MassEffect762 wrote...

Jory should have stayed home, Duncan should have never recruited ANYONE with a wife and kid.

That's a good point.  Shame on that Duncan.  What a POS recruiter, only concerned with monthly quota.  The nerve!

[Jsmith0730]

Haven't read this thread in it's entirety but all I can say is that I was SERIOUSLY expecting the other two to just happen to be whichever of the other two races you didn't pick.

[AtreiyaN7]

Eleven pages?! Boy, the Jory at the Joining issue sure stirs things up. Usually it's the whole Duncan murdered him/Duncan DID NOT murder him angle being examined (I'm on the Duncan DID NOT murder him side of things). On the issue of cowardice: Jory started losing his nerve in the Wilds after you reach that dying soldier. Clearly, he's freaking out about darkspawn. He was scared, and at the Joining...well, yes, he acted cowardly, but I do think like others have said that it was a human reaction, given that he has a wife & child. I'm sure not everyone can man up in the situation he was dealing with (and that being said: he drew first & struck the first, albeit pathetically weak, blow).

[marshalleck]

MBirkhofer wrote...

In the Ostigar, battle sequance, as the Darkspawn charge, one of the front line soldiers is shown to be backing away.
The one behind him, puts his hand n the first guys shoulder, holding the line.    He doesn't stab the potential deserter in the back, for breaking ranks.

What do you suppose would have happened had he whipped around and drawn his sword on his fellow soldiers, as Jory did Duncan?

[Roxlimn]

If Jory freaks out about darkspawn and darkspawn blood then he shouldn't be joining an organization devoted to fighting them on a daily basis.



The Joining involves Mages and Lyrium and blood, but it is not blood magic. Blood Magic involves the use of life force, through blood, to power magic and spells. Since the Mages are using lyrium, they're obviously not using blood. Moreover, it's not men's blood that being used anyway - it's darkspawn blood. So even if it was being used to power the ritual, which it wasn't, there should not have been any issue whatsoever.



KalosCast:

He was trained to be ready for those things, he was not trained for his superior officer to go all creepy-stare cultist on him. It's a completely different kind of setting that he'd probably had no experience with. Using what little ingame knowledge that we're really given of him, that's the best explanation I can come up with without settling on meta-game principles like calling him various forms of plot device.

It's different. That doesn't mean it's worse. Duncan wasn't going all "creepy-stare cultist" on him. That's just a rhetorical exaggeration. He looked no different than he had before - if you thought he looked creepy then, then he always looked creepy, and if the creepy leaders are bugging you out, then join some other fighting force.



It's not like Loghain didn't look creepier.



Akka le Vil:

Yeah, right. I'm pretty sure you've a lot of experience fighting Darkspawn to confirm that

If you're going to assume unprovable apriori statements about everything and then proceed to undermine my integrity through veiled attacks, then there is no point in a continuing response. Is that your intent?

Do you have as much experience about fighting hand to hand someone that is really going to harm you than fighting darkspawn, or have you been robotized into blocking every emotion ?

Everyone feels emotion, man, especially fear. Some guys throw up before every mission. It doesn't stop them from doing their job and it doesn't drive them to aim lethal weapons at their commanding officers.



The point isn't that Jory felt fear. Everybody feels fear - it's normal. What makes Jory different is that he allowed his fear to drive him to make several very stupid decisions.

Because you don't look down on someone when you don't even have an idea of what he's facing ?

Seems pretty basic behaviour to me?

Jory wasn't facing something inhumanly horrific. Clearly, many people have done the ritual and not only that, but also survived and continue to live through everyday life thereafter. It's not impossible. We don't even have reports of Grey Wardens who survived but were driven permanently insane by the ritual - whether or not it happens, it can't be happening that often.



However, we do get real reports of soldiers being driven mentally unstable from being shelled too long or being in too horrific a combat. Some of those guys never really recover. Many of them die during the combat that triggers the illness. That doesn't make treason acceptable.



Obliterati:

Duncan wants Jory to drink the blood of a darkspawn, which is, as far as Jory knows, instantly fatal. Not to mention that Jory seems to be a dedicated...uhh, Chantry-worshipper...Chantryite? Chantrist? Anyway, he's religious. I'm relatively sure the Chantry would frown on the Warden's extremely blasphemous use of blood-magic rituals. To make an analogy, try telling a dedicated Muslim soldier he needs to take part in a secret magic ritual that involves drinking a cup of arsenic-laced pig's blood. I'm thinking he might react emotionally as well...and it's hard to argue that he's wrong.

Jory knows that the blood of Darkspawn is NOT 100% fatal - because he has two examples of survivors asking him to do it. He knows it's instantly fatal, but that's a good thing - when I die, I would like to have it be quick, God willing.



Also, see above. The Joining is not blood magic.

[Saurel]

Roxlimn wrote...

Jory wasn't facing something inhumanly horrific. Clearly, many people have done the ritual and not only that, but also survived and continue to live through everyday life thereafter.

Too bad the two guys, one of them acting really creepy doesn't help convey that at the time.

[phordicus]

my character wanted to off Jory in the wilds. unfortunately, dao's death system wouldn't let me.

[Roxlimn]

Saurel:

Everyone keeps saying that Duncan was acting really creepy there. I never got that impression. I get the feeling that all the creepiness was stemming from the blood and the huge chalice, not really Duncan. He was acting no creepier than any other man in a sacred ceremony.



Priests act that way in masses. Directors act that way during inaugurals. Principals act that way during graduation.



Has no one ever been to any sacred ceremony where the mood was anything other than farcical?

[Vicious]

If you're going to assume unprovable apriori statements about everything and then proceed to undermine my integrity through veiled attacks, then there is no point in a continuing response. Is that your intent?

Pure forum ownage.

[Krigwin]

Obliterati wrote...
Not to mention that Jory seems to be a dedicated...uhh, Chantry-worshipper...Chantryite? Chantrist?

Chantryman? Chantrian? Chantrish? 

We're gonna need some clarification on this, Bioware.

[Mudzr]

You can't really blame him, as soon as you play the "wife and kids" card you know your days are numbered.

[Roxlimn]

Yeah, red shirt all the way. I don't think they did it all that well, though. It's probably because they never really thought it all the way through.

[Lughsan35]

Beerfish wrote...

Ser Jory did not have enough information to make an informed decision regarding the Grey Wardens. His point is a good one, he was a good fighter who had proven himself. The Grey Wardens have taken to hiding the truth at best and lieing at worst to get recruits.

The Question has to be asked, how many perfectly good warriors over the centruies have died in the Grey Warden ritual? And how valuable are the Grey Wardens.

We know that you need them to officially 'end' the blight but as far as I can tell any of my non Grey Warden compaions are just as good if not better fighters than my own character.

Nope, I don't think Ser Jory was a coward at all. He just watched Daveth die a horrible grisly death. He had a wife with a kid on the way and he thought, 'Why the hell should I drink a potentially deadly draught, just on the 50/50 chance might become a Grey Warden.

At that early point in the game as a player I was not the least bit unhappy to see Duncan meet his maker.

You're right! The 400 years of history and stories told about the Gray Wardens and what they do certainly didn't give him any warning that he might be facing a Blight and an ARCHDEMON!

He was 1) stupid and 2) cowardly.  He didn't even had the small iota of courage the cowardly lion had in WANTING to be brave...

[Roxlimn]

It's just another point of dissonance. A guy who really was going for glory should at least be trying to FAKE being brave. Quite apart from the fact that following orders isn't about making informed decisions, Jory WAS, in fact, informed that if he joined the Wardens, he would be fighting all manner of horrific creatures at improbable odds, since all lore about Grey Wardens indicated just such a thing.

[Inakhia]

I would also like to argue with the above, in that the Joining ritual is in fact Blood Magic. Its some of the oldest form of blood magic, that ingesting a part of a creature gains you some form of power over said creature. Its some of the oldest recorded forms of ritual on earth, dating back to neolithic times I think. It uses fresh darkspawn blood, blood of an Archdemon and lyrium and some sort of magical preparation around the concoction. The results being anyone who drinks and survives becomes bound to the darkspawn, albeit in a controllable and limited time, manner.

Jory was a coward to some degree. but I think he was also someone who wasn't too bright, and probably had never really thought about anything. Duncan pops up, says you fight well, join us. Jory goes, 'Join the Grey Wardens? What an Honour!' and doesn't really think anything beyond honour and glory. Then he hits Ostagar and starts to see the ugly reality of what he's facing. Madness, monsters and the unknown facing him in every direction. His brain goes into overdrive, *finally* actually thinking about what he might be facing and its a major mistake. He just doesn't have the mental capacity to rationalise through it or really understand any kind of bigger picture.

Truth be told, I don't think Jory ever had enough flexability to ever really be a Warden. first unexpected thing and he freezes up and panics.

[Roxlimn]

It may blood magic in the real world, but Blood Magic in Thedas has some pretty specific definitions, and the Chantry objects to it on very specific grounds. Even if it could be considered Blood Magic, the Chantry wouldn't object.



For instance, you can use the blood of a pig and Flame Blast to cook a pretty mean blood pie. It's magic and it involves blood, but I don't think the Chantry has any grounds to declare you a maleficar over it.

[KalosCast]

It's different. That doesn't mean it's worse. Duncan wasn't going all "creepy-stare cultist" on him. That's just a rhetorical exaggeration. He looked no different than he had before - if you thought he looked creepy then, then he always looked creepy, and if the creepy leaders are bugging you out, then join some other fighting force.

Actually, that's exactly what it means, people are naturally afraid of things that they haven't experienced before, it's a survival mechanism. He didn't look different as in he was wearing a mask, he was, however, staring at him with wide eyes and holding an insanely oversize cup chock full of what amounts to poison (if you're lucky, it takes 30 years to kill you), and just got done doing what's probably blood magic (to the untrained eye at any rate) in front of Jory, who is a religious man.

And at that point, joining another fighting force wasn't an option. The fact that Duncan didn't see this until it was too late to kick him out of the order in a way that didn't involve death is a serious error in judgment. The man takes no steps to hide how nervous and insecure he is from your very first optional meeting.

I dunno, I'm probably done trying to argue the point, we don't seem to be likely to see eye-to-eye on most things.

Modifié par KalosCast, 07 décembre 2009 - 08:25 .

[Roxlimn]

Yeah, probably. You could, however, take a very good look at Duncan at the scene in question and measure his eye size pixel to pixel. It's exactly the same as it was before. There is no widening - he doesn't look at ANYONE with wide-crazy eyes. That's just your own impression.



He looked perfectly normal, if a tad serious, though since he's always serious and melodramatic, it's still arguable that he was any more serious there.



Jory doesn't know it's blood magic and he has no reason to suspect that it is since he hasn't the first idea of what magic is. He probably doesn't even know what blood magic is, exactly. Duncan is no Mage - of that he is 100% certain. He expresses no fear on these grounds. It's a totally baseless supposition.



What I see is a bunch of people overcomplicating what is a simple affair. He was ordered to undergo the initiation procedure for Grey Wardens so that he gets the necessary powers and resistances. He freaked out, refused a direct order, drew a weapon on a superior officer and threatened to run away with vital international secrets.



It's quite cut-and-dried. People are just picking up on the hot buttons that Bioware put in there to excite the excitable and confuse those less familiar with what's going on.



Would Duncan be at fault for choosing what is essentially an unsuitable recruit? Maybe. That's his own issue. Since he's dead, it's a moot point anyway. It has no bearing on what Jory himself did.

[Akka le Vil]

Roxlimn wrote...
Akka le Vil:

If you're going to assume unprovable apriori statements about everything and then proceed to undermine my integrity through veiled attacks, then there is no point in a continuing response. Is that your intent?

My intent is to prove that someone who face monsters isn't a coward. Facing something intents to kill you IS frightening, and he did it. That's brave.

YOU're the one making unprovable statement about Darkspawn being not frightening as they are monsters. Not only that's unprovable, but that also seems to mix up the uneasyness of hurting someone who is a fellow human with the fear of facing something totally alien and the threat of death, which are both completely unrelated.

Everyone feels emotion, man, especially fear. Some guys throw up before every mission. It doesn't stop them from doing their job and it doesn't drive them to aim lethal weapons at their commanding officers.

Do these commanding officers try to make them eat a poison that killed someone before their very eyes ?

The point isn't that Jory felt fear. Everybody feels fear - it's normal. What makes Jory different is that he allowed his fear to drive him to make several very stupid decisions.

Jory was a brave man, but not an heroic man. That's it. He's courageous enough to face death in fight, but not courageous enough to face the heavy duty of a Warden.
I can accept the "you have no way out, drink or die" idea, but I find ridiculous that anyone can call him a coward.
He was perhaps not courageous ENOUGH, but that's not like saying he's cowardly - the world doesn't work in binary mode.

[blauregen]

re: following orders and soldiers in general -- the US military, at least, has the 'illegal orders doctrine'. If you're ordered to do something that is clearly against the law, you're not only allowed to but expected to refuse.

Not only the US military. The old jesuite doctrine of slavish obedience lost a lot of appeal with the enlightement. As for Ser Jory..... Well, he was a human noble, and what you get from the human noble origin is that Grey Wardens are glorious, heroic warriors. Noone mentioned to Miss Cousland that her idols consist to a large part of forcibly conscripted criminals, people who have nothing left to lose and rebels with a cause but no chance. Neither did anybody mention cultish rites, poison and ingesting what - to a follower of the chantry - must seem the essence of evil itself.

So for all people drumming on about the chain of command and the necessity of obedience, I think a good case could be made that Jory had no reason to accept Duncan as anything remotely like a legitimate commanding officer. Actually he had more than enough reason to defy any order and leave on the spot, on the gorund that up to this point Duncan already had contradicted a lot of what his upringing likely taught him about honor and the maker's will.

He just had the bad luck to first follow the crowd, likely hoping for the best when Daveth droned on about defending from the blight, and then to be outnumbered and outmatched by fanatics, making neither a tactical retreat nor an appeal to decency a viable option.

Modifié par blauregen, 07 décembre 2009 - 08:16 .