290 réponses à ce sujet

[blackwolf1981]

Jori
seemed to me like a lot of larger fighters(no offense to you big guys)
He was strong, and naturally strong people tend to rely on that
physical strength. When confronted with things that physical strength
will not overcome...it tests your mental strength. Whats the best way
to demoralize a puncher?  Take his best punch and laugh at him.

Jory
was for the first time facing a monstrous opponent who was physically
stronger and meaner than him, that could causally tear apart seasoned warriors. He then had to face poison....which could kill him no matter how strong and skillfull he was.

I thought Jory was very well written. It emphasizes the point it is not enough to be the toughest man at the BBQ. It is mental toughness and flexibility as well....a willingness to face what you cannot understand.  It emphasizes how elite the grey wardens really are.

The
fact that there is so much discussion about it proves how well written
it was. Were Jory's actions cowardice?  His actions certainly met the
definition. Was he a coward, or was he a normal man subjected to
unusual stresses and simply not up to the task? I think it was the
latter.  I dont think too many people can come face to face with that
situation and not do as he did.

[cglasgow]

Eh, no, Jory entirely owed Duncan obedience. Jory chose to join the Grey Wardens, a recognized order of warriors/knights. Duncan is the chapter master of the Grey Wardens in Ferelden. QED, Duncan is now Jory's liege lord. So by medieval knight standards, Jory was commiting a heinous thing in disobeying the man and then trying to back up that disobedience with drawn steel.

[Tragick Flaw]

I symathize with Jory. Duncan could have done a much better job explaining to him his choices as he panicked instead of offering the old two choices. Anyway, do you really think that you could drink the blood after witness one of your comrades die from drinking it? Being more of a cup-half-full-kinda guy in choices like that, I would say no. He's a soldier, by he wasn't trained to deal with this sort of problems.

[cglasgow]

And a cutpurse from Denerim is?

[kormesios]

blauregen wrote...
Not only the US military. The old jesuite doctrine of slavish obedience lost a lot of appeal with the enlightement.

It's not like Ferelden is modeled on a post-Enlightenment society, though. 

More to the point, in modern times, the US army (and I assume all armies) can execute people for deserting in war time: http://usmilitary.ab.../l/blucmj85.htm

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.

I half-agree with this.  There's this huge disconnect between the Grey Wardens in the noble origin and Jory's view, and everything else we know.  Duncan says "Everyone was warned there's no turning back . . ." which is certainly not the case for my noble PC.

As a city elf, I thought when I joined that it meant cutting ties with everyone else--hence Duncan gives up his last name.  I'm a murderous vigilante, there's a criminal and a homeless Chantry orphan.  And some knight who apparently thinks he can go home and see his wife and kid on leave fairly often.

I assume this is just slightly sloppy writing, but maybe it was intentional--Duncan wouldn't be the first recruiter to mislead people until they sign up.

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.

Very modern use of the word "legitimate".  Duncan was legitimate because Jory agreed to join the Wardens. The way commanders stayed legitimate was by forcing the recruits to do as they commanded.  They certainly had the "right" to kill insubordinate soldiers during war.

I've said before on these boards that my first PC would have backed out after Daveth died, except for seeing what happened to Jory.

[Roxlimn]

 Akka le Vil:

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.

What you're trying to prove is unprovable.  Facing something that's trying to kill you is usually frightening if you believe that it has a chance of doing that.  Moreover, Jory does not show that he feels fear in fighting the Darkspawn you face - only at particular instances when he feels that his life is actually in danger.

Of course, he also isn't shown feeling fear so it can't be proved the other way, either - it's unprovable, as I said.

Bravery to me is not the absence of fear.  It's not brave, IMO to fight something you do not fear, or do something you feel no fear for.  Bravery is learning how to overcome fear, and Jory does not show that he can do this on his own.  He needs Alistair's reassurances, and when reassurances fail, so does he.

Finally, it's not unprovable that fighting inhuman monsters isn't as disturbing - as frightening - as fighting people.  It's the horrific element of fighting and killing people (not animals or monsters) that makes it as disturbing and frightening as it is.

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

They can be called on to order their troops into situations that are obviously and horrifically deadly, yes.  The specifics of the circumstance doesn't, to me, seem particularly important, and not in this instance where it was a simple command involved only with the possibility of a clean and quick death.

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.

He failed at two points in the game where no one else balked, and he showed no capability of being able to deal with his fear on his own.  He allowed his fear to lead to make serious mistakes that cost him his life and led him away from his goals.  That is cowardly, and by my measure, he does nothing I would count as courageous.  Fighting Darkspawn when you have obvious tactical superiority and an elite soldier leading you does not, in my mind, count as courageous, especially if you have to have your resolve reassured halfway through, when no one else (not even TWO civilians) balked.

[kormesios]

Roxlimn wrote...
Moreover, Jory does not show that he feels fear in fighting the Darkspawn you face - only at particular instances when he feels that his life is actually in danger.

From the moment Jory sees the ambushed patrol, he starts talking about how scared he is.  Unless you think he's lying for some reason or other, he is clearly scared of the Darkspawn and pushes himself to go on.  Or is pushed.  Either way, he makes it through a challenging mission, but he's clearly being eaten by worry.  Even the *idea* of another trial freaks him out, before Duncan explains what it is.

Eventually he reaches his breaking point and can't/doesn't make himself go any further, panics, and dies.

Whether he's brave for getting as far as he did despite his fear, or cowardly for snapping, is pretty much up to you.  It's an interesting thread, but trying to judge a whole man's character (even in a video game) on one act is tough.  If you want to call a man who, one time in his life, acts out of cowardice, he's a coward.   But I doubt I'd even try putting myself in his shoes.

[Roxlimn]

He's pushed. Alistair is holding him up. Without Alistair, it's my impression that he would've deserted then and there. The mission was NOT challenging. You only ever encounter scattered scouts, none of whom offer anything like a decent challenge for your small and inexperienced group.



My assessment of him comes from the entire time he spends with the group. including those parts where you were mopping up Darkspawn stragglers. He is continually letting his fear unman him, and it's only through the influence of others that he manages to do anything in the game.

[Jacks-Up]

th3warr1or wrote...

Jory is absolutely a coward. He might even have survived the Joining.

who cares?

[DariusKalera]

Roxlimn wrote...
DariusKalera:

1:  The ambush they found was, from what we can tell, behind friendly lines.  You don't send a supply caravan through an enemy held area.  His reaction of "Lets go back and tell someone" is perfectly justified under that situation since, apperently, no one knew that the ambush had occured.  Did the Warden's know there were Darkspawn in the area?  Obviously, but it is doubtful if they actually knew the numbers.  Once Alistair said out loud that he could generally tell that there weren't many in the area, Jory calmed down.

It was not reasonable.  Alistair was in charge and he said to forge on, and they also sent a survivor back to report on the incident.  Since both are true, he had no reason to want to go back.

2:  Sorry, I read this and I could not help but laugh.  Soldiery is not "just": about doing what you are told no matter what.  It's also about being intelligent and using your head and your own personal judgements.  It's why there are regulations about following an order that a person might feel is criminal.   When I trained my soldiers, and yes, I've trained quite a few, I would train them to use their brains.  A soldier that does not use their intelligence is a liability on the battlefield.  

A soldier that does not follow orders is even more of a liability.  If you don't stress that during your training, then you're not doing it very well.

What Duncan asked was not criminal, and Jory was not refusing on the basis of international or Ferelden law.  He wasn't using his brains - he was just refusing an order.

3:  Yeah, try that in real life.  Go to any military unit and have them line up.  Have one of them drink something that mak'es the drinker die horribly right before them and then say "Next!".  See how many step foreward.

In fact, this has occurred already, just not in the same circumstances.  Many soldiers are given pills to drink without any detailed description of what those pills actually do.  In some cases, the side effects were fatal.  And yes, the soldier drank the pills.

If I lined up a unit of Marines for special volunteer duty and asked them to drink a pill that had the endorsement of the US Government and which I, myself, had drunk, then yes I would expect every single one of them to do it, especially under threat of court martial for treason.

4:  While no soldier is given every strategic detail, they are informed on the nature of thier mission and what will be their tactical objectives in accomplishing said mission.  Information will be filtered down through the command levels till it reaches the soldier and he/she finds out how it all effects them directly.   Suicidal charges are done, usually, for one of two reasons.   1:  They have a fanatical devotion to something and dying in a charge is better than surrendering.   2:  The people in command do not know any better and order they order charge becuase they know that they  will not be the ones having to do the actual charge and getting killed.

Suicidal charges were the norm for combat during the Civil War.  During that era of combat, one of the best accepted ways to overcome an entrenched position was to charge it with infantry under withering enemy fire.  In fact, they still did this when rifles were replaced by machine guns and the guns would almost certainly whittle down all and any infantry charge to nothing.

5:  Jory acted rationally, as any person would have in that situation.  Anyone in thier right mind would have taken a step back after seeing what happened to Daveth.  Yes, he was a bad choice because he had a wife and child on the way.

What?!?  He acted stupidly, is what he did.  Given a chance at life, he chose certain death!  How idiotic do you have to be to do that?

Think of Cougar in Top Gun.  Did he freeze up when the MiG had him locked on?  Yes, he did.  All he could think about was his wife and baby girl.  He resigned because of it.  Did his fellow pilots think badly of him?  Nope, because they understood what he was going through and it had nothing to do with cowardice.

Point 1: He resigned.  And for very good reasons.  He did not refuse orders.  He suffered a normal, psychological human reaction, which he acknowledged and then did the right thing.

Point 2: He did not draw a weapon on a superior officer.

Tell me this: if, in the course of your training, you asked a soldier to do a seemingly suicidal thing (but which wasn't, actually) and then he not only refused but trained a gun at you, and then fired (but missed), would he get court-martialed and possibly executed?  Yes, he would.

1:  Yes, Alistair said to continue on and so they sent a lone, wounded survivor back through enemy held territory.  However, was that the right call to make?  Game play wise, yes, but in actuallity?  No.  It was not the smart thing to do. 

2:  At some point, a soldier has to learn to think for themselves under certain situations.  If they have to be ordered to do every single little thing then when it comes time that they are alone and come up with a solution, they can not do it because they never learned how.  Maybe it is just the difference in how we operated, alone or in a team of two. 

3:  Now, have the first guy take the pill and die right there on the spot while doubled over in excrutiating pain.  Do not have him die after everyone has already taken the pill, or 6 months down the road.  But right then at that moment.  Every single one of them will balk at taking the pill.  

4:  I guess you did not read the part where I said that the charges were being done because they did not know any better.  By the time of the Civil War, there had already been numerous occasions and examples of people using unconventional warfare to either bypass, or defeat, and entrenched enemy.  However, since they were unconventional, the tactics were never accepted by the military as a whole and therefore, never passed on to new leaders.  The belief was "Since we have always fought this way, why change it?".  The same mentallity was in place during WWI where the leaders "knew" the only way to remove an entrenched enemy was to charge them. 

After awhile though, they saw the pointlessness of it and changed tactics.  Some of those changes did come from officers that refused, actually more like neglected, to charge entrenched enemy positions and instead used that grey stuff between their ears to think of different ways to accomplish the same mission.  Yes, a few were court martialed by thier commanding offficers for refusing to obey orders.  Others however, were rewarded because they showed initiative in the accomplishment of the mission with a smaller loss of life. 

5:  Jory was never told that he would be killed if he did not drink the blood.  You can not say that he chose certain death if he did not know that there was a choice.

6:  Cougar actually does disobey direct orders to return to the carrier.  He is still in shock from what has occured.  He does not return until Maverick himself disobeys orders and goes back to reassure his friend and escort him back.

7:  Now, here is a hypothetical situation.  There is a 200 foot cliff with an air bag at the bottom of it.  I know the air bag is there but none of the individuals that I will be ordering to jump do, they just know that the cliff is there.  One at a time, and out sight of the others, I order them to jump off the cliff.  None of them would agree to do it.  Unless, of course, they are already suicidal.  Now, if i said that i would throw them off if they did not jump, I would expect them to react violently.

Would I actually do this?  No, I would not abuse the trust that my soldiers have placed in me by ordering them to do this.  If I order them to do something, they are guarenteed to have a reasonable chance at survival.

Jory, did not trust Duncan.  He had no reason to.  If he had, things might have turned out differently.

Modifié par DariusKalera, 08 décembre 2009 - 04:25 .

[Akka le Vil]

Roxlimn wrote...

What you're trying to prove is unprovable.  Facing something that's trying to kill you is usually frightening if you believe that it has a chance of doing that.

If you believe that some muscular guy wielding a large sword has no chance to kill you, regardless of your own skill, you're either seriously deluded or completely insane. Jory face this fear of being killed without cowering. That is brave, period.

Bravery to me is not the absence of fear.  It's not brave, IMO to fight something you do not fear, or do something you feel no fear for.  Bravery is learning how to overcome fear, and Jory does not show that he can do this on his own.  He needs Alistair's reassurances, and when reassurances fail, so does he.

You realize that you contradict yourself here ?

Finally, it's not unprovable that fighting inhuman monsters isn't as disturbing - as frightening - as fighting people.  It's the horrific element of fighting and killing people (not animals or monsters) that makes it as disturbing and frightening as it is.

Let me requote myself :
"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."

They can be called on to order their troops into situations that are obviously and horrifically deadly, yes.  The specifics of the circumstance doesn't, to me, seem particularly important, and not in this instance where it was a simple command involved only with the possibility of a clean and quick death.

I'm pretty sure that an order of suicide wouldn't be readily obeyed.

He failed at two points in the game where no one else balked

So what ?
He was with people even more courageous than him. Doesn't mean he's a coward. What kind of stupid logic is that ? Did you even get the point of "the world doesn't work in binary mode" ? Did you even read my point about "he was courageous, but not courageous enough" ?

Fighting Darkspawn when you have obvious tactical superiority and an elite soldier leading you does not, in my mind, count as courageous, especially if you have to have your resolve reassured halfway through, when no one else (not even TWO civilians) balked.

Your mind is singularly messed up then. Risking your life in a fight is well above what most people would willingly do.

Modifié par Akka le Vil, 08 décembre 2009 - 01:19 .

[Akka le Vil]

F-ing forum and double-post.

Modifié par Akka le Vil, 08 décembre 2009 - 01:20 .

[Hulk Hsieh]

Duncan is really bad at recruiting. Two deserters in his last 4 guys.

[Roxlimn]

 DariusKalera:
1. Nevertheless, it was not Jory's call to make.
2. I never said that soldiers should not learn how to think.  I said that it's more fundamental that they learn how to follow orders without question.  A stupid soldier could become a liability down the line.  A soldier who doesn't follow orders is a liability the moment he joins the force.
3. On orders and threat of court martial for treason?  I think not.  Soldiers are ordered into horrifically deadly situations all the time.  If they balk at every danger, they're useless.
4. I guess you missed the part where it's all about facing down incredibly dangerous and suicidal odds under orders.  I made no mention of whether it was effective or not.  That's not the point.
5. I think Duncan saying "There is no turning back," kind of informs him in no uncertain terms.  This is not about informed consent, you know.
6. I find it incredible that neither of them were court-martialed.  Of course, they also didn't aim their missiles at the carrier group and fired.
7. I've been in less fanatic societies that demanded more loyalty than that.  If none of your soldiers can trust you enough to jump off a cliff on your order, you're a lousy commander.
8. If so, Jory was a bad soldier in more than one manner.  If he knew he didn't trust Duncan enough to obey a suicidal order, then he is unfit to serve under Duncan and should have resigned his post then and there.

Akka le Vil:

If you believe that some muscular guy wielding a large sword has no chance to kill you, regardless of your own skill, you're either seriously deluded or completely insane. Jory face this fear of being killed without cowering. That is brave, period.

I don't believe that I'm sure to survive to tomorrow.  I have a chance, regardless of how small, of dying in my sleep.  That said, I do not fear sleep and I don't believe it's considered brave to turn off the lights and go to sleep.  Your mileage may vary.  If you think it's brave to sleep and kill cockroaches and eat peanuts, well then, I'm glad we have that ironed out.

And no, just because a guy is muscular and has a large sword doesn't mean he has any meaningful chance of killing you.

[Akka le Vil]

Roxlimn wrote...
I don't believe that I'm sure to survive to tomorrow.  I have a chance, regardless of how small, of dying in my sleep.  That said, I do not fear sleep and I don't believe it's considered brave to turn off the lights and go to sleep.  Your mileage may vary.  If you think it's brave to sleep and kill cockroaches and eat peanuts, well then, I'm glad we have that ironed out.

And no, just because a guy is muscular and has a large sword doesn't mean he has any meaningful chance of killing you.

Where is the smiley when you need it ?

[naledgeborn]

I like to think of Ser Jory as an unshaven vag, full of potential but, unfortunately, realistically irritating.