Sagiro is notorious for loving practical jokes. If he updates right to the very final post, and then never updates again, please don't say that I never warned anyone.
Now there's a Rule One violation if ever I heard one!
(Rule One: Never give the GM any ideas.)
Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 390
One Last Annoying Moral Dilemma
The Company is momentarily stunned by the enormity of Checkle’s proposal. Assuming he’s telling the truth, he’s offering his knowledge in exchange for genocide.
“We don’t
like the Mind Cows,” says Kibi slowly, but…”
“You have to careful,” says Checkle. “The dreaming caves are guarded. At least ours are guarded by... something terrible. You may have to fight it before you wake us up. So be careful. But I know you’ll do it.”
Morningstar glances at Kibi. “I don’t like them either…”
“They are wholly evil!” Checkle interjects. “They are slavers, you know.”
“We noticed,” says Morningstar. “But to kill all of them, does not seem right to me.”
Checkle shakes his head in frustration. “They are trying to kill all of us, all of the time. If you were to wake
them up, they would wipe
us out in a heartbeat.”
Dranko offers an alternative. “But if we wake you up, you won’t
have to go fight them. You’ll be awake, and they’ll still be in Dream. You’ll each have your own realm. You could just leave them alone.”
“They deserve to be killed!” says Checkle vehemently. “They’ve been the aggressors for centuries!”
“That’s where you take the first step on the path to wrongness,” says Ernie. “Whether or not they deserve it, has nothing to do with how you live your lives.”
“No,” says Checkle. “We’ve been fighting too long… I will not give it up. They are evil, hideous… the world will be a better place without them!”
Morningstar casts
brain spider on Checkle. She needs to know what he knows, particularly about the ritual. If they can simply extract it from his head, that would make all of this much easier. But she soon realizes that’s not an option. The ritual, Checkle knows, has never been written down. It has been magically encapsulated as a mental construct, and can only be passed from one mind to another via telepathy. It’s like a book. Checkle owns the book, but is not smart enough himself to open it, read it, or understand it. His plan is to hand the book over to the Company, once they have woken his people.
“None of us like the Egannic,” says Ernie. “But they can’t
all deserve to die in their sleep.”
“If we don’t use the Leaping Circle,” says Kibi to Checkle, “the world is going to end, with you in it.”
“Then we’d best come to an agreement! It’s in all our best interests. I agree!”
Morningstar ponders. She hates this sort of moral dilemma, but it needs solving, and quickly.
“I think if we wake you, we would also need to wake the Egannic,” she says.
“Wake them too? Then they would defend themselves! We would still destroy them all, but at great cost to us. So the result would be the same, save you’d be causing the deaths of thousands of my people for no good reason.”
“You don’t
need to wipe them out,” says Ernie, but Checkle ignores him.
“If we do wake your people up,” says Kibi, “won’t they see us and immediately attack?”
“They will be disoriented and weakened at first,” says Checkle. “You’ll have plenty of time to escape; my people won’t be able to harm you.”
“But then we’ll have to come back here and spend four days casting the ritual,” says Kibi.
“They would never think to come here,” says Checkle. “I certainly won’t tell them you’re here. I’m happy to make that part of the bargain, if you’d like!”
“There must be another way!” Ernie insists. Over the mind-link he says, “maybe we can convince them not to be hostile, using magic?”
“We’d have to convince their entire race not to take the opportunity to kill their enemies,” says Aravis. “I don’t see how that’s going to happen.”
“Why can’t you wake your people from stasis yourself?” asks Kibi.
Checkle sighs. “I’m not strong enough. The monster would eat me. It’s very big. It’s kind of like a… what do you call it… dragon?”
“Sounds like a perfect monster for Galdifain,” says Kibi.
“For what?”
“I think we can take care of the monster for you,” says Kibi.
“And then I can wake up my people myself!” says Checkle brightly.
“That way, you’re the hero,” says Dranko.
“I’ll have to remember how to turn off all the machines...” Checkle says, mostly to himself.
To his friends, Dranko thinks, “I feel better about taking out the monster, and letting him make up his own mind about what to do afterward.”
Morningstar doesn’t buy that rationalization. “We’re still committing genocide.”
“I disagree,” says Dranko. “And there’s a good chance he won’t be able to wake his people up by himself, and we get a free monster out of the deal.”
“We can’t count on that,” says Morningstar.
“I think Morningstar had a good idea before,” says Aravis. “If we do this, we also have to wake the Egannic, to make it fair.”
“I don’t’ feel like we owe the Egannic anything,” Dranko grumbles. “Those guys are jackasses.”
“We can at least
warn the Egannic, that they’re sleeping, and need to wake themselves up,” says Aravis. “We’d be preparing them so that both races have a fighting chance. They’re
already fighting; we’d just be changing the venue.”
In the end, the Company decides that this is the best of the bad options available. Ernie is disgusted that they’re helping perpetuate the cycle of violence, and Morningstar still feels that they’ll be complicit in thousands of deaths, but they need to get moving. The world needs saving either way.
They explain the plan to Galdifain, who thinks she can do her part. “For something as powerful as a dragon, it will take me about half a minute to bind it. That’s how long it will take me to read my scroll. I’ll need a direct unimpeded line to the beast the entire time, and remember, when I’m done, it will be bound in whatever physical state it’s in at the moment of completion.“
“So we have to keep it away from you, but not
too far away, without hurting it, for thirty seconds,” says Dranko. “Wonderful.”
“Sounds like a
forcecage with bars would do the trick,” says Kibi.
/*/
Thanks to Morningstar’s
brain spider on Checkle, Morningstar knows exactly how to reach the Keffet dreaming caves. The way is through one of the other caved-in passages leading out of the Leaping Circle chamber; Scree scouts, and then Aravis
shapechanges into a Digger long enough to eat his way past the rock fall.
They travel for three uneventful days, sleeping each night in a
mansion. On the third night, Aravis receives another vision of the surface.
Hae Kalkas is under siege.
Its massive stone walls, though scarred and cracked from an unrelenting barrage of catapulted boulders, still stand unbroken. The ground just outside those walls is littered with corpses, almost entirely orcish. Here and there lie ruined siege ladders, testament to several failed attempts by the orcish mob to scale the walls.
Thousands upon thousands of orcs now sit camped outside of bowshot range, restless, as more siege engines are built. Having ascertained what a tough nut Hae Kalkas will be to crack, their next assault will not be so easily rebuffed. Dozens of massive trebuchets are under construction. Hundreds of orcs are preparing huge wads of pitch, which will be set alight and lobbed over the walls. Others are slaughtering cows by the hundreds, and throwing the corpses into a charnel pit. These, too, will be loaded into the trebuchets and fired -- disease is often a besieger’s greatest ally. From the looks of things, the dwarves and men inside have about forty-eight hours before the next great assault will begin.
High on a hilltop, a lone orc stands at the apex of a sentry tower, gazing southward. He has been told that there is little to worry about; all of Charagan’s armies have been accounted for, and none are within two days’ march of the besieging force. But it’s odd – there is a heat shimmer on the grassy plains that looks quite a lot like an army. He watches it for a few more minutes, thinking it’s some trick of the light, but soon he can no longer deny it. Hundreds, maybe thousands of human soldiers are marching up the Norlin River from the direction of Sand’s Edge. That can’t be right; the main host of orcs had recently been sent down that river. There’s no way a force of humans could have bested them. Could there?
The sentry grabs a horn and blows it, three long blasts, and this bestirs the command tents down below. Let someone with more authority come take a look, he thinks. Still, he continues to squint through his spyglass, and now he thinks he can make out the insignia on the banners of the approaching force. He doesn’t recognize the white sun on a red field, but even if you had told him that he was looking upon the 2nd and 3rd battalions of One Supreme Intellect’s Army of the White Sun, those names would have meant little to him.
None of the Bloodseer’s orcs have ever even heard of the Jewels of the Plains, but that’s about to change.
It seems as though, up on the surface, the tide may be turning. Now the Company has to do its part.
They expect to reach the Keffet dreaming caves later that morning. It’s time to warn the Egannic. Morningstar dreams herself into Ava Dormo, back to the same temple where they had met Red Diamond and Two Spirals. There are only two Egannic there now, not ones she has met before, and there are no Navni. That makes sense; it’s morning, and they would have woken up.
The two Egannic whisper to one another when she arrives.
“Morningstar, you’ve returned,” says one. “A pleasure to meet you. My name is…” she projects an image of a cluster of spinning Rhombuses. Her friend introduces himself with in image of broken khet chip.
“I learned something very grave in our travels,” says Morningstar. “It’s going to be very difficult for you to understand and accept, but I need you to try. May I show you something?”
“I don’t see why not.”
Morningstar has never tried this before, but in theory it should work. Mustering a titanic force of will, she forcibly expels the two Egannic out of Ava Dormo. The Dream Lords may be her match for power in Ava Dormo, but they don’t know how to resist, don’t even understand that this is a thing that could happen. They vanish.
She waits.
A minute later they return, blinking, confused.
“That was very strange,” says Rhombuses. “What was that? You… gave us a vision?”
“I woke you up,” says Morningstar. “Your people are not from this world. Your people, and the Keffet, have been at war for very, very long time…”
“That is no secret,” interrupts Khet.
“…and while at first you waged it while awake, now you wage it in Dream.”
“We don’t dream,” says Rhombuses flatly.
“Your people developed powerful magic, to do something I never thought possible, to send yourselves, permanently, into what I call Ava Dormo. But you and I are both from the waking world.”
“This
is the waking world,” Khet insists.
“There is a cavern, similar to what you just saw, filled with Keffet,” says Morningstar.
“But… the cavern we saw was filled with Egannic, with our people.”
“They are in stasis,” Morningstar explains. “Just as you are. When you battle in dream, one of the facts of it is, you don’t truly die. Your people have been permanently in dream, never dying, and always coming back.”
“We have mastered death, it is true,” says Khet.
“No. You have machines keeping you in stasis. You are only living half a life.”
“What you are saying doesn’t make any sense,” says Rhombus. “You sound like a madwoman.”
“I know, it’s difficult.”
“I am not inclined to believe you,” says Khet. “What you are saying is, on its face, absurd. But... there were… trays, I suppose you’d call them, for a mile in every direction… with our people. They were all sleeping. We tried to wake up the nearest in the little time we had, but then you ended the vision. But we were lying asleep in our thousands, resting upon stone slabs, one atop the other.”
“As I said, there is some magic keeping your people asleep.”
“So we’re sleeping now? Those are our real physical bodies?”
“Yes.”
“And the Navni…”
“They are awake. They worship you when they are awake, and spend their entire days building statues to you.”
“Well, yes,” says Rhombuses. “We know that they dream about that.”
“No. They dream about you, here. They rush to sleep at night, and come here when they dream. And you give them pleasant memories afterward.”
“Yes, of course,” says Khet indignantly. “We are not cruel savages. The Navni are very useful, but we don’t wish them to have bad dreams at night, when they are finished. We modify them.”
“I am sorry, Morningstar, but do you have any proof of this,” asks Rhombuses.
“Did you try to exercise your Dream Lord powers while you were there?”
“It was a vision, no. We were not
truly there. It would not mean anything one way or another, what we can do, in a vision you granted us.”
Morningstar sighs. “Here’s the thing. The reason I’m telling you this, is that the Keffet are waking up, and that will… tip the balance of power considerably.”
“But they
are awake,” says Khet. “They fight us every day. They…ah, I see. You are telling me that they are dreaming, but that they are going to wake up…”
“And they will find your sleeping bodies, and they will kill you. All of you. I doubt I can prove it to you, but can you afford to take that risk?”
“We will consider.”
Khet and Rhombuses talk quietly to one another. Morningstar can hear Khet when he raises his voice. “They could be in league with the Keffet. This might be some sort of trick.”
“Who do you think I’m more likely to side with,” asks Morningstar. “You, or the Keffet?”
“I would have thought us, obviously,” says Rhombuses. “You are intelligent and enlightened. You’d not side with the barbarians.”
“We could send Two Spirals to investigate,” says Khet. “He is an explorer. He has even been to the dream world, so he says. Or, if Morningstar is right, to the waking one.”
“I can’t see how it hurts one way or another,” says Rhombuses. “If he finds nothing, we’re no worse off than before.”
“Two Spirals will think this is an interesting venture,” says Khet. “But how will he know where to go?”
“I will show him,” says Morningstar. She has extracted the exact location from Checkle’s mind.
Khet teleports away, and returns quickly with Two Spirals. Morningstar explains everything to him.
“That’s extraordinary!” he says when she’s done. Then, to the other Egannic, he asks, “Do you believe her?”
“No,” says Khet.
“I don’t think so,” says Rhombuses.
“Well, I believe her,” says Two Spirals. Morningstar detects a twinkle in his eye, one that reminds her, oddly enough, of Checkle.
“I believe her,” he says, “because I’ve dreamed of it.”
“But we don’t dream!” Khet protests.
“I do,” says Two Spirals. “I’ll go. I’ll take a look. If it’s true, we'd best be waking up. If it’s true, we will owe our race’s survival to you.”
“You’re crazy,” says Khet.
“I know.” Two Spirals winks at Morningstar, and vanishes.
…to be continued…
