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Message: <blockquote data-quote="takyris" data-source="post: 1209808" data-attributes="member: 5171">Hey, all,We've been doing a good job of keeping this civil.  Let's keep it up.A lot of the argument/disagreement comes from two main points:1) Are decades-old immortal children still children?  This is a question only the DM can answer.  If they are physically young but mentally have advanced into twisted cultist-adults, then they should be treated like adults, just like a 40-year-old who polymorphed himself into a kid.  If the demon's gift bestowed them with eternal childishness, then they are no more mature than they were when they were originally tempted, and were arguably misled, like a child used by his parents as a naive accomplice in some horrific crime.  I don't think there are absolutes here one way or the other -- as a Player, I could imagine a situation where my PC would still feel compelled to try to redeem the "child-looking adults" or still feel it necessary to try to kill the "child-minded cultists".  But in general terms, I'd be more inclined to kill the children if they were 40-year-olds mentally, only spoiled and immature, than I would if they were still mentally 8-year-olds who had been stopped from mental growth by the demon's gift.2) How much freedom of choice did the children have after accepting the original bargain?  If they continued to have free will, then the fact that they were children when originally making the bargain ceases to be exculpatory unless, as noted in 1), they were stuck with childlike minds -- you are fine in prosecuting a 40-year-old murderer, even if he says that he learned to do it as a child.  If they lost their free will, then they are only responsible for their original choice, which was morally wrong, yes, but only a single ethical slip, made by someone who arguably was capable of being tricked or fooled into making that choice.  This raises a different question: If you make an ethical mistake as a child but are now an adult, how should you be punished?  If there were no statue of limitations on theft, and I stole $1000 as an eight-year-old, and the crime was discovered when I was 25, would I be charged as the eight-year-old (who would get community service hours) or the adult (who might well spend time in jail)?Rather than knowingly evil cultists, the picture that I'm seeing painted is of children who made one mistake and who were then taught, via positive reinforcement and conscious education, to value a different set of ethics.  The demon crafted these spoiled-but-not-murderous children into horrific cultists in much the same way that an evil animal handler could, over a period of several months, turn an aggressive-but-not-mean dog into a vicious killer trained to go for the throat upon command.Note that, in the United States, the fact that the dog is not responsible for being trained into what it eventually became does not mean that we don't kill the animal.  Tragic as it is that someone would train an animal in such a way, it is now an obvious threat to health and human safety and must be eliminated.Of course, in the United States, we don't have access to the Atonement spell.</blockquote>

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