LCD Death Mage

Discussion in 'Latest Chapter Discussion' started by lygarx, May 21, 2017.

  1. CountryMage

    CountryMage [XSanguine8] not my blood...

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    That's what I'm always saying about him, he'll have one good idea, or some good intentions, but he's just too stupid to follow through. He also convinced his friends with some very wishy washy, power of friendship nonsense, that just makes him sound like a politician, or Bellwood style eco terrorist. He says nothing, "How we gonna compete, or fix this? Don't worry about it, I have 'come up with a plan' on my vision board, so it will work out when we get there, probably."
     
  2. The Godly Aeolus

    The Godly Aeolus Well-Known Member

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    No, in fact, you are not the only one who is irritated by Captain Condiment. But were you really expecting anything better of him after all this time? It's Heinz! He's the poster-boy of never learning from his own screw-ups, ever. He's not actually an idiot, and he routinely arrives at the correct conclusions regarding the state of affairs he finds himself in, as well as deducing the best possible course of action for those situations... but then he never actually does it!

    Exactly! Heinz is that one D&D Character who ended up rolling a '0' for his WIS base-stat... In theory, you can actually play through a campaign that way if your other base-stats are high enough compensate--an extra high CHA stat, especially, can get you really far on its own. But the instant you need to rely on something other than brute force or your dashing personality and good looks to overcome an obstacle, you are boned.
     
  3. metazoxan

    metazoxan Well-Known Member

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    I will say this much in Heinz's defense ... just bear with me.

    It's true he can't do what Van does. Van's guidance and titles make getting to the diplomacy stage much easier. HOWEVER the fact is Van never really even had to try to get them to follow him after getting the ghoul emperor title.

    Meaning while Heinz can't do what Van does that just means it wouldn't be as effortless for him.

    Like you said he simply decides it won't work and isn't worth the effort. If he tried and failed it would be one thing but he makes no effort to even try.

    Van doesn't know for sure if every plan he comes up with will work but he tries them anyway. You can't only act when you're certain things will work and return your effort. SOmetimes you need to just try what you can and hope for the best.

    He might accept it was wrong to not help them but he refuses to take real responsibility.

    EVen worse he aknowledges that the kingdom isn't really a free place for Vida's races and most are either killed or locked away in limited territory like the scylla. But he makes no mention of plans to do anything about that. Instead he uses that as an excuse to not help the ghouls "People won't accept them anyway so why bother?". But van's already proved this false.

    Heinz was correct about one thing. The first step he'd need to take would be having the ghouls be treated liek tammed monsters. It's what Van did after all. But he uses that as an excuse to do nothing as if that means freedom is impossible and thus not worth the effort. But we know from Van that he was able to use bringing them into cities as familiars to show people what they were like and get them a little more understood as more than savage monsters. If Van contines like this then it won't be hard to get people to accept them as races of Vida. At the very least get them treated as the same as scyla or even beast-kin. It would take a while but Van has proven it CAN work if enough time and effort is put into it.

    You can't change the world overnight. Sometimes you need to take small steps and change the world bit by bit. Heinz isn't willing to do this and anything that doesn't provide immediate results that he's happy with it rejected as not worth it.
    I think it's less stupidity and lack of REAL resolve. We see here he understands the truth of the ghouls and all the challanges that come with trying to help them. But he's unwilling to even try because he deems it impossible based on theoretical results and decided slaughtering them was the better option because if he's not helping them it would look bad if he refused requests to "put down a monster nest".

    Even at the end when he says he'll "talk to van" we all know what's going to happen. Either he'll one sidedly tell van he's a threat to the world and needs to surrender or he'll ask Van to justify his actions but reason away anything Van says and declare him a being that must be stopped. He'll probably understand all of Van's friends and family would suffer if he falls but he'll push asside the blame (probably something like they died getting caught up in Van's darkness and can't be saved).

    In the end what looks like resolve is him just pushing responsability onto others, even Alda and Bellwood, and refusing to bear the real burden of trying to change the world.
     
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  4. Legowaffles

    Legowaffles Well-Known Member

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    Woah there, slow it down! Heinz would actually be a pretty decent individual if he had a 0 for his Wisdom stat. You see, if you've got a 0 in one of your mentals, you are comatose.

    Surely you're not suggesting that vegetables are as problematic as Heinz? I think that's going too far.

    He's probably got a 1 though. Not sure where he got the -2 to compensate for a minimum possible roll of 3 when rolling 3d6 though. Maybe his mother was secretly an ogre in disguise?
     
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  5. The Godly Aeolus

    The Godly Aeolus Well-Known Member

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    My DM was playful, sadistic, and inventive; a terrifying combination, if I do say so myself. Instead of 1d20, he'd have us roll 1d100, and he'd count numbers 1 through 5 as a '0', 6 through 10 as a '1', and so on... He claims it's because he doesn't want anyone starting out the campaign with a character who has a base-stat of '20', but it's really because he likes it when people fail horribly. Character creation was no exception, and though he'd let us re-roll any stat lower than '10' one time, if we got '0' both times it was declared 'divine providence' and it stuck. In his defense, however, he had a house-rule where if you managed to roll a base-stat lower than '5', he'd add +2 to every other base-stat as compensation, no matter how high it already was. He was reasonable enough that he'd also let you use an alternative stat to roll than the one he called for if you could come up with a plausible argument as to why you should be able to do so.

    In all fairness, the lowest WIS or INT stat I ever saw was '4'. We did have one guy under those rules with a STR of '2' though. The campaign was... interesting.

    Regardless, Heinz definitely has a painfully low WIS stat. That's probably why the God of Statuses doesn't seem to count it.

    EDIT: Perhaps my analogy was a bit poor. I know that house-rules are called as such because the normal game isn't played in that way.
     
    Last edited: Jan 14, 2022
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  6. Donce

    Donce Well-Known Member

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    Heinz say he can't help Vida races because he don't have country and titles who help Van do it. But Schneider don't have any of them too, but he help many Vida races many times and even impregnated them many times. 〜( ̄▽ ̄〜)
    Also, I don't understand why he even needs or must help Vida races. He can just not hunt them. He can just hunt in dungeons, collect herbs and so on.
    Heinz wants to be Hero, but to be Hero you need to kill Vida races. Be he knows they don't do evil so, he hesitates to do it. Especially if he is 100% sure they did nothing wrong. But will do it it guild says they are evil without evidence.
    Heinz say Vida races is evil and needs to be killed if they attack humans, but will not do anything if Vida races are attacked by humans.
    This shows he is human supremacist. And this is understandable, because he wants to be Hero, Hero of humans, not Vida races.
    Heinz say Van is controlling undead, but if Van disappear they will go wild. Where did he got this conclusion from? After Van made them rational, they never got wild again. How can you know if he controls them all the time or if converts them once and they stay rational for eternity? Even without Van. He just made assumption or excuse to fight Van. Also, here are two human countries who try to conquer each others territory all the time and kills many humans in process, why here can't be a third country of Vida races who may, or may not do it? Even if Van disappear it is OK, because Vida races are rational like humans. So, they will not be more evil than humans are.
     
  7. Legowaffles

    Legowaffles Well-Known Member

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    Eh, you got the point across, that's the important thing. Playful, sadistic, and inventive could be quite enjoyable. Hopefully it was. Sadly, I haven't been able to play anything in years.

    On second thought though, I still feel we're being a bit too harsh here. I think it'd be more fair to give Heinz a 2 or a 3 in Wisdom. Rodcorte would be the poster child of the 1 Wisdom Club though. I'm looking forward to the Edgar situation blowing up spectacularly.
     
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  8. The Godly Aeolus

    The Godly Aeolus Well-Known Member

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    Here's the thing about Heinz... I'm pretty sure that deep down inside he actually knows all of this. In fact, I think that he wants to believe in all of that. However, his character alignment is Lawful-Stupid; right and wrong, good and evil, none of it truly matters to him in the end. Regardless of his actual opinions and beliefs, he'll follow the rules, even if it continually bites him in the rear. Actually, I think that this is why he wants to convince Alda to change the rules; that way, he gets to follow through on what he feels is right without having to be a rebel. This is also why he is doomed to fail forever.
     
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  9. Zamzukan

    Zamzukan Well-Known Member

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    The condement conteplation conversation continues ceaselessly, causing countles civilians certain conundrums of conviction and current conventional cultural criteria.

    Chip chip chereo
     
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  10. metazoxan

    metazoxan Well-Known Member

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    pretty much.

    When Heinz first had guilt over Darcia's death his reaction was not to question Alda but to question the church's interpretation of his teachings. This in itself isn't entirely a bad thing as it would be strange if he just instantly abandoned his faith beause of bad humans doing things in Alda's name.

    But the bigger issue is that he just decides on his own convenience what the "Proper" interpretation of Alda's will is. That being the acceptance of VIda's races without ranks and even some level of tolerance for those with them.

    He LATER is chosen by Alda as a Champion and his "beliefs" are basically confirmed. But we know from other scenes Alda CHANGED his goal form the extermination of all of VIda's children to just those with ranks in order to try to combat Van's ability to win people over.

    Meaning Heinz basically rewrote the rules of the Alda church so he could do what he wanted and not be a heratic. It's just dumb luck on his part Alda changed the rules as well to basically the same thing before he talked to Alda.
     
  11. Zamzukan

    Zamzukan Well-Known Member

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    Causing the current complication:
    Corporealized condemetous character conversing condemnable convictions, carried by himself and circling companions, currently chronologically celebrating the cured condition of central counterpats of their counterproductive cabal.
     
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  12. tirirism

    tirirism He who dealt it

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    WORLD SALAD DETECTED!
     
  13. Nimitz

    Nimitz Well-Known Member

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    This post was brought to you by the letter C.
     
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  14. Arha

    Arha Well-Known Member

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    You're right, he doesn't have A skill that makes ghouls follow him. He actually has two. Three if you count the ability to make fertility charms. And to be fair to people that don't like ghouls, they do attack all other humanoids on sight, according to their race description at some point or another. Van happens to have lucked into running into what is basically the nicest ghoul tribe ever and only managing to get let into the village because he had DAC. I mean, Zadiris probably could have argued hard enough that he could have been let in, but Vigaro didn't want to allow it until magic changed his mind. And that's after saving their chief from slavers. Honestly, ghouls are kind of dicks, and I don't think they have much ground to whine about slavers capturing them when they also make captured women into sex slaves. Not Cool.

    ...But they look cool so I'm willing to overlook it.

    On the other hand, it's weird that he didn't even really think "After we've made some reforms and changed perceptions of arachne and stuff a little, we can try to improve relations with vampires and stuff." Like cmon man, you didn't even have to really mean it. You could have just acknowledged the possibility. Or even just been like "Hey, why don't we try to get policies across that emphasize avoiding ghouls. It wouldn't even be hard since ghouls are tough enough to not be worth hunting for parts. Trying not to kill them would be a step in the right direction."
     
  15. Donce

    Donce Well-Known Member

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  16. Arha

    Arha Well-Known Member

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    Oh the last chapter was the start of volume twelve. I guess that means Edgar is going to get gobbled up by Rudy Guduranis soon. That has to be one of Rodcorte's best decisions ever, don't you think? Yeah, let's use the sealed fragments of the demon king himself to repair the soul of someone who honestly doesn't really matter at all.
     
  17. metazoxan

    metazoxan Well-Known Member

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    Van didn't really "Luck out" he saved Zandaris and she introduced him to the rest. Ghouls attack people on sight mostly because they have to as otherwise they'll be attacked on sight as since ghouls are stuck inside devil's nests they can't really run away and hide (not without Van's help anyway). Meaning if someone strong enough just shows them good will and proves their sincerity most ghoul tribes would likely respond.

    But that's the issue Heinz lacks ANY sincerity at all. Everything he does is ultimately part of building up his hero image. It's why he's unwilling to do any hard work that might take decades to pay off. Again Heinz lacks the skills and titles Van has but if he really tried he could get decent results in his own way even if it would be a little slower. At the very least he could have tried to help the scylla get out of their territory, help the titains litterally enslaved for hundreds of years in a mine, or even just stop killing ghouls even if he's unwilling to take the time to help them.


    Also they don't turn women into sex slaves they turn women into ghouls. They'd turn men into ghouls too if they could but it just doens't work that way apparently. They're simply acting to ensure their own survival against people that went to wipe out their entire species. Keep in mind most ghouls NEVER leave their devils nests. Meaning any humans they capture specifically went into their territory. Either way when people want to destroy you're entire race they don't really get to complain if you get a little brutal in keeping your species alive.
     
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  18. Arha

    Arha Well-Known Member

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    You don't find it lucky that he managed to run into the ghoul chief herself when she's in horrible danger and manages to save her just in time? Especially given that he had a skill that makes ghouls like him and that she happens to lead a really nice tribe of ghouls, at least relatively speaking?

    Also, does it really matter to people why ghouls attack them? Yes, it's somewhat justified from the ghoul's POV, but from the perspective of Villager A ghouls aren't much different from orcs. They even rape captives to reproduce just like orcs do. Also, I'd argue it's only somewhat justified even when you take their circumstances into account given that ghouls are specifically noted as being more aggressive to outsiders than basically any of Vida's other races.

    But yes. I agree. Heinz absolutely could do better with the ghouls than he is. He even has a model to follow in Van. Just quietly walk to a ghoul village, do not draw weapons and try to talk to them. If they attack, leave and try somewhere else. Zadiris's village can't be the ONLY relatively friendly tribe out there and he knows for sure that ghouls are not mindlessly hostile. There's a limit to what he can do, but he's unwilling to explore those limits.

    They turn women into ghouls so that they can rape them and reproduce more easily. You can see from Tarea that this is incredibly traumatic because they don't ASK them if they want to become ghouls, they instead bury them in mud and drop ghoul blood on them and so on. These women then occupy a very low social position, as seen once again with Tarea. This is obviously rape and will continue until the woman eventually dies, especially since they have no more choice but to stay with the ghouls as they won't be accepted outside anymore. And, as seen once more with Tarea, these women didn't even necessarily try to hurt them or anything. Any women they can capture will do.

    Ghouls having a poor reputation with the human races of Lambda is a deserved reputation. Iirc the story even acknowledges that ghouls kinda deserve their bad reputation, as do vampires. This is in pretty stark contrast to races like Scylla, who are widely known to be friendly little cuddlebugs.
     
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  19. Donce

    Donce Well-Known Member

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    Also, does it really matter to ghouls why people attack them? Yes, it's somewhat justified from the human POV, but from the perspective of ghoul A humans aren't much different from orcs. They even rape ghoul women (like Zadiris) just for fun. Also humans are more aggressive to others than basically any of Vida races. They kill most Vida races on sighed (especially in Amid Empire). If they find ghoul near town they will kill male on sighed and will try to rape women and later sell here as slave.

    I have not hear about Scylla in Amid Empire if they are friendly or not here. In Orbaume Kingdom Vida races are not as persecuted as in Amid Empire, so naturally they will be more friendly.
    Would you be friendly with someone who killed your family for fun or body parts? Ghouls are killed daily even if they don't leave forest.
     
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  20. Arha

    Arha Well-Known Member

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    Some humans do things like that to ghouls but pretty much every ghoul tribe either does that to humans or avoids contact altogether, meaning they might as well not exist. Also, humans and ghouls aren't related like ghouls and, say, arachne are. Ghoul being as hostile to harpies and stuff is considered notable by the story and a sign that they are abnormally aggressive compared to other races. This isn't just my opinion, it's also something that the story supports. It's not even about who is right or wrong, it's about the way people see the situation. What humans see is a tribe of cannibal rape monsters because that's what ghouls act like towards humans.

    The point I'm making here is that Heinz is right, to an extent. You can't just walk up to a villager and say "Nah bruh ghouls are okay" because they will tell you "ghouls ate my sister. Or maybe they turned her into a monster and raped her. We don't really know, we just never saw her again." You need to find a way to show that ghouls actually are different from orcs, and the way to do that is basically what Van did a volume or two back: Display ghoul culture and friendly, social ghouls that are comfortable being around people. The reason why Heinz is ultimately wrong is that he shows no inclination to even copy Van and try something new. He just goes 'It wouldn't work' and goes on his way even when he knows it COULD work.

    Honestly, now that I think about it, I think this is a good indication for why Heinz can remain a somewhat sympathetic figure and yet still be utterly useless for getting things done. He acknowledges his error, but makes no attempt to address it or compromise, even when he knows there's another way that can't even be considered immoral unless Alda really hates it when people don't starve to death during the winter The Way Nature Intended.