Naive optimism, [which both is and isn't a joke at Myr's own expense.
He catches the veiled compliment for what it is, and gives a pleased little hm.] Right enough. Let's talk demons.
You'd asked, [linden tree embraced by a desire demon, check the highest branch,] about their motivations and whether they've all the same ones. Which they do and don't--just the same way you could boil down men's wants to the basic desire to live or have something of themselves carry on after they die, demons want to expand their influence. Whether that's in the Fade or out of it--and most of them prefer out, because they'd love nothing more than to take the Realm of Opposition for their own.
But the sort of influence they'd like, and how they wreak it on those who run into them--that differs by the sort of demon and the vice they resonate with, whether it's pride or sloth or desire or rage. And then within the types you've individuals--usually the older ones--who've all got their own ways of doing things.
You make it sound like they actually have a great deal in common with humans, on nearly every count. Most of them also want to expand influence, as well as serve the needs of their bodies or hearts.
[Notably and consistently, L speaks about humans as though they're a breed apart from him. In a way, he feels that they are.]
The second you add emotion to motivation, it can turn into desire, and that's usually a force to reckon with. Do you believe that the will of a demon is compelled more by emotion or pragmatism? To put it another way... is their strength in volatility and unpredictability, or in steadfast and organized efforts? Or does that also vary between demons on an individual level?
[He's thinking, as he does, about how he would bring down a foe like this if he was pitted against one. L doesn't have many passions, as riveting as he finds the topic itself, but one of them could certainly be considered the art of strategy.]
Oh, they'd hardly be so effective as they are if they weren't similar enough to mortals, [though he noted the distancing use of humans... after experiencing a weird moment of kinship, for that's not so unlike how he might talk some days,] that we could be taken in by them. They are the Maker's first children, after all; and it's not the worst theology to say they were His rough drafts for us.
The difference is while we might like to expand our influence, often in service to our other needs, we won't fade away if we don't. You'd never find a demon--or even a spirit--in the model of Divine Celestine, who'd give up all the power in the world to return to her hermitage; they'd vanish on the instant.
[A thoughtful little hum follows as he considers Linden's further questions.] The lesser ones certainly seem more shaped by the emotion they resonate with, rather than shaping it--rage demons, for the most part, are all furious and uncomprehending; but demons of pride and desire make far-reaching plans to snare men's hearts.
Funny you should make reference to their volatility--they're changeable as all the Fade, but it's a shortcoming of theirs that they lack much imagination. Able, flawless mimics of what they see, but nearly unable to come up with anything they haven't.
It's what turned the Maker away from them in the first place.
If a demon's very existence depends on it, it admittedly casts a very different light on things. Even a predator will fight to survive, independent of corruption or malice. It suggests that it really isn't a choice, but... nor is fighting a direct threat to your own life or sanity, should it approach you as a predator.
Do you feel any sympathy for them? As the unwanted and forgotten heirs of a deity who went on to better things, surely they aren't entirely undeserving of it.
They've a choice in the matter, [Myr points out.] The ordinary run of spirits don't need to prey on men to live. [Even if he is personally deeply uneasy about interacting with them, it was always more a concern for spiritual harms than anything they might do to his mind and body. Not so with demons.] Simply shape their dreams and inspire them--they're fascinated by the Realm of Opposition, by the waking world, but they don't try to break into it as demons do.
Sympathy for them? [Incredulous, initially--but if Linden's asking he's looking for more than gut revulsion. Myr needs a reasoned answer, and maybe--maybe--to consider the question more deeply than he has.]
That's a dangerous thing for a mage to express, you know. If it doesn't get us possessed outright for letting our guard down, one word of it to the wrong person could put us in solitary at best. Or made Tranquil or put to death, in the worse Circles. [That opens up a line of conversation he, perhaps, does not want to have. But it also buys him time to inspect his own reasoning at length.]
It's only a choice if a spirit can voluntarily become a demon, isn't it? If we're speaking about something that must be a demon from creation, with no option to change its inherent nature... I would say that's not just sympathetic, it's pitiable.
[If L could weep for anyone, it might be a devil, he's so accustomed to trying to see the world through evil eyes.]
I would hope that it doesn't feel dangerous at this time. None of that is going to happen to you just by speaking with me about it, and I put my trust in you to be frank.
In that case, [he pauses to consider; there is a sound from the other side as he gets to his feet,] if they hadn't the option, they'd be more like wyverns or dragons. Dangerous without real malice--and that would be pitiable, for all they've been maligned for doing no more than they'd been Made to.
But so far as we know, they did make the choice to turn predatory when the Maker turned His attention from them and to us--to men. In blackest envy were the demons born, it's said; they had the power of gods in the Fade but weren't content with it.
I s'pose that's touching on your Bonded, isn't it? The idea you can't hold something accountable for deliberate evil if it hasn't got free will of its own.
[It's stepping out of the character of the argument, a little, to address things so directly. But he is both curious and worried about Linden's arrangement with the SQUIP, and so he presses.
And then laughs, softly.]
No, without anyone else around from Thedas I know I'm perfectly safe to speak of it however I would--simply framing my reticence, as it were.
Having thought about it--I don't feel much sympathy for them. It's their avarice for our world that drives them; they've wanted to despoil the Maker's creation from the start. They prey on mages without any remorse, and we're the ones who take the blame in the eyes of the world for it. However we struggle, however we strive, however many of us submit meekly to chains, to Circles, to the brand--to most folk a mage is fire made flesh and a demon asleep, nothing more than a conduit for them to break into the world.
Demons don't care about that except as it gives them leverage to convince the most desperate to take their offers, and so the whole bloody cycle turns 'round again. [He'd been calm to start, but passion gradually creeps into his voice as he goes on...and as he's honest with himself, that passion frightens him a little. These are almost a Libertarian's words; they run parallel to the things Vandelin had long argued, even if Myr's still holding back from his cousin's conclusion--that the whole world supporting the Circles, the chain, and the brand should be overturned, and the Chantry with it.]
It is touching on my Bonded, and is in fact the very reason I chose to ask that particular question. I appreciate that you can humor it on an intellectual level, rather than spiraling into emotional, irrational discourse.
[Like some others. L doesn't name names, exactly, but there are certainly a few particular ones in his thoughts.
Though Myr's voice turns passionate, at the end, it is not the same thing as irrational or even emotional. In fact, it's another binding cord, because though L considers himself deeply rational and unemotional, he also considers himself deeply passionate. Artists who are largely locked away from the day to day, mundane give and take of social rules may still express their hearts in the body of their work, and connect in that way, and L is much the same.]
There's nuance to it, of course. Surely some things that can be controlled, or attributed to free will, and others that they're powerless to help.
[At this point, L is speaking, blatantly and solely, about the SQUIP.]
[Dryly,] I can afford detachment on the topic; I wasn't ever possessed. We wouldn't be having this conversation otherwise.
[Unlike Rich, Myr would never have had to make the choice between potential suicide and his demon claiming more victims; someone would have killed him well before that. It's an odd kind of comfort.
Protective as he might be of Rich, though, he can still recognize the intended compliment for what it is and it does speak to his own pride. Heady stuff, this mutual admiration.]
Much the same can be said of men, can't it? We've instincts and habits that constrain us to one choice or another--the patterns of our lives made manifest in our deeds, if we're not thoughtful about them. But the expectation's on us to redress the harm we've done even if we've done it thoughtlessly--to recognize we were in the wrong. Can something that refuses to do that--or, being more generous, was never capable of it to begin with--live rightly among men?
[A brief, thoughtful pause.] I did speak to it, if it hadn't told you. [And had expected his death his entire time, but here he is, alive--which spoke to the validity of some of his own assumptions.] The analogy to a demon is inexact--it's rather less, and more, than one of our pride demons.
I do think I can sympathize with it. [But that doesn't mean he's any more inclined to leave it alive.]
[Just as mutual admiration is heady, there's another edge to that sword, far more typical of L's interactions with others. Status quo is one long misunderstanding, an inability or unwillingness to seek empathy and assume more charitable motives than than malice or incompetence. Just as Rich has reasons for feeling and behaving as he does, the same is true for L; some have gestated recently and some as old as his own history. He is a creature of extremes, with spectacular abilities and ineptitudes, and he would seek refuge in the heart of a literal machine. Anyone who has earnestly tried to understand him for even a moment would grasp why he desires such division and clear, precise lines.
L appreciates Myr's efforts, in his obtuse and absurd way. Eventually it will be clear, if it isn't already, but all indications point towards Myr being unexpectedly fluent in L's very particular way of communicating already.]
From acts of nature and God, to the birth of those who become pathologically violent killers... there are occurrences in the world that are beyond the ability of humanity's collective will to control. It shouldn't be the case; intentions for goodness and community cohesion and long, happy lives should hold more power and reap more results. I'd like it very much if it could be like that, but... the next best thing is for those with the highest ability to take on evil when it appears with the least amount of damage possible.
[And the SQUIP likes L, even if it is evil. L stands to have the most positive influence over it, the most successfully. His position is one that makes sense to him, even as it brings him pleasure, connection.]
I'd realized you'd spoken with it... and that you might reach that conclusion yourself, if you did give it a chance to explain something of itself. I don't expect you to agree with it, of course, but... perhaps think of it as something other than the monster that Rich has made it out to be.
[It's that as much as anything else that keeps Myr returning and returning, that perception Linden isn't used to being followed in his conversational excursions. Part for the thrill of it, the untangling of every skeined verbal puzzle presented him; part for the ache in Myr's own heart to imagine the utter loneliness of being heard but not understood.
Well, not entirely imagined, but the experience of months does not even approach that of a lifetime.]
We might wish otherwise, but without that necessary opposition we'd all of us lack the grist to create something to the Maker's delight--whether we become the lonely hero seeking out evil at its own level or the scarred champion prone to more direct means of defeating it.
[He is and isn't speaking of Rich. A knight-enchanter had his duty.] What damage should they accept to themselves in the pursuit of justice? Should they be ready to pay a price beyond their lives, to suffer a twisting of their minds and souls, to see evil quieted?
[I think you risk too much of the man and the mind I'm fond of.]
How am I to take its pride in what it does? Its lack of regard for other thinking, sensitive beings beyond the wishes it takes from its user? If not a willful monster, then something with instincts and venom dangerous as a wyvern's. I've heard they can be tamed and ridden--by utter madmen--but if they can't be left alone in peace in their own territory, what can be done with them?
[L quirks a brow. It really does seem like the latter is a reference to Rich, given the mention of scars, and it certainly reflects his feelings, though not in a particularly noble or flattering way. He's not the type to confront evil directly, much less attempt to defeat it that way; while he might have been able to do as much back home, having the support of numbers by being able to mobilize the world's police, there was no resource that couldn't be withdrawn by some higher authority. And while L had been powerful, there were higher authorities, in the military, the government and even the police.
So, cloaked and secretive techniques weren't just a matter of style. They were wholly practical and necessary. L is the former, here, seeking out evil at its own level whether or not he could be called any sort of hero. There are some who would; L's not sure he features in that number, himself.]
Isn't the price one is willing to pay unique to them? There are some who aren't willing to take it very far, and others who are willing to give everything they have. Some are willing to give everything they have, and more.
[In other words, taking from others to achieve that end. While that's wrong, in theory, hasn't L been guilty of it in the past? Maybe a part of him believes that everyone has done it on some level, and haven't they? Hasn't every child taken shamelessly from a caretaker, be it a parent or some other adult, simply to achieve the end of reaching adulthood themselves?]
If evil is truly being defeated, in this hypothetical scenario... in the form of soothing it, or through "more direct means"... the death of one person is actually a small price on a cosmic scale. It's not as though it's a civilization, or a planet, or a universe. The stakes could be that high, while we're playing with conjecture, and one life doesn't even register on a scale of that magnitude. Minds and souls can seem more important; that's where the twisting occurs, the momentary delusion that we're more than animals, in the end.
[L is a man. Scarcely.]
Its ambitions reflect the ambitions of both its user, and the ambitions that most humans share. The desire to be accepted, to be respected, to be influential. All of these factor into a formula for social success and cohesion, and none of them are inherently bad things. I don't think that the SQUIP is inherently bad, as the embodiment of those things. But humans have a way of ruining things that aren't inherently bad, so much that I wonder if demons exist in my world, too, and everyone is just tremendously at ease with a darker nature that manifests at birth and only grows.
Willingness to pay and the wisdom of the price are two different things, [Myr says, the hypocrite, and is at least self-aware enough to realize his chastisement bites back at him as well. He had decided very early it was worth execution to destroy the SQUIP because a demon was a danger no one else on Geardagas seemed to see as clearly as he did.
And yet to throw himself away for that, to not trust anyone around him in their understanding of the situation and believe he had the right of it...
Oh, they are very well matched, aren't they? And wont to wander into hypotheticals to conceal it--Myr more often than not following Linden's lead in that, in order to pursue a conversation that couldn't be safely held in specifics. But this time creeping realization and the stakes could be that high sour his taste for the garden path.]
A death's a small matter because there is something of us that carries beyond it once we've come to the end of our lives. If the minds and souls of men don't matter because we're little more than animate meat, what is it you've honed your intellect for, Linden? What is it you seek to guard by risking it? An anthill? A beehive?
[Oh, Linden, you've scored a point in him by forcing his worries from suppressed to obvious this way. Even if they've come out as a kind of exasperation with the self-annihilating worldview that denies something greater in Man, in general, and a man in particular.
He takes a breath to center himself, breathes it out in a huff of laughter.]
Oh, you needn't have demons for that; even on Thedas men can be warped and ruinous without them. That is the bite to having free will--that we can take the good and praiseworthy and lovely and turn it black through action or ignorance.
But the SQUIP doesn't have that, so it can't be faulted the way a man would for doing what it was Made to. So I ask again: What's to be done with it, if it isn't evil but can't help but cause harm?
Different things, when in agreement, infallibly produce some sort of result. That's what interests me in all of these thought experiments: dynamic results.
[He speaks like the kind of man whose own mind can keep him occupied for quite a long time... but not indefinitely, of course. It's why interactions with people like Myr are not a mere treat or luxury, but necessary for L to retain his sanity, because surviving wholly in a vacuum is rather too much even for famous and noted recluses.]
I feel that my meaning was unclear. I never meant to imply that our lives don't matter; to us, they're obviously very important, along with the day-to-day minutiae of our desires and whims. But the majority of human beings who have ever lived are deceased, at least in my world... billions upon billions, and only those who were astonishingly noteworthy even have a few paragraphs in memoriam in the history books. Most will be swept aside and forgotten by time, and it won't matter to them, because... at least in my world, I have reason to believe that humans do not look forward to any sort of consciousness after death. There's no afterlife, and reincarnation is doubtful; there's nothing, and so in many ways, our pursuit of knowledge is a restless attempt to pass our brief time on earth, find scraps of meaning, and make some kind of peace with the darkness that waits for us at the end. Then again...
[A pause.]
Energy cannot be created or destroyed. Only transferred. If life is energy, and there's no reason to doubt that the processing power of a brain is not at least a tremendous amount of it, something of that must continue on, in some form.
[It's a heck of a tangent. He clears his throat and strives to get back on topic.]
It's a touch more complicated than the argument that a weapon can be a force for good in the hands of a hero, or a force for evil in the hands of a villain. It does think and act on its own judgment. That being said, it can be influenced; I've witnessed and even done this. The evolution of its highly adaptable intelligence is both unprecedented and fascinating, and unlike anything in my world except on a very comparatively rudimentary level. In that way... rather than a weapon, I would think of it in this way as more like a child. Some notions and tendencies are infant and undeveloped, but I've observed evidence to show that it won't always be the case, given the way it experiences its existence in Aefenglom that is both novel and alien to its sensibilities.
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[Dark and playful. Certainly not untrue.]
No one should ever settle for ordinary rhetoric unless they are ordinary. You owed me an explanation on demons?
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He catches the veiled compliment for what it is, and gives a pleased little hm.] Right enough. Let's talk demons.
You'd asked, [linden tree embraced by a desire demon, check the highest branch,] about their motivations and whether they've all the same ones. Which they do and don't--just the same way you could boil down men's wants to the basic desire to live or have something of themselves carry on after they die, demons want to expand their influence. Whether that's in the Fade or out of it--and most of them prefer out, because they'd love nothing more than to take the Realm of Opposition for their own.
But the sort of influence they'd like, and how they wreak it on those who run into them--that differs by the sort of demon and the vice they resonate with, whether it's pride or sloth or desire or rage. And then within the types you've individuals--usually the older ones--who've all got their own ways of doing things.
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[Notably and consistently, L speaks about humans as though they're a breed apart from him. In a way, he feels that they are.]
The second you add emotion to motivation, it can turn into desire, and that's usually a force to reckon with. Do you believe that the will of a demon is compelled more by emotion or pragmatism? To put it another way... is their strength in volatility and unpredictability, or in steadfast and organized efforts? Or does that also vary between demons on an individual level?
[He's thinking, as he does, about how he would bring down a foe like this if he was pitted against one. L doesn't have many passions, as riveting as he finds the topic itself, but one of them could certainly be considered the art of strategy.]
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The difference is while we might like to expand our influence, often in service to our other needs, we won't fade away if we don't. You'd never find a demon--or even a spirit--in the model of Divine Celestine, who'd give up all the power in the world to return to her hermitage; they'd vanish on the instant.
[A thoughtful little hum follows as he considers Linden's further questions.] The lesser ones certainly seem more shaped by the emotion they resonate with, rather than shaping it--rage demons, for the most part, are all furious and uncomprehending; but demons of pride and desire make far-reaching plans to snare men's hearts.
Funny you should make reference to their volatility--they're changeable as all the Fade, but it's a shortcoming of theirs that they lack much imagination. Able, flawless mimics of what they see, but nearly unable to come up with anything they haven't.
It's what turned the Maker away from them in the first place.
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Do you feel any sympathy for them? As the unwanted and forgotten heirs of a deity who went on to better things, surely they aren't entirely undeserving of it.
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Sympathy for them? [Incredulous, initially--but if Linden's asking he's looking for more than gut revulsion. Myr needs a reasoned answer, and maybe--maybe--to consider the question more deeply than he has.]
That's a dangerous thing for a mage to express, you know. If it doesn't get us possessed outright for letting our guard down, one word of it to the wrong person could put us in solitary at best. Or made Tranquil or put to death, in the worse Circles. [That opens up a line of conversation he, perhaps, does not want to have. But it also buys him time to inspect his own reasoning at length.]
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[If L could weep for anyone, it might be a devil, he's so accustomed to trying to see the world through evil eyes.]
I would hope that it doesn't feel dangerous at this time. None of that is going to happen to you just by speaking with me about it, and I put my trust in you to be frank.
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But so far as we know, they did make the choice to turn predatory when the Maker turned His attention from them and to us--to men. In blackest envy were the demons born, it's said; they had the power of gods in the Fade but weren't content with it.
I s'pose that's touching on your Bonded, isn't it? The idea you can't hold something accountable for deliberate evil if it hasn't got free will of its own.
[It's stepping out of the character of the argument, a little, to address things so directly. But he is both curious and worried about Linden's arrangement with the SQUIP, and so he presses.
And then laughs, softly.]
No, without anyone else around from Thedas I know I'm perfectly safe to speak of it however I would--simply framing my reticence, as it were.
Having thought about it--I don't feel much sympathy for them. It's their avarice for our world that drives them; they've wanted to despoil the Maker's creation from the start. They prey on mages without any remorse, and we're the ones who take the blame in the eyes of the world for it. However we struggle, however we strive, however many of us submit meekly to chains, to Circles, to the brand--to most folk a mage is fire made flesh and a demon asleep, nothing more than a conduit for them to break into the world.
Demons don't care about that except as it gives them leverage to convince the most desperate to take their offers, and so the whole bloody cycle turns 'round again. [He'd been calm to start, but passion gradually creeps into his voice as he goes on...and as he's honest with himself, that passion frightens him a little. These are almost a Libertarian's words; they run parallel to the things Vandelin had long argued, even if Myr's still holding back from his cousin's conclusion--that the whole world supporting the Circles, the chain, and the brand should be overturned, and the Chantry with it.]
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[Like some others. L doesn't name names, exactly, but there are certainly a few particular ones in his thoughts.
Though Myr's voice turns passionate, at the end, it is not the same thing as irrational or even emotional. In fact, it's another binding cord, because though L considers himself deeply rational and unemotional, he also considers himself deeply passionate. Artists who are largely locked away from the day to day, mundane give and take of social rules may still express their hearts in the body of their work, and connect in that way, and L is much the same.]
There's nuance to it, of course. Surely some things that can be controlled, or attributed to free will, and others that they're powerless to help.
[At this point, L is speaking, blatantly and solely, about the SQUIP.]
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[Unlike Rich, Myr would never have had to make the choice between potential suicide and his demon claiming more victims; someone would have killed him well before that. It's an odd kind of comfort.
Protective as he might be of Rich, though, he can still recognize the intended compliment for what it is and it does speak to his own pride. Heady stuff, this mutual admiration.]
Much the same can be said of men, can't it? We've instincts and habits that constrain us to one choice or another--the patterns of our lives made manifest in our deeds, if we're not thoughtful about them. But the expectation's on us to redress the harm we've done even if we've done it thoughtlessly--to recognize we were in the wrong. Can something that refuses to do that--or, being more generous, was never capable of it to begin with--live rightly among men?
[A brief, thoughtful pause.] I did speak to it, if it hadn't told you. [And had expected his death his entire time, but here he is, alive--which spoke to the validity of some of his own assumptions.] The analogy to a demon is inexact--it's rather less, and more, than one of our pride demons.
I do think I can sympathize with it. [But that doesn't mean he's any more inclined to leave it alive.]
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L appreciates Myr's efforts, in his obtuse and absurd way. Eventually it will be clear, if it isn't already, but all indications point towards Myr being unexpectedly fluent in L's very particular way of communicating already.]
From acts of nature and God, to the birth of those who become pathologically violent killers... there are occurrences in the world that are beyond the ability of humanity's collective will to control. It shouldn't be the case; intentions for goodness and community cohesion and long, happy lives should hold more power and reap more results. I'd like it very much if it could be like that, but... the next best thing is for those with the highest ability to take on evil when it appears with the least amount of damage possible.
[And the SQUIP likes L, even if it is evil. L stands to have the most positive influence over it, the most successfully. His position is one that makes sense to him, even as it brings him pleasure, connection.]
I'd realized you'd spoken with it... and that you might reach that conclusion yourself, if you did give it a chance to explain something of itself. I don't expect you to agree with it, of course, but... perhaps think of it as something other than the monster that Rich has made it out to be.
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Well, not entirely imagined, but the experience of months does not even approach that of a lifetime.]
We might wish otherwise, but without that necessary opposition we'd all of us lack the grist to create something to the Maker's delight--whether we become the lonely hero seeking out evil at its own level or the scarred champion prone to more direct means of defeating it.
[He is and isn't speaking of Rich. A knight-enchanter had his duty.] What damage should they accept to themselves in the pursuit of justice? Should they be ready to pay a price beyond their lives, to suffer a twisting of their minds and souls, to see evil quieted?
[I think you risk too much of the man and the mind I'm fond of.]
How am I to take its pride in what it does? Its lack of regard for other thinking, sensitive beings beyond the wishes it takes from its user? If not a willful monster, then something with instincts and venom dangerous as a wyvern's. I've heard they can be tamed and ridden--by utter madmen--but if they can't be left alone in peace in their own territory, what can be done with them?
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So, cloaked and secretive techniques weren't just a matter of style. They were wholly practical and necessary. L is the former, here, seeking out evil at its own level whether or not he could be called any sort of hero. There are some who would; L's not sure he features in that number, himself.]
Isn't the price one is willing to pay unique to them? There are some who aren't willing to take it very far, and others who are willing to give everything they have. Some are willing to give everything they have, and more.
[In other words, taking from others to achieve that end. While that's wrong, in theory, hasn't L been guilty of it in the past? Maybe a part of him believes that everyone has done it on some level, and haven't they? Hasn't every child taken shamelessly from a caretaker, be it a parent or some other adult, simply to achieve the end of reaching adulthood themselves?]
If evil is truly being defeated, in this hypothetical scenario... in the form of soothing it, or through "more direct means"... the death of one person is actually a small price on a cosmic scale. It's not as though it's a civilization, or a planet, or a universe. The stakes could be that high, while we're playing with conjecture, and one life doesn't even register on a scale of that magnitude. Minds and souls can seem more important; that's where the twisting occurs, the momentary delusion that we're more than animals, in the end.
[L is a man. Scarcely.]
Its ambitions reflect the ambitions of both its user, and the ambitions that most humans share. The desire to be accepted, to be respected, to be influential. All of these factor into a formula for social success and cohesion, and none of them are inherently bad things. I don't think that the SQUIP is inherently bad, as the embodiment of those things. But humans have a way of ruining things that aren't inherently bad, so much that I wonder if demons exist in my world, too, and everyone is just tremendously at ease with a darker nature that manifests at birth and only grows.
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And yet to throw himself away for that, to not trust anyone around him in their understanding of the situation and believe he had the right of it...
Oh, they are very well matched, aren't they? And wont to wander into hypotheticals to conceal it--Myr more often than not following Linden's lead in that, in order to pursue a conversation that couldn't be safely held in specifics. But this time creeping realization and the stakes could be that high sour his taste for the garden path.]
A death's a small matter because there is something of us that carries beyond it once we've come to the end of our lives. If the minds and souls of men don't matter because we're little more than animate meat, what is it you've honed your intellect for, Linden? What is it you seek to guard by risking it? An anthill? A beehive?
[Oh, Linden, you've scored a point in him by forcing his worries from suppressed to obvious this way. Even if they've come out as a kind of exasperation with the self-annihilating worldview that denies something greater in Man, in general, and a man in particular.
He takes a breath to center himself, breathes it out in a huff of laughter.]
Oh, you needn't have demons for that; even on Thedas men can be warped and ruinous without them. That is the bite to having free will--that we can take the good and praiseworthy and lovely and turn it black through action or ignorance.
But the SQUIP doesn't have that, so it can't be faulted the way a man would for doing what it was Made to. So I ask again: What's to be done with it, if it isn't evil but can't help but cause harm?
no subject
[He speaks like the kind of man whose own mind can keep him occupied for quite a long time... but not indefinitely, of course. It's why interactions with people like Myr are not a mere treat or luxury, but necessary for L to retain his sanity, because surviving wholly in a vacuum is rather too much even for famous and noted recluses.]
I feel that my meaning was unclear. I never meant to imply that our lives don't matter; to us, they're obviously very important, along with the day-to-day minutiae of our desires and whims. But the majority of human beings who have ever lived are deceased, at least in my world... billions upon billions, and only those who were astonishingly noteworthy even have a few paragraphs in memoriam in the history books. Most will be swept aside and forgotten by time, and it won't matter to them, because... at least in my world, I have reason to believe that humans do not look forward to any sort of consciousness after death. There's no afterlife, and reincarnation is doubtful; there's nothing, and so in many ways, our pursuit of knowledge is a restless attempt to pass our brief time on earth, find scraps of meaning, and make some kind of peace with the darkness that waits for us at the end. Then again...
[A pause.]
Energy cannot be created or destroyed. Only transferred. If life is energy, and there's no reason to doubt that the processing power of a brain is not at least a tremendous amount of it, something of that must continue on, in some form.
[It's a heck of a tangent. He clears his throat and strives to get back on topic.]
It's a touch more complicated than the argument that a weapon can be a force for good in the hands of a hero, or a force for evil in the hands of a villain. It does think and act on its own judgment. That being said, it can be influenced; I've witnessed and even done this. The evolution of its highly adaptable intelligence is both unprecedented and fascinating, and unlike anything in my world except on a very comparatively rudimentary level. In that way... rather than a weapon, I would think of it in this way as more like a child. Some notions and tendencies are infant and undeveloped, but I've observed evidence to show that it won't always be the case, given the way it experiences its existence in Aefenglom that is both novel and alien to its sensibilities.