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[RT][HF] A Practical Guide to Evil Book 3: Chapter 58: Hard Measures
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Author: u/Yes_This_Is_God *
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URL: https://practicalguidetoevil.wordpress.com/2018/01/10/chapter-58-hard-measures/
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Score: 49
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Created: 2018-01-10T05:02:51
Post:
Comments:
u/haiku_fornification [+18] (4 hours later)
The last-ditch effort of Good has failed, as expected. Does Cat get these kind of redemption chances (2nd one now!) because she's a Squire and hence can transition into Good? Or is it related to the continuous fight for Callow's soul, which has never been on the side of Evil?
The real question is this: was this the temptation to lure the protagonist from her rightful path or a last chance at redemption before a tragedy? It very much felt like an inverse of a scene where the main character is tempted by some great evil only to fully commit to the side of the good.
u/melmonella [+8] Tremble, o ye mighty, for a new age is upon you (5 hours later)
It seems to be the temptation scene, yes. My headcannon is that in this hero journey arc, Ultimate Boon would be a new Name (either Black Queen or Black Knight)
u/TheEngineer923 [+2] (a day later)
Yeah, hope that doesn't come to pass. Cat going turncoat at this stage would feel like a massive cop out.
u/space_fountain [+2] (a day later)
I could see her trying to push for a rule outside of the good evil dichotomy.
u/Ardvarkeating101 [+14] Father of Learning (13 minutes later)
You see, Graham Mcneil? That's how you write a fucking religion vs. atheism argument in a world with gods!
u/Ibbot [+10] (an hour later)
And there's a bit of a callback to Skirmish II. Abigail is the captain who was all like "kill them all" when she raised the drafted soldiers as undead.
u/TideofKhatanga [+6] (4 hours later)
Let's hope that Akua really needed those spies now, because crippling your force by removing twenty-something officers (including one senior officer) just before the battle can't be good. At least, neither Catherine nor Hakram said "no way that could possibly go wrong" when discussing their move.
As for that talk with the Sister, I don't know what to make of it. Said like this, Cat's way of thinking sounds like "IDGAF, YOLO". Never been a winning argument. Unless the point was to make it extra clear that Cat is Evil, so deep into that path that she can't even understand why people would want to be Good?
u/melmonella [+27] Tremble, o ye mighty, for a new age is upon you (5 hours later)
*Ubua
Jeez people, names aren't that hard to remember.
u/Nihilvin [+14] (6 hours later)
Because Cat's binary thinking has rephrased Good and Evil as Passive vs Active in a bloody, violent way. So now she calls herself evil, but has rationalised it as being able to decide the course of her own fate.
'If we all cross the same finish line the only thing that matters, the only thing that can matter, is how we get there.'
'So what if we all cross the same finish line? Down here in the mud is what really matters. What we make of it. And if I only have so much time kicking around Creation, then I’m the one who’s going to decide how it’s spent.'
So close, yet so far Cat. That was the point the priestess was trying to make.
u/muns4colleg [+2] (22 hours later)
Unless the point was to make it extra clear that Cat is Evil
The point I'm assuming is to make it extra clear that Cat is a dumb child. The sister literally says as much.
u/MoralRelativity [+6] (36 minutes later)
And in her final refusal of the heavens above, Cat crosses another line.
u/nick012000 [+7] (a day later)
It's not her final refusal. It's only the second time this has happened, see? ;)
u/MoralRelativity [+2] (a day later)
Ah.... interesting. :)
u/-main [+5] (7 hours later)
Over the past few chapters, Cat seems to be going significantly more evil than she has in the past... Leading up to a conflict where she's fighting someone who's more evil than she is. Feels like it's framing for Cat to make a mistake, to me.
u/None [+6] (a day later)
If you solve all your problems with swords, swords are the only reply you will ever get.
This is the biggest problem with Cat's approach. There's always a bigger fish.
u/TheEngineer923 [+1] (2 days later)
Yeah, to quote a certain pale bald deicidal maniac "They will fall as well."
u/werafdsaew [+3] (14 hours later)
"Do you know why the House of Light does not preach rebellion against the Empire? Because it doesn’t really matter"
But heroes do rebel against the Empire, and they're agents of Heaven aren't they?
u/Ardvarkeating101 [+4] Father of Learning (15 hours later)
Calling it right now, this won't help much, because they already infected the army with zombie water. That's what they were used for, and it's already done.
u/melmonella [+4] Tremble, o ye mighty, for a new age is upon you (a day later)
Zombie water has to be taken over a long time and consists of a lot of expensive alchemical reagents. Logistics of that don't work out-officers can't be receiving large shipments of unidentified stuff from the outside and not be noticed.
u/inscrutablescooter [+2] (a day later)
That's a good point, but I don't think that is nearly enough evidence to rule out that the official shipments from the Wasteland did not contain the necessary reagents. Malicia herself managed to ensure that Ubua got what she needed, after all...
u/melmonella [+2] Tremble, o ye mighty, for a new age is upon you (a day later)
Cat controls supply within her own legion. I really really doubt that a lot of magical stuff slipped past her and Ratface and Masego and Juniper and Aisha. Just Cat, sure, but all of them at the same time? Plus every other high-ranked Cat loyalist?
Then there are distribution problems. Suppose traitors somehow got the materials. Now they gotta distribute them to all soldiers so that they would drink them, and insure they keep doing that for a while. I doubt food is cooked in a single place for the whole legion (seems to make more sense to have one kitchen for 2-3 hundred people instead), and each such place probably has dozens of cooking pots, so this means they have to consistently put poison into dozens of pots all over camp without getting caught. How many traitors do you think there are, several hundreds? How do they insure nobody defects and sells the scheme to Cat? How do they insure they never get caught? They can't very much kill anyone who notices, because that would definitely be noticed.
It just isn't plausible.
u/Ardvarkeating101 [+1] Father of Learning (a day later)
They were drinking from/camping by a river, mentioned half a dozen chapters ago. They could have just put it in there and the traitors were told when they did so to get the timing right to drink.
Also, that's not how it works. You drink the chemicals and then anyone can activate the change by magic, otherwise there's no difference unless you're scanned. There's no gradual change.
u/melmonella [+2] Tremble, o ye mighty, for a new age is upon you (2 days later)
Again, you have to drink them over a long time:
“Our understanding of the process was incomplete,” Diabolist conceded. “It took me several months instead of the theorized one to reach the ideal concentration. The process was accelerated when I held the only available source of water, of course. As you can see, it is temporary for you to have the largest army on the field. That can be remedied in the span of an hour should I wish it.”
It takes a couple months to drink the chemicals when using Ubua's process to do it. They put it into dozens of rivers as the legion moved all over the place? At just the right time when everyone was taking water for cooking, because otherwise it'd get carried with the water downstream and be lost? Without being noticed by sentries or anyone else as they conspicuously leave the camp each day at the time cooking is done with backpacks of supplies and return without them?
u/Ibbot [+1] (4 days later)
A Practical Guide to Evil now has a dedicated subreddit, /r/practicalguidetoevil.
u/semiscintillation [+1] (4 days later)
ok so this is late, but everyone calls cat the black queen- we all know she’s going to become the Black Queen, not the Black Knight- she’s going right to royalty, under the empress.