The WOL and Mass Murder

[SentioftheHoukai]

Oddly enough, I was playing through the Main Story Quest "In from the cold" yesterday on an alt and ran across this interesting bit at the start of the duty:

"The tempered imperial has breathed his last ...
You offer a silent prayer for the deceased.
Were you in possession of your own body, you may have had the capacity to subdue rather than slay this tempered soldier."

Those who tend toward the belief that the Warrior of Light is a blood-thirsty murderer, take note.

That's about control, not brute force. It refers to finesse, it says nothing about the WoL's state of mind or preferences. We didn't knock out the Praetorium soldiers, why would we spare these particular Garleans?

And 'afore you go on about how they were in control of their wits in contrast to these ones being tempered, one can easily argue that the guys in the Praetorium were ALSO brainwashed. By Emperor Solus' and Garlean nationalist propaganda. It tends to happen when you subjugate virgin territories and raise your enemies children to bring their parents down. ;3

In Stormblood after taking the bridge we hunt down cowering Imperials who had fled barely able to stand defend themselves & murder them only for few quest later to save an Imperial after shoot their own during battle & again later we kill more after Castrum before Ala Mhigo that hiding in shadows, the game constantly sends mixed messages.

Also you get option in Heavensward to say you'll rip out Zepheryn heart & give Thordan & boys a cold death stare as he questions what we are.

Personally, I headcanoned that my WoL vowed to slay them ALL, not just Zephirin. Let's just say that Lord Horse Fart's demise was a GREAT narrative point to finally pick up that DRK crystal and actually use it, hehe~ ;3

[thegreatonemal]

In Stormblood after taking the bridge we hunt down cowering Imperials who had fled barely able to stand defend themselves & murder them only for few quest later to save an Imperial after shoot their own during battle & again later we kill more after Castrum before Ala Mhigo that hiding in shadows, the game constantly sends mixed messages.

Also you get option in Heavensward to say you'll rip out Zepheryn heart & give Thordan & boys a cold death stare as he questions what we are.

Hunting down the enemy is like rule 102 of war. Besides every single one of them decided to fight rather than give up once caught. Pretty sure we were taking out patrols for those last two examples you're talking about. Standard war things.

[SentioftheHoukai]

Hunting down the enemy is like rule 102 of war. Besides every single one of them decided to fight rather than give up once caught. Pretty sure we were taking out patrols for those last two examples you're talking about. Standard war things.

Why specifically rule 102? You got a handbook somewhere I don't know about? ;3

[DPZ2]

Why specifically rule 102? You got a handbook somewhere I don't know about? ;3

Rule 102: The enemy remains the enemy until the Articles of Surrender are signed and an Armistice declared. "We beat them in the battle" is no excuse to continue to let them live to battle another day.

And yes, our mission in Garlemald was a Rescue Mission, not a series of battles to force the already decimated Garleans to surrender. The Xth essentially did that (surrender) before we attacked the Tower of Babil.

[Necrotica]

Amen.

Now apply that rule to the beast tribes.

[Cleretic]

Something to keep in mind regarding the tempered soldier in In From the Cold is that at that point, tempering is curable. That's significantly different from the wartime situations we were in in Heavensward and Stormblood, where everyone was of their own mind--which ironically is much harder to cure than tempering is now, because technically there's nothing wrong.

[FireMage]

I did this on the MSQ up through 5.55

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards...eborn/79580448

[DPZ2]

Amen.

Now apply that rule to the beast tribes.

An Armistice has been declared by both sides. Eorzea and the Beast Tribes are in negotiations about the Articles of Surrender (and we're not exactly on the 'winning' side of negotiations).

[SentioftheHoukai]

Eh, in the heat of combat the finesse required to not kill is oft hard to muster properly. It's war, and in war bad shit happens. You ask me, you ought to ask yourself if these people deserve to be saved. Brainwashed or not, Garlean soldiers have nevertheless done some pretty heinous shit. They're no Emperor Solus, but they don't have to be. At best they're all mini-Fordolas. So, where's their bomb collars if I might ask? Are we to let these crime committers simply walk free? What happens to the Ala Mhigan fishwife who spots her husband's murderer happily traipsing the Quarter?

[Cleretic]

Eh, in the heat of combat the finesse required to not kill is oft hard to muster properly. It's war, and in war bad shit happens. You ask me, you ought to ask yourself if these people deserve to be saved. Brainwashed or not, Garlean soldiers have nevertheless done some pretty heinous shit. They're no Emperor Solus, but they don't have to be. At best they're all mini-Fordolas. So, where's their bomb collars if I might ask? Are we to let these crime committers simply walk free? What happens to the Ala Mhigan fishwife who spots her husband's murderer happily traipsing the Quarter?

Bad example; they're all dead. Fordola's the only Ala Mhigan enlist left. The EW healer role quest (best role quest, by the way) explicitly discusses this, its main focus is on the families of the people who enlisted and how they're being marginalized for the crime of having a family member who bet on the wrong horse and sided with the Empire to protect their family. And as for Fordola... yeah, people aren't exactly super comfortable with her still being around, although they're slowly coming to terms with the fact and understanding that she's trying to do right by them now. She's a complicated woman.

Now if you really wanted to make this point, the correct place to aim your sights is Doma, because the ranged physical role quest (the... eh, middling-est role quest, depending on how much you like Hien) explicitly discusses that yeah, Doma actually does still have citizens that were with the Empire. Their citizens are rather more conflicted, since most of the focus there is actually on returning Doman POWs, there's a lot of themes of both survivors' guilt and the people's rage at 'why did you live when my loved one died'. There's also at least one Doman fighting with the IVth Legion, Yamatsumi the Onmyoji, although it doesn't exactly end well for him.

Something to always keep in mind, though, is that the chain of command in war means you cannot simply call everyone who fought in a war guilty of all crimes; they might've been the one with the gun, but they weren't the one that gave the order, and they didn't exactly have the option not to shoot. Resolving all of that is a place for a war tribunal, which we won't get because that would be a very boring questline, but suffice to say... well, no, you can't consider EVERY Garlean soldier to be guilty and malicious actors. Especially given a nation that's just finished a goddamn war is a little fragile; sending everyone in Doma who helped the Imperials to the gallows is mostly just gonna lead to civil unrest.