Questionable ethics - Living Memory

[SDaemon]

we are doing the exact same thing sphene is trying to do, just from a different perspective; we 'killed' her and her world to save our own

Except the situations are not the same. If Sphene had stopped her mad plans to destroy all life everywhere to power her Endless with souls and talked with us, then a peaceful resolution could probably have been found. The people of the Source had 0 aggressive plans towards her or her people. She declared our annihilation and we answered by defending ourselves. On the other hand, if we refused to defend ourselves and journey to Sphene's world then not only would the Source have been destroyed and their souls harvested but eventually all life would potentially have been consumed to fuel the Endless. This isn't a case where both sides wished to destroy the other, instead one side wished to destroy the other and one side chose to defend themselves.

[celfhelp]

Except the situations are not the same. If Sphene had stopped her mad plans to destroy all life everywhere to power her Endless with souls and talked with us, then a peaceful resolution could probably have been found. The people of the Source had 0 aggressive plans towards her or her people. She declared our annihilation and we answered by defending ourselves. On the other hand, if we refused to defend ourselves and journey to Sphene's world then not only would the Source have been destroyed and their souls harvested but eventually all life would potentially have been consumed to fuel the Endless. This isn't a case where both sides wished to destroy the other, instead one side wished to destroy the other and one side chose to defend themselves.

she did try to peacefully resolve the issue, albeit briefly, and double albeit not in the most effective way

she asked wuk lamat (and by extension, us) to become alexandrian citizens, which would have resolved the issue without mass destruction, because a continent worth of natural death supplies far more 'empty souls' than just the kingdom of alexandria. obviously this isn't a rational or good solution, but it was a passive one

i also disagree that we just "chose to defend ourselves" by erasing an entire kingdom of people.

imo we overcorrected, because nothing was stopping us from going straight to sphene at the meso terminal and confronting her. we didn't have to turn everything off before hand, and the reason we DID do that ended up being completely irrelevant and useless. we 'killed' her people in an effort to demoralize her and it didn't. she wasn't even aware of it (frankly this is probably more 'oopsie' from the writers than it is something to dig into). hell, had we gone straight for the terminal she probably would've been far weaker an adversary

we could've just as easily "killed" sphene, taken the key, and left alexandria to naturally fade away, but instead we played God and sped up the process

do i personally think there's much of a difference? yes and no, but i'm just posturing on this side for the sake of discussion

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

she did try to peacefully resolve the issue, albeit briefly, and double albeit not in the most effective way

she asked wuk lamat (and by extension, us) to become alexandrian citizens, which would have resolved the issue without mass destruction, because a continent worth of natural death supplies far more 'empty souls' than just the kingdom of alexandria. obviously this isn't a rational or good solution, but it was a passive one

i also disagree that we just "chose to defend ourselves" by erasing an entire kingdom of people.

imo we overcorrected, because nothing was stopping us from going straight to sphene at the meso terminal and confronting her. we didn't have to turn everything off before hand, and the reason we DID do that ended up being completely irrelevant and useless. we 'killed' her people in an effort to demoralize her and it didn't. she wasn't even aware of it (frankly this is probably more 'oopsie' from the writers than it is something to dig into)

we could've just as easily "killed" sphene, taken the key, and left alexandria to naturally fade away, but instead we played God and sped up the process

do i personally think there's much of a difference? yes and no, but i'm just posturing on this side for the sake of discussion

She was only asking us. Not our peoples, nations,etc. Us as individuals, so she wouldn't have to fight us. That's all. She was still going to attack tulliyolal.

[celfhelp]

She was only asking us. Not our peoples, nations,etc. Us as individuals, so she wouldn't have to fight us. That's all. She was still going to attack tulliyolal.

that's a fair, and probably more accurate, interpretation, at the time it just didn't register as that because no one seemed to react with that in mind. haha

[Loggos]

She was only asking us. Not our peoples, nations,etc. Us as individuals, so she wouldn't have to fight us. That's all. She was still going to attack tulliyolal.

I agree and in addition, I also don't think it would actually help Living Memory if Tuliyollal became Alexandrian because the souls of the Alexandrian people already seem to be (more or less) fully in use for their regulator system. They don't seem to have (enough) of them to spare to power Living Memory sustainably. So just increasing the Alexandrian people would probably not actually increase its surplus energy (at least not long term) because, assuming that many would probably also end up using regulators like most of the Turali's who got absorbed into the electro bubble - even if it's just newer generations/generations yet to be born, the life force demand for their normal regulator system would eventually increase more or less proportionally as well.

So in the long run Spehne needs to kill people to generate this surplus of life force. Her own society cannot generate it so she cannot offer all of Tuliyollal/Tural to become Alexandrians because it would actively undermine her goal.

(Also, I don't think it's very "peaceful" to say "give up your whole nation and way of life and succumb to us, otherwise we'll have to harvest you". That is just colonialisation/conquest, no matter how regretful Sphene is or how nicely she asks.)

[celfhelp]

(Also, I don't think it's very "peaceful" to say "give up your whole nation and way of life and succumb to us, otherwise we'll have to harvest you". That is just colonialisation/conquest, no matter how regretful Sphene is or how nicely she asks.)

it's more peaceful than slaughter. plenty of cultures/peoples survive today because colonialism/conquest of all brands and sources wasn't flatout slaughter (most of the time)

don't get me wrong, she was always going to go the slaughter route because the story demanded it. granted Preservation disappeared but you'd think that they could've found an alternative fuel source if they just committed to finding it. would've personally enjoyed exploring that route more, but it'd probably make for a horribly boring video game main story. haha

[Loggos]

it's more peaceful than slaughter. plenty of cultures/peoples survive today because colonialism/conquest of all brands and sources wasn't flatout slaughter (most of the time)

I'd say more "peaceful" but not actually peaceful. I didn't intend to say it was as bad as slaugher so technically I agree. I just mean that it would still be incredibly immoral by Sphene (if she were to offer Tural to become Alexandrians, which I don't think she was actually implying, as said above) to put the gun on a whole continent's chest and say "succumb or die". (I'm also not sure I agree with "cultures survived because of colonialism/conquest" because if they hadn't been colonised in the first place...but this is another can of worms and I don't want to open up a debate on this any further, so I'll stop here.)

Regarding Sphene, the only point I was trying to make with that quoted part is that none of her actions or (theoretical) intentions (assuming for the sake of the argument she was offering Tural to join her kingdom) were actually peaceful, so her offer is not a display of her "good" character is all.

I agree on exploring different solutions but I think this is a separate point because she could also have explored these things with us without (theoretically) asking Tural to become Alexandrian.

[SDaemon]

she did try to peacefully resolve the issue, albeit briefly, and double albeit not in the most effective way

she asked wuk lamat (and by extension, us) to become alexandrian citizens, which would have resolved the issue without mass destruction, because a continent worth of natural death supplies far more 'empty souls' than just the kingdom of alexandria. obviously this isn't a rational or good solution, but it was a passive one

i also disagree that we just "chose to defend ourselves" by erasing an entire kingdom of people.

imo we overcorrected, because nothing was stopping us from going straight to sphene at the meso terminal and confronting her. we didn't have to turn everything off before hand, and the reason we DID do that ended up being completely irrelevant and useless. we 'killed' her people in an effort to demoralize her and it didn't. she wasn't even aware of it (frankly this is probably more 'oopsie' from the writers than it is something to dig into). hell, had we gone straight for the terminal she probably would've been far weaker an adversary

we could've just as easily "killed" sphene, taken the key, and left alexandria to naturally fade away, but instead we played God and sped up the process

do i personally think there's much of a difference? yes and no, but i'm just posturing on this side for the sake of discussion

We didn't erase an entire kingdom. We shut down the memory archive of Endless. The Alexandrians are moving forward and living their lives in Solution 9 and Heritage Found.

While I don't consider the memory constructs of Living Memory to be the true people, whose souls were robbed from them and used as fuel, that they are based on. I would argue shutting them down is a far better outcome then letting the place slowly run out of energy and turn off on its own, not that this was the WOL's purpose in doing so.

We didn't play God. Again, we took action to stop an entity that was unrelentingly going to destroy everything, including our world. The actions we took were described to us as being beneficial in hopefully not having to come to blows with Sphene at the critical moment. That just didn't end up being the case and we had to defeat Sphene regardless due to her programming. I might not agree with a kid like Gajool Ja ruling the Alexandrians, but now they have a chance to rebuild their lives in a way that won't destroy every other world in existence.