Endwalker Main Scenario Commentary & Feedback

[Cleretic]

Parting thoughts on prior post:

I think you're being rather blind to a known issue, in real life, that's being echoed in the story.

When a war is settled, there is a big question of culpability, of exactly who is responsible versus who was simply another kind of victim being used as a tool. Similar issues cropped up around Doma in 4.x; after you've taken new control over a nation, what do you do about people guilty of things that just weren't crimes under a new nation?

The Crania Lupi are a perfect example of a facet of it. They were forced into service, either by outright conscription or a form of blackmail and extortion by their rulers ('your only way to get the respect and protection of the Empire is to join their army'), and acting on orders they weren't coming up with. If a man shoots against his will, under threat of his family being harmed if he doesn't, how guilty is that man of the death that may follow? This is a complicated goddamn issue, enough so that IRL the International Criminal Court basically exists to figure it out. Saying 'but they're all murderers' and calling it a day is dangerously reductive.

Chances are, if you really went through it all, the Crania Lupi probably had members that fall on both sides of this divide (and Fordola might be the hardest question of them all). But the problem is that Ala Mhigo never really asked those questions, they tried to brush it all under the rug. That led to nobody really getting any answers or closure; not only are now liberated civilians leery of that family around the corner whose son joined the Empire, but the ex-Lupi and their family themselves are grappling with the morality of what happened under occupation, wracked with guilt for actions that ultimately may not have been their fault. That creates the pariah situation that we saw in the healer quests; a complicated situation was not acknowledged or approached, and as a result people jumped to the simplest answer, which happened to be the most painful one.

[Puksi]

Ala Mhigo didn't brush it under the rug--the writers did. If they weren't willing to delve into the gravity of the situation they created, they probably shouldn't have crossed so many moral event horizons. It's ridiculous to show a child dead in the dirt only to shrug it off and later call the one responsible a "hero"--a "hero" that's shown no regret for any of it, either, except for how it's affected her. The narrative is also very quick to portray the Ala Mhigans who were harmed as "unreasonable", in what feels like an attempt to generate sympathy towards the "Butcher".

In terms of pure story, though, there was zero reason to permit Wercrata to be beaten, and zero reason to kill Anamika. Fordola was in command of both those situations, and could have handled it as Baut handled Ala Ghiri--Baut was a conscript too, yet still had the ability to choose basic decency. Fordola had command over even Imperial soldiers at the tower. Yet she allowed a defenseless civilian to be beaten and a child taken hostage and later murdered--in the end she even killed her own men, her "friends", supposedly also reasons she joined the Crania Lupi in the first place.

The Imperial she ordered to fire on them hesitated to do so longer than it took her to arrive at the decision that she wasn't going to throw away her progress with Garlemald for their sakes. She even admitted in she wanted revenge on the Ala Mhigan people.

Gaius seems to have also been forgiven for forming the Crania Lupi to begin with as well, so there's that. And, of course, they've elevated the founder--and until recently, the Emperor--of Garlemald itself to practically the face of the series lately.

I'm not blind. I'm sick of the writers tossing around these monstrous deeds and lazily ignoring the weight of them--somehow always going directly to redeeming the irredeemable, no regret needed, because reasons. That's the only thing reductive in this conversation.