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[Gervassen]

They lost that right when they came with fire and sword to our lands first. We are not marshmallows and pushovers. When we get into the territories that they've razed on the way to the capital, with piles of dead, the women in particular torn of their clothing and left undignified to rot, you'll regret any impulse to treat them as civilised. Now is not the time for womanish mercy on savages.

We take no chances, and do not pretend that these people have been good nieghbours with white picket fences.

[GreatWyrmGold]

I'm not saying we don't react harshly, I say we are also polite.

Sorta like this, except with less outright malice.

[tryrar]

I agree with both of you, we be though to them at first, but if they don't show signs of resisting, we'll soften a bit and be a little polite. We won't however, show any weakness at all, otherwise that might lead to them resisting, which would slow us down long enough to cut down the idiots who are making trouble, which we don't want.

[GreatWyrmGold]

I just thought of a great metaphor!

We want to show that we are hard, but we want to be more marble than granite.

...That sounded better in my head.

[Gervassen]

Their culture may not even have the same concept of politeness.

Frankly, foreign cultures often don't even pick up on the same signals of "affability" and what can seem polite in one culture is rude in another. The difference between waving in western cultures and chinese culture, for example. You really can't say what they consider polite, but we know how to make them take us seriously: giving them explicit orders in simple Kingdom speech that give them to understand our serious intent.

When we are away from the burning village, ideally in Torchester, we can relax a bit, smile, and compliment the various bones and beads and bits of sharp metal hanging from their noses.

[GreatWyrmGold]

No, that's not what I said.

Affably Evil, but without Obviously Evil, to put it in Delinked Troperese. Be hard, but don't be needlessly cruel, and don't be impolite where it isn't needed.

[Gervassen]

At this point, though, with several of their kinsman slain, their huts about to burn, they being held at sword-point, I'm not even sure what is meant by being polite, to be honest. It all seems a bit tone-deaf to the situation that we're to be polite while doing irretrievably impolite things to people that have been equally irretrievably impolite to us.

[GreatWyrmGold]

It's not so much to earn his trust as it is to show that we have a soul.

[Gervassen]

These are the same people that have been busy exploring the guts and innards of our countrymen with their spears and axes, so they are likely to know as well as we do what precisely is inside of us. We have a soul... Our dead countrymen had souls... but does this savage? Does that even have a meaning in his culture that he can understand? It is far from a universal concept.

There are some cultures, where politeness is always interpreted as weakness, no exceptions, because politeness is defined as deference to strength. I'm inclined to think a barbarous nation such as this is among that number.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Why do we see them as barbarians? Because they attacked us and our towns.

Look at what we just did.

Showing that we aren't the demons that they may well think we are opens the door to assimilating their descendants into the nation.

[Gervassen]

Look at what we just did.

They landed on our coasts and attacked us. Is that not justifying their own deaths? At what point in the continuum of outrages from landing on our coasts unwanted to venturing into Marna's bedroom unwanted for a quick shag is too much of an aggression for your mildness to bear? I draw the line at the very first, knowing that all other steps toward atrocity must follow in its wake by necessity of inertia, when gentleness is shown to those with no appreciation of it.

[GreatWyrmGold]

My point is, we wouldn't look so different to them. Everything we think of them, they could well think of us, especially given that our nobles are probably better-informed than their peasants. Because one is nobility and one is peasants.

It goes both ways.

[tryrar]

Ahem, let's nip this in the bud. I get what you both are trying to say, but I lean more towards Gerv. We can be polite later, when we know what their concept of politeness is, but for now we must be more granite than marble(to borrow your analogy GWG). Only when we have time and breathing room can we afford to drop the hard edge we take with them

[GreatWyrmGold]

All I'm asking is that we not be needlessly hard. Show that we do care about human life and such, even if we put our country above them.

[tryrar]

....I don't see anyone suggesting going Vlad the Impaler on them(not Even Gerv is suggesting that!)