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[hops]

As stupid as trading your soul to the Underworld for the powers of dark wizards who weren't competent enough to stay alive? As stupid as becoming a Fihter instead of a profession that uses your high INT? As stupid as relaying your conspiracy to control the Sapphire Guard without checking whether there's people listening?

[Akura]

To be fair, the last one actually worked regardless if the paladins were aware of it - the ruse wasn't for them, it was for the less-than-honorable nobles. They were bound to serve their king, and he wasn't actually evil(he was working for everyone's best interests). Even better, because the nobles weren't trying to assassinate him, the paladins had less work to do to protect him.

Too bad that one of the two paladins who were listening was batshit insane...

[Mathel]

New one is up.

Spoiler:  Actual spoiler (click to show/hide)

Yeah, should have at least told Durkon.

[smjjames]

Rich Burlew is on a roll with the updates, heh.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

It is a lot easier to draw when your dominant thumb isn't severed, yes.

[Xantalos]

Wouldn't a valid solution to the prophecy be just never having Durkon leave in the first place?

[Trekkin]

Wouldn't a valid solution to the prophecy be just never having Durkon leave in the first place?

"Returns home" is worryingly vague, though. It might trigger when Durkon steps outside the mountain briefly, or when he gets home from work, or when next he's around his family, depending on what is meant by "home". Prophecies are fiddly like that.

You could probably get around that by immuring him in a disused tunnel or something, but that's even worse than exile.

[Akura]

Gotta say, they're treating the brewmaster like a VIP. Considering what a dwarven brewer is to DF dwarves, that's pretty understandable, actually.

I thought they, like, lost his dwarf paperwork or something!

Of course, the bard inadvertently hits the nail on the head.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

There's really only two reasonable approaches when one has reason to believe there is a genuine prophecy in play.

A. The prophecy will come to pass in the absolute manner in which it was intended, no matter what you do. This is immensely distressing since it suggests prophecies just tell the future and there's no free will. Anyway, there's nothing you can do about it, so just go back to your automaton life and wait for the axe to fall.

B. The prophecy is some sort of magical heuristic set that pushes on reality in order to reach any eligible end-state. Durkon goes outside for a second and triggers a landslide, Durkon spiritually "leaves home" and invokes Thor's wrath upon the whole city when he tries to repent, Durkon's vengeful soul breaks free from the phylactery you imprisoned it in a thousand years ago and exterminates the dwarfs. Something that fulfills the sense implied by the words of the prophecy.

In such a situation as B, you should probably try to game the system by moving everyone into another city and having Durkon intentionally collapse the old cavern afterwards. It might not work but it's all you've got, really.

[Lord Shonus]

Wouldn't a valid solution to the prophecy be just never having Durkon leave in the first place?

"Returns home" is worryingly vague, though. It might trigger when Durkon steps outside the mountain briefly, or when he gets home from work, or when next he's around his family, depending on what is meant by "home". Prophecies are fiddly like that.

You could probably get around that by immuring him in a disused tunnel or something, but that's even worse than exile.

Pretty sure that was explicitly brought up when the prophecy was originally revealed (in On The Origin of PCs, one of the print-only prequel books). The fear was that he'd doom everybody the next time he opened his front door, as he wasn't at home when the prophecy was given.

[Egan_BW]

There's really only two reasonable approaches when one has reason to believe there is a genuine prophecy in play.

A. The prophecy will come to pass in the absolute manner in which it was intended, no matter what you do. This is immensely distressing since it suggests prophecies just tell the future and there's no free will. Anyway, there's nothing you can do about it, so just go back to your automaton life and wait for the axe to fall.

B. The prophecy is some sort of magical heuristic set that pushes on reality in order to reach any eligible end-state. Durkon goes outside for a second and triggers a landslide, Durkon spiritually "leaves home" and invokes Thor's wrath upon the whole city when he tries to repent, Durkon's vengeful soul breaks free from the phylactery you imprisoned it in a thousand years ago and exterminates the dwarfs. Something that fulfills the sense implied by the words of the prophecy.

In such a situation as B, you should probably try to game the system by moving everyone into another city and having Durkon intentionally collapse the old cavern afterwards. It might not work but it's all you've got, really.

There would also have to be a C: being that the prophecy is merely one of many different possible futures, though probably a likely one. This means that depending on the manner in which Durkon returns home, he might not actually cause death and destruction after all. Unless you have more specific information, it might be hard to prevent the bad thing from happening anyway.

[scriver]

There's really only two reasonable approaches when one has reason to believe there is a genuine prophecy in play.

A. The prophecy will come to pass in the absolute manner in which it was intended, no matter what you do. This is immensely distressing since it suggests prophecies just tell the future and there's no free will. Anyway, there's nothing you can do about it, so just go back to your automaton life and wait for the axe to fall.

I don't see why being able to tell the future true would mean nobody has free will. No matter how many choices you have you can still only pick one. That means that if one can see into the future one can tell which action you will free-willedly choose.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

There's really only two reasonable approaches when one has reason to believe there is a genuine prophecy in play.

A. The prophecy will come to pass in the absolute manner in which it was intended, no matter what you do. This is immensely distressing since it suggests prophecies just tell the future and there's no free will. Anyway, there's nothing you can do about it, so just go back to your automaton life and wait for the axe to fall.

I don't see why being able to tell the future true would mean nobody has free will. No matter how many choices you have you can still only pick one. That means that if one can see into the future one can tell which action you will free-willedly choose.

Because a prophecy brings back data with certainty. It's the inherent paradox in seeing your own future in a non-multiverse setting: Once you see it, it changes because you've gained knowledge that you wouldn't have had otherwise, and not just once but continuously. So you can never really see your future because if anything happens that you'd want to change (and you will) then you'll never see anything as it forever shifts through your observation-reaction. It stretches out to infinity.

If you can see something, then you're either seeing a multiversal copy or you can't truly change your mind. Even if you observe something and change it, it means your "original" plan was a fiction, this outcome was established at the conception of the universe and existed ever since. It was waiting for you to flow down the river of time and reach it.

And if you can't change even once you know, you aren't deciding anything. It just happens. Deterministic universe.

[Trekkin]

Then again, if a fictional universe isn't deterministic and its prophecies are only predictions (optionally with magical enforcement), it follows that the best way to foil a prophecy is to ignore it. The original forecast would have included the audience's reaction to the prophecy in it, and if the original prediction had indicated that nothing would change, there would be no need to tell anyone about the prophecy. Thus, anyone being told a prophecy can presuppose that the prophecy needs them to react to it somehow for it to come true -- which the number of prophecies ironically fulfilled by trying to avoid them would seem to corroborate.

So whether A or B, it would seem optimal to act as though the universe is deterministic.

[Mathel]

Yes, it seems like most prophercies do require you to act upon them to come true.

But also, most of the time it is the actions of those, who are not the agents of the prophercy, that bring about it's fuifilment.

Oidipus was prophecised to kill his father and marry his mother and thus was exiled by them.
Later he returns (unknowing that it is a return), kills his father on the way and marries his mother.

Maybe he would have killed his father anyway, but he certainly would have not willingly married his mother. And neither would she marry him.

There is always the option to kill the agent of the prophercy outright, because if he is dead, he can usually not fuifill it.
In settings with undead and ressurections, you also have to destroy his body and soul.
It worked for Shulk in Xenoblade Chronicles.


But yes, I believe that prophercy is an outcome, predicted including the reaction to it, and enforced by magic.