Thanks everyone for reading my story. I tried to give it my best effort. I’ve had a lot of practice writing story rewards for the Bay 12 champions and it’s all a lot of fun. As far as dwarven use of poison goes: I think it has to pass the ‘badass test.’ I don’t imagine a dwarf sneaking up from behind and stabbing their enemy in the back with a poison knife, but dumping a caustic liquid down the fortress wall on a host of attackers, that works. What do you think?
Honestly, natural poisons strike me as elvish, chemical poisons (such as refining mercury or lead toxins, or even just improving on wild animals venom) strikes me as the human version. Dwarves dump magma on their enemies. Though I must admit, I really wish I could load my catapults with wooden booze barrels, light them on fire, and launch flaming booze at my enemies. It would make the Russian Mafia look like amateurs. This is new territory for the community though, the odds of goblins actually conquering a fortress are a single, very round, digit. Dwarves are more likely to kill themselves in a stupid accident than die in war.
However, I agree, this actually opens up another issue entirely - doing unethical things to survive. Would the elves burn a forest if it was the only way to stop a goblin army from destroying their entire civilization? Would the dwarves resort to brutal measures (read [ETHIC:TORTURE_AS_EXAMPLE:UNTHINKABLE]) to end a potentially deadly uprising? We already see several breaks of dwarf ethics, such as a traitor (oath breaking and treason are both capital crimes) and killing another dwarf. They lied to the elves to get them to carry out the assination. This may be something Toady has to flesh out in the end, some civilizations may decide to do what is necessary while others choose to die out before submitting their values.
The glass orbs remind me a lot of the bottles of acid the humans used in "Dwarven Assault". Since the dwarves were living in exile with the humans in this story, you might actually consider that the dwarves were using a human weapon in the assassination, or at least one inspired by human weapons, which gives rise to another question - cultural contamination. Humans probably wouldn't think twice about using chemical weapons, but it seems the consensus is that dwarves would. So would being forced to live with the humans effect a civilizations ethics at all? If the elves were forced to hide in a dwarf fortress, would they stop being so shocked at seeing trees cut down?
Another thing I noticed that nobody commented on was how Bronzeflower's opponent in the arena had already been poisoned, and how the gladiator was actually an assassin. Killing as an example of power has not, I don't believe, been explored before (though it's not uncommon in fantasy settings, see Dune). Having the ruler or general prove his skill in the arena should be considered, especially in adventure mode where you might have to prove your skill before you're given a quest. At the same time, assassination can take many forms. Bronzeflower knew the boy was trying to kill him, but the boy tricked him and would have killed him if he hadn't been wearing armor. Tricking an opponent, cheap tactics like low blows, throwing sand, feints, trying to lull them into a false sense of security/superiority should be valid tactics.
As always, an awesome story Threetoe.
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Topic: The Assassination of Zecalo Bronzeflower: A Threetoe Story (Read 27000 times)