mrshad wrote:As if moral declairations carry any weight at all from mercenaries.
But especially from you, Jyudas, it is particularly laughable.
You dont know what you believe, other than the drink on the bar in front of you.
You arent even a convincing soldier for hire, preaching peace, pretending to neutrality, but still consistently accepting very large sacks of dapper to fight for Ma-Duks Death Cult.
That you can look at the side supporting Raynes blood orgy, and look at those of us who are trying to protect hominkind from such depravity; and not be able to choose between the two is the mark of a mal-formed mind.
Heres some dapper; go back to drinking and let those who care about a peaceful Atys get to it.
Consider this then...
*Jyudas picks up the dapper*
This is a dapper, basically crystalised sap. We can infuse it with our personal sap to make crystals that power our enchantments, we can use it to crystalise spells, learned from the kami, that we can place into our weapons and channel through them. It is the very life blood of Atys, and ourselves.
Dapper doesn't make any special demands on me. It doesn't tell me what I can and can't do, who my friends can be, whether I can explore the deep roots or not. It doesn't hide behind an impenetrable mask, it doesn't pollute our home with its foul smokes and strange lights. It doesn't demand I kill its enemies, it doesn't masquerade as a god to take advantage of our naive simplemindedness.
Kami and Karavan alike both desire it, crave it, are in its power, as our the homin peoples.
It can buy friends, companionship, love. It can provide booze to drown one's sorrows, a roof over one's head and it asks for nothing in return.
With it I can perform magic. I can make things invisible to guards and excisemen. I can turn it into a house, a guildhall, mektoubs, weapons, armour, materials, food, anything I might desire.
With enough dapper I could topple the Emperor, depose the king, control the federation or break the faith of the Zorai.
Dapper doesn't judge me, it doesn't say what my morals should be. It lets me choose them myself. It enables me to act upon those morals as I see fit. It has let me bring my father up from the refugee camps, it has helped establish our camp in reclaiming the old lands, in creating a new nation away from all this... bodoc dung going on here, in the new lands.
It has lead to me being a force of balance in these lands, the desperate Kami willing to pay for a strong sword arm to help fend off the advances of the imperialist Matis who, in their arrogance, mostly refuse to pay.
Who are you, any of you, to speak to me of morals? The Kami with their random killings, their terrible hypocracy. The Karavan with their goo experiments, their rape of the planet, their secrets and their slavery.
I might kill, for dapper, for something material and real that I can put to good use helping my friends, my family and others. You? You kill for nothing, for an idea with no more substance than a gust of wind.
You kill for AN IDEA. Even the animals are better than that.