#Vanguard logic

[pentacass]

me: 'ok we've done the ardat-yakshi monastery dozens of times. you've even done it once on insanity. you can do it again. don't cry. don't cry.'

the ardat-yakshi monastery i've done dozens of times:

me:

[utilitycaster]

You know what's interesting to me? For all people keep claiming at every juncture that perhaps Bells Hells will come around on the gods and see the harm they do (which, as discussed extensively, is, half the time, simply not intervening) not only have they never done so, but also they never quite cross the line into saying the party should join the Ruby Vanguard or aid them - and indeed, they defend against it - so what does this achieve? It feels like they're asking for a story in which the party stands idly by, which isn't much of a story nor, if I may connect this briefly to the real world, a political stance anyone should be proud of.

That's honestly the frustration with the gods and the "what if the Vanguard has a point" conversations in-game. What do we do then? Do we allow the organization that will murder anyone for pretty much any reason that loosely ties into their goals run rampant? The group that (perhaps unwittingly, but then again, Otohan's blades had that poison) disrupted magic world-wide, and caused people who had the misfortune to live at nexus points to be teleported (most, as commoners, without means of return). While also fomenting worldwide unrest?

Those were the arguments before the trip to Ruidus; with the reveal of the Vanguard's goals to invade Exandria, the situation becomes even more dire. Do you let the Imperium take over the planet?

And do the arguments against the gods even hold up? If Ludinus is so angry at them for the Calamity, what does it say that he destroyed Western Wildemount's first post-Calamity society for entirely selfish means? (What does it say about the validity of vengeance as a motivator?) What does it say that Laudna told Imogen she could always just live in a cottage quietly without issue before the solstice even happened? (Would this still be true if the Imperium controls the world?) What does it say that when faced with a furious, grieving party and the daughter she keeps telling herself was her reason for all of this, Liliana can't provide an answer to the question of what the gods have done other than that their followers will retaliate...for, you know, the Vanguard's endless list of murders. (That is how the Vanguard and Imperium tend to think, huh? "How dare your face get in the way of my boot; how dare you hit me back when I strike you.") She can't even provide a positive answer - why is Predathos better - other than "I feel it", even though Imogen and Fearne know firsthand that Predathos can provide artificial feelings of elation. Given all the harm Ludinus has done in pursuit, why isn't the conclusion "the gods should have crashed Aeor in such a way that the tech was unrecoverable?"

Even as early as the first real discussion on what the party should do, the fandom always stopped short of saying "no, Imogen's right, they should join up with the people who killed half the party," it was always "no, she didn't really mean it, she just was trying to connect with her mother." Well, she's connected with her mother, and at this point the party doesn't even care about the gods particularly (their only divinely-connected party member having died to prevent the Vanguard from killing all of them). So they will stop the Vanguard; as Ashton says, the means are unforgiveable. As Laudna says, it's not safe to bet on Predathos's apathy. As Imogen says, she's done running; the voice that she used to think of as a lifeline belongs to someone she doesn't trust. So I guess my question is: if they're stopping the people who are trying to kill the gods (and defense of the gods isn't remotely their personal motivation)...do you think the next phase of the campaign is Bells Hells personally killing the gods? Reconstructing the Aeor tech and hoping none of their allies notice? How does this end? Does your ideology ever get enacted? Or is this entirely moot and pointless and the story ends with Bells Hells saying "well, I'm really glad we stopped the people who [insert list of Vanguard atrocities from above]; none of us follow the gods or plan to, but honestly, the status quo we return to is preferable to whatever nightmare Ludinus had concocted in his violent quest for power and revenge"?

[themightyvibe]

i'm surprised that people are frustrated with bells hells going to see predathos like OF COURSE they were going to were going to see theee god eater OF COURSE they were going to push that red button

[essophysics-enjoyer]

i feel like something happened here

[grandwitchbird]

Taking It Will Not Die for rp reasons more than build reasons is how we’re rolling. Lavinia will be the last person standing always.

[six-improbable-things]

I just failed a thieves' tools check (that I had advantage on), and then rolled a nat 1 on a wisdom save, and got yoinked away from the party. Someone rolled arcana and realized that I got teleported somewhere in the dungeon, but uhh... it's probably not good for me, lmao. Plus now the party is missing their rogue for a jailbreak mission.

[metaldevilll]

cosplaying glen sounds so fun(ny) bru but iam not making a fucking SHARPIE BATH

[deramin2]

Orym's argument against Ludinus Da'leth and the Ruby Vanguard is essentially "The purpose of a system is what it does."

This is a systems theory coined by Stafford Beer around 2001. He posited there is "no point in claiming that the purpose of a system is to do what it constantly fails to do." It does not matter what someone tells you a system does if it does not reliably do that. The things it does consistently do are the actual purpose of the system.

Ludinus (and Liliana) claim the purpose of the Ruby Vanguard's violence is to free Exandria of oppression from the gods. Orym's point is that they have not consistently protected anyone from oppression. They consistently murder innocent people, indoctrinate vulnerable people into doing terrible violence (including children), support a ruling class that dominates the population through mind control and eugenics, and seek to release a predator so terrifying that the warring alien gods and native primordials worked together to seal it away as a threat to both of them.

So the logical conclusion is that the purpose of Ludinus' system is not to free anyone from tyranny, it's to install himself as the tyrant. And it does not matter what Ludinus says it's for or even what he believes it's for. The purpose of a system is what it does. And Orym has been personally and repeatedly victimized by what it does. Why wouldn't he keep reminding them of that?

Add onto that, the Ruby Vanguard is a death cult. They lure people in with believable lies. They use propaganda to control how people view them and to convince people to support them. Liliana has been groomed into a true believer who genuinely thinks what she has been told is true and that Ludinus' system does what he says it will. She has been convincing other people of this for years. Not because she's an inherently bad person but because everyone generally tries to convince others that what we believe is true. It is actually dangerous to let a cultist try to talk you into the cult's perspective. That's why Orym shuts it down.

Orym was already on edge but it's fully in a breakdown after FCG's sacrifice. One more iteration of Ludinus' system consistently murdering the people he loves. But he still told Imogen he wants her to have a good relationship with her mom again. He wants Liliana to make it through the other side of this. But that has to involve consistently stating the reality of what's happening against what she believes.

Ludinus believes in the rapture of the revolution. Burn everything to the ground on a fundamental level and a new perfect society will grow, with him to guide it. The reality is that kind of power vacuum consistently leads to horrific violence and conditions often get much, much worse. Especially for vulnerable people, who often do not survive. A lot about the gods' relationships to mortals probably needs to change, but this an incredibly dangerous gamble to fix it.

The purpose of a system is what it does. Any suggestion otherwise is cold comfort to Orym's family in the ground.

[revvethasmythh]

You know, I think there's something so, so insidious to the idea that Orym's perspective of the Vanguard is "flawed/human" or that him repeatedly reminding his friends what the Vanguard does (kill innocents to achieve their means) "blocks nuance" in the conversation, etc, because it implies that, in this mythical "objective" perspective that apparently exists, the Vanguard aren't so bad. If only Orym could put aside his petty grievances, such as the murder of his father and husband, and let people be nuanced about this situation, he'd see there's two sides to this story. And why discount the Vanguard's perspective just because *checks notes* they're a massive, manipulative cult that preys on vulnerable people to join their ranks and turns them to violence, or that they work with a centuries-old fascist eugenicist literally mind-controlling psychic government with the goal of freeing a creature that could very well destroy the world as we know it and even if it doesn't, will leave an enormous power vacuum for that fascist government to potentially occupy when they invade Exandria?

I think there's some misconception people have that they think war shouldn't ever be personal and if it does become personal for someone then their logic is too clouded by their feelings to see the situation clearly, just automatically. And perhaps sometimes, in some contexts, this can be true! But not here. It's actually quite cut and dried that Orym's "flawed, human" perspective is the one reminding everyone of the human cost to Ludinus' grand plans, all in the name of so called "progress"

[vexwerewolf]

-- SSC Death’s Head @ LL6 -- [ LICENSES ] SSC Death’s Head 3, IPS-N Tortuga 3 [ CORE BONUSES ] Reinforced Frame, Full Subjectivity Sync [ TALENTS ] Heavy Gunner 3, Vanguard 3, Grease Monkey 3 [ STATS ] HULL:4 AGI:2 SYS:0 ENGI:2 STRUCTURE:4 HP:26 ARMOR:0 STRESS:4 HEATCAP:8 REPAIR:4 TECH ATK:0 LIMITED:+1 SPD:6 EVA:14 EDEF:8 SENSE:20 SAVE:13 [ WEAPONS ] MAIN/AUX MOUNT: Deck-Sweeper Automatic Shotgun / Pistol HEAVY MOUNT: Railgun [ SYSTEMS ] Personalizations, HyperDense Armor, Kinetic Compensator, High-Stress Mag Clamps, Pattern-A Smoke Charges x4

I call this build "Tungsten Peashooter," the logical opposite of "Glass Cannon." It takes advantage of a very specific rules non-interaction: "half damage" effects don't stack.

HyperDense Armor gives you resistance to all damage from beyond of Range 3, in exchange your you dealing half damage to targets beyond Range 3. Heavy Gunner 3 allows you to mark two targets and attack them with your heavy mount when they move, at half damage. But these effects don't combine, so there's no additional penalty.

[utilitycaster]

one last post about this but for real I think the fact that Vax has no death wish, simply accepts that death is a consequence of the choices he made, and genuinely is dedicated to the Raven Queen is what trips up the fandom and the cast because killing the Raven Queen, arguably, makes things worse. If the Raven Queen dies? he has failed in his duty. It's not a happy ending for him. If he leaves service, breaking his oath? It's not a happy ending for him. There is no ending that is happy for both Keyleth and Vax other than, I suppose, the Raven Queen simply saying "you know what, fine" which is a deeply narratively unsatisfying statement with no real cause and which feels out of character. You can't handwave or weasel or One Weird Trick your way out of it because the Raven Queen is stalwart in her tenets and Vax is stalwart in his conviction. and people hate that. I feel Liam gets this and this is why people get mad about Orym, too; you can't cajole or logic or intimidate Orym into supporting a single thing the Vanguard do no matter how much you wish he'd bend.

I think having a firm conviction is a great character trait in and out of game, and I love paladins and similar, so I think these characters are great for it, but like, a lot of people don't because they want there to be a secret way out where they get exactly what they want, and sometimes there isn't and it makes them really mad. And again, makes sense for Vox Machina to feel this way about Vax, but there is not a universally happy ending available given the choices that were made.

[triviallytrue]

Why aren't you a revolutionary?

I live in the US, and there won't be a left-wing revolution here any time soon. There are no vanguard parties, no radicalized masses, no crisis of legitimacy for the current government, no infiltrated armed forces, no unifying figures. Conditions here could radically change, but for the next couple decades at least, talking about leftist revolution in the US is a little like basing your politics around the immediate formation of a world government or the complete abolition of nation states.

As an extension of the previous, if you live in a somewhat-functional democracy like the US, it seems a lot easier to just... win an election. There are certainly barriers to leftists winning elections beyond unpopularity, but there are a hell of a lot more barriers to winning a revolution. It's a lie to pretend the playing field is equal under liberal democracy, but it's delusional to think that the playing field for armed struggle isn't massively more unequal.

I think I would be kinda sympathetic (though still not convinced of anything, see 1 and 2) if the logic of most US leftist revolutionaries was something along the lines of "the US has rotten, stagnant institutions that limit the ability of truly democratic sentiment to express itself and wield power, and I want to clear away the cruft" but instead it's typically something along the lines of "well I would like to do the cultural revolution here but I can't do that no matter how many elections I win." It would help the case of revolutionaries if they were not apologists for the worst excesses of prior revolutions.

[postoctobrist]

I feel you are uniquely qualified to answer this question as a vanguard of the revolution and a person exploring her faith and connection to whatever God or Gods we may worship.

Almost all, if not all, faiths explicitly say that killing or committing murder is bad. However, the revolution *will not* happen without bloodshed. How do we reconcile our desire to abide by the tenets of our beliefs with the material necessity of Lighting This Candle?

I can think of a couple approaches, but none of them feels satisfactory. The first is an Abrahamic approach of Feeling Bad About It™️ afterwards, but that feels a bit disingenuous to me. The other thing I could see is an argument that such actions would be self-defense, as these policies represent such a danger to the lives and limbs of not just ourselves but countless others that stopping them by any means necessary is justified, which I can't really argue against from a logical perspective, but theologically I don't know if I can abide such a broad definition.

all I have for you is uncertainty and ambivalence. try reading this:

[redjademilktea]

I've talked about this before, but with the final episode of Downfall and the Cooldown that followed it I feel the need to write about it again.

The morality of saving the gods of Exandria was never going to be clear cut. Stopping Ludinus, stopping the Ruby Vanguard maybe. But there's an important conversation to be had about the nature of divinity that needs to be had. And Downfall makes this discourse more salient and pressing than it's ever been.

I really liked what Brennan brought up in the Cooldown, about "achieving enlightenment on their terms," or suffer the fate of "not being able to understand." The gods as they exist have protected and will continue to protect the way of being that allows for their continued existence. They dismiss anything that challenges that existence - anything that makes them confront the nature of mortality, as Brennan elegantly phrased it - as something not worth considering. As something that simply doesn't grasp what one needs to grasp to do what must be done.

And if doing what must be done means calling a truce in their great war. If that means collaborating with the very siblings on the opposing side of that conflict, which has led to so much loss of mortal life and desecration of the face of Exandria, then so be it. It has to be done. We are mere children, we wouldn't understand.

I'm reminded of Ann Stoler in her book "Along the Archival Grain," along with Avery Gordon's "Ghostly Matters." Both authors talk about the lengths and extents colonial states go to legitimate and justify their existence through the policing and curation of knowledge. It is in the best interest of the colonial state to produce and maintain knowledge that justifies its being. They are doing what they do because they define it to be right, to be just.

And those contradictions? The holes in colonial logic born out of the anxieties and fears of losing that legitimacy? Those inconsistencies that necessitate their reproduction and continued existence? Poor child, you do not understand. It is the right thing to do. There are things at play that are beyond fathoming for you. It simply must be this way. It is right for it to be this way. Fallicies and contradictions in colonial logic become justified and legitimated via the production of knowledge produced from the colonial archive to reproduce itself.

The knowledge of the divine killing weapon. The people, the complex, ephemeral, fleeting, textured, beautiful, pained, vibrant lives of those that held that knowledge. That knowledge that was spread to touch every soul on that floating city. All of it could not persist. For them to persist would mean the possibility of the way things are, the way things are ought to be from those who know better, could come to an end.

So it must be this way. The city must fall, despite its infinite arcane beauty. Lives must be lost, and so too must their chance for redemption, for a new beginning. All things must come to an end, if that means preserving the infinite. Family must persist. *They* must persist. And so it must be this way.

I say all this to highlight the fact that the morality underlying the theme of this campaign is not clear cut. The nature of it prevents that. The members of Bells Hells are not good or bad because some of them remain ambivalent to the existence of the gods. No single one of them is inherently right or wrong.

But you cannot argue there is a "right" answer when it comes to the gods. They simply are. Much like anything simply is. And what their existence means, especially for what it means to the lives of mortals on Exandria who must suffer the consequences of that divine existence, must be reckoned with.

I really am impressed with the bold scope of thematic ideas that Campaign 3 introduces and continues to grapple with. It is phenomenal story telling, and is strikingly resonant with the enmeshed struggles that permeate the very real world that informs the lives and experiences of its creators. All of them continue to blow me away every Thursday night!

[kozyndan]

"Minka-ski Space" 30x51cm painting (42.5 x133cm scroll) nihonga paint on washi paper, fabric scroll 2024

Edit: SOLD

Our first kakejiku in over 3 years, this traditional nihonga (Japanese mineral pigment paint) artwork was inspired by the old joinery in our 140 year old farmhouse in the Japanese countryside, and our young cats who figured out they could ascend the columns like a tree trunk and have a whole new world to explore in the rafters over our heads. Like many of our cat paintings, almost all the cats are ours, or friends' cats. The cats are not, however, existing in one dimension, but we seem to be seeing multiple dimensions of cats and joinery in the same moment and thus it may seem to make sense to our perception and then lose sense and back again - they seem to have their own kind of logic.

Kozy painted this artwork using the very traditional medium of Japanese painting - crushing minerals into a fine powder herself and mixing them into warmed hide glue to make each color, repeatedly re-warming the mixture to keep it at the correct temperature necessary to paint it onto the handmade washi paper.

Once the painting was finished, we took it to a father and son scroll making team in the mountains of Minobu, Yamanashi, where we selected the elements of fabric they would use to build the scroll around the painting (one might assume a painting is attached to the front of a scroll, but in fact the fabric elements are cut and glued to fit around the painting instead).

We have sent this painting off to Outré Gallery in Melbourne, Australia for their 2024 Vanguard group exhibition, which is on view September 6 - 29, 2024.

[phthalology]

(Ikora Week Day 1 - Void)

“A Void Guardian cannot be Vanguard,” said the Speaker, descending the stairs from the balcony. Bronze light lapped at the railing, at his eyeless mask. His footfalls were soft. “That is what they say. What is your answer?”

Ikora knew the rumors about the Void. Most people presented those rumors to her only in polite terms. But the Speaker had been testing her lately, preparing a place for her, and she knew the studies he spoke of. The Void was Darkness, some said. The Void was cannibalistic.

She adopted a posture of reverence, her eyes downcast, but her voice was firm. 

“The Void is gravity,” Ikora said. “It shapes the world invisibly. But it is not dark matter. We can see the Void, touch it.” She thought of the violet sheen of a crackling Void Soul, of the way its passing raised the hair on her arms. She thought of her mixed feelings about becoming Vanguard — not wanting to take Osiris’ place, but knowing she would fix some things, knowing she wanted to fight for her own place. “The Void comes from the Traveler. I could cite Levit’s Absolute Zero Thesis, or Trail-5’s equation, but the simple evidence in the observable world shows Lightbearers use the Void. Therefore, the Void is Light.”

“You can cut through problems well,” the Speaker said fondly. “I’ve read your books; you can elaborate if needed. But to use decisive logic is a skill worthy of a Warlock as well. I accept your answer. And I think, soon enough, the whole Tower will, too.”