KOW and imitation from ANDOVER_at_delphi.com on 1995-12-05 (Glorantha Digest Vol 02)

From: ANDOVER_at_delphi.com
Date: Mon, 04 Dec 1995 23:29:56 -0500 (EST)

I'm not sure I'm impressed by the argument that "the bad guys will win by making us just like them" that seems to be fast becoming the new conventional wisdom about the KOW. After all, in this century we had plenty of experience with untold horrors in the years 1914-45, and the few opponents of WWII in the Anglo-Saxon world argued that the fiery climaxes of Dresden and Hiroshima meant that we had become the Nazis. But 50 years later, so far from the victorious powers having built death camps of their own, they flee from Third World countries which inflict 18 deaths on them, and spend their time not on racist ideologies but on "politically correct" analysis. History does not move in straight lines, but in its own dialetic fashion. If I may mention the kind of moral test that might be more useful (re Churchill saying that "If Hitler invaded Hell, I would at least have a good word to say about the Devil in the House of Commons") let me mention that (gasp!) other game. In the AD & D pack Iuz the Evil, the PCs can be given a choice of allying with the direly evil priests of Nerull against their mutual enemy Iuz.

So, frex, what if the vulnerability of the KOW might be to biological warfare? Their healing can hardly be as first rate as that of more benevolent societies. What if the players are offered a choice of working with Malia priests to spread plague among the KOW armies? Or with Chaos monks? Would tapping KOW warriors become acceptable given their behavior the way that carpet-bombing civilians became acceptable after Coventry?

Is there a magical equivalent of an atom bomb? Something that might risk the survival of the world but bring an end to the KOW? Some way of reinstating the Ban, frex, would certainly work, and would certainly be sought by people who suddenly found the KOW as their new neighbors.

If you want to make A tragedy of it, have the PCs conduct some massive nasty ritual to save the world which just makes things worse (as in Donaldson's Thomas Covenant series).

At a more prosaic level, Cannibal ogres, relatively safe in multi-generation families in the non-chaos detecting West, might be allies against a KOW whih would destroy their own comfortable lives.

Or if the whole thing is really an Elder Race plot, what about forced breeding programs, using some unholy mixture of Dwarf and Elf suggestions (a growing machine or something) to create warriors to fight the KOW? Of course, the players then learn that this is the same system that created the KOW warriors in the first place . . . and the two races think it is a way to clear humanity off the planet.

Or at a lower level of anxiety, the 1984 scenario, updated by Poul Anderson in "Kings Who Die." The KOW and its enemies are really in a pact to create A state of permanent war that allows their ruling classes to strengthen their power forever.

Or is the KOW really just a giant chaos hole? Or is it an evil illusion of some sort? Waiting to be dispelled by an excorcism (cf. James Blish's "A Case of Conscience")

In conclusion, against the argument that Evil can "win," remember that Blish followed his terrifying "Black Easter" with its unforgettable conclusion with "After Armageddon" which points out that the Devil, having won, can only get better! To circle back to my opening point, isn't that what happened to that ultimate evil Empire, the Roman Empire?
Jim Chapin