My Name is Jarl - Going Overboard With Pictures
((Okay, yeah, too many pictures this time, and it was probably too long. It just took so much time to get to an actual choice about something, and this particular choice is one of the bigger emotional gut-punches of the game.
I'd like to talk today about a trope called "jumping off the slippery slope." Generally, it's assumed that if you do one evil thing, you'll be more inclined to do other, slightly more evil things, and more evil, and more evil still, on and on. This is a slippery slope argument, and aside from being a logical fallacy, it's essentially the blueprint for every "good person gone bad" story ever--except for the ones who jump off the slippery slope. These are the people who skip some or all of the evil progression and go right to something so big that without the usual build-up, it's jarring. It can even be excessive. That's what we have here.
The Cammona Tong, up to this point, have been portrayed as another, rival thieves' guild. They're the local mafia, trying to hold onto their own when threatened by the foreign syndicate moving in. And they steal things, sure, but so do the Imperial thieves, that's kind of the idea of a thieves' guild. And they kill people, but hey, crime syndicate, bad things happen to people in bad lines of work, am I right? And they smuggle, because undercutting tariffs and moving contraband is how a black market works. And they keep slaves, but that's legal in dark-elf-land, so they're not even breaking a law.
But here's where we get a look at what kind of folks they really are. They're using a slave as a drug mule--something real people in the real world do, too, right down to the swallowing balloons or condoms full of the stuff. But assuming they can keep their gastric juices from eating through that latex life raft and dumping a few hundred doses of pure narcotic poison into their guts, those mules can at least expect to live once they reach their destination. The Cammona Tong? They're going to kill a girl because they don't want to wait for her to use the litter box, and couldn't be bothered with any other kind of discreet courier on the largely unguarded walk along a river.
That's not just evil, that's stupid, wasteful, petty, cruel, pointless evil. There's no benefit in making her go through that, or killing her at the end; there's only her horror, and their sadistic kicks. Even your average supervillain or drug kingpin would blanch at practices like these.
This is the Cammona Tong. Forget the game's real villain, I want some quests to take down these guys.))
I'd like to talk today about a trope called "jumping off the slippery slope." Generally, it's assumed that if you do one evil thing, you'll be more inclined to do other, slightly more evil things, and more evil, and more evil still, on and on. This is a slippery slope argument, and aside from being a logical fallacy, it's essentially the blueprint for every "good person gone bad" story ever--except for the ones who jump off the slippery slope. These are the people who skip some or all of the evil progression and go right to something so big that without the usual build-up, it's jarring. It can even be excessive. That's what we have here.
The Cammona Tong, up to this point, have been portrayed as another, rival thieves' guild. They're the local mafia, trying to hold onto their own when threatened by the foreign syndicate moving in. And they steal things, sure, but so do the Imperial thieves, that's kind of the idea of a thieves' guild. And they kill people, but hey, crime syndicate, bad things happen to people in bad lines of work, am I right? And they smuggle, because undercutting tariffs and moving contraband is how a black market works. And they keep slaves, but that's legal in dark-elf-land, so they're not even breaking a law.
But here's where we get a look at what kind of folks they really are. They're using a slave as a drug mule--something real people in the real world do, too, right down to the swallowing balloons or condoms full of the stuff. But assuming they can keep their gastric juices from eating through that latex life raft and dumping a few hundred doses of pure narcotic poison into their guts, those mules can at least expect to live once they reach their destination. The Cammona Tong? They're going to kill a girl because they don't want to wait for her to use the litter box, and couldn't be bothered with any other kind of discreet courier on the largely unguarded walk along a river.
That's not just evil, that's stupid, wasteful, petty, cruel, pointless evil. There's no benefit in making her go through that, or killing her at the end; there's only her horror, and their sadistic kicks. Even your average supervillain or drug kingpin would blanch at practices like these.
This is the Cammona Tong. Forget the game's real villain, I want some quests to take down these guys.))