It’s a typical sci-fi “pre-crime” morality puzzle. In this case we know that he would have killed those prisoners, if he had been given the opportunity. He probably was going to that PoW camp with the intent to do so, there wasn’t any other reason for him to go there. But as it turns out he never had the opportunity, when he got there the camp was empty. So we’re left consoling ourselves that “attempted mass murder” is probably still worthy of us killing him in the end.
The morality puzzle sort of got eclipsed even later in the campaign when it turned out this was merely a dry run for a bigger version. One of the “big bads” of the campaign was a 1500-year-old immortal naga who had ruled an evil empire that whole time (the Butcher of Bracken Ridge had been in her military). She was an immortal naga because 1500 years ago she’d used a powerful wish-granting artifact to turn herself into one, making herself completely unkillable. The way we ultimately defeated her was to travel 1500 years into the past to right before she made that wish and assassinate her then when she was still a mortal human.
Then my character took the artifact and made the wish instead, becoming the Serpent Queen. The rest of the party time-travelled back to the present, and my character took the “long way around” by living through history and making all the same choices the original Serpent Queen had made. Once she got back to the present and met back up with the rest of the party she rejoined them, bringing the resources of the entire Empire of Endless Flowers along at her command. It was the most efficient way we’ve ever defeated a boss monster - it turned out she’d been secretly a party member the whole time.
But disguise self played a much smaller role in that particular gambit.
So your character spent 1,500 as an immortal Serpent Queen making all the same decisions (including, I presume, some pretty horrendous ones) and they were just happy to change back to their original form?
Nah, she kept the immortal serpent body. And the Empire. She did what she could throughout history to “tweak” it into a less evil empire without making it seem less evil, and then once she reached the “present” she was fully free to get down to fixing its social ills much more fully. And it was very useful having an empire’s resources to help us deal with the other big bads, especially the omnicidal faction that was trying to destroy reality altogether.
It’s fortunate that throughout the whole campaign my character kept facing challenges to her fanatical devotion to her personal philosophy and coming through them more confident and grounded in it than ever. That preparation allowed her to remain steadfast to her goal throughout those 1500 years.
Oh, she did occasionally use a variant of disguise self to pass as her original pre-Serpent Queen self from time to time after that, to stay on the thread’s topic. But as I recall we had to houserule it a bit because I don’t think disguise self can normally make a size-large serpent look like a size-medium humanoid.
Yes, we do. We have time travel and came from a timeline where he had indeed done exactly that, and the point of divergence we introduced came only a very short time before he would have done that.
It’s like if someone has a gun that they think is loaded, and they go put it to someone’s head and pull the trigger. The fact that it was not actually loaded doesn’t absolve him.
We don’t even know if the Butcher even intended to kill any of the prisoners!
It’s a typical sci-fi “pre-crime” morality puzzle. In this case we know that he would have killed those prisoners, if he had been given the opportunity. He probably was going to that PoW camp with the intent to do so, there wasn’t any other reason for him to go there. But as it turns out he never had the opportunity, when he got there the camp was empty. So we’re left consoling ourselves that “attempted mass murder” is probably still worthy of us killing him in the end.
The morality puzzle sort of got eclipsed even later in the campaign when it turned out this was merely a dry run for a bigger version. One of the “big bads” of the campaign was a 1500-year-old immortal naga who had ruled an evil empire that whole time (the Butcher of Bracken Ridge had been in her military). She was an immortal naga because 1500 years ago she’d used a powerful wish-granting artifact to turn herself into one, making herself completely unkillable. The way we ultimately defeated her was to travel 1500 years into the past to right before she made that wish and assassinate her then when she was still a mortal human.
Then my character took the artifact and made the wish instead, becoming the Serpent Queen. The rest of the party time-travelled back to the present, and my character took the “long way around” by living through history and making all the same choices the original Serpent Queen had made. Once she got back to the present and met back up with the rest of the party she rejoined them, bringing the resources of the entire Empire of Endless Flowers along at her command. It was the most efficient way we’ve ever defeated a boss monster - it turned out she’d been secretly a party member the whole time.
But disguise self played a much smaller role in that particular gambit.
So your character spent 1,500 as an immortal Serpent Queen making all the same decisions (including, I presume, some pretty horrendous ones) and they were just happy to change back to their original form?
Nah, she kept the immortal serpent body. And the Empire. She did what she could throughout history to “tweak” it into a less evil empire without making it seem less evil, and then once she reached the “present” she was fully free to get down to fixing its social ills much more fully. And it was very useful having an empire’s resources to help us deal with the other big bads, especially the omnicidal faction that was trying to destroy reality altogether.
It’s fortunate that throughout the whole campaign my character kept facing challenges to her fanatical devotion to her personal philosophy and coming through them more confident and grounded in it than ever. That preparation allowed her to remain steadfast to her goal throughout those 1500 years.
Oh, she did occasionally use a variant of disguise self to pass as her original pre-Serpent Queen self from time to time after that, to stay on the thread’s topic. But as I recall we had to houserule it a bit because I don’t think disguise self can normally make a size-large serpent look like a size-medium humanoid.
No we don’t, all that we can guess is…
Yes, we do. We have time travel and came from a timeline where he had indeed done exactly that, and the point of divergence we introduced came only a very short time before he would have done that.
It’s like if someone has a gun that they think is loaded, and they go put it to someone’s head and pull the trigger. The fact that it was not actually loaded doesn’t absolve him.
I see, didn’t realize you were the original commenter in the campaign, I thought this was someones speculation.