On the shoulders of giants: a new multiple choices LP!

[Tigranes]

C, though A is good too.

I don't think anyone wanted the Wielder to be shoveling shit for a year, it's not exactly a recipe for controlling him. Since we don't have open options to pursue a more elaborate strategy, I think we should follow this step. And before some people start wailing and gnashing teeth about how the Wielder is evulll (yes, we know), I think C will open us up in the next updates towards more options on how we might use/control/kill/etc the guy. Choosing A or B here may restrict our ability to intervene, and let more time pass. So to me it's not a case of choosing C to 'forgive' and trust the Wielder, but to continue our initial strategy of finding a way to control/dispose of him while learning as much as we can.

 

[Vernydar]

A

I think C is foolish. Seriously, do you really want the Wielder to gain even more power? Already he's seen as a mistreated hero. And you want to have him teaching again? How long before he has even MORE fanatic followers? We need more conventional weapons.
B is good, but defense comes first

 

[Omicron]

I doubt going for A or B is going to stop the Wielder from getting more power. In shovelling dung he has already become the most respected member of the tribe. Because of this, he would be able to teach people in secret, would he desire to do so. If we let him teach in the open the council will seem more benevolent in the eyes of the tribe, decreasing the chance of a coup d'etat. And even if a civil war happens the Wielder's side will not be the only one with the capability to use fire.

 

[Tigranes]

Yeah, I have no idea why anybody would think choosing A and letting the Wielder continue to shovel dung will help us in any way regarding that situation. We decided to keep him alive because we want to find a way to learn more about the gem and also to dispose of him without making him a martyr. Keeping him on shit duty is not going to do that.

 

[Cassidy]

C: Now that a future of Djinnitude(horrible pun I know) was already chosen before, no need to stay half-way through it. Maybe there will be an opportunity for transformation of all into beings of fire rather than earth later.

 

[oscar]

A, though all the other options here are good.

 

[Hirato]

C

I hope scouts get sent out regardless, we know a bit too little about the surrounding area.

 

[Kipeci]

C.

Guys, there's an active volcano back there. Active, as in, erupting. What obsidian? We do not HAVE obsidian right now....

We do have some amount of the old obsidian weaponry we've already created, and I doubt that the volcano will be erupting long enough so that we'll have figured out how to get iron weaponry down before we could get any more obsidian. I was saying that while finding out how to make iron weapons would probably nice, it's not something we should throw ourselves towards before addressing more pressing current concerns, especially since iron weaponry is pretty much inferior for killing compared to our regular tools.

 

[Esquilax]

We do have some amount of the old obsidian weaponry we've already created, and I doubt that the volcano will be erupting long enough so that we'll have figured out how to get iron weaponry down before we could get any more obsidian. I was saying that while finding out how to make iron weapons would probably nice, it's not something we should throw ourselves towards before addressing more pressing current concerns, especially since iron weaponry is pretty much inferior for killing compared to our regular tools.

Yeah, but iron can be used to chop trees and make shields. Obsidian can't do either of those things. Besides, we could build better boats that way to fetch the obsidian that's upriver much faster.

I'm not sure I like this whole "let's appease the Wielder" thing. It seems very Neville Chamberlain.

 

[Quetzacoatl]

How about we cut the Wielders hands off?

 

[Cassidy]

I was one of the few who voted against the madness of letting a man into the magma.

Now let the madness overtake everything as a new chant becomes the basis of the new faith of the tribe:

DISCUSS!!! DISCUSS!!! DISCUSS!!! will forever echo to remind those of the terrible mistake of putting fanaticism above reason and survival instinct.

 

[oscar]

Except for the fact that fanaticism seems to give you the power to throw fireballs and melt people.

 

[Quetzacoatl]

We should really find out if the stone is responsible for the Wielder's insanity or not.

 

[Kz3r0]

Except for the fact that fanaticism seems to give you the power to throw fireballs and melt people.

The one possessed by the Djinns is Cassidy, for what other reason he insist that we should have engaged in stone age diplomacy with beastmen?

 

[newcomer]

C

I don't want to see this deranged wielder become a mistreated hero. Let him train & watch him closely, and if he break more rules we can humiliate him further due to repeated offense.

Actually if we really want obsidian right now, we CAN collect it. I mean, currently we have a "fire-walker scavenger who are currently cleaning sheep dungs". Even if there is no obsidian yet, surely he can force-cool the lava, right?

 

[Computer Gamer Refugee]

C

Once the fire spirits in the sacred mountain have calmed down we can send scouts to retrieve more obsidian. Boats make transport relatively easy.

 

[Jick Magger]

A. Let the wielder stew for a little longer, we need to rebuild our military with the emphasis being on technology as opposed to spiritual power.
Going with C will probably lead to our military becoming centred around using the fire wielders, which would potentially lead to the wielder gaining control over our military power and staging a coup.
Yes, I know this is essentially a giant pile of 'if's and 'maybe's, but I'd rather not take the risk. The key to stopping him seizing power is to demonstrate that we are not dependent on him for leadership.

 

[Esquilax]

C

I don't want to see this deranged wielder become a mistreated hero. Let him train & watch him closely, and if he break more rules we can humiliate him further due to repeated offense.

Actually if we really want obsidian right now, we CAN collect it. I mean, currently we have a "fire-walker scavenger who are currently cleaning sheep dungs". Even if there is no obsidian yet, surely he can force-cool the lava, right?

The logic of this doesn't make sense to me. If we give him more restrictions (i.e. not allowed to train everybody) then the next time we catch him training someone, we can exile/execute him. We know that his play in the future will be going after the gem, so he needs to gather enough force to get it. I was in favour of letting him live to prevent our society from being fractured, but giving him his freedoms back crosses the line into appeasement, IMO. We've already managed to marginalize him to a certain extent, but we can't just give the guy what he wants. We're wasting an update where we could be learning great new technologies that would give a lot of our normal warriors the edge against him and his disciples should they rise against us. I feel that this war and the Wielder's appearance have caused us to avoid conventional technology too much.

As Jick_Magger_101 said, we have to shift our emphasis away from the spiritual and into the practical right now. Doing so will ease the initial burst of fanaticism that the Wielder's influence brought and it'll isolate him. He'll be forced to seek out apprentices in secret and break the law doing so. Then we can get him.

At least that's my take on it. Then again, allowing the Wielder to train people would mean that he would reveal all of his secret apprentices so we know just how many people he has on his side. This is a tough situation, there are no easy answers.

 

[Kipeci]

Yeah, but iron can be used to chop trees and make shields. Obsidian can't do either of those things. Besides, we could build better boats that way to fetch the obsidian that's upriver much faster.

I'm not sure I like this whole "let's appease the Wielder" thing. It seems very Neville Chamberlain.

I think we have a ways to go before we can get to the ironclad warships. I'm not saying that learning how to create iron objects wouldn't be useful in the future, but it's not something we should be concentrating on at the moment as there are many other things that provide a much more immediate usage. Chopping trees would be nice, but let's boost the population and train up a decent army so that we can beat up the guys who would rape us for going into the forest. Learning how to create shields in the first place would be something to get into before developing iron technology to the point where we could make an iron shield.

As for the Wielder, I don't care about appeasing him, I want us to have a good number of people with the fire magic. Even the paranoid people here should realize that if everyone has fire powers, that makes the Wielder a less important person relatively speaking, especially if they can take on their own apprentices. It's evident by now that learning fire magic doesn't turn one into a raving demon ready to burn down everything around them, so we should load him up with as many students as possible to make the fire magic more egalitarian. Setting up a society where everyone has some ability to control fire should leave us less vulnerable to an extremely small class of fire users overthrowing us all, as it not only helps to equalize the difference in power but also provides us with many more ears if there were to be some sort of conspiracy actually going on. The more people present in such a situation, the higher the likelihood it would be leaked, at which point we could take care of the matter accordingly. It's best to have as many taught as possible now as the Wielder is eager to spread the information before any successors realize that by withholding that information they can set themselves up as a ruling class of fire controllers over the rest of us muggles.

 

[oscar]

It seems kind of ridiculous all the technological progress we've made (scavenging ape-humans to Neolithic Revolution) but our population has barely increased by a hundred.

 

[treave]

A.

Don't think too deeply about the choices, you barely have enough information and leeway to figure out what will happen should we continue politicking with our picks. There's too much we don't know about the nature of the fire magic and the Wielder has hardly been truthful, with no reason for that to change. Stick with what is written. This is a techno-progress choice, so in picking C you're giving up on alternative paths of technology in favor of focusing on the fireball magic tree. That's pretty much the main gist of the choice.

 

[oscar]

I hope we're not entirely giving up the fireball magic tree, as there is no reason outside of dumb "religion impedes science" stereotypes that we cannot have both.

- I don't think it'll die out if we don't choose C, but it is true that it will likely be less advanced and powerful without the Wielder overseeing the apprentices. Still I imagine they will stumble forwards. I imagine we will soon have to come to a decision about the fire stone.

- Hopefully the water worshippers bust out their equivalent of the Wielder so we can get a cool dualistic religion (and I can see water magic being useful for things like keeping up the fish stocks, avoiding water pollution, avoiding floods etc)

 

[TOME]

I would be all-in for teaching everyone the ability to throw burning deathballs if not for the mind controlling threat.

Seems like B don't have a chance so going for A.

 

[Curufinwe]

It seems kind of ridiculous all the technological progress we've made (scavenging ape-humans to Neolithic Revolution) but our population has barely increased by a hundred.

I know, I know. But I don't want to be forced to make a perpetual cavemen LP. So tech acquisition is MUCH faster than it was for our ancestors.

 

[oscar]

No problem with time compression, but I feel our population should be quite a bit bigger!