Thus Spake Zargrabowski/Authoritarianism

_c_grabowski - 12/15/2003 08:47:35 - raindog@white-wolf.com

>>>I gotta go with Paragon, too. ;) If I -had- to live in the AoS. Shiver. That would suck!<<<

Why would living in a Big Brother state make it any better? Ask the people of North Korea what they think of the security of an authoritarian existence in a time of global strife and insecurity. They'll surely tell you if you give them some rat meat.

Authoritarianism sucks -- there's no accountability for failure, there's no stable mechanism of succession, if it is totalitarian it drains your society of new ideas in favor of orthoprax stability, and it is by its nature open to the crassest sorts of abuse by the ruler and his favorites. Even if it works today, there's no reason to believe that King Stork won't go off his rocker tomorrow or next year.

I agree the Age of Sorrows is a time of woe. I think the people of Paragon's only predisposition that differs from other mortals is that they are way more likely to get sacrificed in human wave attacks against some enemy of the Perfect.

Geoffrey C. Grabowski Exalted Developer, WWGS raindog@white-wolf.com

Comments

Just my own thought on this. It really comes down to comfort versus freedom. If you are mortal, you probably can't have both. The advantage of living somewhere like Paragon is that you at least will have some degree of comfort and safety, even if it means living under an authoritarian thumb. Because ANYWHERE you live, unless you go to the Barbarian tribes or a handful of places like Nexus, you are basically going to have no freedom. There are no democracies in Exalted--your choice is an authoritarian government, a functional anarchy like Nexus, or else living in a barbarian tribe where you will have lots of freedom, but you will live a lousy lifestyle and die young.

North Korea looks bad because there are infinitely better alternatives in the modern world, whereas, if you want to live reasonably safely, you really have no choice but to submit yourself to authoritarian rule in the world of Exalted. -- JohnBiles

I don't really agree that Paragon is at all a safe place to live. The Perfect will gladly send you to die working in the mines for the rest of your short and miserable life... at least if you had freedom, you could run away. - GoldenH

And in the Realm some Dragonblooded might just whack off your head, and in Harborhead you might be killed by one of Ahlat's brides, too. But the security level is certainly higher than living in a Barbarian tribe where your life is guaranteed to be brutish, nasty, and short. - JohnBiles

How is that guaranteed? Hunt the wild whatever, live honorably, and as long as your tribe doesn't get dragged into an Exalt's wake you'll live and die a simple and not-so-bad life. Not every barbarian is Thorgar Godslayer. -Ben-San

There really is no definitive answer to the "barbarian vs. city-dweller" question, but I think it depends a lot on what kind of position one is taking for oneself -- to put it into crunch terms, whether you're a heroic mortal or just a normal mortal. The barbarian lifestyle is an appealing one if and only if you have the strength of character and of arm to be able to stay useful to the tribe. Heroic mortals can live glorious lives within a barbarian tribe; normal mortals have it a bit dicier. While there's nowhere in the Age of Sorrows that's precisely friendly to a normal mortal, there are a lot of perks to living in a city, where at least you probably won't be cast out into the freezing wastes the first time you fail to prove useful.

(The other problem with barbarians as written is that so many of the tribes are either Wyld-mutated or being pulled along in the wake of an Exalt or a little god. While I'm sure this is less an accurate population dynamic and more a reflection of the sort of barbarian tribes that get written up in splatbooks, it can still be unnerving.)

On a metagaming note, I confess to never being quite fond of blanket statements about faction morality in the Exalted universe. It's been set up to be a wonderfully gray setting, with great potential for heroism or villainy from everyone, and I'm discouraged with statements from on high about how the Realm really can't ever be heroic and so on. It paints things in black and white fairly needlessly. (This may be my Dragon-Blooded sympathizer side showing, but so it goes.) -- AntiVehicleRocket