It's interesting that you see it that way, because Bel's attack on the Arc was not premeditated. He abandoned his preoccupation (defense against the assault of the undead forces, and protecting Nehutu from the Abyss which was seeping in) to rather hurriedly mount an attack on what he saw as a threat to the universe at large as soon as he realised that the Arc would be launched before he got another chance.
If anything was planned, it was the Apocalypse - which was a holy war which I initially directed not toward other players but Melirelle. Bel does not lie (something I have made clear out of character before), he obscures, and he was very much truthful when he stated that his crusade would be directed first against the external threats.
I took a look back and found where I might have gone wrong in-character. The following quote is far too candid. None of the rest lacked the necessary ambiguity.
Bel wrote:Those followers of mine who even now dedicate themselves to this final apocalypse, the scouring clean of this world, must understand that by doing so they doom themselves. If their worship is pure, then they will accept their own annihilation when the time comes. If it is not, then they are all the more deserving of it.
Bel wrote:
There can not be Peace so long as the hand of another God touches this world, nor any mortal draw breath upon it. Their very nature denies it.
Bel wrote:
He has come to save this world--
I COME TO END IT
...
"I am your servant, Great Lord. All shall be as you will.
"This world shall end. But it shall end clean."
From the Game thread
Bel wrote:... your mind is too small to see the inevitable end of things....
I came to bring Peace. What I have discovered is a world polluted beyond repair by those who came before Me. It grows into a blight within all that exists outside of it, and I intend to cleanse it.
... Accept the truth. Your world ends, Zephyr
Emphasis in last is mine of course. None of these seem ambiguous to me (or my character) - Bel is going to wipe out all life. Seems to be an urgent threat to me ... and your followers seem ready to help you carry it out - which makes them legitimate targets.
Bel was sheparding in the end which already appeared inevitable (due to outside events) by the time he said those things. Saying that if the world is going to end, he would rather it end clean, does not necessarily mean what you suggest.
I'd also point out a couple things in those quotes:
The first quote: Was not said by Bel. Really, go practice your reading comprehension. The Herald was going through a period of depression and nihilism while Bel was absent from the world, and his thoughts became very dark (you know, that's why he attempted suicide). Bel actually brought him back from that edge and gave him purpose.
The second quote is from the same sequence; both of these, however, are not something that other gods would be aware of. The majority is the internal thoughts of a mortal, and the very little part where Bel speaks, he does so directly into that mortal's mind. Though the story may have been posted publicly for entertainment purposes, it's not something that anyone else could have known in-game.
And I didn't actually include Bel's plan in that story, either. I deliberately narrated the Herald's thoughts about Bel's purpose in the final lines, but withheld all detail.
As for why I phrased it with the words "I come to end it"? Well tell me, does "I come to make the end of the world which is about to occur easier by ridding it of abomination" sound as dramatic?
Oh no, I was a threat. I'm not going to argue that. I'm just arguing your choice of those particular quotes to demonstrate it.
My position originally was that more of the motivation for attack came from out-of-game knowledge than actual character motivation, but I'm now accepting (per my previous post and the quote I posted) that I did actually let out a little more than I intended, and that it was indeed possible for other gods to reach that conclusion.
My second position is that I was not an immediate threat, just a potential one, as I intended to direct my actions toward things that were also a threat to other players - originally the demons from the Abyss, but because they were being dealt with and those involved in that defense refused to share anything, I aimed myself at Melirelle (which Xar could attest to by my turn submissions in the last couple of turns).
And the underlying root of all this is that I feel I didn't get as much enjoyment out of Pantheon 3 as I could of mainly because I spent the majority of the game defending myself from other players' pre-emptive attacks.
So yeah, the whole story thread is... interesting. I know that The Numen's posts in there were intended to be public knowledge. It was never said that way, but I just assumed. And later, we've had the conversation before about what threads are IC and OOC (and I know that Fist will jump in here to repeat what he'd said yesterday).
And I might even point out that since Fist is our leader, his "misinterpretation" of that post as being IC could have lead to us following flawed orders.
Personally, I'd have thought Mox was a more immediate threat, too. I'm not sure I trust his change of attitude, though that's just my paranoia talking. (Could still be right, though.) And Mox has done far more against the world in the past, though his recent comments and actions aren't bad. Bel was more of a hypothetical threat, than a known danger. Just dumb luck that Bel happened to actualize his enmity at the same time we attacked him. Until I saw that, I was feeling a bit guilty about preemptively attacking, when he'd sorta called a truce on the rest of us.
But really... even in vague terms (and I'm still not going to go back and try to find exact quotes... that's too much like schoolwork... I'd need to do proper APA citations, blah blah blah), Bel has said that external threats are more important than his quest to bring peace to all of us. But even that statement implies that at some point, he'll shift his focus to internal threats. So it seems to me that, if we're going to have to fight him sometime... might as well do it now, while everybody is keyed up anyway. They're more likely to help me, or at least, more likely to be too busy to object. And the guilt was player guilt, not character guilt.
(Murrin, have you noticed that I seem to be attacking you unprovoked in like... every game we're in? Either you tend to play characters who deserve a good beating, or I tend to play characters who think they're justified in deciding who deserves a good beating.)
Goatkiller666 wrote:Personally, I'd have thought Mox was a more immediate threat, too. I'm not sure I trust his change of attitude, though that's just my paranoia talking. (Could still be right, though.) And Mox has done far more against the world in the past, though his recent comments and actions aren't bad. Bel was more of a hypothetical threat, than a known danger. Just dumb luck that Bel happened to actualize his enmity at the same time we attacked him. Until I saw that, I was feeling a bit guilty about preemptively attacking, when he'd sorta called a truce on the rest of us.
But really... even in vague terms (and I'm still not going to go back and try to find exact quotes... that's too much like schoolwork... I'd need to do proper APA citations, blah blah blah), Bel has said that external threats are more important than his quest to bring peace to all of us. But even that statement implies that at some point, he'll shift his focus to internal threats.
Hey, at least someone gets it. You've got Bel nailed down pretty well there.
(Murrin, have you noticed that I seem to be attacking you unprovoked in like... every game we're in? Either you tend to play characters who deserve a good beating, or I tend to play characters who think they're justified in deciding who deserves a good beating.)
I have to confess, I've been terrible in other games at keeping track of which players correspond to which characters. But yeah... God of Death who sets out to simply conquer everything, with a healthy dose of human sacrifice; God of Strife (Chaos) whose entire purpose is to just cause trouble - it's no surprise those characters would attract negative attention.
Yeah. He doesn't even get to tell everyone how his great unveiling of power would have saved the rest of creation from corruption with the abominations of Eiran.
Yeah, well. Sunrise and sunset are last week's courts. These days, everybody wants to be in that new fangled Eclipse thingy.
Feh. Kids these days. What's the point of being in a super-secret coalition of deities, when your only goal is somewhat hinder one or the other court? What ever happened to wanting total and complete world domination? That's a REAL secret society.
Fist and Faith wrote:I've always thought it was strange to see Bel there. Not as strange as Brid, but still very strange.
Eh????? You've had as much interaction with Brid as anyone (and oh, by the way, she's really pissed at you at the moment!) so you should know exactly why she's in Sunrise.
Brid's teaching has always been that you gain personal strength from being the outcast within a community. She doesn't hold with taking the easy option and leaving, because you're different. Brid's dogma is the only one within Sunrise that entirely justifies her being a member!
Edit: oh wow! we now really do have a tree of life that Brid can sacrifice Zephyr on!
Aglithophile and conniptionist and spectacular moonbow beholder 16Jul11
Edit: I just have to add here that I really mean it when I say to Simjen "well played". For once in this instance of the game, someone did not attack me pre-emptively for things they feared I might do, but instead put something out there and waited for other players to act against it, likely suspecting that I would be one who did. Bel totally deserved his fate for attacking Simjen's false Arc, and I tip my hat to Syl.
Thank you, Murrin. To be completely honest, though, I wasn't really expecting it to be you (until after the last turn submission, anyway). I just knew that somebody was bound to try to mess with it. Hopefully the Bruce Dickinson reference makes sense now. Too bad the whole mist event kept me from observing what happened directly.
Speaking of, it will take some time for Simjen to find out you're in there and coordinate terms of release. If I can think of any ideas that I can shoot off you OOC, I'll PM you, and you're welcome to do the same.
And why does Bel suddenly have me thinking of a curiously-named planet in Hitchhiker's Guide?
"It is not the literal past that rules us, save, possibly, in a biological sense. It is images of the past. Each new historical era mirrors itself in the picture and active mythology of its past or of a past borrowed from other cultures. It tests its sense of identity, of regress or new achievement against that past.”
-George Steiner
Syl wrote: To be completely honest, though, I wasn't really expecting it to be you (until after the last turn submission, anyway). I just knew that somebody was bound to try to mess with it.
I wonder who you had in mind...
Embracing me is to embrace the true way your mind works. Let yourself not be hindered by the false.
He doesn't even get to tell everyone how his great unveiling of power would have saved the rest of creation from corruption with the abominations of Eiran.
