397 replies to this topic

[Kish]

My astute debatig fellow forgets we also discussed how a few days of having a soul could not undo the harm done by hundreds of years of not having one. 

Hundreds of years? Losing his soul reduced him to "a life no longer than a human's."

There's a q in "equation," incidentally.

Jon did at one point feel regret over his actons.

Whatever gives you that idea? Reading his second journal gives me the impression he is fundamentally incapable of seeing anything he did as wrong. What he did was just; it's his destiny to be a god and everyone else should be honored to be tortured and killed for that great good end. This isn't a matter of the emotions he now lacks, it's pure intellect: He doesn't think he was wrong.

In some sense, he certainly feels regret; he wishes he had done a better job of it and become a god the first time. I presume we can agree that that kind of regret isn't a good starting point for anything, though. The tone he takes suggests, to me at least, that ever since his first bid for godhood he has never considered the possibility that he could be wrong.

[Kish]

However, a person can love without utilizing a soul. I do not believe I have a tangible soul, yet I was in love time and again.

When you say, "I do not believe I have a tangible soul," do you mean someone performed a ritual on you to rip it out--or do you mean you don't believe real-world people have tangible souls? If the answer is the former, I'm very sorry, but certainly no one can challenge your degree of insight into how Irenicus feels. You should have mentioned your credentials sooner.

If the answer is the latter--then the analogy is horribly, blatantly invalid. Beliefs about real-world souls have nothing to do with the Forgotten Realms, where the existence of souls is a fact. Whatever the Seldarine did to Joneleth, they didn't shine some bright lights on him and take away something that wasn't there anyway.

[dorotea]

Hundreds of years? Losing his soul reduced him to "a life no longer than a human's."

Well - lets agree on 'decades' shall we? Human can live 70-80 years and he is a mage, who can at least help his body a long a little.

Reading his second journal gives me the impression he is fundamentally incapable of seeing anything he did as wrong. What he did was just; it's his destiny to be a god and everyone else should be honored to be tortured and killed for that great good end.

Now here is something which is not exactrly true. There is nothing in the journal indicating regret? How about these lines :

No doubt these texts will prove to be an embarrassing legacy, but I must order my thoughts herein, lest they spill from my accursed mind.

I just want to point out that calling his mind accursed and talking about embarrassing legacy gives me an impression of at least being unsure that he is 'perfect'

Then again if this :

On occasion I sense nature as if she is my mother, as though never removed from her bosom, but such moments are few. I bear the hallmarks of senility with the rage and power of a young elf to lament it.

is not about regret - than what is this about? Why would a creature absolutely sure of his path even bother writing this? It is regret of the consequences but regret it is.

And lastly about torture and the fact that he thinks that

everyone else should be honored to be tortured and killed for that great good end

Here is a collection of quotes from Irenicus himself

Don't be afraid, <CHARNAME>.  I suspect this will be mercifully quick.

Yes, I believe that you would.  I can't blame you, really, not when I wish the death of others for similar reasons.  A pity one of us must be denied.

That is not for you to know.  Suffice to say that I regret what must occur.  I know the rage you will feel once I am done.  I seek the death of others for similar reasons.

I had to show her some very dark shadows indeed.  It is unfortunate that it had to be done, but it was necessary to get what I needed.  Now I must focus on you.

If this is not a lame attempt at apology and excuse - than what is it? Once again he does not sound as he revels in the torture. Rather - he is annoyed and apologetic that he has to do it.

[dorotea]

And Kish, by the way if this:

It is all I have now, Ellesime.  There is nothing else beyond my revenge.  Revenge for what you did to me, what the Seldarine did to me!

I look upon you and I feel nothing.  I remember nothing but you turning your back on me, along with all the others.

Once my thirst for power was everything.  And now I hunger only for revenge.  And... I... WILL... HAVE IT!!

Does not indicate to you that his goal of Godhood is now secondary to his Revenge for what was done to him - than nothing I will say will ever convince you.

[dorotea]

Saying that a soul stores only ?good? emotions and allocating to ?bad? emotions place somewhere else...is a bit strange. Soul, theoretically, contains it all, good and bad, so if taken, Irenicus would not be able to feel anything at all, he won?t be driven, and he is not a dispassionate being.

Soul is responsible for empathy. One may argue that even undead can feel rage and jealosy to some extent...

Human emotions, which might feel sharper in comparison, are not quite so compounded by letting them to pass through mind a number of times and very short-lived.

There is no idication that he was ever granted a human soul after his elven one was 'severed'. And he keeps complaining he has no feelings...

Now here is what Immy says after Hell

Unless it's because she was a vampire, with no soul of her own.  She just... died, and there was only my own soul left?  Or maybe it had something to do with your dying at the Tree of Life.  I don't know.

Which sort of hints that while Irenicus's soul degraded, there were some remains of it there.

If you?d like to insist on soulness, soul degeneration, triggered by the severance, is a better option imo, than vile Ellesime who forced Corellion and the whole of Seldarine into the business of soul slicing and dicing.

Erhm, I dont 'vilify' her. It is a fact that she asked for it.

It fell to Ellesime to judge the crime, and she was harsh. Having forsaken everything elven, they would be outcast so they might learn how precious our ways are. Of spiritually high regard, Ellesime petitioned the gods and a divine curse was placed upon the Exiles. All their connection to the elven spirit was severed.

Ellesime has taken my ability to truly feel, and I am left with the threadbare heart of a human, or some other short-lived vermin. I will not suffer this much longer.

And what shall I call you instead?  'Irenicus'?  'Shattered One'?  Yes... it was a terrible punishment.  But you violated everything we hold dear.  You nearly destroyed us all!

Erm, Yoshimo's was a little-known rather lame redemption case I wrote.

Does not count - he is not truly a villain, he was under geas. I think even Vico will be better 'qualified'.

Actually, you have publically done so in your post from March 20 2004 in this particular thread. After which you went ahead equating Ellesime with Cersei, the character which you stated you abhore. By extension, I conclude that you abhore Ellesime - from publically available information.

I do dislike her - for being holier-then-thou, it does not mean I would care to 'vilify' her blatantly. But I never called her 'Bitch Queen', so here at least you are wrong.

[Hendryk]

Elves in 1E didn't have individual souls; just spirits. Has that changed in 2E or 3E? If it hasn't, then it would be very hard to imagine Irenicus having one before helping himself to CHARNAME's. All he'd logically have is an individual elven spirit, already corrupted by his early megalomania, which is now totally severed from the universal elven spirit and so is putrefying and dissipating at an increasing rate.

For all the rest, all we have is Jon's own words for it and he wouldn't be an unbiased witness on his own behalf. This is what Demin has to say:

Of spiritually high regard, Ellesime petitioned the gods and a divine curse was placed upon the Exiles. All their connection to the elven spirit was severed.

Ellesime thought it a punishment worse than death. A life no longer than a human's, and their elven spirits banished from the paradise all elvenkind are entitled to.

On this reading, nothing Joneleth had been as an individual was removed. The individual was just walled off from the race. You could even suppose that his reduction in lifespan was due to the loss of sustenance for his individual spirit by the racial one.

[dorotea]

Elves in 1E didn't have individual souls; just spirits. Has that changed in 2E or 3E? If it hasn't, then it would be very hard to imagine Irenicus having one before helping himself to CHARNAME's. All he'd logically have is an individual elven spirit, already corrupted by his early megalomania, which is now totally severed from the universal elven spirit and so is putrefying and dissipating at an increasing rate.

On this reading, nothing Joneleth had been as an individual was removed. The individual was just walled off from the race. You could even suppose that his reduction in lifespan was due to the loss of sustenance for his individual spirit by the racial one.

Thank you very much for a 'scientific' approach! That was what I was trying to prove all along - but I did not know about 1E.

That his severance in practice meant spirit losing sustenance and dying - as result of being 'separated from his race'.

He surely was not granted a human soul in return, and human != elf severed. This will be too simple and unfair to humans as a race.

[Merja]

Hundreds of years?  Losing his soul reduced him to "a life no longer than a human's."

While I honestly don't think the life no longer then a human's is true, and am under the impression that he has fought the curse to the best of his abilities and survived longer - however long he might have lived does not make my point in any way moot. Give a man who has had a leg amputated for 20 years the best prothesys (I have probably spelled that wrong as well, do forgive) - chances are he will not start jogging the day after he gets it.


As for 'q' in equation, I thank you very much. Not being a native english speaker I reserve the right to three typos and two misspellings a year.

Whatever gives you that idea?  Reading his second journal gives me the impression he is fundamentally incapable of seeing anything he did as wrong.

While reading his first in which he talks about missing nature's embrace and how painful the faint memories of belonging are you'd kinda get the impression he feels at least some measure of regret over his separation from his kin.

The way I see Jon's thought processes evolving from that point id deeply different from yours, and it does not exclude initial regret. I do not deny that Jon is selfish, in the way that children are selfish - they want things done their way, now.

What happens when a child gets punished for doing something wrong? Regret and anger at the same time, with equal strength. The anger does not prevail over the regret because children, although they might not understand how they erred, love their parents enough to give them the benefit of doubt. Jon does not love his elves as much, whatever feelings he has for them slowly decay and thus, given his condition, I would say regret has a pretty thin chance at prevailing over anger.

The tone he takes suggests, to me at least, that ever since his first bid for godhood he has never considered the possibility that he could be wrong.

To this I say an emphatic 'No.'

I do not remember your love, Ellesime. I have tried to. I have tried to recreate it, to spark it anew in my memory. But it is gone... a hollow, dead thing.

I genuinely do not think these are the words of a man who has never considered that he was wrong. A man who never considered he was wrong would point out that she has wronged him by failing to comprehend his genius, and that he is above such petty emotions as love. Furthermore, if he genuinely had done no wrong, he would not regret the company of those he had wronged, nor felt his removal from their midst as punishment.

Ah what an opportunity for a drow rant, but I shall skip - this is drow way. They do not regret not being part of the elven community anymore, in fact they feel much better for it. They are in complete denial of their evil. Jon is not, in my opinion, but he does not see an alternative, and so he perseveres in the only action he feels he has left that ties him to his people. That is taking revenge.

[Laufey]

What I suggest we do is this - we are presented with the ecuation of redeeming Jon in this particular way. Like it happened to me on various superiour math exams, we don't get to wonder why we were asked that question. Nor do we get to say 'I don't really wanna know the value of X in that expression, you darned nitwit!' - aka We don't think Jon deserves redemption, therefore the problem does not exist. We have the problem before us on the blackboard, and we are trying to solve it.

Dorotea is the writer and she has defined the terms on which we operate. If we dismiss those initial terms, there is nothing to discuss. If we do dismiss them, we don't want to solve the given problem, we want to solve another. Anyone is free to go redeem Jon in whatever way they think is suitable. But this is our way of doing it here.

Instead of wondering why the ecuation looks the way it does, and why we are trying to solve it, we should see if her solution works, in her terms. That's what we do when reading a book or playing a game - we place ourselves in the temperature and pressure conditions created by its authors and we assume certain facts are real. And truly, in this case they are not far fetched.

Well said Merja, and it closely matches my own opinion. Dorotea has stated repeatedly her opinons as well as her reasons for those opinions. Now, of course nobody is forced to agree with those opinions, but I still think that if one truly wishes to offer helpful insights on this mod, one still needs to accept the basic premise for it. And, like it or not, the basic premise is that there is a (slim) possibility that Irenicus can be somehow redeemed. If you reject that basic premise, then there is no way you can offer useful input on how the specific details of that redemption work, because you have decided from the start that the entirety of the mod is impossible, and nothing will satisfy you. (Much like when I was four years old and my parents wanted to buy me new shoes. Since I had decided that I didn't want any new shoes whatsoever, I declared that every single pair pinched my feet.)

Imagine that an artist has decided to paint a picture of a red dragon. How can you help her? I don't think you help her by insisting that the dragon ought to be blue instead, because that's the colour you personally prefer. B)

[jester]

Nothing ties together as hate and love. They are the same emotion. Just as everything around you defines everything within you, any surface elf is an insult to the drow and only their complete extinction would bring them fullfillment and loss at the same time.

[jester]

I think he is all about revenge as an intellectual concept in his head. He does not feel hate or anything else IMHO.

Sidenote:
If RtLR proves me wrong that would be ok with me.

[Merja]

Nothing ties together as hate and love. They are the same emotion.

So, if Irenicus can experience hate, he can experience love.

That be the point.

[Kish]

I think he is all about revenge as an intellectual concept in his head. He does not feel hate or anything else IMHO.

I'd say it's entirely possibly his goals changed when he stole CHARNAME's soul. He was focused on becoming a god, and then suddenly he could feel again and he's like, "...Ellesime! You BITCH!"

[Hendryk]

There would probably have been at least a yearning memory of love as a desired/desirable state in Jon. Otherwise, it'd be difficult to account for the dryads and clones in chapter 1.

[jester]

I think he is all about revenge as an  intellectual concept in his head. He does not feel hate or anything else IMHO.

I'd say it's entirely possibly his goals changed when he stole CHARNAME's soul. He was focused on becoming a god, and then suddenly he could feel again and he's like, "...Ellesime! You BITCH!"

I see the theft of any human soul as a useless venture for Jon. Yet not the PC's, because we are apparently partially a god already. I think of it as a climax like the film 'Highlander' used it. By the time we vanquished Sarevok, many bhaalspawn must have met their untimely end. By stealing our soul Jon achieves two things both very rational. It furthers his attempt to become a god, perhaps in a slightly different way he thought of first, and it makes his revenge much easier.

Perhaps what you said comes in unplanned at a certain point, but they don't shape the rationale behind his actions.

EDIT
@ Hendryk: Good point, but I often keep souvenirs around to remind me of certain events in my past. Some feelings I knew existed but I cannot rekindle them as hard as I miss them and try to get them back. They are but faint memories, foreign to me now.

Edited by jester, 27 March 2004 - 12:11 PM.

[Hendryk]

I think he is all about revenge as an  intellectual concept in his head. He does not feel hate or anything else IMHO.

I'd say it's entirely possibly his goals changed when he stole CHARNAME's soul. He was focused on becoming a god, and then suddenly he could feel again and he's like, "...Ellesime! You BITCH!"

I see the theft of any human soul as a useless venture for Jon. Yet not the PC's, because we are apparently partially a god already. I think of it as a climax like the film 'Highlander' used it. By the time we vanquished Sarevok, many bhaalspawn must have met their untimely end. By stealing our soul Jon achieves two things both very rational. It furthers his attempt to become a god, perhaps in a slightly different way he thought of first, and it makes his revenge much easier.

Perhaps what you said comes in unplanned at a certain point, but they don't shape the rationale behind his actions.

This actually brings up anothe question altogether: does Irenicus truly *need* the PC's divinity and soul to complete his revenge and drain the Tree?

It would seem that if (a very big "if" since we're not given a time for how long the PC was captive in Chateau Irenicus) the party had only been captives for a couple of weeks, then Irenicus wouldn't have had time to complete the elaborate negotiations with the drow and rakshasa in the same timeframe. So he must have set all that up beforehand and there would seem no reason why he couldn't have proceeded with the plot, without the PC at all. No reason except for his own supposed mental deterioration.