Oh By The Way...

PeterZ wrote:Indeed so, Don. Recall that Archbishop Maikel stipulated in he sermon establishing the policy, he stipulated those Inquisitors that willingly serve Clyntahn. I recall his also mentioning that Inquisitors that stopped serving Clyntahn would be spared. Those caveats sound like guidelines for the local authorities to act using their discretion.

So, if the Inquisitor actually serves Clyntahn, he dies. The best example is the Inquisitor that refused to kill the Charisian POWs on the ship Sir Dunkin captured. That Inquisitor was not a sadist but was honestly serving Clyntahn. This compared to the sadist bastard on the other ship.

I believe the rule of thumb had been to kill all Inquisitors unless there was clear evidence that the Inquisitor rejected his orders somehow.

Agreed. I'm just saying that this element of the story has always bothered me. Most of those intendants in the TL armies were serving as chaplains and monitoring the loyalty of the troops which really isn't criminal. If we make whether or not they were serving Clyntahn the marker, you could make a strong case for saying that that everybody in a TL army is "serving Clyntahn." Yet nobody proposes to massacre entire armies.

Don

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n7axw wrote:

PeterZ wrote:Indeed so, Don. Recall that Archbishop Maikel stipulated in he sermon establishing the policy, he stipulated those Inquisitors that willingly serve Clyntahn. I recall his also mentioning that Inquisitors that stopped serving Clyntahn would be spared. Those caveats sound like guidelines for the local authorities to act using their discretion.

So, if the Inquisitor actually serves Clyntahn, he dies. The best example is the Inquisitor that refused to kill the Charisian POWs on the ship Sir Dunkin captured. That Inquisitor was not a sadist but was honestly serving Clyntahn. This compared to the sadist bastard on the other ship.

I believe the rule of thumb had been to kill all Inquisitors unless there was clear evidence that the Inquisitor rejected his orders somehow.

Agreed. I'm just saying that this element of the story has always bothered me. Most of those intendants in the TL armies were serving as chaplains and monitoring the loyalty of the troops which really isn't criminal. If we make whether or not they were serving Clyntahn the marker, you could make a strong case for saying that that everybody in a TL army is "serving Clyntahn." Yet nobody proposes to massacre entire armies.

Don

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I believe RFC posted a while back that Inquisitors performed ....acts...that made their service to Clyntahn inarguable. My recollection was that those acts by themselves made Inquisitors morally suspect. Unless they demonstrated their rejection of Clyntahn, their willingness to engage in those activities described at best questionable moral values. If Inquisitors tortured people who were almost certainly not guilty, but were tortured anyway as some sort right of passage and example, then I have no issues with killing those sobs unless they can provide very solid proof they are not morally degenerate sadiists.

I have no problem enforcing the penalty on persons guilty of criminal behavior. One can make the case that supporting Clyntahn at all was immoral. But immoral and criminal are not one and the same thing. Part of my issue with the policy is that it seems to paint with such a broad brush. I don't like broad, nondiscriminatory brushes. Usually stuff gets painted over that should be painted around.

Don

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n7axw wrote:I have no problem enforcing the penalty on persons guilty of criminal behavior. One can make the case that supporting Clyntahn at all was immoral. But immoral and criminal are not one and the same thing. Part of my issue with the policy is that it seems to paint with such a broad brush. I don't like broad, nondiscriminatory brushes. Usually stuff gets painted over that should be painted around.

Don

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I think that part of the problem was that whatever the Inquisition did was, simply because it was the Inquisition, not criminal. Furthermore, there's evidence that the Inquisitor part of the Schulerites were trained to torture from the get-go.

But there's an absence of that evidence for Intendents; so my guess is that being an Inquisitor is a career choice within the Schuelerites, therefore de facto evidence that the Inquisitor has personally used torture. Later, being an Inquisitor is de facto evidence of collaboration in torturing POWs to death, which was illegal by Safeholdian rules of war. If they haven't personally done it, they've preached it, helped deliver the POWs, etc.

Some Schuelerite Inquisitors are decent people who've been taught to think that this is a stern duty, like the several Inquisitors who treat prisoners comparatively well before handing them over. Or the equally decent Inquisitors who tell commanders not to get their men killed in a futile Clyntahnesque fight-to-the-death. But they're still handing the prisoners over... at which point, the evidence needed is of active resistance.

But what Charis is doing is reversing the assumption that the Inquisition can do no wrong and cannot be punished. Torturing prisoners to death is wrong, by Safehold law, and members of the organisation who pronounced this crime 'lawful' will find themselves treated by those same rules. They collaborated by default in declaring POWs 'non-POWs', so they too will become 'non-POWs'.

If Charis was less nice, they'd have received exactly what Gwylym Manthyr and his men got.

I agree that immoral and illegal are not the same in the real world. On Safehold, the matter blurs quite a bit. One can easily argue that for a theocracy, immoral is illegal, but let's leave that aside for the moment. Even so, toturing someone the evidence suggests is innocent just to make an example or to provide a sort of sacrament to Inquisitors would meet the standard for both being immoral and illegal. Clyntahn's dispensations are merely means of selectively enforcing the law, not changing the law to make such activities legal. Archbishop Maikel is simply enforcing church law.

They already committed capital crimes as a rite of passage to be Clyntahn's Iquisitors. Clyntahn simply chose not to prosecute those crimes. They are guilty because that guilt is required of all Inquisitors under Clyntahn. Their lives are subject to legal judgement, but the CoC and EoC still provides those law breakers the opportunity to repent.

I have no problems at all with this policy.

Think of the Inquisition as like the various Departments of the KGB. IIRC;

First Department Foreign Intelligence
Second Department Counter Intelligence
Third Department Domestic Intelligence
Fourth Department Boarder Guards
Fifth Department Foreign Technology
Sixth Department Military Loyalty

There were times when I'm sure the closet good guys were killed right along with the bad apples. Especially when the commander of the victorious army didn't have a Seijin with him to point out one from the other. Assuming Merlin or Nimue even knew. Remember they can't read anyone's mind. Only if Owl saw a given Inquisitor going out of his way to spare innocents would they know he didn't deserve an automatic death sentence. Basically, if you were working for the Inquisition you took your chances.

ecortez wrote:There were times when I'm sure the closet good guys were killed right along with the bad apples. Especially when the commander of the victorious army didn't have a Seijin with him to point out one from the other. Assuming Merlin or Nimue even knew. Remember they can't read anyone's mind. Only if Owl saw a given Inquisitor going out of his way to spare innocents would they know he didn't deserve an automatic death sentence. Basically, if you were working for the Inquisition you took your chances.

I am sure a message from OWL or a Seijin could make it's way to the front's commanding officer if there was proof that said inquisitors were trying to be good people and not minions of clyntan. But for the most part the inquisitors were the first to run if they saw the lines about to break (tough to keep moral when you know you are going to die because you have orange on) or they would keep to their jobs and keep the army in place by threat of death to anyone who tried to run (that would make them a true servant of Clyntan).

The idea to kill them all was a mental game to sift them out. Good men would see the chance to use their positions to do good and see Clyntan for what he truly was, and change their ways and repent. Anyone else was too far gone and drank too much of Clyntans Kool-Aid... They would try to use their fear to keep the army on task.

PeterZ wrote:So, if the Inquisitor actually serves Clyntahn, he dies. The best example is the Inquisitor that refused to kill the Charisian POWs on the ship Sir Dunkin captured. That Inquisitor was not a sadist but was honestly serving Clyntahn. This compared to the sadist bastard on the other ship.

If that's your "best" example, you need to find a better one. The Charisians didn't kill the Good Inquisitor; he killed himself under the assumption that the Charisians were going to kill him anyway.

There's every possibility that the Good Inquisitor might have been spared, especially with Dunkin getting intel directly from Owl at this point.

IOW, this incident can't be used as an example of Charisians being indiscriminate in killing Inquisitors.

evilauthor wrote:

PeterZ wrote:So, if the Inquisitor actually serves Clyntahn, he dies. The best example is the Inquisitor that refused to kill the Charisian POWs on the ship Sir Dunkin captured. That Inquisitor was not a sadist but was honestly serving Clyntahn. This compared to the sadist bastard on the other ship.

If that's your "best" example, you need to find a better one. The Charisians didn't kill the Good Inquisitor; he killed himself under the assumption that the Charisians were going to kill him anyway.

There's every possibility that the Good Inquisitor might have been spared, especially with Dunkin getting intel directly from Owl at this point.

IOW, this incident can't be used as an example of Charisians being indiscriminate in killing Inquisitors.

Texted? Not how I recalled the episode.