The Zuma

[De-Legro]

Actually, he did.

Unless you don't think that "no way" is synonymous to impossible.

No that is true. The Zuma and Garrett will engage with SOME nobles. But lets be honest the average noble wondering Zuma lands will be ignored. Thus the point becomes it is possible for SOME nobles to learn first hand of the Zuma. The rest of the continent could learn 2nd, 3rd hand extra, but then our characters would have to question how accurate the information is, and what agenda the re-tellers have that might encourage them to alter certain facts.

[Chenier]

No that is true. The Zuma and Garrett will engage with SOME nobles. But lets be honest the average noble wondering Zuma lands will be ignored. Thus the point becomes it is possible for SOME nobles to learn first hand of the Zuma. The rest of the continent could learn 2nd, 3rd hand extra, but then our characters would have to question how accurate the information is, and what agenda the re-tellers have that might encourage them to alter certain facts.

I'm quite sure that if a part of 20 nobles gathered in Nightmarch for some RPs together, they'd get Zuma attention.

You just need to be noteworthy enough. Sure, that might mean that a lowly knight going there alone could be ignored (being ignored happens at irrgular frequencies, he could very much not be ignored too), but there are various guilds that link almost all of the realms, if not all, so if a single realm can't spare enough nobles to go, getting a good number from a host of realms shouldn't be that hard.

But as I said, you aren't guaranteed to be ignored if you go there either. Most of the times I've went I wasn't, and I always went alone.

[Bedwyr]

Indeed.

As for Anaris' comment earlier (I think it was him) about how impossible it was for the Lurians to find out... what makes you say that? It's not that hard to go to the Zuma lands. Unless you are an ass, D'Hara tends to grant permission to use their ports if you announce your arrival and intent.

Koli's actually on his way, via a roundabout route.  It's taken him a while to settle matters in Luria to the point where he thinks he can leave without a war breaking out while he's gone (and he's still not entirely comfortable with it).

It makes no sense to assume that the beings on Dwilight are the same as the beings on Beluaterra. That they both may or may not fit in the caegory of "Massively powerful inhumans ruling over humans" is irrelevant given that their behavior is radically different; even characters in Luria would be aware of this fact. Here is how:

Luria, even as far away as it is from the Zuma, would have long ago heard news if the beings on Dwilight were as inclined to same level of destruction as those on BT. Therefore, the absence of such reports is by itself enough to throw suspicion on the assumption that the two groups are the same -- particularly so, if you are comparing past invasions of BT to Dwilight.

Who cares what their behaviour is?  They're inhuman, and they're powerful, and they're in the world.  The Manifest Path's assumption is that anything inhuman with any degree of sentience is evil until proven otherwise.  How is that any more irrational than any other principle of any other religion in the game?

And the Zuma quiescence can easily be explained by comparing it to the Daimon colonies between the Third and Fourth Invasions.  They're biding their time until Beluaterra is conquered, and then they'll send help to their kin on Dwilight.

[Solari]

The Zuma are Other.  They have, at times, fielded monster unit types.  They probably look funny and practice ritual sacrifice.  By every metric in tMP's book they are not to be trusted.  Which is why I'm wondering why anyone is debating the validity of a religious or philosophical tenet of tMP that doesn't exist? 

It doesn't matter if the Zuma are different from the Daimons on BT.  They satisfy several other conditions.  tMP doesn't say "thou must suspect daimons (only)".  It says that daimons are merely actors in a very Darwinian cosmology, and there are other non-human things waiting to eat us, too!  The Manifest Path is not a religion on BT; it's on Dwilight.  It is informed by events on BT, which as I understand are part of the larger BM canon.  People talk about Da Great Goat on every continent.  Attempting to draw distinctions between the Zuma and Daimons in such a way as to question tMP is a bit like saying "you can't believe that here", which would be rich given the circumstances.

[Anaris]

Unless you don't think that "no way" is synonymous to impossible.

Oh, my goodness, Chénier: I apologize most profoundly, as my wording was shamefully imprecise!

I should have said, "There is no way for most people on Dwilight to find out about the Zuma without making a months-long trek to a potentially hostile area in the vague hope that a group either suspected to be evil and deadly to humans (if you're far away and know little) or known to be close-mouthed and somewhat inscrutable (if you're closer and know a little more) will be nice and tell you all about themselves."

[Anaris]

It makes no sense to assume that the beings on Dwilight are the same as the beings on Beluaterra.

On the contrary.  They are Daimons.  It makes no sense to assume that they are different from the Daimons on Beluaterra.

If you happen to know that they're different, then yeah, you can see why it makes sense to find out differently.  But from your messages, it seems like you're having a hard time putting yourself in the position of someone who literally doesn't know anything about the Zuma except "they are or live with Daimons" and "they attacked Paisly a while back and did a lot of damage."

[Vaylon Kenadell]

It makes no sense to assume that they are different from the Daimons on Beluaterra.

 Then... why hasn't there been an invasion? If your character knows how Daimons act on Beluaterra, then -- simply by virtue of Dwilight's long history of Daimons not acting like the Daimons on Beluaterra -- he ought to know that the Daimons on Dwilight are different.

Look, it's very simple: How many invasions has Dwilight had? How many invasions has Beluaterra had? Therefore, Daimons on Dwilight must be different. Your characters can know this even without ever having set foot in a Zuma land or swung a sword at a Moot-member.

Even if your character knows absolutely nothing about the Daimons on Dwilight, he can look at a map of Dwilight or open a history book and know that the Daimons have not managed to take over the continent nor have they done so in the entire known history of Dwilight, and therefore if your character also has knowledge of the invasions on Beluaterra (and has a shred of honesty and intelligence) he ought to be capable of admitting that so far the Daimons on Beluaterra have displayed a markedly different type of behavior from the Daimons on Dwilight -- EVEN WITHOUT EVER HAVING VISITED THEM. Your characters can still rightfully hold erroneous beliefs, be suspicious, prejuduced, ignorant, idiotic fanatics, generally poor at logic, what-have-you and so on and so forth. But this:

tMP believes what it believes based not on the Zuma, but on the BT invasions. What they believe is both rationally arrived at and cannot be proven wrong.

This is wrong. You cannot claim to have knowledge about the Daimons from Belutaterra while simultaneously claiming that the Daimons on Dwilight are exactly the same and have come to this conclusion rationally.


Moderator note: Sorry Vaylon, I hit the wrong button when trying to replay to your post, and edited it by accident. I think I have restored it to your original text.   --Indirik

[Anaris]

Then... why hasn't there been an invasion? If your character knows how Daimons act on Beluaterra, then -- simply by virtue of Dwilight's long history of Daimons not acting like the Daimons on Beluaterra -- he ought to know that the Daimons on Dwilight are different.

Occam's Razor says that we should assume the simplest explanation.

The simplest explanation here is that the Dwilight Daimons are just as deadly and inimical to humanity as their counterparts on Beluaterra, but for reasons we do not know—a mystical force, a lack of guidance, their own inscrutable agenda, or something else entirely—they choose not to rampage through the land.

The simplest explanation is not that these are, essentially, completely different beings who just happen to also be called Daimons.

Again, you seem to have a hard time putting yourself in the shoes of someone who doesn't have your knowledge.  Please try to accept that for someone who knows nothing about the Zuma, but a lot about the Beluaterra invasions, this is at least a logical conclusion to draw, even if it's not the only one.

[Geronus]

This is wrong. You cannot claim to have knowledge about the Daimons from Belutaterra while simultaneously claiming that the Daimons on Dwilight are exactly the same and have come to this conclusion rationally.

You and seemingly everyone else are completely missing the point here.

tMP as a philosophy is a reaction to the BT invasions - the horror and destruction visited on humanity by nonhuman beings of great power. It has been explained and rationalized (to death) as such elsewhere by Bedwyr and De Legro.

The result of this is the belief that anything that is both sentient and nonhuman is probably a threat to humanity. There is no need to stick a Zuma peg in a BT shaped hole. Are they sentient and nonhuman? Yes? Then they are probably evil, irregardless of their similarity or lack thereof to the daimons of BT. They could be moon men from Theta-12Z and we could still rationally start with the assumption that they are evil, simply because the entire range of experience with sentient nonhumans in BM suggests that they will be.

And here's the really important part, that everyone has missed thus far. No one can prove beyond all doubt that they are NOT evil. Sure, they have been quiet neighbors so far. They don't attack people unless provoked. They appear to be rational. None of that proves anything. It would still be rational, even KNOWING all that, to make an assumption that, being nonhuman, they probably don't have our best interests at heart, cannot easily be understood by ascribing to them human traits such as reason and emotion, and are probably motivated by things that we do not and possibly cannot comprehend. Therefore, they may pose a threat in spite of their veneer of civilization, as their motivations are literally incomprehensible to us mere humans. They leave us alone for now. However, we don't know why. We don't know what they really think of us, and we don't know that they won't change their minds suddenly and without explanation and start a jihad against humanity.

Anaris has it more or less right here, but I'm going to post this anyway.

[Shizzle]

Also, even going from the idea that tMP's view of the Daimons is a lie, who cares? People believe lies because they hope them to be true, or because they fear them to be true. There's no need whatsoever for our characters to be rational.

I do believe that they are, though

[songqu88@gmail.com]

Hey guys, here's a thought: Take whatever the heck it is you're doing or might be doing here, and actually take it into the game. Because, you know, going on and on about it on the forums does nothing for anyone.

[Shizzle]

Hey guys, here's a thought: Take whatever the heck it is you're doing or might be doing here, and actually take it into the game. Because, you know, going on and on about it on the forums does nothing for anyone.

Dude, if you had written 1,381 roleplays instead, player retention wouldn't even be an issue now. Or maybe it would


J/K, I'm not hatin'

[Meneldur]

I don't know what's so hard to understand about this; they're non-human monsters for goodness sake!! That alone leaves enough basis for a character to assume them hostile until proven peaceful. And when you add a religion founded as a response to Beluaterra into the mix then the whole matter seems perfectly logical (at least to the medieval mind).

We have whole families/realms despising entire human realms/families and all affiliated due to longstanding feuds, yet when a religion speaks against a race of dubious non-humans because of similarities with a group that attempted to destroy a whole continent they are "irrational"?

[Glaumring the Fox]

Kill em' all let the stars sort out the rest!!!!111

[Indirik]

If you kill them all, then there won't be any "the rest" for the Stars to sort out.