The Power of Ten
patreon
So, a Reader on Royal Road posted a scathing review and several Ratings on BECMI...
🕑 Added 2025-08-07 17:27:51 +0000 UTCbecause he didn't like the fact that I didn't have Edge Fall from Grace for wiping out the Khirifi.
Then he started mock-quoting me to justify his actions because of it, which is the height of hypocrisy, basically accusing me of being a supporter of genocide (i.e. a Nazi) and a power tripper getting off on mass slaughter.
He's very upset that I didn't play Edge like a comic book superhero, save all the children, take them home and raise them right, etc.
--------
I knew the whole idea of the Khirifi being killed would be controversial, and I made an honest effort to convey why Edge chose the tactic she did. I did think about how she would handle it, and I went with the persona she created.
She's not a Shard of mercy, obviously. She's also not a Shard of Healing or Compassion. Given her anger at how the Immortals treat mortals here, her strongest trait to me comes out as Heavenly Wrath or Justice.
The Khirifi were guilty of the following things:
Genocide of three different peoples (the vale-folk, the Korshwa when they caught them, and the Elbers). Genocide meaning over 3/4 of the vale-folk are dead, any Korshwa that fell into their hands, and the Elbers have lost over 2/3 of their population as well, with all of the rest reduced to slavery because someone has to work those fields that were conquered, only now there's no people left to really do so.
Mass slavery of all conquered peoples, with no care for their well-being and killing them out of hand if they rebel, and all the crimes of an occupying army (rape, torture, pillaging, etc), all perfectly excusable because this is all...
Conquest in the name of religion, considering themselves the chosen people and all others inferior (violent racism and religious fanaticism). Conquered people are not even worthy enough to induct in their faith, and any fate is acceptable for them, which led to...
Making a magic item that is powered by consumed souls of their victims, all to summon in creatures who ALSO consume souls, for the purpose of creating an unbeatable army to conquer and enslave everyone.
This last one REALLY set Edge off. The first sets are just Evil acts typical of Evil people, and deserve no mercy for the perpetrators. But consuming souls? That's violation on a scale against both the natural and spiritual order, an act of Evil so bad it taints ALL of them.
It was the Summoning of Soul Eaters which pushed Edge to act, and that Cauldron is even worse than they are, and is meant to Summon hordes of them!
She Communed with the Essence of Heaven to see just how far she needed to take this, and Mercy was not on the table.
Justice is the key here. The Khirifi were to be punished for what they did and are doing, and their Fate to be a lesson to all who thought using the souls of their victims for power was acceptable. Good would not see its hands tied in this matter. This is the highest form of Evil, and it needed to be stopped and punished NOW.
Making it even worse, the Immortals of this world were just looking on and letting it happen, because mortals were doing this to themselves. They literally did not care it was happening!
Sparing the children and young was not on the table. As the Khirifi slaughtered the young and old who were not productive, they would watch their own die, too. This is the War on Evil, innocents die, and War chortles as all are repressed equally... only this time it was the repressors, and there would be no children coming back in the future to avenge their parents.
The highest and most revered Solars of Heaven are those who have managed to completely exterminate races of Evil, down to the last egg or child. The Khirifi were human monsters, and if they chose the path in blind delusion following the dictates of their god and people, they still chose it.
Edge was also capable of shouldering the burden of killing ALL the Khirifi. Killing the parents and not the children without being forced to spend time and energy caring for those children, undoing the brainwashing, getting rid of the hate programmed into them, and in essence being forced to pay a tax the Khirifi don't have to pay, was not going to happen. Edge is NOT a mother figure.
Since she wasn't going to succor them, wiping their elders is basically a death sentence at the hands of those the Khirifi had already slaughtered and enslaved. Since she would be responsible for them starving to death, being butchered by their former enslaved, burned alive, and generally treated like they'd treated their conquered, she shouldered the burden and did it directly herself most of the time, effectively giving them a swift death instead of a lingering or painful one.
If she couldn't be merciful and let them live, at least she could be merciful and see they died quickly. She was responsible for their dying and she shouldered that responsibility directly.
This is a very hard interpretation of Good and the War on Evil, and it is still War. Good is not required to be nice, and Good is not required to be merciful. You don't have to act like Spiderman and never kill anyone to be a Good hero. Good heroes kill all the time. The difference is that they don't like what they do, but they still do it when they need to.
The Khirifi are gone, probably less than a thousand left alive, scattering to the winds and most likely to die in the short future. Their faith in the protective god is shattered. Their great Empire aborning is no more. The deeds they did on their path of conquest will live in infamy, and their doom as what they did was returned to them was also survive, letting others know there are lines that, when crossed, have consequences as horrible as the deeds they spawn.
It's a lot easier to write about monsters that are not human, like undead and fiends, which can be killed without mercy and that's a-ok. Even if demons can be Redeemed, there's no need to take the time and make the effort to do so, you can just kill them and you're fine.
Do that to mortals, and suddenly everything is up in the air and you have to follow a different code of conduct that puts all the weight of THEIR sins on their slayers?
No, Good can be cold and hard and merciless, too. They will never glory in it, never celebrate it, but they can and will DO it, to those who deserve what they get.
I didn't like writing this whole section of the story, but I chose to do so because what the Khirifi were doing and the Immortals allowing to happen was so appalling. Being accused of being a supporter of genocide basically means being called a Nazi. Saying I used this as a Power Fantasy to ostensibly get my sick jollies is just insulting. I don't like to and have real problems when I have to write evil viewpoints, their justifications for what they do, the twisted reasons, and all else. It's the main reason you don't see enemy viewpoints often in the story, I have real problems writing such stuff.
I didn't write a Fall from Grace for Edge, and now a reader feels betrayed because I didn't, I instead wrote a Wrath of Heaven in which the protagonist took responsibility for every soul she killed.
Oh, well. I'll live with it.
Good is a wide Alignment and has many viewpoints, all are valid, but they are not REQUIRED. Classical heroes and modern heroes have very different ideas of Good, and part of the reason I write all these stories is to show that modern touchy-feely idea of Good is NOT how Good has been depicted throughout the ages, and happy-skippy-carefree adventurer Good is only as valid as grim-necessary-harsh-regretful Good.
They are all valid, in their own time and ways, and I wrote Edge according to that interpretation.
I also don't like being called a virtual Nazi and getting off on a literary power trip, either.
Apologies to all my supporters for this drama. But the chapters are out, I'm not going to change them, and the difference in what Edge is willing to do is why she is different from the other Shards.
I will also note that when Dynamo in Book Four is wiping entire fleets of alien settlers fleeing from a dying universe, including all their breeders and children, wiping out entire worlds and species, watches Galactus Consume whole worlds and all the innocents who live on them, and then destroys an entire universe full of innocents affected by Mythos... pretty much the same thing is happening, right? War is a nasty, nasty beast, and the War on Evil is often the worst of them.
Or maybe I'm just blowing hot air. I wrote what I wrote, and there it is. BECMI is a cruel place, with uncaring and self-interested not-gods. Edge is basically the Wrath of Heaven and alone here, and it means there's a different flavor going to come in this book... and Writing a Fall from Grace with a character who knows Truth would be very, very hard for me to justify.
Sorry to ramble, but I had to get this off my chest. Edge is actually the most responsible of the Shards, because she is shouldering all the spiritual consequences of the fighting directly. She's not Falling from Grace. She's getting her faith and belief in a higher Good hammered and tempered by something horrible she has to do because THESE HUMAN MONSTERS need to be killed forever, and she's shouldering the consequences so others don't have to and going on.
And that's my viewpoint on this whole matter.
Comments
Greg Alverson
The reviewer sounds like the type who does not have a real understanding of that word and history and hates those that disagree with them. I was slightly taken back by how vengful edge was not in taking out all the soldiers and even neutral adults or older children who bullied the slaves, but i did wonder how killing infants was not an issue as they had not drvoted worship to that immortal and were not old enough for their aura to have any color. Dynamo had seemed different, because it felt almost like they were outaide the natural order similar to outside creation and not meant to be in that universe. I think other races dont bother people asich because forany years many monstrous races were born evil, before wotc tried to make other races just be misunderstood instead in recent times. In the end though its a fictional story and there is no reason to give a book a low rating because you think a charzcter should be different to fit their personal ideals.
Michelle Clark
That section caught me a bit off guard more for it being a quick change of pace going from sort of semi-adventuribg with a group to suddenly solo wiping out a nation. But I didn't question the morality of it as she did an alignment check and she also serves all the gods of Heaven, which includes Harse. Isn't he the guardian of souls or just a judge of them? I thought somewhere it mentioned his purview was also Justice and it seems with her Speaker for the Dead role she's taken, an Inquisitatoral role. Also wondered why she isn't Heaven bound? Is it too dangerous right now to be one?
