Lore hot take: Choosing Kymon's Chosen makes more sense than Order of Death's Vigil

[sekai]

DISCLAIMER: THIS POST DISCUSSES LORE AND THUS WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS. DO NOT READ IF YOU WANT TO AVOID SPOILERS

Imagine the end of the world, on steroid. The society has collapsed and the Mad Max style raiders are the least of your worries when there are beasts, cultists, undeads, demons, gods, and eldritch beings at every corner wanting to do horrible things to you and your kin in ways you can't possibly imagine and it's better off that way. The world was lost and you were the last resistance, the last leg of humanity against its seemingly inevitable and painful end.

Now you have allied yourself with a remnant shock troop bad company made up of former convicts as the last line of defence between simple every day joe billy farmers and all the outworldly horrors, but also as the last reminder of what it used to be, the last flicker of human civilisation. You desperately need more people in the ranks and reassuringly two groups stepped up and rose to the challenge and came before you.

1. A typical zealous paladin order that hit every trope possible under the sun. They are fanatically infatuated with their subject of worship whom they call a god. They despise all things "unnatural", which in this context means demons, cults, and necromancy and wish to destroy them. They are rigid the uppity, but it's not exactly what we've not seen before.
2. A necromancer cult, with a twist, as are posh instead. They are similarly fanatically infatuated with their subject of worship, only this time they recognised him was a man, but they praised and prostrate before his idol as if he was god anyway. They carried an air of sophistication and self-assured in that their necromancy was merely an honest search of knowledge regardless of its implications.

So who would you make an alliance with? The answer is obvious from a lore perspective - It's obviously Kymon's Chosen paladins you make alliance with in this scenario.

Unless the people of Grim Dawn, and you the one making the decision on their behalf, have decided that there will be no society going forward, otherwise you should not make alliances with necromancers of all people, or at least certainly not openly.

Necromancers even in the Grim Dawn universe still adheres to the traditional sense of their profession, and thus are an aberrant entity. They defile the dead and enslave and abuse people's souls at their whims. They harp on about their humble "research" fundamentally because they see 0 concern in crossing other people's autonomy and boundary in a total sociopathic or psychopathic disregard for consent or ethics, made manifest through the most visceral analogy of r-word ie necromancy. These are your mad scientists, your eugenicists, your billionaires, and your war hawks, casually signing a piece of paper that doomed thousands and millions of people into misery and death over a glistering champagne glass while cuddling a baby's skull, while sitting in front of his "research" papers and books held up by a shelf made of skeletons.

The Order of Death's Vigil's characterisation is at its paragon in none other than its founder, Uroboruuk. Uroboruuk started as a tragic figure who was tortured for.... being a necromancer. Okay sure, being tortured for like a century was obviously silly when he should've just been executed which... they tried, they just couldn't kill him. So what were they supposed to do, just set him free? Of course they kept trying to kill him to finish the job. And this through the boundless wisdom of Uroboruuk, was interpreted as torture when it was just failed execution because he refused to die, because I guess he was just supposed to be set free no questions asked of his necromancy business. For Arkovian's "hubris", Uroboruuk cursed not only its entire civilisation but also all of its descendants into either undeath or being mutated into beasthood, 99.999999% of which wouldn't have even knew he existed let alone personally particulated in his so-called "torture" which amounted to him abusing necromancy to survive execution attempts, a feat he ironically must have achieved by actually torturing countless innocent civilians through his "studies". And to this day, Uroboruuk still cried woe was him for it, a massive evil egomaniac that see no value in others beyond livestocks and a grandly inflated self worth that perfectly mirrors the logic of necromancy and his Order of Death's Vigil.

"But they are so chill!" People often defend. Yeah sure they are, so would the mad scientists sipping coffees while throwing human test subjects into the furnace to get rid of "failures". Attitude hardly matters when your position is necromancy, not even the often white-washed apologist version of "just recycling dead body" but real, actual necromancy that involves perverting the body AND soul. Yeah, that.

"But Uroboruuk felt bad about what he did!" And? What has he done to atone for his crime, by his own admission, in the hundreds if not thousands of years leading up to before the start of Grim Dawn? He didn't say that because he genuinely cares, he just says that so he can feel better about himself, which is like a common theme among his followers and their self-grandiose and pretenious ways who in the end of the day, are necromancers.

Meanwhile what has Kymon's Chosen as a whole done wrong? Being vindicative against demons, cultists, necromancers and whatnot? What's wrong about that? Or is it their sin the fact they were mislead and scammed into worshipping a false idol who was in fact, not Empyrion, whom that 99.9% of the order genuinely believed they were following and taking initives from? That doesn't make them the bad guy, that makes them VICTIMS of a scam! If I were to start a fake church that worship Christ but behind the cross in the cathedral it is the Satanic symbol, that doesn't make worshipping Christ evil, it just makes ME an evil SOB. Why doesn't this simple logic apply to Kymon's Chosen? Not to mention, you DON'T know about their little faith crisis, they don't know that either; that's what it means to have the rug pulled under them. You only know through meta clairvoyance and hindsight that no character in-universe has access to. Sure they got scammed into worshipping a false god, but besides their founder everyone in the entire order has their heart and faith in Empyrion, probably the closest god you get in the whole verse to being actually a nice god. All they needed was a restructure, not slander. Their heart is in a good place and there's nothing wrong in subjugating demons, cultists and necromancers.

Or is it their supposed bad attitude? Well times are tough cue the end of the world and I'd rather take an honest ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that fight demons over a sweet-talking, pretentiously yappie necromancer that only hate blood cultists probably only because of the competition.

Not to mention after all, once Grim Dawn was over the new order/leadership can always just deem Kymon's Chosen too extreme and thus sidelined if they had to for any reason. But there is no getting back once your new order was founded on the hands of necromancers, especially ones whose god doomed a whole civilisation to undeath and misery.

...............

TLDR: Uppity and intolerant paladin that kills demon, cultists and undead are far better as allies than pretentious, self-important necromancer cults. The paladins in Grim Dawn all have hearts in the right place and have their actions to prove it even if they were unknowningly sending their faith into the wrong god like some kinda men-in-the-middle attack; it doesn't make them evil especially since no one but the founder knew it was happening in the first place. And they even figured out their own debacle on their own in the DLC and was on their way to reform the order into something that should've been from the start.

Meanwhile necromancers fashion themselves as scholars while fiddling with people's dead body and souls, while still to this day rationalising the action of their founder/god who doomed a whole kingdom and its millions of inhabitants AND all of their descendants to miserable existence as "mere" collateral of a crime that never was because there was a huge difference between a necromancer that refused to die to execution over their obvious crimes and being tortured for decades and that even if it was the latter it would've still be totally justified given what necromancers do and has done (including cursing the whole civilisation). If anything on this tiny cross section of the Arkovia history, the only thing they did wrong was them failing to execute Uroboruuk before his nerd rage.

On a pragmatic level it also makes far more political sense to support crusaders than necromancers. There's just going to be less ♥♥♥♥ to deal with once the apocalypse was averted if it did happen. They were also easier to get rid off since it's easier to write off and banish them as being too zealous after the fact, but there's no way you're gonna talk yourself out of the fact you had necromancers as your best buddies that fiddle with people's corpses and souls during the biggest crisis of humankind. Just imagine the kind of flood gate it will open to other cults even if Death Vigil was totally cool with it, which they probably won't be considering their founder/god's history even if they said they would be.

Thus supporting the Kymon's Chosen simply makes far more sense.

[Neit]

Ursprungligen skrivet av Wintermute:

To be perfectly fair to Chosen, their Blood grove branch, if you sided with them, does break off from Kymon's deranged crusade, and dedicate themselves to the actual cause of saving humanity and fighting demons. This, however, makes them active heretics to the very teaching of the Chosen, which causes arguments and accusations of heresy even within that group.

You are right, even as you meet the various deserters across the FG areas, they realize they screwed up, so this is obviously not a black and white issue. Most of them probably believe they are doing the right thing and want to save the world, or at least themselves, as is often the case with cultists.

And I also hope it's kinda obvious my first reply wasn't exactly serious, as I know you can crazy parallels in just about everything, and we are obviously just discussing a game so I hope nobody is taking this too seriously.

[Scipo0419]

See, we can go with lore implications all day, but the choice is very simple. One is an order of scientists and the other is PURGE THEM IN FLAME! BURN IN HOLY FIRE!
As such, Kymon's Chosen is, and always will be, my choice.

[Faust Wither]

Ursprungligen skrivet av sekai:

Ursprungligen skrivet av Faust Wither:

There is possibly that the king framed the order of death vigil because reviving the death are against the gods their serve at the time but due the king being greedy he wants the immortality for himself. if you revive malkadarr you know they are really loyal to the order. They are people that use logic more and I think they cherished life more than someone that serving the "good" god.

You have a "possibility" that he was framed. We have the very real fact that necromancy in Grim Dawn requires death and corpse/soul desecration, AND the clearly disproportionate revenge Uroboruuk did (especially one he did from a position he was entirely in the wrong in the first place).

Also "logic" doesn't require you to violate other's autonomy by killing them or forcing them into undeath for "research". It doesn't sound like "logic" to me, but more like some kinda blood god. I'm sure most people will take a "good" god over whatever abomination this is even if they use all the buzzwords of "free will" or "logic" or whatever.

Sounds like you're just grasping at straws.

They can just buy the corpse bro, have you thought of that? Why they need killing or kidnapping while they just need a corpses even animal corpses work. And yeah necromancer getting framed is on lore.

[sekai]

Ursprungligen skrivet av Wintermute:

Ursprungligen skrivet av sekai:

You forgot to mention that they wanted to kill the "disagreer" because the said "disagreer" he was referring to is either a demon, a blood cultist, a miserable undead or the necro cultist that experiment on people and desecrate the deceased that created them. Sounds legit to me.

They want to kill the disagreer because they follow oppressive Luminari doctrine. Kymon is an inquisitor. AKA, a borderline ♥♥♥♥. Luminari outright purged whole religions, like Sky serpent one, for reasons left unkown. They also murder the architect of Necropolis in cold blood, for the sin of asking questions about their project in there, and leave the builders for dead inside.

Yeah but I don't think the Chosen ever did any of the things Luminari did. Especially since Luminari like many organisations just doubles down on their corruption once its exposed, and instead the Chosen fought against it immediately after finding out, even if it meant fighting against their very own founder and the god they've been sending prayers to this whole time.

Even then, like I said in the last part of my initial post. If Grim Dawn were to be repelled and order restored, dismissing the Chosen after a temporary alliance is obviously going to be a far easier job than dismissing the Death's Virgil. Simply because it's much easier to break alliance on the basis someone is too extreme for the long term benefit of the nation, than trying to convince the populace to accept that the saviour of the world shared a cup with killers and corpse fiddlers whom just killed Jimmy and raised him into undeath for "research" last night.

[Neit]

Ursprungligen skrivet av sekai:

You forgot to mention that they wanted to kill the "disagreer" because the said "disagreer" he was referring to is either a demon, a blood cultist, a miserable undead or the necro cultist that experiment on people and desecrate the deceased that created them. Sounds legit to me.

Their only "flaw" was that they got bait and switched. Which is to say they simply don't actually have one.

They in fact waged war against the very (false) god they've actually been praying to this whole time the moment they found out about the deception. Seems to me they're the good guys, just done dirty.

Ok, so for once a serious reply.

That's literally how cults work. They designate someone to be an enemy you can pin all your problems on and offer you a magical solution, usually a god, or god-like person, that you can follow, who makes everything right. They prey on vulnerable people, I would say literal apocalypse would work quite well for this, cultists are busy fighting this imaginary enemy, so that leader can profit from them.

Take a look at BITE model, it's quite interesting stuff.

Now back to imaginary ingame scenario:
In this case, this made-up enemy realized what's happening and what those cultists are trying to accomplish and that it means bad news, so they literally did become real enemy and tried to stop them, which again works very well in cults favor, as their made up enemy behaves like a real enemy and they feel even more justified trying to eradicate them. Bad stuff is still bad, even if you believe you are doing the right thing.

[Wintermute]

I don't think Cairn ever had a shortage of corpses to reanimate without killing to begin with.

[Wintermute]

Ursprungligen skrivet av sekai:

Ursprungligen skrivet av Wintermute:

They want to kill the disagreer because they follow oppressive Luminari doctrine. Kymon is an inquisitor. AKA, a borderline ♥♥♥♥. Luminari outright purged whole religions, like Sky serpent one, for reasons left unkown. They also murder the architect of Necropolis in cold blood, for the sin of asking questions about their project in there, and leave the builders for dead inside.

Yeah but I don't think the Chosen ever did any of the things Luminari did. Especially since Luminari like many organisations just doubles down on their corruption once its exposed, and instead the Chosen fought against it immediately after finding out, even if it meant fighting against their very own founder and the god they've been sending prayers to this whole time.

Even then, like I said in the last part of my initial post. If Grim Dawn were to be repelled and order restored, dismissing the Chosen after a temporary alliance is obviously going to be a far easier job than dismissing the Death's Virgil. Simply because it's much easier to break alliance on the basis someone is too extreme for the long term benefit of the nation, than trying to convince the populace to accept that the saviour of the world shared a cup with killers and corpse fiddlers whom just killed Jimmy and raised him into undeath for "research" last night.

At this point in the game, "general populace" is surviving entirely by the grace of the Taken, who, depending on what you play, can dabble in anything from necromancy to blood magic to invocations of the Great Devourer. I don't think the populace cares all that much anymore.

As for dismissing the chosen... they are an organized militaristic order. Those are never easily dismissed. Necromancers are a bunch of nerds, much less numerous themselves than Chosen. And much less capable, because each and every time the two clash in the world, Chosen absolutely butcher necros.

[sekai]

Ursprungligen skrivet av Faust Wither:

Ursprungligen skrivet av sekai:

You have a "possibility" that he was framed. We have the very real fact that necromancy in Grim Dawn requires death and corpse/soul desecration, AND the clearly disproportionate revenge Uroboruuk did (especially one he did from a position he was entirely in the wrong in the first place).

Also "logic" doesn't require you to violate other's autonomy by killing them or forcing them into undeath for "research". It doesn't sound like "logic" to me, but more like some kinda blood god. I'm sure most people will take a "good" god over whatever abomination this is even if they use all the buzzwords of "free will" or "logic" or whatever.

Sounds like you're just grasping at straws.

They can just buy the corpse bro, have you thought of that? Why they need killing or kidnapping while they just need a corpses even animal corpses work. And yeah necromancer getting framed is on lore.

Necromancers did both? They needed corpses so they either killed for it or they found it. Either way, they violated their body AND their soul since reanimation required at least some level of perversion of the soul. That's why they were prosecuted and hunted because what they're doing is obviously evil.

Again, there are at most 2 undead in the whole game who are undead because they chose to be. NONE of the other thousands of shambling undead you crush beneath your boot on the way to your next destination chose to be that. They were all forced into it in a clear crime against humanity on the necro's part.

Saying necromancers are "framed" for necromancy is like saying a cheater caught with their pants down in the bedroom of another person's spouse is "being framed". Just no.

[sekai]

Ursprungligen skrivet av Wintermute:

At this point in the game, "general populace" is surviving entirely by the grace of the Taken, who, depending on what you play, can dabble in anything from necromancy to blood magic to invocations of the Great Devourer. I don't think the populace cares all that much anymore.

As for dismissing the chosen... they are an organized militaristic order. Those are never easily dismissed. Necromancers are a bunch of nerds, much less numerous themselves than Chosen. And much less capable, because each and every time the two clash in the world, Chosen absolutely butcher necros.

"Necromancers are a bunch of nerds, much less numerous themselves than Chosen. And much less capable, because each and every time the two clash in the world, Chosen absolutely butcher necros."

They are murderous and r-pey nerds. You have to be one of them or both of them to be a necro. Them getting destroyed is good.

Maybe their destroyers don't come from a good intention, but this action is certainly an objective good.

And then there's the fact the said destroyer is in fact, very mostly good. And so the situation is just pretty good.

[Faust Wither]

Ursprungligen skrivet av sekai:

Ursprungligen skrivet av Faust Wither:

They can just buy the corpse bro, have you thought of that? Why they need killing or kidnapping while they just need a corpses even animal corpses work. And yeah necromancer getting framed is on lore.

Necromancers did both? They needed corpses so they either killed for it or they found it. Either way, they violated their body AND their soul since reanimation required at least some level of perversion of the soul. That's why they were prosecuted and hunted because what they're doing is obviously evil.

Again, there are at most 2 undead in the whole game who are undead because they chose to be. NONE of the other thousands of shambling undead you crush beneath your boot on the way to your next destination chose to be that. They were all forced into it in a clear crime against humanity on the necro's part.

Saying necromancers are "framed" for necromancy is like saying a cheater caught with their pants down in the bedroom of another person's spouse is "being framed". Just no.

Yeah but and they can also just put it back to sleep if they really suffered much have you thought of that? And they are framed for scapegoat to disgruntled populace from corruption that might toppled the empire. Every necromancer you meet in game aren't violent person.

[sekai]

Ursprungligen skrivet av Neit:

That's literally how cults work. They designate someone to be an enemy you can pin all your problems on and offer you a magical solution, usually a god, or god-like person, that you can follow, who makes everything right. They prey on vulnerable people, I would say literal apocalypse would work quite well for this, cultists are busy fighting this imaginary enemy, so that leader can profit from them.

Take a look at BITE model, it's quite interesting stuff.

Now back to imaginary ingame scenario:
In this case, this made-up enemy realized what's happening and what those cultists are trying to accomplish and that it means bad news, so they literally did become real enemy and tried to stop them, which again works very well in cults favor, as their made up enemy behaves like a real enemy and they feel even more justified trying to eradicate them. Bad stuff is still bad, even if you believe you are doing the right thing.

If gods, demons and whatnot are actually real. And if a bunch of worshippers found out that their very real god they were supposed to be worshipping was actually someone else pretending to be the one. And they got angry and started a war against the liar god.

This is then NOT some "made up enemy" used to justify aggression or to sweep up followers because it's an actually real and tangible enemy that they're having an issue with.

In this kind of setting, "god" is basically just like CEO with like 12 arms and wings.

Chosen are just people who got scammed into a fake company and they're mad and then take the fight to their fraud CEO. It's all very real given the setting.

[Gilver Redgrave]

Well given how the story goes i would pick the Necromancers.

I rather follow a man who earned the right to be called "a god" then following a selfish being that declared itself a god that would eradicate humanity at any given second. The Choosen are blind fools that followed a wrong leader blinded by hope instead of asking the right questions. The Order however knew exactly whats going on.

The Choosen gave their member what "they wanted". Hope. The Order gave them what the members "needed". A Reason. So do you wanna fight because some random dude gave you hope or do you wanna fight because some random dude gave you a reason to do so ?

[sekai]

Ursprungligen skrivet av Faust Wither:

Ursprungligen skrivet av sekai:

Necromancers did both? They needed corpses so they either killed for it or they found it. Either way, they violated their body AND their soul since reanimation required at least some level of perversion of the soul. That's why they were prosecuted and hunted because what they're doing is obviously evil.

Again, there are at most 2 undead in the whole game who are undead because they chose to be. NONE of the other thousands of shambling undead you crush beneath your boot on the way to your next destination chose to be that. They were all forced into it in a clear crime against humanity on the necro's part.

Saying necromancers are "framed" for necromancy is like saying a cheater caught with their pants down in the bedroom of another person's spouse is "being framed". Just no.

Yeah but and they can also just put it back to sleep if they really suffered much have you thought of that? And they are framed for scapegoat to disgruntled populace from corruption that might toppled the empire. Every necromancer you meet in game aren't violent person.

There's a reason why there are so many undead in game and that's not because necromancers clean up after themselves.

Also clean up after themselves is not even the statement you should be posing. Because the real position is that it shouldn't even happened in the first place, especially when it's entirely by YOUR design and action.

Necromancy violates one's being on an existential level in every part of its equation. To say "oh we could just put it back" completely disregards the idea of consent of the individual.

It's like saying "oh we can just give her a shower" as rationalisation of touching someone without consent. It's just wrong.

..........

Necromancers don't need to be violent because they have unwillingly slaves to do their dirty work once they get it rolling. That's you know, kinda the point.

Many people are perfectly evil and does crimes against others without ever holding a weapon in their hand. Necro is more or less a person like that.

[sekai]

Ursprungligen skrivet av Gilver Redgrave:

Well given how the story goes i would pick the Necromancers.

I rather follow a man who earned the right to be called "a god" then following a selfish being that declared itself a god that would eradicate humanity at any given second. The Choosen are blind fools that followed a wrong leader blinded by hope instead of asking the right questions. The Order however knew exactly whats going on.

The Choosen gave their member what "they wanted". Hope. The Order gave them what the members "needed". A Reason. So do you wanna fight because some random dude gave you hope or do you wanna fight because some random dude gave you a reason to do so ?

He "earned the fight to be called a god" by not only killing a million people but also forever damn every single one of them into eternal suffering as well as all of their descendants who did manage to survive. All because they dared to try to execute him for desecrating the living and the dead. It's not just medieval logic of "oh you can't dissect the body", it's f'ing NECROMANCY that in universe, requires perversion and damnation of someone's soul to do it.

And and 99.999999% of them who got forever torment have never even heard of him.

I'd like to see YOU become a task for someone to "earn their godhood". I heard max level security prison and some cultists hiding in a cave are open for volunteering.

[Wintermute]

Ursprungligen skrivet av sekai:

There's a reason why there are so many undead in game and that's not because necromancers clean up after themselves.

Also clean up after themselves is not even the statement you should be posing. Because the real position is that it shouldn't even happened in the first place, especially when it's entirely by YOUR design and action.

Necromancy violates one's being on an existential level in every part of its equation. To say "oh we could just put it back" completely disregards the idea of consent of the individual.

It's like saying "oh we can just give her a shower" as rationalisation of touching someone without consent. It's just wrong.

..........

Necromancers don't need to be violent because they have unwillingly slaves to do their dirty work once they get it rolling. That's you know, kinda the point.

Many people are perfectly evil and does crimes against others without ever holding a weapon in their hand. Necro is more or less a person like that.

Absolute majority of undead things in the game don't come from necromancers though.

Aetherials? They perform the same necromancy. And it's as easy as infusing a corpse with raw aether. Ravager propagates his own kind of undead. Then there are ghouls. Then there is a number of crypts that aren't connected to Arkovia and Uroboruuk in any form, yet still have undead reanimating in them.

Even classic necromancy isn't monopolied by Order, as independent practicioners exist. And it happens independently of humans so much, to the point of potentially even happening naturally, that undead become a topic in need of centralized research by a scientific organization. One like Order itself.