A forest that was not there yesterday

[unprophesied_of_ages]

The Lord Ruler is in his palace, when he sees a sight he hasn't seen in centuries. Trees, sunlight...is he hallucinating? The fact that there's a forest in his living room isn't the surprising part. The fact that there's a forest on his planet is. As soon as he walks through the door to where his living room isn't, it's definitely not a hallucination.

His stores of Allomantic metals abruptly disappear. They're still physically there, but the power is completely gone. He immediately turns to go back, only to see more forest.

At least his Feruchemy still works—he can tell because he's still alive—but that won't last him forever. He only has so much stored youth, and without both sets of abilities he can't replenish it. He hasn't been in so much danger since the beheading that one time. Returning to Scadrial is the highest and currently only priority. If spontaneous forests are a thing, he needs to find someone who can explain them and more importantly how to get back.

The next few hours are spent walking in an essentially randomly chosen direction, with the sun to his right. He's quite certain that suns are supposed to be moving across the sky, but that's not a pressing emergency. He already knew he wasn't on his own planet when he saw proper trees and plants instead of ash-covered monstrosities. Whenever he calls out, nobody responds. If it's an empty spontaneous forest, he's probably doomed.

After some time, he hears his stomach growl. He hasn't seen much that looks edible, but possibly that's just because he's not used to real plants. Berries. Berries used to exist. Those berries look tasty, and if they're poisonous it's not like he needs to worry about it. As always, he has a truly ridiculous amount of stored health in his gold jewelry. Tapping gold just in case, he eats a handful.

Comments

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"Okay, the fact that it's not them doing it does change things. In that case, I'd have them force-fed, find out who their orders came from, and if possible threaten them with it. That even leaves the vassal without a master.

Although, if fairy communication is as bad as you say, I might be able to get away with posting a fake name. If stealing their immortality is successful it'd probably kill them, and the perpetrator never being seen again is consistent with them running and never stopping."

[imeanforever]

"Okay, so appealing to any sense of empathy is probably totally pointless, noted."

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"It's a particularized lack of empathy for people who have recently tried to kill me. It's not like I'm suggesting doing anything of the kind to innocent fairies."

[imeanforever]

"You suggested doing something of the kind to innocent fairies a moment ago before I pointed out that they could be under orders. You didn't spare a second to think about it, you leapt straight to murder and disproportionate retribution. How sure are you that's the only thing you're missing?"

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"If someone were to try that here, they would know that they could tell me what they were ordered to do and I'd go after the actual perpetrator instead. I can protect them from whatever consequences they were threatened with, and since I'm widely believed to be even more powerful than I actually am, people know I can protect them. That's the situation I'm used to, where how strongly people can be forced to do things is limited, and that's why I assumed anyone trying to kill me wants me dead. It's different in Fairyland, but it's a specific difference, not one in a wide class of things that don't apply here.

As for disproportionate, it doesn't seem to me to be any more permanent than death."

[imeanforever]

"Your sense of proportion is about revenge and not about - anything else. It is not a good sense of proportion. Please be advised that if you demonstrate the ability to model a better sense of proportion, even if it is not natively familiar to you, I will be much more willing to leave you unsupervised, because I will be able to refer to it when telling you not to be so blatantly evil."

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"I could also lock them up, or give only the orders necessary to keep them away, or even just ask you for a temporary gate to this world and leave them. Those are inferior options not because I'd want revenge but because they're insufficient incentive not to try to kill me. Or to vassalize a mortal, as I suspect would be more common. The point of a terrifying punishment is that you don't have to use it."

[imeanforever]

"I don't think you're going to get very far with this argument. I understand the concept of deterrence. That is not the gap we have here."

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"Oh, I don't expect to convince you of that. Just that there exist non-evil reasons for me believing it.

If it's opening them up to arbitrary torture that's the problem—and I agree that's a problem—how strongly would you object to actually killing people like Yellow? Especially if, since I don't know whether or not this is the case, every few executions may make a human as immortal as a fairy."

[imeanforever]

"I expect that I can figure out immortality without having to kill any fairies via sorcery alone. Yellow is not a good person, but he does other things with his time than unremitting evil and could be prevented from the evil via methods short of execution - or even turning him into a frog. You're not a particularly good person either, as far as I can tell, aren't you glad I don't want to kill you for it?"

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"Of course I am.
In the time until you figure out immortality, how many would die? I can find people worth three of Yellow. I could probably even do it by choosing at random. If the same were true of me and killing three like me would let you save one of them, then I would be able to understand why you might want to kill me for it.

Please do keep in mind, I'm already kind of immortal. I'm not just motivated by selfishness here."

[imeanforever]

"I am considering this tradeoff. It should not form the basis of a primary solution. It should not be the first idea. Not least because mishandling Yellow, in particular, in any way would be a disaster for both of us."

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"That is a fair point. We could of course be far away if necessary.

It was my first idea, or close to it, because it's a much more available option for me than for you just based on our worlds' histories, and I don't have quite as strong of an assumption as you do that it's impossible.

If I were to abolish the death penalty here, I could mitigate the negative consequences. More and more visible law enforcement, I suppose, like with the replacement for the Soothing."

[imeanforever]

"It's possible part of the - misunderstanding we are having - is that I am not familiar with large centralized populations in which nobody can simply order anyone else to stop whatever obnoxious thing they are doing. What kinds of crimes are we talking about here, besides trying to assassinate you?"

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"Trying to kill people who aren't me is the big one. Treason. Rape. Even theft, sometimes. Most crime comes with lower penalties, of course."

[imeanforever]

"What constitutes treason?"

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"Trying to overthrow the government. It hasn't come up in a long time, mostly because of the perception of omnipotence. I was expecting it to be theft I'd have to explain."

[imeanforever]

"Do explain why you kill people for it, but you didn't have to tell me what it is."

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"Yes, that's what I meant.
Probably much of the difference is because here, people can buy and sell food safely. A big effect of that is that people are much more dependent on property than they seem to be in Fairyland. If highwaymen make a road too dangerous to use, there's someone depending on each shipment that doesn't make it through. Maybe it's food, or maybe it's something that a merchant is depending on. This matters more as cities get bigger and order gets more important.
Stealing the tools of a man's trade used to be a capital crime in many places for similar reasons, on the theory that it's making it impossible for him to earn a living.

Not every theft is considered the same of course. A starving thief who takes a loaf of bread is obviously treated more leniently than someone who breaks into a home using magic."

[imeanforever]

"...Why does it matter if they use magic?"

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"Part of it is because in a case that could otherwise go either way, executing someone with magic allows it to be given to someone else later. The rest of it is because if a Mistborn decides to commit a crime, the victim has about as much chance of stopping them as if they had an army at their back. Is that not true of sorcery?"

[imeanforever]

"It can be, but anybody can learn sorcery. Albeit at the cost of being a more appealing vassal."

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"You can't fake not having it?" It wouldn't work for most Allomancers, but only because there's specific and relatively common magic for detecting it.
"Anyway, if Fairyland had a decent legal system that differentiated between levels of crime, it'd make sense to say crimes are worse when they involve sorcery. For some of the same reasons it would be worse if it involved a deadly weapon. If there were any in Fairyland. I need better analogies."

[imeanforever]

"We could try. There are ways to guess, though, and of course if you do any magic where someone notices... Anyway. Why do people commit these crimes? I have no experience with motives for murder, although I guess I could analogize it to turning someone into a frog, which is a pretty long-term neutralization. Why do you have starving people who have to steal bread? What motivates burglars, what are they taking? There is - no need to explain motives for rape."

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"We rarely have people starving. That was an ad hoc example of the least heinous theft I could think of.
Burglars don't usually have specific things they're taking; they're more commonly after anything that looks valuable enough to re-sell. If they've been hired by someone else it's probably about harming the target without actually harming them. The other reason it's considered worse is that there's an assumption that people ought to be safe in their own homes. Breaking into most other places would be less bad.
Murders might be about politics, revenge, an inheritance, a dispute over romance, or maybe they just strongly don't like the person. Motives are pretty varied for that one."