Game 2 - Rose

[crittersheep]

[A rose shaped crystal rises from the ground. You instinctively know to touch it for Death's Eye to receive your answer.

You are bound to your flock by a thin thread, making it impossible to separate, but you may still answer individually.]

Comments

Re: DISCUSSION

[catposting]

What is the value of life?

[strateelgic]

The value of anything is determined by every individual. There's no specific answer to that question.

[catposting]

...

"The value of anything is determined by every individual."

You reckon it'll take that for a specific answer?

[ or is it too much of a loophole... ]

[pleasantmisery]

I think we should say that life is the most valuable thing of all. Because without life, there can be no death.

[this will almost certainly piss Death's Eye off, but after being made to cough up blood and choked for daring to mildly question Death's questions, Shadow Fiend is no longer in the mood to cooperate]

presumably this is after Everything Happens SO Much so: he's doing great

[finalbows]

_{it is, too. life. unmetered and uncontrolled. a world without life and death is no world at all...}

[pleasantmisery]

Yeah, that's the ticket! Blood Fiend was kind of thinking that way too. His suggestion was "Life is the Everything before the Nothing. Life before Death." Though maybe we should rethink the phrasing a little, since the question is specifically about value.

Something like... "Life is the Everything before the Nothing. Without an Everything, there can be no Nothing."

I dunno, what do you think?

[finalbows]

I think no amount of verbal bargaining with the interloping snake that's made itself the apparent new arbiter of life and death is going to sway it in any one direction it doesn't already want to go.



That is. Whatever we say to it is pointless. But we're being forced to say the truth, anyway, so we might as well say it with our whole chests.

[pleasantmisery]

Haha... Well, I guess you do have a point about that! But we've gotta be truthful, so--does what I said sound like something you'd be able to agree with?

[finalbows]

...

The value of life is in the living of life. It is valuable for the sake of it being there, even if an individual life is a small little thing. It all feeds a crystal, in the end, just the same.

So, I suppose... if what we're trying to say is that life is what gives death meaning... I agree.

[pleasantmisery]

Yeah, I think that's the general idea. Just, you know, with some fancier phrasing.

[finalbows]

_{[ distant, definitely just... ambiently upset discussing this at all + all the everything happening throughout the questionnaire, ]}

Sure.

Re: DISCUSSION

[pleasantmisery]

Gosh, I really wish I was, like, a philosopher or a cleric or something right about now. There's so many ways to answer this!

Re: DISCUSSION

[catposting]

Thoughts on what Floyd said? It's not a value, but it is an answer.

... I wish we had some kind of "loophole criteria".

Re: DISCUSSION

[pleasantmisery]

Hmm... Seems pretty vague. Like, it's the kind of statement that you can't really make an argument against? And it's not really specific to life, or living, or what have you.

It's not a bad answer, but... I dunno. Seems like we might run into the same problem we had with the blood sacrifices, where we tried to be clever and wiggle out of committing.

Then again, committing to an answer that Death's Eye doesn't like might be even worse...

[strateelgic]

If they wanted solid responses they shouldn't have asked such problematic questions.

Any answer that doesn't belong in a pageant is going to be biased. The real riddle to solve here is what is their bias.

[pleasantmisery]

Well, given all the other questions... The answer Death's Eye wants is probably gonna be something like [putting on a spooky voice] "life has no value at all, because it's short and terrible and death is a blessing!!" [end spooky voice] Or something.

[catposting]

You're way too dramatic...

"She knocks, many a time, but never waits for me to Answer."

"The Death became Nothing when the first Alive stopped living."

That's what she told me back then.

[ . . . ]

So how do we make her truth ours, too?

[pleasantmisery]

But what does that even mean??

[catposting]

[ SHADOW FIEND PLEASE ]

What if we said something like "Life serves as the Everything before the Nothing"?

The segment of time before Death. I lived my whole life believing that death would be the end, so... it's my truth, at least.

[pleasantmisery]

...Isn't that just my suggestion but more pretentious?

I mean, Death's Eye does seem to like cryptic and dramatic, so more pretentious probably isn't a bad thing...

[catposting]

... Yes and no. You're onto something, but time is the key. We need to specify time.

"It is not an order. It is not a request. It is inevitable."

Life before Death. Question before Answer. Think about it, Shadow Fiend. Did anything Death said contradict that?

[pleasantmisery]

Ummm... Well, no, I don't think so? Death seemed pretty calm about the whole inevitability thing. Patient, you know? Not really in a hurry to speed up the living part, since... Death is inevitable!

[catposting]

"May you live your lives well, until you fall over the edge, men among lambs."

She didn't care how we lived our lives, as long as they were lived. As long as they came before.

[ he's just repeating himself now, so moving on ]

The answer of time. Could you agree with that truthfully?

[strateelgic]

Is life really the question? Some might say it's the other way around. When you die, if there's an afterlife, your judgement is going to be based on the question "How did you live?"

[catposting]

Death didn't seem to think there was an afterlife. When we died, She wanted to send us to the Nothing.

Before you came here, there was a guy on our team that wanted to save everyone. Protect all human life, that kind of thing. He was the reason we didn't give our own blood as planned.

I... I'm not that kind of person. But as we faced Death, it didn't matter. Our fate was the same regardless of how we'd lived.

The question asked for a value. It didn't say the answer couldn't be purely logical. Time-based.