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]

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?

[pleasantmisery]

Umm... yeah, I think so! Life before death and all that. Unless you believe in reincarnation, in which case death comes before life, but then that next life still comes before death, so... Well, let's not complicate things here. Life before Death seems about right to me.

[catposting]

[ goes and gets mauled at some point ]

[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.

[strateelgic]

Is that so... how depressing.

I can't say I care for doing nothing but boring, logical answers.

[catposting]

[ snorts ]

Self-preservation can be pretty boring sometimes.

[ goes and gets mauled at some point oops ]