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An act of kindness?

[The Brucolac has clearly just received bad news. He looks positively poisonous, wide streaks of silver whorling over his skin. His jaw is stiff with it, even his hair frosted over with strange metal. His right eye burns gold still.]

I am sick to shit of this half-cocked magic. [He shudders—would gesture, but he doesn't want to show off how badly his left arm is faring under the encroaching silver. It hurts to raise it to shoulderheight; above is impossible.] An act of kindness is no godsdamn cure, to be bottled and applied at will!

What is an act of kindness? Is it kind to tax a people, that a city may grow? Is it kind to lie in order to protect the honest? Is it kind to enforce a system of law and punishment?

By the gods, [he drops back, shaking his head, looking weary,] there is no hope for us.

Before anyone tells me to just do something nice, [pitching his voice mockingly higher] I've given my scribe a longer lunch break. [It is midnight.]

And apart from a marked decrease in efficency, fuck all has happened.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Kindness is an extremely subjective and therefore inherently worthless concept.

[Balem: world's most pleasant individual.]

Whoever told you that would be the cure must have phrased it poorly. Perhaps it was a specific act they considered kind, and interpreted it to mean kind acts in general.

Precisely.

[That seems very sensible.]

I suspect it was in fact just completely the wrong fucking information, though reports suggest that cures are...varied.

And moralistically ironic. [He risks a brief, dry hike of an eyebrow, assuming from Balem's first statement that he'll agree with the Brucolac's underlying sentiment of massive disapproval.]

I'm glad I'm not one for physical contact, then, because I'd hate to know what moralistic irony this place would have in store for me.

[Probably something involving charity or humility, his two least favorite concepts.]

But you must be correct: it was the wrong information. Whether or not an act is kind depends on intent; how would a disease know your intent? Could it not be argued that anything done with the intent of curing the disease was not truly done out of kindness, anyways? It's a ridiculous task.

Mmmmn. [A shrug, hesitant on one point:] Thaumaturges often...overlooks intent. It has, in my experience, more potential than it's often granted. Though I was never any good at healing.

What grates on me...mm, what grates on me, [another of those spasms of repressed movement; he forces himself not to raise his hand, because it's frozen into a twisted silver claw], is the notion that someone has apparently assessed my conduct and concluded that an act of kindness, whatever that may be, would be the perfect antidote.

[His voice is dry as the grave.] Unmannerly bastards.

Do it for the sake of the cure and ignore whatever moral lesson they're trying to threaten you into learning. Once it's gone, you can do as you please.

[In other words, do it but be a stubborn jerk about it and be even meaner after just to prove a point.]

Can you hear that? It's the faint sound of my nearest and dearest screaming at you not to give me that advice.

And why is that?

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