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Thoughts on Shaper Rawal?


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They're a (mostly benign) totalitarian state that uses the appearance of infallibility and supreme power to maintain control over the populace. You are never a person of status in Shaper society. They will never admit failure to you. They are answerable to their superiors, and while corruption and misuse of power on that level happens, portraying Shapers as literally blind to their failures is in no way accurate.

Granted, they have an interest in maintaining that facade of infallibility. But when it cracks, of course the first thing that would come to mind is "What else is there that I don't know about? Do they even know what they're doing?" not "Maybe it was just this one time, I'm sure they know what they're doing". How am I supposed to know what they think?

 

In fact we see shades of this on Harmony Isle in G3. The rebels have invaded. Lankan needs protection from Diwaniya (which is his job as the ruler) to make a living, and is angry that Diwaniya won't provide it. So the facade cracks, and Lankan decks Diwaniya and runs off. Then when you talk to Diwaniya you find that it's not so much that he doesn't want to do his job, but that he can't. And the facade prevents him from admitting it, and even if he could people already hate him for failing to meet (what they think is) the Shaper standard. It's just really sad to watch. Of course, Diwaniya is young, and the rebels are a threat that the Shapers have not had much experience facing, but it's not a good job overall.

 

Who said that no records are kept of facilities and accidents? Just because you, a low man on the totem pole, don't get to see them (And as per the totalitarian state argument above, records of failures are not freely distributed) doesn't mean they don't exist. It's true that sealing things doesn't solve the problem, but when trying to fix the problem might let it out or make it worse, or when you're not entirely sure what went wrong, that's not an unreasonable response.

If what Lilith said is true re: destroying records, they really don't. That hints that they don't like to admit failures even to themselves (i.e. are literally blind to their failures, or intend to be so). One can argue that only the records of the research are destroyed and not which places are sealed and why, but usually no one the PC talks to (including Shapers who have a vested interest in cleaning up, like the Guardian who needs the anvil) can remember why a place was sealed beyond the useless "an experiment went wrong", which shows that even Shapers who want to clean up can't prepare themselves. (In fact the Guardian doesn't even know that there is another anvil, while the outsider blacksmith who also needs the anvil does. I'm not getting the impression that they keep good track of their facilities and accidents.)

 

I agree that sealing things up is not unreasonable under certain circumstances, and we now agree that it doesn't solve the problem. The problem is that the Shapers act as if it does. I keep using Darkstone Mine as an example not because it's a particularly spectacular SVH - quite the opposite, in fact. It was a relatively minor incident and it occurred when the Shapers were in full control of the island, and therefore were as able to actually solve the problem as they ever would be. Instead they sealed up the place and forgot it ever happened - according to procedure, true, but it came back to bite people when the other anvil broke, betraying a lack of foresight in their policies. The fact that this is standard procedure is also not up to the standard they set for themselves. Their claim to power and their stance on serviles and drayks is based on the premise that they are the masters of what they create. Then when something goes pear-shaped they go "Seal it up and forget this ever happened instead of risking our lives" instead of "Well, we made this mess, now let's get together a party of glaahks and show that thing who's boss" ... there's a disconnect there. And the "forget this ever happened" part is, as I said, punting responsibility. That is how their risk management stinks.

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"Seal it up and forget this ever happened instead of risking our lives" instead of "Well, we made this mess, let's get together a party of glaahks and show that thing who's boss" ... there's a disconnect there.

It's worse than that. G1 makes it very clear that Shapers will seal places off even though people are still inside, rather than mounting a rescue attempt or sending in reinforcements. Of course, one of the potential disasters of Shaping is the creation of new, horrible diseases, in which case sealing a research facility off rather than sending in more people makes a fair amount of sense (at least in the short term, until further research can come up with ways to cure or destroy the disease, or prove that it can't live for very long on its own). For rogues and pollution? Yeah, immediately sealing them off doesn't make much sense.

 

Dikiyoba.

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My argument with Nalyd seems to be going in circles; I'm hearing points repeated that I thought I had answered. Perhaps I wasn't clear, so I'll try to repeat myself briefly, which is often the best way to clarify.

 

It's not enough for me, if the sealed vaults of horror just stay sealed. Competence means more than avoiding really huge catastrophes. When most of your labs have to be sealed, you're doing it wrong. When the countryside is littered with the lairs of mad Shapers, just waiting to break out like Monarch, you're doing it wrong.

 

It's not enough for me, that some of the corrupt Shapers repent, or avoid doing catastrophic harm in the short term. The rebellion happened because the entire Shaper empire couldn't find two honest Shapers to clean up the Geneforge. That's like the United States of America sending a team to clean up a wrecked nuclear missile sub, and having two top admirals turn around and sell the warheads to terrorists. You can't get off the hook by just calling them bad apples. It's the business of a competent government to make sure that those kind of apples aren't bad. There's no way to spin this Shaper-friendly. If Barzahl and Zakary didn't count as top admirals, why the heck didn't the Shapers send someone who did?

 

Finally, there's no reason to ignore the evidence of what happens in the games, in favor of some general story background that the Shapers know what they're doing. That background story isn't there! The background story you find in the games is that the Shapers say they know what they're doing. That's not the same thing.

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*facepalm*

 

The risks of Shaping and the dangers of research are not known. Judging the rate of failures acceptable or unacceptable by your standards is entirely arbitrary. Nobody ever says that this phenomenon is dangerous or out of hand.

 

Most of the labs are not sealed or dangerous. Some of the ones you visit are, because game.

 

Even perfectly competent and reliable people can do things that their employers wish they hadn't. We have no idea what Barzahl and Zakary's positions or temperaments were before Sucia Island.

 

Would you put admirals in charge of cleaning up a wrecked missile sub, or would you have technical crews do it? It's not a matter of sending the best and brightest or not, it's sending people qualified to do the job. Speculation of the sense of assigning the two is pointless. It turned out badly. That is not enough to point to incompetence on the part of anyone.

 

The background story is definitely there. In the title and ending screens, in conversations with Shapers, commoners, and Rebels, the Shapers as a whole are never characterized as incompetent. Never. You made that up. By giving weight to irrelevancies and disregarding explanation, you have arrived at an erroneous conclusion.

 

'What happens in the games' is not the same thing as 'gameplay'. 'Evidence' is not the same thing as 'my direct experience and nothing more'. It is a game, and so there are dungeons. The world accommodates them. They're fine. Some of them are interesting. They're not the only things around. Some of the things around are not interesting, so you don't go there. The game world consists of more than what the player sees personally, as any game world of appreciable complexity necessarily must. Things take place off-camera. Sometimes implicitly.

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The risks of Shaping and the dangers of research are not known. Judging the rate of failures acceptable or unacceptable by your standards is entirely arbitrary. Nobody ever says that this phenomenon is dangerous or out of hand.

That's one of my main arguments: nobody in charge even comments on the absurdity. A ridiculously high rate of serious failure is considered routine. That's exactly what institutionalized incompetence is all about.

 

Most of the labs are not sealed or dangerous. Some of the ones you visit are, because game.

So by 'because game', you mean that you assume there are many nicer places in the game world, and the PC just doesn't see them. This could have been put more clearly. Anyway, it's merely speculation on your part. You can speculate as you wish, but that's not an argument. The speculation part of my scenario is every bit as valid as yours. The non-speculation part of mine is a better fit with what you actually see.

 

Even perfectly competent and reliable people can do things that their employers wish they hadn't.

This seems to use unfamiliar definitions of 'competent' and 'reliable'.

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So, because Shaping disasters are not considered a serious problem, they're a serious problem? And, again the rate of shaping failures is not ridiculously high. Failures are overrepresented to you, as you are an adventurer that goes around busting into places to kill and steal things. The existence of places and events outside of the player's direct experience is necessary for a functional, sensible game world. This kind of filling in the blanks is gaming convention - hell, it's a convention in any kind of media - and implicit in the way the world is presented to the player. The stated characterization of things takes precedence over holes in presentation (To a degree. Done badly, this breaks down and the blanks become plot holes).

 

Because the Shapers are never portrayed as generally incompetent, because they are instead portrayed as efficient, powerful, dangerous, etc., I interpret and explain your observations as idiosyncrasies of game design and not as valid representation of the faction. The nature of the speculation to allow this is irrelevant - the murky areas can be filled with whatever you think is most reasonable. The nature of Shapers, directly addressed by the narrative, is not in those murky areas, and what you put in them has to support the stated facts of the world.

 

Your argument is no less speculative than mine. Instead of speculation to support the narrative, you engage in speculation to defy it and common convention. If, for you, the narrative does not adequately support itself and replacing it is necessary, go ahead, discard and replace it, but that's not the same thing as interpreting it.

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Shaping disasters are not considered a serious problem, sure. Well, actually, that statement is troublesome, because they almost always are. That's why they're disasters; no one who ever sends you into a Shaping lab gone awry has ever not addressed it as a problem of some sort. However, Shaping disasters aren't generally considered a widespread, systemic problem, as far as we are aware. There's never any mention of how the Shapers are struggling to contain their own empire from collapsing due to all these failed labs full of rogues.

 

However, we can make some implicit inferences from the narrative that suggest that they are, indeed, a problem. The Shapers have developed what seems to be (since we never get the full details) an elaborate system of checks to insure safety. That indicates that, at some point, the Shapers had far less of a lid on things and were just wildly Shaping at their own will. This makes sense for the early days of Shaping, but the empire has matured to some degree. However, their ultimate failsafe is to lock an area down and bar it, as they did with Sucia Isle.

 

Barring things has unequivocally been a failure in every scenario we've seen. Drayks, Sucia Isle, the Geneforge, Drakons, canisters, spawners, and the stoneworks near Krotoa-Kel are all examples of things that the Shapers barred. All of them erupted into problem situations. The problem with evaluating how successful the Shapers actually are at barring things is that we wouldn't hear about the sucesses, since they're barred, but these all mushroomed into some very severe problems.

 

Moreover, we have direct evidence from the game that indicates that the Shaping disasters are actually a serious problem. Sure, the narrative given by the Shapers indicates they're benign, for the most part. However, the PC investigates and often times expresses shock at how severe the situation is. This, too, comes from the narrative, and that's because there are factional biases present in what the Shapers say that don't match up with the rest of the narrative that we see. Just because the Shapers are telling us to pay no heed to what's behind the curtain doesn't mean that it isn't something worth worrying about; rather, it just shows they are unreliable narrators with a bias towards themselves. That's not really a shock.

 

The interpretive debate here is whether or not we can trust what the Shapers are saying about themselves. As they are the dominant class of Terrestia and have very strong incentives to maintain that position, I'm skeptical as to how trustworthy they actually are. They censor, as stated in canon multiple times. And there are plenty of examples of the Shapers saying something that doesn't match up with what's seen in the game.

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And, again the rate of shaping failures is not ridiculously high.

Uh, the narration contradicts you there.

 

"You enter the Purity Workshop B, one of the Shapers' factories for the creation of the tools and chemicals they need for their work. Like most such places, it is underground. That way, when the horrible accident happens (and it will), everything can just be sealed up under countless tons of stone. Then they can move elsewhere and start over."

 

Dikiyoba.

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There are a couple of other points where it's implied that the expected fate of every Shaping lab is to be sealed off when something goes badly wrong.

 

It'd probably be useful for this discussion if somebody collected all the text that's displayed on entering the various sealed lab dungeons throughout the series.

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The tombs of Zavor and Tek are in defiance of Shaper law, with the shades, but they're holed up in their crypt and not menacing other things. There's not anything around them to menace, even, and they seem to postdate Shaper inhabitation of the island. Even if they don't, the Shapers leaving them on a deserted island far from anything valuable is no big deal.

 

 

You're forgetting that the island was not deserted. It had a whole bunch of serviles and drayks on it. So the Shapers essentially left what they considered to be a whole bunch of children with access to forbidden Shaping research. Would you allow your children to play with a nuclear missile?

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The interpretive debate here is whether or not we can trust what the Shapers are saying about themselves. As they are the dominant class of Terrestia and have very strong incentives to maintain that position, I'm skeptical as to how trustworthy they actually are. They censor, as stated in canon multiple times. And there are plenty of examples of the Shapers saying something that doesn't match up with what's seen in the game.

 

Exactly. If there were unambiguous facts laid down by an honest-broker narrator, I would grant Nalyd's contention that you have to accept the background world, and consider your PC's experience to be exceptional. But this is why I called Shaper competence a Big Lie. What you see as background knowledge is mostly from Shapers themselves or people heavily indoctrinated by Shapers, either in dialog, or as stuff that your character learned in a Shaper school. You can choose not to notice this or worry about it, and take all that stuff as gospel because the game told you it was true. In fact, though, it wasn't the game that told you. It was some Shaper in the game. There's a layer there.

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Does the game world ever really suggest that Shapers are particularly skilled at governance? They're immensely powerful militarily ("every shaper is an army") and highly intelligent, but they certainly seem to value shaping ability more highly than administrative skills. It'd be quite surprising if masters of such a demanding art happened to also be politically adept enough to efficiently govern a complex state. Getting that good at something as hard as shaping takes focus - probably something even beyond a PHD equivalent. I think they rule because they are (or were for most of their history) militarily dominant, not because they are good at ruling. It doesn't seem common to find outsiders who genuinely think they govern well.

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Does the game world ever really suggest that Shapers are particularly skilled at governance? They're immensely powerful militarily ("every shaper is an army") and highly intelligent, but they certainly seem to value shaping ability more highly than administrative skills. It'd be quite surprising if masters of such a demanding art happened to also be politically adept enough to efficiently govern a complex state. Getting that good at something as hard as shaping takes focus - probably something even beyond a PHD equivalent. I think they rule because they are (or were for most of their history) militarily dominant, not because they are good at ruling. It doesn't seem common to find outsiders who genuinely think they govern well.

 

I always got the impression that the Shapers governed in the fashion that the Romans did. The local people could continue ruling themselves more or less as before, but under the auspices of the Shaper infrastructure of law. They pay taxes to the Shapers, ask the Shapers for help, let their lands be subject to Shaper flora and fauna and experiments, send soldiers to the Shaper army, etc. but they are more or less left to figure out their own civil code. After all, the only mention of Shaper law that ever gets given are regulations on Shaping.

 

I think the mayor in Dillame was the one who originally gave me this impression, though I may be mistaken.

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