-snip-
As another said, proving otherwise takes time.
As I said, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
If that doesn't answer your question, consider this philosophical question: If it's easy, is it worth doing?
My point is, just because it's hard or time-consuming doesn't automatically mean we shouldn't do it.
You claim that dealing with demons = murder-worthy evil, yet assuming demons themselves are evil is racist? What?
You have a choice if you're dealing with demons.
You don't have a choice if you're a demon.
Dealing with a race known to typically delight in pain? Evil.
Being a member of a race known to typically delight in pain? Suspicious, but not evil
in and of itself. Especially if you're only part-demon, and not willingly so. (Did we choose to be part-demon?)
You would give them a chance, but you aren't GWG the Just, slayer of evil demon-dealing magicians & plunderer of phat lewtz!
This goes back to "We need more data before we can make any kind of prediction".
We can't exactly defeat the adventurers without a lot more power, and trickery pretty much requires more illusive power. Power requires amulet, key behind door.
In any case, you didn't explain what we have to lose.
Unless we split them up, (like with an enormous fire), and only have to deal with a drained & weakened sorceress, (like right now).
I don't understand what you mean with the last part, 'what we have to lose'.
1. How do you intend to make an enormous fire that also manages to split the adventurers up somehow?
2. What do we have to lose by trying the normal-friendship option before going the Nanoha-friendship option?
Making the fire I've detailed already. As for splitting them up- the sorceress is exhausted atm, aka useless. She'd stay in the keep while the others went out to help put out the fires.
Yes, because a sorceress adventurer who is exhausted and therefore mostly vulnerable, who probably has accumulated a number of enemies through her adventuring, can be relied on to leave herself perfectly defenseless in her room while an emergency is going on. I could see her going with her friends, or having one stay behind, but I don't think we can count on her leaving herself undefended.
We lose surprise, and possibly more- we have covered this. Dunno what a nanoha is.
We have surprise? Not the way we're going. Or, for that matter, by being
a freaking mini-dragon!
As for the other, Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha is a magical girl show which, according to TV Tropes, has a fanbase which uses "befriend" to refer to the process of beating someone up.
It makes sense in context.Simple: No vivisection, and one more step and one more transit we can escape during.
Assuming they do take us to a 'competent' researcher, there is still no guarantee of non-vivisection.
Why not? What competent researcher goes straight for vivisection, especially on an intelligent being who can talk and such?
Because they make no guarantees? (note: straight to vivisection; implying vivisection later on). Keep in mind we're in an analogue of the middle ages- 'competent researcher' can have a variety of meanings.
There's so much that can be learned from a live specimen...and you don't risk learning how quickly a small magical dragon can kill an allegedly-competent researcher.
Killing adventurers
To be fair, I am suggesting a fair deal of killing, albeit indirectly.
Why?
Because fires kill people?
No, why kill them?
Not their lapdog, their ally. That is the plan with the highest chance of not dying, whether due to amulet withdrawal or angering a bunch of pretty powerful adventurers.
The power'd be too disproportionate to be called an alliance.
France allied with the colonies in the American Revolutionary War. Germany allied with Italy in WWII. In the cold war, both sides made many alliances with much weaker nations.
Your claims are false.
A closer analogue would be egypt & ethiopia. Except with egypt being 1/5th the size of ethiopia. Yeah, let's ally with them! Please don't turn off our water..
My point was one where you claimed that alliances were impossible between groups of differing power, and I was proving you wrong.
Besides, in our case our Egypt can manage to get water if they work together with Ethiopia, with their only other option being trying to take on the (larger
and better-armed) Ethiopia directly.
Yeah, the analogy sucks, but you're the one who brought it up...
-snip-
You break it up too much. In telling a fib about our sad past where our master experimented on & abused us, making poor innocent us a demon etc, we'd be lieing. Which would instantly & inherently put us into a different archetype from 'harmless, innocent dragonling'. Instead, we're the 'manipulative dragonling allying with a party for his advantage'. Identity.
That requires them to figure it out. How would they? Would they interview our master and ask if her abducted any small dragons? Oh wait, he's dead and if he did he wouldn't admit to it.
Explain how they would find out, and I'll concoct a sob story that's entirely within the truth. Although that one is, technically, true...AFAIK, at least. I don't know exactly where he got the draconicness from.
Assumingthey aren't Isilev the Just isn't a zealot.
Even if he is one of the adventurers (was this ever stated?) and is such a zealot, he's got two friends who hopefully keep him in line. Just like almost every single zealoty hero in fiction.
You're relying on meta-knowledge of fictional story stereotypes to make in-character decisions-- You're quite willing to assume demons aren't evil, unlike most fictional settings, (and real-life superstitions at that), but are willing to predict a set of individual's behaviors based upon the same exact source material? squintyfry.jpg
1. I'm basing my assumptions that demons are not all evil based A. on what the GM said and B. a knee-jerk dislike of universally homogenous groups bigger than one or maybe a few people.
2. Want more reasons? This whole place would need to be a major theocracy for a group of three highly zealotrous adventurers to be not only accepted but honored by the government, as well as well-rewarded and such. To say nothing of why a group of zealots is raiding tombs and killing wizards rather than going on crusades...
But playing as the dragon, we won't have a say in where we go or what we do. Pilgrimage to the draconic-ruled beastman civ of the north? Not likely. But hey, the GM might be able to do something creative, so...if it works out I can see it being fun. But that's a nasty if, especially if Mr. Lurker gets bored.
You know how we get a say? Prove to be valuable to the party's efforts.
That doesn't mean we have a say, that means we get let out of the cage more often. We aren't going to be usurping the leader's role, not unless 'everything went better than expected!' and they turn out to be happy-go-lucky adventurers.
I don't expect to be the leader...but you don't need to be the leader to get a say. This isn't the military, this isn't a dictatorship--it's a band, a gang, a small group where at least some level of democracy and cooperation is needed for group cohesion, let alone success.
And we'd still have to tail them, which could lead to all sorts of fun. Oh, and the sorceress lady's experimenting with it.
Both of those are true regardless of our choices.
Yeah, unless we steal it back now. Which is why I was using it as support for stealing it back now.
Steal it back now? How? The crazy "Set a fire and hope the sorceress leaves herself unguarded in case of emergency" plan?
They don't know we need it, we have kept a low profile.
That requires ignorance on the adventurer's part of how familiars work, failure to learn anything from the experiments, and pretending the whole High Profile trait (and the ripples we're making with our powers and such, inexplicable and probably connected by some pattern we can't see from our hyperoptic position) doesn't exist.
They don't necessarily even know what the amulet is, and they haven't seen hide-nor-scale of us, ever. The high-profile trait means if we don't have our camo on, we'd be easy to recognize. We've had our camo on. You're postulating a greater system of ripples that we haven't seen any evidence of. Occam's razor. Small spells & our miniscule mana pool are likely to be very hard to see.
We've managed to make people aware of us, as shown by those people chasing a muddy thing. If they thought we were just a stray cat or something, a thief attacking a woman would take greater priority. If they know we're more than that...it would explain their actions.
Besides, you're assuming that they don't know what the amulet is. There's no evidence for that. Presumably, an adventuring party has some way to figure out what magical items are...the sorceress wouldn't have experimented with the amulet with no idea what it did, after all.
To summarize...allying with the adventurers means they kill/enslave their new pal, and setting fire to the town will work and will, rather than destroying the amulet or covering it in rubble or causing its bearers to flee, put it in our grasp. Oh, yeah, and we want to prove everyone who hates demons right.
I don't buy it.
The castle is behind a mote, separate from the town. Causing it's bearers to flee would make it easier to steal than it is currently, surrounded by people & inside a keep...being experimented on.
We shouldn't limit ourselves because 'we don't want to prove demon stereotypes right!'. We're a dragon, we do what we need to do, we aren't beholden to anyone, (particularly humans), for any reason. It's an argument of opinion.
1. Why would raising the alarm make them lower their security? I mean, fires don't start every day, let alone around the time you get back from raiding a wizard's castle and a muddy dragon-shaped thing has been seen wandering about.
2. We shouldn't limit ourselves by proving demonic stereotypes right, either. Face it: Either path limits us in some way. We may not be beholden to anyone, but we can't hope to survive if we turn everyone against us, regardless of why we do so.
Implying there isn't a huge difference between 'not leaving of his own volition' and 'not leaving because physically unable to'. Now you're getting wacky with your analogue. Restate for arguement?
Not until you explain why we'd be "physically unable" to leave. Remember: If we can steal it now, we can steal it when we're travelling with the exact same people.
Why not?
I suspect it's just a difference of opinion...
I fail to see why any of that is impossible with the adventurers by our side. Firstly, I'd like to mention that adventurers...adventure. Not much adventure to be found if you stay within shouting distance of your own front porch. Secondly, joining the adventurers gives us much better chances in the world, as far as not getting killed/captured/hated on sight goes, than becoming a town-murdering arsonist. Thirdly, it's easier to get close to the amulet--which we both agree is something we must do--if the adventurers like us than if they hate us.
Implying they'll know it's us that set the fires. Impossible or unlikely? Or terminally unlikely. They're going to be doing adventurer things, ('adventuring'), which isn't the same as baby dragon things. They can have correlations, but they aren't the same. We'll be at their side, not the other way around.
1. Again, there are too many coincidences for them not to suspect...especially if a muddy dragony thing like what people have been talking about tries to steal the amulet, and later a draconic creature shows up saying he needs the amulet to survive.
2. What "baby dragon things" do you have in mind? Adventuring is as good a thing to do as any, IMHO.
Just as a note, the amulet and our distance from it are not nessecairy for our survival. It's just that if we don't get our hands on it in 3 months (or was it weeks), we will come under the current's owners control. At that point, the link will be restablished and we will get our manaflow in order. If we get it ourselves, we can restore our manaflow too.
Well, according to Grizzly, our freedom is pretty important and becoming the "lapdog" of the sorceress is worse than death...and, anyways, she's kinda messing with it.
Nope, it's worse than having our freedom.
Well, we might not have a lot of options.
The way I see it, we have two choices here:
1. Burninate the whole town! Hope that the adventurers leave a single unguarded sorceress as the only thing guarding the amulet as the others go to help with the fire. Hope that a small dragon can defeat said sorceress. Steal the amulet. Flee and hope that the sorceress's companions and possibly the sorceress don't find and kill us.
2. Keep the diplomatic option open long enough to find out more about the adventurers.
