RuneScape Forum Archive | Second Age, Zarosian Humans

Hguoh

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Cthris said :
Aesa's account does not collaborate your claim any more than it collaborates mine.

In regards to the first part of your response. I shall need you to elaborate on how that implies that the Cthonians can go from a state of non feralness to a state of feralness due to unregulated consumption.

Really now? Well, here's something from the same book:

Even Hostilius was butchered and dragged into the Abyss. There he languished, strung between worlds like a great corpse-puppet. His remaining subjects fell once more to cannibalism, frantically attempting to hoard enough power to survive. When defeated and exiled, many of them made their way to his bloated bulk and infested it, crawling over and inside the dead flesh like so many flies and maggots.

In the absence of a system that provided some guarantee of survival, they reverted to their most natural method for self preservation (the same one they used when overthrowing the Infernals): gathering power through consuming. This creates an environmental pressure favoring consumption over restraint and pushes the Chthonians toward being more feral.

08-Nov-2016 01:24:18 - Last edited on 08-Nov-2016 01:25:05 by Hguoh

Dec

2023

Cthris

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Hguoh said :

1) Eschewed is a fancy word for leaving behind. It's not that he had an atypical thought pattern, he just refused to live in Hostilius's corpse with the rest of them.

2) And as for a precise moment when he went nutty, here's the very next line:

There he stayed for an age, accompanied only by wretched self-pity and thoughts of revenge. He fed on the detritus brought to him on Abyssal currents, and scratched his inscrutable thoughts on parchment fastened to his own body, in order that they would not drift away. After long aeons, the ebb and flow of the Abyss brought him close to our world, and he was filled with hunger - both for living meat and for dominion over others.

He started tying his notes to his body, anticipating his insanity, and by the time he came near Gielinor again he was driven by hunger.

1) "He eschewed his kin - who scavenged and picked over the remains of their once-master - and made his own way into the great beyond."

The rest of his species did one thing, he did the opposite. Pretty much the definition of atypical thought pattern.....

2) That tells us when he started writing down his insane thoughts, it still doesn't tell us when he went insane, when he first started having inscrutable thoughts.

Again you are inferring causation from correlation. Was he insane? Yes. Was he driven by hunger. Yes. Was the hunger the cause of the insanity? Impossible to ascertain. It is just as likely that his isolation from sentient beings caused his insanity, if it wasn't there already.

Also I should point out that you claimed that Senecianus went insane from eating a human. You're now claiming that Cacus went insane due to hunger, which usually implies not eating.

08-Nov-2016 01:31:46

May

2008

The Mather1

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Original message details are unavailable.
The relevant text follows. "Our diocese is efficient, the taxes flow regularly, and the people are satisfied or, at least, obedient."

I don't believe it at all should be interpreted as suggesting his/her diocese is keeping people satisfied ? It shows a disconnectedness from the people and error in logic. From what he wrote, Madromurts measure of satisfiability is through a obedience/disobedience scale. This is quite the fallacy. His logic appears to be:

If satisfied then obedient
Obedient
-------------------------
Thus satisfied.

This is an example of the fallacy of affirming the consequent.

Madromurt doesn't actually know whether his/her people are satisfied, and which presumably is why he is relying on assumptions. Personally, I think a leader of a diocese who doesn't even know if his people are satisfied is a good indicator of error.
The phrasing indicates that keeping them satisfied is the goal, and the correction indicates that while their obedience is evidence and there is no evidence to the contrary, he is cautious that he could be mistaken.

Original message details are unavailable.
It speaks anecdotally of a single benevolent demon, whom either did not possess the theory of mind to realize that humans name themselves, or thought so little of humans that it did not even occur to him that they were sophisticated enough to give themselves names. His ability to know what scares humans appears to contradict the possibility that he lacks theory of mind. Thus I am more willing to accept that he just thinks little of humans.
He was an accountant, his main clientele would have been the business owners; humans. What he hadn't considered wasn't whether humans used names, but rather whether someone who had raised themselves alone on the street would even think to give themselves a name.

It is also not anecdotal, as the evidence lies not in his actions, but rather in how him sharing it with his clients indicates that it was socially acceptable.

"Abscondita est in Astra."

08-Nov-2016 01:40:01

Dec

2023

Cthris

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Hguoh said :
Cthris said :
Aesa's account does not collaborate your claim any more than it collaborates mine.

In regards to the first part of your response. I shall need you to elaborate on how that implies that the Cthonians can go from a state of non feralness to a state of feralness due to unregulated consumption.

Really now? Well, here's something from the same book:

Even Hostilius was butchered and dragged into the Abyss. There he languished, strung between worlds like a great corpse-puppet. His remaining subjects fell once more to cannibalism, frantically attempting to hoard enough power to survive. When defeated and exiled, many of them made their way to his bloated bulk and infested it, crawling over and inside the dead flesh like so many flies and maggots.

In the absence of a system that provided some guarantee of survival, they reverted to their most natural method for self preservation (the same one they used when overthrowing the Infernals): gathering power through consuming. This creates an environmental pressure favoring consumption over restraint and pushes the Chthonians toward being more feral.

Again you are inferring causation from correlation. That isn't a valid form of deduction.

Yes Hostilius had power over the Cthonians.
Yes at around the same time he died they became ravenous.
------------
But perhaps if it wasn't for the Cthonians breeding a ton of non-intelligent Cthonians Hostilius could have died and there would be no feral Cthonians.

If so then the reason they went feral is because of my claim rather than yours.

So again Aesa's account does not collaborate your claim any more than it collaborates mine.

08-Nov-2016 01:41:07

Hguoh

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Cthris said :
1) "He eschewed his kin - who scavenged and picked over the remains of their once-master - and made his own way into the great beyond."

The rest of his species did one thing, he did the opposite. Pretty much the definition of atypical thought pattern.....

2) That tells us when he started writing down his insane thoughts, it still doesn't tell us when he went insane, when he first started having inscrutable thoughts.

Again you are inferring causation from correlation. Was he insane? Yes. Was he driven by hunger. Yes. Was the hunger the cause of the insanity? Impossible to ascertain. It is just as likely that his isolation from sentient beings caused his insanity, if it wasn't there already.

Also I should point out that you claimed that Senecianus went insane from eating a human. You're now claiming that Cacus went insane due to hunger, which usually implies not eating.

He wrote his thoughts down and tied them to himself so that he would not lose them. That indicates anticipating insanity to me, rather than already being insane. And as for leaving, I view that as him, already having plenty of power to sustain himself, moving away from a situation where he could be ganged up on and overpowered through sheer numbers (not necessarily an atypical thought as we have little indication as to what the other Dukes did).

And no, I'm not arguing that Cacus went insane due to starvation. Again, in the same books:

He (Cacus) fed on the detritus brought to him on Abyssal currents

He ate what the Abyss sent his way. He did not starve. Their hunger is simply insatiable.

08-Nov-2016 01:48:13

May

2008

The Mather1

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Original message details are unavailable.
I believe you misinterpreted the text. The relevant text is as follows. "More than this though, I wonder about what this means for the Cthonian population at large. How many more of them bear this repressed urge to devour which, once indulged, will break down all their mental fortitudes ."

Nabour was not wondering about how many Cthonian's had a ravenous hunger, but how many had a ravenous hunger that would cause mental instability once indulged.

I can further demonstrate this by demonstrating contradiction.

Hazeel's memory is a follows.

"... and without exception every Chthonian I have met slavered at the very thought of consuming its kin. There is a law in the empire against consuming humans, but I do not think they keep it very well, ...There are many forces that keep the streets of Senntisten clear of the homeless, and not all of them are economic.:

What you have interpreted is in contradiction with Hazeels memory. If Hazeel is aware that demons don't keep the law very well, then there must be a lot of Cthonians eating people. If lots of Cthonians are eating people then presumably a fair amount should know. I wasn't referring to the sheer hunger of it, but rather its bestial nature.
Nabor was the first to discover that just being a good law-abiding person at heart might not be enough to stop them from going into a feeding frenzy.

Meaning that what we have been recognizing as a legitimate threat due to Chthonian instincts, they only thought could happen due to conscious criminal decision.

"Abscondita est in Astra."

08-Nov-2016 01:50:04 - Last edited on 08-Nov-2016 01:51:41 by The Mather1

Dec

2023

Cthris

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The Mather1 said :
[
1) The phrasing indicates that keeping them satisfied is the goal, and the correction indicates that while their obedience is evidence and there is no evidence to the contrary, he is cautious that he could be mistaken.

2) He was an accountant, his main clientele would have been the business owners; humans. What he hadn't considered wasn't whether humans used names, but rather whether someone who had raised themselves alone on the street would even think to give themselves a name.

3) It is also not anecdotal, as the evidence lies not in his actions, but rather in how him sharing it with his clients indicates that it was socially acceptable.

1) If he doesn't know then he's not really doing his job....

2) Fair enough. Still shows either a lack of theory of mind, or that he considered her so beneath him that he wouldn't even think that she would have a name, and seeing as he demonstrated somewhat of an ability to have a theory of mind I'm still inclined for the former.

3) A) Not every action is socially acceptable. Keep in mind that this guy goes crazy. His previous behavior should be held as dodgy as best, and certainly not as the precedent of normal behavior.

Also, note that the clients were amused by the girl. They weren't sympathetic, or caring, they laughed, perhaps the same way you might laugh at your pet when it acts in a silly way.

08-Nov-2016 01:50:49

Mod Jack

Jagex Moderator Forum Profile Posts by user

There are two theories here and I really like both of them. I'll rephrase them slightly, but I think they're both usable.

1) Due to the wars on Gielinor and Infernus, Chthonian society broke down and all the laws on cannibalism were abandoned. This resulted in powerful Chthonians being able to devour weaker ones, which lead to moral degradation and would have been a significant factor in their loss to the Avernic. For example, if the Avernic besiege a Chthonian fortress and morale (and supplies) start to waver, the Chthonians would be very quick to fall on each other and destroy themselves from within, handing an easy victory to the Avernic. The long term impact of this would be that the surviving Chthonians would be the most vicious, cannibalistic, immoral of their species because they were the only ones to survive. Any Chthonian who believed in a different path would be fairly quickly been killed and/or eaten.

2) Again due to the wars, the Chthonians needed to produce soldiers and quickly. Because the Avernic were no longer entirely trustworthy, they had to produce Chthonian footsoldiers. To save on valuable essence, the footsoldiers would have been created as simply as possible, probably little more than animals in many cases, with no higher capacities than absolute loyalty to their creator. If the creator was then destroyed, the soldiers would turn feral. Conceivably if one of these creatures gathered enough essence it could develop intelligence and sentience, although it would have no opportunity to learn culture and so would still appear feral. This may or may not have happened in the Abyss.

Great stuff!

08-Nov-2016 12:10:52

Hazeel

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The Mather1 said :
He was an accountant, his main clientele would have been the business owners; humans.

What on earth makes you think business owners would be humans? XD Runescape doesn't need a hero...it needs a villain. An all encompassing force of evil that will remain ever-threatening and use chaos to make the peoples of Gielinor tolerate each other, grow strong together, and fight side by side against this evil. I am that villain.

08-Nov-2016 16:37:26

Hguoh

Posts: 7,581 Rune Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

Hazeel said :
The Mather1 said :
He was an accountant, his main clientele would have been the business owners; humans.

What on earth makes you think business owners would be humans? XD

Mostly because the other races in the empire would more likely be holding positions of power/nobility rather than being shopkeepers.

Considering Humans permeated a large chunk of the Empire's positions (the Pontifex Maximus prior to Azzanadra was human) through shear numbers, I'd be surprised if a good chunk of business owners weren't human (it's just that even more would have been in less favorable positions).

08-Nov-2016 17:04:28

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Second Age, Zarosian Humans