Have you done the epic quest? I found Hallifax to already be rather grey before that, but doing that was basically getting delivered a tungsten hammer to the face. I shan't spoil it for those who haven't done it yet, but the epic quest contains a lot to make Hallifax worse than it needs to be. I mean, if it works as advertised, Hallifax could be the ideal Lawful Good society in the basin, but it doesn't work as it should work for that to be reality.

To use the alignment designation. Personally, I think Hallifax is harshly Lawful Neutral with quite a few respects to Lawful Good and Lawful Evil. In its own eyes I think it is Lawful Good, as well, though.

Hallifax is an Authoritarian Collectivist state, I think we can all pretty much agree on that. There are some shades of Meritocracy thrown into the mix as well, I think some of us can agree on that. Hallifax is a "grey" in terms of morality, I think, same with Gaudiguch. I do not want to turn Hallifax into a purely "evil" or purely "good" org since that does not strike me as very interesting at all. In fact, I do not want to turn Hallifax into anything. I think the discussion that started really had more to do with our differing perceptions of what makes up Hallifax, what parts of it are "good" and what parts of it are "evil" to modern sensibilities.

At its base, I think this:

I have noted once before on the forums, I reckon, sometime long ago: "Just because Hallifax is not racist does not mean it is not horribly opressive and dehumanizing in its strive for efficiency" (paraphrased)

I think that Hallifax is a community with so much emphasis on efficient striving towards whatever goals it sets itself, be it knowledge, artistics or industry that the common citizenry are really made to be nothing more than (as described by others) cogs in the machinery, but also commodities with measured value.

In its cold and calculating rationale, devoid of many of the ethical standards that we as players find ourselves in in our own world, I think that the words become much less "what is good for the whole" in terms of welfare and more "what is good for the whole" in terms of output. I simply think that if Hallifax were to be given a choice between allowing some Lowest-Class citizen his life and freedom or order his death through various means would be a purely mathematical question which would take into account how much the Collective output would benefit from either or these two choices.

I think, if Hallifax were to be given such a choice, they would go for what aids their long-term or short-term plans rather than what would be ethically correct in the situation.

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We are looking at this through our own paradigms, of course, so perhaps we will not find a conclusion. I do not think that is very important, anyways, to be honest. Rather we have differing intrepretations to ponder on.

Also, sorry if I might seem to be rambling, it has been a hard weekend.

What I like best about the "moral gray" are two things.

First, that everyone genuinely has the opportunity to advance at least to middle castes if not higher ones. When one speaks of "oppressive" cultures in the sense that they are evil, it's invariably the case that the oppression is both non-consensual and impossible, or at least insanely difficult, to change your place within. There is often lip service given to the idea of everyone finding a place in which they can truly be happy, but it's generally just a bromide. In Collectivist Hallifax, the possibility of rising to your appropriate level isn't just a game mechanic or something the players do to make sure it's fun for other players; it's a genuine thing. Sure, there are flaws in it, but the difference between a real thing that could use some improvement and isn't always followed 100% by everyone, and a fake thing that is only propped up as propaganda but not taken seriously, is key.

Second, that the idea of how the Collective works isn't being used merely as a pretext for some people to seize power over others, but for actual reasons about making a society work. Sure, some people will abuse it for their own power, but again, the difference is that that's the exception in an actual set of reasons, not the actual reason hiding behind a veil of propaganda.

It's easy to go wrong by applying real-world analogies to Hallifax because there hasn't been, on any significantly-sized scale, a society in the real world that really did what Hallifax does, but there are plenty that have put on the appearance of doing it for other reasons.

So it might be corny to say it, but Hallifax isn't good or evil, it's "beyond good and evil", it's about something where good and evil aren't really the relevant issues. What's interesting about it isn't that it's morally ambiguous so much as that it talks about different, and less thoroughly explored and buried in cliché, questions of morality than those we talk about when pointing out how Celest's "good" can be evil and Magnagora's "evil" can be good.

I absolutely loved the outcome of the epic quest. It's what's behind that shiny exterior that makes Hallifax truly awesome.

Yeah. I found it quite different. It just really struck me as a "Hallifax is too grey. Let's make it gleefully evil for the evulz." The quest just reeked way too much of me as being what Lendren describes as a fake facade that drums up support for a belief system it doesn't really believe in, for the sole reason of maintaining its own control. Perhaps I'm pulling it too much, but I really got a "Mother Brain" of the Illithoid feel from it.

Personally, I quite enjoyed it. Similar to how the Illuminati need actual secrets so they can be secretive, Hallifax needed dark secrets in order to disseminate proper propaganda about how they don't. What Happens In The Epic Quest fits that bill to a t.

Yes, I agree with most of this to some extent. The bolded I agree with completely.

It made me think, too. Thank you very much for the post.

EDIT:



Yes, I thought that as well, which is probably what led to my first post. Why are we disseminating so much propaganda that seems so much like covering up shortcomings of the system if the system is not, indeed, flawed in some way?

EDIT AGAIN:

Of course, it could really just be informative propaganda, but it just does not seem like it, damn it!

There needs to be something fishy going on

I wish I could see what happens in the Epic Quest.

I should also note that, as people have pointed out, we don't seem to have many obviously evil scientists around. I'm pretty much the most evil one, and even I talk more than I do (partially because it's difficult to actually do evil experiments and whatnot). One of the Hallifaxian archetypes, however, is the one I'm trying to play with-- the mad scientist. More properly, I like to think of my character as an entirely sane scientist who just happens to have a few little ethical issues. Mostly he'll be perfectly polite, though.

(The evil tends to appear in my work, if you look closely enough! RIP those brave interns.)

If it helps the Collective, it's not evil. That's the mindset you're expected to have. It's very similar to 'Nothing matters but Glomdoring', which may be why we don't get along as well as we could. Pragmatism, which seems to be one of the more popular philosophical schools in the Aeromancers, says that only the results matter. If Ileein needs to kill interns in order to advance scientific knowledge, then he should do so. Moreover, it's their duty to the Collective to participate, knowing the results may not be personally beneficial.

Well, that's if we trust the scientific knowledge outweighs the lives lost, and all their future productivity in the name of the Collective. So they're not really guinea pigs with no free will in the matter.

It helps the Collective...

Not to demean a very sensitive historical topic, but do you know where NASA got a great deal of their data on the tolerance of the human body to extremes that was necessary for manned space flight?

Someone give this Casilu a medal.

EDIT: Also, I LOVED the epic quest. Oh man! It was so worth all those hours of soul-crushing work on the Generators and the Hand. If you're ever dying for some sweet, delicious Hallifax information, just buckle yourself in and join the "oh god I hate custodians of justice" club.

I didn't think it was "forcing" Hallifax to be evil at all. Why would it be "forcing" anything? That's...how it is. It's not like they just threw in a little side detail about "oh yeah lol we're evil". It's a huge part about what makes Hallifax, Hallifax! If you think it's horrible and evil, then you think it's horrible and evil (I personally think it's freakin' sweet but that isn't the topic here), but I think it fits perfectly in with everything else that Hallifax stands for: everything for the Collective.

My first response and hope is 'monkeys', but if I'm wrong ... well, damn.

They got their information FROM SCIENCE, dammit, and don't you say anything different!

To mention the caste system here, being in a higher caste would imply that your future contributions, were you to remain alive, would outweigh the benefits to be gained by killing you, or letting you die. That's why it's generally the lower castes that get volunteered for the dangerous stuff.

This is expressed using the equation RQ=1/C^2, where RQ is Redshirt Quotient, or probability that your shirt is red, and C is your caste. As you can see, as caste goes up, redshirt quotient undergoes exponential decay. At a Caste of 1, you're a servant, and the probability that your shirt is red approaches unity. Good luck on that landing mission/science experiment/art exhibition! You'll need it.

Love it!

Yes. That is how it should be. Remember that there is a huge difference between doing what is expedient, and what is effective. Sacrificing interns to create a definition to use in a field of study is so preposterous that Kira pretty much treats that as a joke. If it was true, it'd be morally abhorrent squandering precious resources.

Same with the collective really. There should be a ton of better ways to deal with some of the issues surrounding it. Yet it just really feels "lolevil" to me, from a narrative POV.