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RE: *Spoilers* The Torture Victims - hollowleviathan - 10-12-2010
You can't point to one person and say, that's an average person. You have to point at 100,000 people and say, most of them will act in a certain way. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Monsters_Are_Due_on_Maple_Street This is generally what I expect from average people.
It's certainly possible for there to be singular people who would not act like Daniel did, but there's at least some who would do what he did. It's a legitimate reaction to be horrified by him, of course. But even assuming his speedy descent to butchery is not possible for the average person, I don't think you could say it's outside of the possibility of humanity.
It's even possible that he himself is no longer a person who would have done those things, after taking the amnesia potion. He doesn't have the predilections of his memories, only his force of personality carrying him on. When he re-discovers everything that reduced him to paralysis, it can no longer stop him. He's a new person now.
RE: *Spoilers* The Torture Victims - Mjarr - 10-12-2010
(10-12-2010, 02:45 AM)hollowleviathan Wrote: It's even possible that he himself is no longer a person who would have done those things, after taking the amnesia potion. He doesn't have the predilections of his memories, only his force of personality carrying him on. When he re-discovers everything that reduced him to paralysis, it can no longer stop him. He's a new person now.
Which would give us interesting problem regarding personality. It's quite easy to hear the common "I'm sorry, I wasn't myself" argument when things go awry, and while in its own way it might be 'true', it begs the question how one can be sure what is to be oneself? You - or someone else - thinks that "oh I know him\her so well it can't be" when they have trouble even knowing what they themselves are capable of doing, regardless is it rational or irrational 'reasoning' when you explain what might have motivated a person to do X or Y.
RE: *Spoilers* The Torture Victims - Macil - 10-15-2010
(10-12-2010, 09:30 AM)Mjarr Wrote: Which would give us interesting problem regarding personality. ... rational or irrational 'reasoning' when you explain what might have motivated a person to do X or Y.
@Mjarr
I don't understand. What's the problem with personality?
If we assume the amnesia potion causes irrevocable loss of all memory (pertaining to identity, not procedural memory) -- and we have every reason to believe this is true -- then Daniel committed suicide at the start of the game.
Without knowing more about the amnesia potion, then I would consider the "player" Daniel a new person -- who cannot be held accountable for the "old" Daniel's actions any more than Santa Claus.
A person is always themselves unless they're not themselves (i.e., dead), heh. I mean ... who else would they be?
RE: *Spoilers* The Torture Victims - Karkarov - 10-18-2010
Well a few things you guys are missing here. Alexander is a member of the Order of the Black Eagle. AKA the ruling elite of Prussia. He is basically best friends with the King, the top generals, so on so forth. The "authorities" are not going to come after him. Second like another poster mentioned there were lots of local stories about Alexander, the castle, and the kidnappers working under him. So people did have "suspicions" about what was going on and who was to blame.
Again though think about the time when this game went down. Jack the Ripper happened the year before, Napoleon was also a member of the Order of the Black Eagle and had been up to shenanigans recently, etc etc etc there were simply bigger fish to fry.
Secondly look at the documents and memories associated with Wilhelm. He openly admits to realizing he is kidnapping people. From Daniels memories we can assume the prison and the torture rooms were much more... stocked... when Daniel first arrived. I also hate to say it but the odds that the people being locked up were all actually criminals is also pretty slim. More than likely they were all just indigents, vagrants, etc. People no one would miss. It is a 100% lock though that Daniel personally killed and or tortured at least 11 different people minimum by the end of the game.
1 the first warding ritual
2-5 the people in the transept
6 the ritual victim right before the choir
7-9 three victims in the choir
10 the little girl
11 the guy you yourself drown in the cistern (forgot him didn't you?)
At the least you are giving the ripper a run for his money. Also note the loading screen text. Remember the Ripper was active the year before, Daniel's father did some kind of "surgery work" which he thinks he may have taken pride in while he himself kills someone, odd time to think that isn't it? As a kid he bashed some dude with a rock possibly killing him, etc etc etc. Alexander himself straight up says in some notes he thinks Daniel is hiding something from him and is more than he appears. There is more than that alluded to but I don't want to go on all day.
Just consider that the game never tells you what Daniel was doing prior to the dig, why he was teamed up with Herbert to begin with, and don't forget (chuckle) he lived in london. Also if you get the revenge ending and really pay attention you will get the distinct impression that he didn't take the potion because he "needed" to he did it so that it would throw the shadow off and buy him some time/force him through a sort of personal trial which would make up for his sins. In other words self serving reasons. Also it is obvious the effects of the potion aren't permanent, one of the prisoners even realized he was being drugged at one point and your memories are seeping back little by little as the game goes on.
Truth be told there isn't much reason why he couldn't have just opened the door much like you did in game and like he said "he is old and weak and you are young and strong". Of course the shadow wouldn't have had any proper sacrifice that way though would it?
RE: *Spoilers* The Torture Victims - superluser - 10-18-2010
(10-18-2010, 12:31 AM)Karkarov Wrote: Jack the Ripper happened the year before, Napoleon was also a member of the Order of the Black Eagle and had been up to shenanigans recently, etc etc etc there were simply bigger fish to fry.
Jack the Ripper killed 5 women over the span of 3 months and the entire city of London was up in arms.
Daniel personally killed how many?
Also, Napoleon had not been up to shenanigans for any definition of recently, owing to a severe case of being dead for a decade. In fact, I'm not sure what history book you've been reading from, but Jack the Ripper would have had to be fifty years old when he went on the rampage to have ever caused anything to happen in 1834. And even then, the only thing that would have happened would be a little dribble.
I do admit that the Order of the Black Eagle would have given him some protection. I mean, in order to get the order to move against their own, you'd have to, like, kill hundreds of your own citizens in peacetime for no apparen...oh, wait.
(10-18-2010, 12:31 AM)Karkarov Wrote: More than likely they were all just indigents, vagrants, etc. People no one would miss.
We know that some of them (e.g. Wilhelm and those known as the king's men) were not indigents. The girl and her family were well off, and had a rather sizable estate. Even if they were the servants at the place, they would have been missed by the junker. If that were the first time that that happened, maybe it wouldn't have been noticed. But I doubt that Alexander was taking Daniel on brand new endeavors so soon.
(10-18-2010, 12:31 AM)Karkarov Wrote: It is a 100% lock though that Daniel personally killed and or tortured at least 11 different people minimum by the end of the game.
Over the span of 10 days. So a person a day...365 people per year, 146000 over the 400 years he's been doing this.
(10-18-2010, 12:31 AM)Karkarov Wrote: At the least you are giving the ripper a run for his money. Also note the loading screen text. Remember the Ripper was active the year before, Daniel's father did some kind of "surgery work"
The ripper wasn't active until 1888. I suppose you could give him a run for his money by killing twice as many people as the ripper did.
And nothing is ever mentioned about the line of work that Daniel's father was in (certainly no mention of his father being involved in surgery), just that he took pride in it.
RE: *Spoilers* The Torture Victims - hollowleviathan - 10-18-2010
It took 80 fairly blatant kidnapping/murders to get the higher-ups to do anything about Elizabeth Bathory. I imagine it would take more if Alexander were being careful, using prisoners, and staging the kidnappings as the victims of supernatural forces. The Thirty Years' War was 200 years prior, the Gatherers could have been taking a lot of scapegoating for him.
RE: *Spoilers* The Torture Victims - superluser - 10-18-2010
(10-18-2010, 09:00 AM)hollowleviathan Wrote: It took 80 fairly blatant kidnapping/murders to get the higher-ups to do anything about Elizabeth Bathory. I imagine it would take more if Alexander were being careful, using prisoners, and staging the kidnappings as the victims of supernatural forces. The Thirty Years' War was 200 years prior, the Gatherers could have been taking a lot of scapegoating for him.
That makes it slightly more plausible. Note, however, that those 80 kidnappings/murders took place over the span of 7 years. We're talking about maybe 15 per year. Alexander's were ten times that much--a full order of magnitude--and they continued at that rate for hundreds of years. Note also that this means that he can't use the thirty years war to excuse this. The closest that he could come to doing that would be to use the German Peasants' War as cover. That war extended as far north as Goslar, but nowhere near the Baltic Sea, where Brennenberg is said to be located.
I don't know. It still seems improbable to have Alexander kill that many people outside of war and still get away with it. As you say, Bathory was put on trial for killing 80 people over the span of a decade. Not also that there would have been ample reason for the nobles to go against Alexander, since he would have been ruling in that area during times when it was not under Prussian control. Depending on where exactly it is, this would have been the time of the Second Northern War or the period just after the Thirty Years' War, when this area would have been under Swedish or Holy Roman Empire control. Being a future member of the Order of the Black Eagle at the time would have been cause for nobles to spread rumors (founded or not) about you.
Even if he did kill that many, it still makes it very difficult to relate to any of the actual victims, since they just blur together.
RE: *Spoilers* The Torture Victims - hollowleviathan - 10-18-2010
I strongly suspect that the killings ramped up drastically during the time that Daniel was there, to ward the active shadow chasing him. He was chastised for the manner by which he acquired the orb, which brought on the hunting, meaning they both circumvented its summon somehow, meaning they had little need for murder sacrifices previously.
Also, Alexander's torture is intended to continue the lives of the victims to maximize vitae extraction while minimizing deaths. He even concocted an amnesia potion so that jaded and broken prisoners could experience the fear of death anew.
He's obviously not trying for the murder world record. He sees the end of his struggles in sight, and sacrifices his cover and subtlety for the final two weeks, gathers a bumper crop, then seals the evidence away in the wine cellar.
RE: *Spoilers* The Torture Victims - Karkarov - 10-18-2010
(10-18-2010, 05:19 AM)superluser Wrote: Over the span of 10 days. So a person a day...365 people per year, 146000 over the 400 years he's been doing this.
You sure are one to put words in peoples mouths. I said nothing about how many people Alexander killed, only how many Daniel did and the 11 I list are not arguable, he did it, in game events prove it. However the ripper killed people in a very ritualistic/gory way, left them out in public places, and wrote weird notes about it.
Daniel killed some in very nasty ritualistic ways yes. But he killed them all in a castle, in the middle of a dark forest, where no one ever found the bodies. Logic dictates he isn't going to get alot of heat from the law since there are literally, no witnesses, no evidence, or any sort of proof that it even happened. They are just "gone".
As for Alexander, there is no evidence of any kind to suggest he did tons and tons of kidnapping and killing. Even Agrippa will tell you without an Orb he is mostly a toothless dog. So if he has no Orb why would he be torturing all these people for vitae? You guys are the ones who said he did it to extend his life, the game never suggests anything of the sort. It clearly tells you Alexander is not really human, this may just be his races normal life span or some other "event" may have happened when he was exiled that caused him to live so long as a punishment. The only thing you do know is he needs to vitae to power the Orb. The memories in the dog room even suggest he spent plenty of time testing animals so he may have only used human when he had an orb itself.
Last thing you need to do more research yourself buddy. The Order of the Black Eagle was basically the ruling party of Prussia. When you are bro's with the King in a monarchy you can pretty much get away with just about anything. There is no "protection" to it, he was above the law, he WAS the law. Other than the one "messenger" he left to die in his cells he never killed anyone who was high profile. Wilhelm was a disgraced low rank nobleman, no one would miss him hell he took the job hoping Alexander would put in a good word for him, Wilhelm's men were just generic thugs and toughs from who knows where, etc etc. This isn't CSI Miami, there are no forensics, most of these people no one would have ever come looking for from the get go.
Lastly the girl and her family were not well off. They were dairy farmers, they had a farm that accounts for the "large estate" aka house and barn. That doesn't make you "rich" trust me ask any American farmer today. Also they had just been killed literally within the last day or two. People may not even know they are dead yet. This isn't modern times people did live on their own and only go to towns and such once or twice a week back then.
Also castle Brennenburg is basically smack dab in the middle of "Prussian control". Like I said the Order of the Black Eagle are the rulers of Prussia and certain distinguished members from outside the country. The reason I mention napoleon is because Alexander does it himself in one of his own memory things you find in the transept and clearly states the Order had taken issue with him. Am I the only person who actually looked for these things?
RE: *Spoilers* The Torture Victims - alfie - 10-19-2010
I personally assumed Alexander tortured his victims to extend his life, based simply on the fact that vitae is latin for life. Also, if you go past the dog room and check in the cupboard on the desk, it is full of human skulls, these mean that Alexander has been extracting vitae since atleast before Daniel arrived.