Intermission 10 Page 9
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“Of course the Emperor is merciful. Granted, the Guard and His other servants may make mistakes now and then—”
“You saw how me and Lohk were living back in the city. How MOST goblins live, and others, too. Do you think a problem that widespread could really be just a mistake?”
“Well, The Emperor’s not ALL powerful, you know. He can’t wave His hands and make more housing, or more food, or whatever.”
“He’s doing the best job possible with the worldly limitations He has to work under.”
“He may be a god, but there’s still only one of Him.”
“That might be a decent point, if we were allowed to LEAVE.”
“If we’d tried to leave the city through the gate instead of sneaking out, even if we weren’t already fugitives, I would’ve been pulled aside for questioning.”
“They changed the law that forced all of us to stay in the city, but only one in four goblins actually gets out when they try to do it legally.”
“You can’t write all of that off as “mistakes” or “limitations,” Mac!”
“It’s oppression!”
“You want to know what oppression is like?”
“Let me tell you about the dragons the Emperor freed MY people from.”
Oof, whataboutism is not a good look Mack. Also, what are the bets on whether the whole oppressive dragons thing is more Empire propaganda that Mack took at face value.
The more it becomes clear Mack isn’t just in denial but is an actual empire partisan the more I feel like he really hasn’t been paying attention. Granted, he didn’t hear Kamau’s story of how being a top dog of the empire was so bloody with the death of innocents that it gave him ptsd, but still.
You are right there, but I honestly want to see if this is a case of the goblins being Jim Crow while the Kobolds had slavery. Because if the Empire freed them from that I could see why they would stick up so hard for them.
Yeah, that’s a fair point. I’m not certain either way whether the story Mac will be telling is a real history or propaganda he’s been fed to justify the emperor’s rule (or a mix of both, exaggerating a situation that did actually happen), but given Mac’s colored view of the situation it definitely seems possible that some portion of the story is warped.
At the end of the day it probably doesn’t matter how much the story is propagandized. There’s no way this kind of Empire took on the dragons for the purpose of saving people. It was either the eliminate a threat or acquire their resources, most likely both. “Saving” the kobolds would have been incidental or they’d have been considered part of the resources to take.
What the Goblins had that nobody saved them from: https://dungeoneyes.com/intermission-9-page-17/ So I’m not discounting the very real nature of monstrous creatures in the world
There was a mention that the dragons are extinct thanks to the empire yet we still see some kolbolds try and worship other dragon-like lizards. So at the very least maybe we get to hear what happened to the dragons?
One old religion conquered by sheer physical destructive force and systematic rewriting of historical facts, only to be immediately replaced by a new religion, surprisingly incidentally totally inline with the conqueror’s power ladder.
I rarely paste links, but 😀 this reminded me about this stand-up https://youtu.be/zrfVUqzPTMw
It’s fun to contrast Mack’s perspective with how a number of the other kobolds wound up with a dungeon that fell to dungeon sickness and turned to the dragons of old…
Admittedly it’s hard to deny Mack comes off as a child of privilege, but I wonder if something else isn’t going on with dungeon sickness…Or with Dungeons in general.
Because the Empire certainly isn’t immune to Dungeons!