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I think all of this talk of "she should have given clearer warnings" vastly overestimates humanity's ability to correctly interpret simple messages.
No matter how clearly you state something, people will misunderstand (or deliberately misinterpret) what you say.
Cleric of Sarenae - "I cast the Commune spell"
(for reference, the text of said spell: "You contact your deity–or agents thereof–and ask questions that can be answered by a simple yes or no. (A cleric of no particular deity contacts a philosophically allied deity.) You are allowed one such question per caster level. The answers given are correct within the limits of the entity’s knowledge. “Unclear” is a legitimate answer, because powerful beings of the Outer Planes are not necessarily omniscient. In cases where a one-word answer would be misleading or contrary to the deity’s interests, a short phrase (five words or less) may be given as an answer instead.
The spell, at best, provides information to aid character decisions. The entities contacted structure their answers to further their own purposes. If you lag, discuss the answers, or go off to do anything else, the spell ends." )
So, in all the history of Golarion, leading up to the nuking of Gormuz, not one, not a single cleric, bothered to ask their Goddess via a Commune spell "Hey boss, is it a good idea to live here?"
Pretty sure she'd have answered with a "NO". That's not vague, that's not unclear, misleading or contrary to her interests. It's pretty much spelled out for them. And every single cleric of Sarenae that asks that question via a Commune spell should have, in theory, got the same answer.
So, how do you screw that up?
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Easy, not everyone is a Cleric, and not every Cleric has Commune. It’s a 5th level spell.
So assuming there’s a bunch of 10th level Clerics hanging around able to spam that is just that, a blatant assumption.
There’s also no reason for every Cleric of Sarenrae to ask about it, in the same way that not every cleric would ask about Divinity in the Silver Mount in Numeria. Because not all of them know about it.
But say some did, those were the ones that stayed away. Gormuz wasn’t a temple, it was an entire city. Trying to get people to leave got yourself killed, like Sarenrae’s servitor cause again, Rovagug emissions messing with everyone.
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Yeah, Commune is rare.
By my calculations Clerics who can manage it are probably one in 10,000 people at most (one in 20,000 is more likely), and then you have to figure how many of those are specifically Clerics of Sarenrae. That probably drops it to more like 1 in 400,000 or less. So that's a very small number of people who can even ask the question, especially given the population of most cities in Golarion. I'd be surprised if Gormuz lacked such a person, but I'd be equally surpised if it had more than a couple of them.
But more importantly, they have to ask the question in the first place. It's a rare (not in the game mechanic sense, just in the sense that 9th level or higher Clerics are rare) spell that requires significant effort to cast (instead of casting it, you could raise someone from the dead if their friends or relatives have the money to spend) which means it's only going to get asked on questions people don't already know the answers to. And people thought they knew the answer in regards to Gormuz, so why would they ever waste such a rare resource on asking about it?
One of the key axioms of intelligence work is that it's not things you don't know that get you, it's the things you do know that aren't so. This is very much in the latter category, an unexamined assumption rather than a matter there was dispute on.
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And when the high priest came down and told them they made a huge mistake settling in Gormuz, they killed them as being under the malignant influence of Rovagug. Just another proof that their presence was needed to keep adherents of the Rough Beast away so that Rovagug would never get free. Being certain that you are saving the world is a strong incentive to ignore the truth.
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Except she did spend literal years telling folks to get the hell out of Gormuz, but they did the opposite of that, and became depraved Rovagug worshippers as a result. She smote a city full of people that refused every opportunity to get the hell out of dodge and repent their wicked ways. Sarenrae is the goddess of redemption, but if you deliberately ignore every warning she gives you maybe some smiting is warranted. Good doesn’t always mean “nice”.I realize that this is a very late reply, but I can't understand how infants and newborns in that city warranted smiting for failing to relocate.Was there any?
It was a city full of axe crazy Rovagug worshippers, they probably didn't have any children in there. Because children can't really defend themselves.
(purely a guess on my part since it isn't stated either way, I just don't see Rovagugians being big on being parents)
Technically possible, but it seems statistically unlikely. You have a sizable settlement so you would normally expect some reproduction. And followers of Rovagug might feel that spawning was following their god's path. ;)
You also had a steady influx of Sarenrae's followers who have not yet been slowly corrupted. It seems that even if no corrupted people were reproducing, there would still be a few young children among the newcomers. If Sarenrae did something to save the children, I would expect that to be mentioned in the tales.
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Maybe she teleported them to a safer place with none the wiser. Or she cursed the adults so that no kid would be born during the last 20 years. Or the faithful were given a sign to flee with all the children in tow before the smiting came down. Or kids would throw fits just looking at the place from afar.
We do not have the details of the tale. Only the big message.
Or maybe they were killed and their souls went to their rightful place.
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It's also possible that by the time she smote the place, there was nothing "innocent" left, even of infants/newborns.
Like, maybe they actually started coming out half-fiends, or started coming out mindless or qlippoth-possessed.
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Also again, pretty sure it was stated she told them multiple times to leave the place and they assumed it was test of faith and their god was being contrarian in order to test them :P
Exactly, no matter how clearly you state a thing, people can and will willfully misinterpret it.
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After all, who has she actually succeeded in redeeming?(*)
The same number of family members that the god of families (Erastil) has? The same number of children that the goddess of birth (Pharasma) has?
Sarenrae would hardly be the first god who is god of a thing, but doesn't seem to have much to do with that thing...
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After all, who has she actually succeeded in redeeming?(*)The same number of family members that the god of families (Erastil) has? The same number of children that the goddess of birth (Pharasma) has?
Sarenrae would hardly be the first god who is god of a thing, but doesn't seem to have much to do with that thing...
Good catch.
Just to note that Rovagug cultists are nihilists who hate creating new things and want to destroy everything. Aka, zealous Rovagug cultists wouldn't have children just because it would be anathema to their religion, they are REALLY self destructive cult :p
That wouldn't stop them from being like Fred Saberhagen's Berserkers and being fully capable of allowing some life to live (see Goodlife) or even creating life (much like the Spawn of Rovagug) for the purpose of destroying more life. Even Daemons (who want to destroy all life, not just all mortal life) can do this (see Urdefhan).
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Orcs in Belkzen (who also worship Rovagug) have no problem having children, and it doesn't break his Anathema according to James Jacobs. So it's not universal among such cultists to not have kids.
That said, a particular sect refusing to breed (or sacrificing all children borne to the Rough Beast) is entirely consistent with Rovagug's ethos and could easily have happened in Gormuz given that they seem to have been pretty crazed even compared to the Orcs of Belkzen.
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That said its not like most orcs are super fanatical about Rovagug. I mean some of them even smith weapons :p For all we know, majority of Rovagug worshipping orcs could be in it just for fun of destruction and killing and not really care about the overall goal.
That said, they do seem to like creation of super weapons that could destroy everything :p Though to be fair, most case of Rovagug cultists trying to get their hands on super weapons involve weapons someone else created...
Though Rovagug's spawn seems to be what lot of the cultists WANT to create, though Rovagug himself is probably less interested about that since there is implication that Spawn of Rovagug are more accidental sideproduct of Rovagug trying to trash himself free rather than something he intentionally creates. Like, they are basically just super large parasites or pieces of him.
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{. . .}
Though Rovagug's spawn seems to be what lot of the cultists WANT to create, though Rovagug himself is probably less interested about that since there is implication that Spawn of Rovagug are more accidental sideproduct of Rovagug trying to trash himself free rather than something he intentionally creates. Like, they are basically just super large parasites or pieces of him.
You're thinking of Wrackworms. The Spawn of Rovagug are different.
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Good point. How hard is it to hack a connection to a deity?
Not too hard, if that connection is “divination spells” considering there are loads that interfere with such. Hacking commune in specific is harder, but it is questionable how magic acts around the pit. We know of at least a couple of places where magic acts oddly - Mana Wastes (“too much magic broke the system”) and Starstone Cathedral (“gods: normal magic need not apply”). We also know that the pit has at least a few real oddities associated with it: in the wild magic tables, multicolored centipede like creatures might erupt sometimes and uniformly gaze toward the pit of Gormuz, if I recall. This indicates that magic likely works weirdly, at least a little.
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Looking the spell over again, in terms of Commune it's actually slightly ambiguous in PF1 whether you contact your actual deity or just get a servitor (it says you get one of the two, but does not clarify who decides which).
In PF2, this is made a lot more explicit, with Commune (now a Ritual, and level 6) only getting you your actual deity on a critical success (otherwise you get a servitor). If that's how the spell is intended to work in-universe (and I think the combination of it being the updated version and the ambiguous wording in PF1 indicates it is) then it becomes even more believable that people would be willing to ignore it under some circumstances.
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Looking the spell over again, in terms of Commune it's actually slightly ambiguous in PF1 whether you contact your actual deity or just get a servitor (it says you get one of the two, but does not clarify who decides which).
In PF2, this is made a lot more explicit, with Commune (now a Ritual, and level 6) only getting you your actual deity on a critical success (otherwise you get a servitor). If that's how the spell is intended to work in-universe (and I think the combination of it being the updated version and the ambiguous wording in PF1 indicates it is) then it becomes even more believable that people would be willing to ignore it under some circumstances.
Look, if I want to talk to a servitor, I'll Call one. Lesser Planar Ally is a level below commune and the regular version is only a level higher. Then you can actually talk to them like a regular conversation, not limited yes/no questions.
And if it's a case where the deity in question is trying to get the message across, their servitors should be quite willing to spread the word without much hassle.
That also requires people willing to listen.
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Look, if I want to talk to a servitor, I'll Call one. Lesser Planar Ally is a level below commune and the regular version is only a level higher. Then you can actually talk to them like a regular conversation, not limited yes/no questions.
I think the implication is that you get much more powerful servitors than you can with similarly leveled summoning (ie: you get to ask a Solar rather than a more minor angel).
But regardless, I'm talking about how the spell works, not how you think it should work. It could be a terrible spell and that wouldn't change anything in regards to the world being based on how the spell does work.
And if it's a case where the deity in question is trying to get the message across, their servitors should be quite willing to spread the word without much hassle.
My point was that if you don't want to believe it, it's a lot easier to dismiss the words of a 'mere servitor' than those of your God directly, not that they wouldn't say exactly the same thing in this instance.
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It would be interesting to know how gods in the setting normally communicate such messages to their worshippers. Or even more basic doctrine.
It could have changed by edition, but we have a method for communicating in lore already - each deity has a little blurb on how they communicate displeasure or pleasure to their followers. The communication is suitably vague and allows for potential misinterpretation (because that’s a convention of the genre) but such communiques are relatively well known in the church. Thus, at the most basic level, they should be able to understand that their deity is not happy - they know the signs and portents.
We don’t know how explicit Sarenrae was prior to sending her herald, but we do know that at some point she actually did send her actual herald... and he was murdered.
But this thread has a fundamental error in its creation - it presupposes that we can determine alignment from perceived actions and piece together the information enough to sit in judgement of Sarenrae.
We are told, canonically, that she is good. This is what objective alignment means. We can disagree, of course (which is valid insomuch as we disagree with the entire morality system of Pathfinder), but in canon it is stated fact that she is NG. To this end, we must do our best to put her actions through a NG lens and come up with plausible reasons why her actions are neutral good instead of declaring her “not good” and casting condemnation... unless we just want to reject the alignment system, which many do.
Now, of course, some people want the alignment system, but disagree with its outcomes or assignments, but in this case they are disagreeing with a subjective interpretation of an objective system which still contravenes canonicity by virtue of self-made value-judgements (which may be valid or may be arrogant or may be a genuine mistake).
An objective system declares that fiends are evil because they have (evil) as a subtype and do evil things. Further, this objective system states that the fiends are made from the direct result of people’s free will - their choices are evil, they are evil, they go to evil and become evil.
A subjective interpretation might seek to blame good gods for letting people go to hell and become fiends, this making the good gods “evil.” While this isn’t wrong in one sense (and makes for good metatextual philosophical debate), it greatly misses the point in another (judging the world by merits not its own; though if it is immoral “enough” from a real-world standpoint it’s worth making note of and probably then divorcing ourselves from that narrative).
None of this is an ironclad defense - I’m not trying to say that in-canon that, “Sarenrae did nothing wrong.” - point in fact, we don’t know if she made a mistake or acted in an otherwise imperfect way; rather, what I am saying is that Sarenrae is, over-all, a good goddess and we should look at her through the lens of being a good goddess. If something about her actions would cast her as evil, we must presuppose that there are things that make it not evil in-canon according to its own merits and presuppositions or else we must reject the subjective interpretation of the objective system utilized by the developers and, in so doing, set ourselves up as “authorities” of moral judgement. And in the latter case, we are creating what amounts to a philosophically inclined fan fiction.
All of this to say that Sarenrae is NG; we can only presuppose the actions she took yielded a NG person over-all; but guesswork is fun - as is occasional non-aggressive philosophical debate about the interpretations of the alignment system.
Similarly, Set posits that Erastil is a family god with no known family. We either accept that he is valid in that role or reject the notions of divinity as presented in PF (and/or offer fan solutions - as a potential example, I am uncertain of the canon status, but I’ve heard that Erastil is worshipped by giants who also worship his wife, though I’m not lore-wise enough to know the veracity of such).
I usually like to take settings as valid unless it greatly offends my moral code; and so far, few have done so consistently enough that I have to outright reject the setting entirely, even when they have a fundamental basis for morality alien to my own, because you can (hopefully) usually separate the fantasy from the reality. In the same way bat guano, incantations, wavy fingers and arms, etc. does not yield a little incendiary that weirdly doesn’t create an increase in air pressure (because physics works differently), I can accept that a genuinely good entity making best possible decisions can result in something like the Pit of Gormuz because things work differently. I just gotta figure how those work in character.
(That said: Iomedae did nothing wrong! Viva la Valorous One! She was right, I tell you! She was riiiiiiiiiight!)
Creative Director
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Sounds like this'd be a good topic for a new Windsong Testaments that helps to explain things a bit better; it's certainly NOT a case of "Ha ha I just ruined your houses now worship me more!"
That said, it's also intended to be an example of a time in the very ancient past where a deity made a mistake in trying to solve a problem and then learned from that mistake... but it's easy to gloss over/forget the context and the circumstances, I suppose.
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Sounds like this'd be a good topic for a new Windsong Testaments that helps to explain things a bit better; it's certainly NOT a case of "Ha ha I just ruined your houses now worship me more!"
That said, it's also intended to be an example of a time in the very ancient past where a deity made a mistake in trying to solve a problem and then learned from that mistake... but it's easy to gloss over/forget the context and the circumstances, I suppose.
You also have people who like to tear down good figures. Especially if said figures are deities.
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Similarly, Set posits that Erastil is a family god with no known family. We either accept that he is valid in that role or reject the notions of divinity as presented in PF (and/or offer fan solutions - as a potential example, I am uncertain of the canon status, but I’ve heard that Erastil is worshipped by giants who also worship his wife, though I’m not lore-wise enough to know the veracity of such).
Just a brief digression, but this was clarified in Lost Omens Gods and Magic, where Erastil's entry lists his divine family: he's married to Jaidi, the Azlanti goddess of agriculture, and the Empyreal Lords Halcamora and Cernunnos are their kids.
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I have to assume that the Goddess couldn't or was prevented from repairing the pit that was created. I would agree that if the goddess left it open by choice then that would definitely make her a but for cause for a lot of death, and kinda evil at the very least irresponsible and callous. It is 100% foreseeable that leaving that pit open would have led to mass death and destruction.
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One of the things we try to do in establishing the backstories of our deities is to infuse in them mortal qualities so that we as humans can understand them. Part of that is to give them historical mistakes or errors in judgment. Desna's curiosity accidentally released the god of parasites, Ghlaunder. Dou-Bral made some errors of judgement that ended up with him transforming into Zon-Kuthon. And Sarenrae, after generations of her worshipers misinterpreting her commands about the dangers of the Pit of Gormuz, overreacted when the citizens of that city, who had become corrupted by Rovagug, slaughtered her herald after she sent him there to try to warn them away from worshiping the Rough Beast.
If/when I get the chance to write about this event as a Windsong Testament, it'd cover the following:
At the time, the people of Gormuz were not good people—they were by and large chaotic evil cultists of Rovagug, but there was no doubt some collateral damage. Since then, Sarenrae's worked to handle misunderstandings among her faithful more patiently and diligently, which is why she didn't step in to take a stronger role in dealing with the warmongering cultists of the Dawnflower in recent years and instead relied on her true believers to put an end to the schisim relatively peacefully—which they did.
The Pit of Gormuz, where the cult city of Gormuz once stood, was left behind both as a warning to others about the dangers of Rovagug and a reminder to Sarenrae of past mistakes. Rovagug's ability to menace the world is roughly the same whether or not the Pit is open or closed when taken on a worldwide scale, so in Sarenrae's mind, closing it up and covering it over would only be an act of self-delusion and an attempt to hide her previous failures.
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The Pit of Gormuz, where the cult city of Gormuz once stood, was left behind both as a warning to others about the dangers of Rovagug and a reminder to Sarenrae of past mistakes. Rovagug's ability to menace the world is roughly the same whether or not the Pit is open or closed when taken on a worldwide scale, so in Sarenrae's mind, closing it up and covering it over would only be an act of self-delusion and an attempt to hide her previous failures.
Says rather a lot about Sarenrae that the price paid in the mortal lives lost to the Spawn that emerged from the Pit (whether they could have emerged elsewhere is of no moment - they did emerge from the Pit, might have remained confined without it, and if they did emerge elsewhere might have killed more or fewer people but almost certainly would have killed different people) are a price worth paying for a memory aid.
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The Pit of Gormuz, where the cult city of Gormuz once stood, was left behind both as a warning to others about the dangers of Rovagug and a reminder to Sarenrae of past mistakes. Rovagug's ability to menace the world is roughly the same whether or not the Pit is open or closed when taken on a worldwide scale, so in Sarenrae's mind, closing it up and covering it over would only be an act of self-delusion and an attempt to hide her previous failures.Says rather a lot about Sarenrae that the price paid in the mortal lives lost to the Spawn that emerged from the Pit (whether they could have emerged elsewhere is of no moment - they did emerge from the Pit, might have remained confined without it, and if they did emerge elsewhere might have killed more or fewer people but almost certainly would have killed different people) are a price worth paying for a memory aid.
Says lot about you how you essentially take "Whether or not Sarenrae would seal pit of Gormuz, the spawn of rovagug would still be released into world to kill people" as irrelevant :p
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Also folks, please try to remember that the lore in this setting was created not by one person, but by a LOT of different people who had different skills and intentions and interests and goals.
Different authors go different directions with characters someone creates, and sometimes that means having to get creative as the creative director when new elements are added to the lore that you didn't intend or anticipate.
Turns out when you have hundreds of different writers work on a shared world, there'll be periodic differences in how some of those shared characters are portrayed. During an era of Paizo's history when a fair amount of lore was being generated (to either side of the launch of 1st edition for a few years in each direction), we did NOT have someone in a role of creative directing all of the various products or trying to keep all the lore 100% consistent across the adventures, Adventure Paths, lore books, and so on. We simply didn't have the staff or time to do a great job at that, so we tried our best.
Sorry if my attempts to creatively bridge the character gaps in the lore for some elements of the setting bother some folks. I try to do these methods in preference to flat-out retcons, since they're less disruptive. I hope my earlier post was helpful for more folks than it was disruptive or frustrating; I'll go ahead and back out of the thread now since it sort of feels like some people are more interested in finding ways to have Sarenrae be something other than I've intended her to be over the past 20 years I've been building up her lore.
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Just a brief digression, but this was clarified in Lost Omens Gods and Magic, where Erastil's entry lists his divine family: he's married to Jaidi, the Azlanti goddess of agriculture, and the Empyreal Lords Halcamora and Cernunnos are their kids.
Woah, that's awesome!
Blows my fanon that his absent spouse was Curchanos, the god of beasts that Lamashtu eated, out of the water, but that was almost as silly as the 'Norgorber is four halflings in a tall coat' or 'Desna is a Great Old One' mind-drabbles. :)
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Rovagug's ability to menace the world is roughly the same whether or not the Pit is open or closed when taken on a worldwide scale, so in Sarenrae's mind, closing it up and covering it over would only be an act of self-delusion and an attempt to hide her previous failures.
I like that part, specifically, since it plays well to her 'goddess of honesty' side. She doesn't want to hide it, or back away from it, or 'bury' it (quite literally). She doesn't want to do what Norgorber would do, and edit any history about herself she doesn't find flattering.
Even if, unfortunately, it can be used by her detractors to point fingers and say, 'See! She's a bad person!' This is a price she accepts, since the people pointing the fingers were never going to be followers anyway.
If anything, allowing some controversy like this serves as a lightning rod to identify folk who are going to raise a ruckus about it... Some might make great priests, in a Doubting Thomas sort of way, who make the faith ever stronger through their incessant challenges. Others, well, there are nineteen other major gods, and countless others. Perhaps they can go criticize one of them? :)
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Says lot about you how you essentially take "Whether or not Sarenrae would seal pit of Gormuz, the spawn of rovagug would still be released into world to kill people" as irrelevant :p
It is irrelevant to whether Sarenrae is blameworthy for the deaths of the specific people who were killed by the specific Spawn that actually emerged from the Pit. She could have taken actions that would have protected them, and chose not to for the sake of reminding herself that she's fallible. Well. If the events themselves (the loss of a Herald, the destruction of a city) didn't make enough of an impression, she could have written "you're fallible" on a divine Post-It note, without putting people who actually died at risk.
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In the same vein you could argue that by leaving the Pit open she saved all those people of the lands where the Spawn would otherwise have emerged.
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In the same vein you could argue that by leaving the Pit open she saved all those people of the lands where the Spawn would otherwise have emerged.
Sure, but whether the Spawn would have emerged, and whether they would have killed more or fewer people, are hypotheticals. Sarenrae also wouldn't have made those other openings for them to wriggle through.
(It's a trolley problem, only switching tracks is guaranteed to result in death while the outcome of not switching is unknown.)
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Also folks, please try to remember that the lore in this setting was created not by one person, but by a LOT of different people who had different skills and intentions and interests and goals.
Different authors go different directions with characters someone creates, and sometimes that means having to get creative as the creative director when new elements are added to the lore that you didn't intend or anticipate.
Turns out when you have hundreds of different writers work on a shared world, there'll be periodic differences in how some of those shared characters are portrayed. During an era of Paizo's history when a fair amount of lore was being generated (to either side of the launch of 1st edition for a few years in each direction), we did NOT have someone in a role of creative directing all of the various products or trying to keep all the lore 100% consistent across the adventures, Adventure Paths, lore books, and so on. We simply didn't have the staff or time to do a great job at that, so we tried our best.
Sorry if my attempts to creatively bridge the character gaps in the lore for some elements of the setting bother some folks. I try to do these methods in preference to flat-out retcons, since they're less disruptive. I hope my earlier post was helpful for more folks than it was disruptive or frustrating; I'll go ahead and back out of the thread now since it sort of feels like some people are more interested in finding ways to have Sarenrae be something other than I've intended her to be over the past 20 years I've been building up her lore.
You are never disruptive James and always welcome.
I have to say that i did not see the content of your response coming though. That she left it open on purpose is sooo interesting. That is actually amazing i am continually impressed with the lore of Golorion.I sort of feel that from a God's perspective, this is very much a death of one person is a tragedy and the death of a million a statistic sort of situation.
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I am going to have to agree with the OP and put Sarenrae in solidly the evil category.
The problem is she is committing the only act that has ever been universally recognized act of evil in every culture since writing, and that it's always murder/wrong/evil when you intentionally cause the death of an innocent and unoffending person.
that these people were going to die by rovagug by some other means any is not meaningful in the moral sense.
The best analogy is the person who jumps outs of a window to certain death, now in purely causal sense it doesn't if you shot and killed this random person who did nothing to you first, however morally it's 100% meaningful if you shot and killed them first.
Of course good persons and deities can make mistakes. the first time a spawn got out and destroyed an innocent and unoffending civilization it's mistake, that she let it continue as an object lesson makes it just evil.
honestly this is why scholars always put pride as the first sin. Sarenrae's pride has someone manage to convince her, that's its for the best that innocent and unoffending people die in order to teach a lesson and to remind herself of a past mistake. it's not even people who are committing the acts that you are trying to deter dying, but people just minding their business that are getting the brunt of the lesson.
A truly Good deity would care that they aren't morally responsible for these deaths, even if they were going to die by rovagug hand in some other way, it should matter morally that you aren't responsible.
I don't see how you could possibly justify giving Sarenrae a NG label. There can be grey sometimes, but this is not one of those situations.
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Uh, she smote a CE society that had repeatedly ignored her warnings and had been committing more and more heinous stuff (you don't get to be a Chaotic Evil society by being nice and kind) culminating in them butchering her Herald when they tried one last time to save them. That's what pushed her past the point of breaking, not them worshipping Rovagug.
Was it possible there were innocent people there? Maybe. But very unlikely.
As for the Spawns, as had been pointed out multiple times the Pit was not the genesis of the Spawns nor was it their sole escape from the Darklands.
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In the same vein you could argue that by leaving the Pit open she saved all those people of the lands where the Spawn would otherwise have emerged.Sure, but whether the Spawn would have emerged, and whether they would have killed more or fewer people, are hypotheticals. Sarenrae also wouldn't have made those other openings for them to wriggle through.
(It's a trolley problem, only switching tracks is guaranteed to result in death while the outcome of not switching is unknown.)
It's not an unknown, though. By centralizing their appearance and thus making it more predictable, I cannot imagine a scenario where stopping or avoiding them is not made easier. Having them appear at random but in the same numbers is just so much worse on every level.
So, it's a trolley problem, sure, but the standard kind and she's made the decision to minimize deaths.
And, frankly, I find the idea that closing the pit would make deaths that ensued that wouldn't if she hadn't closed it 'not her fault' but the ones caused by her leaving it open somehow are her fault both ludicrous and morally abhorrent. That doesn't make any sense to me.
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It's not an unknown, though. By centralizing their appearance and thus making it more predictable, I cannot imagine a scenario where stopping or avoiding them is not made easier. Having them appear at random but in the same numbers is just so much worse on every level.
It seems like she channeled their appearance to be in one location, and so made it easier for people to avoid that area, like creating a chimney so that there's somewhere for the smoke to go, rather than let it foul up the whole room.
In that case, she did generations unborn a favor. Want to avoid a Spawn of Rovagug? Don't live near the giant hole in the ground. Certainly don't build a city there and start worshipping what lives in it... (And I imagine the city wasn't going to survive the coming of the Tarrasque or Ulunut anyway! It would be interesting to tweak the story so that she didn't collapse the city to punish the psychos living there, but to bury a rising Spawn (that would have killed them all anyway) and spare distant lands it's rampage, and even now, it's trapped beneath the tons of stone, fuming in frustration.)
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In the same vein you could argue that by leaving the Pit open she saved all those people of the lands where the Spawn would otherwise have emerged.Sure, but whether the Spawn would have emerged, and whether they would have killed more or fewer people, are hypotheticals. Sarenrae also wouldn't have made those other openings for them to wriggle through.
(It's a trolley problem, only switching tracks is guaranteed to result in death while the outcome of not switching is unknown.)
It's not an unknown, though. By centralizing their appearance and thus making it more predictable, I cannot imagine a scenario where stopping or avoiding them is not made easier. Having them appear at random but in the same numbers is just so much worse on every level.
So, it's a trolley problem, sure, but the standard kind and she's made the decision to minimize deaths.
And, frankly, I find the idea that closing the pit would make deaths that ensued that wouldn't if she hadn't closed it 'not her fault' but the ones caused by her leaving it open somehow are her fault both ludicrous and morally abhorrent. That doesn't make any sense to me.
Yeah, I find it insulting as well.
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In the same vein you could argue that by leaving the Pit open she saved all those people of the lands where the Spawn would otherwise have emerged.Sure, but whether the Spawn would have emerged, and whether they would have killed more or fewer people, are hypotheticals. Sarenrae also wouldn't have made those other openings for them to wriggle through.
(It's a trolley problem, only switching tracks is guaranteed to result in death while the outcome of not switching is unknown.)
It's not an unknown, though. By centralizing their appearance and thus making it more predictable, I cannot imagine a scenario where stopping or avoiding them is not made easier. Having them appear at random but in the same numbers is just so much worse on every level.
So, it's a trolley problem, sure, but the standard kind and she's made the decision to minimize deaths.
And, frankly, I find the idea that closing the pit would make deaths that ensued that wouldn't if she hadn't closed it 'not her fault' but the ones caused by her leaving it open somehow are her fault both ludicrous and morally abhorrent. That doesn't make any sense to me.
They'll exist in the same numbers, but whether the same amount will emerge to the surface or to populated regions from the Darklands is an unknown. This is what makes it not a standard Trolley Problem. The amount, time, place, and manner of deaths caused by Spawn of Rovagug had Sarenrae done nothing is unknown. It's a counterfactual at this point. That large numbers of deaths resulted from her opening the Pit and allowing Spawn to issue from it is sure. Gormuz is very close to other very large population centers, including Oppara, Katheer, and the greater cities of Kelesh. These populations are sacrificial; it is all but impossible to stop a Spawn of Rovagug and while avoiding one is easier for high-level people they are not likely to bring the plebs along (E and N people together outnumber G people). Oppara has been destroyed by a Spawn from the Pit at least once.
As for why that Sarenrae's fault, that's twofold. First, she knows about this hole, because she made it consciously and willfully. The same cannot be said of every crack and fissure up from Orv. Second, she chose to prioritize leaving herself (not her followers, herself; that's the stated reason) a reminder of her past failures over any other consideration. Endangering specific people in a particular, specific way just to give yourself a memory aid seems callous and cavalier to me.