Thursday, January 31, 2019

Should Krusk Kill Captain Gruel?

I haven't done a "Should [my D&D character] Kill [so and so]" blog post in a long time, mostly because the answer, most of the time, was obviously "No." Krusk is a barbarian pirate. He has killed a lot of people he shouldn't have killed, including at least two or three that even he himself will admit he shouldn't have killed. Granted, his reasons for wishing he hadn't killed those people have little to do with the rules of morality, but as I said before, Krusk is not a good role model. He's more like a case study of a character trait that I'm trying not to develop: anger.

However, right now, his anger is directed at someone who might actually deserve it: Captain Axel Gruel. To explain who he is and why Krusk wants to kill him, I have to get you caught up on a few things. In tonight's D&D session, Krusk was reunited with his wife, Holly. She told him that, shortly after he was shanghaied, she was kidnapped as well, and Captain Gruel was keeping her hostage for about two months. She was freed when the ship she was being transported on got caught in the same storm Krusk's ship was caught in. When the storm settled, Krusk brought his ship over to Holly's ship, and the few crewmen who survived the storm agreed to release her in exchange for their lives.

Now Krusk wants to kill Captain Gruel for kidnapping his wife and holding her hostage, and the argument is about the same as it was when Krusk considered killing Captain Barnabas Harrigan. The person in question is definitely a pirate and probably worthy of death, but if Krusk is to one to do the deed, he'll do it for revenge, not justice, and one's motivation matters. Doing an arguably good thing but with bad motivations is almost certainly going to be a bad thing. So, yeah, no, Krusk shouldn't kill Captain Gruel, at least not until he has a better motivation than wanting to avenge his kidnapped wife.

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