@Jack on Thaler's words: I did remember how Thaler's words put more stress on the subject being's interpretation ... which was partially also why I bought up the difference-aspect. I kind of doubt yths naturally have a concept for servitude in the sense of doing what a superior being instructs them to like most humanoids and other beings with well-developed hierarchal societies do. [An error has occurred. "Serve" has not been defined. Action has been terminated.] Well, and in any case the word would be demanding the yth to do something it doesn't want to, be what it wants getting out or eating the closest thing available... I cannot begin to fathom how hard it would be to get it across to this particular yth that it should simply go past multiple people to bite a specific one.
(...Did someone actually chain an yth up just to see what will happen if you feed it a hard-to-obtain and expensive illegal substance?)
@Hymusia/Cthulu (Should I introduce you to my friend, the business-suit Cthulu?): I am most definitely not trying to make you feel bad for anything...? If there is anything to say about what I am doing, then, well, I analyze things. I am more or less constantly analyzing things, and occasionally making remarks over some of said things - which should be taken as either completely neutral expressions of my thoughts and impressions or constructive criticism, depending on how I word them. In the given case, it was actually the first - I wasn't giving an estimation on whether anything would work as much as I was just remarking that such a command would probably be a quite complex thing to pull off. And later I explained why I thought so. I like disassembling things just to see how they work, so to speak (if my occasionally rather elaborate discussions with Jack on how his world functions haven't been an indicator).
I also like when my own things are taken through, since sometimes it brings up aspects you yourself did not think of, and having to explain why something works in one way or another is often enough a good way to make it easier to later put it down in written word in a more eloquent manner than you'd have done so yourself with the first take. Granted, my manner of debating sometimes tends to come across as a bit aggressive in plain text, which in turn might drive some people away from bringing such topics up ... which is a pity, really. I don't feel the need to defend my concepts - I constantly seek to adjust them so they'd be more complete, more logical, and so forth -, and much like my personal beliefs, if someone shows me that another way makes more sense, I just might go for it, depending on how much effort altering everything on the go would take (just remember my notion on already-published works). If not for the line at hand, then at least keep it in mind for the future.
It's always the matter of "why didn't anyone just tell me (sooner)?", and never that of being done injustice to. (Has the fact that I am not a "pure" writer and artist affected my way of seeing things? Most likely. A programmer will expect other programmers to painstakingly scrutinize every single line of their creation and consider it a perfectly natural part of life, whereas most writers tend to be very taken aback by similar treatment, especially in the beginning. And I tell you, the world of writers tends to be a lot more biased, opinion-based and brutal in the end - along with more praise comes more open hostility...)
I am not judging Thaler. Even less, I am implying that she should act differently. (I, however, very frequently *do* get people asking for my advice in how they "should" play a character... At which point I will most likely simply say that in a way that is realistic for that person. I will gladly help with designing technology, anatomy and to an extent society - that would work with the environment - but there is no specific way one "should" play a specific character aside of paying mind to realism and continuity.) As for Thaler, I can in fact perfectly understand why she's acting in the way she does, and that's usually a sign of a good writer. (Is my own character "perfect"? Of course not. His intentions might be good, but it doesn't mean that he won't approach to some matters in a manner worthy of a groan and hitting your head against the keyboard for a few times.) It's as you said - perfect characters are boring and artificial. Characters should be independent beings with their own lives rather than pieces of chess you move around as you see fit.
- Written just because I prefer people to know where exactly I stand.
@Jack on Nilick/Koraakan: Hmm... Okay. As for Nkaa Raakan* oneself, then the one would still treat Nilick's predictions as just that - as predictions, and not the hard reality the one oneself deals with. The one is not someone that tries to lead the world according to one's own will as much as the one is simply a force that (mortal-initiated interactions left aside) sets things back towards how they should be in a natural state once they have already gone too far askew. Basically, it can be said that normally the Balancer always reacted to happenings retroactively in the canon. (Well... Kind of how, if you decided to build an infinitely tall tower, gravity would eventually get fed up with it and just make the tower collapse upon itself.)
As for mortals gaining knowledge of the future by asking Koraakan what the Oracle knows of the matter... I suppose it would basically fall back to the usual barrier of information overload that has always governed information trades with the one (for the purpose of the example, lets just assume that the requester always has what it takes to give in return). Namely, while it is possible to gather usable information this way, you have to already know quite closely what you're looking from and where should you look it from, and even then you had to be extremely careful. (Aemoten was, and even then I have stated that his obtainin information about the Unmentionable One is largely resonsible for his poor mental state.)
If someone were to simply ask what Nilick knows of ending or curing the Withering without narrowing it down further, then they would quite simply receive everything that fits it by the literal definition - every single attempt, every single speculation, every single wish, the results and prognoses for every single attempt and speculation ... and buried somewhere under it all, the answer that was actually being searched for, too. At once. As very vivid thoughts and memories. Which will simply break said person's mind.
Alternatively, you could ask a karakon, since they are protected from their minds breaking upon something like that and to an extent can use their own logic to narrow the selection of information down by giving additional specifications, but even then, the sheer amount of information that would be returned upon such generic question would mean that unless you are simply utterly, ridiculously lucky, the karakon will easily spend a few dozen years pondering, discarding one useless instance after another until one that seems to fit is found. 'Cept since karakon are very limited resource, the karakon would probably be summoned somewhere else in between.
(Of course, it also remains a matter of asking the right question... But that can be much harder to do than it sounds.)
*There, by the way, is a meaning behind which label I use. "Koraakan" mostly refers to mortal depictions and understandings of the deity, "Keeper of Truth and Balance", "Six-Eyed God", "Bloody Balancer" and a few other descriptive names more narrowly refer to certain specific cultures' understanding of the deity, the Varaagic "Nkaa Raakan" refers to the force/deity itself in the purest form, "the Balancer" being the self-incarnation of the deity as the one takes action on one's own accord ... and "the Weighter" (which I've mostly been using in the posts) generally refers to the mortal-summoned incarnation, and also the incarnation that draws upon the karakon for reference and action-determining the most, thusly being also the most mortal-like and relatable form the deity can potentially assume.
(...Did someone actually chain an yth up just to see what will happen if you feed it a hard-to-obtain and expensive illegal substance?)
@Hymusia/Cthulu (Should I introduce you to my friend, the business-suit Cthulu?): I am most definitely not trying to make you feel bad for anything...? If there is anything to say about what I am doing, then, well, I analyze things. I am more or less constantly analyzing things, and occasionally making remarks over some of said things - which should be taken as either completely neutral expressions of my thoughts and impressions or constructive criticism, depending on how I word them. In the given case, it was actually the first - I wasn't giving an estimation on whether anything would work as much as I was just remarking that such a command would probably be a quite complex thing to pull off. And later I explained why I thought so. I like disassembling things just to see how they work, so to speak (if my occasionally rather elaborate discussions with Jack on how his world functions haven't been an indicator).
I also like when my own things are taken through, since sometimes it brings up aspects you yourself did not think of, and having to explain why something works in one way or another is often enough a good way to make it easier to later put it down in written word in a more eloquent manner than you'd have done so yourself with the first take. Granted, my manner of debating sometimes tends to come across as a bit aggressive in plain text, which in turn might drive some people away from bringing such topics up ... which is a pity, really. I don't feel the need to defend my concepts - I constantly seek to adjust them so they'd be more complete, more logical, and so forth -, and much like my personal beliefs, if someone shows me that another way makes more sense, I just might go for it, depending on how much effort altering everything on the go would take (just remember my notion on already-published works). If not for the line at hand, then at least keep it in mind for the future.
It's always the matter of "why didn't anyone just tell me (sooner)?", and never that of being done injustice to. (Has the fact that I am not a "pure" writer and artist affected my way of seeing things? Most likely. A programmer will expect other programmers to painstakingly scrutinize every single line of their creation and consider it a perfectly natural part of life, whereas most writers tend to be very taken aback by similar treatment, especially in the beginning. And I tell you, the world of writers tends to be a lot more biased, opinion-based and brutal in the end - along with more praise comes more open hostility...)
I am not judging Thaler. Even less, I am implying that she should act differently. (I, however, very frequently *do* get people asking for my advice in how they "should" play a character... At which point I will most likely simply say that in a way that is realistic for that person. I will gladly help with designing technology, anatomy and to an extent society - that would work with the environment - but there is no specific way one "should" play a specific character aside of paying mind to realism and continuity.) As for Thaler, I can in fact perfectly understand why she's acting in the way she does, and that's usually a sign of a good writer. (Is my own character "perfect"? Of course not. His intentions might be good, but it doesn't mean that he won't approach to some matters in a manner worthy of a groan and hitting your head against the keyboard for a few times.) It's as you said - perfect characters are boring and artificial. Characters should be independent beings with their own lives rather than pieces of chess you move around as you see fit.
- Written just because I prefer people to know where exactly I stand.
@Jack on Nilick/Koraakan: Hmm... Okay. As for Nkaa Raakan* oneself, then the one would still treat Nilick's predictions as just that - as predictions, and not the hard reality the one oneself deals with. The one is not someone that tries to lead the world according to one's own will as much as the one is simply a force that (mortal-initiated interactions left aside) sets things back towards how they should be in a natural state once they have already gone too far askew. Basically, it can be said that normally the Balancer always reacted to happenings retroactively in the canon. (Well... Kind of how, if you decided to build an infinitely tall tower, gravity would eventually get fed up with it and just make the tower collapse upon itself.)
As for mortals gaining knowledge of the future by asking Koraakan what the Oracle knows of the matter... I suppose it would basically fall back to the usual barrier of information overload that has always governed information trades with the one (for the purpose of the example, lets just assume that the requester always has what it takes to give in return). Namely, while it is possible to gather usable information this way, you have to already know quite closely what you're looking from and where should you look it from, and even then you had to be extremely careful. (Aemoten was, and even then I have stated that his obtainin information about the Unmentionable One is largely resonsible for his poor mental state.)
If someone were to simply ask what Nilick knows of ending or curing the Withering without narrowing it down further, then they would quite simply receive everything that fits it by the literal definition - every single attempt, every single speculation, every single wish, the results and prognoses for every single attempt and speculation ... and buried somewhere under it all, the answer that was actually being searched for, too. At once. As very vivid thoughts and memories. Which will simply break said person's mind.
Alternatively, you could ask a karakon, since they are protected from their minds breaking upon something like that and to an extent can use their own logic to narrow the selection of information down by giving additional specifications, but even then, the sheer amount of information that would be returned upon such generic question would mean that unless you are simply utterly, ridiculously lucky, the karakon will easily spend a few dozen years pondering, discarding one useless instance after another until one that seems to fit is found. 'Cept since karakon are very limited resource, the karakon would probably be summoned somewhere else in between.
(Of course, it also remains a matter of asking the right question... But that can be much harder to do than it sounds.)
*There, by the way, is a meaning behind which label I use. "Koraakan" mostly refers to mortal depictions and understandings of the deity, "Keeper of Truth and Balance", "Six-Eyed God", "Bloody Balancer" and a few other descriptive names more narrowly refer to certain specific cultures' understanding of the deity, the Varaagic "Nkaa Raakan" refers to the force/deity itself in the purest form, "the Balancer" being the self-incarnation of the deity as the one takes action on one's own accord ... and "the Weighter" (which I've mostly been using in the posts) generally refers to the mortal-summoned incarnation, and also the incarnation that draws upon the karakon for reference and action-determining the most, thusly being also the most mortal-like and relatable form the deity can potentially assume.
