Who is the most evil villain in CoX?

Except as I recall, it was confirmed Primal Earth fired the first shot.

basically.

Originally Posted by mauk2 Evil_Legacy became one of my favorite posters with two words. "Kick Rocks." I laffed so hard. Never change, E_L!

Some people wanted the USA to have a king too. Good people knew better.


So he didn't know those little girls floating around his capital were enslaved by a psychic monster? Hmmm.... no not buying it.

Bullpoo. The existence of the Seers is an unimaginable crime. It damns anyone who stood for it, but it most certainly damns the man who allowed it to happen with his blessing.

Umm... It's a pretty apt comparison to Tyrant. EDIT: Sam makes a very cogent argument as to why above.

Right, and you'll note that I put Recluse much higher on my list than Phipps. Not even sure why people think one of Recluse's low level functionaries even rates mention. I put Recluse a bit less on the evil scale because at least some of his lieutenants have redeemable qualities.

And that justifies conquest and genocide? Because as I understand the 'first shot' it wasn't anything like an invasion. It was a few raiders.

At which point does inaction become a sin? Cole wasn't responsible for the Devouring Earth, MacArthur and his pencil-pushing goons were. Why would Cole help those very same politicians that ordered a nuclear strike on top of his head, nearly killing him and definitely killing every other meta-human ally he had on Korea?

If Cole hadn't been in Rome when it burned, those people would still be dead. He was there, and due to either pity or compassion he ended up rescuing a bunch of people that in his mind weren't worth saving. "Come with me if you want to live." That means his city, his rules, and if you don't like it, well, good luck out there. Those aren't the actions of a hero, but by that point Cole wasn't claiming to be one, just the savior of the human race.

I don't like him, but I would rather bend to his rule than get eaten by a tree.

That's actually my biggest problem with how Praetoria is resolved - everything's destroyed, everyone's dead or evacuated and it's all pretty much gone to hell. Granted, I myself have told the story of abandoning a world which was beyond saving, but there seemed to be a lot left on Praetorian Earth that was worth fighting for. You'd think Vanguard and the Heroes, at least, would want to preserve people's homes and whole frikkin' world, instead of bombing it into the ground. I mean... What was the point of that "morality" choice about destroying the Enriche plant and leaving people with nothing to drink until Vanguard could supply water six months later? Because six months later we're abandoning Praetoria anyway. What did that even matter?

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Well, that still could happen. Time being flexible as it is between the trials, they could add a trial in I28 that is "two weeks after Tyrant is taken down..."

And if you want to completely humiliate Tyrant and leave him broken, that would be the way, have primal heroes take out (or at least permanently keep at bay) Praetorian Hami. Even if you don't believe Tyrant's goal was keeping humanity safe from the Devouring Earth, Tyrant always believed he was the biggest baddest guy around. For Primals to succeed where he failed... crushing blow to the ego.

They are the actions of the vilest villain. Give people a false dilemma as if "Follow me or die" are the only options. It's so disgusting, I genuinely can't see how so many people on these boards repeat this argument seemingly without irony.

Cole didn't 'save' anything. He cut a deal. Marchand could have cut that deal, or some other unnamed person probably killed in Cole's regime. What Cole actually did was sign a treaty. Regular joe human beings have been saving their countries for millenia doing the same thing. Nothing in that deal, justified him declaring himself emperor or the many crimes he committed to maintain his deception.

This isn't directed at you personally since you aren't the first or tenth person to make this argument, but it saddens me that so many people actually believe they had a choice. Or that they get to make that decision for all the people born subsequent to their decision.

Actually, the point of Godwin's Law is that once you start drawing sides in an internet argument, the natural tendency to escalate the evil of one side over the other eventually leads to Hitler and Nazis as the top of the food chain.

There used to be a corollary to Godwin that stated that when either Hitler or Nazis is mentioned correctly in the context of discussions surrounding European history or fascism in general, that the first person to accuse that reference of being an instance of Godwin was itself an instance of Godwin.

Somebody may need to let his PR team know that...

This was pretty much my point. People only 'chose' to follow Cole because the alternative at that point was a horrible death.

To really rub it in have Praetorian Hami killed by the combined efforts of Flambeaux and Sky Dragon.

That would be funny.

Originally Posted by mauk2 Evil_Legacy became one of my favorite posters with two words. "Kick Rocks." I laffed so hard. Never change, E_L!

And here I thought they just made a competent leader that actually accomplished things. The opposite of what primal has.

Things Tyrant accomplished:

Slavery
Thought control
Secret Terror Camps
Elimination of democratic rule
Invasion
Lying about your own role in 'saving' the world
Diddling your granddaughter (NO RETCON )

Yeah, he's accomplished a lot. As did Hitler. Doesn't make him any less of a monster.

Yep. Totalitarian regimes are efficient in the short term, but the side effects are a serious buzzkill.

Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze Nice build

Because it depends on your idea of "evil".

Is your idea of evil in some sense consequentialist? (not neccessarily purely utilitarian, but just considering the consequences of someone's actions, the number of dead, enslaved, etc. etc.) By that logic the worst villain would probably be either (Praetorian) Hamidon or Rularuu, possibly Nemesis or alt!Clockwork King. All of these have (more or less) wiped out at least planets, if not universes.

A consequentialist view doesen't have to be just counting corpses, ofc. You can have some nice long arguments about the depths of suffering, etc. etc.

Now, a utilitarian would argue that you'd have to balance these things off, to some degree: How many would have died had you NOT acted? But that's a different ballgame. (any utilitarian scheme would probably make Tyrant go up in comparison to Recluse, just FYI)

There are of course other kinds of schemes of morality, some are rights- or taboo-based: IE: Consequences doesen't matter so much as the idea that there are certain actions that are inherently evil, and doing them makes you evil, regardless of the consequences. Philosophers tends to not like these kinds of arguments because they essentially end up as arbitrary lists of "evil" actions, and any attempt to bringing them back to first principles tends to end up as some kind of conseqeuntialism or deontologism anyway.

Now, the most famous deontological (that is, duty-oriented) philosopher is Immanuel Kant: He's really, really, really important for all sorts of reasons. Now, to sum it up, for Kant consequences doesen't matter: There are a bunch of reasons for this, but basically it comes down to they are impossible to predict: You don't know when or circumstance is going to make your good intentions have bad results, or vice-versa. The effects of your actions are in essence separate from your intentions, and thus should have no bearing on judging the morality of said actions.

Now, Kant was trying to come up with a purely rationalistic basis for morality, without relying on God (Kant was a believer, of sorts, but he felt morality could be rationalized without relying on divine fiat) he reasoned that the only thing that can be considered "good" in itself, without relying on consequences, is a good intention. Now, this seems like it would let people like Tyrant off the hook, right? After all, he had good intentions. Now, Kant was a bit more strict than this: His definition of "good intentions" is summed up in what is called "Categorical Imperative" (by this he means something rather profound, namely an imperative that binds everything and is not caused by anything but itself)

He has two major formulations of this:
1. "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law."

Now, what this means, is that for Kant, any intention to do something must be something that you could concievably want everyone else to do: The classic example is lying. Lying is wrong, because in a hypotethical example where everyone lies communication (and therefore lying itself) becomes impossible: The same is true of stealing, murder, etc. These things are wrong by definition, since they cannot be made universally applicable without creating a paradox.

The second formulation of the categorical imperative goes:
2. "Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end."

Which means that whenever you act you should act with the intention of treating everyone else (and yourself) not as a means to an end but an end in itself: This would eliminate Tyrant (he clearly treats persons as means to his various ends)

EDIT: there is also a kind of ethics known as Virtue Ethics, where the basic concepts to be judged is not the consequences of actions or the breaking of rules but rather what it says about the character of the person in question: IE: Lying shows that you have a character flaw (you are deceptive).

For a virtue-eticist it is entirely plausible to judge Recluse as less evil than Phipps, because Recluse has virtues (bravery, a certain level of determination, etc.) that Phipps lack.