Annotated 34-12
This scene is doing its best to argue that Syr’Nj and Byron have not just become a pair of idiots for the convenience of the plot. I think it’s partly successful in that: Syr’Nj’s precaution is reasonable, and Byron’s musing that this could be all about him makes sense, given how much time he’s spent recently as the leader of a larger movement.
It’s somewhat sketchier how Syr’Nj expects Byron’s team to be able to disrupt a soothsayer’s plans, and if disrupting predictions is the name of the game, why not have Byron not go? They could send him to help Frigg’s team instead, and surely Syr’Nj could pop in to explain the last-minute personnel change. It’s true he knows the Cultists better than anyone else, but c’mon, how much do you need to know about these guys, they want to destroy everything and use magick to make you want that too, that’s pretty much their deal.
But… even though Bandit is the field commander of the Peacemakers and thus a general authority, Byron is still the leader of the movement and the focus of its morale. His presence could cause a massacre, but so could his absence. Moreover, as much as he wants to be rational here, to be outwitting the Cultists, to be more than the Berserker, he’s driven to confront them regardless of warning signs, a fact that will become clearer as we go. (“Certain doom” is an, um, interesting turn of phrase… maybe an attempt at tension-breaking humor, but still.)
Syr’Nj knows all this, and knows that taking him out of the field against his will (“Here, try a little of the extra-strength anti-berserk now… oh, sludge, it had too much sedative in it, guess you’re staying here!”) would be a breach of trust from which they might not recover. “You’ve made your choice.” Marching into danger constantly is what adventurers do. So she elects to trust his instincts and hope for the best, a choice she will later regret. So maybe they have become a pair of idiots, just a little bit, but in what I hope is a mostly believable way.
Or maybe they’re not. Maybe they’re thinking – if they “chose” to have Byron stay then *that’s* what Brother Tom would have foreseen and so the attack would come later, or be a sneak attack on him in the capital instead, or whatever. Maybe they realize that the real “choice” is not to submit to fear, and constantly wonder if you’re playing the Cultist’s predicted playbook but to embrace and swallow the fear and go f—k them up as much as you can.
I didn’t see this as a “Who is holding the idiot ball today.” Sometimes you have to make what you believe to be the best choice you can, based upon the information you have.
What separates a bad idiot plot from a good one is: A bad idiot plot is doing something stupid for the sake of the narrative. A good idiot plot is doing the dumbest thing possible that you honestly thought was a good idea at the time.
To be fair, if “The Cultist” foresaw the future, he would’ve foreseen the player switch– or anything really. He saw the future not specifically the one you thought he saw. They did their best.
Well, this gets philosophical quickly: If free will exists, can the future be predictable?
If Byron and Syr’Nj have free will (and if anyone in Arkerra does it’s the Five), then the prediction can only work up to a point. Heck, they’re even wildcards to HR, so if anything/anyone is able to inject something into Arkerra which cannot be foreseen from within Arkerra, it’s them (And HR of course)
I was going to write that the smartest thing would be to toss a coin to decide such things, to become unpredictable, but I don’t know what logic Arkerra runs on. The coin toss might actually easier to predict for Brother Tom than anything that the Five might come up with.
(i.e.: that game may be using a very bad random number generator)
The way I see it, that I know which actions you’ll take doesn’t take away free will from you. I did not influence them or guide them in anyway. The entire result is due to your actions, I just know it beforehand.
If they had tossed a coin, Tom would’ve known what it was going to land as.
If they had ignored the coin toss or not, he would’ve known.
He still knows the end result regardless. He didn’t affect the coin toss, however, he’s just an observer here.
Another thing is that he’s not really omniscient either. As I see it he’s like us reading this comic. We know irrefutable facts and events that are going to happen in many scenes, like he does, but not all. We don’t know what exactly HR or Carol are doing right now, for example. So even knowing what happens in the next five pages, neither us nor Tom know…. what is Emerl saying right now? Or Scipio?
Depends on what you mean by “free will”.
If you mean “libertarian free will”, which is silly, like all ideas with “libertarian” flavor, then no.
Defining free will as being able to decide something else than your brain is going to decide is the same as defining free will as non-existent.
But if you define free will as your brain being able to make decisions free of direct external control, then it’s probably mostly meaningful.