Monstrously Human

I sometimes wonder what would take to make a monster. Lines that are drawn must be crossed with such intention as to be obliterated. To make the line a barrier that you can never return from. One isn’t a monster for crossing the line, only for living across it. Certainly you’ve crossed the line Thief, taking my fourth journal one after the other. Can’t say I’m surprised given that once you stop, you’ll die. Do you live across that line Thief? Has your life demanded you reject yourself so fully that you embrace the lesser side of your actions? I recently killed a child, a nonhuman one, after killing their parents. The party that I have traveled with, the LADs, were tasked with finding some crayfish, a creature much like a lobster but larger than a human and rather fierce. We were to kill and bring them to feed a Kraken. A simple matter of spell-work and steel would have completed the task. What the party didn’t account for was that they would be sentient. Upon entering their cave and killing the two we saw, a larger version came out from a secret tunnel and loudly called for its parents. The party seemed surprised but continued regardless in the action. Except for Mac, the Kobold in the group. I wonder what he saw as he backed away from the fight? He himself was a monster by the standards of civilization and yet he had helped to kill the parents of the child now crying out in grief and rage. I used a spell to animate the corpse of the female parent and commanded it to fight. Such a look of despair on the crayfish’s face as his own mother crushed him under her claws. Mac came to me and said that he would kill me if I ever did that again. Does he not realize that all creatures are sentient? In this plane and many others you can speak and understand their will, desires, wants and needs in the same way you read mine and yet… There is no issue killing them so long as we do not have to hear them. So long as we can pretend that they are less than us.
 
It is interesting to see the difference in Braum the Orc’s behavior. He was surprised but continued with the intention to kill the child despite it screaming and raging in the common tongue. What is the difference between the two? Braum knows he is not human, but he has been embraced by them. He holds a position of high power in his city and commands respect from the humans and dwarves beneath him. I think that he has left behind his origin and become ‘human’ in the mental sense of the word. There was little hesitation in the moments before he aimed to resume his attack. He didn’t see someone grieving at the unfairness of a system that would send agents to kill for no reason other than pleasure. No, Braum only saw a monster that needed killing for a job fit for Legendary Adventurers. Mac saw a person. Unlike Braum, Mac holds no positions of power. No deep dies to the city or its people and little connection to others outside from the party. He remembers what it is like to be on the end of the sword staring down at the remorseless humans. Can you imagine Thief? Wanting so desperately to be recognized as something other than what you are at the cost of what you were and all that you believed in? In that moment Mac recoiled. I don’t know if he recognizes it, but I don’t think he will truly embrace humanity nor walk the same path that we do. I can’t help but think that is a good thing. We need someone to be better than us.