Poll of the Day > The leader of a rival martial arts school has killed your master

(+) Yeah! (+)

To everyone else it looked like an accident in the ring but you know the truth.

You need to reclaim the honor of your school and put his memory to rest but your master's last words has forbidden you from vowing revenge.

Your master realized long ago that both schools have perpetuated this cycle of hate for decades. You suspect he willingly walked in the ring and accepted his death in advance.

You know that if you don't take matters into your own hands then your bothers will die as well. They won't ever stop killing. They'll never be satisfied with just one sacrifice. This is how you try and justify it but going against his wishes troubles you as well.

Perhaps in the grand scheme of things it doesn't really matter what choice you make.

Do I win?

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This sounds like it could be the premise of some martial arts movie.
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NeoSioType posted...

Your master realized long ago that both schools have perpetuated this cycle of hate for decades. You suspect he willingly walked in the ring and accepted his death in advance.

You know that if you don't take matters into your own hands then your bothers will die as well. They won't ever stop killing. They'll never be satisfied with just one sacrifice. This is how you try and justify it but going against his wishes troubles you as well.

If the problem is a cycle of revenge, and I cannot break it via inaction (because others will carry it on regardless), the only viable solution is the reverse - to engineer a revenge so destructive and complete that only one side survives, and the rivalry ends forever.

So I go to the rival school, and poison their well with a slow-acting toxin that will enter their bloodstream undetected and kill them all before any of them realize they've been poisoned. And then I hunt down any survivors and murder them, their families, their children, their friends, and anyone who ever met them.

This ultimately leads to one of two outcomes. Either my fellow students agree with my stance and support me, in which case only our school remains and the rivalry is ended because there's no more rival. Or my fellow students turn against me, seeing my methods as being too draconian and violent, in which case they are forced to join with the rival school to defeat me, thus ending the rivalry as they must band together against the far greater evil. Either way, I win.

This also has the added benefit in that my actions don't actually violate my Master's wishes - I am not vowing revenge, I am acting logically and dispassionately to break the cycle of violence. I don't seek to punish the rivals for what they have done, I simply seek to eliminate them forever to stop them from ever doing it again.
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