The evil you can't bash
Apr. 8th, 2026 09:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
baroque_mongooseI haven't posted about the writing for a bit, so this is where we are with the third book.
In the third chapter, a teenager arrives at the Regents' palace; she's come all the way from a small town in the far south of the province, displaying considerable resourcefulness and competence in doing so. She has run away from home because she wants to see the wizards, of whom she knows there are plenty at the palace. And the reason she wants to see the wizards is that she wants them to "fix" her by magic so that she will be acceptable to her parents. Fortunately, she encounters Nivaunel first, who correctly discerns that the problem is with the parents, not with this girl, whose name is Meherret.
Meherret has suffered precisely the same kind of emotional abuse as I did; and, in fact, when I was writing her, I initially thought "I'm going to have to tone this down, because nobody is going to believe parents would really act like that". I decided not to, in the end. She has also internalised the abuse, as, again, I did (for years - though Meherret now stands a chance of being able to shake it off, as she's now being treated very differently), so she genuinely believes she's all the terrible things her parents have been calling her. Nivaunel and her friends have to spend a lot of time and patience explaining that all the evidence they have paints a completely different picture. And then, in the fourth chapter, we get her parents being summoned to... let's say discuss the matter; they're not on trial, but nonetheless the matter does need to be sorted out. Nivaunel realises that the problem is that they can't cope, and they can't even recognise that, let alone admit it; so what eventually happens is that a cleric of Pelor is sent to live with them to help them become good parents to Meherret's younger sister, who - very tellingly - since Meherret left, has started complaining that she's now being treated like Meherret. Of course she is, since the parents need a scapegoat and Meherret has left that position vacant. Meanwhile, Meherret herself remains in the care of Nivaunel and her friends, since everyone is happy to continue that arrangement; the plan is that if her parents are able to learn and sort themselves out to the point where it's safe for her to return, she will do that, but not otherwise.
Darg, meanwhile, has been thinking; and you never know quite what'll happen when he does that. Darg has been established since the beginning of the second book as a very simple (though not stupid) soul, and as far as he's concerned he knows about evil. Something evil attacks you, you bash it. Easy. But he realises that a) what has happened to Meherret was undoubtedly evil, but b) the people who did it to her weren't evil-aligned (they're both Lawful Neutral, as it happens), c) they didn't intend to do evil, and d) bashing is not the solution in this case. They need intensive help, not violence. (Arguably, they need more help than Meherret does; she's just got to heal from the damage that has been done to her, but they need a complete change of mindset.) The fact that it's not all black and white has been touched on before; Nivaunel has mentioned that alignment isn't everything, and you can, for instance, have a good alignment but a bad temper, or difficulty seeing when other people around you need your help, or any one of a number of things that don't alter your alignment but do make you less good than you would otherwise have been.
In the end, Darg is going to realise that, as Solzhenitsyn put it, the line dividing good and evil runs through the heart of every human being (and, indeed, elf, dwarf, gnome, and so on)... including his own. And Darg, bless him, has about as pure a heart as you can get in a battered world.
For the moment, he's asking Nivaunel what to do about evil you can't bash. And, as she says herself... that's a really good question.
In the third chapter, a teenager arrives at the Regents' palace; she's come all the way from a small town in the far south of the province, displaying considerable resourcefulness and competence in doing so. She has run away from home because she wants to see the wizards, of whom she knows there are plenty at the palace. And the reason she wants to see the wizards is that she wants them to "fix" her by magic so that she will be acceptable to her parents. Fortunately, she encounters Nivaunel first, who correctly discerns that the problem is with the parents, not with this girl, whose name is Meherret.
Meherret has suffered precisely the same kind of emotional abuse as I did; and, in fact, when I was writing her, I initially thought "I'm going to have to tone this down, because nobody is going to believe parents would really act like that". I decided not to, in the end. She has also internalised the abuse, as, again, I did (for years - though Meherret now stands a chance of being able to shake it off, as she's now being treated very differently), so she genuinely believes she's all the terrible things her parents have been calling her. Nivaunel and her friends have to spend a lot of time and patience explaining that all the evidence they have paints a completely different picture. And then, in the fourth chapter, we get her parents being summoned to... let's say discuss the matter; they're not on trial, but nonetheless the matter does need to be sorted out. Nivaunel realises that the problem is that they can't cope, and they can't even recognise that, let alone admit it; so what eventually happens is that a cleric of Pelor is sent to live with them to help them become good parents to Meherret's younger sister, who - very tellingly - since Meherret left, has started complaining that she's now being treated like Meherret. Of course she is, since the parents need a scapegoat and Meherret has left that position vacant. Meanwhile, Meherret herself remains in the care of Nivaunel and her friends, since everyone is happy to continue that arrangement; the plan is that if her parents are able to learn and sort themselves out to the point where it's safe for her to return, she will do that, but not otherwise.
Darg, meanwhile, has been thinking; and you never know quite what'll happen when he does that. Darg has been established since the beginning of the second book as a very simple (though not stupid) soul, and as far as he's concerned he knows about evil. Something evil attacks you, you bash it. Easy. But he realises that a) what has happened to Meherret was undoubtedly evil, but b) the people who did it to her weren't evil-aligned (they're both Lawful Neutral, as it happens), c) they didn't intend to do evil, and d) bashing is not the solution in this case. They need intensive help, not violence. (Arguably, they need more help than Meherret does; she's just got to heal from the damage that has been done to her, but they need a complete change of mindset.) The fact that it's not all black and white has been touched on before; Nivaunel has mentioned that alignment isn't everything, and you can, for instance, have a good alignment but a bad temper, or difficulty seeing when other people around you need your help, or any one of a number of things that don't alter your alignment but do make you less good than you would otherwise have been.
In the end, Darg is going to realise that, as Solzhenitsyn put it, the line dividing good and evil runs through the heart of every human being (and, indeed, elf, dwarf, gnome, and so on)... including his own. And Darg, bless him, has about as pure a heart as you can get in a battered world.
For the moment, he's asking Nivaunel what to do about evil you can't bash. And, as she says herself... that's a really good question.
