I’m thinking about Gortash tonight and in the Steel Watch Foundry, there is this book on the altar/shrine to Bane?
I wonder what the Twelve Admonitions actually are, in full — but it’s interesting to me that the two most read pages are The Reprimand for Leniency and The Rebuke for False Compassion.
First of all, the first (if owned by Gortash) suggests that he, too, had “going soft” feelings, perhaps?
But the second. That’s juicier to me. For one thing, Bane rebukes false compassion? Does that mean he tolerates genuine compassion? And for another thing — which compassions of ol’ Gort’s were false, and which were real, and did he feel reprehensible for any of them?
I just think about these things. I chew on them. If anyone knows more than me about this, please let me know lmao.
EDIT: Now that I think on it again, this is a two-page spread. That is EVEN MORE INTERESTING. We know that this book was easily cracked open to this exact page, which means its owner (Gortash?) visited this particular part of the text often.
I neglected to see that it was BOTH ADMONITIONS on the SAME OPEN PAGES. Larian, you devilish geniuses.
The way I see it, this is Larian letting you read one of two things into this book:
- Gortash was asking for forgiveness and/or punishing himself for leniency (and who do we think might have inspired that? Perhaps the one person he wanted to share an empire with?)
- Gortash was asking for forgiveness and/or punishing himself for false compassion to someone with just as much fervor
Now that I read THAT, I see it like this. Larian is inviting you, the viewer and player, to decide: was Enver Gortash so close to Durge that it scared him, or was the whole thing an act?
(Still fascinating to me that False Compassion is an admonition. Those are later thoughts.)
