garden of whimsy

Petra and Ryah: serial failed black widows

Koral: dead, previous relationship status unknown

[Unnamed Tachonis]: relationship status unknown

Frons: dead, previous relationship status unknown

Ethrand: no bitches

[Unnamed Tachonis]: relationship status unknown, but their older brother still has yet to get married, so chances are they haven't done much yet

Occtis: probably can't reproduce; has game but can't recognise it for shit

"He kills people!" Yes, and so do all the other people in this campaign. There are very few saints in an adventuring party.

"But this is different!" Yes, it is. Because Bolaire was a tool given sentience by people who never gave any thought to what would happen to him or his siblings once they served their purpose. Maybe they were all supposed to be destroyed in the same play that destroyed the halfling shaper? Maybe the people doing the crafting were so desperate that they had neither time nor energy to give a thought to what happened after the death of a god? Maybe they couldn't spend any time considering or discussing it for fear of being discovered? We don't know and we may never know for certain, but that lack of consideration definitely impacts who and what Bolaire is now.

How does a disposable sentient object learn morals? Most creatures are taught that sort of thing in their childhood by their parents. Bolaire and his siblings had no parents and never had a childhood. They knew each other for a day before the play. What they knew of each other, the world, and their personalities was "programmed" into them for one purpose: to get a job done. For decades after that, Bolaire had no sense of self, he was simply a tool of war. He was used by mortals when they needed to destroy and kill, and put away whenever he wasn't needed for those roles. When he began achieving sentience, who were his first teachers about how to treat other beings? The very people who were using him to kill and destroy. Is it really shocking that he treats (some) people as disposable? As means to an end? The traveling play may have given him goals to strive for, but the people who wielded him for decades gave him the roadmap for how to achieve those goals.

How do we gauge how old Bolaire is? Do we date it by his creation or by when he gained sentience? How do you gauge a sentient object's intellectual or emotional age, their level of culpability for their actions? They have no life cycle, no developmental period. Is Bolaire an adult or a child, or do those designations even matter for an entity that never ages? For example, Azune probably killed people as a child soldier but do we give him as a child the same level of culpability for those actions that we expect of him as an adult? Both legally and ethically the answer is usually no.

If Bolaire isn't a person, how can he be culpable for his actions? We don't sentence cars to jail for hitting pedestrians. But unlike cars (as far as we know), Bolaire has thoughts and feelings, so he must be a person. So then why did/do so many people treat him as if he isn't? What is their role in making him what he is now vs his own responsibility for how he shaped himself once he found out he could?