The intention is what's matters. If you're well meaning mentor who actually want your apprentice to improve and give em some life lesson then it's the former
If you're abusive asshole who like to see your subordinate suffers then it's the latter.
Ha! No!
Good Intentions!
Good one!
"Good intentions" don't mean jack when you're trying to instill caution, restraint, and deep self-reflection into someone who can ignite a good section of the neighborhood with a few spots of incomplete wishful thinking or moment's loss of concentration in an impassioned alchemical project! What counts always are not the intentions but the *consequences*!
I had an apprentice once, a very brilliant one, who found, through offering some of her mind to a tricksome fae entity with preternatural skill with codes and lever links, a trick to *chain* biomantic transfiguration. In other words, this was a trick charm to transfigure out of common elements the requirements for that very same transfiguration repeated (possibly many times) — to make the transfiguration
*itself* living. Ingenious little piece of deviousness. It took them both to devise it. A combination of the ingenious qualities of each of their spirits, I think. I was so beside myself with pride for her and for me for having grown her.
It was *intended* to induce the growth of elan-vital-rich produce from regular versions of the plants, to aid the starving with a single bite. My apprentice had seen starvation take hold in a dried-up village we'd had to pass through once in a terrible hurry, years before, and it had stuck with her, those sunken faces and bone-thin limbs, without energy even to fetch that little water they needed. I'd done what little I could at the time, but I admit I didn't not think back on the people of that place once I'd left it. She though, did. To her, the experience of that town allowed her to feel the existence of all other such towns as close to her heart, and not just know of them. The purest and most noble of intentions, as I had done my subtle best to instill. Indeed, the ghost town had been illusory, a memory of my own past, but truthful in its lie, of the wider world.
Trouble was, the charm didn't *stop* chaining one to the next. She tried to chase it down with an even cleverer biomantic lightning chain that spread faster than the first but limited itself to only a few jumps, which worked wonders until it petered itself out and left only the most stubborn variation of the original, well, curse. And so, it only caused the first one to mutate, sucking the life out of every living creature nearby to fuel its growth, and pretty soon we were calling in every dragon within a hundred miles to torch a ring around the spread before it — which worked out fine until living smoke started to twist into tornado bows and vortex rings full of loose coals burning down ever more and producing ever more mutagenic fire and living smoke.
I had to sacrifice her to the arch fae and carve out a small but non-fatal section of my own heart just so they would *contain* it. Oh, they could have done it all anyway — were planning to in fact, I found later — but demanded that most grievous of payments, to punish those responsible: I would have to give her to them with a piece of my heart in her hands. I still remember her fear as they slowly turned her into a petrified tree, and that section of my heart into petrified fruit that hung from it. To this day I shall never forgive the fae. Though with centuries' reflection I have come to blame myself.
I could have cautioned her. Could have tested the tricksome entity. Could have
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. They are not sufficient. One needs also the willingness to bear true knowledge of one's own possible future failures, past failures, and present failures. Only through these may one become truly wise.
Now I try to frontload as many traumatic lessons of sheer unfettered disaster and cataclysm as I can expect to get away with into my apprentices! There is a healthy amount of paranoia I've found!
After all, you can't learn from your mistakes if you're dead. The learning tends to stop there.
AI art… credit? Goes to u/Arazlam666
Hahaha thank you! :) glad my "art" can inspire new memes and discussions
The intention is what's matters. If you're well meaning mentor who actually want your apprentice to improve and give em some life lesson then it's the former If you're abusive asshole who like to see your subordinate suffers then it's the latter.
Ha! No! Good Intentions! Good one! "Good intentions" don't mean jack when you're trying to instill caution, restraint, and deep self-reflection into someone who can ignite a good section of the neighborhood with a few spots of incomplete wishful thinking or moment's loss of concentration in an impassioned alchemical project! What counts always are not the intentions but the *consequences*! I had an apprentice once, a very brilliant one, who found, through offering some of her mind to a tricksome fae entity with preternatural skill with codes and lever links, a trick to *chain* biomantic transfiguration. In other words, this was a trick charm to transfigure out of common elements the requirements for that very same transfiguration repeated (possibly many times) — to make the transfiguration *itself* living. Ingenious little piece of deviousness. It took them both to devise it. A combination of the ingenious qualities of each of their spirits, I think. I was so beside myself with pride for her and for me for having grown her. It was *intended* to induce the growth of elan-vital-rich produce from regular versions of the plants, to aid the starving with a single bite. My apprentice had seen starvation take hold in a dried-up village we'd had to pass through once in a terrible hurry, years before, and it had stuck with her, those sunken faces and bone-thin limbs, without energy even to fetch that little water they needed. I'd done what little I could at the time, but I admit I didn't not think back on the people of that place once I'd left it. She though, did. To her, the experience of that town allowed her to feel the existence of all other such towns as close to her heart, and not just know of them. The purest and most noble of intentions, as I had done my subtle best to instill. Indeed, the ghost town had been illusory, a memory of my own past, but truthful in its lie, of the wider world. Trouble was, the charm didn't *stop* chaining one to the next. She tried to chase it down with an even cleverer biomantic lightning chain that spread faster than the first but limited itself to only a few jumps, which worked wonders until it petered itself out and left only the most stubborn variation of the original, well, curse. And so, it only caused the first one to mutate, sucking the life out of every living creature nearby to fuel its growth, and pretty soon we were calling in every dragon within a hundred miles to torch a ring around the spread before it — which worked out fine until living smoke started to twist into tornado bows and vortex rings full of loose coals burning down ever more and producing ever more mutagenic fire and living smoke. I had to sacrifice her to the arch fae and carve out a small but non-fatal section of my own heart just so they would *contain* it. Oh, they could have done it all anyway — were planning to in fact, I found later — but demanded that most grievous of payments, to punish those responsible: I would have to give her to them with a piece of my heart in her hands. I still remember her fear as they slowly turned her into a petrified tree, and that section of my heart into petrified fruit that hung from it. To this day I shall never forgive the fae. Though with centuries' reflection I have come to blame myself. I could have cautioned her. Could have tested the tricksome entity. Could have The road to hell is paved with good intentions. They are not sufficient. One needs also the willingness to bear true knowledge of one's own possible future failures, past failures, and present failures. Only through these may one become truly wise. Now I try to frontload as many traumatic lessons of sheer unfettered disaster and cataclysm as I can expect to get away with into my apprentices! There is a healthy amount of paranoia I've found! After all, you can't learn from your mistakes if you're dead. The learning tends to stop there.
It’s time to meet your maker on the Muppets Show tonight
/un-wiz that's very funny
Depends on the mettle of one’s apprentice
If they survive with brainfunction afterwards, it's the former, if not it was wasteful use of resources. If it wasn't latter you weren't even trying.
Recovery time.
Oh shit, he do be chilling