I have no idea what a Fallout quest is like. I am only guesing that Fallout is a video game.
I think pushing the Brigadier into hostility will be hard. He’s a pretty calm guy, more Batman than Wolverine. He has done nothing overtly aggressive yet; he has just said he’s leaving. If he your guys try to prevent him from riding off and he simply dismounts and walks toward the gate, are youwilling to send an arrow into his back? Do you think your fighters – whom, according to the OP, he trained, and probably leads as well – will follow that order.
I don’t think the Brigadier is a crazy bastard. He’s certainly revealed himself as malevolent toward his wife and daughter, implicitly toward all women, and potentially toward the town. But I have to suspect that this may be a ploy to get the mayor to publicly betray him so he, the Brigadier, can get the town to overthrow him and acclaim the Brigadier the new leader.
I was responding to a suggestion that Anne would end up killing the Brigadier. I agree her options are pretty bad, and they may get worse if the Brigadier leaves the Town alive.
Am I the only person who thinks that the Brigadier’s value to the community seems to be worth more than Anne’s? We don’t owe anything to this woman and her band, and we have no obligation to take anyone in that isn’t going to be a net positive to the community. The Brigadier can’t keep the women here against their will, but I’m not willing to sacrifice the most valuable member of our community for four strangers.
If they want to stay, they have to assent to the Brigadier’s wishes; probably by agreeing to his divorce/ bride price settlement offer. Otherwise, they have to leave. By dawn.
If the Brigadier were willing to let Anne & Co. go their own way, I’d have to swallow my pride and my morals and allow that. But he may not be willing to do that. Bear in mind that he’s not only been actively looking for her, but has foregone opportunties for new relatiionships or at least sex from other women (who obviously dodged a bullet there). He seems fixed on Anne. If he considers Anne his property and anyone who keeps her from him a thief (including the man she’s with know, who might reasonably have thought the Brigadier was dead), he may well not be willing to let her goe now.
There’s other reasons not to put Anne in the Brigadier’s power. It creates a very bad precedent. If the Brigadier is free to do what he will to “his” woman, another of the fighters, or the village doctor, may decide the same should apply to them.
It is thin. I do think that you have a moral obligation to prevent members of your community from enslaving other people, no matter their pretext. If the Brigadier, or the Doctor, or the Quiet-But-Genius-Biochemist-Working-on-The Cure goes off and starts bringing back people in chains, we might have a very different discussion. My job as Mayor is to keep the community together, and even if the Brigadier leaves over this, I think he’ll have a much smaller chance of taking his people with him if the situation is “We didn’t let them in, and he left on his own accord to go hunt them down,” instead of “We’re forcing the Hero of Zombieton to live next door to his cheating wife and disrespectful daughter.”
I’m completely willing to let valuable members of the community have the right to set certain conditions on outsiders joining. They would have much less latitude with changing the rules on how they treat others who are already part of our encampment.
Put the question to the whole community. Explain that either the women can stay, but only as free persons and not under his control. Further explain that we as a community must do whatever it takes to prevent the brigadier from abusing the women, up to and including imprisonment or execution.
Or make clear that I will leave the community because I won’t be part of a slave owning society. And I will try to bring the women out with me, if they are willing and I am able.
If the community sides with the brigadier, and I think I can get away with a quick move, pull a pistol and put a bullet into the brigadier’s head.
Five years into the ZA, nobody’s got any bullets left. The OP specifcally mentions arrows.
More seriously, the Brigadier is the baddest badass in town – as good a fighter as Jack Reacher. Yeah, any three of the fighters can take him hand-to-hand, but at least one of those guys is gonna get hurt bad. And a lot of people are going to say, “Wait – I’m supposed to get beat up by our resident badass on behalf of some chick I’ve never met? Fuck that shit.”
You’re making the assumption, however, that the Brigadier is going to allow them to leave peacefully, and he’s already said he won’t. They’re his property, remember? If you allow his property to sneak out of town while he’s asleep, “Y’all will be the thieves who stole my family.” He’ll go after them, murder the men and enslave the women, AND likely return to wreak havoc to the “thieves” (that’s you and your community).
I’m not familiar with the Jack Reacher reference, since I’m not a fan of whatever book/movie/television series he is a character in, so I’ll take your word for it. From the rest of your hypothetical OP, it reads to me like I had the misfortune of helping to create a post-apocalyptic community with a lot of ain’t-shit dudes in it. Although, then again, I suppose that there is a nonzero chance that ain’t-shit dudes are more temperamentally suited to surviving the Zombie Apocalypse, so pickings might have been slim on that front.
All things considered, I probably lean towards @Boyo Jim’s solution.
I actually think the assumption that the Brigadier will allow them to leave peacefully is justified. He’s already said that he doesn’t feel free to fight the other people of hte town until he’s cut the cord. If I were going to be all Smurfy and not murder him in his sleep, I’d be willing to tell him that while we won’t abet his abuse of Anne and her daughter, we won’t treat them as town members to whom we owe protection, and so will send them back into the wild. Whether he decides to track them down is up to him, but he can’t bring them back. If he’ll accept that, I’ll grit my teeth and give Anne & Co. a 12 hour head start.
I am going to take your word that you are sincere here, and that you are not implying that I woud watch a Tom Cruise movie. Otherwise of course I would have to challenge you to a duel, by which of course I mean shoot you in the back.
Jack Reacher’s a badass on the order of, oh, Hawk from the Spenser novels, or Eliot from LEVERAGE. (But he certainly is biger than Tom Cruise.)
But he already not-so-subtly threatened the community in his speech about how domestic violence is his right. Unless he leaves in a way that burns all his bridges with his friends, and also forgets all the training and security measures he set up, then it seems like just a matter of time until he comes back as a not-friend.
Who do you think you’re talking about? This isn’t some monster, this is The Brigadier. When the Flensers demanded we pay them tribute, who fought them off? The Brigadier. When that horde of undead from the west fell into the river, who built the purifier that kept us from dying of thirst? The Brigadier. This is not a man who can’t be reasoned with, this is not a man who wants to destroy our community.
He just wants what he feels is his. And if he can’t have that, he’s even given his conditions to ameliorate the situation. That says to me that he’s not going to wreak havoc on us for throwing her back out to go find somewhere else to live. My foraging party brought her in, if I release her, he hasn’t lost anything.
Most of you want seem to want to put a bullet in his head because your ways of thinking about pre-apocalypse don’t jive with his, but what’s more important here? The man who has and will ensure the survival of hundreds, or some woman we’ve never met before?
HE says, however, “I’m laying my claim to them again. You want me to stay here, you’ll honor that.” If you release her, you are not honoring his property claim; his property will be out of his control, due to your actions. He’s told you what that means: “the next time we meet, we won’t be friends. Y’all will be the thieves who stole my family.” That tells me that he IS somebody who can’t be reasoned with, at least on this topic.
If you give him the woman, however, to use as his sex slave and punching bag, what happens the next time? If he beats this woman to death, are you going to give him another, just so he can build you a new purifier? Where is the line in the sand? Whose life is important enough that you won’t sacrifice it to play nice-nice with the Brigadier?
If this guy thinks any human being can be his property, he is a slaver, and slavers are *Hostis humani generis *just as much as zombies are. Out he goes. Or kill him, clearly I’m not a pacifist in this scenario.
i’m not sure what you mean by saying you’re not a pacifist in this scenario. Do you mean that, in such a survival situation, the real you would abandon pacifism (i.e, pacifism is a luxury you can’t afford) or tjust that you’re playing the hypo as you would a video game.
Pretend the real you is the Mayor. There’s no zombies; civilization has fallen for some mundane but still really bad reason. The external threats are are just rival settlement and nomadic banshees. Are you still willing to murder the Brigadier in advance of his doing anything wrong to any member of your community?
