I'm not sure I quite understand. Why would your character not want to swear an oath of obedience, if she is willing to work for them?
For someone to be trusted with a special title, equipment, responsibilities, etc, they should be obedient to their employer.
I suspect that this is another case of poor word choice, like fealty was. Have you in your entire life ever heard of any employer asking an employee to
swear obedience? Have you ever promised to obey anyone you ever worked for? Would you?
No, it doesn't work that way. Obedience is not something expected of rational, intelligent people. Obedience is something people expect from children, pets...
...
and slaves.Semantics and word choice aside, do you see why Aurora especially would not do this? Do you see what you're asking her to do?
Even mercenaries have contracts.
Yes, to complete a specific task. The contract being proposed here: "obey us," is not reasonable. If Aurora were Basayen, and willing to simply lie about it, that wouldn't matter. But Aurora is an honorable mare. She's not going to lie about something like this just to get in the door.
Everything about this is unreasonable. It completely fails even a common sense test. Applicants are being asked to promise obedience to the ring. We haven't even been chosen yet, and apparently this is something that was expected for us to even talk to them. Working with your employer/employee metaphor from before, that would be like an employer requiring applicants to promise obedience even just to get an interview.
So look at Basayen.
He swore an oath. What happens if they tell him he's not chosen to be a pioneer, and to go work the salt mines instead?
He has promised to do that.
Only someone who is either an idiot, lying, or simply not taking it very seriously would agree to the terms being requested. In this case,
Rolepgeek made it pretty clear that Basayen is willing to lie, and
Patrick has established that his character is an idiot. Aurora is neither of things. She's an honorable mare who takes truth and honor seriously. This whole thing is a
To Be Lawful or to be Good trap waiting to happen, and Aurora is unwilling to step into the trap.
This could go bad in
so many ways.
What happens if the ring orders us to go slaughter an innocent village to make room for settlers?
"Oh," you reply,
"they probably wouldn't do that." Ok, that's nice. We can speculate all we want about what the ring probably will or probably won't command, but what the ring commands is not something Aurora is able to determine. What she can determine is whether she's going to promise to put herself in that kind of situation. What if they order us to spy on Glistens? That's entirely plausible and from their point of view it would be a perfectly reasonable thing for them to want to do, but it would put Aurora in a very difficult position.
What if the ring gives orders based on incorrect, incomplete or dated information? For example...what if they order us to kill a monster that's been harassing villagers, and when we get there it turns out that the villagers have been stealing its eggs and the creature is simply trying to get them back? If we're to "obey orders" we would simply kill it. That might not be the right thing to do. But it would be what we'd promised to do. What if they order us to hunt down and execute someone who'd, for example...stolen secret documents from the ring? But once we locate them, it turns out that the documents they'd stolen were evidence that certain member of the ring were conspiring with enemies of Equestria. The obvious thing to do would be to return and confront the ring with both that individual and the documents in tow. And, suppose we did that and they responded by accusing us of breaking our oath and conspiring with the very criminal they'd ordered us to execute? They'd be right.
What about the ring itself?
Even they don't trust each other, and it's been established that the Trade Master has a history of engaging in secretive schemes. That's the whole reason why Sam is even here. No surprise that the Judge doesn't trust her, after all,
his predecessor was murdered. Let's keep that in mind before we assume that the ring is fundamentally good and honorable and that everything they tell us to do is the right thing to do. Even they don't trust each other and keep secrets from one another. And yet we, total strangers who have just met them, are being asked to swear loyalty and obedience?
That is not an oath that Aurora can make in good faith. There are any number of ways this could end badly. The above are just a few examples. Aurora is an honorable mare. She's unwilling to take an oath that could so easily and in so many ways result in her needing to choose between dishonoring herself by fulfilling that oath and doing something terrible, or dishonoring herself by failing to fulfill the oath.
"Whoever claims to be noble must conduct himself nobly." -- OED
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Topic: [OOC] The Birth of Equestria (Everything's green)[6/6] (Read 13940 times)