Destichado wrote:First the Elves send a military squad to ambush him and Meji from behind invisibility spells using crippling mental attacks, for no other (apparent) reason than the fact that they exist.
Actually, Ian knew that the reason a full elven squad appeared was because he stole a book. Given that he was hoping to find some clue in the book towards gaining untold power, the elves had pretty good reason to not want him to have that book.
Then when he rescues her, how do the elves defend their own city? By hiding in the shadows -again- and fucking with their heads -again.
His method of rescuing her was to punch a hole in the mountain where they lived and then murder the guards, even though no harm was ever done to Meji. Had the elves preferred to kill rather than disable, Meji and Ian would be dead. They're alive simply because the enemy they're fighting has not tried to kill them, despite the fact that Ian is answering with lethal force.
Every elf he has met looks like a racist, self important, cowardly, untrustworthy fuck who will attack him on sight for no better reason than his birth. They deserve to die. Killing them does a service to the world. And you know what? He's not half wrong.
No comment on how good for the world to kill every elf would be. The elves don't seem to be having much influence at this time, so I don't think their continued existance would be better or worse than the alternative. However, every elf he's personally met has only been after him because he stole stuff that wasn't his. The book first, and their goddess later.
As I mentioned, as the number of dead elves increases, so does the likelyhood that they'll retaliate with lethal spells instead of disabling magic. This places Meji in danger, as he's shown to be unable to protect her from everything that's flinged at her. It may also give the remaining elves more of a reason to go out
en masse and exterminate whatever half-elves might be left. If they offered a good enough bounty for good info, it wouldn't be long before Santuariel's neighbours ratted them out.
Escalation is almost never a good idea. It is always best to keep your opponent's response as mild as possible. Ian could just as easily disable the elves without killing them, but he chooses not to and endangers those he cares about by doing so. Beyond any moral considerations, this is a bad idea.
On a more general scale, Ian introduced himself as something of a noble type. He didn't kill the priest for instance, and he didn't kill the library guards. He mostly played nice, and even just a few strips ago he chastised himself for having enjoyed killing the guards. He's now relishing the act, which marks a disintegration of his moral character. He lost his main motivation when his mother killed his sister. Without a moral structure, he becomes an aimless super-powerful entity, and those are always dangerous as people as Anita can get their hands on them and use them easily.
Lastly, Praenubilis doesn't only have elves that killed errants. A not insignificant part fought on the side of the errants as well. They're all living together now. Not all of those would be like Sarine, looking to leave as soon as possible. So Ian could, in his 'righteous' indiscriminate killing, be ending elves that were sympathetic to the half-elven cause, and that might have done more for their continued existance than he ever will.
Plus there's the basic moral belief, shared by most people, that one should avoid killing if possible. Ian has other options. He could simply shield himsef from anything they could throw at him and walk amidst them until they figured out that attacking him is pointless, for one.
Essentialy, I can't think of any valid reasoning that would make Ian's actions better than alternative solutions.