Board Thread:Lore Discussion/@comment-24.139.116.236-20131222233804/@comment-24590102-20140811061014

A facepalm! Is that the sound of one hand clapping that I can hear? :^)

On a serious note, please do no forget that lies are the first and most important weapons of war. You can't always have more men, better technology, or a superior position and telling effective lies via a variety of, often, non-verbal methods (e.g. the walking forest scene in Macbeth) is how the scoreboard is evened up (and yes, telling lies is always an act of war). Never forget that the person who lies to you today is ready to kill you tomorrow because he or she doesn't consider you an equal and, thereby, does not place any value on your life as your life. After all, the goal of deception is to rob another person of the ability to make an informed choice. This has a lot to do with why propaganda (known as "Jingo" back in the late Nineteenth Century) is the rule rather than the exception in war; particularly civil war. One side makes up lies about the other to suppress any empathy or sympathy their own soldiers may feel for the enemy. This is usually done for the express purpose of making the soldiers less likely to refuse orders involving activities which may be considered war crimes. Frank Herbert showcases, in his Dune trilogy, a prime example of the same type of propaganda which has made an appearance in so many wars that it has become a cliche. Anyone for a little game of catch the baby on a bayonet?

So, returning to the subject of the OP, in the absence of a mass grave and independent corroboration by civilian witnesses who are no longer in a position to be threatened by parties to the conflict (whether directly or indirectly) then the "Karthwasten Massacre" can be safely assumed to be a bald-faced lie on the part of an officer who is planning to order his men to commit some kind of war crime or atrocity. The lack of lore concerning this alleged incident confirms a lack of civilian corroboration which strengthens the case that it is, indeed, propaganda.