Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous's Minagho's Ending

Minagho once trapped a man within a blessed fountain of healing waters, and lit a fire under the fountain.  The man boiled alive in holy water that continued to heal him as fast as it scalded him, kept in undying agony for days on end.  She kept the man’s subordinates prisoner and starving, and occasionally she would take a slice of his cooked flesh off of him, and tempt her ravenous prisoners with it.

Owlcat Games, it is not my place to tell you how to go about your business, but I think it might be a real good idea to do a round of psych evaluations with your writing staff.  There is at least 1 guy on your payroll who is not fun to talk to at parties.

Minagho the demon has also taken part in an aggressive war against all of mortalkind, ruthlessly manipulated the emotions of a man into betraying his cause which led to hundreds or perhaps even thousands of deaths, engaged in murderous games of intrigue against her fellow demonkind, and spoken unkind words to others with the clear intent of hurting their feelings.  None of which even come close to the vicious cruelty of the boiling holy water thing, of course, but it’s definitely worth establishing that that was not a lone act of evil in her long and industrious career.  Hell, we don’t even necessarily know for sure that that was the worst thing she’s ever done, although I frankly can’t imagine what could possibly top it.  And if you can, I don’t want to talk to you at parties.

Why am I coming at you with a villain’s laundry list that includes possibly the most sick and heinous act ever committed in an RPG, besides maybe that shit Kevin Winnicot pulled in Xenosaga 3?  Because I want to make sure we all know Minagho’s deal, and I’m not gonna be accused of not giving you the whole story so that my position sounds better.  Even if she’s actually still only mid-range at best on the evil tier list when it comes to the baddies of Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, Minagho’s certainly got the greatest individual act of evil locked down, and I’m not about to sugarcoat that fact.  While I generally am one to hold my ground on the opinions I post here, Minagho ain’t a hill I’m gonna die on.  I wholeheartedly accept and respect anyone who wants to hold this promising candidate for leadership at Ubisoft accountable for her cruelties with her life.

But I, shockingly, actually believe that giving Minagho a happy ending is the best course of action.

This sounds absolutely ludicrous, I know.  I’ve ranted and raved against forgiving other villains in the past who aren’t even on the same scale of malice as Minagho, even when they actually do far more damage than she manages.  But there’s 4 major considerations in this matter which, when all put together, convince me that the best course of action is for Minagho’s fate to be as good as possible.

Although before we get into them, it’d probably be best to clarify what Minagho’s happy ending even looks like.  Basically, Minagho usually has 2 potential fates: she either dies at the hands of the protagonist during their final confrontation, or the Commander spares her, and later on Minagho returns to help fight on the Commander’s side, and dies during the battle.

But, if you’re on the Azata Mythic path, which you totally should be because it's the best one, you actually can enable a much more favorable ending for her.  Upon meeting the demon Chivarro, it’s discovered that she and Minagho are associates, and though their association began as hatefully murderous rivals, it gradually has progressed naturally into something that Chivarro seems utterly unable to understand or even identify.  But the audience can pretty easily recognize that Minagho and Chivarro have fallen, or at the very least are in the process of falling, in love. Even The Hand of the Inheritor can see it as such, and while he’s a pretty chill guy all things considered, angels aren’t usually the most open-minded and optimistic folks when it comes to demonkind, so that means something.  Well, if you’re playing as an Azata and you’ve spared Minagho, there’s a path-exclusive option to tell Chivarro that Minagho’s out there alive but alone, and to urge Chivarro to go to her.  Chivarro does just this, uprooting her life on the spot and leaving her highly successful business behind forever for the sake of being there for Minagho (a telling indication in itself of how genuine their emotional bond is).  After this, Minagho will not show up later on to fight and die, and instead her ending slide will indicate that she and Chivarro eventually reunited and stayed together forever.

It’s very heartwarming!  As long as you try to forget the fact that the last time Minagho warmed a heart, it took on a very different form.

Anyway, now that we know what shape Minagho’s happy ending takes and how, let’s establish why I think she should have it.  NOT why I think she deserves it, mind you.  Because she doesn’t.  But why she should have it all the same.


Point 1: The factors of Nature and Nurture.  Now let’s get 1 thing very, very clear: a bad upbringing does not absolve a person of guilt and responsibility for their crimes.  And let’s get 1 thing more just as clear: having impulses to do wrong does not absolve a person of guilt and responsibility for submitting to those impulses.  As a general rule, even if one’s formative years taught one to act only in self interest and told one that harming others was an acceptable or necessary part of living, the fact of the matter is that, as an adult, a human being almost inevitably has enough exposure to the basic workings of lawful society, not to mention cultural philosophy and foresight through art, media, and interactions both personal and witnessed, to be able to reason one’s one’s way to knowing right from wrong to at least a minimal degree.  Similarly, by the time one is an adult, it’s only reasonable for the world to expect one to be able to separate which of their impulses are acceptable from which ones aren’t, and exercise appropriate self-restraint based on that discretion.  Mind you, I absolutely believe that matters of justice and sentencing should take factors like bad childhoods and psychological conditions impeding functional moral judgment into consideration when determining both sentencing and avenues for rehabilitation!  But those factors are, generally, NOT free passes.

But that’s how it is for human beings, in the real world.  In the case of Pathfinder’s demons...it’s a little trickier.  The demons in the Abyss exist within a society built upon nothing BUT evil and cruelty and self-interest.  There’s no external evidence for them to witness and learn from which could tell them that acts of evil are unacceptable.  Rather, every level and function of their world reinforces the idea that ruthlessness, manipulation, and pure power are the only ways to succeed--and cruelty in all of these qualities is the only way to enjoy having that success.  The Abyss is the plane of Chaotic Evil; there is no ebb and flow of good and bad within it the way there is with a “normal” world like Golarion (or our own), no havens or foreign lands to find or hear of where things are different and better that could inspire a demon to pursue and explore such an idea.  The majority of demons will only ever encounter beings of other planes as invaders, or in the capacity of using them as slaves or partners in wrongdoing.  While demon lords have enough power and position that they can observe the rest of the multiverse long and intently enough to learn better, most demons below that top rung simply do not have the option of prolonged exposure to other societies and other ways of thinking.

How can one ethically hold the average demon accountable for her or his crimes on the basis of laws and morality that she or he simply doesn’t even have the opportunity to learn?*

Similarly, demons are the very representations of the concept of Chaotic Evil.  Though it is possible for them to have the spark of something more within them, and though it is possible even for them to restrain themselves, the fact is that the overwhelming majority of their nature yearns to do evil at every opportunity, and it is very, very difficult for them to resist that urge.  Even when they actually want to!  Arueshalae, a succubus who has managed to refashion herself into an honestly very good person, struggles for most of the game to restrain herself from hurting those around her.  Her first instinct is still always to do harm, and it’s through conscious effort that this sweetheart does anything else.  Planescape: Torment’s succubus Fall-from-Grace, meanwhile, suffers constant torment from her internal war against her nature as she forces herself to be chaste and Lawful Neutral, going so far as to create a quasi-religious order dedicated to redirecting one’s passions from the physical to the intellectual, as a way of further destroying, denying, and agonizing over what every fiber of her being wants her to be.  While we may all have both good and evil within us in varying quantities, it’s safe to say that few humans, if any, are as starkly incongruent in their moral instincts as a demon is.

How can one ethically hold the average demon accountable for acting on her or his evil instincts when she or he effectively has no other impulses to choose from?

This doesn’t mean that Minagho or other demons should just be forgiven out of hand and allowed to do whatever the hell they want, nor that they deserve kindness or reward.  But at the same time, both rationally and ethically speaking, there is only so far that we can hold a grudge against them for their evil before our desire to see them punished is for no higher purpose than our own personal gratification.  The demons still are enemies and need to be fought and stopped, usually through lethal means--even Ember will freely admit to this, and she’s basically Pathfinder Jesus--but it’s significant to understand that for this act to be righteous and not just gratuitous, it must be to prevent the demons from committing more evil, not as retribution for the evil that they’ve already wrought.  Minagho sure as hell may not deserve joy, but if we look at the circumstances of her existence objectively, it’s only fair to concede that, once convinced not to continue attacking humanity, she also does not necessarily deserve punishment.


Before we move on to Point 2, we should probably clarify that Minagho’s happy ending is not just a case of her finding a pleasant fate for herself (and Chivarro) postgame.  It’s also representative of a potential for Minagho to ascend higher than the limitations of her demonic nature.  Because this is a new beginning for her (and Chivarro) that is defined by Love, an emotion that is supposed to be impossible for demons to experience and one which is most frequently and significantly tied to the Good side of the moral spectrum, it is, I think, only reasonable to see this moment as the first step on a path to redemption and ascension.  Whether she (and/or Chivarro) will be capable of continuing the journey past that first step is unknown, but that first step is the most monumentally difficult to make for a demon, the true breaking through of the barriers of her/his own limitations, so it’s damned promising.  Arueshalae herself speaks during the game’s course about the fact that Good is a far more powerful, tempting force than people credit it to those who have never known it before--it might even be, in Pathfinder’s judgment, nearly inevitable that the journey out of Evil will be completed once it’s begun.

Also, as a side note, if Point 1 hasn’t convinced you that Minagho shouldn’t be fully and completely punished for her egregious crimes, I do want to just add, now that we’ve established that her happy ending is also potentially the first step toward ascension, this thought: Arueshalae never suffered greater pain for the evils she had committed than she did when she was far enough along her journey to Good to feel remorse.  No typical demon will regret the evil they’ve done, not even at the moment you plunge a spear through their heart in retribution.  But the nightmares of what she’s done will always be Arueshalae’s burden to bear, because she’s become good enough to understand her wrongs.  If you truly can’t be convinced otherwise that Minagho (or any other demon) must be harmed for what she’s done, then at least consider that redeeming her, opening her mental state to the concept of regret and empathy, might very well be the only way of truly punishing a demon at all.

Anyway, on to the next major point.


Point 2: The factor of Our Own Hypocrisy.  For most players on the Azata route--really, for most players as a whole, I should wager--in Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, to deny Minagho the chance at ascension that her eventual life with Chivarro represents is to be a hypocrite to our own actions.  After all, provided we’re pursuing her story to its intended, Good ending, we not only extend that very same courtesy to Arueshalae, but actually assist her along the way!  Arueshalae’s involved character subplot is a story of her struggling to overcome her instinct to be evil with her desire to be good, to complete the journey to ascension that the goddess Desna put her on and to find a dream for herself.  If we’re willing to give Arueshalae a chance of happiness and a future of personal fulfillment, how can we then turn around and arbitrarily say that Minagho doesn’t deserve the chance to go on a journey of betterment of her own?  Yes, Arueshalae is a darling sweetheart cinnamon roll who must be protected at all costs while Minagho is, uh, a little less sympathetic, but we’re only seeing Arueshalae halfway through her journey of ascension.  While our scope of knowledge of the old Arueshalae is limited, she was, by all accounts, a monstrously wicked being responsible for all manner of corruption and torment.  I don’t know if Arueshalae’s got any evil act in her history quite the equal of Minagho penning a new recipe for soup, but when you go walking around the Abyss in the game, Arueshalae’s a well-known figure on a first-name basis with just about everyone of any note you meet.  You don’t exactly get to be the Norm Peterson of Hell’s meaner big brother through kindness and generosity.

Not to mention that finishing Ember’s personal quest involves more of the same.  If you’re willing to support Ember’s beliefs and help her in her goal for a better universe, her simple but charismatic entreaties to her enemies winds up convincing a generous handful of demons to switch sides and give the ways of love and kindness a chance.  Much like Desna did for Aruehsalae, Ember has gifted these random demons the chance to become better and find a better existence, kickstarting them on their own paths to ascension.  While it’s doubtful that these rank-and-files have had the opportunity to give someone the worst kind of bath like Minagho did, they’re still beings defined by the evils they’ve done being given an opportunity they haven’t earned to become better.

If you can believe in Arueshalae’s right to ascend, if you can support Ember’s simple, indiscriminate kindness and belief in good...hell, if you can even just admire Nocticula someday becoming the Redeemer Queen through sheer determination to ascend from demon lord to outright goddess...then surely it’s not reasonable to shut Minagho out of a similar opportunity.


Point 3: The factor of Thematic Consistency.  Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous is a game with a constant, powerful theme of transcendence, of the capacity of people to be more than the sum of their components and rise above what is supposed to be possible for them.  From Arueshalae working hard to shed her evil nature, to Ember convincing evil beings to do good through nothing more than caring about them, to Areelu’s reason for creating the Worldwound, to Regill the Lawful-fanatic employing guile and sacrificing his own position for the greater good, to Nenio becoming something out of nothing, to Anevia having been able to become what she was meant to be regardless of what she was born as, to Galfrey’s capacity to relinquish her duty for the sake of her love...and I could keep going with so many more examples...PWotR is absolutely filled with representations of this theme, both overt and subtle, as it underscores and defines the game’s greater plot and purpose, the majority of its substantial characters, and the very concept of its Mythic paths.  For the simple sake of symmetrical elegance, the fact that Minagho has the opportunity to perhaps one day follow in the footsteps of Arueshalae, Fall-From-Grace, and Nocticula, and ascend to be more than she was born to be, means that it’s our duty as witness and participant to this overarching symphony of ascension to permit her to pursue that path.

Also, we should consider what’s consistent to the path of the Azata, here.  After all, for all the inflated importance and time this rant is giving it, this option to give Minagho a future with her lover IS exclusively an act of a protagonist who has chosen to be an Azata.  And I would definitely say that it’s in character for an Azata to cut Minagho a break.  As an entity of Chaotic Good, an Azata really doesn’t get hung up on orderly systems like karma and justice--what matters to an Azata protagonist is what’s good and right in the here and now and in the future, and the freedom necessary to pursue that good.  The wrongs of the past matter nothing before what rights can be wrought now and in times to come for an Azata.  The act of allowing a demon the chance to live in love, the freedom to defy the bonds of her nature in order to explore something good and wholesome?  That’s definitely right up an Azata’s alley.  And it’s especially appealing to a being of Chaotic Good that betting on a demon’s ability to transcend her Evil nature is to act against the cosmic order and hierarchy that dictates what demons are meant to be.  So in terms of the game as a whole, and the path in which this option presents itself, giving Minagho her best ending thematically lines up.


Point 4: The factor of the Miracle.  To decide not to nurture Minagho’s ability to love Chivarro, and vice-versa, feels like a waste of something significant.  I mean, these are 2 demons who have on their own manifested the capacity to love each other, and unconsciously taken their first steps toward ascension.  It took the intervention of a goddess to bring Arueshalae to the point that she could recognize, appreciate, and desire any non-evil act or emotion.  Ember’s demons have only been able to dip their toes into a greater world of Good because they were lucky enough to have the Overcooked Elf Girl equivalent of Jesus sermonize in their direction.  But Chivarro and Minagho have somehow, miraculously, begun to feel love for one another entirely on their own, without any guidance from benevolent divine or charismatic external forces.  Even the Hand of the Inheritor recognizes and is slightly awed by the revelation that the redeeming light of love could independently bloom within demons in the middle of the Abyss--and while Pathfinder angels are generally less stringent and self-righteous than the ones over in Shin Megami Tensei, the shocked approval of an archangel for anything a demon does is an endorsement I’m loathe to disregard.

And beyond the fact that you shouldn’t just go sticking your nose up at miracles, allowing Minagho and Chivarro to embrace and advance their love is important for the precedent it sets.  The belief that demons can’t feel love is such a universally accepted one that Chivarro herself still clings to it in denial even as she struggles to explain how her feelings for and connection with Minagho could be anything but.  Giving Minagho her happy ending has implications beyond just her and Chivarro’s happiness and redemption--it allows them to be an example to the rest of their kind that such aberrations from the norm the universe expects of demons are possible.  The more examples like Arueshalae, Nocticula, the demons Ember converts, and Minagho and Chivarro, the more chances there are that other demons who learn of them can be inspired to follow their paths.


Jesus Christ I just realized I’ve spent 6 pages talking about whether or not a second-tier villain should be redeemed by an action that’s only available to players on 1 of 10 different story paths.**  I thought this was gonna be a quick rant.  Look, those are my points of argument, take them and do what the hell you will with Minagho if you even have the option to begin with.  In my estimation, there is little to be gained by insisting that Minagho pay for her crimes, the concept of justice isn’t really satisfied by punishing a demon for being the only thing she ever could have been to that point, and denying her the potential to someday ascend is inconsistent with the other actions most typically taken by players not to mention against the theme of the game and the path in question.  Instead, letting her have her happy ending may actually wind up adding some good to the world--it’s probably the only way to derive any kind of good at all from her having existed, really.  There you go.  This rant and I both have clearly gone off the rails and it is way past time to end this thing.

I have GOT to get this nerdy wordiness thing under control.











* Now, to be fair, Minagho’s role in the fall of Drezen means that she had to have at least a little non-combat interaction with the alien, non-Evil culture of Golarion over the course of her seduction of Staunton Vhane.  So she’s not quite as ignorant of alternatives to the Abyss’s ways as, say, a minotaur fresh out of the labyrinth.  Still, she probably wasn’t traipsing down main street hand-in-hand with Staunton every day for a year, delightedly taking in the sights and sounds of these quaint human folk as she set to manipulating his heart for her own purposes, so it’s still fairly safe to overall judge Minagho by the standards of moral ignorance that apply to most demons.


** Although admittedly Azata is totally the best Mythic path in the game and you absolutely SHOULD be playing it.  I mean there’s some great and fun content for several of the other paths, and the dedication that Owlcat Games had to making this a very different game if you’re a piece of shit Lich or Swarm is impressive, but it’s clear which route the writers had the most fun and devotion to.  The rest of them are fine and fun options for subsequent playthroughs, but if you’re only gonna play Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous once, it should be as an Azata.  If for no other reason than the fact that Aivu is a treasure.