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Old 01-16-2021, 04:52 PM
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StainlessSteelCynic StainlessSteelCynic is offline
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There's a few of us here in Lurken's game and the above is essentially what happened to us. We had prisoners, we knew their comrades would likely be coming to support them soon but we desperately needed the fuel they were hauling.
The PCs were debating how to handle the prisoners when one of the NPCs who was attending to the wounded, made the decision to apply what was essentially a mercy killing to the most wounded prisoners

But he didn't stop there, he started killing slightly wounded prisoners.
Here's the kicker though... he really was just following orders.
The commander of the German group we encountered has very limited resources and is trying to get his people home. They have no facilities or resources for handling prisoners but more than that, the commander has a hatred towards the enemy (which if I remember correctly is due to his own family being killed in the war)

So their reasons for killing prisoners are quite practical -
1. they don't have the resources to look after them,
2. even if they did, they have captured too many over time, that the prisoners would outnumber their captors,
3. survival, the unit is too small to deal with some of the Soviet units in the AO and have been trying to avoid too much attention, if they release the prisoners and word gets back to the Soviets, well, you can guess what happens

All of which makes perfect sense but it's still a morally reprehensible act to murder the prisoners. Particularly as the German commander is motivated to do so by more than just practical needs.
The PC group had initially thought of joining up with this German unit but after witnessing the "German first aid", we decided to part ways as soon as it was practical - none of us wants to be associated with a unit that murders prisoners.
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