A moral dilemma(slight MB2 spoilers)

[Comfortable Madness]

This might be posted in the wrong forum but I got the idea from reading MB2 so I'm posting it here.....

O.K. So, I was reading the scene where Sazed gets nabbed by Jastes' koloss and it got me thinking about this situation. I was thinking that what if(although this still may happen, I am still reading MB2) those koloss just lost it and attacked Straff's and Cett's armies. More to the point, I was thinking about what Elend would do if this happened. The koloss are bloodthirsty grotesque brutes that would kill with reckless abandon, I think, and looking out over the walls and seeing this slaughter I thought that Elend might have a problem with that. True the koloss would be taking out two armies threating his kingdom and probably weakening themselves enough in the process to be beaten by Elends own forces. Although, him being who he is, he might send in his own troops to aide the human troops against the koloss. However, as I continued to read on he simply dismissed the thought, or so it seemed, and Breeze commented on how much of a good thing that would be....

So, lets replace the koloss with something far more evil, trollocs. Lets say your a king in Elends exact posistion but looking over the besieging forces one day one-hundred thousand trollocs engage the human forces and begin to lay waste to their ranks. Now tactically this is a good thing the forces are at even strength with maybe a slight edge to the trollocs due to sheer brutallity and intimidation. Thus, at the end of this battle you have the strongest army left standing and will be able to secure your kingdom for another day. On the other hand, maybe Straff and Cett are horrible men and get what they deserve but the soldiers are just soldiers doing what their king tells them. Which is by no means atrocious, I mean thats what kingdoms do they expand by use of force. So, should you sacrifice your own forces to aid those whom a moment ago were besieging your city or would you sit back and wait???

I've been asking myself what I would do in that situation and would be interested in hearing what others would do......

[VegasDev]

Yes, let's go out and save the invading forces from the Koloss, because I am sure once that battle is finished, they will just leave. They wouldn't even think of coming to attack us now that our troops have been weakend as well and put the innocent citizens we freed back under slavery.

[charity]

an enemy army is an enemy army... an enemy soldier is an enemy soldier... you can't differentiate between the two in war.

And besides I'd be far more worried about the koloss/ trollocs turning their blood thirst in my direction when they were done with Cett and Straff. They made mince meat out of the walls if you don't remember.

[Skar]

There is something to be said for making common cause with fellow humans against ravening monsters.  Since this hypothetical commander would have responsibility for the humans in the city, though, he'd have to be awfully sure that the humans he was saving were truly making common cause with him in return.  If he can't be sure that they are, it would simply be a choosing between leaving/betraying the humans outside the wall or leaving/betraying the humans inside the walls.