The Burning Village
Witness ethics in wartime
What started with the march just got more complicated. Now you need to recognize sunk cost fallacy in high-stakes decisions and argue against momentum — and the situation is shifting faster than your first approach can handle.
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Part of this story
The March
→The army is on the road. The orders are given. You are marching with 400,000 soldiers toward the Kalinga border, watching decisions get made that cannot be unmade. Ethics under pressure means something different when the pressure is this real.
Part of the quest
Ashoka: The War Within
→261 BCE. The Mauryan Empire is at its peak. You are a young advisor to the most powerful emperor in the ancient world, and he has just made a decision that will cost 100,000 lives. Navigate the Kalinga War, witness a king's transformation, and help shape the edicts that will be carved in stone for 2,300 years.
What you'll learn from The Burning Village
This scenario focuses on Witness ethics in wartime — a critical skill inside the broader history domain. You'll face a decision where the instinctive response is often the wrong one. After you make your choice, you'll see exactly what happened in the other person's head and why it mattered. The scenario is part of The March, a full interactive story inside the Ashoka: The War Within quest.
Skills you'll build in Ashoka: The War Within
More scenarios in this quest
The army is marching. 400,000 soldiers, an empire's full weight bearing down on Kalinga. The orders can't be un-given and the ethics you believed in yesterday feel different when the machine is already moving.
This is the moment you've been building toward. Advising someone powerful who doesn't want to hear what you have to say — except now the stakes are real and there's no rehearsal. What you do next matters.
You've faced the hardest part. Now turn what you've learned into something sustainable — a way to recognize sunk cost fallacy in high-stakes decisions and argue against momentum not just today, but every time this situation returns.
Ready to practice Witness ethics in wartime?
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