The Bovine Bulwark

Question: At what point does the good of the people outweigh the good of Enech? For example, if the Morrigan has the geas Beast (Cattle) is she able to eat beef? Does she oppose people killing and eating just enough cattle to feed themselves? Does she turn eco-terrorist and break into every slaughter house on earth? In short, at what point is inaction acceptable by the standards of Enech?

Enech is fabulously simple: it does exactly what it says it does. This is often incredibly inconvenient, but that's Irish myth for you. Getting screwed over by your geasa is practically a rite of passage over there.

The Morrigan probably can eat beef, but only if it's presented to her long after it was killed - at that point, it's not an animal that can be hurt anymore, so there's no conflict that would cause her to "protect" it, just like she's not obligated to protect any already-dead cow carcasses she happens to see when she passes by. I have to imagine it would be weird to eat beef, though, all things considered, but then again the Morrigan is pretty stone-cold badass about these things, so she might not be too put off by the weird quasi-cannibalism of it. Might as well put that Faunaphagia to good use.

Whether or not the Morrigan herself opposes people killing cattle purely to subsist on them, her geas opposes it absolutely; she can't let a farmer slaughter a cow in front of her no matter how hungry he is, because her geas cares more about the cow than it does about the farmer, no matter what she personally cares about. She is the champion of cows everywhere. She is the patron saint of the Chick-fil-A cows. She is going to save that cow regardless of who wants to eat it or why, because if she doesn't her geas is going to break into a million pieces.

Of course, she can choose to let the farmer eat his cow, thus saving his starving children, but doing so will break her geas because she's traded the cow's well-being for the human's. Enech is a bitch that way. It doesn't bind her to always defend cows except when it's inconvenient or morally questionable; it binds her to always defend cows, period. This is why people get screwed over by their geasa in Irish myth, because it's very easy to maneuver them into no-win situations that way. (Though, to be honest, I doubt the Morrigan is going to lose any sleep over depriving a farmer of his cow - she's not exactly the most lovingly empathetic goddess ever to walk the earth.)

However, she does get a little bit of a pass: she doesn't have to make it her crusade to go around blowing up slaughterhouses and cattle farms if she doesn't want to, because they're not right in her face confronting her. If she happens to pass by a cow in distress, she'll have to ride to the rescue, but if cows are getting slaughtered in China while she's at home in the Emerald Isles, she's unaware of the incident and her Enech isn't going to punish her for not immediately eradicating cattle-suffering across the globe. The purview's written a little bit confusingly, but if we go with what happens in Irish myth as well as what makes sense in play, the Morrigan is only going to need to deal with saving cows that she actually sees in danger - she can't let anything happen to them when it comes up, but she doesn't have to seek out possible cattle-murderers pre-emptively. (Of course, this will not help anyone that she happens across while she's doing something else - heaven help the poor bastards that run a slaughterhouse when the Morrigan is passing through on some other errand.)

Despite being awesomely badass in its rewards, Enech can be very punishing, so I wouldn't make it even harder for your players to handle by making it apply to all things, all the time, everywhere, especially since before they have access to things like high-level Guardian or Ultimate Perception, they have no chance in hell of hoping to handle such a global application. Just as Bres' Guest geas won't explode if he doesn't find every supermarket giving out free samples in the world and partake, so the Morrigan won't lose her Enech for not reinventing herself as the Butcher of Butchers. But when it comes to wanting to break a geas just because you feel bad keeping it... unfortunately, that's not how it works. Enech represents a sacred oath to perform a sacred duty; if you break it, even with the best intentions or in order to help someone else, you're still in breach of that sacred trust and will have to work your way back up.