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Best subject line I could think up, sadly.
Now this is a long lead up before the meat of this thread, so please, bear with..
I've been somewhat pressured by players in my campaign to make this post on here since they thought it might result in some entertaining discussion to read (especially as they themselves have been discussing it).
There is a minor deity in my campaign setting the players have been responsible for releasing.
Said deity was being held by the aboleths in what was essentially a tessseract labyrinth, imprisoned at the moment of her creation (which predates the time of the heroes by quite some time, so its not like a recent event). Said aboleth, prior to the whole 'tentacle vs sword, die foul abomination' thing that followed did inform the players that the deity being contained was the living personification of a memetic weapon created by his enemies, and used the title of 'The Darknes at the End of Time,' to describe the trapped goddess.
The party, quite rationally, decided that before releasing the 'darkness at the end of time' from her rapidly deteriorating prison they'd consult the best means available for them, which at the time was limited to some phylacteries of faithfulnes on the paladin and the cleric, both dedicated to what are essentially lawful good deities.
The phylacteries came up with an indication that releasing the imprisoned entity did not construe a violation of their faiths and the vote in the party passed to release it. Especially as the deity had been aiding the heroes through the adventure (they were there for reasons independant of it).
The deity throughout the adventure had been demonstrating a somewhat, lets say..fun-loving personality. Assisting them, teasing them with information and at one point resolving the problem they were having with underwater fighting by something involving chewing up a shark and mouthfeeding it to some members of the party to grant temporary freedom of movement (which when questioned, confessed she found it funny to do so even though she could have just given the 'boon.')
Upon release she allowed the heroes to question her and they determined her origins. An ancient race on the campaign setting had designed a weapon, a memetic weapon to use against the illithids (mind flayers, don't sue WoTC). Said weapon functioned by removing mental blockages and forcing the illithids to experience the weight of every consciousness they had consumed over their lifespan, essentially crushing their minds under the titanic weight of countless hostile minds. The weapon, like a disease was transferred through communication, be it mental, linguistic, written, or even something as simple as a wave of greeting or a grunt of acknowledgement.
Admist the fear of the dying illithid species, the memetic weapon birthed a deity tied to it. THe one the heroes released. She's known as the Darkness at the End of time, as she's the Illithid end-time, their darkness a mystery that promises only agonizing death in madness shame and pain, but they're unaware of the specifics (as to know the specifics would entail infection and therefore death).
The goddess associated with this rather gleefully told the party of the millions of illithids in their death throes, apparently enjoying their fear, intense pain and last moments of terrifying impotence before their empire fell asunder. She also wants to complete her mission, and spread to the rest of them before she supposedly will 'gleefully become a dead god floating in the astral."
Now, the question the party has been debating. Just what alignment is she?
Some people have argued that the memetic weapon and her obvious intentions lean towards complete genocide of a race.
The counter arguments have been that the illithids (who require sentient brains to subsist on) could be safe if they didn't consume sentient life in the first place and therefore their deaths are beneficial to the universe.
The party can't determine, proposing such alignments as Neutral, Chaotic Good, Chaotic Evil, Lawful Evil, Lawful Neutral and basically everything except Neutral Good and Lawful Good.
Salient facts include:
1.) Phylacteries of faithfulness did not indicate a problem in the act of releasing her from her confinement by the aboleth.
2.) Detect evil on the goddess from the paladin revealed nothing, but a god might be able to hide her alignment.
3.) Illithids in my setting required (past tense since every one of them on my world is stone dead) the consumption of sentient living minds/brains to live.
4.) She enjoys her work with kitten-like glee.
5.) Her creation was not the intention of the initial creators of the memetic weapon, their alignment for making the memetic disease is kind of murky too though but it apparently involved the patronage of a LN(E) deity.
So now, hopefully not inspiring a flamewar, I offer this to you guys for discussion. I can offer additional data or clarification, but like I told my players, I don't intend on revealing her alignment at this time.
I look forward to seeing opinions on the subject though.
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As the player from this campaign pushing for the actual post, I sternly believe that any god whose portfolio includes "racial genocide", regardless of the absolute evil of the race, is pretty damn evil.
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Chaotic evil. Revels in the destruction of life, even their own, for the sake of the destruction of life.
Then again, the things it was targeting are Evil as hell.
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Chaotic evil. Revels in the destruction of life, even their own, for the sake of the destruction of life.
The counter argument to this I heard from my players was that she might be lawful because "she just enjoys doing her job/fulfilling her programming." Essentially I think they tried to counter the point by attributing she was like a computer AI, or a lion on the serengheti hunting antelope and enjoying it.
I think someone might have even commented about a CG ranger having favored enemies at some point, but I'm not sure.
I do find it amusing as a DM that the fact she enjoys her job seems to make a big difference.
Would people view her actions and intentions differently on the moral axis (E-N-G) of the alignment scale if she pursued them with ashen-faced determination (this must be done!) or if she did them naively (yay, more sleeping illithids!) or would that just change where folks would peg her ethically (L-N-C)?
Then again, the things it was targeting are Evil as hell.
There are in fact probably good aligned illithid, somewhere, someplace in the multiverse. They can probably be counted on one hand though. The only really safe ways of dealing with the weapon itself is by 1.) Not eating people's brains (not really feasible for illithids as their very birth requires devouring at least one) or 2.) Somehow being able to come to terms with the sentiences of everything you've devoured (something the illithids in general lack the empathy or 'humanity' to do).
Again, I'm playing devil's advocate here because I find the thought processes behind it interesting.
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Good characters and creatures protect innocent life. Evil characters and creatures debase or destroy innocent life, whether for fun or profit.Good implies altruism, respect for life, and a concern for the dignity of sentient beings. Good characters make personal sacrifices to help others.
Evil implies hurting, oppressing, and killing others. Some evil creatures simply have no compassion for others and kill without qualms if doing so is convenient. Others actively pursue evil, killing for sport or out of duty to some evil deity or master.
Protects innocent life? Unknown. Probably not.
Debase or destroys innocent life? That goes into the "are illithid babies evil" sort of thing, but otherwise at the moment this is an unknown, I don't know who she destroys other than illithids who have already devoured minds, who probably could not be called innocent (although catching them unawares and killing them without mercy is kind of a gray area, in my opinion).Altruism? Not that I have seen. The only people we know she has helped is the party, and she did that likely for personal gain.
Respect for life? A deity designed around genocide probably doesn't have that. Also the shark chewing thing doesn't sound very respectful under the circumstances.
Concern for dignity of sentient beings? We have not seen that demonstrated. In fact, awakening a dead sentient mind to torment its destroyer might even be seen as cruel, even if the purpose is to punish the creature that did the killing.
Makes personal sacrifices to help others: Not demonstrated.
Hurting, killing, and oppressing others: Yes. Even if they are illithids.
I would like to take a moment to note: there is no rule anywhere, ever, that says killing evil beings is a good act. And evil beings kill other evil beings for evil reasons all the time (see also: Blood War, the).
Based on information provided, I would say probably evil with a chance of neutral, depending on nuances not seen.
Lawful characters tell the truth, keep their word, respect authority, honor tradition, and judge those who fall short of their duties. Chaotic characters follow their consciences, resent being told what to do, favor new ideas over tradition, and do what they promise if they feel like it.Law implies honor, trustworthiness, obedience to authority, and reliability. On the downside, lawfulness can include closed-mindedness, reactionary adherence to tradition, self-righteousness, and a lack of adaptability. Those who consciously promote lawfulness say that only lawful behavior creates a society in which people can depend on each other and make the right decisions in full confidence that others will act as they should.
Chaos implies freedom, adaptability, and flexibility. On the downside, chaos can include recklessness, resentment toward legitimate authority, arbitrary actions, and irresponsibility. Those who promote chaotic behavior say that only unfettered personal freedom allows people to express themselves fully and lets society benefit from the potential that its individuals have within them.
Someone who is neutral with respect to law and chaos has some respect for authority and feels neither a compulsion to obey nor a compulsion to rebel. She is generally honest, but can be tempted into lying or deceiving others.
Beyond her devotion to her portfolio, there are no examples of honor, trustworthiness, obedience to authority, and given her description as "kittenish," I'd say reliability may be in question. The OP provided no examples of adherence to tradition or self-righteousness.
She does seem adaptable, flexible, and likes to have the freedom to do as she sets out to do. Some of the OP's descriptions suggest "reckless" or "arbitrary actions" might be in question, but it's hard to say.
I'd say likely chaotic, with a chance of neutral.
Based only on the details or not provided, I think most likely she is Chaotic evil, but could also be Chaotic Neutral, Neutral Evil, or Neutral. The fact that she is built around genocide leans me in particular toward evil.
NOW, that said, if she were amenable to changing her nature--perhaps she seeks out to punish telepathic enslavers but does not seek to utterly destroy their race, but rather to change or reform them, then that would also be an interesting twist and story. Alignment shift of a god... doesn't happen very often but could make for a great campaign.
The deities can be very dodgy and selfish. In a gm-made world, it was one reason atheist actually made a lot of sense. In that, the gods were a lot weaker than golarion gods, far more closer to powerful Chinese ancestor spirits, and very human with specialties and what they personified.
Anyway, in such a situation where all of the gods were in worship competition, they ended up less embodying alignments. They just came across as undying princes/merchants really. The dm wasn't a fan of alignment, but in the end as he strayed from this, the gods actually became very samey--they really wanted converts, were cheeky about getting them, and could make people champions, but then they were slaves that they controlled and watched very carefully, and they could brutally punish through the same means that they gave power. They could cook or curse you through the fruit-juice drip!
Anyway, in polytheism if the gods all act the same they may not seem like gods. If there are too many, their power and importance diminishes, and it can be easy to just ignore them.
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Agreeing with the "she's evil" conclusion many are drawing. Her choice of targets doesn't get her off that hook.
NOW, that said, if she were amenable to changing her nature--perhaps she seeks out to punish telepathic enslavers but does not seek to utterly destroy their race, but rather to change or reform them, then that would also be an interesting twist and story. Alignment shift of a god... doesn't happen very often but could make for a great campaign.
And heck, this doesn't even have to result in her turning good. She could very well wind up being one of those "cruel mercy" types, inflicting a far more poetic punishment upon her targets than simple and irrevocable annihilation.
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The cruel mercy / vengeance deity is the one who assisted the folks who made the weapon in the first place ironically enough (he's the LN(E) guy I mentioned. He had no part in the creation of the deity however (my campaign world has two tiers of deities, ones requiring belief and born of it, and ones born of bits of an elder deity who don't require belief. She's in the former category, he's in the latter).
The counter argument I have heard on the evil thing at the table was the fact that her methodology is harmless towards 'the innocent' (non-brain eating illithids need not fear) an only punishes the guilty and she seems to show no intention of expanding the weapon's capabilities or increasing her 'effectiveness'. Its the wholesale nature of it that admittedly tends to make pretty much everyone lean towards the belief she's not on the good side of the alignment scale.
There's also been the argument regarding what her 'title' or portfolio even is. This has included such obviously good-aligned (tongue firmly in cheek) titles as 'the goddess of semi-justifiable genocide' or alternately 'the goddess of killing brain eating abominations.'
Perhaps tellingly or not, she's patterned her identity on the daughter of the weapon's creator, who instigated the weapon's development through her death at the tentacles of the mind flayers. Essentially as a 'take-that' at their whole species.
As I expected, this conversation's definately getting interesting. I'm half expecting to see some of my players bring it up when we have our next session.
Here's a little bit of the conspiracy theory time though.
The phylactery issue. The LG love/death goddess and another good aligned deity (the ones followed by the cleric and paladin respectively) did not seem to have an issue with releasing her from the aboleth's tesseract labyrinthe prison. And to remind, the phlactery should warn of any 'action or item that could adversely affect (their) alignment and (their) standing with (their) deity.'
If the deity itself is chaotic evil or neutral evil as some of you (and some of my players) believe was releasing her an evil action?
Do you think she subborned the phylacteries with her own deific power?
And from a moral perspective, are the players culpable in the action of release even though all available evidence indicated it was safe and they didn't qutie learn of the true extent of what the deity represented until release? Keeping in mind, the weapon kept on killing illithids even while the god its release created was trapped by the aboleth.
One theory was that the it wasn't an evil action to release her as she somehow will 'control' the weapon and prevent it from expanding into even more dangerous areas. There was also some talk about hoping she'd mature (given that her current personality seems to be akin to a kitten playing with a mouse) Again, I just provided the raw data, but I enjoy seeing the discussion play out.
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I would say her alignment is Chaotic Neutral.
The Chaos part comes from the whimsical part of the deity. This: "The deity throughout the adventure had been demonstrating a somewhat, lets say..fun-loving personality. Assisting them, teasing them with information and at one point resolving the problem they were having with underwater fighting by something involving chewing up a shark and mouthfeeding it to some members of the party to grant temporary freedom of movement (which when questioned, confessed she found it funny to do so even though she could have just given the 'boon.')" just screams chaotic to me.
The neutral part comes from the fact she can not kill a mind flayer who has not already killed. She is not good though because she does not have a altrusitic motive for this.
Also she is not killing mind flayers from some a selfish motive....she was designed to do so. It is sort like calling a wolf evil...or dear good.
Perhaps she mature and expand...either becoming evil or good. Perhaps that is why the cleric's and paladin's god was behinds this hoping that his followers could have influence on this young goddess and turn her to a force of good.
Anyway overall I would say this a fascinate senario for a DM to run so my hats off to you Spook 205 and would like to know what is the truth of the matter in a PM.
If the deity itself is chaotic evil or neutral evil as some of you (and some of my players) believe was releasing her an evil action?
The act of releasing her itself doesn't apply a morality to the action. You have to factor in knowledge and consent.
If a character feels no living being (including a god) should be eternally imprisoned, they have a good intent (even if they're doing a bad job by not thinking about the consequences).
If the characters were not fully aware of what she was--or at least of the full ramifications--then there's no harmful intent there either.
If they released her saying, "Hell yes let's commit some genocide, woo!" then that's probably an evil act. :)
If they released her knowing she had an evil purpose, but they felt they could use her power for a good cause/change her mind/reform her, then that's neutral to good depending--with perhaps judgment not passing until later, after whatever consequences of their actions are realized.
And really, the alignment here isn't the interesting part. It's just a little descriptive game mechanic that, except for some spells and some class abilities, doesn't have a huge effect on the game. YMMV, especially if you're a paladin, of course.
But the interesting part here really is seeing those consequences unfold, regardless of what the rules of the game would label them.
If not for the fact that Pathfinder follows the usual Good-Evil-Lawful-Chaotic set of alignments, I'd personally have said that the Deity in question was more Orange-Feet aligned.
Because it's a Deity, it follows its own internal logic with regards to Morals and Ethics, and thus is beyond the understandings of mere mortals.
But since we're going by the usual alignment system, I'm going to have to say that she's closest to Lawful Neutral.
Kitten-like behavior aside, she's following the parameters of her programming. Any action it takes will be for the purpose of achieving her objective, thus Lawful.
Neutral on account of it not having any sense of something being morally right or wrong. Killing all Mind Flayers isn't considered Evil or Good to her because she's only following her programming, and she has no idea if she's hurting someone else in the process, and doesn't know she should feel remorse for it or not.
The fact that she's gleeful to the idea of committing Genocide to an inherently evil race is irrelevant to the matter of alignment.
She's a bot!
Letting evil kill evil is not evil, it does enter the amoral pragmatic political realm though.
Well lazar, you don't have to jettison alignment if you want a nuanced, complicated and subtle game. It is just a piece of the character and npc puzzle, it doesn't have to be everything.
To add, I'm running a dnd game at the moment with alignment, very sandbox. Anyway, they came across an escaping fugitive (from a country that is both good and bad, lawful and sometimes friendly theocracy)). Anyway, this man Therin, has committed some serious crimes, even roasting noble boys when him and his rebel friends took a castle. At this point he was chaotic evil, and while he had reasons to be so, he was also vicious and cruel with a shocking sense of humour (fireballing people and the smell of it really takes him back to the old days).
They almost turned him over, but they ended up helping him, taking him in and directing/redeeming him. Oh he had some evil thoughts and wanted to do some dark stuff, but they kept it in check and directed it at monsters, crims and the like. So now he is neutral, probably on the way to chaotic good. They gave him people to care about, relations to save, monsters and real threats to keep him busy, and they trusted and talked to him like a real person. So here he sits on neutral, with an evil past, but a protector of a community with steadfast and good friends. They took him right back from chaotic evil, and that is an accomplishment in an alignment system.
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Again, because a good man contemplates a bad thing doesn't make him immediately evil. Alignment is a spectrum, it's not a strait jacket (to paraphrase the rules) in which you must behave exactly as described every single second of every single day. It describes how a person generally believes and behaves over a period of time, and changes only if those beliefs and behaviors change over a period of time.
(And with the example of Picard in the Doctor Who/Star Trek crossover comic, the Doctor shows Picard he actually wants to do something that would have horrific, indeed evil, consequences, and Picard reneges, ultimately following his generally good tendencies, despite a darker desire.)
Chaotic Neutral sounds like the most fitting to me too.
She doesn't care about the concept of good and evil, she just wants to carry out her official instructions, which boils down to "Kill all sons o' b~@@$es."
Other than that driving goal, she follows her own whims and does what she pleases. There is no malice in what she does, and she seems to enjoy life to a great extent and just kind of revels in BEING and finding fun in whatever situation gets thrown at her.
Sounds pretty spot-on with the Chaotic Neutral description to me.
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She seems Chaotic Neutral to me.
Definitely not Good (as demonstrated above), but not specifically Evil either. After all killing the bad guys might not be a Good thing to do but it is not described in the RAW as an Evil thing either.
Note that innocent illithids would not die from the disease she embodies. The litmus test for Neutral/Evil could be to confront her to an illithid who contracted the disease and survived.
And I would say Chaotic rather than Lawful because she does not seem to put any stock in what deific rules of behaviour she is supposed to follow, seeing as she is eagerly consorting with mere mortals and bending reality to suit their needs (and her whims).
But really, this thread reminds me of this quote from Marvel Comics' Ares (Greater God of War and other not so nice things) : "Good and Evil are for man. Not I "
One point to consider is that mind flayers are one of the few races for which genocide is an appropriate action. Most races that kill and eat humanoids have a choice in the matter -- so they can redeem themselves by choosing not to do so. Mind flayers have no such alternative -- their very existence requires them to kill humanoids, with or without a worthy motive for doing so. Since the only way they can "repent" of their evil basically requires committing suicide, you would not have to be of evil alignment to conclude that they must be wiped out. The only thing that would move this deity away from good and towards evil is the fact that she enjoys what she is doing -- to a creature of good alignment, the prospect of wiping out an intelligent but unredeemably evil species would be a necessary duty but not cause for joy.