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So in a Calvinist campaign world, the Human alignment is Usually Any Evil or Always Evil?
If you're Calvinist, humans are an inherently evil race. :D
As long as they have stats for Hobbes, I'm down with a Calvinist campaign. :)
"James Jacobs of Earth... RISE".Well they do seem to be really really mad about Drow and given their goal seems to be eradication, would that not make them more like Red Lantern Bearers?"Mersiel of Golarion, you have great rage within you. Welcome to the Red Lantern Corps."
Now I want a series of rings that bless the wearer whenever he does something that fits their 'color.'
The red ring blesses a wearer who is raging or frenzied (prized by half-orc barbarians, particularly!). The yellow ring blesses the wearer on any round that someone else suffers from a fear effect or is demoralized by an Intimidate check they have made. The indigo ring blesses the wearer *and the target(s)* on any round in which they heal another magically or use the Heal skill on another. The green ring blesses the wearer whenever they succeed at a Will save.
I can't help it, the elves turning into drow in Golarion have always reminded me of this.
In a Calvinist world there are only two alignments, The Elect and the Damned.So in a Calvinist campaign world, the Human alignment is Usually Any Evil or Always Evil?Yeah, I find the concept of "inherently evil" to be very poor storytelling, too, unless it is an outsider. And even there exist some corner cases, if not we wouldn't get redeemed fiends or fallen celestials. Free will is a very important factor to life.If you're Calvinist, humans are an inherently evil race. :D
I have not studied the philosophies of Calvinism enough to know what you mean by that.
I usually go by philosophies that defy a predetermined fate, so I find myself cringing at the idea of Calvinism now.
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Though I mentioned it as a joke, I will decline to threadcrap a serious discussion about the alignment repercussions of Calvinism.
I will suggest that Calvinism is usually misunderstood and caricatured by nonadherents. No offense, LazarX, but your description of Calvinism reads like a capitalist's description of communism.
/offtopic
You can still have them have an evil culture without being inherently evil. I don't like the idea of something having free will but unable to be nice at all.
You're comfortable with things actively and deliberately choosing to murder, rape, steal? That sounds like "inherently evil" to me.
Yeah, I find the concept of "inherently evil" to be very poor storytelling, too, unless it is an outsider. And even there exist some corner cases, if not we wouldn't get redeemed fiends or fallen celestials. Free will is a very important factor to life.
What, exactly, does "inherently evil" even mean? It's a concept that doesn't really exist in the world. Are sociopaths inherently evil? Sociopaths are generally considered to be 'malfunctioning' in some way; for a number of reasons, they display antisocial behavior, and on the extreme end, may seem to be "evil". Nobody forced them into this behavior; in truth, there's very little one can do to coerce somebody into being "evil". The choice is always still there, you can always choose to not steal a cookie/say mean things to people/eat the census taker's liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti. That said, there's evidence that sociopaths have significantly different neuroanatomy that "causes" their behavior.
Any way you slice it, this is going to come down to ethical philosophy. What is evil? What makes a person evil? Who decides what evil is and isn't? Why is it that, just because I like to hear the sounds of dying babies, I'm evil? I mean, Conan just loves listening to the lamentations of his enemies' women, but that doesn't make him evil.
"Inherently evil" is a storytelling device. That much we agree on. But I disagree that it's "lazy" storytelling. For it to be lazy storytelling, it has to be a shortcut to doing work, in this case to explain an evil motive. This suggests your belief that evil must be externally motivated, or at least be explained by a Freudian excuse. In my opinion, this is a total cop-out. It excuses "evil" by reducing it to something that you can understand and possibly sympathize with. In doing so, you drop the ball on holding "evil" accountable. Sure, there are plenty of rationalizations for evil. But to force the concept of evil to adhere to rational motive? To disregard, out of hand, anything potentially worse than that? By definition, evil is everything that is wrong and bad. It is abhorrent, vile, disgusting, and disturbing. By reducing it, you neuter it into a form that is more comfortable to you, as though evil is something you're supposed to be comfortable with. If you can't stomach it, that's fine. But please don't accuse me of laziness, simply because I allow such irredeemable horror to exist.
Creatures being "inherently evil" is a trope which has been used in multitudes of fiction and, yes, I find it lazy thinking. A good example would be vampires and demons in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer universe. They are mostly portrayed as remorseless killers, who find nothing wrong with wiping out entire villages for a night of fun and blood.
As it happened, later seasons of the show gave much more nuance to this view, by the way of the character Spike and some demons of other demon races, the latter of which were shown to be little more than people with horns. But at least in the case of Spike (and vampires), the writers (by their own admission in interviews from that time) felt so uncomfortable with the ambiguity they themselves had introduced, that they ultimately that he could not be good without getting a soul.
And that just sucked. They tried invalidate the aspect of free will, which had been put to the forefront of his character arc. Luckily they failed even at that, because by making his own decision to get a soul he managed to show self-determination.
And I disagree with the rest of your assessment. Making sentient creatures evil without the chance of self-determination is lazy thinking, simple as that.
Creatures being "inherently evil" is a trope which has been used in multitudes of fiction and, yes, I find it lazy thinking. A good example would be vampires and demons in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer universe. They are mostly portrayed as remorseless killers, who find nothing wrong with wiping out entire villages for a night of fun and blood.
As it happened, later seasons of the show gave much more nuance to this view, by the way of the character Spike and some demons of other demon races, the latter of which were shown to be little more than people with horns. But at least in the case of Spike (and vampires), the writers (by their own admission in interviews from that time) felt so uncomfortable with the ambiguity they themselves had introduced, that they ultimately that he could not be good without getting a soul.
And that just sucked. They tried invalidate the aspect of free will, which had been put to the forefront of his character arc. Luckily they failed even at that, because by making his own decision to get a soul he managed to show self-determination.
And I disagree with the rest of your assessment. Making sentient creatures evil without the chance of self-determination is lazy thinking, simple as that.
I would agree that it certainly can be lazy thinking, and has been used as such. That doesn't mean it always is. Especially if examples of such evil exist in conjunction with other kinds. I like Spike as much as the next guy, but the Buffy Universe was pretty clear from the beginning that vampires = evil, and Angel was the exception that proved the rule, and he was more of a loophole than an exception. Spike violated the rule they wrote into the universe. I'd argue that that's lazy writing.
Was Lovecraft lazy because he never analyzed Cthulhu's Freudian excuse?
Furthermore, you've still failed to identify what it means to be "inherently evil". Simply disagreeing with my assessment doesn't do anything to further the discussion. My argument stands that choosing to do bad things to other people because it makes you feel good is still an example of inherent evil. It is, in fact, the capacity for self-determination that allows them to be inherently evil. Because they have the choice to do good and yet they choose do evil in spite of that ability, without coercion, they are inherently evil, because they are internally motivated to do evil. And when a whole race of creatures is born this way, it makes the whole race inherently evil. It is this fact which allows for maverick special snowflake good guys in the first place. If the whole race wasn't inherently evil, you lose access to any story founded on being different. The Drizz't problem wasn't that drow were inherently evil, it was that the overwhelming popularity of the exception to the rule forced a paradigm shift. For that matter, I don't recall Drizz't ever being explained. He was simply different. He rejected evil, but his reason for rejecting evil was never explained.* Is that lazy writing? I would say so, for the same reason discussed above.
And still, nobody complains about Always Evil outsiders. Why is that? Everyone's okay with evil demons. How about creatures native to the Material Plane? Nobody complains about evil aboleth. Or evil goblins. It's evil drow almost exclusively.
*I only read the Icewind Dale trilogy. If it was explained later, please correct me.
Salvatore's explanation was pretty superficial, because he is a bad writer. But in essence, it was Drizzt coming to the conclusion by himself that the selfish societal approach of the Drow was wrong and that he wanted to live a different kind of life. Which is self-determination, insted of pre-determination.
And your assertion that the writers of BtVS were "lazy" by accidentally telling a more complex story than they themselves intended is, um, not very logical.
As for Aboleth and Goblins, I would want good individuals to appear. It simply is that they haven't been explored very much in fiction, beyond their roles as antagonists. It's of course more difficult to empathize with giant fish and little giggling arsonist monsters, but I would dislike it very much if the capacity for empathy and self-determination would be taken from them.
As for evil outsiders, I already said that even there corner-cases should be allowed, but mostly tey are made from the essence of evil (which is a tanglible thing on Golarion), so it is much more understandable that they are regarded as "always" evil.
And my explanation of the term "inherently evil" is that races which are considered as such are denied the capability of self-determination about their personal goals and preferences. And that seems lazy to me. I have no problem with societal norms and maybe internal urges making a life of evil easier and normal for such races, but at the same time I would want individuals to be able to make decisions to abandon their "normal" way of living and try out other races philosophy.
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Pressed for time so this is pretty short, but personally I don't give otehr mortal races a pass on the inherently evil thing either. Aboleths are one of the odd exceptions considering that they're all forked personalities from a common progenitor, but even then I'd be open to exceptions. You could get a hell of a story out of that.
With "regular" mortal races though, the Always Evil thing seriously grates, for a lot of reasons. Not an exhaustive list, but:
For one, it really cheapens good and evil when actual choice is taken out of the equation. For Good and Evil to actually mean Good and Evil, they need to be more than something you can just be born into. This gets into the reason why most outsiders get a pass: They are made from the choices made by mortals in life. (and even then, there are the possible exceptions of fallen angels and risen fiends)
For another, the Always Evil thing frequently leads to things that absolutely make the game unfun for me, to the point that it's one of the things I check with GMs about before I even start to play, just to be sure I even want to be there.
I'm just really not a fan of "good-sanctioned" genocide and child-murdering in my heroic fantasy.
Regarding exceptions to norms, personally I found the Elistraee...eans...and the drow both in and out of that faith that weren't auto-evil more interesting than the single lone rebel. It wasn't their uniqueness or rarity that made them interesting to me. And you don't have to have an entire race be genetically evil in order to enable cultural rebel-type characters. The punk-rock-attitude Caydenite tiefling in Cheliax possessed of both the smug self-righteousness of youth and a genuinely conscientious rebellious spirit* wouldn't be made better by making him the sole non-evil tiefling in the setting; if anything it would just throw unnecessary hurdles in the way of that character getting to be played.
And there are a lot more reasons why someone may want to play a drow beyond being a special snowflake. Honestly, the main appeal they'd have to me for most character concepts is "get to be an elf with black skin and white hair".
*Character concept derived from listening to "Prisoner of Society" by The Living End.
What I never got was why there are no automatically good mortal races? You have outsiders, but even they can fall. But since we have to have races who are pure evil and can never be good, shouldn't we have some who are forced to be good too?
No. Because, frankly, it's an awful idea from an 80's cartoon. The good guys are always good, and do good things. The bad guys are always bad, and do bad things. This Is The Way Of Things. But even cartoons have evolved beyond that point. Characters can, and do, change sides now and then.
If even kids can't accept, 'always evil, 'cos' I'd like to think most adults don't.
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Man, even as a child the idea of an entire race of people automatically being evil and okay to wipe out just bothered me, whether it turned up in cartoons, books, or mythology. And that was before my first D&D experiences started throwing "now alaughter the evil non-combatants and their nurseries!" crap at me when I was naively expecting to play a hero.
Well, there is the Vasharans from BoVD... I particularly liked the part about how they were sometimes surprised by how other people acted, because they could not even conceive of someone valuing someone else. Now that's hardcore! I always envisioned them sitting on their mesa, each in his/her own hut, and all of them Hating the Living S!@# out of one another.
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No. Because, frankly, it's an awful idea from an 80's cartoon. The good guys are always good, and do good things. The bad guys are always bad, and do bad things. This Is The Way Of Things. But even cartoons have evolved beyond that point. Characters can, and do, change sides now and then.
IMO, some of the most interesting heroes have some flaws. Tony Stark has been an addict, a hedonist, a sexist, an elitist, and done all sorts of badwrong things, and yet he's also a hero, despite his occasional screw-ups, and so he seems more heroic for overcoming all of that stuff, than someone who is just automatically moral and never screws up. The classic portrayal of Dr. Doom is more interesting than the Red Skull because he isn't two-dimensionally evil. He's got layers, and some of them involve his word, his loyalty to his people, his love for his mother, etc.
Lots of interesting characters come about when exploring lines between good and evil, from sympathetic bad-guys like Leon in The Professional to dick-ish good-guys like the angel Gabriel in The Prophecy. We've always had a yen for that sort of thing, with likable crooks like Robin Hood or Josey Wales up against despicable lawmen and unlikable 'good-guys' like the Sherriff of Nottingham or Captain Terrill.
Even in a world with your 'gentleman villains' or 'misunderstood rebels' or just clueless mobs who don't realize that maybe torches and pitchforks are not the only solution here, there's still plenty of room for pure evil, with no explanations or justifications or rationalizations. Even if there weren't 'elemental' evils, like soul-devouring daemons, out there, there's still room for the nutjob worshipper of Norgorber who *enjoys* murdering people to honor Father Skinsaw, and would have done the same even if Skinsaw didn't exist.
Just because a humanoid race (such as orc or goblin) isn't necessarily 'always evil' because that concept flies in the face of free will, doesn't mean that *most* of them can't be as evil as evil can be.
Nothing is being 'taken away' by getting rid of always evil. So, in the end, it's a win-win.
More storytelling opportunities. Nothing lost.
No. Because, frankly, it's an awful idea from an 80's cartoon. The good guys are always good, and do good things. The bad guys are always bad, and do bad things. This Is The Way Of Things. But even cartoons have evolved beyond that point. Characters can, and do, change sides now and then.IMO, some of the most interesting heroes have some flaws. Tony Stark has been an addict, a hedonist, a sexist, an elitist, and done all sorts of badwrong things, and yet he's also a hero, despite his occasional screw-ups, and so he seems more heroic for overcoming all of that stuff, than someone who is just automatically moral and never screws up. The classic portrayal of Dr. Doom is more interesting than the Red Skull because he isn't two-dimensionally evil. He's got layers, and some of them involve his word, his loyalty to his people, his love for his mother, etc.
Lots of interesting characters come about when exploring lines between good and evil, from sympathetic bad-guys like Leon in The Professional to dick-ish good-guys like the angel Gabriel in The Prophecy. We've always had a yen for that sort of thing, with likable crooks like Robin Hood or Josey Wales up against despicable lawmen and unlikable 'good-guys' like the Sherriff of Nottingham or Captain Terrill.
Even in a world with your 'gentleman villains' or 'misunderstood rebels' or just clueless mobs who don't realize that maybe torches and pitchforks are not the only solution here, there's still plenty of room for pure evil, with no explanations or justifications or rationalizations. Even if there weren't 'elemental' evils, like soul-devouring daemons, out there, there's still room for the nutjob worshipper of Norgorber who *enjoys* murdering people to honor Father Skinsaw, and would have done the same even if Skinsaw didn't exist.
Just because a humanoid race (such as orc or goblin) isn't necessarily 'always evil' because that concept flies in the face of free will, doesn't mean that *most* of them can't be as evil as evil can be.
Nothing is being 'taken away' by getting rid of always evil. So, in the end, it's a win-win.
More storytelling opportunities. Nothing lost.
The bolded part is exactly why I support the removal of the Always Evil thing when it comes to humanoids.
However, this does not mean that I will disregard the stats at hand. In the 3.5e D&D Monster Manual, the Orcs were listed as "Often Chaotic Evil" which meant that around 40%-80% of them were of that alignment IIRC, while Drow were "Usually Neutral Evil" which made about 80-90% of them Evil. I still take those stats into account when I am the DM, regardless of the campaign world I'm running. It was also stated in both the Pathfinder and D&D books that a creature with an "Always" alignment can shift, though it's a rare occurence as Ragathiel is the only known Empyreal Lord born of a Fiend and there is only a handful of fallen angels*.
* = The Erinyes do not count in my opinion, as they are descendants of fallen angels and were never pure to begin with as a result.
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Re: 'always/usually/often evil'.
Don't forget that society itself puts an incredible amount of pressure on people to conform. And even in our Western society, there's that pressure, and we won't kill/murder/sacrifice to our demonic masters like the Drow will.
Years ago, I posted an idea of a good drow, raised as an orphan by a blind hermit. My thought then, as now is that the good drow are going to be 'culled' by peer pressure outing them, or they're going to bury it down deep and maybe become more pragmatic (neutral) as a result.
I think the later is what Salvatore implied happened to Zak, BTW.
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The bolded part is exactly why I support the removal of the Always Evil thing when it comes to humanoids.
Interesting. The bolded part is exactly why I support the inclusion of the Always Evil thing in some cases, like goblins and drow.
It seems we disagree on what it means to be inherently evil. So now I'm curious: what does it mean to be unable to choose? Functionally, what does that look like? I favor an interpretation of Always Evil drow in that each of them can choose, and they consistently choose evil. What's an example of something that doesn't have the ability to choose, and is evil because of it? How can we tell that they lack such cognitive faculties?
Mikaze, it seems we're just simply going to have to disagree. You want drow to just be elves with black skin and white hair, while I want drow to be fundamentally different and more than just chocolate elves. I'm glad we've at least gotten to the root of the issue and identified it. I'm sorry that you've had such poor experiences and that games with those elements often veer into territory you don't feel comfortable with. I haven't had those experiences.
magnuskn, the reason I accuse the writers of BtVS of being lazy is because they broke their own rules without intention to do so, without consideration for how it would affect their narrative. They simply weren't paying attention. They didn't write Spike the way they did because they were trying to prove a point about good vs. evil. Initially, it wasn't given any consideration. They didn't even seem to be intentionally writing him as not-evil. Maybe the character ran away with the story; that happens, and I can see a case being made for Spike. The story they wrote may have been more interesting for you as a result, but that's more a case of happy accidents and good things coming out of bad. You yourself have expressed your belief that Salvatore is a bad writer for failing to deliver a satisfactory explanation for Drizz't being different. I would posit that this is similar to the writers of BtVS, the difference being that the Buffy writers, instead of delivering an unsatisfactory explanation, instead tried to reconcile the character of Spike with the pre-written mythology. It's bad writing in both cases that caused the problem.
Matthew, I agree that societal pressure is a very powerful force. However, it seems that there's a functional disconnect between these concepts of existential good and evil where mortals are concerned. The societal argument leads to the question of what 'good' and 'evil' really are, which goes back to the ethical philosophy. That's largely a problem with fantasy settings that allow for and reinforce such concepts as existential moral alignment. RPGs aren't really good for moral philosophy, especially as ambiguous as they often are. They're simply playing with a different set of rules, so to speak.
I didn't say that Salvatore had not provided a reason for Drizzt alignment perspective, only that his explanation was not very good. And I see the evolution of Spike as not lazyness of the writers, but rather them unwittingly surpassing their own petty limitations.
magnuskn, my wording was ambiguous, and for that I apologize. I mean that you feel that Salvatore is a bad writer, not because he didn't provide an explanation, but that the explanation provided did not satisfy you personally. Which is a valid opinion. I think it's best that we just drop this whole lazy vs. not lazy discussion; it's run its course and is sufficiently far from the original discussion to no longer be relevant.
LazarX, I was under the impression that Spike was actually a minor character who proved to be exceedingly popular and was thus an ascended bit part and ensemble darkhorse.
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I have a player in my campaign who is aiming to become a Lantern Bearer. Since my players started at first level I only skimmed (yeah, I know, my own fault) the Lantern Bearer prestige class. Now that they have gained a few levels I've looked into the prestige class as well as it's backstory and I'm confused to say the least.
For those who don't know:
PCs are required to be neutral good to become a member of the Lantern Bearer organization. The goal of the Lantern Bearer organization, as stated on PathfinderWiki.com, is toSuppress knowledge of the existence of the drow, and how they came into being, and also to eradicate all the Drow.Suppress knowledge of the existence of the Drow? Ok. How they came into existence? Savvy. And also to eradicate all the Drow? Yeah that seems compWAIT, WHAT?
I guess what I'm not understanding is how a NG character can condone finding and eradicating an entire race of people. I get (sorta) that the Drow as a race are inherently evil due to their corrupt nature but as a whole not every individual Drow is evil.
So can someone please provide me an answer as to how a NG character can participate in genocide? Or is my confusion justifiable?
I would say that your confusion is perfectly justifiable, because when I read about the Lantern Bearers, I thought the exact same things. I believe the Lantern Bearers are a morally repugnant blood-soaked organization dedicated to mass-murder, and should be classified either as a Neutral organization that pursues the best of ends through the most horrid of means, or as an outright evil organization.
Keep in mind, according to the Pathfinder Faction Guide, not only are the Lantern Bearers dedicated to annihilating all the Drow (down to the last baby, apparently), but they are also dedicated to silencing anyone who finds out about the secrets of the Drow by any means necessary, up to and including murder.
We could argue till the cows come home as to whether or not the genocide of an entire race of sentient beings (the majority of whom, if not all, are evil) can be justified and whether the organization taking it upon themselves to carry out the genocide can be called "good." However, the dubious nobility of their cause is negated by the fact that they are apparently willing to not only kill the Drow, but anyone who finds out how the Drow came into existence.
The Lantern Bearers are not a "good" organization by any stretch of the imagination. There is no good that can come of violently suppressing knowledge of the Drow and keeping the world in ignorance of the truth of their existence or their origins...except perhaps to keep the shame of this knowledge from tainting the world's perception of Elves any further. I would argue that keeping people ignorant of a powerful underground empire made up largely of sadistic, ruthless megalomaniacs is an evil act in and of itself. If anything, I would classify the Lantern Bearers as a Neutral Evil or Lawful Evil organization of murderous Elven Supremacist fanatics, which may have good members with the best of intentions being led down the road to Hell. If I choose to include them in any future campaigns, that is what they will be.
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There may be a certain amount of metaplot revision happening here, as some of the books that have come out recently (the Shattered Star AP and the Pathfinder Society Primer in particular) have made it clear that those who want to know are aware not only of the drow's existence but also of how they come to exist. The Bearers may have adjusted their stance on the drow and knowledge thereof accordingly.
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There may be a certain amount of metaplot revision happening here, as some of the books that have come out recently (the Shattered Star AP and the Pathfinder Society Primer in particular) have made it clear that those who want to know are aware not only of the drow's existence but also of how they come to exist. The Bearers may have adjusted their stance on the drow and knowledge thereof accordingly.
I may have missed it, but in what way have the Lantern Bearers adjusted their stance?
I'm playing a Lantern Bearer in a Celwynvian military campaign set around the same time frame as Second Darkness.
"Wipe them out... all of them." /palpatine
And we all know that Palpatine was a shining example of Neutral Good.
I liked "Extinguish them. Painfully." better...
I may have missed it, but in what way have the Lantern Bearers adjusted their stance?
I don't think any change has been stated. But given that between the events of Second Darkness and the efforts of the Pathfinder Society, the existence, society, and origins of the drow are now common knowledge around the Inner Sea, the Lantern Bearers have to have given up their suppression efforts, if not their drow-extermination agenda.
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Well, if you're looking for canonical indications, from Second Darkness itself...
So, from that in-world point of view, yes, pursuing genocide is undeniably evil. However, just because the leaders of the Lantern Bearers are Evil does not make the members themselves evil - borrowing from Star Wars again, Chancellor Palpatine being evil did not make the entire Jedi Order during the Clone Wars evil. They simply fought the war that had been engineered, using their own moral compasses.
I suspect the vast majority of the Lantern Bearers are neutral good, and wish to fight the threat of the Drow. They are also unquestioningly loyal to their leaders, meaning they may well commit acts they find morally wrong, in the belief their leaders have a larger goal of good.
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Given that the drow ARE established as evil, and are looking to wipe out their surface kin, leveling charges of genoicide at the Lantern Bearers strikes me as a bit of armchair alignment analysis.
I never stated that the Drow are somehow innocent in all of this. According to Paizo's canon, they are monsters, pure and simple. I have no problem accepting the world the writers at Paizo have created (although there are a few non-evil Drow). I am stating that taken as they are written, the Lantern Bearers are an evil organization too.
They are not only out to exterminate an entire race of people (however justified one might argue the extermination is), but they were actively murdering any non-Elves who discovered the existence of the Drow and their origins. This may very well be an armchair alignment analysis, but please do explain what good can come of suppression of the knowledge of such a danger as the Drow? Again, keeping people ignorant of such a huge danger, and especially through such violent means, should not be considered "good." The Lantern Bearers are killing people whose only crime was discovering the existence a monstrous underground empire consisting of fallen elves. Where is the good in this?
If anything, you would think the Lantern Bearers would be trying to spread news of the Drow and recruit people from every walk of life into their campaign of "righteous genocide." Instead, they are assassinating people who could be their greatest allies. The greatest irony is that in trying to hide Elvenkind's greatest shame, they may end up causing an upsurge in the prejudice against Elves.
I mean, can you imagine what would happen when news of the Lantern Bearer's assassination campaign spreads? That there is an underground empire of evil elves plotting to murder and enslave everyone on the surface, and that instead of warning everybody, the surface elves were murdering anyone who found out? Elves will be seen hanging from lampposts in almost every human city in the Inner Sea.
Well, if you're looking for canonical indications, from Second Darkness itself...
** spoiler omitted **
So, from that in-world point of view, yes, pursuing genocide is undeniably evil. However, just because the leaders of the Lantern Bearers are Evil does not make the members themselves evil - borrowing from Star Wars again, Chancellor Palpatine being evil did not make the entire Jedi Order during the Clone Wars evil. They simply fought the war that had been engineered, using their own moral compasses.
I suspect the vast majority of the Lantern Bearers are neutral good, and wish to fight the threat of the Drow. They are also unquestioningly loyal to their leaders, meaning they may well commit acts they find morally wrong, in the belief their leaders have a larger goal of good.
That is fine and fair. An organization such as the Aspis Consortium may be made up of a majority of neutral and even good people simply trying to make a decent living for themselves and their families. While the people at the top of the Consortium are definitely evil, I would find it hard to believe that every single person (or even the majority of people) within the Consortium are a bunch of irredeemable profit-hungry psychopaths. But the overall goals of the organization (pursuing profits at any and all costs) is evil, thus making the organization evil.
Likewise, I would argue that the overall goal of the Lantern Bearers, i.e., the unequivocal pursuit of total genocide against an entire sub-race of elves, along with the suppression and murder of those who have knowledge of the Drow, are evil goals. Thus, the organization should be considered an evil organization.
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I personally dislike "always" evil mortal races (and for that matter "always" good mortal races as well).
I am okay with outsiders having a fixed alignment...after all they are literally formed from pure evil, and are the result of magic, not biology. Plus, the idea that demons and angels don't really possess free will is already an established trope.
With Abberations, I figure it's simply comes down to the being having such an alien mindset that it can't comprehend the basis of human morality, or that humans and other creatures are anything more significant than food or hosts. The Xenomorphs from the Alien series are not consciously performing evil acts, they are simply following the demands of their biology. Also see Lovecraft's treatment of the Old Ones.
But for mortal races? First, an always evil race is going to be so dysfunctional that I can't see any society persisting for long. Ultimately, all the backstabbing and selfish behavior would cause the society to continually fall apart and prevent advancement, and they would either dwindle in numbers from attrition within the ranks, or be so unstable and unliked that another race will eventually wipe them out. Just look at Earth History...Societies that operate on what can only be described as evil principals tend to fall apart or are invaded by their neighbors. Altruism is a huge component that hold societies together, and a always evil race would lack that.
Secondly, if something is inherently evil, and it always chooses evil, is it really "choosing"? If it wired so that eating babies is always the preferring option, it's not going to truly have free will. In which case you have whole races that basically exist to be punished in the afterlife. That is just...disturbing...and not something I can see the cosmic forces of good really allowing, especially since you would be giving the evil outsiders guaranteed recruitment.
Now, I have no problem with cultures that are messed up and evil, but whole races? no thanks.
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Likewise, I would argue that the overall goal of the Lantern Bearers, i.e., the unequivocal pursuit of total genocide against an entire sub-race of elves, along with the suppression and murder of those who have knowledge of the Drow, is an evil goal. Thus, the organization should be considered an evil organization.
Except that the second half is, as I pointed out earlier, no longer true, and the first half is a mischaracterization of what they're doing and why. It's not genocide. It's euthanasia.
Seriously.
I mean, consider it from the perspective of the elves. You have a normal elf, then something happens and they suffer a permanent alteration, not only of appearance, but of alignment, allegiance, and worldview. They become something else on both a physical and a metaphysical level. The transformation is one-way, completely irreversible as far as the Lantern Bearers know - according to JJ, there has never been a "redeemed" drow in the entire history of the race. As a result, the Lantern Bearers probably believe that, for all intents and purposes, the true soul of the elf in question is already gone; just like a vampire, the entity inhabiting the body may have the same memories and appearance as the person you knew, but it's something else and is utterly, irredeemably evil. Killing it is not killing a person - it's stopping the desecration of a corpse. Killing drow is the same thing. Each one is the shell of an elf that either was but is no longer or never had a chance to be to begin with, and either way, killing it is a mercy, not an act of cruelty.
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@ MMCJawa
I do agree with you. I do not think the Drow would have ever been as successful as they were if they were all evil, especially Chaotic Evil. Personally, I always saw the Drow as being Neutral Evil rather than Chaotic Evil. Chaotic Evil always struck me as being passionate and capricious, and the alignment seems to have been shoe-horned into the Drow's culture. A Chaotic Evil culture makes sense for races like Ogres, Morlocks, Orcs and Trolls, where the only thing that is respected is raw power and strength. But Drow culture is based more around subtlety, shifting alliances and manipulation, which tends to be more the bailiwick of a Neutral Evil culture. I doubt that a race of psychopathic prima donnas would have succeeded as magnificently as the Drow have.
On a side note, I don't think there are enough Neutral Evil monster races. The way I play it, Drow culture always struck me as being Neutral Evil, because they appear to the ultimate pragmatists. They are utterly ruthless and willing to do what it takes to survive, whether it is turning to demon worship or sacrificing family members. They have no sense of honor and weakness is crushed and ground out underfoot. However, they do not let their emotions cloud their judgment, as Chaotic Evil people so often do. Drow children who exhibit signs compassion and empathy are subjected to merciless psychological brainwashing or outright mental and physical torture until all kindness is beaten out of them. Those that persist are relegated to the slave caste for being too weak to be in position of rulership, if they are not murdered outright by their peers or elders. After all, in the Darklands, only the strongest survive, and no weakness whether mental or physical can be tolerated.
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Likewise, I would argue that the overall goal of the Lantern Bearers, i.e., the unequivocal pursuit of total genocide against an entire sub-race of elves, along with the suppression and murder of those who have knowledge of the Drow, is an evil goal. Thus, the organization should be considered an evil organization.Except that the second half is, as I pointed out earlier, no longer true,
I am going to quote for you verbatim a passage from the Lantern Bearer Prestige Class from Paths of Prestige, which is the most recent entry regarding the organization and what they do:
"Members of this secretive organization state that their goal is "to be a light against the coming darkness." In plainer terms, they seek to contain and eliminate the drow, and especially to conceal the shameful truth behind the birth of their corrupt relations."
How exactly do they go about "concealing the shameful truth"? If a non-elf finds out about the Drow and how they originated, what does a Lantern Bearer do to keep that person from spreading the news? Do they kill the person? Or perhaps imprison that person for the rest of his or her life? Maybe they ask nicely not to tell anyone? Brainwash or gaslight, him or her into forgetting? Use magical enchantments to make them forget? Threaten their friends, family and loved ones?
I am just listing all the options at the Lantern Bearer's disposal to conceal the truth. Short of asking the person not to tell, none of these are good options, because concealing the truth simply because it might bring shame upon your race is not a good action.
The only possible good reason that I might concede for Lantern Bearers to do this is to keep people from becoming even more prejudiced against elves than they already are. But as I said before, any measures the Lantern Bearers take to suppress the knowledge short of asking nicely not to spread the news will only come back to bite them in the rear. This will simply lead to an explosion of anti-elven prejudice and lynchings across the Inner Sea.
and the first half is a mischaracterization of what they're doing and why. It's not genocide. It's euthanasia.
If you wish to cloak butchery with a more acceptable term, that's fine. I prefer calling the extermination of an entire people what it is: genocide. You don't have to try and convince me just how horrible the Drow are. It is not the Drow I am arguing for here. The vast majority of them are evil. Perhaps all of them are evil (except when I run my games), down to the little Drow babies from birth.
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Volume 44 of the Pathfinder Chronicles, from the Pathfinder Society Primer: "Published in 4707 AR, this volume is notable for the detailed account by Koriah Azmeren of her exploration of the Darklands. Her confirmation that the legendary drow were in fact real drove the elves of Kyonin — who had maintained the secret of the drow’s existence for millennia — to attempt to bribe the Decemvirate into recalling and altering the book. The Society didn’t relent, however, making the existence of dark elves a widely accepted fact within only a few years’ time."
Again: they aren't doing that anymore. The cat's out of the bag. It's over. Done.
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Oh, so they now stopped killing innocent people because they got exposed. That makes all their prior behaviour justified, of course.
Disgusting.
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I didn't say that Salvatore had not provided a reason for Drizzt alignment perspective, only that his explanation was not very good. And I see the evolution of Spike as not lazyness of the writers, but rather them unwittingly surpassing their own petty limitations.
Salvatore also gives him a neutral father. This father is Drizzt's mentor and trainer.
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It may also be worth noting that Lantern Bearers are not heading into the Underdark. They're protecting the surface world from drow who come up.
Meanwhile, drow are planning the extermination of the elf species. The goal is 'to be a light against the coming darkness'.
What is the source for Lantern Bearers = planning/perpetrating genocide?
The drow aren't actually trying to exterminate the surface elves. They need a few for fleshmolding/entertainment purposes. Bloody hateful propaganda here.
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RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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If you wish to cloak butchery with a more acceptable term, that's fine. I prefer calling the extermination of an entire people what it is: genocide. You don't have to try and convince me just how horrible the Drow are. It is not the Drow I am arguing for here. The vast majority of them are evil. Perhaps all of them are evil (except when I run my games), down to the little Drow babies from birth.and the first half is a mischaracterization of what they're doing and why. It's not genocide. It's euthanasia.
This.
Even if you accept that killing an elf-turned-drow is a mercy killing, killing drow-born-as-drow because they're drow isn't.
Now I *do* beleive that the society as written 'self selects' for evil. Any god will be seen as weakness and an aberration. This will make a good aligned drow problematic. When he first asks why they're sacrificing that surface elf to Abraxis, when he wonders if fleshwarping is painful, when he first spares the life of an assassin, all these markers are going to show him as 'weak' and more importantly vulnerable to his peers. That doesn't mean behaviours can't be unlearned. Just unlikely to be unlearned.
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What is the source for Lantern Bearers = planning/perpetrating genocide?
From the Page 26 of the Pathfinder Faction Guide. Again, I will quote it verbatim:
GOAL: Eliminate the Drow
The elves among the Lantern Bearers often describe their goal in lofty terms: "To be a light against the coming darkness." The sentiment is genuine and is typical of the elven way of thinking. But more bluntly, the Shin'Rakorath seek to eliminate the drow.
There is a spiritual element to the goal, beyond mere slaughter. The longtime members, those who have served for decades at minimum, are told the secret behind the appearance of the drow and the organization's true motives. The Shin'Rakorath know that drow are changed elves. Thus a commitment to goodness and purity ensures that the hunters are less likely to become the things they hunt, a preemptive strike at the enemy within.
They don't say that the Lantern Bearers' goal is to destroy the Drow Empire rendering their influence impotent, or to simply defeat them militarily. They are out to eliminate the Drow people, full stop, without any qualifications. This isn't a war. It is a campaign of extermination. And the Lantern Bearers see this as some kind of spiritual duty, above and beyond "mere slaughter." That is where we find the intent to commit genocide.
Let us at the very least respect the Lantern Bearers enough to say that, as they are written, they seek the annihilation of the Drow as a race. Again, this is without even touching upon the morality of exterminating an entire race of sentient beings for onstensibly being completely evil.
In addition, in support of my earlier points, from the same page:
JOINING
The group is very secretive and works to suppress knowledge of the drow. The Lantern Bearers may recruit adventurers who know that the drow exist but who are too valuable to eliminate. The members consist almost exclusively of elves, with only a few half-elves rounding out the roster.
I just want to bring your attention to the second sentence. That the Lantern Bearers recruit adventurers who know about the drow's existence, "but are too valuable to eliminate." That heavily implies that people who learned about the existence of the drow but were not deemed to be "valuable" enough were eliminated.
And let me be generous and say for the sake of argument that Shisumo is correct, and the Lantern Bearers no longer violently suppress knowledge of the Drow or how the Drow originated. It just raises the question: How many people have the Lantern Bearers assassinated up to this point in history simply for learning about the existence and/or origins of the Drow?
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If you wish to cloak butchery with a more acceptable term, that's fine. I prefer calling the extermination of an entire people what it is: genocide. You don't have to try and convince me just how horrible the Drow are. It is not the Drow I am arguing for here. The vast majority of them are evil. Perhaps all of them are evil (except when I run my games), down to the little Drow babies from birth.and the first half is a mischaracterization of what they're doing and why. It's not genocide. It's euthanasia.
This.
Even if you accept that killing an elf-turned-drow is a mercy killing, killing drow-born-as-drow because they're drow isn't.
Not true. Elves believe in reincarnation (see the Brightness Seekers for the most obvious example), and every drow is a elven soul corrupted into that abomination. As far as the elves know, death is the only way to free those souls to have a chance to become elves again. If anything, the mercy offered is greater, because the souls born into drow bodies never had a chance to be anything else.
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There's some saying about the best way to destroy an enemy being to make a friend.
I wonder if there has ever been a Lantern Bearer initiative to *prevent the formation of new Drow* from their people. Last we heard of them, two out of five Lantern Bearer leaders have 'gone to the dark side,' because their current goals are actually more compatible with turning Drow than with fighting Drow or preserving the non-Drow elven way of life.
I could see at least one Lantern Bearer looking up and saying, 'wow, this ain't working!' and thinking that the best way to prevent more Lantern Bearers from switching teams would be to re-evaluate their entire philosophy. Perhaps the best way to prevent elves from turning into Drow would be to stop doing the sorts of things that cause elves to turn into Drow, eh?
I could also see someone getting the dangerous notion of trying to capture Drow and change them back, purging the corruption and anger and hate from them through all sorts of dubious means, such as compulsion magic or transmutation magic or necromantic soul-altering magic or alchemical experimentation or conjuring all sorts of lesser good celestial critters and 'possessing' them with goodly spirits, etc., etc.
As with all horribly wrong-headed attempts to 'torture the evil out of people,' it will probably go as hilariously wrong as their current approach of genociding their way to a better (whiter) world.
The simple elysian spirits summoned to 'possess' and 'cleanse' the captured Drow, for instance, might just end up being horribly tormented and tainted and themselves corrupted or even spiritually sickened by this sort of experience, causing benevolent azata or celestial spirits to return to their upper planes now bearing seeds of darkness. Soul-altering necromancies might so deaden the spirits of the Drow affected by them that they become less passionately evil and hateful, but become listless passionless living zombies, while the 'evil' purged from them flits forth as undead shadows that wreak havoc on the living.
The Drow strapped to a chair and magically sickened as he is exposed to the sorts of brutishness and violence that he once enjoyed could find himself powerless to resist evil in the future, helplessly throwing up as children burn and he is powerless to unbar the door and save them.
From the 'good intentions' of trying to 'fix' the Drow through horrific means, many hells could be found instead.
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In the old module D3, vault of the drow, there is a drow prisoner there who is neutral with a 'slight but terrible tendency towards good deeds'.
Consider that this guy is probably one in ten thousand, perhaps even one in a million drow. That's at least 4 sigmas, maybe even more from the mean. That means your average drow is evil, pushing EVIL. Combine this with their incredibly aggressive nature and gratuitous cruelty towards their slaves and it's really easy to see why they're considered Kill on Sight (KOS) by pretty much everyone else (honestly, the race that likes them the most is probably their 'friendly enemies', the mind flayers, who are also on nearly everyone's KOS list).
Indeed. In D&D there are some races of sentient beings that are so alien, predatory and/or instinctually violent that peace may very well be impossible (Even in those "what if we raised their babies to be good?" scenarios). That is especially true in cases of beings such as Mind Flayers who need to kill other intelligent sentient beings in order to survive. A person playing good D&D/Pathfinder character may very well be able to argue that extermination of a species should not be considered an evil act, because left to their own devices, that species would invariably seek to enslave/kill/torture the PCs and their people.
Human history doesn't have any society even close to the drow, although there were a few ancient civilizations that successfully provoked the genocide response from their neighbors pretty justifiably (by justifiably, I mean that most of us in the same circumstances would've done the same thing, perhaps quicker).
And we would have been just as evil as the people who committed the genocide for having done so. However, please do not let us get into arguments of which particular ethnic groups of people historically deserved to be butchered down to the last bawling baby, shall we? The Mods have already made it clear that we are not to talk about that.