I read through the information from Inner Sea Gods and found her deific obedience. I am looking for more information about this god.
I'm specifically having trouble understanding why she is listed as Lawful Neutral. She is listed as the god of transitions. Transitions generally imply change, which is usually a chaotic attribute. I saw that she also often mediates disputes -- which would be lawful -- but her main focus seems to be transition points.
It looks like an interesting god and I've recently created a character that is a follower. I'm just having a bit of trouble understanding why she was made LN.
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Transitions are movements along a defined path or to a new category (child to adolescent, outside to inside, alien to citizen, phase change from water to ice, etc.). Defining and regulating those separations sounds lawful to me.
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Transitions are movements along a defined path or to a new category (child to adolescent, outside to inside, alien to citizen, phase change from water to ice, etc.). Defining and regulating those separations sounds lawful to me.
Exactly, she is a goddess of change, but not the bizarre, random, and primal change of the proteans. She's all about ordered change and logical transformation.
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So kaizen rather than entropy?
Does she value traditions? As a LN, is the letter of the law more important than the spirit or intent?
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So kaizen rather than entropy?
... meh. "Entropy" is kind of... weird. As is chaos and law, for that matter.
More, I'd say, she's the kind that, should the universal wheel need turning - and change to happen from one predefined variable to the other - she sees herself as the clock-keeper, the timecard overseer, and oil-changing engineer.
She's the one that ensures that people don't stay always babies.
Sure, it sucks to lose the vitality of youth into the decrepitude of old age, but that's the order the universe - it's important that the trains run on schedule, and the young become the elderly properly, and so on.
And, of course, entropy, being a function of the universe, needs to be preserved in its own way...
... but not always. Sometimes, for the greater collective, those things have to be bucked. While saving a life is generally the better option, sometimes... sacrifices... might be necessary. It's never good, and always abhorrent, to allow the innocent to die... but that might be the way things have to be every once in a rare while.
If social collapse and disorder would occur, it's probably legitimate to allow a lichdom or so to keep order, so long as the preponderance of people aren't harmed in the transition.
Kaizen, on the other hand, is also a the right thing. Because progress is not the enemy of entropy - they are two sides of the same coin. One cannot make better and more complex devices without increasing the amount of entropy in the world. Entropy must not "win" - that's stupid and anarchic. Kaizen cannot "win" - that's not the proper order. Sometimes one or the other should be superior in a local situation, but that's why she's there - to sort out the mess and provide order in the middle of anarchy, peace to the clash of desires, hopes, reality, and existence.
Nothing is worse that chaos: today entropy rules, and tomorrow it may, or may not, and no one has control or cares... that's awful. Perhaps entropy and progress instead take turns. They don't struggle - they play nice. They each have their own role to play in the transition from one thing to the next, after all.
A very complex and potentially confusing conceit, to be sure. And maybe not even the right one. It could be, however, a heretic's understanding. Or perhaps the promotion of Kaizen is the heretical view. Hm.
Does she value traditions? As a LN, is the letter of the law more important than the spirit or intent?
To the first: yes; but she also values traditions that transition with time.
I don't know if you've ever seen Avatar: the Last Airbender, but that series is phenomenal about explaining these sorts of things. Especially the way Aang deals with both the fact that the Air Temples have been abandoned (sort of) for a century that he's slept through, and the way the rest of the world does. In one episode (and later, one comic in particular - so good!) Aang has to come to grips with the fact that the world is different than it was when he was asleep. He must respect the new ways while acknowledging the old.
A compromise is ultimately necessary to allow the world to continue. One cannot ignore or reject the past... but one must not be so slavishly devoted to doing things just so, because, inevitably, that, itself, becomes entropy - progress can never be made, and forward movement is impossible, because you've hit stagnation and become frozen in time. And stagnation will lead to dissolution.
But now there is a whole city, and not all are practitioners... they can't be. But they still wish to acknowledge the old ways. But the hill is now a bustling cityscape... there is no ability to have the quiet communion with nature. Instead, the procession becomes a parade, the quiet communion a riotous dance, and the meditation fireworks. Either way, the ultimate intent - the commemoration of the ancient thing - is kept. It's just kept by the new people and new situation. It has... transitioned.
Or, in a different example, the Old Jedi Order no longer exists. It is impossible to remake it. The Galactic Council was eliminated, the government replaced with an Imperial Throne, and the Order hunted down to only two living members, only one of which was a counselor.
Then they both die, leaving behind a pupil trained in the traditional arts and skills, but deeply lacking the nuance and understanding of politics, rites, processes, religious history, and even straight-forward scientific lore of the Order he claimed to represent. There is never going to be the Order again - it will never exist.
But a new Order can. Taking the training he's received, Luke can start a new academy - he creates a new system where people have other options and can new rites and new rules and new rituals and new religious history and understanding. It's new, but it's based on the old. It has... transitioned.