Slaadi never seem to do any good, or even neutral, stuff. What makes then CN and not CE? (Besides the ones that ARE CE....)
They are aligned to Chaos. For them, it's more important to further the causes of Chaos without getting distracted by the orthogonal conflict of 'Good' vs 'Evil'.
In Planescape they're very clearly depicted more as forces of Chaos than forces of Evil.
Their creator, Charles Stross, contributor to 1981's Fiend Folio, said in a 2008 interview: "The Slaadi were going to be basically representatives of, and devotees of, total chaos — with an added warped sense of humour."
I also think some of the things we consider most horrific - a disease that transforms creatures into slaad and tadpoles that eat you from the inside (very current) are just part of the cycle of change that as creatures of limbo they represent. Plus the most commonly encountered are generally lower intelligence 6/7 and often following bound orders (either from a summoner or death slaad master) so aren't themselves evil.
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Death Slaads are uniquely tainted with evil. The rest are just jerks.
Being a jerk is a kind of evil....
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Being a jerk is a kind of evil....
In the world of D&D, where there are sun gods and moon gods and fey and shadows and ents and magic, and a plane for every element, where "Fire" lives and wants to burn, where "Water" live and wants to drown…
…in that world, even Good, Evil, Law and Chaos themselves are "alive". Forces you can be aligned with or opposed to.
There are those who strive to do Evil, to do selfish things. And there are those who strive be Good, to help others.
Chaos, to fight order. Law, to bring order.
A lawful good character has a moral dilemma when they're forced to choose between restoring order, or helping others. Similarly, a chaotic evil creature has a moral dilemma when the choice is between fighting order or helping one's self.
On Earth, it's easy to think that all absense of Good is then automatically evil. In that earthly philosophy, you either prioritize helping other people or you don't. "Jerks are evil". But, in D&D as Gygax created it, there is also Evil beyond not caring about others. Actively caring about self. (Now, hopefully, in the real world, most people will care about both self and others.)
True Neutral, the required alignment for Druids in 1e, is about the natural balance between these forces.
Chaotic Neutral, the alignment of Slaad, hates order, thinks order is tyranny, gives up both self and others in order to fight order.
Slaad brings chaos even when it happens to help others. They just don't care about right or wrong, good or evil, just as long as they can throw wrenches in the gears of law.
I've had arguments with people who thought Lawful Neutral automatically was Evil. "If they don't care about doing good, if they would sacrifice others to bring order, that's evil!" That argument flies on earth, where in some (far from all) definitions and philosophies, mere absense of goodness is Evil. Well, that's a Good worldview. "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal." (In other words: "Even though I do everything by the book, if I don't love, I'm just hollow noise.")
But in D&D's cosmos there is evil beyond non-good, chaos beyond non-order.
Early editions had three alignment. Law, Neutral and Chaos. (That came from a novel, Three Hearts and Three Lions.) These were cosmic, ancient forces.
In AD&D 1e, two more forces revealed themselves to be part of this ancient war. Good and Evil. Altruism vs Selflessness. They were positioned orthogonally to Law and Chaos, creating a two-axis system with eight extremes plus one neutral point in the middle. Slaad are from this time. They hate law and order and their souls belong fully to chaos. So focused are they on chaos that they disregard all sense of good and evil. If they should be summoned to a place where lawful evil, tyrannical devils ruled, they would fight these lawful evil devils in the name of chaos.
In the 4e era, there were five alignments, points on one line. Chaotic evil, evil, neutral, good, lawful good. Chaos and Law had chosen sides in the war between Good and Evil. Chaos only wanted Evil soldiers and Law only wanted Good soldiers. A model that's easier to understand, for those who happened to be Lawful Good or Chaotic Evil. For someone who was Lawful Evil, this order was incomprehensible.
But in 5e, we're back to the nine point model. There can, once again, be Chaotic Good. Someone who dedicates their heart both to fight the tyranny of order, and to uphold goodness and love and helping others.
To a Good person, it's hard to see the difference between Neutral and Evil, and to a Lawful person, it's hard to see the difference between Neutral and Chaotic.
Like, if you turn off the flashlight, it gets dark right away, doesn't it? That's how they think, these four extremes. It goes from the other direction, too — take a prophet of selfishness such as author Ayn Rand.
As soon as you compromise away Your Self, she thought, you've misstepped. If your actions to further your self happen to benefit others, well, that's how societal progress is made, but it's, to her, immoral to ever go against your own interests -- ever more immoral if you do so in order to help others. Coincidentally, she was also a strict proponent of absolutely immutable law, so much so that she saw elections and democracy as a chaotic threat to what she would consider absolute, "objective" justice. Her worst enemy is Robin Hood, who both fights law and also forcibly redistributes wealth. Robin Hood is Chaotic Good.
Here on Earth, depending on what tradition or philosophy we come from, we've been taugh good and evil. We see things that align with our own worldview as good and just, and things that break our worldview as evil and chaotic.
But in the greater wheels of the cosmos (also, D&D is fiction), "Good" means something specific, "Evil" means something specific. In the eyes of someone born and raised in Slaadi values, obeying chaos is (lowercase) "good", and everything outside pure chaos is wrong and confusing and imposing and tyrannical and (lowercase) "evil".
I just realized something; I guess I shouldn't have spent the above 860 words describing the differences between Chaos, Law, Evil and Good. In the eyes of many Earthlings, it's Neutral that's hard to understand. They would understand a four point model: Chaotic Good, Chaotic Evil, Lawful Good and Lawful Evil. But neutrality? How can one want both Evil and Good at the same time, want both Chaos and Law at the same time? On Earth, if a lightning bolt strikes a tree and burn it, that's neither good or evil, that's just nature. But in D&D, the primal forces of nature are themselves agential forces. Nature wants to be nature. Nature wants a balance between good and evil, between law and chaos.
Slaad agree with nature when it comes to good and evil, but when it comes to chaos vs law, they have definitely picked a side. "All hail Discordia! Down with Concordia!", they say fnord. "Good, bad... I'm the guy with the gun" they say.
I think most Earthlings are closer to neutral than they realize. They want good things both for themselves and for others. They want order when it helps them, oppose it when it doesn't. But sometimes it's hard to see the point where you're standing. It's hard to see water when you're submerged. It's hard to see the evil, good, chaotic and lawful things we do because we rationalize them or deny them. "I had reasons to do what I just did" we think.
In the fiction of D&D, it's a constant push and pull between these cosmic forces, a war between them.
BTW you don't have to use the alignment rules in your games. For most games, I tell the players to leave the alignment rule blank and instead we go with whatever the players have chosen as their Ideal. "Help others", "Fight tyranny", it's a freeform textfield and you don't have to understand the alignments in order to do so.
In one campaign I ran, I replaced the nine aligments with three new ones. Civilization, Nature and the Glitch. (It was a homebrew world where there was an incursion from another dimension, the "glitch". All set in a jungle world of dinosaurs where the humans and demis had come to settle and build cities.)
To be specific to Slaadi; once one of the overlords of Law sent a powerful stone into the chaotic world of Limbo, hoping to absorb all the Chaos that dwelled there so that Law could find a place to be. "Absorb the chaos", that's how the D&D worldview works, chaos as a "thing" in and of itself as if it were light or water. But when the stone had absorbed all the chaos, it got so chaotic itself that it birthed the slaadi, and then the slaadi killed all the lawful creatures like modrons and githzerai around them.
They are pure chaos. Jerkness is rebelling against politeness -- politeness is law, jerkness is chaos.
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They are change and growth in endless variation, rebelling against any taint of order. Because of their destructiveness, some slaadi do become evil. In general, though, they are simply obsessed with might and reproduction. You could, in theory, gain their alliance to protect Chaos against lawful beings. Mainly, though, they just ignore things that don't relate to their personal desires.
Just as formians and modrons are pitiless in their pursuit of Law, slaadi are pitiless in expressing vibrance, chaos, and brutality. They are parasitic to moral beings but not filled with an abundance of hatred. They think no more of infecting humans with their brood than humans do about plowing meadows and forests into fields, destroying the lives and homes of beasts, fey, and sylvan folk.
One reason they come across as more "evil" is that they usually lack much individuality, and hence don't respond to others as individuals.
I think it's not a stretch to say that they do qualify as little "e" evil to a degree, but lack the intentional malice, in most cases, to qualify as Evil in a metaphysical or moral sense. However, the quest for power can taint them, changing them from beings who express a reproductive role in the Chaotic tapestry to evil beings, the death slaadi, who pursue individual might and dominance over others.
I think a CG slaad would be very rare, and because of their nature, would be unlikely to pass on their genetic or philosophical legacy. However, they might serve as unlikely friends to other types of being.
Xanxost does not seem evil
Who is Xanxost?
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Who is Xanxost?
Xanxost
Xanxost is a blue slaad with a penchant for exploring the planes, explaining their secrets to everyone interested, and eating whatever he can catch, particularly mephits. He appears as a character in the Planescape accessories Faces of Evil: The Fiends and The Inner Planes. Both of these books are written as if they were created by someone within the Planescape setting, and within that writing style, both books have an 'editor' who collected the investigations and opinions of various planar creatures on the topic at hand. Xanxost is one such character. "Though his mannerisms are often odd, his information is always reliable".
In Faces of Evil he is one of the 'authors' of the section on tanar'ri, and in The Inner Planes he 'wrote' the section on the Quasielemental Plane of Steam. (The editor of the latter book claims that he was recruited to pen the chapter because feedback to his commentary in the former book was overwhelmingly positive.) Xanxost seems less chaotic than other slaadi in that he can write a mostly coherent piece of text, though his nature still shows through in his writing style, with many wanderings off-topic (mostly to the subject of food), repetitions of earlier remarks, and a seeming inability to count. He also refers to himself in third person. He also admits that his conflicts with tanar'ri have edged him slightly from pure Chaos towards the side of Good, at least for the time being. Xanxost is referred to as "it" in Faces of Evil, which makes some sense given the unusual nature of slaadi reproduction, but as "he" in The Inner Planes.
Neat! I miss Planescape.
To ants, a kid with a magnifying glass seems evil.