Gods and their servants and "The law"


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CodeDragonDM wrote:

Divine Detente is good for all lawful and neutrally aligned deities, but what about the chaotic ones? I'd poise there is a cost players can't see for Divine Intervention. If they want to blow up non-believers or dump demon armies on the universe, they risk war and spiritual starvation.

And with the forces of Law beating down the ones of Chaos, well, they can't make a concerted effort. Player-characters then become a hugely powerful pawn in this divine war just on cost savings alone as long as believers are an effective way to channel will into the universe.

That's the thing. A general read on the Divine Politics of Pathfinder, and Starfinder if it hasn't changed that much, is this.

All Good Alignments are united under one faction, let's call them the Greater Good.

Lawful Neutral Axis has contracts with the other Lawful Alignments, and even some Non-Chaotic groups, but are not part of a Law faction, same goes for Lawful Evil Hell.

True Neutral Boneyard doesn't care if it's not about the undead.

Chaotic Neutral Maelstrom is also doing whatever it wants.

Neutral Evil Abaddon wants to destroy everything and so the one group everyone else hates.

Chaotic Evil Abyss is split between the demons who want to do what they want and the qlippoth who want to kill off all mortals. Demons are more agreeable than the other.

There's a cold war between the Greater Good faction and the squabbling and infighting forces of Evil. There's a different issue with the Law vs Chaos cold war.

Lawful Good and Chaotic Good are in the same team and try to keep infighting to a minimum. So the only true conflicts are the three Lawful factions vs the two non-Good Chaotic alignments.

Lawful Neutral and Chaotic Neutral are eternal enemies, same goes for Lawful Good and Chaotic Evil.

There's no Blood War so relations between Lawful Evil and Chaotic Evil are in a case by case basis. Both sides would team up if Neutral Evil was going to win.

Really, there is at least one way to wonder about the Problem of Evil. If the forces of Goodness is united against Evil, and the forces of Evil are not united and prone to infighting, then why doe Evil still exist?

My take is this.

Hell made itself a necessary evil. Asmodeus made himself useful to the forces of Goodness.

The Abyss is a never ending horde. Demons are formed from both the souls and sins of mortals.

Abaddon exist despite attempts to kill it off. Pharasma has no court nor embassy for Abaddon. It was created when her bureaucracy was overwhelmed and lost souls ended up in the empty plane before going all survival of the fittest and turn into daemons.

There would have been divine crusades to prevent them from taking power, yet they failed in stopping Abaddon from forming and entrenching itself.

Which means one thing. That the united forces of Good is impotent at some level. It could even be some metaphysical distance, the lack of supply lines, and the neutral territory between the Greater Good and the forces of Evil. Law vs Chaos is practically sidelined in comparison.


That "good" deities and their followers aren't at open war with each other, usually, doesn't mean they're united. The divine powers in question often represent radically different worldviews, and they and their followers might often be prevented from decisive action by a simple lack of coordination. Not to mention everyone trying to gauge everyone else's intentions and choices against the sometimes-inscrutable or indifferent nature of "neutral" deities and their servants, before one even gets to confronting the evil ones.

The Law and Chaos axis can maybe be used to bring out some of the mutually alien character of the perspectives involved, although... it's kind of a limited tool for this.

(Honestly I get why some people just ignore all the Alignment stuff altogether insofar as they can get away with it; its schematic character brings as much confusion to the table as anything else. I get why Moorcock ended up blowing up the Eternal Champions universe, which inspired the system originally -- esp. the Law vs. Chaos thing -- in The Quest for Tanelorn; it was pointedly about freeing his characters, and perhaps some of his readers, from being ruled by these abstractions.)


I figure the CE is both its own problem and solution. Even within their own 'legions' or equivalent, there's no trust or loyalty, its all strength and backstabbing. Its all selfish focus. It relies more on brief common circumstance or shared goal, which also can quickly fall apart due to the individuals involved, or the multiple other self-interests within a group that can sabotage the group effort.


I was always partial to the idea that something so... Other appeared in the universe that even the most Chaotic and Evil deities could reach an agreement if it meant keeping that at bay...

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