Ebberon Question: Morality of Imps

[Togath]

As the title suggests, I ran into an issue with my gaming group in a recent session..
I set them up to encounter an Imp merchant, as an example of how Ebberon's alignments aren't cut and dried like other settings..l they promptly killed it, And now are carrying it around as a trophy.
The Imp's only crime in this case was trying to counterfeit scrolls.. and not checking to make sure the "paper with magical auras" he bought didn't already have spells written on it(most didn't and were otherwise inert.. but ten of them had active spells; 6 inflict light wounds, 2 inflict moderate wounds, and two protection from good scrolls)

How should I handle this? They immediately jumped to assuming the Imp was evil, despite the setting(and one of the party members is a knight and a town guard..)
Three of the five party members have never played dnd before.. the other two though, are decently experienced, and all of them wanted me to use Eberron.

[Vaz]

Some have Archetypes that need explaining away. Perhaps have the party confronted by a patron of the Fiend; perhaps it is an Angel protector or another Higher power demon/devil. Encourage the party to use a protection from good spell/scroll and then have it unaffected.

Alternatively, introduce it via the knightly order publicly decrying the knight/guard.

[VariSami]

Well... Imps are still devils, and I believe Eberron remains relatively unforgiving towards the alignments of full-blood fiends (unlike Planescape, for example).

However, fact is: something being evil is most definitely not a good enough reason to kill it in Eberron. I would probably teach the ambiguity by having someone who had previously bought something from the imp in question report the characters to the authorities who will question them for the reason they turned vigilante in this particular case. Should make it clear that they cannot act based on nothing but intuitions and prejudices. You need not even strong-arm them that much to make the point clear: authorities will not be on your side in such cases in the future.

Then again, maybe it will actually turn up that the imp worked for the Lords of the Dust. Maybe some of the scrolls included some secret plans that he would smuggle to infiltrators by "selling" them? Maybe the characters will need to convince the authorities of the justness of their actions, and this opens a way for them to do so? It is such a simple retcon, after all. Of course it would cement the idea that imps are all evil and not break it. But I believe the characters would still learn to watch their actions due to the initial reaction of authorities.

[Big Fau]

Imps have friends, and in Eberron nonevil-aligned Fiends may seek retribution through legal methods. A Harvester Devil (FC2) can easily blend into normal society and inform the guards that the PCs (one of which is a member of the local guards himself) slew a merchant in cold blood and provide proof.

The counterfeit scrolls don't matter, the murder takes precedent.

[DeltaEmil]

Imps in Eberron are still creatures of pure order and evil, and quite rare on the prime material plane of Eberron, unless in Sharn.

Just because Eberron has evil priests in a mainly good religion doesn't mean that outsiders with the evil subtype aren't evil anymore (it doesn't help that a chaotic good imp would take damage from any smite attempt that goes against law, chaos, evil and good). And the inhabitants of Eberron are still rather pro good outsiders (like angels, archons, guardinals, eladrins) and against evil outsiders (like demons and devils and daemons).

You might have tried too soon with the whole morally ambiguous thing that is one of the strengths of the Eberron setting.

You should have first let the player characters known that the imp is a well-known citizen of the community where they are, and a tax payer and stuff, so that the imp isn't a tiny malicious devil, but a citizen.

As always, first talk to the players, before applying any ingame consequences, to make sure that you're all on the same wavelength.

There are things that however never will be considered bad to kill (except in the eyes of the bad guys who worship them), like mind flayers, beholders, daelkyrs (if anybody is actually strong enough to kill them), and of course all those many other evil outsiders.

[Togath]

I think I have some ideas now.. given that imps are lawful(and devils are basically elementals of law and evil), I could have either a stronger devil, or just the guy the imp was working for(a warforged psion) cause trouble later on..
I figure he's smart enough to wait until he's not actively in the clutches of the heroes to take action(also because both he and the imp did commit a crime, counterfeiting scrolls and tomb robbing intentionally, and whatever you'd call passing out inflict wound scrolls as healing, flight, or other such beneficial scrolls, due to neither of them being able to identify scrolls, more than enough to know if one has a magic aura anyway)

[Benthesquid]

And whatever you'd call passing out inflict wound scrolls as healing, flight, or other such beneficial scrolls, due to neither of them being able to identify scrolls, more than enough to know if one has a magic aura anyway)

Probably criminal negligence, potentially manslaughter if anyone could be demonstrated to have died as a result.

[Maginomicon]

Eberron's deliberate alignment ambiguity aside, you might be able to draw some inspiration (if not a direct solution) for how to handle this from the Real Alignments Handbook (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=283341). In Real Alignments, the intention is (among other things) for no one to be a typical caricature of evil. Further, just because someone is a merchant at a gun shop doesn't make them villainous, even if they're extremely sunburned and have questionable hairstyle choices.

[Telok]

It may also be possible that the merchant had purchased something on credit from another person and that the PCs may now be carrying a valuable object that someone else has a legal claim to. You dead merchant may also have taken an order and money for something that he had not procured yet, it the PCs took all the "loot" they now have money that legally belongs to someone else.

If the murder took place in a town or city the merchant's accounting and inventory books will be used by the authorities to determine who might have a motive for killing the merchant. PCs don't normally take such mundane and non-money value items despite the information value they might contain. If the PCs start selling or displaying items that match the contents of the murdered merchant's store then local law enforcement will want to question the PCs.

[Greenish]

Imps in Eberron are still creatures of pure order and evil, and quite rare on the prime material plane of Eberron, unless in Sharn.Why Sharn, specifically, or do you just mean it's a large city with lots of stuff?

[Feint's End]

First of all that is metagaming in the worst possible way. Do the player characters even know what an Imp is if it's that rare? Do they know how they usually behave and what alignment they have? If the answer to those questions is no then well .... that was a chaotic evil act. Chaotic because out of no reason (IC of course) and evil .... well that's pretty obvious I'd say.

Even if they know they shouldn't assume every Imp they encounter is a murderous monster who sucks out peoples souls while they are sleeping. Especially the town guard. I mean .... you don't go around a town and kill every evil person right? If a human would do the exactly same thing as the Imp has done it probably wouldn't even be a real crime or a small one at maximum.

You probably should punish them with an alignment shift and talk to them out of Character about Metagaming and racism. Also if the Imp was a regular citizen then this was a crime and should be handled adequately.

[Greenish]

Actually, I'm not sure if people from places that were not signatories of the Thronehold Accords have any legal protection (except potentially under the auspices of one of the Dragonmarked houses).

So, killing a, say, an imp from Demon Wastes or an ogre from Droaam may not be legally punishable in, say, Aundair or Breland.


Of course, "not illegal" doesn't mean "right" or "just" or even "socially acceptable".

[Togath]

First of all that is metagaming in the worst possible way. Do the player characters even know what an Imp is if it's that rare? Do they know how they usually behave and what alignment they have? If the answer to those questions is no then well .... that was a chaotic evil act. Chaotic because out of no reason (IC of course) and evil .... well that's pretty obvious I'd say.

Even if they know they shouldn't assume every Imp they encounter is a murderous monster who sucks out peoples souls while they are sleeping. Especially the town guard. I mean .... you don't go around a town and kill every evil person right? If a human would do the exactly same thing as the Imp has done it probably wouldn't even be a real crime or a small one at maximum.

You probably should punish them with an alignment shift and talk to them out of Character about Metagaming and racism. Also if the Imp was a regular citizen then this was a crime and should be handled adequately.

Do note, I only use alignments for statistics, rather than fluff,(such as the protection from x spells, the detect x spells don't exist in my campaigns)so that advice is useless in my case.
Also the imp was working with a warforged merchant who the pcs "rescued".. by killing his business partner, and looting his stall as well as destroying it, in broad daylight, in the middle of a market.
So the pcs might get in legal trouble with the village still:smallsmile:
One of them also just took on a work order(to craft weapons) from a "suspicious dwarf", who is actually a member of a violent gang of bandits. He doesn't know they're bandits, but I figure the fact that the one that sent the order then went and told another dwarf(who the pc had seen mugging a beggar earlier, or at least threatening one) should have been a hint:smallwink:

[DeltaEmil]

Do note, I only use alignments for statistics, rather than fluff,(such as the protection from x spells, the detect x spells don't exist in my campaigns)
Do your players all know this, and are they okay with the consequences? Have you talked to them about this? Because nothing disrupts the game faster than players having a different assumption about what should be okay for the game than the GM, and this not being clear.

[Tanuki Tales]

Breland.

Really? If memory serves, they're one of the most vocal about the rights of all sapients.

[DeltaEmil]

Really? If memory serves, they're one of the most vocal about the rights of all sapients.But not devilish monsters from the Age of Demons (which does also include Rakshasa Rajas and Daemons and Devils), the hellish fireplace of Fernia, the bloodsoaked battlefields of Shavarath. Devils also live in Khyber, the horrible underdark/underworld of Eberron, where Daelkyrs, mind flayers, mindless undead and worse things live.

In Eberron, a fiend is still normally regarded as a fiend, and nobody likes fiends.

If fiends like that little imp devil aren't horrible monsters that must be killed on sight to save the world in this campaign, then the GM must tell the players that difference.

The players are justified per the background lore of the Eberron campaign setting in their behavior for killing the imp. If it's not okay, the players must know this. If they know this, then the consequences are okay.

Now, if that imp was the familiar of a sorcerer/wizard, who died from the death of its familiar, then that might bring other consequences, which nobody would object to.

[Greenish]

Really? If memory serves, they're one of the most vocal about the rights of all sapients.Warforged rights, yeah. They're not that principled when it comes to Droaam, I should think.

Still, I could be wrong, I only distantly remember what I read about legal protection of non-Thronehold Accords nationals. I can't even recall whether it was from Sharn - The City of Towers or Five Nations. Or maybe Forge of War. I should probably give them a reread some day now.

[Togath]

The Imp was indeed a familiar, though the wizard died of old age, setting it free to.. well, live in the wizard's house for a few years.

I also hadn't known much about Ebberon when I started the game, and had assumed it was like Sigil, but even more morally ambiguous.