Exacting Genocide as a Good character..?

[Firechanter]

Alright, here's an alignment-related roleplaying dilemma. Technically it's for an AD&D2 game but that doesn't really make much difference; I am posting in this board because the problem would be the same in 3.5 and, well, there's more traffic here. ;)

I'll explain in detail first, but will sum up a tl;dr version at the end, so you can skip ahead if you don't feel like reading a wall of text.

Okay, here's the background:
We're playing a Forgotten Realms campaign, revolving around the Dalelands so far. We have helped liberating Daggerdale and kicked out the Zhents. Got awarded a Barony and dealt with some other threats. Then we got to the point where we could decide what we wanted to do next.
One of our players has a LN Dwarven Earthwalker, i.e. Priest of Grumbar, the Neutral deity of elemental Earth. A very small cult, and at level 10 he is probably the highest-levelled Grumbar priest in the Realms.
We learned about the Mines of Tethyamar, a former Dwarven city kinda like Moria, including the fact that it has been overrun by evil creatures (Orcs, we heard) hundreds of years ago. The Dwarf hatched the idea to liberate these mines and establish a Sanctuary of Grumbar there, and get our own mining operation going. Since he assisted us in liberating Daggerdale despite a lack of personal ties to it, we agreed to return the favour and help him in this enterprise.

We planned a lot and launched a big effort. We hired a crack company of Dwarven tunnel fighters (for a lot of gold up front and a share of the loot). We also enlisted an allied NPC Mage/Priest for the promise of a share of the mine yields.

The first part of the operation went well: we fought hundreds of Hobgoblins (not Orcs, we did notice), several Giants, Fey'ri, Tanarrok... wait, what?
After capturing a couple of halls and establishing a beachhead, we learned that the mines were under the control of a Kossuth cult, led by a bunch of Half-Demons (Fey'Ri and Tanarrok) and a Fire Giant. They asked for parley, which we accepted. They explained they had the whole mountain under control, and kept the Orcs in check by making them work in the mines for them in return for some baubles. They also made the point that none of us had a right to these mines, since they used to belong to a completely different dwarven clan which is long since extinct. All they as Kossuth-cult wanted was a place where they could worship their deity and not be bothered by the outside world.
They actually offered to enter a cooperation with us: they would supply us with goods, weapons and armour forged in the Fires of Kossuth, which we could trade in the outside world, and share the profit. And they would even be okay with us "removing" the Orcs from the mines, as the Dwarf wanted to have the mining operation run by other Dwarves. They confirmed that there were about 3000 Orcs down there, held in check by about 100 (lesser) Tanarrok.

This caused much discussion among us players.
My character - a NG Fighter/Bard and Harper - believed the Kossuthites that they posed no threat to the outside world and just wanted to be left alone. Getting a steady supply of excellent equipment would have been just dandy.
The Dwarf however was of the opinion that Dwarves and Half-Demons could never live side by side in peace. And he was not willing to just leave the mines to the Orcs.
The Elf of our group had a big problem with the Fey'Ri. Despite normally being all for peaceful solutions, here she really wanted to have them rooted out of this plane of existence.
(Another player was absent and thus couldn't voice her opinion)
So long story short, I was overruled and had to go along with the Hawks. We resumed the assault and had soon wiped out the Kossuth cult (except for the Tanarrok in the lower levels). A couple of survivors had asked for quarter and were permitted to pull out. They teleported into the Underdark after vowing never to return.

This is the current state of affairs. Next step will be to clear out the lower levels, where the remaining Tanarrok reside, and eventually the Orcs dwelling in the mines. Now it is obvious that among 3000 Orcs, a lot of them will be non-combatants; elderly, women, children. Killing about 1000 Orc warriors won't be a problem for us, but what to do when the rest wants to surrender and begs for mercy?

For the Dwarves in our host, it's probably no big deal. They hate Orcs and may not be above mercilessly slaughtering helpless civilians. While I can't speak for the other non-dwarves of our group, I can say that for my character, it will be a problem. This only really dawned on me after we wiped out the Kossuth cult -- they could have kept the Orcs in check but now there's just no turning back.
We can't spare them, because the Dwarf wants to reclaim the mines for his people. We obviously can't release them into the open country because they might swarm into Daggerdale, which is still weakened by the war. Just looking the other way while others do the dirty work is also not exactly the definition of Good-ness. So how am I supposed to deal with this situation?

Note, btw, that the DM puts us under no pressure alignment-wise. He declared that he would not forcefully change our alignments. It's just our business to play according to the alignment we selected. So this is a purely roleplaying thing (with possible roleplaying consequences) but without mechanical implications.

tl;dr:
As a party of mostly Good-aligned characters, we can expect to be soon confronted with >1000 non-combatant Orcs (read, women and children), which can't stay where they are and have nowhere to go. What can we do?

[Abd al-Azrad]

tl;dr:
As a party of mostly Good-aligned characters, we can expect to be soon confronted with >1000 non-combatant Orcs (read, women and children), which can't stay where they are and have nowhere to go. What can we do?

I love this problem, because there is no good answer. Let's remove the question of "alignment" from it for a moment, that's for the Gods to judge and you are mere mortals.

If you kill them all, you have a fairly clean slate to work with. Assuming you can all live with that decision, I think your biggest potential problem would be to your reputation as leaders. Sure, many of your people will be fine with this decision in the short-term, but, well... see Redcloak for an example of what happens when one group takes to exterminating another group out of convenience or hatred. Or really any terrorist cell / rebel army from history, fiction or the modern day. Some people just get unreasonably annoyed at folks who wipe out entire nations.

Basically your best bet to keep that sort of problem under control is overkill. Make sure none can escape, bind souls if needed, and use whatever magics you have at your disposal to ensure no legends of the genocide slip through to the outside world.

Imagining you're not comfortable with that... degree of carnage, you end up basically being responsible for whatever happens to these thousand-plus people whose husbands and fathers you've just murdered. Large-scale mental manipulation may help alleviate the problems of rebellion, etc., but it's kind of likely they'll be, again, unreasonably annoyed and uncooperative with your efforts to, say, relocate them, or reintegrate them into another society.

I think your best bet is a "Land of Our Own" sort of solution. These people are effectively slaves, they have already been forced into labour for the benefit of others. What they need is a home, preferably somewhere far away, where they can settle down and build lives for themselves. The more they eventually build up, the more they will have to lose from a potential future war of vengeance against your own people. Given that you're about to kill off their military, you'll also have to assign a contingent to support and protect them, or at least find someone else who will be willing to take that role. If not, you're basically sentencing them to death anyway, which would be best done by you guys (see above, cleaner).

[hymer]

It's a classic problem, of course. Something you may want to try and find out, is to what degree evil is Evil, and to what degree orcs are Evil in these particular Forgotten Realms. If orcs are (virtually) irredeemably evil, then the only problem with massacring noncombatants is aesthetics and possibly sanity. Not doing it is like feeling sorry for the weeds you pull out of your garden, and leaving them to strangle your potatoes and lettuce.
If the orcs can be redeemed, well now they better be.
My guess, from the laissez-faire attitude of your DM towards alignment, is that these orcs, or some of them, can be turned into allies. But I really don't know.

[hamishspence]

Even the "Good is like Greek Hero Good" perspective, isn't especially genocide-tolerant:

http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Dungeonomicon_(DnD_Other)/Socialnomicon


Living With Yourself After a Raid

The goblins have gone and conducted a raid on your village in full force. They rode in, took a bunch of the sheep, killed some of the people, set fire to some of the cottages, and rode away again with Santa Sacks filled with this year's crop. And they laughed because they thought it was funny. And now that your elder brother has been slain you want to dedicate yourself to the eradication of the Goblin Menace and begin the training necessary to become a Ranger so that you can empty the goblin village from the other side of the valley once and for all.
Par for the course D&D, right? Wrong! Killing all the goblins isn't just an Evil act, it's unthinkable to most D&D inhabitants. This is the Classical Era, and actually sowing the fields of Carthage with salt is an atrocity of such magnitude that people will speak of it for thousands of years. In the D&D world, goblins raid human settlements with raiding parties, humans raid goblin settlements with "adventuring parties", and like the cattle raiding culture of Scotland, it's simply accepted by all participants as a fact of life.
When your city is raided by other groups of humanoids, it's a bad thing for your city. Orcs may kidnap some of your relatives and use them as slaves (or food), and many of your fellow villagers may lose their lives defending lives and property important to them. But that's part of life in the age, and people just sort of expect that sort of thing.

Razing Hell: When Genocide is the Answer:

Sometimes in history there would come a great villain who just didn't get with the program. The Classical example is the Assyrians. Those bastards went around from city to city stacking heads in piles and levying 100% taxation and such to conquered foes. They became… unpopular, and eventually were destroyed as a people. That's the law of the jungle as far back as there are any records: if a group pushes things too far the rules of mercy and raiding simply stop applying. Goblins, orcs, sahuagin… these guys generally aren't going to cross that line. But if they do, it's OK for the gloves to come off. In fact, if some group of orcs decides to kill everyone in your village while you're out hunting so that you come home to find that you are the last survivor, other humanoids (even other Evil humanoids like gnolls) will sign up to exterminate the tribe that has crossed the line.
Cultural relativism goes pretty far in D&D. Acceptable cultural practices include some pretty over-the-top practices such as slavery, cannibalism, and human sacrifice. But genocide is still right out. That being said, some creatures simply haven't gotten with the program, and they are kill-on-sight anywhere in the civilized world or in the tribes of savage humanoids. Mindflayers, Kuo-Toans, and [Monster] simply do not play the same game that everyone else is playing, mostly because their culture simply does not understand other races as having value. And that means that even other Evil races want to exterminate those peoples as a public service. Like the Assyrians, they've simply pushed their luck too far, and the local hobgoblin king will let you marry his daughter if you help wipe them out of an area.
Solitary intelligent monsters often get into the same boat as the Kuo-Toans. Since the Roper really has no society (and possibly the most obscure language in Core D&D), it's very difficult for it to understand the possible ramifications of offending pan-humanoid society. So now they've done it, and they really haven't noticed the fallout they are receiving from that decision. Ropers pretty much attack anything they see, and now everyone that sees a roper attacks them. In the D&D worlds, ropers are on the brink of extinction and it probably never even occurs to them that their heavy tendrilled dealings with the other races have pushed them to this state.

[FishBonePendant]

Damn, that is one hell of a problem for the party. Parlaying with the dwarves and your party as an advocate for peace may the only way to even get them to consider an non-genocide solution, so you've got another big problem to cover.

My suggestion? You guys hired wizards right? See if you can get one of them to disguise you and maybe another party member to go down into the mines and talk to the orcs, you can't exactly come to an agreement if they know nothing about what's going on above them.

If you can find an Adept or a Cleric or even a Sage among the orcs, see if he can give you or the other orcs some divine insight to a new place they can live or some kind of solution. If that doesn't work you can go back to the dwarves and demand they at least explore a peaceful way to deal with things.

If none of that works you're left with 3 choices: Slaughter the orcs with everyone else,
Sit and pout like the world's worst Paladin,
Or saddle up, pick your +5 Holy cahones, and fight with the orcs for the rights against the dwarves for the right to live peacefully, evil background be damned.

[White Blade]

You could present the orcs with numerous options:
1. You could try and convince the dwarves to let the orcs work as manual labor.
2. You could look for somewhere in need of mercenary warriors and hire the orcs out there in exchange for land.
3. You could convince the dwarves to hire out the warrior orcs in exchange for a place for their kinsmen to live.
4. You could just off them all. What's three thousand people next to all the people you've saved... oh wait. Its three thousand people.
5. You could get in contact with a good aligned deity and get them to make the choice. The other dwarves (not the dwarf priest) no doubt honor the dwarf pantheon - Surely a priest of them can tell you what they want you to do. Its FR, not Eberron. "What do the gods want" is a relevant question.

Any approach that results in peace probably won't involve killing all the warriors.

[Dalebert]

Some people just get unreasonably annoyed at folks who wipe out entire nations.

I call those people the fun police!

[Elkad]

Baby orcs with evil daddies grow up to be evil. Especially if you killed their daddies and made them want revenge.

1. Pump lots of cloudkills into the depths.
2. Profit.

[mangosta71]

You should have refused to participate when the other two merrily decided to slaughter a bunch of intelligent beings that you perceived as non-threatening. You could have simply departed in peace. Depending on your role in the party, that could have seriously disrupted with their plans, which would have been a good thing from your point of view.

When it comes down to the women and children, it seems to me that it would be in character for you to stand between your "allies" and their prey.

[Firechanter]

Thanks for the replies, yeah, so you can see what plight I am in. (And possibly the other Good characters, too.)

By the way we are around levels 9-10 now, so no Binding Souls or mass brainwashing. So let me just quickly go through this list of suggestions:

Coexistence with the Dwarves will be just about impossible. We are talking about a race that has a hatred for the other species written in their racial description.

Maybe, just maybe, we can find a way to relocate the Orcs after all, maybe to some unsettled wilderness in the north, or maybe the lower mines offer some access to the Underdark, which we can hopefully seal off once the Orcs are gone.

Keeping them as allies should be impossible. They just aren't reliable enough for that. If we wanted that kind of thing, we could have just allied with the Kossuth guys and spare the trouble with unruly Orcs.

However, I have to say the DM does seem to be a friend of such unorthodox alliances. The NPC Mage/Priest we've got with us is actually a Neutral Evil guy, but "Evil" only in the sense that he doesn't care about collateral damage and stuff like that. We actually won him as an ally after one of his experiments had gotten out of hand, and after we had everything under control, it would have been in our power and our right (as lords of the land) to off him. We decided in favour of mercy (with our CG Elven Thief dissenting) and won him as a friend, though it's a bit like Roy keeping Belkar in check in OotS.

Also, even previously, we had to recapture the old castle of the barony, which was occupied by Trolls and suchlike. We gave them a damn good thrashing, and had killed / disabled about half of them when the rest surrendered. We allowed them to evacuate the castle and move into the wilderness to the north. Afterwards, the DM hinted that we might have won them as allies as well if we hadn't attacked them on sight.

[Inevitability]

Well, you're in the FR. Find some high-level mage and ask him to create a Gate towards the plane of orcs or something. For 1530 GP, you can get a 17th-level wizard to cast it for you.

Silly? Yes. Good? Most certainly.

[Firechanter]

You should have refused to participate when the other two merrily decided to slaughter a bunch of intelligent beings that you perceived as non-threatening. You could have simply departed in peace.

Yeah, in hindsight that might have been the thing my character should have done. Or actually, and I had realized that already before the recent session, I should never have agreed to go there, considering that no threat had come from these old mines for centuries. Well, I already learned a lesson from that - never undertake such an effort "because we can" without proper motivation.

Well, I made a couple of mistakes there, and now I have to live with them.

[jaydubs]

This isn't exactly a good option, but...

You could slaughter all the orcs above a certain age, and then engage in hardcore socialization the old fashioned way. The victors write history, after all. If you teach them from a tender age that the dwarves in fact rescued them from dark and terrible lives, and raised them into civilization, they might well be integrated into dwarven society in a decade or two.

[Vogonjeltz]

The first part of the operation went well: we fought hundreds of Hobgoblins (not Orcs, we did notice), several Giants, Fey'ri, Tanarrok... wait, what?
After capturing a couple of halls and establishing a beachhead, we learned that the mines were under the control of a Kossuth cult, led by a bunch of Half-Demons (Fey'Ri and Tanarrok) and a Fire Giant. They asked for parley, which we accepted. They explained they had the whole mountain under control, and kept the Orcs in check by making them work in the mines for them in return for some baubles. They also made the point that none of us had a right to these mines, since they used to belong to a completely different dwarven clan which is long since extinct. All they as Kossuth-cult wanted was a place where they could worship their deity and not be bothered by the outside world.
They actually offered to enter a cooperation with us: they would supply us with goods, weapons and armour forged in the Fires of Kossuth, which we could trade in the outside world, and share the profit. And they would even be okay with us "removing" the Orcs from the mines, as the Dwarf wanted to have the mining operation run by other Dwarves. They confirmed that there were about 3000 Orcs down there, held in check by about 100 (lesser) Tanarrok.

So to summarize as a news title: Demon-worshippers Enslave Orc Horde and Tempt Do Gooders With Greedy Riches

These guys hit basically every stop on the evil checklist.


This caused much discussion among us players.
My character - a NG Fighter/Bard and Harper - believed the Kossuthites that they posed no threat to the outside world and just wanted to be left alone. Getting a steady supply of excellent equipment would have been just dandy.
The Dwarf however was of the opinion that Dwarves and Half-Demons could never live side by side in peace. And he was not willing to just leave the mines to the Orcs.
The Elf of our group had a big problem with the Fey'Ri. Despite normally being all for peaceful solutions, here she really wanted to have them rooted out of this plane of existence.
(Another player was absent and thus couldn't voice her opinion)
So long story short, I was overruled and had to go along with the Hawks. We resumed the assault and had soon wiped out the Kossuth cult (except for the Tanarrok in the lower levels). A couple of survivors had asked for quarter and were permitted to pull out. They teleported into the Underdark after vowing never to return.

Your response is fairly evil.


but what to do when the rest wants to surrender and begs for mercy?

If they surrender you let them go, the same way you let the demon worshippers go. Good characters accept surrender and show mercy.


As a party of mostly Good-aligned characters, we can expect to be soon confronted with >1000 non-combatant Orcs (read, women and children), which can't stay where they are and have nowhere to go. What can we do?

If you want to be consistent with the evil decisions you've made thus far, you kill all of them. From what I've seen your character is being played as Neutral Evil.

[Firechanter]

Right, I suppose you can argue and turn every imaginable action into "Evil" with semantics.

"So there's a former Dwarven stronghold which, as far as you know, is now infested with Orcs.
You don't care? So you let the Evil in there go unchecked until it spills over and floods the land? Well, that's Evil.
Oh, you want to go in? When you have absolutely no business there? Evil!"

"You learn that the stronghold is actually ruled by, not Orcs, but a Cult of Kossuth, a True Neutral deity. The leaders are Planetouched, though, Half-demons to be precise. They ask to parley.
What, you want to murder them anyway? A True Neutral cult that wants to treat with you? That's Evil.
Oh, you want to make peace with them? With Half-Demons, are you serious?"

With that kind of rationale, you can argue _anything_ as being evil. That kind of "damned if you do" attitude is not helpful at all.


If they surrender you let them go, the same way you let the demon worshippers go.

First off, there were no "demon worshippers". There were planetouched that worshipped a True Neutral deity of the Elemental Plane of Fire. Their father happened to be a Tanar'ri.

Secondly, let them go where? As opposed to the Fey'ri, they cannot teleport away. So we should release them into the open country, so they can start raiding human settlements?

However, in response to one of the previous comments:


Well, you're in the FR. Find some high-level mage and ask him to create a Gate towards the plane of orcs or something. For 1530 GP, you can get a 17th-level wizard to cast it for you.

Silly? Yes. Good? Most certainly.

That's a pretty good idea. There's probably no high-level enough mage available in the area, except maybe Elminster, but maybe we could procure a scroll somewhere. I'll put it up for discussion.

[Sith_Happens]

You said you're playing a Harper, right? I hear Thay is a pretty popular Orc hangout, so help then move there.:smallwink:

EDIT: Pretty sure I'm getting Thay and Netheril mixed up, but it's still a good plan.

[137beth]

I'm just going to leave this (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?321374-Is-V-really-repentant/page3&p=16673090#post16673090) here.

[jaydubs]

I'm just going to leave this (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?321374-Is-V-really-repentant/page3&p=16673090#post16673090) here.

The relevant quote:

"It is. It is an evil act. Always. Without exception. Period. Genocide is always evil, guys."

***

I'm going to have to disagree. In our world, genocide is evil because we're basically only dealing with other human beings. Human beings are malleable enough creatures that we aren't destined from birth to be good or evil.

In fantasy universes, it's entirely possible for races to be evil (or in some cases unavoidably destructive), from birth. Whether genocide is evil is therefore dependent on what exactly you're trying to wipe out. For instance:

-Would it be evil to kill all the xenomorphs?
-Would it be evil to kill all the mind flayers?
-Borg?
-Tyranids?
-Daleks?
-Weeping angels?

Orcs are troublesome because it depends on the author/DM in question. Some will portray them as 100%, irredeemably, unalterably, evil. Others will have them as wilder and more savage, but otherwise morally similar to human beings. Whether killing all orcs is evil, therefore depends on the campaign setting.

[White Blade]

I'd point out that many people today consider the (human propagated) destruction of the megafauna on Earth tragic if not wrong and they were all a threat to human life (People feel the same way about the depopulation of poisonous/predatory creatures today). The only objects that modern, Western humans really endorse that sort of thinking for is viruses - Which are not capable of feeling pain or fear or anything whatsoever.

I'd also like to say that it is definitely not ethical to kill someone just because they are a capable combatant. That's like saying that if you conquered a country, it would be ethical for you to slaughter every soldier, active, reserve, and retired. Not really a thing.

You can present a bunch of different options to your dwarves and if they reject them, you can ask them for suggestions, thus giving the DM a chance to suggest some alternative course. Asking the gods what they want was my equivalent suggestion. I didn't play AD&D and don't know if there is any magical hackney that lets you get divine counsel. Hell, just bring it up to your DM OOC if you have to.

[Vogonjeltz]

Right, I suppose you can argue and turn every imaginable action into "Evil" with semantics.

"So there's a former Dwarven stronghold which, as far as you know, is now infested with Orcs.
You don't care? So you let the Evil in there go unchecked until it spills over and floods the land? Well, that's Evil.
Oh, you want to go in? When you have absolutely no business there? Evil!"

"You learn that the stronghold is actually ruled by, not Orcs, but a Cult of Kossuth, a True Neutral deity. The leaders are Planetouched, though, Half-demons to be precise. They ask to parley.
What, you want to murder them anyway? A True Neutral cult that wants to treat with you? That's Evil.
Oh, you want to make peace with them? With Half-Demons, are you serious?"

With that kind of rationale, you can argue _anything_ as being evil. That kind of "damned if you do" attitude is not helpful at all.

First off, there were no "demon worshippers". There were planetouched that worshipped a True Neutral deity of the Elemental Plane of Fire. Their father happened to be a Tanar'ri.

Secondly, let them go where? As opposed to the Fey'ri, they cannot teleport away. So we should release them into the open country, so they can start raiding human settlements?

However, in response to one of the previous comments:

That's a pretty good idea. There's probably no high-level enough mage available in the area, except maybe Elminster, but maybe we could procure a scroll somewhere. I'll put it up for discussion.

The motivation given wasn't altruistic, it was greed based. That makes the whole venture evil, not good.

Nobody said you can't parley, but after talks broke down the survivors who surrendered were allowed to go free.

There are no guarantees they will raid anyone, which means this is just prejudice at work. Make them swear an oath to live in peace if you allow them to go free.

[Hazrond]

The motivation given wasn't altruistic, it was greed based. That makes the whole venture evil, not good.

Well, not nescesarrily, even if the motivation was greed i could see a good act evening out as neutral, genocide though not so much

[Phelix-Mu]

Genocide is evil because it picks a very non-discriminating discriminating factor in who it's killing; race/ethnicity/etc. Such a factor is never grounds for a good person to kill someone else; it's okay to kill evil creatures, but only once you know they are evil. How do you tell if they are evil? Well, there's a spell, and there is just checking to see what actions that person has taken (through divination, discussion, investigation, etc). Orcs are evil because most of them engage in evil behavior as part of their society. That doesn't mean that all of them are forced to, or that those that don't commit evil are somehow tainted like the rest of them. Assuming that people are evil based on their reputation, prejudice, myth, or limited sample size is bad form, and bound to kill innocents at some point. Remember, in-game, the way most everyone knows that "orcs are evil" is based on anecdotal evidence of orcs that made it into the legends, rumours, and songs for their raping and pillaging. By this measure, all humans are evil, since a fair number of us are bastards occasionally, going by the lore.

Painting people, regardless of race, with a broad brush as a way to justify mass slaughter is not good. It might be tolerated by neutrality for practicality's sake, but, really, it's killing for no reason other than them being [group label]. That's not something that can be good (in my mind, not even in the case of [evil] subtype stuff, but that is just me). Good people engage in killing when necessary. Not when convenient or expedient. And it's only necessary when there is no better way to solve the problem (which is extremely rare given the typical D&D toolbox).

[Inevitability]

That's a pretty good idea. There's probably no high-level enough mage available in the area, except maybe Elminster, but maybe we could procure a scroll somewhere. I'll put it up for discussion.

Elminster is CG, right? Saving thousands of intelligent beings from death with three spells at most seems like something he'd do. (teleport in, Gate, teleport out)

[DeadMech]

I'd be tempted to say that the ball is in the orc's court. If you march your army of dwarves down into the mines and tell the orcs that you defeated the people keeping them as slaves, the orcs SHOULD be happy about that.

From that point I'd tell them they have three options. Orcs who want to become citizens of your growing empire line up on the right. Orcs that want to leave the mines and never return line up on the left. Orcs that want to fight us, the people who defeated the people who defeated the orcs already, line up infront of our wall of spears and we'll give you a warriors death.

[malonkey1]

I'd be tempted to say that the ball is in the orc's court. If you march your army of dwarves down into the mines and tell the orcs that you defeated the people keeping them as slaves, the orcs SHOULD be happy about that.

From that point I'd tell them they have three options. Orcs who want to become citizens of your growing empire line up on the right. Orcs that want to leave the mines and never return line up on the left. Orcs that want to fight us, the people who defeated the people who defeated the orcs already, line up infront of our wall of spears and we'll give you a warriors death.

I like this.

"I killed the people who enslaved you. Want to help me build an empire?"

"Ugh...Why we work for you?"

"I-killed-the-people-who-enslaved-you. I freed you. And I'm powerful. And that makes me a good choice for a leader."

57 minutes of bickering amongst the Orcs

"Okay, we works for you, boss."

[Sith_Happens]

That solution was already written off on the grounds that the Dwarves will not coexist with the Orcs. Though maybe that just means the Dwarves need a good talking-to.

[Firechanter]

Couple of comments:

- Elminster technically lives nearby, yes, but at least in our game he is away most of the time, to avoid him functioning as deus ex machina because he could solve everything by snapping his fingers. But if all he needs to do is sell us a scroll, it might be fair game. (However, Gate might work differently in AD&D.)


From that point I'd tell them they have three options. Orcs who want to become citizens of your growing empire line up on the right. Orcs that want to leave the mines and never return line up on the left. Orcs that want to fight us, the people who defeated the people who defeated the orcs already, line up infront of our wall of spears and we'll give you a warriors death.

This is pretty hilarious. ^^ However, the Orcs in this particular case might not necessarily be aware that they were practically slaves. They were paid for their services - with "baubles" as the Kossuth leader put it, with which he probably meant the equivalent of masterwork or low-level magic items. So, while I like the idea of walking in there and saying "Hooray, we freed you!" the Orcs might see it differently. Or they might say "Great, then we are now free to go raiding" which puts us back to square one.

As for incorporating them into my domain -- well, none of our characters is particularly fond of Orcs. I wouldn't know what to do with them. The Dwarves certainly won't tolerate them in the mines. Allowing them to settle in my barony would make my human subjects very uneasy, to say the least. And it would be a ticking time bomb.


The motivation given wasn't altruistic, it was greed based. That makes the whole venture evil, not good.

The motivation was to help our dwarven buddy to win back a place his people had built and lost to evil creatures, after he had helped us liberating Daggerdale. If that's evil, then Thorin, Balin and all the other Middle Earth dwarves were also evil. Which is a silly thought.

If all adventuring is evil in your world because there will be deaths, then that's your game, but I hazard a guess that you will be pretty alone with that notion.


I'd point out that many people today consider the (human propagated) destruction of the megafauna on Earth tragic if not wrong and they were all a threat to human life (People feel the same way about the depopulation of poisonous/predatory creatures today). <snip>

Well, careful with applying real-life standards to a fantasy game, particularly one with absolute morals. It's very hard to compare. IRL, Good and Evil is mostly a matter of definition, and people like to define themselves as Good and their enemies as Evil. Thing is, these enemies also think of themselves as Good and the other guys are Evil.
In D&D, it's a little different. People are (probably) aware of being Good or Evil; the difference is that if you subscribe to Evil morals, you don't see anything wrong with it, but consider Evil as superior morals.
Which is exactly why it can be so hard for us as players to get the hang of it.

Funny Anecdote time:
Apparently, not everyone needs to be aware of their own alignment. At one point, we asked a NE priest (of a N deity) to help us find a certain disguised evil creature, so he cast Detect Evil. Then he looked at his hands and said "Whoa..." -- now you might expect some monologue like "I am Evil? How could it be? Where did it go wrong?" but in fact he proceeded to say "With that I can read in the dark."

[1eGuy]

tl;dr:
As a party of mostly Good-aligned characters, we can expect to be soon confronted with >1000 non-combatant Orcs (read, women and children), which can't stay where they are and have nowhere to go. What can we do?The "children" are future evil, the "women" are generators of evil. Your business is to eliminate evil, not look the other way and hope that those kids won't grow up to commit atrocities or that those women won't spawn armies of destruction and suffering. You have deity-given spells to detect alignment.

I think that covers all you need to know :smallsmile:

OTOH: if the DM views the orcs' alignment as not fixed then you have a cultural problem and as powerful, name-level, characters you have a responsibility to resolve that somehow - perhaps grant the orcs sanctuary on your own holdings' land or some such, and deal with the reaction of the victims of orc attacks toy your decision to give them shelter.

But the key item is the DM's attitude to monster alignment - if orcs are created and born evil then your duty is to remove every last one of them in exactly the same way that a surgeon removes cancer cells without worrying about their right to life or whether they're young etc.

This is the big problem with alignment - DMs tend to build traps with it, sometimes on purpose, and sometimes by accident. Alignment is supposed to be absolute and if you are aligned with evil then that's all there is to it. For the female orcs, they probably have chosen a side by now since they're adults, but if the kids are taught evil rather than having an instinctive desire to become evil then you can't really defend the idea of slaughtering them.

This sort of stuff appeals to modern views, but it makes for very dull gameplay, IMO. I want escapism, not allegories of real world problems that I can see any time of the day or night by turning on a news channel. Also, the "alignment moral crisis" has been done to death as a trope.

[atemu1234]

Coexistence with the Dwarves will be just about impossible. We are talking about a race that has a hatred for the other species written in their racial description.

Try. Remember alignment isn't some fixed thing. When I started playing it was described as not a summary, but a goal. What you want to be. Striving for good even in the face of impossible odds, be it charging a demilich shouting, "FOR PELOR!" or negotiating peace between hostile races.

[Kane0]

Just think, you have a chance to build perhaps the only place in the world where being a half orc is not by default a bad thing.

[Abd al-Azrad]

Just throwing it out there, but all this talk of teleporting the Orcs away to the plane of Orcs or whatever... is basically using a much higher-level spell than needed. If you're comfortable magically relocating the Orcs to Orc Paradise, the spell you need is Fireball.

Why have we decided that there is no way for the Dwarves to live in proximity to the Orcs? And even if we take that assertion at face value, why does that make the Dwarves the good guys here? They sound extremely belligerent. What I'm more expecting, is that you have a vocal minority of Dwarves screaming, "Not in my backyard," while the rest of them will grudgingly accept sharing their lands with a mid-sized tribe of dudes who have never before bothered them.

The easy battle is to slaughter thousands of innocents. The hard battle is to convince your Dwarf allies that wholesale slaughter is not a good answer. I imagine the easiest way to start would be for your team to refuse to initiate hostilities and put the actual act of killing in the hands of these warmongering Dwarves.

[Prince Raven]

To truly be a Good character you would do everything you can to stop the rest of the party from perpetrating this genocide.

[XmonkTad]

Demand they hold talks. During the talks serve Dwarven Ale. Spike it with Elixers of love. I mean, you're a bard. If it doesn't end with everyone getting married, it's a tragedy.

[malonkey1]

Demand they hold talks. During the talks serve Dwarven Ale. Spike it with Elixers of love. I mean, you're a bard. If it doesn't end with everyone getting married boning indiscriminately, it's a tragedy.

Fixed that for you, buddy.

[Abd al-Azrad]

I've been all over the map in terms of my advice, but I will admit that my true position in this situation is this:

If you're already in a place where the eradication of thousands of sentient beings is a foregone conclusion, you're probably able to accept the strategic risk of not doing so. And if you're enacting genocide as a consequence of perceived public opinion, I am betting there are a few less-horrific options available if you're willing to accept a risk factor of greater than zero. Having a few people feeling pissy that they failed to slake their blood-lust is a significantly less awful evil than the mass murder of the defenseless (here I am actually including the Orc soldiers, because if you're discounting their worth as a military presence, they are effectively defenseless too).

In other words, all we are saying, is "give peace a chance."

[Dimcair]

Step 1: Favor co-existence of the dwarves with the orcs
Step 2: Let things get out of "control"
Step 3: Let dwarves fight their own battle against the orcs
Step 4: You don't have to share your loot with dead dwarves

[1eGuy]

Just think, you have a chance to build perhaps the only place in the world where being a half orc is not by default a bad thing.The OP is talking about 2e, so the default position is that what you're suggesting is basically impossible because orcs are evil. "Evil" is not "very grumpy", nor is it "has a different cultural background". In AD&D Evil is about domination and taking from others even that which you don't want.

To put it into the context of "half orcs": orcs create half orcs by force and they do so deliberately. A human interested in mating with an orc will not be successful because orcs are evil and WANT to mate with those humans who are unwilling because it pleases them to see the distress they cause; not creating distress is the less appealing option for the orc.

I think a lot of the answers in this thread are falling into the "orcs are just different humans" rut which is so common in later edition play but, IMO, that robs the setting of a big part of its fantasy. Yeah, in the real world no "race" is evil in this sense, but then there's no dragons either. Whether orcs are sentient or not does not preclude that they may be constructed by some deity or power with a drive to Evil no different from our drive to eat and sleep, neither of which prevents us from being sentient.

Nevertheless, if the DM runs "evil races" differently the PCs will have to adapt.

[Prince Raven]

Well, sure, if you're going with "anything with an Evil alignment is a 100% irredeemably horrific monster who eats babies with a rich plum sauce" genocide is justified.
Said scenario is also probably the only time genocide is not an evil act.

[Firechanter]

If I remember correctly, my DM's stance on the matter is that Evil in humanoid species is cultural, not hardwired. So to use 3E notation, Orcs (just like Drow) are "Usually Evil" and not "Always Evil", even if non-evil Orcs are one in a million.

Also, interestingly, in AD&D Orcs have the Lawful Evil tag, not Chaotic. This has surprised me maybe the most. However, the description in the MM also says... ah let me just quote:
They believe other species are inferior to them and that bullying and slavery is part of the natural order. They will cooperate with other species but are not dependable: as slaves, they will rebel against all but the most powerful masters; as allies they are quick to take offense and break agreements.
(It's really beyond me why they are marked as LE rather than CE.)

[1eGuy]

If I remember correctly, my DM's stance on the matter is that Evil in humanoid species is cultural, not hardwired. So to use 3E notation, Orcs (just like Drow) are "Usually Evil" and not "Always Evil", even if non-evil Orcs are one in a million.

Also, interestingly, in AD&D Orcs have the Lawful Evil tag, not Chaotic. This has surprised me maybe the most. However, the description in the MM also says... ah let me just quote:
They believe other species are inferior to them and that bullying and slavery is part of the natural order. They will cooperate with other species but are not dependable: as slaves, they will rebel against all but the most powerful masters; as allies they are quick to take offense and break agreements.
(It's really beyond me why they are marked as LE rather than CE.)It's mostly because they work together in tribes, I think. But also note that they think that other species are inferior - that's Lawful thinking ("species" Vs "individuals").

[Firechanter]

Oh, another thing.

Further up in this thread, someone mentioned something about Good FR deities condoning, encouraging or even undertaking atrocities themselves. Can you please give some examples of that? It would be _really_ helpful to get the hang of what's acceptable as "Good" behaviour in the Realms.

[Phelix-Mu]

Even in 2e there were rules for playable humanoids, though, and I don't recall the requirement to be evil being carried into those books. Even if a race is designed with strongly evil proclivities by their gods, unless the gods robbed them of free will (which is generally required to make choices in the first place, and lack of self-determination makes for some pretty uninspiring evil) then there is the possibility that outliers will choose not to be evil.

And I think the whole system of alignment, which for the characters is based on action, not the color of their blood, works better when everyone is judged by the same standard (including infant orcs that haven't done anything, let alone do something evil).

As to the FR canon, I seem to remember a not very reliable source (one of the Elminster novels by Ed Greenwood) describing in passing an episode where Elminster and Mystra slaughtered an entire kingdom of slavers that were apparently abusing magic to dominate their servitor races. Is Mystra good? Lol, I don't even remember; imho, deities of all-magic should be Neutral, but some of Mystra's incarnations have definitely skewed good.

Not clear if that slaughter was down to the last person, though, so I'm not clear it was an actual "genocide" either.

[Studoku]

What evil acts are the orcs actually doing that's evil? From here it looks like the dwarves are the bad guys.

[Firechanter]

What evil acts are the orcs actually doing that's evil? From here it looks like the dwarves are the bad guys.

Being Orcs, and stuff.
To be fair, the Orcs' ancestors were the ones who invaded a dwarven city (coming out of the Underdark) and killed most dwarves who lived there and were the rightful owners of that place, and all the remaining dwarves of that community when they tried to get their property back.

So now the situation is:
if killing someone and taking his property makes you the rightful owner of that property, then the Orcs are the rightful owners of Tethyamar -- up until someone else comes, kills the Orcs and claims the property for themselves. Which would be the PCs.
If however invading a property and killing the owner does _not_ make you the new rightful owner -- a position that I find much more reproducible -- then the Orcs are not there legally and may be punished and removed. Which would be by the PCs.

Now the Dwarves currently involved in our little operation are not related by blood to the former people of Tethyamar. But thing being a fantasy world and all, it may still be justifiable that any Dwarven community has more right to any Dwarven settlement than any other non-dwarven community.

[Prince Raven]

What evil acts are the orcs actually doing that's evil? From here it looks like the dwarves are the bad guys.

Until recently they've been slaves, they haven't even had the opportunity to do anything of their own volition, good or evil. What the OP's party is proposing is a pre-emptive genocide.

[jaydubs]

Being Orcs, and stuff.
To be fair, the Orcs' ancestors were the ones who invaded a dwarven city (coming out of the Underdark) and killed most dwarves who lived there and were the rightful owners of that place, and all the remaining dwarves of that community when they tried to get their property back.

So now the situation is:
if killing someone and taking his property makes you the rightful owner of that property, then the Orcs are the rightful owners of Tethyamar -- up until someone else comes, kills the Orcs and claims the property for themselves. Which would be the PCs.
If however invading a property and killing the owner does _not_ make you the new rightful owner -- a position that I find much more reproducible -- then the Orcs are not there legally and may be punished and removed. Which would be by the PCs.

Now the Dwarves currently involved in our little operation are not related by blood to the former people of Tethyamar. But thing being a fantasy world and all, it may still be justifiable that any Dwarven community has more right to any Dwarven settlement than any other non-dwarven community.

So if the orcs have somewhere to go, and they refuse to leave, you would then be justified in removing them by force (up to and including killing them).

But in this case, one of the principle issues is that they don't have anywhere to flee, from what I understand. And since they didn't put themselves in that situation (they were born there), it wouldn't be right to kill them for it.

To give an analogy, say you're kidnapped and dropped into someone else's home. They tell you to leave. If you refuse, they'd be right in forcing you to leave.

Say you're kidnapped and dropped on someone else's houseboat in the middle of the ocean. The owner can still ask you to leave, but would have to wait until reaching land so leaving wouldn't be a death sentence.

The situation would be different if these were the actual orcs who had killed the previous residents, rather than their ancestors. It would also be different if not removing the orcs would endanger the lives of the dwarves instead.

[Prince Raven]

I'd like to point that if you justify killing all these orcs for something their ancestors did you're setting a very dangerous precedent your DM can use against you later on.

[malonkey1]

Hey! Cool! I just got sig-quoted! Thanks, PR.

Back on topic: How about killing all of them, and getting a bunch of magic-users to reincarnate them into other races that the dwarves find more palatable. (and which find other races less palatable, as it were).

[Firechanter]

Yes, jaydubs and Raven, that's pretty much the sum of my dilemma.

As I said, maybe there is one solution, but again that might bite us some day:
The original Orcs invaded the city coming from the Underdark. Maybe that passage still exists. Maybe we can make them go back where their ancestors came from.
The important bit would be that we need to be able to seal off the connection to the Underdark once and for all, to avoid them just returning in force a couple of months later.

[atemu1234]

Yes, jaydubs and Raven, that's pretty much the sum of my dilemma.

As I said, maybe there is one solution, but again that might bite us some day:
The original Orcs invaded the city coming from the Underdark. Maybe that passage still exists. Maybe we can make them go back where their ancestors came from.
The important bit would be that we need to be able to seal off the connection to the Underdark once and for all, to avoid them just returning in force a couple of months later.

You have dwarves nearby. Ask for a big rock and offer a free drink to anyone who helps push it.

[SaintRidley]

This is pretty hilarious. ^^ However, the Orcs in this particular case might not necessarily be aware that they were practically slaves. They were paid for their services - with "baubles" as the Kossuth leader put it, with which he probably meant the equivalent of masterwork or low-level magic items. So, while I like the idea of walking in there and saying "Hooray, we freed you!" the Orcs might see it differently. Or they might say "Great, then we are now free to go raiding" which puts us back to square one.

Change it to "Hey, so the guys in charge talked with us and we're in charge now. Everybody gets a raise!" And then give them enough of a raise to get them out of functional slavery.

[XmonkTad]

The important bit would be that we need to be able to seal off the connection to the Underdark once and for all, to avoid them just returning in force a couple of months later.

Well, I'm not sure how you can do that, but that's what bardic knowledge is for. Getting them to leave might be as simple as poisoning their water supply, but keeping them away will probably be the dwarves' problem. Try to save a few infants, raise them as dwarves, and keep them around for future use against further orc incursions.

[rlc]

Being Orcs, and stuff.
To be fair, the Orcs' ancestors were the ones who invaded a dwarven city (coming out of the Underdark) and killed most dwarves who lived there and were the rightful owners of that place, and all the remaining dwarves of that community when they tried to get their property back.

So now the situation is:
if killing someone and taking his property makes you the rightful owner of that property, then the Orcs are the rightful owners of Tethyamar -- up until someone else comes, kills the Orcs and claims the property for themselves. Which would be the PCs.
If however invading a property and killing the owner does _not_ make you the new rightful owner -- a position that I find much more reproducible -- then the Orcs are not there legally and may be punished and removed. Which would be by the PCs.

Now the Dwarves currently involved in our little operation are not related by blood to the former people of Tethyamar. But thing being a fantasy world and all, it may still be justifiable that any Dwarven community has more right to any Dwarven settlement than any other non-dwarven community.

even ignore the fantasy setting for a bit. think about israel for a second. i'm not going to get into specifics because that'd just be beating a dead horse, but *that's the point.*

[1eGuy]

Until recently they've been slaves, they haven't even had the opportunity to do anything of their own volition, good or evil. What the OP's party is proposing is a pre-emptive genocide.If they're evil they'll have found ways of expressing that. Even slaves occasionally kill people. If nothing else one tribe of orc slaves will turn on slave orcs from another tribe. There's no reason to assume that evil slaves have not been able to do anything evil.

There's not necessarily any reason to reach into the dim and dark past to find "crimes" to justify the destruction of these orcs. A simple know alignment spell solves the problem by checking that any captives are not one of the 1% non-evil orcs that the DM has implied exists. The rest are simply executed in the same way that we kill cancer cells, and for much the same reason.

Edit: and not killing the 99% who are is a non-good act; you're turning a blind eye to the inevitable consequences of allowing evil to live and thrive.

[hamishspence]

Orcs are only "often chaotic evil" in 3.0 and 3.5.

And in any case, "Evil" doesn't always mean "Deserves to die" - though that may depend on the setting. In Eberron at least, there's a strong theme that it doesn't - that most evil people are not "cancer cells" in society.

[1eGuy]

Orcs are only "often chaotic evil" in 3.0 and 3.5.Well, the OP is in a 2e game I think and in any case the existence of Know Alignment makes it moot - you just have to spend a bit more time over it. Each orc is or is not, as a matter of objective fact in-game, evil.


And in any case, "Evil" doesn't always mean "Deserves to die"Well, I think from the PoV of the OP's character (who is Good) there is at least a compunction to eliminate the Evil - if Good isn't about removing Evil from the world then what exactly is the point of it? What is that PC's personal duty as someone who has aligned himself with Good when faced with a large number of Evil creatures while at the same time being in a position to influence their fate.


though that may depend on the setting. In Eberron at least, there's a strong theme that it doesn't - that most evil people are not "cancer cells" in society.I guess the question is what makes the orcs evil if it's just "cultural"? For bonus points: did these orcs make a rational choice to do the things required to be classed/detect as evil??

[hamishspence]

if Good isn't about removing Evil from the world then what exactly is the point of it?

Good can also be about classic virtues - compassion, mercy, forgiveness, redemption and so forth.

That doesn't mean you can't kill - but it does mean that a certain amount of effort to do the other things as well, is important.

Keep in mind that in 2nd ed era novels, there was at least one orog (Deep Orc) paladin in the Realms - orcs aren't exactly considered irredeemable.

[Chambers]

Just think, you have a chance to build perhaps the only place in the world where being a half orc is not by default a bad thing.

What's the current timeline that the campaign is in? In 1360 DR the Zhentarim sends a bunch of Orcs to Thesk in order to fight the invading Tugian Horde. After that is settled many of the Orcs settle in the Large City of Phsant and are able to maintain a civil existence within the city. It's actually one of the few (if only) places where Orcs live relatively peacefully with other races.

If it's after 1360 DR talk with the Orcs about arranging transport for them to Phsant, a place where they can live in peace with others of their own kind. If it's before 1360 DR...well, try to get it through the other dwarves thick skulls that killing non-combatants and children is the sort of thing that monsters do, not dwarves. I'd try and force them to come up with a living situation compromise or convince the Orcs to move out, probably back up north towards the Spine. That does add to the problem of a growing Orc Horde but that's a hard problem for another day.

Killing innocents and children to avoid having to deal with a tough situation is the epitome of selfish and psychotic behavior. "The years of fighting between our races will make it difficult for us to live nearby, so we're just going to kill you all to save ourselves from having to deal with you." I'm sure the dwarven company will have many rationales and excuses but in the end they are planning on killing children for their own benefit.

[Prince Raven]

If they're evil they'll have found ways of expressing that. Even slaves occasionally kill people. If nothing else one tribe of orc slaves will turn on slave orcs from another tribe. There's no reason to assume that evil slaves have not been able to do anything evil.

There's not necessarily any reason to reach into the dim and dark past to find "crimes" to justify the destruction of these orcs. A simple know alignment spell solves the problem by checking that any captives are not one of the 1% non-evil orcs that the DM has implied exists. The rest are simply executed in the same way that we kill cancer cells, and for much the same reason.

Edit: and not killing the 99% who are is a non-good act; you're turning a blind eye to the inevitable consequences of allowing evil to live and thrive.

Just because someone is of an Evil alignment doesn't mean they've committed acts deserving of summary execution. How do you the Evil Orc you just killed is Evil because they kill little children and eat their flesh or if they're Evil because they steal food from the other Orcs?

[Firechanter]

Interesting fact about Phsant, I didn't know that.
Actually, we're writing the year 1369 DR. A few months ago, we have rescued Randal Morn and helped him reclaim Daggerdale. Zhentil Keep has been wrecked by the Dragon Cult, or so we heard.

But Thesk is really a long way away... deep in the Unapproachable East, easily 1000 miles as the crow flies. Tricky might be an understatement.

[nedz]

A strategic view.

Locate some other region which is populated by troublesome CE creatures which are roughly a match for Orcs
Lead the Orcs to freedom and then onto their promised land
The Orcs and troublesome CE creatures should fight/compete for the land weakening both

Now because of the way D&D experience works this might actually end up strengthening which ever tribe wins, but in principle you have given the Orcs their freedom and a chance to claim some territory and reduced the number of evil creatures in he world.

[1eGuy]

Just because someone is of an Evil alignment doesn't mean they've committed acts deserving of summary execution. How do you the Evil Orc you just killed is Evil because they kill little children and eat their flesh or if they're Evil because they steal food from the other Orcs?I would expect the DM not to label something as Evil for stealing food when they were hungry. I would expect it to indicated something more like: Orc A stole Orc B's food because A knew that B was starving/very hungry. Evil seeks always to demonstrate superiority and to humiliate those that are weak.

Given that something has done enough to be detectable as Evil, then either it has made the decision to do those things or it can't help itself. Either way, I think the Good character (particularly a neutral good character as in the question) has very little obligation to spend time trying to show them the error of their ways.

I know I'm repeating myself, but I think the know alignment spell draws a very clear line for the characters - if it says an individual orc is not evil then that's fine and dandy and Good characters can not just slit their throats. If they are, then it should be because of a level of maliciousness that is worthy of the name and of whatever action is required to negate that maliciousness.

It is an action/adventure fantasy game of, well, dungeons and dragons. It's not social work :smalltongue:

[Vogonjeltz]

I would expect the DM not to label something as Evil for stealing food when they were hungry. I would expect it to indicated something more like: Orc A stole Orc B's food because A knew that B was starving/very hungry. Evil seeks always to demonstrate superiority and to humiliate those that are weak.

Given that something has done enough to be detectable as Evil, then either it has made the decision to do those things or it can't help itself. Either way, I think the Good character (particularly a neutral good character as in the question) has very little obligation to spend time trying to show them the error of their ways.

I know I'm repeating myself, but I think the know alignment spell draws a very clear line for the characters - if it says an individual orc is not evil then that's fine and dandy and Good characters can not just slit their throats. If they are, then it should be because of a level of maliciousness that is worthy of the name and of whatever action is required to negate that maliciousness.

It is an action/adventure fantasy game of, well, dungeons and dragons. It's not social work :smalltongue:

Alignment exists independent of any acts. Being evil means the character is selfish, primarily, but that is all. There's plenty of room there for characters who haven't done anything wrong at all, but who aren't charitable and lack compassion for other living beings.

Like those dwarves the party is teamed up with.

[TheDarkDM]

Why are you trying to exterminate or get rid of your convenient replacement army for Daggerdale's defense?

[jaydubs]

Alignment exists independent of any acts. Being evil means the character is selfish, primarily, but that is all. There's plenty of room there for characters who haven't done anything wrong at all, but who aren't charitable and lack compassion for other living beings.

Like those dwarves the party is teamed up with.

There are lots of things that are selfish, aren't charitable, and lack compassion for other living beings. Non-social animals, for instance, which are considered neutral. Spiders. Sharks. Etc.

Evil suggests an active delight in causing harm beyond self-interest (hurting people for fun), or self-interest to a ludicrous scale (having no qualms about murdering 20 people for a cupcake).

[Zanos]

There are lots of things that are selfish, aren't charitable, and lack compassion for other living beings. Non-social animals, for instance, which are considered neutral. Spiders. Sharks. Etc.

Evil suggests an active delight in causing harm beyond self-interest (hurting people for fun), or self-interest to a ludicrous scale (having no qualms about murdering 20 people for a cupcake).
Animals aren't Evil because they don't possess a high enough intelligence score to do anything besides obey their instincts. They make no moral choices.

[Prince Raven]

Alignment exists independent of any acts. Being evil means the character is selfish, primarily, but that is all. There's plenty of room there for characters who haven't done anything wrong at all, but who aren't charitable and lack compassion for other living beings.

Like those dwarves the party is teamed up with.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

[Coidzor]

Why are you trying to exterminate or get rid of your convenient replacement army for Daggerdale's defense?

Aye. Remember that sometimes NPCs are also loot. :smallbiggrin:

[TheDarkDM]

Aye. Remember that sometimes NPCs are also loot. :smallbiggrin:

Especially in 2nd Edition. The party has a barony, they're missing out on a major opportunity if they don't leverage that to provide the orcs a new home. Will it be difficult to get the orcs accustomed to life among less aggressive humanoids? Sure. But once they do, very few people are going to want to screw with them.

[Phelix-Mu]

Alignment exists independent of any acts. Being evil means the character is selfish, primarily, but that is all. There's plenty of room there for characters who haven't done anything wrong at all, but who aren't charitable and lack compassion for other living beings.

Like those dwarves the party is teamed up with.

Emphasis mine. I don't much care for this sentiment here, since it sets up a big double standard. How does the DM judge the actual alignment of the player characters? By judging how they act and behave. How does the DM judge the alignment of npcs, enemies, and others? Must be check the book, right?

Meh. I don't buy that. If deeds are rewarded/punished with alignment change for characters, then the same should be true of the population in general. Most people are neutral specifically because, while they are mainly in it for themselves and their kin (survival instinct), they don't actually do much that maliciously harms others in pursuit of their self-interest.

In short, the orcs need to be examined on case-by-case basis. Even if, metagame, we can speak statistically or objectively about there being no non-evil orcs or w/e, in-game there is precious little justification for acting as though all the orcs are uniformly corrupt as a good person. Being good means that one believes that they are held to account for their actions, and if one is to be responsible for every life that one takes, then one better be darn sure that it needs taking.

Thus, know alignment/detect evil/whatever on everyone under consideration. For those that fail, it would be decent to try a bit of diplomacy to get them to leave for parts unknown peacefully.

And ditto on whoever said these guys could be useful allies. I imagine the orcs will be just about as useful as the *cough* dwarves.

[TheDarkDM]

And ditto on whoever said these guys could be useful allies. I imagine the orcs will be just about as useful as the *cough* dwarves.

Eh, I know I was the one who proposed giving the orcs a home, but I'm not sure I'd rank them higher than the dwarves in terms of long term utility. Tethyamar is one of the Realms' canonical Great Dwarven Kingdoms, so its restoration would draw dwarves from across the region and bolster the PC's reputation and the security of Daggerdale immensely. So, really, they should arrange it so that Tethyamar goes to the dwarves. They just shouldn't abandon the manpower that 3000 orcs can provide in the process.

[Nilehus]

The only time "good" and "genocide" should be in the same sentence together is if "stopped" is between them.

[TheDarkDM]

The only time "good" and "genocide" should be in the same sentence together is if "stopped" is between them.

Or as a descriptor in an evil game!

"That was a jolly good genocide, Abyxthrias old chap. Now what do you say to a jaunt down to my hunting lodge in Twelvetrees for a spot of brandy?"

[Coidzor]

Especially in 2nd Edition. The party has a barony, they're missing out on a major opportunity if they don't leverage that to provide the orcs a new home. Will it be difficult to get the orcs accustomed to life among less aggressive humanoids? Sure. But once they do, very few people are going to want to screw with them.

And there's precedent in the wider fluff too, as a large number of orcs from a Zhentarim army(mercenary army?) or the entire group managed to settle down more-or-less peacefully in one area or another after their Zhentarim handlers got offed by Harpers or adventurers or what have you.

Can't remember the name of the area for the life of me, other than that I think it was named after Something Keep. :smallconfused:

[TheDarkDM]

And there's precedent in the wider fluff too, as a large number of orcs from a Zhentarim army(mercenary army?) or the entire group managed to settle down more-or-less peacefully in one area or another after their Zhentarim handlers got offed by Harpers or adventurers or what have you.

Can't remember the name of the area for the life of me, other than that I think it was named after Something Keep. :smallconfused:

Phsant (http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Phsant) was mentioned earlier in the thread. Is that what you're thinking of?

[Vogonjeltz]

Emphasis mine. I don't much care for this sentiment here, since it sets up a big double standard. How does the DM judge the actual alignment of the player characters? By judging how they act and behave. How does the DM judge the alignment of npcs, enemies, and others? Must be check the book, right?

Meh. I don't buy that. If deeds are rewarded/punished with alignment change for characters, then the same should be true of the population in general. Most people are neutral specifically because, while they are mainly in it for themselves and their kin (survival instinct), they don't actually do much that maliciously harms others in pursuit of their self-interest.

In short, the orcs need to be examined on case-by-case basis. Even if, metagame, we can speak statistically or objectively about there being no non-evil orcs or w/e, in-game there is precious little justification for acting as though all the orcs are uniformly corrupt as a good person. Being good means that one believes that they are held to account for their actions, and if one is to be responsible for every life that one takes, then one better be darn sure that it needs taking.

Thus, know alignment/detect evil/whatever on everyone under consideration. For those that fail, it would be decent to try a bit of diplomacy to get them to leave for parts unknown peacefully.

And ditto on whoever said these guys could be useful allies. I imagine the orcs will be just about as useful as the *cough* dwarves.

I'm only saying that is how the game rules act.

That being said, alignment on NPCs is an indicator of how those characters (in general) should behave. There are exceptions. This is really all up to the DM to take care of though.

[Coidzor]

Phsant (http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Phsant) was mentioned earlier in the thread. Is that what you're thinking of?

Hmm, being in Thesk does seem to ring a bell, I suppose.

[Phelix-Mu]

Eh, I know I was the one who proposed giving the orcs a home, but I'm not sure I'd rank them higher than the dwarves in terms of long term utility. Tethyamar is one of the Realms' canonical Great Dwarven Kingdoms, so its restoration would draw dwarves from across the region and bolster the PC's reputation and the security of Daggerdale immensely. So, really, they should arrange it so that Tethyamar goes to the dwarves. They just shouldn't abandon the manpower that 3000 orcs can provide in the process.

I was mainly responding to earlier implications that the dwarves are outsourcing their dirty business to the party over what amounts to greed, and the talk of demonic influence. I really don't think that, if the dwarves weren't going to solve the problem themselves, that it is their rationale for killing the orcs that a good person should be considering.

Basically, not that dwarves are terrible, just that these dwarves in particular have not been exemplary. I vote them a merit on the greed and territoriality, but a demerit on the enslaving orcs (Dwarven Proverb: The only good orc is a dead orc.), and probably a further demerit for not having killed all of these orcs a long time ago. I think I docked them twice for letting the orcs live, but really, if you hate orcs with a passion, you should a.) not base your business plan on them and b.) deal with the problem yourself.

And that is just a neutral examination of the dwarves. From a good perspective, as noted upthread, these dwarves don't come off so hot (though this is mostly in the 3e alignment sense...2e was notably less stringent, as rules for alignment change or basis for alignment were even less coherent, IIRC), and the party's entire interaction with them has been decidedly neutral.

Murdering the rest of the orcs would, of course, turn things decidedly in the direction of evil; but it's only murder if you kill without a reason, and if you have evidence that Mr. Smith here is an evil orc, then go ahead and whack him. I mainly object to a kind of in-game racist approach of "the reason I am killing you is because you are an orc." Good can punish/cleanse/purge the evil through slaying, if necessary, but the moment good people start assuming that things are evil for [reasons], then the fiends out there start rubbing their hands and smiling gleefully.

[Firechanter]

Played again today, things went a little differently than expected... but that's typical for this DM, we should have known something strange would happen. =D
Our Thief found a magical trap and tried to disarm it -- bad mistake; she sprang the trap, failed her Save, and got teleported away to an unknown destination. Later that day, we found out by way of Commune that she was help prisoner by the Sorcerer-King of the Orcs. So now they have considerably more bargaining chips than we thought. That Orc is actually smarter than the Kossuth guys were.
(Edit: it was a totally optional door, and we knew that, so the lass totally brought this upon herself. It's not like the DM railroaded anything to contrive this situation.)

So now all bets are off... we may have to negotiate a peace to get our Thief back, because trying to fight our way through to free her might get her killed.

[TheDarkDM]

Played again today, things went a little differently than expected... but that's typical for this DM, we should have known something strange would happen. =D
Our Thief found a magical trap and tried to disarm it -- bad mistake; she sprang the trap, failed her Save, and got teleported away to an unknown destination. Later that day, we found out by way of Commune that she was help prisoner by the Sorcerer-King of the Orcs. So now they have considerably more bargaining chips than we thought. That Orc is actually smarter than the Kossuth guys were.
(Edit: it was a totally optional door, and we knew that, so the lass totally brought this upon herself. It's not like the DM railroaded anything to contrive this situation.)

So now all bets are off... we may have to negotiate a peace to get our Thief back, because trying to fight our way through to free her might get her killed.

There's no way to Seal Team 6 into the orc king's lair and carry out a daring assassination/rescue op?

[Firechanter]

I dunno. By way of Commune, we found out: she is alive, she is on this plane, she is _not_ in the mines, _not_ in the Orc King's palace, but _in_ his power, and within a reasonably small radius around our current position. So for all we know, she is in a prison somewhere in the mountain but not directly in the Orc-populated area.

As meta-information, we know a bit more by now (the DM told her where she was) but of course our characters have no way of knowing any more than the above.

(We actually had fiddled out a proper flowchart for the Commune questions; i.e. "Is she on this plane?" and if the answer had been "No", with follow-up questions to nail down whether she was on an Inner or Outer Plane, if Outer of which Alignment, and so forth until we could have pinned it down exactly.)