JusticeZero
2016-12-26, 02:24 AM
I've tried explaining this a few times as a viewpoint that makes it easy to make sense of alignment debates. New analogy.
First, note that good, evil, etc are literally places in D&D. Places can be consecrated and unconsecrated. Lots of Negative Material energy effects are tagged "evil" and Good clerics cannot channel it as easily, and vice versa. Necromancers are often considered "evil", even though there's no strict reason for it.
My conclusion is that alignment, as a property that is affected by magical effects, can be contaminated by planar energy.
Imagine a setting where the main alignment conflict is, rather than good/evil, Nature/Technology.
Imagine a nice girl here, Cora QE-974. Cora discovers that she appreciates the quiet of the forest. She learns about conservation and environmental issues, she studies the migration of the animals and the ways of maintaining the forest. Soon, her woods rivals that of the druids, a sanctuary for the natural world.
But nature spirits are still going to go berserk at the sight of her. Druids and nymphs are still going to get upset at her presence.
Why? Because it does not matter how much forest she expands and grows, it cannot change the fact that her heart is a nuclear reactor, her bones are graphene and titanium, and her muscles are myomar plastic fiber. She cannot change those things. Just existing is a wonder of technology, no matter how hard she works on regrowing the forest.
The same applies to the dryad, a pure spirit of Nature, who starts tinkering with computer coding and robotics. Heck with the forest, I want my tree close to a factory so I can get fast access to the wonders of agricultural science, miracle fertilizers and the like! Still a nature spirit! She is no longer a friend of Nature, though. She still pings as a Nature Spirit on scanners.
Now we apply this to the usual hob goblins of alignment. Susan studies necromancy. Over her life span, Susan is irradiated with lots of Negative Material energy, which takes its toll. Magical Geiger counters go off around her, even though she is actually really nice and an upstanding pillar of her community. She spent much of her life studying a cure for an arcane plague, and her work is in danger of being lost, so when she gets sick, she starts gathering materials and rituals to become undead in death. After the ritual, she awakens and resumes her heroic quest.
It doesn't matter how many lives she saves from this point on. She still creeps out paladins and angels though, because her heart is a decrepit onyx gem saturated with the soul energy of the damned, her bones are animated by liquid hate and despair, and her eyes glow with the darkness of unlife. She cannot fix those things. Her body is irrevocably chthonactive. Whatever it is that alignment detection magic detects, she glows with.
Mere exposure to the magical components of alignment constitute aligned acts, independent of any ethical activity. Intensive exposure to the component of alignment constitutes profoundly aligned acts. Having a body that literally runs on the magical components of alignment is going to peg one's alignment to that component, without altering or restricting the ethics and behavior of the one affected. Radiation does not have an ethical component, but in a world where ethical acts can ionize matter and be measured with a Geiger counter, uranium is unjustly but inevitably going to be treated as a moral issue.
First, note that good, evil, etc are literally places in D&D. Places can be consecrated and unconsecrated. Lots of Negative Material energy effects are tagged "evil" and Good clerics cannot channel it as easily, and vice versa. Necromancers are often considered "evil", even though there's no strict reason for it.
My conclusion is that alignment, as a property that is affected by magical effects, can be contaminated by planar energy.
Imagine a setting where the main alignment conflict is, rather than good/evil, Nature/Technology.
Imagine a nice girl here, Cora QE-974. Cora discovers that she appreciates the quiet of the forest. She learns about conservation and environmental issues, she studies the migration of the animals and the ways of maintaining the forest. Soon, her woods rivals that of the druids, a sanctuary for the natural world.
But nature spirits are still going to go berserk at the sight of her. Druids and nymphs are still going to get upset at her presence.
Why? Because it does not matter how much forest she expands and grows, it cannot change the fact that her heart is a nuclear reactor, her bones are graphene and titanium, and her muscles are myomar plastic fiber. She cannot change those things. Just existing is a wonder of technology, no matter how hard she works on regrowing the forest.
The same applies to the dryad, a pure spirit of Nature, who starts tinkering with computer coding and robotics. Heck with the forest, I want my tree close to a factory so I can get fast access to the wonders of agricultural science, miracle fertilizers and the like! Still a nature spirit! She is no longer a friend of Nature, though. She still pings as a Nature Spirit on scanners.
Now we apply this to the usual hob goblins of alignment. Susan studies necromancy. Over her life span, Susan is irradiated with lots of Negative Material energy, which takes its toll. Magical Geiger counters go off around her, even though she is actually really nice and an upstanding pillar of her community. She spent much of her life studying a cure for an arcane plague, and her work is in danger of being lost, so when she gets sick, she starts gathering materials and rituals to become undead in death. After the ritual, she awakens and resumes her heroic quest.
It doesn't matter how many lives she saves from this point on. She still creeps out paladins and angels though, because her heart is a decrepit onyx gem saturated with the soul energy of the damned, her bones are animated by liquid hate and despair, and her eyes glow with the darkness of unlife. She cannot fix those things. Her body is irrevocably chthonactive. Whatever it is that alignment detection magic detects, she glows with.
Mere exposure to the magical components of alignment constitute aligned acts, independent of any ethical activity. Intensive exposure to the component of alignment constitutes profoundly aligned acts. Having a body that literally runs on the magical components of alignment is going to peg one's alignment to that component, without altering or restricting the ethics and behavior of the one affected. Radiation does not have an ethical component, but in a world where ethical acts can ionize matter and be measured with a Geiger counter, uranium is unjustly but inevitably going to be treated as a moral issue.