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HoboKnight
2020-12-23, 08:47 AM
So ... I like to run my elves as rather tolkien-esque. They are super competent ubermensch with high morals and etics*. Still, alignments are distributed randomly and some part of the population will be born with NE/LE/CE alignments, even without social incentives to go toward such an alignment. I'm wondering, how would such a developed and mostly moral society react/curate/punish such a character?

How would such a community adress this question, once they notice "the evil child" among them?

*Not all elven deeds in Tolkien's work may be seen as good, but let's say they are not as weak as Men in terms of succumbing to all kinds of vices.

Cygnia
2020-12-23, 08:52 AM
What sort of "evilness" would this child be doing? There's leaps and bounds between shoplifting versus murder, for example...

Imbalance
2020-12-23, 08:53 AM
Banishment, ultimately.

KaussH
2020-12-23, 10:47 AM
If the child can control their urges, accept them and channel them into something that works inside their needs. Cultures often have jobs that are harder for more "good" people to handle.

Quertus
2020-12-23, 06:40 PM
So… the alignment call out is indicative of a D&D setting.

Several phrases (mostly "alignments are distributed randomly and some part of the population will be born with NE/LE/CE alignments") imply that your world leans strongly towards nature over nurture. I'm not going to comment on how accurate that may be for D&D or IRL, merely stating that it affects how effective various approaches will be.

One thing that will definitely affect what approaches the elves even consider is the(your) definition of "ubermensch". Another is your definition of "good". A third is who is in power.

So, the Determinator would probably have festivals surrounding the birth of new children (consistent with elven low fertility rates) to celebrate the event. Part of the rituals of the celebration would likely include the detecting of Evil, and the donning of the Helm of Opposite Alignment (known as the "birthday hat") as needed.

Actually, the Determinator would find this suboptimal, and would attempt to Detect Evil as close to the moment of conception as possible. Thanks to Divinations, crack forces with Detect Evil already running would Teleport in instantly, congratulate the happy couple, and "Exalted Mindrape" the captive fetus as needed. If this is 3e, as my commentary has drifted towards, they would likely have their own prestige class (I'm thinking "prenatal care specialist" "department of homeland security" or "department of the interior" might be suitable candidates).

I'll stop there for now, until I find out how far off the mark the parameters I chose ended up being.

Grim Portent
2020-12-23, 07:02 PM
Well the ethical thing for them to do once they notice something is off with a child is to schedule counselling to try and teach them empathy in addition to the normal punishments for misbehaviour, if the counselling fails to take and the child continues with antisocial evil practices then you have to turn to the elvish equivalent of a monastery or juvenile hall. A scholastic monastery would be my preference.

The child is basically given to the care of a group of scholars and/or priests who live in relative isolation, with the intention of minimising the opportunities for the child to do anything evil while having as little impact on it's free will or quality of life as possible* while still maintaining some sort of punishment past the point where their own village can meaningfully enact punishment on a child.



*Exile would technically also fit the bill, but that just means you're dumping your problems onto other people which is not ethical.

Kitten Champion
2020-12-23, 09:50 PM
I had such a PC at one point.

Essentially this Elven girl was a sociopath but had no real conscious self-awareness of this because her life provided everything she needed in abundance and the consequences of cultural norms, customs, and laws against anti-social behaviour were sufficient for her never to really consider acting on negative impulses. She was still something of a... not great person. Being narcissistic and demeaning towards her perceived inferiors as a rule. That, sadly, wasn't exactly un-Elf-like in this setting and plausibly beneficial for the marital politics of her society to act so dismissive and haughty.

However, once she was put into jeopardy where she had to defend herself with violence, she learnt that she had really no qualms with it and actually got something of a perverse thrill from the sensation of taking a life with her own hands. When she returned to her normal life after that she started having more dark and violent fantasies about harming those around her, and while she would never actually follow through on them she jumped at the opportunity to venture out into the broader world - which Elves called the charnel house - to find much more permissible targets for her latent tendencies once the option to be an Adventurer was offered to her. She can hack up goblinoids like they're firewood and get money and near-universal respect in return, so why not? Then she can always return to her life with all the privileges that entails.

Which is the thing, you can be an objectively awful person and treat others like garbage, but that doesn't necessarily mean you'll cross the line where there will be any specific permanent consequences to doing so. You could, obviously, but the cost to you yourself would prohibitive in exchange for a momentary release of that negative impulse. If such an Elf went so far as to be incapable of being a rational actor who weighs this then I don't know what such a society would do. Since D&D's pretty intrinsically anachronistic in the first place and they have access to magic to further complicate things, looking at real world examples feels rather problematic. I would probably insert some kind of enforced isolation and containment, although if it's later in life than I would also say something like exile.

HoboKnight
2020-12-24, 05:39 AM
Amazing answers, and I'll go over them one by one.

@Cygnia
Mass murderer type-evil. Starts with small kittens.

@Quertus
Yes. I do lean strongly toward nature in this case. In my games, most goblins, drow, chromatic dragons are just evil. There may be an exception here and there, but mostly, there is nothing but malice in them. It makes "moral conondrums" much easier.

>One thing that will definitely affect what approaches the elves even consider is the(your) definition of "ubermensch".
I'd summarize it like this: We are the Qel-Tessir. The uncorruptable. Drow were an abomination, the weak ones amongst our kind. Stamping out evil is a must - because it threatens the society.
>Another is your definition of "good".
Well, for this we can just take alignment definitions from D&D.
>A third is who is in power.
So far neutral and mostly good guys.

The helm is a great idea.

It's 5e btw.

@Grim potent
What if child stops his evil deeds, but just becomes smarter about them? And community knows that, has the wisdom to spot this? The "orphanage for evil elves" is an interesting concept.

@Kitten Champion
... pointed out a great point in this: "a perverse thrill". For evil, as I see it in this case ... well - it was greatly described in Stephen King's book IT, when a teenager suffocates his baby brother in a crib. For the moment, it's like world so far was black and white and tasteless, but feeling of power and of suffering of antoher creature ... it is super fun! It actually brings color and taste to our elves' life - for a time. Ramsay Snow from AsOiaF might be another such case. Not doing anything stupid, but hey, he can "hunt" peasant women with a bow and dogs in fathers' forest, right?

Democratus
2020-12-24, 09:04 AM
Can a child be evil?

Childhood is what we call someone who isn't developed enough to know the difference between wrong and right and can't be held fully responsible for their actions.

You could have a child that is possessed by evil. Or maybe one that is acting up because they don't have a good parent or guardian?

Cygnia
2020-12-24, 09:43 AM
In the (sad) cases I've read about child murderers, there's usually the common thread of abuse and/or neglect in their upbringing. Of course, in an "ubermensch" society, authorities may refuse to blame the guardians, instead thinking it's a weakness in the child (and unfortunately, then double-down on abuse or even "liquidate" the failure).

LibraryOgre
2020-12-24, 11:18 AM
Ok, let's start with some assumptions:

The elf society is generally CG, and most of the elves are CG. A non-CG character in a CG society is going to run into problems depending on how their alignment differs, with a one step difference being usually acceptable, and a two-step difference being somewhat able to adapt. More than two steps of difference and you're going to run into big problems integrating with society... you're too different from everyone else.

So, a CE elf in a CG society will have some big problems (assuming they're merely CE, and not a homicidal maniac). They're too cruel, too selfish. They are, in short, *******s. But a LE elf would find even larger problems; they struggle for dominance with people who just don't do dominance. They seek structure with people who avoid it. All this on top of being cruel and selfish. They're not going to fit in at all, and their wants are going to be

Now, some of this comes down to how you assume alignments are formed. If the child is, for some reason, innately some sort of evil, they're going to find elven society intolerable. As a child, there's going to be the hope that they can be changed. As they grow, they're either going to learn to hide who they are, or they're going to get ostracized, but not necessarily cast out (elves are Good, after all, so they're not gonna kill the kid). But an adult who can't hide what they are? They're gonna get kicked out (qv Dalamar and the dark elves of Krynn).

Grim Portent
2020-12-24, 12:18 PM
@Grim potent
What if child stops his evil deeds, but just becomes smarter about them? And community knows that, has the wisdom to spot this? The "orphanage for evil elves" is an interesting concept.

A small community doesn't really have the burden of proof required to punish someone, so the village leaders can punish the child as they see necessary without legal pretext. If the village 'knows' the child is still being a sadistic little ******* but can't prove it they can still punish the child because there's not really a comprehensive legal system involved at any point. Punishments would be firm, but never cruel, lest it stray into unethical or immoral grounds.

Long lifespans would teach the elves that things change and the consequences of actions can be unpredictable. Todays sociopathic child might be tomorrow's life saving surgeon for example. That the odds of redemption are slim doesn't give the elves the ability to accurately predict who can and cannot be redeemed. A light hand becomes practical when you have hundreds or thousands of years to correct things, and an excess of resources to contain and support people who can't be allowed to walk around free.

To a human perspective the elven system would seem wildly impractical, humans don't have the time or resources to try and mend everyone who isn't Good, so they address the worst offendors harshly and often let more minor problems go unpunished. To elves who have all the time in the world and live in comfort and plenty the human system would seem cruel, barbaric and heavy handed.


The primary thing to me is that Tolkien-esque elves weren't exactly 'burn the evil out by the root' kind of people. Severe penalties like death were only to be done in moments of true desperation, when possible evil was to be contained and treated with kindness to the extent that was practical. The risk of things escaping to be evil later was the accepted price of doing things the way their morality demanded. Their moral teachers, the Valar, imprisoned the literal creator of evil as a houseguest because they hoped he could be redeemed, and only when faced with overwhelming cause to believe they couldn't save him did they cast him into a prison from which he couldn't escape.

Hopeless
2020-12-24, 02:55 PM
I'm currently running a female wood elf who was exiled due to being born malformed as a result of a premature birth whilst her mother was travelling through the feywild.

Now the mother IS evil, but only in that the pregnancy was unexpected and it was exposure to the Feywild that allowed the child to be born at all as she was intending to abort it.

So far my DM hasn't picked up on this despite me trying to go into more detail however I don't seem to have played in any games where the DM actually bothers to read any of my background!

I think I may have a bad reputation!:smallredface:

Tanarii
2020-12-24, 03:05 PM
It's 5e btw.
What kind of evil? That will give us an idea of the typical, but not constant, overall behavior. Absent other personality traits.


Lawful evil (LE) creatures methodically take what they want, within the limits of a code of tradition, loyalty, or order.

Neutral evil (NE) is the alignment of those who do whatever they can get away with, without compassion or qualms.

Chaotic evil (CE) creatures act with arbitrary violence, spurred by their greed, hatred, or bloodlust.

KineticDiplomat
2020-12-25, 04:17 PM
Tolkien’s elves in particular have a history of vanity, pride, resentful behavior, fear, impatience, being deceived by sweet words, repeating convenient lies, jealousy, suspicion and being swayed by strong loves and desires. While they might not be drunkards or debauched hedonists, they are very much susceptible to “higher order” character flaws. And notably those who are great orators, warriors, lords, and beauties often have those character flaws overlooked. That’s part of the plot of the Silmarillion.

With that in mind, I suspect the outcome for the Evil Child, provided they aren’t determinedly openly evil and kicking puppies, will be in many ways be determined by the child. An ugly incompetent of the lower social orders will no doubt be...corrected...but if the child is of a higher social class, and strong of mind and body, why, a great deal might be forgiven until the day it goes all too far.

Quertus
2020-12-25, 05:10 PM
The type of evil was stated as starting out as "killing kittens", iirc.

Of course, as that is a noble profession among elves, I can only assume that they would graduate to the equally noble profession of killing orcs.

Tanarii
2020-12-25, 05:47 PM
The type of evil was stated as starting out as "killing kittens", iirc.
Sounds like CE on steroids, in 5e terms, arbitrary violence for bloodlust.

KineticDiplomat
2020-12-25, 06:18 PM
I’m guessing that (again, using the call out Tolkien as a setting driver) even a kitten-killing Evil Child is capable of enough self restraint to further their own ends if they have the wit to do so. Melkor, the literal primal embodiment of malice, manages to pull this on the elves. Unless the EC is not only a kitten killer, but one who cannot stop killing kittens on impulse and no matter the apparent consequence, given a loooong childhood he’ll probably figure out that even if he loves nothing more than a good kitten skinning there are games he needs to play to get there.