CITY/COMMUNE ALIGMENTS (of course in d&d format)

Piotrhabera

Hi there! I pretty much know a bit about this and that so I will tell the aligments of all cities and commmunes (bar those who are not in our plane of existence) In d&d format  

SERENVILDE: True Neutral 

GLOMDROING: Neutral Evil

MAGNAGORA: Lawful Evil? 

NEW CELEST: Neutral Good

GAUDICH: Chaotic Good 

HALLIFAX: Lawful Neutral? 

And that's pretty much all that i can tell. CHEERS!

Maligorn

I'd definitely say New Celest is Lawful Good, but...


Each City/Commune is pretty gray in morality. Old Celest's imperialism almost destroyed the Basin. Serenwilde sat back and let innocent people die as undead Ladantine marched on Old Celest. Magnagora certainly doesn't see itself as evil. Gaudiguch can be hella evil and twisted behind the front they portray. Hallifax promotes order and stability but thinks slavery is A-OK. It goes on and on.

Shaddus

Your assessment is somewhat close, but there are a lot of variations.

Arcanis

Ah, you just opened up a large can of worms with many a different and conflicting opinion on the alignments. :P

Kiradawea

Shaddus

Kiradawea said:

Given the slight misspellings, I'm going to go with "somewhat new and perhaps trying to classify Lusternia into something he's familiar with."

Kiradawea

Interestingly, that's why I'm wondering if it's a troll attempt. The Serenwilde misspelling I can understand, and Glomdoring might be an accident from eagerness. But the Gaudiguch misspelling is a bit much. That, and ALL CAPS.

That said, I suppose 't might be a bit poor taste 'f he is genuinely new.

Arcanis

I just noticed the misspellings.

Elanorwen

Kiradawea said:

Interestingly, that's why I'm wondering if it's a troll attempt. The Serenwilde misspelling I can understand, and Glomdoring might be an accident from eagerness. But the Gaudiguch misspelling is a bit much. That, and ALL CAPS.

That said, I suppose 't might be a bit poor taste 'f he is genuinely new.

I like the whole "I pretty much know about this" bit. What, and we don't? Only about 18 years of D&D here (Probably would have been a bit more if I was born in another country that didn't even know D&D existed until about 10 years ago, anyway)

Llandros

Yeah, Magnagora isn't evil for the sake of evil. We just stress personal and national growth and empowerment to such an extent that it dwarfs any form of conventional morality.

If making puppy stew is of even the slightest benefit to you or the city then no one would blink an eye. Heck, even if you were making puppy stew just to see if it would be of any benefit then it would be ok.

We tread on the dark side not because it's dark but because it is powerful. We don't reject the morality of others in terms of right and wrong. We scoff at their weakness and laugh at how they have enslaved themselves to their beliefs. We see it as they are too afraid or weak to do whatever it takes to be the strongest and the best.

We aren't evil, we're just better than you. 

B-)

Haezon

Piotrhabera said:

Hi there! I pretty much know a bit about this and that so I will tell the aligments of all cities and commmunes (bar those who are not in our plane of existence) In d&d format  

SERENVILDE: True Neutral 

GLOMDROING: Neutral Evil

MAGNAGORA: Lawful Evil? 

NEW CELEST: Neutral Good

GAUDICH: Chaotic Good 

HALLIFAX: Lawful Neutral? 

And that's pretty much all that i can tell. CHEERS!

If that's your opinion, fine. We can all have different ones. Because if that was about as deep as the entire organisation and gameplay goes, I wouldn't play Lusternia out of sheer boredom. Have some depth to your character role-play, or don't bother.

At best, every organisation is Neutral Evil because they are all in it for themselves, using and discarding the others when they stop being useful and wanting to just be in charge. To put it into perspective for new people in general, every org has had a ceasefire with all the other orgs at least once.

Kethaera

The DnD alignments are flawed themselves(much as I love DnD), especially when it comes to describing an entire community of people. Are chaotic evil communities formed by people who were born evil? Then paladins killing those babies is acceptable morality. Were they forced into 'evilness' by circumstance/to protect their own? Then how are they any different from "neutral" humans? It's all based around human standards of morality(as defined by the creators), and the whole alignment system is necessarily rigged against non-humans. Don't let them define you!

...Anyway, Glomdoring is no more evil than Serenwilde, IMO. They have legitimate disagreements about nature. Glomdoring was altered by force to what it is now(despite their attempts to stop it), and Serenwilde sat back and did nothing while people died- why does that make the former evil and the latter not? 

Hallifaxians are communists, and as an American, I know that makes them the most evil organization in the Basin.

Shaddus

Kethaera said:

The DnD alignments are flawed themselves(much as I love DnD), especially when it comes to describing an entire community of people. Are chaotic evil communities formed by people who were born evil? Then paladins killing those babies is acceptable morality. Were they forced into 'evilness' by circumstance/to protect their own?

Are people born wicked? Or do they have wickedness thrust upon them?

Kethaera

Shaddus said:

Kethaera said:

The DnD alignments are flawed themselves(much as I love DnD), especially when it comes to describing an entire community of people. Are chaotic evil communities formed by people who were born evil? Then paladins killing those babies is acceptable morality. Were they forced into 'evilness' by circumstance/to protect their own?

Are people born wicked? Or do they have wickedness thrust upon them?

Exactly. It's the sort of questions that haunt me every time I kill an orc, that I then have to go find a bank(demi-human friendly) to set up a trust fund for that orc's wife and kids. But for some reason no one will play DnD with me anymore.

Piotrhabera

So what? this is getting confusing!

Llandros

It's not confusing, it's just complex. Which is important because it allows for flexibility and creativity.

Celest can be all bunnies and unicorns one day and unleash a marauding horde of zealots that kill anything that is not 200% pure and wholesome the next. Without that flexibility an entirely good org could be backed into a corner and become a punching bag or find itself declaring that all vital game mechanics are off limits for its citizens.

Enyalida

Trolly or not, I'm actually pretty comfortable with most of these, to within one degree of change. 

When you're considering morality in the d&d sense, you're not looking at what actually happens (Celest's  destruction etc.), you look to what the motivation behind it is. As far as history goes, yes: Every org would essentially be neutral evil by those standards, only interested in their own affairs. However, Celest did those things because it thought it was doing everyone a favor!

Shaddus

I think that the OP's post is generally correct from an outside perspective. But no org thinks of them self as evil, and truly evil people generally think they're doing the right thing. See: Pat Robertson.

Moi

Maligorn said:

I'd definitely say New Celest is Lawful Good, but...

I think I'd put New Celest as Neutral Good. There's the Paladins, but there's also the Cantors. There's the racial segregation, but there's also the anti-slavery. There's the religious orthodoxy of the Celestines, but also the individual enlightenment of the Tahtetso.

I would probably go with Gaudiguch as closer of Chaotic Neutral than Chaotic Good, though - there's a lot of setting people on fire and driving people mad going on along side the drugs, sex and slave-freeing.

Kiradawea

I've always had a hard time thinking of Celest as "Good", especially if you know the history. What they did to the scorpion cult makes Isabella and her Spanish inquisition look tolerant, and project Peacemaker is a far more horrid version of the Opium wars from real world history. The supernals and Celestines may preach wonderful virtues, and without a doubt are there many good individuals in the city. (I'm especially fond of the unnamed priest of the Basilicia for being an actually decent person) but the city itself has done so many *vile* things, both past and present, that to classify them as "Good" or even good, is difficult for me.

Moi

Old Celest is an empire that is centuries old. You can't have a government for that long without eventually getting a ruler who is either evil or crazy at some point. With the bad emperors being much more well remembered than the good, I don't think it's fair to point to the worst events of Old Celest's history as evidence that New Celest is evil (or, at least, not-good). It's like saying that the New Republic in Star Wars is evil an not to be trusted because the Old Republic got taken over by Palpatine.

Kiradawea

Except it started out as an imperialistic land-grabbing nation. One of the first things old Celest did was drive out the native Lobishigaru that used to live where the blasted lands are now. Imperialistic expansion has *always* been the crux of Celest. It wasn't until they breached Celestia that Celest's claim to being a holy empire had any leverage in morality. And there's still segregation. The city is still run as a feudalistic aristocracy. 

Maligorn

The stark history of "actual bad things" Celest has done is longer than anyone's in the Basin. It's pretty darn difficult to play a Razielan Celestine or some zealot when I know all this crap went down, and is actually set in stone because of our access to history. Sure, Glomdoring kills a lot of babies, and Magnagora feed gorgogs and torture Marani Veloske repeatedly, but...the list of "actually bad things" probably needs to get lengthened (or elucidated to me here on da forumz) if I'm going to believe Magnagora is the dark city and New Celest is the Light.

Moi

Except that, as I've already pointed out, the Celestine Empire and New Celest are not the same thing. After all, it's been over four centuries since New Celest was founded. They share a name, less than half* a religion and a nexus design. That's it. There's more former citizens of the Celestine Empire in Magnagora than there are in New Celest. The ruins of the Celestine Empire's capitol are controlled by Ladantine. The previous imperial holdings of the Celestine Empire (Gaudiguch, Hallifax, Magnagora and Shallach**) are variously independent, also independent, in a state of constant war with New Celest, or a war-torn ruin with no surviving government. New Celest was founded across two oceans from the Isle of Celest, by a ship full of refugees fleeing the destruction of the Celestine Empire. None of them were representatives of the Imperial government, none of them were in line for the throne: they were just oridinary citizens. Furthermore, where Old Celest was mostly Merian, New Celest is actually minority majority at this point***. There's a good argument to be made that New Celest has as much in common with Old Celest as modern day New England has in common with Elizabethan England.

*Yes, less than half. Under the Celestine Empire, the Holy Emanations were treated as co-equal representations of the Light alongside the Holy Supernals. Furthermore, Grimbach and Dumaliel were part of the official Old Celestine pantheon. New Celest worships 42% of the half-formed that Old Celest did.
**Yes, Shallach. During the Empire, it was a whole city. It didn't have a nexus of its own, but it was the first city to bow down to the Celestine Empire and did have an entrance to the Catacombs of the Dead.
***A recent headcount of NPCs says Celest has around 30 Merians, 25 Kephera, 10 Krokani, 2 Humans, 2 Angels, a Mugwump and around 20 NPCs without any specified race, but who are described as having human-coloured skin, no fur and human-style hair.

Haezon

Maligorn said:

Sure, Glomdoring kills a lot of babies, and Magnagora feed gorgogs and torture Marani Veloske repeatedly, but...the list of "actually bad things" probably needs to get lengthened (or elucidated to me here on da forumz) if I'm going to believe Magnagora is the dark city and New Celest is the Light.

There's also the justification you have to factor in. Celest does it all for the light, saying it's about Justice and bringing the Light to everyone, using it as an excuse to do whatever they want and being amoral. Glomdoring is well aware it kills babies, but it doesn't try to cover it up or hide it behind anything else. We kill babies. Do you think it's bad? Good for you. No need to justify it to the rest.

Marcella

Magnagora justifies everything it does through the lens of "Every time in history, when we restrict ourselves to only a couple kinds of ways of fighting the Soulless, they win and the Elders have to gtfo into the void/the Vernals have to fuse Avechna after most of the world is destroyed/Celest happens because the old government was afraid of change, because Ladantine was totally going to be a good guy and seal back Kethuru with his power". We do the things that others are scared to do not because of personal power (ideally), but because we're willing to sacrifice our very souls to ensure the safety of the rest of Lusternia as a whole, and anyone trying to stop us is spitting on our sacrifices. Heck, one of the halls in our cathedral is called the Pyrrhic Sage because of the sacrifices taken for knowledge.

Neos

Mag helps Illithoid though.

Marcella

Because if we help the illithoid, and the illithoid help us mess up Kethuru, then Kethuru will be pissed at Illith and it might engender more soulless infighting, duh.

Saran

It's all semantics but Serenwilde didn't let a whole heap of people die... they let a whole heap of people kill themselves. 

Like yeah... Celest was the head of an empire that helped to steadily destroy the natural world and countless cycles of life. 

From memory they also sided with Gaudiguch in the Nature Wars, which I believe was due to Gaudiguch's experiments on animals and is why Serenwilde was burned in half with that gods damned scar of a road.

It's also the head of the empire that refused to listen when they were clearly warned against undertaking the very project that resulted in their deaths.

You can argue that "Oh but not all Celestians..." but from a Serenwilde POV Celest as a group has been doing this sort of thing for centuries, it's likely that most of the forest wouldn't be able to remember a time where the cities weren't wrecking up the land.

So yeah... Serenwilde let a destructive force destroy itself, one that has actively harmed the forest, they'd be good if they saved their bully but hey... true neutral.

Llandros

I'm not sure Glomdoring being left for dead even though they strongly opposed the project qualifies as semantics but whateves. Serenwilde did not act out of neutrality but out of self preservation. People who do that kind of thing in apocalyptic settings are generally referred to as dicks.

Just saying. 

Enyalida

Self preservation: Also known as D&D true neutral.