Dragonmarks 4/4: Good and Evil

Posted on by

First, the standard disclaimers: All of this is just my opinion and how I run my personal campaign. For official Eberron support, check the material on the WotC website (as highlighted in this handy list of links). And it’s always worth remembering that the Eberron you know is the shared work of many authors and designers – James Wyatt, Chris Perkins, Ari Marmell, C. A. Suleiman, Jason Buhlman, Bill Slaviscek, Rob Schwalb, and many more.

My goal is still to post a Dragonmark every Wednesday – we’ll see how it goes. Please go ahead and ask new questions in the comments. Questions may not be answered in the order received; I’m doing this on my own dime, so it’s all a matter of what I’m inspired to write about. So there! Now let’s get started…

How did you end up deciding against alignment constraints?

There’s a place for clear-cut struggles between good and evil, and it’s why we have forces like the Emerald Claw in Eberron. However, in my home games I’ve always preferred to challenge the players to think about their actions – to have things be less clear-cut than “We’re good, they’re evil, beating them up is the right thing to do.” From the start, film noir was called out as a major influence of Eberron, and a noir story relies on a certain level of moral ambiguity and shades of gray. It shouldn’t always be easy to decide who the villain is in a scenario… or if killing the villain will solve a problem.

Beyond this, one of the underlying principles of Eberron is that it is a world in which magic has been incorporated into society. Detect evil exists. In 3.5, paladins can use it at will. Stop and think about that for a moment. If evil was a tangible thing that could be positively identified – and if everyone who was identified as evil was unquestionably a monster with no redeeming features, while everyone who’s good is noble and pure – how would evil still exist? Over the course of two thousand years, wouldn’t we turn to paladins  and alignment-detecting magic to help us identify and weed out the bad apples until we had a healthy tree? Consider our own history of witch-hunts, inquisitions, and the like. If we had an absolute yardstick and if we knew the people who failed the test were truly vile, what would happen over the course of centuries?

Removing alignment completely was never an option. It was a concrete part of the D&D ruleset. So instead, it was about taking an approach to alignment that could work with the noir story and take into account the existence of paladins and other alignment-linked effects – to justify a world in which good and evil people can work and fight side by side, where the existence of the value that can be identified with detect evil is accepted within society.

There’s four elements to this.

Alignment is a spectrum. Round up ten “evil” people and you’ll find that their behavior and histories are radically different. Consider the following.

  • A sociopathic serial killer who will kill or rob anyone that crosses his path without any hesitation or remorse.
  • A soldier who takes pleasure in torturing citizens of enemy nations – even civilians – but who is willing to lay down his life to protect his own people, and abides by the laws of his homeland.
  • An innkeeper who consistently waters down his ale and pads the bill a little whenever he thinks he can get away with it.
  • A repo man who ruthlessly reclaims goods on behalf of his employer, regardless of the circumstances of his victim and how the loss will affect them.

In my campaign, all four of these people will read as “evil” for purposes of detect evil. They all hurt other people on a regular basis and feel no remorse for their actions. Yet the innkeeper would never actually kill anyone. And the repo man is just doing a job and doing it well; he won’t interfere with anyone who hasn’t defaulted on their payments. In my eyes, one of the key elements of alignment is empathy. All four of these people are capable of performing actions that hurt others without remorse because they don’t empathize with their victims. But again, they vary wildly in the threat they pose to society. The serial killer is a dangerous criminal. The innkeeper is a criminal, but not a violent one. The cruel soldier is a danger to his enemies but protects his own people. The repo man has turned his lack of empathy into a productive tool. All of them are evil, but they are on different points of the spectrum.

Another important example of this for Eberron comes with clerics. Eberron allows clerics to have an alignment that is different from that of their divine power source. But it is again important to realize that an evil cleric of a good faith can mean different things. One evil priest of the Silver Flame may be a hypocrite and liar who is secretly allied with the Lords of Dust or abusing the faith of his followers for personal gain. However, another may be deeply devoted to the faith and willing to lay down his life to protect the innocent from supernatural evil – but he is also willing to regularly engage in ruthless and cruel acts to achieve this. The classic inquisitor falls into this mold. He truly is trying to do what’s best, and in a world where demonic possession is real his harsh methods may be your only hope. But he will torture you for your own good, and feel no sympathy for your pain. This makes him “evil” – yet compared to the first priest, he is truly devout and serving the interests of the church.

Alignment versus Motivation. Alignment reflects the way the character interacts with the world. Empathy is an important factor, along with the degree to which the character is willing to personally engage in immoral actions. But what it doesn’t take into account is the big picture. Let’s take two soldiers. Both joined the Brelish army of their own free will. The “evil” soldier hates the Thranes, and given the chance he will carry out torture, rapine and looting. He wears a belt of Thranish ears. Yet he loves his country and will sacrifice his own life to defend it. He’s “evil” because he is willing to carry out those atrocities; but he’d never do such a thing to a Brelish citizen. On the other hand, the “good” soldier will kill Thranes on the battlefield, but will not condone the mistreatment of prisoners or civilians. He hates the war but feels sympathy for the civilians on both sides; he further recognizes that the enemies he fights are just protecting their people, and treats them with respect. Both soldiers have the exact same goal and will fight side by side on the battlefield; alignment simply provides insight into how they may act.

Expanding on this: one of the rulers of the Five Nations is a good-aligned monarch who seeks to restart the Last War. Another is an evil leader who seeks peace. Restarting the war will result in the deaths of tens of thousands of people – how can a “good” monarch support that? Again, in Eberron alignment doesn’t represent someone’s actions on a global scale: it reflects the manner in which they pursue those goals. The good ruler believes that a just war is possible and that a united Khorvaire will prosper under her rule. She won’t condone torture, the mistreatment of civilians, and so on. She will treat her prisoners and emissaries fairly. Of course, her ministers and generals may engage in evil behavior in the name of the war; she will be horrified when she hears of it. Meanwhile, the evil king pursuing peace has a noble goal, but will do absolutely anything to achieve it. Torture? Oppressive martial law? Assassination? Anything. He’d kill members of his own family if he had to. So in both cases, the personal alignment tells you how they conduct their personal affairs, but nothing about the big picture.

People know these things. If a paladin walks into a tavern and scans ten people, he may find that three of them are evil. This doesn’t require any immediate action on his part, and while disappointing it isn’t a surprise. In The Empire Strikes Back, Yoda looks at Luke and says “There is much anger in him.” Luke hadn’t done anything bad; but what Yoda could sense was his potential to do evil. That’s what the paladin gets from detect evil. He doesn’t know where you lie on the spectrum. He doesn’t know your motivations. He knows that you lack empathy for others and may be selfish or narcissistic; that you are capable of hurting others without remorse; but he doesn’t know if you have or ever will. This is a key point with the Church of the Silver Flame. They are devoted to fighting supernatural evil: demons, undead, lycanthropy, etc. These are the things to fight with sword and spell. HUMAN evil is something that should be fought with compassion, charity, and guidance. Per Flame creed, you defeat mortal evil by guiding people to the light, not by killing them.

So – once you accept this version of alignment, you can find many jobs in society that are actually better suited to evil people. A repo man who has too much sympathy or empathy for his targets is going to have a difficult time doing his job. A tax collector may be the same way. An evil politican who’s willing to play the game of corruption in order to get things done may actually be the best hope of a city – providing that his motivation is towards the greater good. Knowing someone’s alignment is a piece of a puzzle – but it doesn’t tell you everything and it doesn’t end the story.

One side note: you may look at some of these things and say “I’d probably just make the repo man neutral/unaligned.” And that’s a reasonable approach. With Eberron, I specifically narrowed the spectrum of “neutral” while broadening the spectrum of “evil,” because again, the less concrete evil is the easier it is for it to be incorporated into society. If evil people can contribute to society in a positive way, then knowing someone is evil doesn’t lock in a story… while if only villains are evil, it automatically becomes a villain detector.

OK, that was probably three times longer than anyone cared to read… but there it is. I’d certainly be interested to hear your thoughts and personal experiences! Meanwhile, I’ll add one more related question…

If Eberron assumes that there may be persons that fail to live up to the ideals of a group or ideology (e.g. as happens with the Silver Flame) or dark sides to good persons/groups and vice versa, what are the dark sides (if any) of the Kalashtar and the gray parts of the inspired. I have the feeling that they are portrayed as archetypes of good and evil aspects, respectively. Am I wrong?

You are in fact wrong. But it’s complicated.

Something I didn’t really touch on in the previous question is the fact that in Eberron many creatures that are traditionally bound to a specific alignment aren’t. By and large, creatures with human intelligence are as capable of choosing their own path as humans are. You can have good medusas and evil gold dragons. However, there are exceptions to this rule, and the most notable of these are celestials, fiends, and other spiritual entities. These beings are in essence physical embodiments of ideas. A fiend is evil personified… and as a result, it is both always evil and a much purer evil than you tend to see in mortal creatures; on a scale of one to ten, it goes to eleven. It is possible for the angel to fall or the demon to rise (as shown by the Quori bound to the kalashtar), but in these cases the spirit will typically physically transform to reflect this change. An angel that falls from Syrania will become a fiend or a radiant idol, for example. So when you meet a devil, you can generally be pretty sure it’s lawful evil, because that’s what it means to BE a devil.

The Inspired are mortal vessels directly possessed by Quori. As a result, you know that the Inspired are evil. However, as noted above, that’s personal alignment – which doesn’t tell you anything about their long-term motivation or the impact of their actions. The Dreaming Dark is an agency that is carrying out an evil agenda, and Inspired agents of the Dreaming Dark are reliably evil. But the majority of the Inspired are ambassadors and administrators maintaining an empire. A typical Inspired overseer feels no empathy for his human subjects and would feel no remorse if he had to slaughter them; but most of the time he DOESN’T have to slaughter them, and furthermore he knows that the best way to help his people accomplish their goals is to keep his subjects content. Subtlety and charisma are the greatest weapons of the Quori; they are masters of propaganda and manipulation, of tricking you into thinking you want to do what they want you to do. Which means that while they may BE evil, most Inspired appear to be benevolent rulers. They provide for the needs of their people. They will not tolerate crime or disobedience, and they will act ruthlessly and swiftly to enforce this. Nonetheless, those Riedrans who are content to follow the path assigned to them needn’t worry about food, shelter, or security. The Inspired see to their needs and protect them.

What this ultimately comes down to is that the Inspired have done a good thing: they have created a stable society whose people by and large need not worry about crime, war, disease, hunger, or even bad dreams. However, they have accomplished this by doing an evil thing – stripping people of freedom and choice. The typical Riedran doesn’t want to BE free of the Inspired… because they’ve created a society where he doesn’t have that choice. On the other hand, a Riedran farmer is likely to live a far more comfortable, stable, and secure life than his counterpart in Breland or Karrnath. So… are the Inspired purely evil? If you destroy them, you’ll throw Riedra into chaos and civil war, unleash famine and plague… is that a good act?

Now let’s look at the kalashtar. The race was created when rebellious Quori of good and neutral alignment fused with human hosts. However, that was well over a thousand years ago. Unlike the Inspired, the kalashtar aren’t directly possessed by their Quori spirits; they are merely influenced by them, and that influence comes through instinct and dream. An Inspired will always match the alignment of its Quroi spirit, because it literally IS the Quori spirit. Kalashtar, on the other hand, aren’t required to match the alignment of their Quori. If the alignment of the kalashtar is radically different from that of its bound Quori spirit, it will create emotional dissonance that will result in mental instability or outright madness… but that can still make for a very dangerous villain. This is especially relevant for orphan kalashtar who know little or nothing of the history or origins of their people; the Quori voice is part of what will shape their character, but it’s not alone. This is discussed in more detail in Races of Eberron.

So first of all, you can have literally evil kalashtar. Beyond this: Just as the Church of the Silver Flame and the Blood of Vol have groups of extremists whose actions soil the fundamental principles of their faiths, there are extremists among the kalashtar as well. Overall, the Adaran kalashtar live by principles of patience and perseverance, confident that through their actions they are pushing the cycle closer to the turn of the age and destruction of the Dreaming Dark. Overall, they have avoided acts of aggression against Riedra, not wanting to harm innocents in their struggle with the Dreaming Dark. But there are exceptions. There are atavists who believe that they must take the offensive against il-Lashtavar – even if that means killing or torturing the innocent pawns trapped in the web. They will and should stand out because this behavior is so unlike the kalashtar norm, and it may create mental dissonance. But it’s still there. Beyond this, there are kalashtar who actually envy the immortal Inspired, and want to actually become like the Quori themselves. So in the end you can find darkness among kalashtar – even among the followers of the Path of Light – and there are Inspired whose lives are devoted to ensuring the comfort and survival of civilians.

Dragonmarks 3/28: Roots of Magic

Posted on by

If you’re looking for official Eberron support,the place to go is the Wizards of the Coast website. I recommend that you check out the Dragonshards archive (no subscription required!) and Eye on Eberron (subscription only). A new EoE article just went up today: The Chamber!

While I’m posting links, I’d also like to call out a far more complete list of Eberron resources maintained by Echohawk on ENWorld. It’s definitely worth checking out!

While I can’t provide official Eberron material here, I can at least answer questions and talk about things I do in my personal Eberron campaigns. If you’ve got questions, post them as comments and I’ll add them to the list. Just so you know when to check in, I henceforth declare Wednesday to be Dragonmark day – however, depending on my workload, that may be every other Wednesday! But if there is going to be a Dragonmark  update in a given week, it will happen on Wednesday.

Now, on to some questions!

Did you make Eberron from scratch or was it a home campaign?

The one-page idea that I submitted to the Fantasy Setting Search was entirely original. As it worked its way to the final stages of the search and into actual production, I ended up incorporating ideas from a number of different campaigns I’d run over the years. For example, the Zil gnomes are largely pulled from my high school campaign. Other key ideas came about after the setting had been selected, during the brainstorming sessions with James Wyatt, Bill Slaviscek, Chris Perkins, and other members of the WotC team. For example, the Talenta halflings were always set up as nomads… but it was in those brainstorming sessions that the idea came up that they could have domesticated dinosaurs (my memory of this was that it sprung from James’ son being in a dinosaur phase, but I know other people remember it differently). In any case, there are pieces of it that come from the past, and pieces that were made up at the very end of the process.

What piece of source information is your favorite?

It’s a tough call, because I’m a perfectionist and I’m always looking at books in the light of “We didn’t manage to squeeze in that detail about X.” So it’s hard to find something that I’m ever completely happy with. With that said, in terms of sourcebooks I am pleased with Chapter 1 of the 4E Eberron Campaign Guide; I feel that it sums up a lot of details that were scattered across various 3.5 sourcebooks and articles, and does a better job of capturing some of the underlying themes of the setting (such as the scars left by the Last War) than the 3.5 ECS.

What was the one thing you wanted to put in Eberron that you didn’t get around to doing (as opposed to things left on the cutting room floor)?

There are many things I wish we’d had time to squeeze into the sourcebooks. Many of these aren’t especially vital for playing in the world – which is why they weren’t at the top of the list – but help to add depth to the world, which interests me. One of the core themes of Eberron is the idea of exploring how magic as it exists in D&D would be integrated into society and shape a civilization. Given this, one thing I’d like to have is a stronger sense of the development of magic. Who were the arcane pioneers who shaped magic as we know it today? What were the key discoveries and how did each one impact the world? For example, how long has the Sivis message stone been in use, and who invented it? What’s the history of Zil elemental binding – were there some terrible disasters along the way to the efficient harnessing we have today? What about the war? We know about the warforged and the eternal wands… but what other weapons were developed in the Last War and previous wars?

This isn’t vital, because it doesn’t affect the world as we know it today: it’s a question of how we got to this point. I’d just like to add that level of detail someday.

One thing I did consider when I was thinking about this back before 4E rolled around was the idea that magical components – verbal, somatic, material – are themselves tools that have been developed over time to help spellcasters channel magical energy more effectively. In 3.5, you have metamagic feats (Still Spell, Silent Spell) that allow you to ignore components in exchange for raising the spell slot level of a spell. So… where did these components come from? If magic is treated as a science, did it spring into existence fully formed with a language of verbal and somatic components? Did the first fireball require a ball of guano?

I prefer the idea is that components were themselves innovations. When Aundair was a living person, magic was a raw force that was channeled with force of will and mental discipline. What this meant was that the spells were simply higher level. A magic missile didn’t have verbal or somatic components – and it was a 3rd level spell instead of a 1st level spell. The formulas and gestures were developed over time as tools that allowed people to channel this power more efficiently. By the present day these things have become so engrained into arcane study that people have to receive special training (IE feats) to cast without them. So if your wizard went back in time to the birth of Galifar, people would be astonished at his capacity for casting and curious about his strange words and gestures.

I warned you this wasn’t going to be especially relevant to your current game, right?

That’s all for this week – what do you want to know next?

Eberron Thoughts: Do Warforged Dream of Iron Defenders?

Posted on by

As always: The material I do for Eye on Eberron is canon; anything I say here is just my opinion. Take it for what it’s worth!

Over on Dungeonmastering.com, Frank asks:

I have a quick question about the warforged from Eberron. In 4e, it is written that they only need four hours of ‘inactivity’ to regain all the extended rest benefits, however they are still fully aware and perceptive of their surroundings during this time. So i was wonder, what constitutes ‘inactivity’ per se? Would one be able to do simple tasks during this time? Specifically could they work on learning a language for the hours?

It’s an interesting question. The warforged of third edition didn’t need to sleep at all. The 3.5 ECS specifically called out that a warforged wizard had to rest for 8 hours to regain spells, but the wizard was the only class that had any restrictions. When we were working on converting the warforged to 4E, this was a subject of debate. I felt that it was very important that warforged not have to sleep, in part because it’s something that’s clearly established in the novels and something that makes them useful in the war; they are sleepless sentinels and can march on through the night.

So my first thought is this: Warforged don’t NEED to rest. A warforged can operate continuously without any rest whatsoever—marching, fighting, learning a language. It simply won’t gain the benefits of an extended rest until it does get those four hours. But if it doesn’t NEED those benefits, it can simply keep going and going and going.

But what if it does need an extended rest? What can it do during those four hours? Well, let’s look at the benefits of an extended rest:

  • Healing surges, healing surges, and action points are restored.
  • Daily powers are recharged.

To my mind, the physical benefits suggest three things. First, warforged have reservoirs of alchemical fluids. I could see these being depleted by strenuous activity and requiring downtime to be restored. I firmly believe that a warforged should be able to take basic physical actions while “resting” – patrolling, tending to armor or weapons, marching in a column – but running, engaging in combat, exerting full strength, etc should break that rest. Bear in mind that per 4E rules periods of such activity simply add to the total time you need to rest – they don’t reset your clock.

Continuing with the discussion of healing, warforged heal in two ways. First, I’ve always seen warforged as doing a certain amount of self-smithing… mending and patching while others are sleeping. However remember that warforged are in part living creatures. Even aside from the livewood tendrils, their metal components aren’t dead metal. A warforged juggernaut literally grows spikes on his armor… and pieces of metal sliced off a warforged will corrode, which is why you can’t strip adamantine-plated warforged and sell them for parts. Warforged are made of steel, leather, and stone, but all of these elements are magical in nature; they are living constructs.

Next issue: Daily powers. This varies by power source. Where do the warforged’s powers actually come from? In the case of divine classes, I believe that the warforged needs to spend those four hours in meditation and prayer, contemplating his vision of the divine and his connection to it. The warforged paladin can still patrol while doing this, but it takes up higher brainpower and would keep him from learning a language or anything else requiring a high level of focus. Ditto for the wizard, who spends his resting time considering mystic formulas and the nature of magic itself. The primal warforged meditates on his connection to the land around him, and the way in which the livewood within his body is part of the world. The warlord thinks about his allies and how he can inspire them in the day ahead.

So generally speaking, my thought is that recharging daily powers will prevent a warforged from engaging in other intellectual activities. A warforged who is purely regaining healing surges could read a book or study a lesson while doing it, though – and for a warforged bard, learning a language might actually BE the rest that restores his daily powers!