(This chapter is background, not a story. Feel free to skip to the next chapter!)
The forces of Good, Evil, Law, and Chaos represent conflicting profound forces that define the multiverse with their struggles and conflicts in the Power of Ten. As forces that profound, they exist beyond the gods, and the Divine could be said to be what they are because they represent minor tropes of different aspects of the Alignments.
A LOT gets argued about alignments when playing RPG’s. This is because it’s hard to pinhole people to an alignment... especially optimizers who want maximum benefits. Getting the rep of the Lawful and Good while being able to do anything you want, like the Chaotic and Evil, is basically what is pulling at people.
The difference is that when people assign an Alignment to their character, they are saying they are going to play him that way. However, if they don’t play them that way, said people get very upset with their Dungeon Master coming in and saying, “No, you’re CN, not NG, if you’re stealing from everyone you can.” In the interests of friendships and gaming, DM’s end up having to put up with the Lawful Stupid, the Stupid Good, Chaotic Arseholes, and all sorts of dumb variants of ‘Alignment’ that have to do with keeping the game going rather than any sort of reason.
However, in a literary world, the exact opposite is true. Players don’t get to just say ‘I’m Neutral Good.’ No, Good and Evil exist on their own, they are not defined by the characters. Someone thinking they define what Good is, is the exact same thing as an ant screaming at the Heavens to stop raining. The Alignments exist in and of themselves. Your Alignment is how close you stand to them, proven by word, thought and deed. Your Alignment is the result of the choices you make, it is not what ‘decides’ those choices, completely the opposite of what an almighty Player Character thinks.
Thus, a story with real Alignments is dealing with fundamental forces as primal as gravity and light. They can’t be avoided or talked around. They are real and have real effects.
However, this doesn’t mean that what any particular person believes is Good is ‘good’, or that what is ‘good’ is Good. In Earth’s own history, Law/Civilization was seen as inherently ‘good’, while Chaos/Barbarianism was ‘evil’, and indeed the conflict between them shaped a lot of history.
But in the Power of Ten, because Good, Evil, Law, and Chaos are ‘real’, there are some tropes in effect, and NOT in effect, based on the power of the Alignments.
First of all, Human-style corruption of the Good gods isn’t really there. You don’t get Zeus going down to shape-change into the husbands of women and rape them to satisfy his libido. To be a Good god, you actually have to be Good and your choices resonate with it. The human desires and corruption would mean that god would make choices and move further and further from Good, falling into Neutrality. The searing arrogance and pride of the whole Olympian Pantheon means remarkably few of them would qualify as Good, among other things.
This fact of being Good means that things like War in Heaven between different opposing gods, angels, ahrens, celestials, devas, archons and whatnot... does not happen. Good people have many, many ways of resolving conflicts without resorting to butchering one another, and they have so many external enemies that there is tremendous incentive not to do so.
Good is also the alignment of empathy, compassion, understanding, and mercy. Because of that, Good is a higher power that can do something Neutrality and Evil cannot... they can bring the opposite ends of Goodness, Chaotic Good and Lawful Good, together in a greater understanding and recognition that all are parts of a greater whole, and no Alignment is inherently greater or more perfect or ‘better’ than the rest.
Oh, Good can ‘compete’ with itself... healthy competition is a matter of evolution, competence, and preparation, after all. But simply reducing war to athletic competitions, debates, setting goals in thwarting Evil, negotiations, mutual cooperation, trading of favors, or a thousand other ways means that Heaven gets along with its many parts on the wings of understanding, even if there is rivalry.
Secondly, Good stands against Evil. Oh, Evil may try to explain it away, especially devils who argue that they fight demons all day long, and isn’t that doing Good by helping contain them? Yet the Hells, by their very existence, require Evil souls to make more devils, and those Evil souls generate the Sin that creates the demons. In effect, Hell is creating its own enemies by growing its own power... and despite Good getting involved in the war now and then, which should immediately turn the tide fantastically... it doesn’t work.
Hell has no interest in stopping that eternal Law/Chaos war, or the flow of Evil souls. If that means competing with demons forever to do so, so be it. Managing an eternal stalemate is totally and completely within the bounds of Hell to do so, as long as it fosters Hells own survival!
Evil actions throw Good into stark relief. Good can be called the most restricted of the Alignments, for Good is defined by what it will NOT do more than any other Alignment. Things that Good will not do are deeds that generally generate the Sins that create the denizens of the lower realms. Evil, by contrast, is the least restricted of the Alignments, for the more Evil you are, the fewer the limits you place on what you will and will not do. Truly Chaotic and Evil people can murder a billion people as readily as they step on an ant.
Lawful Good people are the most restricted of Good folk, as obeying Good Laws naturally means that things like stealing from the rich and giving to the poor are quite out of line, among other things. It could be called the highest calling of civilized folk, since it has the fewest moral and ethical options open to it.
Chaotic Good folk, on the other hand, have the fewest restrictions of the Good on themselves, living as they will, with their own definition of what is Good being more important than what some sage or king or distant god says. Living with a clear and independent heart, they yet do not step over that line into selfish and uncaring behavior. Trying to do this without being affected by increasing communal bounds is often difficult, at least for humans.
Neutral Good folk see the benefits that both Law and Chaos can bring, and so try to take the best of both, and set aside what they consider unpalatable. In terms of numbers, most Good people are Neutral Good, as CG and LG are both extreme alignments that demand a great deal of those who follow them, and it is intrinsically HARD for a normal human to operate at those extremes of behavior long-term.
Because Good stands against Evil, it could be said that Evil makes Good strong. When people see Evil behavior directed at them, they understand there is a better way, and this is how Good prospers. In the end, Evil seldom truly conquers Good, because superior cooperation, trust, and harmony really are that powerful on the macro scale. Good is also capable of sacrifice of self that Evil is not, and if that means apocalypse on both sides, so be it.
What kills Good in the end is generally Neutrality, or the Grey. People like to separate the two sides into black and white, and the grey is what exists in between.
In real life, this is simply the people that take advantage of others, without being actively malicious about it, and think it’s Just Fine... and get away with it. The worker who doesn’t do their job, but still gets paid. The manager who gets the promotion because he drinks with the boss, not because he’s competent. The merchant who soaks a client for every ounce of gold by whatever means, instead of treating him like a valued client. Viewing a stranger as a resource to be exploited, instead of an equal and a peer. Favoring blood ties over all else, and taking advantage of others to empower and enrich yourself without end, without necessarily using violent means, breaking the law, or such.
Such actions and views erode away the Good, as trust is not returned, faith is not restored, equality falls apart into various forms of justification and discrimination, and things start heading towards the zero-sum game where people can only prosper if someone else suffers. The idea of synergy where everyone benefits by supporting ideas becomes more and more difficult to take root if someone will benefit more than others by not going along with everyone else.
Evil tends to kill Neutrals, who generally are totally susceptible to the way Evil steps over the invisible lines of family, friendship, and community to advance themselves by more ruthless means. Subjected to such methods, Neutrals are likely to respond with the same, as such actions are often incredibly pragmatic and practical, and “get results”. Coming up against Evil, Neutrals tend to darken over time as their own life choices taken to the extreme come back to bite at them, and they decide to bite the same way.
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Evil people naturally don’t think of themselves as ‘bad’. They think of themselves as pragmatic and reasonable sorts who aren’t bound by some kind of self-limitations or enforced morality dictated to them by others. They can be nice if they need to be nice, and they can impale a thousand babies as an object lesson, if they’re Evil enough. This willingness to step outside moral and ethical boundaries others draw about themselves basically defines how Evil they are, and they generally aren’t too concerned about it, and there certainly isn’t anything WRONG with it, from their standpoint. It’s just willingness to do what others are not!
Other implications of Real Alignments:
Rewarding Evil: Generally speaking, doesn’t happen in the afterlife. Why? Because your boss is Evil. Alive, you are a potentially fattening soul, who can lead other souls to your boss. Dead? You’re just a resource, like gold, to be spent and used as they deem fit. The forces that rule in the Lower Planes are Evil to a great and dark degree... in short, they are like you, only much, much worse, and they treat you accordingly. You have no value as an individual, no power to speak of, and are only a resource, which generally means being rendered down for more Sin, being agglomerated into a Fiend as a pawn in the machinations of those more powerful, used to power the furnaces and war machines of the Dark Planes, or tortured for emotional sustenance the doomed can subside on. You were rewarded while you lived. Dead, you pay it all back as the boss deems fit.
You are NOTHING, a disposable commodity.
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Aural colors are not variable: Lawful Good is Silver, and Everyone sees it that way. There’s no mistaking it, there’s no interpreting it as something else, i.e. Chaotic Evil types don’t see themselves as Silver and Lawful Goody-types as Black. LG is Silver. NG is Gold. CG is Rainbow or Orange. LN is Blue. True Neutral is Green. False Neutral is Clear or Brown. Chaotic Neutral is Grey. LE is Red. NE is Purple. CE is Black.
Creatures ‘beyond Alignments’ will still have resonance with one of these Alignments. They may have orange and blue reasonings, and consider themselves above such petty things... but those petty things define reality, so they aren’t ignorable, and they will resonate accordingly... generally CE, as placing yourself above all morality and ethics is the highest degree of CE, however you want to justify it.
Celestials and servants of Heaven are not vulnerable to Evil: in 3rd Edition D&D, evil weapons are those that do the most damage to servants of Heaven, as they have damage reduction x/Evil. This is very dumb, from a logical standpoint, because Evil is what they are meant to fight the most. It is when Good does turn upon itself that it suffers the most, so in the world of Power of Ten, angels and celestials are most vulnerable to holy weapons turned upon them, and they have DR x/Good.
Likewise, the greatest enemies of the Evil are one another, not the Good. It is generally the fiend next to you who is most likely to get you killed, not some angel who could not care if he never meets you, and certainly doesn’t want your wealth, power, or place in the lower planar hierarchy. Devils, daemons, and demons fight one another on unthinkable scales, and that is how the vast majority of them die, Evil preying upon itself. Heaven tends to fight Evil when needed, if it fights anyone, while the Neutral powers either stay out of things or act opportunistically, if at all, or have personal grudges/enemies they war against instead, staying ‘above the conflict’ which is so much larger than their own.
Thus, Fiends and the minions of Evil have the exact same vulnerability that Celestials do, x/Good, because Good is something they rarely run into; they need to protect themselves from one another!
The net effect is that Fiends can rip into one another, and find it difficult to kill one another with their DR, resulting in protracted battles of great violence. However, a single Angel can often defeat multiple Fiends, as they are both resistant to the damage Fiends inflict, and inflict damage that can cause them great harm. This satisfies the trope that Angels are usually seen as stronger than demons and devils of the same rank via a simple mechanics change.
The fact that demons and devils brought to the Mortal World often end up fighting celestials is a non-factor. Those conflicts are so small in the macro scheme of things they constitute a rounding error on the scales of the Divine.
Note that Evil and Good Magic are explicitly harmful to the opposing Alignment. Conversely, Evil magic also works just fine against Evil people most of the time, but Good Magic virtually never does.
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Law and Chaos:
Law represents both the power of Fate, and the idea to subject all the multiverse to a single hierarchy and system of laws. It backs the power of science, civilization, discipline, unity, and inevitable progression towards a single perfect path.
Lawful Good is the force of Destiny, LN is pure Fate, and LE wields the power of Doom.
Law considers Chaos to be nothing but raw potential, waiting to be defined and ordered, perfected and refined towards the ultimate state. True Law considers any imperfection something that must be addressed and eliminated, and beings of Chaos should be dealt with immediately under this principle. Conflict within Law is evidence of imperfection, and dealing with internal divisions is merely refinement towards an ultimate state.
The fact that reconciling multiple types of Law is probably impossible until you end up in a state of total entropy at the heat death of the universe is not a concern of Law at all, they keep right at it.
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Chaos represents Luck, individual choice, emotion, raw personal strength, conflict, and ultimate freedom. It backs the power of magic, favors individuals over the many, talent, drive, and endless variety and options, uncaring of where they lead among the many possibilities.
CG represents Good Luck, CN Luck fickle and fair, and CE very Bad Luck, indeed.
Chaos considers Law to be merely one option among the many possibilities available to reality, of no real importance save for its tendency to try to restrain other options and possibilities. Chaos acts on all other forces to open up defined paths back to infinite possibilities, gradually eroding away all other profound forces in a continual march towards entropy and rebirth. Law’s attempts to restrain and limit it are met with passion and fury.
Internal conflicts within Chaos are constant, to be expected, and tend to be enjoyed by all concerned.
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STRIFE: There are wars taking place between profound forces all the time. The place where most of these things take place is the realm of Strife (not yet featured in the novel).
Strife is a Plane of indeterminate size, exactly big enough to fit ALL the forces fighting there. These forces wax and wane as their corresponding forces in the mortal realms rise and fall, engaged in conflict unending on scales equally massive. The Planes are the source of the forces that fight here, the fighting rarely gets to the Planes themselves. Strife will expand to pull in invasions of the other Planes, removing them from the source and making it very difficult, if not impossible, for such forces to truly ‘win’ a fight against one another by always having wars occur on eternally neutral ground.
On Strife, Earth throws mountains at hurricanes from Air. Fire raises volcanoes and small suns in oceans of Water. World-trees do battle with Planet-spores, while Kaiju rage at both of them. Demons assault devils in a war as primal as time, while axiarchs build and anarchs destroy endlessly. Forces of Heaven confront Evil spilling off the Eternal War and attempting to corrupt all the other forces. Insect hive-minds consume one another ceaselessly, avians war on fish and furred alike, dinosaurs clash with mammals, sahaugin battle with mermen while Deep Ones prey on both, Jotuns continue their ages-old rivalry with Dragons, and life goes on.
Aberrants, Old Ones, and Elder Gods exist Outside Creation, and are not part of Strife. The Warp Gods exist in their own pocket universe, separated from the rest of Creation, where they toy with life as they wish. Both align with CE for the simple reason that they have no moral or ethical restrictions that would limit them, and their actions tend to confirm that disregard for same, even with rare exceptions that tend to end up being based on entertainment value.
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Characters:
Sama: (L) NG – Lawful bias because of her enforced military background with the Ironblood.
Briggs: NG – Closer to nature and less constrained than Sama, and Sources tend to be more emotional than Nulls. His past and being an Ancient tends him towards N instead of Chaotic like many human Sources.
The Brotherhood: TN – Their whole existence is about bringing things back into Balance with the Land. They may want to be NG, but the things they have to do and the pressure they are under generally doesn’t allow for the kind of slower, longer-term solutions being Good requires.
Estemar: LG – A Paladin is required by definition to be LG.
Animals, plants, uncaring people: False Neutral: Either they don’t take a moral position from being unable to make such decisions, or simply don’t care and follow their instincts. Most hiveminds are Neutral, instead of LN, for this reason... the lower orders obey out of instinct, not of choice, or simply can’t think at all.
Errant: NG, a slight Lawful bias because of his family, but he’s moving away from it once independent. Heavenbound by definition must be Good.
Hazé: Also NG, as the Goddess of Silver Magic is NG, and prefers that Alignment for her priests.
The Girls: Amber is CG, Verd and Veis are NG. Scut would also be CG. Mama is also NG.
Feist: N (G). He’s quite ruthless, especially towards larger races, but the girls and Sage Sama have been softening him up with heroism, or maybe just antipathy for Evil.
The Ironblood: Most are NG/LG, due to being in harmony with Sama’s Nightmare originally, i.e. the most moral of soldiers.
Rorn Greywolf: N(Chaotic) G. Most Northmen have a strong independent streak, but he’s effectively rebelling against the traditions of his country and planning on conquering it to set himself up as a benevolent King and Source. Sama doesn’t mind.
The average mercenary: N, LN, NE, LE. Concerned about paychecks and following orders to kill others, not much else. Oh, yeah, power!
Sorcerers and Rogues/thieves/scouts tend towards Chaos. Wizards and warriors tend towards Law. Barbarians tend to be quite Chaotic, especially Berserkers, while the vast majority of Monks are Lawful.
Any questions, leave them in the comments!