When Angels Battle

[hyzmarca]

It's also canon that a victory by Good would be just as bad for the multiverse as a victory by Evil,

How, exactly? You can sort of see how Evil would wreck up the place, but what would be so awful about Good? What makes the much-vaunted Balance so crucial to uphold--better even than Good?

Good and Evil aren't abstract concepts. They're metaphysical physical forces that hold the multiverse together. Good stamping out Evil would be akin to electromagnetism and stamping out the strong nuclear Force. We wouldn't like it very much because we'd all instantly explode at the speed of light.

The Great Wheel is built on alignment balance. Unbalance them and it comes flying apart. If you destroy the Great Wheel you not only destroy everything that exists, but the possibility of anything ever existing.

[Grek]

Just going to leave this here:

http://yudkowsky.net/other/fiction/the-sword-of-good

[OgreBattle]

I was hoping for more cyborgs in this thread

[Grek]

So, alternative to the previously proposed (and, IMHO, very stupid) idea about how good and evil are both neccessary in the universe. All of the Good outsiders are, in fact, good. They do good things, help people and work to make the world a better place. The major conflict between the angelic factions is on how this should be done. And there's three sides to the conflict:

The Archons, ruled by Zaphkiel from Celestia, beleive that Good is best advanced by organizing mortal societies into orderly and lawful nations ruled by the good and just. Zaphkiel personally favours a fuedal system of rulership, with a Good monarch ruling over Good lords ruling over Good knights who rule over the peasants. There's not 100% agreement with this policy, even among Archons. The ones native to Arcadia prefer to establish a Good system of laws and have things run off a legalist system, while the Bytopian Archons prefer to do away with the divinely ordained government and just have the Good knights go around righting wrongs and upholding justice at will.

The various Chaotic Good outsiders, found in Arborea and not centrally ruled by anyone in particular, think that the Archon's plan of sponsering mortal governments, handing down laws and establishing knightly orders is a bad idea. They fear that fiends of various descriptions will impersonate the Celestials that are supposed to be handing down the laws and eventually corrupt any organization that the Archons found for Good towards evil. Instead, they go around performing one-off acts of kindness and goodness, helping out where they can and foiling the plots of fiends. Beastlands Celestials try to encourage mortals to live in harmony with nature, while Ysgardians reward those who are exceptionally brave, artistic or good.

In between these two confliction factions are the Guardinals, ruled by Talsid and the five companions from Elysium. They hold that all Celestials should return to the outer planes and leave the Prime Material out of the Blood Wars, only returning to intervene once Good and triumphed over Evil and celestial-kind has been reunited. They're also the foremost crusaders against Evil. Also present in Elysium, but unaffliated with the Guardinals, are the angels, who seek to reconcile the various celestial factions. They're the reason that the Upper Planes haven't divided in half entirely, like the lower planes split into Infernal and Abyssal factions with entirely seperate languages and goals.

[Josh_Kablack]

Old Thread laying out some relevant ideas.

[virgil]

I decided to have a Prime world where an evil necromantic king had ruled for some time, but got sick/poisoned somehow. An angel snuck in and drugged him into a near-permanent coma, insinuating itself as an adviser to the regent. From there, it had taxes raised for the rich, lowering the upper end income to that of well-off tavern owners. An analogue to lembas bread was farmed/bought/gathered in great number and sold at prices proportional to the buyer's income. A large number of drugs became legal and smokehouses funded. The red light district was sanctioned and grew immense in size. Soma was introduced. Anyone who causes unhappiness is taken away by guards to be 'questioned'.

Meanwhile, archons are coming in as terrorists against the regime, attempting to slay the "puppeteer". They're getting funding/aid from the expatriate wealthy, a few paladins, etc.

[Xaos]

The balance is bullshit. Evil totally outbalances good in the Planescape universe. The Abyss is a literally ENDLESS hellhole of beasts that hunger for the suffering (and souls) of intelligent beings everywhere.

Also, the argument of "Good is the absence of evil" is also bullshit. If "Good" ceases to exist without "Evil", then even with Evil it doesn't mean anything. If you aren't helping people with your evil-punishing, all we have is an infinite vengeance loop. Good doesn't, or at least SHOULDN'T just care about the suffering that is caused on purpose, but should also give a shit about all the other flaws in the world.

"Evil" technically isn't the ultimate adversary of the good. Its just another pointless distraction.

Which actually makes "Holy Word" and the other "Good-aligned" spells that affect not only evil, but "Any Non-Good" is kind of silly. Heck, damaging and killing evil doesn't really fit the theme of what good is supposed to be.

I mean, okay...Power Rangers in Space ended with Zordon's death. The Red Ranger broke his energy tube and unleashed a shit ton of good energy in that part of the galaxy. He was basically carrying a "Goodsplosion" in that part of the galaxy. This is referred to as the "Z-Wave"

However, it wasn't quite a "Blasphemy" in reverse. It only killed those who had no good in them (or who had no good LEFT in them due to believing their morality pet being dead. That's kind of cruel...) For those with some good "buried deep down", like Rita and Zed (apparently...?), it turned them into normal humans with no memory of their lives as villains.

That's not what say, "Holy Word" (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/holyWord.htm) does at all. " Any nongood (!) creature within the area that hears the holy word suffers the following ill effects. "

Will blind, deafen, paralyze, or outright KILL creatures that matching the caster's "Holier-than-thou" alignment, based on their

A Global "Holy Word" (which count only be invented and CAST by a ridiculously high level caster), wouldn't be a very good thing. Hell, it would DESTROY THE FOOD CHAIN BECAUSE IT WOULD KILL ALL THE ANIMALS.

That's right. This "Goodsplosion" would kill all the bunnies and kittens. Which actually makes the caster kind of the exact opposite of a saint.

Which is why the Z-wave didn't do that. It only harmed/changed a bunch of aliens (very few human, I notice, but I kind of believe Power Rangers subscribes to the idea that "people are basically good, and only something that comes from far, far away can actually be evil enough to be a real antagonist") and left all the animals INCAPABLE of higher moral thinking alone.

Actually, its a mark against the alignment system. I mean, animals are "neutral" because they couldn't reasonably be anything else. It would make more sense to have nonsentients be not neutral persay, but "No alignment"

I mean, a Goodsplosion would destroy all the plantlife for Tyr's sake!


...I was going somewhere with this but then I was interrupted with a lightning storm, and made a better post down below. Toodles.

[Foxwarrior]

And that's why D&D alignments should always be spelled with capital letters.

Also, aren't almost all the planes supposedly infinite?

[OgreBattle]

I like Shin Megami Tensei. They just have Law & Chaos

and even with that, those are just general attitudes, they don't affect if Archangels can banish you or not. Being a servant of YHWH or a Lucifer rebel affects that.

[John Magnum]

If you're going to make "good" and "evil" cosmic red team and blue team, don't call them "good" and "evil".

[tussock]

The Modrons are a curse, they march the ring regularly and slaughter everything in their path. They can be stopped, eliminated, replaced with the less harmful ant and bee people (whatever the fuck they're called).

The CG types have a plan. All that stands in the way is the LG types, who have an unbending will that no one shall cross heavens to engage in wars. Also, the LG types see the bastard Slaad as far more of a curse, and more readily replaced. All that stands in their way is the CG types, who think it unusually crazy to stir that shit up.

Also, there's Angels, who will totally murder all such warmongering zealots, to help keep the peace. So, yeh, the blood war, in reverse. Chaos vs Law.



In short, Good creatures make war with each other because they have opposed military goals.

[Xaos]

Actually...the more I think about it, the more it makes sense that the Celestials would fight on the Material Plane.

See, I had a funny idea. Why would the Celestials fight each other if it could ever be avoided? I mean, its even stupid that the FIENDS fight each other if they have any self-interest at all. They are immortal unless they get killed in which case they become NOTHING.

But then again, I think that's why they do much of their fighting in Gehanna, not Baator or the Abyss. Gehanna is the home of the Yugoloth, so they are the only ones who risk anything as they try to escalate and profit from the conflict. ...Why do I now imagine Yugoloth more as arms dealers and spies for hire rather than outright mercenaries? (Don't Spies lead dangerous lives you ask? Why, yes they do. But you see. The same Yugoloth spy offers his services as a spy to the OTHER side as well. And so, co-operating with a Shadow broker who is the real ring-leader who decides which intel to tell who, all Yugoloth spies are not only double agents, but TRIPLE AGENTS.)

Um, ANYWAY!

Mortals have been stuck in a conceptual universe defined by what they could already do. Or rather, but what their "heroes" and "protectors" could do. Not what is technically possible within the rules of physics. The Archons can see some much low-hanging fruit that the mortals are too busy fighting each other to implement, and the Prime Material plane is seen as a never-ending cycle of despair.

They actually are kind of aware that outsiders can't be rezzed, but mortals can be. And they also can go on to an afterlife, so death isn't the end like it is for outsiders who die on their native planes.

So, Archons are basically fed up with how the mortals are mismanaging things, and plan to invade and create a Holy Empire of unification.

The Chaotic Eladrins dislike the Archons' way of doing things. They stand for Freedom and dignity and choosing your own destiny and all that. And also some of them have ties certain tribes that they are sworn to serve. In general, they start to see other groups of Eladrins as allies in the fight against Tyranny, and start to resemble an army.

But fighting on the material plane is actually a kind of gentlemanly agreement. That's the place where the territories the Archon Empire is fighting to conquer is happening, after all. The only real barrier is the summonings, but a lot more people are probably more willing to summon Celestials than Fiends. Fiends have a reputation of stabbing you in the back and unilaterally eating/imprisoning your soul.

But sometimes, bad shit does happen on the upper planes. Bad feelings because of the ongoing war lead to all sorts of problems and Archons and Eladrins frequently come to blows in Aracadia, Bytopia, the Beastlands, and definetly in Ysgard. They seize holdings from the other side, besiege strongholds

Eladrins rarely go to Celestia unless they are diplomats or something. And vice versa among the Archons and Aborea. Perhaps even outright bigotry breaks out among the Angels. Think about it. If THEY come to your home plane, they can kill you, but you cannot kill them. But you can imprison them...

Japanese internment camp AHOY!

Anyway. The Neutral Good Guardinals are just that. Neutral. The Archons and Eladrins might never speak to each other ever again. They might act like medics for Archons, Eladrins, and Mortals, perhaps even providing Mass Raise Dead to mitigate casualties. But that is the height of their involvement with the war. They probably police violence harshly in Elysium...

Think of it like Manaan in Kotor.

[ishy]

You could also do something silly* / stupid, like Moradin and Yondalla had a dinner party, but Moradin refused to drink the wine Yondalla offered and drank Ale instead.
This caused Yondalla's wine gathers to be offended and they attacked a Brewery of Moradin and 1000 years later nobody remembers why the war even started in the first place.

*If you want to do something funny, make up something yourself