A Far Out Rant

[Klaus]

When the dam breaks, is a flood evil as it rushes down the narrow valley towards you?

Implacable. Uncaring. Destructive. Terrifying.

I agree with Piratecat Stevens here (and damn near anywhere).

The Far Realm is inimical to mankind because it's utterly ALIEN. It's madness given everchanging form... which shouldn't exist!!!! (to spin a phrase like Lovecraft... gotta have italics and exclamation marks)

A fire elemental lives to burn. To it, if you're not fire, you're fuel (to steal a phrase from my campaign world "Burning Lands"). And yet, it is Neutral.

A man-eating tiger sees humans as food. Its nature is to hunt creatures down and eat them. And yet, it is Neutral.

Creatures from the Far Realm have a nature that is incompatible with the Material Plane. The sheer aberrancy of their minds might qualify them to be Chaotic, but only Chaotic Neutral.

EDIT: People have mentioned Great Cthulhu. But do note that Cthulhu is the high priest of the Elder Gods. As powerful and alien as he is, he's not on the same level as Azatoth and the rest.

 

[Vargo]

Star Control 2, right?

I borrowed the #camper# from it, but that was about it. The Orz were actually remarkably coherent if you thought about what they were saying. To me, the far realms represent critters that are as incapable of understanding us as we are of them. For example, the idea of collecting on a contract thirty-seven days before the contract negotiations are completed - to something that exists outside of our time-stream, that might encounter us in the fourth dimension in the same way we encounter a winding river pulling away from the road and back again... And they may not even have all of our physical dimensions in addition.

 

[Creeping Death]

Only:
*snip*
This is subjective, but then, morality itself is inconsistent. One example I've seen repeated recently is the following scenarios:

1) "You and an obese guy are on a train speeding towards 5 people on the track who cannot get off. You have the option to flick a switch and divert the train to another track where only 1 person is trapped, killing them rather than the 5. Do you flick the switch?"

2) "You and an obese guy are on a train speeding towards 5 people on the track who cannot get off. There is no switch and alternate track this time. You could push the obese guy off the front of the train, which would slow it enough to save the 5 people but kill him. Do you push him off?"

Given that most people don't hesitate to flick the switch in the first instance, but cannot bring themselves to push the obese guy off in the second suggests that morality cannot be approached in terms of logic, only in terms of human idiosyncracy. Mine tells me that Cthulhu is evil because I know what the true story purpose of his creation was, and he resembles a devil more than an animal. The tipping point for me is that he schemes against humanity, and thus cannot fall back on low intelligence as an excuse for his actions.

Well, the 2nd instance has some problems. How do I know that fatso would slow the train down enough. What if he did? What if he didn't? If he didn't slow the train down enough, then 6 people are dead instead of 5. I mean, this would have to either be a light train or a really really fat guy.

The original poster was talking about WotC's version of the Far Realm, which is based off of HPL's work, but has been altered so that they, while similar, are not the same anymore. His rant was we have the lower planes, do we really need a <pinky to lip>more evil</pinky to lip> place?

I don't think we do. When did we move past Asmodeus, Orcus, and others being the big bad guys. The Far Realms are for the bizarre and alien. Some could be evil like your example of Cthulhu, some could be oblivious to life in the Great Wheel, and some could be good. However their sense of good might be so wierd and alien, beings in the Great Wheel would consider it evil.

Again, this is where adhering to RAW D&D has flaws. A Balor's entry list alignment as Always Chaotic Evil. That mean no chance for redemption. Astral Deva, Alway Good (Any) therefore can't be corrupted. But isn't one of the Lords of the Nine, slug guy, a fallen Archon? The rules seemed to have been bent for him so that he could fall, wouldn't that then suggest we could bend the alignment rule a bit for the Far Realm and say they defy classification? Their actions look evil, but detect evil has no effect.

 

[Blind Azathoth]

Mine tells me that Cthulhu is evil because I know what the true story purpose of his creation was, and he resembles a devil more than an animal. The tipping point for me is that he schemes against humanity, and thus cannot fall back on low intelligence as an excuse for his actions.

Heh. How typically arrogant of humanity. You call that which you do not understand "evil." You ascribe motives to beings whose minds you could not possibly hope to comprehend. Compared to them you are insignificant. Compared to their many lives yours is but a tiny flickering of light, snuffed out as soon as it is lit. They are not devils, nor animals. They are beyond you and your feeble attempts at cognition. They are beyond even those enlightened such as I. They are beyond good and evil, mere trifles invented by humanity to restrain their natural urges. You should be on hand and knees day and night praying and begging for Cthulhu's servants to help rid you of the artificial categories your society has helped ingrain into your mind as bonds on your true nature. There is no good. There is no evil. There is only the Old Ones. And soon, very soon, we and our awakened masters will show the rest of you the way, guide you to liberation; when laws and morals have been thrown aside we will show you the way and will guide you in the killing and dancing and reveling in the greatest joy you have ever known, and all the world will flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom! Iä! Iä! Iä-R'lyeh! Cthulhu naflfhtagn! Great Cthulhu sleeps no more!!

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

Lately, I've seen a few posts about "the far realm: a place so evil that fiends fear to tread". Such inconsistencies just tick me off.

Personally, I'm not a fan of the "the Far Realm & denizens are outside of alignment" idea, but it doesn't bug me as much as the former.

 

[Nifft]

1) "You and an obese guy are on a train speeding towards 5 people on the track who cannot get off. You have the option to flick a switch and divert the train to another track where only 1 person is trapped, killing them rather than the 5. Do you flick the switch?"

Flick the switch and kill the fat guy.

2) "You and an obese guy are on a train speeding towards 5 people on the track who cannot get off. There is no switch and alternate track this time. You could push the obese guy off the front of the train, which would slow it enough to save the 5 people but kill him. Do you push him off?"

Kill the fat guy.

What do I win? (Aside from a dead fat guy.)

Thanks, -- N

 

[Arrgh! Mark!]

People here seem to be misconstruing Cthulhu as someone who has deliberate schemes against humanity.

This isn't true. His cult has schemes against humanity. Cthulhu is both asleep and dead. He doesn't do much; occasionally his mind touches things, and generally that leads to artistic pretention rather than full blown madness or even cult behaviour.

No, Cthulhu doesn't hate or care about humanity. He doesn't really even know we exist. It's unlikely he even knows about his cult - created when his dreaming and dead mind touched the minds of humans over aeons. It's the humans that want Cthulhu to rise again before his time, to bring in the real world or whatever (I assume a lot of mind bending reality happens rather than Cthulhu eats everything. Gravity stops, etc.)

Assuming that Cthulhu is evil is again, like saying the law of gravity is evil. It is; its so much bigger than us we can't comprehend it. Just because we get smeared doesn't mean anything to Cthulhu, if he even noticed us at all.

It's the crazy cultists you have to watch out for. They are the evil ones; the far realms just happen.

To the first poster - The far realms aren't evil, though their effects can be. Their effects could also be beneficial - Shub-niggurath causes pregnancies around the world or all sorts of things. The far realms are more eternal laws in denial with advanced creatures beyond our thinking that we sometimes accidentally get involved with.

 

[paradox42]

Honestly, the Far Realm really is what you make it- the inscrutable beings there can do apparent good just as easily as they do apparent evil, just as other posters here have been saying. But don't take our word for it- other posters elsewhere have done a fine job of making the Far Realm less the "Ultimate Monstrous EVIL!!!" and more the "Ultimate IncomprehensibleNonsensethatsomeHowmaKesSenSeanYWaywaiTwHataMIsaYiNg?"

Follow this link into the Wizards boards to find a thread on actual layers of the Far Realm, posted on WotC's own site. Links within the first few posts of that thread will take you to other threads with even more interesting and edifying information people have come up with on the subject.

For my part, I'll just mention that the PCs in my Epic game encountered an Uvuudaum Paladin in their travels, twice- and realized in the second encounter that that creature had encountered them, from its perspective, the other way around (that is, to it that encounter was the first one and the other encounter was subjectively later). I had great fun setting up that interaction, it's one of my favorite memories from the campaign.

 

[Hussar]

On the lion - again, as I have repeated before, animals are given a free pass on alignment due to having a 2 Int. Elementals aren't exactly the brightest lights in the sky, but, they aren't animal intelligence. However, an elemental doesn't go out of his way to do anything to a sentient being he meets. Yes, an elemental might attack you or it might not.

Most Far Realms creatures will deliberately attack you on sight. The aforementioned Kaortic Hulk is actually not a native of the Far Realms in that it is the twisted remains of a cat familiar. The actual natives mentioned that Dragon article are pretty much all oozes. And thus, unaligned. I have no problems with that.

However, all that being said, any creature in D&D with an intelligence who routinely disregards the life of other sentient beings for no justifiable reason (such as self defence) is evil by D&D alignments. It doesn't matter that their minds are alien and unknowable. So are Aboleth and Mind Flayers. Yet, no one bats an eye that both of those critters are evil. If the creature is mindless, then fine, no alignment, same as objects and animals. However, if it is sentient and destroys indescriminantly, then its evil.

 

[Baron Opal]

The the Mythos is basically is a cosmological Mary Sue.

Huh? Who'se Mary Sue and what dose she have to do with the conversation?