Town 1, the most powerful person is a tyrannical warlord who enlsaved the town. The Orc kills him, and the people view him as a savior for releasing them from their bonds. To them, he is good, a hero.
Town 2, the most powerful person is a saint, a warrior of light who helps the downtrodden and protects the people. The Orc kills him, and the people view him as a monster who sundered their hope. To them, he is evil, a villain.
Objectively, is he Evil or Good?
You're giving me the
subjective views of the people in the town(s) and asking me to give the Orc an
objective alignment.
But (given the information above) I would say the Orc is objectively evil. He murdered a man for no good reason (not in self defence, or the defence of others).
Let us say that over a million towns, he only kills three people seen as good people. All the rest were clearly villains. Does that change your answer?
No, it does not. The alignment of his victims does not matter in and of itself. If he's killing people for reasons other than self defence (or the defence of others) and/or when other options reasonably present themselves, he's evil.
Sure, your fridge is in your kitchen. But, let us say that you don't actually own your home, and the bank takes custody of your property. The Fridge has not moved. Yet, it is now no longer in your kitchen. If something is objectively true in the moment, but objectively false later, without changing the object itself, only time, is it ever objectively true?
Yes, it is.
Grazzt, the Demon Lord was once a LE Devil. The fact he was once LE is objectively true (regardless of what he, you or I subjectively think about that fact) as is the fact he is now CE.
Grazzt might think of himself as being a Good guy. That's his subjective reality. We are in a privileged position to know the objective truth of Grazzts alignment.
Clearly the orc gods are evil, they are encouraging war against the "civilized" race. So, you will ban worship of them, correct? And, you want to redeem them, so you will install churches to the good gods in their place, teaching them the correct religions.
Have to keep an eye on the orcs to make sure they abide by the treaty, and they are your prisoners after all, so you will install overseers to watch them. Maybe move them from their current homes into homes more conveniently located for you to observe them.
What jobs could they have? Most jobs involve tools that could be used as weapons. So, the safest options would be to monitor the tools, make sure they aren't hording items that could be used as weapons. Only the most trusted orcs who agree with your overseers that their people need redeemed would be allowed to gain knowledge such as blacksmithing, which is vital to the community, but could lead to weapons being created.
Their cultural rituals would need to be banned. Most orc rituals involve violence and bloodshed and clearly are no longer acceptable. Maybe you could take a few and change them to better suit the type of rituals that you find acceptable.
I could go on, but I think you can see that while what you are saying sounds good, the reality matches with some of the most evil actions ever taken upon the face of earth. And, you defend it the exact same way. You are good and doing good, the people you are helping are evil and need guidance.
You take whatever reasonable and proportionate steps are required to stop violence.
Remember; you've posted an absolutely extreme example here. These Orc villagers nearby are hell bent on growing as a force, invading your lands, and murdering everyone. In your post; nothing short of
genocide will stop them.
I see signing them up to a treaty, banning the worship of an evil pantheon of Gods (or at the very least, banning any evil practices of those Gods like sacrifice and so on), disarming them, and steering them away from murder, bloodshed and rape to be good acts.
Unless the DM says otherwise means I am talking about RAW.
'Unless the DM says otherwise'
IS RAW. That;s the precise rule, copied from the MM, word for word.
You cant talk about a monsters alignment in the absence of DM discretion.
You are dodging the question. What about warforged makes them alive while Modrons are not alive.
The books say they are alive. They're not constructs; they're humanoids. They're expressly alive, sentient and sapient. They even had a subtype in 3.5 called 'living'.
In 3.5 they were contructs, a sub-type called "living constructs" but I would ask the same question then as I am now, what makes them alive?
Beats me what makes them alive (heck; beats me what makes you or I alive); but they are.