Paladins and Good Aligned Folk In War - Are Orc Children Slain?

[mythusmage]

Is it nature or nurture?

Yes.

Most of the time people are capable of making choices, of adapting to circumstance. But there are some who can't. Those of low intelligence for example, or those suffering from an inherited or acquired trait.

For example, there was a British man who suffered a head injury. Before his injury he had a normal sex drive. After it he became obsessed with small children as sexual objects. As an experiment he was put on a medication then being evaluated as part of a treatment for OCD (Obsessive/Compulsive Disorder). His obsession vanished.

Now consider the wolf. Whether you're dealing with grey wolves, red wolves, or dogs the wolf is an animal that by its nature needs to have the hierarchy of the pack clearly laid out. The wolf canot comprehend equality. The wolf is also rather bloody minded about maintaining order in a pack. An alpha male that fails is either driven out, or killed. That is the way wolves are.

At the same time wolves can, and do, adapt to our ways. We do not tolerate the killing or exile of a member that is failing. Instead we are more apt to care for that member in a different way. Grandmother needs a walker, she gets a walker. Old Blue develops osteoarthritis, he gets arthritis medication. (But make sure you have enough peanut butter for all your dogs).

Wolves are the way they are. Bears are the way they are. Both are limited as to how adaptable they can be. But, with some adaptability on your part wolves and bears can be a part of your life. But I'd recommend against it because most people have no idea of how to handle domestic dogs, much less grey wolves and bears.

When you start talking about more intelligent animals you're now dealing with creatures that are much more flexbile in terms of their behavior. Though not absolutely flexible.

So what does this have to do with the topic?

Gary and Dave grew up in a society that dealt in absolutes. Evil was irredemable and incapable of having any good traits. Hitler was awarded two Iron Crosses in 1918? Well obviously the Germans were handing out Iron Crosses like candy to everyone as a cheap way to bolster morale. People like Hitler were by their depraved nature utterly incapable of possessing courage.

Today people grow up in a society where things are, at the very least, not so clear cut. For some people the world can be down right murky and morality a matter of expedience. In this sort of world German policemen can go out and slaughter men, women, and children because it's what their society asks of them. But never neighbors, fellow Germans. Slaughtering fellow Germans was not something they would do, even if the neighbors were Jews. That was a line they would not cross.

Now, if you're running a world where certain races are beyond redemption, butcher away. But if your world is more morally ... indeterminate, consider nature and upbringing. Consider too how adaptable the race is, how able they are to moderate their behavior when such moderation is needed. Though such considerations depend largely on what sort of world you want to have.

Side Note: In my last group (oh so long ago) we had one player who was deliberately disruptive. He played a wizard, and he loved Fireball (2e). In the end he was asked to find another group, for we wanted more responsible play.

One time we were battling some orcs. We beat the band's warriors and were going to discuss what to do about the non-combatants. He went and tossed an FB in their lair. Being a 2e FB and in a constricted area it pretty much filled the lair. There were 3 survivors.

The two women refused any assistance we offered. And since the child was not theirs they would have nothing to do with him. so my character (Aleena d'Auberville, cleric of Chauntea) found herself with an adopted orc son. (She later got a dire wolf, and this refers to the Pleistocine canid, not a buffed up member of the species Canis lupus.) The DM and I concluded that considering the boy's basic nature, and his upbringing by Aleena, he'd most likely end up a paladin. (Combines opportunities to help people and bash folks. Orcs in his game did not see the two as contradictory in any way.)

Just some thoughts to consider.

 

[sword-dancer]

In this case, I don't have any objections when the PCs use the famous words of the papal legate Arnaud: “Kill them all, for [God] knows His own”, where "[God]" represents your campaign specific deity.

IIRC neither church or pope where very fond of this words, quite contrary his career run against the wall literally.

 

[Turjan]

IIRC neither church or pope where very fond of this words, quite contrary his career run against the wall literally.

This is correct. Keep in mind, though, that the real world situation where these words were used was much less clear cut than my example .

 

[sword-dancer]

The last church order with this attitude was shifting their focus from Orcs to dwarves and elves.

 

[haakon1]

Conorc, one of the orcish children you spared, grew to become Conorc the Barbarian, one of the most brutal killing machines ever to walk the earth. His success as a killer was largely fueled by hatred of your PCs and their species. After killing both of your PCs in revenge for murdering his parents, he kills your PC's family and friends . . .

Tries to kill your family and friends, at which point the DESCENDENTS of the original group of PC's -- Evil Slayer II, Seeker Junior, Bob the Barbarian the Third, etc., start as PC's, eventually defeating Conorc as the head boss monster of the whole campaign.

This is how the Oerth goes round.

 

[haakon1]

I am sorry if your tender sensibilities are so easily offended but if there is a better way than to crush cockroaches and destroy their nests I haven't seen one in the majority of fantasy millieus. I am not promoting evil gaming, I am arguing that in a fully realized, believable setting full of the amount of violence so apparent in D&D that there are very reali consequences to war and sometimes good guys do a lesser evil to prevent a greater evil. In grittier settings the world isn't so easily reduced to 1s and 0s and though hero are heroic they sometimes have to make hard choices for the sake of the good they serve.

"Tender sensibilities"? I feel a rant coming on. Luckily I went back and editted this before it was out here too long.

Anyhow, you say baby killing is OK for the greater good. I say "end justifies the means" is what evil people say to justify evil. To shorten and de-crazy what I said, I think you are what you do, and if you do evil, you just lost the war to evil. Which is not to say I'm against war -- I'm just against evil. Rare is the pacificist who plays D&D, I suspect. Though I did have a peacenic doper in my RECON campaign, who played a doper who fought when he had to, but didn't like "The System".

I say that I believe there's a REAL SOLID difference between Good and Evil in real life, and that I think the game is more interesting if you play it as if that were true, whether you believe it or not, because that "heroic" world view is most consistent with historical views on these matters, makes for more complicated stories and consequences, and is more consistent with heroic stories of old.

You say I'm being modern. I say moral relativism, not being that there's really such a thing as Good or Evil, "do unto others before they do unto you", is the modern thing here.

Obviously, we're never going to agree, so eventually we're just going to annoy each other to death.

 

[Chimera]

This is the way that I look at it and the way I GM my own setting.

Take a look at the way Humans have treated other humans throughout history.

I against my Brother.
My brother and I against my Cousin.
My family against the World.

Huge chunks of the world are still governed by this dictum.

Back in the ancient days, the people of the next village were treated as if they weren't really human at all.

Now put that (all too human) attitude into a world where the people in the next village are not Human!

A lot of campaign worlds seem to operate as if there is no racism, there is no operable difference between the races, there isn't a lot of bad attitude going around toward other races. Given Human History, this doesn't seem very realistic.

Sure, you can do it that way, and I'm not saying that you're wrong for doing so. More power to you and I wouldn't have any problem playing in your world. In fact, I'm going to be playing a Human in an Eberron campaign with another PC who is a Hobgoblin!

In my world, racism is rampant and strong. The Orcs, the Hobgoblins, even the Elves and the Gnomes are all NOT HUMAN. They're not like us. The same attitude appears on the other side of the coin as well. Thus, you won't find the "mixed communities" of the DMG; or at least not very often and not widely occuring.

Orc children? (substitute any other race seen as "evil") Kill them. Bash their heads in. Don't leave them around to grow up and seek revenge, don't leave them around so they grow up and repeat the "evils" that you're wiping out their parents for. Kill ALL of them and be done with it. Anything less is (seen as) foolish and irresponsible.

Whether or not we would see this as evil is not the issue. The issue is whether or not people in that society would see it as evil.

I'm quite certain that there's a lot in our current society that someone, somewhere in time, would point to and see us as the most vile and evil people who ever lived. The people of my world see themselves as good, just as everyone through history has done.

 

[Falkus]

You're forgetting that the alignment system is an objective system, and doesn't care what society thinks. If something is evil, it's evil, no matter what you believe.

 

[Sundragon2012]

"Tender sensibilities"? You're the moral relativist here, who says baby killing is OK, if only the killer's feelings were upset and the killer's culture says it's OK. I say NO. There's right, there's wrong, and there's no excuses. That does mean Good can be harder than Evil. That's why Good is heroic, and Evil -- including baby killing because it's easier and prevents hard work later on -- is not.

For example, on "Enterprise", when they decided to turn pirate to steal some random aliens warp drive to get to wherever and complete their mission "for the greater good", I think Archer turned evil, not gritty. If going pirate and stranding a neutral party in space was his only choice, he needed to think of another way -- or just lose.

To me, losing your morality is worse than being exterminated. As a 4th generation New Yorker, I'd kill to defend my country, like my ancestors have before me, and I feel there's a very good chance most of my family could be killed by a "suitcase" nuke within the next decade, but when I see stuff like Abu Graib, it doesn't just offend my "tender sensibilities". I think we ought to take the perpetrators, right on up the line, and shoot them for betraying what America's about AND hurting the war effort by giving Al Qaeda great PR and creating new generations of terrorists. When you become baby killers and sadistic torturers, you've ceased to exist as you. Conquering and then kindness -- think WWII -- is the morally correct way to go, and the most effective in the long term.

Better Dead than Red is absolutely right, in my opinion -- better to die than to become evil. Nothing "tender" about that.

I am not saying that I personally could do this, I live in a world were everyone is human with a full gamut of potential traits and behaviors. There are no types of humans who are nearly universally malevolent or genetically violent. We KNOW certain things about humans because we live in this world. Psychology has shown that no matter how evil someone's parents are they, if removed from their influence won't grow up to be serial killers. That is HUMAN.

We are not discussing humans, we are discussing creatures that are USUALLY CE, that doesn't mean that outside of that usually they are good...it means that most are CE and some will be of differing alignments mostly evil most likely.

My point is that I don't believe that the vast majority of humans, elves, dwarves, gnomes, etc. see orcish children as any more valuable that baby rats who will grow up and spread disease and eat all of your food. I am not saying that I, in this world of humans with the full panapoly of moral choice would, for any reason, support this kind of thinking. However we are dealing with a hypothetical situation where races of all kinds are monsterous marauding rapists and killers who breed like rabbits.The constantly form new armies due to enviromental pressures and the desire for plunder and conquest and are, as a species, guilty of constant depradations upon any group fool enough to allow them to live within a few miles.

I believe that individuals, not groups, can live up to their highest moral philosophy in any given setting. The PCs may be averse to putting orc younglings to the sword, but do you really and honestly believe that a dwarven army, whose people have been slaughtered by orcs for generations will have such tender sensibilities? No, in any believable setting, the dwarves would have neither the desire or resources to take care of their blood enemies. They give the younglings a quick and merciful death in order to not have them wander the underdark to die brutally at the hands of a predator, so as to not have them starve to death and finally to make sure that these little creatures to not grow up and embark on a quest for vengeance. These dwarves are not evil, they are good folk forced to make a terrible decision for the sake of their lives, their kids lives and the future safety of their communities.

I've seen the rare good-aligned red dragon, the rare neutral beholder, hell even good fiends (1 in 1,000,000,000 most likely). Does a good adventurer who encounters a young red dragon raise it and convince it to be good or does he defend against the blast of its breath weapon (in this case launched in fear and self-defense) and then kill the thing. How about tad-pole illithids or baby-orb beholders or any immature creature whose alignment in RAW is less than 100% evil 100% of the time?


Chris

 

[haakon1]

Sorry dude, I meant to take that back. I guess you were writing while I was editting. Opps.