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The Explicatae Incompositae - Being A Bestairy of the Sometime Lords of Chaos
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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3488258" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>Thanks. Life has gotten in the way of my regularly updated this thread, but I have some more in the works.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I agree. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>The slaad forms chosen have not been completely random. Monkeys and wild dogs (jackals, coyote) are mythically linked to 'tricksters'. The pachyderm slaad was chosen because of its appearance is supposed to comically contrast with its supposedly serious purpose - think the Tick meets the dancing hippos from Fantasia meets Guy Fawkes. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Those would be excellent choices. The purpose of the slaad cults is to provide the oppurtunity to give the slaad the sort of diversity that we'd expect in a chaotic race, that is we would really expect incarnated chaos to be individually unique (like the 1st edition Hordlings), while still leaving an avenue for explaining why we mostly know them by thier batarachian form. One area I hope to eventually go into is why the majority of the slaad have fixiated on the batarachian form. The answer is part of the deep dark of Ygorl, the Death Slaad, and includes the answer to why noone has ever seen Ygorl in his 'other true form' of a black slaad. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>First of all, I'll be retconning the decision to make the Death Slaad choatic evil. IMO, slaad which are not chaotic neutral should be as rare as celestials which are not good. This is a planeborn race composed of elemental chaos. While we might find a few rare individuals of differing alignments, we would never expect whole races of them - whole steps in thier evolutionary cycle in some conceptions of them - to be something other than chaotic. This is my personal preference, but I don't like the idea of aligned outsiders becoming something other than what they are. In my opinion, if you are made of evil the only way you can be anything but evil is if you change the thing you are made of, in which case not only are you no longer the thing you were and its an open philosophical question whether you are still yourself or whether you've been 'reborn'. IMO, if a planeborn were to change its alignment, it would change into a different sort of planeborn. So you'd never find any truly CE or CG good slaad - you'd find Eladrins or Tanar'ri that used to be slaad. </p><p></p><p>To let loose another deep dark secret of my campaign, in my homebrew goblins and gnomes share this trait and are secretly of the same race. If a goblin truly becomes good, it changes into a gnome and vica versa. Of course, IMC this is so rare that gnomes are a mythic race and thier existance is not generally credited nor is thier origin known to 'science' (except by a few goblin loremasters and they aren't talking).</p><p></p><p>But as you noted from my description of the slaad lords, there is alot of territory to cover between CG and CE and we can have slaad that are almost CE (like Baseraxs, Quag and Tretfivor) and slaad that are almost CG (like Paxcreeg and Zazashaf) while still being distinct from those alignments. The thing I like about the slaad is there ability to do both tremendous good or tremendous evil. For example, how you respond to Breasdfea probably depends alot on whether the rule he is overthrowing is that of a benevolent and just paladin or a tyrannical 1000 year old lich king. Breasdfea doesn't really care, and his role as celebrarted hero or despised villain depends on where he is standing at the moment.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 3488258, member: 4937"] Thanks. Life has gotten in the way of my regularly updated this thread, but I have some more in the works. I agree. The slaad forms chosen have not been completely random. Monkeys and wild dogs (jackals, coyote) are mythically linked to 'tricksters'. The pachyderm slaad was chosen because of its appearance is supposed to comically contrast with its supposedly serious purpose - think the Tick meets the dancing hippos from Fantasia meets Guy Fawkes. Those would be excellent choices. The purpose of the slaad cults is to provide the oppurtunity to give the slaad the sort of diversity that we'd expect in a chaotic race, that is we would really expect incarnated chaos to be individually unique (like the 1st edition Hordlings), while still leaving an avenue for explaining why we mostly know them by thier batarachian form. One area I hope to eventually go into is why the majority of the slaad have fixiated on the batarachian form. The answer is part of the deep dark of Ygorl, the Death Slaad, and includes the answer to why noone has ever seen Ygorl in his 'other true form' of a black slaad. First of all, I'll be retconning the decision to make the Death Slaad choatic evil. IMO, slaad which are not chaotic neutral should be as rare as celestials which are not good. This is a planeborn race composed of elemental chaos. While we might find a few rare individuals of differing alignments, we would never expect whole races of them - whole steps in thier evolutionary cycle in some conceptions of them - to be something other than chaotic. This is my personal preference, but I don't like the idea of aligned outsiders becoming something other than what they are. In my opinion, if you are made of evil the only way you can be anything but evil is if you change the thing you are made of, in which case not only are you no longer the thing you were and its an open philosophical question whether you are still yourself or whether you've been 'reborn'. IMO, if a planeborn were to change its alignment, it would change into a different sort of planeborn. So you'd never find any truly CE or CG good slaad - you'd find Eladrins or Tanar'ri that used to be slaad. To let loose another deep dark secret of my campaign, in my homebrew goblins and gnomes share this trait and are secretly of the same race. If a goblin truly becomes good, it changes into a gnome and vica versa. Of course, IMC this is so rare that gnomes are a mythic race and thier existance is not generally credited nor is thier origin known to 'science' (except by a few goblin loremasters and they aren't talking). But as you noted from my description of the slaad lords, there is alot of territory to cover between CG and CE and we can have slaad that are almost CE (like Baseraxs, Quag and Tretfivor) and slaad that are almost CG (like Paxcreeg and Zazashaf) while still being distinct from those alignments. The thing I like about the slaad is there ability to do both tremendous good or tremendous evil. For example, how you respond to Breasdfea probably depends alot on whether the rule he is overthrowing is that of a benevolent and just paladin or a tyrannical 1000 year old lich king. Breasdfea doesn't really care, and his role as celebrarted hero or despised villain depends on where he is standing at the moment. [/QUOTE]
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