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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8511475" data-attributes="member: 6790260">I mean, I'm still pretty thoroughly in the "devils and demons are Basically Always Evil" camp, I just believe that if you're gonna do that, you need to do your homework. Explain why they are. I've come up with three answers to the question thus far. Others may exist.You've almost certainly heard my Jewel of the Desert spiel, so I'll spare you (this time). "Always evil because they fought an infinite war for the right to be always evil" actually puts something down; it shows how these beings can be both intelligent and capable of understanding that their deeds are evil, without compromising the absoluteness. Even the one exception, a succubus who turned away from that...only did so because she changed what she was by doing it.The second answer, that I proposed some time ago but haven't used yet, was a "redemption is hard" perspective. There's a stairway in Hell. It goes directly to Heaven. Climbing it means admitting your sins and guilt and the horrors you've done, and truly coming to terms with all of that stuff. It's a long, difficult climb--but the beings of Hell have all eternity to climb it, and never truly grow tired, so they can just keep climbing for however long it takes. Once you reach the top, you've earned your forgiveness; truly completing the journey (which cannot be skipped or sped up by anything, not outside aid, not magic, nothing) makes you ready to enter Heaven. The celestials rejoice greatly each time a soul comes out the top...because that's tragically rare. The problem is twofold. First, redemption is hard, and hurts, and takes time, time you have to be constantly working, never giving up even when it seems hopeless and the cavalcade of your misdeeds seems to stretch off eternally. Second, it's so easy to just...maybe back off for now and try again later. You can only reach the top once, but you can try as often as you like...so...maybe just spend a little time in Hell, work up your strength first. Except the only way to not suffer in Hell is to do some pretty nasty things; the only way to thrive in Hell is to do outright awful evil. Any devils powerful enough to contact the mortal world have long since given up any thought of ascending the Stairway to Heaven--for them, it would take eons, and mean sacrificing all the power they've built up.Third answer is less interesting IMO, but has its potential uses. All outsiders are, effectively, magic AIs. They can't be reprogrammed, they just...are what they are. They can think rationally, but they aren't really "good" or "evil" in behavior so much as "good energy with a hardwired Good AI" or the like. So they can do a lot of things that look like good or evil, but realistically, they're just doing what they're programmed to do by reality itself, and are kinda objects of pity as a result. Perhaps justify it with something like an Ahura Mazda/Angra Mainyu kind of split, where there was a Big Good deity and a Big Evil deity (and Big Chaos etc. if you like) and these beings broke down into smaller pieces; they don't really have a choice because they're the tiny bits and pieces of a much grander but currently non-present entity.My first and second answers explain why these beings are still moral agents who can be held responsible for their behavior, while still sticking to the notion that, if you meet an X, you can know it's got alignment Q--having alignment Q is a prerequisite for being an X, not a consequence of being one. The third accepts that these beings aren't actually moral creatures at all, and in a sense aren't even creatures with "behavior" in the proper sense; they don't "choose" anything, they just act out their defined nature, and thus should be opposed, but can't really be held responsible for the stuff they do, any more than an entity appearing in Conway's Game of Life has "responsibility" for what it does.</blockquote>

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