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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5216633" data-attributes="member: 4937">While I quite happily will agree with you that the real examples of knighthood seldom excercised the idealic chivilric virtues if that is your point, as far as your specific example goes I don't interpret the stories that way.  I would also like to point out that I've actually read the Song Roland and Fierabras, and have 9 credit hours of medieval history and a number of textbooks on the shelf here if you really want to give a go at it.  But, feel free to show my how the central story of the chansons de geste is robbing and killing a bunch of Moors simply because they were Islamic.  I think you'd be pretty hard pressed to show that the Carolingian kings were the aggressors at the stage of history you say is the 'historical basis' for Paladins.  Certainly the tale of Fierabras isn't one of killing people and taking your stuff except to the extent that it is a robbery of a Christian church that initiates the action.The definition of Chaos is slippery even in comparison to terms like 'good' and 'evil' that people have been arguing about for thousands of years.  In other places, I've offered what I think is a fairly robust definition of the attributes of Chaos as a moral code.  Under that definition, Ignorance is part of Chaos because it represents indifference to the external world.  Quag is the preemenent example of this indifference to all things not self.  Quag changes solely compared to some other aspects of Chaos, and not really at all to external forces, but that isn't to say that he doesn't change.  Quag's relatively fixed appearance is a sign of his indifference to the outside world.  Quag lives only in his mind and creates his own reality.  That is how he is Chaotic.  Other Slaad Lords capture different aspects of chaos.Your are also missing from your analysis the underlying 'deep dark secret' of the Slaad, which has to do with the question, 'Why toads?', or 'Why have any organization at all?'  This is a much more mysterious problem than Quags relatively fixed appearance compared to some other Slaad on the list, but there is a very good explanation for it and it requires looking at the tension inherent in Chaos between the notion of individuality and change.  This tension between the desire to be an individual and assert oneself and constant change lies very much at the heart of Slaad as I concieved them, and explains much of the mystery of the strangest Slaad of the bunch - Ygorl.  Not to give too much away, but the problem for an individual that embrases change is the issue of how you survive with an identity.And this is a really important issue, because Chaos can't maintain the notion of self, then it become indistinguishable from Law.  You end up with a situation where there is no distinguishment between absolute symmetry and the absolute lack of symmetry.  In other words, Chaos has to have some essential element to it that makes it more than just random, but allows it to manifest complexity.  Because if Chaos doesn't manifest complexity (as personified by the Slaad) then Chaos is merely another form of uniformity.</blockquote>

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