Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 factol_rhys_dup May 19, 2004 21:30:54	Here's an interesting thought I had: Mortals are uniquely capable of moral decisions. What I mean by this is that exemplar, being composed of good, evil, law, chaos, neutrality, or some combination, are almost locked in their mindsets. They are almost forced to do what they do by their very existence. I'll try to explain it in terms of evil, simply because that is the most dramatic way of expressing the concept. A fiend certainly does evil deeds, but in terms of their planar significance, a fiend's own personal misdeeds are meaningless. This brings new ideas to the relationship between mortals and exemplar. Why do fiends try so hard to corrupt mortals, when they certainly have the power to perform whatever foul task needs doing? Because a fiend doing evil has only material benefits. Sure, an enemy may be destroyed, but have the planes really been made any more evil? What creates evil as a force of its own, as a source of power and energy for the Lower Planes and their children, is the conscious decision of a mortal with a mind and a soul who willingly turns to evil. A human or any mortal with the free will to do as he desires and makes the decision to do evil creates an impact on the very fabric of the planes that a balor doing what he was born to do can never achieve. Certainly, exemplar are not absolutely trapped in a certain code of behavior (read: "alignment"), but it's extremely rare that one overcomes his original way of being. That makes for a potent spell reagent, but it doesn't have the same metaphysical impact. That is why the beliefs of mortals reshape planar reality, but exemplar only do so when they get mortals to believe a certain way. I think it empowers mortals in a unique and very planescape-esque way. What do you think?
#2 Shemeska_the_Marauder May 20, 2004 11:03:11	Planars get all huffy when you try to explain the evidence for the outer planes being directly modified, if not created, by mortal belief in a concrete way. (Though I'd argue Sigil as being somewhat a caveat to this perhaps). I like the description in 'Faces of Evil' that describes what it is to be a Yugoloth, to be both dedicated to the absolute supremacy of evil as an abstract concept, that racial goal thats branded into your own essence that you cannot question because its what you're made of. And then contrast that to their supremacy of the individual and the whole 'do as thou wilt shall be the whole of the law' take on morality and actions (if I may quote Crowley). Only they matter, only their personal benefits mean anything, nobody else has relevance to this since they're only tools. Two viewpoints that make up a Yugoloth, and ones that in part are wholly contradictory to one another. The first, the racial goals seem to put a damper on their own personal growth and power. They constantly strive to make themselves personally relevant in the fact of this, to justify their own unique existance instead of being a cog in a plan set down by the beings that created them. I'm sure it frustrated them to no end, and it ends up being focused outwards on the world around them.