Thoughts on Codex character alignments

I sometimes like to speculate about how characters would fit into the old-school Dungeons & Dragons character system. For those of you who are unfamiliar, D&D would classify characters based on two axes: Good-Neutral-Evil and Lawful-Neutral-Chaotic. This resulted in 9 possible combinations. Obviously, this is by no means a perfect system…but it’s the one that I grew up with.

So I tried to come up with some initial choices for the heroes in the Codex world, based on what we know about their lore. This is massively speculative, and for some heroes we know almost nothing. I’m interested in thoughts and feedback.

Whitestar Order:
Rook: Neutral/Chaotic Good: Obviously a good guy, he lets birds nest on his head. Whitestar being the land of Do-As-You-Please, Chaotic seems like the better fit.

Setsuki: Chaotic Neutral? Largely due to her somewhat unrestrained fighting style.

Grave: Lawful Neutral: Discipline really says it all. He’s not really a hero, he doesn’t care much about others, and is purely devoted to his own skill and development.

Moss Ancients:
Midori: True Neutral: Balance spec really says it all.

Calamandra: (Chaotic) Neutral, somewhat the embodiment of nature itself. One article referred to animals as “Neutral Hungry”, which seems like it would be the ideal choice.

Argagarg: Neutral Good: Basically, a nice guy, something of a pacifist.

Anarchs:
Jaina: Chaotic Neutral: Fiery, aggressive, but not malicious.

Zane: Chaotic Evil: He throws bombs. Basically the closest thing Codex has to the Joker.

Drakk: Chaotic Neutral?? Could easily be Chaotic Evil.

Mercs:
Troq: (Chaotic) Neutral: More or less the equivalent of the Hulk, he’s big, kinda dumb, and likes to pound things…but he’s not exactly malicious about it.

River: ?? True Neutral?? No idea here.

Flagstone Dominion:
Onimaru: Lawful Neutral: Dedicated to the security and defense of the state.

Quince: Lawful Evil: A corrupt official using lies and trickery to maintain power.

Bigby: Lawful Neutral: Could easily be interpreted as Lawful Evil

Blackhand Scourge:
Garth: Neutral Evil: Seems a reasonable choice for someone who came to necromancy seemingly by accident.

Orpal: Neutral Evil: Of course, only evil from the viewpoint of large life forms…for the microbes he’s a wonder.

Vandy: Chaotic Evil: “Queen of Demons” kind of says it all.

Vortoss Collective: No idea here. I’m tempted to say they’re all True Neutral.

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Midori is at least either lawful or good (or both) in my opinion.
His sole role in the lore is to be a teacher with a philosophy of restraint as opposed to Menelker’s “everything is allowed in a fight” attitude.

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Well, considering Mid fights with the Moss Sentinels, who explicitly fight against Flagstone’s species-ist military-industrial complex, and Flagstone makes the laws, I’d put him at Neutral Good. But maybe you’re right; he is all about adhering to a code. It might not be Flagstone’s code, but it is a code.

Grave got his code from Mid, so if one is Lawful, so is the other. Grave really had to be roped into joining the Whitestar, so I’m with you that he was Neutral and not Good. Maybe that’s changed?

Might be true Neutral or Neutral Good. Did she join Whitestar because she believes in it or just to follow Grave? Looking at her spec, the cuddly animals make me want to put her in the Good column. As for Chaotic vs. Neutral, the ninjas make me think Neutral. They operate outside of the law, but they don’t seem to have the same hatred of order that the Chaotic folks do (and seem to be very organized within the school).

She might be Chaotic Good. When you’re chaotic, you get called Evil a lot, but I think she thinks she’s doing the right thing and helping?

She might be lawful evil. For her empire, she makes the laws, but I’m willing to bet she expects them to be followed? And she’s got barons and shrines and shackles, which makes me think there’s some heavy organization on the back end.

I think Garth is definitely Lawful Evil, even if Vandy is Chaotic or Neutral. You can tell by the spec: Skeletal Lord, Lord of Shadows, BH Resurrector, Bone Collector, Hooded Executioner, Corpse Catapult, maybe even Necromancer: everything but Wight has a distinct job that fits within a distinct hierarchy. Garth is organized and runs a tight ship.

I’m willing to bet Vir and maybe Prynn are Lawful Neutral. They just follow Vortoss laws.

Geiger’s definitely true Neutral. He worked for Flagstone, eventually decided they were too evil for him (or maybe just didn’t like losing control of his Clockwork Soldiers) and went to Rook’s Morningstar Sanctuary and signed on as Science Advisor. Then he makes contact with the Vortoss and decides that learning more from them about time and tech is totally worth joining up and putting Morninstar and everybody else at risk of being crushed by a new Empire. So he’ll work with good guys and bad guys. He seems to have some sort of conscience, maybe, but it’s pretty imperfect. He’ll work within the law or outside of it. All he really cares about is SCIENCE!

Definitely True Neutral. He did hard labor for Flagstone and didn’t really have any complaints. Then Zane came along and said, “Hey, my way is better!” and Troq joined up with the Blood Anarchs, and had no complaints. Now he’s running his own merc crew and he’ll work with anybody, including Blackhand, Whitestar, Vortoss, whatever. Troq will literally follow the most recent person to make a pitch to him.

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I just wanted to throw it out there that most everyone, even terrible villains, think they are a hero and they have some kind of morals that put them above everyone else.

Think somebody that uses kills many people, but in an effort to save the environment or something. Maybe they just want to create a society that they think will work better than the current one.

It’s quite possible to be evil to the core and still to believe oneself to be good or to believe that one is striving to make things better than they are. Evil acts can be brushed under the rug because it’s just a means to a worthwhile end.

The deciding factor here is how other people view you to be.

I can’t speak to the lore, I just wanted to point out a flaw in this reasoning.

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Everyone is the hero of their own story.

It is worth noting that the old DnD alignments were the subject of endless debate across every gaming table ever.

But, as long as we are trying the exercise with Codex…

Lawful characters adhere to a code that is understood and followed by some organization or society.
Chaotic characters adhere to their own code, and tend to reject the code of society or organizations.
Good characters are interested in the welfare and advancement of others as a way to achieve their own advancement.
Evil characters are interested in their own welfare and advancement at the expense of others.

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Chaotic vs Lawful is mostly about the means to the end, as in what is it OK to do in pursuit of your goal. Lawful people obey rules when pursuing a goal and Chaotic people ignore rules in pursuit of goals.

Good vs Lawful is mostly about whose benefit you are working toward. If you are willing to put everyone else’s needs as secondary to your own that makes you evil. If you are willing to put your own needs as secondary to the whole, that makes you good. Being self centered is the same thing as being evil.

That makes the vast majority of people on earth Lawful Evil.

I would say the vast majority of people are not self centered enough of the time to qualify as evil. But that probably strays a bit form the original discussion.

Even better… certainly all babies are chaotic evil.

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I wouldn’t think a baby would have the understanding to classify as anything.

Neutral Poopy.

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I don’t think it’s necessary to understand one has a given alignment in order for one to have said alignment.

Babies don’t care about any rules of society or who their actions hurt as long as they get what they want.

I am generally of the opinion that one has to know that your actions could hurt someone and take the action anyway in order to qualify as evil.

My definition of evil is narrower

“Evil characters are interested in their own welfare and advancement at the expense of others.

That is to say, being selfish is insufficient.

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I tend to agree. “Self-interested” is closer to neutral.

Benefit to oneself is at the root of everything evil and benefit to others is at the root of everything good. These are quite literally THE root causes.

Maybe a certain amount of self interest in certain contexts is deemed acceptable to society, but self interest is most definitely evil.

But what if, in the process of benefitting myself, I also benefit others as well? I teach math in order to make a salary, which benefits me. It’s in my self interest to work. Would that be considered evil?

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With alignment, it is the intention behind the action that matters. Do you solely teach because of the salary? If you won the lottery, would you keep teaching? And as always, there is the grey area, as you can always give reasons why an action is “Good”, as everyone always does. Good and Evil are always in the eye of the beholder.

I would say that most of the time working at a job is like buying something in the market, generally an even exchange of value.

It really matters what somebody looking on the outside would think, though.

The CEOs making a few hundred million a year probably aren’t doing any kind of realistic fair exchange. Whatever they produce probably isn’t worth tens of thousands of times more than what an average employee in their company is making. People on the outside would probably deem this not to be an even exchange of value.

I think most people tend to believe teachers are either fairly paid or paid too little.

A lot of it depends on how you approach the job too. I knew a guy once that said he went into teaching because he wanted to be in control and to have people listen to his orders and do them. He wanted to be respected and feared. I wouldn’t say that person was leaning toward the good side, looking at it from the outside. Similar for police officers since that is also their typical motivation.

I think Zane is confirmed Chaotic Neutral or even Chaotic Good honestly. He’s a freedom fighting rebel who is strictly against the true Lawful Evil faction, and is just anti-rules rather than actually a bad guy.

A common theme of Fantasy Strike is that it’s hard to identify who the bad guys are, if there even are any. Quince is the clear Evil character, but is he really? Maybe he is just a reflection (yoooo) of the world that elected him.

I have a theory that “Quince” used his illusion magic to actually run two campaigns for Magistrate of Flagstone. One, as a fascist dictator, and the other, a liberal extremist. The people of Flagstone spoke with their vote, “Sirus Quince” being the winner. His running opponent then mysteriously disappeared, exiled from Flagstone for his polarizing views. “Quince” is now forced to live out this persona, his lust for power at all costs being his main character flaw.

Only DeGrey knows the real truth…

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SEE! This is what I was talking about…

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Zane is definitely not good. He imposes his own brand of tyrannical rule (highway tax) and seems like he would fight against Flagstone no matter their politics. It’s just what he does, he fights the power. I’d see him teaming up with Vandy when she arrives just to take down the ruling authority in Flagstone.

Edit: Also all rebels think they are freedom fighters but many are just as evil or more so then the government they are trying to defeat.

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