The only thing I can think of is what he did to the real Kaius the third. So I ask you forum, why is King Kaius evil?
I think Eberron would have been better off if the important NPCs had simply been described without referencing alignment.
There are other puzzles, like Aundair's Queen Aurala being good (neutral good in 3.5), even though she "has no intention of letting a lasting peace stand in the way of her ultimate goal," which happens to be ruling the continent. ... Wait, how's that good? She'll destroy peace and begin the Next War to rule?
Sure, I'm sure "she believes" that "she's the best ruler" for the Five Nations and that everyone would be "better" under her regime, but that's the same nonsense every fictional and real-world dictator uses to justify their slaughter, oppression, and other terrible deeds. It doesn't matter that she abstractly believes people would be better off if ruled by her.
The alignment descriptors for the important characters just confuse things. It's like flipping open Hamlet and reading the following character list at the beginning:
Hamlet (Neutral Evil)
Claudius (Lawful Neutral)
Gertrude (Chaotic Good)
Yorick (True Neutral)
With the written material on monarchs like Kaius, Aurala, or Boranel, we could easily write plausible explanations for why they possess any alignment we choose. We could "prove" Kaius to be lawful good or Boranel to be neutral evil, but we can more easily disprove all of those arguments. It's a wash.
I think it's better to think of characters in terms of their motivations and leave alignment in the ancient editions.
but ultimately, Kaius is willing to do things that Aurala or Boranel would not do, and that makes him evil.
To see if he's evil, I'd read the evil entry in the PHB.
"...they're perfectly willing to take advantage of the weakness of others to acquire what they want. Evil characters use rules and order to maximize personal gain. .... They support institutional structures that give them power, even if that power comes at the expense of others' freedom."
Kaius III (yeah, I know) doesn't perfectly fit the quoted lines, but he fits the general traits. He rules with a totalitarian fist, going so far as to intimidate his warlords into cooperation with him. IMO, he would not hesitate for a second to kill off anyone who is being openly defiant, nor would he regret it afterwords. Let's also not forget he has allowed his people very little freedom, and kept it that way after the war has ended. The country is still under martial law and he has up-kept the code of Kaius.
As to the specific points you bring up, just because he's not a warmonger does not mean he has good intentions at heart. As for the the organizations part, IMO it is more accurate to say, "he's trying to drive out some of the competing evil organizations from his land." Again, trying to use the country of Karrnath as your personal vengeance machine against Vol isn't really a good aligned thing. Indeed though Vol herself is very evil, the Blood of Vol as a religion is pretty neutral. How would you feel if someone was trying to take away your belief that life is a struggle against death, and you should find the strength inside yourself to try to win that battle.
Lastly, your may or may not have the book 5 Nations, so I'll post a bit of Kaius' description here.
Secrets in here! From page 104 of 5 Nations
"Another important aspect of Kaius is his utter ruthlessness. This is a man who's been through a lot: He turned against his own sister, breaking a 900-year old tradition of peaceful succession. He became a vampire to save his nation. He killed his wife in vampiric bloodlust. He went into hiding for eighty years, then replaced his own great-grandson on the throne. He turned his granddaughter into a vampire, and he keeps a harem of young Karrns so he can drink their blood. If the PCs face him in combat, he shows them no mercy-but he might have reasons of his own to keep them alive."
"Another important aspect of Kaius is his utter ruthlessness. This is a man who's been through a lot: He turned against his own sister, breaking a 900-year old tradition of peaceful succession. He became a vampire to save his nation. He killed his wife in vampiric bloodlust. He went into hiding for eighty years, then replaced his own great-grandson on the throne. He turned his granddaughter into a vampire, and he keeps a harem of young Karrns so he can drink their blood. If the PCs face him in combat, he shows them no mercy-but he might have reasons of his own to keep them alive."
Kaius III (yeah, I know) doesn't perfectly fit the quoted lines, but he fits the general traits.
So does Aurala, yet she's "good." That's the problem. Almost any behavior of Kaius that is used to indicate he's evil is also in evidence for someone else who isn't (described as) evil.
Yes, Kaius has a harem of people to drink their blood. Aurala is prepared to trigger a war that will surely kill thousands. If we simply look at the numbers, Aurala is going to produce a lot more death and suffering than Kaius will.
We don't know the specific motives Kaius I and the other monarchs had when the began the Last War. Maybe Kaius is just a selfish royal who wants to rule the world and will stop at nothing to do so (like the "good" Queen Aurala).
Maybe Kaius rejected Mishann of Cyre because he felt she wasn't competent enough to run the empire. He might have started the war to take over to secure it from other threats, like the monster of Droaam or the unknown nations of Sarlona. He sacrificed his humanity to save his nation from starvation and destruction, and then spent decades secretly trying to liberate his people from the Emerald Claw.
The point is that the behavior of the monarchs (and most important figures) are too complex to link them to alignment.
Yes, Kaius has a harem of people to drink their blood. Aurala is prepared to trigger a war that will surely kill thousands. If we simply look at the numbers, Aurala is going to produce a lot more death and suffering than Kaius will.
I agree with the basic assertion that alignment is a flawed tool for complex characters, and that we were simply stuck with it because it's part of the D&D package. With that said, speaking as one of the original developers, our rationale was this: when you are directly interacting with this character, how will he or she behave? What actions is he willing to take in order to accomplish his goals? Is he willing to poison your drink? To imprison you without cause? To hire assassins to kill you?
In Kaius' case, his goal is ostensibly for the greater good. But he will murder, torture, massacre, and do anything else to achieve that goal, and he won't blink at it. He will imprison innocents. He will hold his people under martial law, and make brutal examples of those who defy him. He will not flinch at directly taking evil actions. Nor would he deny the fact that thouse actions are, by the standard moral codes of the world, evil; he thinks that what he did to his grandson was necessary, but he wouldn't try to convince you it was "good". He's just willing to do that immediate evil for the greater good.
In Aurala's case, we all know that starting the war again will be responsible for tremendous death and suffering. But Aurala is a naive dope who doesn't see it. She believes in war with honor. She believes that Galifar will truly be better off under her rule. And because she approaches the war in this way, SHE will not murder or torture. She will not condone massacres. She will resist imposing martial law as hard as she can, because that's not her vision of the perfect Galifar under her rule. All of these things could happen as a result of her actions; just because the commander-in-chief doesn't authorize a massacre doesn't mean it won't end up happening. But SHE thinks it's possible to fight a war without it. She'd punish the man she learned was responsible for it. Kaius, on the other hand, would personally give the order to butcher a thousand innocents, if it was necessary, with no regrets. He has no illusions; Aurala is a dreamer. And she doesn't see how evil that dream is. She'd never poison you or hire an assassin - though she might send soldiers to have you arrested and executed legitimately according to the laws of the land (and hey, what the Royal Eyes do without her knowledge is between them and their minister). Show her a child in trouble and she'll try to help - all the while blindly refusing to acknowledge or accept your assertion that returning to war is as good as murdering that child.
So. For the world? Aurala not so good. But in a one-on-one situation, Aurala will act as you might expect a "good" person to act. Kaius is perfectly prepared to take evil actions in his interactions with PCs. Hence, the alignment. It's a small-scale short-term glimpse of what to expect in a direct encounter with the character... while the long-term goals provide a bigger picture. Put the two together and you get what the character is REALLY about.
Kaius is busy with Vol and the increased activity he would have to do in a war would make it that much harder to conceal his condition.
Boranel is getting old and Breland citizens are at best "meh" regarding his heir. If he won another war and then promptly keeled over, another war of succession would break out since his son doesn't even have a strong following in his home territory. At worst, the populist movement in Breland spreads and ends the reign of Galifar's descendants over the entirety of Khorvaire.
Prince Oargev doesn't even have a country anymore, so his chances of success are almost nil.
Thrane is a theocracy and doesn't even have a claim to the throne anymore. Possible, that they could attack to convert Khorvaire into a theocracy as well, but Jaela doesn't even like ruling thrane. Krozane would love to increase his power but you aren't getting a war without the blessing of the Keeper.
All while Aundair is the second strongest country, Aurala is young and fit with a consolidated power base among the royalty and the commons (ignoring the conspiracy to overthrow her, but who doesn't have a scheming brother or vicar). So she could get a good end out of a another war assuming nothing too cataclysmic happens.
Sure she would prefer it that everyone else saw how well Aundair is recovering and how good a queen she is and would gladly sweep her into thronehold but, alas, sometimes you just got to smack common sense into people. Which is why she is so interested in finding a magic A-bomb so when hostiles rise again she can end it quickly and not another 100 year slug fest. At which point she can be the benevolent ruler she wants to be.
Unless your party is heavily evil aligned, its unlikely that they will just go "Ooops", shrug, and walk off to leave the general populace at the mercy of clashing warlords, undead holdovers from the Last War, and Valenar raiders.
Not to mention what Kaius' death will do to the peace between the nations themselves. He was one of the initiators of the peace talks, and Karrnath under his rule was one of the things that kept Aurala's ambitions in check.
Now if you want to set the game within a desperate, devastating civil war in Khorvaire, then killing off Kaius would be one of the better ways to achive that. (Although it will make the party persona non grata amongst several of the other nations.) If you just want the party to kill the leader of a nation because killing a vampire king would be "cool", you may want to pick on a less high-profile one.
Lastly of course there is the fact that he is the head of an entire nation, much of which is still on a war footing, amidst several hostile factions both within and without, with enemies who want him personally dead. He also is not stupid. Any potential assassins are likely to find that Kaius himself is the least nasty challenge they will face as they run into all of his precautions, contingency plans, and guards.
On the plus side, fighting him can certainly be done, (although why the party would decide to attack the ruler of the nation they are in is up to your plot) and since the party are unlikely to be aware of his true nature, they probably aren't going to manage to kill him permanently. This also gives the party a motive to go see what the weather is like over in Xen'drick for a spell.
You could even run a plot based upon freeing a mysterious prisoner from his cell in its unassailable prison complex. Once they discovered who he is, the party would be trying to put him back on his rightful throne, negotiating or intimidating some of the warlords into supporting his bid, culminating in a coup in which they have to defeat Kaius I and put him on ice so that Kaius III can take the throne.
If you want to be really nasty, once he takes the throne, it will turn out that Kaius I is one of the worst things that could happen to Karrnath and Khorvaire in general, as well as attempting to have the party silenced permanently. The PCs will then have to track down Kaius I to whereved Kaius III was keeping him, free him, and go through the process of raising another coup.
Thrane is a theocracy and doesn't even have a claim to the throne anymore. Possible, that they could attack to convert Khorvaire into a theocracy as well, but Jaela doesn't even like ruling thrane. Krozane would love to increase his power but you aren't getting a war without the blessing of the Keeper.
Thrane still technically has a monarch. However, she has less than no power and isn't even a figurehead.
However, the Church of the Silver Flame could really give two squats about a monarch--they have the Voice of the Silver Flame, and that trumps some ninny whose great grandfather14 put a crown on his own head.
If you feel like using the listed alignments of the leaders, use it as a guideline to their behavior toward the PCs, rather than as a guideline for how they treat their subjects or the rest of the world. Aurala will listen graciously to the PCs, while figuring out how to use them to forward her agenda. Kaius III will sign warrants for the PCs arrests, while figuring out hoe to use them to forward his agenda.
Now, that's what the character wants and believes. The player and I both know that Erandis is using him, and that Kaius made the right decision to push her away from Karrnath. And we both imagine the PC will figure this out... but probably not until after he's killed Kaius and has a big mess on his hands. At this point, we turn to the greater story arc of him having to defeat Erandis and eliminate the corruption in the Blood of Vol... while simultaneously trying to do something to counter the huge mess he's made of Karrnath.
I like it as a story arc because he's got a goal that makes sense for the character, but which we know will turn out to be a terrible mistake - a turning point for the character and something he'll have to atone for. And I like it because I'll have the chance to show what happens to Karrnath when you don't have Kaius there to hold it together.
If you feel like using the listed alignments of the leaders, use it as a guideline to their behavior toward the PCs, rather than as a guideline for how they treat their subjects or the rest of the world. Aurala will listen graciously to the PCs, while figuring out how to use them to forward her agenda. Kaius III will sign warrants for the PCs arrests, while figuring out hoe to use them to forward his agenda.
Personally, I take it a step farther. Kaius will torture the PCs to get what he needs. He'll kidnap their loved ones. He'll have them poisoned. Aurala wouldn't do these things. Both she and Kaius believe that their causes are just; Aurala believes that she can achieve her just goal without compromising her ideals. To me, this extends to their subjects, as shown by the Code of Kaius. Aurala truly believes that what she's doing IS for the best of her people. She believes that it is possible to have war with honor. If you pointed out that in war civilians are going to die, she'd refuse to seriously look at it, acknowledging that war is ugly but that if you conduct yourself with dignity, follow the articles of law, and so on, it's all OK... and that once she is the Queen, she will be a gracious ruler to ALL and Galifar will prosper.
Kaius recognizes that war is ugly. He is prepared to do ugly things to prevent a greater horror. Aurala refuses to see the ugliness in the field while she gives orders from the throne room - and she's not willing to authorize actions that go against her personal code of honor. Again, of course, this doesn't mean that such things don't occur in Aundair; it simply means that it's the local commander who authorizes the torture instead of Aurala, and that she will be truly shocked to hear of it.
So again, there was a point to the alignment when we assigned it to her. Kaius is a ruthless realist, and in interacting with the players he will take evil actions - even if he does so because he believes it necessary for a greater good. Aurala, in trying to lead the world back to war, will still conduct her personal actions as a "good" character would, and she believes that this is sufficient to ensure the righteousness of her cause. Where Kaius is a realist, Aurala is a romantic who thinks of the war as a fairy tale - she thinks of all the good she'll do once she's Queen of all Galifar, not of the hundreds of thousands of peasants that will die to get her there.
If anyone has ever Played Fallout 3, you know of the mission(s) I speak of. You can attempt to facillitate peace between two particular groups of people, believing they can get along. While it was implied the whole time that one side was violent and untrustworthy, a good natured person may simply interpreted it as bigotry. Soon after you convince both sides that the others can be trusted and form a mututal agreement between them, the side they said was violent and untrustworhy proves to be just that. You return to find a bloodbath.
You meant well. You didn't honestly know it would happen. You didn't mean for it to happen. But it happed, and in a sense, you knew it could happen.
Your compassion and belief in the ability of people to get along wrought more suffering and destruction than would have occured if you had just walked into the other group's camp, guns--blazing.
I hated those ghouls after that quest! I willingly took the bad karma so I could blow their heads off with a shotgun.
I left the ditzy girlfriend of the leader alone though. But after I heard Three Dog start talking about the bloodbath I had orchestrated? Man, I marched straight across the wastes and Wasted those jerks.
(I have fast travel off, so it was a long, arduous journey, but well worth splattering that deceitful smug jerk of a ghoul)
I don't really have a problem with the DnD alignment system. Probably because I believe IRL in objective good and evil. The problem IRL is that it is almost impossible to know for certain what is good vs what is evil. That isn't a problem in DnD since, as a DM, I choose what is objectively good. Put the alignment system does depend on there being an objective difference in right and wrong, so if you run more morally ambiguous games then yeah, alignment is a lot harder to keep consistent.
Kaius, as we know, is very much an "ends justify the means" kind of guy. In that sense, he's not much different from Jack Bauer (he applies torture himself) or Vic Mackey from The Shield (who's probably got worse ethics than Kaius), but what they're doing helps others (Bauer is defending the American people, Vic absolutely will not harm anyone if they don't deserve it, though even that's sketchy at best).
I can't even believe I'm saying this, but: What about Batman? He may not kill people, but he is not above employing torture, fear, beatings, and other brutal methods to gain information, and people don't view these as ethical tactics, yet he could very well be considered the most "good" of DC's superheroes because he's the most devoted, mentally driven, and self-sacrificing.
Now, let's look at Aurala. She's pretty much Kaius' polar opposite. She wants war, but doesn't want the unsavory bits that come along with it. Now, she comes across to me like some numb-nuts idealist living in an ivory tower who has no idea how the real world works. Kind of like Superman. Everything's black and white with him. There's good and evil, right and wrong, and that's it. There are things he ABSOLUTELY will not do, but his unwillingness to do certain things, morally grey as they may be, have had serious consequences. Let's also not forget about his intermittent bouts of hubris, too.
Aurala's moral compass is solid, but her desires may be even worse than those of Kaius as she doesn't understand: War is an ugly thing. There's not "shining example" of war or "wondrous glory" or any of that nonsense. It's pure, unadulterated slaughter. No-holds-barred, fight to the death, winner takes all. Were she one of those generals who traversed the battlefield after a major fight, she would come to realize this.
Aurala clearly has her heart in the right place, and were Galifar united again, I'd prefer her over Kaius (to be frank, I like Borenal most because he seems to have more of a pulse for his people), but at what cost? There is no point in attempting to unite Galifar if it consists of nothing but a series of Pyrrhic victories. You can't have a kingdom if there's no one to rule over.
Yeah, guess I'd be rooting for Boranel, old as he may be.
The intro to this Dragonshard actually says it better than I do: www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ebds/2...
As to the examples of Jack Bauer or Vic Mackey, would they actually be regarded as Good? They sound more like Evil people who regard their service to a higher cause as justifying their actions. They may even be Lawful, if they think of their positions of authority as giving them the right or duty to commit evil acts, and have personal codes of honor.
People like them are the reason that you can have Evil priests of Good deities in Eberron: They simply do not regard themselves as evil, and still believe in the righteousness of their deity and cause.
Contrast with the Agent in Serenity, who is Evil, and accepts that he is Evil, yet serves a Good cause, fully aware that in the bright future that he is trying to create, there will be no place for him.
Batman . . . Batman's alignment has often been debated. I think that the debate was mostly concluded when someone wrote an eloquent and convincing arguement for each possible alignment. Personally, I'd regard him as Lawful Neutral, with a fanatical devotion to the concept of Justice. He has respect for the laws of the land, but is willing to break them when they are not sufficient to do what they were created for.
When the subject of murky alignments comes up, I can't help but think of Captain Carrot and the Patrician from Terry Pratchett's Discworld. Captain Carrot is probably Lawful Good, but knows that Ankh Morpork works better under the rule of an Evil ruler than it would under him. The Patrician is likely Lawful and Evil, and willing to commit almost any act to ensure the prosperity of the city. He is so intelligent and machiavellian however, that he has started to approach a Good alignment from the other side, doing good acts and refusing evil ones because he is aware of the historical consequences.
Still, I think that this is one of the reasons why Eberron rules. There is no real black-and-white. The PCs can, justifiably, work for almost anyone without becoming villains.
Vampirism isn't the only way in which he has sacrificed his humanity for the good of others. He has repeatedly been a postion where doing the Good thing, and doing the right thing are not the same, and has chosen to sacrifice his "soul" in order to protect his people.
If there are any Buffy fans in the room, it's a bit like when Giles murders the nurse guy who acts as a host for the demon chick. It's not the guys fault that he has a demon living in him that takes over and seeks to open hell upon the world, and Giles knows that. But if he lives, she'll come back, and Buffy barely defeated her this time. So Giles killed him when no one was looking.
Who is really the hero in that episode? Buffy, who sacrifices her life at the end and defeats the BBEG? or Giles without whose actions her sacrifice, and defeat of the BBEG, would end up being completely meaningless?
Kaius is a lot like the Agent from Firefly.
Vampirism isn't the only way in which he has sacrificed his humanity for the good of others. He has repeatedly been a postion where doing the Good thing, and doing the right thing are not the same, and has chosen to sacrifice his "soul" in order to protect his people.
Kaius also tried to win the war for several decades without giving two squats about the thousands that were killed. It's not like he made some grand sacrifice for his people--he became a Vampire so that he might live forever, and become the immortal emperor of all Galifar.
It's only after the Mourning that he decided to advance an agenda of peace, recognizing that a) the Mourning was too big to continue the war and b) Karrnath, cut off from the other 3 nations, could no longer hope to "win" the war.
Kaius isn't like the Agent. The Agent wants a better world--one without suffering, or war, or hatred. And in the end, he will have to die, and is content with that and carries out an agenda for the greater good.
Kaius wants a world where there is suffering, and war, and hatred, but above all, there is Kaius on top of everything, an eternal OverKing of Khorvaire.
Kaius is a lot like the Agent from Firefly.
Vampirism isn't the only way in which he has sacrificed his humanity for the good of others. He has repeatedly been a postion where doing the Good thing, and doing the right thing are not the same, and has chosen to sacrifice his "soul" in order to protect his people.
Kaius also tried to win the war for several decades without giving two squats about the thousands that were killed. It's not like he made some grand sacrifice for his people--he became a Vampire so that he might live forever, and become the immortal emperor of all Galifar.
It's only after the Mourning that he decided to advance an agenda of peace, recognizing that a) the Mourning was too big to continue the war and b) Karrnath, cut off from the other 3 nations, could no longer hope to "win" the war.
Kaius isn't like the Agent. The Agent wants a better world--one without suffering, or war, or hatred. And in the end, he will have to die, and is content with that and carries out an agenda for the greater good.
Kaius wants a world where there is suffering, and war, and hatred, but above all, there is Kaius on top of everything, an eternal OverKing of Khorvaire.
We have very different impressions of Kaius, I see. I've seen nothing to suggest that Kaius wants a world featuring suffering, war and hatred. The fact that he wants to rule hardly distinguishes him from the vast majority of rulers.
And I certainly got the impression that his turn to vampirism, and his...displacement of his grandson were directly motivated by his dedication to his people, and of course his belief that he is the rightful, and best, ruler of Karnath, and that the Karnathi have a destiny to stand above, in rulership, of the other peoples of the continent. And the last bit seems open to debate, so far as I can tell.
I figure, after a hundred years of war, and witnessing the complete devastation of Cyre, Kaius didn't want to see any more war. His people were dying in droves, there was no sign of the war slowing down, and an entire nation had just been destroyed. If the war continued, might not Karnath be next? How long could he keep his nature secret if the war continued? If found out, could he continue to lead, guide, and protect his people?
And don't mistake a willingness to continue fighting a war, and a complete disregard to the loss of life involved in that war. Nor a willingness to pursue that war in a ruthless fashion. They are not the same thing.
Kaius may be a vampire, but he's what, 150 years old or so? Hardly long enough to completely disconnect him from the motivations, and mindsets of mortals. A middle aged elf is more removed from humans than a 150 year old human, vampire or no.
He certainly isn't a nice guy, and he won't be winning the Nobel Peace Prize anytime soon, but as Kieth said, he's statted as evil because of the manner in which he's liable to interact with the pcs if they work in opposition to him. Not because his grand scheme motivations are evil.
as for the Agent, the Agent is a monster. He admits that. He would personally butcher the inhabitants of every orphan in the 'verse if it brought the 'verse closer to his "world without sin." And he wouldn't feel even a moment's remorse. If I had intended it to be a perfect comparison, I would have said that kaius is exactly like the agent, which I didn't. However, they are similar. They are both willing to make of themselves a monster, to achieve what they believe is the ultimate good. They are both pretty much devoid of mercy, and they are probably (definately in the case of the Agent) misguided.
There seems to be a lot of that in Eberron.