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On The Gods and their Alignments
Posted 2010-11-20/03:02 in category: explanations
Golarion has been aware of magic for longer than we have surviving written records. We have also been aware of the existence of many planes: sets of places that it's impossible to go between without magic. Golarion and Earth are both on the Prime Material plane, the plane of ordinary matter where mortals are born, live, and die. There are also the elemental planes of Earth, Water, Air, Fire, Positive Energy, and Negative Energy, inhabited by beings of those elements. There are the Ethereal, Astral, and Shadow planes, which are too weird for this post but might get their own at some point. And there are the outer planes.
The outer planes are shaped by two pairs of opposing forces: Good and Evil, and Law and Chaos. There's an Outer Plane for each of Lawful Good, Neutral Good, Chaotic Good, Lawful Neutral, Neutral Neutral, Chaotic Neutral, Lawful Evil, Neutral Evil, and Chaotic Evil. Each outer plane is populated by outsiders, beings who fully embody the plane's alignment. Some of them are naturally occurring and appear out of nowhere, and others started out as living people, were sent to that plane when they died, and gradually transformed to be more like the plane they were on.
When a mortal being capable of making moral choices dies, they are judged by representatives of Pharasma, the creator of the universe, and sent to the afterlife corresponding to the effects they had on the world in life. This is a pretty okay system as far as Good and Neutral people are concerned, but it's a terrible system for Evil people because the Evil afterlives are very very bad. I'm not going to get into detail on this. The good afterlives are working hard at making sure as few people go to the Evil afterlives as possible.
The most powerful outsiders on the outer planes are the gods. Gods are tremendously powerful, but there are many of them of all alignments working in opposition to each other, so rather than exhaust themselves striving against each other, they agree among themselves to limit their interventions on the Material. On Golarion, these interventions consist mostly of empowering clerics and paladins [. . .]
I'm really not seeing the Chaotic. All the covenants and commandments and mandatory sacraments and complicated church structures, come on. LE? I might buy LN.
Well, you see, he doesn't keep his covenants. Wait a sec, I need to roll Knowledge(religion). Okay, I did that, the first covenant was to not commit genocide again, or at least to do it without using water next time, and, uh, Leviathon exists (so far, I'm pegging it at CR 27).
Hmmm. Now I want to ask Samora what she'd say after doing all her reading, but she probably has more important things to do.
Samora's world has a goddess of songbirds and She's Good! It's we who should be preaching to you! Sadly, many humans can't understand our tweets glorifying God 😞
Samora sounds like a very interesting and Good person. I wish I could meet her someday.
as God is clearly Chaotic Evil, he can't be a druid
atheists will really hear God tell ppl "love ur neighbor" and "feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, care for the sick" and say that he's Chaotic Evil, huh
tells u a lot
Simple, Jesus is Neutral Good. god the Father is Chaotic Evil. Or Lawful Evil. Or maybe he is True Neutral and the Holy Spirit is Evil. Or vice versa. All makes as much sense, really.
jesus and God the father and the holy spirit r all God, and it doesn't make sense 4 any of them to be Evil
Well, the thing is, it's a bizarre set of constraints that produces a Jesus which is or represents himself as being the Son of an Evil God, and which proselytizes for him, does the whole 'the old law [of the Evil god] isn't being replaced, it's still in force there's just also a new thing' schtick, and is still NG. It's not typically a Good thing, to spread the faith of an Evil god and invite it to be spread, to cause your students to invite an Evil — well, Unholy, I assume — Spirit into their hearts, etc etc. In this hypothetical, either we're very wrong about anything Jesus thought or said during his life, or God the Father isn't benefitted by any of what Jesus said about him, or they go together.
jesus and God the father and the holy spirit r all God, and it doesn't make sense 4 any of them to be Evil
Please read the Bible, and also what I wrote above about how he wouldn't promise not to do any more genocide but he did swear to at least be creative about it, and then wasn't even creative. How many times do you think you can do genocide and still count as Good? Because the Bible has him doing it a two-to-three-digits number of times.
Killing three-year-olds because they're the oldest kids in their households is totally genocide.
For a clearer example, in Numbers 17:6 he murders 14,700 people for complaining that he keeps murdering them, if that's not Chaotic Evil behavior I don't know what is.
6 And Moses spoke unto the children of Israel, and every one of their princes gave him a rod apiece, for each prince one according to their fathers’ houses, even twelve rods; and the rod of Aaron was among their rods.
u heard it here 1st, giving people rods is genocide
God: hey listen to these 2 guys. they will keep u safe in the wilderness
people: no we are having a rebellion
God: well i will kill the leaders then. and i will be very public about it so everyone knows what happened and that they should listen to the right guys
people: *die*
more people: we still won't listen, we will keep doing unsafe things
God: :(
more people: *die of plague because they didn't listen*
guys God put in charge: *stop the plague"
u: this is genocide! how could God do this!