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The evil of Illithids goes beyond the consumption of brains and the treatment of their slaves.

They are an abhorent race of alien-like monsters who've come from a different place (which varies based off which source book and edition you read) and since they arrived they have done horrendous things to the inhabitants of Toril. They are evil in both their actions and their mindset.

As a race, they have enslaved entire species to fulfill their own evil plans and no doubt exterminated several species in the process. The Gith and the Duergar were lucky that they eventually developed the means to free themselves: although its not said in the source books, you can guarantee that other species weren't so lucky and met their fate one brain at a time.

The Illithid race itself is also utterly evil down to an individual level. Despite working in unison as a society, each Illithid is arrogant, self-obsessed and power-hungry. They are also very good at keeping / acquiring secrets and manipulating others which makes betrayal, enslavement and treachery an Illithid's primary (and often preferred) weapon of choice. So much so that Illithids actually manipulate other species to fulfill and agenda that benefits them as a species. The book of Madness supplement actually says that the Illithids purposefully fuel the feud between the Githyanki and Githzerai to keep the races fighting one another and that they dabble in the politics of the surface races as an experiment for some greater future scheme. That is textbook lawful evil right there.

And that's before you get to the Elder Brains who make even the most atrocious deeds by their parasitic underlings look like a newborn puppy peeing on the couch in comparison.

The other very dangerous thing about the Illithids is their sheer lack of trust in anything but themselves. Unless they seek to profit from an encounter with another species, and generally at the detriment of the encountered species, they will attack you. There's no negotiating with them: if you possess nothing of use to the Illithid, they will either kill you or make a use for you by enslaving you. That makes them extremely dangerous to deal with even at a civil level because if they haven't outright killed or enslaved you, you're most likely being manipulated in the Illithid's favour.

Whose to say that the Illithid did not psionically suggest you to sell that sword of yours (by making you think 25k was an excellent bargain!) to them because its all part of some evil scheme to use that sword and the plans of Kohlingen's defences which you just happened to be thinking about at the time in a hundred years to slit the throats of your descendants as your beloved city burns?

That's the kind of people the Illithids are. There's a reason the squidfaces are evil ladies and gentlemen. Dealing with them comes with terrible price: don't forget that.

[edit] Also, Manarethan and Dusty are your current experts in all things Abberations. That speaks volumes about what you can expect haha.

Actually, I think an element of this is that Underport doesn't (to my knowledge, but then I easily miss such things) have any player representatives. A paladin opposed to Underport would have to attack it directly with DM oversight, while people from Tarkuul have actual players that can be antagonized and attacked without (much) consequence. It's not like banning the mindflayers from visiting Kohlingen would do anything. Tarkies are just the more convenient target, in a meta sense anyway.

A person playing a paladin who swears to slay evil or die trying, is OOCly afraid of consequences of trying to lead an army to attack a known despicable settlement?

It angers me to even think that a person would play a paladin and not at least try to do something about Underport - as much as they do with Tarkuul anyway. Come on. Three pages of conversation talking about whether or not Underport is evil? Underport is home to Illithids, goblins, slavery, brain eating, likely black market and stolen goods, and more, and people are debating whether or not it's evil, or at the very least less-than-paladin-friendly?

This isn't the real world where we can have debates about people being evil or good, morality is subjective, or whatever stuff you learned in Philosophy 101.

This is D&D.

Morality is literally an absolute spectrum. It's not a debate.

Underport is evil.

Paladins are supposed to be paragons of good and destroy evil, and free people.

If you're a paladin, round up more paladins and do-gooders and mercenaries if you have to, and lead an attack on Underport. That'd be kind of awesome in fact.

At the -very- least, don't trade with them. It really is that simple. You don't have to attack Underport, but you should vocally disparage the city for the things it does and the creatures it harbors if you're actually good-aligned. A Christian, or Iraqi soldier, or *enter other beheaded group in ISIS here*, wouldn't condone ISIS unless they were nuts, and wouldn't go hang out in occupied Syria even if they knew that they weren't going to be beheaded, would they? I'm quite certain they'd hate ISIS even if ISIS were leaving that person alone for some reason, because they see all the horrific stuff they do.

I agree with you that Paladins should attempt to do more against forces like Tarkuul, or Underport.

However, a Paladin who is in any serious position command is also responsible for the lives of those who follow them. Blind attacks with little to no serious preparation will only result in failure, especially in the case of Underport.

Paladins are about a lot more than that as well. As much as they are about the fight against Evil, they are about redemption. They'll gladly stand to the line against impossible odds themselves but they won't condemn their men to similar fates.

But, yes: Definitely not trading in Underport willingly is a start. *Though depending on the order they might be willing to at the least tolerate use of covert actions against Underport even if they themselves don't push the fight to begin with*

Last edited by Dead on Mon, Sep 29 2014, 2:32 AM, edited 1 time in total.

I agree with you MristerLich (Underport wise) just don't ever bring RL war discussions or examples into forum in any form. Last time certain someone did that in a "good vs evil" discussion it ended in bans, because it's sensitive ground, and people may get easily offended.

Last edited by Krin on Mon, Sep 29 2014, 17:32 PM, edited 2 times in total.

I agree that most goodies should avoid Underport, but I don't agree that people should have their characters' alignment messed with for popping into Underport to drop off loot for ooc convenience. I know that alignment and morality in D&D are supposed to be objective and absolute but, as demonstrated by soldiers killing other soldiers and the 'slavery' that paladins of Horus-re take part in, that simply doesn't work when applied to a living, breathing world.

I think ignoring the impact of culture, upbringing, and perspective on morality(alignment) is a tad lazy and puts a damper on a lot of interesting story concepts, even if it complicates the 'red is dead' thing.

I'm iffy about getting into real world conflicts here.. so.. I'll use food.

6 Animals That are Eaten Alive by Humans(Not for the squeamish)

My delicate Western sensibilities and 'Murican perspective have taught me that the act of eating a living, feeling creature is barbaric and cruel. Does that make the people enjoying their still living food evil? No. I don't think they're evil. I think that part of their culture is pretty screwed up, but that doesn't equal evil. They'd probably call me a stupid hypocrite for being okay with eating an animal so long as I don't need to look it in the eyes as I do it..but.. 'Murica. I don't care.

The subjects of Morality and Ethics are full of these grey areas. I don't think we should simplify that because it might force us to look deeper than what color an NPC is glowing on our screen.

I've always wanted to see an LE Paladin <.<

Not likely! I know. But I can dream.

Sam was a CE paladin for almost a year! Granted, her abilities didn't work very well...

Krin wrote:

drop off loot for ooc convenience.

There are people who stay IC at all times, and people who have OOC conveniences. There are good RPers and there are bad RPers. Pick your own playing style I guess, but do not expect of other people to have understanding for your OOC conveniences. IC action = IC reaction.

"Their evil reputation is based on their horrid appetite for living brains." - D&D, proving it doesn't understand it's own alignment system very well

Manarethan wrote:

Killing in self defense is not inherently evil by the rules of D&D.

So I'm right then. Killing for survival, that is, killing to see tomorrow, isn't an evil act. Pass the brains then!

Yes, I get it. AD&D is a silly, juvenile, simplistic, and goofy pen/paper game where "all moonstar must b ebil" so smite evil and this spell here, and that ability on page 47 can work on them, but on a bit more of a "I'm not 10 anymore and am not stuck thinking on that level" bit, we can recognize it's goofy and nonsense in many situations.

If I have to eat people to survive because people are literally the only thing that gets me to tomorrow, pass the salt and jump on my plate. Not wanting to martyr myself over you doesn't make me evil, it makes me alive. Otherwise /every druid/ on Amia has to be evil by your own rationalization because to /every druid/ on Amia, not just Animals, but Plants and Rocks (yes, rocks) all have sentience, wish to continue existing, and can carry a conversation yet I don't see too many druids wasting away in the woods on hunger strikes over this realization. (Oddly enough, I actually made a druid who acted logically after realizing that and started eating anything that happened to be around when her tummy rumbled because there's no moral high ground to not eating elves and dwarves when wolves, trees, and deer ask you how your day is going and have names.)

Not to mention, these pro-evil arguments overlook the fact Illithid share zero hallmarks of an evil race whatsoever. No illithid self-aggrandizes itself over it's peers. No illithid steals from it's own people. No illithid murders illithids. Heck, illithid are practically really ugly Smurfs who have to eat brains to see next week. This is where D&D failed the "Lovecraftian Monster" idiom terribly. The key to Lovecraftian is understanding you /cannot understand/ it. It's alien and unfathomable. Unknowable to your tiny, insignificant mind. They outright failed Illithid the moment they laid everything bare in print (and it is terribly mundane to say the least), gave them a voice and opened dialogue with players, then hilariously slapped "evil" on them without actually making them do anything actually evil. Eating what keeps you alive is not evil. Lovecraftian horror is not evil. It's beyond the human ability to comprehend to the point of amorality (and trying drives you mad!).

Manarethan wrote:

The point here is that to feed, the illithids don't just kill something, then remove the brain and eat it. They extract the brain from a living, still-aware individual in an act that is comparable to torture.

[*Citation needed.]

Argument falls apart for two reasons. 1. Cited book specifically states the brain must come from a living, active person. (There must be brain activity, ie, psychic energy. Brain-dead, coma, and sleeping people need not apply.) And 2. It even goes so far as to specifically say the enzyme in their mouths needed to aid digestion cannot survive in the air so it has to do the whole tentacle thing to keep a suction seal on the head otherwise it doesn't work. Eating the only way you can, doesn't make you evil. The only reference to evil in the entire work in relation to illithids is the passage I started this post on, which is hilariously inept and being an excuse for writing "evil" on the alignment line.

It makes them horribly unpleasant at the dinner table, but is not an actual elective moral intent.

CouncilofAutumn wrote:

Rashad has a menu with slaves on it? I don't know if this sort of admittance brings Underport's alignment up as much as it brings Rashad's down.

He might have a slave for sale, depends on the day. Again, owning/taking slaves is not an evil act in the setting. If it were, all of Zakhara and many "good" nations/NPCs in Faerun would be evil. Heck, Zakhara is ruled by a paladin who holds an immense number of slaves. You're projecting you 20th century western morality on a setting which does not have it largely. Many cultures and nations here have lawful slavery where if a person commits some crime against you or incurs a horrible debt, they become your slave. And mind you, illithid don't keep slaves, they keep /food./

CouncilofAutumn wrote:

The point of all of this is that Illthids do actually have a choice. They could avoid doing the things that they do, but they won't, because they know it works. I have in this thread detailed how Illithids could manage to get by without consuming brains, quoting a source book, and all it would cost them is their inherent psychic power. Power they aren't willing to give up. You might not, but they like their alignment just fine.

No, they do not. And no you did not. You quoted a brief passage in a book (which literally suggests none of the things you just posted). Indeed, the one line up from what you quoted literally says "Its (as in, the illithid brain's) great weakness is that it does not produce the critical enzymes, hormones, or psychic energy that the body needs to survive and function. Those critical components must come from consumed brains." And then it goes on further down to describe just how they die if they don't eat sentient brains in such and such a time. The passage you quoted merely asserts they shove other things into their mouths on occasion when desperate because some bits have some other bits that can keep them going a little bit, but the entirety of the section (and sections further down) asserts only /sentient brains/ keeps them alive and without them, they starve to death. They give up sentient brains, they die. There are zero Edward Cullen Illithids because Twilight Illithids starve to death.

Kenneth wrote:

I don't really get the mind-flayer apologists.

Illithid were intentionally created to be D&D versions of Lovecraftian monsters, and since when was any evil fish-headed race in any of the mythos anything but evil?

Lovecraftian races are not evil. You didn't get Lovecraft if you think they are evil. Lovecraftian races are amoral at best and didn't give 2 deuces about mankind. They were fighting for survival and mankind was the thing they scraped off the bottom of their shoe occasionally thinking it was no more than a speck of dirt. In most cases, the Lovecraftian "thing" is so far advanced it cannot even recognize mankind as a sentient creature because mankind to them are as furniture to us. Mankind is that insignificant to them. The entire point of Lovecraft was simple and brilliant and truly horrifying: the entire universe is indifferent and incomprehensible because mankind is insignificant and tiny so much that it's not even a player in the game. Everything looks evil to you when it's mouth is descending on your face, but that doesn't mean it is. This is why TSR (and then WotC) failed illithid terribly. They replicated Cthulhu as a race, but stupidly made an attempt to explain it out, going so far as to make it something you can have conversations with and understand, then slapped "evil" on it despite it really doesn't do anything other than eat, occasionally procure food, or hatch a plot to keep the 3 races who want to kill them, dead. D&D is a game where everything that must oppose our players has to be evil because in the beginning, 1rst ed dungeon crawls are not high theater or places to do actual thinkery and monsters are were just mobile loot containers and holy gee guys how cool would it be if we fought shoggoths! Sadly, it didn't really evolve much past that.

Galenson wrote:

...a bunch of stuff here...

Your justifications as to why they're evil is they play off two races who want to /actually murder them/ against each other and they don't nicely ask their food to peacefully come along with them and not put up fights? You're going to need a whole lot more argument than that, because if we're buying that, then PETA is right. Meat is murder!

Dead wrote:

MightNMagic wrote:

Zombies and Skeletons are evil because they are /not/ mindless. If uncontrolled, they hate life and will do what they can to kill any life they detect, much like most low-level undead.

If you walk into a den of lions, you will be killed as well. Do lions hate life?

No, they love life ...in their stomachs. It's delicious. However, skeletons and zombies? Yep, hate life to the point they want to murder it outright and when they lose their controller or are created "naturally" with no controller, that's what they do and it's stated over and over and over. Skeletons, zombies, and other "mindless" undead who are created "naturally" (that is by say a vortice to the neg energy plane infusing nearby corpses with neg energy) or lose their controller stand still til a living thing (any living thing usually bigger than a bug) comes into range then they kill it because they "hate life." They are not golems. They do not stand around in perpetuity unless they have an existing controller who tells them to stand around.

And vampires are evil because they "hate life" inherently (at least that's the reason given as to why 99% of undead are evil). Unlike illithid, they're not a living creature just trying to survive.

We can all agree to disagree, but quite frankly illithids fail the "am evil by our own standards" test as given under the definition of evil in the PHB, unlike say, a beholder who has lots of great options, but just chooses to be a dic(tator).

Last edited by Dead on Sun, Oct 12 2014, 23:30 PM, edited 2 times in total.

Dude, if it suits your character SO MUCH to go to the Underport.. it's ok. It really is. There's no need to write essay upon essay about something that is simply not true, trying to justify your character's actions . Illithids of the Underport are evil. Period. There is absolutely nothing you can say or write, no argument you can bring forward to change that fact. So you'll just have to roll with the fact that your character goes to a place of immense evil that is the Underport to get richer, while at the same time avoids Tarkuul because he considers it evil, because that is exactly what is going on.

Edit:

MightNMagic wrote:

[*Citation needed.]

DM word = citation. DM word > canon lore. Welcome to D&D.

Um, yeah, dude. I get Lovecraftian races. :-P

But, completely alien with zero consideration for all other life, or actively, purposefully, seeking to convert, consume, enslave, absorb, or destroy other life, still qualifies you as evil in D&D. And most people would say that's pretty evil in RL, too.

And, yes, if the poor mind-flayers could just live off fucking kale, maybe they wouldn't have turned into the complete bastards they are. But that's not what happened.

Instead, they're an ancient, interstellar race that has evolved NOT away from needing to cause suffering to other sentient beings, but TOWARDS it. If you have, as a race, existed for aeons, with superior technology, and you couldn't find a way not to extinguish the sentience of other beings to survive, chances are you're that way because you wanted to be. Either that, or you completely fucking suck at evolution.

And, for the record, I think evil and good are kind of silly concepts. Most creatures do things because it helps them survive, it's easy, because they enjoy it, and because they want to.

But, if the way something exists runs counter to the way something ELSE exists, and then that thing continues to keep intruding upon your life, you call it EVIL. Because it helps you rally others together to go kill it. :-P

Usually, we determine an alignment by actions. By rule of thumbs, we have learned that some actions are not avoidable, there are no real options. In those scenarios, we determine alignment by intent and motives behind, by the mentality.
You can hold the argument that for the Illithids the sentient races are no more food than animals to the sentient races; that may as well be true. Illithids aren't necessarily evil because they have to eat, that's just another point in the balance - and in my book, eating sentient beings is somewhat worse than eating animals.
They are evil because they have a complete disregard of any sort of life that it's not their own.
They are evil because, if they were given the chance, the Illithids would still eat brains for dinner.
They are evil because I have to fill this space with another point that I can't think right now.

I think it says something about illithid society that the first spark of rebellion among the gith was lit when Zerthimon saw another slave impaled by a sword, and it completely shook his worldview because up until that point the very idea of death being caused by anything other than an illithid was completely unimaginable to him.

You can make arguments all you like, but the fact of the matter is that Illithids are evil. Your argument falls apart when faced with the 'is this completely ridiculous?' question. Is is completely ridiculous to try and justify the torturous murder of innocents in order to sustain themselves as something not evil? Yes. Obviously it's evil. Dancing around the facts and twisting my words serves no purpose.

MightNMagic wrote:

[*Citation needed.]

Read any entry about ilithids and you'll find your citation. Hell, open the FR books and look for ilithids. There's even a narrative describing a victim being devoured as knowing his brain is delicious.

Right, DM word as well as much canon lore specifically states that:

Illithid are absolutely, unequivocally, undeniably evil.
Having sentient slaves for both labor, and eventually a food source, simply because you want to exploit them before eating them, is evil.
Having slaves for reasons such as "Well, you stole a horse from me, you owe me a year of labor" is not inherently evil, but that's not the type of slavery Underport works on, and we all know that.
Goblins and other such creatures are almost always evil, and in this setting we can assume to be evil.
Underport has all these things, and also a black market presence.

Logical conclusion here is not that Underport is a place for Paladins to be trading in. The logical conclusion is the exact opposite: Paladins and clerics of good-aligned deities, or deities that find all this stuff absolutely reprehensible, should not support or help or inflate the Underport economy, even if it is -slightly- inconvenient for them. If you're the cleric of, say, Velsharoon, then fuck it, go crazy. NG Cleric of Lathander? I bet Lathander would have something to say about those slaves, languishing under their masters, only to be eaten later, and you not doing anything about it, other than support their black market.

If it isn't punished by being fallen when players do this, and I have no idea if it is, then players still need to realize that other characters might begin to question the motives of your own character once they realize "Hey, that Paladin of Oghma is trading with Underport a lot. Maybe he's not a great guy or a real paladin..."

There is literally no reason to defend Underport given the nature of D&D alignments, the clearly written and voluminous lore on Illithids, and the word of at least one DM (Mana) themselves (and DM's word is law, over any other source of lore, DM's word is always law). Underport does evil things as part of its very existence, and institutionalizes them. There can only be one logical conclusion.

Underport is Batman evil.

Going to places like Underport just for the merchants while being good is not that different than going to Kohl for the merchants if you character is evil. Amirite?

An evil character is not beholden to a code of moral conduct like a good character is. If a Priest of Torm were to trade with my Velsharran, the Tormtar would fall. Whichever way the trade was going because he breached his code of conduct, whereas my Velsharran has no such obligation to maintain.

I don't think the Tormtar would instantly fall just for that, unless your Velsharran is an especially horriffic and infamous individual. Illithids are some of the most notoriously evil creatures in the entire setting, and to trade with them you have to wander into the middle of their slave market where innocent beings are being sold as food. Unless the Tormtar and Velsharran were standing in the middle of Tarkuul, surrounded by undead slaves, I don't think that'd be quite the same.

It'd be a lesser sin, sure, and Torm would definitely find some way to send that message, but divine punishment isn't just... fall or nothing.

The way I see it, your character is the primary point of call; if you genuinely believe that your character wouldn't have an issue hanging around the Underport, that's that. Player perspectives aren't always so important unless people are doing strange mental acrobatics to justify purely OOC actions, like the aforementioned 'OOC merchant runs' which strike me as going against the spirit of the server.

If a Tormite trades with a Velsharan, knowing that the other guy is Velsharan, he'd fall hard as far as I know. Imagine a Banite priest trading knowingly with a Cyricist. It's not just a matter of good vs evil there. It's a matter of the archnemesis god's priests having a friendly encounter. It's all about the individual faiths. Torm and Bane are very strict on their rules. Cyric and Velsharoon are not.

Is Underport evil?

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