I think the PHB allows you to follow a moral code or code of ethics to maintain lawfulness, rather than a particular government. A truly lawful good knight might well reject the authority of a despotic kingdom even if it meant suicide, as knuckling under would violate his code of ethics.
That being said, while Nale is definitely evil, the law/chaos spectrum is harder to figure out. I would still lean towards lawful though - the wide variety of plans that require exact adherence strikes me as a lawful trait, as well as trying to stick to his “evil opposites” theme. In fact, in adherence with his evil opposites theme, Nale would be LE, since Elan is CG. (of note, Roy is LG while Thog is CE, both V and Z are TN (although leaning towards evil), Belkar’s opposite is usually lawful, etc).
Finally, just because Nale is LE, doesn’t mean he’s incapable of chaotic acts.
That’s my opinion. Nale’s belief in intricate plans and complicated maneuvers would lead me to think of him as lawful since you need an adherence to order to pull those things off (regardless of Nale’s actual ability).
Xykon, in contrast, takes a complicated plan and says “This is boring. Let’s just launch Meteor Swarms at it until it catches on fire, then laugh, then go throw orphans in lava and laugh at them.” Chaotic Evil and a constant headache for the more lawfully minded Redcloak.
Impossible to say, given how little we know about what happened, but a lawful alignment does not imply any particular opposition to the undead. Tarquin’s lawful evil, too, and his best friend was a vampire.
True, but the thought that had occured to me was that little vampire minions somehow upset Nale’s “sense of order”, whether it’s “natural order of things” [where natural = not undead] or something else.
Just because two characters share the same alignment doesn’t mean they have to get along (which was the point of the Roy/Miko relationship).
But I agree that the backstory is still pretty thin at this point, and all I have is speculation.
Someone with that attitude would most likely be lawful, yes, but being lawful doesn’t necessarily mean they have that attitude. And nothing we’ve seen from Nale indicates he has any particular interest in the “natural” order of things.
Back in 1st edition, the I think the idea was that most lawful evil mortal souls were largely just consumed/tortured/whatever and some especially evil souls eventually became Lemures which were the lowest form of devil. As opposed to lemurs, which are the lowest form of monkey.
Even if the evil dead aren’t in a lake of fire, it’s possible that the planes are partitioned off by pantheon and Malack is enjoying a different afterlife in Nergalville than Nale is enjoying in… whatever-his-pantheon-would-be-land.
Going back to the previous posts about evil people being Raised and warning about the bad afterlife, maybe the appropriate infernal management for those planes should set up a temporary holding area. Give the souls a year or two of hookers feeding them grapes and then when the average person stops being Raised/Resurrected, take 'em out back for the real deal.
He’s just in it for the money. He doesn’t really give a damn whether something is good or bad - just like most of us. “Do this and you get paid” doesn’t strike me as particularly evil.
One idea I’ve been toying around with for my campaign is that a person is able to maintain their individuality in the afterlife for as long as someone living remembers who they were. When they’re finally totally forgotten, they transform into what ever the basic native is for their plane. Thus, the more famous (or infamous) you were in life, the longer you’ll exist in the afterlife - giving tyrants and saints alike a reason to make as big a mark on the world as they can before they die.
You might look into Mexican traditions concerning “the third death”. The first death is the death of the body, the second is burial (which might be looked at as a death of “place”), and the third is the death of memory, when there is no one left who remembers the deceased. The remembrances of the Day of the Dead hold the third death off for a time. I haven’t found much on what is believed to happen to the soul after that. (It’s kind of hard to search on and a lot of hits are repetitious.) However, the original reference that led me into it suggested that a soul that has experienced the third death is freed to be reborn.
In that light, it might also be a motivation for the living to keep the memory of the hated dead alive, if they believe the souls of the ones they hate are suffering in the afterlife. I could picture an order of monks with a duty to memorize a litany of the names and crimes of evildoers, for the purpose of keeping the villains’ souls bound in Hell.
Roy could remember no details of the LG afterlife beyond the gate. It was all a blur that he new was wonderful. I suspect all the afterlives are like that. Those returning would only have an extremely vague feeling about what it was like. And in the case of the evil afterlifes, that feeling could be a deception.
