V is level 15 because his Mass X spells affect 15 people (1 person per level). I can’t speak for any of the others.
V really needs to come clean to Roy. Specifically, “if I ever fall into an unexplained coma, don’t blow up any gates for at least 20 minutes.”
24 minutes to be safe, just in case they go back to back,
Agreed, I’m surprised he hasn’t told Roy about what he saw in the Rift.
And honestly, I’m surprised nobody in the order has really questioned V’s spring into power. “Oh, just a one-time spell, teehee” and it’s been ignored since.
I keep thinking that the ultimate comeuppance for Tarquin would be to be killed, but not by a protagonist. I.e. some relatively low level npc shows up in the middle of this distraction with a perfect plan to assassinate Tarquin and the Psion.
Killed by a falling flumph.
Not really. An evil act is an evil act, regardless of whether you’re doing it for pay, or pro bono. That said, D&D is a world where there are a lot of circumstances where killing a dude is a legitimately moral act. It’s possible that there are, somewhere in Tarquin’s empire, a significant number of soldiers who are neutral or maybe even good aligned. However, the soldiers fighting the Order right now aren’t just any soldiers, they’re the soldiers that hang around the palace waiting for the chief villain to say, “You men! Come with me!” In that circumstance, even for non-elite mooks, there’s going to a bit of a screening process to make sure you get the right sort of soldier in that position. They’re going to select for the sort of person who doesn’t hesitate when you hand him a potato peeler and tell him to go kill everyone in an orphanage. So the guys Roy is killing right now probably are all Lawful Evil, with maybe a few Neutral Evil mixed in.
Not according to the author:
They are probably proportionately more Lawful Evil than the general population, but there are probably also (as the Giant says) various other alignments mixed in with them.
I was thinking that the least likely alignment one would find in an more-or-less volunteer army would be Chaotic Neutral. And the most likely would be Lawful of some flavor, depending on the culture of the nation in question.
Any kind of Lawful alignment would join up because of duty and loyalty to one’s country. Lawful Good characters would also need the war to be honorable, lawful in the eyes of the international community, or somehow just or righteous. LN characters just need it to be lawful–approved through proper channels. LE characters just need an excuse to have a war, assuming it can be justified in almost any reasonable way as being in the nation’s interest.
Neutral Good characters would join up for the pay or potential for power or influence. They’d be much less compelled to join than lawful characters. A “just” war increases the likelihood of Good soldiers in general.
Neutral characters really would need to see that it is in their own interest somehow to join. Duty wouldn’t persuade them, nor a just cause, in and of themselves. Some combination of just cause and invested personal interest would be required.
Chaotic Evil characters might join because of the possibility of sanctioned killing. Same for Neutral Evil characters. You wouldn’t be able to trust either, of course, at all. They’d be as likely to loot corpses as fight in the vanguard. Neither would stick around if they don’t see a decent of amount of pain infliction happening. They’re the most likely to commit war crimes.
Chaotic Good characters would have little reason to want to join up. Duty won’t do it for them at all, and war hardly ever seems especially good. It would have be a truly just war for CG characters to go for it. The might go AWOL if the war turns ugly (well, uglier than normal for war.)
Chaotic Neutral characters … well … if they see some sort of self interest or personal entertainment in joining up, maybe. They’re by far the most likely to go AWOL, for any reason under the sun, or even just on a whim.
So I think it’s entirely justified to suppose a variety of alignments are in Tarquin’s army, but probably the most common are LE, LN, and maybe NE and the least common are N, CG, or CN. LG characters might have a problem with being in Tarquin’s army as well; they’d have to be deluded about Tarquin’s evil doing. Sort of like a soldier in Hitler’s army, in denial about what the regime is really about, sort of like Elan before he saw the light, so to speak.
I’m not assuming many in Tarquin’s army are exactly volunteers. Conscription is part and parcel of a LE regime, one might assume. So that would mix alignments more, but CG and CN are likelier to go AWOL.
One other thought: NE and CE would require intimidation to stay in the army, and/or the promise of power (for NE) or lots of killing and torture (CE). They would need to feel going AWOL would be worse for them than the risk of staying in the army, without those promises.
I’ll beat my dead horse and say again, V is on the way, Haley and Elan are heading into the crater, I see the OotS all headed for the rift, OotS plan A has always been run away, run away. Next book, a change of scenery.
Then **Measure for Measure ** just said something to make me go Hmmmm… They have a flying carpet. Still plan A…
I’d assume most CE aligned people or humanoids would be better suited for a warband or other loose collection of raiders than any sort of organized army. Even with lots of killing, pillaging, rape etc they’re going to chafe under anyone’s direct command.
True enough. Only fear and intimidation will keep them in line.
Where, though? Is it in the hammerspace where Haley keeps her arrows?
Who says the army *is *volunteer? Don’t dictatorships generally have a lot of conscription?
Belkar follows Roy’s orders well enough, as long as Roy is ordering him to kill something (and Belkar doesn’t care too much just what). And I’m sure that Tarquin would be able to find good use for someone like Belkar, too. Though not necessarily in the regular troops.
Alignments of individuals can also be influenced by culture. There are probably more lawful evil people in societies ruled by a lawful evil dictator than there are in good-led lands.
I thought they lost it when Malack blew them off of it back in #849. I don’t remember them saying later that they recovered it.
Edit: Oh, and if they had it, wouldn’t they have used it to fly away from the explosion, instead of riding it out in the sarcophagus?
849 is the last we saw of that carpet. I posted just before the pyramid blew that I thought they’d ride it out of there ahead of the explosion. That didn’t happen, so I assume the carpet is lost to the story now.
Wouldn’t a mercenary most likely be True Neutral?