Is anyone really EVIL anymore?

No probs. Ok, point by point;

Vampires: Entirely as maleable as humans. Potentially more likely to become evil, due to possessing more power, but the same could be said for meta-humans. Powers over darkness do not immediately equate to being evil. No link with 'god' required, not everything is always tied to religion.
Leon, as my personal example, has a code that he sticks to. While he is very easily considered 'Bad' (i.e. doesnt obey the law, disregard for authority) he's not evil. For instance, he would never harm a child (within reason, freaky cyber-christ children that tried to kill him would get dealt with) and he only steals very important things (he has a well stocked Swiss Bank Account for everything else)

Zombies; Magical zombies, while frequently the shambling dead. Technically just the animated dead, may or may not have their/a mind attached. If so, then they are the same as any human or sentient being.

Werewolves. Not always cursed, can be born as well. Not always evil, either. Same arguement for vampires, power corrupts etc. Not always. Fully down to interpretation.

Demon/Daemon. Again, different definitions exist. Demons are another stereotype that gets done to death. Demons and spirits in other mythos' other than Greco/Roman and Christian ones were equally portrayed as good and evil, as far as I know. Again, common perception and over-use effects portrayal.

Mobster: Uhm...usually, yes. Not always 'evil' though. Greedy likely, doesn't necessarily mean evil.

Merc: Again, would heavily contest that. Just being a merc does not instantly forbid people from having a moral code. While rare, again with the whole power thing, moral mercs are still both potential and real. It all comes down to the people.

Peacebringer: Unclearly defined, yes. Amoral? Uhm, not really. Both Sunstorm and Shadowstar, while pretty focussed on what is best for their kind, wouldn't be Heroeside if they were amoral. They'd do things that jeopardised human lives, to the point of their race being lumped in with the Rikti as 'Potentiall dangerous aliens'. So, amoral gets a no from me.
Nictus, now, I'd say are amoral or just plain evil.

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Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

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Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

Lycanus ..i am happy to defer to your scholarly knowledge .. the only points i would like to make is when i am talking about werewolves i am just speaking about them , not shapeshifters in general ..and by Mercs i mean they pay us we will kill people for you guys.. twas why is used the ther Merc , not hired soldier.

Hmn, another chunk of my ignorance jsut got cured.

You do realise I will now be bugging you for background knowledge on stuff like this if I ever get a character concept that falls into this sort of realm?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

Well, I was going to post in this before it turned into a long moral discussion. Now I'm not sure discussing individual characters is on topic any more.

But personally, I don't see most of my characters as evil. Most of them are motivated by injustices they have seen in the past to lose faith in "morality" and attempt to remake the world in their image. The best example of this is my main villain, Silver Bolt. He was born into a Mob family, and his parents were betrayed by the Family and turned over to corrupt police, who killed them. He was then taken in by the Boss and raised by him. He resents his "father", but not openly. He was trained as a hit man, and has killed quite a few people, with only a few being "innocents", in his eyes. When given the chance to claim the powers of a metahuman, he took it with the intention of freeing himself from the control of others. But he's quite capable of embarking on a campaign of conquest as well, to turn the world into his vision of "Utopia".

The thing is, being somewhat aware of his own nature, and facing off constantly against the heroes who ended up with some of the powers he wanted, he's come to realize that if he really did go that far, he'd be no better than those who were trying to control him. Or at least, in my own version of the stories separate from this game. He's got enough moral character to recognize that he is in danger of losing that aspect of himself, and that in fact the heroes are themselves pretty strong characters that can resist the corrupting nature of power themselves. So this reestablishes a faith in individuals in him, even if he still can't believe in mankind as a whole. It's sort of a redemption story, so he ends up as somewhat of a Rogue.

My werewolf character isn't evil at all. There is no curse or animal spirit within him, he just looks like a wolf. And in fact, there are hints that he may be lying about getting the form by being bitten by a werewolf. He's a wrestler, and the monster werewolf act is just an act, at least to the extent that if he IS a werewolf, he's totally in control of it and fully sentient and aware of the consequences of his actions. He will defend himself if attacked, and in the Rogue Isles one is often attacked, but he's never actually killed anyone. Hurt them badly, put then in the hospital, yes, but no one's ever died.

Likewise, my robot character isn't evil for much the reasons described. It's not sentient, just following its programming to continue functioning and provide itself with energy. It just so happens that that energy is human life. It DOES have a demonic spirit trapped within itself, but that spirit is weak, and probably not conscious of its actions either, at least not yet. Early on, the robot did decide that feeding recklessly on life energy would cause conflict with the "authorities", and so it took a more measured and less fatal approach to feeding from then on. This may pave the way for redeption later, although ultimately humans mean nothing to it. I think it could be said that it has no desire to inflict suffering, though, unless the demon starts to awaken somewhat more. (And turns out to be a major demon and not just some unlucky little minor spirit)

The one character I have that is TRULY evil, though, is a wizard from medieval times who experimented with using magic to control and torture people. He finally found a way to switch bodies with a victim, and used it to trade bodies with a dragon. He's completely cruel and sadistic, however, when he interacts without people, he is polite and charming, sometimes unnervingly so. It comes, I think, from my liking villains that are not the stereotypical mustache-twirling villain, but instead are smart, manipulative, and most of all Genre Savvy. He's not going to tick off allies just to prove that he's evil, or kill a few otherwise useful minions to enforce fear. He's just going to jump you while your back is turned, drain you of all information and power you have to offer, and make you disappear forever never to be found...

I suppose the darkest example I can come up with, but not one that is truly evil, is another robot character, a cyborg transformed from a young girl by Crey. As my main character, she was able to escape and stabilize the process, but her greatest fear is that the machine will overpower her and she won't be able to stop it. That happened to her Praetorian version, the process completed, and her mind was completely "assimilated". While she has gone completely insane, and there really isn't enough left of her human mind to be conscious anyway, there is still some part of her that is aware of what she is doing and has to watch as her body goes around killing people. Needless to say, she's not a character I play often, as it's not a very nice mindset to get into.

Really, that's kind of what the werewolf mythology is about, although in this case I'm making it technological instead of mystical.

sorry Jade we did kind of stray ..but we can all blame FFM, vampires is always a fun topic to rant about.

so getting back to characters ..

My toons that are evil , and those that are bad but not evil.

My MM Necro/FF Ravenna Krone.. is evil , she is a medical doctor and a modern day necromancer , and is a totally nasty bit of work, she will go to any lengths to further her research, and has a number of arrest warrants outstanding from murder and maiming by means of medical experiments. She views people as material and considers herself bound by no man’s rules. Note she is not insane, she recently did some work for the KG supergroup as a medical expert , she can function perfectly well in the normal world , she just chooses to do evil.

My Brute DM/WP Blood Ghoul .. is evil, he is a ghul, based on the djinni myths, a feaster on the dead , a corrupt being, who’s aim is self-gratification and sees the world as a prize to be seized , and its people as things to be enslaved.

My MM ninja/dark Hieronymus Crovas ..is evil, he is a summoner of demons and has made many a dread pact with them, sacrificing innocents to pay his debts. (( his ninja are in fact demon possessed humans that he has enslaved ))


The rest are, well, villains, in that they are criminals, My MM thugs/poison Archibald Vyllain.. basically is east end gangster drug dealer. My VEAT Spider Operative Thrice , is an amoral thug , My VEAT Widow Katipo, is a follower of Lord Recluse, a minion. While the rest are just character who live in RI and have fallen into unlawful way, some only being counter as criminals because they have broken RL laws.

Interesting, I always assume that most folklore is common knowledge but that could just be me making assumptions again. I love folklore, it would explain why I have three Sidhe characters, a werewolf and two revenants. Hey ho.

Although I hadn’t intended this to be a discussion on what is evil, I guess that’s really what this is all about. Frankly, I have been having a whale of a time on a new character who without even RPing, I know is completely evil. However, I had no idea how I knew this so wanted to get other people’s perceptions on how they play their ‘evil’ characters. The other question I wanted to try and answer was whether such a character had a place in Union RP or whether he would come across as just another snarling, insane barbarian that ended up on a lot of ignore lists. Playing a cliché is just too easy sometimes and Rogues seem to be constantly in favour.

So far, I seem to have been able to narrow his ‘evil’ down to a few criteria:

1) He knows right from wrong. A bomb doesn’t ruminate over who it is going to kill (unless it’s in Dark Star) and the same goes for a robot programmed to destroy its targets. Evil seems to indicate choice, of knowing the difference between what is acceptable behaviour and what is not and choosing to behave in a way that is deemed illegal or immoral.

2) He doesn’t mitigate the acts with any sort of explanation or rationale. A soldier kills people as part of his job but his moral choice has been made by his commanding officer. Likewise, a vampire (seeing as they are the monster of choice in this thread so far) can point to their need for blood as being the reason why they have to eat people. These almost relieve the character of the moral burden of their choice and in the case of the vampire can make them a sympathetic character rather than a monster. Whereas real evil seems to know full well what they are doing and offer no explanation or justification for doing so other than that was what they wanted to do.

3) He enjoys it. This is a tricky one. I was going to add a fourth point: Insanity trumps everything, but Pyralith isn’t insane. I think there is a fine line between the cackling villain who laughs as he cuts up his victims and the illicit thrill of doing something you know is ‘wrong’. Real insanity has a disjointed perception of reality whereas an ‘evil’ character is fully aware of their actions and why they are doing them. Where is the line between a sane person choosing to do evil and the person who is mentally ill? It seems to be a fine line but I would argue that an insane person has the recourse of being declared ‘unwell’ and not ‘evil’.

It seems that being truly evil without crossing the line into insanity is a tricky one to walk. Cliches abound when it comes to villains so trying to get the balance right is going to be a real struggle. I shall have to try harder. Regardless of his choices, I don’t see any reason to remain unsociable as was discussed earlier in the thread. An archetypal mad genius would probably be reclusive but I don’t see why someone with the above qualities could not socialise. Hmmm… now I’m rambling but I’ve certainly got a lot to think about…

But what if the creature is sapient but is so alien we really don't know if they have emotions like ours? Do we really know they are enjoying it when the kill us with abandon? Since most stories on this planet are written by human authors, we, the authors and audiences, define what evil is. Evil is a humanly framed concept.

I might be revolted by the larvae of a parasitic wasp that lays eggs in caterpillars but is that really evil? Stuff like that happens all the time in nature, so red in tooth and claw. Or to strike more closely to home, the xenomorphs in the Alien movies, or similar creatures in Dead Space. Are they evil or just fulfilling their biological function? Are Cthulhu and other Lovecraftian horrors really evil, or just some hyperspatial kids thoughtlessly driving their bikes through the ant nest we call the Earth? I'm sure rabbits and cows, if they could think, would view us as horrific monsters--shades of Chiken Run.

But this repeats things and takes us back into the discussion about vampires being automatically evil or just a predator on humans.

That is ignoring the point, I think, which is that evil requires a choice to do something you know is wrong.

The alien isn't, in it's own view, evil if it does not consider what it's doing to be wrong.

From an outside view, it may be classed as evil.

Evil is subjective.