- -----Original Message-----
From: the Falcon
Date: Tuesday, February 23, 1999 8:43 AM
Subject: Re: [BIRTHRIGHT] - Alignment falwed?
>
>If you want some examples of CN characters in the AD&D game,
>check out any mercenary captain. 9 of 10 times it'll be a CN.
>Some merchants and wizards are CN as well. Take Orthien Tane
>for example. Is he insane? I reckon not. What about that
>renegade Khinasi necromancer? All different approaches to CN.
>

Machiavelli's warning against mercenaries must never have been so true as in
your campaign. Rather than repeat my own descriptions of lawfulness once
more, I shall quote the PHB, "Chaotic Neutral characters believe there is no
order to anything ... they tend to follow whatever whim strikes them at the
moment. Such characters have been known to cheerfully, and for no apparent
reason, gamble away everything they have on the roll of a single dice."
What uniformly bad behavior for an officer! Where is the troop discipline?
Does he cheerfully throw away men's lives in battle? Does he lead his
company of men away from the army over a petty slight, or on a whim?

Many guidebooks were written in the age when mercenary captains were common,
and they advocate quite lawful behavior, considering risk-taking and
ill-discipline to be great vices.

I will post a second note to deal with the illusion of a contradiction for
those who think of Cuiraécen and would argue on this point.

Kenneth Gauck
c558382@earthlink.net