SpoilerOn Mammalian Ethics
From the To-Be-Collected Works of Ketrak, Kobold Ambassador

It is with great fascination that I have learned of and documented during my travels the staggering amount of inconsistencies and misconceptions that riddle the societies of the mammalian races; while an individual dwarf or human may be counted on to be largely reasonable when dealt with in person and lead adequately through a particular thought or belief, their social structures as a whole can be counted on to effectively quash reason and perpetuate the sort of harmful thinking that prevents the individual from realizing its true purpose within society and society's true purpose for the individual. These demonstrably false — or at least easily argued — core concepts of mammalian thought range all the way from the loftiest realms of philosophy to the basest understanding of physical and arcane laws and serve as the basis for a great number of heuristics that are if not consciously shared by all at least widespread enough to inform mammalian behavior as a whole and, especially, govern their interactions with the other races.

Consider, as an instructive example, the nomenclature they choose to use when referring as a whole to those races that fall outside of whatever milieu of society the speaker considers "civilized": the savage races. Savage, indeed! Aside from the obvious connotative problems the word savage engenders — one is certainly likely to lend little credence to the opinion or sentient status of a species they consider savage as opposed to pastoral or, may the high lords of their ascending heavens banish the thought, simply different — it is so blatantly inaccurate as a descriptor for those races as a whole to tread the line between galling and humorous. Perhaps the lizardfolk, in their impermanent marsh homes and with their simple ethos of survival and reproduction, could be considered primitive, savage, but even the lowest of the goblinoids have cultures with laws, art, and governance, to say nothing of the oral traditions of the centaurs, or the clansongs of the merfolk, or of course the world's greatest and oldest historical records maintained by the kobold nations.

It is perhaps easy to dismiss this example as simple quibbling over a fundamentally irrelevant choice of word; perhaps the reader may think that a name is just a series of letters, that the dialectics I have alluded to matter only in the most superficial of ways and even then only as a matter of pride rather than as a truly powerful tool of propaganda and disinformation. However, words are the units of thought, the way in which abstract cognition becomes concrete action, and it is truly only the most deluded of thinking beings that refuses to acknowledge the power these mere collections of sound and symbol have over their user. If a bugbear is a monster, it is ethical and fair to slay it on sight; what matter is the life of such a beast? Nothing, and indeed less than nothing: failing to kill it when one reasonably could have places culpability of its further atrocities on the head of whoever chose not to end the rampaging of a monster. Savage, lesser, monster, evil... These are not so much words as thought-stoppers, giving false rectitude to whoever employs them against those they detest or fear or desire to maintain power over. It is immaterial that that bugbear may be a merchant or scout or simply lost; it is irrelevant that the lizardman that threatens with brandished spear is defending its home; no consideration is given to the gnoll seeking medicine for her ailing mate. They are monsters, inherently evil, and deserve death or the psychic death that is forced indoctrination into whatever society deigns to abolish and assimilate the lesser cultures. It is by means of symbols and speech that the mammalian races exert their true power over all others and organize the world into right and wrong, worthy and unworthy, Good and Evil.

Good and evil are at the very heart of mammalian hypocrisy. Consider the laughable moral frameworks they have erected around the sorcerous arts: magic is simply a force of the universe, a physical law like any other that is manipulated with arcane will rather than bodily exertion, completely without motivation, purpose, or intent. Even the most morally deluded monkey cannot convince itself that fire is evil because it can burn flesh; why, then, is negative energy and its manipulation inherently wrong, inherently Evil with an immutable capital, simply because it withers the same? Why is the same scrutiny not afforded to sorcery that addles or controls the mind? A spell that completely subsumes the will of the subject is rightly considered simply a tool that can be used for good or ill as the caster wills, but a spell that simply detects how close to death those the caster sees are is branded evil, wicked, useful only to those with malignity in the core of their being. Triage, apparently, is a concept both foreign and foul to the mammals.

This disconnect between intent and morality is baffling to me regardless of how long I choose to study it and theorize as to its nature. Oh, certainly I can see how it is used as a tool by the powerful to maintain their thrall over the powerless — and what an effective tool it is! — but what I fail to understand is an individual's ability to adhere to such self-evidently wrong and facile ideas. Were I a megalomaniac with interest in establishing some kind of personal or even specieal hegemony, I would certainly condition my subjects to hate and fear anything that could threaten my rule or that I found personally distasteful; such would be only pragmatic for a being with no scruples or interest in the well-being or dignity of others. What I cannot fathom is how such overtly, blatantly self-serving cultural mores stand up to even the most cursory scrutiny, nor the apparent lack of interest in engaging in such scrutiny without external prodding. How the downtrodden cling to the boot that crushes them with love, faith, and acceptance, even in the face of overwhelming evidence.

A thought experiment I find useful for demonstrating the necessity of intent to the nature of morality is what I think of as the parable of two wands: there exist, hypothetically, two magic devices; they were crafted by no-one, and simply have always been. One projects an exploding sphere of fire, capable of igniting most organic matter and even melting less hardy metals; the other turns corpses into mindless servants, animating them without in any way interacting with the souls of the deceased. Both have the capability to cause great harm, any would agree, and if pressed most would even admit either could be used to good purpose. The latter even moreso, as its capacity for creation (in the form of tireless unskilled labor or sending the dead to perform dangerous but simple tasks without risking harm to the living) far outstrips the former. If the rod of fire were used to murder a great number of innocents, the evil is housed in the wielder, not the tool; this much, almost all I have proposed the scenario to agree. If the rod of reanimation were used to defend the wielder's city from a rampaging army or mindless magical beast, I feel it is clearly and obviously if not a good act, at least one that is not in any way immoral; this is where I lose — at least temporarily — the agreement of many. Interestingly, if the second wand is changed to create golems from unliving (or even, often, deceased!) matter, however, the question of evil never even arises, despite golemeurgy requiring the summoning and enslavement of an elemental spirit to animate the golem's physical shell. Reusing a corpse, the conclusion then is, is evil, but ripping a sentient clump of matter from its home to pilot an enraged construct is not. Curious.

It is here that words again become important, and the deception at the core of inherent or objective "good" and "evil" is revealed. Those uneducated in the nature of magic claim, without justification, that reanimatory necromancy is simply inherently wrong, as is the creation of disease, the manipulation of negative energy, and even a handful of arbitrary abjurations and evocations. It just is. Many will invoke the commandments of some deity or other, and while this at least serves as a basis for that belief without begging the question, it ignores the fact that a god is not good just because it says it is, nor is it right simply because it is a god. There are a great number of gods, many of them truly abhorrent, and to accept an ethical framework simply because it is proffered by a more powerful being is foolish at best and dishonest at worst. However, it is those who do know enough about the nature of magic to be aware of the "aligned" spells that have most succumbed to the devious twisting of nomenclature; they use such sorcery's evil (or good, or chaotic) name as self-proving evidence of the objective nature of the (im)morality it represents. Such a spell is evil because it is an evil spell, and even if used for good that spell is still tainted by foulness. What they fail to address, and what I have yet to be presented with a good counterargument for, is that even within the fundamental nature of arcane reality, the property they describe as "evil" is just a physical law that is named such; in the same way as fire burns even if called ice, our descriptions of reality are simply concepts we apply to the universe to understand them and have no objective truth to them. Evil spells could have been called Delicious spells by the ancients when they were codifying arcane lore, and today's sages would argue that the existence of zombies proves the objectivity of flavor. It's all just words.

The divinations that reveal alignment are of particular interest to me, and a particular crux of my morally deconstructionist theories of magical law. Repeated uses of the same spell by the same or different mages typically reveal the same conclusion, and when they do not, it is reasonably explainable by a change of heart of the subject (people do change) or a mistake on the part of the caster. To me, though, it is this consistency that is the most damning evidence that whatever the spell sees, it is not an objective representation of the subject's moral fiber; my personal theory is that it instead detects what the subject thinks of itself, but that is largely irrelevant. Regardless, to make my reasoning clear to the hypothetical non-kobold audience, I will briefly explain the ascension of Kurtulmak (blessed be his barbed tail):

Many ages past, so many that even we, the world's preeminent historians, do not have clear numbers, the world was without both dragons and kobolds. It was Io, the Ninefold Dragon, who created the first true dragons; they were originally divine beings like Io himself, each with a different aspect of his personality. They were less powerful than he, however, and lacked his ability to divinely create; they desired such, and petitioned him for aid. Io gave them the knowledge they needed, but warned that using it would render them forever mortal, unable to return to the heavens and destined to eventually wither and die; the original dragons happily took this knowledge and departed for the world, each making itself a mate and as part of the process of so doing creating the first tribes of kobolds. We served them faithfully, taking up pick and spell to seek wealth from the earth for their pleasure and our purpose. Kurtulmak (hallowed be his impenetrable scales) was the first kobold created by the first dragon to use her new ability, and he lead his siblings with honor and glory. So faithfully did he and they serve that they were eventually released from that service to seek their own destiny, and with glee they did. They plumbed the soil and stone, harvesting, crafting, perfecting, and recording. By his peerless leadership and paramount sorcery, the first kobolds created a utopia, Darastrixhurthi. They were without equal in the fields they chose to pursue, and Darastrixhurthi was without equal in both its bounteousness and its perfect execution.

Indeed, it was this lack of an equal that would doom them, for jealousy is not solely the domain of mortals.

Garl the Deceiver, patron of the feckless gnomes, saw what Kurtulmak (champion of sorcerors) and his kin had created, and was outraged. The gnomes were to be the preeminent gemcutters in the mortal realm, the gnomes were to amass the most wealth, the gnomes were to outstrip all the other small folk. This was his belief, and when the gnomes themselves spent such time on games and jokes and japes and foolishness that the hardworking kobolds surpassed them in every respect, he decided to force his belief on reality in the way only a divinely-empowered despot can: he collapsed Darastrixhurthi with one wave of his gnarled hand, killing the kobolds to the last wyrmling, crushing them to the last egg. It was just a joke, he claimed. A prank, of the kind he was so well known for. He engendered a slaughter that to this day even Erythnul has been unable to match, a senseless act of bloodshed that must have made Nerull as jealous as he was delighted, and called it a joke. Few of the corpses sealed in what was once a thriving civilization were laughing.

Oh, the other gods were outraged, or claimed to be so. The most Good among them demanded an explanation and received no more than they already had, but none acted. The kobolds were not their children, so why should they be moved to do anything on their behalf? Pelor may claim to be the champion of all good people, Elhonna may say she protects all things that live, Heironeous believes himself to be not only the paragon of justice but its very incarnation, but did any of them show these traits? Did any of them truly prove themselves Good? They did not. It was not their death, not their injustice, not their problem. Punctilious disgust was the order of the day; action and fairness were not.

Eventually, it was Io himself that deigned to care. He brought the soul of Kurtulmak (may he mine forevermore) before him and offered a choice: Kurtulmak (all-watcher of all-watchers) could either recreate his society or be deified such that the kobolds would never again fear divine punishment without a guardian to champion them. It was no choice at all. Darastrixhurthi would remain buried and forgotten, paved with the bones of its builders, but the kobolds would have their god.

There are, of course, a great number of facts and details omitted for clarity and concision here, but the central thesis remains both true and indisputable. Even Jealous Garl and his craven priesthood do not deny the reality of his heinous actions, try to deflect and recontextualize it though they might. This is no mere legend, no folk tale for mewling hatchlings, it is a historical fact.

And yet. And yet! Any amount of divination and planar examination would reveal that Murderous Glittergold is inherently, immutably, objectively good. Not just good but Good. Jealous, petty, power-mad, deceitful, blood-soaked, genocidal, two-faced, a killer of children and the unborn, but Good. What sane morality would allow those facts to be simultaneously true? Even if he had ever made any attempt at making amends (he has not), or done great selfless works since then (there have been none), or even simply expressed remorse (ha!), how could such a being, such an unparalleled murderer, be considered good? No mortal who caused such suffering and death would be given such latitude. No other deity, even those called evil or who call themselves evil, has ever committed actual specicide. He is a laughing butcher, but the magic says he is good, so we accept it without questioning what it measures; his priests, such as they can be called, have access to the domain they call Goodness, yet can cast by his grace through that domain a whirling barrier of razor-sharp swords. Where is the inherent goodness in summoning a couatl, what is to prevent Aid being used in support of treachery or evil?

There is none, and there is nothing. It is all just words. Words the mammals and their gods wrap themselves in to avoid truly confronting morality. True goodness exists within selflessness and work and respect, not within a cackling killer simply because he claims to contain it.

It is worth mentioning at this point that nothing I have discussed here is an inherent failing of the mammalian races; most can be made to understand the truth of things if that truth is framed in the right way, and those that cannot usually only can't because they've been so thoroughly deceived by others. I do suspect that it is in the nature of social traits the mammalian humanoids share that allow these lies and misconceptions to both spread and take such firm root, but there is no reason they cannot free themselves from the shackles of deceit and false certainty if shown how. Indeed, some have come to the same conclusions on their own; my thoughts are hardly unique within the vastness of our reality. It is only with the disestablishment of self-interested power structures, both mortal and transcendent, that a truly valid ethical and moral system can be created and understood, and this is not solely the ability of the kobolds. We are simply better equipped to make these realizations, with our comparatively great tendency towards collectivism, altruism, and unity versus the surface-dwelling mammals combined with the factual reality of the suffering our great race has endured.

I find it interesting that the greatest mammalian allies I have made towards the ultimate deconstruction of traditionally flawed mammalian mores have been among the dwarves; while they have always shared a great deal with our people in terms of philosophy, tendencies, and simple proximity, they also share many of those same things with the gnomes that I, even in my station, struggle to communicate with without encountering their blunt refusal to see the truth or even eventual violence. Perhaps the gnomes themselves could be seen as victims of Garl of the Thousandfold Atrocities in a certain light, though it disgusts me even to consider it. These, though, are musings for another time, I feel.