Universal Rules of Alignments

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First, Gannji and Enor are both True Neutral, though Gannji leans a little more Lawful and Enor leans a little more Chaotic.

Second, they were absolutely trying to kill Roy when Enor breathed lightning. A half-dragon's lightning breath does more lethal damage than 99% of the people in the world can withstand. However, remember that in the Empire of Blood, it would have been totally legal to kill Roy on the spot for asking about a legitimate bounty. The only reason it became an issue is because Kilkil "lost" the paperwork.

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Even through they want to kill Roy, they are not evil because of the location of their deeds. Does that means alignments are not universal as we expect? :smallconfused:

A) I am not sure what this thread is, do you want to go on discussing something Rich closed?

B) My personal conclusion to this is... Rich is simply wrong in his estimate his characters are actually True Neutral. Yes, he can decide that with Word of God for his work and thus the topic is over, yet I still disagree with his assessment here.
That is all I will ever say to this but to me, this is also what solves the discrepancy. In the context of this forum, the question has been settled and there is nothing more to add.

C) I do not know what the question "Is the alignment as universal as we expect?" means. Who is we? What is a "universal alignment"? What is "expected"?

It might be a case of:

"if it's not murder by the laws of the locals- then (since the locals believe their killing is justified) it's, morally, less bad- manslaughter rather than murder".

If a person has been raised in a society where certain killings are considered legally justified, then it isn't a case of "they knew it was wrong, and did it anyway".

Could be, at least.

Champions of Ruin does discuss the issue of behaviour accepted in one place but considered immoral in another.

He's saying why they would try to kill Roy without fear of being arrested (since a potential argument for why hey wouldn't try to kill Roy would be "they could get arrested").

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Originally Posted by martianmister

Even through they want to kill Roy, they are not evil because of the location of their deeds. Does that means alignments are not universal as we expect? :smallconfused:

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I think there is some misunderstanding:

As i see it, the fact that the bounty hunters would have had no legal problems with killing Roy was just an information, not at all meant as a proof for the neutral alignment

We only get to see a very small part of the bounty hunters' story, so with a neutral alignment they can do anything except maybe deeds that would be counted for as extremely good or evil.

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Originally Posted by hamishspence

It might be a case of:

"if it's not murder by the laws of the locals- then (since the locals believe their killing is justified) it's, morally, less bad- manslaughter rather than murder".

If a person has been raised in a society where certain killings are considered legally justified, then it isn't a case of "they knew it was wrong, and did it anyway".

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That's it. Sorry for my bad english.

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Originally Posted by hamishspence

If a person has been raised in a society where certain killings are considered legally justified, then it isn't a case of "they knew it was wrong, and did it anyway".

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If you're in a place where lethal force is considered an appropriate response to asking questions like that, then - well, you really should accept at least some responsibility for what happens when you ask questions like that.

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Originally Posted by Wikipedia

Ankh-Morpork does, however, have an extraordinarily high suicide rate, due mainly to the city's view on what constitutes suicide. For example, walking alone through the night-time alleyways of the Shades is suicide, as is asking for a short in a dwarf bar. It is very easy to commit suicide in Ankh-Morpork if you are not careful.

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I would venture that in the Empire of Blood, it is, as far as we've seen, practically impossible to not do something that makes it possible for someone to kill you legally.

Apparently entering a contest does it...

There is nothing in my statement that implied that trying to kill Roy wasn't an Evil act. Being legal does not makes something not Evil. True Neutral characters can (and often do) commit Evil acts from time to time.

I included the information simply to show that the bounty hunters were not operating wholly outside the ethical framework of the Empire of Blood. While it does not change the nature of their acts, there is a certain degree of "when in Rome" going on with their actions there. Would they have attacked Roy if it weren't legal to do so? Probably not. Therefore, it is not as indicative of their overall alignment as one might initially think. Because the comic contains so few scenes of a person's life, there is a heavy "selection bias" when trying to guess their alignments. My intent when writing them was to shoot for True Neutral, however.

That being said, starting a new thread on a topic that has been specifically locked is against the forum rules. Let's not see any more threads created to discuss this, OK?