Letter to Lady White

To Lady White, Exalted Justiciar:

I am writing to request you to rethink matters in regards to the recent policy update on recruitment. As such, I've included a rather lengthy presentation on the rationale behind my stance, but you may skip to the end if you so wish, Lady White.

It's theorized that a humanoid's body is made of the four primordial elements - fire, water, earth, and air. And indeed, through various methods from alchemical examinations to inquiry with eldritch beings from beyond the stars, this much can be confirmed. Soulless bodies were even made in secret, by various innovative necromancers seeking to break through the barrier of life and death itself. However, there's one ingredient that isn't so readily available: The soul itself. Two non-primordial elements, that of positive and negative energy, are mixed with some of the primordial elements in the creation of a soul, the essence travelling through the astral plane to reach the womb of a mother, forming a newborn. As the process itself requires both positive and negative energy to co-exist in harmony, it's impossible by mortal magic to create a soul from scratch.

The amount of positive and negative energy that happens to form a soul is rumored to determine where the soul is likely to go. A soul with more positive energy is more likely to be born to the union of two parents that also have a shining, bright soul, while a soul with more negative energy is... Well, those are less picky about where they wish to go. There are ceremonies that clerics perform onto newly conceived mother that supposedly bless the child in hope to attract a soul more inclined toward positive energy, but those are often treated as superstitions at best. (But of course, all of that is bollocks.)

This creates an unfortunate situation of racism in various humanoid races - orcs, for example, are actually fairly neutral in term of their soul's positive and negative balance (Even more so than elves, who have a tendency to breed within their own bloodline and thus have a much wider variance; See Sir Kromwell's "On Heredity and Elven Supremacy"), but leans extremely heavily toward fire in their four primordial parts, both in body and spirit. This causes an overwhelming aggression in orcs, which often become mistranslated by other races as sadistic or evil tendencies, and rumor of orcs being a race "born to evil" spreads. And it doesn't help that Gruumsh, the One-Eyed Tyrant of Orckind, occasionally "hand-craft" a few souls sufficed with negative energy from his divine realm's essence and hurl them toward promising orc tribes.

In truth, most mundane humanoid beings all start out at a fairly balanced state - of roughly the equal amount of positive and negative energy, plus or minus a few arbitrary units (Regrettably, no scholars have come forth with a standard in the measure of a person's soul). Even those "Born under the evil sign, out of wedlock, into an accursed bloodline" is only few degrees leaning toward negative energy at best. The amount of positive and negative energy within an infant's soul do not matter in the long run; Some could say that children are born in a blank state, ready for both good and evil, no matter what their race is.

Of course, we'll have to talk about nuture as well. And that's where unfortunately things take a turn; Each action we perform has a connotation of good and evil, which naturally attracts the ambient positive and negative energy. Worse yet, there are no real measure of how "Good" or how "Evil" each act is, and the amount each individual act changes the soul seems almost arbitrary at times. It's generally understood that a murder in cold blood for no real reason tend to attract more negative energy into a person's soul than not picking up your pet drake's excrement with mage hand, though. (Shame on you, Steve.)

What does this mean, in a grander scheme of things? Nothing much, it seems - even a soul brighter than the sun itself can fall with a snap of finger into a murderous rampage, staining their soul with ink darker than starless night. And even a soul from the depth of a moonless sea can burst with brilliance enough to rival the sun itself, in time of need. All it seems to affect is the detection magic that measures a person's soul, of their "good and evil" - their component of positive and negative energy. This detection magic is hard to fool outside the realm of specialized spells or equipment, and the innate ability from many artifacts to judge their wielder seems all but impossible to fool by mortal power.

... This is where the meat of the matter is. As we've established, a person's soul and the state of positive and negative balance within is not sufficient evidence to accept or reject a potential recruit or acolyte into the ranks of the various churches of good. Moreso than a person's soul, we should strive to look into a person's future instead. A simple detection magic to replace the investigation normally required for each recruit is preposterous and foolhardy. That, and there are no reason to exclude those of rumored "evil" race to our ranks - I must exceptionally protest the exclusion of half-orc from the consideration of recruits. They are every bit as capable of the task as any others.

Please, reconsider.

Signed, Marius of Ivory Bishop.