"Say the words."

"..."

"The words of dread and incomprehensible power. The words that predate Pharasma's grand experiment and with it this universe itself. The words that will give Hell a headache and me a cool story to recruit other advocates with. Say them.

You too, dude with the eyes. You know it's the correct interpretation of Nimmer and whatnot. And Myra, I assume you're on board with this?"

Inh sits back and leads the chorus of four voices while smiling and gesturing like an orchestra's conductor probably does.

"FOR CHAOS!"

"Subject to terms and conditions. Void where rendered unnecessary by law. Axis maintains that the Court need not and should not determine the alignment of Benediction to resolve the case at bar."

"Spoilsport."

Vulpes rubs his temples to assuage the headache.

"That is unsupported in law, Your Honor.

There is some authority that, as a general statement, disregarding divine commands is more Chaotic than Evil. But Elysium's argument simply does not engage with the more specific precedent. Trading in souls contributes to sidestepping these trials, and it is primarily Evil, not Chaotic. Erecura, having interfered with the appointed judgment, was assigned to the plane set aside for Lawful Evil.

As for in re Alighieri, it is true that there were other points for Good in that decision. Few cases are like this one, turning on a single specific question. It is hardly surprising that Alighieri was not another such exception. Nevertheless, the Court did adopt the Goodness of a correct sorting as one of its reasons in favor, and that proposition remains good law.

In short, it is Evil to disregard this divine command. We are all familiar with the statement that it is Evil to "upend that sorting which is among the great purposes of Creation by disconnecting planar destination from character." I believe the original formulation came from Nirvana v. Boneyard, but nearly every trial involving Malediction repeats it by rote, and it has been quoted to describe interferences from soul sales to creating a shabti. Many such cases."

"For those advocates who disagree, are you asking me to overrule precedent? Particularly regarding Lawful Evil casters of Malediction-- did earlier courts err in failing to rule that they were in fact Chaotic?"

"And Malediction follows the caster's current alignment. If casting it turned people Chaotic, Hell's mortal agents would quickly lose the ability to send it souls directly."

"Not seeing the problem there."

"That question is not before this Court. We are not tasked with maintaining a balance between Law and Chaos, merely with judging what is Chaotic.

Nevertheless, Hell is correct that that shift usually does not occur. A Lawful Evil caster generally remains Lawful Evil and future Malediction targets retain the same destination. Is this an error?"

"Yes! If the alignment is based on disobeying Pharasma's authority, that's absolutely more Chaotic than it is Evil.

And this dude was trying so hard to get Benediction ruled Evil, it'd be hilarious if he cost Hell its ability to kidnap people."

"To be clear, my question is meant to communicate that I'm not likely to overrule that much precedent. It is asking whether that means you lose."

"You could always rule that it's not about Pharasma's opinion. It's only Hell that thinks that matters, anyway. But if it is about going along with how the Powers want things to Be, that's definitely just Law and has nothing to do with Good. Nimmer, Earendil, et cetera."

"More precisely, even if the Court wishes to prioritize the judgment-avoiding aspect of Malediction, as compared to the suffering-causing aspects, this would not mean that every caster is Chaotic.

It is relatively rare for Malediction to be cast as part of a Lawful decision process or in obedience to Lawful authority. When it is simply revenge or a kidnapping, it often is a Chaotic act. In re No One, 1998. If the Court ruled that Malediction is Chaotic, it would not be declaring a new rule. It would be adding a factor to an existing test, with no need to rule that specific cases or practices are wrongly decided.

And of course, on those occasions where it is cast for Lawful reasons, the Court could consider that a mitigating factor the same as with any other question. So while it is a Chaotic act, it is not necessarily so Chaotic as to immediately change the caster's alignment. That would be a contextual question. And because the context of various Malediction cases is not before the Court, there is no need to rule against the previous decisions."

"It would inevitably mean that some of them were wrongly decided. Casters of Malediction are usually very strongly Evil aligned, but there is no such correlation toward Law or Chaos. We may assume that adding a new factor pointing consistently in one direction would have changed the alignment in some fraction of cases."

"Yes, but that is not more true here than it is with every proposed change to a legal rule. This does not prevent the Court from evolving its standard when necessary."

After an amount of deliberation that could just as easily have been an immediate answer or a week and a day, the judge speaks.

"Malediction is not before this Court. Anything further on the claimed Chaotic alignment of Benediction, or of developing it?"

"The Court is persuaded that the decedent's act in researching Benediction is decisive in this case. It was his broadest-scale action with effect on the most people, both as he perceived it and in all likelihood in actual outcome.

As to the alignment of that action, the outcome and the intent may diverge. It is undisputed that the decedent's intent was primarily Good, and that he believed the results would be actively in service of Good. Nevertheless, most of the predictions regarding possible outcomes were argument unsupported by admissible evidence. The opinions of advocates, however well-argued, are not substantive evidence. Hell was the only party to attempt to submit non-speculative outside prediction compliant with Tarot Readers Ass'n v. Merrell Dow, 2786. In the absence of conflicting experts, the Court takes Hell's economic predictions as unopposed. At least some of this evidence was credible. In particular, the Court finds it credible that the existence of a completed Benediction spell would result in substantially more sold souls. The Court finds that this is sufficient to establish some Evil effects, and does not believe it necessary to determine the credibility of the predictions regarding Evil in the general population.

Good intent and mixed results would ordinarily be an appropriate setting for a Leurdorfell balancing. However. Most of the claimed Evil results, with the exception of usurping Pharasma's judgments, were not known to the decedent until this trial. The Court does not believe him to have been deliberately indifferent or otherwise culpable in failing to realize every effect of his project. This Court sorts mortals based on their actions as a reflection of their character, and in this case the decedent's character is best represented by his motivations and attempts at mitigating those Evil effects that did occur to him.

The decedent did, however, act in full consciousness that he was usurping this Court. Many cases use language associating this with Evil, but few directly turn on that question. I am persuaded that this does, in fact, tend less toward Evil than toward Chaos. The decedent's act of developing Benediction was Chaotic Good, and the spell itself will very likely be fundamentally Chaotic for the same reason.

I do not hold that Malediction is also Chaotic. That question is not before the Court. Moreover, dicta from in re Sophia, 0422, which I presume Hell would have brought to the Court's attention if I appeared inclined to make that ruling, has observed that "Malediction was permitted by treaty and hence is not Chaotic." I make no holding on whether Sophia has sufficiently differentiated Malediction from the case at bar in agreeing with Elysium's argument FOR CHAOS.

I am aware that whether to apply treaties as binding law in this court beyond their explicit terms is a matter of some contention as described in in re Postal. The parties may feel free to debate whether this case and Sophia are taking a position on that issue, if in some future case they ever feel the need for a sixth layer of recursion.

The decedent Harrow is Chaotic Good, and will be sorted to Elysium. It is so ordered."

The judge and the Harrow immediately dissolve back into swirling light. Harrow's expression is obscured by the glow. The judge of course does not have one.

"Thank you Your Honor," Vulpes says to the fading judge. Sharp teeth flash behind a grin.

"Why are you gloating? Isn't this the exact opposite of your bullshit?"

"Of course. I made no arguments Hell would wish to see fail. Absent a serious chance of obtaining a ruling that Benediction is Evil, I suspected the way to obtain a ruling that it was Chaotic was to try anyway and let Chaos be the refutation. Simple and not at all suspicious. It was a bit of a relief to see a representative from Elysium today."

"And you'd want Chaos because? Don't bother. You're pulling the same trick you tried on Harrow. Maybe I'll track him down and tell him that, since I can do that now and you can't."

"Because no offense, but Chaotic Good isn't really a threat. You're not an opponent. You're just there, being too Chaotic to accomplish anything worth doing and too Good to try. Our enemy is over there." He gestures widely toward  the angel, who fixes him with a stare. "If this costs Heaven the Lawfulness of some of its mortal tools before they learn of this, my Lord will at least value the spite. And if in the long term Lawful Good must treat Benediction as a tradeoff instead of a straightforward rescue, if it becomes that little bit less lightly performed, that's only a small victory for Hell. But a victory nonetheless.

So I'm not going to thank you for your service. If you hadn't been looking for reasons to argue Chaotic Good, I could have dropped the right hints until Nirvana did. Or accepted the suspicion and argued it myself. You did not make Hell's second choice very much more certain, only helped it occur more smoothly. Don't blame yourself. If I couldn't get this much use out of an Elysian, I'd turn in my bar card and become a bioethicist."