"The fuck are you doing here?" an azata asks an archon.

"I wanted to see what argument you could possibly make."

"Ahem."

"The Court is not allowed to question the motivations of attorneys as long as they make a good-faith effort towards defending the claim that the decedent is a member of their particular alignment, Boneyard v. Abyss -2362. It's good law."

"And... do you?"

"I accept Hell's argument that Tar-Baphon is Lawful and Nirvana's argument that Tar-Baphon is Good. Therefore he's Lawful Good. QED."

Eyeroll. 

The judge turns to the azata. "Are you speaking for Elysium?"

"Nirvana. I'm part of the Nirvana-Elysium Lawyer Exchange Program."

(The azata in question was a defense attorney in life. He was executed when he refused to violate attorney/client privilege upon command of the king and in order to prevent his client from committing more murders. After a hard-fought trial, he made Chaotic Good and immediately began Nirvana-lawyer training.) 

"The entire side of Good shows its typical contempt for the rules of this court--"

"Enough. We'll hear from the Abyss and Hell about the decedent's systemic alignment, and then Nirvana and"-- eyeroll-- "Heaven can"-- sigh-- "make their case for non-Evil."

"Trying to take over the world so that all mortals can be crushed under your iron fist is Lawful Evil. This is well-established-- in re Arawn 324 is merely one example."

"While the Abyss agrees that trying to take over the world is Lawful Evil, we propose that Tar-Baphon fails several of the items in the balancing test established in in re Flagg. Tar-Baphon worked with mind-controlled undead--"

"In re Arawn addresses the undead situation. Having a mind-controlled undead army is itself Neutral on the Law/Chaos axis."

"Not quite. In re Arawn presents a test: is the decedent's use of a mind-controlled undead army because they can't bear the possibility of disobedience-- Lawful-- or is it because they can't or don't want to set up the structures that would allow them to use ordinary soldiers-- Chaotic. The Abyss argues it's the latter. The decedent's use of Chaotic species such as orcs provides further evidence.

"In re Flagg points out the central issue at hand. Taking over the world is Lawful Evil if and only if the decedent attempts to establish rule of law, meaningful state capacity, a civil service, or otherwise a 'genuine state.' The decedent reliably showed no interest in establishing a genuine state. Areas he ruled continued to select their own rulers in the traditional manner, except that Tar-Baphon killed the rulers if they didn't provide tribute. His primary influence on the life of the peasants was allowing orcs and undead to maraud without consequence."  

"Pillaging was a traditional way of paying soldiers at the time, common even for Lawful Good forces like the Shining Crusade. The deliberate decision to allow his soldiers to maraud shouldn't count against Tar-Baphon's Law. Further, respect for traditional forms of governance is Lawful, Erastil v. Desna."

"The Abyss also thinks the rest of the decedent's conduct is enlightening. Hell has presented no evidence he adhered to a personal code of honor. He kept oaths when convenient and broke them when inconvenient. His pursuit of vengeance against Aroden reflects a traditionally Chaotic area of concern--"

"Vengeance against those who have wronged you is far from a Chaotic-only concern."

"The deliberate use of threats to disincentive particular behavior is Lawful. The decedent's unreasoning hatred of Aroden, in the Abyss's opinion, is Chaotic."

"This seems to me to address the main points," says the Judge. "Nirvana, you're up."

"While Nirvana doesn't disagree that much of the decedent's behavior is best construed as Evil, Nirvana believes that there are a number of mitigating factors this court should take into account when deciding the decedent's final destination."

"Come the fuck on."

Yeah, he honestly agrees here. 

"Much of the decedent's behavior-- including turning into a lich, many of his conquests, and the battles against the Shining Crusade and other adventurers attempting to kill him-- were motivated by the genuine and justifiable fear of a Chaotic Evil afterlife. Nirvana considers this to be a major mitigating factor."

Tar-Baphon remembers the moment he was first powerful enough for his alignment to be read and it came up Chaotic Evil. The sick feeling in his stomach; the flashes of everything he'd read about the Abyss through his mind, now with himself in the position of the victim; the desperate hope that maybe if he changed he could make at least the Maelstrom, but then he'd have to give up-- give up everything-- safety and power and knowledge-- but there was a way out, if he was clever and ruthless enough, he didn't have to die-- 

"Do we have to list off all the case law? Nirvana has made that argument hundreds of times and not once has the Court found it legitimate."

"With respect, Nirvana feels those precedents were wrongly decided. It is well-established case law that many Evil acts, if committed under threat of torture, are Neutral at worst. How much more so, then, if the torture is potentially infinite? If we accept that it is not Evil to murder an innocent if you have a legitimate and well-grounded fear of being tortured for days or weeks, surely it is not Evil to become an undead-- something which, after all, causes no direct harm to any being-- because you have a legitimate and well-grounded fear of being tortured for millennia."  

"Not the precedent."

"This court has overturned precedent before, in extreme situations. 'An incorrect sorting in the past doesn't justify incorrect sortings in the future,' Hell v. Cayden Cailean." 

"I hate Hell v. Cayden Cailean."

"Is Tar-Baphon really the decedent you want to use as your test case here?"

"I argue the case that's in front of me, as do we all.

"Nirvana further argues that the decedent's actions during the Shining Crusade are Neutral at worst. The decedent had a well-justified fear that Iomedae and the other members of the Shining Crusade would kill him, which would consign him to, again, an eternity of torture. Self-defense is not murder."

"Iomedae was trying to kill him because he was trying to take over the world."

"Self-defense is a mitigating factor in cases of homicide even if the decedent is committing an Evil act at the time, in re: Ker." 

"Ker is about dealing drugs, you disingenuous snake-tailed fuck, you can't possibly be arguing that that applies to world conquest especially when Iomedae would have respected a surrender--"

"Given Iomedae's stated commitment to destroying Evil, the decedent had a well-justified belief that she would not accept his surrender, particularly since his continued unlife is dependent on him being an lich."

I GUESS EMOJI. 

Yeah, it was pretty obvious that 'Iomedae accepts surrenders' is absolute bullshit, at least when it came to people who were trying to take over Avistan. 

"As a key member of the Whispering Way, the decedent helped thousands of people become undead and avoid dire fates in the Evil afterlives. Although Pharasma considers this action to be Evil, the decedent's motivations were purely altruistic. He sincerely believed that unlife is superior to life, because the undead don't know pain and fear, and acted to bring this state to as many people as possible. Eventually, he hoped to end all life and leave only the undead, who would have no risk of going to Hell, Abaddon, or the Abyss--"

"Destroying the world out of negative utilitarianism is also Evil, I was literally there last time you defended a Rovagug cultist with this argument."

The azata smiles. "Technically, no! The decedent's plan was that sentient beings would continue, as a different and superior form of life. This court has historically found behavior of this sort to be Neutral-- see Lykos v. Parker."

"I think that turning everyone into dinosaurs is a little bit different than turning everyone into undead!"

"Only if this court continues its unwarranted bias against a perfectly legitimate form of existence, namely, unlife."

YEAH. For a Chaotic Good entity this azata is surprisingly right on. 

"What is unlife, really? It is simply continuing your existence on the Material Plane in a different form after your death. Truly, how is it different from Immonhiel or Pulura, both of whom maintain multiple incarnates on the Material? Is the difference that neither Immonhiel nor Pulura were born on the Material? Or that they maintain multiple incarnates instead of a single one? Neither of those intuitively reflects on the fundamental Goodness of the action. And even if this court concludes that, after your death, you can live on any plane you weren't  born on, making an honest mistake about such a complex issue hardly makes someone Evil."

"You are sufficiently good at twisting words that you should work in the soul contracts department."

Smile. "Thank you.

"I would like to direct the court to the creation of the Mirrorgrave, which I believe is indicative of the decedent's true nature."

A child to whom Tar-Baphon was kind, long ago, when it was costless to be kind-- you're smart, you know, there's no reason you couldn't hang a cantrip, if you were less nervous, here, let me show you--

Tar-Baphon in prison, a decade later, and the child is a young man now, although still so young to Tar-Baphon's millennia-old eye. Tar-Baphon doesn't even recognize him, had entirely forgotten that afternoon, but he sneaks Tar-Baphon the keys and poisons his family and Tar-Baphon is free--

Tar-Baphon tracks the boy's family down and kills every single one of them, slow and lingering, so that they know what happens when you imprison Tar-Baphon, so that they know what happens when you hurt the boy who is Tar-Baphon's--

The boy, his shadow, eternally loyal, the only person it is safe to relax around, the only person to whom Tar-Baphon can show his underbelly and expect not to have it stabbed for his trouble--

And the boy is dead, and he died saving Tar-Baphon, and he's in the Abyss being tortured because he was loyal, and Tar-Baphon can give up everything he has for a diamond but next time there might not be a diamond and it is not acceptable that this could happen, Tar-Baphon will shake the foundations of the universe itself before he lets the boy get hurt. Tar-Baphon has long ago stopped being the sort of person who can think friend, much less love, but the boy hears it when Tar-Baphon shows him the cloak and tells him about the souls captured in it that can take the damage for him.

None of his imprisonment was as bad as seeing the broken body of the boy who would become the Mirrorgrave.

"Therefore," the azata says, "we see Good within the decedent's soul. Love and friendship and self-sacrifice. Caring about someone else more than he cares about himself."

"By... enslaving and tormenting the souls of the innocent."

"The initial seeds of Goodness inside a mortal soul are often directed in a perverse manner."