Just a question I thought about when I was thinking about the story of my campaign so far, looking at the game as a story ant at the relationship between the PCs and the villians, why would the story focus on a party that does bad things? why are they the 'heros' of the story trying to stop the BBEG when in reality he is somewhat better as a protagonist than them?
Obviously the answer is: because they are the PCs, but if I ignore the game and try to think of the events as a story where unwritten game rules like "don't split the party" are less bold
There are people that spend their whole lives trying to answer the question you just asked.
I think you are getting some things confused though, the difference between a "Hero" and a protagonist. A protagonist is the person the story is about. A hero is, well, a hero. John Wick is an example of a protagonist that isn't a hero. If your party is a bunch of evil doers then they are not heros. Atleast not in a traditional sense.
I am a writer, I could talk about this for a long time. The main thing to answer your question is really a clarification that Hero's and protagonist are not the same thing.
Right, I undestand that and the answer just fascinates me, I can obviously continue the campaign without knowing but exploring these questions are part of the fun for me
I think that is really fun to tell a story about bad people who think they are the good guys. Especially when the reveal at the end is all the destruction that they had wrought. It allows for the players to potentially see what they are doing and change. Or not. Either way is a fun time.
I’m no writer but why do we watch shows like House of Cards where Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright’s characters are evil and manipulative. Or the show Shameless (American version) where the Gallagher’s are basically CE to CN starting out and going more towards CN to GG in later seasons? It’s entertaining and the characters grow and evolve (or devolve) for better or worse.
Are the PC’s in your campaign evil? What are they trying to do by stopping the BBEG? Do they have their own agenda or want to side with the BBEG? Or take the BBEG’s place? Or is it just because it is in the PC’s self interest to stop them? And any good deed that comes from it is just happenstance?
Or maybe I’m just completely missing what you are asking 😊
If altruism isn't part of the equation, find egoist motives. What will the party gain for themselves by removing the BBEG? Power? Wealth? Fame? (EDIT: A warm fuzzy feeling inside for the first time in their lives?)
You'll need to be familiar with your party to motivate them.
I know of a party where their motivation is to just get back to "normal". The players are NPCs in an MMO after all. The DM creates motivation by disrupting their "normal". They can't get back into their programmed, boring routines until they deal with whatever's disrupting their game world. The players have yet to recognize this.
It seems manipulative. ...and... it totally is. The trick is so the players don't know they're being manipulated. They have to feel like it's their idea.
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider. My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong. I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲 “It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
It helps if they have a more relatable motive for being evil then "I want power/money/to do whatever I want, and I don't care how I get it." It also helps if the antagonist has way more power than the "bad guys," so they're still the underdogs, and if they're not "good guys," but it's evil vs evil. The part of Game of Thrones (the books are a better example, because she's the POV) where Cersei has to deal with the Faith Militant is a good example—she's evil, but because she cares about her family and wants to keep what is "rightfully" hers, she's got her back to the wall, and the Faith sure aren't good guys.
Funnily enough, though, I've thought about a lot of the same things in the game I'm running right now. Many of the villains operate by a code of honor, and, while their motives aren't pure, they try to minimize innocent bloodshed. The heroes, on the other hand, have become increasingly callous about executing innocent witnesses and causing bystander casualties as they try to stop the villains. True, I didn't frame it as a good vs evil game, so the heroes aren't all good aligned. But it's interesting to see them "going to the dark side," and, since my world tends to have a Tolkienesque morality in which "oft evil will shall evil mar," there might have to be consequences at some point.
Are they "evil", or more anti-heroes? There can be many shades of gray, and in a campaign (or a book), that can be fun to explore. In the YA series I am writing, there are celestials and demons, and while the celestials are the "good guys", not all of them are "angelic". Indeed, one in particular could probably be classified as an antihero. While he wants to defeats the demons and protect Celestia and Elyshaeza (the mortal world), his methods are often...questionable. He leads a celestial group of warriors, but they often get new "recruits" by kidnapping, and he has left many emotional scars on one of the MCs. Frankly, he's not a nice guy, even though he's ultimately fighting on the "good side".
I like my "classic" hero; the person who saves the day and fights the BBEG and stands for justice and peace. But, I also like to explore the nuances and shades of people.
If you hunt down and murder every single XXX to stop their evil plot, well guess what, your name is Adolf Hitler.
Players tend to be 'hunt them down and kill them all' types. This is only 'good' if the people they are hunting are really bad guys, but players tend to not take a lot of care making sure that is true.
Did the evil main character "win" in the end of the movie? I have not seen any of those so I don't know.
But now that you mention it, I do recall one movie where the bad guy won, but he wasn't really the star of the movie. Kevin Spacey played a disabled fellow that was working with the police to track down a criminal, when at the very end it turned out he was the criminal. ... Well I just looked it up and it was The Usual Suspects. I only watched about the last half-hour of it, but the ending was pretty neat.
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Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
All the movies mentioned above have the bad guy win in the end. Also note, they tend to be better movies. Chinatown for example was originally planned to have the good guys win. But when they did the alternate ending with the bad guy winning, the audience lost it. They could not stop talking about it, so they kept the 'downer' ending and created the famous "Forget it Jake, it's Chinatown."
Think of the Godfather. They didn't fight against the "good guys." They sort of fought against the "other bad guys."
I'm having trouble thinking of one movie where the bad guy beat the good guys. I'm sure there is one out there, but nothing comes to mind.
Well, on the sci-fi and fantasy side there are also "Alien: Covenant," "The Empire Strikes Back," the Terry Gilliam film "Brazil," and arguably, the "Lupin III" movies.
Who is really on the side of "Good" and who is really on the side of "Evil" usually depends on the frame of reference. Who would an audience sympathize with? If the players playing the PCs are the only audience aside from the DM and the players are all in agreement that what they do is good and right or at least necessary for the Greater Good, then they could certainly qualify as heroes, at least in their own minds.
For instance, it's fascinated me that Illithids are always characterized as Lawful Evil. I mean, they enslave humanoids and dine on their brains. Who would say they aren't? But if you asked an Illithid about the morality of their customs, they could well argue that humans are no less evil since they "enslave" horses, elephants, cattle, and pigs, frequently slaughtering the latter for food. The big difference here is a matter of perspective, isn't it?
Think of the Godfather. They didn't fight against the "good guys." They sort of fought against the "other bad guys."
I'm having trouble thinking of one movie where the bad guy beat the good guys. I'm sure there is one out there, but nothing comes to mind.
Well, on the sci-fi and fantasy side there are also "Alien: Covenant," "The Empire Strikes Back," the Terry Gilliam film "Brazil," and arguably, the "Lupin III" movies.
Who is really on the side of "Good" and who is really on the side of "Evil" usually depends on the frame of reference. Who would an audience sympathize with? If the players playing the PCs are the only audience aside from the DM and the players are all in agreement that what they do is good and right or at least necessary for the Greater Good, then they could certainly qualify as heroes, at least in their own minds.
For instance, it's fascinated me that Illithids are always characterized as Lawful Evil. I mean, they enslave humanoids and dine on their brains. Who would say they aren't? But if you asked an Illithid about the morality of their customs, they could well argue that humans are no less evil since they "enslave" horses, elephants, cattle, and pigs, frequently slaughtering the latter for food. The big difference here is a matter of perspective, isn't it?
Brazil is on my 'Best films I will likely avoid watching again' list. It is deeply disturbing but without relying on gore, and yes, definitely in this category. Clockwork Orange would also be on the list.
And the difference with Illithids is sentience. However this is not the venue to really delve into discussions over real life sentience. If in your campaign world, even conventionally domesticated animals are sentient, then yes, in your world eating them would be evil.
And as for 'enslaving' horses, horses are herd animals who have leaders in nature, too. Any good horseman in real life treats their horse much more as a partner than as a slave and every movie in which understanding communications with horses are possible, the horse is typically asked rather than forced, unless the forcing is part of indicating that a bad guy is bad.
The view that good and evil are merely subjective simply does not hold up particularly well.
I don't know whether the perspective has been canonically stated; but while the illithids may acknowledge the humanoids they enslave (and in a lot of iterations use as breeding stock to propagate their own species) are "sentient" but they may well think that sentience is well beneath what their own intelligence is. I kind of think of Illithids and other Far Realm evocations in the words of that great Lovecraftian, Stephen Crane in his poem "A man said to the universe: / 'Sir, I exist!' / 'However,' replied the universe, 'The fact has not created in me / A sense of obligation.'" There is evil predicated on impassioned hatred ... but Illithid evil is a colder, literally uncaring evil to a degree that D&D philosophers and theologians will debate whether the Illithid can be adequately fathomed in humanoid morality or is humanoid morality a fragile shell of vanity that will ultimately fail to keep the light on? And if that question is the sort that makes your players pause, you've got your horror tone, and you can look at range of things between the John Dies at the End books to Quatermass and the Pit ("Five Million Miles to Earth' in the U.S.) to help dream up the place for heroic action in such a universe.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
In reply to the comment about the difference between a protagonist and a hero - I would humbly refer everyone to the youtube video "The Case for Gul Dukat".
Every villain sees themselves as the hero of their own story.
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Tayn of Darkwood. Lvl 10 human Life Cleric of Lathander. Retired.
Ikram Sahir ibn Malik al-Sayyid Ra'ad, Second Son of the House of Ra'ad, Defender of the Burning Sands. Lvl 9 Brass Dragonborn Sorcerer + Greater Fire Elemental Devil.
Viktor Gavriil. Lvl 20 White Dragonborn Grave Cleric, of Kurgan the God of Death.
Willful ignorance is also a form of evil. The best you could argue that they themselves are non-sentient and therefore simply are, but they are always portrayed as having more awareness than any of the Deep Old Ones (who are also often portrayed as not even conscious let alone self aware).
Illithids, Vampires, and similar beings who feed off of 'lesser races' do clearly understand good and evil, since they usually have edicts against killing each other. Refusing to acknowledge the sentience of another race that you persecute or literally feed on is no absolution.
I think your parameters are too narrow to adequately entertain over the edge cosmic horror. One can't argue best with you if you refuse to accept the possibility that there are forms of intelligence beyond "sapience". You're taking the core of cosmic horror and belittling it, and belittling what makes it horrific, by claiming "elder gods" "beings from the far realm" or what have you (a whole set of different mythos evoked by the Mind Flayer) are somehow more brutish or less self aware than humanoid intelligence derived morality. If you pay attention to Lovecraftian and cosmic horror mythos writing or gaming, the "madness" that afflicts most human witnesses of cosmic horror is not predicated on a moral judgment. The mind is broken because the limits of the human epistemology and cognition are broken by even the literal architecture of R'lyeh. My favorite account of Illithid written language describes it as three dimensional brail because two dimensional characters are inadequate to the language Illithid thinking necessitates (this again isn't canon lore, but again is predicated on common speculative fiction tropes as to how conventional human morality can be challenged). The Far Realm is literally not on the planar map to 5E, a planar map which indicate how the moral forces of good, evil, law and chaos shape the universe. So a Far Realm entity that makes entry into D&D's known or charted planescape may well be like a three dimensional object entering a two dimensional plane. The universe can't really contain it on a cognitive or epistemological level, why would morality adequately address it.
And the Gith are the "heroes" who rose up to beat the Illithids out of their dominion in this planescape ... that begs the question as to what "good" is for since "good" at least in broad alignment swaths didn't seem to be part of that fight.
Yes, most D&D can be situated in relationship where a moral compass can point to good and evil and the holder of that compass feels there's some authority in that value. What aberrations like the Mind Flayer and Aboleth offer is a challenge to the notion that "good" is anything but a false comfort against the truth that whatever your intention there is something in the universe beyond your agency that wil never respect you and see you and your civilization as little more than engine lubricant or ambulatory wombs for a breeding program. And the challenge to someone who believes in good is the notion that its view is more true than what you hold in your fragile hands. You say there is no absolution for the perspective I presented. Absolution isn't asked. You can abdicate these considerations in favor of your moral comfort zone; but for people working in fields speculating on the ends of artificial intelligence and how, if at all, an advanced extraterrestrial intelligence would consider us, these are questions that keep people up at night. And it makes for fun gaming too.
On an uplifting note, think of Clarke's Childhood's End, where humanity did advance, and what happened to terrestrial morality. Maybe the Illithids are ultimately in Faerun to uplift the humanoids. Quatermass and the Pit has a really neat riff on the Ancient Astronauts myth as to why humans are sapient in the first place. Evil impulses are part of the design, as humans are poor efforts to capture the intellect of their makers. Will this really change a players thinking on moral agency? Well, I'm never going to say say never when it comes to epiphenomenon affecting being, but I'll still plead, "it makes for good gaming."
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
It does surprise me as a DM how quickly most PCs gravitate towards the chaotic evil. Chaotic, because it's difficult to predict what they'll do and they give no thought to traditional or acceptable behaviour. And evil, because they rarely think about anyone but themselves. I sprang a random encounter on my players recently where two factions were fighting each other. Some of the party took one side, some took the other, but they still killed everyone and took all their stuff. Job done.
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Just a question I thought about when I was thinking about the story of my campaign so far, looking at the game as a story ant at the relationship between the PCs and the villians, why would the story focus on a party that does bad things? why are they the 'heros' of the story trying to stop the BBEG when in reality he is somewhat better as a protagonist than them?
Obviously the answer is: because they are the PCs, but if I ignore the game and try to think of the events as a story where unwritten game rules like "don't split the party" are less bold
There are people that spend their whole lives trying to answer the question you just asked.
I think you are getting some things confused though, the difference between a "Hero" and a protagonist. A protagonist is the person the story is about. A hero is, well, a hero. John Wick is an example of a protagonist that isn't a hero. If your party is a bunch of evil doers then they are not heros. Atleast not in a traditional sense.
I am a writer, I could talk about this for a long time. The main thing to answer your question is really a clarification that Hero's and protagonist are not the same thing.
Buyers Guide for D&D Beyond - Hardcover Books, D&D Beyond and You - How/What is Toggled Content?
Everything you need to know about Homebrew - Homebrew FAQ - Digital Book on D&D Beyond Vs Physical Books
Can't find the content you are supposed to have access to? Read this FAQ.
"Play the game however you want to play the game. After all, your fun doesn't threaten my fun."
Right, I undestand that and the answer just fascinates me, I can obviously continue the campaign without knowing but exploring these questions are part of the fun for me
I think that is really fun to tell a story about bad people who think they are the good guys. Especially when the reveal at the end is all the destruction that they had wrought. It allows for the players to potentially see what they are doing and change. Or not. Either way is a fun time.
Buyers Guide for D&D Beyond - Hardcover Books, D&D Beyond and You - How/What is Toggled Content?
Everything you need to know about Homebrew - Homebrew FAQ - Digital Book on D&D Beyond Vs Physical Books
Can't find the content you are supposed to have access to? Read this FAQ.
"Play the game however you want to play the game. After all, your fun doesn't threaten my fun."
I’m no writer but why do we watch shows like House of Cards where Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright’s characters are evil and manipulative. Or the show Shameless (American version) where the Gallagher’s are basically CE to CN starting out and going more towards CN to GG in later seasons? It’s entertaining and the characters grow and evolve (or devolve) for better or worse.
Are the PC’s in your campaign evil? What are they trying to do by stopping the BBEG? Do they have their own agenda or want to side with the BBEG? Or take the BBEG’s place? Or is it just because it is in the PC’s self interest to stop them? And any good deed that comes from it is just happenstance?
Or maybe I’m just completely missing what you are asking 😊
EZD6 by DM Scotty
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/397599/EZD6-Core-Rulebook?
If altruism isn't part of the equation, find egoist motives. What will the party gain for themselves by removing the BBEG? Power? Wealth? Fame? (EDIT: A warm fuzzy feeling inside for the first time in their lives?)
You'll need to be familiar with your party to motivate them.
I know of a party where their motivation is to just get back to "normal". The players are NPCs in an MMO after all. The DM creates motivation by disrupting their "normal". They can't get back into their programmed, boring routines until they deal with whatever's disrupting their
gameworld. The players have yet to recognize this.It seems manipulative. ...and... it totally is. The trick is so the players don't know they're being manipulated. They have to feel like it's their idea.
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider.
My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong.
I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲
“It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
It helps if they have a more relatable motive for being evil then "I want power/money/to do whatever I want, and I don't care how I get it." It also helps if the antagonist has way more power than the "bad guys," so they're still the underdogs, and if they're not "good guys," but it's evil vs evil. The part of Game of Thrones (the books are a better example, because she's the POV) where Cersei has to deal with the Faith Militant is a good example—she's evil, but because she cares about her family and wants to keep what is "rightfully" hers, she's got her back to the wall, and the Faith sure aren't good guys.
Funnily enough, though, I've thought about a lot of the same things in the game I'm running right now. Many of the villains operate by a code of honor, and, while their motives aren't pure, they try to minimize innocent bloodshed. The heroes, on the other hand, have become increasingly callous about executing innocent witnesses and causing bystander casualties as they try to stop the villains. True, I didn't frame it as a good vs evil game, so the heroes aren't all good aligned. But it's interesting to see them "going to the dark side," and, since my world tends to have a Tolkienesque morality in which "oft evil will shall evil mar," there might have to be consequences at some point.
Wizard (Gandalf) of the Tolkien Club
Are they "evil", or more anti-heroes? There can be many shades of gray, and in a campaign (or a book), that can be fun to explore. In the YA series I am writing, there are celestials and demons, and while the celestials are the "good guys", not all of them are "angelic". Indeed, one in particular could probably be classified as an antihero. While he wants to defeats the demons and protect Celestia and Elyshaeza (the mortal world), his methods are often...questionable. He leads a celestial group of warriors, but they often get new "recruits" by kidnapping, and he has left many emotional scars on one of the MCs. Frankly, he's not a nice guy, even though he's ultimately fighting on the "good side".
I like my "classic" hero; the person who saves the day and fights the BBEG and stands for justice and peace. But, I also like to explore the nuances and shades of people.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
If you hunt down and murder every single XXX to stop their evil plot, well guess what, your name is Adolf Hitler.
Players tend to be 'hunt them down and kill them all' types. This is only 'good' if the people they are hunting are really bad guys, but players tend to not take a lot of care making sure that is true.
Think of the Godfather. They didn't fight against the "good guys." They sort of fought against the "other bad guys."
I'm having trouble thinking of one movie where the bad guy beat the good guys. I'm sure there is one out there, but nothing comes to mind.
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
China Town. Wealthy bad guy incestuous pedophile definitely wins.
His wife/daughter dies and the cops give his grandaughter/daughter to be 'taken care of' by him.
because they want to
Beholders like to eat people who don't pay attention
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NEVER CROSS OUT THINGS
Joker
The Usual Suspects
Silence of the Lambs
Lots of horror, where the bad guy is an inhuman force or entity (Mouth of Madness, Event Horizon).
Se7en.
It happens.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Did the evil main character "win" in the end of the movie? I have not seen any of those so I don't know.
But now that you mention it, I do recall one movie where the bad guy won, but he wasn't really the star of the movie. Kevin Spacey played a disabled fellow that was working with the police to track down a criminal, when at the very end it turned out he was the criminal. ... Well I just looked it up and it was The Usual Suspects. I only watched about the last half-hour of it, but the ending was pretty neat.
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
All the movies mentioned above have the bad guy win in the end. Also note, they tend to be better movies. Chinatown for example was originally planned to have the good guys win. But when they did the alternate ending with the bad guy winning, the audience lost it. They could not stop talking about it, so they kept the 'downer' ending and created the famous "Forget it Jake, it's Chinatown."
Well, on the sci-fi and fantasy side there are also "Alien: Covenant," "The Empire Strikes Back," the Terry Gilliam film "Brazil," and arguably, the "Lupin III" movies.
Who is really on the side of "Good" and who is really on the side of "Evil" usually depends on the frame of reference. Who would an audience sympathize with? If the players playing the PCs are the only audience aside from the DM and the players are all in agreement that what they do is good and right or at least necessary for the Greater Good, then they could certainly qualify as heroes, at least in their own minds.
For instance, it's fascinated me that Illithids are always characterized as Lawful Evil. I mean, they enslave humanoids and dine on their brains. Who would say they aren't? But if you asked an Illithid about the morality of their customs, they could well argue that humans are no less evil since they "enslave" horses, elephants, cattle, and pigs, frequently slaughtering the latter for food. The big difference here is a matter of perspective, isn't it?
I don't know whether the perspective has been canonically stated; but while the illithids may acknowledge the humanoids they enslave (and in a lot of iterations use as breeding stock to propagate their own species) are "sentient" but they may well think that sentience is well beneath what their own intelligence is. I kind of think of Illithids and other Far Realm evocations in the words of that great Lovecraftian, Stephen Crane in his poem "A man said to the universe: / 'Sir, I exist!' / 'However,' replied the universe, 'The fact has not created in me / A sense of obligation.'" There is evil predicated on impassioned hatred ... but Illithid evil is a colder, literally uncaring evil to a degree that D&D philosophers and theologians will debate whether the Illithid can be adequately fathomed in humanoid morality or is humanoid morality a fragile shell of vanity that will ultimately fail to keep the light on? And if that question is the sort that makes your players pause, you've got your horror tone, and you can look at range of things between the John Dies at the End books to Quatermass and the Pit ("Five Million Miles to Earth' in the U.S.) to help dream up the place for heroic action in such a universe.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
In reply to the comment about the difference between a protagonist and a hero - I would humbly refer everyone to the youtube video "The Case for Gul Dukat".
Every villain sees themselves as the hero of their own story.
Tayn of Darkwood. Lvl 10 human Life Cleric of Lathander. Retired.
Ikram Sahir ibn Malik al-Sayyid Ra'ad, Second Son of the House of Ra'ad, Defender of the Burning Sands. Lvl 9 Brass Dragonborn Sorcerer + Greater Fire Elemental Devil.
Viktor Gavriil. Lvl 20 White Dragonborn Grave Cleric, of Kurgan the God of Death.
Anzio Faro. Lvl 5 Prot. Aasimar Light Cleric.
I think your parameters are too narrow to adequately entertain over the edge cosmic horror. One can't argue best with you if you refuse to accept the possibility that there are forms of intelligence beyond "sapience". You're taking the core of cosmic horror and belittling it, and belittling what makes it horrific, by claiming "elder gods" "beings from the far realm" or what have you (a whole set of different mythos evoked by the Mind Flayer) are somehow more brutish or less self aware than humanoid intelligence derived morality. If you pay attention to Lovecraftian and cosmic horror mythos writing or gaming, the "madness" that afflicts most human witnesses of cosmic horror is not predicated on a moral judgment. The mind is broken because the limits of the human epistemology and cognition are broken by even the literal architecture of R'lyeh. My favorite account of Illithid written language describes it as three dimensional brail because two dimensional characters are inadequate to the language Illithid thinking necessitates (this again isn't canon lore, but again is predicated on common speculative fiction tropes as to how conventional human morality can be challenged). The Far Realm is literally not on the planar map to 5E, a planar map which indicate how the moral forces of good, evil, law and chaos shape the universe. So a Far Realm entity that makes entry into D&D's known or charted planescape may well be like a three dimensional object entering a two dimensional plane. The universe can't really contain it on a cognitive or epistemological level, why would morality adequately address it.
And the Gith are the "heroes" who rose up to beat the Illithids out of their dominion in this planescape ... that begs the question as to what "good" is for since "good" at least in broad alignment swaths didn't seem to be part of that fight.
Yes, most D&D can be situated in relationship where a moral compass can point to good and evil and the holder of that compass feels there's some authority in that value. What aberrations like the Mind Flayer and Aboleth offer is a challenge to the notion that "good" is anything but a false comfort against the truth that whatever your intention there is something in the universe beyond your agency that wil never respect you and see you and your civilization as little more than engine lubricant or ambulatory wombs for a breeding program. And the challenge to someone who believes in good is the notion that its view is more true than what you hold in your fragile hands. You say there is no absolution for the perspective I presented. Absolution isn't asked. You can abdicate these considerations in favor of your moral comfort zone; but for people working in fields speculating on the ends of artificial intelligence and how, if at all, an advanced extraterrestrial intelligence would consider us, these are questions that keep people up at night. And it makes for fun gaming too.
On an uplifting note, think of Clarke's Childhood's End, where humanity did advance, and what happened to terrestrial morality. Maybe the Illithids are ultimately in Faerun to uplift the humanoids. Quatermass and the Pit has a really neat riff on the Ancient Astronauts myth as to why humans are sapient in the first place. Evil impulses are part of the design, as humans are poor efforts to capture the intellect of their makers. Will this really change a players thinking on moral agency? Well, I'm never going to say say never when it comes to epiphenomenon affecting being, but I'll still plead, "it makes for good gaming."
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
It does surprise me as a DM how quickly most PCs gravitate towards the chaotic evil. Chaotic, because it's difficult to predict what they'll do and they give no thought to traditional or acceptable behaviour. And evil, because they rarely think about anyone but themselves. I sprang a random encounter on my players recently where two factions were fighting each other. Some of the party took one side, some took the other, but they still killed everyone and took all their stuff. Job done.