Why Does Evil Always Lose?

Why Does Evil Always Lose?

Also known as why can't Tir an Scathanna get its shit together and conquer Cridhedon?

This is an interesting question to me, because of the real world reflections. In the real world its just a complete coincidence that the good guys have won literally every war fought, and the bad guys have lost every war. It has nothing to do with history being written by the victors, or that many wars are fought for completely different reasons than those shown on the news and in the history books. The DungeonVerse doesn't have a secretive group of boogeymen who are manipulating world history to further a strange devil worshipping, child eating, ethno-centric quasi-religious death cult.

The short answer is that Scathanna multiple mutually hostile races who have cultures built around caste systems, jealously guarded power and position, internal tribal alliances, and a basic ethos that trust is a form of weakness.

1. Bottoms Up

The most common race in Scathanna is the goblin. Eons ago, they proved their genetic morphability and danger, but that has been proven an anomaly. In a one on one fight, goblins are not effective fighters. They are comparable in size and strength to halfings, but they lack the general constitution. More telling, they completely lack social structure. When left to their own devices, goblins form into tribal village groupings that seldom number more than a few hundred. Once there are more goblins in a settlement than can be aware of all the others in the group, factionalism breaks out. West village versus east village, squatters versus standers, loin cloths versus nudes. It doesn't matter other than the fact that goblins don't cooperate.

In massed combat, goblins are even worse. Their morale is low. Their combat prowess is terrible. They are piss poor archers, they are terrible line soldiers, they absolutely suck as any sort of heavily armored and armed infantry. The largest advantage they have is that there are generally a lot of goblins, and if enough are terrified into following a strong leader, they can sometimes win a massed goblin rush battle. Heroes have scrolls listing all the goblin rushes that have been defeated, because morale, cohesion, and equipment can frequently turn the tide in these battles. There are no records of goblin rush victories because the losers are butchered and eaten and goblins dont write things down.

Well, they have lots of literature and oral traditions about fucking.

Goblins love to make more goblins.

2. Top Down

Any sort of organized attempt to conquer beyond the borders of Scathanna requires an immensely powerful leader. Without a warlord, there is no great threat out of the shadow lands. This leader has to be powerful, charismatic, and smart. Weak leaders are killed by their own subordinates. Uncharismatic leaders only gain the followers they can terrify into following them by sheer force. That makes building alliances impossible because typically winning over a Scathannan faction by force is going to remove at a minimum half of its numbers and usually closer to three-quarters. A collection of decimated factions does not a coalition make. Smart leaders understand beyond diplomacy, and displays of power and ruthlessness, armies need logistic support, weapons and armor, and to have organizations beyond a vast screaming horde of orcs, gnolls, goblins, and the rest.

These powerful warlords are rare. Most warlords who accumulate power have their most powerful foes not in the lands of the Elves, the Castledom, and beyond. Most of their foes are among their own ranks of followers, or rival members of different tribes of their own race.

3. The Arms Race

Another tremendous problem faced by Scathanna is that the profoundly hostile and violent races that live in the Shadow Lands is that the vast majority are not intellectual. They do not produce armorers, bladesmiths, engineers, or even advanced magic users. Goblins use the most primitive of weapons. Even the rank and file monstrous races of the shadow lands are more inclined to raid and kill others to steal their arms and armor. When a potent warlord does manage to control a large population, and forces some to start smithing and making weapons, these are very low quality. In contrast, the armies of the Castledom are very well armed and armored, and have a dramatically higher percentage of heroic members and magic users.

4. The Skills Race

Like equipment, skills are rare in Scathanna. This isn't because the races aren't capable of cultivating magic power and essence-using skills. The issue is that once an orc, goblin, or gnoll learns a magic power or ability, they absolutely will not teach anyone else this power. Power and capability are jealously guarded and not shared. The skilled do not teach the unskilled. Within the framework of Scathanna, a shadowlands magic user is rare and afforded a great deal of respect and power. If the magic user teaches a second being magic, there are now two and the power and respect are halved. When the shadowlands march to war, their magic users are outnumbered, even if their total numbers are dramatically higher.

5. Training? We Don't Need no Stinking Training

The races of the shadowlands are not cooperative. The skilled do not teach the unskilled. They unarmed are not armed by the well armed. Once rallied under a banner, the hordes have no training, no drills, barely cohesive organizational structures, and no combat experience beyond tribal level raiding. In contrast, the Castledom has a modest trained army of basic equipped and drilled conscripts, enhanced with large guilds of mercenaries, cadres of noble and royal military forces, and most importantly, the small but massively potent adventuring guilds. A typically mid-tier adventuring team is worth a battalion of orcs or goblins, especially when in ranks with other heroes.

6. Dungeons are Off-Limits

In the Castledom and other lands, heroes delve into the depths of the dungeons. This gives them a multi-fold advantage over their Shadowlands adversaries. Dungeons are intense training accelerators, as mentioned in other pieces done for the DungeonVerse. Secondly, heroes who raid dungeons come away with magic armor, weapons, new spells, new special abilities, and the like. Thirdly, the resources drawn from the dungeon are fuel for the engine of civilization in the Castle Lands. Finally, as the dungeons are raided, it keeps them under a semblance of control. In contrast, the orcs, gnolls, and the rest do not get the training bonus. They are not equipped with powerful magic weapons and tools. These items are either rare relics passed down through the tribes, or they are loot handed out by charismatic leaders. Shadowlands civilizations are resource poor, skilled worker poor, and the entire region is existing on a much thinner margin than the Castle Lands.

Finally, and this is an important one, the dungeons of the Shadow Lands are rampant. They regularly produce monster swarms that spew out. Sometimes this signals the arrival of a new monstrous race in the shadows. Sometimes it's just a massive reset of the local population, turning orc and goblin settled areas back into wilds and wastes. If it is a wave of low level vermin and dungeon swarms, it is the appearance of a massive Raid Boss, a giant solitary dungeon monster ejected from said dungeon for becoming too large and essence-hungry. These beasts are turned loose, and it's everyone else's problem. Most shadowland settlements are young, since they are routinely wiped out by short lived beast gods, swarms of dungeon mobs, natural disasters, famine, or the constant low level raiding and warfare endemic to the region.

7. Emigration

There are certainly individuals in the Shadow Lands who can rise above these above mentioned problems. They can work together and share information. They can train others and in turn be trained. They also have a high rate of leaving the Shadow Lands. There are demi-human populations of the so-called shadowlanders across Cridhedun, and after a few generations they bear little to no resemblance to their kin remaining in Scathanna.