What if someone with an evil alignment had to do horrible and selfish acts because the mechanics of The Land itself forced them to do so? Philosophers had been tackling this particular question since consciousness had evolved on Earth and hadn’t made any headway. Richter was willing to bet it was the same in The Land, and the only ones who felt they had a definitive answer were normally perpetrators of the worst acts imaginable. Any action, no matter how heinous, could be justified if you had a “righteous” cause to drive you forward and you were acting in the “common” good.
