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Notes -
Eh, partially but not entirely. For one, these Named technically have allegiance to the “Gods Above or Below”. So there’s a bit of divine pressure. In that sense Good is more “do what you are told” and Evil is more “spit in the eye of the heavens” (also tolerate dirty tricks and blackmail and stuff in combat for example) and so there’s technically a hard divide there and in terms of the Roles that arise (narratively self reinforcing too which is part of the point/problem). So evil and capital-E Evil in this setting are overlapping but distinct.
Also the Dread Empire still will do stuff like assassinations, collateral damage, even massacres, that kind of stuff, and to some extent the main character participates in that too; part of the broader setting, kind of cleverly, is that the Empire doesn’t have good farmland or rather, much of their land is ruined, so they turn to massive blood and sacrifice rituals to magically sustain crop output and avoid starvation (and invasions of course for food plunder). There’s some plot threads that try to connect the macroeconomics to the political conflicts IIRC. The predominant human ethnic group in the Empire (there are several) have a culture of backstabbing and poisoning and such. Did I also mention that despite having many more mages, they deal in necromancy and diabolism as very prominent magical disciplines?
With that said yes, the whole overall arc of the series is an attempt towards pragmatism on the side of Evil but also seeing if Good can work together with them sometimes or even come to a kind of accord rather than be a constant kill on sight cycle of violence. And a central tension is in order to get that, you have to gain raw power first, but not so much that a better future becomes impossible. But it’s a series with several books so we see some variety and detail come out over time.
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