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{quote|The Eldrazi are neither good nor evil; neither lawful or chaotic. They have no principles or morality, and exist beside such traits. That's not to say they are nihilists--for one to be a nihilist, you have to reject conventional beliefs. The Eldrazi are incapable of having such beliefs in the first place, and you cannot reject that which you physically cannot hold.
They destroy not out of malice, but because that is what they do--they're incompatible with reality, and reality itself is warped in their presence.
Their in-game abilities reflect this. Annihilate and Ingest represent reality unraveling in their presence; Devoid shows that they exist outside of our understanding of the world.
This falls apart a little in the second Innistrad stories, where Emrakul has a bit of a speaking part, and is one of the reasons that block is maligned by lore-fans.
For examples outside of Magic's lore, you need not look further than the source material--H.P. Lovecraft's Elder Gods.
They are, of course, not the only colourless creatures--artifact creatures generally do not have wills of their own, or are firmly rooted in their mechanical creation (like Karn, Scion of Urza).
Ugin is a being of pure spirit, and seems to have transcended the normal understanding of how magic works. Likewise, Scion of Ugin, the only non-artifact, non-Eldrazi colourless creature, is an extension of Ugin's transcendence.
Most literary characters or divine entities ascribe to some morality, and can thus be classified into a clear colour identity. There are probably spirits in various mythologies that exist outside of morality, and thus could be considered colourless, though I'm drawing a blank off the top of my head.
Simply put, a being completely devoid of any personality does not make for a particularly compelling character character, present an interesting foil to a religion's main god, or serve as the basis for a morality tale. Lovecraft's mastery as an author was his ability to evoke terror and dread not through an evil entity, but through his words and an overwhelming sense of inevitability.
If we're move to the real world, there are lots of creatures that would ascribe to a colourless worldview (or, more accurately, lack thereof)--plants, fungus, bacteria, viruses, and most animals do not have the ability to understand right and wrong, and thus can't really ascribe to any colour philosophy.
To draw a comparison to another Wizards of the Coast work, D&D has a 10th category of alignment--unaligned (not to be confused with true neutral), outside of the regular system. |cdkime of Tappedout}
BMH here. I just wanted to see what characters on this Wiki apply to all this. Such as the Aforementioned Cthulhu Mythos. To have such a thing apply, it must have these qualities, or mention why the character in question has these traits:
- Unaligned Alignment of D&D's Alignment system.
- Reality is warped to their presence while having incompatibility
- Having no beliefs in the first place
- Existence outside of our understanding
- Have no Will/Firmly believe in their mechanical creation
- Is a being of pure spirit
- Transcended Nearly all normal means of Magic
- Elder Gods (Cthulhu Mythos & other Lovecraftian Lore)
- Almost all of Nature (The Real World) (Yes, they aren't Green Mana after all...)
- Chara (Undertale) (Possible)