Geekery x2
I was working on this before, and the situation was touched upon elsewhere, so I wanted to make sure to get it up rather than forget like I so often do.
So at the end of the final session of an ongoing D&D Campaign, my character resurrected a creature of significant power and evil alignment, who had in the past hounded the party and alternately either wiped the floor with us or had its ass handed to it, depending on where in its (and our) evolution we ran across it. I realized there would be some poor reactions amongst the party, and perhaps a perception that I was just screwing around as a player, but it seemed the best resolution to his dilemma.
It's easy to see True Neutral as just not caring enough to pick a side, or avoiding extremes to walk the middle path, but Essan takes the idea of balancing those extremes pretty seriously even if it's still tempered by his humanity. Boccob may be The Uncaring, but Essan is not.
This means he has to spend a lot of time considering how to balance himself against the predominantly Good and largely Lawful (or lawfully inclined in the case of the NG Dwarf) influences on him and the actions he takes as part of the Champions. Since the party includes a Lawful Good Paladin who, strictly speaking, can’t even continue working with someone who is evil or consistently offends her Code of Conduct by performing evil acts, finding that balance in front of her was problematic.
Much of this was done off camera in the form of casting a variety of spells with the [Evil] or [Vile] descriptors, which count in the metaphysical balance of things as evil acts, even when they have no strictly moral impact (some might argue that, I know) such as Summoning or Calling a creature with the Evil subtype, or creating undead. This was largely to balance the rather frequent use of [Good] and [Exalted] spells he cast in service of the party’s goals, as the use of such spells to lesser and greater degrees will tilt your alignment in their direction whether you want it to or not. It’s all a sort of spiritual accounting that would likely outrage members of his party, but which I feel makes perfect sense for who Essan is.
Since the more lawful influences on him were less metaphysical and more personal, balancing them with [Chaos] magic never really seemed appropriate, though he did choose that route a few times whenever he was the party remember responsible for carrying a powerful artifact, a piece of the Rod of Law. More often than not it manifested as him occasionally making decisions on a whim or just to be contrary, though it took a while to find a pattern that a) didn’t result in him actually thinking about being deliberately whimsical (which is then… not, really) and b) didn’t result in me just playing a Chaotic character and calling it Neutral.
The end result is that sometimes (but not TOO often) Essan just does things on impulse or to be contrary, and then has to deal with the fallout of whatever he’s just done, both in terms of his party. One of those things was resurrecting a fallen Orc Paladin of Pelor who at least appeared to have died on the path to the same goal as the party, even to the point of using up a sort of divine trump card where each member of the party was allowed by the gods to just once ‘break the rules’ in some fashion to accomplish something otherwise impossible. The Paladin had its soul devoured by a particular type of monster, so normally could not be brought back. The decision to resurrect the orc was on a whim, but not an irrational one: He’d died in service to the same cause as the party, and as an Orc Paladin (of Pelor, no less) he represented a sort of balance of but not necessarily between extremes that Essan found both compelling and admirable.
In doing so, however, he’d just brought back a potent Good back into the world (and right on the heels of destroying a significant amount of Evil), and while that’s not normally something he thinks too closely about (trying to actually balance the amount of evil creatures the party has killed would be either impossible, or truly make him a monster however he did it), in this case there seemed something he could do.
My (and Essan’s) impression of the unique Outsider called the Cathezar was that she was also a creature balanced between extremes. Halfway between Devil and Demon, it would have been easy for her to swing back and forth between the extremes, and certainly would have fit the sort of madness her creator indulges in. Instead she seemed to be more neutral in that regard, and while Evil in terms of her innate alignment and actions in service to her creator; it wasn’t the evil of a Devil or Demon who much like Angels are irrational and uncompromising manifestations of their innate alignments. By virtue of wanting a versatile tool, the Cathezar’s creation seemed to have allowed her a considerable amount of free will and ability to think outside the box she found herself in. At least, that was Essan’s impression after we found her journals in a recent adventure.
At any rate, the Cathezar had failed her master on multiple occasions, and most recently to the detriment of the very plot she was (maybe, I’m fuzzy on this bit) created to facilitate. Resurrecting her was itself a whim meant to balance his resurrection of the Paladin, and while she was immediately ready to attack him if there was some trick, he explained that she was free to go if she wished. It’s possible her master (Demogorgon) would have found her too useful to do away with, but Essan considered the odds of her being sent against the Champions or their people fairly slim. More likely if she was accepted back it would be for a considerable duration of punishment at the very least.
Regardless, the alternative he offered her was to bind herself to the land in that area as the party had, and serve to protect it and the town growing up on it. Ancient Druidic magic, the binding is strong enough to perform a sort of transmutation that renders an Extraplanar creature into a native of that plane (so she can’t be Banished back to her old home). To his mind this both gives the town another important protector against more powerful dangers that may come its way, and the Cathezar a chance to make her own decisions about who she is going to be. While the Paladin of the party made certain she was aware of the consequences of pursuing evil ends, corrupting or harming those outside the land the creature is bound to protect, Essan believes the Cathezar is capable of recognizing that entirely outside of those threats doing so gains her very little. There are potent individuals who would stand against her (and while attacking and killing her may be prohibited by the Land bond, there are a lot of things that don’t require either that would render her impotent), and none who she can trust to stand with her, since trust is in short supply and anyone evil she allied herself with to her own ends would have a ridiculous amount of leverage over her due to her bond with the land. It simply isn’t in her best interests to act in a manner consistent with evil, she’s no longer required to act towards that end, and Essan believes that will eventually sway her away from it.
Of course, he had no idea the Paladin would do what she’s done, but I imagine the Cathezar would make him aware of it sooner or later (D, thoughts?) and he’d consider it an interesting opportunity for both of them. I certainly hope that as far as his party is concerned, Essan has earned enough credit that his actions here won't be some insurmountable problem, but I suppose we'll see. :)