Quote from: jibbajibba;843096Lord Varys: I did what I did for the good of the realm.

Petyr 'Littlefinger' Baelish: The realm. Do you know what the realm is? It's the thousand blades of Aegon's enemies, a story we agree to tell each other over and over, until we forget that it's a lie.

Lord Varys: But what do we have left, once we abandon the lie? Chaos? A gaping pit waiting to swallow us all.

Petyr 'Littlefinger' Baelish: Chaos isn't a pit. Chaos is a ladder. Many who try to climb it fail and never get to try again. The fall breaks them. And some, are given a chance to climb. They refuse, they cling to the realm or the gods or love. Illusions. Only the ladder is real. The climb is all there is.

A good point.

Cugel the Clever.

Seriously.  Rapes at least one woman, threatens another into sex, sets up a traveling companion to be killed by thugs for absolutely no reason, has no scruples, no morals, cares about absolutely no one other than himself...

The Dying Earth is full of utter assholes, but he stands head and shoulders above them all.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;840007When does it become Chaotic Evil then? CE would be just as fine hurting others and breaking any rules to get what it wants.

I think, as has been said, that the above typifies neutral evil. To me, NE has always been the most selfish alignment.  Anything, lawful or chaotic or otherwise, to get what I as an individual want.  But as someone said earlier, it's WHAT the character wants that defines what kind of evil you are.  If you WANT to torture or kill for no other reason than the thrill of it, that to me is chaotic evil.  You're not doing it for some rational (albeit selfish) goal like greed or a lust for power, like a NE character would.  Which is why the Joker fits this alignment so perfectly.  He kills, tortures, kidnaps. . . just for laughs.  He burned a huge pile of money, in front of a gangster that could have potentially killed him for doing so, just to prove a point: I'm not in it for gain in the traditional sense.  A NE character would consider such behavior a waste of time, because it diverts him from his goals of satisfying his own selfish (but rational) desires.  He wouldn't torture or kill someone just for the fun of it, because there's no point - no utility - to his doing so.  But he'd torture a person if they were withholding information he needed, and kill someone that got in the way of his goals.

All that having been said, I don't think that requires that a CE character be batshit insane.  In one of the other alignment threads, there was a discussion of Ramsey Bolton from GoT.  He enjoys torturing people, and does so in instances where it's not necessary (or to a greater extent than he needs to where it is).  But he does not otherwise act rashly.  He's not batshit insane (although he may "suffer" from sadistic tendencies).