Sustainable evil

In a recent conversation with my brother we remarked upon something that's been bothering me for while. Are you familiar with Dungeons and Dragons? Passingly? Ok, near enough.

In the backstory there's this race of black skinned Elves who are evil (no racial comparisons intended by the designers... hopefully). They are evil pretty much to the last man (although considering how 99.99% of them are evil, there's a surprisingly large number of misrepresented rebels), and as such their society consists of oppression, scheming, political assassinations and vast amounts of "let's fuck over our neighbour and take their stuff". That's all well and good, it provides a good moral reason for the appropriately varied small group of elite warriors and wizards to sneak in and kill them because they're being evil and threatening, and sometimes that's GOOD for a party. No moral considerations, just "bad guys are here, stab their faces in". Oh, and they live in one of the most hostile areas of the world imaginable, where everything wants to eat everything else's faces.

However...

And this is a big BIG however...

As mentioned this is a race of Elves. In common Fantasy one of the normal aspects of Elves is that they breed very, very slowly. Maybe they're so sick of beautiful people they don't get it on much, but in general Elves breed slowly. The only reason the race doesn't die out completely is they're very good at what they do, and so don't die alot.

So a race that constantly kills each other, lives in one of the most hostile lands imaginable, and constantly tries to invade the 'good' surface world... SOMEHOW has a viable population. Call me picky, but this makes no sense. In general if a species is constantly getting picked off, the only way to avoid that is to have LOTS of babies, which it's already established Elves don't do. As an evil race of bastards, this is completely unsustainable.

It is then my brother came up with one of the greatest terms ever.

S.E.R.

Sustainable Evil Race.

A Sustainable Evil Race is one in which the population will never fall below a certain line of sustainable growth, no matter how many of them are killed by "heroic Adventueres" walking in, stabbing them and taking their shit, or the elements, or their environment, or even each other. Orcs and Goblins are normally a good example of this, since there seem to be so many of the bastards you couldn't stop them from showing up, even if you wanted to. Drow and other evil elven-like races? Not so much. Kill a couple and it'd be a genuine blow to the race. Kill an army of races like Kobolds and they'll be up and at'em again in a couple of years.

So, what is required for a sustainably evil race? Let's introduce some faux maths.

B = Birth Rate, how many will be born over a given time period
S = Percent who survive to 'fighting' age, the age they can fight alongside other evil buggers.
E = Environmental dangers, how many will die because of their surroundings over a given time period
I = Infighting dangers, how many will die because of they are all arseholes over a given time period
H = Heroic dangers, how many will die because of "heroes" killing them and taking their stuff over a given time period
L = Locations, how far spread around the world they are

(B x S - E - I - H)^L

An Example or two:

Drow have a low Birth Rate, but most of then survive because of protection by their family. Their environmental dangers are enormous, as is the infighting. Heroes aren't TOO common, but common enough to be a threat. While the Underdark (where they live) is meant to be enormous, it's also meant to be very inhospitable, and as such there aren't too many Drow settlements. As such, it's quite easy to imagine the Drow are NOT a sustainable evil population. If they didn't have as much infighting or heroic encounters it's not hard to imagine they'd have a greater chance of survival.

Goblins breed like rabbit hermaphrodites, alot of them probably die before reaching 'fighting' age because of low resources. They're the bottom of the food chain and bicker among themselves all the time, as well as having enormous problems with huge numbers of threatening heroes. But, and a big but, they are EVERYWHERE. The fact they breed like it's going out of fashion coupled with the fact they're all over the place means the best you can possibly do is wipe out a few tribes, and even then the other tribes will have bred enough in that time to make up for it. Goblins ARE a sustainably evil population.


What's the lesson here kids? If a race is going to have massive infighting, be evil enough to want to invade everywhere, and have major problems with the tough environment, they're going to need to breed enormously just to keep the numbers up. Remember that when you're designing stuff.