I've heard how GW rationalizes it, but looking at the models themselves it just doesn't make a whole lot of sense. When looking at the models, this intuitively felt correct... Besides, the crazed witch elves hardly seem civilized to me. Nor do they seem like city/town builders.
But the idoneth deepkin only raid for souls because they have too. Its a matter of life and death for thrm
That doesn't make em "not"-evil. They're still murdering innocents arbitrarly. They could at least prefer chaos or undeath targets or even destruction. Hell, they could literally make a pet-waagh and occasionally take some souls from them. The orruks wouldn't mind as long as they get a good fight...
go sacrifice chaos followers then. Or again, undeath. Plenty of zombies, vampires and what have you shambling around.
Still doesn't make em not "evil" though . They could also simply accept that they have high child mortality and be a "small" race. Has the added moral benefit of not using their "failed" offspring as basic thralls/slaves...
You mean to make sense out of AoS... I'd suggest alcohol. (and this coming from a guy who doesn't drink at all! )
So be it.... logic would dictate that you quit all this AoS nonsense and come play a more complex game!! (kidding of course... play any game you wish) More on topic, if a race is forced to kill others for their very survival, are they still evil? Is a lion evil for killing a zebra?
They don't need it for the survival of the race though, as they only need the souls for the thrall/servant caste, who's main purpose seems to be serving as cannonfodder in raids to acquire more souls for more servants-thrall things. The "proper" fish-aelves don't need the souls if I understood it correctly. They could just deal with not having servants for once
I suppose it depends on the actions associated with the killing. If it's quick, clean and practical, then I would say no' it's not evil. If the process is torturous, like Ramsay Bolton's hobbies, then yes.
Obviously I don't know enough about AoS lore to truly debate this. If they can sustain a viable population without soul harvesting then that pushes them heavily towards the evil side. What percentage of the population does not require soul harvesting in order to properly procreate (i.e. what is the approximate ratio of proper fish-elves to thrall/servants)? This is a key question as it determines whether or not a viable population can be sustained without sacrificial killing. Also by your own explanation, that would indicate that the thrall/servant caste is difficult to label as evil because they do in fact require the souls to reproduce.
The thralls themselves wouldn't be evil, it's their overlords that are. A for the population, if I remember correctly from one of the fluff pieces about 1 in 100 new-borns doesn't need extra souls. Although that's a low number those are still proper aelves with the usual stupendously long life-span, so they have plenty of time to try and spawn new babies. As such I'd say the thrall's aren't actually needed for a viable population. What also supports this is the fact that despite only 1 in 100 being a "proper" fish-aelve they still manage to keep a society going. It's not like the thralls get upgraded to "normal" after getting their soul sacrifice, they remain sorta "broken".
Which is what I’ve said in several previous posts. Compare that then to the Dark Eldar who enjoy inflicting pain on others and stealing their souls. The Idoneth could sustain a viable population of Fish-Elves if they never fought anyone, as each Elf would be more or less immortal and they could avoid being killed in battle, which is the only way they can die. However, they do need to fight in order to take the souls of others to keep their offspring alive, so each of the fish-Elves is risking their own life to help their offspring survive and as such they can’t sustain a viable population of sea-Elves, as some will die in the battles fought to lengthen the lifespans of their offspring, so the only way in which they could sustain a viable population without soul harvesting is if they just let all their deformed offspring die, in which case their remaining population would be incredibly small. So it’s a choice of either having a small but viable population without soul harvesting, which could be at great risk of destruction through a cataclysm of some sort, or a larger population that is less at risk of destruction but requires soul harvesting. Either way the Idoneth are in a rocky position.