Potted Summary: Chaos is not a universal, absolute notion of 'evil', it's culturally conditioned to (at least) a degree, and even within a particular cultural take is not beyond being subverted. If you find the Orlanthi attitude to Chaos excessively bigotted, then why not either run a game which gets about subverting these attitudes? Or as Simon suggests, run a Lunar game (or a Kralori one!) which doesn't have 'em in the first place?
> * The Orlanthi will still hate the Lunars: the Lunars have
> invaded, are changing the Orlanthi way of life, changing the
> mythic landscape.
Sounds like you wish to make the Lunars _less_ morally ambiguous in their Badness. I suggest the numerous portrayals of The Good Lunar, and the numerous cases of Lunar conversion among the Orlanthi make the point that they are _not_ morally unambiguous, despite their 'chaoticness'.
> * "Chaos" gods remain hated or feared. Thanatari still steal
> knowledge, Krarshti still conspire, Thedi(?) still rape.
> Humakti still kill.
So where's the beef? If 'Chaos' gods are still (functionally speaking) 'evil', what moral depth does this add, in and of itself? If you want to portray them as less unambiguously evil (or just as being less evil, even), I don't see how this is incompatible with their being 'chaotic'.
> * The lesser and greater darkness from the godtime remain, but
> are the same thing. Very few of the myths change.
Apart from every single one the Greater Darkness myths from (for example) the Orlanthi perpective. These are all _about_ chaos, and unless one simply replaces "Chaos" and "Predark" by "Feep" and "Maguffin", would be rather hard to tell without reference to 'em.
> * The Compromise remains, to include and control the changes of
> the Storm Age into the stability of the Golden Age.
Without the Chaos Age, why would the Storm Gods have bothered? Tough luck Yelmie, you lose... Unless, again, we replace 'chaos' by something functionally identical.
> The real world doesn't have clearly labelled evil. This makes for
> difficult judgements. Gameworlds like _Call_of_Cthulhu_ don't have
> clearly labelled evil.
It doesn't? Maybe they just ran out of signs before they ran out of Evil Monsters. Infinitely long before, evidently.
Potted conclusion: don't remove 'chaos', just examine more closely its assumed identity with 'evil'.
Slainte,
Alex.
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