Well, I'm trying to take the "chaos and relativity" thread to the Digest, but I'll respond to this separate point here.
Not everything that is "evil or morally corrupt" is chaos. Many evil acts empower chaos in some slight and indirect way (like blowing out a candle on your birthday cake empowers Orlanth), but they are not chaotic in and of themselves -- they don't call chaos down on the community, turn the doer into Broos*, or whatever. They are just evil, bad, rotten, nasty things to do. This has got to be the case or every Gloranthan adventure becomes "heroes vs chaos," and that's kind of dull. You also erode the difference between scary but natural cultures (like the Exiles or the Aramites) and chaos horrors, which cheapens the story.
Furthermore, we end up with an distrurbing spectrum of chaos:
Vampirism -- stealing life
Tapping -- stealing essence
Rape -- stealing the integrety of a person's body
Malkioni Land Management Practice -- stealing peasants' livelihood
Good Ole Heortling Fun -- stealing the neighbor's cattle
The only difference between the first three and the last two is that the "chaotic acts" are specifically tied to the victim's body and spirit, nevermind that the latter two can have largely the same consequences -- the peasants forced off their land starve, curse Malkion, and are damned, the Heortlings counterraid in an increasing cycle of feud and violence (well, maybe).
Anyway, this is getting over-long, but there has to be room in Glorantha for evil to be just evil.
Peter Larsen
*Insert "let the chaos fit the crime" here
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