[Planescape?] Yugoloths big relocation from Hades to Gehenna: why?

Well, the title really sums it up. Why did all the yugoloths move from Hades to Gehenna anyway?

Hades didn't suit them. The plane's soul sucking effect on everything is incompatible with a race which are essentially planar mercenaries. Gehenna didn't have a native race, so the yugoloth were moved there, leaving Hades to the Night Hags and Larvae.

Although I can't answer the question as I'm simply not that interested in Lothy Loths (I'm sure Shemmy will be along in a minute), I'd just like to point out that there are still plenty of Yugoloths left in the Waste. They hold Khin-Oin, after all.

Some death gods and hordelings moved in and there went the 'ol neighborhood.

Huw said:

Hades didn't suit them. The plane's soul sucking effect on everything is incompatible with a race which are essentially planar mercenaries. Gehenna didn't have a native race, so the yugoloth were moved there, leaving Hades to the Night Hags and Larvae.

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That doesn't make much sense. As the natives of the plane, they should be the most suited to the nature of the plane, as demons are to the Abyss, for instance, or devils to Hell.

Sammael said:

I'm sure Shemmy will be along in a minute

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Heh-heh. Yeah, I should have just flagged this thread as a question for him, shouldn't I?

Gather round, hold hands, it's story time.

The 'loths didn't abandon the Waste, they just expanded into Gehenna, and they're seeking to do the same with Carceri as well.

The 'loths originated on the Waste and they spontaneously generate from the raw stuff of that plane, but since they colonized Gehenna eons ago and then tethered themselves to that plane (via the Tower Arcane) they now arise out of the furnaces of that latter plane as well. Seeking to do the same in Carceri, they're constructing the Tower of Incarnate Pain on Othrys, cobbling it together from dozens of millions of petitioners into a structure that when complete will rival the size of Khin-Oin and infect Carceri in the same way that they co-opted Gehenna.

The 'loths see a domination of the three neutral evil planes as something of a birthright, something to perhaps prove themselves worthy in the eyes of their creators the Baernaloths. In Gehenna they had no opposition, but in Carceri it's more difficult since the Demodands (Gehreleths) inhabit that plane, and the two races kill one another on sight. The Demodands were created by a renegade Baernaloth, either just before or just after the 'loths were created by the orthodox members of that primal NE race (timing depends on who you ask). The yugoloths abhor deities, but the Demodands revere their creator Apomps the Triple Aspected as a deity and have his/her/its/their direct support, and have demolished the Tower of Incarnate pain several times (Apomps might or might not be a deity, in some ways he's seemingly not and in other ways he's frighteningly more capable than any deity should be. His exile from the Waste may have actually been the formative event that created Carceri in the first place).

The 3e Manual of the Planes was a bit awkwardly worded in the suggestion that they all moved to Gehenna, which isn't true. 'loth rule over Gehenna is just more overt than their subtle, yet largely monolithic domination over the Gray Waste. Some of this then has leaked over into various other 3.x books, some just mentioning Gehenna and others mentioning the Waste and also Gehenna as well, probably depending on if the author was only familiar with the 3e coverage of the 'loths, or also the 2e and 1e material as well.

But the eventual intention by the 'loths is the connect the engines and furnaces of the Tower Arcane, the pools beneath Khin-Oin the Wasting Tower, and the Reflective Chasm of the Tower of Incarnate Pain into some unholy trio. What this will actually do isn't known, but the 'loths are fanatical about finishing the third great yugoloth tower to accomplish this, and it may at least in the way that I've developed in my own stories/storyhours be something like an attempt by the 'loths to mimic the three Loadstones of Misery in the Gray Waste (one per layer of the plane, they're presumed to be Baernaloth relics that predate the 'loths, and might be responsible for funneling or channeling the misery of the Waste and pooling together all of the emotions and life that the entirety of the plane itself saps and leaches from anything there).

Thanks, Shemeska! I knew I could count on you.

Hey, while I've got your attention, any chance you could enumerate a bit on these primal fiendish races; what they're story is, where they are, and how they came to be replaced by the modern fiendish races? Or at least point to a good source of that information, in a pinch?

Also; this is really bizarre; I first thought I could maybe find some of this on planewalker.com, but for some strange reason, it's been called a pornographic site by our IT department, and I can't access it from work.

Be prepared for some pretty fantastic (as in, a product of fantasy ) 'loth propaganda. He'll tell you the baernaloths are behind it all. For a more realistic version, refer to Chris Pramas A Guide to Hell.

J-Dawg said:

Thanks, Shemeska! I knew I could count on you.

Hey, while I've got your attention, any chance you could enumerate a bit on these primal fiendish races; what they're story is, where they are, and how they came to be replaced by the modern fiendish races? Or at least point to a good source of that information, in a pinch?

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The material in and especially the timeline of the Lower Planes in Hellbound: The Blood War and material in Faces of Evil: The Fiends, Planes of Conflict and in 3.x bits in Fiendish Codex:I are the most applicable sources.

According to the oldest legends on the topic, which are almost uniformly of Yugoloth origin*, since they have the oldest records, the cardinal/pure alignments existed as non-material and formless abstracts before the formation of the planes. They warred with one another before the nameless essence of True Neutrality forged a truce and the planes sprang into their first material form (this is all prior to the rise of intelligent life on the prime material, and depending on source, before the prime material existed at all). Each of the alignments sent in their chosen servants to war on their behalf in this new emergant reality, and abstract Evil sent as its chosen a race of fiends known as the Baernaloths.

*(but do you trust them to not spin the truth to their convenience?)

The Baernaloths eventually created the yugoloths as their own servant race, their chosen and favored children (as the 'loths see it). Around this time, one Baernaloth, or possibly three of them fused into one, named Apomps the Triple Aspected created the Demodand (Gehreleth) race. The 'loths say this was in flawed imitation of themselves and they came first, while the Demodands say that they were first and the 'loths were created afterwards by the remainder of the Baernaloths who had been indecisive.

But Apomps was exiled, apparently on threat of obliteration of himself and his own children the Demodands, and they still exist in bitter seclusion in Carceri. Apomps seems to have dedicated him/her/itself to the destruction of everything created by his fellow Brother/Sisters who rejected his actions at the dawn of creation.

But back to the newly created yugoloths. Eventually during this period the cardinal elements began to spread and merge, mingle, or infect one another. The yugoloths began to become flawed by traces of law or chaos, and so a yugoloth, supposedly the first to achieve Ultroloth status, later known as the General of Gehenna, purged his fellows of Law and Chaos at the instruction of the Baernaloths using an artifact known as the Heart of Darkness. The bits of law and chaos they removed from themselves were forced into the first larvae that had begun to appear on the Waste, and those tainted with law were herded into what would become Baator, and those flawed with chaos were herded into what would become the Abyss.

The orthodox version of this legend states that out of this seeding of Baator and the Abyss rose the Baatezu and the Tanar'ri. How politically conveniant to current dynamics on the lower planes. Fiendish Codex 1 turns this on its side and instead claims that out of this the Baernaloths/Yugoloths created the Ancient Baatorians and the Obyriths. The Tanar'ri would later be created by the Obyriths, and the Baatezu would be created in the Hells at a later date as well. This act of creation might have been intentional by the Yugoloths, or an unintended consequence of their self purification, but their creators probably had it planned from the outset.

In any event, shortly thereafter the Baernaloths largely withdrew from the planes and handed over authority to the Ultroloths. Some of them might have departed the multiverse in its entirety, back to their source, others devolved into madness, but others remain behind as puppetmasters to the elite of yugoloth society. This last ground is known as The Demented, and they dispense their wisdom, wanted or not, to the General of Gehenna, the Oinoloth, and the most powerful Ultroloths. This group is obsessed with a simultaneous embrace of the extremes of universal evil, existing as a form of NE that encompasses both LE and CE at once. The Demented seem to view existance as an experiment, seeding a playing field and then watching as things develop. None of them in specific have been named, and outside of Apomps, only one Baern is know by name (Daru Ib Shamiq, who was responsible for the granting of teleportation abilities to the fiend races).

But to the Obyriths. These guys were only alluded to in the Planescape material, but the Fiendish Codex really establishes them heavily and makes clear that while they're the primordial CE race, they did not originate in the Abyss, but migrated there from elsewhere after being created by another parent race of fiends. Elsewhere in the FC:1 the Baernaloths are name dropped in that creative capacity, as well as having created the Ancient Baatorians as well. The Obyriths created the Tanar'ri as servants, and eventually the Tanar'ri rose up and destroyed their masters after a brief but devestating war between the Obyriths of the Abyss and the Eladrins of Arborea. The remaining Obyriths have gone into seclusion, or adapted to the current changes and rule from behind the scenes more often than by overt rule (such as Dagon's partnership with Demogorgon, and Pale Night exerting influence through her consort Baphomet, and the several Abyssal Lords that she claims to have created/given birth to, including Graz'zt, Lupercio, and Vucarik)

The Ancient Baatorians, the original LE race, were largely displaced by the Baatezu, but some still exist in Baator. In fact some of them exist frozen in the ice of Cania along with similarly frozen Archons, suggesting that it might have been the Archons that precipitated their downfall rather than just the Baatezu. Potentially the Baatezu were formed as a result of the corruption of one of the primal LN beings by the spreading influence of Evil. FC:1's twist on the Baernaloth legend removes some of the mutual exclusion between the Planescape version of lower planar history and Pramas' Zoarastrian influenced version of Baator in Guide to Hell.

But if you leave a larvae in Baator long enough, they'll become the lowest form of Ancient Baatorian by default, rather than becoming a Baatezu. The Baatezu have not wholly dominated the plane itself to that point yet, and they kill and forcibly twist any of these larval Baatorians, known as Nupperibos, into lemures. Nupperibos look like bloated, blind, deaf, and mute humanoids. Leave them alone in Baator long enough and they'll become intelligent, no longer deaf dumb and blind, and they'll sprout energy draining tentacles. One such evolved Nupperibo exists in a tower in the Kyton city of Jangling Hiter in the layer of Minauros, it's the prisoner of the kyton lord of the city who doesn't entirely know what the thing is, just that it was a gift by an Ultroloth to his now dead brother and co-ruler. The 'loth seems to have known he gave, and perhaps just wanted to see how the thing evolved on its own plane, or perhaps intended to cause a kyton revolt against the Baatezu since tensions between the races are already stretched.

But further evolutions of the Ancient Baatorians seem to cause them to become spined creatures of living, writhing darkness, and one of them in a state of torpor under the layer of Maladomini resembled a light-devouring slug or jellyfish (that was immune to anything short of a wish). Ultimately the Ancient Baatorians may evolve beyond a physical form, existing as animate thought-forms filtering through the layers of the plane and the minds of its occupants.