The 'Wonderland'-Inspired Faces of the RAGE OF DEMONS

Take a peek at some of the art from D&D's upcoming Rage of Demons storyline. This art is by Richard Whitters, who is the art director for D&D and used to work as a concept artist for Magic: the Gathering. WotC's Chris Perkins has indicated that one of the influences on Rage of Demons was Alice in Wonderland, and I think the influence is clear when you look at the characters below.

OUGALOP, kuo-toa cave cricket catcher extraordinaire.

YUK YUK and SPIDERBAIT, goblin adrenaline junkies.

THE SOCIETY OF BRILLIANCE, the Mensa of the Underdark.

GLABBAGOOL, awakened gelatinous cube.

RUMPADUMP and STOOL, myconid followers.

PRINCE DERENDIL, a quaggoth who thinks he's elven royalty.

TOPSY and TURVY, svirfneblin wererat siblings.

THE PUDDING KING, svirfneblin devotee (i.e., flunky) of Juiblex the Faceless Lord.

D&D's "Legion of Doom." What a wonderful bunch of malcontents.
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[pemerton]

I agree that ultimate evil is often tedious, especially for mortal villians. On the other hand, I don't see Lucifer, Dracula, Grendel, or Sauron as being cartoony just because they are Ultimate Evil. It's a traditional fantasy of morality in black and white.

I've always been a little puzzled by Sauron's motivations. I wouldn't say that he's especially cartoony, but rather a bit under-developed.

Whereas that's not really the case for Saruman, Wormtongue, or even Melkor/Morgoth.

 

[Rejuvenator]

I've always been a little puzzled by Sauron's motivations. I wouldn't say that he's especially cartoony, but rather a bit under-developed.

Power? Paranoid and eliminating all rivals? I figure he has his reasons, they're just not explained since the character exists primarily behind the scenes.

Mind you, I have the same puzzlement about the endless parade of D&D villians that seek an artifact to take over a region.

 

[The Hitcher]

I guess, from a world-building perspective, if fiends are pure incarnations of evil on paper (as described officially in many monster manuals and accessories) and yet this meanders in actual play or Planescape whimsy, then where is the For Real Incarnate Evil? I mean, if Sauron and Satan are not ultimate evil and just slightly misunderstood, then who is Ultimate Evil in a classic D&D setting?

Ultimate evil can work as a kind of force of nature - something as pure and inhuman as a volcano or sandstorm. In that form, it can be an obstacle against which the hero's mettle is occasionally tested. But as soon as that evil becomes personified into a character that is even a slight approximation of a person, it pretty quickly becomes cartoony. Likewise for minions who are evil just because their boss is. What's in it for them? Characters need somewhat understandable motivations to be characters at all. Otherwise they're just set dressing with hit points.

And personally I think a fantasy world populated with complex characters is by far the more interesting alternative. If "good guys" sometimes turn out to be liabilities and "bad guys" to be assets and sometimes you just have no idea, that is way more interesting than just rolling a whole lot of d20s on the way to the big boss.

Hell, if Paradise Lost counts, that's a treatment of Satan Hisself that's EXCEPTIONALLY relatable (but still, as it is a text written by a good Christian, in the wrong).

Yeah, Satan is quite frequently a sympathetic character, even to Christians. I'm quite partial to the version from Sandman, myself.

In Planescape, the fiends are not just there to be monstrous, but are there to be characters you interact with, since it's a setting that uses hell itself as a stomping-ground on occasion. Because these are in most D&D games the epitome of debased, horrible evil, using them as shopkeeps (A'kin), patrons (Shemeska), informants (Rule-of-Three), whatever, and by depicting them not as all Gothic horror and HR Geiger unsettling weirdness, but as DiTerlizzi's "dark whimsy"...that's part of how PS tweaks D&D into something a bit morally greyer. Even an epitome of debased evil might not be such a bad dude....or maybe he is...it's really an individual consideration, and you can't approach them all the same way.

...

And in PS, at least, I'd say that the ULTIMATE EVIL is largely a matter of who your characters think it is, not who the game tells you it is.

This. Imagine how boring roaming the Planes would be if you could already tell EXACTLY how every celestial or fiend was going to act just by looking at them?

 

[Rejuvenator]

Because these are in most D&D games the epitome of debased, horrible evil, using them as shopkeeps (A'kin), patrons (Shemeska), informants (Rule-of-Three), whatever, and by depicting them not as all Gothic horror and HR Geiger unsettling weirdness, but as DiTerlizzi's "dark whimsy"...that's part of how PS tweaks D&D into something a bit morally greyer. Even an epitome of debased evil might not be such a bad dude....or maybe he is...

Not "maybe". He IS bad, to the bone. But it may not manifest as Geiger-ish monstrous behavior. If I was, say, a reporter, and I met with Dracula in his castle, and I know he's the Worst Evil Vampire, and yet he was really nice and polite to me the whole time, that's still really disturbing (perhaps more disturbing in a way than if he predictably attacked me and sucked my blood). I don't for one second think he's not such a bad dude.

What's not relatable to me is if a person meets with Dracula ala Planescape and feels pretty secure and comfortable hanging around Ultimate Evil, and musing how he's not so bad.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Not "maybe". He IS bad, to the bone. But it may not manifest as Geiger-ish monstrous behavior. If I was, say, a reporter, and I met with Dracula in his castle, and I know he's the Worst Evil Vampire, and yet he was really nice and polite to me the whole time, that's still really disturbing (perhaps more disturbing in a way than if he predictably attacked me and sucked my blood). I don't for one second think he's not such a bad dude.

Actually, with most of the PS examples, and ESPECIALLY with A'kin, the truth of the horror is open to question. Fallen angels and risen fiends are things that are known to happen (even if they're rare, they're not unique) and a demon who shares your heroic goals or an angel who opposes them are things that PC's deal with. The setting wants you to ask the in-character question, "What MAKES this character evil/good? And even if they truly are, is that really a problem/solution for us right now?"

I imagine this adventure is going to be full of mad underdark denizens that you may or may not want to momentarily trust or that you may or may not momentarily need, and this artwork definitely helps sell that. You'll probably not just want to kill Glabbagool, but your ability to trust it will likely be different for different PC's.

What's not relatable to me is if a person meets with Dracula ala Planescape and feels pretty secure and comfortable hanging around Ultimate Evil, and musing how he's not so bad.

I imagine in ROD, your bonkers wererat gnomes or whatever might earn their share of fans in the party - I could totally imagine folks favoring them to the uptight paladin or the aloof anti-hero. And yet they are wererats and monsters and madmen, things that in a lot of D&D campaigns certainly represent evil.

In Planescape, your fiendish informant might very well be a more trusted source of advice than the party member who is a Diviner and also a Doomguard ("For some reason, all her predictions point to our grisly and inevitable demise"). Your fiendish shopkeep who smiles and gives you what you ask for and serves you tea, while odd, might be the best supplier for your expedition to protect some planar trade caravan of lost orphans going to Elysium by the scenic route or whatever. And you could, in-character, think them quite decent chaps for an entire campaign, and not have any stitch of evidence to prove the contrary.

Which is all just to say that part of what I think I dig about the dark whimsy on display here is that they seem like interesting characters, not just monsters to slay. I was a fan when PS did that to the fiends, and I'm a fan of it here, though it's not always and everywhere in every campaign the choice you're going to want to make, absolutely.

 

[Rejuvenator]

Which is all just to say that part of what I think I dig about the dark whimsy on display here is that they seem like interesting characters, not just monsters to slay. I was a fan when PS did that to the fiends, and I'm a fan of it here, though it's not always and everywhere in every campaign the choice you're going to want to make, absolutely.

I hear you. Well maybe it's not a zero sum game. Maybe Evil can be characterized just enough to have interesting interactions, but still be faithful to an irredeemably evil nature.

For example, Lucifer can be still come across as somewhat sympathetic and yet still be irredeemably evil. He complains about kicked out of heaven as a disproportionately cruel punishment by the will of God. Sure, he's narcissistic and manipulative, but it's not his fault, he didn't deserve his role in the universe.

If he's NOT Absolute Evil in that story, perhaps he's a victim of circumstance, feels sorry for himself, and strives to be better, but feels like he can't change.

But if he is Absolute Evil in that story, he follows his nature wholeheartedly. He embraces his place in the universe. Poo-poo on his fall from heaven, it was inevitable. He embraces his role as The Devil! Vilest of all, for anybody who believes his sob story, being sympathetic to the devil might actually bar their soul from going to heaven. Thus Lucifer exploits the human desire for empathy in order to possibly claim the mortal's soul for Hell. That would be pure mean evil.

In that vein, Planescape could be PR propaganda churned out by the Lower Planes in order to soften the 'pure evil' reputation of the fiends, get the berks to drop their guard a little, just enough to further their diabolical plans

If fiends are evil incarnate, then each one IS according to its nature. There is an inconsistency for me when something like Zhentarim are cartoonish one-sided Bad Guys, but a demon (the essence of evil chaos and destruction) wants to sip wine and talk about Art. Some exaggeration there, but human villians demand more humanistic motives to me than extraplanar beings do. I guess I'm saying some things don't seem to walk the talk, don't put their money where there mouth is.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I hear you. Well maybe it's not a zero sum game. Maybe Evil can be characterized just enough to have interesting interactions, but still be faithful to an irredeemably evil nature.

I guess what I'm saying is that "fiends are irredeemably evil" is a choice you make in a setting, not a constant truism. If that is true in your world, then that affects how you approach fiends as a player (you don't usually try to talk with them, for instance). If that is NOT true in your world, that ALSO affects how you approach fiends as a player. It changes your assumptions.

The same is true for anything you care to replace "fiends" with. Mind flayers. Wererats. Kuo-toa. Orcs. Whatever. None of those things HAVE to be irredeemably evil, but any of them CAN be, depending on the campaign.

This adventure looks like it's treating some underdark beings at least as they appear in this adventure as More Weird Than Evil, which is great. But, like, in Ravenloft? That would be an awful choice.

 

[Rejuvenator]

The same is true for anything you care to replace "fiends" with. Mind flayers. Wererats. Kuo-toa. Orcs. Whatever. None of those things HAVE to be irredeemably evil, but any of them CAN be, depending on the campaign.

Look, all I did was take "evil incarnate" in the Monster Manual (and supporting tales of fiendish depravity) at face value. The Monster Manual doesn't describe orcs as "evil incarnate" but merely "evil" or unaligned (in 4E?) as a statistical mean. I have no reason to describe them as HAVE TO BE irredeemably evil (thus killing orc babies is controversial). Is killing demon spawn controversial? Mind flayers are described as alien in thinking, so that means something too. Kuo-toa, if I remember correctly, are insane, so a sane kuo-toa drank the anti Kool-aid. The various canon descriptions place different demands on the DM accordingly, unless the DM veers from the canon, which is cool too, but that's a different argument. Perhaps it's on me, perhaps "evil incarnate" is not as straightforward as I assume it to be.

This adventure looks like it's treating some underdark beings at least as they appear in this adventure as More Weird Than Evil, which is great.

That's cool. FR makes allowances for variance in (lower case e) evil races (Drizzt and good drow are a case in point) so it's not a systemic problem for me.

 

[Relax]

How does everyone here feel about the ultimate evil presented in the Cthulhu mythos? Is an evil with alien motivations still interesting?

 

[Sword of Spirit]

The way I like to look at evil in Planescape is that fiends really are evil incarnate...but that doesn't mean they can't be allies.

Take a yugoloth. Their core motivation is "what's in it for me?" You can "trust" that a yugoloth will do whatever it considers to be in its own best interest. If your interest and the yugoloth's interest perfectly coincide, you've got a pretty reliable ally (as long as things don't change). I've seen non-D&D fictional presentations exactly like that, and they were quite believable. A lot of the times the protagonists (and the audience) are unsure of how evil the helpful bad guy is--but usually at the end they get betrayed and realize, "Yep, this guy was pure evil the whole time."

So that fiendish shopkeeper? Just as bad as any other, but he is smart, he is working as a shopkeeper for a reason, and that reason is best served by not killing people nor breaking (most) laws. My interpretation of Planescape (think about that for a moment...) is bringing up the question, "How many ways can ultimate evil manifest, and are they necessarily a problem to you?"

And I don't look at Planescape as "the planes." It is the specific planar culture of Sigil that also bleeds over into certain other locations. Most fiends are much more transparent, most planar denizens don't speak the cant, and most of them probably either don't know about Sigil, or steer clear of it like an insane asylum. Even for inhabitants of the planes, Sigil is weird.

So the fact that fiends are rubbing shoulders with everyone else there? Just another oddity. Why are they there? What are their real motives? But, to the average guy on the street in Sigil, if that fiend isn't going to eat me on my way home from work, why should I care?