Yugoloths: Do They Have an Identity Beyond the Blood War?

[Mouseferatu]

I wonder--and I'm just thinking aloud here, this isn't something I've spent a lot of time on--if searching for a race-wide goal/purpose/identity for the yugoloths isn't self-contradictory.

They're neutral evil, emphasis (since we're talking about the differences with demons and devils) on neutral. The devils have a unified method/purpose because they're lawful. The demons want to spread destruction--to whatever extent--because they're chaotic.

But "neutral evil" is about me, whoever the "me" in question happens to be. So one could argue that the difference between the 'loths and the others should specifically be that they're all individualistic; that while there might be trends and tendencies, there isn't a unifying principle beyond self-interest.

 

[pemerton]

I'm not even sure there's Blood War going on in 4e.

There is. It's the result of Asmodeus's attempt to recover the "shard of evil" from the heart of the Abyss. (See MotP, p 89.)

I had a look at D3. It has a few things to say about daemons in the entries for new monsters at the end of the module.

<snip>

So they dislike rules and any other limitations on their ability to ruthlessly pursue their own self-interest. They sound pretty much like the embodiment of NE.

This is one of the (many) cases where I can't really see the difference between NE and CE. What do bugbears, gnolls, ogres etc do? They ruthlessly pursue their own self-interest and power regardless of rules or social convention.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

There is. It's the result of Asmodeus's attempt to recover the "shard of evil" from the heart of the Abyss. (See MotP, p 89.)

This is one of the (many) cases where I can't really see the difference between NE and CE. What do bugbears, gnolls, ogres etc do? They ruthlessly pursue their own self-interest and power regardless of rules or social convention.

Yup, there it is. Sorry, never was a big fan of multi-planar adventure, so some details tends to get ignored while playing.
On another note, I foud this thread on 'loths lore for the Dawn War, I dont know if it differs that much from their natural lore:

''Most people are familiar with the Great Wheel/Planescape version of Yugoloth lore. Created by the night hags and bearnoloth's(/Asmodeus in 5e), mercenaries in the Blood War, and there's a theory that they started the Blood War and may be the progenitors of all of fiendkind.

However, I never see much talk about 4e's yugoloth lore, which makes sense since it was sort of spread between several Monster Manuals, the Demonomicon, and several issues of Dragon magazine - and it was obfuscated by the fact that they weren't often called out as a distinct group, having been rolled into demons.

In 4e, when Obox-Ob fell through the Abyss he created the Blood Rift (in older editions the Grand Abyss), which has the notable property that no Demon Lord or God can enter it. It is here that the first demons (all yugoloths with -demon instead of -loth or -daemon in their names), who were loyal to Tharizdun ended up settling down. Because their master is in chains, and because no greater powers can enter the Blood Rift, they are free to do as they please and have developed into traders, emissaries and (especially) demonic mercenaries selling their services to the highest bidder.

That's what's different in 4e. Thanks to Dragon 417, most of the old Great Wheel lore is also possibly true, though if you want to harmonize it with 4e's other sources, I'd do something like: Obyrinths send Seed of Evil from their dying universe to a brand new one > Tharizdun corrupted, creates abyss > Baernaloths spawn as first demons of the Abyss > Bearnoloths create yugoloth demons > First ultroloth creates Heart of Darkness and turns the Law and Chaos in the yugoloths into larvae > Asmodeus steals part of the Seed of Evil at the heart of the Abyss (possibly being convinced by Pazuzu or the baernaloths) > Asmodeus kills his patron god and the first baatezu devils are the angels that fell with Asmodeus and the Lawful larvae from the yugoloths > all other demons of the abyss are spawned from the Chaotic larvae of the yugoloths > the yugoloths pretend to still be demons and settle into the Blood Rift as mercenary fiends''

 

[steeldragons]

The Blood War was a 2e invention. It definitely played a big role in the 2e Planescape line.

Ahhh, that's it then. I never played/used Planescape.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

I'm not even sure there's Blood War going on in 4e. IIRC, in the Dawn War cosmology, the Demons were originally the Angels/Devils (Angels served good Gods, Devil served evil Gods but were still lawful servants of divine dominions in the Astral Sea) of Tharizdun that fell in the when the other gods decided to throw Tharizdun's Dominion at the bottom of the Elemental Chaos, thus creating the endless Abysses. That's why in 4e Demons are considered Elemental creatures and Angels/Devils were Immortals. Since there's no easy way to travel from the Astral Sea to the Elemental Chaos, I doubt there was an open war between the two ''races'' in 4. But that's from memories and some of that may be homebrew stuff I'm mixing.

Actually it's more like this:

- Demon Lords from another multiverse that they had personally sent into a death spiral searched for a way to escape their dieing reality. These surviving Demon Lords, the twelve Obyriths, used a crystal made from their slain peers to pierce a hole into another multiverse and send the crystal through. Tharizdun found it and threw it into the Elemental Chaos where it tore through the plane and formed the Abyss, becoming the Seed of Evil at its "lowest" layer. The twelve Obyriths were able to enter the Abyss as it was forming and pretended to be either transformed Primordials or creations of the Abyss itself like the other newly created Demon Lords. Tharizdun fought the Obyriths for control of the Abyss and created lesser Demons from it to wage war, but was later driven out, where he would be captured and imprisoned by the Gods.
- The Devils were former Angels led by Asmodeus, who was himself a servant of the God now only known as He Who Was and tasked to guard the prison of Tharizdun for eternity. However, Asmodeus was convinced by the Obyrith Pazuzu that mere guard duty was beneath him and that by using a shard of the Seed of Evil he could slay He Who Was and become a God himself. Asmodeus procured a shard and used it to form the Ruby Rod, and together with his forces defeated He Who Was. The victory came at a price, as the slain God's realm was transformed by a dieing curse into the Nine Hells as a prison for the rebel Angels, who thereafter became Devils.
- The Blood War was instigated by Asmodeus' desire to take the entirety of the Seed of Evil from the Abyss, whereas the Demons wished to take back the shard that was used to form the Ruby Rod. The primary method by which the Hells and the Abyss were connected was via portals located in the Abyssal layer called The Plain of a Thousand Portals. Graz'zt was himself originally a leader in the Devil's siege on the Abyss but was transformed into a Demon Lord by its influence. The Blood War subsided somewhat due to increased conflicts within the Hells and the Abyss, with forces on both sides formerly engaged in the Blood War now being needed to fight battles at home.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

Actually it's more like this:

- Demon Lords from another multiverse that they had personally sent into a death spiral searched for a way to escape their dieing reality. These surviving Demon Lords, the twelve Obyriths, used a crystal made from their slain peers to pierce a hole into another multiverse and send the crystal through. Tharizdun found it and threw it into the Elemental Chaos where it tore through the plane and formed the Abyss, becoming the Seed of Evil at its "lowest" layer. The twelve Obyriths were able to enter the Abyss as it was forming and pretended to be either transformed Primordials or creations of the Abyss itself like the other newly created Demon Lords. Tharizdun fought the Obyriths for control of the Abyss and created lesser Demons from it to wage war, but was later driven out, where he would be captured and imprisoned by the Gods.
- The Devils were former Angels led by Asmodeus, who was himself a servant of the God now only known as He Who Was and tasked to guard the prison of Tharizdun for eternity. However, Asmodeus was convinced by the Obyrith Pazuzu that mere guard duty was beneath him and that by using a shard of the Seed of Evil he could slay He Who Was and become a God himself. Asmodeus procured a shard and used it to form the Ruby Rod, and together with his forces defeated He Who Was. The victory came at a price, as the slain God's realm was transformed by a dieing curse into the Nine Hells as a prison for the rebel Angels, who thereafter became Devils.
- The Blood War was instigated by Asmodeus' desire to take the entirety of the Seed of Evil from the Abyss, whereas the Demons wished to take back the shard that was used to form the Ruby Rod. The primary method by which the Hells and the Abyss were connected was via portals located in the Abyssal layer called The Plain of a Thousand Portals. Graz'zt was himself originally a leader in the Devil's siege on the Abyss but was transformed into a Demon Lord by its influence. The Blood War subsided somewhat due to increased conflicts within the Hells and the Abyss, with forces on both sides formerly engaged in the Blood War now being needed to fight battles at home.

Ahhhh, that's interesting. I dont know why I though that Tarizdun went mad after gazing through the Living Gate. Looks like I got confused with homebrew lore/Nentir Vale lore and official lore.

God I love this cosmology; the Great Wheel is cool, but the Dawn War just click with me in a way none other can.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

In 4e, when Obox-Ob fell through the Abyss he created the Blood Rift (in older editions the Grand Abyss), which has the notable property that no Demon Lord or God can enter it. It is here that the first demons (all yugoloths with -demon instead of -loth or -daemon in their names), who were loyal to Tharizdun ended up settling down. Because their master is in chains, and because no greater powers can enter the Blood Rift, they are free to do as they please and have developed into traders, emissaries and (especially) demonic mercenaries selling their services to the highest bidder.

I didn't remember that detail! Was that from Demonomicon?

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

I didn't remember that detail! Was that from Demonomicon?

I wouldnt know, this is a post I found on Reddit (no one answered the OP). It refers a to Demonomicon and Dragon 417, so I guess this is from somewhere around there, but like many thing with 4e, the lore is spread across 100000 books and magazines. It get confusing sometime and its hard to remember is something is a real information or if its something an old Dm added to a game.

 

[Shemeska]

That would be the proteans, which are vaguely serpentine looking creatures. Still not exactly what I would imagine as beings of incarnate chaos, though.

Speaking as the person who created Pathfinder's proteans, they're serpents for two reasons. Firstly because it's a nod to the slaadi that were closed content and I couldn't use, but in the Egyptian Ogdoad of Hermopolis creation myth, the primordial chaos of creation was inhabited and shaped by male froglike and female serpentine gods, and if the slaadi are froglike... On top of that the serpentine motif worked in other ways as well, what with various mythologies having a serpent or dragon ruling over primordial chaotic waters. So you've got the basic notion of proteans there as primal sea serpents in an infinite, ever-changing, semi-literal ocean of formless chaos, and it went wild from that point and you end up with the choruses without number singing in the infinite deep of the Maelstrom.

While there's a basic serpentine motif, their behavior and the motivations of each chorus are myriad and unpredictable. And if you consider the proteans themselves as tantamount to the Maelstrom's immune system reacting to the local contagion of the other, less chaotic planes that drift within it (and the Abyss as essentially an adjacent reality run around on the Maelstrom and the two of them brutally reaction to one another) the proteans are only one facet of the Cerulean Deep, and it's infinite and you're only seeing the forms of its life present in one local tidal shallow. Stranger things indeed swim in the deep beyond the reach of gods and mortals.

 

[Shemeska]

I wonder--and I'm just thinking aloud here, this isn't something I've spent a lot of time on--if searching for a race-wide goal/purpose/identity for the yugoloths isn't self-contradictory.

They're neutral evil, emphasis (since we're talking about the differences with demons and devils) on neutral. The devils have a unified method/purpose because they're lawful. The demons want to spread destruction--to whatever extent--because they're chaotic.

But "neutral evil" is about me, whoever the "me" in question happens to be. So one could argue that the difference between the 'loths and the others should specifically be that they're all individualistic; that while there might be trends and tendencies, there isn't a unifying principle beyond self-interest.

Colin McComb's opening pages in the yugoloth chapter in Planescape's 'Faces of Evil: The Fiends' for 2e addresses that seeming paradox, and is IMO arguably the best material on the 'loths and regarding any of the D&D fiends in any edition of D&D, hands down. It's truly spectacular.

That Planescape material and associated content was touched upon in 3.x multiple times, and I tried to do the same briefly for 4e (as much as I was able within the restrictions placed on the work), and so it's a disappointment to see 5e seemingly avoiding it entirely.