[4th ed] Clockwork Horrors now DEMONS? And Neogi...

[Philosopher]

What could be more horrendous than the thing that waits endlessly and patiently planning and plotting ultimate destruction. Evil to the uttermost core, infinitely more patient than the cunningest spider in its web, relentless, totally cruel, wise with the wisdom of infinite ages, and undying.

Yes, devils are, in many ways, more horrendous than demons.

Fortunately, the game isn't as limited as you seem to imagine.

No, it's quite clear that the game is not limited to internally consistent ideas. I don't share your enthusiasm for this fact. Inconsistency itself is not what makes something cool, it isn't necessary for creativity, so there's no need for it. If you want a Demon Lord of Craft, that's fine, but don't claim that demons are all about entropy and destruction; rather, emphasize their chaotic nature and claim that they represent a wide variety of approaches to evil without centralized organization. My objection wasn't to a Demon Lord of Craft per se, it was to the inconsistency.

The examples you (and the Jester before you) gave are not really about daffodils, justice, and virtue. They're perversions of these things. And that's perfectly fine, because that works with demons. (In fact, I kinda like some of the examples the two of you give, good job.) But a perversion of justice is not justice. A perversion of virtue is not virtue. A perversion of daffodils... okay, maybe that one wasn't the best example, but the other two should make my point. The infinite layers of the Abyss shouldn't imply that there all things are possible in the Abyss - that simply doesn't follow.

 

[Mapache]

Perhaps... but a demon lord of alchemy and artifice? It's the like the difference between evil people using healing on themselves (nothing unusual about that) and having an evil god of healing (something very unusual about that).

Demonic craft is merely to expand the engines of destruction. All worlds are but fuel or raw materials, waiting to be consumed and turned into the instrument of the next world's fall. Haagenti works tirelessly, destroying all by conversion to his armies. He will not rest until all flesh is made steel, all wood is burned as charcoal, and his infinite, perfect engine devours him and breathes its last sigh and collapses, destroying itself as the last act, for there is nothing else left.

 

[Philosopher]

Demonic craft is merely to expand the engines of destruction. All worlds are but fuel or raw materials, waiting to be consumed and turned into the instrument of the next world's fall. Haagenti works tirelessly, destroying all by conversion to his armies. He will not rest until all flesh is made steel, all wood is burned as charcoal, and his infinite, perfect engine devours him and breathes its last sigh and collapses, destroying itself as the last act, for there is nothing else left.

See my post just before your own.

 

[Nifft]

The examples you (and the Jester before you) gave are not really about daffodils, justice, and virtue. They're perversions of these things. And that's perfectly fine, because that works with demons.

Well, yes. Demons pervert things. That's their "nature". That's why the Demon Lord of Fluffy Bunnies would still be a Demon Lord, and not merely a large fluffy bunny with a big house.

In my setting, Demons were champions of life: corrupt, sick, terrible and twisted life, but life none the less. They were Succubi birthing cambions, they were Vrocks seeding foes with vines, they were Glabrezu granting perversions of wishes. They didn't want to kill the world, they wanted to make the world into yet another abyssal hellscape -- and in my game, that's exactly why the layers of the Abyss were uncountable: each layer was a world that had fallen to the race of demons, including the planet that gave rise to Elves, the one that forged Dwarves, etc.

Orcus was a perversion, due to his fascination with the undead, but whatever. Demons are about perversion. A demon who perverts the foundations of demonhood is just getting demonic on his own demonhood.

Devils, on the other hand, only wanted total obedience. If they had to kill you & reanimate your remains, that was 100% fine with them. Their spell-like ability list confirmed this (to my mind anyway): devils all get Animate Dead, while demons do not. So my campaign had diabolical forces being behind most Necromantic lore (including undead grafts), while forbidden demonic lore would tend towards living augmentations.

Poisons, being often biological in origin yet being inimical to life, were the midpoint of demonic & diabolical philosophy, thus the Sinmaker's abode in Carceri was fortuitous.

Anyway. IMC, demons weren't about killing everyone, they were about tempting & perverting everyone -- succubus, remember? Devils wanted everyone dead, but they were methodical about it.

What would run wild, rampaging & killing everything in its path, for no apparent reason? Crazy things from the Far Realms. (Some of them anyway.) Oozes, (magical) beasts, uncontrolled undead -- dumb things. Maybe slaad, but not most other Outsiders.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Aegeri]

Its tenuous...a Primordial wouldn't have much use for an uncontrollable engine of destruction like a Clockwork Horror.

I don't really see your logic here, because not all primordials are the same and some have very destructive servants already. I don't see how a clockwork horror, something that embodies the very nature of primordials destruction and creation (they destroy and create more of themselves) is something that doesn't fit with primordials. I also don't see them as being creations of daemons to be much of a stretch either, given that daemons may be incredibly destructive but they are hardly incompetent at magic. A daemon lord of Alchemy - that incidentally isn't described in any manner further in the book - seems perfectly acceptable to me. Especially given all the furore in this thread over a sentence with no further description, it just seems entirely silly. If he was given a full write up, say by who did Oublivuae, I am sure they could make it work pretty well because Demonomicon is an excellent book in every manner.

I'm willing to give excellent books passes on single throwaway sentences without much drama myself.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Its not that they're destructive, its that they're essentially uncontrollable.

To my mind, the destructive aspects of non-Demonic non-corrupted Primordials was more...directed. More orderly. It had a purpose beyond mere destruction.

 

[Philosopher]

In my setting, Demons were champions of life: corrupt, sick, terrible and twisted life, but life none the less. They were Succubi birthing cambions, they were Vrocks seeding foes with vines, they were Glabrezu granting perversions of wishes. They didn't want to kill the world, they wanted to make the world into yet another abyssal hellscape -- and in my game, that's exactly why the layers of the Abyss were uncountable: each layer was a world that had fallen to the race of demons, including the planet that gave rise to Elves, the one that forged Dwarves, etc.

Orcus was a perversion, due to his fascination with the undead, but whatever. Demons are about perversion. A demon who perverts the foundations of demonhood is just getting demonic on his own demonhood.

Devils, on the other hand, only wanted total obedience. If they had to kill you & reanimate your remains, that was 100% fine with them. Their spell-like ability list confirmed this (to my mind anyway): devils all get Animate Dead, while demons do not. So my campaign had diabolical forces being behind most Necromantic lore (including undead grafts), while forbidden demonic lore would tend towards living augmentations.

Poisons, being often biological in origin yet being inimical to life, were the midpoint of demonic & diabolical philosophy, thus the Sinmaker's abode in Carceri was fortuitous.

Anyway. IMC, demons weren't about killing everyone, they were about tempting & perverting everyone -- succubus, remember? Devils wanted everyone dead, but they were methodical about it.

Nifft, your setting (at least this part of it, since I don't know the rest) sounds awesome. I like this much better than a lot of what WotC writes. As I said above, my issue isn't with the particular concepts in themselves, it's with WotC's overall setting flavour (which I find lacking).

 

[Nifft]

Nifft, your setting (at least this part of it, since I don't know the rest) sounds awesome. I like this much better than a lot of what WotC writes. As I said above, my issue isn't with the particular concepts in themselves, it's with WotC's overall setting flavour (which I find lacking).

The thing about this is, all I did was interpret the flavor implicit in WotC's crunch -- I'm a mechanics-first kind of guy, so what drove my flavor decisions were the powers & spells that the various fiends had at their disposal.

So, while I'd love to take credit for this stuff, IMHO it's nothing more than an interpretation of the crunch that was in front of me.

Anyway. I hope I've at least elucidated how one interpretation of demons can be "creative", while still retaining their scary demon-ness.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Gradine]

Its tenuous...a Primordial wouldn't have much use for an uncontrollable engine of destruction like a Clockwork Horror.

<Raises hand>

Tarrasque?

This seems perfectly in line with both primordial and demon, really. Is the issue that the Horror in question is Clockwork? I would imagine a demon lord of artifice actually practices artifice by brute force. That is, heavy amounts of whatever passes in the blasted nothingness of the Abyss for duct tape. I don't have a copy of the Demonomicon myself (what's next, the Devilomicon? The Primordinomicon?) so I don't know how they're presented there, but that's probably how I'll use 'em if I ever do. Jagged bits of scrap metal death held together by sheer chaos and demon spit.

Not it's not what they were when they in Spelljammer, but keeping things the way they were in days of yore is not entirely high my list of priorities.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Again...well, I may not have mentioned this in this thread...I'm not buying any of the books to run 4ED.

I'm just reading this and going "huh?"

So I have no idea as to what various critters have been redefined as, like your sample of the Tarrasque.

But yes, a big part of my issue is that they are Clockwork.

And while I like the line about "sheer chaos & demon spit"- do be sure to use that if you ever get the chance, 'cause that's DM description gold- I'm not buying chaos (a.k.a. entropy) holding anything together.