Acheron spirit armies

[Voadam]

In Acheron there are supposed to be armies of spirits continually battling each other on the plane's giant cubes. Orc and goblin ones stand out in the legends I've introduced in my campaign. The legends say the dead orcs fight the goblin spirits and triumph every night but the goblins reform and must be fought anew every new night. The goblins have a similar legend but placing themselves as the continual victors.

The 16th level party I'm running is heading to Acheron soon and I'm trying to figure out how to portray these spirit armies if they come upon them and end up fighting a squad or whatever.

I have the 1e Manual of Planes, a pdf of Planes of Law, and I'm running a 3.5 game using tons of d20 sources. I don't have the 3e Manual of Planes or Planewalkers Handbook though.

What would be a good way to stat out these spirit warriors? Undead template? Outsiders? normal monster npcs who just reform each night?

 

[Zappo]

Definitely not undead. The Planescape way was to use the normal monster stats, but back then we didn't have types, templates and whatnot. In Planescape, I'd use normal monsters but make them petitioners. For a normal campaign, I'd use "normal" orcs and goblins, except that they have the Outsider type. The extra skill points would be spent on knowledge (the planes) and knowledge (religion), since spirits usually know about this stuff.

 

[Inconsequenti-AL]

I'd make the vast bulk of the armies much like their Prime counterparts: Warrior 1's. Although I'd template up some of the champions and leaders - fiendish, axiomatic or chaotic would probably suit. Especially if the PCs have to fight them...

They could simply reform each day, or more just appear - make them the spirits of almost every orc and goblin which dies on any prime.

I'm sure some of the fighting would take place around enormous orc looking fortifications. Thinking of massive sieges with thousands on each side?

I'd focus the weirdness into how they wage war accross the cubes. I have visions of Warhammer 40K style orc war barges floating between them. Huge cobbled together looking things that are massively over engineered. Most likely kitted out with oversized, destructive and unstable 'siege' scale weapons.

Possibly add some portals connecting certain cubes - huge skirmishes around these.

 

[Klaus]

Use the regular statistics for grunts, slap fiendish to the lieutenants and half-fiend to the commanders. If they were taken to other planes, they'd get the Extraplanar subtype. As it is, they're native (even though orcs are now CE and Acheron is a LE(N) plane...).

 

[I'm A Banana]

They'll be petitioners. I believe the petitioner template is OGC, and I think it's in the SRD, but I could be wrong on that....

From the MotP, the two realms of the goblin and orc war deities are now seperate, though they were once together, and now they launch invasions of each other accross the void. Their realms are free of the usual Law alignment on Acheron.

The important thing to note about the goblin/orc war, like all wars on Acheron, is that it is entirely pointless. No progress can be made, no goals can be met, no victories truly won and no looses truly lost. It is an eternal stalemate of blade-on-blade action.

I'd depict the armies as ants coming from a nest, or bees defending a hive, or other insectile references. They are warriors, defined by war, with a ponitless existence, and they are well aware of it. That's the torment on Acheron: obligation, without a reason to get behind. You must do it, even though doing it accomplishes nothing. You do it because you are told to. You are told to because the people higher up are told to. And the highest ones simply delight in this bloodshed and combat, and don't want to make progress -- they are most unhappy when the war is over, and they are at their proudest in the melieu of horrors and pains that warfare causes.

 

[Ryltar]

The MotP mentions petitioner template stats for every plane, IIRC, so you might just choose your basic setup and slap that on. Ftr1 for grunts, ftr 6 for commanders, ftr9/xyz1-3 for leaders.

 

[Shemeska]

Mmmm, petitioners.

Mix in some mortals who got pressganged into one army or the other, possibly some yugoloth mercenaries (sure the plane has nothing to do with their racial goals, but payment for services rendered is still payment).

I've currently got my own PCs on Acheron as well, though they completely skipped the layer of Avalas and went right to Thuldanin.