Asmodeus ~ 2nd Ed. concept no longer relevant

[Upper_Krust]

Hi all!

I just re-read that section last night while looking through this thread. THe background is, roughly, as follows:
Ahriman and Jazirian were two mighty gods of Law long ago. They created a lot of stuff, most of creation I think. They had a falling out on the good/evil problem, and they separated (they had been joined together as serpents: each had the other's tail in his/her mouth). As Jazirian had wings, she flew to the top of Mt. Celestia, where she hides from all of creation -- other gods don't know who she -really- is, they think she's just the goddess of the couatls. Ahriman had no wings, so he fell to the very bottom of Hell. He changed his name to Asmodeus and he's waiting to heal up from his injuries from this fall. He also conceals his true nature from all and sundry.

Considering if Ahriman is a big giant serpent then hes not technically the Asmodeus we all know and love. I don't see why Asmodeus couldn't actually be an Avatar/Aspect of Ahriman!?

I don't have Guide to Hell buts thats the conclusion I arrived at some years back.

Researching Persian Mythology its easy to concoct a relationship between the two.

That's a brief overview, and why Chris Pramas used Ahriman without also using Ohrmazd I don't know.

Presumably Jazirian is simply 'Ormazd' by another name?

 

[Skarp Hedin]

Mistah Krust,

Yeah, the Guide to Hell says stuff about that -- Ahriman's true form is like, miles long. So he has that stashed away where no one can get at it, and he creates avatars to deal with everyone -- so he calls himself Asmodeus, but the only actual being you deal with is an avatar. It's just a name change sort of thing, an alias.

He can have up to ten avatars, but only one on the Prime.. and if he sends an avatar to the Prime, all his Hellish avatars fall asleep or whatever. He can't span the planes through avatars, s'part of the restrictions on him when he fell into Hell.

 

[Aaron L]

U_K, that sounds awesome. Some gods using worshippers fpr power and some using other sources, even stealing it from each other. I'm very happy with a setup like that.

Now, the Ahriman/Asmodeus thing. It sounds interesting, but I wouldn't want that to be the way it is in my games, and it has the feeling of something just slapped on to make Asmodeus more powerful than he was before. Kinda cheesy.

Now, I never imagined Asmodeus ruling all of Hell itself anymore than I imagine any god ruling all of the plane it resides upon. Asmodeus rules the Devils, not Hell. The Devils are the primary inhabitants of the Hells, so Asmodeus has a great deal of power there, but he doesn't control the plane itself.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Mistah Krust,

Hi there Skarp!

Yeah, the Guide to Hell says stuff about that -- Ahriman's true form is like, miles long. So he has that stashed away where no one can get at it, and he creates avatars to deal with everyone -- so he calls himself Asmodeus, but the only actual being you deal with is an avatar. It's just a name change sort of thing, an alias.

He can have up to ten avatars, but only one on the Prime.. and if he sends an avatar to the Prime, all his Hellish avatars fall asleep or whatever. He can't span the planes through avatars, s'part of the restrictions on him when he fell into Hell.

The whole Avatar thing can easily get out of hand - especially in 3rd Ed. where the power needed to create them is incongrous.

I would simply have one Asmodeus and one Ahriman. Othewise too many cooks etc.

In 1st Ed. Manual of the Planes they had a concept which predated the introduction of Avatars. They were referred to as aspects:

1st ed. MotP pg. 126

"A Greater Power can create Aspects of himself in his domain. These Aspects are Lesser Gods that can take on an independant life and even join other Pantheons, or watch over a specific prime Plane or Region of a Plane. Creating an Aspect takes 1d10 years, at the end of this time, a Lesser power is generate of similar abilities and tendancies. Some Greater Powers use Aspects to mete out justice to travelers."

To me this better explains the Ahriman/Asmodeus relationship better than having 10 Asmodeus* running around.

*What is the plural of Asmodeus anyway? Asmodei?

 

[Voadam]

Octopus, Octopi.

Asmodeus, Asmodei.

Sounds right to me.

 

[Gez]

Well, Asmodeus was never really powerful. I have it from the highest autority possible, Magna Veritas/In Nomine Satanis, the game where you can play angels or demons.

Asmodeus is the Demon Prince of Games. He ascended to Princehood at the apogee of roman Circus games. He's not really powerful, as demonic politics is only a game for him, the only game for which he don't know all the rules.

He enjoy playing simple games with Satan, like Advanced Squad Leader, GURPS, or the russian roulette. And, of course, INS/MV.

His special power is "Stupid bet", by saying something like "I bet you don't dare to jump from the Eiffel Tower and flap your arms until you land on the Arch of Triumph", he can compel people to try to win that stupid bet.

The real lord of all demons, since the Devil is a bit absent-minded, is Andromalius.




Well, it's not the exact same cosmology as D&D's one, but it's funnier. I enjoyed playing a demon of Asmodeus, who was a silly TV-game animator.


Sorry for the total off-topicness.

 

[Voadam]

One of the things I liked about GtH's Asmodeus was that he was the biggest liar in the multiverse. His relationship with the other devils, all based on lies, with the other dukes, lies as well, the purposes of the devils in the blood war? Based on lies. His perceived goals, even his name and apparent nature, all lies. His plots on the prime, lies again.

The master of devils is a master of falsehood in everything that he is and does. Everything that is known about him, are lies wrapped with little tidbits of truth.

 

[The Sigil]

OT...

One of the things I liked about GtH's Asmodeus was that he was the biggest liar in the multiverse. His relationship with the other devils, all based on lies, with the other dukes, lies as well, the purposes of the devils in the blood war? Based on lies. His perceived goals, even his name and apparent nature, all lies. His plots on the prime, lies again.

The master of devils is a master of falsehood in everything that he is and does. Everything that is known about him, are lies wrapped with little tidbits of truth.

Not to pull this off-topic, but is this the same Voadam as the one that brought us Voadam's Mystical Compendium Vol I: Spell Mastery?

Please e-mail me off-thread. the_sigil@hotmail.com

Thanks.

--The Sigil

 

[Information]

U_K, that sounds awesome. Some gods using worshippers fpr power and some using other sources, even stealing it from each other. I'm very happy with a setup like that.

Now, the Ahriman/Asmodeus thing. It sounds interesting, but I wouldn't want that to be the way it is in my games, and it has the feeling of something just slapped on to make Asmodeus more powerful than he was before. Kinda cheesy.

Now, I never imagined Asmodeus ruling all of Hell itself anymore than I imagine any god ruling all of the plane it resides upon. Asmodeus rules the Devils, not Hell. The Devils are the primary inhabitants of the Hells, so Asmodeus has a great deal of power there, but he doesn't control the plane itself.

I'd have to agree. IMC, I've debated using a single extraplanar race of evil, demons (which I actually converted from another source), or using both demons and devils as detailed in the official products. If I were to do the latter, I would set up the individual archdevils and demon princes as merely the exemplifications of their races, not deities per se but not necessarily less powerful than deities.

The Ahriman/Asmodeus concept posits an exlusivist cosmology which would work with very few cosmologies, and as derived from the Guide to Hell, those which use the Great Wheel. But...even here it doesn't work very well. I would have thought that the Ahriman being would have descended to Hades (the plane of evil balanced between law and chaos), as opposed to the lawful evil plane, i.e. the Nine Hells.

The concept, no offense to Mr. Pramas, was poorly constructed. I don't use the Great Wheel (my cosmology is closer to Toril's), but even if I did, I would retreat from any suggestion of interjecting a pre-existent dualism in the Great Wheel's cosmology, *especially* one in which the planes of Law (as opposed to those of neutral good and neutral evil) were used as the catalyst for the cosmology's construction and eventual downfall (if I understand Asmodeus's/Ahriman's schema correctly).

When I did use the Great Wheel, I generated a cosmogony which allowed for the simultaneous emergance of all the planes as a necessary working out of a balance between all contending ideological extremeties, i.e. law, chaos, evil, and good. In a cosmology (presumably such as one the Great Wheel is predicated upon), in which all contending forces are balanced, an absurdity emerges in using one ethical extreme, here Law, as the progenitor and potential destroyer of opposing forces.

As I am leaning closer to actually using the devils and demons of 3E (excited as I am by Monte's BoVD, and his treatment, as I understand it, of the archfiends), and as my cosmology presumes no "The Adversary", I have no use or desire for such use for an Ahriman-type entity, especially one that has been associated with a specific race exemplifying a very specific alignment (in this case Asmodeus and the devils). Sorry, just not my cup of tea.

 

[Information]

One of the things I liked about GtH's Asmodeus was that he was the biggest liar in the multiverse. His relationship with the other devils, all based on lies, with the other dukes, lies as well, the purposes of the devils in the blood war? Based on lies. His perceived goals, even his name and apparent nature, all lies. His plots on the prime, lies again.

The master of devils is a master of falsehood in everything that he is and does. Everything that is known about him, are lies wrapped with little tidbits of truth.

Well, I didn't like the concept. It is based upon a confusion of Asmodeus with the "ultimate evil" of various real-world mythologies, such as Ahriman or Satan. I just don't understand the logic of making the ruler of the Nine Hells (or at least, the devils) the supreme progenitor of evil.

I especially disliked the idea of Asmodeus as the inspirer of disbelief, and that souls who succumb to it "go to Hell" when they die. I think that a Hadean power would have been better suited to this role, as a force of balanced evil, in much the same way that I believe an Elysian entity would have been better than the Jazirian power from Celestia.

The whole concept is simply corny. The Guide to Hell would have been much better with exhaustive lists and stats for the devilish hierarchy (as well as the archdevils), new devil types, and for god's sake, better art. My niece's depiction of Santa (devilish in its own right), would have made a better illustration of Asmodeus.