Demonic Lore

[Alzrius]

Those are certainly possibilities, though they don't seem as appropriate to me. I mean, they're demon spirits. No matter how you parse that, the Abyss is the plane that comes to mind first.

Yes, but as BOZ pointed out, Oriental Adventures-style products that referred to "demons" didn't have to mean CE Outsiders from the Abyss. Dragon Claw (from Mad Monkey vs Dragon Claw) is one such example.

 

[BOZ]

Gremlins are specifically associated with the Abyss, however. They're little demons (though not tanar'ri) according to Planescape, which is the source of much of what we know about the Abyss. There's no reason anyone should be forced to go along with that, but that's the most recent official word.

eh??? source?

Or Pandemonium, which is chaos with evil as an afterthought. Or maybe, just maybe, they're from a plane that's not an Outer Plane, like the Ethereal or some natural demiplane. All aligned creatures don't have to come from an Outer Plane.

that's basically what i was trying to say all along.

of course, the point is moot if the FC1 designers decide not to touch the krakentua in the first place (odds on that: good!)

 

[Grover Cleaveland]

Dragon Claw is certainly a chaotic evil outsider, though, and though the adventure doesn't specify there's not really anywhere he can be from but the Abyss or, I suppose, Carceri (he's too evil for Pandemonium). Ethereal demiplanes just don't spawn things like that. By the standards of his culture he's a god of sorts, although an extremely petty one without a formal divine rank. By anyone's standard but the tanar'ri, he's a demon.

As spirits, krakentuas should be outsiders or fey.

 

[BOZ]

Yes, but as BOZ pointed out, Oriental Adventures-style products that referred to "demons" didn't have to mean CE Outsiders from the Abyss. Dragon Claw (from Mad Monkey vs Dragon Claw) is one such example.

that, and take a look at how Asian cultures use words like demon in the first place - very different than how we use the term. many, perhaps most are evil, but they don't have to be by any stretch of the imagination. the main character in Inuyasha is a demon and proud of it, but he seems to be more good than not (or at least screamingly neutral).

while the OA designers were probably not of an Asian culture, they were attempting to do their best to emulate it, and i think this aspect carried through.

 

[Grover Cleaveland]

eh??? source?

Planes of Chaos, as quoted above. They were specifically called "abyssal scavengers" and listed with a bunch of other Abyssal natives. Any attempt to present them as interlopers from a different plane in that context smacks of arguing-for-its-own-sake (which is what we're all doing, really, but still). A few of the demonic creatures they're associated with are found on other lower planes as well, but we've at least narrowed the gremlins down to the outer planes of chaos or evil. They could be cousins of the chaos imps of Limbo, I suppose (the Mimir lists them on their Limbo encounter list), but the intent of Planes of Chaos was to list creatures native to the Abyss.

Really, it's bewildering to me that after seeing gremlins in a list of Abyssal creatures, someone would keep trying to claim that gremlins might not be Abyssal creatures. At the very least, they're an appropriate thing to mention in this thread.

 

[BOZ]

"Others are scavengers that hide in the cracks, scuttling into view only to snatch food and desperately trying to avoid attention. Abyssal scavengers include small fliers like galltrits, gremlins, mephits, shadow fiends, vargouilles, and lesser varrangoin.

so all creatures in this list are demons and abyssal natives, then? does that include the mephits and vargouille as well?

this is the passage you are basing your assumptions on, correct?

 

[Grover Cleaveland]

that, and take a look at how Asian cultures use words like demon in the first place - very different than how we use the term. many, perhaps most are evil, but they don't have to be by any stretch of the imagination. the main character in Inuyasha is a demon and proud of it, but he seems to be more good than not (or at least screamingly neutral).

while the OA designers were probably not of an Asian culture, they were attempting to do their best to emulate it, and i think this aspect carried through.

Asian cultures don't use words like demon, of course, but that's a good point. InuYasha is half "youkai," which isn't really the same as a demon. If you translate the krakentua entry as "youkai" then no, they probably don't come from the Abyss. If you translate it as "kami" they might be fey associated with volcanoes rather than planar things.

They could also be demons from the Lower Planes (they're far too evil for Pandemonium).

What struck me was that krakentuas are the only things called demons in the Kara-Tur MC, despite the large number of other wicked supernatural monsters who could be called youkai. It's not definitive - and I've said over and over that they might be from the Material Plane instead - but it looks like a meaningful choice to me.

Dragon Claw is still definitely an outsider, given the context.

 

[Grover Cleaveland]

so all creatures in this list are demons and abyssal natives, then? does that include the mephits and vargouille as well?

Yes, of course it does. Vargouilles are also found in a few other lower planes, but they're also native to the Abyss (the creator of the vargouilles, Rozvankee, lives in the Abyss to this day).

Nearly all mephits found in the Abyss will be the creations of tanar'ri, so they're definitely Abyssal natives.

If it were a list of everything that might conceivably visit the Abyss, it would be much longer and include things like spirits of the air, mediators, yugoloths, humans, drow, and aleaxes.

 

[BOZ]

obviously we have very different opinions on these subjects. discussing it further seems pointless.

 

[Grover Cleaveland]

That's probably something worth mentioning in this thread specifically - the creator of the vargouilles, a female lich named Rozvankee, travels the watery layers of the Abyss in a three-masted ship made from the bones of her enemies (source: PSMC1).

And yes, apparently whether or not gremlins and krakentuas come from the Lower Planes is really controversial. I had no idea.