Fiendish Codex I: Hordes of the Abyss

[Shemeska]

Exactly right. Hopefully you'll include all the molydeus types (everything from the lowly monodeus and duodeus to the exalted secundeus and primdeus).

I'm blaming you for any damage done to my keyboard when I shot soda out my nose while reading that.

 

[Sundragon2012]

Exactly right. Hopefully you'll include all the molydeus types (everything from the lowly monodeus and duodeus to the exalted secundeus and primdeus).

Noooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!

Erik they lie, lie, lie. They seek to resurrect the primal evil that is the modrons.

Gods help us should that horror far worse than fiends rise again.



Chris

 

[zoroaster100]

I hope this fiend book will treat fiends more like the recent Dragon articles (horrible inhuman evil entities) and not like humans in funny costumes, as someone stated above. Even the lowliest demons should be utterly terrifying as far as their motivatios and behavior, in the way that ultimate evil should be utterly terrifying to mortals. Human beings can sink to despicable evil, so surely beings who are evil incarnate should be able to surpass them. I hope the book does not spend much time at all on the Bloodwar. I thought the whole concept of the Bloodwar was ridiculous from the start. I'm much more interested in how demons relate to mortals and how demons relate to celestials than a war of devils versus demons. If they include stuff on the Bloodwar, I hope they present it as an optional campaign idea and not an integral part of the cosmology or "ecologies" of the demons presneted. In fact, I'd rather that not too much time be spent on cosmology in the book, since each campaign has a different cosmology and the material might not be applicable. I'd rather get interesting information on individual demons, including interesting new demon types. In particular, I'd like to see more low and mid level demons, and more unique demons of lesser power that can be used with mid level adventures. One shouldn't need to be 20th level to have an adventure featuring interesting unique fiends.

 

[demiurge1138]

Have you seen The Book of Fiends, zoroaster100? It's an alternate cosmology for the Lower Planes, where the Blood War is mostly treated as an aside when it's referenced at all, and most of the fiends are geared towards mortal/outsider interactions. And it's co-written by none other than Fiendish Codex's co-author Erik Mona.

So, somehow, I think there will be plenty of room for the demons and their relationships with Good and with mortals, even though the Blood War's almost certainly going to remain as canon. I can't imagine that it wouldn't.

Demiurge out.

 

[Mouseferatu]

Pray she meant it in humor and in critism of recent Stoker adaptations...

Nope. I'm not the world's best when it comes to reading people, but I can listen to tone of voice as well as anyone else. She was 100% serious. :\ I'm so certain of that, I'd bet money on it.

 

[Dr. Harry]

Speaking of, would you care to truly weep for the future of literary study? A few years ago, I was in the DVD section of a Best Buy. A pair of young women passed me, and one of them was telling the other that:



I about cried right there in the store.

There is a very old set of Peanuts strips in which Lucy is spouting off ridiculous, made-up "fatcs" to Linus, and all Charlie Brown can say is "My stomach hurts." I've been flashing to that strip a lot lately. re: also thread on "medireview".

 

[Pants]

When someone like Erik Mona casually uses phrases like "typical of Planescape's slap-dash approach to fiends" he forgets how painfully thin the amount of total fiendish material was before Planescape and how detailed, complex, and painstakingly thought-out (and genuinely scary!) the fiendish ecologies in Planescape really were, especially as Colin McComb presented them. I consider that to be both style and substance.

Well, in all due respect, it was kind of slap-dash.
Faces of Evil paints the fiends as pretty horrific creatures, unfortunately it also paints them as more... humanoid than I (and apparently others) would like. At least with me, it's not the fact that Shemeska and A'Kin are merchants, it's the fact that fiends are encountered at all in Sigil. The opening scene of Fires of Dis has a freakin' Glabrezu bartering with a merchant. The fiends have lungs, they breath, they have organs similar to those of other humanoids (at least, the baatezu do). It's all too humanoid for me.

It doesn't help when the Planescape Monstrous Compendium I is full of many decidedly unfiendish illustrations (I never cared for Rex or Post's illustrations). For pete-sake, the Arcanaloth has glasses on!

While, many perceptions of PS may not be true of every fiend in the setting, these perceptions ARE reinforced by certain characters, some of the flavor text, and a lot of the art.

I fully believe that PS would've been better received if it wasn't locked into the Core Cosmology and was instead an alternate Cosmology. I know that when I was reading through the old 1e Monster Books, I wasn't expecting the fiends to speak some slang cockney, wear funny hats, or look all cute, not to mention run stores.

 

[blargney the second]

Well, those are several series, and there certainly isn't a "Lords of" series.

I was including Lords of Darkness in the "Lords of" series. In a linear world, two constitutes a pattern! (I wish English had an elegant way of pluralifying 'series').

-blarg

 

[Shemeska]

It doesn't help when the Planescape Monstrous Compendium I is full of many decidedly unfiendish illustrations (I never cared for Rex or Post's illustrations). For pete-sake, the Arcanaloth has glasses on!

Not all of the art falls into what you'd consider unfiendish at all. Here's just a sampling I had sitting around:
1 2

1st one by Rex I believe, 2nd by DiTerlizzi.

Some people do just simply not care for DiTerlizzi's style. I like it, but some people can't stand it.

I fully believe that PS would've been better received if it wasn't locked into the Core Cosmology and was instead an alternate Cosmology. I know that when I was reading through the old 1e Monster Books, I wasn't expecting the fiends to speak some slang cockney, wear funny hats, or look all cute, not to mention run stores.

It's not like there was really any deep detail to genuinely speak of in the 1e monster books. As Rip said before, pre-PS it was pretty painfully thin. Like it or not the direction it went in, it's the direction the planes of DnD did go for two point five editions and two decades now.

I will grant you that the Sigilian cant should have been restricted to within Sigil, or in character commentary by people from Sigil. Those times it spread into places beyond Sigil was probably a bad move, but the amount and pervasiveness of the slang drastically varied from book to book. It wasn't omnipresent.

 

[Mouseferatu]

Not all of the art falls into what you'd consider unfiendish at all. Here's just a sampling I had sitting around:
1 2

I don't think anyone is claiming that Planescape had no fiendish art, Shemeska, or that it never portrayed the fiends as--well, fiendish.

My problem, and what I think other folks have problems with, is the fact that it sometimes portrayed fiends as unfiendish.

That doesn't render the setting useless, or bad. It's a great setting. But it was, IMO, a mistake to ever show the fiends as too human, or too organic, or--dare I say it--silly. That's all I, and I think others, are saying.