Fiendish Codex I: Hordes of the Abyss

[Shemeska]

What on Earth are you talking about! They are far more insightful and logical than that Planescape pap you keep touting,

Except in the context of this entire thread the Planescape material is one of the primary sources whereas the Gord novels aren't even on the table for more than one reason. What on earth am I talking about? I don't even think that WotC could use them as sources for legal reasons, completely outside of their being in a different continuity of the planes than 2e or 3e.

Planescape I didn't like for two reasons, one, that it made the planes 'cuddly' by allowing low-level characters to traipse about.

You're not that familiar with it then. It didn't have them traipsing about anywhere that was violently hostile till they could actually handle it, or avoid overt dangers. It wasn't anywhere remotely as 'cuddly' as you might like to characterize it as.

3rd Edition hasn't borrowed anything I hated from 2nd Edition as far as I can tell.

You've expressed distate for PS beyond the reasons you cite as hating 2e for, it borders of kneejerk.

And most of the 3e Manual of the Planes, the Planar Handbook, the planar information and sample locations therein in the 3.5 DMG, and a whole host of monsters are direct imports from Planescape.

I'm familiar with 2nd Edition/Planescape, I just don't live by it, like you. I don't have every Planescape supplement, but I have enough to know I don't like it that much.

*shrug* You've said before that you haven't read certain books, including some that have been repeatedly referenced in this thread. And yes, I do in fact differ in some ways from a direct Planescape interpretation of the planes, perhaps that surprises you. But that doesn't entirely matter in this thread since we're not talking about house rules, be they mine or yours, but about the Tanar'ri and other Abyssal fiends as they exist and have been developed through the close to 30 years of DnD.

I don't see it as anything to do with editions as much as it has to do with logic and practicality.

You make it an edition war as soon as you can most of the time, because what you personally profess to like and what the game must have, you only find within one edition, and you then condemn the others as irrational and lacking in logic. You're like the Diaglo of the 1e deity stat paradigm. No offense to Diaglo who is rather cool.

I don't see why you have cause for lamenting...you're not still upset about that whole 'kosmically' business are you?

I'm lamenting because I'm wasting time arguing with you. Upset? You've never seen me upset. This is a message board, I don't get upset over it.

Funnily enough the only time I ever have to make such a thing 'clear' is when I have been replying to 'hater' comments about stats for gods from you or your insidious confederates.

I have 'insidious confederates'? Cool! That's awesome!

I'm merely defending immortal gaming from your embittered allies remarks.

I thought I had 'insidious confederates'. Or are they 'embittered allies'? You're taking this way too seriously UK. We're not out to get you, we're not out to oppress you, lighten up. Though admittedly I wish I had the masses of internet cronies I'm made out to have, they'd be useful.

Well established in Planescape I would envision perhaps, but I don't use that work as my gospel.

Very obviously not. But for the purposes of this thread that you don't use it doesn't exactly matter in the slightest.

 

[Nightfall]

*waits for Shemmy and Krusty to notice him*

 

[Ripzerai]

If you control an infinite number of demons then just hide behind them and no one can ever defeat you, nor could anyone ever take your layer away from you, a single battle could last eternity.

You can't hide behind an infinity, only the number of troops you can muster within a given length of time - troops you have to keep amused and occupied or they'll simply leave.

Well, basically what you were saying was there should be no stats for gods simply because you don't want them. Which is tantamount to telling people they can't have Psionics or Eberron, unless you want them.

He (and I) were expressing a preference, just like the pro-stat crowd is free to express their preferences. Nobody was telling anyone they couldn't have anything - we have neither the authority nor the desire.

How is Orcus city, for example, overtly hazardous?

In Naratyr, the air is dangerously thin (outsiders need to breathe), the climate is terribly cold (even tanar'ri are vulnerable if it becomes cold enough), the streets are filled with demons and undead, and even demons fear the undercity. They may be unexpectedly drained of their life levels, and the biggest hazard may be Orcus himself.

Also note that, strictly according to the rules, any demons in Thanatos (or any plane with the minor negative-dominant trait) take 1d6 points of damage a round until they turn into ash, since outsiders are vulnerable to negative energy and energy attacks bypass damage reduction. Technically, every demon in Thanatos should be dead due to the hostility of the planar layer. We have to ignore that, of course, but it's still a great example of how even the most "civilized" parts of the Abyss can be dangerous to the Abyss' natives.

But Naratyr was easy. With Zelatar and Samora (in Azzagrat) I'd have to be more creative and subtle. But my point is that if any place in the Abyss is safe for anyone but the rulers of the layers (and not even always then) the DM is slacking. It's a place of chaos and unexpected dangers, more than the rulebooks can possibly list. Demons survive and thrive in the Abyss in spite of its hazards, not because they can ignore them.

The Abyss ain't Iraq. It's much, much worse.

There is a lack of precedents on both sides. Its up to the people who want practical rules at these power levels to adopt something that works for them, not bewilder them with sophistry.

Only on your side, actually, which is ironic as you're the only one complaining about precedent. If I occasionally use sophistic techniques, it's only in situations where formal logic doesn't apply. Your own mastery of logic leaves much to be desired with your numerous nonsequiturs and unjustified assumptions, and your weird paranoid flights of fancy like the idea that lone gamers can (or even would) tell people they can't have statistics for their gods.

The point is, things like infinite planes and breeding fiends work, and they work at any power level. If you need to know that Mephistopheles has precisely 666,666 troops available and Demogorgon has precisely one hundred times that, then that's what they have and the Planescape cosmology explains this as well or better than yours does.

Kosmos refers to the combined material and spiritual universes, as opposed to cosmos which only refers to the material universe.

That works, and I understand some writers' desire to seperate metaphysics from astronomy, but "cosmos" can actually refer to the spiritual universe as well and does so in most texts. Particularly when discussing "D&D," which refers to a planar "cosmology" (not a "kosmology"), I think simply saying "cosmically" is more appropriate, though in the particular context you use it I would probably say "metaphysically" instead.

Well then how come deities control their realms (even though they don't necessarily encompass whole layers)?

Divine realms override the nature of the layer they're on, burning away the layer's own sentience and replacing it with the god's own. Realms are an extension of the deity and there is no conflict of personality.

Planar rulers instead join with their layers in symbiosis. The layer influences the personality of its ruler and vice versa, each changing the nature of the other. In the Abyss, there may occasionally be battles of will, while in the lawful planes the layers obey their assigned masters.

So then what you are saying is that each demon prince realm (the occupied portion of it) is finite anyway! There is no practical benefit to controlling the region outside this area. How is that any different to what I suggest with the kosmically localised areas?

For one, it's a lot simpler to just say the demon controls the layer than to mess about with hypothetical parallel cosmologies coexisting in the same planar layer.

And there is a great benefit to controlling the entire layer: the ruler gains control over - and a limited omniscience within - the shape and content of an infinite expanse of space. This makes little difference in game terms, but it's nice for the demon, and you're taking that away in order to "solve" something that isn't even a problem.

The main problem that your "localized" cosmology resolves is the dilemna of an infinite number of material planar worlds - how does Orcus deal with all of them at once?

There are actually a number of simpler solutions, however.

1. Orcus only has influence over a few worlds. Other demon lords deal with the others. Orcus, then, would only be one of the three most powerful lords of the Abyss from the perspective of the known worlds. The problem with this theory is that while there are a potentially infinite number of Abyssal lords, there are only nine lords of Hell. We can postulate further eladrin queens, other Primuses, and an endless number of yugoloth paragons, but there is definitely only one archdevil per layer - the devil and his layer are one. We would have to postulate "kosmically localized" groups of nine Hells, so this is pretty much your solution.

2. The other simple solution is to say that yes, Orcus and his ilk do have infinite resources and infinite armies, which he is able to deploy in an infinite number of arenas at once. Any single army will be finite, however, because his infinite troops will be infinitely busy. There are an infinite number of portals leading to Thanatos, and Orcus needs someone guarding each one. If he deploys too many troops to defend any one portal, another Abyssal lord can invade one of the more weakly-defended positions. In this cosmos planar lords need infinite resources, where deities do not. This is like Michael Moorcock's system where Arioch, Donblas and the other Lords of Law and Chaos appear in different incarnations and aspects on every world in the infinite multiverse.

3. You can just say there aren't an infinite number of worlds - the Material Plane is infinite, but the number of worlds on it are finite. This is the assumption I make in my arguments, just for simplicity's sake. I don't actually have any problem with option #2 except it gives me a little bit of a headache to think about such vastness.

There's something you didn't understand about my arguments! They were based on one arbitrary assumption among, as I count them, three. I'll happily argue #2 with you instead - it's basically the same as #3 (with number not being the most important quality and any one engagement being between finite groups), but on a larger scale.

I will agree that it would be pretty much impossible to play Orcus using cosmology #2 - in such a game you could play gods, overgods, Eternals or whatever you like, but you can't play the lords of the infinite planes. You can fight off their hordes, you can weaken them (by weakening their alignment), you can ally with one against another, and you can even destroy them in personal combat - being infinitely busy doesn't mean they're immune to all harm, although given that a literally infinite number of assassins is going after them at once some pretty extraordinary means will be required - but they can't be PCs. Fights between lords of the same plane - Demogorgon versus Orcus, for example - are a different matter. Demogorgon doesn't have to exterminate every one of Orcus' minions, only show Orcus' weakness by defeating

So now I think we finally understand one another. You're working under Assumption #1, which requires either "kosmic" ghettoes within each layer (your method), entirely seperate cosmologies for worlds or groups of worlds (the standard 3rd edition method), or "kosmically localized" groups of layers (another possible method - so there would be, for example, 666 layers of the Abyss and 9 layers of Hell accessible from Alloryia and perhaps a different 666 Abysses and 9 Hells accessible from Karanblade in the same Great Ring. Ghettoizing cosmologies like this has its own host of logical paradoxes and conundrums if you allow them to interact at all.

I work under assumptions #2 or #3 (effectively #3, as most people do - few people bother to worry about infinite worlds bombarding the same planar layers at once because there's really no reason to give yourself that kind of headache and it saves on complicated cosmological hacks) but I think, keeping in mind that #2 is much less tested than #3, they're both perfectly self-consistent.

 

[BOZ]

Except in the context of this entire thread the Planescape material is one of the primary sources whereas the Gord novels aren't even on the table for more than one reason. What on earth am I talking about? I don't even think that WotC could use them as sources for legal reasons, completely outside of their being in a different continuity of the planes than 2e or 3e.

a-yup. gary would have to give them permission, and i don't see him doing that any time soon.

 

[Ripzerai]

The (1st Ed.) Monster Manual never said he wasn't a deity.

Heh. It didn't say kobolds weren't deities either - obviously that's not a very good line of reasoning. Being a deity seems worth mentioning.

Actually, according to (1st Ed.) Manual of the Planes there were no Greater Powers (or Intermediate Powers) dwelling in the Abyss because they would constantly have to contend with the demons.

Firstly, since greater deities are capable of planar travel at will, this is irrelevant. Secondly, Set was a greater deity who lived in the Nine Hells - why didn't he take them over? Thirdly, you're incorrect - the Manual of the Planes actually says "Few Greater Powers make the Abyss their home," which is very different from none.

You might want to brush up a little on 1st edition cosmology.

As we can see from reading the Gord the Rogue books, in the face of an outside threat, the demons will grudgingly band together to combat and expel the interloper (a facet of their inherantly racist nature).

Except we know they won't always, since there are a number of deities dwelling in the Abyss - Vaprak, Tou Mu, Lu Yueh, Laogzed, Urdlen, and Kali, to just name the 1st edition ones.

Demons aren't inherently racist - they mostly hate all things equally. Baatezu are racist; tanar'ri miscegenate freely and even with relish. They don't treat their half-breed offspring well, but they don't treat anything well - what's important is that they don't kick things out just because they're not tanar'ri.

What good is that going to do them when they are dead at the hands of their near-omnipotent divine adversary. Any intelligent deity (which is funny because they are all virtually omniscient in 2nd Ed.) is going to either destroy or otherwise expel the current ruler and then make their realm on his layer.

Only greater deities (and planar lords) were anything close to omniscient in 2nd edition - their nearest rivals, the intermediate gods, could only sense in a 100 mile radius or near their worshippers.

But you're right - the power to expel pantheons wasn't their only power; obviously, they had some sort of ability to protect themselves from divine attacks as well. It was vague, but vague is better than horribly broken, as 1st and 3rd edition are.

What the heck was the point of them talking about 2nd Edition deities in that sort of physical capacity anyway

Because there was a concern about making a cosmos that made some sort of self-consistent sense as far as the relationship between deities and planar lords went - something that Gygax tried spiritedly to do, but never really managed.

The point is that there are many campaigns out there who want to use deities in a physical capacity, and its bordering on a disgrace that you and your cohorts continually whine, hiss and moan about the matter.

Who are these "you and your cohorts?" Remember that The Primal Order thread I contributed to, hawkeye? I've never complained about divine-level campaigns!

I don't throw a hissy fit

I do believe that's what you're doing right now, and I can't even tell what brought this on. We're trying to take your books away or something?

On his home plane he could personally hold his own against intermediate opposition, factor in all his major servants and its unlikely he would be defeated by such a threat.

Deities don't have servants?

So, just to clarify, why do these pantheon heads have a beef with Demogorgon again?

He's the titular prince of all demonkind, a handsome trophy by any standards. And he's a major force of evil - his defeat would be a great triumph for the forces of Good. Demons, who respect only strength (and are not particularly racist), might well serve the one who defeated their master. And gods don't always need reasons - mysterious ways, you know.

Asmodeus, as the uncontested ruler of an entire plane, is an even more tempting target. Hextor would have offed him long ago in your cosmology.

Theres nothing arbitrary about it. It links the outer planes directly to each prime material world, because its the dead spirits of that particular world who become demons, devils etc. in the first place.

The outer planes are linked to the various worlds by astral conduits. So where do the invisible walls come from? It's the invisible walls that are the arbitrary part.

Do I reference Durzugons now or later?

Better wait till later, when I mention the fact that only female baatezu are sterile - durzugons have baatezu fathers. Better yet, when you read that part, you can go back and edit this last line so you don't look quite so foolish.

It could be the products of a continual mass orgy.

Sure, but remember that anything a mass of demons do is going to be more destructive as it is creative - it can be a continually mass orgy of slaughter mixed with the occasional procreation.

So are you saying now that universal balance cannot be upset?

No, I didn't say that. In fact, that's what the fiends are counting on. They believe they can win against every other race - but to do that, they have to upset the Balance.

You make it sound as if actual physical combat between demon princes or their armies is irrelevant.

No, physical combat is the agent by which the job is completed. Demogorgon and his armies might grow stronger than the legions of Azzagrat, but this won't do him much good until he tries them out.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hey Shemmy!

Except in the context of this entire thread the Planescape material is one of the primary sources whereas the Gord novels aren't even on the table for more than one reason.

Its already been well established in 3rd Edition that deities (and by extension demon princes, archdevils) are nothing like their Planescape incarnations.

What on earth am I talking about? I don't even think that WotC could use them as sources for legal reasons, completely outside of their being in a different continuity of the planes than 2e or 3e.

You don't have to copy anything verbatim to adopt the inherant logic behind their approach.

You're not that familiar with it then. It didn't have them traipsing about anywhere that was violently hostile till they could actually handle it, or avoid overt dangers. It wasn't anywhere remotely as 'cuddly' as you might like to characterize it as.

But compared to 1st Edition the planes were cuddly. The planes were practically no more dangerous than the prime material worlds - which sort of makes a mockery of Rips idea that it would be such a hostile place even the demons are dropping like flies, let alone the mortal visitors.

You've expressed distate for PS beyond the reasons you cite as hating 2e for, it borders of kneejerk.

Its hardly kneejerk - I've played 2nd Edition, by your own admission, you haven't.

And most of the 3e Manual of the Planes, the Planar Handbook, the planar information and sample locations therein in the 3.5 DMG, and a whole host of monsters are direct imports from Planescape.

I have already stated that I have no problems with anything imported (so far) from 2nd Edition to 3rd Edition. Its got limitless epic levelling, stats for gods and is not shy about calling a demon just that.

*shrug* You've said before that you haven't read certain books, including some that have been repeatedly referenced in this thread.

Well as far as I know the only book mentioned so far, that I haven't read, has been Faces of Evil and based on what you have told me about it I am somewhat glad of that.

And yes, I do in fact differ in some ways from a direct Planescape interpretation of the planes, perhaps that surprises you.

How?

But that doesn't entirely matter in this thread since we're not talking about house rules, be they mine or yours, but about the Tanar'ri and other Abyssal fiends as they exist and have been developed through the close to 30 years of DnD.

Well I think House Rules are important in this instance, because remember, there are very few people happy with how 3rd Edition fits the demon princes and archdevils into its cosmology. Which is what most of the discussion is revolving around.

You make it an edition war as soon as you can most of the time,

You keep making this point, and I keep trying to explain to you its about the practicality of the idea thats important, not whichever edition it ascribes to.

2nd Edition/Planescape is not practical for supporting epic/immortal level play, nor was it an entirely practical cosmology. Now not everyone plays epic/immortal games, which is fair enough, but no one gains anything from the statless deity approach, theres no net gain from it at all! Saying that their absence 'preserves the mystery' is just utter hogwash! To me, Eberron is a mystery, because I don't own that book. But if I want to learn about Eberron and how to apply it practically to my campaign, I simply need to buy that book.

because what you personally profess to like and what the game must have, you only find within one edition, and you then condemn the others as irrational and lacking in logic. You're like the Diaglo of the 1e deity stat paradigm. No offense to Diaglo who is rather cool.

I'll take that as a compliment.

I'm lamenting because I'm wasting time arguing with you.

If anyones wasting time its me, given that you both reply to my posts to the other (as well as yourselves), so I find myself having to reply to the same point in stereo.

Upset? You've never seen me upset. This is a message board, I don't get upset over it.

Glad to hear it.

I have 'insidious confederates'? Cool! That's awesome!

You learn something new everyday...and you thought you were wasting your time arguing with me, eh!

I thought I had 'insidious confederates'. Or are they 'embittered allies'? You're taking this way too seriously UK.

Not at all, I am having a ball.

We're not out to get you, we're not out to oppress you, lighten up. Though admittedly I wish I had the masses of internet cronies I'm made out to have, they'd be useful.

I suspect you are only looking out for your own interests, however, your interests don't work in tandem with mine, even though mine do work in tandem with yours.

Very obviously not. But for the purposes of this thread that you don't use it doesn't exactly matter in the slightest.

It gives a counterpoise to your comments, so clearly it has its purpose.

 

[Upper_Krust]

*waits for Shemmy and Krusty to notice him*

Oi! Hiya Nightfall matey!

I saw your post, though it seemed more of a statement rather than a question, and with me still having to deal with the terrible twins here, I decided against a reply.

Hope you are keeping well, or at least as well as can be in this post-Scarred Lands wasteland of a world?

 

[IcyCool]

I saw your post, though it seemed more of a statement rather than a question, and with me still having to deal with the terrible twins here, I decided against a reply.

I'm just curious UK, is there a reason you feel you need to resort to name calling to try to win your arguement?

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hey Rip!

You can't hide behind an infinity, only the number of troops you can muster within a given length of time - troops you have to keep amused and occupied or they'll simply leave.

The idea assumed you had a rival demon princes army attacking. With an infinite number of troops (each) the two armies keep crashing against each other for an eternity.

In Naratyr, the air is dangerously thin (outsiders need to breathe), the climate is terribly cold (even tanar'ri are vulnerable if it becomes cold enough), the streets are filled with demons and undead, and even demons fear the undercity. They may be unexpectedly drained of their life levels, and the biggest hazard may be Orcus himself.

Also note that, strictly according to the rules, any demons in Thanatos (or any plane with the minor negative-dominant trait) take 1d6 points of damage a round until they turn into ash, since outsiders are vulnerable to negative energy and energy attacks bypass damage reduction. Technically, every demon in Thanatos should be dead due to the hostility of the planar layer. We have to ignore that, of course, but it's still a great example of how even the most "civilized" parts of the Abyss can be dangerous to the Abyss' natives.

But Naratyr was easy.

Agreed, reading over 1st Edition Manual of the Planes it appears that the great majority of the inhabitants of Orcus plane are indeed undead.

With Zelatar and Samora (in Azzagrat) I'd have to be more creative and subtle.

Absolutely.

But my point is that if any place in the Abyss is safe for anyone but the rulers of the layers (and not even always then) the DM is slacking. It's a place of chaos and unexpected dangers, more than the rulebooks can possibly list.

I'm sure they only touch on the idea rather than define it.

Demons survive and thrive in the Abyss in spite of its hazards, not because they can ignore them.

Exactly, and as a rule they generally adapt to their environment.

The Abyss ain't Iraq. It's much, much worse.

The point was, that if people don't thrive in an area they won't gather in it.

Only on your side, actually, which is ironic as you're the only one complaining about precedent. If I occasionally use sophistic techniques, it's only in situations where formal logic doesn't apply. Your own mastery of logic leaves much to be desired with your numerous nonsequiturs and unjustified assumptions, and your weird paranoid flights of fancy like the idea that lone gamers can (or even would) tell people they can't have statistics for their gods.

A few posts ago you told me to 'make them up and use my imagination for God's sake', or was that just a flight of fancy?

The point is, things like infinite planes and breeding fiends work, and they work at any power level. If you need to know that Mephistopheles has precisely 666,666 troops available and Demogorgon has precisely one hundred times that, then that's what they have and the Planescape cosmology explains this as well or better than yours does.

Breeding fiends work in so far as the idea can't be used to a planar rulers advantage - in that I agree with you.

Infinite planes and layers work, my beef is more with the idea of infinite realms. Even assuming the demon princes do control their layers infinitude, the idea is totally impractical because they don't have infinite resources to populate it. Which means that, at best they populate an infinitely small fraction of their layer. So propagating the idea is redundant. Even if we entertain the notion, it doesn't benefit us in anyway. No one can ever map out an entire infinite layer.

That works, and I understand some writers' desire to seperate metaphysics from astronomy, but "cosmos" can actually refer to the spiritual universe as well and does so in most texts. Particularly when discussing "D&D," which refers to a planar "cosmology" (not a "kosmology"), I think simply saying "cosmically" is more appropriate, though in the particular context you use it I would probably say "metaphysically" instead.

I am sure there are any number of words that could be used. I fail to see how one, in this case, is worse than another. I think kosmic (and its derivatives) is an interesting word.

Divine realms override the nature of the layer they're on, burning away the layer's own sentience and replacing it with the god's own. Realms are an extension of the deity and there is no conflict of personality.

Planar rulers instead join with their layers in symbiosis. The layer influences the personality of its ruler and vice versa, each changing the nature of the other. In the Abyss, there may occasionally be battles of will, while in the lawful planes the layers obey their assigned masters.

But is there any reason why, say for instance, a demon prince could not choose to create a realm in the same fashion as a deity.

I quite liked the idea that they 'burn it away' - nice.

For one, it's a lot simpler to just say the demon controls the layer than to mess about with hypothetical parallel cosmologies coexisting in the same planar layer.

But thats the main crux of it, to allow an infinite number of cosmologies to co-exist.

For instance, you could travel to the Warhammer World or any number of Moorcockian Planets and become aware of their particular Gods of Chaos.

And there is a great benefit to controlling the entire layer: the ruler gains control over - and a limited omniscience within - the shape and content of an infinite expanse of space. This makes little difference in game terms, but it's nice for the demon, and you're taking that away in order to "solve" something that isn't even a problem.

I don't see it solving anything practical though.

The main problem that your "localized" cosmology resolves is the dilemna of an infinite number of material planar worlds - how does Orcus deal with all of them at once?

Why would he be aware of them all? Or more to the point why would they be aware of him necessarily!? I think, as with Q1: Queen of the Demonweb Pits, the more powerful princes are known on a number of worlds (it was about 8 or so mentioned for Lolth for instance), one or two of which they may actually have conquered, in others they may be allied with one nation, in yet others they may only have token investment.

There are actually a number of simpler solutions, however.

1. Orcus only has influence over a few worlds. Other demon lords deal with the others. Orcus, then, would only be one of the three most powerful lords of the Abyss from the perspective of the known worlds.

We know that demons do not necessarily, as a rule, have a monopoly on any given planet, so I wouldn't go along with this approach.

The problem with this theory is that while there are a potentially infinite number of Abyssal lords, there are only nine lords of Hell.

I would challenge that infinite number of Abyssal Lords theory. I think the 66 princes (incorporating the 6 monarchs) and 666 Lords is enough.

We can postulate further eladrin queens, other Primuses, and an endless number of yugoloth paragons, but there is definitely only one archdevil per layer - the devil and his layer are one. We would have to postulate "kosmically localized" groups of nine Hells, so this is pretty much your solution.

We could, but I don't think it is necessary. I would incorporate numerology into this sort of exercise, but of course there is nothing to say that all kosmically localised areas have the same number of layers. There may be four hells (north, south, east, west - as per Goetia) in some for instance.

2. The other simple solution is to say that yes, Orcus and his ilk do have infinite resources and infinite armies, which he is able to deploy in an infinite number of arenas at once. Any single army will be finite, however, because his infinite troops will be infinitely busy. There are an infinite number of portals leading to Thanatos, and Orcus needs someone guarding each one. If he deploys too many troops to defend any one portal, another Abyssal lord can invade one of the more weakly-defended positions. In this cosmos planar lords need infinite resources, where deities do not.

If we use this scenario it doesn't really lend itself to any practical applications (as you yourself agree below).

This is like Michael Moorcock's system where Arioch, Donblas and the other Lords of Law and Chaos appear in different incarnations and aspects on every world in the infinite multiverse.

Surely the kosmically localised system is more akin to this idea?

3. You can just say there aren't an infinite number of worlds - the Material Plane is infinite, but the number of worlds on it are finite. This is the assumption I make in my arguments, just for simplicity's sake.

This is sort of the assumption I would also make, although I wouldn't necessarily say the universe is technically infinite, but I would say that its so big that debating the point is moot.

I don't actually have any problem with option #2 except it gives me a little bit of a headache to think about such vastness.

Now you are seeing my point.

There's something you didn't understand about my arguments! They were based on one arbitrary assumption among, as I count them, three.

For me, this post has been the most interesting of our recent tete-a-tetes.

I'll happily argue #2 with you instead - it's basically the same as #3 (with number not being the most important quality and any one engagement being between finite groups), but on a larger scale.

I will agree that it would be pretty much impossible to play Orcus using cosmology #2 - in such a game you could play gods, overgods, Eternals or whatever you like, but you can't play the lords of the infinite planes. You can fight off their hordes, you can weaken them (by weakening their alignment), you can ally with one against another, and you can even destroy them in personal combat - being infinitely busy doesn't mean they're immune to all harm, although given that a literally infinite number of assassins is going after them at once some pretty extraordinary means will be required - but they can't be PCs. Fights between lords of the same plane - Demogorgon versus Orcus, for example - are a different matter. Demogorgon doesn't have to exterminate every one of Orcus' minions, only show Orcus' weakness by defeating

Ideally you want all such beings to be able to interact (epic PCs, deities, planar lords etc.) if you are going to bother with such levels of power in the first place.

So now I think we finally understand one another.

Pretty much, yes.

You're working under Assumption #1, which requires either "kosmic" ghettoes within each layer (your method), entirely seperate cosmologies for worlds or groups of worlds (the standard 3rd edition method), or "kosmically localized" groups of layers (another possible method - so there would be, for example, 666 layers of the Abyss and 9 layers of Hell accessible from Alloryia and perhaps a different 666 Abysses and 9 Hells accessible from Karanblade in the same Great Ring.

Thinking about it, you could still have the realm infinite (although the populated area of the realm would still be finite) using the kosmically localised approach, however once a second kosmology became known, the realms would conjoin (two infinities are still infinite after all).

Ghettoizing cosmologies like this has its own host of logical paradoxes and conundrums if you allow them to interact at all.

Possibly, but at least everything will be of a finite size, so at least we can deal with it practically.

I work under assumptions #2 or #3 (effectively #3, as most people do - few people bother to worry about infinite worlds bombarding the same planar layers at once because there's really no reason to give yourself that kind of headache and it saves on complicated cosmological hacks) but I think, keeping in mind that #2 is much less tested than #3, they're both perfectly self-consistent.

Agreed. The complications only arise when you actually need to start explaining it for immortal characters (encompassing demon lords, deities, elemental masters and so forth), which obviously you don't really need to do unless they are going to be used in a physical capacity. So its something you can easily ignore up to that point.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hey IcyCool!

I'm just curious UK, is there a reason you feel you need to resort to name calling to try to win your arguement?

A bit of light-hearted banter here and there is only intended to lighten the atmosphere not offend anyone. Shemmy, Rip and I know each other pretty well (longtime online sparring partners) and I would certainly like to think none of us take offence at anything the others typed. I certainly apologise if any of my comments have offended either.