Fiendish Codex I: Hordes of the Abyss

[Dr. Harry]

Fiends in love.....Jesus, please. Yeah right....incarnate EVIL that can care for another as much or more than it cares for itself. Incarnate evil that trusts another and can be trusted by another to work in that other's best interest even at personal cost to itself. That is love.

If fiends are capable of selfless affection and placing the welfare of another on the same plane as their own or even higher then they aren't evil incarnate. Sorry but that isn't incarnate darkness......its mortal. Its a mortal in a funny costume.

Chris

Let me give you a big "amen!" on this. It is also my point of view on the "vampires in love" theme ("Oh, the horror", "Oh, the beast within", yada yada yada.)

I think that this is a case that something becomes popular by virtue of being big, tough, and bad-&$$ and then has people trying rehabilitate by making them into something they can try and justify liking.

Good on Farscape, bad with demons and undead.

Harry

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Let me give you a big "amen!" on this. It is also my point of view on the "vampires in love" theme ("Oh, the horror", "Oh, the beast within", yada yada yada.)

Except that the modern vampire's very first depictions in the 19th century all included this as a trope, to varying degrees. Vampires are not evil incarnate, they are once-human things that retain some elements (maybe even if they're just memories and habits) of their humanity.

Demons, on the other hand, game on.

 

[Shade]

My luv of Fiendush Kodux nows know limit.

 

[Dr. Harry]

Except that the modern vampire's very first depictions in the 19th century all included this as a trope, to varying degrees. Vampires are not evil incarnate, they are once-human things that retain some elements (maybe even if they're just memories and habits) of their humanity.

Demons, on the other hand, game on.

Noting that you are saying the modern vampire as opposed to the mediaeval monster, I would like to ask you what you are considering your souces. Respectfully, of course; there was one person on another thread that got really, really upset because I dared to ask for a source.

I must confess that I am primarily going on Dracula as my source, and not Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's version.

I could be missing something (though that portrayal of vampires would still bug me).

 

[Upper_Krust]

Just wanted to add that I am really looking forward to this book and I am sure James and Erik will do us proud.

Shockingly I actually agree with Shemeska for once that the Daemons/Yugoloths are the ones who really need a book to do them justice. They often seem like the second class citizens of the lower planes, with demons and devils grabbing all the headlines...oh and when you do get round to the Daemon book would somebody please vorpalise that Mydianchlarus and bring back Anthraxus?

Hey there Grover!

Lemme think:

2. There were a bunch of new creatures invented for the books (dreggals, maelvis, etc.), but they were poorly described if at all.

I think numbers of those 'invented' creatures were simply existing creatures under new names. I think Dreggals was another name for Barghests for instance.

8. Lower planar creatures in general tend to be stupid, short-sighted bullies, rather than clever and far-sighted as they often are in Planescape. The big, almost unique exception is Vuron, Graz'zt's demonic vizir. Graz'zt admits that without Vuron he wouldn't be nearly as successful.

A lot of this hinges on the power fluctuations that happened between 1st and 2nd Edition. In 2nd Edition (certainly the early days) they kicked all the Demon Princes upstairs, removing them from the picture. Which made the likes of the Balors, Ultroloth and Pit Fiends the 'top dogs' you could encounter, so they became less henchman and more akin to the major villains calling the shots...the criminal masterminds you attest to below.

9. The hierarchs of daemonkind are generally disposable cannon-fodder in Gygax's multiverse, excepting Infestix himself.

In Planescape, every ultroloth and arcanaloth is a criminal mastermind. Some of the greatest villains in the Gygaxaverse are human, putting the fiends to shame, while Planescape put great emphasis on the prowess of the immortal, unthinkably ancient fiends.

I think you are failing to take into account that the fate of the multiverse was at stake, not some paltry feud between a Balor and a Pit Fiend. At such a measure of power even demon princes and daemon masters were but pawns in a larger game.

 

[Mouseferatu]

Noting that you are saying the modern vampire as opposed to the mediaeval monster, I would like to ask you what you are considering your souces. Respectfully, of course; there was one person on another thread that got really, really upset because I dared to ask for a source.

I must confess that I am primarily going on Dracula as my source, and not Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's version.

I could be missing something (though that portrayal of vampires would still bug me).

Ugh. Don't even get me started on what Coppola did to Dracula. What makes it even worse is that so many people take it at face value, assuming that the literary Dracula was the same sort of character.

There's no romantic angle to Dracula in the novel. None. The whole feeding and "seduction" thing isn't a love metaphor, it's a rape metaphor, cloaked beneath the veil of Victorian sensibilities.

Not that I doubt Whizbang has his sources. There were a lot of 19th century vampire tales other than Stoker's.

 

[Mouseferatu]

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:

There are two movies adapted from Anne Rice's books. "Interview With the Vampire" and "Bram Stoker's Dracula."

I about cried right there in the store.

 

[Voadam]

Fiends are primal evil. They know nothing else, they are nothing else. They are terrifying, and all the more so because they cannot be anything other than what they are. They cooperate with mortals only when they have something to gain from the deal. They have no friends. Even their love, when they can feel it at all, is ultimately perverse and self-serving.

Anything less than absolute, nigh-incomprehensible evil isn't worthy of the title "fiend."

Fiends as absolute evil and celestials as pure good excludes the possibility of a celestial falling. So no Lucifer morningstar starting out a good angel leading a rebellion of a third of the heavenly host and becoming the devil.

I like and use the concept of certain outsiders as alignment elementals, but the free will fallen archetype for fiends is strong.

 

[diaglo]

I hear their Abyss one was pretty good.

--Erik

pretty abysmal if you ask me.

 

[DungeonmasterCal]

Ya know..this is a book I'd probably never use. I don't really care for "extra-planar" adventuring or critters.

Ya'll enjoy!