Fiendish Codex I: Hordes of the Abyss

[Shemeska]

True, true. I forgot 1e with its 400 hit point Zeus and Odin. I should have stated that 3e brought that travesty back from the abyss from which it had fallen and stuffed what could have been a book rich in useful information about gods, their churches and their manner of interacting with the worlds into a book stuffed with monsterous stat blocks so that uber-munchkins can sharpen their +15 swords of Excessive Grandiosity upon the greatest monsters in the universe.

Well spoken. It should have remained buried back in the Carter administration rather than rising up into unlife in 3e.

 

[the Jester]

It used to be that only on FR, after the Time of Troubles, that deities had such an intimate connection to worshippers that they would weaken and die if their worship disappeared on the world. In Planescape it became a universal assumption that gods NEEDED worship to exist. This was never the case on Greyhawk or Krynn.

Actually Gygax wrote an article on this in Dragon in the 80's sometime, referring to how gods gained 'mana' both from worshipers and from creatures of their alignment.

 

[Shemeska]

Good god. I would have stopped and said something to them.

Myself, lacking tact, I'd have fallen over laughing at them.

 

[Krypter]

And really, the 'Fiends and Celestials getting drunk alongside mortals in bars all over the place in Sigil' is honestly an unfair stereotype that gets tossed around but wasn't ever there. The setting gets maligned for it anyway.

Shemmie, dear, no offence but your namesake prances around town shopping for dresses and preens herself in a mirror. My avatar-sake sits in a shop in a mortal city and sells trinkets. Look at your avatar. It's cute 'n all, but it ain't demonic. It's too human, with human foibles tacked on too garishly.

Planescape works well as a faery wonderland, poorly as a hellish pit of depravity. It requires a lot of bending and stretching to disassociate it from the interplanar races fantastic voyage model. It's a specific genre quite different from regular D&D, which is why regular D&D players often had such a strongly negative reaction to it.


PS: Yeah! Bring back Anthraxus! Who is this Mydichlorian Star Wars refugee anyway?
PPS: And the Molydeus. My players decided to jump into a portal to the Plane of Fire rather than fight one. Now that's scary.

 

[Shemeska]

Shemmie, dear, no offence but your namesake prances around town shopping for dresses and preens herself in a mirror.

Man, the temptation for a purely IC response... but no.

The best way to respond here is to relate to a quote from the Evil Fashion thread we had last week, about how really, if you were an evil warrior and you could get away with it and just kill anyone who said anything about it, you'd be wearing black full plate armor with spikes and skulls on it too.

The Marauder acts that way because frankly, she can get away with it. Plus, given her position in Sigil, it's nearly a job requirement to take upon some more mortal traits in order to better interact. It's better to act the part of the prissy socialite with fangs in an evening gown than a snarling fiend from the Gray Waste of indeterminate gender who leaves a trail of ashes behind themselves. One of those people can relate to, even if they understand that you're wholly evil. The act people can relate to, and business in corruption and souls goes much better because of it.

Same thing with A'kin, the 'good cop' to her 'bad cop' in Sigil. He's nice. Far too nice. But he gets information that way even if he probably goes back to Gehenna every night to torture petitioners to release the fury of having to bottle his true nature day in and day out.

The same fiends in their own environment wouldn't carry around that baggage and pretense. But perhaps that's just my take on it, a bit of rationalizing the situation. I've used at least one of them like that, and made them pretty damn fiendish in the stuff I've written.

PS: Yeah! Bring back Anthraxus! Who is this Mydichlorian Star Wars refugee anyway?
PPS: And the Molydeus. My players decided to jump into a portal to the Plane of Fire rather than fight one. Now that's scary.

Honestly I like the faceless Mydianchlarus at Khin-Oin, fits better with the race to an extent, given Anthraxus' origin. Course I killed off Anthraxus in my own campaign, and Mydianchlarus too.

And the Molydeus was awesome. My PCs sadly trusted one of them.
"You can't attack us! You said you were bound to obey us if we let you out!" - sadly mistaken PC

The Klurichnir in 3e was a pretty thin attempt to replace the Molydeus, but it'd be fraggin awesome if we got the Molydei back.

 

[Grover Cleaveland]

Shemmie, dear, no offence but your namesake prances around town shopping for dresses and preens herself in a mirror. My avatar-sake sits in a shop in a mortal city and sells trinkets. Look at your avatar. It's cute 'n all, but it ain't demonic. It's too human, with human foibles tacked on too garishly.

Krypter, the logical error you and some others are making is that you're referring to Planescape as if it was a monolithic entity, where in fact it was a number of different contributors, each with their own interpretations of how things should be.

For example, this is how Colin McComb describes an ultroloth in Hellbound:

"...at flrst the fiend appears to be a lifeless statue - motionless, its spare frame wrapped in a voluminous black cloak. After a moment, it turns to face the party, seeming to spin more than move, its ebony eyes boring into all PCs at once.

...
"After a moment, the ultroloth speaks. Its voice is like the buzzing of strange bees in a hive and the crash of acidic waves on a sulfurous shore."

Pretty damn impressive, huh? Here's a fragment by Monte Cook from Planes of Conflict:

"The gaze of an ultroloth is not one you want to meet twice... I heard his voice in my head. As always, I cringed.

"His words penetrated my brain. 'What have you made for me?' It felt like a razor cutting soft flesh."

And here's a tiny part of Colin McComb's description of what it means to be tanar'ri in Faces of Evil:

"Your heart of darkness keeps growing. It extends its veins like spitting serpents through your body, cancerous lesions of violence erupting across your skin... Everything you see becomes tainted by your rage and bleak hatred. You can't imagine a time when you felt any of the emotions that creatures of good are said to possess. Love and friendship are foreign concepts; you know their meaning but not their truth. Instead, you use the word cruelly to create hope in others - but only so you can crush it later.

You become a creature without conscience. Others exist only to serve as your tools, only to satiate your needs - even if those needs are merely for things that you can burn and sting and tear to mewling shreds."

That sort of thing goes on for an entire page, a rhapsody of darkness and hate that concludes by reminding you that all that is the merest glimmer of how tanar'ri feel.

Shemeshka and A'kin are, more or less, creations of Ray and Valerie Vallese. They're two of the most popular and iconic characters in the Planescape line, so it's not surprising if you think of them as emblematic of how fiends were treated in Planescape in general - but it wasn't.

Similarly, Tony DiTerlizzi's art was distinctive and beautiful, but concentrating on his depiction of fiends ignores the horrors conjured by Adam Rex and rk post.

I can see how memorable examples might gestate in the fertile soil of someone's mind, blossoming as vague prejudices in RPG-related forums, but occasionally it's good to take some metaphorical gardening shears and cut them down.

 

[Clueless]

I about cried right there in the store.

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

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hey Grover!

Unlikely. Barghests (or barguests) are creatures from English folklore, and therefore didn't need to have their names changed. And dreggals - spiky-headed, metallic-voiced creatures - don't resemble them. They do somewhat resemble the linquas, but they were a Planescape creation.

I wasn't suggesting that all the monsters were under different names, merely some.

Gary Gygax himself is unwilling to say any more about what maelvis are.

He he!

Dumalduns don't resemble any AD&D creature either.

Were Dumalduns not Hordelings?

The fate of the multiverse is at stake (more or less) several times in the Planescape adventures - due to the Iron Shadow, the Last Word, and other problems.

...and who inevitably sorts these problems out?

Gygax's multiverse was more human-centered, while Planescape's seems more dominated by the planeborn, whose puissance due to their great age and experience is emphasized heavily. I'm just noting a stylistic difference, not criticizing.

You could argue the Planescape method has more style...but less substance. The age old argument of balancing crunch with fluff.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hey there!

Shemmie, dear, no offence but your namesake prances around town shopping for dresses and preens herself in a mirror. My avatar-sake sits in a shop in a mortal city and sells trinkets. Look at your avatar. It's cute 'n all, but it ain't demonic. It's too human, with human foibles tacked on too garishly.

Planescape works well as a faery wonderland, poorly as a hellish pit of depravity. It requires a lot of bending and stretching to disassociate it from the interplanar races fantastic voyage model. It's a specific genre quite different from regular D&D, which is why regular D&D players often had such a strongly negative reaction to it.

...and the whole things far too cuddly! Pandouring to a bunch of low-level fops indeed.

PS: Yeah! Bring back Anthraxus! Who is this Mydichlorian Star Wars refugee anyway?

Wasn't he the tattooed, spike-headed Ultrodaemon with the brilliant energy double-sword?

PPS: And the Molydeus. My players decided to jump into a portal to the Plane of Fire rather than fight one. Now that's scary.

Considering how much of a bump the 3.5 Balor got a conversion of the Molydeus would be a very scary proposition - lets hope James and Erik remember the Molydeus. I always liked the anachronism of what was essentially a chaotic evil fiend with a lawful role.

 

[BOZ]

same here, but it takes something special to find order in chaos - or chaos in order, for that matter.