Fiendish Codex I: Hordes of the Abyss

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

No Demiurge, I have not seen the Book of Fiends. Who is the publisher? I do have Armies of the Abyss and the other book in that line about devils. I thought both were interesting. I had a vague recollection of hearing about the Book of Fiends and I thought it was a compilation of those to other books, but that could be completely mistaken, since I never bought nor read Book of Fiends. Is it good?

It's a compilation with the Yugoloths added: http://greenronin.com/catalog/grr1025

 

[Shemeska]

As for hordelings: I was glad to see the hordelings presented as choatic, as their randomness is perfect for a plane of pure chaos and evil like Pandemonium or the Abyss. I never liked their previously assigned neutral evil alignment.

That's the thing though, they're weren't expressions of randomness at all. They were all different because each of them existed as a physical expression of their own personal, unique, all consuming agony.

They were the twisted wreckage of those larvae upon the Waste who perverted the consuming malice of the plane and rather than succumbing to it, they came to embrace it, latching onto their pain and misery as they only thing they had left to call themselves. They became their own misery in order to retain some measure of self, spreading their pain and misery at all others not out of wanting to randomly destroy as an expression of chaos and evil, but in order to define themselves. NE worked fine for that, but making them CE and native to pandemonium just ignores that and remakes them entirely. What you've got in Dungeon isn't a Hordling, it's something else with the same name.

But it's late, I'm thinking too hard about this, listening to TOOL and reading Dostoyevsky while procrastinating writing this week's storyhour update. So forgive me for being fervent on this all.

 

[coyote6]

It's a compilation with the Yugoloths added: http://greenronin.com/catalog/grr1025

Well, not really yugoloths. NE fiends from Gehenna, but they're not really yugoloths, AFAICT.

 

[demiurge1138]

Very un-yugolothy. The yugoloths are planar mercs profiting off of the Blood War. The BoF's daemons are the personifications of Sin, committed to tempting mortals.

Demiurge out.

 

[Soel]

Don't get me started on deities.

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. On Krynn for example, certain gods actually helped create the world so they existed long before mortals came to the world.

Essentially instead of the relative youth of gods being a peculiarity of the FR setting, Planescape translated that to the entire multiverse and every setting therein effectively negating the creation stories of the peoples of the material world who believed that their gods were more than just suped up figments of their own imaginations who actually created the universe in which they lived. Nah, that was just silly clueless talk.

However, what PS did to deities was nothing compared to what 3e did to the gods of various settings by turning them into what amounts to big bad boss monsters that the PCs can fight instead of being anything approaching what many consider beings worthy of worship. This necessitated the conceptualization of other kinds of creatures like the Illithid elder beings who are even beyond the gods in power fundamentally becoming what the gods were so in effect the "real" gods of the game, the ones who have power beyond which some orc smashing little PCs can ever attain are these weird alien type creatures. For all intents and purposed the gods beyond which mortals can reach haven't disappeared they just changed form and name from Zeus and Isis, Nerull, Tharizdun, Odin, Chauntea, Shar, etc. to Xeoltorepmh and Ithilorgh the Cthulhu rip offs.

Great design decision.


Chris

Well, I should have added that I actually went with the concept of deities as "just bigger, more powerful mortals" in my old PS campaign, using Dead Gods as the spearhead to ask the loaded question, "just what is divinity?" which in turn lead to the next questions about mortality, and everyone's real station in the multiverse.

Of course, sometimes you just wanna take some hit points off of something...

 

[Grover Cleaveland]

Very un-yugolothy. The yugoloths are planar mercs profiting off of the Blood War. The BoF's daemons are the personifications of Sin, committed to tempting mortals.

Demiurge out.

Yah. The Daemon Hordes of Gehenna from Green Ronin actually make excellent replacements for hordlings, but they're not much like yugoloths.

The Horde, called also the hordlings and, more specifically, the Hordes of Hades, fall into seven major groups corresponding to the seven classical sins: pride, avarice, lust, wrath, envy, gluttony, and sloth. Like the demons and devils, the hordlings evolve from the larvae that spring from the souls of wicked mortals as well as from the lower planes themselves. The Horde are by far the most diverse of daemonkind, personifying as they do the million sins and fallibles of sentient life. Their seven rulers are said to be godlike in power, encouraging the spread of sin across the planes.

 

[BOZ]

Don't forget OP1 - Tales From the Outer Planes!


A bit more playing around with the Dragon archives CD (which, i'm sure you've already done, but just in case):

From the Sorcerer's Scroll (#28): EGG gives some insight into how the demons, devils, and daemons relate to each other.

Ecology of the Yuan-Ti (#151): includes info on a former god of the yuan-ti, turned demon lord.

Down-to-earth Divinity (#54): Ed Greenwood mentions a beast cult demigod named Repra, King of Serpents, based in the Abyss. (a google search suggests this being was destroyed by Sseth)

But not least: The Humanoids (#63): Roger Moore's demihuman perspectives article series first presents the shoosuva.

Campaign Classics: Three Greyhawk Grimoires (#225): Iggwilv's Nethertome, a work lesser known than her Demonomicon (which the article squeamishly refers to as the "Fiendomicon"), features some backstory as well as two new spells - Iggwilv's Lightning Cage and Iggwilv's Timeless Sleep.

Dragon's Bestiary: Nonhuman Creatures With Human Form (#141): Features the Black Troll, a troll variant created by breeding with demons.

For King and Country (#101): brief mention is made of demons and what races worship them; including the earliest reference I have seen that ixixtachitl worship Demogorgon!

Demons, Devils, and Spirits (#42): Hacamuli, a servant of Orcus appears.

Setting Saintly Standards (#79): St. Kargoth, King of the Death Knights, appears.

Fiend Knights and Dark Artifacts (#206): Featuring material cut from "Ivid the Undying".

Fiendish Fortresses (#233): By Monte Cook, as I mentioned above. 'nuff said.

From the Sorcerer's Scroll (#23): The first appearance of the random demon generation table, which would later appear in the 1E DMG, and would later become the basis for the hordlings.

The Goristro Revealed (#91): The first appearance of this demon, which later appeared in Planes of Chaos, and 3E's Manual of the Planes.

Creature Catalog III (#101): Featuring the Tener, which is sometimes found on the Abyss.

Bazaar of the Bizarre (#117): Features the Ring of Lolth, a minor artifact.

The Dragon's Bestiary (#118): Features the Phoenix Spider, an inhabitant of the Abyss.

A Touch of Evil (#126): Suggests that death knights are bound to Demogorgon, and that the ghast is powerful due to "continued exposure to the magical forces of the Abyss."

The Game Wizards (#165): Ah, the beginning of the end for the demons and devils. They had already been removed from AD&D with the advent of 2E, now with this review of Monstrous Compendium 8: The Outer Planes, (Jan 1991 - Planescape, as stated previously, debuted in 1994) we see the seeds for the Blood War, "baatezu," and "tanar'ri" as well as them being described as "races" of fiends for the first time. The archdemons and archdevils are removed from the picture entirely, and the demons and devils have been officially neutered until 3E is released.

Ecology of the Neogi (#214): One of the five gods introduced for the Neogi is Thrig'ki, a lesser power from the Abyss.

Dragon's Bestiary: Lords of Chaos (#221): A tale is related of how the slaad lord Ssendam repelled a demonic invasion of the Spawning Stone.

 

[Garnfellow]

For King and Country (#101): brief mention is made of demons and what races worship them; including the earliest reference I have seen that ixixtachitl worship Demogorgon!

I'm pretty sure the old Deities and Demigods book has this in the beginning of the Nonhuman Mythos section; I'm certain that the old Monster Card (1982 ?) mentions Demogorgon.

 

[BOZ]

well, it was the earliest reference i had seen.

 

[Pants]

A bit more playing around with the Dragon archives CD (which, i'm sure you've already done, but just in case):

Complete thread hijack:
Is the Dragon Archives CD-ROM still available for purchase somewhere? Paizo doesn't seem to have it (or I couldn't find it).

Back to your regularly scheduled thread.