Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Grover Cleaveland" data-source="post: 2615803" data-attributes="member: 34932">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.</blockquote>

Verification