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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Grover Cleaveland" data-source="post: 2693272" data-attributes="member: 34932">The Abyssal layers themselves have infinite intelligence - infinitely vast, rather than infinitely smart. Most have animal-level intelligence, though a few are sentient.Abyssal lords, who are tied to their layers spiritually, have the ability to tap into the infinite minds of their layers if they're not busy doing anything else. They're probably not able to process an infinite amount of occurances at once, but their layers are, and their layers inform them of important events (like spellcasters trying to open gates). I don't think Orcus is necessarily instantly aware of Sir Gareth Dragonsbane entering Thanatos from the Plane of Infinite Portals  - or of Kiaransalee doing the same - but he has the ability to know such things available to him. Planar rulers rule over infinities, while deities rule over finite regions, which was why the poster who started this particular debate suggested that planar rulers were the more powerful of the two groups. As "rules an infinity" has been the canonical assumption since 1st edition, it's a valid point.The difference is that if Mephistopheles could control everyone in Cania as if they were marrionettes and he was holding the strings, he would do so in a heartbeat. Orcus is a creature of unpredictability, and would soon grow bored and frustrated in such a universe. He likes his animated dead, but skeletons and zombies alone grow tiresome.  Weird.The scenario I was suggesting specifically assumed that the gate opened in the infinite space outside the local lord's control. In this case, the enemy wouldn't have any way of knowing about the gate or the invasion - the invader could create its own realm every bit as powerful as the enemy's. That's my problem with assuming infinite wild terrain exists outside an Abyssal ruler's command, which seemed to be your assertion.If you assume the layers are finite in size, not just the realms, things are different, but this doesn't seem to be exactly what you're suggesting. I think I explained why the analogy doesn't work - every layer, or most layers, is equally accessible from the Plain of Infinite Portals - which are filled with enormous, undispellable gates that thousands of demons could pour through at a time. There aren't any intermediate layers for the greatest demon monarchs to guard. Orcus can attack (the first layer of) Azzagrat as easily as Graz'zt can attack Thanatos, using the first layer of the Abyss as a staging ground. Naturally they'll have fortresses around most of the major portals, but not an infinite number of them - and even where there are fortresses, they aren't unassailable to a determined foe (just as castles don't necessarily deter invasion in the real world).In the same sense that Russia has more oil reserves than Saudi Arabia - they exist, but they're not being exploited to the same degree. The layers are infinite, but they're not infinitely developed. Also, much of the layers might well be empty void, like the regions beyond the land in the layers of Gehenna, or otherwise useless for most purposes. The lords still control them, for all and all of infinity.I don't see how the amount of time it takes to purge a gelugon of its lower nature relates to how quickly tanar'ri reproduce at all. It might be a guideline for how long it takes a nalfeshnee to become a balor, but that's it. Tanar'ri have lower standards for promotion than the perfectionistic, bureaucratic baatezu, so  manes will become balors more quickly than lemures become pit fiends, but it's still going to take centuries, or millennia, for it to happen.They're placing bets, too. They're a race of chaos - they get too orderly, they die out. Demons don't have a rigid hierarchy in that way, anyway. There are the base demons - the manes, dretches, and rutterkin - commanded by babau, hezrou, chasme, or the like. Their superiors are, in no particular order, the balors, nalfeshnee, and mariliths, who work - sometimes - for the lords and princes of the Abyss. But there's no direct supervision - they're told roughly what to do and they decide how to do it their own way. They're not going to be more rigid than that any more than they're going to start helping sick puppies and children or donating to charity.Some layers of the Abyss are more deadly than others, but even the safest ones are deadly by the standards of the Material Plane. Unless you know a way of calculating exactlly how deadly the safest place in the Abyss is, you can't claim that demons will be able to reproduce there at a geometric rate.There a lot of demons. A lot of demons - an uncountable, seemingly endless number. But not so many that it's impossible for the baatezu to defeat them. Part of that's because the war has more to do with belief than numbers - you kill enough, they become demoralized and the whole race weakens. You weaken the forces of Chaos or Evil, the whole race weakens. Take this far enough, and you end up with an entire species too weak to overcome the damage resistance of rival outsider races. They're defeated - they're done. The tanar'ri are thought to have exterminated races in the Abyss before. They destroyed the varrangoin civilization. It can be done.</blockquote>

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