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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4606408" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 75: July 1983part 1/2100 pages. Its a devil special! The nine hells and their occupants get an extensive look over, courtesy of Ed Greenwood. This is nice. Another plane is now described enough to be playable. And because it's so big, they've cut in half, so there's still plenty of unrelated stuff in this magazine. Sweet! I can't wait to get my fangs into this one. Should I have saved that joke for the halloween issue? Maybe. Eh, it matters not. There are plenty more where that came from. In this issue:Harn, rolemaster and middle earth are once again occupying both the inside front and back covers. That's quite the saturation of advertising. They must be shelling out a lot to get the premium positions every time. Out on a limb: Two letters correcting some out of date and incorrect information in the PbM article a couple of issues ago. Its a fast changing world. A letter criticizing the champions article and the way it handled it's rules changes. Frankly, my dear, you should be grateful for getting anything at all. A letter praising the first ecology article, and asking for lots more, with more details about their lifecycles and dietary habits. Sounds good to me. A letter asking how you use the cavalier with the attack priority system. They reply that you'll have to figure that out yourself. As most of the articles are unofficial and by different people, there are bound to be some that are incompatible. Hmm. Looks like they're looking for a japanese translator. Does that mean Oriental adventures'll be along in a year or so? Does that mean it'll be properly researched?  We shall see. The ecology of the mimic: The magazine finally starts producing homegrown articles for this series, instead of recycling them from Dragonlords. And it seems like Ed is quite taken with the concept, as this is the first of many that he'll contribute over the years. We get descriptions of the way mimic's internal structure produces various textures and colours, probably drawn from real life examples such as octopi. We also get some tactical ideas, including an amusing story of a mimic living in waterdeep disguised as a statue. Still feels a bit short, but it does manage to fit a good deal into a single page. Another article that's well up to his usual standard. Looks like the series is in safe hands. From the sorceror's scroll gives us an extensive list of the dukes of hell, plus several other devils, including abishai and barbazu. As you would expect, they are rather scary, and have extensive lists of powers. A lot of information is given about exactly who is in charge of what. Which makes sense. It is the plane of lawful evil. Having a precise hierarchy to present your players with adds to the sense of solidity of the world. Of course, details may differ from source to source. Chalk it up to the devils lying. Wheels within wheels, muahahahahaha! Anyway, this is indeed a pretty useful article, although it feels a bit weird having Gary be the warm-up act for Ed. There is a bit of illegible scanning, but I think I can figure out roughly what's on it, since I have plenty of planar stuff from other sources. So lets not worry about that, and get to the main course. The nine hells: Ed greenwood once again shows that when it comes to prose, there are few that can rival him in skill and attention to detail in this era. This first installment covers the first five layers, plus huge quantities of their inhabitants. Considerable amounts of research has gone into collating all the hints from various monster descriptions and providing a home for them, without any contradictions. And so far, he's done a great job. Hell under him is indeed pretty hellish, with each level having it's own distinctive flavour of environmental and social nastiness to negotiate your way through. Pity tha foo paladin that decides to just wade in and smite as much evil as he can. Chances are you won't even get a dignified death, instead being drowned in the eternal fetid swamp, enslaved, or starving, as everything is tainted. Lest we forget, lawful evil is not necessarily polite or negotiable with. If you're not useful, don't have the right permissions to be in a place, or are simply the "wrong kind of person", you can get summarily stomped. And if you're a living human, you can be sure you're breaking tons of regulations just by being there, unless you filled out the forms in triplicate and signed them in blood (yeah, like you really want to do that) before you even entered. If you're coming here, you'd better have a plan, a realistic goal, and several escape methods if you're to have any chance of coming out ahead. Or, given the power level of the princes, princesses and dukes as statted here, if you could gather a few hundred level 20+ characters, you could probably take down the entire devilish hierarchy in one fell swoop in the most epic endgame raid ever. (yes, badwrongfun, I know, but it does have a certain appeal, seeing level 20 characters having to fight to their limits, attacking swarms of pit fiends, dropping like flies and being rezzed (and possibly reincarnated if they run out of rez'es <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devil.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":devil:" title="Devil    :devil:" data-shortname=":devil:" /> ) several times per battle by the clerics.) Anyway, I'm sure many of you had fun with this, and I hope some of you will in the future as well. Because it's definitely some pretty impressive work, and t'would be a shame if it just disappeared into history unused.</blockquote>

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