Queen of Chaos--get off yer duff!

[Erik Mona]

As the guy who "brought back" the Queen of Chaos and tied her into the Age of Worms and Fiendish Codex 1, I thought I might suggest that the "Queen of Chaos" works as a name because she is from a very, very early time in the history of the multiverse, as much a concept as a living, breathing thing. She is the most powerful of the obyrith. Perhaps the most powerful demon ever to have lived. She doesn't need a name more specific than the one she's had for almost 20 years, now.

She's shuttered away for the same reason as the demons imprisoned in the Wells of Darkness. She serves the same purpose as Tharizdun. As Fafnir and the Midgard Serpent.

Basically, she's an Apocalypse Trigger.

Bringing her back is Bad in the way Vecna entering Sigil is bad. For the Queen of Chaos to stir, major, multiverse-shaking plots are afoot.

And major, multiverse-shaking plots are really the domain of the individual DM, in my opinion.

Now that said, were I publishing a compilation of world-ending bad guys, the Queen of Chaos would be a perfect fit.

But, alas....

--Erik

 

[CanadienneBacon]

Now that said, were I publishing a compilation of world-ending bad guys, the Queen of Chaos would be a perfect fit.

I humbly submit that just such a thing is an excellent premise for a hardbound book.

 

[Shemeska]

i still have to wonder if she's not a slaad lord in disguise.

Pre-FC I that's how I envisioned her, as a renegade Slaad Lord who was exiled from Limbo by Ssendam and Ygorl after having been corrupted from CN to CE (similar to how Bazim-Gorag is existing only by the sufferance of that pair due to his own slip into CE).

But since I've never really used the Queen, I might muddy the waters if I ever do and offer that as one myth, and incorporate some of Erik's notions from FC:I as well.

 

[Shemeska]

I humbly submit that just such a thing is an excellent premise for a hardbound book.

I suspect that Elder Evils might be something along those lines from what little details have slipped out.

 

[Infernal Teddy]

I keep on seeing Shemmy and others dropping hints about the creation myths of the fiends and the multiverse. Where in the Abyss do you guys get this stuff from???

 

[Joker]

Also, do you know how hard it is to get a good manicurist in the Abyss?

"I went to Orcus' layer of the Abyss to get a facial. Have you seen these people? I said: You don't have a lower jaw. And you're gonna give me a facial?
She got mad. At least I think she did. Have you ever heard someone speak without a lower jaw? She sounded like a murloc. Rarararagh."

 

[Shemeska]

I keep on seeing Shemmy and others dropping hints about the creation myths of the fiends and the multiverse. Where in the Abyss do you guys get this stuff from???

Largely from 'Hellbound: The Blood War', 'Faces of Evil: The Fiends', modified by bits from FC:I and FC:II. The fun is trying to piece together a mythos when most of the sources are IC and carry their own bias (ie the earliest histories of the lower planes are almost uniformly written by the 'loths, and there's a question of how much is true, or a twisted version of the truth, etc).

Outside of the lower planes, the history is more sketchy and is only pieced together from a number of sources. Most of what we have is informed speculation really, and partially mirrored on the fiend prehistories. For instance we might infer that the current celestial races might have been preceeded by earlier ones. For the archons this seems a tempting idea, since all archons spawn from petitioners which would otherwise make celestia incredibly young unless something was there before them. For the eladrin there are the ruins that dot Pelion/Mithardiir which are built on a scale that doesn't fit the eladrin at all, and the speculation is that a pre-eladrin race of CG outsiders was there in Arborea but ultimately vanished or was destroyed. For the guardinals, it's purely the temptation to have a pre-guardinal NG progenitor race of celestials to mirror the NE baernaloths.

For TN, we know that the Rilmani weren't the first exemplars of TN, but were preceeded by a race known as the Kamarel. Ultimately the Rilmani warred with them, and the Kamarel retreated into a quasi-reality of reflections and mirrored surfaces, leaving behind only ruins and the Mirrored Library at the center of what would become the Rilmani city of Sum-of-All (ie you could treat them as being in self-imposed exile in a pseudo-transitive plane of mirrors).

 

[CanadienneBacon]

I dunno about Abyss information, but I've always liked Guide to Hell by Chris Pramas from 2e days. I get a lot of my info on the layers of hell from it.

Erik Mona wrote and published Armies of the Abyss, a d20 supplement (by Green Ronin, I think). Haven't checked that one out, though.

Other than that, Book of Vile Darkness has *some* info on some of these creatures. 1e Fiend Folio is also pretty good, ditto with the out-of-print Manual of the Planes.

 

[Infernal Teddy]

Rilmani? I knew I should have bought the supplements at the time...

 

[Ripzerai]

Erik Mona wrote and published Armies of the Abyss, a d20 supplement (by Green Ronin, I think). Haven't checked that one out, though.

It's interesting, I really liked it at the time, and a lot of the backstory mythos in Fiendish Codex I came originally from there. It's kind of clunky in retrospect, with Abyssal lore having gained in sophistication since, but there's a lot you can take from it.

Several of the demon lords from Armies of the Abyss are connected to the idea of a future Armageddon - Raum, who was created just before the apocalypse and has aged backwards since; Astaroth, whose duty is to record all knowledge and destroy it at the end of time; and Abaddon, who is the apocalypse incarnate. There are also apocalypse beasts, imprisoned at the lowest known layer of the Abyss. I'm thinking that Cabiri the Watcher, an ancient obyrith (mentioned in the FC1) even the Queen of Chaos could not destroy, was the one who saw the future at the beginning of time, creating the tanar'ri apocalypse lords in order to prepare the universe for its inevitable fate.