Retcon the dumb "Faction War" and bring back the FULL on Blood War?

[Erik Mona]

I tried to contextualize the Blood War with the aeon-spanning Law/Chaos conflict at the origins of the D&D multiverse (what I called the Age Before Ages) in the history bits of Hordes of the Abyss and throughout various planar projects I worked on as a freelancer and magazine editor. In my view, the Blood War was the last shudder of that epochal conflict, the final spasms of multiversal war between two forces simply too evil to stop fighting.

For whatever reason, that allowed me to come to peace with the Blood War itself (which I forever associated with the baatezu/tanar'ri capitulation that appeared in the same product), so I was happy with it.

I was somewhat less happy when, a few months later, the powers that be decided to essentially toss out 30 years of planar history and start afresh, but them's the breaks in a work-for-hire world.

--Erik

 

[DaveMage]

I was somewhat less happy when, a few months later, the powers that be decided to essentially toss out 30 years of planar history and start afresh, but them's the breaks in a work-for-hire world.

--Erik

I'm just happy you got to write it before the new edition was announced. Now I have it forever to cherish.

 

[FireLance]

While I appreciate the epic scope and flavor of the Blood War, I also felt that it was somehow too ... pat? Simplistic? "Demons and devils just don't get along" seems like a pretty poor reason (IMO) for a conflict so old, vicious and widespread. Surely there are better (or at least, easier) targets for both demons and devils to vent their evil impulses on.

I don't mind demon-devil conflict, but I think it should be less generalized and more localized: the enmity between a specific Archduke and a particular demon lord might cause both of them to field vast armies to attack each others' domains, for example. Under this scenario, demons and devils might even work together against a common foe.

I wouldn't even mind the idea of an ancient compact that requires the devils to raise armies to attack the demons regularly (I think this idea was suggested in the late 3.5e supplement Tyrants of the Nine Hells) as it's a more plausible basis for the conflict.

Perhaps it's ascribing human motivations to elemental (and immortal ) evil, but it's a trope that's as old as dirt. As a race, we've been ascribing human motivations to gods, spirits, natural forces and inanimate objects, after all.

 

[Danzauker]

Planescape turned them into the D&D equivalent of Star Trek aliens, IMO. It made them far too human, made their cultures and their mindsets far too comprehensible. The notion of a demon or a devil sitting down for a drink in a tavern in Sigil (just for example) is absolutely anathema to what these creatures are. The Blood War was just one element of what was, to me, Planescape's mismanaging of the very concept of the fiends.

What you say is oh-so-true, and that's why I liked the Blood War IN Planescape.

Planescape humanized EVERYTHING! It's a big part of it's flavoue and style. The Gods are not omnypotent beings that created the cosmos. They are just "kingpins" bullying around with their great, but limited, power.

Heck there are people building towns on their dead, cold corpses!!!

That's not saying I want the Blood War in other settings, though.

The beauty of having different settings, after all, is that I can twist the tropes of a genre to my needs. For a generic fantasy setting, the 4e presentation of demons and devils works way better than Panescape's IMHO.

 

[Doug McCrae]

It doesn't make sense for fundamentally chaotic beings to be involved in an eternal conflict. Or anything eternal, for that matter.

If you're going to have Lawful devils and Chaotic demons then I would propose a relationship akin to that between the Chinese and the Mongols. The demons are the barbarian outlanders, mostly disorganised, but occasionally uniting under a great leader. They raid the devils' 'lands' frequently but this only develops into an all-out war, something similar to the Blood War, those rare times when the demons are united.

I don't think you need the original Blood War to explain why fiends haven't conquered the multiverse. The demons can never conquer anything for long because they are too disorganised and expend most of their resources fighting one another. The devils are in a standoff with the forces of Heaven. That conflict may be like the Cold War, except limited by carefully worded treaties instead of nuclear weapons. Treaties which the devils are always trying to weasel around ofc.

 

[Dausuul]

It doesn't make sense for fundamentally chaotic beings to be involved in an eternal conflict. Or anything eternal, for that matter.

Well, that depends entirely on what you mean by "chaotic."

If Chaotic means "undisciplined, unpredictable, prone to random actions," then yes, I agree.

If Chaotic means "devoted to anarchy, opposed to all things civilized and organized," then a fundamentally Chaotic being could quite easily be part of an eternal war (though not an eternal military; the "war" would be millions upon millions of individual demons waging their own personal crusades against the rest of the multiverse).

I prefer the second definition. It's easier to work with, and it also gives demons more of a grand cosmic motivation. Demons don't exist to perform acts of random malice; they exist to tear down creation. Viewed in this context, the Blood War is a logical outgrowth of a) the respective motives of demons and devils and b) their proximity in the lower planes.

As regards the "humanizing" of demons and devils, I'm with Ari. Demons should embody raw fury and destruction; a balor would never sit down in a Sigil tavern for a drink. To do so would be to implicitly acknowledge the rules of Sigil society, which cuts directly against a balor's nature. A pit fiend might do so, but only in pursuit of some elaborate and malevolent scheme... pit fiends never "take a break" from being lawful and evil, any more than you or I "take a break" from having our hearts beat or our lungs breathe.