freebfrost
Explorer
Not sure how many gods, but I've always numbered the demon lords at 666 for obvious reasons...Bartmanhomer said:
The number of Demon Lords and Gods
- Thread starter Bartmanhomer
- Start date
Flexor the Mighty!
18/100 Strength!
I've calculated 10 to the 3598th power number of Demon Lords in the nigh infinite layers of the abyss. It's going to take a while to stat them all though....
Zappo
Explorer
While we're at it... demons evolve from abyssal larvae, right? Which are the souls of dead Chaotic Evil people, right? How come there is an infinite number of demons, while any other planar race is supposed to have a very large but finite number of individuals? Wouldn't that imply that there are infinite sentient beings, of which only a finite number are non-CE in alignment? Isn't that a scary thought?
DragonLancer
Hero
BOZ said:
Indeed!
freebfrost
Explorer
Tease!Erik Mona said:
Yair
Community Supporter
That would make archdemons a measure zero subset of demonkind. As they are discrete and >>1, this would mean they are not analytical which would hint at sanity loss and Far Realm influences.Zappo said:
IMC there aren't really any gods, just philosophies, but don't tell the players.
Shemeska
Adventurer
Zappo said:
Some from abyssal larvae, some from Tanar'ri breeding with one another, and to a much lesser extent, some just rip themselves up out of the raw chaos and evil of the plane itself.
And the assumption of infinite Tanar'ri is just that, an assumption. They do appear to have a much larger amount of their kind involved in any particular Blood War battle as opposed to the Baatezu, with the 'loths having much less on the field since the other two sides generally aren't willing to fight alongside equivalent size mercenary armies, or pay them. But numbers fielded in the Blood War aren't absolutely representative of either of the full racial numbers of those three. The Tanar'ri have infinite layers to draw from, the Baatezu only have 9, and the 'loths control two entire planes and portions of a third. But does this imply anything about the number of larvae each of them get (not that the 'loths derive from larvae like the other two races)? I'll get to that later.
There's no reason to assume a non infinite number for other planar races, but there's been a longstanding, heavily glossed over assumption, that the Tanar'ri, and perhaps the chaotic races in general, tend to have the weight of numbers on their side. Only the Tanar'ri have really had lots of backup on their numbers in the numbers department though.
But, that said, I see little reason to assume that the Baatezu are getting an influx of petitioners into their plane at any lesser rate than the Tanar'ri. However, keep in mind that the Baatezu cannot breed amongst themselves, while the Tanar'ri can and very frequently do. That alone might make the numbers situation make sense. The 'loths can breed, and they exclusively emerge from their native plane(s) so petitioners are largely irrelevant to them, so their own numbers are probably somewhere in between the other two races most likely.
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Hellbound suggests that, in fact, the number of tanar'ri is finite. It argues that if there were infinite tanar'ri, the Blood War would be unwinnable, and the baatezu are not so stupid as to fight an unwinnable war. While I'm not certain that this is a valid argument, I agree that there's no reason to automatically assume there are infinite tanar'ri.
DragonLancer
Hero
Theres also the idea that the gods of the Abyss created hordes of them in the beginning. Thats the way I tend to view them (and any Outsider for that matter).
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