The timeline as read from the books, and DRAGON

[happyelf]

Hashkar -945,000: Celestials begin to interfere in the Blood War. Much of the Upper Planes are destroyed by fiendish retribution.

Hashkar -922,000: Fiends first encounter the titans. Several of them are killed before they learn not to interfere in the Blood War.

Hashkar -21,885: Height of the Juna Civilization. The young gods first appear in the planes, overthrowing the older, titanic powers. The fiends soon teach them not to interfere with the Blood War.

Some pretty obvious fiendish propaganda here, no doubt encouraged by the powers of the higher planes

I don't think the fiends have ever "taught" anyone not to "interfere" with the blood war- I see little reason why the celestials would ever seek to overtly assault the lower planes, but I'd argue the powers of the higher planes have been interfering with them all along, keeping the blood war going and using pawns and gambits to maintain the balance of power.

There have been bits and pieces here and there to suggest this(such as in hellbound), and generally I don't think much of any cosmology which sees the fiends as super-awesome, while their opposite number are often seen as inert. The blood war could be over tomorrow if the powers of higher planes willed it, but doing so would only unleash the victors on the multiverse. The best thing your enemies can do is kill each other.

The higher planes have the best motive of any group to perpetuate the blood war, and it's reasonable to suggest that they have worked to do so.

Of course this is also a good hook to bring the PC's into the blood war- correcting an imbalance, blunting an advance, or covertly aiding the weaker side in a battle, all to keep one side from overwheling the other. This alllows the PC's to have a signifigant effect, even if they don't have the vast powers needed to wage open war.

And it doesn't have to be based on celestial agenda. For isntance, the PC's might find their world invaded by demons who seek to conquer it. They may not have the power to defeat the horde, but they could learn that the demon lord in charge can only invade their world because they have pulled those forces off the front lines in the blood war, where the lord is currently holding his foes in a stalemate. By helping the Devils to break that stalemate, the PC's can force the Demon Lord to withdraw the troops he has on their home world. Thus, by 'tipping the balance', the PC's can have a signifigant effect, even if they aren't, for isntance, epic level characters capable of taking out hordes of demons in single combat.


Oh, and I very much doubt the fiends ever demolished large swathes of the upper planes, they're flat out winning ground in a turf-war over the worse real estate in the multiverse, I doubt they'd fare that well in a real fight vv

 

[Ripzerai]

In those cases, I was reporting what Hellbound said more or less exactly. That book was presented as being from the fiendish point of view (in-character, it was quoting yugoloth histories) so it is worth taking with a grain of salt.

I don't think the fiends are stronger than celestials, but that scenario represented something that happened at the dawn of time, when fiends had already been warring with one another for centuries and the celestials had only just found out they existed. The fiends were prepared for war and the celestials weren't. So I don't think the scenario was that far-fetched.

I do think fiends, and the major outsider races in general, have to have the power to put fear in the hearts of the gods who squat in their planes, but that's another discussion.

 

[Maldin]

For a detailed description (perhaps too detailed to paste into this thread) of the creation of the physical multiverse (pre-mortal, pre-fiend, pre-god, pre-everybody!) and how the "rules" of the AD&D multiverse came about, see my "Life, the Multiverse, and Everything" webpage at http://melkot.com/mysteries/multiverse.html

With my own "Grand Unified Theory" (GUT) of the multiverse, I try to explain the how and why of the physical structure of the planes (their organization, as well as specific features such as the Outlands' "Spire"), the origins of mortals and immortals and their relationships as well as their sources of power, the different natures of planes (such as the varying effects of magic and time) and how those planes change and interact, the imbuing of sentience without the need for complex brains (as in simple organisms like puddings; objects such as intelligent swords, elementals and intelligent clouds of electricity; even entire planes with awareness), the palpable nature of good, evil, law and chaos on so many levels, the twisting of time and dimension impossible with our own RealWorld physical laws (such as portable holes, teleportation, and time travel), the very source of magic and its laws... ALL can be explained with the proper GUT.

Let me know what you think about it!

Denis, aka "Maldin"
============================
Maldin's Greyhawk http://melkot.com
Loads of edition-independent Greyhawk goodness... maps, magic, mysteries, mechanics, and more!

 

[Shemeska]

I don't think the fiends have ever "taught" anyone not to "interfere" with the blood war- I see little reason why the celestials would ever seek to overtly assault the lower planes, but I'd argue the powers of the higher planes have been interfering with them all along, keeping the blood war going and using pawns and gambits to maintain the balance of power.

We know that the one time the Archons sought to directly take part in the Blood War they were initially successful, purely by element of surprise. But then the fiends turned on them as a whole, slaughtering them so absolutely that only a handful managed to escape back to Mount Celestia out of an army that had numbered in the millions.

Since then none of the celestials have taken any organized action in the Blood War, both from the perceived futility and the horror that would result if they ever convinced the three major fiend races to view them as a greater threat than each other.

And then very explicitely, true deities took an active part in the early Blood War, pretty much right after mortal faith caused them to spring into existance. Those deities were just as split along alignment lines, and fought in the war to great effect till each and every one of them started to watch their divine essence whither away without apparent cause till finally one of them just more or less disintegrated. Terrified of the same fate, every one of them withdrew from direct involvement, and sure enough their power stopped its decay and they survived.

We don't know how the fiends accomplished the task, we just know that they did not appreciate the unwanted influence of what amounted to powerful children meddling in -their- genocidal war. It might have been a collective thing by all of the fiend races, it might have been the open slaughter and sterilization of entire worlds worth of worshippers on the prime material, it might have been the use of secrets known only to the Obyriths, the Ancient Baatorians, or maybe, more primordial still, the Baernaloths seeking to put their childrens' little experiment back into proper order. We don't know, but damn if it's not fun to speculate.

There have been bits and pieces here and there to suggest this(such as in hellbound), and generally I don't think much of any cosmology which sees the fiends as super-awesome, while their opposite number are often seen as inert. The blood war could be over tomorrow if the powers of higher planes willed it, but doing so would only unleash the victors on the multiverse. The best thing your enemies can do is kill each other.

I think the lesson is that you can't destroy evil using evil's tactics in evil's backyard. Slaughter only empowers the lower planes, drenching the Waste in misery and pointless bloodshed, whispering orders to kill into the ears of Baatezu, and filling the minds of every Tanar'ri with psychotic hatred... this hurts the fiends again how? If you can't destroy them, you occupy them, you contain them, you bottle them up as best you can so that you can turn your attention to bolstering yourselves if the tide of fiends ever does seek to assault the upper planes. You don't arm yourselves and butcher fiends, you let the fiends fight while you turn your attention to the prime material and seek to shape the hearts of mortals.

The higher planes have the best motive of any group to perpetuate the blood war, and it's reasonable to suggest that they have worked to do so.

We know that some groups of celestials do seek to perpetuate it, either out of a sense of self-preservation, or out of the notion that keeping evil turned inwards on itself is the best way for Good to combat them without raising the spectre of a law/chaos fracture in their own ranks which an open celestials versus fiends war would undoubtably risk causing.

 

[Erik Mona]

I think most of the creators didn't want them to be part of the wheel. EVER. Greenwood has always wanted to distance FR from the wheel. If you read most of the early novels you can note how much divergence there is from the wheel methodology. Also would like to note that the same is pretty much true for DL. While you don't get the separate feel in the novels, the creators of the setting have said time and again that DL is in no way, shape, or form part of the great wheel.

Perhaps those creators shouldn't be signing all-rights work-for-hire contracts to write shared world fiction, then?

--Erik

 

[Shemeska]

Perhaps those creators shouldn't be signing all-rights work-for-hire contracts to write shared world fiction, then?

--Erik

Like an 800lb Bar-Lgura, the statement that many people were thinking but nobody wanted to say...

 

[happyelf]

I don't get why Krynn can't be put into the great wheel anyway. It got moved once, it can get moved again!

I think the lesson is that you can't destroy evil using evil's tactics in evil's backyard. Slaughter only empowers the lower planes, drenching the Waste in misery and pointless bloodshed, whispering orders to kill into the ears of Baatezu, and filling the minds of every Tanar'ri with psychotic hatred... this hurts the fiends again how? If you can't destroy them, you occupy them, you contain them, you bottle them up as best you can so that you can turn your attention to bolstering yourselves if the tide of fiends ever does seek to assault the upper planes. You don't arm yourselves and butcher fiends, you let the fiends fight while you turn your attention to the prime material and seek to shape the hearts of mortals.

The problem I have with this is that it leads to a duality in the planes wich i'm not convinced is good for the game. If you can't kill evil, how do you defeat it? If the PC's defeat one demon lord, another one will simply arise. What's the point?

And in a broader sense, if the lower planes are a metaphysical expresion of evil, and the blood war is a symptom of that, then everything that happens in it is futile- and granted, that's a great quality for a 'hell' to posess, but OTOH it's not that great a quality for part of the campaign setting. PCs (for instance, epic PCs), are supposed to change the world, make an impact, but they're not going to if the field they're playing on makes all their actions self-defeating due to ti's metaphysical composition.

I think the lower planes work best if, in the PC's frame of refrence at least, they function more like a conventional environment, albeit an extremly nasty one. PC's (of suitable power) who take on the lower planes should not feel that their actions are futile or worse yet, that they're just racking up XP. I feel there should be a feasable argument for a genuine blow being struck against the denizens of the lower planes. Fiends can do a lot of damage to the prime, or other planes, it's only fair that the good guys can return the favour.

We know that some groups of celestials do seek to perpetuate it, either out of a sense of self-preservation, or out of the notion that keeping evil turned inwards on itself is the best way for Good to combat them without raising the spectre of a law/chaos fracture in their own ranks which an open celestials versus fiends war would undoubtably risk causing.

Leaving everything else we "know" aside, I think it's a mistake to assume that, for instance, the CG and LG planes would ever turn on each other and schism and fight the way LE and CE do. There is difference between 'good' and 'evil', after all.

Looking at the timelines on the thread, I note the idea of the Blood war as a continuation of the LvC war of the previous era, as is noted in the background of the rod of seven parts. I think this is a good angle- but mainly for evil creatures. They're the kinds of creatures who would perpetuate such a vicious and ultimatly pointless conflict. Extremly good creatures would not good that. Because they're good. They don't fight stupid wars.

If the higher planes had cause to make war on the lower planes, they would do so, and do so with little internal strife, because that would be the right thing to do, and we are after all, speaking of supremely good and righteous beings. They're not going to sink into petty infighting any more than a Pit Fiend and a Balor are going to turn up on daytime television and let Dr Phil coax them into a tearful reconciliation.

 

[JustaPlayer]

Perhaps those creators shouldn't be signing all-rights work-for-hire contracts to write shared world fiction, then?

--Erik

You are absolutely right at that sir. They should have held out for more control. But I'll still tend to go with autors though. One thing I notice is that if WotC get's it, it just turns into the same thing as any other setting now.

We've got all kinds of Eberron things in core books with notes on how it fits in FR and visa versa. IMHO it cheapens all the worlds. It doesn't matter if it's spells, classes, prestige classes, creatures, races, or whatnot.

 

[Shade]

We've got all kinds of Eberron things in core books with notes on how it fits in FR and visa versa. IMHO it cheapens all the worlds. It doesn't matter if it's spells, classes, prestige classes, creatures, races, or whatnot.

Such as...?

Many of the spells in the Eberron CS came from pre-Eberron sources (such as all the repair damage spells). Action points were in UA. Other than reprinting the races in MMIII, I haven't seen much Eberron content migrating to core books. What am I missing?

 

[JustaPlayer]

Such as...?

Many of the spells in the Eberron CS came from pre-Eberron sources (such as all the repair damage spells). Action points were in UA. Other than reprinting the races in MMIII, I haven't seen much Eberron content migrating to core books. What am I missing?

Well, since Archmage was put in core, and red wizard, and more, I'll start there. I haven't looked at spell compendium to in depth, but I know spells were renamed from both settings to be core, from there it's one step. Then we talk about the stuff from Eberron placed in MM3. From FR Pherimm (sp?) were made core. Some of these thing talk about how they work in the other world.

[Edit] Not to mention that Greyhawk being the default core setting make all this stuff Grewhawk. *sigh*