What Would Devils Do?

[Lendro_Furioso]

Hey everyone! I'm running Speaker in Dreams for a party of five newbie players. I'm having some trouble coming up with stuff for the second part of the adventure, when devils take over the town. Here's the short version: what would a tiefling cleric devoted to devils and his cadre do with pretty much complete control of a town and a Hellgate open?


Now for the TL;DR version:
I've extensively revised Speaker in Dreams, partly based on Pielorinho's thread here (thanks, Pielorinho!): http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?14725-Modifying-Speaker-in-Dreams-to-improve-cohesion

Here's the plot:
A cabal of wizards unwittingly summoned a mind flayer from the Outer Planes
The mind flayer took control of them and set about his plan: feeding his buddies back home
To this end, they summoned some extraplanar muscle, and used a gang of wererats to wreak havoc upon the town
During this time, the mind flayer infiltrated the Baron's keep, and is now controlling him

Step two of the plan is to get complete control of the town. To this end, the mind flayer, through the cabal of wizards, contacted a group of devil-worshippers and offered them the means to open a Hellgate in the temple of Pelor. Martial law ensues.


Now, the mind flayer basically entered a contract with the devils: he gave them the location and means to open the Hellgate, and they protect him. The town's inhabitants are essentially split 50/50. The illithid is using his new labour to construct a huge gate to the Outer Planes, where he will take all his captives, then leave. Free buffet for the mind flayers, who can even use these people to breed more food!

What I'm having trouble with is the other half of the forceful occupants of the town. What's their endgame? What would a tiefling cleric devoted to the Nine Hells and his cadre of devils do with so much? Sure, they're into the corruption of souls, but that takes time and is best done through subterfuge. Frankly, I'm stumped and could use a hand, so I've turned to ENWorld for guidance.


Not that it matters much, but here's the party's composition: elf archer, human barbarian, half-elf rogue, human wizard and half-orc druid. I'll have to see what they come up with, but this is essentially the sandbox part of the adventure. They'll have to find allies and probably start a resistance, since there are too many bad guys for them to take on themselves.

 

[MarkB]

It seems to me that there's an opportunity here for the devils and mind-flayers to work even more closely together to mutually benefit from a shared food source. After all, the mind flayers want the townsfolks' bodies (or specifically brains), but aren't particularly concerned with their souls, whilst for the devils the reverse is true.

How about if the devils and mind flayers come up with a scheme between them - they create the massive Gate, but attune it to both the mind flayers' domain and the Nine Hells.

The mind flayers use their psionic powers to soften up the townsfolk, making them helpless to resist the devils' persuasions and magics, ensuring that by the time the Gate is complete, the devils have full possession of the peoples' souls. Then, when the victims are fed through the Gate, their bodies are sent to the mind flayers, and their souls are syphoned off and channeled direct to the Nine Hells. It's immortal-soul-temptation on an industrial scale.

 

[tangleknot]

Whether your a player or Mindflayer or lawyer you will never be as good at making/ twisting a deal as a devil is. Devils are the embodiment of Lawful Evil, they start their existence as worms and through hundreds of thousands of years of never slipping up and always coming out on top of deal they eventually make the ranks of the devils you know of in the Monster manual.
I agree with the OP^ the devils and mindflayers should work together for a time, but eventually the devils will tear their contract in half using the many loop holes they negotiated within, and turn on the mindflayers. Before the mindflayers realize what is happened it will be too late. Epic battle ensues as the Players and mindflayers attempt to escape the clutches of Devils (maybe even working together) before they are sucked into the 9 hells and indentured into the blood war... I bet those Devils would get a promotion if they brought back Mindflayers/ human slaves for the blood wars...

 

[MarkB]

I agree with the OP^ the devils and mindflayers should work together for a time, but eventually the devils will tear their contract in half using the many loop holes they negotiated within, and turn on the mindflayers.

That's a good point, and it's a great thing for players to exploit. If they can expose the devils' duplicity or make the devils think the mind flayers are onto them, they could kick off the in-fighting early, and get the townsfolk to safety in the confusion.

 

[Lendro_Furioso]

Thanks for the input! I like the idea, but in this case I'm not sure it would work because there is only one mind flayer. He's avoiding acting directly, and is just pulling all sorts of strings to get what he wants. The illithid is well aware of the duplicity of the devils, and his plan is to capitalize on the deal as quickly as possible. Even without knowing much about the Prime Material Plane, a gate the Nine Hells is likely to attract unwanted attention. As such, he has timed his plans so that in a few days time a planetary alignment will allow him to open a temporary gate to the Far Realms. He will then herd a bunch of people through.
Basically, for the illithid this was a free buffet! He was unwittingly summoned, and could have left anytime due to his plane shift ability, but being highly intelligent and conniving he decided to stick around and see what he could get out of it. Due the the Far Realms' lack of intelligent beings (appart from other illithids), getting a few people back home is highly advantageous to him.

The devils, however, I've no real clue what they should be doing. Even if they are power crazy and think this could go on forever (which is doubtful), what do you do with a town of people too scared to fight you off? They don't want material goods, they want souls... So, I guess they'd try to get as many contracts as possible? Seems a little too freaky for a fantasy setting, like a suited devil going door to door asking if any residents are interested in a deal. I'm stumped, really. I've thought about the devils exposing the people to the hellfire's energy and transforming them into lemures or somesuch, but it seems lame...

 

[MarkB]

Maybe have the devils go for quality over quantity. Maybe there's one particular, especially virtuous soul in this town - a high-level cleric or paladin, someone who's had direct dealings with gods - whose soul would be worth more than those of any dozen average mortals.

The devils, whilst playing at having a good time torturing innocents in order to keep the Mind Flayer fooled, are actually brokering a deal with this one person - in return for that person's soul, they'll turn on the mind flayer and ensure that none of the townspeople are taken to the Far Realm.

Of course, the Devil is in the details as always - their plans for "not letting people get taken to the Far Realm" could just as easily mean slaughtering them all right there in the town - so there's some fine-tuned negotiation left to be done, even assuming the person they're after is willing to make the deal.

 

[GSHamster]

Why not keep it simple?

The devils just want a base of operations, one with a working gate back to the Outer Planes. They can parley this into a staging point for an invasion, or just to slip more agents through to other cities in the land. The devils can enslave the remaining townspeople to build defenses, and to torment.

 

[thedmstrikes]

Here are some thoughts given the intellect of the bad guys involved:

Mind flayers are smart enough to create a contract that will hold up for the short period they desire, and the nature of the devils is to twist everything to their advantage. However, find a way for the devils to have discovered the Mind Flayer's end result and make it so that the departure of the Mind Flayer frees them from their indentured servitude to do as they desire on the prime plane. Now you have created the stage for dividing the adventure again into two distinct goals, stopping the Mind Flayer from taking the town's people, either defeating him or just preventing him from departing with them and then getting rid of any devils that remain, now unbound to the Mind Flayer and free to create havoc at their own whim. The PCs can use hit and run tactics to nail some of the devils before the final confrontation with the Mind Flayer to reduce his "body guards" and simultaneously create a condition which prevents the worst of the devils from being summoned to his devense during that encounter (this can be done by not stationing the devils constantly around the Mind Flayer, probably because he does not like their smell, or whatever, and that gives them their own lair for the hit and run tactics). Remember, once freed of their indentured service, the devils will be free to gate in reinforcments of their own, so the PCs will want to act fast in elimiinating them, while giving you a way to keep those encounters appropriately challenging. These are merely ideas to help you along, but knowing what the style of that adventure is overall, I think this presents an opportunity to keep that same style going until it is resolved. In the final battle, you could also set it up so that the PCs discover that the devils are coming from behind the background because they figure they are going down anyway and want to create as much openly public havoc as possible before their impending departure back to hell.

Again, those are just some ideas to keep the same flavor of the original adventure...

 

[Belzbet]

The first thing any devil would do is try to gain dominance over any force more powerful than it (if they themselves cannot gain dominance then maybe they would abandon this project since dominance is king to a devil, no mortal will control a devil, if it has something to say about it, only other devils have that kind of control over other devils; BUT that doesnt mean the devil WONT ACT like others have control over it)... It could act weak and wait for the moment to strike.. Or it could take the creature out by force... Or whatever... After the devil is the strongest creature in its sphere of influence it would try to establish order (this could seem GOOD at first but really it is a device to gain power and control)... More laws would be created, more police would be appointed, the devil would not allow anyone unloyal to it to make decisions (this is why the PC's may pose a problem)... Also the devil COULD seem very nice and good REMEMBER THIS... also devils are most concerned with control or what have you NOT chaos... They WILL and CAN act like the benevolent dictator... Roleplay it that the new king/queen/ruler (really a devil in disguise) has actually HELPED the city/town/area/etc (devils will try to act nice to gain the upper hand)... mind flayers mean nothing to devils aside from the souls they can harvest from them; the devils will try to manipulate and take control of the mind flayers....

 

[tangleknot]

I'm starting to picture this story having 3 acts. ACT 1 "Something is not right" (yes I've titled them for you) the PC's come to town discover the mindflyer's plot and try to save as many people as they can until the mindflayer skips town. ACT 2: "The actual threat" the mindflayer's minions/ I mean Demons are here to stay and they've got plans... Great big evil plans, the kind of plans that may not even get developed for a few adventures in, and the PC's will only realize how tangled up they are when they are firmly in demons grasp.