Why did the era of primordial evil end?

[Ry]

More and more official D&D material is talking about an era of primordial evil/chaos. For example, Tharizdun is impossibly ancient, the aboleths were created by Elder Evils, and themselves had eons on the Prime before it was even habitable by modern creatures. What happened that screwed up all that great primordial chaos, anyway?

 

[Nyeshet]

If I had to make a guess, I would say that it ended entirely by chance (coincidentally enough).

On a more serious note, there is no explanation, and core D&D tends to mostly ignore the fact that such an age ever existed in the first place. It is used as a plot device to explain the existence of evil, and due to the fact that a similar trilogy of Good plane books is unlikely (We might - just might - be lucky enough to get *one* book on good planes, perhaps.) I doubt we will ever learn how Good arose in the evil universe, let alone Law.

I think in 2e there was some story about a being from beyond time / space (in effect either from another multiverse or from the far realms) - a serpent-like creature that arrived and, for some unknown reason, split into thirds. Each then ended up in one of the ultimate lawful planes (the LN plane, becoming the first Primus, the LE plane, becoming the Serpent / Asmodius, and the LG plane, becoming whatever being supposedly is at the top of Mt Celestia). Supposedly this was how Law arrived, and considering that one third of it was Good, that could be argued as to the means by which the first Good arrived as well.

On the other hand, in a realm of pure chaos, I can easily see the occasional CG being appearing, so perhaps the CG planes existed before the LG ones, in which case that is a story all in and of itself. Perhaps it took the presence of a LG plane (mt celestia) to prepare the way for a purely good plane - or even a purely CG plane, lending the arrangement enough stability for it to settle into an actual plane instead of something semi-planar that was constantly forming and un-forming.

I may be wrong on some of the details here, as I am recalling them from readings done years ago, so you may want to speak with some others as well about this topic.

 

[Korgoth]

Maybe the alien physiologies and unnatural longevity of the squiddies means that they periodically lapse into long periods of torpor. They fall asleep and when they wake up whole new races exist to foil their plans. This is why they have to rely on abstruse and inefficient magics and schemes which are so far-reaching that they have to reliably span thousands of years.

It also makes them scary because anybody who lives less than a thousand years or two after a 'victory' will never really know if the 'victory' was genuine, or part of a larger, even more insidious scheme. Mortal races simply don't live long enough to out-think them. On the other hand, ironically, it makes the schemes of the squiddies more susceptible to entropy due to the "butterfly effect".

 

[painandgreed]

IMC, the natural order rebeled and created the elves and dwarves to unite the native races against the chaotic invaders and their degenerate races. The elves were the defacto leaders and cleansed the world of such creatures except in the underdark where divinations fail and it could not even be told if they were there.

These Elder Evils are Lovecraftian type powers that exist outside the world. They were invaders into the world to begin with and sometimes still come across when called. Some races that exist hidden away still worship them and every now and then humanoid races will also do so. The most notable being when humanoids prayed to the Elder Gods to deliver them from the elves and one gave them aid. He came down and kiddnapped an eveln goddess inorder to produce a child that would lead the humanoid races out of slavery under the elves. This child created his own race after himself, the orcs, so they could rule over the world instead of the elves.

 

[Alzrius]

I seem to recall that Lords of Madness implied that the ancestors of the humanoid races rose up against the eldritch horrors with a new weapon they'd discovered: faith.

The gods were something the ancient evils had no experience with, and with divine power and magic backing them, the ancestors of the humanoid races were able to throw off their oppressors and take over.

 

[Nightfall]

That and I think the Obryiths decided not to back anyone.

 

[Shemeska]

Before we speculate much, I think we need to make a seperation of any putative period of evil on the prime material from the history of the Outer (and Inner) planes. The prime material is hideously young compared to the other planes. The fiends were ancient before the first ameoba spawned from the primordial muck, ancient before the first Aboleth was created (perhaps by chance) by entities not even native to the multiverse of the Great Wheel. And a nonmaterial form of the pure alignments (NG, NE, LN, CN, N) were warring before the metaphysical reality of the outer planes took form, and some proto-version of the outer planes existed well before the prime material (a discussion of the relative formation of the mixed alignment planes, and their appearance at what point relative to the prime and inner planes is another thread entirely, and very speculative especially for the upper planes).

The inner planar wars of Law versus Chaos were happening only a short while after mortal life first appeared on the prime, because there were mortal souls to spawn the tanar'ri soldiers of the Queen of Chaos. It's debateable whether the first gods had been spawned from mortal belief at this point or not (because gods aren't mentioned by the histories of the fiends till after the formal start of the Blood War between the Tanar'ri and Baatezu).

The fiends don't appear to have had much interest in the prime material, and for a long while many of the fiends knew that larval souls were popping up on their planes from somewhere else, but they didn't backtrace to the source of them till much later. Exploitation came first and explanation came later. The beings of the inner planes probably had more immediate impact, but I'm content to allow the prime material to have developed largely without outside influence for a good while, excepting the (perhaps inadvertant) creation of the Aboleths.

Tharizdun is ancient as well, but based on when he seems to have been making an appearance in certain events on the inner planes, he might not be a god in the conventional sense. He's an open question, but I'd prefer to leave some of his mystery a mystery in that regard. He might have been spawned in the inner planes as a sort of autoimmune reaction to physical/material reality to itself, or he might have come from another multiverse entirely (the far realm or another one), or he might be from a prior incarnation of the Great Wheel (though that has too many Galactus similarities to my liking).

Deities of course appear on the scene historically late in the grand scheme of multiversal time. (I'll admit that I rather like the notion of some of the earliest gods being formed from the faith of their worshippers specifically out of those mortals' need for deliverance from the Aboleths).

 

[S'mon]

If you follow HPL, it just basically went to sleep.

Personally I like the "A Hero Arose" meme, like in Buffy (First Slayer) or Moorcock (Eternal Champion - eg Aubec) who drove back the screaming hordes of Darkness and formed Law from Chaos; but "eh, they just fell asleep" is much more Lovecraftian. So whichever floats your boat.

 

[theredrobedwizard]

I like the idea that the Illithids aren't from the far far past; at least, not directly. They're from the End of Time (tm). They foresaw the end of the Universe, and in a last ditch effort to survive, they flung their species back to the Beginning of Time (tm). Unfortunately (fortunately?) most of their species died. The resulting influx of lawful-ish beings into the Primordial Chaos created a schism, which resulted in the creation of the Lawful Evil vs Chaotic Evil wars.

This makes the Tanar'ri and Baatezu conflict simply a machination of the Illithids vs Primordial Chaos conflict. Whether the Devils were created by the Illithids or merely enslaved and force bred by them is a totally different arguement all together. Soon, as always, rebels arose; forming the basises of good. Thus, Angels were born. Erego, Devils are not fallen Angels, but Angels are risen Devils. From those anarchic and humble beginings sprung all the Law and Good in the Universe.

That, or Humans. Either way.

-TRRW

 

[John Q. Mayhem]

That's a really cool idea, redrobedwizard.