Why did the era of primordial evil end?

[Ry]

Shemeska, where can I find more info on the inner planar war between law and chaos? Is that the same as the Queen of Chaos / Miska the Wolf-Spider vs. the Wind Dukes of Aqaa?

 

[Ry]

This makes the Tanar'ri and Baatezu conflict simply a machination of the Illithids vs Primordial Chaos conflict.

That's a really cool idea, but I'm just too enamored with the idea of the Baernoloths creating the Obyriths who then create Tanar'ri idea right now. The Illithids are definitely from the End of Time (tm) though; they are descendants of the Aboleths, and need to get back to their roots fast before their Elder Brains die off.

 

[Ibram]

"Nor is it to be thought (ran the text as Armitage mentally translated it) that man is either the oldest or the last of earth's masters, or that the common bulk of life and substance walks alone. The Old Ones were, the Old Ones are, and the Old Ones shall be. Not in the spaces we know, but between them, they walk serene and primal, undimensioned and to us unseen. Yog-Sothoth knows the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the key and guardian of the gate. Past, present, future, all are one in Yog-Sothoth. He knows where the Old Ones broke through of old, and where They shall break through again. He knows where They had trod earth's fields, and where They still tread them, and why no one can behold Them as They tread. By Their smell can men sometimes know Them near, but of Their semblance can no man know, saving only in the features of those They have begotten on mankind; and of those are there many sorts, differing in likeness from man's truest eidolon to that shape without sight or substance which is Them. They walk unseen and foul in lonely places where the Words have been spoken and the Rites howled through at their Seasons. The wind gibbers with Their voices, and the earth mutters with Their consciousness. They bend the forest and crush the city, yet may not forest or city behold the hand that smites. Kadath in the cold waste hath known Them, and what man knows Kadath? The ice desert of the South and the sunken isles of Ocean hold stones whereon Their seal is engraver, but who bath seen the deep frozen city or the sealed tower long garlanded with seaweed and barnacles? Great Cthulhu is Their cousin, yet can he spy Them only dimly. Iä! Shub-Niggurath! As a foulness shall ye know Them. Their hand is at your throats, yet ye see Them not; and Their habitation is even one with your guarded threshold. Yog-Sothoth is the key to the gate, whereby the spheres meet. Man rules now where They ruled once; They shall soon rule where man rules now. After summer is winter, after winter summer. They wait patient and potent, for here shall They reign again."

The Dunwich Horror, HP Lovecraft 1928

 

[Ry]

What is it about the phrase "Iä! Shub-Niggurath!" that gives me a chill?

 

[Shemeska]

Shemeska, where can I find more info on the inner planar war between law and chaos? Is that the same as the Queen of Chaos / Miska the Wolf-Spider vs. the Wind Dukes of Aqaa?

The Queen of Chaos/Miska and the Wind Dukes were some of the major figures on the Chaos and Law sides respectively, but you also had other beings (not always ones you might expect) on each side (or sitting the conflict out). The archomentals fell into the conflict in unconventional ways, and the para and quasielementals lords likewise tended to enter the mix along odd lines (good/evil rivalries and raw alignment-based rivalries tended to trump the overall Law v Chaos swing of the war in some cases). Outside of the Obyriths however, there wasn't much outer planes influence (that we yet know of, though Ygorl appears to have been around, and involved somehow, and hopefully future material may develop the involvement or lack thereof for the Slaadi, the Eladin who don't appear on the map till after the war when they strike at the Obyriths along the Good/Evil line, and the Ancient Baatorians who were being oblitered by the Baatezu during the whole period which would happily account for the lack of involvement by the younger LE fiends in the Inner Planes).

Sources:
Fiendish Codex I really codifies what happened into a cohesive history (and in select bits in some of the Demonomicon articles)
Rod of 7 Parts (but its details don't go out of their way to mesh with the larger histories of the planes, and that's what FC:I thankfully does)
The recent Dragon articles on the Archomentals (adds some details on which archomentals did what during that)
I add a very very minor bit on Ygorl in my recent Demiplane article
Bits in the AoW adventures that touch upon the Wind Dukes

 

[Ry]

That's cool.

Hmm... but I still don't know why the era ended. The closest thing I can think of is that a chunk of the primordial abyss (with Aboleths on it) somehow broke off, and ended up drifting close enough to Pelor's divine power that his light appeared there.

 

[Nightfall]

Ryc,

You're asking a lot of questions. Loths usually leads such questioners to their doom. Doom I say!

But seriously, the comparison between Tharizdun and Galatus is a pretty cool one and possibly quite apt.

 

[Shemeska]

But seriously, the comparison between Tharizdun and Galatus is a pretty cool one and possibly quite apt.

Not one that I'd favor though if we had to pin down big T's origin. I rather like an idea that Rip came up with, that Tharizdun wasn't from a prior incarnation of the multiverse, or from another multiverse like the Far Realm, but was something like an autoimmune reaction or suicidal prayer of Physical Reality directed against itself.

In the forgotten ages before the war against Chaos, a cancer formed on reality.

Some imagined it must have come from Outside, for if it did not, reality itself must have had a secret death wish.

Others believed it to be an integral part of reality, the inevitable opposite reaction to Creation's action. For something to be created, they claimed - even the multiverse itself - something must be destroyed. Even the multiverse itself. Reality, in short, did have a secret death wish.

 

[ruleslawyer]

That's a really cool idea, redrobedwizard.

The illithids-from-the-future thing is from Lords of Madness also.

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.

I'd really prefer it if you didn't write campaign-specific stuff as if it were somehow canonical. This is by no means a cut-and-dried issue. It's quite possible that the Elder Evils existed (and gave birth to the aboleths) before the creation of the Outer Planes (or the tanar'ri by the obyriths, *at least*) and possible that it was the other way around. For that matter, it's not at all clear that demons and devils are older than the gods, implying that humanoids may have existed on some worlds before the beginnings of Outer Planar life. This stuff is really specific to the particular campaign.

 

[Nightfall]

Shem,

Eh it might not work for you, but I'm Marvel Comics fan. ANYTHING that can allow me to make D&D villains work similar to some Marvel Comics cosmic baddies can't be ALL bad.

I mean I'd like a guy to be like Apocalypse and have the Four Horsemen under his command.