Planescape General and Q&A

>>52232309
>the Heart of Darkness, Maeldur et Kavurik, Tenebrous, Pelion, and the Last Word

EXPLAIN WHAT THESE ARE

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>>52232596

According to AD&D 2e's Hellbound: The Blood War: The Dark of the War, page 10, the Heart of Darkness was an artifact used by the yugoloths before the Blood War to purge all traces of law and chaos from themselves:

>The Casting of Law and Chaos. The General of Gehenna, the first ultroloth, creates the Heart of Darkness – a magical stone that drives the "impurities" of law and chaos from the hearts of those that touch it, and utterly destroys those who champion good. The General gathers the host of yugoloths to it, and uses the Heart to make them pure.

>The General channels these expunged forces into the natural larvae of the Gray Waste; the influx of law and chaos twists the creatures into new beings that eventually become the first baatezu and tanar'ri. (Some histories mention that the General spoke with these larvae and imprinted dire magic in their heads before sending them on their respective ways.)

The same page dictates that such a history comes from the annals of the yugoloths, which means that it could be nothing more than yugolothic historical revisionism. It can still be reconciled with the tanar'ri creation myth in the 3.5 Fiendish Codex I by saying that the obyriths uplifted the chaos-tainted larvae into tanar'ri. This can also be reconciled with the baatezu creation myth in the 3.5 Fiendish Codex II by saying that the fallen "angels" (which could have been Mechanus-born aphanacts) had transformed into baatezu because of exposure to the law-larvae, and had turned further law-larvae into devilish beings much like themselves.

Personally, the idea does not make that much sense to me, the yugoloths were clearly fine with a little law in their souls seeing how the majority of them later migrated to LE/NE Gehenna. This could be explained as the yugoloths initially valuing NE purity, only for most to loosen up that belief as the centuries went by, causing a schism between the "old guard" of the Gray Waste and the "new generation" of Gehenna.

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>>52232596

Maeldur et Kavurik was the source of all fiendish teleportation in the 2e era. He was a planetar from Mount Celestia captured by the baernaloths and flesh-warped into a space-twisting matrix.

Anyone whose true name was known to the Maeldur was granted teleportation. This was an instinctive gift, and only a handful of fiends even knew the Maeldur existed. The yugoloths had access to every single fiend's true name and fed them to the Maeldur. (The books never explained how this was possible, which was a major setting hole and gave the yugoloths an undue advantage.)

The yugoloths' plan was to accustom all of the Lower Planes to teleportation, and then later, manipulate mortal adventurers into dunking the Maeldur into the River Styx to wash away its memories. This would remove the teleportation ability of all fiends. The yugoloths would then pin the blame on the mortal heroes, retrieve the Maeldur, cover up the Maeldur's existence, tell it all of the yugoloths' true names, and offer to restore the teleportation of other fiends in exchange for vows of loyalty.

2e-canonically, this is exactly what happens in the adventure Hellbound: The Blood War: War Games: Squaring the Circle. That 2e book and all subsequent 2e books assumed that the yugoloths' plan succeeded, and that the mortal adventurers were duped most thoroughly. (Despite this, the adventure explicitly allows the adventurers to foil the plan by killing the Maeldur outright, or by doing something else to secure the Maeldur for the Upper Planes. When I played through the adventure, our group did the latter.)

4e likewise assumes that the yugoloths' plan was successful, going by page 6 of Dragon Magazine #417.

5e never outright states it, but it also implicitly assumes that the Maeldur scheme was successful, seeing how all of the yugoloths in the Monster Manual have teleportation, whereas the demons and the devils have it rarely.

3.5 is ambiguous on this, since it gives most fiends teleportation.

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>>52232596

Tenebrous, Pelion, and the Last Word are all set up in the epilogue of the 2e adventure The Great Modron March, and the entirety of the 2e adventure Dead Gods: Out of the Darkness.

Orcus was a true god in the 2e era, but was slain by Kiaransalee. He later resurrected spontaneously. "Tenebrous" was simply Orcus's alias during this time. This is acknowledged in 3.X's Tome of Magic, wherein that alias was noteworthy enough to become a vestige (Tenebrous, The Shadow That Was) and the basis of a prestige class (the tenebrous disciple).

Pelion, also known as Mithardir, is the third layer of the chaotic good plane of Arborea. You can read of it in pages 54 to 56 of the 2e Planes of Chaos: The Book of Chaos book. Page 146 of the 3.0 Manual of the Planes has a snippet on it as well.

As per page 98 of Dead Gods, Pelion/Mithardir was once home to an ancient pantheon of deities, but that pantheon has since disappeared and faded into obscurity. Those gods constructed a vault containing the "True Words," magical runes of tremendous power, predating all gods. (These are also known as the "Language Primeval," and referenced in pages 2, 3, 150, and 151 of the 2e adventure Die, Vecna, Die. Pages 43 and 44 of the 2e supplement College of Magic also mentions them, albeit more obliquely.)

As Tenebrous, Orcus found the vault of the True Words and mastered a single word within it: the Last Word, a command to make anyone in earshot drop dead, even a deific entity like Primus. Foolishly, he erased all the other True Words to prevent them from being turned against him, thus depriving the multiverse of a major breakthrough in magic.

Pages 56 to 57 of 3.5 Dungeon Magazine #149 acknowledge Orcus once having mastered the Last Word, by giving him an echo of such a power.

Page 13 of 4e Dragon Magazine #417 similarly acknowledges the existence of the Last Word, and by extension, the True Words.

5e is silent on the matter of the Last Word and the True Words.

>>52232860

Always forget how fucking OP Yugoloth's were in fluff.

Starting off as NE to a fault and then drifting lawful also opens up the possibility of rival yugoloth factions, leaks and hooks for parties to work both for and against yugoloths.

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>>52233709

The 2e books like to speak of the yugoloths as a monolithic entity, but I personally think it would make much more sense for there to be a tremendous schism between the Gehennan yugoloths and the Gray Waste yugoloths.

In my view, Gehenna's daemons are people who champion ambition, selfishness, and mercenary gain. I see them as the "new generation," very energetic and active, and keen on indulging their vices.

The way I see it, the Gray Waste's daemons would be more concerned with instigating apathy, despair, pessimism, and suffering in general, just like the plane around them. I think they would be less ambitious, but far more evil, if not the most evil race of outsiders, because the main thrust of their activities is making people slowly suffer and lose all hope. They would also have a much lower population, but tremendously more powerful individual yugoloths due to being the "old guard."

The Gehennans would deride the Gray Wasters for being too concerned with unproductive schadenfreude, while the Gray Waste yugoloths would look down on the Gehennans for being ambitious and materialistic for its own sake. Likewise, I think that the Gehennans would be interested in ending the Blood War and uniting the Lower Planes, whereas the Gray Wasters would prefer to prolong the Blood War and all the suffering it inspires.

Another point of conflict would be that the Gray Waste yugoloths have forged an alliance with the plane's night hags and are all too eager to accept bioaugmentations as altraloths. The Gehennan yugoloths would find such transdaemonism to be abhorrent, yet there would nevertheless be Gehennans approaching the night hags for altraloth bioaugmentations.

Complicating the schism further would be the canonical third branch of yugoloths setting up shop in Carceri, in the Tower of Incarnate Pain, as laid out in pages 80-81 of 2e's Faces of Evil: The Fiends. I am unsure of what dark "virtues" they would champion, however; what could fit Carceri?

>>52232309
I'd go for something pseudo-mideval, but with a lot of magical and technological curiosities.

>>52232309
Sigil really isn't medieval. It's generally at a level of "pre electricity", but there's enough magical items and abilities floating around that they can mimic higher tech-level items (and exceed ones from the modern day even).

Of course, given the nature of the Planes, all sorts of random junk from different tech-levels can show up. You can find assault rifles and laser weaponry if you really look hard enough, but they don't have the infrastructure required to really make them useful - an assault rifle is a much better ranged weapon than a bow, but that doesn't actually matter if you can't get it repaired or find ammo for the thing (not to mention the lack of magical assault rifles, assault rifle proficiency or even knowledge of how they work, or the varied environments that can render them useless like the Plane of Water).

And on an amusing note, it is canon that there's a jet fighter in some junkpile somewhere out there.

>>52232860
>>52233074
I get the feeling that yugoloths were writers' pets, always being the strongest, smartest and most influential, basically playing all the other fiends.

>>52239179
To be honest, it comes with the territory. They're pure E, with no L or C in them. They aren't nearly as involved with the Blood War as the other fiends (and it actually earns them resources rather than consumes them like it does for the Baatezu and Tanar'ri).

Really, they're surprisingly insular and inactive in the setting given their potential, and I've always found them to make great villains.

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>>52236930

>it is canon that there's a jet fighter in some junkpile somewhere out there.

As per pages 31 to 33 of the 2e adventure Doors to the Unknown, this is a magical object that simply functions as a fighter jet, not a technological fighter jet.

That said, pages 49 to 53 of the same adventure present a (mostly) magic-free world that actually does employ modern-day, if not sci-fi-esque, technology.

>>52239179
>>52239236

I do think that the 2e portrayal of the yugoloths gives them *far* too much power and resources. It is one thing to create a vast teleportation matrix to power all of the fiends, another thing to declare that the yugoloths somehow know every single fiend's true name, and something else entirely to make canon that the yugoloths' cunning scheme actually worked and gave them a strangehold over the main method of fiendish transportation.

It does not help that there were some blatant furries on the team who were strongly pushing arcanaloths, down to presenting their fox-waifu Shemeshka in Uncaged: Faces of Evil.

Conversely, the way 5e pushed the yugoloths back down to "generic fiendish mercenaries" does injustice to the race, by making them too small-time.

I think that a happy medium between the 2e and 5e portrayals of the yugoloths would work out most aptly.

>>52239236
>They're pure E, with no L or C in them.
Why would that make them more influential and stronger? It's not like Chaos or Law are some impurities that weaken you... I think.

>>52239474
Again, I just think yugoloths were writers' pets, at least from what I've read here. I am not too knowledgeable on Planescape lore, honestly, and I don't have access to books.

>>52240177
>Why would that make them more influential and stronger? It's not like Chaos or Law are some impurities that weaken you... I think.

Chaotic or Lawful aligned creatures tend to have problems understanding other alignments way of thinking - though I'm not sure what happens if you remove an axis from the alignment of a creature entirely.

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>>52240177
>>52243791

By this logic, the NG guardinals should be that much more effective than the LG archons and the and CG eladrin.

While I am all for nomadic animal-people celestials, this does not seem to be the case.

>>52245552
>>52243791
>>52240177

Straight up evil means that there's more ambition, lust for power/domination/etc and less ruurus/randomness. It also means that they don't really have to devote any effort whatsoever to L or C - they're purely devoted to E.

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>>52248308

This does not explain the majority of the race's gradual shift towards law in volcanic Gehenna.

>>52248367
That's explained by the "corrupting" effects of the Plane itself when you live there for millenia.

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How would you integrate the concept of seasons into the planes? One of the facets of the Prime that is lost in the planes is the time-based variety created by spring, summer, autumn, and winter. Surely the planes should have just as much variety as the Prime in this respect?

Prime-like planes such as the Outlands, Arcadia, Bytopia, Elysium, the Beastlands, Arborea, and Ysgard are easy to imagine seasons for. But what do spring, summer, autumn, and winter look like in the depths of Baator or Pandemonium, the ever-changing chaos of Limbo, or the slopes of Mount Celestia or Gehenna?

What of the seasons in the Inner Planes? What does winter look like in the Elemental Plane of Fire, and what is a Paraelemental Ice summer akin to?

The reason why I wanted to use a system of spring, summer, autumn, and winter is because they are a simple and familiar method of lending striking, distinct visuals to each time period. A GM already has much to keep track of with respect to the exotic physical configurations and environments of each plane; it helps to be able to say, "It is autumn in Elysium, so the trees shed their red and gold leaves," or "You can tell from the chill gales and the coating of frost upon the cavern walls that it is winter in Pandemonium," or even "summer in Baator's layer of Cania has melted away the topmost rime, revealing the ruined cities of the ancient Baatorians."

I do not think any plane should have static seasons, because that lends a feeling of stagnation and diminishes variety.