Let's say that Zariel was reinstated as the Lady of Avernus, and Bel kicked back to her second-in-command.
What would have had to happened to let Asmodeus let go of his grudge to reinstate her?
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Let's say that Zariel was reinstated as the Lady of Avernus, and Bel kicked back to her second-in-command.
What would have had to happened to let Asmodeus let go of his grudge to reinstate her?
Apparently, she already has been in 5E.
Outlands time.
The wizard Ersbevor of Alcheim hires the party as aides-de-camp and bodyguards for an expedition into the other realms to test his strange theorem and search for "absolute balance." He believes it can be found not just at the Spire, where it is inaccessible, but also, logically, everywhere across the vastness of the Outlands - provided one has not traveled toward any of the gate-towns inextricably linked with cosmic forces that would taint the result. All he has to do is get past the ring of gate-towns... without crossing it.
Spoiler: Encounter OptionsThe Concordant Creature template will be used in these encounters to provide additional options (see below)
Ersbevor has brought the party, using a potent scroll, to the estates of the deity Boccob, a vast library of magic. A rival has enlisted a local shapechanger to assist him in stealing Ersbevor's plans amid the stacks (1 5th level human wizard and 1 1st level concordant doppelganger rogue = CR 7)
The route to take requires moving around the Spire through Semuanya's bog. Border guards don't appreciate trespassers, but can be reasoned with, though disclosures of Ersbevor's plan may result in information getting to the wrong parties... (3 1st level concordant lizardfolk fighters = CR 6)
The plains are home to the strange leomarh, a talented predator that wouldn't mind a snack (treat as concordant dire lion with Improved Initiative as a bonus feat and immunity to force effects, hide in plain sight while in the terrain of the Outlands. A leomarh that hits an opponent with both claw attacks can attempt to trip its opponent (+11 check modifier) as a free action without making a touch attack or provoking an attack of opportunity. If the attempt fails, the opponent cannot react to trip the leomarh) (1 leomarh = CR 7)
A khaasta gang roams the region looking for plunder. They may be mistaken for more of Semuanya's underlings at first blush, but the resemblance is thin at best and the behavior should be a dead giveaway (3 khaasta = CR 7)
Ersbevor's plan involves beginning from the wilds near the gate-town of Xaos, which he feels is most likely to allow a "breach in the rules" so to speak. The party will head directly Spireward from Xaos, then double back exactly, hoping the town of chaos will refuse on principle to be in the same place twice. Complicating this plan is the presence of Gzemnid's realm below the ground, and the alien god does not appreciate wanderers (2 fiendish gas spores = CR 6)
A traveling tso and its entourage encounter the party and are interested in conducting trade - though a tso's motives are never good or to be trusted for even a second (treat as Medium neogi with 6 HD, poison initial and secondary damage 1d6 Dex) (1 tso and 4 enslaved 1st level fighters of varied races = CR 6)
Ilsensine, the god-brain of the mind flayers, has been spying on the party's progress and believes that Ersbevor may be on to something. It has dispatched a representative, an eater of knowledge, to demand that Ersbevor's results be sold to the god only and no other. It will not take no for an answer (treat as spellwarped phthisic that has power resistance instead of spell resistance, absorbs psionic powers instead of magic, has the improved grab special ability and Improved Grapple as a bonus feat, and mind feed special ability triggers on claw attacks or grapple damage rather than bite; remove regeneration) (1 eater of knowledge = CR 7)
The plan gets thrown off with the intrusion of a mighty fhorge, which has decided that its territory should include where the party roams. Even if the party should fell it rather than fleeing, they will find that in the confusion, the mists of the Outlands make it hard to determine whether they are now facing Spireward or ringward (1 fhorge = CR 9)
As the party roams, the sky shifts to a strange rust-red color, the mists still high and now a vague yellow in hue. A party of beings stands on a bridge, refusing passage. Arrayed in pairs, they demand Ersbevor surrender his chart and turn back, concerned that he seeks oneness where all things should be balanced in twos - and creating imbalances here may imperil the plan ("2" 2nd level dvati bards and "2" 2nd level dvati fighters and "2" 2nd level dvati rogues and "2" 2nd level dvati sorcerers = CR 6)
The party enters a forest ruled over by a young baku Holy One, which is not at all used to having visitors and quite curious about the nature of their expedition. As a representative of neutrality, it may not appreciate the concept of intruding on "absolute balance" - though, of course, it also just might think that's okay, depending on the read it takes of the party (treat as draconic elephant with Int 18 and Cha 13, manifests powers as a 7th level psion with the telepathy discpline, proficient with and wielding a Large +1 heavy mace, becomes invisible at-will as a psi-like ability)
Ersbevor spots a promising sign as the sky shifts to a banded blue and orange - a large lizardlike creature he refers to as a demarax, which eats the remnants of magical spells that reach into the planes. The demarax has a unique ability to recall with perfect accuracy anything that has ever been said in its vicinity, and Ersbevor needs to confirm that a prior traveler of this route has passed this way before. However, the demarax is also one of the stupidest creatures on the Planes, and immune to magic - communicating with it to learn what it knows is extraordinarily difficult (extracting information from the demarax = ad hoc CR 6)
The good news: the party has successfully ended up in the Hinterlands without being proximate to a single gate-town, as indicated by the mad and constant whirling of Ersbevor's compass. The bad news: figures in the distance have taken a silent but decidedly unfriendly interest in the travelers, and a confrontation with the alien keepers appears inevitable (2 2nd level keeper fighters and 2 2nd level keeper fighters 500 feet away = ad hoc CR 7)
The mists swirl and eddy as the sky changes to a strange green. A mirrorlike river blocks the road ahead. Once traversed, the party will notice mirrorlike figures converging on their location. The presence of these strange duplicates appears to warp the landscape such that it cannot be meaningfully traversed, but their nature defies logic (each time a figure is damaged, it uses mirror image on its next turn; each time a member of the party declares a standard action, a duplicate will take that action first; the party member can then decide whether to follow through. If they do not, a xeg-yi appears within 10 feet of that party member and focuses on attacking them exclusively) (4 concordant varoots = CR 4; and 1 xeg-yi = CR 7; and 2 xeg-yi = CR 8)
The clouds part, revealing the Spire far behind and faint reflections of vast planetary spheres in a starry sky that cannot possibly be. Coruscating figures like the shadows of animals twist and gyre as a group of one-eyed humanoids astride brilliant horses attempt to corral them. These Menta cyclopeans need the party's assistance to corral the strange incorporeal entities, which are in fact misplaced and wandering belief taken form. Each is armed with a +1 ghost touch quarterstaff to assist in subduing their quarry (beliefs are treated as true neutral-aligned allips with the outsider type instead of the undead type, not recalculating statistics to account for this change; each belief drains either 1d4 Int, 1d4 Wis, or 1d4 Cha in place of an allip's normal Wisdom drain; determine which ability is drained once per belief. When a belief is struck by a natural weapon or is destroyed, its attacker is affected by a spell-like ability - a Will save at DC 16 negates the effect. Choose one of the following per belief: confusion, crushing despair, fear, good hope, heroism, hideous laughter, modify memory, phantasmal killer, rage, song of discord.) (3 1st level concordant Menta cyclopean rangers mounted on ur'eponas joining the party against 4 beliefs = CR 8)
The cyclopeans lead the party to a ruin where the last traveler, the one Ersbevor has been using as a guideline, met his end, though they will approach no further. A young concordant dragon now occupies the ruins, naming them the Tower of the Willfully Lost, and warns that the party may not be able to find its way back to the Spire now that they have come this far without direction - for those who penetrate the Hinterlands normally do so apurpose and from somewhere to somewhere. It is mildly interested in helping the party back where they belong, but will attempt to dissuade the party by force from continuing toward "absolute balance," which it admits they are on the trail of (1 young concordant dragon = CR 7)
At the base of a plummeting ravine is a small outpost suspended treacherously above a deadly river. A squad of plumach rilmani guard the stair above the rushing whitewaters, fully aware of the kind of journey that must have been taken to reach this place and unwilling to admit intruders, though they will not give chase under any circumstances if their perimeter is breached or their foes retreat (treat as 2nd level dwarf fighters wielding bludgeoning weapons, with rilmani traits, 17 Str and DR 5/magic, who possess the following spell-like abilities at will: chill touch, detect chaos/evil/good/law, heat metal, hold person; once per day a plumach may conjure solid fog as a 4th level wizard. Plumachs are outsiders rather than humanoids and are always true neutral) (5 plumachs = CR 7)
The party crosses through a desert of copper and green sands and suddenly finds themselves in a vast glass orrery. A hill giant in a fine kilt and wielding a magical halfspear demands that the party depart this Hidden Realm. Other giantlike figures watch silently as the confrontation plays out (1 concordant hill giant = CR 9)
Sneaking through the vast bands of the orrery while avoiding the few guards, Ersbevor leads the party to a fabled orb which can guide the questioner to the location of anything in the multiverse, hoping to find the direction of the road to "absolute balance." A ray of light leaps forth, creating a bridge to a rocky cliff on which black, starry grass waves in a gentle wind. Blue lightning crackles in an endless vaulting night sky that seems to shed a dusky glow. The world below seems an endless tract of nuance without a single character. A sturdy, iron-gray guard in spiked armor presents a mighty battleaxe in the party's direction. He advises them that he is a guardian of "absolute balance", in all its meanings, and that Ersbevor's quest has resulted in the party becoming lost - in more ways than one - for in their quest to find balance, they have time and time again broken the balance and that which protects it. To proceed would be to risk contaminating the very goal of their quest. Ersbevor is unconvinced but unsure of himself - the party, and the rilmani, will have to drive the conclusion one way or the other. If Ersbevor is convinced to proceed or if the rilmani is attacked, the cliff transforms into a plain made of transparent glass balanced impossibly atop dizzyingly angled glass pillars suspended in a void of black. Three figures emerge to prove the rilmani's point about the consequences of seeking balance by striking out against it (1 concordant arkamoi and 1 concordant hadrimoi and 1 3rd level concordant lashemoi fighter = CR 9)
One way or another, the guardian of balance will test the strength of the party's convictions if they should press on, confronting them atop a single glass pillar that emerges into a clouded and misty blue sky (1 ferrumach = CR 9)
The pillar cracks as the guardian falls, revealing stairs that descend into a dark room where the only source of light ebbs and flows around an orb that seems alternately gray, coppery, pearly, and opalescent, without ever really being any of these. Ersbevor is unimpressed, as he had hoped to find some form of fundamental truth about the multiverse in solid form. The voice of the rilmani speaks out, saying that everyone who has ever made this journey has come away disappointed - "absolute balance" is ultimately not what anyone wants it to be, for it is the presence of both that which one seeks and that which one despises. Even for those who venerate balance itself, what lies within this place - what lies without the many pulling directions of the Great Wheel - defies worship, desire, or design. Its greatest promise is that all else in reality shall be unlike it; its greatest danger is that all else in reality might exist or take shape only in relation to it, the hope of one such as Ilsensine who would seek to turn "absolute balance" into itself. Armed with this new truth of the multiverse, Ersbevor opens the doors at the far end of the room and emerges... in the basement of Boccob's library. Each member of the party has now become changed in some way to become "less neutral" - a minor magical boon or alteration that can be removed with magical aid if unwanted, but which otherwise marks out that these individuals have seen "absolute balance" and come to know themselves more definitely as apart from it.
Spoiler: Concordant CreatureConcordant Creature
Concordant creatures dwell in places of neutrality, although they resemble beings found on the Material Plane. They appear virtually identical to their Material Plane counterparts when directly observed, though they will have one distinguishing feature - dull metallic eyes or claws, unnatural coloration, physical asymmetry. When not directly observed, a concordant creature looks "off" out of the corner of the eye, different in a way that is startling and fascinating, though impossible to describe.
Creating A Concordant Creature
"Concordant" is an inherited template that can be added to any corporeal aberration, animal, dragon, fey, giant, humanoid, magical beast, monstrous humanoid, ooze, plant, or vermin (referred to hereafter as the base creature).
A concordant creature uses all the base creatures statistics and abilities except as noted here. Do not recalculate the creatures Hit Dice, base attack bonus, saves, or skill points if its type changes.
Size and Type
Animals or vermin with this template become magical beasts, but otherwise the creature type is unchanged. Size is unchanged. Concordant creatures encountered on the Material Plane have the extraplanar subtype.
Special Attacks
A concordant creature retains all the special attacks of the base creature and also gains the following special attack.
Smite Principle (Su)
Once per day the creature can make a normal melee attack to deal extra damage equal to half its HD total (maximum of +10) against a lawful neutral, chaotic neutral, neutral good, or neutral evil foe. Against a lawful good, chaotic good, lawful evil, or chaotic evil foe, this attack instead deals extra damage equal to the creature's HD total (maximum of +20).
Special Qualities
A concordant creature retains all the special qualities of the base creature and also gains the following.
Aligned Resistance (Su)
Against attacks or mind-affecting effects originating from a non-neutral creature, a concordant creature gets a +2 deflection bonus to AC and a +2 resistance bonus to saving throws. The concordant creature must choose against which alignment component (good, law, chaos, or evil) it gains this bonus. It can change this once per round on its turn as a free action.
Hit Dice Resistances Damage Reduction 1-3 5 - 4-7 5 5/magic 8-11 10 5/magic 12+ 10 10/magic
Darkvision out to 60 feet.
Damage reduction (see table).
Resistance to acid, electricity, and sonic (see table).
If the base creature already has one or more of these special qualities, use the better value.
If a concordant creature gains damage reduction, its natural weapons are treated as magic weapons for the purpose of overcoming damage reduction.
Abilities
Same as the base creature, but Intelligence is at least 3.
Environment
Any neutral-aligned plane (Concordant Domain of the Outlands)
Challenge Rating
HD 3 or less, as base creature; HD 4 to 7, as base creature +1; HD 8 or more, as base creature +2.
Alignment
Always true neutral.
Level Adjustment
Same as the base creature +2.
Yessss, this is the stuff I do like.
You've spoken briefly before about how Outsiders in general can be bad for the Prime, which is part of why celestials don't do big interventions in the way that devils or demons will do massive invasions. How might mortals seek to reverse such corruption?
Can there be some kind of highest rank deity, someone who created the whole Multiverse, or maybe someone who "manages" it now?
Some time ago, I had an idea that the crime of Nameless One was killing the Creator of the Multiverse - and that's why "planes are dying".
Didn't understand this one. What war over the question of reality? I guess you don't mean Blood War?Quote:
It doesn't seem likely, given that huge war that got fought over the question of if reality should be real or not. If someone made the whole joint then the War of Law and Chaos would have been the tiniest bit pointless.
And also, who said that Multiverse should have a meaning. :smallwink:
The War of Law and Chaos. It's come up in these threads a few times before, though it might be hard to find given how many there are and how long it is. The forces of Chaos waged a mighty and terrible war against Law over the nature of reality - whether it should have fixed and consistent laws or not, whether it should be made of material or immaterial substance or even no substance at all, whether it should have a fixed shape. The War was so mighty, so long, so all-defining, that it's still ongoing today despite its ostensible end with the imprisonment of Miska the Wolf-Spider. Though neither side truly 'won', Law came out ahead; reality is real instead of unreal.
This is interesting, and I'll try to find something to read about this, but as I understand from your words, the war was over how to treat reality now, not how it was created in the first place. Or I am getting it wrong?Quote:
The War of Law and Chaos. It's come up in these threads a few times before, though it might be hard to find given how many there are and how long it is. The forces of Chaos waged a mighty and terrible war against Law over the nature of reality - whether it should have fixed and consistent laws or not, whether it should be made of material or immaterial substance or even no substance at all, whether it should have a fixed shape. The War was so mighty, so long, so all-defining, that it's still ongoing today despite its ostensible end with the imprisonment of Miska the Wolf-Spider. Though neither side truly 'won', Law came out ahead; reality is real instead of unreal.
Uh? But draeden are older than the Planes themselves, and powerful enough to face the gods... They entered their current state of slumber before the Great Wheel was formed and the current Planes coalesced around their dormant bodies... they are WAY older and WAY above the dragons, unless we are speaking of a race of dragons whose every member was similar to Bahamut and Tiamat in power...
Well, there are plenty of Overgods: Ao from Abeir-Toril, Krynn's High God, the Creator of Tellene, Praemus of Praemal... etc. So it seems there is a hierarchy above the deities commonly worshipped by mortals... and said hierarchy seems to wish a balance of Chaos, Law, God and Evil...
That is correct.They were certainly more powerful than modern dragons. I don't know by how much, though.Quote:
they are WAY older and WAY above the dragons, unless we are speaking of a race of dragons whose every member was similar to Bahamut and Tiamat in power...
Law chaos was the original conflict iirc. The pact primeval came out of it, and good and evil only came too later, at least according to Asmodaeus.
Quote:
Well, there are plenty of Overgods: Ao from Abeir-Toril, Krynn's High God, the Creator of Tellene, Praemus of Praemal... etc. So it seems there is a hierarchy above the deities commonly worshipped by mortals... and said hierarchy seems to wish a balance of Chaos, Law, God and Evil...
I read the "Avatars" trilogy, and I know about overgods like Ao. But even them seem to follow pre-set laws of the Multiverse, and only control their own "territory". They don't seem to be those who created Multiverse. And in the end of "Avatars" Ao talks to someone of obviously higher ranking calling him "Father" or "Master" or something similar.Quote:
I remember that there was a teaser about this at the end of the Avatar trilogy...
If you want to hear Afro's take on it, read the creation myth he wrote in the fifth planar questions thread. Just search for Ilkahvval or start here. (Apologies for linking the whole page and not the specific thread; I'm not very link savy.)
I imagine this might've come up before but my search turned up nothing.
Elder Evils. Would your afro-ness be so kind as to provide a quick run down of which official elder evils actually deserve the elder evils designation (I recall Zargon being much loathed on that front), as well as what other known entities would make the cut of falling in that designation (e.g. those dreaming dragons Io supposedly planted in the cores of material plane worlds, or that race of before time monstrosities of which one is sleeping in the abyss)?
Most don't. Asmodeus and a scant few demon lords (Dagon, for instance) are aware of it and keep their eyes on things in that direction just as a basic precaution. Certain factions of yugoloths buy into it, not least of which because it inflates their importance in things, which they always love doing. By and large, though, few yugoloths actively concern themselves with the end of the Blood War. As for the devils and the demons, each figures they have a much better way of ending the Blood War in their favor than relying on the Crawling City in any capacity.
Nothing really needs to "have happened;" Asmodeus is an inscrutable schemer who keeps his own counsel and loves to wrongfoot everyone else in Hell with little notice. See also how he deposed a staunch loyalist in favor of the fiend who murdered his wife.
Close the rifts and gates, banish or destroy the outsiders in question, magically contain it however they can and hope that with the source cut off it abates in time. Divine magic such as consecrate/desecrate or dispel evil/good/chaos/law may also help.
The closest thing to that would be the Old Ones, a nebulous collection of entities responsible for the creation of the multiverse and who exist beyond and apart from it. The Old Ones do precious little to "manage" or maintain it in any way.
Law and Chaos was indeed the primal conflict in the Multiverse. The Blood War is the last vestige of the War of Law and Chaos.
I mean it's a weird term to put to use, considering it's applied both to the campaign supermonsters from the book of the same name, and also to the ancient and terrifying creepy-crawlies of aboleth mythology. By the definition of that book, a vast number of powerful and inimical entities fit the bill. Even Zargon, though he's awfully lazily executed. :smalltongue:
Functionally, Elder Evils as a book is interested in designating entities whose active interest in and designs on the world in which your campaign is set result in terrible catastrophe; campaign-scope megavillains who can anchor an adventure path. Kyuss, Adimarchus, and Demogorgon would all fit the bill according to these criteria. I could basically do the same with any given demon lord, duke of hell, altraloth, and numerous other concepts and entities.
As for draedens, they are too vast in scope to be Elder Evils as the book uses the term; there's a very good reason why you don't see them active in the current multiverse.
Where do vestiges fit into creation mythos? The concept is fascinating but the execution has potential issues. Where they reside, how knowledge of them are leaked etc. I've had an idea that they are connected to tbe obyriths somehow that i'm working on for a campaign but since they have near no official support I'm having trouble saying just because.
They don't. With very few exceptions, vestiges are all entities which were once part of the Great Wheel cosmology after its inception - usually quite a long time after.
On these threads we usually call their nonspace the "Near Realm"Quote:
Where they reside
Various ways, depends on the vestige.Quote:
how knowledge of them are leaked etc.
The 3e Manual of the Planes also states this. Either that, or the Planar section of the 3.5 DMG.
Found it. 3.5 DMG, page 151:
Quote:
Layered Planes
Infinities may be broken into smaller infinities, and planes into smaller, related planes. These layers are effectively separate planes of existence, and each layer can have its own planar traits. Layers are connected to each other through a variety of planar gates, natural vortices, paths, and shifting borders.
Access to a layered plane from elsewhere usually happens on a specific layer: the first layer of the plane, which can be either the top layer or the bottom layer, depending on the specific plane. Most fixed access points (such as portals and natural vortices) reach this layer, which makes it the gateway for other layers of the plane. The plane shift spell also deposits the spellcaster on the first layer of the plane.
All layers of a plane are connected to the Astral Plane, so travelers can reach specific layers directly through spells such as astral projection. Often the first layer is the one most hospitable to planar travelers.
A quick query:
Which Demons lords have actually succeeded in dragging material plane worlds into the abyss? I know lolth's web has doors to some, but not sure if they're meant to be in her web or just connected. I have also read that Graz'zt at one point wanted to drag some world and make it layer 48, but not sure how that went.
How do intelligent Slaadi and Obyriths tend to feel about the Far Realm, or are they too individualistic to generalise on something like this?
Bear in mind that while chaos is formlessness and possibility, the Far Realm is n/a, other, do not inquire within, trespassers will be shot. Its an non-iteration of unreality that is totally inimical to the entire conceptual map of which you or I are capable.
The things slaad and obyriths embody are things, the infinite chaotic soup many of them would like to make out of reality is still basically real. The Far Realm, on the other hand, is not far and its not a realm - it has the same relationship to reality that gamma radiation has to biology.
Fro said this, at one point, on the topic of an obyrith traveling to the Far Realm:
To partially answer my own question, Dragon 360 (which for the longest time I didn't know was 3rd ed) Demonomicon article of Graz'zt mentions that him and his sister Rhyxali have been cooperating to prepared the Nerebdian Vast layer for a material plane capture, as to make it a 4th layer for Mr Sohorny.
Still wondering about Lolth and the others though.
Also, now wondering about Rhyxali. To my knowledge she's only ever gotten mention in BoVD (web enhancement mostly), a few off-handed comments in FCI, and now this Dragon 360 article. Has she ever appeared in anything before then?
When I say "Big A, the archfiend" what are the first 5 archfiends that come to mind, in order? Include yourself, if applicable.
This isn't a question, but I just want to throw in here that I'm really enjoying everything clarified in these threads over the years and want to take a second to thank you, Afroakuma!
Also, I'm going to be using one of your Slaadish soon in a campaign of mine :smallsmile:
Spoiler: The Tawny Seer (name subject to change)
Slaadish
Nonreproductive
Orange coloration
Dracoid (Half dragon! Determined randomly to be half black dragon)
Sticking Digits +4 Climb
Savvy +2 Wis
Extra Eyes +4 Spot
Electrogenic +1d6 electric damage on melee attacks
Additional Claw +1d6 on claw attacks
Tail Slap 1d8