afroakuma's Planar And Other Oddities Questions Thread VIII

[afroakuma]

You know, Larbek's questions on souls and animi are missing one:

What happens when an outsider or elemental becomes undead?

For the most part, they do not; your conventional methods of undeath do not work on outsiders - I should point out that even those few templates which mention that they apply to "any corporeal creature" should not function on outsiders, and Savage Species told us that outsider and undead are mutually exclusive creature types.

Now, that being said, there are certain very specialized types of undead which arise from outsiders or elementals; the lichfiend, for instance, manipulates the traditional lich ritual to attain body-soul separation by migrating the soul to a phylactery and replacing it in the body with an animus, just as a normal lich does. This is a hard thing for a fiend to do, but it is possible; of course, it comes with attendant vulnerabilities; while the soul and the body are no longer one unit, the soul is now in a comparatively much weaker container, and progression of the soul in the way that fiends normally could (promotion) is stalled forever. Needless to say, this is not something a lot of fiends pursue. Some other forms of undeath may be possible with the corpse of a fiend (assuming it doesn't go through death throes that destroy it), which would involve an animus badly mimicking part of the soul's existence to reanimate the body. These are shoddy and dangerous things - see the visages, for instance, which wholly lack the characteristics of the original fiend but remain driven by its evil nature.

Elementals are more interesting, at least to my mind; they may appear as necromentals, where the elemental nature is essentially hijacked by an animus that pilots it about with no more intellect than a skeleton or zombie would have, or they may take the form of some specific kind of elemental undead, such as a dessicator. In both cases, the negative energy is mimicking something of the binding elemental nature that normally animates an elemental, but in the latter case the original elemental animus is trapped and tainted by the negative energy and unable to disperse, creating a tortured entity that just wants to be a true elemental being again but is incapable of restoring itself and as a result lashes out at its fellows.

What would happen to a captive illithid fed only on cow brains?

Psionic starvation, cognitive failure, nerve damage, seizures, eventual death. The minimum Intelligence score required for an illithid to get everything it needs from a brain is 3. If some method is devised to supply them with the psychic energies needed for proper nutrition, the cow brain would handle the physiological nutritional requirements sufficiently.

How, in general terms, is an Angel's outlook/personality/philosophy different to a human's?

The two are... pretty vastly different. The most general way I could position it is that to a human, one's own needs are always fairly primary; even when one is considering the needs of others, it may tie into a personal need. For angels, their own needs are always secondary. To put it more glibly, you know how you feel sick, tired, and hungry? Well, angels are sick of cruelty, tired of needless suffering, and hungry for justice.

Another little question on my part: We already know that the Divine Mind class is dreck that flies in the face of everything we know about psionics. Is the Ardent's fluff equally bad or is there something of worth there. My intuition says the first thing, but I would like a second opinion.

At a glance, seems kind of weak, but the general notion that they are making a psionic connection through the Astral Plane to some sort of major belief about the multiverse isn't terribly off base from what we know about belief and the Outer Planes. I think the book is going a bit overblown with all the "fundamental" and "transcendent" nonsense though.

Terrible book.

Don't know if this is the best place to ask this, but...

Did D&D invent the differentiation between Demons and Devils? In most folklore, they are interchangeable. I'm assuming D&D came up with the whole LE vs. CE type deal for these creatures?

Given the topicality, I'm sure you can appreciate there are things from a certain book that I am not supposed to talk about on the forums. I will simply say that in a certain book, there were terms translated in Greek that referred to particular beings. A later book starring Virgil echoed this with the native torture-dispensers and monsters of Hell being "demons" and some people of a formerly feathery persuasion being of the other kind.

How far back in D&D do Demons and Devils go? I know as far back as AD&D 1E, but earlier than that?

Demons originated in OD&D. Asmodeus & friends showed up in AD&D in the Monster Manual.

And the Blood War was introduced in 2E, from memory?

Correct.