After reading some of the old Planescape books as well as the 3e Manual of the Planes, I've come up with numerous inconsistencies. As painful as it is to myself, most of these are just retcons and errors from the transition to third edition (which, aside from monster stats, I vehemently refuse to acknowledge). Some, however, still confuse me. For right now I'll limit myself to asking the general opinion of the most esteemed members of this forum (sounds fancy enough for a guvner, doesn't it?) about two of these.
1) The Battle Cube:
According to the 2e Planescape book Planes of Law: Acheron the orcs and goblins sitting pretty in Acheron are in constant war. Fair enough. But even within that same book there are inconsistencies. Some descriptions make it seem as if the two opposing armies are on the same cube, the so called Battle Cube, and are constantly fighting a war. Other paragraphs make it seem as if the Battle Cube is actually two seperate cubes, each owned by one of the opposing forces, that are nearby and constantly at war.
For instance, on page 16 of the previously named book, it says:
while a couple of sentences later it says:
If the first quote was correct, then the orcs own the entire cube. The second obviously contradicts that. To add to the confusion, the Manual of the Planes (3e) says that they are seperate cubes that were once whole but split due to the efforts of the two warring pantheons. So, my sword-sided question is what was the original Planescape setting intending for the Battle Cube and what is the general opinion on it today in the land of PlaneWalker.com
2) Imps and Quasits:
I seem to recall that imps used to be flying minions of the Baatezu with a deadly poison in their tail while quasits were the weaker and less intelligent, landbound equivalents on the Tanar'ri side that had a weak poison in their claws. In fact, even the 3e Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting has a picture of a wingless quasit, but the 3e and 3.5e Monster Manuals make the two almost identical. Imps are no longer as deadly, their poison being the same as that of the quasit, while quasits now have wings. So, again, my question is, 'What is the general concensus for PlaneWalkers?' A possibility, considering the almost construct nature of the two fiendish familiars, is that post Faction War the demons decided to remold their own little helpers to be more useful while the devils ran out of the virulent poison and had to resort to the more common stuff.
Anyway, if you read through that longwinded and terribly harrowing (to perfectionists, of course) inquiry on seemingly trivial matters of the planes, I'd very much like to hear some opinions on the matters therein. If you didn't, say something witty and add a smiley.
One possible interpretation of the first dilemna is that the two cubes split very recently - so recently that planar records still conflict on the subject.
As for the second, as chaotic as they are, it seems odd that the tanar'ri would make all quasits look the same. I think there should be hundreds of different quasit breeds - at least as many as there are dog breeds.