Brainstorming session, part 3: the upper planes

I agree completely, Clueless. The whole purpose of the Blood War, in an out of character way, is not only to create numerous plot threads in the lower planes and facilitate negotiations with fiends by playing them off of each other, but also to explain why the fiendish hordes haven't overrun all of the Great Wheel.

Before we weaken the already fragile celestials with a similar arrangement, we should probably empower them in some way. Allowing them to threaten the Blood War with a final conclusion (which has as much as, if not more, of a possibility of turning out badly for everybody as it does of ridding the planes of the fiends) would be a good reason to later deny them that by throwing them into a fight of their own.

Just a thought: Basing their conversion war in the Prime seems more fit for deities than it does for exemplars. Elysium hasn't seen much action lately, though, and the guardinals would make very good mediators. Sure, that echoes the Blood War and yugoloths again, but its really hard not too. Instead of scheming to continue the war (infact, starting it in the first place) and benefitting themselves like the loths, however, the guardinals would be trying to end the whole thing.

My last post for tonight:

That's a great premise, Clueless, but it still poses the problem that it weakens the celestials without empowering them first. In essence, they begin squabbling before even finding the weapon, which may or may not be found/exist in the first place. They need a definate boon before they can be weakened as such, I think.

“Willing or unwilling, you’re a part of this all. Fate and I don’t choose at whimsy. You see, things happen not because we choose for them to happen, but because they must. Well, most times anyways…” - Green Marvent, sectol of The Illuminated and arch-lector of Plague Mort near the latter half of my last campaign.

I adore Marvent as a character, my PCs hated his guts.

He's great as a Jim Jones 'Halleluea and pass the cool-aid' type guy, a dangerous cult of personality figure, or perhaps just a well meaning ideologue gone terribly wrong. Depending on what take you pull with him, he's got great potential.

But outside of Marvent, the idea has merit as something to make the upper planes interesting places in the minds of players who just see it as peaceful and well... boring. Boring is bad.

Hm.
Possible but that could turn into a very short module that way. Once the celestials actually have the weapon in their hands, that's sort of the moment of crisis as far as I can see it - right? How do we complicate it enough to give PCs something to do and be able to have it as a back plot for some time?

... ohhhhh - I *like* that idea. Of mirroring the Towers.

I like this one, it further differentiates the celestial conflict from the Blood War by not necessarily splitting the feuding parties along law/chaos lines but also remains similar in the "My way is the true path of good (/evil)" way. It questions the application of philosophies and where the ends vs means "line" is rather than challenging the underlying philosophy. This seems to fit better with celestials given that if we are to assume that tolerance is a virtue then they should be fairly tolerant of each others "eccentricities" so long as the greater good is served. I mean think about it from a party level - the Paladin is far more likely to show an amused exasperation or fatherly disapproval to the CG rogue's antics than he is to crack it and storm off to find another party or challenge the rogue to a duel. This plot would allow for more complex politicking/espionage between the involved parties than in what is essentially boiling down to a war of "racial hate" in the lower planes, I mean really how often do a Tanar’ri and a Baatezu sit down and try and nut out what each other actually believe.

I see a lot of law on one side and chaos on the other, and while these are a lot of cool ideas, I think that mirroring the conflict of the blood war too much might seem kind of forced.

Heres an alternative idea. If memory serves, the Guardinals have always been the more 'active' of the celestials against the fiends.

The Guardinals have decided that since neither side of the blood war looks like its going to bleed the other dry (and the yugoloths using it to advance their own plans with each new day) its time to get a bit more aggressive. What if, after a long period of patiently waiting for the other celestials to stop puttering around and commit to something, The guardinals finally commit their full strength to attacking the fiends. And using the blood war as a distraction. After all, with all the armies of fiends out there, if one doesn't report back, all you know is it was destroyed. Maybe a bit of subterfuge on the Guardinals part to make the opposite side of the blood war look responsible.
Anyway, they want to provoke attacks by the fiends against the upper planes. Then the other celestials will have to fight back. Right now, the upper planes have been docile long enough that they have lost alot of believers. Its when faced by destruction at the hands of true evil that people really start pumping that belief to the side of good. We can take out the forces of evil, but we have to do it before they decide to come after us on their terms.

At least, this is the Guardinal's plan. But the other celestials found out first. Now, its the Archons and the Eladrin trying to hold back the Guardinals, resulting to violence more and more often as a last result. And the Guardinals are doing their best to get the fiends attention. After all, if the fiends start attacking, the other upper planes would have to stop attacking them and band together, right?

So it becomes NG vs LG and CG, with the Archons and Eladrin trying not to commit genocide to protect themselves before the Guardinals bring the wrath of the lower planes down on them. It could be that some of the Archons and Eladrin actually support the Guardinals.

Just an idea. There are probably a bunch of holes in it.
And now... sleep.

And in canon, that is exactly what they did last time the celestials (much less just one race of the celestials) tried that. The Blood War stopped immediately and all the fiends turned and attacked. The results were devestating. :-/ That's why the current situation is the way it is.

Plus, I personally find myself much more intriguing if the debate doesn't split along alignment or racial lines. If you find yourself with factions within the races - or factions that comprise of part of two or more of the races. Most importantly, where the opinion on what to do is *not* restricted to the usual three way LNC view. (And really - this isn't a debate that resides on any law vs. chaos basis.)

For example, and this is with the simpliest of situations in which the celestials know *exactly* what the weapon will do to the fiends:

You may have some archons all for using it b/c the fiends should be punished for their crimes.

Some archons, guardinals and eladrin, that want it used to protect those the fiends are harming or will harm.

Others, including archons and guardianals, that want it *not* used because fiends rise and therefore are redeemable and should be given the opportunity.

Whereas another group, of eladrin and asura, think that with using the weapon they will only allow for another 'evil' to exist by comparison. If then the rilmani, or the sladdi or madron become 'evil'... What's next? The archons turning it upon the chaotic races like... the asura and eladrin?

And still another group, also of eladrin and asura and probably younger guardianals as well, don't think we should be bothering with all this debate while people are out getting killed!

And all of that would be in the case where the weapons is a known thing. If there's any doubt about the scope of the weapon's actions - if it will take out mortal evil as well, or non-good, or what have you... there could be many more poitns of view.

I could go on - but I think you see the depths of what I'm looking at here. We should be able to break the factions out in a much m ore considered fashion - and I *want* to see cross species boundaries broken. That's what makes it different from the Blood War. That's what gives it depth.

Don't Azura's have backing from the Indian Pantheon? I have a feeling the got covered in a Raksasha thread over on WotC. I remember Rip featured heavily so he might have some insights.

Now, I haven't found that thread, but I have found that in the (non-PS) Vedic mythology, asuras started out in good standing as their own rank of divine beings, but over time the idea mutated somewhat, turning them into demon-like direct adversaries of the devas--which is now their chief identifier. "Asura" is said to mean "power-hungry" or "power-seeking", interestingly, so that could be a spin on things.

I'd be interested in a bit of that reading, myself.

I actually thought up of a bit of a Creation Story for the Upper Planes while doing some brainstorming for UPS.

There is great danger in the Upper Planes, the Realms Above.

The danger goes beyond the idiosyncricies of one exemplar or the other. And it is not a product of any bias towards law or chaos either, for this danger is greatest on the Plane of Holistic Good, Elysium. You feel it right now-that soothing sense that your soul yearns for. It is conforting, but you know that it can trap you here as easily as the despair of the Grey Wastes can.

I see that you are confused. You'd expect my words from a fiend, or mabye even a Rimilari. Perhaps offering to answer any question of yours was a mistake. However, you had the wisdom to pose the question; I believe that same wisdom will help you to understand the answer.

Why does Elysium trap visitors? That is beyond even my knowledge. I have looked into that puzzle, though, by studying the annals collected by Lady Bharri. What I found led me to long periods of meditation, and still it troubles me.

When the Outer Planes began to form, the first forms of sentience were divided between those that sought order, and those who wanted to eliminate it. The precusors of Law created a bulwark that would corral the precusors of Chaos. in response the Chaos precusors reached through the lost Ordinal and drew forth connections to the Positive and Negative Energy Planes. These vortecies were drawn through the prism of belief. The Law precusors were divided by this new force, and so their bulwark was sundered. But as Law was divided, so too was Chaos demarcated, forced into groupings it couldn't shake off. The result was cataclysmic-the Ordinal Plane disappears from the annals, perhaps because it was destroyed. But the Prisms remained. Drawn to opposite ends of the nascent Great Wheel, they served as founts of morality, lending substance to the forces now defined as Good and Evil.

The Rule of Three defined that there should be three layers covering each Prism. As the Prisms leaked bits of energy into the Outer Planes, motes of belief began to cling to them. Here, however, the paths of Good and Evil diverge. In the Wastes, when the beliefs clinging to the dark energy reached the critical amount for sentience, they became jealous of their own identity. The stronger ones were able to overwhelm the ones that were weaker, but ultimately a stalemate was reached between these surviving proto-fiends. For centuries they hunted and eluded each other, defining the different aspects of Evil as they did so.

On Elysium, the beliefs clinging to Light energy eventually formed into the first race of Celestials-the Ehadim. The Ehadim lacked the impulse to swallow up their bretheren. Individually, they were not as strong as the surviving proto-fiends of the Wastes. They were great in number, though, and were free to explore the Plane. Eventually, one of them discovered the Source of the holy energy that created her species. This one became a beacon of holy Power on the Great Wheel. The other Ehadim were enraptured by the energy, and were drawn to the kin that released it. The entire race coallesed into a single entity more powerful than any since the formation of the Great Wheel: Elohim, the Unified Light. As power flowed freely from the Holy Prism, the Outer Planes buckled from the excess energy. The beings that carried the mark of Chaos and Law were still too weak to halt the encroaching Light. And the precusors of Balance were inactive at this time. The only power that could stop this Holy Armageddon were the proto-fiends of the Wastes.

The proto-fiends at first waited to see if one their bretheren might resolve it for them. As the light grew in strength, their sloth was replaced with fear-what if the light was too strong for them to turn back? It was amid this indicision that one proto-fiend decided to challenge Elohim. The name of this fiend is lost, but we know that it embodied the selfish will to survive. Such a force is at once empty and consuming, which gave this fiend great power amongst its peers. Against the Holy Armageddon, the basic drive this fiend had tapped into only grew stronger, and it became a Nether Fiend of the Wastes. In his presence, the other proto-fiends felt their fear of the Light be replace by an unfulfilling yet all-consuming drive to not only survive, but destroy that which threatened them.

As the Nether Fiend and its host marched towards Elysium, the Unified Light, according to my research, looked into the Realms of Possibility. What Elohim saw, my researched did not reveal-only that it looked into the Time-Stream, presumably to decide how to respond to the coming invasion. Elohim somehow passed through the Prism of Light, difusing the Unified Light into four entities, each independent yet part of a greater whole-Mikhail, the Penetrating Light; Raphael, the Healing Light; Uriel, the Revealing Light; and Jibrael, the Guiding Light. And it was unto Jibrael that the vision of Elohim was given, and she told the others of what the Unified Light had intended.

Mikhail gathered the remaining light of Elohim that had passed through the Prism, and from this light he created the Aasimon. For it was unto Mikhail that the strength and presence of Elohim was passed. When the invading proto-fiends reached the Holy Plane, they were engaged by Mikhail's army. As fiend and celestial clashed for the first time, Mikhail drew the Nether Fiend away from his horde and deeper into Elysium. Upon bringing the beast to the boundary between Eronia and Thalassia, Uriel sprung his trap. Uriel was given the Word of Elohim, and he used the Word to bind the Nether Fiend right on the border of the two layers. Raphael, who inherited the Wisdom of Elohim, then moved to seal the trap by creating a new layer of Elysium: Belierin.

In binding the greatest scion of the Dark Prism so close to the Fount of Light, the power of Unbiased Good and Untainted Evil were diminished. The proto-fiends retreated back to the Wastes, but with the Will to Survive trapped in Elysium, Despair settled over the Plane and color leached away. The proto-fiends who were drawn too close to the Nether Fiend went mad, transforming into Hordlings. Others sought to recreate another Cosmic Entity that would unite the fiends of the Wastes, and became Night Hags. A third group discovered the potency of deception, and would later call themselves Baernaloths.

As for Elysium, the power of the Fount of Light has been turned inward, in part to contain the Nether Fiend trapped beneath Belierin. But there is a deeper reason, one that goes back to the force that almost seared away the Outer Planes. It is this that I continue to meditate on. Perhaps this conundrum that I am only beginning to understand was the reason the Guardinals were created later. But that is a discussion for another time...

Ooh. Neat premise, Ulden. I love how there are almost as many theories on the origins of the planes as there are on Her Serenity. So, this time, it seems, the planes started out as law against chaos. I like that particular outlook more, since good and evil require conscience, thus sentience, whereas primeval chaos that's trying to prevent the encroaching order (the balance of the two eventually providing a habitable environment for the planes) can occur even before planar life. As toward your particular story, here are my opinions:

Pros:

¤ Tying in the rules of the multiverse into the formation of it's current structure.
¤ Explaining the distinctly out of place feeling of Belierin and what exactly Guardinals are guarding.
¤ Explaining the origin of hordelings, night hags, and baernaloths.
¤ Explaining why Elysium entraps sods by blaming it on the entrapped protofiend (though that doesn't explain why the protofiend makes everything so pretty that you just 'have' to stay, but I guess if you're trapped under an infinite planar layer, you work with what you can get).

Cons:

¤ The whole positive vs negative energies being equivalents of good vs evil. There's a discussion about that here.
¤ Although I know the 2e stats for Baernaloth make them out to be just a medium-powered outcast yugoloth caste, I always envisioned them to be protofiends of near deity level power (I blame Shemeshka's series). Making them equals of Night Hags and Hordelings doesn't seem to do them justice, although I see it working.
¤ It doesn't explain where the ancient Baatorians and ancient demons (which I'll refer to as Obyriths just to make it easy) came from.
¤ And finally, and this is just a pet peeve, I think the outer planes should have formed after the material (which formed from the inner planes) because they are formed from belief, which wouldn't exist without somebody to believe in it, even if that somebody is sentient crystal spheres or other 'alien' beings.

Overall, however, I like the premise. It doesn't really give specific reasons for a new war in the heavens, but it gives plent of possibilities. Kudos.

Very good answers! I misunderstood the whole Fount of Light being turned inward deal, containing not only the fiend but anyone else unlucky enough to fall under its sway. That's what I get for rushing. You explained my other concerns quite well, and my only remaining gripe is not with any part of your story but rather with the idea of linking elemental/energy planes with outer planar concepts of good and evil. I blame that newfangled transitive plane linking the two.

It is? Where? I've got Guide to the Inner Planes in hand right now and I'm not seeing it. As far as I know that was added aka "attached with chewing gum and duct tape" late in 3.5, and even then was a bit of a clunker that was inconsitantly handled. Do you have any page numbers I can look at to confirm/deny this?

As far as I know the main reason that healing and harmful energies are associated with Positive and Negative energy planes is because they are the sources of the energies that are tapped for those spells. The spells themselves are fairly nuetral on morality, they just tend to be more useful or less harmful than others from the point of view of a prime mortal.

Alternatively - to a paraelemental of ice, fire is *evil* - utterly, totally, and horrifically useless and harmful with no good reason to exist... it's a bias based on perspective only. And in this case - perspective from the point of view of the Prime mortals - which are the beings whose belief create the Outer planes and their entities - hence, the likelyhood that their angelic beings will heal and not harm is pretty high. Descration of the dead tends from a prime point of view to be pretty bad so... there's your Upper/Lower trend there - caused by belief - not by actual quality of the energies involved.

If the use of Postive and Negative energies in these spells were a solid arguement then by comparison: One could make the logical argument that fire or magma which are commonly harmful and often used in combat spells, because they are used to harm others their respective elemental planes must *also* be planes of evil. Or that the knife a warrior wields is innately evil, while the knife a surgeon wields is innately good.

The trend you notice icomes from two things:
1) Clueless readers - and I'm not meaning this as slang, I mean the newbs - who don't know a lick about the planes or their interactions and are making some pretty base assumptions.

2) Recent books which have tied negative energy undead to evil and positive energy undead to good. Which is in direct and *utter* contradiction to 2nd ed material and frankly poorly researched. Look up the elven undead guardians, the baelnor - a great example of 2nd ed undead, negative energy critter that's L-to-the-G. It's been widely assumed that animated objects are defined as items having a link forged to the positive energy plane in the same way undead do to the negative. (I'll include a reference for this as soon as I can find one.)

In short - the only reason negative energy is deemed 'evil' is really more because it's 'icky'. And positive is deemed 'good' is because it's... I dunno - 'fuzzy puppies'? It comes down to the logical flaw of correlation implies causation.

... and now. I'm going to put on my mod hat...
[mod] Bad Clueless. Bad. Go sit in the corner, wench. You have thread-jacked on your own forum! You oughta know better! Go to your room for thirty minutes and then when you come out post in the proper thread: here. [/mod]
*ahem*

Anyway, let's get back to making the Upper Planes more interesting.

We have the Peace War (Celestials trying to get the others to convert) and the Great Arguement (Whether to use the Ultimate Weapons or not).

We still need some dangers, I'd say. Maybe some of the fiends are trying to attack the Ultimate Weapons? Maybe more subtle strikes? Maybe the Ultimate Weapons are innately dangerious, and since being uncovered, many odd things have been seen (bandits in Bytopia, for example) that need dealing with.

Thanks
Luc "Threadkiller" French

As for the Peace War, as you so aptly named it, I think the misinformation concerning the ultimate weapon (we need a better name for that, really) should be the inherant danger surrounding it. I also like the last idea Lubaf mentioned - the weapon corrupting the planes around it. That could also be tied into the whole Asura plot (they are, after all, chaos-corrupted archons). Asuras have a lot of potential, but we need to look back on what was already written about them so as not to contradict that.

On a side note, I have come up with a short story (hopefully to be put in the Chronicles section) involving many of the major players found in the Faces of Sigil book but after Faction War. I'll write it up sometime this weekend when I have a spare moment. The reason I am mentioning this, is I might tie it in loosely with the plot we are disucussing here, but without influencing this plot too much. We'll see how it works out.

I can't answer 2 & 3, as that's more plot related, but I can see 5 modules:

1.) The uncovery of the Ultimate Weapons (whatever we decide them to be; I suggest one (the most lawful) be a production device for creating an unbeatable army).
2.) The Great Arguement.
3.) The Peace War.
4.) The Disruption of the Upper Planes.
5.) The climax, triggered by an arguement over the Asuras, wherein we see that the Ultimate Weapons should be reburied, but the warnings on the tombs should definately be clearer, and the existance (and flaws) thereof should be advertised.

#2 and 3 can be smooshed together, but #4 needs to come right before #5.

Hmmm, who says that the ultimate weapons have to be from a long time ago? Its a re-occuring idea in fantasy settings that items of great power only come from the distant past.

I can easily see a situation where you have a weapon of incredible power being built in the present. After all, what do you think the Doomguard have been doing all these years? It wouldn't surprise me one bit to discover that the Doomguard have been building a weapon capable of destroying entire planes. Or if thats a little more power then we want this weapon weilding, simply killing the inhabitants of a very large area and busting up the landscape.

The moment that even the rumor of such of weapon reaches the ears of the exemplars (maybe some secret information is discovered/ revealed by the PCs), everyone is going to make a grab for it. We'll say that its not complete yet, so the Doomguard can't use it to defend themselves.

You can base an entire module around the quick and feirce battle to take control of it. But it ends with the Celestials managing to grab it and take it to the upper planes. Some of the Doomguard working on the project are taken by the fiends, some are taken by the Celestials. Most die in the battle, either caught in the crossfire or killed when it looked like the enemy might get them.

But you end up with the Celestials having a near-complete weapon. Their first objective was simply to keep the fiends from having it, and now that they have it, they arn't sure what to do with it. But one things for sure: the fiends may have lost control of it to the celestials, but they haven't given up. The Yugoloths are setting the stage to play the Tan'ari and the Bataazue off each other as each side abandons the traditional Blood War battlefields and rushes to the upper planes, and then steal the Weapon for themselves while the Bataazue and Tan'ari duke it out.

Now you have the celestials who are rushing to complete the weapon before the fiends overrun them, and they arn't exactly sure if they can risk using it even if they do get it up and running in time.

The way I see this ending is the Celestials completing the weapon, but not before the fiends have already invaded the Upper Planes. Then, the Celestials have no choice but to use it on the fiends, on their own soil. (Come on, pick an upper planar layer that wasn't that interesting, and blow it up. That will make it interesting!). The fiends retreat, and wait to see if the Celestials are willing to use it as an offensive weapon. The weapon promptly breaks down after one use, but with time can be repaired, and made to be fired multiple times. (You have to assume the Celestails wern't exactly worried about product quality as they raced to finish it in time.) This is when the Celestials finally get a chance to get into a real ethics debate. Probably keeping it as a last resort weapon.

Meanwhile, the lower planes are working with the Doomguard they captured to build a similar weapon. And now the Celestials have to either destroy it, or find a defense against it. They try the first, and fail. Then they manage to create some spell or another that keeps the weapon from locking on the planes that it is not itself on. This spell quickly falls into fiendish hands via Yugoloth spies.

As the dust settles, you have fiends and Celestials with Doomguard Weapons, neaither of which is useful except as a last resort defense. After all, you don't want to blow up your own plane if you can help it, right?
Now your back to a similar stalemate. Sure, they could sneak their weapons onto the planes they want to destroy and then use it, but they will probably blow up their weapon in the process, and that leaves them vulnerable.

So, is this a plausible idea?

I wasn't think the Doomguard as a whole, just on of the 'faction 'sects.' If I remember correctly, one of them wants to seriously speed up Entropy anyway, right? This would be them.

And I doubt the entire pro-Entropy sect would be wiped out, just the ones who were in the fortress where the weapon was being built, and even then a fair number of them coulkd have escaped via portal. And even then some where captured by the fiends and the Celestials. The ones with the fiends we probably wont see again, but the ones the celestials have will probably be released after everything settles back into a stalemate at the end.

And, in response to #3:

But it has to be impressive enough to cause this sort of arms race scramble. If its not enough of a threat, then it loses its importance.

And this is hardly more dangerous then the 'destroy all evil in the multiverse' ultimate weapon. The only differance is that this can effect anyone.

Dont get hung up on details, its the general concept that I'm putting forward. (The concept being that rather then a long lost artifact weapon, its something built by a presently existing group. I only chose the doomguard because the Entropic fanboy groupseemed like the ones most likely to build it.)

No hard feelings here at all. Its a brainstorming session, if there wasn't some sort of criticism, I'd be a bit dissapointed.

Edit: In a previous post, you mentioned:

What adventure was this? This interests me.

Hmm... and finding a defence might require some degree of testing, yes?

I'd suggest at least one group of fiends trying to sneak in and use the celestial weapon against the celestials.

My suggestion for the Ultimate Weapons:

1.) A machine for producing an unbeatable army, each member of which is powered by its innate Goodness.
2.) A device for exterminating all evil beings.
3.) A spell that will cause all sentient beings in a given world to be able to know if a person is evil just by looking at them.

Each of these devices, unfortunately, leaves "Good" and "Evil" dangeriously undefined; suspicions that they use whatever the collective belief of the Upper Planes defines these words leads to the Peace War.

I'm inclined against having the Ultimate Weapon being a Doomguard device, if for no other reason, than because the result would be something usable by anybody, which greatly lowers the degree of the power up given to the Celestials by the weapons.

Thanks
Luc "Trinity" French

“Oh, if only we could wipe all larvae from the Lower
Plane! Many fiends and fiendish races would suffer then,
that’s for sure! Hordlings, imps, quasits, baatezu, and
tanar’ri all rise from the ranks of the larvae though, admittedly,
the baatezu and tanar’ri do emerge from other sources
as well.”
Rezzik Tam – Faces of Evil

Could the ultimate weapon destroy all larvae?
Major blow to fiends – yes
Destroying evil beings – yes
Upending the order of the planes – yes
Destroying souls which may not yet be beyond redemption – ?