Fundamental Gray

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Fri, 2007-09-07 18:21

Iavas

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Fundamental Gray

This is a thread for discussing the very basic workings of the Gray Waste, its native inhabitants, and its relationships to the surrounding planes. I believe it is important to have a decent understanding of the underlying infrastructure of a story (or fictional place) before one can begin expanding upon it without straying too far from the source. Particularly regarding this basic information, we should try to stick to the original canon (that is, from official TSR 2e Planescape sources) as closely as possible. It would also be prudent to include the more popular of the fan-created details possibilities or even, if they do not contradict the official sources, as 'new canon' upon which we can expand. Leave it to the other threads to discuss that expansion - the psychology of the hordlings, the behaviour of the night hags, and the locales and items of the Waste. This thread is for more fundamental questions, some of which I will list below to start us off:

Petitioners:
Petitioners are the souls of the dead, appearing in the plane most closely matching their alignment (or in the realm of their deity, in case of the religious ones). They are relatively weak and attempt to merge with their plane, but they are also the first step in exemplar caste systems. Exemplars (baatezu, tanar'ri, archons, etc) can arise either directly from their plane (in which case they take their life essence from those petitioners already merged and purified by the plane) or from the ranks of artificially purified petitioners. In the Waste, petitioners not claimed by a particular deity appear in one of two known ways. The first form, taken by the less willful neutral evil berks after death, is that of a shadowy gray ghost that is attracted to life as a moth to a flame but is otherwise completely emotionless. The other form is the better known larva, a five foot long maggot with an angry humanoid face and no predefined alignment other than evil. These are used as food, currency, building material, and spell components by the more powerful fiends. There are great herds of these, typically driven by night hags on nightmare mounts, throughout the lower planes.

¤ Are there any other forms of non-deity petitioners besides shades and larvae on the Waste? If so, what are they?

¤ What is the origin of larvae? Some are definitely produced by the night hags' nightmare ability, but that is a lengthy and uncertain process that can hardly explain the herds of larvae spread throughout the lower planes. Are they also a natural and most basic form of petitioner, a more advanced form of petitioner, the result of hag influence on normal petitioners, the result of the Yugoloth 'reproductive' process¹, or some combination of the above?

¤ Where do larvae arise? Are they native only to the Gray Waste and appear on the other lower planes only through trading and the effort of night hag larvherds, or are can they spontaneously arise anywhere from Acheron to Pandemonium (or at least Baator to the Abyss)?

¤ What exactly is the relationship between larvae and night hags? Why do night hags have the natural ability to produce larvae from stolen life essences? How exactly is the larvae involved in the night hag reproductive cycle²? Can larvae ever naturally evolve into night hags if left alone for a long enough time, or do they change into something else?

¤ What, if any, is the relationship between larvae and yugoloths¹?

¤ Are larvae even true petitioners, or are they simply physical representations of a person's evil nature without any actual 'soul'?

Hordlings:
Hordlings are the individualistic, sadistic, and far too prolific monsters with unique shapes and abilities. They make kip on the Waste and seem to have no ulterior motive besides rampage and slaughter. They appear to have a mutually laissez faire relationship with the night hags, but neither does either side hold much love for the other.

¤ Are the hordlings simply natives of the Waste, or are they actually the exemplars of that plane? Keep in mind, the Yugoloths are not technically exemplars, and a lack of an official progression for the hordling race might be interpreted as a direct effect (or perhaps a representation) of the Waste's apathy toward advancement (and everything else, for that matter).

¤ Where do hordlings come from? Do they reproduce? Are they born directly from the Waste like exemplars? Are they created from larvae or other petitioners? Do night hags have anything to do with their creation? Is the truth some combination of the above or, perhaps, something completely different?

¤ What is the exact relationship between hordlings and night hags? Why the uneasy peace? Are they more like people and wild dogs, two forces in a cold war, or two different keepers of a hidden secret?

More to come soon... hopefully. Start thinking, folks.
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1. Yugoloths, unlike the other 'exemplar' races, do not arise from petitioners. It has been suggested that newly created Yugoloths, upon cleansing themselves of the impurities of Law and Chaos, discard these impurities into surrounding petitioners. It has also been suggested that this is the way baatezu and tanar'ri first arose, replacing the more ancient and original baatorians and obyriths. While not completely official, this theory is pretty widely accepted and merits consideration. One possibility is that the yugoloths not only use use petitioners as spiritual wastebins but also as a source of life or soul energy, leaving behind a petty larva that is a petitioner representative of all and none in particular of the lower planes.

2. (Planes of Chaos - Liber Malevolantiae, p50) and perhaps a particular Dragon Magazine article which I can't locate at the moment.

Fri, 2007-09-07 22:13

Moral-Decay

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Hymneth said this in the other thread:

Quote:

I'm not sure how it may tie in, but as far as larvae go, I'm pretty sure the PS2e adventure "In the Abyss" has the Tanar'ri and the Doomguard constructing the massive Ships of Chaos out of Abyss-spawned Larvae. I could be wrong though, as I don't have the booklet with me. I do know the thing was primarily a writhing mass of fused souls built around a few demons, and most of the framework was shaped larvae.

But the Abyss could have freaks and exceptions of all kinds. As far as I know, and feel free to jump in, larvae elsewhere could all derive from the Gray Waste and travel by way of night hag deals or the Styx (say). In the latter case they might arrive in bad shape, and take on lawful or chaotic traits as the plane revives them.

Fri, 2007-09-07 22:22

(Reply to #2) #3

The Great Hippo

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'Moral-Decay' wrote:

I know absolutely nothing about core concerning the larva, but it strikes me as a good angle to view the larva as completely blank slates as far as their alignment goes--they're what happens when a petitioner has been reduced to their most base components. Like an evil seed--if left to grow on a certain plane, they'll adopt that plane's characteristics (law, chaos, neutrality) with bits and pieces of their previous personality worked into it (similar to how a crystal inherits the properties of the mineral it was formed from).

Sun, 2007-09-09 11:39

(Reply to #3) #4

Iavas

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I have a particular idea concerning larvae. The only problems are that I'm not sure if it contradicts anything canonical and I'm not sure how to incorporate it without just directly explaining it as I'm about to.

Petitioners, being essentially the departed souls of dead creatures, have two parts: the spirit and the alignment. The spirit is the life force and the ultimate identity of the creature in question. It absorbs all the memories and lessons acquired from both life and afterlife, although these cannot usually be directly accessed even by the creature itself. The alignment is the essence fuelled by the actions of the creature during its most recent life. These two aspects are seperated from the physical body after death and combined into the new petitioner's body on the plane that attracts the particular alignment. Upon the petitioner's 'death' or absorption into its chosen plane, the alignment joins with and expands the plane while the spirit, having acquired some of the lessons, punishments, and/or rewards of the most recent alignment, returns to live a new life in a new body, oblivious of the memories of the past life in any but the most subconcious way. If the petitioner, on the other hand, progresses into an exemplar, the alignment takes center stage while the spirit is simply used to fuel the new body as it forgets any previous lives that it lead before.
Larvae, created outside of this natural process (still questionable, see my previous post), are simply the corporeal representations of an evil alignment. The spirit aspects are stolen to fuel either the life of the Yugoloths or whatever terrible purpose the hags need them for. The 'loths combine this spirit with the pure evil alignment aspect that they draw directly from the Waste itself, making them a sort of artificial exemplar. The larvae, then, are nothing more than the manifestations of an evil alignment, regardless of its position on the law/chaos axis, and utterly bereft of any sort of identity or life-force. They can thus be used to strengthen an evil spell, ritual, or exemplar. However, they cannot be directly transformed into an autonomous being, even one as weak as a lemure or imp, without the extraneous addition of some spirit. Larvae left alone for a long enough time, however, begin to develop a new spirit. This is both the reason that hags herd larvae and charge more for particular ones.

Tue, 2007-09-11 16:40

(Reply to #4) #5

Kay

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@ Iavas: Is anything of that canon? For I believe that it is common for Baatezu (and maybe some Tanarri) to turn larvae into their respective base form (nupperibo, etc). I don't actually know where I got this from, but I'd like to propose something on my own:

Those folk who manage not to end up in the fangs of the many beings that call themselves gods will eventually 'petition' the plane of their respective alignment. Dwelling the happy fields of Elysium? Lucky! Ending up on the bleak grounds of The Nadir? Not so. But then, its your fault (oh, don't blame society! your dna? whats that?). No matter what excuses you'll come up with there is no way to avoid your rightfully earned fate (or maybe there is, but that's an entirely different matter).

Evil persons go to hell. Everyone know this. What not-so-many know is that there are many different hells. To which one you'll go, that depends: either you are stuck with a pantheon - which we won't discuss since this book doesn't concern itself with the poor sods that are caught by the powers - or you'll end up as a part on an evil plane someday. But before that happens you're going to enjoy a (more or less) long existence among the winged inhabitants of these planes: the fiends. Although many secrets are still covered in the mists of myth (like, why so many fiends actually possess wings), there are no few people on the planes who know at least a bit o'the dark. So, ever wondered what happend to that bully from the other side of the street? Here's the chant, berk!

It is common knowledge among planar denizens that the Night Hags tend to 'herd' a lot of the little abnormities called larvae. Some of these are the unfortunate victims of the sister's own evil action, but most are not. They once 'qualified' for their now-attained existence by being generally evil and mean. That said, larvae are the 'basis' of all evil to crawl out of the planes. They are the remains of those who led a life the multiverse considers 'evil'. The great dictator, the violent husband, the wicked crone, you get the impression. Larvae turn up on every evil plane and may be of any evil alignment, but are rather fastly absorbed to whatever that planes provides for them.

However, a few souls don't end that simply: particular powerful, strong-willed or otherwise outstanding berks might escape this fate, though this escape is not about getting a second chance or accidently pop up in Exstasy. On The Waste it basically means one of two things (which doesn't mean that there is no third possibility just hidden behind the obvious): Becoming a Hordling or 'real' petitioner.

If a blood has led a life of excessive desire, rage, anger, hatred there is a chance (though no guarantee) that the power of these emotions will prevent him from transforming into a larvae - and instead make him a one of the rampaging maniac fiends that are called Hordlings.

tl;dr:
*larvae turn up on every evil plane and may be of any evil alignment, but are rather fastly absorbed to whatever that planes provides for them
*particular powerful, strong-willed or otherwise outstanding berks might turn into Hordlings or 'normal' petitioners

I'm really sorry I can't finish this today - but I've become really tired while writing this. If these ideas got generally accepted I'll be happy to write some more bits of "fluff". For now, I'll just fall asleep.

Tue, 2007-09-11 17:23

(Reply to #5) #6

Iavas

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Kay, I'm not quite sure how your idea differs from the generally accepted view of larvae, but I hope you'll clear that up after you've had a good rest.

As for my previous post, it was not canonical. It was simply my own musings on the way petitioners would logically work. As far as I am aware, it doesn't contradict too much. Fiends can still make more fiends out of larvae, but only the older ones that have developed their own life force. The weaker ones are snacks.

Tue, 2007-09-11 21:59

(Reply to #6) #7

Zeniel

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For Iavas sake(coz he asked me too) and the project I think I should say that I am of the belief that Larvae are not just found on the Gray Waste. The evidence of this is very simple.

As we all know the vast majority of the Baatezu and Tanar'ri population come from larvae. However the Tanar'ri population has been accounted, numerous times, to be far larger than the Baatezu population. Something along the lines of ten Tanar'ri for every one Baatezu. Maybe more I can't really say.

To the Fiend laboratory! Its time to find out a little more of fiend interaction with larvae!
Now the reason why the Tanar'ri haven't conquered their arch enemies with sheer numbers, is because like all great chaotic evil people, their all too busy fighting amongst themselves with their own petty power struggles. If they all united and worked together like the baatezu. They'd've won the blood war a loong time ago. Also you gotta hand it to the baatezu to be able to take on an army ten times its size and manage to hold its ground, but I'm digressing.

Now IF the larvae only appear on the Gray Waste. How in the abyss did the Tanar'ri manage to get such fine deals from the night hags? I would think the Baatezu would be far shrewder traders. A Tanar'ri'd probably just want to take the ones it wanted, at least of foolish Tanar'ri would. And while fiends can and do breed, the main body of their population comes from their larvae.

Also Baatezu do not eat their larvae, their far too valuable to be wasted like that. At the very least the crappy Larva turned Lemure can make good cannon fodder for the more ambitious one. Tanar'ric larvae I have read, appear in enourmous swarming masses inside a crater or something along those lines, I think the Hezrou are the ones in charge of whether they become food or manes, I'll need to recheck the info.

Plus devils can breed too, so theres no downfall on their behalf. Its whole reason , as to why demons and devils corrupt people in the first place, in order for their sould to fall to their version of the dark side and matierialise onto their plane so they can get more recruits for the blood war!

So by this simple known fact of the other fiends, we can understand that larvae simply cannot just go to the waste. Unless the tanar'ri have some trick up their sleeve. But i don't think the Abyssal lords are dumb enough to try and fool a Night hag out of more larvae.

I'm starting to think I should post up info on larvae in my Old School info post as well. Seeing as they play an important part of the night hag/hordling schtick.

Tue, 2007-09-11 22:22

(Reply to #7) #8

Iavas

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Ooh. Do post more info. More info is always good.

However, I do want to offer this reply to the Tanar'ri numbers problem you mentioned above. Firstly, while the Tanar'ri are chaotic, a healthy lot of them are far from stupid, particularly those with the resources to buy larvae. It is a common misconception, but a misconception nevertheless, that chaos = stupidity. They still know what they want and how to get it, but they might take less logical or fair methods than their Baatezu counterparts in getting it.
Also, aside from larvae promotion, both Tanar'ri and Baatezu spawn from their respective planes - the latter in the form of Nupperibos (which they later turn into Lemures and set on the Baatezu progression rollercoaster) and the former in any possible shape (which most commonly defaults to Manes and Dretches). My suggestion is that the building blocks of this new fiendish life originate as follows: the shape is brought about by the nature of the respective planes, the alignment aspect is acquired from the plane itself (which acquired it from petitioners and beliefs), and the life force is either left to grow in the new life (explaining the utter mindlessness of the lowest ranking fiends) or siphoned off from some nearby petitioner. It is a natural process, and it is a short step from there to assume that it simply happens more often on the Abyss for whatever reason. After all, some planes are just more populated, just as some planes have more layers.

Tue, 2007-09-11 22:31

(Reply to #8) #9

Zeniel

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I know first hand that chaos isn't stupidity. I believe that if naturally left alone, a Larvae on Baator will simply turn into a Nipperibo. However a Baatezu will manipulate any larva into lemures and any Nipperibo into them as well. As I said I will have to check up this. The reason why the tannar'r come off as mindless is because. They do what they are told or they are killed. They dominate or kill those weaker because to do so will make them strong enough to conquer those in their way. When sent into the blood war its a lot like the Sabbat in Vampire:The masquerade. Their beaten over the head and told to charge with no prior training beyond their own infernal ability. Those that die deserved to and those that lived prove the stronger. Also with the Tannaric larvae they form into one of three, Manes, Dretch or Rutterkin, as I'm sure you know but just in case.
As I've said and I'll say again, I'll definately research the larva as it is becoming more and more important to the projects completion.

Tue, 2007-09-11 22:59

(Reply to #9) #10

Hymneth

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'Iavas' wrote:

Also, aside from larvae promotion, both Tanar'ri and Baatezu spawn from their respective planes - the latter in the form of Nupperibos (which they later turn into Lemures and set on the Baatezu progression rollercoaster) and the former in any possible shape (which most commonly defaults to Manes and Dretches).

Just a quick correction. Nupperbios are not Baatezu. They are used by them as mindless troops sometimes when they don't have time to boil them down into lemures, but they are not Baatezu. A Nupperbio can never be 'promoted' into even a Spinagon unless its essence has been transformed from the ground up into a Lemure first. One of the big Darks with a capital D in the lower planes is that Nupperbios are the last remaining vestiges of the Ancient Baatorians, except for a few odd monstrosities in the depths of the Hells. Baatezu are either the results of sexual reproduction or souls (usually larva) that are altered at a fundamental level.

There are some details on this in Tales of the Infinite Staircase. That book gets mentioned a lot, don't it?

Tue, 2007-09-11 23:07

(Reply to #10) #11

Zeniel

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I know nupperibos aren't Baatezu. However they sure as hell change them into baatezu.

Wed, 2007-09-12 01:57

(Reply to #11) #12

Moral-Decay

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1. I'm not sure what you mean by "fine deals". I gather tanar'ri and baatezu both pay large amounts of magic or money for a theoretically infinite resource that one could theoretically find lying around in Hades in any desired quantity (if one spent enough time looking). And balors have enough 'order' or consistency in them to keep paying the night hags or the General of Gehenna, which seems related to the following.

2. What's this about most tanar'ri coming from larvae? I had the impression that plenty of them started as petitioners, namely manes. Demons will tell you they only buy larvae to drive up the price and make life harder for the baatezu.* Now, this is probably a lie. At one point the fiends of the Abyss and the Nine Hells did form naturally from petitioners and their planes.** Each realm offered an afterlife that might, on paper, appeal to people of their alignment. Baator would let them join the personifications of their Law, fighting for true justice, the rule of their superior race and the glory of Hell. The Abyss would let them fight as nature intended, choosing their own forms after proving their strength. Then the yugoloths found a way to bring each plane closer to their own. On the Abyss, carefully crafted demons inspired a plague of imitation so great that strong manes will now develop into tanar'ri by default (on most of the layers we know). The demon hierarchy just has to give them a little push at most. But in the Nine Hells, devils had to exterminate the natives (probably with help from indefinitely many archons, before belief changed the whole situation) and still have trouble converting their own petitioners to the new infernal law. They've never matched their enemies' numbers for this reason. Getting back to the claim that demons don't really need larvae, their Abyssal recruits probably don't lend themselves to the creation of new balors, this being the first model designed by the forces of Neutral Evil.

Note that the Gray Waste never offered much of an appealing afterlife, as far as we know. It has nothing to recommend it except the sinister suggestion that one day its despair will spread everywhere and destroy all other options. Maybe mortal belief in punishment (and lack of belief in anything among many Neutral Evil types) produced an unpleasant 'punishment' in Hades that spread in its own way to the nupperibos. Or maybe someone with no interest in mortal ideology found a way to shape the Waste so their interests took precedent over the petitioners.

*This claim comes from a Dragon article on night hags. The article also claims that "larvae" from other planes make terrible fiends and may spontaneously merge with their plane after promotion.
**I don't know where the rest of this came from, but it would surprise me to learn that canon contradicted it.

Wed, 2007-09-12 07:33

(Reply to #12) #13

Iavas

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I reread a portion of Faces of Evil, and found that while both Tanar'ri and Baatezu arise from larvae and other petitioners, the Tanar'ri do so more often because the Nalfeshnee judges at the Mountain of Woe transform almost all of the unclaimed chaotic evil petitioners (stated as larvae, but that's a seperate question*) into fiends. Baatezu, on the other hand, do so much more selectively and thus less frequently. Also, the Tanar'ri can form directly from the Abyss itself. They literally pull themselves out of the ground. Baatezu can also do this, but far more rarely. Laws of nature really muddle up the whole creationinst schtick. Finally, fiends also procreate, making wee little fiendlings. And by wee little fiendlings I mean fully grown monsters. Enjoy that image.

Regarding the Gray Waste as being less appealing than Baator or the Abyss, I must disagree. After all, if you lead an evil life and, while not genuinely regretting your actions, were tired of all the worries that came with the evil life, you would no doubt wish for nothing more than to "forget it all and stop caring".

* That question being: are all lower planar petitioners naturally larvae and, if so, why. If not, which is the answer that I prefer because other products mention other types of petitioners, what creates the difference and which one is more 'natural'.

Wed, 2007-09-12 16:43

(Reply to #13) #14

Ornum

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'Zeniel' wrote:

For Iavas sake(coz he asked me too) and the project I think I should say that I am of the belief that Larvae are not just found on the Gray Waste. The evidence of this is very simple.

I don't think this question has definitely been answered, but I'll throw this in, anyway.

They aren't just found on the Grey Waste. I have two sources here that I'll share, just to help clarify. The first is from Faces of Evil (page 94).

"Night hags're an important link in the chain of the Lower Planes. They herd vast armies of larvae across the plane, culling the worst and selling the choicest to fiends, liches, and other creatures that require life forces. Fact is, hags're somehow able to tell the good larvae from the bad quick as a wink; that's why their customers deped on 'em. And one reason they harvest mostly on the Grey Waste is that the plane's larvae are all neutral evil, which are easily adapted by both baatezu and tanar'ri."

The bold part flat out says that they harvest "mostly" in the Wastes, which means they must also be found outside of that plane.

Another quote, this time from the Planes of Law booklet on Baator (page 10).

"There are several kinds of petitioners found on Baator. The first and most common are lemures, the infantry for the vast armies of Baator. Only the most evil of mortals can achieve status as lemures, and they're here regardless of who they worshipped in life. As long as their actions promoted law and evil, it doesn't matter who the god was - they're doomed to serve forevermore in the baatezu armies.

Those mortals who were selfish, proud, and ambitious, but not evil enough to make the initial cut as lemures, find themselves petitioners in the form of mindless larvae instead."

Again, the bold passage flat out says that baatorian petitioners can, in fact, be found in the form of larvae.

Wed, 2007-09-12 18:18

(Reply to #14) #15

Iavas

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Awesome, Ornum. That is precisely the kind of evidence I was looking for. There were sometimes minor contradictions between various sources, and the more direct quotes we can get before building up suppositions, the better. These inconsistencies crop up particularly often concerning the fiends, such as between Faces of Evil and Planes of Conflict / Planes of Law. For instance, Faces of Evil assumes that all lower planar petitioners are larvae, from which even the weakest fiends evolve, and this was so even before the time of mortals. The purification of a larva or a Nupperibo evolved from one was, along with growing directly out of the plane itself, the only way a Baatezu could come into being.

"Faces of Evil, pp 12-13" wrote:

Mortals who didn't revere any Baatorian deities reform somewhere on the plane as wriggling larvae.

...

Baatezu troll the layers for the hardiest larvae, the ones that learn to survive and prosper, and they mold the things into lemures.

...

What few folks know is that this isn't the natural way of things - at least, not the way things started on the plane. Long, long ago, before the first baatezu ever saw the light of day, Baator was home to a race of powerful, unknown creatures. The larvae of the plane (which weren't born from moral spirits, as there weren't any mortals yet) all evolved into the fleshy fiends known as nupperibos, which were the young of the mysterious race.

...

Not all baatezu grow from larvae and nupperibos, though. Some just pull themselves fully formed from the unfeeling order of Baator itself. But, as a body might suspect, that's a tough trick in a place as structured and regulated as Baator - the baatezu don't just spring up like weeds. Still, the fiends can't produce offspring by mating (as will be discussed later), so they have only two ways to replenish their race: appear spontaneously or evolve from larvae.

Planes of Law and Planes of Conflict directly contradict the assumption that larvae are the only and original form of petitioner on all the lower planes.

"Planes of Law: Baator, p10" wrote:

There are several kinds of petitioners found on Baator. The first and most common are lemures, the infantry for the vast armies of Baator. Only the most evil of mortals can achieve status as lemures, and they're here regardless of who they worshiped in life. As long as their actions promoted both law and evil, it doesn't matter who the god was - they're doomed to serve forevermore in the baatezu armies. Those mortals who were selfish, proud, and ambitious, but not evil enough to make the initial cut as lemures, find themselves petitioners in the form of mindless larvae instead.

As you can see, this implies both that lemures are petitioners (foregoing the Nupperibo question), and that the baatezu somehow supercede the deties' claim to particularly strong petitioners. It also implies that the larvae are actually 'less' evil than the other petitioners of Baator.

"Planes of Conflict: Liber Malevolntiae, p 49" wrote:

Three sets of creatures make the Waste famous, and each of them is just as influential across the glooms in their own particular way. The omnipresent larvae are the spirits of selfish mortals, evil beings whose actions in life were so malicious that they didn't have to suffer through the gray despair the rest of the petitioners have to endure - they transformed directly to this form at their deaths. Either that, or the larvae were the unfortunate victims of night hags.

This, to me, implies that the larvae are somehow special to the Waste, either being more numerous or native here. Secondly, it implies that they were 'more' evil than the other petitioners (and here it means the pure evil petitioners of the Waste, not just the Lawful Evil petitioners of Baator).

As you can see, there are quite a few minor contradictions. It seems that the Nupperibo idea was only added in Faces of Evil, and that book rewrote some of the ideas behind fiends. Should it be the final source of canon, seeing as it was published later than the other sources I mentioned? Perhaps, although I would vouch for a combination of ideas, since they are all 'canon', so to speak, and some of the stuff in Planes of Law/Conflict makes far more sense.

Wed, 2007-09-12 18:57

(Reply to #15) #16

Ornum

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Contradictions, indeed!

I've been doing more digging concerning the larvae, nupperibos, and lemures.

MCI:

It implies that larvae are specific to the Waste by saying "Larvae have no will of their own and simply lie in giant, quivering masses on the grounds of the Gray Waste." (page 63 under the Combat section of the entry)

Also, it states that nupperibos are the baatezu petitioners (page 26) and it doesn't give the specifics of where lemures come from (page 25).

Of course, Faces of Evil and Planes of Law change all of that. Faces of Evil states that both lemures and nupperibos come from larvae and Planes of Law state that both lemures and larvae are petitioners.

Personally, I'd take Planes of Law as fact over the MCI, simply due to the fact that it did come out later and it fleshed out Baator better. Plus, I'd take it as fact over Faces of Evil because it is written as fact, where FoE is written in character by several "authors" and they even say that their information could be false.

Fri, 2007-09-14 02:39

(Reply to #16) #17

Squaff

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Here is my idea why are Larve found on all Lower Planes: Becaouse NE mortals realy never chosse means to their shelfis ends. So Lawfull or Chaotic ways are used in situations when they suit them most.

So I guess, after NE mortal die, whatever chosmic force places petitoners on planes just scatter their souls over Lower Planes in this order: 1. Gray Waste, 2. Gehena and Carcery, 3. Baator and Abyss.

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Fri, 2007-09-14 15:45

(Reply to #17) #18

Iavas

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I'm not sure what you mean, Squaff. Could you elaborate, please?

Fri, 2007-09-14 17:08

(Reply to #18) #19

Lubaf

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Joined: 2005-11-28

Fundamental Gray

My personal take:

Larva are petitioners who were defined more by Evil, then by any particular brand of evil; those who were selfish, but in a broad, undefined way; otherwise, they would have become full Petitioners of one of the Lower Planes. As such, Larve turn up in all the Lower Planes except Archeon and Pandemonium.

Now, that said, the Wastes is the only place where you are likely to actually encounter a Larva; all the other Lower Planes are more populous, and thus, more likely to herd their Larve, rather then engage in Open Range Larve Ranching.

Does that reconcile the canon sources sufficiently?

Thanks
Luc "Bell shaped curve" French

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