Lower Planes, fiends, and the like. Might be good to fit Abattoir in here. Gives us plenty of time to find art for it.
With this issue we have a year's worth planned out ahead of time. Primary goal here is to avoid the art bottle neck and give time for crunch.
Have an artist who wants to take on Abattoir. Given this Issue is Q4 2013, might be awhile before we see the image but nice to have a potential complete art+article this early!
eta:
Also, have permission to use this story in the zine:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/story-hour/271738-response-fiction-shemeska...
It's a response fic for Shemmy's Demented Baern. If Shemmy still wants to have all the Demented put together in one supplement, by that point we can use this story as a lead to announcing that.
Also, IIRC the Clockmaker has stats?
Useful link -> Demonic Lore thread on Enworld:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/166970-demonic-lore-...
That thread is amazing!
One idea for something to include in this issue is advice on using the new types of fiends introduced by Pathfinder in a Planescape game -- where do these fiends hang out? Which ones are on which planes and layers? How are they involved with the Blood War?
Pathfinder has a total of 10 fiend races: Daemons, Demodands, Demons, and Devils as normal, plus Qlippoths (which are analogous of the Obyriths) and the introduction of the Asura (LE), Div (NE), and Oni (CE), in addition to expanding the Kyton and Rakshasa into their own races.
So how do these all fit in? Qlippoth is probably the easiest, you assimilate them into the Obyriths or pick which one you prefer (unless we have fantastic suggestions on why it's a great idea to include both in your games? Let's go let's go let's go!). The other three new ones are fairly eastern-themed, but still different from the other fiend races.
Good call on the Pathfinder fiends, I was thinking of them a few months back. Div might work better as coming from the Etheral or Quasi-Neg planes.
=-=-=
Another topic -> How do fiends police their own? Not how the punish traitors, but how do they keep even the spark of Good (or Law/Chaos) from superceded the Evil that is a fiend's very make up?
One idea from a long while back I had was that archfiends ensured that their lessers were often betrayed by trust, love, mercy and the like so they'd abandon any effort to share their vulnerabilities with others.
Maybe we could come up with a handful of hotly contested sites for the Blood War and the reason why they're being fought over.
Legendary magic items/artifacts lost by the fiends over time and the stories surrounding them.
Famous fiendish invasions across the planes, told from different viewpoints (a survivor of the attack, a greybeard recounting a history lesson, a fiend who was there, etc). You could tie this back in with my first two suggestions.
All great stuff Wicke. It's over a year away, so there's plenty of time.
Also, would love to have some demodand love in this Issue. I feel like there are some other neglected Lower Planar creatures we might give a bit of the spotlight too as well.
One thing we might want to look at it is the obsession of the 'loths and their desire to understand Evil.
Also, as a possible article the Gilded Darkness Parallel:
/forum/enumerating-parallel-multiverses#commen...
"People must hurt each other, as inevitably as they breathe. Nothing can stop it. It's not enough to accept it. Accepting it is not enough, like sighing resignedly and putting on an attitude of long-suffering. Don't get to be too good at protecting yourself. You've got to be ripped to pieces for the one you love, again and again. That's doesn't prove anything but love, and its entitlements are a frailty that can't be held.
But you will live even in that hell. The fire that hurts you gives off light like any other fire, that illuminates beautiful things, and is beautiful itself."
The Great Lover, Michael Cisco
"I will not concede defeat by this modern world. I will not retire to this fool's paradise ... I have weapons that you would not dare use.
Fear rules Man. By summoning all the Dark Powers, I will invest the spirit of Man so he will use his science and logic to destroy himself ... Turn brother against brother ... Greed and avarice shall prevail.
And those who will not hear my words shall pay the price.
I'll teach man how to use his machines.
I'll show him what distorted science can give birth to.
I'll teach him how to fly like a fairy.
And, in the end, I will give the ultimate answer to all his science can ask.
And the world will be free for my magic again.
While your powers die, mine will flourish! Man will never inherit my domain, for I am making Man mine! He will come to understand and learn to desire my magic. It is inevitable. You shall see ... This dark determination I swear ... by this Red Crown ... source of all my dark power ... so be it ... now and forever.
Farewell. Can you not feel the world turning in my direction already?"
- Omedon, The Flight of Dragons
Jacob: You know the downward spiral is essentially a chain reaction.
Allel: And nothing that comes out of your mouth makes any sense.
Jacob: They're all reactions! One thing begets the next. A man has a weakness, he's flawed. That flaw leads him to guilt. The guilt leads him to shame. The shame he compensates with pride and vanity. And when pride fails, despair takes over and they all lead to his destruction. It will become his fate...
Something's gotta stop the flow.
-Ink : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9iYchHgygc&feature=related
Plight of the Demon:
http://www.koboldquarterly.com/k/front-page13066.php#.UBlLKkR-CUc
An interesting take criticizing the Blood War but praising the Belief is Power aspect of Planescape.
I do wish more people realized that the Blood War, and the terms "tanar'ri" and "baatezu", predate Planescape.
Wayward Children of the Abyss by Todd Stewart:
http://www.koboldquarterly.com/k/front-page4466.php#.UBlWPkR-D-U
A great series with some nifty new horrors for the Abyss.
eta:
There are a few fiend related threads around here I need to make sure get mentioned - Bootchie's demon thread, some individual fiend threads, and the like.
=-=-=
A Devil May Rise:
http://www.koboldquarterly.com/k/front-page10973.php#.UBlt20R-D-U
'....the devil’s mind reflected on the first time he had seen the Eternal Light: the time Vadim had taken his hand, lifted his head and said, as they rose toward the Light, “For after all, Thiloquenn, if an angel may fall, may not a devil rise?'
Rip's History of the Lower Planes:
http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19558750/The_History_o...
The Well of Karrud: The Well of Karrud is a well filled with water that tastes like rotted meat in the mortal world. In the Shadow, the well is at the center of a city of concentric circles. Each circle is a community that becomes more and more monastic as one gets to the center. So in the outer circle you have a metropolis and at the center you have a monastic community that is a nigh-necropolis as in the last circle all that is left to do is make the final preparations before one jumps in the well.
Each circle takes one further toward the life of an ascetic, specificlaly the legendary kind of guru fable in the East for being able to subsist on little more than dew and light. Each circle is also less capricious and evil than the ones before, as if the gloomy effects of the Shadowfell are being countermanded. This leads one to ask what is at the center of the well?
The monks in the inner circle would say the god Karrud awaits, the god who is the darkness of the subconcious. Cleansed of hate, fear, and even despair, the monks who enter the well are meeting with the god who is themselves - the darkest part they buried like all mortals do. Of course, to see these fabled monks in the center requires entrance through the circles, something not easily granted by Karrud's ogre mage militias that prevent fraternizing between circles as well as allow traffic to flow toward the center. Only these oni are given leave to determine who is worthy to enter each successive circle.
The city is incredibly diverse, drawing members of all races fom all walks of life. Apparently the city manages to draw in people not from your world...
Note: Loosely based on the god Kud from Korea, who I was told watched over the negative, darker aspects of human nature. A god of evil who isn't evil himself essentially. Liked the idea a lot!
The Locust Graveyard: At some point, perhaps to prevent famine or to stop some dark ritual, millions of Abyssal locusts were magically drawn to this chasm to suffocate on the poisons that seep out of the earth. The vapors are both a hallucinogen and capable of draining the body of vitality in a matter of hours. It is unknown who provided the glyphs on the walls of the chasm, magic apparently strong enough to lure thunderheads of demonic insects to this place and keep them here until they finally passed away.
What is left is a chemically preserved pile of insects that, due to their demonic heritage, retain glimmers of life. In fact, after their deaths they should have vanished back to their homeland, but some interaction between the misty poison and the magic of the glyphs prevented that. Their collective ghost haunts this area as a ethereal titan known as The Goetia, a spectral swarm that attacks anything around it as it cannot return to the Abyss until it is destroyed of fulfills its original purpose to destroy some nation or family. To attempt this in the present would mean killing some lineage that perhaps one of the PCs is either a part of or the sworn enemy of.
The Iron Heart
A heart made of iron sits in a fountain in a courtyard abandoned to the ravages of time, the buildings around it ground down to their foundations. Some kind of black liquid dribbles from the varied holes, and the plantlife around the fountain is twisted and grotesque, trees whose bark resembles blistered flesh and grass that makes one think of eyelashes. The soil under one's feet seems to be a thin layer of dirt over a membrane but digging reveals nothing but soil soaked with the black liquid. The heart, in truth, is possessed by a sibirex obyrith who escaped the ancient war between the Queen of Chaos and the Wind Dukes of Aquaa.
"If Evil comes from one's conditioning in the world, then we have a responsibility to lead people to another path while recognizing the majority of their moral makeup is not of their choosing.
But then again, if Evil comes from some an external Platonic force then those touched by it are to be pitied if they cannot change or cured if they can be. If Evil comes from cataracts on the Third Eye, then people are to be Enlightened so they can see the Good."
-Katerina the Silver Hoofed, for whom All are Oprhans
LET ME AT MY PREY!
LET ME FEED AND FEED UNTIL NOTHING REMAINS BUT MANDRAKK!
BLOATED AND ALONE BENEATH A SKYFUL OF MURDERED STARS!
-Superman Beyond 3D
"Exhausted. Isolated. Your father failed to save his world. Now it's your turn...
The dying God left your universe wounded, broken, defenseless and alone in the endless dark...where Mandrakk dwells. Here at the end of ALL stories."
-Final Crisis
Pathfinder has a total of 10 fiend races: Daemons, Demodands, Demons, and Devils as normal, plus Qlippoths (which are analogous of the Obyriths) and the introduction of the Asura (LE), Div (NE), and Oni (CE), in addition to expanding the Kyton and Rakshasa into their own races.
So how do these all fit in?
Oni are described as disgraced, disembodied spirits that take on monstrous humanoid forms on the material plane. While there are in theory as many types of oni as there are of humanoids, it's interesting that three (arguably four) of the five corporeal Oni presented in the Bestiary are elemental: fire, ice, and water (their forms being the appropriate giant types and possessing element-appropriate special abilities; the Void Oni is a whole different thing, though they could plausibly be associated with Negative Energy, flavor-wise).
So if I were integrating them into a PS campaign I might dispense with the whole backstory and the countless types and use what's presented thus far as the basis for Oni as Tanaric-Elemental hybrids. Off the top of my head I can't think of any extant creatures that fit this description, and the heritage could certainly make for some good drama. While some might be outcasts, dominating prime worlds and whatnot, others would be the Tanari presence on the inner planes, mucking up Efreet-Baatezu business and whatnot.
....
Ok, just reading about the Div now - oddly enough, they're explicitly described as arising from the spirits of especially evil genies, despite having no particularly elemental properties at all. I'll think on this.
....
Also, it feels to me as if the Baatezu should be more imperial than they seem to be presented (a la the vast breadth of the Vaati Empire). For instance, while I'm happy with the Rakshasas holding it down in Acheron, I like to think that if the Baatezu say jump...
Cardigan sits in his small plain room staring aimlessly at a dull spot on the barren wall. He’s been trying to remember the words to an old song about belonging to You . . . trying . . .
He knows there are faces on the other side of the wall, knows they have voices, and plans . . . and dreams. Knows they remember tales they were told . . . He’s detected their thrashing, knows, they too, are slaves of The Tide . . .
Smiles darkly . . . Follows where his thoughts drift—within to Inmost . . . Through a dark labyrinth, a hedgerow of black murmurs . . . secrets rumble and something slithers, tears at the Blackness . . . Castles of sand . . . And bastions of sand . . . and The Tide is rushing in . . . It fades to a sad smile . . .
Something in his eyes burns.
He knows Night waits on the other side of the door . . .
Pulver Sr., Joseph S.. The Orphan Palace (Kindle Locations 177-181). Chomu Press. Kindle Edition.
I don't recall either of these things being present in 1e. I could have missed it, though.
Legendary magic items/artifacts lost by the fiends over time and the stories surrounding them.
Famous fiendish invasions across the planes, told from different viewpoints (a survivor of the attack, a greybeard recounting a history lesson, a fiend who was there, etc). You could tie this back in with my first two suggestions.
I really like these ideas.
I might have an artifact description or two lying around that I haven't posted yet...
Zim - good to see you again!
Aw, thank you 
Can also provide snippets of the Lower Planar Renovation Projects, keeping up with the ideal of showing off some of the work we already have!
Health Resources: Register family with 911 services, so providers will have info prior to emergency/disaster. Also mental health info & hotlines, articles, treatment assistance options, prescription assistance, special needs registries, legal aid, and more!