| Author |
Message |
Journeyman Greytalker
Joined: Jan 21, 2010
Posts: 196
Send private message
|
Wed Feb 20, 2013 2:06 am
Flight of Fiends and devils - I'm missing a piece of info
|
REPLY
QUOTE
TOP
|
|
Once I read somewhere that the Flight of Fiends may have not affected devils and they might have pretended that they were banished.
I just can't find this information anymore. Is it somewhere or was it just a dream?
|
|
|
GreySage
Joined: Aug 03, 2001
Posts: 3310
From: Michigan
Send private message
|
Wed Feb 20, 2013 6:00 am
|
REPLY
QUOTE
TOP
|
|
|
That's from Guide to Hell by Chris Pramas. Page 18.
|
|
|
Journeyman Greytalker
Joined: Jan 21, 2010
Posts: 196
Send private message
|
Wed Feb 20, 2013 7:01 am
|
REPLY
QUOTE
TOP
|
|
Thank you Rasgon!
Just as a sidenote: In my campaign the clerics of Boccob based in Sheldomar Valley are trying to investigate the reason why devils weren't banished. They would like to summon devils and conduct research on them, but they are afraid of breaking the law: summoning fiends is punishable by death. Of course some clerics have already summoned devils and questioned them, but they have to keep the results as a secret. Open and legal research with official records would be more efficient.
Now the boccobites have sent an adventuring party (the PCs of my players) to Hell (Stygia) to capture live devils. This is a lawful thing to do. Maybe in this way they can have legal means to investigate the problems behinds Flight of Fiends and perhaps publish a study one day. All in the glory of Boccob, of course.
|
|
|
GreySage
Joined: Sep 09, 2009
Posts: 2470
From: SW WA state (Highvale)
Send private message
|
Wed Feb 20, 2013 3:55 pm
|
REPLY
QUOTE
TOP
|
|
Never heard or read about this before...of course, I am 'stuck' in 2e materials.  Please expand on this for those of us, myself included, who are ignorant on said topic. Fiends are the catch all term for the lower planar denizens of evil: devils, demons, and daemons, so I am perplexed by this assertion.
Lanthorn
|
|
|
GreySage
Joined: Aug 03, 2001
Posts: 3310
From: Michigan
Send private message
|
Wed Feb 20, 2013 5:14 pm
|
REPLY
QUOTE
TOP
|
|
| Lanthorn wrote: |
| Never heard or read about this before...of course, I am 'stuck' in 2e materials. |
Guide to Hell is a 2nd edition supplement. It was published in 1999.
| Quote: |
| Please expand on this for those of us, myself included, who are ignorant on said topic. Fiends are the catch all term for the lower planar denizens of evil: devils, demons, and daemons, so I am perplexed by this assertion. |
Ormus was a spiritually conflicted cleric of Rao in Veluna who converted to the church of St. Cuthbert after the Greyhawk Wars. He was unable to reconcile his church's support of the Pact of Greyhawk with what he saw as a continued need to confront Iuz directly, and one of St. Cuthbert's clerics, a Billet named Marcel, persuaded him that peace treaties were abhorrent in the face of such manifest evil. In the Vesve forest, the now-Cuthbertite Ormus liberated a former Cuthbertite monastery from an evil warlord who claimed to have been led astray by a devil.
"According to Canon Hazen and the church of Rao, all fiends had been banished from the Flanaess. Ormus, however, had his doubts and initiated an investigation. As he suspected, only the demons had been affected. Since Iuz had used them in large numbers, their absence was obvious. When Canon Hazen affirmed that the other fiends had gone with the demons, no one doubted him. But now Ormus knew better. The devils were not only still in the Flanaess, they benefited from the widespread belief that they had been banished. Ormus knew he had to stop them."
The text went on to describe the various branches of the order of devil-hunters that Ormus founded. The book statted a kind of minor possessor devil, and rooting those guys out is one of the order's primary tasks.
|
|
|
GreySage
Joined: Sep 09, 2009
Posts: 2470
From: SW WA state (Highvale)
Send private message
|
Thu Feb 21, 2013 4:00 pm
|
REPLY
QUOTE
TOP
|
|
Odd that such information never seemed to make it into other publications and sourceguides like "The Adventure Begins" or LGG. It would've been helpful.
-Lanthorn
|
|
|
Grandmaster Greytalker
Joined: Jul 10, 2003
Posts: 1234
From: New Jersey
Send private message
|
Thu Feb 21, 2013 5:23 pm
|
REPLY
QUOTE
TOP
|
|
| Lanthorn wrote: |
Odd that such information never seemed to make it into other publications and sourceguides like "The Adventure Begins" or LGG. It would've been helpful.
-Lanthorn |
You may wish to go over your notes my friend. The flight of fiends was a major Greyhawk event. Lucky for you the church of Rao is forgiving in these matters.
Later
Argon
|
|
|
GreySage
Joined: Aug 03, 2001
Posts: 3310
From: Michigan
Send private message
|
Thu Feb 21, 2013 6:12 pm
|
REPLY
QUOTE
TOP
|
|
He means that he wonders why the "devil exception" isn't mentioned in other sources.
The answer is that it's something Chris Pramas invented for Guide to Hell and no one else liked the idea enough to mention it elsewhere. I can imagine Chris Pramas thinking "how the hell am I going to write a sourcebook about devils if all the devils on Oerth are gone?" and everyone else just yawning and deciding that fiends exist where they need them with no explanation or hint of conspiracy necessary.
The Flight of Fiends was important in that it temporarily set back Iuz's ambitions and probably meant that his Abyssal allies were reluctant to lend him further troops, but later sources contain plenty of fiends of various kinds, so obviously it wasn't some kind of permanent shield against fiends entering the Flanaess and some fiends, even demons, were never banished at all. For example, the erinyes of Alhaster in Dungeon #131, and the Fiend-Sage of Rel Astra seemingly never left, and the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer mentions demons still haunting Iuz's city of Dorakaa even after the Flight of Fiends.
|
|
|
Journeyman Greytalker
Joined: Jan 21, 2010
Posts: 196
Send private message
|
Thu Feb 21, 2013 9:35 pm
|
REPLY
QUOTE
TOP
|
|
| rasgon wrote: |
and everyone else just yawning and deciding that fiends exist where they need them with no explanation or hint of conspiracy necessary.
|
Well, you can say that again. For instance, I ran Shadows over Istivin adventure (Dungeon magazine #117 - #119) and they had plenty of demons there. Mostly it made no sense, so I simply had to replace them with yugoloths and devils.
|
|
|
|
