demons and devils [Archive] - Wizards Community

demons and devils [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
concerro
02-23-06, 04:30 PM From what I read in the monster manuals both demons and devils seem to enjoy bringing other to ruin even if it does not benefit them, so why is one lawful evil and the other chaotic evil? They both seem to be chaotic evil to me.
Lord_Canius
02-23-06, 04:37 PM Im not sure, read the book. It does say in the begining entry for both of them things about them, and like DM Guide kindly points out, Evil doesnt neccesarily have to like other evil. All I know is that Demons are chaotic because they delight in bloodshed and misery at the drop of a hat, and Devils take more care to plan out their bloodshed and misery, instead of just killing things for no apparent reason other than "It exists, so I killed it.".
Answer your question?
concerro
02-23-06, 04:46 PM Im not sure, read the book. It does say in the begining entry for both of them things about them, and like DM Guide kindly points out, Evil doesnt neccesarily have to like other evil. All I know is that Demons are chaotic because they delight in bloodshed and misery at the drop of a hat, and Devils take more care to plan out their bloodshed and misery, instead of just killing things for no apparent reason other than "It exists, so I killed it.".
Answer your question?
The way I understood it was that both of them do it for no reason but their methods are different. A demon is like the tank in the party who just rushes in and cleaves you with an axe, while the devil is like the rogue who stalks you for days studies your habits and then stabs you in the back with the knife. Either way you die but neither gains from your death. Just because you take the time to plan someone's death it does not make you less evil.
Verelor
02-23-06, 09:44 PM If you're still confused, think of demons as back-alley abortionists and sleazy drug-dealers, and devils as murderous fascists masterminding a police state.
DMDaddy
02-23-06, 10:14 PM Demons are all Chaotic Evil. Devils are all Lawful Evil.

They war against each other in the outer planes. Demons Vs. Devils.

Demons (chaotic) use more scare tactics and kill all within sight, unless they are Int. and Wise enough to use tactics that lead to a persons dispair. Temples are usually created to devour.

Devils (lawful) use more temptation tactics to get good to do evil. They engage in masterplan plots and schemes which involve good people unaware of the evil influence. Temples are usually created to subdue and mentally enslave to accomplish some master plan.

This is a brief description. I am no expert by far, just a christian DM who utilizes many demons and devils in my campaigns.
Ogre4Hire
02-23-06, 11:17 PM The short of it is: Demons are anarchists, Devils are Facists.

For a more detailed look at the inhabitants of the Abyss and Baator, try looking in the Manual of the Planes, Planescape's Faces of Evil (2E, but quite possibly the best supplement ever written for D&D), or ask one of the local experts such as Shemeska the Marauder (knows about everything there is to know about fiends) on the Dieties & the Planes forum.
Shemeska the Marauder
02-24-06, 09:05 PM For what it's worth, here was my reply in case it helps anyone else out:

Neither CE or LE is more or less evil. CE is just as chaotic as it is evil, and LE is just as lawful as it is evil. NE is nominally the most evil since it's purely evil without the overriding influence of L or C.

But allow me to wax philosophical for a bit, and hopefully it's coherant, it's too early as I'm writing this.

Demons (Tanar'ri being the primary group of them native to the Abyss) are malign chaos incarnate. They represent primal fury, psychotic rage, a barely lucid destructive potential bubbling up on the underside of all mortal societies. They are those things taken flesh and multiplied a thousand, million, infinite number of times to fill the unnumbered layers of the Abyss to the brim, all frothing and raging and devouring itself just as much as it spills over and defiles everything that touches it.

Demons are just as much beings of Chaos as they are beings of Evil.

Devils (Baatezu being the primary group of them native to the 9 Hells of Baator) are tyranny incarnate, the abuse of power, the need to control and dominate to see out some goal regardless of who is ground underfoot in the process. They are the corporation leading the faceless with only profit being what matters, they are the military machine that conquers without pause while also settling and remolding the conquered rather than destroying them. They're not about killing and destroying for its own sake like the Tanar'ri are, they're about control in all its forms and by any means to reach that end.

Devils are just as much beings of Law as they are beings of Evil.

Yugoloths (the native race of the Gray Waste, Gehenna, and Carceri, and the creators of the Tanar'ri and Baatezu for what it's worth) are some of both and neither at the same time. They're a paradox of selfishness and selflessness. On one hand they're not interested in anything beyond themselves and their own personal gain, yet at the same time they quite literally worship abstract evil like a living, breathing, animate thing that they themselves are the chosen children and heralds of, and its own individually unimportant hands, eyes, and ears throughout the multiverse. The yugoloths, or 'loths for short, are betrayal, treachery, meaningless misery, and agony simply because it can be applied and not because it matters for any particular reason. You will suffer, not because you matter, not for any reason, but simply because.

Yugoloths are pure evil, and they're as a race obsessed with that idea of purity, and of Evil as some nebulous, beyond deific, omnipresent force. They are not beholden to Law or Chaos in any way, and show no preference for or attachment to either, but they'll use and abuse both principles if it will further their goals and designs. They cannot, under virtually any circumstance, be trusted.
Shemeska the Marauder
02-24-06, 09:07 PM And here's a bit delving into the nature of evil from a decidedly 'lothy perspective.

Filed by Argent Longfellow, sage and planewalker of the Planewalker’s Guild of Sigil:

The following was found within the papers of the noted planar scholar and former member of the Doomguard, Nirash Petulark following his suicide by self-immolation. It purports to have been found inscribed upon a block of slate lodged within a crater in the Gray Waste. Which layer on the Waste in which it was found is not noted. Oddly, Nirash’s writing makes mention of the ‘Lord of Sorcerous Corruptions’ and a series of runes that he seems to have been unable to translate. They bear a striking resemblance to the runes found upon the so-called Loadstones of Misery, themselves also upon the Waste. Nirash also claims that the crater was sunk into a bluff overlooking the Wasting Tower of Khin-Oin, some fifty miles in the distance, as well as a series of footprints burned into the rock leading off in the direction of the tower before fading from sight.

The text, as recorded by Nirash, is reproduced below:

“Hope is a shallow, hollow concept, devoid of meaning except to those fools who mistakenly believe that it holds any worth.”

“In Baator and the Abyss, the Baatezu and Tanar’ri alike give unknowing tribute to this blasphemy against truth. Hope is lodged and ensconced at the heart of the Abyss and Baator, a horrid flaw within what should be pure. A crack in the pillars that hold and exalt the fusion of perfect evil with both law and chaos. Imperfection upon imperfections upon the face of evil.”

“Petitioners there in Baator, which mortals call Hell, have a chance albeit slim to escape their torture and slavery at the hands of their fiendish masters. Hope is granted a place, even if it involves becoming that which oppresses, rules and tortures because that it what it does. That black-hearted hope exists. This evil is imperfect, this torment incomplete, this ‘Hell’ nothing of the sort.”

“In the Abyss, the doomed mortal souls are part and parcel of the never ending and mindless slaughter. The butchers and ravagers of the infinite layers of the plane of obliterative chaos are ultimately wasteful and self-consuming. They turn their destructions inwards more than outwards and the mortals condemned to this place are given hope. Though that hope comes only by joining and becoming part of the Tanar’ri hordes, there is a chance to rise above their own pain by inflicting it on others. They can escape their torture. Even the majority of Abyssal Lords are ultimately from ascended mortal stock and not from those of their original stock from which we populated the Abyss. Their pain has a relief, a refuge and a release. They have their so-called hope, and their torment is hollow and incomplete.”

“But not here… across the three planes of conflict, the crèche, bastion and pit of the Yugoloth race, there is no such thing as hope. Within the furnaces of perdition there is only the will of the strong and the subjugation of the weak. The weak are made into their station and will die within their station. Petitioners have no chance of rising above their position of torment. At best they are capable of avoiding their fate for a time before inevitability draws its claws upon their souls. And in the end their struggles only prolong the latent suffering inflicted upon them by their plane. In the end the furnaces burn hot upon their soulstuff.”
“Within the Red Prison of Carceri there is no escape from torment, either inflicted by self styled wardens or self inflicted exile. Their prison walls are borne from their own failures, their own weakness, and their fate. Such is their lot in life, and beyond. Be they fallen powers or mortal traitors at once their fate is both forever removed from their ability to alter it, and wholly their responsibility. More often than not they make their own cages, their own nooses, their own shackles. We simply aid along in the process… Locked away, abandoned, forgotten, they will eventually saturate the orbs with their spilt blood while their essence is stolen and tormented beyond torture.”
“And in the end, they are at fault for what they cannot change. That is the gnawing torment of the plane, the secret that harrows the hearts of Crius, Cronus and Hyperion alike, all the way down to the triple aspected traitor of his own kind… they are doomed by their own hands.”

“But the depths of the Waste are reserved for the purest of evils; cold, remorseless, clinical and detached. The agonies of the Waste are constant and cannot be driven away by any act of will or show of strength. It saps the life, emotion, motivation and the will to live from the greatest hag to the lowest larvae. It is omnipresent and uncaring. The agony of the Waste pays no heed to whether you are strong or weak, it kills you slowly and painfully because it can. You are bereft of any influence upon your torment whatsoever. Will matters not, circumstance matters not, and not even the glimmer of release from your self imposed torture exists that might upon Carceri. You are nothing, you are unimportant, but you will suffer all the same.”
“The Waste gnaws at the souls of its petitioners minute by minute more so than even Nidhogg upon the roots of Yggdrasil. You are slowly devoured by misery and regret, apathy and acceptance is the only route of potential escape from it all. And that hope is a false one, an avenue to greater tortures. Eventually, bereft of what it was that made you hurt, bereft of any reason to your pain, bereft of meaning to it all and your own existence, you have only your pain to dwell upon. You clutch it tight, making it worse because that pain, your pain, gives your hollow existence a meaning and a purpose that you otherwise cannot claim. It makes you special, it makes you unique and it makes you hurt all the more so. You embrace your agonies against all reasons, for none exist but those you perceive in the absence of the self, in the absence of what it was that once made you your own being.”
“Your hope that makes you clutch to your own misery will devour you wholly. Most will simply cease to be, or continue on nearly catatonic to the outside world, aware of nothing but their own unceasing pain. Some will be sold by the hags and given a false release. Others will be killed by creatures afflicted just as much as themselves. Still others will be used by we Yugoloths to fuel the infernal sorceries and engines of the Wasting Tower, to turn the cogs of evil, to fuel the Loadstones more and more. We are perfection born of horror. Out of purposeless agony is born purpose, out of meaninglessness is born meaning. Out of your pain we arise to turn you upon the spit once more. The cycle repeats over and over and you fuel our hunger against all reason. Out of your miseries we emerge. Out of your agony I exist.”

[Publisher’s note: We have published this material under contract, though the individual who made arrangements with us originally has since passed on and we are unable to relay correspondence to him by any curious individuals. He took his own life shortly after the publication of this manuscript, according to the report filed with and available from the Sons of Mercy he gouged out his eyes before hurled himself from the edge of Suicide Alley in the city of Sigil. He was carrying the original documents from which these papers were produced at the time of his presumed suicide. We direct inquiries to his organization, the Planewalker’s Guild, Market Ward, Sigil c/o guildmaster Balthasar Thames.]
Verelor
02-25-06, 12:09 PM See this wonderful supplement for everything youe ver wanted to know about Devils. It is totally free.

Dicefreaks' The Gates of Hell (http://community.dicefreaks.com/viewtopic.php?t=88)

Horrors of the Abyss and A Light from on High coming soon!

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
concerro 02-23-06, 04:30 PM	From what I read in the monster manuals both demons and devils seem to enjoy bringing other to ruin even if it does not benefit them, so why is one lawful evil and the other chaotic evil? They both seem to be chaotic evil to me.
Lord_Canius 02-23-06, 04:37 PM	Im not sure, read the book. It does say in the begining entry for both of them things about them, and like DM Guide kindly points out, Evil doesnt neccesarily have to like other evil. All I know is that Demons are chaotic because they delight in bloodshed and misery at the drop of a hat, and Devils take more care to plan out their bloodshed and misery, instead of just killing things for no apparent reason other than "It exists, so I killed it.". Answer your question?
concerro 02-23-06, 04:46 PM	Im not sure, read the book. It does say in the begining entry for both of them things about them, and like DM Guide kindly points out, Evil doesnt neccesarily have to like other evil. All I know is that Demons are chaotic because they delight in bloodshed and misery at the drop of a hat, and Devils take more care to plan out their bloodshed and misery, instead of just killing things for no apparent reason other than "It exists, so I killed it.". Answer your question? The way I understood it was that both of them do it for no reason but their methods are different. A demon is like the tank in the party who just rushes in and cleaves you with an axe, while the devil is like the rogue who stalks you for days studies your habits and then stabs you in the back with the knife. Either way you die but neither gains from your death. Just because you take the time to plan someone's death it does not make you less evil.
Verelor 02-23-06, 09:44 PM	If you're still confused, think of demons as back-alley abortionists and sleazy drug-dealers, and devils as murderous fascists masterminding a police state.
DMDaddy 02-23-06, 10:14 PM	Demons are all Chaotic Evil. Devils are all Lawful Evil. They war against each other in the outer planes. Demons Vs. Devils. Demons (chaotic) use more scare tactics and kill all within sight, unless they are Int. and Wise enough to use tactics that lead to a persons dispair. Temples are usually created to devour. Devils (lawful) use more temptation tactics to get good to do evil. They engage in masterplan plots and schemes which involve good people unaware of the evil influence. Temples are usually created to subdue and mentally enslave to accomplish some master plan. This is a brief description. I am no expert by far, just a christian DM who utilizes many demons and devils in my campaigns.
Ogre4Hire 02-23-06, 11:17 PM	The short of it is: Demons are anarchists, Devils are Facists. For a more detailed look at the inhabitants of the Abyss and Baator, try looking in the Manual of the Planes, Planescape's Faces of Evil (2E, but quite possibly the best supplement ever written for D&D), or ask one of the local experts such as Shemeska the Marauder (knows about everything there is to know about fiends) on the Dieties & the Planes forum.
Shemeska the Marauder 02-24-06, 09:05 PM	For what it's worth, here was my reply in case it helps anyone else out: Neither CE or LE is more or less evil. CE is just as chaotic as it is evil, and LE is just as lawful as it is evil. NE is nominally the most evil since it's purely evil without the overriding influence of L or C. But allow me to wax philosophical for a bit, and hopefully it's coherant, it's too early as I'm writing this. Demons (Tanar'ri being the primary group of them native to the Abyss) are malign chaos incarnate. They represent primal fury, psychotic rage, a barely lucid destructive potential bubbling up on the underside of all mortal societies. They are those things taken flesh and multiplied a thousand, million, infinite number of times to fill the unnumbered layers of the Abyss to the brim, all frothing and raging and devouring itself just as much as it spills over and defiles everything that touches it. Demons are just as much beings of Chaos as they are beings of Evil. Devils (Baatezu being the primary group of them native to the 9 Hells of Baator) are tyranny incarnate, the abuse of power, the need to control and dominate to see out some goal regardless of who is ground underfoot in the process. They are the corporation leading the faceless with only profit being what matters, they are the military machine that conquers without pause while also settling and remolding the conquered rather than destroying them. They're not about killing and destroying for its own sake like the Tanar'ri are, they're about control in all its forms and by any means to reach that end. Devils are just as much beings of Law as they are beings of Evil. Yugoloths (the native race of the Gray Waste, Gehenna, and Carceri, and the creators of the Tanar'ri and Baatezu for what it's worth) are some of both and neither at the same time. They're a paradox of selfishness and selflessness. On one hand they're not interested in anything beyond themselves and their own personal gain, yet at the same time they quite literally worship abstract evil like a living, breathing, animate thing that they themselves are the chosen children and heralds of, and its own individually unimportant hands, eyes, and ears throughout the multiverse. The yugoloths, or 'loths for short, are betrayal, treachery, meaningless misery, and agony simply because it can be applied and not because it matters for any particular reason. You will suffer, not because you matter, not for any reason, but simply because. Yugoloths are pure evil, and they're as a race obsessed with that idea of purity, and of Evil as some nebulous, beyond deific, omnipresent force. They are not beholden to Law or Chaos in any way, and show no preference for or attachment to either, but they'll use and abuse both principles if it will further their goals and designs. They cannot, under virtually any circumstance, be trusted.
Shemeska the Marauder 02-24-06, 09:07 PM	And here's a bit delving into the nature of evil from a decidedly 'lothy perspective. Filed by Argent Longfellow, sage and planewalker of the Planewalker’s Guild of Sigil: The following was found within the papers of the noted planar scholar and former member of the Doomguard, Nirash Petulark following his suicide by self-immolation. It purports to have been found inscribed upon a block of slate lodged within a crater in the Gray Waste. Which layer on the Waste in which it was found is not noted. Oddly, Nirash’s writing makes mention of the ‘Lord of Sorcerous Corruptions’ and a series of runes that he seems to have been unable to translate. They bear a striking resemblance to the runes found upon the so-called Loadstones of Misery, themselves also upon the Waste. Nirash also claims that the crater was sunk into a bluff overlooking the Wasting Tower of Khin-Oin, some fifty miles in the distance, as well as a series of footprints burned into the rock leading off in the direction of the tower before fading from sight. The text, as recorded by Nirash, is reproduced below: “Hope is a shallow, hollow concept, devoid of meaning except to those fools who mistakenly believe that it holds any worth.” “In Baator and the Abyss, the Baatezu and Tanar’ri alike give unknowing tribute to this blasphemy against truth. Hope is lodged and ensconced at the heart of the Abyss and Baator, a horrid flaw within what should be pure. A crack in the pillars that hold and exalt the fusion of perfect evil with both law and chaos. Imperfection upon imperfections upon the face of evil.” “Petitioners there in Baator, which mortals call Hell, have a chance albeit slim to escape their torture and slavery at the hands of their fiendish masters. Hope is granted a place, even if it involves becoming that which oppresses, rules and tortures because that it what it does. That black-hearted hope exists. This evil is imperfect, this torment incomplete, this ‘Hell’ nothing of the sort.” “In the Abyss, the doomed mortal souls are part and parcel of the never ending and mindless slaughter. The butchers and ravagers of the infinite layers of the plane of obliterative chaos are ultimately wasteful and self-consuming. They turn their destructions inwards more than outwards and the mortals condemned to this place are given hope. Though that hope comes only by joining and becoming part of the Tanar’ri hordes, there is a chance to rise above their own pain by inflicting it on others. They can escape their torture. Even the majority of Abyssal Lords are ultimately from ascended mortal stock and not from those of their original stock from which we populated the Abyss. Their pain has a relief, a refuge and a release. They have their so-called hope, and their torment is hollow and incomplete.” “But not here… across the three planes of conflict, the crèche, bastion and pit of the Yugoloth race, there is no such thing as hope. Within the furnaces of perdition there is only the will of the strong and the subjugation of the weak. The weak are made into their station and will die within their station. Petitioners have no chance of rising above their position of torment. At best they are capable of avoiding their fate for a time before inevitability draws its claws upon their souls. And in the end their struggles only prolong the latent suffering inflicted upon them by their plane. In the end the furnaces burn hot upon their soulstuff.” “Within the Red Prison of Carceri there is no escape from torment, either inflicted by self styled wardens or self inflicted exile. Their prison walls are borne from their own failures, their own weakness, and their fate. Such is their lot in life, and beyond. Be they fallen powers or mortal traitors at once their fate is both forever removed from their ability to alter it, and wholly their responsibility. More often than not they make their own cages, their own nooses, their own shackles. We simply aid along in the process… Locked away, abandoned, forgotten, they will eventually saturate the orbs with their spilt blood while their essence is stolen and tormented beyond torture.” “And in the end, they are at fault for what they cannot change. That is the gnawing torment of the plane, the secret that harrows the hearts of Crius, Cronus and Hyperion alike, all the way down to the triple aspected traitor of his own kind… they are doomed by their own hands.” “But the depths of the Waste are reserved for the purest of evils; cold, remorseless, clinical and detached. The agonies of the Waste are constant and cannot be driven away by any act of will or show of strength. It saps the life, emotion, motivation and the will to live from the greatest hag to the lowest larvae. It is omnipresent and uncaring. The agony of the Waste pays no heed to whether you are strong or weak, it kills you slowly and painfully because it can. You are bereft of any influence upon your torment whatsoever. Will matters not, circumstance matters not, and not even the glimmer of release from your self imposed torture exists that might upon Carceri. You are nothing, you are unimportant, but you will suffer all the same.” “The Waste gnaws at the souls of its petitioners minute by minute more so than even Nidhogg upon the roots of Yggdrasil. You are slowly devoured by misery and regret, apathy and acceptance is the only route of potential escape from it all. And that hope is a false one, an avenue to greater tortures. Eventually, bereft of what it was that made you hurt, bereft of any reason to your pain, bereft of meaning to it all and your own existence, you have only your pain to dwell upon. You clutch it tight, making it worse because that pain, your pain, gives your hollow existence a meaning and a purpose that you otherwise cannot claim. It makes you special, it makes you unique and it makes you hurt all the more so. You embrace your agonies against all reasons, for none exist but those you perceive in the absence of the self, in the absence of what it was that once made you your own being.” “Your hope that makes you clutch to your own misery will devour you wholly. Most will simply cease to be, or continue on nearly catatonic to the outside world, aware of nothing but their own unceasing pain. Some will be sold by the hags and given a false release. Others will be killed by creatures afflicted just as much as themselves. Still others will be used by we Yugoloths to fuel the infernal sorceries and engines of the Wasting Tower, to turn the cogs of evil, to fuel the Loadstones more and more. We are perfection born of horror. Out of purposeless agony is born purpose, out of meaninglessness is born meaning. Out of your pain we arise to turn you upon the spit once more. The cycle repeats over and over and you fuel our hunger against all reason. Out of your miseries we emerge. Out of your agony I exist.” [Publisher’s note: We have published this material under contract, though the individual who made arrangements with us originally has since passed on and we are unable to relay correspondence to him by any curious individuals. He took his own life shortly after the publication of this manuscript, according to the report filed with and available from the Sons of Mercy he gouged out his eyes before hurled himself from the edge of Suicide Alley in the city of Sigil. He was carrying the original documents from which these papers were produced at the time of his presumed suicide. We direct inquiries to his organization, the Planewalker’s Guild, Market Ward, Sigil c/o guildmaster Balthasar Thames.]
Verelor 02-25-06, 12:09 PM	See this wonderful supplement for everything youe ver wanted to know about Devils. It is totally free. Dicefreaks' The Gates of Hell (http://community.dicefreaks.com/viewtopic.php?t=88) Horrors of the Abyss and A Light from on High coming soon!