| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| jordanz |
Posted - 08 Jun 2009 : 01:47:09
Undead of all types inhabit the lower planes. What is their natural relationship with the evil outsiders that are native to the lower planes? In other words, would a ghost or Specter bother to attack a demon because the latter has no soul?
Conversely do the evil outsiders basically ignore intelligent undead or are there special enmities? Do they consider powerful undead inferior or is there a grudging respect. I ask these question because it's rare to see these types in mixed groups. |
| 11 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| Calmar |
Posted - 24 Jun 2009 : 19:14:08
Don't forget that the ethereal plane does not touch the outer planes. Therefore there are no incorporeal undead. |
| Purple Dragon Knight |
Posted - 22 Jun 2009 : 05:38:43
quote:
Originally posted by Shemmy
Perhaps they don't taste as good, perhaps there's no pleasure in consuming the essence of a once mortal soul that has already lost everything it ever had, but the daemons afterwards tend to ignore them.
Perhaps it's because the Positive plane is the wellspring of souls, the souls coming out of it are "positively" charged (i.e. their battery is full). So the daemons home in on them and get some nutrients from that soul energy. Undead have always been associated with the Negative plane, and perhaps they work like electrical "grounds" connected to the Negative plane (i.e. when they perform energy drain and such, the life force is conducted to the Negative plane; to be even more geeky, the reason they get "stronger" when absorbing lifeforce from the "full batteries" that are mortal souls could be because every time they drain, they create another conductor / pathway / connection to the negative plane, akin to parrallel circuits that reduce electrical resistance... therefore, they become greater "void vacuums" with a greater capacity to transmit electricity from mortals back to the Negative planes).
I see the Negative plane as a black hole: ultimate destruction, but necessary. Otherwise, the Positive plane wormholes would soon fill the universe in pure, white searing energy... The Negative plane and the undead are there to balance the ecosystem. Same for soul-eating daemons and other soul-anihilation means. When/if the soul energy reaches the Outer planes, it feeds the various parts of the Outer sphere and helps the growth of the plane it lands in. The various planes war against each other, thus also eliminating souls in the process. If one side would win forever, that plane would overlow with positive energy and perhaps explode the whole Outer sphere... (the cracks represented by the Abyss are perhaps an indication of the "soul-strain" experienced by the whole Outer sphere... or perhaps act as a pressure regulating valve that lets some souls out into some maddening void / back to Negative or Positive plane, etc.)
Late night rants...  |
| Shemmy |
Posted - 12 Jun 2009 : 12:49:05
quote:
Originally posted by jordanz
Interesting. How do Blood Fiends play into things?
Not very well. I don't particularly care for the concept myself since it comes off (to me at least) of a case of 'demons are physical incarnations of evil but lets make it even -more- even by making it a vampire! yeah!'. Still, it's not as bad as the lich-fiend from Libris Mortis, which made zero sense.
In any event, regardless of you liking the design of the critter or not, they're utterly minor in terms of their role and numbers within the lower planes. |
| Quale |
Posted - 12 Jun 2009 : 10:35:21
quote:
Originally posted by jordanz
Undead of all types inhabit the lower planes. What is their natural relationship with the evil outsiders that are native to the lower planes? In other words, would a ghost or Specter bother to attack a demon because the latter has no soul?
Conversely do the evil outsiders basically ignore intelligent undead or are there special enmities? Do they consider powerful undead inferior or is there a grudging respect. I ask these question because it's rare to see these types in mixed groups.
I imagine that the fiends consider the undead among the least interesting of beings due to their lack of souls. Maybe that is the source of Orcus' contempt for them, the basic types of undead are just toys that wouldn't never provide power as would other servants with souls. The intelligent undead that have souls are often too much to bother with, dealing with mortals is easier.
Oh, and demons have souls, they are utterly corrupted souls. It depends on a spectre or ghost and their tragic circumstances.
Fiends tolerate powerful undead as long they're useful, such is the story of Mellifleur who dares not cross with the 'loths of Gehenna but is not in friendly terms with the hags and Typhus, wanting to get a piece of their larva trade. Other important undead are Doresain (the White Kingdom of ghouls in the Abyss), Kanchelsis (vampires, Abyss), Kiaransalee, and briefly Tenebrous, the undead demigod. For some fiends necromancy is the best mean for gaining power, such are the ak-chazar rakshasa rajas in Acheron, baatezu lord Thasmudya, probably Nergal, ultroloth Inthracis, Orcus etc. Then in Acberon there's the Boretti's Army(of undead led by a lich) and an army of mummified kuo-toa (they take your water).
Interestingly in one Planescape adventure there's a yugoloth ghost, that usually is impossible to do, except for baernaloths, who seem intend to keep that secret for themselves. So maybe they didn't allow greater fiend-undead mixing for some mysterious reason or it's just easier to manipulate the fiends.
But the undead thrive in the negative inner planes (ash, dust, vacuum, salt) and particularly in the negative energy plane, which is the most avoided place in the multiverse, so from there you get the feeling they aren't much around. |
| jordanz |
Posted - 12 Jun 2009 : 07:40:50
quote:
Originally posted by Shemmy
As others have said, there weren't a ton of undead on the lower planes. The only places that tended to have them were the domains of archfiends and gods associated with undeath or who had it as part of a deific portfolio (kiaransalee, orcus, etc). Otherwise, intelligent undead were just as much soul-chow as anything else on the lower planes, and ripe for a fiend to feast upon.
The more powerful undead like vampires and liches are a special case perhaps, but they were capable of avoiding the fiends by their own power, or striking deals with the fiends where appropriate. They were there on the lower planes not so much because they were undead, but because their undeath was usually a means to an end for them, and conventionally easier to get than eternal youth, etc. And evil liches are more likely to aggregate on the lower planes than the upper planes, simply because it's easier to pay off an archdevil than to deal with celestials who might want to destroy you for your actions, or annoy you by attempts to redeem you, etc.
That said, in Golarion's cosmology, the NE plane of Abbadon does have a decent mix of undead thrown into the mix. Not because of any association the daemons have with negative energy, but because at least daemonic caste is obsessed with experimentation on mortal souls, and incorporeal undead often end up being created as side effects of some of their work. Perhaps they don't taste as good, perhaps there's no pleasure in consuming the essence of a once mortal soul that has already lost everything it ever had, but the daemons afterwards tend to ignore them. Additionally, the goddess of plague and undeath, Urgathoa, dwells on the plane oddly enough at the fiends' request, as well as her somewhat-servitor, the demigod of tragic death, Zyphus. Leakage occurs from their domains, so to speak, with regards to some undead.
Interesting. How do Blood Fiends play into things? |
| Shemmy |
Posted - 11 Jun 2009 : 23:21:18
As others have said, there weren't a ton of undead on the lower planes. The only places that tended to have them were the domains of archfiends and gods associated with undeath or who had it as part of a deific portfolio (kiaransalee, orcus, etc). Otherwise, intelligent undead were just as much soul-chow as anything else on the lower planes, and ripe for a fiend to feast upon.
The more powerful undead like vampires and liches are a special case perhaps, but they were capable of avoiding the fiends by their own power, or striking deals with the fiends where appropriate. They were there on the lower planes not so much because they were undead, but because their undeath was usually a means to an end for them, and conventionally easier to get than eternal youth, etc. And evil liches are more likely to aggregate on the lower planes than the upper planes, simply because it's easier to pay off an archdevil than to deal with celestials who might want to destroy you for your actions, or annoy you by attempts to redeem you, etc.
That said, in Golarion's cosmology, the NE plane of Abbadon does have a decent mix of undead thrown into the mix. Not because of any association the daemons have with negative energy, but because at least daemonic caste is obsessed with experimentation on mortal souls, and incorporeal undead often end up being created as side effects of some of their work. Perhaps they don't taste as good, perhaps there's no pleasure in consuming the essence of a once mortal soul that has already lost everything it ever had, but the daemons afterwards tend to ignore them. Additionally, the goddess of plague and undeath, Urgathoa, dwells on the plane oddly enough at the fiends' request, as well as her somewhat-servitor, the demigod of tragic death, Zyphus. Leakage occurs from their domains, so to speak, with regards to some undead. |
| jordanz |
Posted - 09 Jun 2009 : 02:07:56
quote:
Originally posted by Zanan
Never noticed that much undead on the lower planes, apart from the realm contested by Kiaransalee and Orcus?
True. I remember reading some of the old Planescape stuff. There was a rumor about large group of Liches that where looking for some lost artifact.
Whats interesting is that Undead are pretty darned powerful on the prime material Plane but on some of the lower planes, even a Liches and Death Knights would have a lot to fear.... |
| Zanan |
Posted - 08 Jun 2009 : 16:33:45
Never noticed that much undead on the lower planes, apart from the realm contested by Kiaransalee and Orcus? |
| jordanz |
Posted - 08 Jun 2009 : 05:19:33
Great responses guys. Very informative. I always believed there should be more ambitious intelligent undead in the lower planes. It seems like there is some unspoken rule that they have to be under Orcus' or some other high level outsiders rule. My line of thought is that there have got to be some undead (beside LarLoch, Vecna, or Szass Tam) that are on even a demon Lords power level, and I would assume they would have there own selfish aspirations. |
| Knight of the Gate |
Posted - 08 Jun 2009 : 04:34:40
This is something that the DnD rules have largely glossed over since 1st edition. If you've ever read or used Gary Gygax's Mythus(aka Dangerous Journeys) system, he addressed it in a very cool way there, and I've translated it into 3E. for my own game.
The system is this: There are 2 'Kingdoms' (in the phylological sense) of undead- the Preternatural, and the Supernatural. The Preternatural Undead are most of the ones represented in DnD rules: Wraiths, Spectres, Zombies, Skeletons, et.al. who reached undeath as a result of curses, mortal magic, or 'infection' by other undead, whereas the Supernatural Undead are those that achieved undeath by making pacts with the Dark Powers of the Lower Planes. It should be noted that in Mythus, this second category includes all Liches and Death Knights, but there are Vampires of each type. The odd thing is that (as Gygax wrote it) there is a small subset of the Supernatural Undead who are referred to (along with most powerful Lower Planar creatures) as Unliving, meaning that they were never alive, but were either created that way, or were Celestials who 'fell' and were transformed into their current form
The interrelation betwixt the Supernatural Undead and Lower Planar creatures is somewhat nuanced- on one level, they are very valuable to the dark powers, since they are 'mortal' and thus are bound by none of the rules that bind demons/devils/'loths/etc., and also tend to be quite powerful personally. As such, they tend to be at least reasonably 'high ranking'. Having said that, the lower planars still love to taunt the Supernatural Undead with the fact that they've sold their souls, and after death are in for some eternal-damnation-type loving.
This is largely how I interpret many powerful undead in my game, especially Death Knights and Lichnee, with most of these being in service to Orcus or one of his lieutenants.
I know that none of this is canon to the Realms, but I think it's pretty cool, and hope it helps! |
| Ghost King |
Posted - 08 Jun 2009 : 03:50:32
I think it would be situational in their relationship to the demon/devil. If the demon made them or rules over them then probably not unless they found the upper hand to over throw their control. However, I'm sure evil intelligent undead would work with or against them if they knew it would benefit them to do so.
Again, all I can say is that is situational. |
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