tesbs further flavored civilizations [development thread]

I tend not to like the idea of copying lore from another source which tends to contradict with what is known of Erebus. There are certainly wars among the demons in the hells, but not 3 distinct camps based on lawfullness. The rather lawful vault of Aeron does not really allow such an open conflict, while the myriad demons of chaos in Camulos hell forever wage war on each other and in Agares' hell the sophisticated fiefdoms of the demon lords all fight each other for power and the attention of the King of Hope.

Wouldn't it be better to turn your graphical talents towards the creatures found in the Bestiary of Erebus?


That last one reminded me of a Caducus. It would need gaping holes in its torso to be one, but if you are going to redo the belly armor anyway that might not be a problem. If you do want it to be a Caducus though I'd recommend changing the skin color to a shade of blue, like Camulos's other demons the Chaos Marauders and Avatar of Wrath have.
Bestiary of Erebus said:
Caducus- Cadacus are twelve-foot-tall demons with gaping mouths large enough to swallow men whole. Their thick bodies are hollow and numerous gaps allow those swallowed alive and trapped within the Caducus to be seen struggling. A Caducus will keep victims trapped within him for days, until they die on their own. They prefer children as victims as they can stuff more inside themselves.

If you gave that first demon a serpentine lower body it would make quite a good Salamander. (I suppose it might even work without it, as the text does not mention such a tail, just the picture near it has one.)
Bestiary of Erebus said:
Salamander- Salamanders are made for war, most were crusaders in life spending their days on blood-soaked battlefields in allegiance to some ideal or command. Now the illusions of their ideals have been stripped from them and war is all that they seek. Salamanders differ from Camulos’s demons in that they seek war for the ability to inflict pain and the sheer chaos. Salamanders love war for the conflict, for the struggle, for the clash of ideologies (even if they don’t care which ideology wins). Leaders of rebellions are fond of summoning salamanders to aid them.
 
@magister the lore about the new devils can easily be written differenty, actually as of now they have barely any at all. when i am doing reskins i am not going by lore, or units i would like to see, but game mechanics i would like to have. then comes the models, then the lore.

i can't really comment on the game mechanics yet because they are still a bit in flux. If the blood war doesn't fit into erebus then i will write different, fitting, lore. Just a question are there no devils in erebus lore and just demons? i much more familiar with standard dnd lore then the erebus stuff.
 
As near as I can tell, in Erebus the terms Demon and Devil are interchangeable. Actually, if the scenarios and 'pedia are any indicator, most mortals seem to prefer the term Devil, even if Demon is the term used for the racial promotion and is preferred in third person narration.


I would guess that Devil is just a more colloquial term for demon, or perhaps a derogatory term used by priests of good religions and their followers to refer to enemies. (Also, one of Cassiel's diplomacy texts implies that he is considered a devil by many priests, although he is not even even. The Bannor Prelates also spoke of the Calabim Vampires as Devil-men. Flauros never uses the term, but only counters that while he has no allegiance to hell he does have similar means of extracting power from mortals.)



Etymologically, Devil means Slanderer or Attacker while Demon means Spirit or Lesser Deity, and is ultimately derived from roots being Divider or Provider. I could see the term Demon having a neutral or even positive connotation, at least among evil men. Demons probably use the term in reference to themselves, and may emphasize the original sense of the word by claiming to be providers of power for those who serve them. Devil almost certainly has a purely negative connotation and would be preferred by those who want nothing to do with the forces of darkness. Demon could emphasize their power, while Devil emphasizes their treachery.



Erebus does have Good vs Evil, but does not really have a Law vs Chaos spectrum, at least not in a sense any more important than other spectra like Passion vs Serenity or Responsibility vs Fun.
 
thank you for your answer :)
would the following draft be in bounds of current lore:
-a rival demon lord invades Erebus to hinder Hyborem on achieving his goals
-he and his army are of an other demon race, i would either call them devils for an easily distinction but make clear that it is mostly a rivalry between too demon lords who are of different race or give them a more unique race name description
-he does not invade himself, but rather sends his army through a few, well fortified, positions.
-it is basically the continuation of an old feud between two strong entities of hell (does Erebus lore make use of Baator, Abysss and the other lower planes?)

i would basically drop the blood war reference and shift from an alignment based conflict (Law vs Chaos) to a dispute over primarily power and secondary race.

i am not sure if Erebus lore supports different Demon races, but standard dnd surely does.
 
Erebus lore does not have Baator, Abyss, etc.

Fall from Heaven is rather strict about the existence of only 21 precepts and only 21 gods (plus their original creator who greatly transcends all, but has chosen to cut himself off from his creations and has not been relevant in a long time). All planes were created by the 21, and strongly bear their mark.

For a canonical description of Hell, this is the thread you want.


Hell consists of 6 planes, the Vaults of the gods Esus, Mulcarn, Mammon, Camulos, Aeron, and Agares, bound together by connections that could perhaps be considered a 7th Vault owned by Ceridwen.


Bhall now dwells in the lowest Hell, Nyx, the Vault of Agares, along with the King of Hope. She once had her own vault, but it was among the holiest of heavens and was torn asunder when she fell. With Ceridwen's help she may someday be able to bind the pieces of her old heaven into a new vault that will join with Hell, but this may be a challenge as the power of ex nihilo creation was long ago away taken from the gods by The One True God.



There are certainly a myriad variety of demon types, but I'm not sure I'd call them 'races" per se. Most demons are former mortals, who have passed though various stages of demonhood during their metamorphosis. Almost all souls condemned to hell must start as Manes in Mulcarn's mountain before descending into Mammon's city. In the battlefields of Camulos they take on the new form as Spinagons, becoming extremely weak and barely reduced to only their most basic animal instincts as they loose almost all traces of who they once were. Here they must cause pain in order to evolve into stronger demons, before being broken again and made into Imps in Aeron's hell. Only after graduating from this great academy are they allowed to choose a true master for themselves, and to adapt into the sort of demon that would best serve their new lord.

There are also true demons who were created specifically to serve their lord. The least of these are Bhall's Balors. What true demons can do in Erebus is much more strictly regulated by The Compact than what former mortals can. They have lots of leeway when dealing with those whose souls their master owns, but cannot go near a righteous man.



(The heavens are all distinctly seperate vaults, each ruled by one good god. The neutral gods also have their own distinct and seperate vaults, generally not referred to as either heavens or hells. Arawn's vault is unique in that it is easily accessible from Erebus so that the souls of dead mortals can find their way there, and in that he does not so mcuh rule it as allow the subconscious of every soul residing there to make up its own dreamworld. Arawn's Netherworld can be more glorious than the heavens or more terrible than the hells, although for most it has the boring familiarity of the homes they left in Erebus.)

The gods created many other worlds beyond Erebus and their own vaults (some created by one god, some by pairs of opposites or small groups of gods working together), but little is known about them and generally they don't seem to be important. It could be that these worlds had to be cannibalized to create the vaults in their present form, as ex nihilo creation is no longer an option. Ceridwen seems to rule a myriad of worlds, many of which may be the broken fragments of once great planes and others early failed attempts at making worlds.

(I vaguely recall reading at one point that Tebryn Arbandi was not from Erebus in life, but another plane that was similar but had fundamentally different laws of magic and happened to share the same hells. I think that may have been changed a while back though, and is not now canonical.)

There are also infinite planes of pure elements, created by Agares but made accessible by all the gods through the Gems of Creation. Although they denounce him for making these, not a single Good god has refrained from using this power they granted them. Agares hates them for this hypocrisy above all else. While only a third of the gods are in open rebellion to The One and are considered evil, every single one of them has been corrupted and they all fear they will be punished when their maker returns. As a Dark Fantasy, Fall from Heaven does not truly known anything better than a Black and Grey Morality.

Without the Gems of Creation and access to the Infinite Planes the gods might have drained their inner wells of mana to the point that they were left as essentially mortals. It has not been confirmed, but I tend to think that The One intended them to empty themselves of their immense power so that they could come to know the gift of true free will like Mankind has rather than being forever enslaved to the nature of their precepts.




FfH2 already includes 6 more demon lords besides Hyborem. It is strongly implied that while Hyborem is the strongest and is a true demon created as a clone fo Cernunnos, the other demon lords in the game are highly refined former mortals. They already have different emphases, like Duke Sallos being interested in little more than sexual lusts.
 
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