Fiendish Codex II: Ho-hum deviltry

[DeeL]

When I got my grubby mitts on the first Fiendish Codex, I was satisfied.  

I wasn't ecstatically leaping hither and thither, but honestly I thought it was pretty good.  It depicted a race of beings arising from chaos, steeped in violence and seething with cruelty, and it did it fairly well.  Names were named, backgrounds explored, and there were little hints here and there of the prehistory of the fiends in general and the demons of the Abyss in particular.  It was a nice gory slab of meat tossed to those of us who have an ongoing interest in the Outer Planes, and the implications of their existence for our characters eternal souls.

Fiendish Codex II, not so much.

It certainly included detail, but really it wasn't anything I hadn't seen before.  The fictional history of the Nine Pits of the Great Wheel was carried forward a bit, but so what?  Like we haven't seen that the devils will freaking stab you in the back while still obeying the letter of the law.  

The story of the origin of Hell and Asmodeus was retold once again, and I'll admit it was a drastic improvement on the attempt in the paperback accessory that came out in '99 - I think it was entitled Of Hell - and yet it was still strangely trivializing.  In FC1, the demons are said to have arisen in the beginning due to the machinations of the tribe of Baern - a clear reference to the baernaloths - but this reference is nowhere repeated in FC2.

Instead, we get some story about how the devils were originally celestials (so far so good), but that rather than falling by their own evil they were corrupted by having been assigned the task of controlling the wild variegation of demons through the Blood War.

Right.  War turns people evil.  For mortals it's almost a tautology; I have a higher opinion of celestials.  But be that as it may.

FC2 then introduces the Pact Primeval.  Apparently, the gods had to find a way to punish the souls of mortals who broke their laws in life.  Asmodeus essentially tricked them into giving those souls to him to use as sources of power; the gods apparently didn't conceive that the devils might actively tempt mortals to evil in an effort to improve their yeild.

Here is my problem with the Pact Primeval, in a nutshell - I don't believe it.  

It sounds like one of those folktales from Eastern Europe wherein the devil was a maggot who became the lord of hell from feasting on the big toe of the god of the sea, or whatever.  It sounds like it could be the basis for a Charlie Daniels song.  It sounds like the little God and little Devil of Jack Chick.

What is this supposed to be?  A metaphor?  Throughout the rest of the book there are hints that the story is untrue - as we might expect of devils - but the main text of the book seems to be buying into it, to the extent of putting a copy of this Pact in Nessus, under the guardianship of Asmodeus himself, lest it be stolen and the universe fall into ruin.  

Okay, so what about the Chaotic Evil souls?  They transgress the law in huge ways, but they don't wind up in the devils' clutches.  What about the souls of just he Chaotic Good?  Some of them simply ignore rules they don't like.  Who is that supposed to be tooling around in Arborea?  

Way back in the Planescape days there were occasional implications that Baator was inhabited before the coming of the devils proper.  What exactly happened to those inhabitants?  Who or what were they, and were they themselves somehow connected with the baernoloths?  You remember the baernoloths, right?  They appeared in a paragraph or two in the previous Fiendish Codex, which strongly implied that they were the granddaddies of the modern demons.  So did they just never look over at the Lawful side of the Great Wheel and say, 'Oooo, nice pit.  Let's see what we can shape out of that clay!'?

But this is all nothing new.  In the D&D universe, the demons have persistently proven more fascinating than the devils, and for my money the Yugoloths have blown the doors off both the other races of the fiends.  

Or is it just me?  Am I simply not the market for devil-related game accessories?  There certainly is one - *somebody*, I won't say who, paid for the copy that I am perusing.  

It's just that when I think of D&D demons, I think of a wildly vicious horde of beings relentlessly focussed on tearing everything in the universe into jagged shards.  Two-headed Princes of the Abyss who constantly argue with themselves.  Mighty powers who arise from the basest of forms to come to reign over legions of undead until someone treacherously casts them into the darkness, only to struggle back to their old powers by killing a long list of gods and recruiting a bunch of unwitting adventurers as their assistants.

And when I think of D&D devils, I think of bat-winged accountants.  Dangerous, to be sure, but not in an interesting way.

Am I missing something?

[limetom]

I don't usually whore out either Dicefreaks or the CBG, because I always find it kind of fanboyish when other people do that kind of thing but in this case...

FCII wasn't that great, as you said.  You really should check out Dicefreaks' the Gates of Hell.  In tGoH, there's no dumb Pact Primeval which goes against already written 3.X Edition material; devils get mortal souls because they were of Lawful Evil alignment in mortal life, or made a pact with a devil.  Devils in tGoH are not portrayed as "bat-winged accountants" except when prudent.  The only problem people have ever really had with it is the fact that it uses Challenge Ratings for the highest tier of Devils so that it makes sense that they rule layers, or an entire plane.  Hell, it makes sense that they can't be beaten by a slightly advanced Pit Fiend, as presented in the Book of Vile Darkness.  Mephistopheles, for example, has a Challenge Rating of 66.

Its not just you.  You might be in the market for diabolical game accessories, just not in the market for the tripe Wizards' has been putting out lately.

If you are interested, you can check it out here.

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

Wizards just generally puts out tripe.  I have some books back from 3.0: tripe.  New books: tripe.  Sometimes they have good stuff.  FCII actually sounds better than most, mainly because all the flavor just mentioned sounds original or at least thought out for once rather than just being a generic hash of "these guys are evil".

I like my devils as accountants, or more presciceously lawyers.  The demons sound like a load of brute force, which is fun in the first cool dose but gets old once you know what's going to happen.  In contrast plotting devils sounds like it can go on and on.  Demons are dangerous right in front of you, but devils are dangerous where you don't see it.

[DeeL]

limetom, Silvercat, thanks.  I will say, I wouldn't mind devils portrayed as lawyers - but in any decent such portrayal, most of the game statistics would be irrelevant.  One would never put a devil's challenge rating to use, because by the time one realized what there was to lose, it would be too late to fight for it because anything you'd have to fight with would already be in the fiends' hands.

In other words Silvercat, right on.  That's why I loved the Yugoloth's as presented in the Planescape setting.  Those guys manipulated *everyone*.  Demons, devils, gods - the Blood War was depicted as the most horrific ongoing catastrophe in the universe, and the Yugoloths gave the impression that they were the ones stirring the pot just for entertainment.

Freaking *loved* those critters.

Demons were always a close second.  There was always a pleasure in trying to find that balance of smart, wise and chaotic.

But long before WotC, nobody seemed to be able to get the devils right.  I'm not saying I've done any better, but then I'm not a professional writer.

Regardless, I'm glad I'm not alone in that assessment.

And tom, thanks for the link.

[Matt Larkin (author)]

I prefer to write my own fluff in regards to cosmic mysteries, partly to add to the mystery.  That said, I've looked at FC1, and it was okay.  DiceFreaks had some interesting ideas, too.  I kind of stopped getting D&D books, so I don't have FC2, and it doesn't sound as though I'm missing so much.

Though maybe FC3 will bring you your yugoloths.