Café de Nuit

It's strange that you should accuse Skeever of incompetence. I personally think he was well done and provided enough distractions for the PCs to make it tactically AND personally satisfying to try to destroy him.

As I understand, imps and quasits are familiars that are meant to have a bit of the "little badguy" complex, including petty mindedness, sadism, thieving ways, and other little things. Skeever's antagonism towards the naga and towards the PCs is trifling and irritating... but with a hint of real underlying danger, venom, and malice behind it.

Isn't that pretty close to what the term "impish" means, anyway?

Also, in 2nd ed., having an imp familiar means you regenerate 1 hp/round, which in addition to the other standard familiar bonuses, may have been enough to justify the trouble of finding the familiar for a lichlord like Azalin.

I see it that Azalin keeps Skeever around like a despotic king might keep a court jester. Everybody else has to serve a role with grim purposefulness, but Skeever is kept more as a pet - occasionally entertaining and offering a slight element of whimsy to an otherwise oblivious existence.

I personally don't see Squalimous as being much different from Skeever. The main use that the Kargatane forum's Azalin (sort of like a talking FAQ) had for Squalimous was as a messenger, posting messages from people who were afraid to face Azalin's wrath.

So basically he's the ultimate henchmen - a little goofy, a little spiteful, clearly way behind his master as far as powers go. But that's sort of inbuilt to the flavor of what an imp should be, and I don't think Skeever is any worse than usual in FtS.

By the same token, I wouldn't look at an orc chieftain and say "That orc was unhygenic and didn't care for a four-day work week!", for example.

gonzoron wrote:I think Skeever's incompetence is direct meddling from the Dark Powers. "You want a diabolic familiar? here you go!"

I had a (non-RL) PC like that once. Stern Elven badass Sheriff (Arcane Archer/Sor/Ftr/Rog). He asked the spirits of the woods for a familiar to aid him in his quest for vengeance.

He got a cute widdle hedgehog. He was so disgusted, he never even named it, and would never admit to having it. But sometimes, when he no one was looking, he could be seen petting it gently.

LOL, that's so cute!

And I agree with your idea: Azalin, who's pretty much the epitome of lawful, who plans years in advance, appears to be a workaholic and really never stops to enjoy the good things in life... I can definitely see the Dark Powers torturing him with someone like Skeever.

That can also work with the idea of Azalin purposely sacrificing Skeever, too. If Azalin was looking to handicap himself and had a waste of a familiar anyway, why not sacrifice him?

HuManBing wrote:It's strange that you should accuse Skeever of incompetence. I personally think he was well done and provided enough distractions for the PCs to make it tactically AND personally satisfying to try to destroy him.

As I understand, imps and quasits are familiars that are meant to have a bit of the "little badguy" complex, including petty mindedness, sadism, thieving ways, and other little things. Skeever's antagonism towards the naga and towards the PCs is trifling and irritating... but with a hint of real underlying danger, venom, and malice behind it.

Isn't that pretty close to what the term "impish" means, anyway?

...
I see it that Azalin keeps Skeever around like a despotic king might keep a court jester. Everybody else has to serve a role with grim purposefulness, but Skeever is kept more as a pet - occasionally entertaining and offering a slight element of whimsy to an otherwise oblivious existence.

...
So basically he's the ultimate henchmen - a little goofy, a little spiteful, clearly way behind his master as far as powers go. But that's sort of inbuilt to the flavor of what an imp should be, and I don't think Skeever is any worse than usual in FtS.

If imps were fey creatures, I'd wholeheartedly agree with your statements. But since imps are fiendish devils, summoned from the Nine Hells, where scheming, betrayal, wanton cruelty, and long-term malicious planning are not only common but are necessary just for base survival, I'm afraid I'll have to agree to disagree here. This is like me trying to imagine a happy-go-lucky bard emerging from the commoners of Falkovnia; it's something I just can't wrap my head around.


For my opinion on devils, here's a quote from Grant Morrison's "The Invisibles", which is Jack Frost's thoughts when confronting the King Of All Tears, concerning the archons as a whole (page 165 of "Entropy in the UK"):

It's not how they look that's scary. It's the way they make you feel. Every [expletive] thing you've ever done, every horrible, sick thought you've ever had, they turn it back on you until you can't think of anything else. They can read you like a book and pull out whatever page it takes to make you feel like you're sick or useless or guilty. They can break your heart and [expletive] on your soul. And they can remind you why you deserve it.

Now imagine that's describing your parents, most every single elder you've ever had growing up, most every single respected authority. That's what the Nine Hells are like, in my view. I can't see a devil, even one as lowly as an imp, coming out like Skeever. Though I do admit that Skeever fits how most writers have described imps, I don't agree with those writers either.

Oh, since that reminds me... Since Squalimous was part of the Ask Azalin forum (and as that disappeared long before I came back), did it ever say when Azalin picked up Squalimous? And if anyone knows where I could peruse the Ask Azalin forum (as I'd like to either keep Squalimous in line with the pre-existing character or create a completely different imp between Skeever and Squalimous) or have a saved copy that they wouldn't mind emailing me?

Lord Cyclohexane: I don't have a problem with agreeing to disagree. You point out a compelling reason for questioning the character design of Skeever, going on the basis that imps are subtle, intelligent, and coolly intelligent creatures from the Hells.

Personally, I do not buy into that.

But before I get any further, I have to say that 12 years ago, if you'd made these arguments, I definitely would have agreed with you. Devils and demons should not behave in ways that humans should understand and be able to preempt. They should be not just beyond the ken of humans, but beyond all mortal creatures.

Sadly, what I have seen in the rest of the D&D game setting has convinced me otherwise.

Before I read the Manual of the Planes and the Planescape settings, I thought of Demons and Devils as being terrifying transcendant beings, rather akin to Lovecraft. Creeping shadows that manifest a limb or claw to do their bidding... white mists that form a hand and accidentally drop carrion from trees... even ghostly doglike creatures that materialize through acute angles in space - all these were the ideas I had, where the PCs would find themselves in utterly alien situations and dealing with rapidly changing laws of physics against the clock.

If only that could have endured! Alas, I read the Outer Plane Monstrous Compendium for 2nd ed. I bought the Planescape setting. I even had a few games of the Blood Wars CCG way back in the early 1990s.

These have destroyed forever the idea of demons and devils as being unknowable untouchable beings. Instead, the D&D campaign setting seems to insist on cobbling together vague hybrids of existing animals and calling that a demon. Or even worse, adopting a clearly anthropomorphic creature and saying that's an Erinyes, or giving a naked woman wings and calling her a Succubus.

I find myself getting blurry on the difference (without resorting to stats) between a Pit Fiend and a Balor and even Orcus himself. How many humanoids-plus-horns-plus-wings can you even squeeze into a damn pantheon before you start getting bored?

So take a look at Planescape and the Blood Wars, and quail at the stupidity of the Tanar'ri and Ba'atezu (one passage of the Planescape boxed set even says something to the effect that Tanar'ri tacticians are pretty idiotic compared to humans - their idea of subtle infiltration is marching buttloads of demons across the battlefield). Check out the inter-racial hierarchies and tensions and petty jealousies, passed down from Molydeus through Balor all the way down to the Lemures and Dretches.

And against that backdrop of demons and devils as "glorified feuding orcs and goblins... which can only be hit by cold iron weapons", then yes - it does seem considerably more believable that imps and quasits (who represent among the lowest ranks) would behave in a goblinesque way, rather than being the scheming power mongers that they supposedly are.

Then again, when I initially read about liches, and Azalin in particular, I had a very different type of character in mind than what Ravenloft ultimately proved him to be. Why would a lich show emotion? Why would a lich need a personal diary?

I have a hard time arguing with your reasoning, mostly as I went through the same thing. The Planescape Campaign Setting broke my heart also, and the Planes of Law boxed set (which covers the Nine Hells of Baator in detail) ripped away any hope I had of seeing real devils and demons. I never bothered to pick up The Blood War boxed set, as I couldn't stand to see what it would cover. To be fair, though, Faces of Evil: The Fiends was decent, doing what it could to move from standard Planescape goofiness toward what I thought demons and devils should be.

But, if we apply that standard, of following the Planescape books to define canon for demon/devil behavior and the nature of the Nine Hells and of the Abyss, then Falkovnia is honestly a scarier place to live than the Nine Hells are. Azalin could easily replace one of the Lords of the Nine, as few of them seem to be as powerful or cunning as Azalin.

Keeping in mind the writings for Planescape and Ravenloft, there is a great incongruency between the two. How should we resolve it? I say by ignoring the overall D&D multiversal scheme, basically for two reasons: 1) Ravenloft is no longer published by WotC, merely owned, and thus need not be part of the D&D multiverse and 2) Ravenloft is primarily played from the perspective of Ravenloftian natives, and as escaping the Mists is nearly impossible, it's unknown what the rest of the multiverse is outside of Ravenloft; by not knowing what is outside of Ravenloft due to not being able to get outside, we need not consider the external multiverse to be the D&D cosmology and thus need not follow the Planescape canon.

Although, thinking about it, now I'm breaking the very thing I was talking about above, where I had wanted to keep all of this in canon. Now I'm picking and choosing which canon I want to follow and throwing out the rest...

So I guess I need to go back and think about all of this further. Perhaps it is absolutely indisputable fact that Falkovnia is a much scarier place to live than the Nine Hells are, which is what the contradictory canon says to us. I guess that's not too weird, though, as normal canon already shows us that the illithids are ridiculously more scary than the devils from Hell, and that makes no sense either...

[Current idea: a Hell-forged imp might suck, but what about a Mist-forged imp? Outsider (lawful, evil) might just plain be pathetic compared to Outsider (Mists)... And personality-wise, the Dark Powers could have forged this imp to be whatever they believe it ought to be]

Followup rhetorical question: why does "Because the Dark Powers made it that way" seem as horrendously unfulfilling as "Because I said so"?

Perhaps incompetence is the wrong word... I apologize to Skeever. Intolerable Goofiness is probably closer. The question is really, why does Azalin, serious and Lawful to the core, put up with such goofiness in a supposedly lawful familiar... But then, he seems to like watching the debauchery at his annual balls, so who knows?

gonzoron wrote:Perhaps incompetence is the wrong word... I apologize to Skeever. Intolerable Goofiness is probably closer. The question is really, why does Azalin, serious and Lawful to the core, put up with such goofiness in a supposedly lawful familiar... But then, he seems to like watching the debauchery at his annual balls, so who knows?

In second edition, I imagine it's because Skeever's existence granted Azalin regeneration.

Not to stray too far off topic (although this is significantly more on-topic than my rant about Planescape above) I wanted to see what your consensus was about Azalin's depraved balls.

Even as far back as the Black Box incarnation, it has said that Azalin throws decadent parties. But I sit and scratch my head and I really can't imagine what sort of depravity Azalin would care to witness. I mean, the lich has always been portrayed as a ruthlessly efficient ruler and I cannot see him really getting any sort of emotional satisfaction from physical torture, sex, or food. (The latter two for obviously physiological reasons.)

Perhaps he gets grim entertainment by seeing how far the guests would go to curry his favor (especially if they are unaware of his true nature) but even so, what sort of activities would he feasibly host? "Pin the fetters on the peon"?

I'm hoping to set an adventure to culminate in an assassination attempt during one of these balls, but I am having difficulty imagining what might go on at all.

HuManBing wrote:Not to stray too far off topic (although this is significantly more on-topic than my rant about Planescape above) I wanted to see what your consensus was about Azalin's depraved balls.

Even as far back as the Black Box incarnation, it has said that Azalin throws decadent parties. But I sit and scratch my head and I really can't imagine what sort of depravity Azalin would care to witness. I mean, the lich has always been portrayed as a ruthlessly efficient ruler and I cannot see him really getting any sort of emotional satisfaction from physical torture, sex, or food. (The latter two for obviously physiological reasons.)

Perhaps he gets grim entertainment by seeing how far the guests would go to curry his favor (especially if they are unaware of his true nature) but even so, what sort of activities would he feasibly host? "Pin the fetters on the peon"?

I'm hoping to set an adventure to culminate in an assassination attempt during one of these balls, but I am having difficulty imagining what might go on at all.

Read Tower of Doom, there's one of his balls in that.

"If imps were fey creatures, I'd wholeheartedly agree with your statements. But since imps are fiendish devils, summoned from the Nine Hells, where scheming, betrayal, wanton cruelty, and long-term malicious planning are not only common but are necessary just for base survival, I'm afraid I'll have to agree to disagree here."

This is why they are imps: they are not that good for planning. Remember demons changes of form over time by acquiring some demonic wisdom. An old imp is probably good at scheming but a younger imp or one that is to stupid to learn the lesson will probabloy do pe

"This is like me trying to imagine a happy-go-lucky bard emerging from the commoners of Falkovnia; it's something I just can't wrap my head around."

Some happy go lucky persons emerged form nazi germany and communist russia.

"But before I get any further, I have to say that 12 years ago, if you'd made these arguments, I definitely would have agreed with you. Devils and demons should not behave in ways that humans should understand and be able to preempt. They should be not just beyond the ken of humans, but beyond all mortal creatures."

Why? Not all setting are horror setting! Remember that before being demons and devils they were mortal and they progressivly(by evolving to more powerfull form) learn about evil. So yeah demonic lord and tanari are beyond human being but imp and manes... I dont think so.

"Before I read the Manual of the Planes and the Planescape settings, I thought of Demons and Devils as being terrifying transcendant beings, rather akin to Lovecraft."

Damn dnd is no call of cthulhu. Planescape would really be a bad setting if they were like that. I mean remember that lovecraft dmeosn dont negotiate a lot so roleplaying opportunities with them are quite rare.

"Creeping shadows that manifest a limb or claw to do their bidding... white mists that form a hand and accidentally drop carrion from trees... even ghostly doglike creatures that materialize through acute angles in space - all these were the ideas I had, where the PCs would find themselves in utterly alien situations and dealing with rapidly changing laws of physics against the clock."

Maybe in ravenloft but in planescape? In greyhawk? In the forgotten realms? Like I said remember that not all dnd setting are horror setting. All settings have their flavor this is why planescape demons are made for the planescape setting and not the ravenloft setting.

"Instead, the D&D campaign setting seems to insist on cobbling together vague hybrids of existing animals and calling that a demon. Or even worse, adopting a clearly anthropomorphic creature and saying that's an Erinyes, or giving a naked woman wings and calling her a Succubus."

Tradtionnaly demons were like that. I mean look in Hindou, christian jewish ect... folklore and most demons are anthropomorphic and animals hybrid.

"(one passage of the Planescape boxed set even says something to the effect that Tanar'ri tacticians are pretty idiotic compared to humans - their idea of subtle infiltration is marching buttloads of demons across the battlefield). Check out the inter-racial hierarchies and tensions and petty jealousies, passed down from Molydeus through Balor all the way down to the Lemures and Dretches."

Tanar'ri are not supposed to be good tacticians. The typical tanar'ri behavior would be like the one of the Marquis de Sade.

"But, if we apply that standard, of following the Planescape books to define canon for demon/devil behavior and the nature of the Nine Hells and of the Abyss, then Falkovnia is honestly a scarier place to live than the Nine Hells are. Azalin could easily replace one of the Lords of the Nine, as few of them seem to be as powerful or cunning as Azalin."

Yeah maybe reading about falkovnia is scarier but then falkovnia is made for an horror setting while the nine hells and the abyss are made for a philosopher with club setting so the writing style is not the same. Because frankly I would prefer to be stuck in falkovnia than in hell or the abyss. In many place in the lower plane you cant breath the toxic air or drink the acidic water. Remember that beings more powerfull than you are are probably hunting you. I falkovnia there is hope in the lower plane there is no hope.

Tower of Doom, eh? Okay, I'll have to check eBay for that. I didn't realize Azalin appeared in other Ravenloft novels as well.

As for Faust, I read through his post carefully and didn't understand what he was saying, so in the old trick of covering my own ignorance, I will hereby agree with everything he has said.

Well, I guess I'm going to go with Faust's answer then: Ravenloft is Ravenloft, Planescape is Planescape, and never the two shall meet. This, of course, requires me to ignore a bit of canon (as some Planescape materials reference the Demiplane of Dread, thus seeming to bind them together), but whatever.

For those who don't like the above, here's my other answer: Baatezu don't have to be devilish, as they're not Devils, they're Baatezu. Tanar'ri of course don't have to be demonic, as they're not Demons, they're Tanar'ri. So any and all Planescape canon can be retroactively ignored, as they're not talking about Demons and Devils at all. (And I will continue to chant "tra la la la la" whenever someone points out contradictions in Manual of the Planes or the Planar Handbook and ignore any contradictions binding me to non-horrific devils and demons).

[sighs heavily] Okay, nevermind on the above. Just noticed, in Denizens of Dread, page 73, this passage:

Denizens of Dread, page 73 'Fiend, Dread' wrote:Many fiends fall into the category of baatezu, or devils, creatures from the Planes of Hell. Others, the tanar'ri or demons, hail from the Abyss.

So I'm bound back to Planescape canon again, this time by Ravenloft canon itself.

That said, perhaps this whole idea was silly to begin with. I really liked the idea of a fiendish imp who'd learned at Azalin's feet and wondering what he/she/it had been doing while Azalin was gone, and it was exciting to find that it'd work with normal canon (though wouldn't have been appreciated; I got that notion just fine), but now after being beaten down by the Planescape canon as well... Perhaps the idea of a horrific imp is just silly, explaining the silly imp fetish perpetually in vogue.

I officially give up on this idea.

What's silly about a giggling thing that can hide in shadows and kill a person with a touch (of his stinger)?