T is for Tharizdun and Tiamat

Yesterday I talked about the Devil as embodied in Satan.  As I mentioned I don't like the idea of using such impossible evils to kill (if it has stats it can be killed).  But near-impossible ones are fine.

I have talked about Tiamat a lot here.  Not just the D&D concept of her, but the ancient myths and what she means in my world.  She is the current "Big bad" in my kids 3rd edition game.  They began as just a small group looking into researching dragons.  In the process they discovered the rise of the old Cult of the Dragon (I am using what appeared in Dragon Magazine before it was went over to the Forgotten Realms) into a new threat.  The feel the only way to stop this evil from taking over the world is go to the source.
The twist I am planning is the artifacts I am having my kids gather up to summon Tiamat are also just what she needs to come into this world to rule it.  I am using ideas from the old Doctor Who serial "The Key of Time" and the Come Endless Darkness book by Gary Gygax (more on that book later).  They have gathered up all the relics they need; and these are true relics, they are the remains of dragons that are now "saints" in Tiamat's evil pantheon.   They are going to summon her using these relics and a few other items. Then there is going to be a big no-holds-barred fight on the Dragon Isles.
There are some parallels here with my last campaign/game "The Dragon and the Phoenix", but this one should be a lot bloodier.
Here are some of my relevant posts on Tiamat

• http://timbrannan.blogspot.com/2012/06/tiamat-on-my-mind.html
• http://timbrannan.blogspot.com/2010/11/sohave-you-ever-killed-god.html
• http://timbrannan.blogspot.com/2012/03/dragonslayers-epic-epic-of-epicness.html
• http://timbrannan.blogspot.com/2013/04/e-is-for-eodemon.html

Tharizdûn is closer to the classical idea of "The Devil" than Tiamat is.  Though I do recall at one point thinking that Orcus was the son of Tiamat and Tharizdun.  Not keeping that, but I might revisit it one day.
Unlike many of the other creatures, I have posted here Tharizdun was created whole cloth by Gary Gygax and expanded on in later books.  He is the main bad guy in the Gord the Rogue books including Come Endless Darkness (he is on the cover in fact).  In my games, he is god chained at the bottom of Hell and Asmodeus is his jailer still.  Though the millennia of Tharizdun whispering in his ear it is hard to say how much of the original Asmodeus is actually left.
He is hinted at in the T1-4 modules and then bits and pieces in S4 and WG4.  I think it would be very interesting to do the entire GDQ series under AD&D but instead of Lolth being the big bad, make her an unwitting pawn of Tharizidun.  Get the Shard of Pure Evil (from 4th Edition) so he can escape his prison and destroy the world.
Sure it is an awful lot like my Tiamat arc above.  But it works, and the stakes would be much higher.

Can't wait for my kids to fight these two!

S is for Satan

I have talked a lot about demons this month and about Hell prior to this.  The one thing I have not talked much about is the Big D himself, The Devil aka Satan.

Here are two things you likely didn't know about Satan in RPGS and D&D in particular.
First, he usually doesn't appear in them.  In fact, there are no official stats for Satan/Lucifer in D&D in any edition.  Plenty of stats in third party products, but none for the guy himself.
Secondly, I never use Satan in my games.  Not because I don't want too or have any fear of it, simply put there is no way he could ever live up to the expectation of the players.
One lucky roll and all my carefully laid plans become, oh hey we just killed the Source of All Evil.  How many XP do we get?  There is just no way that stats on paper can match up with the expectations of the players.  With a character like Dracula, it is easier.  He can be just as evil, just as much of a threat to the characters, but we know something else about Dracula. It's the same as Smaug, or Voldermort, or Vader or Sauron.  These evils can and were defeated.  Satan is, or at least should be, an unstoppable dreadnaught of evil. He is not the Monster of the Week, he is not even the Big Bad.  He is the Biggest Bad EVER.

Despite the lurid tales from the 80's (check out Asshat Paladin's review of "Playing with Fire") or Pat Robertson's claims, D&D players are not Satanists.  Sure, maybe some are. But no more or no less than say the general population (which is much smaller than people generally think).

Lucifer as Satan has appeared in the pages of Dragon Magazine and in the various Tome of Horrors books.

Satan made his appearance in Dragon #28 from 1979 in the infamous Politics of Hell article.  Here are the stats he had then:

Satan
FREQUENCY Very rare
NO. APPEARING 1
ARMOR CLASS -8
MOVE Whatever desired
HIT DICE 333 hit points
% IN LAIR 5%
TREASURE TYPE H(*2), l(*2), U(*2)
NO. ATTACKS 1
DAMAGE/ATTACK 10-100
SPECIAL ATTACKS +3 or better weapon and purity of heart required to hit
MAGIC RESISTANCE 95%
INTELLIGENCE Godlike
ALIGNMENT Lawful evil
SIZE Variable
PSIONIC ABILITY Special
Attack/Defense Modes Special

and his more recent S&W stats:
(Satan from the Tome of Horrors Complete, Copyright 2011, Necromancer Games, Inc., published and distributed by Frog God Games; Authors Scott Greene.)

Satan

Hit Dice: 25 (150 hp)
Armor Class: -6 [25]
Attack: Rod of Infernus (3d6), bite (2d4 plus poison) or 2 claws (2d8), bite (2d4 plus poison), tail sting 1d8 plus poison)
Saving Throw: 3
Special: Gaze weapons, spells, summon devils, +3 or better weapon to hit, immunity to fire and poison, regeneration (4 hp/round), magic resistance (90%), see in darkness, telepathy 100 ft.
Move: 21/30 (flying)
Alignment: Chaos
Challenge Level/XP: 40/10400

The Pathfinder stats are even more powerful.
EVEN then there is some character out there that could take this guy.  Maybe not many, but they are out there.


Lucifer and Satan have appeared as separate entities in the old Death's Edge Games Inferno games.
Which got me thinking, what if "Satan" isn't a person, but a title.  Not "Satan" but "the Satan", similar to what I did for Demongorgon.  The idea is not really an original one, Piers Anthony covered it in his Incarnations of Immortality series and it was covered well in the Charmed series with their Source of All Evil concept.
So the idea here is take a demon, already powerful, and juice him up on all the power of evil, or Evil, and he becomes the ruler of all demons.  Take a page from Lexx and His Divine Shadow and make it so that the new host of this evil power, the new Satan, has all the memories of all the previous Satans AND the knowledge of the new host.  That is a very dangerous foe.

So lets combine this idea with Dante's Inferno and some from the the D&D game itself.  In D&D there is a god of Evil, Tharizdun (who I'll talk about more tomorrow) that is roughly the same as Lucifer/Satan.
Tharizdun is trapped in a prison where his jailer was Asmodeus.  Asmodeus is now the leader of Hell and Tharisdun is forgotten.  There are a lot of clues to his whereabouts and even Gygax himself featured him in his Gord the Rogue books.  So my solution is to split "Satan" up into a couple of beings.  Part of him is the imprisoned Beast and another part in actually part of AAsmodeus

Another part...well I have not figured that one out yet.

The real question that in a world FULL of demons, devils and all sorts of monsters what purpose does Satan serve? What does he do?

The recent Kelley Armstrong book "Thirteen" finally features Lucifer.  He is very different than what is typically expected.  Two of my favorite versions was Peter Cook's in Bedazzled and Viggo Mortensen in The Prophecy for different reasons.  Maybe I should do that for my next October Movie marathon, only watch movies that feature the Devil/Satan as a character.

I also have something to say about RPGs and their role in the Satanic Panic of the 80s.  But that needs to be for another day.

Stop CISPA

CISPA is bad for the internet, bad for people.
Learn more at https://www.eff.org/cybersecurity-bill-faq

Regular post continues later today.

R is for Raven

Total cheat today. But I am going with Raven. Her name is also Rachel Roth, so that also counts.
 Why is she good to post today? Raven is the daughter of the Demon Trigon. So she is half demon. But she is a good person, or at least she tries to be one.


Raven Detail by *AdamHughes on deviantART


Raven by *timberwolfd3 on deviantART


Evil Raven Laughs at... by =morganagod on deviantART


Raven's bookgasm {tontos como yo 'verse} by ~Asmodeus7891 on deviantART


Raven - Teen Titans by ~Neferet-Cosplay on deviantART


Blackbird by ~HastyKitten on deviantART


Trigon's Heir_colored by ~FezzTheeElite on deviantART


Raven by *RandyGreen on deviantART


Teen Titans-Raven by =autumnwraith on deviantART


Teen Titans Raven Theme by ~hackman2k3 on deviantART


Raven in ten years?? by ~Asukawa on deviantART


Demon's Daughter by ~raymundlee on deviantART


TT-Raven (DC Special) by *Glee-chan on deviantART


Sentinel of Magic by ~Neferet-Cosplay on deviantART

Q is for Quareen

Qareen, or qarīn, are another demon from Islamic literature.  They are kind of an interesting idea.  I think they have some origins of the idea of a personal daemon like the Greeks talked about, but I have no data to support this.

In a game I would treat them much like another demon I created a while back called the Never Was. Though I would give them a much darker edge.

Quareen

These creatures are lesser Jinn also known as Personal Demons.  Occult scholars suspect that everyone has at least one, maybe even several.  Unlike other demons, the Qareen rarely if ever manifest in our world as physical beings.  They influence their host by goading them on to do evil. The Qareen are also unique in that they work with nearly any demon.  If a succubus has targeted a particular mortal in order to steal his soul, his Qareen will aid the succubus in the temptation by suggestion.  The succubus gains the soul on the death of the victim.  It is unknown what the qareen get. They seem motivated by evil for evil’s sake.
If the qareen is made manifest (some rare magical books detail how this can be done) they have the same stats as the person they belong too.  Killing the qareen doesn’t affect the person, save for making them feel “good” and want to do good. Sooner or later another qareen will take over.
A carefully worded remove curse spell can remove a qareen, but they usually return when the character is faced with temptation again.

Game Stats:
The Quareen uses the same stats as whatever person it is attached to. They can't normally attack and do not physically manifest.  Though the days when a Qareen is most active the character must make a Wisdom-based save (or Will or Magic with Wisdom mods) to avoid giving into temptation.

Atari 2600 for Sale

Ok, so I normally don't pass on non-RPG related eBay auctions, but in this case I am sure you will forgive me.

My brother is selling a sealed in the box, brand new Atari 2600 system. Never been used.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/230963964171

He bought it at some sale with a bunch of toys.

Either way this is old school video-gaming at it's best.

New Google+ Comments

Trying out the new comment system that is supposed to link Blogger comments and Google+ comment together.
I know some people like to post here, and others over at Google+.

Instead of doing it here first I figure I'll try it on my other blog.
So pop over there to give it a try.

http://freedomofnonbelief.blogspot.com/