Taking 20 Podcast - Ep 105 - The Blood War Part 2

Episode Date: December 26, 2021

Happy Holidays one and all!  Didn't get enough of the Blood War last time?  Good.  Let's talk some more about Demons and Devils slaying each other by the billions in a fight that's lasted damn near forever.  But what about the Celestials?  Who is the Lady of Pain?  Where do these fights happen?  Tune in and find out!

This week on the Taking20 Podcast. They know that if demons and devils ever teamed up, the good plains of Arcadia, Mount Celestia, Bytopia, Elysium, and the Beastlands, Arborea, and Asgard would be in serious trouble of being overrun. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to episode 105 of the Taking20 Podcast. This week, part two of a previously covered subject, the blood war. This week's sponsor, fake hair. I heard the devil lost his hair, and should anyone ever find out he's wearing a wig,

there'll be hell to pay. We have a coffee, ko-fi.com slash taking 20 podcast. Please consider donating. Domain renewal time is coming up and that has a little cost associated with it. If you like this podcast and want to support it, I would greatly appreciate anything you'd be willing to donate. Happy holidays. This is the last episode of 2021. So let's celebrate this time of peace, love and cheer by talking about demons and devils. Okay. I first talked about the Blood War in episode 79, and I've gotten a lot of positive comments and requests for more information about it. Thank you all so much for the feedback.

And by the way, talking more about the Blood War, don't you dare threaten me with a good time. Today we're going to talk about some of the political players, some major locations, and finally some creative ways to include the Blood War in your game. As a reminder, most of this lore comes from the various versions of Dungeons & Dragons. There is no parallel in Pathfinder or Starfinder, but that just means that you could just port it over and make it up in your own campaign if you wanted to. But first things first, a recap of the previous episode. We talked about the Blood War, which is the eternal war between devils and demons. Lawful evil devils like the Beatazoo reside in the Nine Hells. The chaotic evil demons like

Tanari reside in the Abyss. And Tom, these teams do not like each other. Throw out the records, when these two teams clash, the hatred's so palpable you can cut it with a demon scythe. They've been fighting a war that's been raging for millennia. The battle's in a constant state of flux, and there's almost always fights along the River Styx, which connects the two planes together. The Celestials mostly just hang back and let the two groups beat the crap out of each other,

but not completely. More on that in a moment. I first read about the Blood War back in D&D 2nd edition, and the planescape setting greatly expanded the lore. Each successive edition has provided more detail and slightly expanded or modified the information available. 5th edition largely ignored the topic until Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes came out in 2018. largely ignored the topic until Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes came out in 2018. There, it described the Blood War as having gone hot and cold through the ages, with skirmishes continuing but large-scale

battles being rare during the times of a Cold War. That's all been covered before, let's get to the new hotness. Wait, is that a phrase anymore? New hotness? If not, can someone write me and tell me what the new hotness phrase is for new hotness? I really don't think it's still new hotness. Sorry, let's talk about the City of Sigil and the Lady of Pain. In Dungeons and Dragons, the City of Sigil, sometimes called the City of Doors, is in the center of the Great Wheel of the Outer Planes, like the hub on a wheel with the outer planes like Mechanus, Mount Celestia, Limbo, and important for purposes of the great wheel of the outer planes, like the hub on a wheel with the outer planes like Mechanus, Mount Celestia, Limbo, and important for purposes of the Blood War, the Abyss and the Nine Hells at the edge of this wheel. Every plane has portals that lead to Sigil,

which makes it a natural meeting place and a place where trade can be conducted. Also, very importantly, the only way to enter or leave Sigil is one of these portals. You can't teleport in. Sigil hovers above a tall, mountainous landmark known as the Spire at the center of the plane on which it resides. It's shaped like a torus, a donut if you will, with a circumference of 20 miles and a thickness of about 1.5 miles. The city is inside the torus, so inside the donut, not on the outside of it. So if you were in the city and you look up, you'll see more of the city or parts of the torus. In other words, there's no sky in Sigil. The city artificially maintains a 24-hour day-night cycle

with light rising to the peak and then receding to the lowest light level called the anti-peak. Sigil maintains strict neutrality and officially does not get involved in planar politics. It's like the Switzerland of the D&D planar cosmology, but with more kidnapping of visitors and less chocolate. It's estimated that 50,000 beings live full-time in Sigil, while 200,000 visitors are there at any given time. Many come for important interplanar meetings or to make trade with various locations in the various planes. To understand how Sigil is related to the

Blood War, you need to know about the Lady of Pain, Sigil's enigmatic leader. The Lady of Pain wields immense power as the ruler of Sigil from her throne of blades. She is rarely seen, but when she is, she looks like a large feminine figure floating above the city with a mantle of blades around a blank, expressionless face. We mentioned Sigil's shape and size earlier. The Lady of Pain can change these details about the city at will, can make it bigger or smaller,

can cause it to grow or shrink. She also maintains the planar portals that connect Sigil to all the other planes. She is extremely powerful. It's within her power to keep extraplanar creatures like deities and archfiends from entering the city at all. As a matter of fact, no one enters the city without her permission to do so, and she doesn't give permission to anyone she thinks will cause problems. She isn't human. I mean, no one really knows what she is. She's called a lady, but nobody knows what gender, if any, she has. She just is. Some think she's a god. Some think she's a manifestation of the plane itself. What I can tell you is she seems like she's kind of a bitch. If she's annoyed at

anyone or stopped by anyone while she's floating above the streets or questioned by anyone, she'll send them to a demiplane full of mazes. And this demiplane is extremely difficult to get out of, so many people go there to die. You may be asking, if Sigil's neutral, how is it involved in the blood war? First of all, both devils and demons have tried to invade Sigil and take it as a jumping-off point for invading all the other planes. None of them can stand up to the raw power of the Lady of Pain, even the demons that are numbered in the trillions.

Instead, they started working with the various power factions within Sigil to try to corrupt it from within. The Tanari demons accepted the aid of the Dustmen in their battles and began looking for other allies. The Dustmen of Sigil are mass humanoids responsible for collecting all of the dead in the city. Officially, they burn all of the bodies because there's not room for a graveyard, but they could be sending the bodies to other planes, selling them, or perhaps the Dustmen you see walking around collecting the bodies are the reincarnated or reanimated bodies of those previously collected. For reasons unknown, the dustmen sided with the demons. Some say it was to augment the

demons' number with teeming dead arriving from dozens of planes. Following the dustmen in allying with the demons were the Anarchist Revolutionary League and, if you have it, it's yours faction called the Fated. But soon, the Beatazoo, the devils, found their own allies. At one point, the Sign of One and Mercy Killers were aiding the Beatazoo. A faction known as the Doomguard started offering their knowledge to both sides. started offering their knowledge to both sides. And when the various Sigil factions joined the fray, it exposed planes throughout the multiverse to some of these battles

because these factions exist outside of Sigil as well. Including, yes, the prime material plane where we live. In 3rd edition and 4th edition, a lot of the power of these factions was crushed by the Lady of Pain because they attempted to use demons and devils to overthrow her. The factions still exist, but many of them were banished, their power bases now largely

reside outside of the city of Sigil, and only a select few operators and spies still live within the city. So the demons and devils are still looking for ways into Sigil so they can subsequently invade their opponent's plane, thereby opening up a new front in the Blood War. Speaking of which, some believe the Lady of Pain has a hand in keeping the Blood War raging, and some whisper that she allows strong external forces to reinforce each side to keep the balance of war from tipping too far one side or the other. Why? Don't ask her, she'll banish you to one of those fucking endless maze demiplanes

and you'll never be heard from again. Moving on from Sigil, jeez, there's so much here. The factions, the Lady of Pain's immortal hovering servants called the Daboos who repair and recycle the city, guides that sell their services called Touts. Sigil is a location pregnant with adventuring ideas, but because of time purposes, we have to move on. Like any war, there are mercenaries and arms dealers on both sides supplying weapons. It's said that extended wars profit only the mercenaries and arms dealers, and the blood war has its share of both. The most egregious example of this are the neutral evil yugoloths. I mentioned them briefly in the previous episode that they sell their

services to both sides, sometimes at the same time. What I didn't mention is not only do they sell their services to both sides, but they will sometimes switch sides, mid-battle if they're promised a better cut of treasure or more pay. They are ruthless in their pursuit of riches. There are even stories of Yggdalaath captains who sell the river Styx who have purposefully drowned entire boats full of one-side troops when the other side offered them money to do so. Both the demons and the devils will sometimes show up to a battle with a very highly protected treasure chest full of stuff that they can use

to bribe the yugoloths. But as long as the blood war exists, the yugoloths will profit from it. Some accuse the yugoloths of artificially extending the blood war to keep increasing their profits and power. The Ugaloths claim they created the demons and devils and that the war will end when they grow weary of it. The first part of that claim may be spurious, but it's definite that they see no reason to encourage the end of the war anytime soon. A surprising supplier of the weapons in the blood war are the Celestials. Yep, the good holy people. Angels, Archons, Eladrin. You'd think they would steer well clear of a war between two evil sides, and they generally do, but not all of them. Some Celestials will sell weapons, information, and even souls to one side or the other, depending on the highest bidder.

You might think that this is because even the forces of good aren't immune to greed, but it's way more important than that. They see the continued fighting between the evils as good for the multiverse as a whole. They know that if demons and devils ever teamed up, the good planes of Arcadia, Mount Celestia, Bytopia, Elysium, and the Beastlands, Arborea and Asgard, would be in serious trouble of being overrun. So they watch and tinker when they need to to keep the war going, keep each side focused on the other, and the good planes stay safe because of it.

Another interesting characteristic of the war are the spies that both sides can use. The devils are more successful at this due to their lawful nature, but powerful demon lords have had some success with them as well. spies that both sides can use. The devils are more successful at this due to their lawful nature, but powerful demon lords have had some success with them as well. It is extremely uncommon for demons to side with devils or vice versa. They're just innately so different. But it doesn't mean that it couldn't happen, but it is kind of rare. Even if it did, by the way, demons wouldn't trust a devil turncoat for long and vice versa. They'd likely be grilled for information and then killed, just not over a grill because they're immune to fire. The most common example of spies that you can find are the incubi, succubi, and night hags.

They aren't really tied to one side or the other, and they will happily work for whichever side offers the best compensation or companionship. Demons use them to sow chaos in the nine Hells, while devils use them as scouts and intelligence gatherers. On the subject of information gatherers, by the way, either side would happily hire adventurers to make a clandestine foray into the opposing plane, usually accompanied by another creature who can give them a better chance of success. Sneak into the enemy's side, conduct some reconnaissance, steal an item, or murder a strategically important opponent. Sounds like an interesting campaign proposition, and you could

build an entire world around it. There's something important I haven't covered appropriately. What happens when demons and devils die? When demons and devils die on a plane other than their home, their bodies return to their home planes. But when they die on their home plane, they're destroyed So when a demon is reduced to zero hit points on the first level of hell called Avernus, that's the devil's home. So the demon falls, but its bodies return to the abyss. Conversely, if a devil is slain on that same plane, that's its home and it is slain forever. Flip the roles when fighting on the top layer of the abyss called Pizunia. Demons slain there are slain permanently.

Devils just poof back to their plane of existence and are reborn. Dying on another plane, mild annoyance. Dying on your home plane, you're dead. No resurrection, no coming back. That's the end, benito. Kaput. Because demons and devils don't have souls to be reborn. As you can imagine, devils when fighting on their own plane are more prone to retreat than they are on other planes, and more prone to retreat than demons are. Devils retreat, regroup, get reinforced, and fight again. Demons, with their immeasurable numbers, don't retreat.

They throw wave after wave of troops against the devils, and there's always more demons being brought to the fight. Devils have the advantage of better supply lines, better logistics, better tactics, and better training. Demons have the numerical superiority, and those two different advantages has kept this as a stalemate for millennia. When reincarnated, devils will report back to their commander

and re-enter the fight. But reincarnated devils, with their chaotic nature, are just as prone to wander off to a random direction rather than return to the fight at the front. Again, their numerical advantage, though, means that's not that big of a deal. Eventually, they'll reform the fight. It may just be 100,000 years or so.

I'm running out of time, so let's talk about some interesting battlefields of the war. A lot of the battles take place on Avernus, one of the first layers of the Nine Hells. Demonic forces will sail the river Styx into the layer, and they're repelled by diabolic legions that reside in reinforced iron towers along the river. It's said that Avernus was once beautiful, with massive forests and grasslands, but now all that remains are blasted landscapes, abandoned siege engines, and the previously mentioned iron towers. I also mentioned Pizunia earlier, and that's another primary battleground. Devils will regularly attempt to conquer this first layer of the Abyss to use it as a jumping-off point for invasions into the entire

infinite layers of the Abyss, but they rarely gain a foothold for long. Another regular battlefield of the Blood War is Oinos, the first layer of Hades. Battles occasionally leak into the deeper layers of Nilfheim and Pluton, but that's rare. Another common battlefield is the Grey Wastes of Gehenna. It's the home plane of the Yggdrasil and one of the only places where the two sides can fight and be assured that the Yggdrasil won't interfere, or at least won't interfere much. Yggdrasil slain on their home plane die permanently, same problem as demons in the Abyss and devils in the Nine Hells. And dead yugoloths can't earn any profit, so they avoid fighting close to home. Nearly any contract the yugoloths sign with either side will have a clause that allows them to escape the fight if it spills onto their home plane.

No sense in risking permanent death now. Finally, other planes have been home to battles, including the Prime Material plane. Finally, other planes have been home to battles, including the Prime Material plane. When it spills onto our plane, each side will sometimes bring mortals to bear in the battle, trying to swing the tide one way or another. But the tide never swings for long. The Demons have recently brought in Chaos ships, although in 3rd edition they were called Ships of Chaos,

to bear in the Blood War, and that's the latest bid for one side or the other to gain an advantage. These ships, by the way, are built in the abyssal level of Twelve Trees, which has a really cool history in and of itself. It's Twelve Trees, it's the twelfth layer of the abyss, and twelve astral divas were tricked into coming there and bound to the trunks of twelve enormous trees in a horrible arcane ritual that forever infused the lair with evil energy. When you visit that plane of existence, you can still hear the echoes of the death screams of the divas. The site is ringed by sickly pines that still ooze spiritual slime and an echo of the blood spilled by the ancient divas. Demons will make pilgrimage to the site because they

almost treat it as if it's holy and they will make sacrifices, and the evil of the plane is almost like a drug to them. They can't get enough of it. You could do an entire series on known layers of the abyss which are believed to be infinite. Anyway, chaos ships are built there, and they are incredibly hard to make. They fly through the abyss, and they're usually fitted with extremely powerful weapons. to make. They fly through the abyss and are usually fitted with extremely powerful weapons. Some are powered by soul larvae, others are powered by things called Anarch Spheres, which contain the roiling essence of the elemental chaos. Each chaos ship is unique, and some ships have merged with a demon and are actually alive. Select chaos ships have an aura of entropy around them that causes magical chaos, coercing opponents to turn on themselves.

These ships, powerful artifacts though they are, have only given the demons a small advantage for now. It's only a matter of time before the devils counter and gain their own advantage. Now let's talk about how you could include aspects of the Blood War in your campaign. First off, if the players are going to get into the thick of the Blood War, they'd better be very high level. I'm thinking 11 at a minimum and likely need to be much higher. Each side has a ton of troops they can bring to bear, including some CR 16 and higher creatures. Make sure your players are ready because if they just wander into this eons-long war, they're going to be turned into Balor food. Secondly, the planes where most of these battles happen, Gehenna, Abyss, Nine Hells, are extremely inhospitable to mortal life. Besides the battles that crop up, there are the wandering monsters

who could love to claim some mortals and make themselves look good to their superiors. With those things being said, here are some ways you can have the Blood War as a backdrop to an adventure. Borrow from Romeo and Juliet. What? Yeah, alright, hear me out. A Beatizou and a Succubus have a forbidden love affair. Or, the Beatizou has a letter proclaiming their love for the Succubus or Incubus. It wants the PCs to deliver the letter across the planes quietly and without getting caught.

Another idea, the PCs are brought to Sigil where they are dragged into the faction infighting and have to help one faction or another grow in strength before they can leave. Another thing in Sigil, the party is asked to rescue a devil's offspring from the maze demiplane where the Lady of Pain sends problematic entities. One of the players has a magic item that one side or the other wants, and rather than offering to buy it, you know, like a civilized devil would do, they send assassins to try to take the party out. A Tanari is made a blood pact with a mortal, and it's time for the devil to collect on the contract,

and they want to send the PCs to do it. The Blood War gives you the opportunity to have a combat-heavy campaign, politics-based campaign, and even a social-based campaign with lots of talking to high-level members on both sides. So far, I have spent two full episodes on the Blood War and there's so much I haven't discussed. The extraplanar faction called the Balance that strives to keep the Blood War going.

The Modrons that seek out and destroy demonic strongholds. Zariel, the fallen celestial who became an archidevil to fight on the front lines of the war. She didn't think that the good sides were doing enough to stop it, so she sees this as her duty to fight against the demons. Demonic scythes that let demons temporarily open new rifts into the Nine Hells. The glaives of the Barbazoo that absorb demonic blood to power the wielder's magic. The crawling city of Gehenna. The Dark Eight pit fiends.

There's so much good shit here. But unfortunately, I am out of time. By the way, I've received a couple of emails asking why I didn't go into the details of Descent into Avernus campaign in my last episode. The reason is that I don't want to spoil it for anyone who gets to play it. I'll just say that the Descent campaign ties into the Blood War, and I will leave it at that. If you can't tell after these two episodes, the Blood War is a very deep well of lore. Speaking of which, I received multiple emails saying how much they love some of the history and lore episodes, so I'm going to start a lore series in a few weeks. I think I

want to start it on the enigmatic vampire lord Strahd. Stay tuned for that. If you're interested about a third episode about the Blood War, or if you have an episode idea, please tell me at feedback at taking20podcast.com. But most importantly, thank you so much for listening and telling others about the podcast. My numbers have surged up recently, and that's all thanks to you. Hopefully, you guys are getting good tips and good ideas out of this podcast, and you and your players and your DM can have fun doing it. Before I go, though, I want to thank our sponsor, Fake Hair. When you get fake hair, you'd better like it immediately. It certainly won't grow on you.

This has been episode 105, part two of The Blood War. My name is Jeremy Shelley, and I hope that your next game is your best game. The Taking 20 Podcast is a Publishing Cube media production. Copyright 2021. References to game system content are copyright of their respective publishers.