Many thanks,
Peace,
tfad
Now imagine a universe. The universe was not created intentionally; it is a side-effect of a greater scheme, the buried foundations of a house that has not yet been built. In the silence and the dark strange abortions form, featureless and mute, white and slippery and boneless. They grow, and as they grow they learn a language that does not require words, they learn sight that does not require light, and they make great tentacles to incorporate their lesser kin into their amorphous flesh. Ultimately the great ones fashion a warrior caste, all brutal spines and facelessness, while the eldest fall into hybernation as they await their final metamorphosis.
The creators of the house - of the universe - return. They see the abominations that have formed, like mildew, in their absence. They determine the foundations must be cleansed so that the intended structure can be built. The children of the heavens are lured in, as pawns, and the first war begins.
At the end, a new race arrives to conquer and control the remaining infestation. It cannot, in the end, be cleansed completely but must be incorporated by force into the new design.
That's way weirder than what I thought was going on with them - thanks for the reply!
So, what of the Baatorian's mental state? Are they intelligent at all? Sentient? Insane? Do they plot? Do they scheme?
And what are they capable of? So, do they use magic, psionics etc? Do they follow any deities? Weild weapons? Do they have strange 'blob' like powers?
Many thanks for your help!
Peace,
tfad
And what are they capable of? So, do they use magic, psionics etc? Do they follow any deities? Weild weapons? Do they have strange 'blob' like powers?
Actually, they've never been statted (except for advanced nupperibos), and hardly described at all. You could pretty much make them anything you wanted them to be.
My post above was more an attempt at a possible analogy rather than anything official.
Official kinds of Ancient Baatorians include the nupperibo and this thing.
As they grow older, they grow stranger. This is the text describing them in Hellbound: The Blood War:
Before the baatezu inhabited Baator, the plane was home to beings even older than the fiends. It's wrong to call the original residents "creatures," really, because they're actually essences of powers and bellefs from an unimaginably ancient age.
The beings still lie scattered about Baator, seeping through the substance of the layers and the minds of the denizens, their presence virtually unknown and unknowable. Occasionally, though, they take material form in Maladomini, drawn for some mysterious reason to the catacombs beneath the empty burgs of the layer.
The Ancient Baatorian encountered in Maladomini is an amorphous shape that sucks in all light. If it wakes up, it quickly drains away all the characters' energy levels. It is immune to all attacks.
The Ancient Baatorian encountered in Maladomini is an amorphous shape that sucks in all light. If it wakes up, it quickly drains away all the characters' energy levels. It is immune to all attacks.
That is a blatant understatement. A wish (and I also imagine miracle) can deal with it :D
A wish (and I also imagine miracle) can deal with it :D
What it actually says is "nothing short of a wish can affect the Baatorian in its current state."
So, yes, a wish can affect it, but it can't necessarily destroy it. Probably the best you can hope for is to get it to resume its immaterial form, becoming once again an idea rather than a monster. In a worst case scenario, the wish just makes it mad.
The answer is probably somewhere in between. A creature immune to 8th level spells isn't going to be instantly destroyed by a single 9th level spell.
The intention of the adventure is that the PCs run away or die.
You've been a great help.
The Baatorians are nothing like I imagined though, and not really suitable for our game. Perhaps a little bit too 'far realm' for what we've got going on.
It's all about the Blood Wars.
Thanks again and peace,
tfad
...
You've been a great help.
The Baatorians are nothing like I imagined though, and not really suitable for our game. Perhaps a little bit too 'far realm' for what we've got going on.
It's all about the Blood Wars.
Thanks again and peace,
tfad
The Ancient Baatorians have indeed never shown up in the Blood War. Nobody's ever quite dared to get them involved.
Which is not to say that one side or the other might not wake them up as a 'suicide spoiler', should it look like ultimate victory for one side or the other. If the baatezu are winning, the tanar'ri try to kick awake the Ancients as a last-ditch distraction; in a tanar'ri victory, the Ancients get woken up as sort of an ultimate, preemptive, sowing of the planes with salt.
Like summoning Pikathulhu, this is something best done when you are losing... badly. :D
Nobody's ever quite dared to get them involved.
Dont say that...
...my PCs will take that as a challenge! :P
Peace,
tfad
