So I started to watch "Band of Brothers" on DVD to get a feeling for the despair and cruelty of modern wars as well as ideas for possible scenes for my adventure. At the moment I consider an elaborted scene with the "Winged Sniper" based on the aforementioned movie. Also I want to expand the encounter "City in Flames" to a house-to-house fighting and finally insert a scene of artillery bombardement in a fixed position.
So these are my ideas but the question remains: is this interpretation of the Blood War consistent with the tone and feel of Planescape? What is your opinion?
Thanx for your input,
Sthelysh
1. Some armies are fighting on a battlefield toe to toe just like in a Braveheart battle (2 groups charging at each other and meet in a clump in the middle of the field).
2. Other battles might be going on similiar to the first idea but with more tactics involved. Archers and spellcasters from a distance. Even some large artillary weapons like catapults and air support. I even imagine fiends tunneling underground to emerge from underneath their foes and pull them down for the kill.
3. Your example sounds like a good one too. Just like in a Wolfenstein 3D game, troops are fighting in destroyed town/villages, fighting from house to house and rooftop to rooftop. That would be fun.
4. The Starship Troopers scenario. Platoons of Baatezu arrive on an empty battlefield only to be swarmed & bombarded by thousands of Tanar'ri ground troops that were carefully hidden away underground thanks to the Yugoloth strategists.
5. My favorite view of the war goes something like the Terminator futuristic battles in the Terminator movies. Only it's not sci-fi of course. But imagine the futuristic scenes from the movie where the humans are fighting the terminators and the ships are flying above. Change the heaping mounds of "junk" to heaping mounds of dead fiends. Change the ships to soaring fiends. I imagine the battles on that field being slow paced. Scouting and spurts of fighting going on. Fiends creeping slowly around/over mounds looking for the enemy. An occasional Tanar'ri poping out of a hiding spot to ambush a group of Baatezu. Smaller fiends creeping along only to be surprised by a much bigger enemy fiend climbing over a mound of dead bodies & coming their way. Yugoloth scouts leading some Tanar'ri thru the mess, but purposely crossing paths with a Baatezu camp because the Baatezu hired the scout to work for the Tanar'ri.
The war is so old & so big that I can see it involving any kind of scenario you can think of. Each sides army will run VERY similiar to any other army. Even medieval warfare in our world hasn't changed much besides the technology. The fiends will still have generals, captains, privates, ect...they just might call them by different names. With the spells, magic items, and strange structures available, it could seem very modern & almost Sci-Fi.
is the Blood War in terms of scope and destruction more similar to modern warfare than medieval warfare,
Oh, definitely. Certainly, in terms of speed and mobility. Many fiends can teleport, which dramatically changes the shape of the war. Many can fly. There are also portals and the River Styx; these allow fiendish armies to travel great distances in far less time and with far less effort than a medieval army would have.
Broadly speaking, distance isn't really a factor for fiends. They can attack any time and anywhere, at least on those layers of the lower planes that touch the Astral. Deeper layers may be better defended.
Castles can still work, though they need to fly and be filled with pockets full of deadly traps in order to dissuade flying and teleporting fiends.
Fiends also have war machines and weapons of mass destruction that medieval armies didn't remotely approach. They have living, walking fortresses, spells that decimate miles of territory at a time, ironsided battleships and submersibles. They can use magic to create the equivalent of mines and poison gas.
The Blood War is very much like modern warfare, and almost nothing like medieval warfare.
The Blood War is very much like modern warfare, and almost nothing like medieval warfare.
Oh so accurate :D
*evil grin* Give me a month or so and my storyhour will break into a multiple update stretch detailing the seige of Khin-Oin and several million fiends loyal to either Anthraxus or Mydianchlarus going to battle. Tens of thousands of slasraths with greater 'loths mounted on them being used as flying artillery against the legions of lesser 'loths in what amounts to trench warfare below, but le somme never had teleportation, magic, etc... it gets ugly very fast because neither side will give up since they'll be butchered if their side loses...
*grin*
Give me a month or so and my storyhour
Now you've gone and done it. Nervous twitching and continuous checking for updates starting ... immediately.
