Book of the Damned: Heresy Devil and Erinyes Queen on Labor Day
Monday, September 7, 2009
Ahh, Labor Day! A day to relax, share the company of friends, and enjoy one of the last summer weekends in the northern hemisphere. Of course, if you're this heresy devil from Princes of Darkness, Book of the Damned Volume I, you've probably never had an honest day of work in your life—just beers, bratwurst, and corrupting existing religions to evil. He's really let himself go, the guy probably weighs like 2,300 pounds! And here's his nagging girlfriend, one of the Erinyes Queens. "Why can't you get a job? All you do is loaf around with your stupid friends! My mother was right about you!" Feels like home, doesn't it?
Now that we're back from the adventures, misadventures, and unexpected romances of Gen Con, it's again time to talk about one of our upcoming books, Princes of Darkness, Book of the Damned Volume I. I'll just quote Master Schneider's text.
Illustration by Kieran Yanner
Moloch: All who burn join the armies of Moloch. A being of seething wrath, the Lord of the Sixth embodies both absolute discipline and directed destructive force. General of Hell's Armies, Moloch endlessly trains his infernal legions to be the greatest martial force in the multiverse.
Whatever body Moloch might have once possessed was consumed in flame long ago. Now, the General of Hell is an embodiment of the most devastating, inhuman aspects of war, a creature of fearsome black metal and spiked armor encrusted with the blood of countless opponents. With his clawed gauntlets he exerts the strength of a titan to heft the blood-soaked sword Ramithaine and the horned battleaxe Goreletch. Even in his most tempered moods, flames leap from Moloch's eyes, flaring nostrils, and every other joint and chink of his scorched armor, this blaze growing more wild as the archfiend's ire rises. He never removes his armor, though on the rare occasions where it has become damaged in the heat of battle, nothing lies beneath but flames and the faint outline of withered, fire-charred bones.
Stygia: Every lie spoken throughout the planes condenses as a drop of poison to flood Stygia, the fifth layer of Hell. Amid the tangled swamps and fetid jungles rise moldy ruins, mired temples to false deities, and whole blasphemous cities. The waters of the Styx mix with the layer's venomous bogs, creating vast noxious moors before flowing into vast black seas. Dilapidated avenues paved with cracked stones—remnants of empires that never were—cut through these dense bogs, though they regularly succumb to unexpected floods of stagnant water. Travelers who brave the paths or manage to fight their way through the swamps for long enough inevitably discover examples of the layer's countless ruins, overgrown temples and cathedrals, disparate crumbling monuments, and fortresses upturned as if flung by gigantic and careless hands. Most of these decrepit structures—drawn in their entirety from innumerable mortal worlds—still bear artifacts and artistry from forgotten epochs, typically idols and icons of deities and divine forces unknown to even the longest-lived inhabitants of the multiverse.
In the mountainous scriptorium called the Library of Oaths, diabolical clerks record every mortal oath with a damning consequence. These records prove binding, and those who break their words are damned to eternity in Stygia for as long as their vows remain within the library vault.
Wes is a pretty creepy guy. He always wears black and red, never smiles, lights creepy candles at his desk, and his voice is a spine-chilling hiss.* What better person to write Book of the Damned, Vol. I, Princes of Darkness?
This book is a seven-course feast of lore about Hell, devils, and Asmodeus. You get descriptions of all nine layers of Hell, each layer's archdevil ruler (such as Dispater, the Iron Lord of Dis), new hellish spells and magic items, a new diabolist prestige class (and her imp "animal companion"), information about the influence of true names and sigils on controlling devils, promotion and demotion among the ranks, five new kinds of devils (including the levaloch, soldiers of Malebolgia), and excerpts from an ancient book penned by an exiled angel about the nature of Hell and the origin of Asmodeus himself. The art is beautiful and evocative; art director Sarah Robinson has outdone herself yet again, producing a beautiful book about the ultimate place of evil.
Sean K Reynolds
Developer, Pathfinder Chronicles
*Wes is actually very nice, outgoing, and fun to work with. And I'm not just saying that because he's hissing. A lot.
As promised, here is part 2 of "Roots & Beginnings: Book of the Damned":
Wes: "There are a lot of interesting stories about demons in Hebrew mysticism and collections of angelology. Sean K Reynolds lent me a fantastic book, the Dictionary of Angels: Including the Fallen Angels, by Gustav Davidson, which was a major source of inspiration. Another interesting source was accounts from the Book of Tobit, which features Asmodeus as the primary villain.
"There was also a lot of ancient Middle Eastern mythology that I tried to fit in. It's interesting how in ancient history, when a large religion such as Christianity gained prominence in an area, the old gods were demonized. Moloch and Beelzebub are good examples of this. Moloch was a relatively benevolent deity in the Fertile Crescent in ancient times. What's interesting is that the word 'Moloch' might refer to the either the deity itself or to the method with which worshipers sacrificed to it. Adherents possessed a kiln shaped like a bull, and put seven sacrifices into seven slots in the oven—one was an amount of flour, there were several animals, and the last was a human child. There was nothing inherently malevolent about this—nor particularly uncommon for the age—it was just the way they practiced their religion.
"1st Edition portrays Moloch basically as a scary devil with horns. Paizo's version of Moloch promotes him to the general of Hell's legions; he is a monstrous suit of armor with a bull-like helm, beneath which there is nothing but living fire. He's disciplined, severe, and merciless, but aside from commanding Hell's war machine, he's also very mercenary in his recruitment for his legions in that he's willing to provide services for those who honor him; if people sacrifice to him, he fixes their problems. Should one burn offerings to Moloch to stop a flood and save their village, he's probably more likely to step in and stop the flood than most deities. The caveat, of course, is that Moloch is an archdevil and whether one worships him as part of a militaristic cult, as part of the traditions of one's people, or just because his standing offer of aid is tempting, serving him damns a soul to his fortress realm in Malbolgia after death. But when faced with dying at the hands of a foe, infernal intervention for either benevolent or selfish reason might be worth the price of later damnation. There's a lot of this throughout the book, evil disguised as goodness or at least the right—or easy—choice for the moment. Sure, Asmodeus, the archdevils, and the armies of Hell could easily murderer mortals and claim their souls, but why when, with the proper nudging, most mortals will damn themselves.
Thanks for reading "Roots & Beginnings: Book of the Damned"!
The Pathfinder Chronicles Campaign Setting gave readers a glimpse of the tortuous layers of Hell and the diabolical machinations of the archdevils who rule them, and The Great Beyond, A Guide to the Multiverse, scheduled to be released in June, will further whet the appetites of those who crave to add a healthy dose of the infernal to their game. The definitive treatise on Hell, however, is being written by none other than Paizo's own F. Wesley Schneider: Princes of Darkness—Book of the Damned, Volume 1. I had the chance to speak to Wes recently about the sources he consulted when writing this daunting tome, and how he managed to reconcile the mythological roots of Hell with the lore of previous editions of the game.
Wes: "The two primary sources of inspiration are obvious: Milton’s Paradise Lost and Dante’s Inferno. Other influential real-world sources included the Lesser Key of Solomon—and the Dictionnaire Infernal.
"The problem is these sources have been used over and over in the game and in third-party supplements. The way the entries for individual demons are written in the Lesser Key, for example, they already sound as if they were appearing in RPG products. I tried to avoid using the entries that have been bandied about the game frequently, as they've had enough coverage already. I didn't want to use too many of the fiends from mythology that have already appeared in products like Necromancer's Tome of Horrors and Green Ronin's Book of Fiends, as they have lives and details of their own. The 1st Edition Monster Manual II has a list of names of demons—some are made up and so we can't use them, but the ones from obscure mythology were perfect.
"The problem with Hell, in my opinion, is that it is the red-headed step-child to the Abyss. Whereas the Abyss is infinitely large, full of an infinitely diverse number of cool monsters, Hell has been stereotyped as a place of boring rigidity ruled over by scary-looking dudes with whips and pitchforks and goatees. When I wrote The Book of the Damned, I wanted to get rid of these stereotypes, and to make the archdevils actually monsters, because that would be much cooler than just generic cackling overlords. I tried to draw on the mythology that was already established for them but make them more like monsters. A good example is Geryon—in the original game he was just a snake man with a spear. Classical Greek mythology, however, portrays him as a warrior possessing a human form from waist down, but with three torsos and six arms. For The Book of the Damned I mixed the both the mythological and game interpretations of Geryon into something at the same time evocative of past images, but still new and very cool.
"The biggest differences between the Pathfinder version of Hell and the classic interpretation in the game is that we play up the "law and order" aspect—it's more about tyrants and the hierarchy of Hell, in that while Hell is first and foremost a punishment, it also has a goal and intention, and the personalities there are ancient and have neat concepts behind them. Beyond just Asmodeus and the archdevils, there is a whole host of deity-like beings: infernal dukes (of whom there is unlimited room for further development and details), malebranche (powerful diabolical warlords sent out to conquer specific worlds), and a few other tiers I’ll save as surprises for the final book. The biggest thing is that there is a lot going on and it's interesting, and it sticks to both the lore of the game and the mythological roots; it also draws on interesting history of deities that have been subsumed by other religions."
Stay tuned for Part 2 of "Roots & Beginnings: Book of the Damned"!
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