Wrath of the Righteous: The Blood War

Or How I added Planescape to Golarion and Love it!

What elements, if any, would the authors/developers/fellow fans use from the Planescape setting in Wrath of the Righteous?

Or How I added Planescape to Golarion and Love it!

What elements, if any, would the authors/developers/fellow fans use from the Planescape setting in Wrath of the Righteous?

Pretty much zero. Planescape's closed content, and as such we can't use any of the flavor from that setting in Golarion. On top of that, I've always disliked the Blood War. It shifts fiends away from being monsters that prey upon mortals into monsters who are more interested in fighting each other.

Fiends of different alignments don't necessarily get along in the Great Beyond, but neither do they do much distracting of each other. Leaving demons and devils and everything in between able to focus their full attention on us poor mortals. Mwa ha ha.

That said... there's a LOT of outer planar/Planescape stuff out there for 2nd and 3rd edition D&D that would fit pretty well into certain parts of Wrath of the Righteous—I'd love to hear about how folks do this if they do!

I find that the fiends in the Blood War are INCREDIBLY interested in mortals! Mortals are oil, currency, uranium and delicious snacks all at the same time.

They just have a general cosmic goal of taking over everything that exists and Hell/The Abyss can't do that job with the Abyss/Hell getting in the way with their lack of discipline/ridiculous heirarchy.

That being said, I would be interested in a "Pathscape" campaign setting! Also a "Pathjammer" book, but keeping everything tied to the Great Beyond and the Golarion system would be best.

It would be fun to see how different such settings would be from those that came before them.

They just have a general cosmic goal of taking over everything that exists and Hell/The Abyss can't do that job with the Abyss/Hell getting in the way with their lack of discipline/ridiculous heirarchy.

I'm ashamed that I had to stop and wonder why you were reversing Hell and the Abyss in that sentence for about a minute.

Anyway, I tentatively use the Blood War in Golarion games. However, I set it "a long way away" planar-ly speaking. The Abyss is infinite, as is Hell. The thing with infinity is that you can go for a very long way and find lots of different things, but things that some demons/devils might have no idea about and other things that they know a lot about.

So demons/devils in Golarion's "region" of the Planes don't know a great deal about the formal Blood War (beyond the "we need to get rid of Hell/the Abyss" thing) outside of the demon lords and archdevils, while demons/devils "further away" in the Planar infinity (for lack of a better term) might know much more about it because they fight in said war. Essentially, different demons/devils know different things depending on where they are, and Golarion just happens to be isolated from some aspects of the Wheel, which is my preferred methodology for treating the Planes (in my homebrew-modified cosmology, Eberron is even more isolated, and nigh-impossible to reach outside of a few very selective methods).

Planescape is my main setting, I hope there will be usable material in the Wrath of the Righteus, and I hope it won't be all hack and slash.

Planescape is my main setting, I hope there will be usable material in the Wrath of the Righteus, and I hope it won't be all hack and slash.

There will.

It won't. (Despite what some paladins might prefer...)

Well, I'll add my voice, as usual, to include more RP sections and less hack sections. ^^

And the Blood War rocked, as did Planescape. If I ever run a homebrewn Golarion game, I'll just add Sigil onto the whole thing.

Best thing about planescape is that you can tack it onto any setting.

I've always found the bloodwar to be a good source of adventure hooks. When the party discovers that the mysterious informant who helped them track down the demon nest is actually a devil, it can lead to some fun rp and further adventures. It allows for both sides to try and tempt the PC's on the sly, by presenting an evil target for them to slay, not knowing they actually are helping a greater evil.

Despite what some paladins might prefer...

What are you trying to say about paladins? That they are all kill-happy smite monsters? I'll have you know that some also like to heal people on occasion. Provided they're not evil, then they must be destroyed with righteous fury and terrible vengeance!

Some say "Kill-Happy Smite Monster", I prefer the term "Karmic Facilitator"

:)

I want to put 'Karmic Facilitator' on my resume.

On top of that, I've always disliked the Blood War. It shifts fiends away from being monsters that prey upon mortals into monsters who are more interested in fighting each other.

That's exactly why I like the Blood War. Mortals are a side show, a potential resource and an interesting recreation. It moves D&D... I mean Pathfinder away from being a shallow recreation of psuedo-Catholic nonsense and gives it some life of its own. And it adds some lovely cosmic horror elements. The popular, not present in the bible vision of Satan as a guy in red pajamas who tells you to be mean to people is silly and pathetic. it also relies on having a dying and ressurected god around to give it context.

The Blood War doesn't need context. It is the context. Possibly the context for the entirety of multiversal reality depending how much credence you give to stories claiming it preceded all other phenomena and realities. The dark forces of Order and Chaos only care about mortals in so far as they are a resource to be expended on something far more important. In Christian mythology mortal souls are the focus and the most important lynchpin of the story. In the Blood War mortal souls are ammunition and refreshments.

The blood war rams home that even the gods are just small fish in a very, very big pond. Gods are slain all the time, realities are unmade, crystal spheres crack and burn, the blood war rages on. When every star in every possible multiverse burns out and all the skies of every possible reality go dark the blood war will still rage on. It's a constant more fundamental than the universe it intrudes on.

If you're going for cosmic horror, which seems to be one of the directions Pathfinder is taking with the explicit inclusion of Mythos creatures and elements (welcome to sunny Leng!), you can't beat the Blood War. A war that has persisted for a longer infinity than any other infinity, waged by an infinite number of disciplined monsters against a larger infinity of depraved berserkers, forming an eye of bloodshed and pain that regularly consumes whole realities and around which all of multiversal reality is made to swirl. And with the explicit and well known sword of Damocles - the only reason that the rest of the multiverse exists is because the Demons and the Devils are utterly committed to each other's destruction - That a fraction of a fraction of a sliver of the power of either faction could invade and occupy every possible and impossible place in all of the planes and the only reason they do not do this is because such a diversion would disadvantage them against their enemy.

It is horrible on a truly cosmic scale - Any mortal mind trying to grasp the scope and purpose of the Blood War would shatter as surely as if it had looked upon the face of Azathoth.