I know this is going to sound somewhat nit-picky, but the spirit is more,"Oh, that's an interesting turn of phrase" rather than,"AH HA! GOTCHA!" I was rereading Erik's editorial from Dungeon #135 and the following caught my eye:
"By unleashing waves of madness and rage throughout the Material Plane, Demogorgon hopes to reconcile the feuding personalities of his two heads..."
To me, this implies that Demogorgon has not two consciousnesses (one in each head) but also an independent third consciousness that wishes to bring the other two into a greater cooperation. Because his personalities are feuding, I have to conclude that they are independent consciousnesses like conjoined twins (though, the more likely alternative may be that it's a case of split personalities). But the fact remains that they are independent of each other because they have conflicting goals, which would give rise to this feud. Because they are independent of each other and have been unable to reconcile while occupying the same body, I would think that neither of them would even dream of trying to form some kind of agreement or fusion with the other head since they both see themselves as both "the right one" and as an individual separate from its twin.
That conclusion leads me to think that there is a third personality or consciousness in Demogorgon, once again independent of the other two, that is rational enough to think,"If I/We can get the two heads to work together, I/We can increase My/Our status in the Great Wheel." So, somehow this third personality or consciousness is either persuading the other two to go along with its goals or neither of the other two know anything about this plan.
Wouldn't it be funny if the PCs spend twenty levels trying to find their way to Demogorgon, the evil mastermind of the campaign only to find out that it/they have no idea what the PCs are talking about? One head may say to the other,"Did you think of that? That's a brilliant idea!" and the other would say,"Oh, you're too kind, but it must have been your idea." So Demogorgon's feud is settled incidentally by this third personality/consciousness' plot.
Or maybe the PCs would have to figure out how to respark the feud between the two heads in order to weaken Demogorgon, much like with Kyuss at the end of AOW.
So what do you think of that? Is there some half-formed vestigial third head somewhere hidden in Demogorgon's mane that is trying to secretly reconcile the other two personalities/consciousnesses that cohabitate its body, for the the gain of all three? Or am I just reading way too deeply into what amounts to a single sentence fragment of Erik's editorial?
More importantly: is it a good idea? Should I use this?
According to the Book of Vile Darkness (and presumably FC1 says something like this):
"Inside the Prince of Demons rages a secret war for control of himself. Demogorgon has two heads and therefore two minds, and each one seeks domination of the other. Even those creatures familiar with the demon prince are unaware of Demogorgon's enternal, internal conflict."
So, one scenario might be that the two minds have agreed to a truce, as both agree one mind would be better than two. Internally, each mind is secretly planning to "win out" and dominate the other.
--Eric
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I think it's just two minds,...but I think your take on it is also pretty cool. I don't think it would be totally out-of-whack for a demon prince, being a being of utter chaos, to arbitrarily grow another head every millenia or so.
Or maybe he did that before, grew a new head, and these two heads chopped the third one off, and it didn't really die like they thought it did. Maybe it crawled around in the dark recesses of Demogorgon's castle for a milennium or three, a serpent-bodied thing with a baboon head, plotting its dark plottings and waiting for its mad schemes to come to fruition.
And it became the demon lord and patron of royal court scheming and skulduggery.
If i recall offhand (don't have the module immediately accessable), in Bastion of Lost Souls, there was a statement along the lines that one of Demogorgon's seperate minds is unaware of the other, and therefore unaware of the conflict. The one that is aware seems to alternate between wanting to kill the other, seperate Demogorgon into two seperate entities, or force a merger, with the presumption that since this one mind is more self aware, that it will end up with a dominant aspect in the new incarnation...
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Yep, it was Bastion of Broken Souls, he wanted to consume the soul of an enitity bloated on pre-incarnate souls. In that module Ashardalon. I am at work and don't have the module to hand but the personalities where Amuel (I think) and something else. Began with a Z I think, it was a while since I ran that. I'll check when I get home.