Learn about the Blood War in ‘Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes’ February 9, 2018Zoltar Devils demons are chaotic evil and Devils are lawful evil now you’d think hey they’re both evil they share something so maybe they’d come together but now one of the key traits of evil is this sense that I come first and so it’s very hard for evil factions to work together at least for a long period of time so maybe at one point they work together now they definitely don’t and then you have law in chaos which very much the devil’s would love to control the demons if they could the demons just want to tear apart Hell and claim it is their hunting ground and then we also have the further complication that demons and Devils unlike other plainer creatures don’t have the freedom to use magic to just teleport or gate themselves from Hell to anywhere else they are much more restricted they have to be called they need someone outside of the abyss or the hell over the nine hells to call them forth now if someone was to foolishly just build a gateway that was open they could just walk through but they don’t have anywhere near the same flexibility that other plainer creatures have to travel with one exception I mentioned they could just walk from place one place to another someone built a gate that stayed open well in the lower plains that gate is the River Styx the River Styx went through a variety of the lower planes including the abyss and the nine hells so demons naturally travel along the banks or try to sail along the Styx which it’s very treacherous but you can manage it if you’re powerful enough or clever enough and they naturally attack every when they come across and he’ll the nine hells is a very tempting target for them so the demons and devils fight all along the Styx any plane that touches it in the areas around it the demons just simply seek out Devil’s for the three of destroying something else and claiming more territory the Devils are primarily interested in defending the nine hells defending their realms but and when they can making forays into the abyss to just try to you know burn out the infection at its root now that just seems like a very simple two sides that don’t get along fighting but what Morden Kanan would tell you is that this is the root of the balance that evil is obviously a very powerful force in the cosmos of D&D right three of the nine alignments are evil opposed by the three good alignments with a three neutral ones in the middle Morden Kanan in his study would tell you that if one side the demons the Devils one of them was able to win the blood war that would be an apocalyptic end to the universe Asmodeus would be so powerful claiming to entire basically to entire plains in the entire planar structure and so many resources and so much power that no one would be able to stand against him he would impose the hierarchy and bureaucracy of hell on everything the outer Plains and the inner planes demons other pan if they were able to overrun Hell and claim it as their own would similarly the demon princes would grow so powerful that as they just bashed against other Plains and sawed pathways into the inner planes and other and to other outer Plains they would overrun the universe so in some ways it’s a cosmic luck that these two factions are locked in combat but neither one either has the organizational capabilities to say let’s stop fighting like the demons are chaotic all it takes is one Demon Lord to decide he wants to try to invade hell or just demons wandering down the sticks and attacking things which then puts hell which would sue for peace potentially if they could but they can’t because they who would they that they could create a peace treaty with Orcas that doesn’t have any and nothing stops a demagogue in or anyone else from attacking so the locked in this endless struggle and the universe is all the better for it now what this means though is that this struggle spills over everywhere you’d think a two evil factions fighting this is great it’s going to keep them busy it makes things easier for the good guys Beck has the opposite effect because anywhere you have demons you’ll soon have Devils trying to thwart them and vice versa and on top of that since both demons and Devils are really driven by claiming souls the Material Plane of mortals both of them have very aggressive cults in the inner plan and Material Plane on various worlds of D&D that seek to subvert mortals claim artifacts claim secrets if someone could find a secret that allowed the demons or Devils to move freely across the plains that would end the blood war in one side vapor or the other so just the broad gresham that both sides brain means that every world every world of D&D is is in danger and that demons and Devils would happily scour them looking for an advantage because they they know the stakes are that high and they want to win and they’ll do anything to achieve victory it’s ranged back and forth I mean it’s the history’s as old as the cosmos and so it’s raged into accident Lane but it’s always been there and in some ways it’s become such a monotonous part of the cosmos that many sages just feel it’s just part of the it’s just part of the mechanism of the world of the plains that there’s it’s always going to be the stalemate and we’ll never change but that’s where Morden came in other adherents of the balanced to them the blood war is the centerpiece conflict of the cosmos it’s the most important one it’s the one that if it fell it fell out of balance would spell doom and so he and his associates and his allies who are interested in the balance very much very much keep a careful watch on how the blood war is progressing because luckily we haven’t had any decisive moments yet you can learn a whole lot more about the blood war Share this:TweetWhatsAppTelegramEmail