Games - Fiend

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	Games - Fiend

In the Dungeons & Dragons
fantasy role-playing game, the player characters (fictional characters controlled by the players) often come into conflict with a variety of monsters from folklore and mythology. One of the game's more prominent monsters are the various races of demons, devils and other malicious otherworldly creatures, collectively referred to as fiends. These creatures are of wholly evil alignment and hail from the Lower Planes.

The tanar'ri and the baatezu hold an eternal enmity for one another and wage the Blood War against one another.

The most common types

Tanar'ri

The most widespread race of fiends are the demons, a chaotic evil race native to the Abyss; they are rapacious, cruel and arbitrary. The dominant race of demons is the tanar'ri (IPA: ). The Abyss and its population are both theoretically infinite in size. "True" tanar'ri such as the balors (originally called Balrogs) and the six-armed serpentine mariliths push other weaker tanar'ri around and organise them into makeshift armies for battle. Demon lords and demon princes such as Lolth, Orcus, Demogorgon, Zuggtmoy, Graz'zt and countless others rule over the demons of their individual layers of the Abyss, inasmuch as the chaotic demons can be ruled over.

In First Edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, some types of demons were not given species names, but were rather referred to as "Type I" through "Type VI" demons. In subsequent editions, Types I-VI were instead known as Vrocks, Hezrou, Glabrezu, Nalfeshnee, Mariliths, and Balors, respectively. Some of these names were originally given in the First Edition Monster Manual as example names of specific demons of that type, so (for instance) Marilith was the originally the name of an individual Type V demon.

Baatezu

The devils, of which the ruling type are called baatezu (IPA: ), are lawful evil natives of the Nine Hells of Baator; they subjugate the weak and rule tyrannically over their domains. Pit fiends are the most powerful baatezu, though even the strongest pit fiends are surpassed by the Lords of the Nine, or Archdevils, whose ranks include Baalzebul, Mephistopheles, and Asmodeus. Unlike the demons, the devils arranged themselves through a strict hierarchy. Like the demons, the devils are scheming backstabbers; while a demon only keeps its words when it is convenient for it, a devil keeps its word all too well.

Yugoloths

Lastly, the yugoloths (called daemons briefly for one prior edition of the game) are neutral evil natives of the Gray Waste; they are neutral to the affairs of the other fiendish races, interfering only when they see a situation that may be profitable or a potential for the advancement of their own schemes. The yugoloths are manipulative, secretive, and mercenary by nature, often acting as soldiers for deities in their own private wars, or even at times aiding both sides of the Blood War.

The more malevolent truth of the matter is that the Yugoloths created both the Tanar'ri and Baatezu, and instigated the genocidal Blood War between those two races as a grand experiment into the true nature of evil. The yugoloths present themselves as simply greedy mercenaries, willing to sell their services to both sides, while behind that public face, the members of their highest castes view the entire course of the conflict as their own thing to control and manipulate till they decide to end it, unify the Lower Planes, and turn their attention to the planes of Good.

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