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r/loremasters•
TheDaedus

I may have messed up. Help me fix an issue with my game's lore?

Hey r/loremasters!

I'm running a heavily house-ruled d20 Modern campaign with quite a bit of borrowing from D&D 3.5 to present a seemingly normal modern world where the battle between angels and demons is real and is spilling into the world again.

The players' first encounter with something supernatural was a Hell Hound. I don't know why, other than I really liked the idea of the newspaper (yes, I made newspaper props) saying that there was some big dog on the loose and other types of rumors that could fly about that. The encounter went well. The party didn't struggle too much and there was good atmosphere building up to it.

The problem is, in the rest of the lore for the game, I specifically called out that the cult in question and the supernatural attacks were associated with demons, not devils. The Hell Hound, being a creature of the Nine Hells in D&D lore, is associated with devils. Demons, by contrast, come from the Abyss.

So now I need to come up with a reason why the demon cult accidentally summoned a Hell Hound during their first attempt to open a gate to let through a demon overlord, and possibly a reason why an NPC with connections to the party would have thought of the Hell Hound as being a demon or at least mentioned it in a book they wrote about demons.

tl;dr-need reason why devil-pet Hell Hound might have been summoned by demon cult.

Please help!

Posted May 22, 2020, 6:26 AM UTC

1516
brad2235•

Its already your own mashup of 3.5 and modern why worry so much about what the 3.5 lore is? Just make hell hounds fit in your world by associating them with demons.

Or say its a heck hound which is from the abyss in this world.

31
Sabudala•

Or flavor this Hell Hound as the demon version. Make a distinction there is a different Hell Hound devil version out there that’s.....I don’t know, yellow or something.

6
Russano_Greenstripe•

I think there's a bigger question to answer: how important is it to keep to 3.5's cosmology? Does there need to be a meaningful distinction between demons and devils? If you are fully recreating the Blood War in a modern setting that's one thing, but if not, it may not be worth worrying over.

If the distinction is important, perhaps the cult summoned it by accident, intending to summon a devil and got the hell hound instead?

16
BlackLiger•

Who says your players/or the cult know the difference between Demons and Devils?

7
Icedcoffeekid•

My first inclination is to just tell your players? It's an honest mistake. But if you're against that, I'd spin it into some kind of war between demons and devils and have the demons trying to pin deaths on devils for some reason. Perhaps to turn people off making pacts with them and pledge their undying souls to the demons instead? Good luck!

4
Micp•

First off, who's to say hell and the abyss are separate places with different alignments in your setting? In most modern biblical inspired fiction (think spawn or hellblazer) there's only one "bad place" with various factions fighting for control (and different sections with different rulers).

Another thing is, if you do want to hold on to your hell/abyss schism, that hellhound is just a word people made for those creatures - but people often know very little about what they are talking about. Maybe hellhound is a misnomer and they really do come from the abyss where demons actually call them "netherbeasts" or something like that?

Or hell, maybe the cultists just captured and enslaved a creature from hell with binding curses to do their bidding and serve as a cheap sacrifice where they didnt have to harm anything they actually cared about?

4
GeoffW1•

Ah, sounds like they encountered an Abyssal Hound. Very similar to a Hell Hound so I can understand the confusion! :P

4
puzzlegiraffe•

If said NPC was the same one who told them it was a devil, maybe make him an infiltrator? He keeps making mistakes which the party could pick up on. Otherwise, he is using the party to kill lesser devils. All so he himself can present them later after they gained notoriety. And get glory for "catching" the people who keep killing devils?

Dunno, just first idea I got.

3
zombie_owlbear•

The cult is new and/or incompetent. Their copy of the Necronomicon had a few typos. Angels intercepted the summoning and twisted it to go to Hell so that the devil princes may be informed of what the demons were up to, hoping to gain an advantage by playing them against each other.

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Ealiom•

Dont see an issue here. Youre setting it in modern day which already precludes much of the lore. Its your world, hellhound could be from wherever you like. Only important thing is that you are ((consistent))

3
mmchale•

  1. The cult is wrong. They're a demon cult worshipping devils and don't know the difference or don't care.

  2. The newspaper is wrong. The reporter/editor don't really care about the difference between extraplanar entities, the big story is that they're being summoned.

  3. The newspaper is malicious. They're trying to downplay the devil angle because they're working with/for the devils doing propaganda.

  4. It's a demonic version of a hell hound.

3
michaelaaronblank•

"Demon Dogs!" - Thundarr the Barbarian.

Entirely possible that demons wanted a bad boi pet and worked it out.

2
Orngog•

You need to read the first three pages of Eric, by Terry Pratchett.

2
brackenfur•

as others have said keeping to the lore is the only "issue" here.

you can drop that and be golden.

that being said, maybe a devil is slipping details and manipulating the cult to further propagate the war?

as long as angels are fighting demons theyre not fighting devils. not to mention that it takes more demons out of the blood war.

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transmogrify•

I like to play up the idea that devils' lawfulness can wind up getting them to serve unusual masters. If you have the correct authority, they are magically bound to your will. I once ran a high-level dungeon crawl in search of a golden tablet that made you the unquestionable commander of an entire legion of the hells. They weren't happy to serve you, but they would anyway. The hell hound could be similar. The cult prefers demons, but they tried summoning an abyssal maw and it ate the summoner. They found a guy who knows a guy who can get you the right credentials and all of a sudden that hell hound is working for Team Chaotic Evil.

But as others have said, there's no straitjacket on you, forcing you to abide by some Gygaxian lore about the nuances of demons versus devils. You could also just make them closer to the same thing, or play up the ignorance that mortals have.

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billFoldDog•

If anyone complains that a demon is using a hell hound, tell them to lighten up, lol.

Its minor, and even Demons would see the value in a hellhound.

1