I would be really excited if we get a 5th Edition version of the Manual of the Planes - a book that I believe came out for 1st, 3rd, and 4th editions and goes into deeper detail about the Outer and Inner planes. It's all well and good to have description in the DMG about Carceri and the Beastlands, but these are pretty brief. Even the descriptions of the Abyss and the Nine Hells (the most iconic evil planes) only give a sort of cursory look at them.
I am not terribly well-versed in the lore established in earlier editions. I've absorbed most of it through browsing wikis and just picking things up from odd sources. I know that 4th Edition attempted to radically redesign the D&D multiverse, which, among other things, established many of the lower planes as part of the "Elemental Chaos" and set up the Primordials as a Titan-like early opposition to the Gods. Here, the distinction between devils and demons was less about their lawful versus chaotic alignment than it was that demons were corrupted elementals (and sort of off-shoots of the Primordials) while devils were corrupted celestials (the Nine Hells existing in the Astral Sea rather than the elemental chaos).
However, 5th Edition basically rolled back all those changes to the Great Wheel cosmology established in 1st or 2nd Edition, putting alignment at the center of the logic of the multiverse.
Now, 2nd Edition launched in 1989, and was the current edition until 2000, making it very much the D&D of my childhood (not that I, or anyone I knew, played back then). During the Reagan era in the 1980s, the Evangelical movement rose from a fringe religious group to be a major power in American politics, and among its facets was a very literal take on the influence of supernatural forces in the real world - believing that Satan and his demons were quite literally trying to corrupt young minds through pop culture.
The resultant Satanic Panic lasted through much of the 80s and the early 90s (its influence can still be felt, though the conspiracy-theory-laden worldview has become focused more around conservative politics than specifically religious/supernatural ideas). And one of the most central pop-culture targets of this movement was Dungeons & Dragons - here was a game in which kids gathered in basements to talk about casting spells and there were books that were all about demons and devils and such. (Nevermind that the player characters in these games tended to fight against said monsters, but whatever).
Anyway, TSR, which ran D&D at the time, in an attempt to sanitize the game for a culture that saw it as a gateway to, or even practice of, devil-worship, made some big changes to what certain things were called. The Hells were renamed Baator, and the devils renamed Baatezu. Demons were renamed Tanar'ri, and Daemons were renamed Yugoloths (this is the only one that seemed to stick - probably because daemon was already so close to demon that you might think it was just an idiosyncratic way to spell the word rather than a different type of thing).
Of course, the actual nature of what these things were didn't change - they still looked like and acted the same, and they were the denizens of horror-planes where evil peoples' souls went after they died.
Despite the fact that these names came about as a sort of capitulation to a really terrible social movement that has ruined countless lives (for the record, I have no problem with Christians or Christianity in general - but if you want to mentally abuse kids for being curious or different in any way, you've lost any claim to the moral high ground) I actually kind of like the idiosyncratic names that this move gave us.
Once the idea that Tanar'ri are also, canonically, demons entered the lore, it opened up a new idea: what if tanar'ri as a term actually only described a certain type of demon?
One of the funny things about D&D is that it's actually devils who fit the classic "demon" archetype. These are the ones that are from Hell, and are all about trying to get people to sell their souls. In most fantasy media, what D&D calls, broadly, "fiends" are just called demons, and "devil" either refers specifically to "The Devil," a.k.a. Satan, Lucifer, the primary antagonist of Christian mythos, or "a devil" just becomes kind of a synonym for a demon.
But in D&D, because devils occupy this more classical demonic space, it actually means that demons are sort of weirder. Yes, figures like Baphomet, Demogorgon, and Orcus all have some basis in real-world mythology (indeed, I think a medieval demonologist might find it odd that Baphomet and Mephistopheles are considered dramatically different things in D&D) but the general sense is that, for the most part, the Abyss and its demons occupy a somewhat more mysterious, weirder space than the lawful devils of Baator.
In fact, in Out of the Abyss and Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes (and I believe Monsters of the Multiverse) Demogorgon actually borrows some traits associated with The King in Yellow, from Robert W. Chambers' stories. H. P. Lovecraft would later give The King in Yellow the name Hastur and incorporate it into his Cthulhu Mythos. In the lore surrounding the King in Yellow, the eponymous abomination has "The Yellow Sign," which infects one's mind with madness simply by seeing it. Demogorgon, likewise, has a sigil that can plant a seed of madness in peoples' minds.
As such, while devils are pretty classical infernal monsters that have developed out of Christian culture, demons sort of tread on a bit more of a cosmic horror territory.
This, of course, seems to be an example of D&D's frequent thematic overlap issue - there is, of course, an entire creature type that is meant to represent that kind of Cosmic Horror monster, which is the aberration. Mind Flayers, of course, are meant to have an appearance reminiscent to Cthulhu (albeit smaller and wingless). And there are plenty of Elder Evils or Great Old Ones that are meant to play the role of Cosmic Horrors or Eldritch Abominations in D&D.
But then again, Arborea and the Feywild are both planes that are meant to be the home of fairies and elves. The Shadowfell and Hades are both bleak expanses of despair. D&D's approach to lore has been very much about making sure there's something there for everyone, not narrowing everything down to be sleek and efficient.
Anyway, what I find fascinating about the little opportunity granted by the introduction of the term "tanar'ri" is that there are actually other kinds of demons.
To be clear, there are several types of fiends. In 5th Edition, we've seen Devils, Demons, and Yugoloths outlined pretty frequently, but the game has gone back and forth over whether Yugoloths are actually the catch-all for any fiends not from the Hells or the Abyss. In addition to them, we have things like Demodands (also sometimes called Geherleths) who are the native inhabitants of Carceri.
But what I'm talking about here are still demons, and still inhabitants of the Abyss. These are the Obyriths.
Obyriths are older than the Tanar'ri, and they're generally thought to be more alien and strange. One of the demon lords among the Obyriths is Dagon (probably a reference to Lovecraft, though that version was itself borrowed from Mesopotamian religion as a sea-god). Another is Pazuzu, who might in fact be the very first demon (he occupies the first layer of the Abyss).
Pazuzu was featured in Minsc and Boo's Journal of Villainy, and is an interesting figure. Again, this based on one of those ancient Middle Eastern gods who was reinterpreted as a demon by monotheists, and is actually supposed to be the entity possessing the kid in The Exorcist. In D&D lore, Pazuzu is rumored to have been the fiend that corrupted Asmodeus when the latter was an angel (though I've heard other, far weirder interpretations of Asmodeus' true nature) and, despite the whole Blood War, is actually a welcome guest when he comes to the Nine Hells.
Sibriexes (introduced in 5E with Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes) are also Obyriths, which might give some extra weight to the strange prophecies they can grant.
Indeed, Obyriths' "elder demon" status seems to make them a kind of asset to the rest of demonkind. Apparently Dagon's layer of the Abyss, the Shadow Sea (an endless subaquatic expanse of darkness) lies just below Demogorgon's layer known as the Gaping Maw, and while no demon really likes another, Demogorgon apparently sometimes travels to Dagon's home to receive prophecies.
This, to me, is just bursting with really interesting potential. It's easy to think of chaotic evil demons as nothing but destructive rage monsters - and yes, on a basic level, that is what they are. But I think it's fascinating to think of the Obyriths as these sort of Great Old Ones - the figures around which Tanar'ri demons build their own twisted version of faith. Indeed, I might even play around with the idea that Obyriths kind of blur the line between fiend and aberration. The Fiend Warlock patron is clearly leaning hard toward a devil as the player's patron. While I think you can still apply this to any kind of powerful fiend, I think that if someone were to have something like Dagon as a patron, I might allow them to go Great Old One, despite the thing being a demon.
I also think this raises some really interesting ideas about just what is going on in the Abyss. The fact that Pazuzu is on good terms with Asmodeus suggests to me that there might be some grand conspiracy underneath the Blood War, and that perhaps the Tanar'ri are just pieces in a more elaborate game that the Obyriths are playing.
When I first got into D&D, I found myself sometimes frustrated trying to figure out a hierarchy of dangerous places for adventures to take place in. How could the Underdark be so scary when the Shadowfell existed? And what was the Shadowfell, really, when the Lower Planes were out there? And was the Far Realm even more dangerous?
Of course, as I've gotten used to running the game, I've realized that it only ever matters where your story is going to take place. As an example, in Critical Roles' first campaign, the most terrible place, which was the sort of arena for the final boss fight, was a city within the Shadowfell taken into the material plane. But the players had already been to the Nine Hells at this point. Meanwhile, you could easily have players make a short journey into the Shadowfell at low levels in a campaign where the biggest threats are just on some scary mountain in the material plane.
And, as such, I think it's very much up to the DM whether the Obyriths need to be this terrifying force behind the other demons of the Abyss, or if they want to make them footnotes to an overall story involving, say, Fraz-Urbluu as the big bad.
But I like the potential for intrigue and complication that they present.
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