Last year, I shared my thoughts on an alternate take on the planes of law and chaotic evil. I always intended to get back and describe the rest if the planes, but I got distracted and never finished. Well, I thought I would take a few moments and jot down my thoughts on the lawful evil plane, or as I like to call it, the Pit of Eternal Torture.
Let me just state that I am doing this because I feel that angels, demons, and devils shouldn’t be in a fantasy realm. I prefer facing something without the real world mythology bleeding in. This way I can flavor it as best fits the story as well as experiencing the joy of creating something new. And when it comes to kytons, there’s lots of room to create.
Kytons, also called chain devils in some versions, believing in giving pain and not just oppressing the damned in their charge. They believe in following the rules and that rule breakers are to be savagely and severely punished. If you are healed, it is only so you can continue working for them. Kytons do not just take pleasure from pain but from the resistance of the mind’s resistances crumbling. They do not only want to beat their followers (also known as charges), but to break them as well.
When a kyton is done with you, you should not be able to see a world outside of them.
People that willingly submit to a kyton’s will have many reasons: they offer strength in troubling times, they make the world seem simple by categorizing everything as good and bad (which their charges understand as pain free and painful), and they demonize anyone and anything that is not for them. To those that see the world as dangerous, siding with such a powerful force seems attractive.
In reality, the kytons make the world a far more dangerous place. However, their followers do not see that infact they are helping to make the world more dangerous. By excluding anyone that disagrees with them, it is easy for the kytons to manipulate their charges into working to cause the very dangers that the kytons say they can save people from. This way, the kytons claws are clean while they sow pain and oppression into the world.
Kytons work in darkness. The light of truth can undo their work. It is for this reason that kytons prefer a dark world. Every kyton works to spread darkness throughout the world. So when their charges can see nothing except the kytons as the solution to their problems, this bother literally and figuratively the case.
Be sure to follow the JBE blog for more on my take on the planes and those that dwell within. Maybe next time I’ll write about one of the good ones.
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