So my home-brew campaign is basically set in the backdrop of the blood war where the cults of the arch devils are trying to essentially perform a ritual that would give Asmodeus free reign in this plane and allow them to harvest all souls at the point of death - rather than having to strike deals - and then essentially using the material plane as a 'devil farm' to recruit enough devils to push the demons back.
One character died early in the campaign, a sorcerer, and quite conveniently they'd written into their backstory that they'd obtained their sorcerous powers through a deal with a devil. I'd now quite like this character to come back as a devil and enemy (possibly a junior BBEG) but just wondering about how I'd make this happen. Can devil's remember their past lives? I was potentially going to model his new incarnation on a campion? Maybe the Archdevils realised his value as the surviving party carried on disrupting their plans and so decided to use him as a senior general etc?
Sounds like you have it figured out already. I don’t think there’s RAW on it, but even if there is, you ignore or rewrite it however suits your campaign. You’re the DM, so it works however you want it to work.
If it were me, I might have him with his memories suppressed. Then, as he interacts with the party, they start to return. It can then give the party a choice of whether or not they want to try and redeem their former friend.
+1 to liking the use of a damned character. This character has become an NPC now, maybe a potential major foil to your party.
The key thing to remember about anything folks may advise is this is the Hell of your game. That said, here's some little tidbits of lore and how I use devils to get your head thinking.
So memory, I believe for the most part, or maybe just largely, souls arrive via the River Styx, which in a lot of D&D also has the properties of the River Lethe, in that it strips the soul's memories away. The soul reconstitutes with the more or less corporeal body of a lemure, is put into the ranks of hell where many jocky for promotion to greater infernal forms. But also as a sorcerer, the character may have been bound for Mephistopheles purview as Mephisto takes a particular interest in damning arcane practitioners, then uses their connection to magic as part of his own going sort of knowledge farming of the arcane or one of his many other magical weapons research programs.
Another thing about Hell, a lot of folks tend to run it as some sort of Mechanus that's mean. I'd encourage you to think of Hell as something with yes, vast mechanical workings of power and control and cruelty and subjugation, but also a system that is nevertheless corrupted by the raw ambition of many of the souls there given even the slightest agency. Let's say the dead sorcerer winds up working under Mephistopheles, who in 5e at least is Hell's #2 and is reputed to be playing a very long game for #1. Yes, the personality and memories of the character have been stripped away and only the arcane ability and the drive to use and increase those abilities remain of the original character. Maybe, somewhere in Cania or another part of Hell with close bonds to Mephistopheles, there's a "memory vault" where Mephistopheles has his devils mortal memories, personalities, etc. under lock and key and kept for a bunch of uses (Mephistopheles is reputed to have many schemes going on at once, only Asmodeus really rivals his scheme capacity, at least in my game, and in my game Mephistopheles is a lot smarter ... you could maybe see it as a Megatron/Starscream dynamic if Starscream wasn't such a dunce, I guess that's Shockwave, anyway...). Anyway, maybe the former character devil rises in the ranks and for reasons left to you to figure begins to desire its memories, leading them to hire the party to heist it from the vault. Upon receipt of the goods, the connection between this devil and the party is revealed.
Anyway, that's how'd I plan the arc using both some 5e "canon" and some how I think Hell is fun to play.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
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So my home-brew campaign is basically set in the backdrop of the blood war where the cults of the arch devils are trying to essentially perform a ritual that would give Asmodeus free reign in this plane and allow them to harvest all souls at the point of death - rather than having to strike deals - and then essentially using the material plane as a 'devil farm' to recruit enough devils to push the demons back.
One character died early in the campaign, a sorcerer, and quite conveniently they'd written into their backstory that they'd obtained their sorcerous powers through a deal with a devil. I'd now quite like this character to come back as a devil and enemy (possibly a junior BBEG) but just wondering about how I'd make this happen. Can devil's remember their past lives? I was potentially going to model his new incarnation on a campion? Maybe the Archdevils realised his value as the surviving party carried on disrupting their plans and so decided to use him as a senior general etc?
All suggestions welcome
Sounds like you have it figured out already. I don’t think there’s RAW on it, but even if there is, you ignore or rewrite it however suits your campaign. You’re the DM, so it works however you want it to work.
If it were me, I might have him with his memories suppressed. Then, as he interacts with the party, they start to return. It can then give the party a choice of whether or not they want to try and redeem their former friend.
+1 to liking the use of a damned character. This character has become an NPC now, maybe a potential major foil to your party.
The key thing to remember about anything folks may advise is this is the Hell of your game. That said, here's some little tidbits of lore and how I use devils to get your head thinking.
So memory, I believe for the most part, or maybe just largely, souls arrive via the River Styx, which in a lot of D&D also has the properties of the River Lethe, in that it strips the soul's memories away. The soul reconstitutes with the more or less corporeal body of a lemure, is put into the ranks of hell where many jocky for promotion to greater infernal forms. But also as a sorcerer, the character may have been bound for Mephistopheles purview as Mephisto takes a particular interest in damning arcane practitioners, then uses their connection to magic as part of his own going sort of knowledge farming of the arcane or one of his many other magical weapons research programs.
Another thing about Hell, a lot of folks tend to run it as some sort of Mechanus that's mean. I'd encourage you to think of Hell as something with yes, vast mechanical workings of power and control and cruelty and subjugation, but also a system that is nevertheless corrupted by the raw ambition of many of the souls there given even the slightest agency. Let's say the dead sorcerer winds up working under Mephistopheles, who in 5e at least is Hell's #2 and is reputed to be playing a very long game for #1. Yes, the personality and memories of the character have been stripped away and only the arcane ability and the drive to use and increase those abilities remain of the original character. Maybe, somewhere in Cania or another part of Hell with close bonds to Mephistopheles, there's a "memory vault" where Mephistopheles has his devils mortal memories, personalities, etc. under lock and key and kept for a bunch of uses (Mephistopheles is reputed to have many schemes going on at once, only Asmodeus really rivals his scheme capacity, at least in my game, and in my game Mephistopheles is a lot smarter ... you could maybe see it as a Megatron/Starscream dynamic if Starscream wasn't such a dunce, I guess that's Shockwave, anyway...). Anyway, maybe the former character devil rises in the ranks and for reasons left to you to figure begins to desire its memories, leading them to hire the party to heist it from the vault. Upon receipt of the goods, the connection between this devil and the party is revealed.
Anyway, that's how'd I plan the arc using both some 5e "canon" and some how I think Hell is fun to play.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.