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After much work, DICE Horrors is proud to present the first chapter of Horrors. In it, we detail one of the most infamous figures of The Abyss; a personage so vile, so persistent in his hatred for the living that not even death could stop him. A being that is one of the most infamous figures in all Creation:

Orcus, Demon Prince of the Undead

The Horror Begins

Palindrome wrote:the first chapter

Chapter one is the info on one major entity? How are you laying the book out?

Good to hear full releases are starting.

Omegalith wrote:

Palindrome wrote:the first chapter

Chapter one is the info on one major entity? How are you laying the book out?

Good to hear full releases are starting.

Good questions. Chapter one is going to be the information on one major entity.

How our layout is going to work is as follows: Horrors essentially covers a lot more material than Gates of Hell did. As just one example, all four of the demonic subtypes (mazza'im, maleidolon, qlippoth, yaldabaoth) are getting chapters-as well as the major demon princes. The result is that DICE Horrors decided that we would go with a more Demonomicon-type of release schedule to cover the material, post it on the Horrors public wiki first, and then have PDF versions that will be downloadable like Gates was.

While I've been aware of bits and pieces of this Chapter for a while, I want to throw out a public congratulations to those involved in getting this impressive piece of work into the light of day (or what should be the light of day... why isn't the sun out, and why is the moon the color of blood?).

I think its also important to point out that although my name is credited as an author, my involvement has been fairly minor. Palindrome has soldiered on with little to no help over long periods, and he deserves the lion's share of the kudos (for those who were around back then, kudos are a type of fish). That said, others have played decent parts as well, and my congratulations go to them as well.

I have to say, I love the summons. The spiritual wounds are fantastic, and the danger involved in treating with Orcus is clearly set out. Curdle the blood is fantastic, and Geysers of Blood is a great epic spell. Some of the other epic spells I probably would give ad hoc reductions in spellcraft DCs, as I don't think the effects match the high level of the current DC. (That said, I only looked at the DC and the spell description - it may be that other factors involved such as radius make it more worthwhile.) Orcus' Oblivion Extraction is a great little booster-spell, though not sure on the DC once again. Severed lifeline is fantastic.


Once again, congratulations on some great work. (I can say this since I had so very little to do with it!)

Congrats on the release, Pal!
This is good work and I think releasing it in Demonomicon format is perfect since their is so much to cover in the Abyss.

Pretty cool stuff. Frenzied Berserker was a perfect choice for Orcus.

Looks great. Kudos to some very fine work getting this together. I'll be waiting eagerly for the rest.

Congratulations! This has to be the first phase of a lot of hard work. Thanks.

Indeed, Selah has the right of it. I handed over the project to Palindrome a long time ago, as he was the only one (including myself) who continued to work diligently on it. I'm very pleased he has managed to pull everything together to begin releasing it, and he deserves the lion's share of the credit, even among those who have been working on it in the recent past. Without his tireless and thankless effort, I don't think it is a stretch to say that Horrors would not have happened.

Props indeed go to Palindrome. The final product is fantastic, and he was very willing to listen to feedback when putting it together. Here's to further releases.

I've already told Palindrome that he's the reason this chapter saw the light of day.

It would be nice for more of us to pitch-in for more creative work in the future. It's ashame that "real life" has affected so many of us so dramatically. Perhaps in the near future some of the old-guard will be joined by new freaks interested in revitalizing this site. The work on Orcus reveals the depth of talent that remains at DF, talent we need to put effor into mining.

At any rate, more kudos to you, Palindrome. You deserve it.

Congrats, Pal...you made one humdinger of a doozy out of this Goat. It'd have never happened without you. And the flumphs, of course; you forget them in the credits.

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I love the Dicefreaks take on Orcus. He's an angry, jealous yet badass Demon Prince who craves power. This chapter was very well written and I eagerly look forward to more.

Congratulations, DICE Horrors!

I'll be back later with a more in-depth opinion on the content, but for now I will say it looks impressive and I like the use of old material in interesting ways. On the more constructive side, it could use some trimming to weed out needless repetition, but it's not a big thing.

And more generally, I want to say I hope everyone who reads and enjoys this material will consider posting about where the ideas take them. There's some rich potential here.

Excellent work, especially on the introductory story IMO.

Orcus, that foxy gentleman.

I knew it was worth all this waiting.

just made my word-file to print. Now I know what I'm going to read on the airplane tomorrow morning.

I've only read the Intro so far, but i wanted to say it was very well written n very badass!!

The Serge wrote:I've already told Palindrome that he's the reason this chapter saw the light of day.

It would be nice for more of us to pitch-in for more creative work in the future. It's ashame that "real life" has affected so many of us so dramatically. Perhaps in the near future some of the old-guard will be joined by new freaks interested in revitalizing this site. The work on Orcus reveals the depth of talent that remains at DF, talent we need to put effor into mining.

At any rate, more kudos to you, Palindrome. You deserve it.

To be honest, I have a ridiculious amount of free time but I don't think I'm a good enough writer to do anything for Dicefreaks. If I thought I had any talent I'd get to work on Horrors right away.

this is so awesome. Is there a release schedule? GOOD WORK and thank you!

hvgotcodes wrote:this is so awesome. Is there a release schedule? GOOD WORK and thank you!

Thanks! We don't have a release schedule in terms of dates, but DICE Horrors is currently working on the next group of chapters that are scheduled for publication.

Palindrome wrote:

hvgotcodes wrote:this is so awesome. Is there a release schedule? GOOD WORK and thank you!

Thanks! We don't have a release schedule in terms of dates, but DICE Horrors is currently working on the next group of chapters that are scheduled for publication.

Ill have to contain myself. Top three waiting list for me, all of equal importance

1. Splinter Cell Conviction
2. A refresh on the Macbook Pros.
3. Some details on the new Apollyon.

Well, after a few days reading all the stuff, I'm ready to post a few impressions. I will divide my comments and questions in three blocks: general, flavour notes and technical notes.

General notes: three concepts here: Awesome, too much, increasingly complex.
1 - The work is impressive. After reading all this, I was compelled to take off the shelve my first edition AD&D monster manual and rest for a minute on the well-know Orcus image and stats, you know, the ones who depict Orcus at 120 hp and -6 armor class, and I pondered for a while on the changes and evolutions the fella had over the last 23 years. The Orcus presented here is a lovecraftian cosmic horror, a being whose power and malice spread though planes and dimensions like a cancer. The idea that once this being was once a mortal adds to the mystery and power a human can acquire under third edition D&D.
2 - On the other side, printing all the material means a 100 page booklet, so I wonder if this is the hallmark of Horror, as there is the risk of having too much discrepancy between the various demon princes (like, 100 pages for Orcus and 10 for Nero) (on the other side, we're talking about abyss here, so who cares for homogeneity.)
3 - Finally, all those stats are difficult to read. Basically we have the interactions of the demonic templates (by the way, I don't know which version of the demonic templates are you using, as the only one actually present in HoA boards is the Demon lord template) with the new power rules. Maybe it would be good to post again, the demonic templates, to better frame logically the technical steps you use when designing demon lords. I find hard to understand how the final product come out (example: Orcus spells. He's an outsider with frenzied berseker class levels added on, so I assume he gets spells from his demonic templates or from his power stats. He seems to have clerical spells at 58 level, but I can't understand from where did he gets the number and power of those spells). In short, maybe it would be useful a (very) brief description explaining when you design demon princes how you let the template interact and which versions of the templates are you using.

Flavour notes: Orcus' background is amazing... but knowing the work dicefreaks is capable of pulling out, and knowing Palindrome's skills (I still remember when he come out with his first article on dicefreaks boards posting Lolth.... it was like discovering a Tyrannosaurus in your garden) , I didn't expected anything less. The story is great, I like a lot the explanation of the motivations for Orcus and Demogorgon's rivality. It was always assumed the two were rivals just for their power, now we have a more philosophical answer: the long-term goals of the devourer of souls (corruption of the material world, but leaving it well alive and thriving so to be consumed) is antithetical with Orcus' kind of corruption, the state of undeath devoided of consumable energies Demogorgon needs. I would also add the fact that Orcus is a mortal, an upstart, more linked with the needs and perverse desires of mortal beings, so it must be seen as a dangerous rival for a being older and representing an ancient type of corruption, linked to a cosmic and ancient scale. On the other end, the reasons for Orcus and Graz'zt war is not very much justified, maybe you could spend a little more effort here giving us a more “philosophical” background of their hate. There are some repetitions in the text, maybe the paragraphs concerning the rivalitiy with Demogorgon and Graz'zt should be placed all together (so you could take the two small parts dedicated to the first atropal and the death knight and put together with the later section).
By the way great idea to present the possibility that the skull on top of the dreaded wand is in fact the remains of Orcus mortal self.

Technical notes: As said, it's difficult to understand how the stats were assembled, an explanation would be useful. Also, the stats block is not easy to follow when you pass to the descriptive part of the stats. If we put together all his special abilities and qualities, we have his Special qualities (abyssal dominion, abyssal sovereign, deathless frenzy, death throes, demonic ideal, divine mockery, inimical), then his ravages (Ability Damage (Cosmic), Additional Natural Attack (Common), Bonus Feat (Common)(x8), Bonus Epic Feat (Abhorrent), Channel Energy (Abhorrent), Class Feature (Abhorrent), Class Feature (Common), Energy Drain (Vile), Extended Reach (Vile), Ignore Immunity to Critical Hits (Cosmic), Mimic Type (Abhorrent)), then his salient abilities (Alter Form, Avatar, Call Demons (52 HD maximum, 14 demons at once), Call Undead (52 HD maximum, 28 undead at once)(x2), Curdle the Blood (Unique Salient Ability), Demonic Chasm, Demon Prince, Demon Prince of the Undead (Unique Salient Ability), Supernal Rage, Supernal Skill Focus (Spellcraft), Dread Curse (Unique Salient Ability), Energy Storm (negative energy, 14 points of damage/round), Hand of Death, Hoarding The Spirit (Unique Salient Ability), Know Death, Life and Death (DC 77 Fort save or die, else 14d8 points of damage), Necromantic Mastery (Unique Salient Ability), Possess Mortal, Taint of Undeath (Unique Salient Ability)).

So the alphabetical order of all his special powers, qualities and abilities should be:

Ability Damage, abyssal dominion, abyssal sovereign, Additional Natural Attack, Alter Form, Avatar, Bonus Feat, Bonus Epic Feat, Call Demons, Call Undead, ,Channel Energy, Class Feature, Class Feature, Curdle the Blood, deathless frenzy, death throes, Demonic Chasm, demonic ideal, Demon Prince, Demon Prince of the Undead, divine mockery, Dread Curse, Energy Drain, Energy Storm, Extended Reach, Hand of Death, Hoarding The Spirit, Know Death, Life and Death, Ignore Immunity to Critical Hits, inimical, Mimic Type (Abhorrent),Necromantic Mastery (Unique Salient Ability), Possess Mortal, Supernal Rage, Supernal Skill Focus (Spellcraft), Taint of Undeath (Unique Salient Ability).

If however I look at the description of the text, the order is the following:

Abyssal aura (abyssal vehemence -despair, euphoria, fear, insanity, loathing, nausea- by the way, maybe you could delete the abyssal aura as it doesn't add anything to the description of the abyssal vehemence)
Wake of corruption
channel energy
curdle the blood
death throes
demonic chasm
demon prince (abyssal sovereign, demonic impasse, divine mockery, induce ravages)
demon prince of the undeath
dread curse
extend reach
fury
hoarding the spirit
inimical
necromantic mastery
semi-undead traits
tainth of undeath
(other powers)

in short, I think there are some discrepancies between the powers under the stat block and the ones described, maybe you should check to better align the two (es, there's no description of “possess mortal” or “know death” or “Life or death” powers, while “Abyssal aura” and “wake of corruption” should find place in the stat block under SQ or under salient abilities).

I find kind of ...peculiar the choice of frenzied berseker as class for him. The background explain this very well, and it's coherent with the take recently assumed by Wotc on Orcus as the Lord of Hate ans Spite in addition to his traditional undead portfolio.

When you talk about summoning Orcus, your' re talking of his avatar or is it possible to summon Orcus itself?

As a very final note, maybe you should mention among his enemies the unforgiven Saint Sollar the Twice-martyried, the solar servant of Bahamut who was instrumental in Orcus demise from Toril.

Wow. This is effing awesome. Congrats to DICE Horrors, and I really cant wait to see more!

The nightmarish and random evils of The Abyss extend even beyond the demon princes, demon lords, and myriad atrocities that both inhabit it and spawn from its layers. The Abyss itself is menaces those foolish or vile enough to enter it, and untold millions, even among the demons themselves, have fallen to the hazards of its layers.

As a continuation of the release of Orcus, DICE Horrors is presenting the first in a series of installments describing the dreaded layer of The Goat: Thanatos, The Mausoleum of Hate. The first piece is a general description of the layer itself. Later components will describe the necropoli; those unique cities of the dead that in their own ways, have spread undeath and pain throughout Creation.

Enter the land of the dead.