Difference between revisions of "The Doomguard"

Revision as of 14:24, 20 July 2008

Ever hear of entropy, berk? Take a look around: Everything's going down the tubes, falling apart, stopping. People die, rocks erode, stars fade, planes melt away. That's entropy, the fate of the multiverse. A lot of folks think that's a terrible thing, but not the Doomguard. They're pretty sure nothing lasts forever, not even the planes. It's the way things are supposed to be, they guess, the goal of everything. Sooner or later, the last bits of the multiverse'll decay, and then there'll be nothing left - think of it as existence's ultimate release from toil and pain. Now, the sods who try to fix things - stop the decay and put everything back together - they've got it all wrong. They're fighting the natural goal of the multiverse, trying to do something unnatural. That ain't right. So look, the Doomguard's here to see that the multiverse gets its way. Things are supposed to crumble, and it's the Doomguard's job to keep the meddlers from messing it up too much. What right do mortals have to deny the natural existence of things? And somebody's got to watch the proxies and the powers, to make sure they don't meddle with the process. Can't have the powers restoring things or ending them too fast, you know. Don't get this faction wrong. It's not like somebody builds a house and they tear it down. That building's part of the whole decay: The stonecutter chips the rock, the logger cuts the tree, and later the termites chew the beams until the whole case comes down on its own. There's a long view to this. The sod who can't see the grand scheme'll go barmy trying to tear down everything that gets built. So, everything's got a part in this. The primes slowly eat away their worlds, and planars do the same. Look at petitioners - entropy reaches perfection when they fade away. It'll all happen in time.

The Doomguard maintains one great citadel on each negative quasiplane: Ash, Vacuum, Salt, and Dust. The Negative Energy Plane represents the Doomguard's idea of the ultimate fate of the multiverse, so the Doomguard's citadels are built as close to the plane as practicality allows. In Sigil, their headquarters is the city's main armory.

Both the Bleak Cabal and the Dustmen find the entropic visions of the Doomguard well suited to their own philosophies, although the Cabal sneers at the idea that entropy is the "goal" of the multiverse. The Godsmen agree with the idea that the multiverse is fated to end, but they can't accept the idea that destruction is the purpose in itself. The Fraternity of Order and the Harmonium reject the Doomguard's philosophy wholesale.

Note: The Doomguard originally appeared in the Planescape AD&D campaign setting from TSR. Additional information can be found in In the Cage: A Guide to Sigil. Their use here is for the purposes of providing context for the campaign only.