Would Demons, Devils, and Angels work together for this?

[NecroDancer]

This was just an idea I had.

Lets assume there was a place that was cut off from the rest of the multiverse, a place that souls couldn't escape from, a place most planer beings couldn't get into. The souls of the dead would have no place to go creating a large reservoir of good and evil souls.

It has been enough time for around a "reserve" of a million souls of each alignment to have built up and now everyone wants them to be freed. Would the angels, demons, and Devils work together to find some way to free the souls assuming they all got an equal amount?

[legomaster00156]

Maybe, but it would be very, very reluctantly, and each one of them would assume the other two are conspiring against them (which they may or may not be).

[Grim Portent]

I don't really think angels would work with demons or devils in such a circumstance. Helping either fight a mutual enemy is iffy, but would probably be acceptable. Helping them acquire souls? Even if the souls the fiends get were dammned already and simply misplaced, it's pretty evil to help/allow them be taken to the planes of torment and suffering and slowly leached of their essence to empower the forces of the underworld.

The lower planes getting souls is the kind of thing angels should be trying to stop whenever they can, except the lawful ones where contract bound, and even that is very morally grey. Really I'd see them working to both open this pocket realm and keep it closed. Trying to open it only if they can keep the fiends from getting souls from it, and keeping it closed if they deem such to be impossible.

Demons and devils would totally work with each other to do this though, though I would expect a lot of political manouvering/negotiation if not outright betrayal to try and increase their own share.

[InvisibleBison]

I think it depends on the nature of the afterlife and the relationship between the souls of mortals and planar beings in your setting.

If it's just a matter of getting all these souls to an appropriate afterlife where they can be rewarded and/or punished as they deserve, I can see good outsiders being willing to work with evil ones (though I'm not sure why the evil ones would be interested in a project which doesn't offer them anything).

However, if the outsiders in some way gain power from the souls that have been allotted to their keeping, I don't think good and evil outsiders would be willing to work together.

[Honest Tiefling]

Assuming DnD rules? Yeah, that's kinda weird. In most editions, Devils and Demons are trying to eradicate each other to the exclusion of actually fighting the forces of good. Demons and devils are also notoriously untrustworthy as well, with the latter twisting any arrangement to serve only themselves, and the former not giving any ***** about breaking their word. Any help they could have given would probably not outweigh those two issues, and they might not even stop attacking each other.

In a different cosmology? It could work, and might be interesting, especially if you want to play around with the idea of an angel/devil/demon or the ideas of good and evil. Pepper in some unusual depictions of them, and that's a pretty interesting concept. Maybe only have the devils be humanoid, as to better tempt mortals while angels have bizzare forms that may not adhere to euclidean geometry, as they don't see a particular need to disguise their true forms.

[Belac93]

I think you might want to check out the Daemons from pathfinder, especially their sourcebook. They are the NE outsiders of the void (four horsemen and abbadon are their leaders). The book talks about how they are the only threat that makes demons, devils, and angels all band together. Might give you some ideas.

[Eldan]

Demons and Devils pretty much do not work together by definition in the standard 3.5 cosmology. Depending on which backstory you believe, Devils were created for the sole purpose of preventing the spread of demons across the multiverse.

Angels are more complicated. As they are not exemplars, they are bound to the will of a specific god, so it would very much depend on which god they serve. I'd imagine some gods would go for it, if they could reasonably expect to get more souls out of it than others. If there were their worshippers involved, even more so.

Looking at a few other celestials: the Eladrin, I can't see going for this. They hate both the demons for anything involving Pale Night and the Devils for being their antithesis. The Guardinals, probably, too, wouldn't be going for it, there is too much evil there, which they hate with a passion. The archons, I could see calculating advantages here, some have been known to work with devils. If it was Archons, devils and demons, they Archons would probably jump on this, hoping to gang up on the demons together with the devils, after the basic task was accomplished.

[Deliverance]

Ignoring moral considerations for the moment, consider the balance of power. Let's say for the sake of argument that they might all be willing to cooperate and were primarily interested in whether this would strengthen or weaken them where the balance of power between the three parties was concerned.

You are suggesting a situation where three mutually antagonistic parties if all choose to cooperate will be rewarded with a reward of equal magnitude if they play it straight, where a party may be rewarded with a greater reward than the others if they cooperate and cheat and get away with and none of the others cheat better or choose not to cooperate, and where no party will receive a reward if even one party chooses not to cooperate.

A party that is currently ahead of the other two thus has no reason to cooperate. The only scenario in which they might get ahead of where they currently are by comparison is the cooperation with successfully cheating better than the others do and getting away with it. But if they can be sure at achieving this outcome then the other parties have no reason to cooperate, and if they are unsure then attempting this may make them end up in a worse situation than the current where they are ahead - and this is especially likely to happen because the other parties will know that this party is going to cheat as that is the only scenario in which cooperation can pay off in the first place. Full cooperation with nobody cheating makes everybody equally stronger, but as this party was stronger already that dilutes its proportional advantage. Cooperation with own cheating and getting caught at it or cooperation where others cheat better is a clear loss. Non-cooperation, however, means they are guaranteed to retain their current advantage.

So ignoring morals, greed, and other reasons for action, and thinking only in terms of power, a party that is ahead should choose non-cooperation unless it was really sure in its cheating, and all three of the parties can reason this out regardless of whether they are ahead or not.

On the other hand, a party that is behind has every reason to cooperate if it believes that either all parties will cooperate without cheating or that it is better at cheating than the others (or possibly only than the one that is furthest ahead in the power comparison, depending on just how great the difference is). Only if it thought that cooperation would by necessity include cheating, and the other parties would both be better at it than it itself, should a party that is behind choose to decline cooperation. OTOH, as noted above, any cooperation that does happen when one party is ahead will include cheating, as that is the only scenario in which a party that is ahead can gain something from participating, so the party that is behind knows that the party that is ahead will either choose not to cooperate or choose to cooperate because it is sure it is better at cheating.

So ignoring morals, greed, and other reasons for action, and thinking only in terms of power, a party that is behind should choose non-cooperation unless it was really sure in its cheating, so sure that it will win at cheating even knowing that the parties that are ahead will only cooperate if they are damn sure of cheating as they have little to win and much to lose, and all three of the parties can reason this out regardless of whether they are ahead or not.

On the third hand, a party that is at parity with both the other parties will gain an advantage against one or both if it cooperates and cheats better than the others, lose an advantage against one or both if it cooperates and cheats worse than the others (or not at all), remain at parity if it cooperates and nobody cheats, or remain at parity if it chooses non-cooperation.

So ignoring morals, greed, and other reasons for action, and thinking only in terms of power, a party that is at parity should choose probably non-cooperation unless it was really sure in its cheating, and all three of the parties can reason this out regardless of whether they are ahead or not.


So if a null-cost to the action of cooperation is assumed, we have in all situations a preference for non-cooperation: The current balance might be perfect parity or not, but it is a known balance and this "equal reward for everybody unless somebody manages to cheat better than the others" scenario is not the one to break it.

(I have assumed a null-cost of the cooperation action because the original post stipulates an equal reward for everybody to create an "we'll all gain the same if we cooperate" scenario, which would not be the same if the cost of cooperation differed.)

Now, there's one big assumption underlying these balance of power arguments... a) that the reward and costs truly are the same, and b) that the three parties have full information and are agreed on things such as "what is the current balance of power". The first was stipulated in the OP, the second is a much more dubious assumption and one I made implicitly for the purpose of a simple textbook example. As soon as the three parties have their own individual evaluation of what the current balance of power is and these differ, as they probably would in your D&D world, misjudgements will be made and if the three factions aren't all agreed on who is ahead and who is behind the choice of cooperation becomes much more volatile - though still falling back on non-cooperation in most cases.

[GPS]

I'm going to be honest, there's pretty much no scenario in which demons and devils would work together, not even if the situation was mutually beneficial. Especially, in fact, not if the situation was mutually beneficial, as they'd both feel they alone could reap the full benefits. It'd probably start a mini conflict. Throw celestials into that mix, and you've pretty much added more nope to the nope pile. Celestials are too rigid and good for work with demons. I could see celestials and devils working together in a scenario where the alignment of the souls is set in stone, but demons are too chaotic, they lack method. Celestials really wouldn't want to touch demons.

In this scenario, here's how it would play out. Each side would be convinced they could get the souls themselves. If you want to stretch it, devils and celestials may work together to this effect, cutting the demons out of the deal. However, I feel the celestials would stop this deal from going over, as they'd want to save all the souls for the side of good. Celestials don't generally compromise their morals, as a celestial that compromises their morals usually falls. (But that may just be me, I'm not up to date on my celestial stuff) If not, they just kind of all fight for the souls, using their traditional methods. Either way, you've got some sort of possibly violent conflict, either with all three or specifically against the demons. Demons straight up won't work with devils.

[Eldan]

Planescape is a special case here, of course, but there's several celestials who sell weapons, armor, manpower, magic, etc. to one side or the other of the blood war. Either because they think the blood war going on is better than one side winning, or because the think one side (usually the one with the same law-chaos alignment) isn't as bad as the other.

[Calthropstu]

Maybe, but it would be very, very reluctantly, and each one of them would assume the other two are conspiring against them (which they WOULDbe).

Corrected it for you.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

^ That's what I was going to post. Even the lawful good ones would probably be bound more by their oath to fight evil than the one to never lie or misrepresent oneself. (And the one to help good souls in need takes precedence above both, hence the cooperation.)

[NecroDancer]

Hmmmm. So assuming they all reluctantly work together to get the souls the moment the prize is up for grabs each of them will betray each other to try to get a bigger share. I'm assuming each side will have contingencies in place for the betrayal they all suspect.

The celestials will probably try to befriend the Devils as they can be "trusted" more than demons (low bar here). As for the demons they probably will need to work the hardest as no one really trusts them, I can see Graz'zt trying to get the celestial's support against the Devils seeing how Graz'zt is a fairly good demon lord (VERY low bar) and the Devils hate Graz'zt a lot and will probably try to screw him over.

I'm also assuming that if one side thinks they can obtain the souls by themselves they will go for it without a second thought.

[NRSASD]

This was just an idea I had.

Lets assume there was a place that was cut off from the rest of the multiverse, a place that souls couldn't escape from, a place most planer beings couldn't get into. The souls of the dead would have no place to go creating a large reservoir of good and evil souls.

It has been enough time for around a "reserve" of a million souls of each alignment to have built up and now everyone wants them to be freed. Would the angels, demons, and Devils work together to find some way to free the souls assuming they all got an equal amount?

As stated, no. Each of the three despises the other two so much they would rather fail than help their rivals. The Celestials risk falling for willing consorting with fiends, and neither the demons nor devils would willingly see the other side get stronger. As long as the souls are secured away, they aren't in danger of falling into anyone's hands, which is... inconvenient, but better than the alternative.

That being said, here's a fun way to make this "Mexican Standoff" happen.

Elminben the Might Wizard hated Outsider influence with a fiery burning passion. Being an angry old codger with no patience for "those **** meddlers", he saw absolutely nothing wrong with disrupting the natural order of things and sealed his Prime off from the Multiverse. All spells of this caliber need an end clause though, and Elminben strove to write one so difficult it would never happen.

The spell would end and release the souls to their final destinations only if "An Angel, a Demon, and a Devil met as friends and agreed to grant their share of the souls to the others".

If the Demon was especially clever (Gra'azt), the Devil particularly willing to bend the rules, and the Angel remarkably pragmatic, the spell could be broken.

[Honest Tiefling]

The spell would end and release the souls to their final destinations only if "An Angel, a Demon, and a Devil met as friends and agreed to grant their share of the souls to the others".

If the Demon was especially clever (Gra'azt), the Devil particularly willing to bend the rules, and the Angel remarkably pragmatic, the spell could be broken.

I'd rework the phrasing 'as allies' (on the basis that a being of pure chaos and evil might have issues making friends), but other then that, I think this is a wonderful idea. It gives a reason for the scenario desired and gives a strong reason for the three to work together.

Then again, I am horribly biased to Graz'zt.

[Calthropstu]

Actually, they would ultimately come to the same accord: all of said souls would go through proper judgement and go to their respective planes.
The demons would try to steal some (as they always do), the devils would attempt to barter for extra, and the angels would attempt to redeem some, but ultimately most of them would end up where they belong.

[Bad Wolf]

I could see angels and devils working together, under extreme circumstances. This seems like the sort of thing that might make Asmodeus less reclusive for a moment.