Modrons

[Heliomance]

Modrons are the greatest bureaucrats in the multiverse. So if you wanted to get something out of them, how would you do it? How would you go about beating the bureacracy, and running the red tape?

[Pronounceable]

No, that's Baatezu. Modrons are gears. They don't even recognize anything but their immediate superiors and subordinates. There's nothing one can do to speed things up with modrons.

[Cainen]

He's right. You DON'T. You wait until they pass you to one of the hierarch Modrons, and then you hope that they aren't going to do something because you've broken an archaic law that you don't know about. After all, Modrons -are- the law, and therefore other peoples' interpretations of the law are flawed if they disagree. That's exactly how they act.

[bosssmiley]

@OP: You mean other than assassinating then impersonating Primus the One and the Prime, and setting the Great Modron March off a century early?

Probably the best way to get anything out of the Modrons is to use their rogues or (if desperate) the rebel Modrons on Acheron as intermediaries. These rebels have a substantially more comprehensible mindset than the Modrons of Regulus and should hopefully be able to act as 'native guide'.

Dragon #354 and the old Planescape "Planes of Law" boxed set are probably your 'go to' materials for making the Modrons interesting, as opposed to their being an inexorable force of nature and mysterious to the point of opacity.

Modron marching chant: "1010001! 1010111!" (repeat ad nauseum)

[Heliomance]

It is actually possible to get stuff out of them. My DM was telling me of a group he once ran who managed to persuade the modrons that by not helping them, they were increasing the net amount of entropy in the universe and that helping them would make the universe more ordered.

[Illiterate Scribe]

But that's the thing: Modrons don't listen to anything, any cutter will tell you that. Primus has worked everything out for them already; they will ignore your protests that you're increasing universal entropy.

Formians, I could hear them listening, but that's because they're not a vast army of indistinguishable polyhedra with one goal - being lawful.

[Madmal]

wasn't Primus killed by Tenebrus/Orcus, and then turned into a vestige?

[TroyXavier]

I think so....though another Primus eventually appeared.

[Xuincherguixe]

It seems that new Primi can be appointed. Which is to say the closest Modron of the next highest rank becomes the new one.

[graymachine]

The Primus is actually upgraded from the next step down, by vote of the 4 modrons that occupy that tier if I remember correctly. There is always a Primus because the modrons are all about hierarchy. The hierarchy, to them, is just another part of the great machine. I would say that interaction with the modrons should be completely incomprehensible; they embody a primal function of order and the average (or great) cutter cannot begin to understand. Using the renegade modrons as intermediaries, though, is a great idea, as they have chaos in them enough to function with a cutter, but are still greatly in touch with primal order.

[Project_Mayhem]

Modron marching chant: "1010001! 1010111!" (repeat ad nauseum)

Binary Solo! 0000000000011000000001111000001110000011100

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