The timing here is amazing - tonight I'm kicking off a new campaign with the players in Malbolge fighting an Erinyes and her minions, for the right to speak with Glasya.

Ah yes. The greater devils that lore-wise share the Orthon's responsibility, but mechanically have the stats to actually get the job done

OMG he's doing a monster that's not fungus or a jelly like. It's truly a new age

I introduced a gang of Erinyes in a Descent into Avernus campaign I ran a couple years ago. I presented them as a roving biker gang that pursued the PCs across the waste lands 😄

0:05 that reminds me of my favorite Greek-ish joke: An ancient Greek walks into a tailor shop holding a ripped garment. The tailor looks up and says "Euripides?" "Yup," says the man, "Eumenides?" "You betcha." :)

AJ is the DM we all wanted growing up. And only a lucky few actually got. New Zealand got us again bois. Damn Kiwis and their skilled DMs. You guys need to share. Like an international GM exchange programs.

I go with a more originalist version of the Erinyes. They may live in the hells, but they are not devils. The Erinyes are not good or evil in the slightest. The oldest of them are older than the gods themselves. They are pure law. They make the modrons seem downright chaotic. A greater Erinyes will be a 20th-30th level character and will remember when Asmodeus was one among their ranks. It was the pact Asmodeus made with the gods that caused the Erinyes to settle into the hells, because it was closer to their enemies in the Abyss than Celestia. Since they are not good or evil, they can be found in all of the upper and lower planes, but they maintain their fortresses in the hells as a form of “home”. They are entirely outside of the devilish hierarchy because they are the enforcers of the devilish hierarchy. If Asmodeus ever broke the pact he made with the gods, the Erinyes would pay him a visit to “discuss” it. Only an Erinyes can destroy a being outside of its home plane. A devil killed by an Erinyes on the prime will not respawn in the hells. An angel killed on the prime will not reform in the heavens. A demon killed on the prime will not respawn in the abyss. If the Erinyes ever gathered as an army again, they could destroy all of the upper and lower planes. When they kill, whatever they killed is dead, permanently. In one of my campaign worlds, Araushnee sought to have an Erinyes destroy Corellian. The Erinyes did not bother to mention that gods killing gods violated the Pact of Asmodeus, so after killing Corellion, it slew Araushnee as well for trying to use an enforcer of the Pact to violate the Pact. To put it bluntly, in my games, drawing the attention of the Erinyes is the only thing that will unite the heavens and the hells against you. The Greater Erinyes are above the hierarchy of the hells, more like honored guests than anything else. Asmodeus is both protected and punished by them being so close. As to Cania, what lies buried in the ice is the end of all things. Awaken even a single one of the Greater Eninyes slumbering there and the Pact of Asmodeus will be broken permanently and the legion will awaken to destroy the heavens and the hells before marching again on the abyss as it was before the Pact.

Even talking about the Hells, AJ is soothing enough to make me forget it's an election year for a few minutes. 😁

Thankyou AJ Nice to know I've been pronouncing their name wrong all these years

So, thunderdome evil valkyries? Sweet!

Ages ago, an entire party of us were doing the bidding of one. Our “leader” thought she was an angel.

If i remember correctly, the Fiendish Codex II says that devils can be promoted TO Erinyes, but once there can only become Pit Fiends, and cannot be demoted. Im not 100%, ill check it again. But im pretty sure.

First 45 seconds and you're bringing up something I've been saying for years. It's not just being a dick, nor is it just signing away your soul. Baator is punishment for breaking oaths and divine pacts.

Never forget that extraplanar creatures are famously weak in 5e. Beef them up considerably and make their capabilities actually resemble their reputations.

There’s a terrific erinyes character in a Classic Greyhawk novel by Paul Kidd. So great!

A perfectly timed video, my players are in for a (now improved) game session. Thank you AJ.

Awesome, been looking forward to you covering this!

Ah, my second favorite fiend. My favorite is the pit fiend.

Glad to see the fiend series is back. Love this series

Skin freezes solid in 30 seconds in a -75 Fahrenheit wind chill. Your coat blocks the wind, but not the chill at those temperatures. I experienced that in Iowa back in the winter of ‘82-‘83. We didn’t go out without goggles, balaclava, scarves, gloves, thick boots, and layers under coats because of it. The high winds lasted for about a week straight and felt like living in some sort of hell.

Never official, but it's always been a bit of my personal headcanon (going all the way back to 1e) that, being outside the standard tracks of promotion as well as in form originating from the "fallen angels" who were among the very first of the Baatezu, that Erinyes are also the source of many of the unique named devils, particularly amongst the "consorts" such as Bensozia, Naome, Baftis, etc.

The sexy Skiritai!

I'm back baby. Took the longest siesta from D&D, but coming back with a passion for getting things going again. Thanks for providing the inspiration and the mood AJ.

Thanks AJ.

I've always loved how organized the hierarchies of fiends are 😂 Very scary, but also very orderly!

Xena’s final form.

8:07 I want to see a D&D version of Law & Order now😂❤

Let's get Deeply Nerdy. Also, one of my players is holding an erinyes that has been cursed into the form of a senient harp, so the timing of this video is exquisite.

AJ Pickett greatest of all time!

i was thinking the whole time that Erinyes were just evil Wonder woman! 🗡️ 🪢 then you actually said that! 😂 it makes sense some of them have ropes of entanglement! 😆 🪢

Pain devil. The Butcher.

I could never be sure how to pronounce Erinyes.

An interesting treat to be sure. Though I'll never get over how 'Erin' means means ''in there', in Dutch, when reading the name of these ladies.

Aj I really need your infernal videos to be at least 30 minutes long

The part of their lore I read is that they serve Glasya, Asmodeus's daughter.

Love your work! Thank you for all the time you take out of your days to provide easily digestible lore content. I would like to make a request. Recently I’ve been trying to dig up info on just the Styx, the river Styx that traverses through the entirety of the lower planes, but I can’t seem to find a single video from anyone on it. While the wikidots are great surface information, I feel there is a degree of information I can’t find or could learn more about it. The Styx just interest me, since they traverse through the nine, the abyss, pandemonium, and others. It’s a unique existence that imo is rarely touched on. I did see you have a video on the Styx dragon, but it’s not quite what I’m looking for. I know you’re a busy person, so again thank you for all of your hard work, and if your reading this, thank you for your time.

Oaths and oath breakers are actually extremely powerful plot tools in fantasy. Just think of the Oath of Fëanor in the Silmarillion, which doomed both him and all his sons to damnation, or Aragorn's holding the King of the Dead Men of Dunharrow to account for his oath-breaking all those years ago. During the Middle Ages, oath-breakers were sometimes seen as worse than murderers, and I think they occupy a lower circle of Hells in Dante Allegieri's Inferno (on which the Nine Hells in D&D are largely based). DMs can easily create a plot line for a whole campaign in which PCs for instance at the very beginning break an oath and consequently become doomed to wander the Realms forever as undead, revenants or ghosts or perhaps something even worse, or are taken by the Erinyes to the Hells from which they have to escape. Don't worry about the technical rules gobbledygook that says you have to be level 10 to survive in the Infernoes: You can be level 1 and living, dead or undead so long as you have your wits about you and can all have a good time with vibrant storytelling...

I had a nice but tragic character. Her back story was part of a noble family in a kingdom civil war. Where the usurper faction wins and begins the genocidal purging of noble houses in the name of justice for an event that never happened and her family was a part of. The courts were still respectable after the war to sort out the innocent nobles thanks to her noble family's unwavering devotion to justice. Many of her family members left their homes to become Devotion Paladin and never looked back. My character was one of the handful few who stayed with family ties. Well her family was up on the chopping block as all the lies were forced down on her family and sentenced to death, in her disbelief and rage on the night before the execution at dawn. She never prayed before she did desperately for any divine intervention to save her family and herself. As the light started to fill the sky she pleaded and offered her innocent soul to bring justice back to their country as she watched the last of her family her 14yr. old sister is beheaded and she was next. This was when time slowed to crawl and Nvadiah heeded her powerful determined desperate prayer. Appearing before my character after questioning her soul. She surprisingly impressed Nvadiah in their conversation and this was a great opportunity to hit two birds with one stone. A lot of wicked people needed to be dragged down to hell because of this civil war. As an added bonus she gets the pure soul of a girl from a line of mortals devoted to divine justice. Nvadiah, frees her and makes a warlock pact with my character to collect these wicked souls with each soul my character will develop wings of Erinyes when my character task is complete. She is free to live out her moral life collecting other wicked souls as she pleases until the end when she would be joining Nvadiah in the hells by her side.

AJ.. since when did you have a lisp? Maybe it's new audio equipment?? Are you OK? (Long time viewer, I love your work! & backed all 4 of your kickstarters)

Erinyes and Succubi meet beauty and AI in a video I had to watch 3 times to make sure I heard everything spoken 🥵

The furies are different. I believe the were megaira, tisiphony and alecto. Three unique beings. Not necessarily demonic. Definitely punishers.

Thanks for the video :) Been waiting for years for this one :)

Thanks for the video AJ

Bless the Mighty GlueStick

Hell yeah, Back to Hell lore!

Great lore. I find it interesting that most of the art featured sexy looking devils that all shared a postural deviation called forward head posture, with their heads jutting forward, and with their chins tilted downward, so that they’re looking at the “camera” sorta through their eyebrows. Now, if this art is, as I suspect, AI generated, it means that these postures are consistently adopted in photos tagged as “sexy, bad boy/girl”.

Thank youuu!

Great work as always! :) Have you considered doing half celestials, I'd love a vid on them!

Not a bot so unfortunately I lack them big ol’ wordy words… but good stuff!

Amazing timing. Do you have a video on the cult of the dragon

Good video AJ

Great vid! I dunno why, I noticed you have a lisp which I never have before, and I've watched a shit ton of your vids, you okay?

I've never heard of Brachinas before. I'd love to hear more about the them, the Erinyes, their culture and such. Did I understand correctly, that only the Brachinas use seduction, while normal Erinyes don't? It is now my personal headcanon, that you can differentiate from which layer an Erinyes stems/which layer they call home by their appearance. If they are, for example, from a layer with ice, maybe they look more nordic, similar enough to easily confuse them with a Valkyrie, have a blueish tint to their skin or radiate cold (kinda like a fridge) and have a foggy breath, while those from a burning layer could maybe have skin that looks like porcelain, radiate warmth (kinda like an oven) and have a breath shimmering with heat, or sport a clothing/armor style that is reminiscent of those worn in hotter regions (like Persia, for example).

Excellent video and please have a good evening.😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊.

Solid :) Like #666 for a 9 Hells video. Might put me on some sort of radar 👀

You got a bit of a lisp in this one AJ? Hope you're alright!

Lore vs story narrative, .. rule of cool and go with the plot determine by dice results. Lawful good is a joke, because good people don't need laws. The Misfits, .. a.) neutral good with chaotic impulse to just hug people, .. yeah, .. she is a hugger. Still treat her with a paladin aura of divine good. New soul, bit clueless. Within 10minutes, any of the lower planes will just Gate her out because she so totally doesn't belong. Too pure to hold. Wrong planar vibration. ( hugs cast Banish Evil, you figure out how cartoonish you want to get it.) b.) Chaotic neutral good/evil. First one to break up a fight, make a deal/ contract, but if you act like a D*ck. He carries a mark from a night hag community, fate spinner/ pooling luck dice. Campaign plot device n/PC. Reality wraps to keep the narrative fast and interesting. What is worst, being ate by a night hag or become their side quest fetcher. It be fun. c.) few others, .. Meta plot, find and retrieve item and teleport back to wizard, who happens to be a Baator court aid. Eight random side adventures just to complete main quest dealing with DM's .. funny .. wild chaos magic result die charts. She though herself to be real funny. Party teleports near the devil at court next over to the side of the Baator level arch lord. The lord is multi tasking multiple speakers so the main court isn't bother with the PCs. But the court guard seems real .. interested. Because Teleporting this close to the throne Should Not be possible, cause you know .. reasons. After the players in character argue about what they think or heard how magic works. Since they recover a dozen Baator items of importances, it was The Will of Baator that they be brough teleported to the side of the throne. That bit of logic leap came from a player running a Lg paladin. Oh the irony .. Not really, he normally plays Sith lords.

that's pretty good ai art, better than most

I swear 30% of the time I feel like you’re describing my ex wife.

Long term assignments prize by the Erinyes, .. a.) Working at a nunnery or Jesuit military boarding school. ( a protective angel.) b.) find a young roguish bard, and be their lifelong muse. c.) wizard mage guild school. d.) create their own half-fiend bloodlines, well night hags do this. Other side notes base on setting and game play, .. a.) Disappearing bodies of someone teleported to Hell in the embrace of a devil does spread stories, but then again just look at European religious history, or lack of therefore to discredit religious superstition. ( .. only the victim sees the devil and no one sees who they are talking to. ) Public confession and then dies from heart attack/stroke, people left wondering what the homeless guy/rich man was talking about. b.) WotC 3e, multiclassing, long story short .. a few hundred Erinyes are gifted with an Item of Teleportation. Many Erinyes cults gift out minor magic items to Hear Prayer, or easy drop on their mortal pawn scout teams ( player PCs ). Erinyes and some Succubus have a wify band length for group chat. They trade favors or post/ask for said items and they trade back and forth. ( DON'T .. POACH .. MY .. PETS !!) One game where the PC army was getting over ran by orc horde and rolled Cha/ BEGGing to be saved, well he got a natural 20. So the Known Hundred local Erinyes teleported in and moves one by one over the coarse of a few minutes the defending humans to safety and rain fire arrows down on the orcs, " fire for effect. " To dodge a " god war " or planar imbalance, the devils only shot to injury and not kill. So they were not Effecting a pair of war/battle gods chess game. However, there were multiple tales from the orcs point of view where they still won anyhow cause they drove their enemies back so hard that their gods flew them away saving their weak dishonorable backsides. The orcs get a new religious holiday. As for the humans, PCs .. they had a Religious experience ! Anime angel kiss. Devil, " Well, I could just pull them into Hell or have a lifetime of loving hero worship."

So... Succubi for guys who like muscle girls. 😄

AJ, you do great lore videos and I always look forward to your uploads. I've seen previous comments saying this, but I also can't keep watching if you're going to sprinkle in AI generated images. Fundamental societal issues aside, they look awful and they really pull me out of the creative mindspace when I look at poorly generated AI images. I understand your reasonings to do so in the YT sphere but it's not the kind of content a lot of traditional DMs want to see. Good luck.

Wait, you're conservative? That's so sad......

I usually enjoy the videos and Im sure it’s out of your control but I couldn’t handle the lisp in this. Had to stop watching.