Nightlord Motivations?

[LostOne]

I'll admit it's been a long time since I read the books. They're currently being borrowed by a player. I just had the thought, I can't recall reading what the Nightlord goals are. Why invade Earth? Is it just ego-maniacal world domination? War for resources? Are they giant PPE locusts and will suck the literal life out of the world over time making it another dark dead world like the Nightlands before moving on to another world? Maybe it's intentionally left vague, like the origins of the Nightbane so the GMs can come up with their own reasons. If so, I'd love to hear yours.

[The Beast]

In simplest terms all the Nightlords except for the head guy want to dominate mortals in every possible way. The head guy wants to assist the Dark in making everything dead.

[Shark_Force]

In simplest terms all the Nightlords except for the head guy want to dominate mortals in every possible way. The head guy wants to assist the Dark in making everything dead.

yeah, pretty much this. i'd say it's implied that at least one other nightlord is also aware of what the Dark actually wants and is also working towards it, but essentially, the majority of them are looking to enslave humanity so that they can be kept as cattle, while a handful at most are working towards killing everyone. possibly they think the dark will reward them in some way for that, and possibly they just hate humanity enough that the dark is comfortable with letting them in on the real final goal.

[Nekira Sudacne]

Does it say the Dark wants all humanity dead anywhere? Near as I can tell Megalomanical Global Domination is still the goal, just with a vauge Alien Intelligence as the puppetmaster behind Nightlords who share the same goal for personal reasons.

Near as I can tell The Dark doesn't actually add anything to the setting. You could just remove him and say Moloch and The Jester are acting in their own right and I don't think a single thing in the books would have to change other than cutting out references to The Dark. He's only there to provide a secret Puppetmaster to a group of villians who...don't really need a puppetmaster to be the villians. Simply being life force vampires who see humans as cattle to be dominated is all the motivation the setting needs. It's Possible the Dark could have been intended to add something, but that something was never actually added, either because of CJ's departure or, more likely, the Dark only existed to give the vauge Lovecraftian Alien Intelligence undertones palladium loves using everywhere.

[Axelmania]

does The Jester refer to Lord Mocker who rules Russia or is that some new guy?

I'm not sure if Moloch wants to kill EVERYthing or just all HUMANS... what if he just really loves the environment and wants to save it from human pollution?

Another thing is... killing everyone doesn't necessarily mean you want to keep them dead permanently. Perhaps once Moloch has killed all humans and rebuilt Earth in his image, he might be open to resurrecting a few to keep in zoos?

[Nekira Sudacne]

does The Jester refer to Lord Mocker who rules Russia or is that some new guy?

I'm not sure if Moloch wants to kill EVERYthing or just all HUMANS... what if he just really loves the environment and wants to save it from human pollution?

Another thing is... killing everyone doesn't necessarily mean you want to keep them dead permanently. Perhaps once Moloch has killed all humans and rebuilt Earth in his image, he might be open to resurrecting a few to keep in zoos?

Does it actually say he wants to kill everything or even kill all humans anywhere? As far as I recall just generic enslavement was his goal.

[Axelmania]

Nightlands 25 says "His apparent goal is the eradication of Humankind" but "apparent" means that just might be what people might wrongly assume about him, not understanding some other goal.

Nightlands 32 ("Lilith's Plans") is actually where the stronger language is:

King Moloch's deal with the Dark.
A deal that will ultimately result in the destruction of all human life on Earth.
Lilith does not like the idea.

then later:

she may be forced to go along with Moloch's plans and contribute to the genocide of the human species

I think this still has some flexibility. Firstly: even if "Moloch's deal" will (ultimately) destroy ALL human life: does that necessarily mean Moloch KNOWS this?

What if, perhaps, Moloch thinks he might simply be trying to reduce human like by 99.9% so that only 0.1% of humanity remains? Maybe he doesn't 100% understand the ramifications of this deal? What the Dark will ultimately do?

Secondly: it does say "on Earth". If you kidnap a human to use as a slave in the Nightlands, they are no longer "human life on Earth" they are "human life in Nightlands" so you don't actually need to kill THAT human to accomplish destruction of all human life on Earth, you just need to reclassify it as "human life on non-Earth" by transporting humans.

Aside from 25/32 there could be some other pages I'm forgetting which are clearer about this.

[LostOne]

I love the citations, thanks.

[Rallan]

In simplest terms all the Nightlords except for the head guy want to dominate mortals in every possible way. The head guy wants to assist the Dark in making everything dead.

They're probably all aware that The Dark wants to destroy everything in existence and accepted "One day I might have to help destroy everything including myself" as part of the price of power. It's just that Moloch and The Mocker are the only canon Nightlord examples we know who are wholeheartedly all for it instead of just going along with it.

Although since there's supposed to be at least a thousand Nightlords, I don't doubt there are others who are totally committed to The Dark's goals but just not as good as Moloch and The Mocker at establishing their authority.

[Shark_Force]

In simplest terms all the Nightlords except for the head guy want to dominate mortals in every possible way. The head guy wants to assist the Dark in making everything dead.

They're probably all aware that The Dark wants to destroy everything in existence and accepted "One day I might have to help destroy everything including myself" as part of the price of power. It's just that Moloch and The Mocker are the only canon Nightlord examples we know who are wholeheartedly all for it instead of just going along with it.

Although since there's supposed to be at least a thousand Nightlords, I don't doubt there are others who are totally committed to The Dark's goals but just not as good as Moloch and The Mocker at establishing their authority.

i rather suspect most of them don't even know. now, some of them might be crazy enough to go along with it if they did know, but let's say that, oh.... 25% are in favour, and 75% are not. infighting is common amongst the nightlords. if three quarters of them are opposed to the plan, they're not just going to say "oh well, i guess i'm just going to starve to death some day", they're going to try to kill the ones that are trying to make them starve to death sooner rather than later.

and frankly, i doubt that the number of nightlords that would be in favour goes as high as 25% considering we're talking about a bunch of greedy, self-serving scumbags that are primarily driven by a lust for power. more likely there'd be a handful of loons willing to go through with it, and everyone else would be working to kill off those handful of loons (preferably by letting others sacrifice their minions to that cause). furthermore, a fairly significant portion of the nightlords' minions are not fullyunder the control of the Dark... i mean, some are essentially mindless slaves created by the nightlords (like hounds and hunters) and would obey regardless, but if knowledge of the real plan came out, i'd have to expect that for example namtar, ashmedai, dopplegangers (the conscious ones), night priests, and princes would at least for the most part side with the nightlords that are in favour of enslaving rather than exterminating humanity, and those forces make up a significant portion of the minions available to the nightlords... so not only would that group of loons be facing probably 19:1 or worse odds in number of hounds and hunters, they could be facing closer to 400:1 when it comes to most other types of minions if that information got out.

so i very much doubt it's known. too little to gain. too much to lose. so long as everyone thinks they're just torturing and murdering humanity to get their numbers low enough that they can't fight back, they'll happily play along. if the ones that do know can manipulate events so that along the way, those pesky humans and nightbanes and guardians just so happen to destroy large numbers of the nightlords that would oppose the extermination of humanity (on the grounds that they'd rather enslave them and not die of starvation), they'll be in a much better position when the time inevitably comes for the war between the factions of nightlords. (but before that, i'd still expect moloch to make sure to pick a few of the more powerful opposed nightlords and find some way to target the rest of the nightlords against them first, to weaken his enemies).

[LostOne]

Although since there's supposed to be at least a thousand Nightlords

Really? I'll admit I haven't read the books in a long time, but I always had in my head that it was more like 100, tops. They're really powerful and I'd think a thousand of them could just march around in the open annihilating whatever the military throws at them.

[Nekira Sudacne]

Although since there's supposed to be at least a thousand Nightlords

Really? I'll admit I haven't read the books in a long time, but I always had in my head that it was more like 100, tops. They're really powerful and I'd think a thousand of them could just march around in the open annihilating whatever the military throws at them.

They'd run out of PPE pretty quickly doing that.

[Warshield73]

Although since there's supposed to be at least a thousand Nightlords

Really? I'll admit I haven't read the books in a long time, but I always had in my head that it was more like 100, tops. They're really powerful and I'd think a thousand of them could just march around in the open annihilating whatever the military throws at them.

I haven't read them in a few years but I never even thought there was more than a few dozen. Not ever city on Earth has a mirror in the Nightlands and some Nightlands cities were ruled by a Night Prince.

I also thought that in either Nightbane itself or the Nightlands book it described the original exodus of the Nightlords from Earth to the Nightlands and mentioned something about small number and how very few new Nightlords have been added since. Did one of the new books set a number for the Nightlords?

[Axelmania]

They're probably all aware that The Dark wants to destroy everything in existence

I can't seem to recall where it actually says that, anyone remember? I'm trying to review stuff like this all spread-out.

and accepted "One day I might have to help destroy everything including myself" as part of the price of power. It's just that Moloch and The Mocker are the only canon Nightlord examples we know who are wholeheartedly all for it instead of just going along with it.

I don't think we actually KNOW that at all. My guess is that these nightlords are okay with more destruction than others, approaching the dark's level of destructiveness, but not necessarily on board for an "everything" approach.

Although since there's supposed to be at least a thousand Nightlords, I don't doubt there are others who are totally committed to The Dark's goals but just not as good as Moloch and The Mocker at establishing their authority.

I think even amongst Diabolic folk that "destroy everything" would still be in the minority. It's also sort of unclear to me how much about the Dark the non-M&M lords (or princes) actually know about.

Although since there's supposed to be at least a thousand Nightlords

Really? I'll admit I haven't read the books in a long time, but I always had in my head that it was more like 100, tops.

One thing we know for sure is NOBODY is sure how many exists (main book pg 171). It says "there must be hundreds, or maybe even thousands" basically the same expression pg 13 used for the number of Nightbane at Dark Day: probably why nightbane alone can't easily solve this problem as most can't take on a nightlord 1-on-1.

I haven't read them in a few years but I never even thought there was more than a few dozen. Not ever city on Earth has a mirror in the Nightlands and some Nightlands cities were ruled by a Night Prince.

Those cities must be lesser cities, as pg 171 says there's at least 1 per major city. 171 indicates a "minimum 200" for the amount of Nightlords IMO, with essentially no upper limit, 'thousands' being comfortably suggested. I'm thinking less than 2 million since 'millions' wasn't used.

I also thought that in either Nightbane itself or the Nightlands book it described the original exodus of the Nightlords from Earth to the Nightlands and mentioned something about small number and how very few new Nightlords have been added since. Did one of the new books set a number for the Nightlords?[/quote]

[Shark_Force]

i don't recall any set numbers. but i believe they've specifically mentioned that more can be made, and it is likely that being made into one is the ambition of most of the night princes. not that they're likely to get that under normal circumstances, any more than a night priest is likely to be given the opportunity to become a night prince, but if things get desperate, who knows?

[Axelmania]

We had a 2017 talk and unfortunately while we did get more specific numbers about the Nightbane (Incriptus found the "hundredfold" on pg 16) none were found on the Nightlords beyond the hundred>thousands.