There’s the mysterious Holey Brotherhood. They’ve been shown as being involved but we’ve learned nothing about them, including their identities.
Their Raison D’etre has disappeared now that the Azure City Gate has been destroyed. They’ll have to find a new charter or disband.
There are also ways to prevent Raise Dead-type spells from working. For instance, you can sacrifice their souls to dark powers, which is probably what Nale did to Malack’s children. And several necromantic kill-spells make it harder, too (though they still generally allow the higher-level versions). It’s quite plausible that an epic kill-spell might prevent raising by anything short of another epic spell.
Also, there are only three of them left alive, and they’re all pretty much on the same side as the Order.
I’d argue they’re not the same side - they have their own concerns and goals. It’s true they’re no longer prime players with their own gate down, but they’re going to retake the city at some point, or try to, and the Snarl is still there.
And there are three of them plus a city populace. And there are only twice that in the Order or the Guild, and only 3 Fiends + 1 imp in the IFCC…
Three archfiends, one imp, one very conflicted succubus, and an unspecified number of other agents and pawns.
When my Neutral Evil rogue died from a scythe trap crit, I ruled that by the time the party had finished clearing the dungeon then got back to town and cast Speak With Dead, he’d already spent what would (to him) have been an eternity in Hell getting tortured, devoured, shat, reformed, then re-tortured.
So all they got from SWD was a long, voice-cracked, hopelessly insane scream. They wisely chose not to raise him.
This has nothing at all to do with the fact I seized the opportunity to reroll a character I’d grown tired off, no siree ! 
Why in the world would anyone choose to be neutral evil if they knew they were going to be tortured mercilessly for all eternity after they died? Have there been any DnD texts on the implications of knowing exactly what sort of afterlife is in store for various alignments when it comes to choosing alignments?
That’s like asking why people in the real world commit crimes when they know that there’s a high chance of being caught and punished for it.
As Xykon once pointed out, the plan is to avoid death and not suffer the afterlife consequences.
Xykon’s main difference being that he seemed to take actual steps to not ever die. I realize Kobal2 gave us a really abbreviated history of his rogue character but it sounds like the rogue wasn’t doing anything to not die and in fact, by adventuring was actually increasing his risk of dying.
Sorry, I don’t mean to hijack the thread, it just struck me as weird.
It’s all about philosophy. Do you want to live a good life, even when things get hard, so that you’ll be rewarded? If so, then you’re Good. Or, do you want to have as much fun as you can now, killing and raping and stealing to get your way, and consequences be damned? If so, you’re Evil.
Another of the tweaks I’ve added to the standard D&D cosmology is that the various hells and abyssal layers aren’t there for punishment. Rather, they represent the ideal state of existence for evil beings. If you’re an evil mortal, and you die, in theory you will enjoy hell every bit as much as a good mortal enjoys heaven - except that the nature of your entertainments are, obviously, very very different. In practice, most people who end up in hell end up at the mercy of some stronger, more evil, more vicious thing down there. But the more vile you were in life, the more powerful you are in hell. If you’re only a little evil, you end up as some lowly thing like a lemure or a nupperibo - twisted, clumsy, barely sentient. But if you’re truly depraved and immoral, you might come back as some higher order demon or devil. Thus, if you’re an evil mortal, you have a pretty strong incentive to be as evil as you can - if you’re wishy washy about it, it’s going to go badly for you when you get down there.
@Miller: So, Belkar is gonna be a Pit Fiend?
He expressed it more as a general philosophy: “Be a vampire, or a ghost, or an immortal with a paint-by-numbers portrait in the rec room. Hell, even a brain-in-a-jar in a pinch. Anything to avoid the Big Fire down below.”
No, I get that. It’s just that when you have empirical evidence of eternal painful consequences, it seems like it’s a little tougher to blithely shake off.
edit: Miller’s explanation makes sense.
I think someone like Belkar gets screwed no matter what. In fact, Belkar might enjoy hell MORE. I mean, if he somehow slipped into Heaven, he’d get booze and sex… but he won’t be allowed to stab anyone. For someone like Belkar, that’s torture. In Hell, on the other hand, he can beat the crap out of the other new souls until he ascends to a higher form of demon, at which point he can continue to fight his way to the top. I think Belkar would like hell more than heaven.
Even if you’re not turned into anything in the afterlife, this still applies: the more evil you are, the more rewarding the evil afterlife is. It’s where lying, cheating, stealing, and murdering (or what passes for murdering in the afterlife) are all highly effective means at achieving power.
There are good-aligned planes that allow plenty of stabbing action. Ysgard, for example, is a constant battle by day, and at night all the slain get up again and join the victors in a raucous party at night, before doing it again the next day.
That is (Sort of) the premise of the Wall of the Faithless, in the Forgotten Realms. Worship a Good deity, and be rewarded; worship an Evil one, and be “rewarded”. Hell, even worship a Neutral deity; just make sure SOMEONE claims your soul. Because no matter how bad Orcus’s afterlife is, The Wall is much, much worse.
EDIT: I think if Belkar went to Ysgard, he’d proceed to stab people at the night party, and thus get kicked out.