Nalfeshnee

Back-to-back demons!  Today’s entry is the nalfeshnee.  Of all the demons, they operate perhaps the most like devils, in that they are the Abyss’s middle managers and serve mortal spellcasters with elaborate contracts.  But don’t be fooled: they serve themselves first, they Abyss second, and everyone else last—including other demons and even evil deities.  And, as Lords of Chaos and Ultimate Magic note, in the mortal world they are spies and keepers of secrets.  The contracts they sign are largely meaningless—contracts mean nothing to demons without the magical might to back it up.  Meanwhile they are learning far more than they spill—think Scarlett Johansson in The Avengers (but in a fat suit with a pig mask). 

In fact, the nalfeshnee’s bestial appearance might actually trick players into thinking a nalfeshnee is a brute.  It might not go amiss to leave the book open near players encountering the demon for the first time.  But while they’re looking at the picture and the damage stats, you’ll be putting the nalfeshnee’s Int 23, Wis 22, and Cha 20 to work…

In short, like all demons they are about ruination and destruction; they just go about it in a slightly less obvious way.

An elf archmage summoned and bound a nalfeshnee decades ago to learn secrets of the Abyss…or so he thought.  In actuality, the bonds wore off in the last 15 years, but the demon has stayed, gleaning the secrets of high elf portal crafting from the archmage without the elf’s realizing it.  Just as a party of adventurers arrives, the nalfeshnee tires of the ruse and attempts to kill the archmage and escape through an as yet unfinished portal—which could send him and the party anywhere in the multiverse.

A party comes across a nalfeshnee tending the bubbling Abyssal pits and cauldrons that melt souls into dretches.  The nalfeshnee does not recognize their Writ of Safe Passage (written by the demigoddess of scorpions herself), so he spills a vat of dretches on to them, then summons babaus to finish off anything that survives the ravenous soulspawn

A dance tournament is being held.  An elderly porcine man asks if he and his loathsome siblings (one brother and four beak-nosed sisters) can participate.  For a laugh the count says yes.  But the group is actually a nalfeshnee warband.  When they drop their disguises, the vrocks begin their dance of ruin and the nalfeshnee heads for the count’s solarium to claim a secret tome written on the skin of evil gnomes.  (The hezrou smashes with abandon.)

—Pathfinder Bestiary 65

Short one today.  Think I am coming down with something grim.  Fever commencing in 3…2…1…