Slimy Demodand

Seated midway in power between the shaggy and tarry demodands, slimy demodands are the brutish, frog-faced shock troops and overseers of the demodand legions.  A slimy demodand (aka kelubar) is an acid-clawed and acid fog-casting terror in battle and intimidating and difficult to fool out of it.

The Sacristy of the Morrowdawn is being preyed upon by a fiend or fiends.  Distressingly, the Sacristy’s holy diviners and soothsayers, usually so prescient on such matters, can read no portents nor find anything in their scrying bowls.  The culprit is at least one slimy demodand, possibly a whole slaving party—all of whom are sheltered from divine sight by their heretical souls.

By coincidence, adventurers book passage on the same ship as another famous adventuring party.  This second group’s fame turns out to be the ship’s undoing, as they are prized targets.  Only a few days out of port half the ship’s crew reveals itself to be huecuvas and mohrgs under strong magical disguises.  The faithless undead steer the ship into the maw of a hammerhead-shark-shaped submersible crewed by slimy demodands who intend to sail everyone back to the Abyss.

Adventurers run up debt in an exotic planar port, stranding themselves.  (Actually, the debts are fraudulent, but the local magistrates don’t care and have the magical means to block the party’s easy egress.)  Their debts are bought by a flame-winged peri, who (when not blind drunk mourning fallen friends and her own sins) seeks to take out a demodand outpost too near the border of Elysium.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 3 70

Since I’m writing this in the future of 6/1/14 rather than the present of 9/4/13—I don't normally like to confess that I’m scribing one of my entries so long after the fact, but in this case its unavoidable—I can tell you that Pathfinder Adventure Path #77: Herald of the Ivory Labyrinth features Amanda Hamon’s “Ecology of the Demodand,” which looks at the demodands and their relationship to the thanatotic titans.  The article also introduces a new demodand variety, the stringy demodand, to take over many of the slaving duties from their slimy kin.

Of course, while normally I’m an unabashed Pathfinder/Golarion fan, I make an exception for demodands—serving life-creating titans in the Abyss is cool and all, but I prefer my demodands pulling shifts as wardens of the Tarterian Depths of Carceri.

Edit: As mentioned above, this post is a revision.  Original entry: Two 12-hour days (okay, a 13 and an 11; what are you, my mom?) have me wiped out.  I’ll tackle the slimy demodand when I have more juice.  And to my Jewish readers: L’shanah tovah!