Gristly Demodand

Gristly demodands are stout, bat-winged brutes who wield bloody mauls.  Appropriately enough, they serve their fallen titan masters as assassins, executioners, and torturers.  Seemingly made of skin stretched over half-chewed muscle and tissue, gristly demodands’ hides literally split, ooze, and heal as they move about.  Their victims’ skins are usually not so resilient.

The marilith Me’salis was tired of quarreling with the demodands that lurked on the border of her domain.  So the brilliant tactician simply hired the gristly demodand and his tarry demodand followers, hoping to coöpt them through employment.  She has since tired of the disgusting brutes—while they are excellent torturers, their zeal for tormenting demons spills more ichor than secrets—and she wants them out of the tower they’ve occupied.  When mortal adventurers make an incursion into her castle, she allows them to clean out the demodands’ quarters without interference…though what the adventurers find there may aid them against Me’salis herself.

An arcane poem instructs adventurers that they must “spit in the eyes of the gods even as you deny them.”  Successful interpretation of the line indicates that they need to procure the sacrilegious spittle of a gristly demodand.

The executioner known only as the Stitcher is famous for flaying his victims…and worse still, for unashamedly making clothes out of their skin.  When adventurers try to stop him from executing a woman he knows to be innocent (but who was not released thanks to a technicality), they find his malevolence and his years of wearing skin-suits have turned him into a gristly demodand.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 5 72

Pathfinder Adventure Path #77: Herald of the Ivory Labyrinth has a big article on demodands courtesy of Amanda Hamon.

Speaking of executioners, has anyone read any of Oliver Pötzsch’s A Hangman’s Daughter Tale novels?  I listened to The Werewolf of Bamberg, and if you could get past the unlikeable protagonists it was worth it for the grim inspiration.  His brutish 1600s Germany is excellent fodder for an Ustalav or Ravenloft campaign.