Moloch

(Illustration by Kieran Yanner comes from the Paizo Blog and is © Paizo Publishing.)

Hold on to your tophets, ladies and minotaurs…it’s Moloch time!

Moloch’s inspiration is a Canaanite god who gets a lot of bad press in the Torah and the Bible—two holy books that, let’s be fair, don’t exactly have a track record of playing nice with the neighbors.  But Moloch also gets some pretty bad press from the Greeks and the Romans, and the phrase “child sacrifice” gets thrown around a lot, so I’m perfectly fine with him being used as an archdevil.  (There’s actually a post floating around the Paizo Blog that basically says, “Well, that’s kind of how religion worked in those days”…but I possess the ultimate authority on good vs. evil—Monte Cook’s Book of Vile Darkness (what, you were expecting Spinoza?)—and it firmly puts child sacrifice in the Evil category, so screw Moloch.)

In early editions of AD&D, Moloch ruled Malebolge as Baalzebul’s viceroy.  In 3.0 and 3.5 Moloch had an even rougher time of it, getting replaced first by the Hag Countess and then Glasya.  Pathfinder’s Moloch, on the other hand, is firmly in control of both the Sixth Layer and indeed all of Hell’s armies.  If you’re looking for a devil who’s a servant or a patsy of another power, Pathfinder’s Moloch is definitely not it.

Probably the four most interesting things about Moloch are as follows:

1) Moloch is publicly worshiped.  Devil worship is not popular, by and large.  Even for truly dastardly faith communities, worshipping gods, even evil ones, is a safer bet than worshipping beings that explicitly come from Hell.  (“Would you like to spend eternity building a pyramid for the Pharaoh God of Taxation and Making Slaves Grovel?  Or go to the place with the fire pits and devils and eternal torment?”  “Gosh, the fire pits do sound appealing.  But seeing as I’m already experienced at being taxed and groveling...Imma hafta stick with what I know.”)  So devil worship is usually a cult thing.  Heck, even Asmodeus isn’t that popular in any land where he doesn't have governmental backing—without a throne, inquisition, or similar power structure in place, his church is at best seen as a necessary evil.  The other archdevils’ cults mainly stick to the shadows.

But not Moloch.  His worship happens out in the open.  His followers build giant sacrificial ovens.  Whole armies subscribe to his message.  Of all the archdevils, he is the one most likely to be worshipped under the glaring eye of the midday sun.  And he gets that worship, because…

2) Moloch is responsive.  He answers the prayers of his followers—often in a quite literal and personal fashion.  Is your village threatened by flood?  Forget subtle shifts in tributary courses—Moloch just shows up in avatar form and dams the river.  Is an army about to ransack your town?  Moloch’s army is bigger, assuming he doesn’t just squash the looters himself.

Yeah, the price for this prompt and professional service is an eternity slaving away in Moloch’s army for anyone who asks for his aid or offers even the slightest hint of praise.  But when floods, rapine, and slaughter regularly threaten your subsistence-farming-level existence, being a mule skinner for an archdevil might seem like a decent trade, especially if you don’t have to pay it off till you’re dead.  Which means that Moloch has a surprising number of worshippers, despite being a walking metal furnace that swallows victims whole and to burn alive in his stomach.  Speaking of which…

3) Moloch has interesting symbolism and visual associations.  Which means interesting worshippers and sidekicks.  He’s got a bull thing—use some minotaurs as his cultists.  He’s got a furnace/child sacrifice thing—use the tophet.  He’s got a walking, fiery suit of armor thing—there are tons of constructs, golems, elementals, devils, and undead like that.  And he’s a general—which means animate war machines like juggernauts or colossi.

With a lot of archdevil nemeses, the PCs’ journey fighting their servants goes tiefling —> lesser devil —> medium devil —> nasty devil—> archdevil, with maybe a fiendish dragon or something in there for variety.  Moloch’s followers are waaay more interesting that that.  Literally any soldier of any race might be found in his legions, either living, undead, as a fiendish version of itself, or as some kind of twisted einherjar.  Pick up thematic cues from his description and his mythology and go nuts. 

And since we’re on the subject of him being a general…

4) Moloch is a general.  He’s the leader of Hell’s armies.  This means facing him is going to be like facing any general with godlike power.  He’s going to have lots of troops he can call for aid.  He’s going to have aerial assault teams and assassination squads and giant hellfire-fueled juggernauts.  He’s going to be physically powerful himself, and canny and strategic as well.  If you come at him, you risk literally having all the armies of Hell chasing after you.

That said, it also means he has other fish to fry.  He has Heaven assaulting one front and the demon hordes assaulting the other.  He has lesser generals and colonels who want his job.  He has some mighty demanding bosses to please.  And, as noted above, he’s very attentive to his flock.  No matter how big you think your beef with him is, you’re probably the lowest item on his to-do list.

Which means you might be able to sneak into his vast army camp and ambush him.  You might be able to challenge him to single combat to gain some small concession.  You might be able to put a treaty in front of him to sign.  Keep your goals reasonable and small, and he might just to decide to send his flunkies after you in retaliation rather than deal with you personally, or burn your great-grandchildren to cinders a few generations from now…but that’s their problem.  Generals are patient, generals can wait, and generals pick their battles.  He will always come down on you like a hammer, but it might not be today.  And when dealing with archdevils, those are as good odds as you’re going to get.

Adventures are asked to investigate a so-called Children’s Crusade, only to discover it is a sham—slavers are herding the children (and their hapless friar guardians) like cattle to boats crewed by gnolls, hobgoblins, witchwyrds, denizens of Leng, and worse.  The trail leads past strange cyclopean isles to a forbidding and cruel coastal nation of military dictators.  There the children are to be fed to giant, animate tophets meant to fuel the archdevil Moloch’s fires in Hell…unless the brave adventurers step in.

A solar and an uinuja formed an unlikely friendship, despite their differing ethics, spheres of influence, and relative power levels.  Now the solar languishes in a Hellish prison, and the plucky azata wants to do what even the archons do not dare: stage a rescue, even if it means facing the Lord of the Sixth himself.  Fortunately, she knows some adventures who are just as plucky—or crazy—as she is.

The cult of Mithras has spread throughout the Roman Empire—in particular, throughout the Roman Legions.  But as the cult has spread, so have disturbing rumors about secret rites, bloody and fiery sacrifices, and worse.  At first, the Senate and certain famous adventurers chalk this up to the usual politics and rumormongering Rome is famous for.  But then word comes out of Anatolia that the great god Mithras is dead, slain by an imposter who now usurps his throne and perverts his rites.  The usurper is Moloch, and he has turned much of Rome’s military might to his service—for even those who resist his call in life have sullied themselves enough so that he may claim their souls in death.  Worse yet, the dour god Pluto is angered by the potential theft of shades from his kingdom.  His priests threaten that if this Mithras/Moloch is not stopped, Pluto will send an army of undead through the Lacus Curtius to drag the Roman army down to the Underworld, no matter what the collateral damage.  Great heroes have to act—and fast.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 6 30–31

(I’ve always thought the rapid spread and equally rapid decline of Mithraism throughout the Roman Empire was pretty fascinating.  So naturally I wanted to give your PCs an excuse to be players in that particular rise and fall.  Now, on to some housekeeping…)

Hi all.  First of all, again, apologies for the absurdly late post.  This article literally sat half-written on my desktop since something like June 18.  We’re talking a month.  Sure, this blog isn't the *daily* Daily Bestiary it once was, but I’ve never been as lax with my posting as that.  Two posts in June and none so far in July is unacceptable.

Toyota earned its reputation for amazing cars not through one outstanding model or innovation, but through a company-wide suggestion system that leveraged lots of tiny improvements.  Unfortunately, the same is also true in the negative.  There’s no one reason I haven’t been able to blog or one big nightmare I had to tackle (okay, there was one—a four-day, 46-hour workweek that sucked beyond measure—but let’s pretend I didn’t say that).  There have just been a thousand tiny distractions and mini-hurdles.  The short version is: June was lame, I had to take some time for me, I probably took too much, and I’m hopping the end of July is better.  Much love and thanks to you all for your patience, yet again.

Tumblr folk already know this (so forgive me if I quote myself verbatim) but my Blogger folk don’t: My second episode as a guest of the Laughfinder podcast is up!  Once again, I aid Bryan Preston, Jim Meyer, and Tommy Sinbazo to fight evil conjured by Dorian Gray and Ben Hancock.  Once again there are many NSFW riffs on Baltimore landmarks.  And most importantly, my blood feud with Aaron Henkin erupts into passionate FURY.  Enjoy!

Also once again it’s Monday, and once again I’m wishing I’d posted the archive link for my radio show last week—because this is a really fun show not to be missed, with hot takes from JAY Z, Jason Isbell, and St. Vincent, as well as a look at 20 years of the Singles soundtrack. It vanishes tonight at midnight (Monday, 07/17/17) so stream or download it now!

Mnemor Devil

(Illustration by Audrey Hotte (I think; it’s a little unclear) comes from the Paizo Blog and is © Paizo Publishing.)

With distended jaws the reveal lolling, probing tongues, mnemor devils siphon up the memories of mortals. Some of these mortals are desperate to forget the past, and make deals to have their memories erased or altered…deals they later come to regret, as the new memories plant new doubts, suspicions, and fears.  Others are simply the victims of a devil so slippery that even the memory of him vanishes when he steps out of the room.

At first I was thinking that mnemor devils (also known as memory devils) would be hard to play at the gaming table—players know what they know.  (Think how many times you’ve struggled to RP a failed Perception check when you just know something bad is about to go down.)  But memory is a tricky thing, especially in a long campaign, and it’s easy to forget what happens session to session.  A GM who’s thrown a mnemor devil against his players a time or two could really mess with their heads next time they try to remember if they found a particular NPC trustworthy, or who really betrayed them at court that one time…

GMs will want to play mnemor devils, because at CR 5 they are easy to deploy at low-to mid-levels, with greater teleport making them consummate escape artists and recurring villains.  But PCs themselves may seek out a mnemor devil if they have memories they need wiped (perhaps to pass detect/discern spells or escape a Lovecraftian taint) or if they seek knowledge found only in the banks of a mnemor devil’s eidetic memory.

A young adventurer realizes mid-conversation that he is speaking with an infernal spirit dressed in the robes of a confessor.  As the devil teleports away, the adventurer can’t shake the feeling he’s met the confessor before.  In fact, the devil has appeared to him on and off again since childhood; this is simply the first time he has come back to awareness (in game terms, passed his Will save) before the devil could tidy up his mental manipulation.

A door in a wizard’s tower leads an otherworldly chamber.  There the adventurers find a psychic surgery staffed by a mnemor devil.  The wizard and he have a strictly business relationship, so the devil is unconcerned by the adventurers’ presence.  He even offers to remove a troubled memory from the party member who has most recently sinned…for a small price.

Both a library and a prison, the Memoriam was designed by inevitables to store important memories from across the multiverse.  With their typical cold, calculating logic, the inevitables deemed mnemor devils to be the ideal staff at such a facility—and thanks to a recent failed infernal plot, the inevitables had plenty of the memory devils locked in their prisons to choose from.  The paroled devils do indeed make excellent librarians, but their hellish system of cataloguing means that a patron researching a specific memory is utterly at their mercy.

—Occult Bestiary 21

When we covered the mezlan the other day I suggested their stats might make good DS9 Founders (an idea badmadwolf seemed to like).  But Bucephalus pointed out the even more obvious movie monster I’d completely overlooked: Terminator 2’s T-1000 (right down to forming weapons with its body).  Duh, seriously, where was my head?

Mephistopheles

(Illustration by Wayne Reynolds comes from the Paizo Blog and is © Paizo Publishing.)

Here we are, only three monsters into Bestiary 6, and we’ve already made it to the book’s bathed-in-hellfire swimsuit cover model: Hell’s #2, Mephistopheles.

(You’ll notice that Wayne Reynolds does not bury the lede in his covers, especially for the even-numbered Bestiaries.  B2 has the Jabberwock, B4 Cthulhu, B6 Mephistopheles.  I can only assume B8 will have, like, MechaZeus or a Stay Puft Marshmallow Man made of nuclear missiles.)

I won't go into too much detail on Mephistopheles.  Paizo’s @wesschneider already wrote the book on Hell and the book on Mephistopheles for good measure.  (Judging by his list of publishing credits, Wes has an affinity for charismatic but deadly schemers—presumably because he owns a mirror.)  Instead, I’ll point out an interesting difference in Pathfinder’s Mephistopheles vs. the standard D&D interpretation. 

In both cases, Mephistopheles is the consummate devil’s devil—brilliant red, horned, winged, always with a contract and quill in hand and an offer too good to refuse.  More than any other archdevil aside from Asmodeus, he is about contracts and compacts, and all that can go awry after you’ve signed on the dotted line.  But in the standard D&D cosmology, Mephistopheles is always scheming to take Asmodeus’s throne—he’s said so to the Lord of the Ninth’s face.  Why Asmodeus keeps him around is an open question—presumably, he’s too useful to do away with (his treacherous plots likely draw other traitors to Asmodeus’s attention, and he keeps Baalzebul in check) and dislodging him would cause too much trouble.  In other words, he is Starscream to Asmodeus’s Megatron (albeit a much more effective one).

Pathfinder’s Mephistopheles, on the other hand, was literally created by Asmodeus out of the stuff of the eighth layer of Hell.  As such, he’s seemingly utterly loyal to Asmodeus, and is more of Hell than even his lord.  To go back to Transformers, think of him as a vastly more charismatic Soundwave, who was so Decepticon his face even became the Decepticon symbol.  (Oh, Transformers.  Is there any metaphor you can't provide?)

Most of this won’t matter to the average party—dealing with the schemes of one archdevil is enough.  (Hell, stopping the plan of only one of Mephistopheles’s servants was worth a whole Adventure Path.)  But if you’ve got a truly plane-hopping, cosmologically cosmopolitan Pathfinder campaign, the old D&D trick of pitting the servants of Mephistopheles and Asmodeus against each other is not going to work.  It’s inevitable that the Lord of the Eighth will turn on his master one day—the literal personification of Hell can do no less; it’s built in to his nature—but that won’t happen until the plane itself has turned against Asmodeus.  If Mephistopheles is playing the long game, it’s measured in eons.  The political games that PCs can play in the upper levels of Hell simply won't work this deep in the Pit.

Of course, that’s if you’re playing in canon.  Out of canon—which is our particular end of the swimming pool—go nuts!

Those who believe travel enriches the soul have never been part of the tea and opium trade, which brutalizes colonial souls and bodies while enriching shareholders.  Adventurers fighting drug dealers, slavers, and mercenaries must eventually take the fight to the Admiralty of Iron, a council of cruel dragon-riding sea captains who control the vile trade.  The final battle takes place on the deck of the largest ship ever built, in the center of a pentagram formed by five other ships.  There the Admiralty of Iron’s infernal patron, Mephistopheles, appears and fights for 30 seconds (five seconds for each ship) per an agreement the Iron Captains struck long ago.

Typically, an independent judiciary is a defense against tyranny.  But in the nation of Concord, the judiciary has claimed sweeping powers.  Not only are they judge, jury and executioner, they are also the notaries, lawyers, bailiffs, tax collectors, and (of course) the inquisition.  The reason for this stunning usurpation of power is an infestation of contract and apostate devils, who have spent decades warping Concord’s laws to their own ends, while funneling monetary and magical rewards to the corrupt courts.  Adventurers attempting to fight this entrenched power structure will have an uphill battle throughout their careers.  Once they bring down the Inquisition Concordia, they may even be forced to defend themselves in the very courts of Hell (with words or with blades)…possibly against Mephistopheles himself.

The current Mephistopheles is a facsimile.  The real Mephistopheles died eons ago in a coup attempt; Asmodeus created the current Mephistopheles out of the stuff of Hell rather than trust another seneschal.  Only now rumors are spreading from the deepest reaches of the Everwaste.  The whispers say that the original Mephistopheles has been resurrected and is coming for his throne.  Soon all Hell—and perhaps even the entire multiverse—will have to pick a side.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 6 28–29

No stats for Mephistopheles are online yet, so no link.

I have a special fondness for Mephistopheles.  I don't think he’s as interesting as, say, Mammon.  But in high school I spent part of a summer in Staufen, the sleepy German town where Faust blew himself up in an alchemical experiment in 1540.  (Or where Mephistopheles came to claim his soul in a fiery conflagration.  You decide.)

I never got into the ’90s ska band Mephiskapheles, but God did I love their name.  (I also love Streetlight Manifesto’s “Down, Down, Down to Mephisto’s Cafe,” full stop.)

We are not talking about Marvel’s Mephisto or “One More Day.”  EVER.

If you’re a fan of alphabetical order and looking for the memitim, it’s back here.

It’s radio show time!  This past Tuesday I continued to dig up (and totally dig) Stornoway's corpse.  I also played lots of new music from Diet Cig, Cold War Kids, BNQT, Waxahatchee, (Sandy) Alex G, and more. Stream/download now through Monday, 05/15/17, at midnight.

(Also note that this show was recorded before the recent PWR BTTM allegations became public.)

Mammon

It’s our first Bestiary 6 monster! (More on that in a bit.) And what a monster it is: Mammon, the archdevil of avarice himself.

Mammon is, to my mind, probably the most interesting of the archdevils.  (Sorry, Anne Carson fans.)  Excepting Barbatos and Geryon, most of the others seem like riffs on the Asmodean model—this one might have a bit more or less bat wing; that one might lean a bit more courtly or seductive or barbaric—but at a glance they all basically resemble pit fiends with really good tailors.

Mammon is not that.  Mammon is about money.  Mammon is avarice writ large.  And it’s not even simple greed, but an exacting, grasping, miserly form of greed like no other.  This is an archdevil that so loved his wealth that when he was originally killed his essence just transferred to his piles of coins.  You read that right: Mammon doesn't just love treasure; he is his own treasure.  Mammon’s spirit lives in a silver statue of himself. 

All of which makes Mammon interesting.  Don’t cross him, don't steal from him, and don't possess something he covets, and he might never notice you.  In fact, his layer of Hell might be one of the safest for parties to travel to, providing they have the right passes and plenty of gold to spend on official taxes, duties, and bribes.  But, like characters in some fairy tale, touch one coin, stray an inch of the path, or flash a costly magical item or artifact, and all is lost.  Because once Mammon has you in his sights—and with his ability to possess and scry on objects, his sight reaches far—he will never, ever stop chasing you until he has what is his…and until you are ash at his feet.

By the way, since we actually get our notion of Mammon from medieval scholars anthropomorphizing the Biblical passage about “mammon,” it seemed only appropriate to create an adventure seed that riffed off of that line as well.  Hopefully that doesn’t make any of you feel uncomfortable; if it does please feel free to message me.  As a (admittedly lapsed) Catholic myself, I’m in no way intending to be sacrilegious; instead I’m trying to creatively and respectfully engage with the texts we have in a magical version of our world. 

Hell’s vaults are the most secure in the multiverse.  So beings of all types—even gods—sometimes store valuables there.  However, Mammon’s greed is such that he loathes relinquishing these goods, even to their rightful owners.  When a demigod cannot retrieve a sentient, singing crystal shard from her safety deposit box—due to “easily remedied irregularities,” her smarmy infernal accountant says—she hires adventurers to break into the vault and steal her own property…an act sure to draw Mammon’s personal attention.

When the nation of Nika fell into crushing debt, Mammon himself loaned the money to settle what Nika owned.  But there was a catch—the Mammon-tainted coins had to circulate, so that the archdevil might better spy upon the world.  Any Nikan with more than ten tainted coins in his or her possession for more than a year risks acquiring the hellbound corruption.  In order to save Nika, adventurers acquire as many of the coins as they can.  They hope to craft a lance that will pierce the archdevil’s essence and free the Nikans of his foul touch.

“Ye cannot serve God and Mammon.”  A shedu astrologer reads these words and muses.  The Jewish martyr Yeshua, called by some Christus, gave this warning some 50 years ago.  Perhaps, the shedu thinks, it is also why he famously threw the money changers out of the Temple.  Was it moral and spiritual outrage?  Or did he know something?  Did he detect the taint of the archdevil in the coins?  And now that the Second Temple has been sacked and its holy energies desecrated and dispersed…might not Mammon return?  Sitting in Palmyra, the shedu muses some more, checks the signs in the stars again, and calls for a messenger.  He needs adventurers—Palmyrans, Romans, Judeans, centaurs; it matters not, so long as their hearts are pure—to go to Roman-occupied Jerusalem and find out if Mammon has indeed returned.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 6 26–27

No stats for Mammon online yet to link to.  Also, while all archdevils are considered mythic, since it’s not at the top of the stat block, I won’t be tagging them as such.

Today’s a bittersweet day for me.  About 19 months ago, give or take about a dozen half-finished entries, The Daily Bestiary had actually caught up to Paizo’s Bestiary production—and that was a great feeling.  Then Bestiary 5 came out…and while I was stoked, I couldn’t give it my full attention.  For a lot of personal and professional reasons, I needed to refocus on some projects on the home front (my other writing, physical fitness, work, loved ones’ health issues, etc.).  In other words, TDB stopped being so daily…and now Bestiary 6 is here, and I find myself only halfway through B5.  Yikes.

That said, I’m excited about B6, so I’ll work it into the fold—though I may have to tighten up my entries (especially the intros) for a while.  In the meantime, I hope you’ll keep reading, and hopefully you’ll find your favorite new B6 monster here soon.

What do I think of B6?  My copy arrived Friday, so obviously I haven’t had time to do more than flip through the pages.  But here are some first impressions:

B4 was unapologetically about big monsters—colossi, demon lords, outer dragons, and even kaiju and the Great Old Ones.  B6 doubles and even triples down on that theme, serving up not just big monsters but the big names—all eight of Hell’s archdevils, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, still more Great Old Ones and kaiju, and some qlippoths, planar dragons, and empyreal lords for good measure.  It can also be said to be a bit of a “Best Of,” working in many of the best monsters from the Inner Sea Bestiary, the Occult Bestiary, and various other softcovers.  But overall, this is a book for GMs who never met a demigod they didn’t like, and for gaming groups who want to write their names into history by stepping up to the multiverse’s most famous Big Bads.

At the gaming table, B6 is not as immediately necessary as, say, B2, which is basically mandatory.  And if you’re strapped for cash, I’d probably push you to B3 or B5 next—B3 for its deep exploration of monsters outside the Western canon, B5 because tucked in among all the aliens are some really nice and evocative low-CR threats that any GM can use.  But when your gaming group is ready for it, B6 is going to join B4 on the top shelf of your bookcase, looming threateningly and possibly cackling to itself.  You know how in Risk Legacy, when the game gets to a certain point you open new packs of cards that raise the stakes of the conflict exponentially?  Yeah, B6 is that kind of book.  You may not need it now…but when you do, I’m betting only Bestiary 6 will do.

Heresy Devil

(Illustration by Eva Widermann comes from the PathfinderWiki and is © Paizo Publishing.)

I was raised Catholic, so naturally I love heresies.  (There’s nothing so fascinating to us as someone Doing It Wrong.*)  Naturally, that means I love the heresy devil.

First off, heresies are interesting in and of themselves—to see a belief evolved, reinterpreted, remixed, or straight-up perverted is a fascinating thing.  Heresies get even more interesting in a world where gods regularly manifest and grant spells to clerics.  In such an environment, how are heresies allowed to flourish?  How big do they have to get before a god notices?  Or can perverted belief pervert the gods in turn—“As above, so below” might work in both directions…

And so into this mix come ayngavhauls, the heresy devils—corpulent monstrosities that float on monstrous thrones, spewing searing words of blasphemy and honeyed whispers of seduction and flawed logic.  They are the authors of false apocrypha, the architects of flawed logic, and evangelists of error on a thousand worlds.  And like all heretics, they have an uncanny knack for gathering likeminded souls around them—especially other devils, which they are adept at summoning.

If you really dig these devils, check out their original entry in Book of the Damned–Vol 1: Princes of Darkness.  There you’ll also find out about the massive robes of lead that some ayngavhauls wear, as well as the obscure branches of wicked scholarship they pursue when not busy promoting their blasphemous works.

Stalled in promotion in the religious hierarchy, a prelate pursues advancement through the law instead.  As the High Adjudicator, he uses his pronouncements from the bench to subtly guide the direction of the faith (and not so subtly enrich himself).  But when he condemns an innocent man to death to undermine a rival, his perfidy inspires divine retribution—or a diabolic reward—and he metamorphoses into a heresy devil on the spot, while the Hall of Justice transforms into a tower of iron and volcanic rock.

As servants of the Blue Lady, adventurers are obligated to join the crusade against the Cerulean Flame, a band of upstart militant schismatics.  Along the way, they are tormented by powerful ghuls, rogue undead, and bone devils—all servants of the heresy devil who is stalling for time to allow his heresy to spread.

Convinced of his righteousness, a fallen paladin baron abducts clerics of a rival faith and imprisons them.  There he subjects them to a variety excruciations to spur them to penance and conversion.  One of his most notorious punishments is to submerge his prisoners in a vat filled with the bile of a heretic devil (said devil being hung in magical chains from the ceiling above the vat), sapping them of their strength and magical might.  It is unknown whether this is the same heretic devil who caused the paladin to fall.

—Book of the Damned–Vol 1: Princes of Darkness 56–57 & Pathfinder Bestiary 5 80

*Especially since most of us are also Doing It Wrong.  For instance, my (Methodist) father was Director of Family Planning for our state.  So when the Knights of Columbus came into our CCD classes to teach Catholic sex ed, I brought pamphlets so I could correct their rather…creative…statistics on condom use and STDs.  I was very helpful.

Also I had a friend named Albie I more than once referred to as the Albigensian Heresy.  Now you know why I was popular.

PS: Anyone getting a Lynchian Baron Harkonnen vibe from the heresy devil?  Me too.

Maybe it’s because of the holiday season, or because people miss the days this blog was five days a week (believe me, I miss those days, too!) but recently a number of very kind readers have written in asking me if I’ve every thought about using Patreon. 

I totally, totally appreciate both the suggestion and the fact these readers are interested in supporting the site.  That said, at present I have no plans to—it’s just not something I’m comfortable with, especially given my current spotty posting schedule, along with some other reasons I won’t get into right now.

Some of the same readers have asked me about setting up an Amazon Wish List.  That I’m more comfortable with, simply because, a) I already set one up for my family and friends, and b) anything on there is simply more brain food for generating this blog.  So if you have a few bucks and want to help my complete my Dungeon magazine collection or dig up a few hard-to-find 2e softcovers, my Wish List is here.  And if you do decide to go that route, you have my serious thanks (and leave me a note to let me know if you want to be credited here).

Alternately, if you want to do some good but Amazon’s not for you, I encourage you to throw a few bucks the ACLU’s way.  I have a feeling they’re going to need our support in the next few years, and we sure as heck are going to need theirs.

It’s The New Indie Canon’s Best of 2016 show!  Enjoy two hours of the songs we loved from the past all-too-eventful year.  Stream/download it now through Monday, 01/02/17, at midnight.

Nemesis Devil

Our second two-page spread monster in a row!  And hoo-boy is it a doozy.

There are lots of things claiming to be gods out there.  Some are actual deities.  Others are demon lords, archdevils, or Great Old Ones powerful enough that to mortal worshipper the difference is academic.  (Particularly in Pathfinder, where these beings grant spells and domain powers and everything.  In 3.5 and D&D in general this wasn’t always the case, but that’s too complicated a subject to get into tonight.)

But that still leaves plenty of charlatans, false gods, fallen idols, and upstart spirits powerful enough to demand worship.  If one of these spirits—or even a mortal man—collects enough worshippers, they become something more than themselves and yet far short of the divine.  And Hell waits for them, molding these souls into advodazas, the nemesis devils.

I dig this notion—it really offers a nice combination comeuppance/promotion to all the false prophets and dragon lords and other cult leaders adventurers have to deal with on a regular basis.  (Hell, the first nemesis devil a party faces could easily be the new shape of someone they once vanquished.)  But it’s the trappings and details that really sell this devil.  Enough false divinity to get domain spell-like abilities.  The ability to bestow an infernal mark through which to grant boons and punishments.  Armor made from the devil’s own “fallen idols and ornaments of devotion”?!?  That's killer stuff.  Fighting a devil is one thing, but fighting a devil covered in fake holy symbols, fetishes, and Easter Island statues?  Whose devil-marked cultists have tormented the PCs for months?  And who it turns out the PCs may have already killed once?  That’s a whole different kind of battle.

Dragons are especially prone to becoming nemesis devils.  Unwilling to cede any more souls to the aeries of Hell, the Great Dragon sometimes tasks his rare human followers to root out dragon cults before they spread.  Destroying a dragon-born nemesis devil’s Material Plane form is one of the highest callings of the faith, and permanently killing one in Hell itself may earn an adventurer an apotheosis into dragon form.

Magr Toth’s appetite for idols in his image finally starved his faith to death, as farming, fishing, and even foraging ceased to feed his demand for sculptors, woodcarvers, and laborers.  But the sacrifice of his people only made his demonic form more terrifying.  Not only is his idol armor particularly strong, but he begins every combat by tossing a giant stone moai like a caber right into his opponents.

Sent by Congress to investigate charges that the tornado rail barons are practicing slavery, a band of adventurers returns to the Wild West they’d sworn they’d seen the last of.  What they find is horror and misery just within the letter of the law.  They also discover something else: So many men, dwarves, and hobgoblins have died in the tornado rail’s construction that the surviving workers have begun to regard the train and its network of wind spires as a kind of angry deity.  Worse yet, some even begin praying to the rail…and Hell itself is listening.  At the ceremony celebrating the erection of Utah’s final wind spire, the lead ventimotive explodes, revealing the metallic form of the nemesis devil who has been answering all the suffering workers’ prayers.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 4 54–55

The Daily Planescape beat me to the advodaza—check it out here.

Lorthact

To get the full story on Lorthact, you’re going to need the Inner Sea Bestiary—essentially he was a consigliere to several archdukes until the Whore-Queen of the erinyes caught him plotting above his station, and now he hides out in Korvosa.  It’s no question that his influence is one of the things that make Korvosa such a dark mirror of the agathion-blessed Magnimar, and in particular you can feel his stain all over the dark teaching methods of Korvosa’s magic college, the Academae.

But if your campaign’s not set in Golarion even his generic stats paint a picture of a pretty terrifying opponent.  His party piece is that he can steal spells and even school abilities from wizards.  (Not only that, but the school abilities remain stolen as long as Lorthact retains them!)  He also exists somewhat out of the time stream, making many divinations useless against him.  And time stops?  He ignores those.  (#sorryaboutit)  Add to that a host of spell-like abilities (many of them empowered or quickened), his ability to drain intelligence with every weapon strike, and the usual risks of taking on an infernal duke, and your adventurers have one hell (ouch, sorry, even I’m wincing at that one) of a devil to face.

In a standard campaign, Lorthact could make for an amazing final encounter—the devil whose behind-the-scenes influence has been making the party’s life a living hell (there’s that word again) since their very first adventure (or maybe even earlier, if any of the PCs were once wizard’s apprentices).  In a mythic campaign, he might be the third-party spoiler that robs PCs of crucial abilities at just the wrong time, when whole worlds hang in the balance.  Either way he’s the devil you can’t know…until it’s too late.

There has never been a senior mage able to “complete the Pentagram”—a term for casting gate, prismatic sphere, time stop, power word: kill, and then releasing a previously prepared wish (in other words, 20th level)—in the history of the Emerald Academy.  This is because the Chair of Shadow Magic is actually a thrall of Lorthact, and together the two ensure that no mage ever reaches that august level of power.  (Archmages are identified and eliminated even sooner.)

The Intelligent Artifice behind the inevitable race, the Mōnarch has diverted the crafteries into forming siege weapons and strange constructs instead of inevitables.  When queried, the Mouth of the Mōnarch replies that “all is progressing in accordance with the Plan.”  The author of that plan is Lorthact and the infernal consigliere is putting his new patron’s resources to good use.

A nation imprisoned in ice.  The Holy City ripped from the ground and sent into the sky.  An elven queen crucified on her own Throne of Thorns.  And the fey queen who has engineered it all promises to reverse everything in a heartbeat the instant she is handed Lorthact’s crown.  The fact that Lorthact’s crown is formed from the very horns of his head is a detail she’ll leave adventurers to wrestle with.

—Inner Sea Bestiary 26–27

Lorthact’s stats come courtesy of Jason Nelson.

Remember this photo?  The episode Mike was filming that night airs tonight at 9:00 PM Eastern on CNN.  There’s a tiny chance you might see me poolside!  But you won’t.  #iamnotphotogenic

(Also if you actually live in Baltimore, check out the front page of The Baltimore Sun where my coworker Aaron and his son Noah make an appearance.)