Phasmadaemon

The ram-horned, mantis-armed phasmadaemons personify death by fright. They also happen to cause death by fright (convenient, that!), courtesy of illusion spell-like abilities supercharged to be practically real, and they feed on fright, too—demonstrating, all in all, a horrifically efficient and thrifty biology.

Though phasmadaemons didn’t make it into the hardbound Bestiaries till number 6, they’ve been around since Horsemen of the Apocalypse, so GMs looking for a deep dive on their tactics, hunting habits and culture should look there. Two things in particular jump out at me, though. The first is how powerful (CR 17) phasmadaemons are—an indicator that causing death by fear alone somehow situates them closer to the daemonic ideal than, say, more base deaths such as drowning, being mauled, or exsanguination.

The second is that—though this isn’t really reflected in the rules, it’s a great story bit—phasmadaemons somehow also collect fearful imaginings and trade them with each other. I’m a big fan of the soul markets of the night hags, so the notion of even more quiddity-derived commodity trades excites me to no end.

Struck by an azata’s arrow, a thanadaemon goes mad as the celestial wound grows septic. No longer content to represent death by old age, it begins stalking the living, culling souls before their proper time—and in the process, disrupting a phasmadaemon’s carefully orchestrated hauntings. Offended, the phasmadaemon tricks mortal adventurers into hunting down the wayward thanadaemon, though all the while it also sends illusory torments to harry their progress and stoke their fear. Once the thanadaemon is slain, the phasmadaemon offers its thanks by revealing itself to the adventurers before attempting to murder them.

Fireworks, porcelain masks, and sinuous manticore puppets are all hallmarks of the Yung New Year’s celebrations. But the court sorcerer made a deal with the daemonic Lord of the Wastes to win Yung’s last war against the northern barbarian tribes, and now daemons have begun slipping unchallenged into the empire. The rise in terror and deaths are largely felt only as a malaise that hangs over the city. But that changes during the New Year parade, when a porcelain-masked phasmadaemon erupts out from under the procession’s manticore puppet and sends illusionary horrors to torment citizens.

Bugbears that perfect the art of stalking and terrifying victims are sometimes visited by a phasmadaemon. The daemon stalks the chosen bugbear over the course of three days and nights, attacking at random, setting up ambushes, and never letting the goblinoid sleep. Though few bugbears could hope to defeat a daemon in combat, if the champion does not show fear throughout the entire ordeal, the phasmadaemon will grant the bugbear some boon. Often these boons include the gift of an intelligent magical weapon, magical prowess (treat as added class levels or the half-field template),a spell-like ability, transformation into a greater barghest, or some other dark blessing.

—Horsemen of the Apocalypse 52–53 & Pathfinder Bestiary 6 74

Hi guys. Been a while since we did a monster. For my Blogger readers, here’s some of what’s been going on—including some fun with monster reading recommendations, some big news, and some bleak news. For my Tumblr readers, thank as always for sticking around and keeping me company.

Pelagastr

(Illustration by Roberto Pitturru comes from the PathfinderWiki and is © Paizo Publishing.)

The serpentine proteans are chaos incarnate—so much so that they can change their shape, their vital organs shift around constantly, they can just regrow new sensory organs, they are in constant flight, they are always under the effects of a freedom of movement spell, and many of them cause warpwaves that ripple through and twist reality itself.  But at least they’re bound by some basic laws of corporeal existenoh God there’s an incorporeal version isn’t there?

So, welcome to the pelagastr!  And it gets worse, because these creatures, while not being part of material existence, delight in it—the Material Plane in particular—dipping their limbs into reality to smack adventurers around or magic jar-ing themselves into humanoids to wear their skins for a while, just for kicks.  They are natural spies and investigators, and unlike other proteans seem to originate directly from the Maelstrom itself, rather than promotion/evolution through the protean caste structure.  So even for creatures of chaos, pelagastrs are…chaotic.

If you’re looking for more on pelagastrs, definitely check out Pathfinder Adventure Path #99: Dance of the Damned, which has room for far more lore (as well as teasing a possible pelagastr master) than the Bestiary 6 write-up.  But in the meantime, here are some adventure hooks to get you started:

Efreet loathe pelagastrs for the disorder the cause—and the plans they ruin with their incessant spying and possession.  Five maliks known as the Fist organize a pelagastr hunt every year.  The prize, a unique statue carved of ruby, is worth a fortune in and of itself, or it may be exchanged for a favor from one of the five fearsome lords.

The Anchored Isles are a chain (literally, thanks to adamantine fetters of extreme size and age) of floating earthbergs hovering where the Planes of Earth and Chaos intersect the Plane of Air. Here the artists and aesthetes from the Circum Sensoria allow pelagastrs to ride their bodies, unlocking the doors of perception for both parties.  But when a clique of pelagastrs begins a new fad of riding mortals into the experience of death, adventures must step in to separate the sense-mad participants.

The Snallygaster & The Pelagastr isn’t a sign you’d see above most public houses—but then again, Cardumond, with its cosmopolitan society and no less than three magic colleges, is no ordinary city.  And things are about to get even more unusual for the tavern.   Earlier this week, a pelagastr (a recent escapee from the university’s Hall of Conjuring) chanced upon the pub. Delighted by the sign outside, the pelagastr has decided that, now that he’s arrived, all that’s lacking is a snallygaster or two…and he his currently herding two giant specimens toward the tavern at this very moment.

—Pathfinder Adventure Path #99 88–89 & Pathfinder Bestiary 6 214

My notes for the first draft of this post references a Snail Mail video where Lindsey name-checks my radio station—the link to which has long since vanished.  Oh, and it references me not doing my show the night before…because of snow.

Also the saved file dates from January 30. 

I…yeah, I should really post more often, huh?

Pakalchi

(Illustration by Jose Parodi comes from the Pathfinder Facebook page and is © Paizo Publishing.)

“Pakalchis feed on the fear and insecurity of failing relationships,” says Bestiary 5.  And if you’ve ever been in a failing relationship, that’s pretty much all you need to know to convince you that these sahkils are the absolute worst monsters in B5—end of story, full stop, done.

And that’s even before you take into account that they can skip between the Material and Ethereal Planes (never a good thing) as a move action (even worse)…dominate you into giving into your worst instincts, fears, and insecurities and sabotage your love…and then strangle, poison, or pierce you to death when it’s all over and you’re no longer amusing to toy with.  Remember how mad Iago made you when you read Othello in high school?  This is Iago with game stats and semi-immortality.  She may be CR 9 on the page, but she’s CR 29 against your heart.

Also, one last note to underscore why pakalchis are the absolute worst: they feed on “failing relationships.”  Not troubled, not star-crossed, not tumultuous—failing.  (And since sahkils are former psychopomps, from a lore/flavor perspective it’s not unreasonable to assume that they have at least a little foresight/precognition about such matters.).  In other words, these relationships were already doomed.  The hurt was already there.  Pakalchis make it vastly worse so as to feed on the couple’s misery…but if you slay a pakalchi, that’s not going to lift the dark clouds over its victims and make flowers spring up in their footsteps.  It just means the relationship is likely going to flounder and fail anyway…and when the end comes, there won’t even be a monster to blame.

Young men in town have been disappearing—often after violent quarrels that leave their sweethearts heartbroken (and too often sobbing and bruised).  Certain signs—vines in unlikely places, bits of clothing caught on thorns, and trails of flower petals—suggest a nymph or some other fey influence.  But the true culprit is a pakalchi whose domain includes a thorny thicket in this world and a grasping, hungry forest on the Ethereal Plane.

Emika and Bez-Sha are twins—budded in the same instant from the same outcropping of direstone in the Cradle of Bones.  Though the catrina sisters were once mirror images of each other, Bez-Sha abandoned the psychopomp order to become a sahkil, gaining in power as she discarded mercy and other weaknesses.  The only hint at their kinship now is the swaying gait of their skeletal forms and the identical shade of tea roses adorning their brows.  The sisters have not spoken since Bez-Sha fled Death’s Realm, but Emika stretches her schedule and her oaths as far as they will allow to search the multiverse for news of her twin. Often this means hiring mortal adventures—sometimes with gold, sometimes with promises of future intercession in matters cosmic.

Napoleon’s occupation of Spain leads to calls for revolt throughout Mexico.  To suppress the uprisings, the Spanish colonial governments rely heavily on mercenary wizards, particularly conjurers whose summoned allies excel at breaking up demonstrations and ferreting out revolutionaries. Doing so, however, pierces the veils between this world and the next, allowing shadows, spectres, and extraplanar threats to creep through.  Recently a pakalchi managed to ooze over from the Realm of Mists.  She has taken to haunting the son of a local marqués and his betrothed, the daughter of a wealthy importer. The lovers’ misery has exacerbated tensions between the families and driven the distracted marqués to ever-harsher reprisals against his people, magnifying the fear and misery that fatten the pakalchi and her allies.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 5 216

The original image of La Calavera Catrina that inspired Pathfinder’s catrina psychopomp and possibly the pakalchi actually dates from a century later than the Mexican War of Independence: 1910, rather than 1810.  But today the images of a beautiful woman and/or a friendly skeleton wearing a flower crown is so tied to Mexico I couldn’t resist playing with history a little for that third adventure seed.  Mashing up wizards and Napoleon is, of course, also a big nod toward Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.

Painajai Demon

As much as I love Pathfinder and D&D, being a fan can lock your imagination into certain patterns.  You hear the word “demon,” and immediately your brain spits out “chaotic evil outsider native to the Abyss” like a cash register dishing out change.  That’s why I find it essential—particularly after a childhood spent reading way too many shared-world franchise novels—to read as widely as possible to break out of those patterns.  “Demon” can mean the Lovecraftian horrors of Anthony Horowitz’s Gatekeepers series, the annoying imps inside the Discworld’s personal organizers, or even (as “daemons”) children’s souls incarnated as animal familiars in The Golden Compass.

So I dig the painajai demon because—while it definitely is a chaotic evil outsider native to the Abyss—it is also a dream-haunting nightmare that seems outside the norm for Pathfinder/D&D demons.  A spider-eyed, frothing horror that stalks the Dimension of Dreams, it spreads fear and confusion via psychic magic and conjured horrors, while controlling the landscape via mirage arcana and hungry pit. Once it has a bead on its prey, it hurls its chain spear into its victims and then drags them in close to continue their torments.  Combining some of the the worst elements of night hags, kytons, and bolas spiders, it’s a relatively fresh take on the demon category I really like.

You can certainly use painajais as written—psychic-magically gifted foils to Desna’s uinuja azata servants.  But your campaign could easily find other roles for them as well.  Maybe in your home setting painajai demons are the main threat to sleepers, rather than night hags.  What does the world look like when a bad nightmare might lead to the Abyss?  Or imagine a world where fiends are rare, like the Forgotten Realms in 2e AD&D.  What would it look like if painajai demons were the only demons known?  Players who have gotten complacent rolling dice against dretches and babaus will be in for a shock when the word “demon” automatically means a CR 14 horror waiting to ambush your dream self.

Adventurers awaken in an inn to discover every single surface covered in spider silk—and every guest but them is similarly cocooned.  The message is an unsubtle reminder that they owe a favor to the aranea queen, Leilani.  Traveling to her mist-shrouded kingdom, they are given a task that will release them from her web of obligation.  An avatar of the aranea trickster god Nasari has been captured by painajais, and party must travel into the Dreamskein to set him free.

“A stately pleasure dome” is how Armapan Singh envisioned his Taj Berin.  What he did not envision was that it would attract the attention of a pair of fiendish lovers.  An avatarna rakshasa and her painajai demon consort have occupied the palace and turned it into den of pleasures and addictions from this world and the world of dreams.  In addition to cleaning out the Taj, Singh himself must be recovered as well—preferably alive and with his soul intact—for his moderating influence is all that keeps the government’s Circle of Adepts from surrendering to their wizard-supremacist impulses.

The solution to cracking the Vault of Marbled Midnight is not a literal key but a musical one: a note no human voice can sing.  Cameron of the Knife has recruited a fleshsculpter who specializes in demonic grafts to craft a sort of vocal sac implant he believes will do the trick.  But not just any demonflesh will do—they need the throaty resonance of a painajai.  That means hunting down the hunters of the Dimension of Dreams and successfully bringing the grisly trophy home while it is still viable.

—Occult Bestiary 19

Happy New Year’s Eve!

Apologies to my Blogger readers: I posted yesterday’s entry before remembering to search for an ouroboros image, and now I’m too scared of Blogger’s buggy interface to try editing the posted file.  You can see the image here, though.

If you’re looking for the outlaw troop, we’ll be covering that when we loop back around to the goblin troop.  If you’re looking for the ovinnik, we covered it back here.

Ourdivar

In the entry on ourdivars, Bestiary 6 states:

Ourdivars are spontaneously formed when called forth via spells like lesser planar ally.  They toil at the behest of their conjurer creators, acting as tools of chaos across the planes.

This is suuuuuper interesting to me.  The creature-spontaneously-created-in-the-act-of-conjuration is a common trope of fantasy fiction.  But in fantasy gaming, we tend to assume all outsiders come from a specific somewhere—after all, our characters can visit those planes.  Even summoners, who call into being conjured creatures the way most people conjure up chili fries, supposedly get the spirits they call from…someplace.  That makes an outsider brought into existence purely in the moment of conjuration an interesting beast indeed.

Now give it the body of a crystal lamia, with a weapon hand that can morph from spear to saber to morning star with just an effort of will (as if they were Junkions in Act 2 of The Transformers: The Movie!)…well, that’s a monster worth conjuring/creating. 

But once they're created, how do they react?  As living embodiments of chaos, following orders to the letter isn't going to be a strong suit, even in the service of a chaotic caster.  Are they thrilled at their sudden coming-into-being, or do they seek to return to the Maelstrom, à la Mr. Meeseeks (“Existence is pain!”)?  That leaves a lot of room to play for an inventive GM and a chaos-loving conjurer.

The enemies of Mortis Minelus have all wound up dead.  But each time, the method has been different—beaten to death, bludgeoned, pierced, slashed, even warped by some form of raw magic.  Minelus himself wears the purple and blue robes of the pacifist Morning Glory sect, having sworn “to raise no weapon, nor fire a spell in anger”—and spells testing his veracity have returned nothing incriminating.  The truth is that Mortis Minelus is an accomplished conjurer, using called ourdivars to do his wicked work.

Debtors know they can always find refuge in the Abbey of Alms.  First, the land the abbey sits upon is properly part of the March of Lady Weatherall, and thus not within the jurisdiction of the Lord-Mayor or his Dunners.  Second and more importantly, the constantly shifting stained glass window in the ramshackle abbey calls ourdivars to fend off any scion of law—be they archons, devils, paladins, or even humble local watchmen trying to fulfill a writ of collection.

Lamias and spirit nagas sometimes summon ourdivars for coitus, not combat.  The resulting entropic creatures are inventively deadly and hate the trappings of humanoid civilization even more than their serpentine mothers.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 6 213

Do I get to say I’m the authority on nagas?  Yeah, I’m gonna say it.

Othaos

High-CR aeons are concerned with the great dualities of existence: creation and destruction, life and death, the peaks and ebbs of karma as it ripples like a sine wave through existence.

The othaos, being only CR 5, handles a more elemental duality: light and darkness, protecting the one from the other so that the worlds of shine and shadow remain in harmony.  If a mysterious obelisk casts an unnaturally large shadow or outsiders made of light make an incursion onto the Material Plane, expect an othaos to manifest.

The Spear of Dumar is an incandescent stalactite of unspeakable size that casts a rosy glow over the dwarf city below.  It is lovingly tended by the Glowstones, a sect of earth druids and elementalists, as well as an othaos that has spent more than a generation inspecting the unique crystal.  When the Spear of Dumar begins to dim unexpectedly, the Glowstones recruit adventurers to rule out sabotage.  They also seek a way to contain the othaos—the aeon seems mad with grief and has already attacked two innocent citizens.

The Mirror Plane actually moves through the Shadow Plane, a ribbon of glowing silver in the eternal darkness.  Othaoses guard crucial passages and intersections along this winding road, preventing incursions from the Shadow Plane onto the Mirrorways, and vice versa.  Owbs are these aeons’ particular foes, and they will attack anyone who seems marked by their stain—including adventurers injured in combat by the magical weapons or death throes of the dark folk.

The expansion of the Incandium, Porthos’s college of magic, has led to an explosion of magical innovations and curiosities, with recent graduates eager to apply their new talents for the public good (or at least for public acclaim).  Chief among these are Porthos’s new streetlights—some magical, some alchemical—which shine brighter than torches throughout the city.  An othaos takes exception to this interruption in the cycle of night and day, dimming or consuming every streetlamp he can find.  With no Lamplighters’ Guild to pick up the slack, Porthos is facing a rash of muggings, assaults, burglaries, and attacks from cloakers, gremlins, and other photophobic monstrosities.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 5 10

I’m no expert in the subject, but I’m pretty sure the othaos would make a kickass Pokemon. 

Also, I could use an othaos to do something about the apartment building across the street that has taken a chunk out of my bedroom’s natural light.

Longtime reader/encyclopedic dr-archeville gave me the heads-up about the Pathfinder Second Edition playtest.  I was really hoping this day wouldn’t come anytime soon, but given the life cycle of the product line—they’d splatted pretty much all the hardcover splatbooks it seems reasonable to splat—and the general veering of the tabletop world away from complexity/having a stat for every situation to ease of creation/use, 2e Pathfinder was probably inevitable.   (The learnings from the development of Starfinder was probably also a big third factor.)

So naturally I’m a little bit nervous (like Garth in Wayne’s World, I fear change), but of course I’m excited too.  Any time an edition switches over, that creates opportunities for hungry creatives like yours truly—and possibly for many of you out there as well. 

Last night The New Indie Canon went architectural and intellectual, courtesy of our guest DJ, mcmansionhell’s Kate Wagner.  We had a great time spinning songs about buildings, architecture, the financial crash, and masses great and smol.  A huge thank-you to her for coming out and to many of you for listening.  If you missed the fun, stream/download it now till Monday, 03/12/18, at midnight.

Oshageros

As proteans go, the oshageros is pretty simple.  No meditating on the beauty of ceaseless change or the nature of the Maelstrom, no trying to get mortals to broaden their perspectives, no games of transmutation or mental manipulation.  OSHAGEROS SMASH.

Of course, it’s not that simple—with Int 21, an oshageros would still wipe the floor intellectually with nearly every mortal wizard, and could out-consider (with Wis 18) even most mortal priests.  It’s just that all that piercing intellect leads them* to rather Gordian† solutions: too much order must be torn down.

That crystalline wall of Law separating Order from Chaos?  Oshageroses are gnawing at the foundations of that.  That presumptuous tower of justice on some Heavenly plane?  They’ll pop in and out in a smash-and-grab judge abduction.  That newly minted inevitable prototype?  Oshageros saboteurs will see it never reaches the production line.  And when the forces of Law strike at the heart of Chaos, oshageroses will stand ready (slither ready? side-wind ready?) with dispel law, chaos hammer, draining tentacles and warpwave bursts to turn aside the blow.

Adventurers attempt to replace the keystone of a magical arch.  To accomplish this feat, a rift must be opened, then the threads of reality anchored to the arch as a ritual is performed…all while fending off assaults from oshageroses drawn to the magnet pull of invasive law.

In theory, one shouldn't be able to walk along the Crystal Horizon separating the Universe That Is from the Void—it’s supposed to be a theoretical construct, and a sphere to boot.  But in the impossible way of the Planes, the Crystal Horizon manifests as a mountain range of otherworldly quartz and granite.  Half-celestial halfling ridge runners man watchtowers here, lighting beacon fires and racing along knife-edge precipices to warn of oshageros assaults from the misty Void.

The School of Thoughts sprawls along Avedon Square and the Aspirateum in the Sixth Sacred Ward.  Anyone who assumes the academy’s moniker is a wry joke would be mistaken—the school literally collects, catalogs, dissects, and displays important concepts from across the multiverse.  An oshageros named Uragolo, Invar, and/or Shezyx (depending on the day) joins in the School of Thoughts’s regular philosophical debates.  It is understood among the planar students that physical might is a valid means of supporting one’s metaphysical arguments, but mortals on the receiving end of the protean’s tentacle lash are often caught by surprise.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 6 212

*If any monster was going to use the singular “they” pronoun, you know it would be a protean. 

†As in the Knot.

In addition to the crocodilian jaws, artist Rayph Beisner gives the oshageros a tail…club?…that is also suggestive of a rattlesnake’s rattle.  Whatever it is, I love it.

Enjoy another radio show, with new Remember Sports and Calexico! Also, 15 years of the Postal Service! Stream/download it now until Monday, 02/26/18, at midnight.

Oolioddroo

(Illustration by Jorges Fares comes from GeekDad and is © Paizo Publishing.)

What, a moth psychopomp wasn’t mothy enough for you?  Then how about a moth demon, the oolioddroo?

From browsing Tumblr, I know a lot of Daily Bestiary fans are also fans of possession and body horror—so merry belated Christmas, kids, because this monster is for you. 

The oolioddroo’s party piece is using her thought-siphoning tongue—you know, the one that can slurp up memories, skills, spells, or Wisdom—to implant her eggs into the brain of a sleeping or helpless victim.  Eggs that then hatch as larva (still in that brain).  Which the moth demon can track across any distance in the same Plane (safely nestled in that brain).  And through which the demon can detect thoughts, modify memory, and cast suggestion (because brain). Worst of all, the oolioddroo can sacrifice the larva (and the victim’s brain—have I mentioned the brain?) in a kind of feeblemind bomb—a tactic that causes even the Bestiary 6 to break tone and refer to it as a “scorched earth” tactic.

That’s right: This is a monster so awful it makes even the rulebook itself stop and say, “Daaaaamn.”

An oolioddroo poses as a roving fortuneteller.  Her magical abilities give her plenty of fodder for predictions, and she leaves a trail of infected or feebleminded victims in her wake.  Normally such a humble disguise would be beneath the moth demon, but this particular band of rovers has long been welcome at a local magefair the oolioddroo intends to infiltrate.

Adventurers are asked to check on the niece of a patron.  The young woman was married off to a stern landholder in a distant county, and in the intervening months her letters have grown strange and evasive.  Should the adventurers take the case, they find the woman in decent spirits but acting oddly—as do many inhabitants of the local village and the surrounding district.  Further investigation reveals the truth: Much of the town is under the control of an oolioddroo.  But when the adventurers go to confront the demon, they find themselves ambushed by the village’s uninfected in habitants.  The entire town has willingly devoted itself to the moth demon, and the infected villagers were merely a lure to draw the adventurers into its clutches.

Among a certain truly decadent and thrill-seeking set, oolioddroo eggs are a delicacy akin to caviar.  The challenge is to consume and pass the eggs without falling under the moth demon’s sway.  And since such eggs can only be harvested from the brains of an oolioddroo’s victims, this delicacy necessarily involves appallingly risky chirurgery or a hefty body count.

—The Worldwound 50–51 & Bestiary 6 86–87

That second adventure seed has a very Hellboy feel to it, if you ask me.

Olethros

(Illustration by David Alvarez comes from CGR and is © Paizo Publishing.)

Wikipedia claims, “Olethros translates roughly in ancient Greek to ‘destruction,’ but often with a positive connotation, as in the destruction required for and preceding renewal.”  Which makes sense for the Greek personification of havoc (and a daughter of Eris in the bargain)…but it works even better for this Pathfinder monster, a powerful psychopomp associated with souls whose fates hang in the balance.

Olethroses are powerful agents of death, helping to preserve the proper course of fate (at least as they, the psychopomp ushers, and their goddess deem it).  This of course means they may come into conflict with adventurers, as PCs are notorious for wishing to bend fate to their own desires.  On the other hand, olethroses are rivals or enemies of a number of other fate-oriented outsiders and entities, including norns, lipika aeons, and sahkils, which may cause them to ally them with PCs. (Bestiary 6 actually goes into great detail about this, as well as their relations with their psychopomp kin).  Powerful olethroses can even become mothers (a rarity among psychopomps—and most outsiders, for that matter) when old fates fork and new fates reveal themselves, immaculately conceiving new olethroses to study the branching phenomena of destiny.

An olethros has been guiding the fate of a single family for generations, subtly ensuring that every birth, marriage, death, and important event falls in its course.  But when adventurers save the family from a fiery holocaust (courtesy of norn’s quiet influence), they upend a century of planning and earn the enmity of the powerful psychopomp.

The pit fiend Idvidicar the Sculptor has been pierced by no less than six arrows from an olethros's silkbow.  He refuses to remove the shafts, wearing them as badges to signify that no one but he is the author of his fate—or the fates of those under his control.  The olethros who shot Invidicar wants to retrieve the shafts, believing their long exposure to the pit fiend’s foul essence may have granted the arrows unique properties,

An olethros conceived a child, presumably according to some looming twist of fate.  Whatever the event was, though, it has failed to come to pass so far…leaving the gravid olethros in a state of horrible pregnant limbo, in terrible pain that is as much spiritual as it is physical.  As the months have stretched into years, the olethros has become desperate to end her condition…and if that means going rogue and forging a new fate for her child to study, so be it.  Adventurers might find themselves caught in the olethros’s schemes, or even be hired by other psychopomps to bring in the rogue mother.  There is also the question of whether her child will be born an olethros after so long, or if some far darker creature will erupt from her womb instead…

—Pathfinder Bestiary 6 220–211

One last post out the door before 2018.  Happy New Year everybody, and have a great 2018!

Obcisidaemon

Avatars of the darkest elements of war, obcisidaemons primarily serve that particular apocalyptic Horseman (Szuriel, if you’re following Pathfinder canon).  Resembling a cross between a man, a wolf, and a smilodon—plus wings, because of course it has wings—this daemon’s most singular feature is the misty cloak of stolen souls it wears around itself.  It can tap the power of this supernatural cloak to boost its weapon, pump its saves, or heal itself—consuming one of the poor souls, of course.  But don’t worry; it’ll get a new soul when it kills your character.  Which it will, because did I mention it’s CR 19?

The obcisidaemon represents the horrors of war stripped of all the trappings of honor, loyalty, and glory, and then taken to their logical extremes—in particular, genocide.  Mass graves, concentration camps, super-weapon test sites, razed cities, and similar locations may draw an obcisidaemon if the planar boundary with Abaddon is thin enough.  Adventurers who defeat a genocidal tyrant may later find their foe’s shade serving one of these creatures.  Worse yet, their foe might be reincarnated as one of these creatures.

Duergar manage to set off a volcanic eruption and guide the subsequent rain of ash and lava to destroy a surface city.  Their triumph is short-lived, as the devastation causes an obcisidaemon to manifest in their capital with a number or daemonic retainers in tow.  Adventurers who wish to bring the duergar high archonus to justice will first have to retrieve his essence from the cloak of souls the daemon wears around itself.

The Horseman of War has been felled by a coup.  Now rival obcisidaemons hope to claim her mantle, and an axiomite city finds itself in the no man’s land between the two monsters’ forces.

Adventurers befriend a dusk elf—a gray-skinned, half-drow exile from another world.  Good-hearted but suspicious and close-mouthed, he says little about his native land, other than that it was ravaged by war, genocide, and blood feuds that go back hundreds of years.  (Indeed, his very birth is the end result of a breeding program of half-castes meant to serve as guerilla warriors and irregulars).  Only when the adventurers’ own nation becomes torn apart by civil war does he open up.  His nation was turn asunder by armies led by obcisidaemons that had broken free of their foolish summoners.  Worse yet, the adventurers discover that one of these daemons has seeded his true name in their world as well…and their own nation’s generals have made plans to summon him.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 6 72–73

Oh hey guys!  There’s less that an hour to download last week’s radio show!  Maybe you should do it right now!  Featuring new Superchunk, new J. Roddy Walston, 25 years of R.E.M.’s Automatic for the People, and more! Get it before midnight tonight (Monday, 11/20/17, U.S. Eastern)!

PS: Tomorrow night’s show is gonna be speeeeecialllll!  Stay tuned!

Oaur-Ooung

From an age before demons—from before even proteans—a Colossal fungal jellyfish undulates in the deepest oceans of the Abyss.  She is a being of evil fecundity who births inhuman monsters from blisterwomb pustules in her bell…half of which she devours on the spot, but the rest of whom escape to torment all creatures born of souls and sin…

This is the qlippoth lord, Oaur-Ooung.

You’re probably expecting me to invoke Lovecraft here.   But nope.  Oaur-Ooung isn’t a being out of Lovecraft—she’s a being out of Justice League Unlimited.  (The DC Animated Universe was very, very good at creating undulating blob monsters that birthed horror after horror. Tentacles, pseudopods, and flying jellies were all in the DCAU wheelhouse.  Lovecraftian it wasn’t, but Lovecrafty?  Sure.)

There are lots of stat block reasons for a wicked GM to love Oaur-Ooung, including mythic ranks, near-immortality, tentacle attacks that reach 600 ft. (hope you brought a big enough battlemat), skin that spews swarms when wounded, blisterwombs that can birth a CR 20’s worth of qlippoth each day…oh, and any creature she kills with her slam attack rises as a qlippoth too. Good times!

But the best reason to use her is that she is a truly terrifying mother of monsters.  Everyone gets that.  If you’ve spent too much brainpower trying to parse the subtle gradations of lawful evil separating asuras, devils, kytons, and rakshasas, or if you’ve faced a table of blank-faced players as you attempted to make effable the ineffable horrors of the Outer Gods vs. the Dominion of the Black, there’s something wonderfully simple about Oaur-Ooung.  “Before demons existed in the Abyss, there were these horrible bug-crab-dog-proto-demons called qlippoth.  This one is their queen.  In fact, she might also be their mom.  She’s a jellyfish who flies.  She gives birth to monsters, and she looks like she’s about to disgorge something the size of Godzilla any day now. Roll for initiative.”  It turns out horror can be cosmic and from the-time-before-time and yet not make your brain hurt.  Who knew?

PS: For those parties not up for tangling with a mythic CR 23 qlippoth lord, she has cults too!  Dedicated to surgical alteration, fleshwarping, and consuming one’s enemies.  So that’s always fun.  Even if your PCs never actually face Oaur-Ooung at the table, she can still inspire plenty of lower-level evil.

One final note: In D&D 3.5, the tanar’ri (roughly equivalent to Pathfinder’s demons) once overthrew the obyriths (Pathfinder’s qlippoth)…but a new race known as loumaras was growing in strength.  Pathfinder doesn’t have a loumara equivalent…but maybe that’s what Mama Oaur-Ooung is cooking…

To their horror, adventurers discover that their entire career has been guided—and even, at times, aided and abetted—by the dread hand of the demon lord Pazuzu.  Yet even the party’s holiest allies can detect no sign of the demon lord’s corruption upon them.  The reason for Pazuzu’s machinations eventually becomes clear: He fears the child swelling in Oaur-Ooung’s greatest blisterwomb, and he needed to hold a few pawns untouched by the Abyss in reserve to end the threat the qlippoth lord and her child pose to existence.

The good news: Adventurers don’t always have to fight Oaur-Ooung.  They bad news: They may have to act as bait.  Adventurers tasked with returning a long-lost race of sylphs to the Elemental Plane of Air must first ferry them through the waters of the Abyss.  Such a foul baptism is the only way to remove the ancestral curse the sylphs have labored under for so long…but it will put them dangerously close to the qlippoth lord’s domain unless she is distracted elsewhere…

After repelling an invasion of fleshwarped corsairs aboard skinwing cutters, a party of do-gooders has taken the fight against demonkind to the stars.  Their adventures have seen them hopping from planet to plane and back, introducing them to water-tainted dwarf summoners, girtablilu temple ships, dream-farming dragons, angelic anarchs and a moon lost to oni corruption.  But always the adventurers have sought ways to drive the skinwing fleet from their solar system…which will eventually lead them to a dead star, an ark made of chitin, and a qlippoth queen who long ago traded the waters of the Abyss for the vacuum of Birthspace…

—Pathfinder Bestiary 6 236–237

If you’re at all curious about D&D 3.5’s demons, I once again invite you to check out my series on the best D&D 3.0/3.5 books for Pathfinder GMs, especially this entry (which covers Hordes of the Abyss) and this entry (Book of Vile Darkness).

Tumblr readers got a preview of this on one of my radio show posts, but for my Blogger readers and those who missed it, I’ll paraphrase: After a promising start, October became the perfect storm of bad health (mine this time), caregiver demands, and unexpected surprises. Please bear with me for a little while as I (hopefully) start to right the ship. I’m starting to have more breathing room, but it’s a ways off yet.  Thanks.

If you didn’t get enough Halloween fun last week, there are just a few more hours left to snag my Halloween radio show.  No “Monster Mash” here, but plenty of songs about ghosts, devils, hauntings, and other things that go bump in the night.  You’ve got till midnight tonight (Monday, 11/06/17, U.S. Eastern) to stream/download it, so click here!

(Also, while a few October radio shows never got posted, I think on the whole you only missed one or two, since my recent scheduling woes also hammered my radio show attendance.)