Many religious texts point to the werewolf Jezelda as the first to spread lycanthropy among the mortals of the world, but strangely, neither she nor her faithful support that claim; instead they remain strangely silent upon her history, as if they shared a secret that the world is not yet meant to know.
As the patron of werewolves, Jezelda is herself a shapechanger. She can appear as a beautiful and darkhaired Varisian woman, a feral and slavering wolf with huge fangs and yellow eyes, or her favored form—that of an emaciated amalgamation of these two embodiments, also bearing a pair of demonic horns.
She despises non-werewolf lycanthropes, and charges her worshipers with seeking out such creatures as heretics worthy only for sacrifice. Unholy Symbol maggot-filled bowl made from a human skull Temple catacombs, funeral homes, graveyards, necropolises, warrens under graveyards Worshipers cannibals, conspirators, ghasts, ghouls, grave robbers, necrophiles Minions fiendish earth elementals, rats, undead, vermleks see page 54 , worm monsters Obedience You must partake of a cannibal feast; the body upon which you feed must either be at least a week old or be eaten while atop a grave.
If you make an attack with a melee weapon, you may activate this ability as a swift action as part of your attack, targeting the foe struck with the effect. The body of a creature slain by this ability immediately transforms into an ochre jelly under your mental control. Ochre jellies created by this ability melt away into noxious residue after 1 hour. The undead that is created obeys you without question. If you use this ability to create a new undead minion, the previous undead is destroyed.
You do not change your total Hit Dice or alter your ability scores. Of the demon lords listed here, Jubilex is perhaps the one least concerned with maintaining a cult. Only among the drow is his faith particularly popular and pervasive.
Certainly, those who worship him tend not to think of him as an entity to be venerated as much as a source of power. It is said that when the first humanoid according to most tales, an elf to feed upon the f lesh of his brother died, he was reborn in the Abyss in a vast necropolis that the plane created in his honor. Kabriri appears as a muscular ghoul with pointed ears, sharp teeth, a long tongue, and pale gray f lesh.
His eyes are beady and red, his hands are talons, and his feet hooves. His favored weapon is a two-headed f lail made of iron and bone, the twin heads of which are skulls wrapped in strips of spiked iron. This weapon is capable of transforming those it enslaves into ghouls, and causes the f lesh of the living to rot away. Lit by strange green light, the libraries of Everglut are unusually vast. His worship is common not only in the Realm of the Mammoth Lords, but also in distant Iobaria and the frozen wastes of the Crown of the World far to the north.
Kostchtchie appears as an immense, deformed frost giant with twisted legs, tiny white eyes, and a thick matted beard into which are woven dozens of skulls—trophies of mortal kings and priests of rival faiths he has slain. This nefarious weapon can destroy nearly any object it strikes, and stuns all but the largest creatures that suffer its crushing blows. Kostchtchie dwells in an immense fortress called Skyskar that is carved out of the heart of a towering mountain in a realm known as Jhuvumirak.
This fortress is itself located in the heart of a rugged realm of jagged mountains and immense glaciers infested with manifold frozen horrors. If you are immune to cold, you may instead gain fire resistance You may change to fire resistance if you gain immunity to cold at a point after you gain this boon. Kostchtchie was born of Ulfen parents, and grew up a murderer after his father forced him to kill his mother and sisters. Kostchtchie went one better and murdered his father as well.
Later in life, after he had become a ferocious warlord, he confronted the Witch Queen Baba Yaga and tried to force her to grant him immortality—the witch agreed, but twisted his form, turned him into a hideous giant, and hid away the last fragment of his mortal soul in a magical torc. Kostchtchie f led to the Abyss to nurture his hatred and hide his shame, eventually finding a new purpose as a patron of frost giants, who turned away from their god Thremyr in search of a more active and warlike deity.
This act must, at the very least, incite the victim to tears or anger. The target of this ability appears to be wrapped tightly in spiderwebs. You can maintain up to three targets in a temporal web at a time—if you use this ability on a fourth target, you must select one of the other three targets to immediately release. This ability is the equivalent of an 9th-level spell. If you are venerable when you achieve the boon, you die and become a ghost.
Mazmezz appears as a hideous tangle of insectoid legs, far too many for any worldly insect to command. Some of these legs end in claws, others in pincers, and still others in spinnerets. Yet when forced to punish foes or do battle, the Creeping Queen always reverts to her nauseating true form. Mazmezz is worshiped primarily by drow, driders, and ettercaps, but some particularly demented humanoids worship her as well—these tend to be isolated admirers rather than members of full-blown cults. Her hive-like Abyssal domain is known as Khavak-Vog, and its tangled ways are the lair of her favored children, the bebiliths.
The core of her maze-like lair is guarded by several of these f iends grown to great size. Legend holds that the f irst bebiliths were spawned by Mazmezz; if true, this would explain the disgust and hatred with which most other demon lords hold the Creeping Queen. Those who survive often receive visits decades later from twisted and hideous half-fiends—their sons or daughters, sent by Mestama to finish off the job and murder their fathers.
Her cultists generally regard competing faiths such as worshipers of Gyronna with jealous anger. The Mother of Witches dwells in an Abyssal realm called the Barren Wood, a vexing forest of dead and dying pine and fir trees.
Decrepit houses serve witches and hags as dens or traps, and darker creatures haunt the more desolate reaches of the wood. Certain remote forests in Avistan particularly in Nidal, Taldor, and Galt are said to connect to the Barren Wood— those who unknowingly wander too deeply into these areas can become lost forever.
The sky is always dark here, with strange stars and a disturbingly large moon in the sky above. Each island is ruled by a unique succubus or incubus with strange and terrible powers. The terrain and natures of these islands are linked to the themes and history of her victims, save for the largest island in the center—this island is Alinythia, her personal realm of pleasure and decadence.
Our Lady in Shadow CE female demon lord of assassins, darkness, and lust Cult Unholy Symbol seven-pointed crown wrapped with thorny vines Temple brothels, dungeons, elegant manors, hidden cathedrals Worshipers assassins, drow, rapists, shadow-using creatures, succubi, whores Minions bats, carnivorous plants, charmed or dominated humanoids, seraptis demons see page 58 , shadow demons, shadows Obedience Ingest a dose of psychedelic plants or fungi and engage in any number of sexual acts either alone or with others , during which at least a pint of blood must be shed.
You may only have one creature dominated at a time via this effect, but the effects are permanent until you dominate a new target, at which point the previous target is released from domination but is stunned for 1d4 rounds.
The first succubus is a beautiful but deadly creature. Lady Nocticula is fond of wearing her dark hair in complex styles. Her eyes are devoid of pupils, her fingers are tipped with talons, and her feet end in stony hooves that weep molten iron. Bat-like wings covered with glowing runes and three tails ending in stingers complete her demonic appearance.
Yet she typically appears to unsuspecting folk as a particularly beautiful woman or handsome man in order to lure them into her clutches.
From him she won the grudging loyalty of the shadow demons. The other demon lords treat Nocticula with a mixture of obsession and fear, with only one of them, Socothbenoth her brother and sometimes lover , maintaining a relatively friendly relationship.
If this obedience does not take place under the light of the sun, you must end the ritual by swallowing a handful of sand and salt. A creature slain by this spell immediately rises from death as a juju zombie see Pathfinder Bestiary 2. The zombie is not under your control, but it will not attack you. This ability is equivalent to a 7th-level spell. Not all who worship the sun do so with joy and kindness in their hearts. Those who venerate the Shining Scourge worship out of fear or awe.
Nurgal embodies the destructive aspects of the sun, and his minions walk without fear in the full light of day. His lower body is that of a golden lion with a draconic tail. His torso is deeply tanned and masculine, and he is rarely seen without a heavy mace, the head of which appears to be a miniature sun, held in one four-fingered, taloned hand.
His head is that of a lion as well, and blinding light spews from his eyes and mouth. Today, his worship has lessened, and is limited to the deserts of northern Garund, Qadira, and ruined Ninshabur. His Abyssal realm is known as Kuthan, an expansive region of alternating desert and dry savannas under a vast red sun that never moves from its noontime height above. Nurgal is also believed to be the half-brother of Socothbenoth, but this relationship is not friendly, and the two have been at war for as long as they both have existed.
His cultists maintain that the Prince of Undeath is merely waiting for matters in other worlds to resolve themselves before turning his gaze upon this world as his next prize—and that when he does, his faithful shall be rightly rewarded for preparing the way. His legendary weapon, the Wand of Orcus, is never far from his taloned hand. His Abyssal realm of Uligor is an entire world of undead-haunted ruins, frozen seas, ragged mountains, and hideous deserts and swamps.
Orcus shares this realm with a large number of evil thanatotic titans, not all of whom worship or even ally with the Prince of Undeath. Large regions of Uligor are scarred by the unending civil war between the titans.
It is unknown what shadowy force directly opposes Orcus on Uligor, but his war with this mysterious demigod has lasted for millennia. Boons 22 Lords of the Abyss Pazuzu King of the Wind Demons CE male demon lord of the sky, temptation, and winged creatures Cult Unholy Symbol image of Pazuzu with right hand upraised Temple cliffside cathedrals, desert ruins, mountaintops, towering spires Worshipers antipaladins, harpies, enemies of Lamashtu, tengus Minions fiendish flying creatures, perytons Pathfinder RPG Bestiary 2 , swarms, vrocks Obedience String up the intestines of a freshly killed creature somewhere that will attract the attention of hungry birds such as the branches of a tree or the crenellations of a tower , then meditate on the offering.
You can use this power up to three times per day. Creatures with fly speeds take a —4 penalty on saves against this effect. If a creature that fails its save against this effect has protection from evil or a similar effect activated, that effect is immediately and automatically dispelled. His breath is a cloud of locusts, and it is said that at the dawn of civilization his first breath of air upon the Material Plane spawned the demon that, in time, would become Deskari. Pazuzu is among the oldest of the demon lords, one of the first to rise to power in the Abyss long ago alongside the likes of Lamashtu, Abraxas, and Dagon, yet his long conf lict with Lamashtu has prevented him from achieving greater power or perhaps even godhood himself—a fact that only serves to spur his unending conf lict with the Mother of Monsters.
This vertical realm includes an immense city on a vast shelf, as well as the depths below it and the skies above. The unique location of this realm allows Pazuzu unprecedented mobility among the Outer Planes, a freedom he often abuses in his war against Lamashtu, recruiting powerful allies from Hell, Abaddon, and beyond.
Pazuzu is an aggressive demon fond of possessing mortals and using them to work his evils upon the world—it is said that Pazuzu can hear his name when an innocent speaks it unknowingly, and that this may be all that is needed to invite possession by the demon. He is the patron of all evil things that f ly, particularly 23 1 Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Lords of Chaos Shax Shivaska The Blood Marquis The Chained Maiden CE male demon lord of envy, lies, and particularly violent murder CE female demon lord of aberrations, clocks, and prisons Cult Cult Unholy Symbol curved white feather sitting in a pool of blood Temple crooked alleyways, hidden rooms in grand estates, secret dungeons Worshipers babaus, chokers, derros, drow, evil nobles, serial killers, torturers Minions fiendish animals particularly great cats, birds, dogs, and rats , shadow demons Obedience Perform an autopsy on a creature killed within the last 24 hours, using bare hands instead of tools as much as possible.
Unholy Symbol clock face with 13 hours Temple caverns, dungeons, prisons, workhouses Worshipers chokers and other aberrations, sadistic prison wardens and guards, slavers Minions constructs particularly clockwork creatures , gibbering mouthers, other aberrations Obedience You must start an obedience to Shivaska at exactly the start of an hour. You must spend this hour bound with chains, rope, manacles, a straitjacket, or some similar restraint.
While bound, you must recite prayers to the Chained Maiden and strain against your bindings enough to leave marks on your flesh for the remainder of the day. For example, if you suffer an effect that causes bleed 5, you do not take any damage from the effect and instead gain fast healing 5. This effect ends whenever you are fully healed. This increase to sneak attack damage stacks with sneak attack damage you may have from other sources.
You need not expend any material components to use this ability, nor can assistants aid you in its casting. You can only have one creature affected by this ability at any one time. If you successfully use this ability on a second creature, the previously bound creature is immediately freed.
This ability is the equivalent of a 7thlevel spell. Cruel and sadistic, Shax revels in the act of torture and murder, especially if the victim retains hope for survival up to the very instant of death. He is particularly fond of eating the eyes of his living victims, but not until he is sure they have seen the filthy tools and bloodstained devices he intends to use upon their bodies.
His cultists are typically lone murderers or sadists, often killers who lead double lives as upstanding citizens of society and kill in secret. Shax is the creator of the babau race, and those he creates by skinning living victims and then infusing them with Abyssal energies are the most powerful of their kind.
Shivaska appears as a female choker with four arms and four legs. Her mouth is unnaturally large, but she has no eyes on her head—her eyes glare red from the palms of her four hands. From her back writhe a dozen long, thin animated chains that end in cruel hooks. An orphanage under the secret control of the cult of Shivaska uses its orphans for all manner of cruel labor, and keeps the children in line by allowing unsettling aberrations usually chokers to prowl the orphanage after dark.
Tales of monsters and fears of being taken away by strange things lurking in chimneys or cramped closets or hiding under the f loorboards work quite well to keep child laborers in line. Her palace, the Ticking House, is an immense workhouse with a huge clock tower, the face of which accounts for 13 hours rather than This clock is kept running by the constant toil of a small army of abducted children.
Her lips and eyes are stitched shut with rusty wire, and her body is cut into sections at the joints. Usually, these amputations appear at the hips and shoulders, but at times they can appear elsewhere. Each portion f loats independently, not quite moving in sync with the rest. Sif kesh embodies the similar roles shared by the three major fiend races—she corrupts like a devil, feeds like a daemon, but is in fact a demon, a conundrum that has long vexed those seeking to impose order upon the nature of the demonic.
This city sprawls along the edge of a cliff overlooking a churning sea—each day, portions of the cliff collapse into the sea, taking with them chunks of city. It is said that false temples of every religion can be found in Vantian, all tended by fallen priests who took their own lives.
The Sacred Whore CE female demon lord of hopeless despair, heresy, and suicide Cult Unholy Symbol bloody feminine hands crossed at slashed wrists Temple desecrated churches, haunted houses, manywindowed towers Worshipers blasphemers, heretics, outcasts from other religions, survivors of botched suicide attempts Minions lamias, seraptis demons see page 58 , undead crafted from the bodies of suicide victims Obedience Perform a ritualized suicide by first scribing a note lambasting your enemies and then pretending to kill yourself via strangulation or cutting.
A worshiper of the targeted religion must be able to hear your utterance, or this ability fails. Rather than assault the victims with images of fear, this ability assaults the targets with images and sensations of crippling sadness and despair. Those who succumb to the spell and die do so at their own hands. If no method of suicide is available for one who succumbs to this effect, the victim simply dies outright of sadness. This effect is equivalent to a 9th-level spell.
Sif kesh is unusual among the demons of the Abyss in that her motives are much more diabolical than those of most of her kin. Unholy Symbol storm cloud pierced by lightning Temple caverns, forest glades blasted by fire or wind, mountaintop towers, ships Worshipers druids, those who live in fear of natural disasters, trolls Minions behirs, fiendish elementals Obedience You must cavort naked atop a hill, rooftop, or mountaintop during a storm, or else ritualistically sever the fingers, toes, then arms and legs of a nonevil being, burning each severed fragment to ash before moving on to the next.
If Nocticula is the demonic embodiment of seduction and lust, then her brother and lover Socothbenoth is the embodiment of the methods by which such hungers are satiated. Paragon to deviants of all types, Socothbenoth views all of creation as his personal arena of pleasure. His tastes, and those of his faithful, tend to run to the violent and destructive.
He is fond of changing his form on a whim to aid in whatever pleasures he currently seeks, but his true form is that of a lithe, handsome man with black eyes, long brown hair, pointed ears, and numerous body piercings of metal and bone. His cult is strong among the drow, but also thrives in the Ustalavic county of Versex, where his cult is quite large, and he maintains a steadily growing secret society of deviants among the nobility of the city of Karcau.
Socothbenoth is a highly social demon lord, and maintains more contact with other demon lords than any of his kin. His greatest alliances are with his sister Nocticula, Pazuzu, Andirif khu, and Baphomet—all of whom have at times served Socothbenoth as lovers. Although he is considered to be the patron of the troll race, the demon lord Urxehl in fact despises the twisted giants that share his form with a great and tremendous loathing.
His Abyssal realm of Verakivhan is a constantly burning forest lashed by powerful storms with rain that fuels the f lames below rather than dousing them. It is only in the face of such tremendous natural disaster that Urxehl is truly pleased, and he often sends visions of such disasters to mortals in hopes they might find a way to create them. Even so, his strongest worshipers remain his trolls, the most religious of which believe that Father Urxehl gifted them with regeneration so that they could survive his terrible rages and depredations.
Urxehl appears as a towering horned troll, nearly 20 feet high and with a long, spiked tongue. He can command storms with ease, and can direct the f low and power of forest fires with a thought.
His troll priests often prepare spells that both protect them from fire and allow them to utilize fire as a weapon, primarily as a way for them to maintain control of those they lead through fear. In addition, a surprising number of chaotic or evil druids look to Urxehl as a source of inspiration and divine power. Of course, other druids view these cultists as heretics at best.
Whether or not this is true, the monstrous gargoyles of the world certainly venerate horned Xoveron as their lord. Sacrifices to the demon require bodies to be cast from high windows or impaled atop spires under the open sky—always in ruined locations, for inhabited cities are anathema to the Horned Prince.
His goal is nothing less than the emptying of the cities of the world so that he may reign over the resulting desolation. Xoveron is the patron not only of gargoyles, but also of the dreaded nabasu demons, and he often sends the latter into the Material Plane to spread his cruelties. Xoveron appears as a four-armed, four-headed gargoyle. The catacombs below Ghahazi are extensive and deep, and are said to extend to no less than a dozen other Abyssal realms—many of these routes are secret and known only to Xoveron and his closest allies.
The Horned Prince CE male demon lord of gargoyles, gluttony, and ruins Cult Unholy Symbol five-horned gray gargoyle skull missing its jaw Temple caverns, rooftops, ruined cathedrals, tall structures Worshipers bandits and brigands, gargoyles, gluttons, nabasus Minions fiendish purple worms, man-eating animals, stirges Obedience Perch atop a high outcrop and look out over the surrounding terrain. The food created by this effect consists of raw or rotting meat and rancid milk. Those who partake of this feast consume their food shockingly fast, as if they were starving—it takes only 1 minute to gain the effects of this spell.
You can activate this ability as a free action, and can use it for up to 3 rounds per day plus an additional number of rounds equal to your Constitution bonus—these rounds need not be consecutive. Nabasu demons who gain this boon can use their death-stealing gaze at will, regardless of their total number of growth points.
During the obedience, you must swallow or inhale at least a dozen living worms or leeches. Cult Unholy Symbol twisted tentacle terminating in an oversized talon Temple caverns, troglodyte dens, underground lake shores Worshipers evil lizardfolk, morlocks, troglodytes Minions fiendish dinosaurs, fiendish reptiles particularly fiendish giant lizards Obedience In a cavern, impale a living sacrifice on a stalagmite so that the creature does not die immediately.
Dance around the sacrifice while shouting prayers to Zevgavizeb, taking time every 10 minutes to push the impaled creature further down the stalagmite. This special curse causes the creature cursed to suddenly grow to venerable age. This curse imparts a —6 penalty to Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution, but does not grant any bonus to Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma. Bestial Zevgavizeb rules the horror-filled Abyssal caverns of Gluttondark, a vast network of caverns connected by subterranean rivers and great chasms.
Many of the caverns of Gluttondark are large enough to be the size of small planets— in such caverns, the walls are rife with jungles and mountains, swamps and seas, with gravity pulling away from the center of the roughly spherical chambers.
Strangely colored suns that pulse from light to dark, simulating the ebb and f low of day and night, churn at the center of these vast inverted worlds. Dinosaurs, strange bat-like monsters, sea monsters, and worse rule these realms alongside nations of fiendish troglodytes. Zevgavizeb has very little interest in events beyond his empire, and as a result presents the least danger to Golarion of the demon lords described here.
His troglodytes, on the other hand, commit countless atrocities in his name, for they believe that only by regularly sacrificing other creatures to his hunger can they prevent him from emerging into their own cavern lairs to feed on them. Zevgavizeb is a hideous beast the size of a dragon, part dinosaur, part tentacled worm, and part bat. His personal lair is the largest of his cavern worlds, a place at the center of Gluttondark with a jungle moon f loating at its core.
It is on this moon that the Troglodyte God slumbers and gnaws. Yhidothrus is a hideous and hateful demon lord associated with the negative aspects of time—aging, the destruction of all things via erosion, and the advance of entropy.
Yhidothrus appears as an immense worm with oily, nightblack f lesh and a mouth that folds back upon itself to reveal a dozen ivory, hook-like jaws around a gullet ringed with countless teeth.
These tunnels, called the Spiral Path, are said to connect to nearly every other Abyssal Realm and even to the lower reaches of other Outer Planes. Zura often assumes the form of a voluptuous maiden, but in her true form she is an emaciated woman with bat-like wings instead of arms, blood-red eyes and hair, immense fangs, and taloned feet.
Her worshipers are vampires, and her cults are strong in places where their kind are common, such as Ustalav, Cheliax, and the underground cities of the drow.
Ancient Azlanti ruins dedicated to her worship have been found in several remote locations, and in some cases, powerful Azlanti vampires still tend these forgotten shrines. Although it is unclear if Zura worshiped Urgathoa in life, as a demon lord her association with the Pallid Princess is a complex one. At times, the two appear to be close allies, but just as often they are at war. Certainly both of their religions appeal to similar sinners, with vampires and cannibals alike f inding much of interest in the teachings of both faiths.
These mountains skirt a long, narrow world that features snowy peaks and glacier valleys at one end and jungle-covered slopes and swampy lowlands at the other. Between these two extremes lie more temperate regions of woodland and moor. Priests of Zura who please the Vampire Queen are sometimes allowed to hunt and cavort in this realm as a reward.
The Vampire Queen CE female demon lord of blood, cannibalism, and vampires Cult Unholy Symbol crimson fanged skull rune Temple graveyards, isolated islands, noble mansions, remote castles, underground cathedrals Worshipers cannibals, drow, vampires Minions bats, gibbering mouthers, leeches, rats, stirges, wolves, undead, various other blooddrinking monsters Obedience Drink some of the blood of a willing creature, and allow the same creature to drink some of your own blood, after which you must meditate on the teachings of Zura.
Alternatively, you can feed on the flesh of a creature of your own race until you are full. The blood imbibed must come from a creature with a minimum CR of your character level —2. Apply the vampire template to yourself for the duration of this effect, which lasts for 1d6 rounds plus an additional number of rounds equal to your Charisma bonus. When the effect ends, you are staggered for 1d4 rounds.
If you are already a vampire, you gain the advanced template for the duration of this effect. Zura rose from the corpse of an Azlanti queen who succumbed to a lust for eternal life and the f lesh of her own kind.
Even today, thousands of years later, tales of her hideous banquets and baths of blood persist as legends. While many tried to assassinate her, it was her own exuberance for blood that saw her soul spiraling into the Abyss after an accidental suicide tryst with several consorts. Yet such was the weight of her sin that when her soul arrived, she 29 1 That Which is Dead Nascent demon lords exist in a sort of limbo.
Though unique and powerful, they have not yet tied their reality to an Abyssal realm to an extent that they can be called proper demon lords. Thus, when they die, the Abyss absorbs and reclaims them.
What comes of this recycling, none can say. Yet when a true demon lord dies, it leaves behind a legacy. In the short term, its worshipers remain—either desperate to ignore the death of their god or hoping that through their faith they might return their demon to life. In a way, their faith can do just that, for the body of a demon lord does not discorporate when slain—it returns to the Abyss as a whole. The body leaves behind its material tools and relics, and even the flesh and bone of its form, yet what might be regarded as a soul forms a sort of blasphemous pearl in a region of the Abyss known to travelers as the Rift of Repose.
Here, strange stony forms emerge from the walls of an endless chasm, immense bodies preserved as if they were giants in the earth, monstrous fossils of vanquished evil. Their clerics go mad and lose their magical powers. And in time, as stories of their depredations fade into obscurity, they are forgotten.
All that remains in most cases is a name scribbled in the marginalia of decaying tomes, yet on these pages a select few of those names shall persist forever—a final testament to accompany the stony forms that hang over the black in the Rift of Repose.
For if a name is preserved long enough, might not that name give rise to life again? Aolar, Lady of the Hunt The demon lord Aolar was fond of traveling to other worlds and hunting heroes, typically by leaving her body in a well-defended fortress perched on the edge of one of the uppermost rifts of the Abyss and sending her mind out across the Abyss to lie in wait for a powerful hero to die. It was certainly only with the support of Calistria, Sarenrae, and Shelyn all of whom had had their own churches targeted by Aolar in the past that Desna emerged from the scandal intact.
In his mortal life, Aroden often came into conflict with a demon lord by the name of Ibdurengian, an aquatic demon of great size that resembled a darkly handsome merfolk with the lower body of a thrashing, spiny, three-headed eel. She served the Silken Sin as both lover and assassin, specializing not only in the murder of her victims but also the defamation of their memories—she left those she slew with a legacy of shame and scandal such that their mourners could not bear the thought of resurrecting their fallen allies.
Vyriavaxus, Lord of Shadows Once the master of the shadow demons, bat-like Vyriavaxus could drink souls from living mortals with his tongue, just as his beloved vampire bats sup blood from flesh. She slew him to gain a measure of control over his shadow demons, an act that some believe to be a prelude to a terrible consolidation of power over all seven of the deadliest sins.
Xar-Azmak, Lord of Rust Just as flesh decays and slides from the bone, so does metal rust away into ruin. Xar-Azmak, known to some as the Sin of Steel, appeared as a twisted and crumbling, horned and hoofed iron golem.
He scoured the Abyss and its neighboring realms, spreading decay and entropy to not only metals, but to stone and flesh and bone and hope, rusting all with his noxious touch and rasping aura. From the Book of th e Damned In which, even as ot power and, in some her lords of the Abyss rise to great true mantle of div triumphant exceptions, attain the Abyss fill endless gr inity, the countless failings of the of the Rift of Reposaves and become one with the walls e.
For she can cast from her womb such a myriad of life as to shame the most slattern of mortal mothers, such that these voracious souls, these writhing larvae, might gnaw at her wondrous flesh to gain potential no mere mortal could pass to its child. Those who preach against her fecundity do so not from righteousness, but from the basest jealousy and rawest envy imaginable.
When the first sinful mortal souls were judged by Pharasma and sent on to their ultimate fates, those sent into the Abyss did not manifest as the Damned and enter the remorseless machine that is Hell, nor did they rematerialize in their living bodies on Abaddon to become prey for the daemonic host. Those who came to the Abyss manifested as larvae—wormlike creatures with pale, glistening bodies and twisted human faces stretched over the pulpy and chitinous masses that now passed as their heads.
These larvae gathered on the rims of the Abyssal rifts, and as the countless worlds of the Material Plane continued to offer up sinful souls as grist for the Abyss, vast seas of larvae began to choke the realm. This lord had long held a strange interest in the qlippoth of the deepest Abyss, and in his realm kept many as stock for experiments and investigation.
Intrigued by the potency of larvae, the ancient Horseman began to conduct experiments with larvae and qlippoth—experiments that showed immediate promise. Over time, the nameless Horseman perfected his methods, and at last was able to trigger a most unholy transformation. The amalgamation of sinful soul-stuff and living matter birthed eons ago by the Abyss convulsed and transformed from the inside out, making something entirely new: the first demon.
Legends vary on the subject of who this first demon may have been. While many believe the creature born that fateful moment would eventually become Lamashtu herself, much evidence suggests otherwise.
If not Lamashtu, it seems likely that this first demon has long since been slain and reworked into some strange new form by the Abyss—apocalyptic scholars and explorers believe that the first demon may still exist in some deep and undiscovered node in the Abyss or beyond, and that its reemergence into the multiverse will presage a new age of transformation in the Outer Rifts. Yet the nature and fate of that first demon are overshadowed by a much greater event that occurred a moment after its creation.
For the creation of that first demon, that first transformation of mortal soul into demonic life, did not go unseen or unknown. The Abyss itself felt the transformation, and almost as if the act were akin to plucking a load-bearing pebble from the fractured expanse of a vast dam, the transformation spread explosively.
Across the Abyss, spasms of birth shuddered through the squirming seas of larvae. Waves of undulant f lesh f lowed over the edges of the rifts as individual larvae—their guts gorged upon Abyssal plants or f lesh, filth, and decay—transformed into demons by the millions. This chain reaction filled the Outer Rifts with a violent new form of life in the span of a few heartbeats, and in an eyeblink demons became the most populous of the fiendish races.
Not every larva was fit for transformation, and while the number of lingering souls had been vast, it had not been truly infinite. Yet the demons far outnumbered the other denizens of the Outer Rifts. Qlippoth, once the masters of the Abyss, were hunted to near extinction and f led into the deepest canyons where even the demons feared to go.
Countless daemonic infestations were destroyed in a matter of minutes by the demonic tide—these fiends retreated in shock to their realms on Abaddon, and for many ages, that realm was also overrun by demonic invaders. Even on the shores of Hell itself, the change had an impact, as the infernal realm suffered a rare siege that it only barely held its own against.
After the initial explosion, demonic growth quickly leveled out, albeit at an unimaginably vast population. Hell regained control of its borders. Abaddon drove out its invaders and reclaimed the lands that had been stolen from it. The forgotten Horseman who had triggered this new age was slain and erased from memory forever—though whether by the tide of demons that rose up around his fortress or by his incensed apocalyptic kin, no one can say. Yet the Abyss itself had forever changed, and the mantle of its rule now lay firmly in the grip of the demonic horde.
While the demon lords are unique and individualistic, the demons themselves are shaped and formed by the constants of sin. When a soul filled with sin comes to the Abyss and makes its transformation into a full-f ledged demon, that transformation, like water, follows the path of least resistance— the results of these transformations almost always manifest as one of the known races of demon.
Additionally, while the Book of the Damned is outside of its repository see below , any evil being of demigod-level power daemonic harbingers, demon lords , infernal dukes or greater using scry or a similar spell can view the Book of the Damned with no risk of being detected by the bearer. Only the intervention of a deity can prevent this punishment.
The bearer can also make use of the following spell-like abilities :. Reference : Any character who can read Abyssal, Celestial, and Infernal and who spends a total of 30 days not necessarily contiguously studying the tome learns soul-tainting secrets—the ultimate blasphemies of all creation. Once per day, the bearer can ask the tome a question relating to any profane topic; she then opens the book to a random page to find the answer, revealed as if the bearer had cast vision.
Repository : Once per day, the bearer of the Book of the Damned can cause the tome to disappear into its own internal demiplane, leaving behind a sinister shimmering portal. The book and those within the repository are affected by a powerful nondetection effect, shielding all within from the sight of even the gods. Creatures do not age while inside, although upon leaving, they immediately age an amount equal to the time spent inside. While within the demiplane, visitors may access any of the powers described in the Reference section.
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