Dungeons & Dragons lore!

I generally like best the ones that look like classic demons, but among the weirder-looking ones I like some depictions of the Glabrezu◊ the most.

I have a Name That Unfolds Like Lotus Blossom for a few of the archfiends and other high level outsiders. In particular the Demogorgon, Prince Of Madness Astride The Infinite Asylum.

Orcus, Dread Lord Atop A Throne Of Graves

Lolth, Web Of Lies Grasps Writhing Shadows

Grumsh, Burning Eye Atop The Ruin Of Civilization

Among generic fiends, I like the look of 3E howlers◊ the best, and find the vaath◊ the most disturbing, for reasons discussed on the Forced to Watch page.

Among demons, I like the idea of the obyriths, and the sibriex◊ has a neat design and function. But solamiths◊ are cool too, an excellent combination of good design (screaming faces trapped in its belly!), function (they hurl flaming chunks of themselves at enemies!), and fluff (they're gluttons, but also dainty eaters who savor the souls of their victims!). Favorite demon lord is undoubtedly Pale Night◊ because her design hook is just that good.

Among devils, I like the narzugon◊'s angle as "so self-destructively loyal that they don't need magical compulsion to serve," the remmanon◊ for its design and mechanics, and the falxugon◊ for being the archetypal "grinning devil waiting at the crossroads at midnight to make a deal with you." Favorite archdevil is Mephistopheles◊ for the "so obsessed with Hellfire that his ice palace is melting" angle.

Among yugoloths, um... I like the canoloth's design, particularly its 3E depiction as an "giant armored eyeless bulldog with an extra set of vertical jaws."◊ And merrenoloths◊ have a neat narrative role, I suppose.

Like I said, among fiends I tend to like best the ones that look like a classic Big Red Devil, but I also like a lot some of the anthropomorphized animals. Particularly the Rakshasa and Arcanaloth, for being Magnificent Bastards with a sense of style. Speaking of Yugoloths, I find the Baernaloth very intriguing, mainly because so little is known about them for sure.

I have a soft spot for vrocks, and in one of those Settings I Need To Actually Build Sometime ideas, I riffed on the ultroloth's "grey alien" stylings with the idea that yugoloths were alien invaders to the planar ecosystem.

One of the more disturbing practices in Drow society in Forgotten Realms was their priestesses mating with Glabrezu. Keep in mind that Glabrezu cannot shapeshift, so the priestess is actually having sex with a four armed dog-faced pincer demon. In full view of other Drow.

Theses pairings often result in offspring known as Draegloth.

Honestly, the real ick is that drow are around 5 feet tall and a hundred pounds soaking wet, and Glabrezu are around 15 feet tall and weigh over 2 tons.

For my personal brew, I re-used the name of draegloth for... well, fiendish drow, yes, but they're just drow from a Commorragh-style island-city that exist halfway between the Material and the Lower Planes. After a thousand years of just soaking up Hell radiation, they've turned into nigh-literal caricatures of drow with inky black skin, radiant white hair, unnaturally long ears and solid glowing eyes, white for the women and red for the men.

This is in contrast to normal drow who have more natural proportions, have skin and hair that actually looks like skin and hair, albeit in a variety of funky colors.

Besides Demogorgon's appearance, I also like how he's essentially a Mad Scientist Demon Prince. He's constantly at war with himself due to his two heads each having their own personality, with this duality being reflected in his realm, and he's constantly running experiments on the nature of the Abyss. His internal conflicts and being focused on his science projects are why he's never really made a serious power play at taking over the Abyss.

Yenogu became my favorite demon lord after reading the story of a wizard who invaded the mind of a gnoll, realized that he kind of liked what he saw in there, slowly went mad, and became a devotee of Yenogu. There’s something delightfully twisted about how one of his cultists goes from “food” to “family” just like that. It’s like if some people gathered cows to slaughter for a feast, then one of the cows said “this sounds fun, can I join?” then is promptly given a seat, plate and fork, and served the other cows with no one questioning it.

Yenogu's a very simple (but not stupid) demon lord. All he asks of his followers is to kill. Doesn't matter if you're a gnoll, a human, a giant, a bowl of petunias...if you like to kill, Yenogu's the god for you.

That just made the idea for a buddy comedy come to mind.

(Flashback intro)
Lawson the lawful: I wish my deity would allow me to kill all these heathens! Pesky ethics getting in the way...
Chevy the throat slasher: Have you heard the good word Yenogu? As long as you kill, it's all good!
(present)
Lawson the lawful: And that's how we became friends! (Stepford Smile)
Chevy the throat slasher: The best friends! (psycho smile)
(Both side eye each other, waiting for an opening for a good stabbing without ceasing to smile)

Well that's just mixed alignment party dynamics in general!

Yeenoghu seems like a foe that would be frequently underestimated in the cosmic battles between good and evil, and even more often in battles between different flavours of evil. He has simple desires and goals, but as has been pointed out, that does not mean that he is stupid. I see some similarities to Khorne in Warhammer, especially in the way his cultists behave. Yeenoghu is like a bestial version of the aspect of Khorne that isn't interested in warriors being honourable, and does not care where the blood flows from, as long as it flows. In a very Crapsack World, a cult of Yeenoghu might have the same allure as many Chaos-cults do in Warhammer Fantasy and in 40K: A very refreshing invitation to indulge in an amoral existence, based on violence and following your base instincts.

I'm more into pathfinder qlippoths style stuff myself, though D&D did have osyruths or something right?

Obyriths, yeah. I think you're blending them together with Osyluths, also known as bone devils.

My goal is to shake up the multicultural cities my troupe normally encounters, and I wanted to surprise the Dragonborn player by making him feel like he fits right in wherever they go.

Edited by merasemu321 on Dec 9th 2022 at 3:34:04 AM

All cities are in fact dragon lairs, and most inhabitants are servants of dragons in some way; as such, there's lots of mixed cities full of whatever people any individual dragon forcefully hired, including lots of dragonborn that are higher on the totem pole because dragon.

The local culture venerates dragons for their might and longevity, and the upper class routinely undergoes a ritual that transforms them into dragonborn. Maybe this is because worship of Bahamut or Tiamat is the predominant faith in the area, and the transformation is a reward for piety, or maybe it's a simple matter of being wealthy enough to afford the components for the ritual, in which case social climbers in the area are going to exhibit some dragon-like avarice.

I actually had my players go through a Dragonborn city state last year as part of their quest.

Some highlights: The culture was clan based and honor based, with an arena and recreational gladiatorial games.

They had a communal hatchery where all eggs are treated equally, this being the most secure location in the city guarded behind traps and a portal. Because of some supernatural shenanigans the king or queen's eggs always have a golden shell, making them the only differentiated ones.

Where I could I used a lot of Maya inspired architecture, to evoke a Kukulcan stone serpent theming.

Since Dragonborn lacked dark vision, the city was actually very well and ornately lit, with sconces having magical fire with colors denoting the districts, giving also a different mood lighting per scene.

I don't know how I feel about the fact that Hags can be dark fey(Sea hags and Green hags) or fiends

according to Volo guide to monsters The fey don't like it much either

anyone have more info on kythons? i know they were limited to monte cook's stuff but personally i thought their design was badass

does anyone also have any more info on stone juggernauts? that theyre purpose-bread mimic-golems is cool, but the fact youre basically fighting a goddamn magic big rig/steamroller is stupidly awesome

I can tell you it was a pain in the ass to get the picture for the kythons' character page entry. By the time I got around to them, the 3rd Edition art archive on the Wizards website had been shut down, so I had to resort to others' low-res page scans, then crop and erase all the gory bits around the adult kython in a larger picture.

Ahem. Kythons, to the best of my knowledge, debuted in the 3rd Edition Book of Vile Darkness and haven't reappeared since — I can't find any Dungeon or Dragon articles that expanded upon them either. The BVD only has a few paragraphs of background information for them around their combat descriptions, and most of it's already on the kythons' character page. But some more tidbits:

• Kython eggs look like "wet, mucus-covered stones." Broodlings' coloration varies widely from dark green to black to orange-white, while adult kythons' exoskeletons are either green, dark blue or black.
• They can speak "a strange smattering of both Infernal and Abyssal, but only to each other, never to others. Broodlings do not speak, but understand the commands of other kythons." To me, this suggests the unnamed fiends who created the kythons were yugoloths, who speak the tongues of both devils and demons but have no language of their own.
• Most kythons upon reaching the "adult" stage remain as such for their entire lives, guarding their nests and doing most of the day-to-day work. Impalers are assassins who are never seen on guard duty, and are either on a mission on behalf of a slaymaster or slaughterking to eliminate a priority target, or at rest. Slaymasters, the previous apex form, are brutal creatures that revel in carnage more than the relatively unemotional lesser kythons do. Slaughterkings, the newest leader caste, are described with an "almost regal — but still feral" bearing, and are usually found in the center of a kython nest, surrounded by guards and attendants, but occasionally a slaughterking will go off on its own to kill something.

Yeah, kythons are cool — smarter than they look, a Horde of Alien Locusts without a Hive Mind, Organic Technology in the form of bone swords and acid-sprayers. Buuut they're pretty Tyranid-y in terms of form and function, which may be why they've fallen by the wayside. And then a year later, the 3rd Edition Miniatures Handbook brought the kruthiks to D&D, which are a more straightforward if less flavorful swarm of chitinous killing machines.

As best I can tell, the "mimic-golem" angle is confined to 2nd Edition. As the AD&D Monstrous Manual explains, the standard juggernaut is a mindless stone steamroller, slow to get started but unstoppable once its gets moving (until it has to turn around). But others are special:

"Some juggernauts are a unique crossbreed of stone golem and mimic. Once animated, these juggernauts can alter their shape as the mimics do. They can grow up to six limbs, each designed for current needs. [sic] For example, if it wishes to sound a warning, a limb may grow into a trumpet or horn. In combat, its limbs become maces or hammers that inflict 2d6 points of damage each, due to its great strength. A juggernaut can rarely bring more than two limbs to bear on a single opponent."

Creating such a juggernaut involves adding mimic blood as a material component during the final spells cast in the standard stone juggernaut creation process, which gives the golem variant some of a mimic's abilities, as well as enough intelligence to have an alignment.

In 3rd Edition, though, the standard mindless stone juggernaut comes with six carved stone arms as standard, no mimic-morphing required. But to make up for it, they have spell-like abilities like web, forcecage and wall of force to help catch pesky adventurers. And some have compartments inside them their masters can ride in, though it'd be more metal to see a warlord riding on top of a juggernaut at the head of an army.

It looks like juggernauts reappear in the 5E Tomb of Annihilation, but as I lack that book I can't tell you more.

im actually surprised at monte being able to get away with using 'nid miniatures given GW lawyers, but granted the actual art is distinct enough while being obviously tyranid and the backstory only shares a 'bioweapon created by alien race' and even then you can just argue Fiends arent really aliens (even though the flavour totally makes them out to be in this instance)

though i like how blatantly xenomorph their behaviours are.

ill take a looksie into kruthiks since i was looking for something that would basically work as reskinned thri-kreen in places that dont have thri-kreen in 5e yet. (i still find it funny how 3e kruthiks are still 'not tyranids')

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thanks for the stone juggernaut info, esp since i wasnt sure about the smart vs. not - i did think about making a mini-juggernaut as a warforged reskin but i wasnt sure about movement.

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okay, hit me on deadly dancers, and if there are any exotic weapons i can use to mimic them in any edition. i just like swords-for-arms ok

Well, if we're going to talk about deadly dancers, it's worth discussing Paimon the Dancer.

According to the 3E Tome of Magic, Paimon was a swashbuckling lothario who used his skill at dancing to seduce the ladies at court and his skill as a duelist to defeat their other suitors. But after Paimon humiliated one particularly vindictive noble, that rival conspired with Paimon's other enemies to capture Paimon and lop off his sword hand.

Undaunted, Paimon had his missing hand replaced with a golden prosthetic he could also swap out for a rapier blade, and after recovering, proceeded to fight and defeat his enemies, only sparing his deadliest rival at the request of the woman they were both courting. This mercy was repaid by that rival once again conspiring to capture Paimon, only this time the noble and his lackeys lopped off all of Paimon's limbs, replacing them with sword blades, then dared him to return to court.

At the next royal ball, that rival and the other nobles smirked and winked at each other whenever other guests wondered about Paimon's absence. But then a newcomer twirled onto the dance floor, impossibly tall and garbed in a dark shroud, under which bloody steel glinted. Many nobles fled the ballroom, but Paimon's main rival walked up to the spinning newcomer and tore the cloth away, revealing Paimon's tortured form. A woman screamed at the sight, and Paimon abruptly vanished.

The rival and other conspirators, thinking they had seen Paimon's ghost, went to find their foe's body for a proper burial, but instead saw a trail of blood and sword thrusts into the ground — Paimon had indeed survived his ordeal, only to be banished by a woman's scream.

Now Paimon exists as a vestige, appearing as a nearly-featureless gray figure with a dancer's physique, metal blades replacing his forearms and lower legs, and a face that appears stretched along the right side of his head, due to his habit of twirling and spinning counterclockwise while balanced on a blade-limb. Binders who call up Paimon display his facial disfigurement, but gain proficiency with the rapier and short sword, as well as some of Paimon's dexterity and uncanny dodging ability, and more dangerously can make whirlwind attacks against surrounding foes, or a "dance of death" to attack every foe they move past (provided they can avoid the ensuing attacks of opportunity).

The deadly dancers that so resemble Paimon in form and fighting style are thought to be descended from binders who summoned the vestige too many times. They seem to worship Paimon, marking their territory by carving his seal into trees and stones, and holding week-long revelries that culminate in coordinated dances that inscribe Paimon's seal across a large clearing. Without mouths, they cannot speak, but communicate with one another through dance, and can learn to understand other languages. Their lack of hands limits their society to a simple nomadic hunting culture relying on natural shelter to survive, though some unscrupulous folk secure deadly dancers' services as assassins, guards or gladiators by holding the bulk of a troupe hostage.

As for replicating Paimon and the deadly dancer's limb-blades, 3rd Edition had a "stump knife" exotic weapon that replaced a missing hand, functioning as a punching dagger that could not be disarmed and gained a critical hit bonus against foes the wielder had already hit and damaged. It shouldn't be hard to scale that up to a rapier or short sword blade. For 5th Edition, I'd talk with my GM and say that a limb-blade functions as a weapon that cannot be disarmed with the downside that it obviously doesn't function as a hand (or foot), which could result in disadvantage on certain checks. Going full Paimon and having four limb-blades would probably be more trouble than it's worth given how 5E handles dual-wielding and multiple attacks, but would at least make for a very distinctive character, if one unpopular with landlords due to wear and tear on floors.