Demon Lords

Abraxas

Master of the Final Incantation

CE male demon lord of forbidden lore, magic, and snakes

Cult

Unholy Symbol: demonic face with two snake tails descending from a mouth encircled by a serpent

Temple: libraries, reliquaries, vaults

Worshipers: drow, sorcerers, spirit nagas

Minions: mariliths, xacarbas, snakes

Obedience: Self-flagellate with a small whip or tree branch, punctuating each stroke with utterances of mystic words of power. Gain a +4 profane bonus on saves against charm effects and written magical effects.

Boons

Abraxas is a hideous creature with the head of a deformed and fanged bird and two writhing vipers in the place of legs. His torso is humanoid, and he wields a flail and shield, both of which have eerie and deadly powers: the flail can steal portions of a thinking creature’s mind or its prepared spells and give them to Abraxas for his use, while the shield can animate and attack foes as it continues to defend Abraxas. Abraxas knows countless destructive secrets and eldritch magical formulas, particularly those that cause great devastation and pain. His greatest weapon is the dreaded “Final Incantation,” a single potent word that can unmake magic.

Although Abraxas’s following is quite strong among the drow of Golarion, one can expect to find small cults of Abraxas in most large cities on the surface. His cult is particularly strong in Nex’s capital city of Quantium, where it maintains a notorious library called Scrivenbough, a fortified stone structure with countless rare books in its holdings, and cultists who tattoo their greatest secrets on hidden parts of their bodies.

Abraxas dwells in the realm of Pleroma, a deceptive world of false paradise maintained by complex illusions and clever construction. A visitor to Pleroma may not even realize she wanders an Abyssal realm, as the nefarious region reshapes itself between blinks and around every corner into places the traveler might view as serene and beautiful. Abraxas himself rules Pleroma from the spiral city of Diovengia. Hypnotic in its beauty, Diovengia consists of thousands of library towers and fortified repositories of hidden knowledge. Populated by serpents, enslaved souls, and plenty of demons, Diovengia’s libraries are sometimes visited by brave and curious seekers of knowledge—although one must be wary when bargaining with the custodians therein. The city itself is protected by a cabal of powerful marilith demons, who are themselves ruled by one of Abraxas’s favorite consorts and minions, the marilith Alistraxia (female marilith rogue 12).

Aldinach

She of the Six Venoms

CE female demon lord of sand, scorpions, and thirst

Cult

Unholy Symbol: gold scorpion with sand dripping from its claws

Temple: Barren valleys, burrows, caves, pyramids

Worshipers: Desert nomads, slavers, raiders

Minions: Fiendish earth elementals, giant scorpions

Obedience: Pray to Aldinach while lying prone on sand for an hour, during which time you must eat at least one live scorpion. Gain a +4 profane bonus on saves against poison from vermin and effects that cause fatigue or exhaustion.

Boons

Aldinach appears as a Colossal golden scorpion. Her claws have razor-sharp crystalline edges, and her face is hideously human. On her back swarm countless scorpions, which she can send out to do her bidding with a thought. Aldinach’s cults are strongest in deserts, particularly in Osirion’s wastelands and the remote reaches of Rahadoum, where her cultists work to seduce and corrupt that realm’s godless citizens.

Aldinach is one of Lamashtu’s daughters, although since Lamashtu’s ascension to divinity, the two have not associated overmuch. The same cannot be said of her relationship with her sister Areshkagal, with whom Aldinach is locked in an eternal war. Ever since Aldinach stole the Abyssal realm known as the Sea of Whispering Sands from her sister, forcing Areshkagal into exile in the desolate Blood Clefts, Aldinach has been forced to defend her desert realm constantly from her sister’s increasingly desperate attempts to reclaim her lost territory. Although she has ruled the Whispering Sands for only a few dozen centuries, already she has inspired her minions to create hundreds of eerie desert cities in her honor, hidden amid the trackless sands.

Andirifkhu

The Razor Princess

CE female demon lord of illusions, traps, and knives

Cult

Unholy Symbol: skull pierced by six thin blades

Temple: Dungeons, labyrinths, torture chambers

Worshipers: Bugbears, derros, drow, illusionists, sadists, torturers

Minions: Mariliths, retrievers, illusion-using monsters

Obedience: Torture a living creature that is smaller than your size category on a mechanical device that utilizes blades or spikes, or torture a bound creature of any size with a knife. The creature must remain alive for the duration, and must die within 1 minute of the obedience’s end. Gain a +4 profane bonus on saves against illusions and a +4 profane bonus to AC against traps that inflict slashing damage.

Boons

Andirif khu is the patron of the debased illusionist, the cruel torturer, and the sadistic inventor. Her cultists are fond of building trap-ridden dungeons and sending sacrifices through to die on spikes, swinging blades, or spear tips within—sacrifices who manage to escape are hobbled or otherwise crippled and then put through the gauntlet again and again until they eventually succumb.

Andirif khu appears as a towering, beautiful woman with green, scaled skin and long, crimson hair. She has ophidian eyes, and she has six arms that all wield different blades, although her favorite weapons are kukris. Her worship is strong among the drow and certain noble families in Galt and Northern Taldor, who venerate her in secret and look to her for inspiration in methods of torture and extracting information from prisoners.

Andirif hku’s realm on the Abyss is the Vault of Ten Thousand Deaths, an immense, trap-filled labyrinth rumored to have hidden connections to hundreds of dungeons scattered throughout the multiverse. Those who stumble into the Vault via one of these obscure portals typically find themselves stranded in the Abyss, for these entrances are one-way only. Andirif hku dwells at the center of this continent-sized dungeon, and it is said that those who manage to navigate the Vault and reach her lair have been so traumatized and transformed by their experiences in the Vault that they have no choice but to become her favored slaves.

Angazhan

The Ravenous King

CE male demon lord of apes, jungles, and brutal tyrants

Cult

Unholy Symbol: demonic ape face

Temple: Jungle glade, ruined city, ziggurat

Worshipers: Charau-ka, high girallons, jungle warlords

Minions: Fiendish dire apes of immense size, girallons, jungle monsters

Obedience: Ingest hallucinogenic jungle plants and then beat a complex rhythm on a large drum made of human skin and bones while chanting prayers to Angazhan. Gain a +4 profane bonus on saves against disease and poison caused by exposure to the jungle or creatures native to jungles.

Boons

Angazhan appears as a towering, blood-red ape with six long fingers, tusk-like teeth, and relatively small, bloodshot eyes. His worship is strongest in the Mwangi Expanse, where his chattering brood, the simian charau-ka (known also as ape-men—see World Guide: The Inner Sea) hold court in jungle-choked ruins and feast on the flesh of human chattle. Angazhan is also served by nalfeshnee demons, and although most nalfeshnees are too proud and self-absorbed to admit that Angazhan is their lord, he is nonetheless served in his jungle realm of Ahvoth-Kor by hundreds of them, if not thousands.

Angazhan’s presence in the Mwangi Expanse is of particular note for its exceptional length—explorers have encountered his minions for thousands of years, and the general consensus is that Angazhan has held power in the Expanse for far longer than humanity has ruled nations on Garund. His favored agents are known as the Gorilla Kings—although only one Gorilla King rules in the Mwangi Expanse a time, there have been hundreds of these violent jungle tyrants over the centuries, each reincarnated into its simian form by potent artifacts.

Ahvoth-Kor is an expansive Abyssal realm—a seemingly endless jungle that stretches along opposing faces of a vast Abyssal rift. Gravity in Ahvoth-Kor pulls toward the walls of this rift, so that someone standing in the jungle realm in an area where the canopy above is open to the sky can look up to the opposite rift’s jungle, although thick mists and clouds usually obscure the view. In places, immense trees and thick vines bridge the gulf between the twin jungles. Both jungles are rife with dreadful simian life, fiendish dinosaurs, and megalithic nalfeshnee-ruled cities populated by demons and other fiends. The point at the bottom of the rift where the jungles meet lies tens of thousands of miles below, and it is here that Angazhan’s palace squats—an immense ziggurat of black stone straddling several deeper rifts that lead into uncharted horrors of the Abyss and often belch forth qlippoth monstrosities or other alien horrors.

Areshkagal

The Faceless Sphinx

CE female demon lord of greed, magical and mundane portals, and riddles

Cult

Unholy Symbol: a faceless woman’s head decorated with a bloody pharaoh’s headdress

Temple: Megaliths, pyramids, stone archways, and stone sphinxes

Worshipers: Avaricious rulers, dragons, drow

Minions: Evil sphinxes, golems

Obedience: Inscribe several of the 23 riddles of the flesh (an interlocked series of conundrums, the answer to which no mortal has achieved) on your own flesh with a tiny bone knife carved from a child’s rib. Gain a +4 profane bonus on Will saving throws against sonic and language-dependent effects.

Boons

Areshkagal appears as a faceless female sphinx with six legs, midnight blue fur, and pale flesh. Her wings are draconic and her tail is a hissing viper—it is from this viper’s mouth that she whispers her unfair riddles to those she captures. Rumors hold that her actual face is too hideous for even the Abyss to bear, but that for brief moments she can reveal its true appearance to drive viewers insane, strike them dead, or worse.

Areshkagal’s realm is a barren region of crimson, stony hills and gulches through which seep rivers of blood. Known as the Blood Clefts, this region abuts Aldinach’s Abyssal realm of the Sea of Whispering Sands, a realm that Areshkagal once called her own. The displaced demon lord often sends her armies into the desert to torment those of her half-sister Aldinach in hopes of someday regaining control over her realm, but to date her armies have been unable to match the power of Aldinach’s forces. It is said that Areshkagal’s treasury still lies hidden somewhere below the Sea of Whispering Sands, and that Aldinach has yet to locate this vast vault. What riches might lie within the lost treasury have long tempted adventurers and demons alike.

Baphomet

Lord of the Minotaurs

CE male demon lord of beasts, labyrinths, and minotaurs

Baphomet Complete Statistics

Cult

Unholy Symbol: a brass minotaur’s head with ruby eyes

Temple: Basements, catacombs, labyrinths

Worshipers: Conspirators, minotaurs, secret societies

Minions: Chimeras, fiendish carnivorous animals (particularly carnivorous aurochs or bison), gorgons

Obedience: Remain motionless for 55 minutes, and then spend the last 5 minutes speaking 50 observations regarding your surroundings into a hollowed-out bull’s horn. Gain immunity to maze and a +4 profane bonus on saving throws against confusion and insanity effects.

Boons

Although he is traditionally the god of the minotaur race, Baphomet’s cult is on the rise among humanity. His human worshipers hold sermons in his name in secret and hand down his teachings along family lines across generations, forming secretive societies that tend to have much political power in Golarion’s larger cities. They remain silent about their allegiance to Baphomet, however, patiently awaiting a time when he might call upon them to rise up against their enemies and return the world to the dominion of the beast. These secret societies use complex signs, hand gestures, passwords, and sigils to identify themselves to each other and pass messages—in these communications, they use their “true names” and refer to themselves as the Templars of the Ivory Labyrinth in honor of Baphomet’s labyrinthine Abyssal realm.

Baphomet ascended to the status of demon lord from the soul of the first and greatest minotaur, a beast created by Lamashtu to serve as a leader for her latest creations. He remains one of Lamashtu’s favored consorts to this day, and she often visits the demon lord in his Ivory Labyrinth. Baphomet appears as a muscular humanoid with a bull’s head; he is only rarely depicted without his cruel glaive of red adamantine in hand (a weapon said to be able to cause particularly horrid and painful wounds to good targets). He is served by glabrezu demons, who often act as advisors to his Templars and even seed new cults in cities not yet tainted by his word.

Cyth-V’sug

Prince of the Blasted Heath

CE male demon lord of disease, fungus, and parasites

Cult

Unholy Symbol: mold-caked severed tentacle coiled in a spiral

Temple: Caverns, dead or fallen trees, diseased forests, sewers

Worshipers: Alchemists, black dragons, derros, drow, ex-druids, polluters, evil vegepygmies

Minions: Fungal creatures, giant vermin, mandragoras, swarms

Obedience: Eat moldering flesh rife with parasitic worms and drink putrid alcohol distilled from strange fungi during a 1-hour feast. You gain a +4 profane bonus on all saving throws against disease and effects that cause nausea.

Boons

Cyth-V’sug’s realm is both a place and a being—an immense parasitic fungus called the Jeharlu capable of extending tendrils into other planes, corrupting them, and then drawing them into the Abyss to expand itself. A quivering, spherical clot of fungal matter much larger than the largest of planets, the Jeharlu lies at the center of an immense cavern, suspended by thick white filaments that attach it to the surrounding rift. Pallid giant worms (fiendish 32 HD Colossal purple worms), moldering shamblers (Gargantuan 24 HD half-fiend shambling mounds), deformed fungoid dragons (half-fiend green or blue dragons with the fungal creature template), and all manner of demons are but a few of the Jeharlu’s dangers. Cyth-V’sug dwells at the heart of this fungal sphere, an immense monstrosity that appears as a tangled mass of fungal tubers, tentacles, and grasping claws topped by a heaving draconic body with puff ball eyes and jagged teeth. Cyth-V’sug can be thought of as a planetary parasite that infests worlds and consumes them, adding the waste that he leaves behind to his ever-expanding Abyssal realm.

One of Cyth-V’sug’s greatest minions, the nascent demon lord Treerazer, recently established a domain on the Material Plane after a failed coup against Cyth-V’sug, yet curiously, the Prince of the Blasted Heath has done little to strike against his wayward minion since.

Dagon

The Shadow in the Sea

CE male demon lord of deformity, the sea, and sea monsters

Dagon Complete Statistics

Cult

Unholy Symbol: gold disk inscribed with sinister runes around an open octopus eye

Temple: Decaying seaside churches, lighthouses, sea caves, underwater cathedrals

Worshipers: Desperate or insane coastal dwellers, boggards, heretical sahuagin and skum, krakens, marsh giants

Minions: Devilfish, fiendish water elementals, krakens, shoggoths, other sea monsters

Obedience: Offer a bowl of fresh blood to Dagon by speaking prayers over the blood and then emptying the blood into the sea. The bowl must be made of gold and inscribed with runes sacred to Dagon—such a bowl must be worth no less than 100 gp, but can be reused for multiple obediences. Gain a +4 profane bonus against the extraordinary or supernatural attacks of creatures with the aquatic or water subtype.

Boons

Dagon dwells in the Abyssal Sea of Ishiar in a sunken city called Ugothanok. The surface of this Abyssal Sea is dotted with countless islands, many of which are settled by fiendish and half-fiend humans known as Ishians who wage constant nautical warfare upon each other in a never-ending battle to claim new islands and impress Dagon with their cruelties.

Not quite fish or octopus or eel, Dagon is fond of sending his spawn into the oceans of the Material Plane to spread his influence, often physically by breeding with creatures of the deeps or among isolated coastal-dwelling societies. Marsh giants are traditionally among his most fervent worshipers on land, yet in certain remote locations (particularly along the western coastlines of Avistan and Garund), his cult is growing among humans. A village that turns to the worship of Dagon often does so secretly, maintaining a facade of worshiping another deity when in fact the town’s devotions are for the Shadow in the Sea. In the most remote locations, these cults mix with sahuagin, boggards, and other hideous aquatic creatures. The deformed hybrid children of such blasphemous unions are sure signs of Dagon worship. In these regions, such deformities are regarded as badges of honor.

Deskari

Lord of the Locust Host

CE male demon lord of chasms, infestations, and locusts

Cult

Unholy Symbol: crossed locust wings dripping with blood

Temple: Caverns, rifts, ruined churches

Worshipers: Denizens of the Worldwound, doomsayers, worms that walk

Minions: Giant vermin, retrievers, swarms, vermleks

Obedience: Meditate while allowing insects or worms of any type to crawl upon your body—if no such vermin is available, you must instead lie face-down in a trench dug into soil and mouth prayers to Deskari into the dirt while scratching yourself with sharp bits of bone or wood. Gain a +4 profane bonus on all saving throws against disease and against effects caused by vermin.

Boons

Thought to be Pazuzu’s greatest son, Deskari is believed by many scholars to be the Usher of the Apocalypse. He and his cult long plagued the northern nation of Sarkoris, where his cultists were eventually driven into the Lake of Mists and Veils by Aroden. Yet upon Aroden’s death, Deskari’s influence on Golarion ripened and burst, transforming Sarkoris into the demon-haunted Worldwound. The blighted land is barely held in check today through the diligence of crusaders from Mendev and the south, who fear that the Worldwound could eventually spread to engulf all of Avistan remain.

Cults of Deskari continue to prosper and cause problems in Mendev, northeastern Numeria, and Brevoy, yet it is in the Worldwound itself that the presence of the Lord of the Locust Host can most strongly be felt. Here, armies of bickering fiends are led by powerful, unique demons, and the very land itself shakes in pain.

Deskari’s Abyssal realm, a horrific maze of chasms known as the Rasping Rifts, features many direct portals to the growing rift of the Worldwound. Deskari appears as an insectoid creature, vaguely humanoid above the waist and locust-like below, with wings made of swarming insects and hands holding a terrible scythe known as the Riftcarver—a powerful weapon that can be used to create earthquakes or cut chasms into the ground, among other things.

Flauros

The Burning Maw

CE male demon lord of fire, salamanders, and volcanoes

Cult

Unholy Symbol: fanged mouth drooling lava

Temple: Caverns, lava caves, volcanoes

Worshipers: Arsonists, drow, fire giants, evil metalworkers, red dragons, salamanders

Minions: Brimoraks, fiendish fire elementals

Obedience: Burn a valuable non-magical object (something worth at least 100 gp) or any living creature as an offering and eat the ashes. Gain a +4 profane bonus on all saving throws against fire effects.

Boons

Flauros appears as an immense reptilian monster with red-hot lava for skin and a humanoid torso. In places, his flesh cools to the sheen of volcanic glass, only to crack open and melt anew as his liquid interior boils up to the surface. He wields a jagged obsidian spear in his muscular arms; this spear can transform into a 60-foot-long lash of lava, and can instantly immolate mortal foes it strikes. His head is mostly fanged mouth, from which thick rivulets of magma, clouds of smoke, and tongues of fire emerge.

As a demon of fire and lava, Flauros is favored by the salamander race. The Mistress of Fire, a jealous and vindictive elemental named Ymeri, has long waged war against Flauros for the salamanders’ worship, but on this front Flauros has traditionally been the victor. Flauros is also worshiped by the drow, particularly those who dwell in volcanic regions or pride themselves on crafting weaponry in lava forges. He is known to count fire giants, red dragons, and countless humanoid arsonists among his faithful as well.

Flauros’s abyssal realm is known as the Bloodpyre Fields, an immense cavern lit by the searing fires of a semicircular arc of volcanoes that surround the shores of an ocean of lava. This molten sea pours off the side of a bottomless chasm, yet never drains. Flauros dwells in the caldera of the largest volcano, in a castle of torrid adamantine suspended over a boiling crater by immense chains. A great wyrm red dragon named Fhengasma dwells in the lake below—many believe that she and Flauros are lovers, and that her offspring compose the large number of half-fiend red dragons that rule the other volcanoes of this realm. Certainly Flauros has been known to send these Abyssal dragons to the Material Plane to do his work, and their devastating visits can lay entire nations to waste in a matter of days.

Gogunta

Song of the Swamp

CE female demon lord of amphibians, boggards, and swamps

Cult

Unholy Symbol: fetish of a boggard or frog made of twigs

Temple: Bog island, marshy pool, swamp deadfall

Worshipers: Boggards, chuuls

Minions: Froghemoths, giant frogs, hezrous

Obedience: Drown a living creature in swamp water (or at the very least, in muddy water), then impale the dead body on a sharp branch so wild creatures can feast on it. After impaling the creature, you must spend the rest of your obedience meditating on the sound of fluid dripping from its sodden body. Gain a +4 profane bonus on saves against disease and poison caused by exposure to the jungle or creatures native to swamps.

Boons

The goddess of the boggards, Gogunta began her life as a mighty mobogo (Pathfinder Adventure Path #12). Her route to ascension as a demon lord is believed by the boggards to have been the result of a life spent slaughtering just the right creatures and feeding on just the right parts of their bodies. Scholars of the demonic believe it more likely that she was a herzrou in Dagon’s service who ascended to the role of demon lord by more traditional means—certainly she favors the hezrous as guardians and lovers, and often sends them to guard or even lead boggard tribes on the Material Plane (particularly tribes in Varisia’s Mushfens, the River Kingdoms, or the Sodden Lands).

Gogunta is unusual among the demon lords in that her realm is not wholly her own—the stinking saltmarsh of Mephizim is a vast region, yet it is contained wholly within the realm of Dagon’s Ishiar. Mephizim floats upon the surface of the vast sea of Ishiar, being pulled idly along by the current. Despite the swampy island’s continental size, it remains a relative speck on the surface of the great Abyssal sea. Dagon seems content to let Gogunta rule her tiny realm above his own, ignoring her blasphemous cavortings. Gogunta’s cult often mingles freely with that of Dagon on the Material Plane, with her boggards and Dagon’s cultists mixing and mating in disgusting ways that nature never intended.

Gogunta appears as an immense, multi-headed frog with too many eyes and even more tongues, but in some boggard artwork she appears instead as an immense boggard queen.

Haagenti

The Whispers Within

CE male demon lord of alchemy, invention, and transformation

Cult

Unholy Symbol: the philosopher’s stone

Temple: Foundry, laboratory, library

Worshipers: Alchemists, drow, non-werewolf lycanthropes, shapechangers

Minions: Golems, magical beasts, mutated animals, non-werewolf lycanthropes, oozes, retrievers

Obedience: Practice the Divine Experiment by following the procedure to transmute lead into gold; this process normally requires a philosopher’s stone, but for this obedience, the thaumaturge can substitute any material for lead—it’s not the actual transmutation that functions as the obedience, but the act of going through the motions. Gain a +4 profane bonus against transmutation effects.

Boons

Of the demon lords, there is a perception that Haagenti is among the least destructive and most reasonable. Of course, this impression is little more than smoke and mirrors, for Haagenti is as cruel and sadistic as demon lords get—the usefulness of his alchemical creations and wondrous inventions is simply his method of subtly influencing the development of society. Many scholars believe that Haagenti is responsible for guiding many of humanity’s greatest minds to discover new and deadly methods of inflicting destruction and pain on each other. The greatest secret he has revealed to mortal life is the method of transmuting lead into gold using a philosopher’s stone, but he is the author of other secrets, such as the method of creating retrievers or the basis of drow fleshwarping.

Haagenti has a myriad of forms, and can change his appearance at will—he typically appears as a member of the same race as those he is interacting with. Rumor holds that his true form is that of a demonic winged bull.

Haagenti’s realm on the Abyss is called Cerebulim. This region is an immense collection of laboratories, libraries, torture chambers, bestiaries, and other chambers that Haagenti can shift around and rearrange to suit his preferences, causing them to grind into new layouts with the thrum of immense, unseen clockwork gears.

Jezelda

Mistress of the Hungry Moon

CE female demon lord of desolation, the moon, and werewolves

Cult

Unholy Symbol: full moon rising above a desolate moor

Temple: Forest glade, remote farmhouse, standing stones

Worshipers: Debased rural folk, lunatics, werewolves

Minions: Dire wolves, wolves, worgs

Obedience: Under the night sky, you must offer up prayers to the moon. On nights when there is no moon, you must supplement your prayers by sacrificing an intelligent creature of your own race by tearing out its throat with your teeth and feeding on the still-warm body. Gain a +4 profane bonus on all saving throws made when the moon is visible in the night sky.

Boons

In certain rural areas of the world, particularly in the region around Darkmoon Vale and the darkened woodlands of Lozeri in northern Ustalav, the barrier between human and wolf grows thin on nights of the full moon. 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 dark-haired 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. Good-aligned lycanthropes in particular raise Jezelda’s ire, and such a sacrifice almost always curries her favor.

Jezelda’s realm on the Abyss is known as the Moonbog. This vast realm is large enough to contain a single glowing moon high above—the “stars” in the night sky are said to be the eyes of her favored wolf consorts looking down upon the realm below. Below, the Moonbog consists of vast stretches of moorland separated by winding wetlands of bogs and fens infested with all manner of monstrous denizens—the deeper and more remote of these bogs are often ruled by powerful hezrous or half-fiend froghemoths. Yet it is on the moors themselves where the true dangers of this realm can be found—for it is here that Jezelda and her favored consorts hunt under the wan light of the moon. These moors are populated by isolated communities of humanoids harvested from countless worlds. Jezelda enjoys moving from one village to the other, constantly hunting while her minions work furiously to abduct and repopulate the realm behind her so she need never be faced with an empty realm.

Jubilex

The Faceless Lord

CE male demon lord of ooze monsters, poison, and sloth

Jubilex Complete Statistics

Cult

Unholy Symbol: a melting red eye

Temple: Caverns, junkyards, sewers

Worshipers: Drow, drug users, poisoners, the slothful

Minions: Oozes

Obedience: Submerge a small, severed piece of a human body in a vial of acid and chant praise to Jubilex as the flesh dissolves. Gain a +4 profane bonus on all saving throws against poison.

Boons

Of the demon lords listed here, Jubilex is perhaps the one least concerned with maintaining a cult. His favored minions, the omoxes (Pathfinder Adventure Path #16), do more to spread his cults than he does—in fact, it’s debatable whether Jubilex even realizes he has worshipers. 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. Yet despite the Faceless Lord’s lack of interest in his faithful, he certainly knows of the Material Plane and enjoys absorbing the bodies of unwilling mortals into his protoplasmic bulk.

Jubilex appears as a shapeless green mass of ooze shot through with dark ribbons of tar and hundreds of glaring red eyes the size of a man’s head. His realm on the Abyss is called the Undersump, and consists of a tangled warren of sewer-like catacombs and tunnels that winds below dozens of other Abyssal realms—many creatures use the Undersump as a method of covertly moving from one such realm to the other, but they must take care to avoid Jubilex’s awareness when they do. Of course, Jubilex’s wanderings and attention to the regions of the Undersump are basically random, and certain parts of the realm are so rarely visited by the Faceless Lord that other strange and dangerous creatures have claimed them.

Kabriri

Him Who Gnaws

CE male demon lord of ghouls, graves, and secrets kept by the dead

Cult

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, 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. Gain a +4 profane bonus on all saving throws against paralysis and against disease effects from undead.

Boons

It is said that when the first humanoid (according to most tales, an elf) to feed upon the flesh of his brother died, he was reborn in the Abyss in a vast necropolis that the plane created in his honor. Kabriri’s teachings are popular among the ghouls of the world, particularly those who dwell in the Darklands city of Nemret-Noktoria deep under Osirion. Kabriri appears as a muscular ghoul with pointed ears, sharp teeth, a long tongue, and pale gray flesh. His eyes are beady and red, his hands are talons, and his feet hooves. His favored weapon is a two-headed flail 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 flesh of the living to rot away.

Kabriri’s Abyssal necropolis is a realm called Everglut—an immense city of ghouls and worse creatures built into a vast cavern with countless stairways leading up to tunnels in the roof above, which in turn lead to a tangled network that connects to graveyards throughout the multiverse. Lit by strange green light, the libraries of Everglut are unusually vast.

Kostchtchie

The Deathless Frost

CE male demon lord of cold, giants, and revenge

Kostchtchie Complete Statistics

Cult

Unholy Symbol: ice-caked, rune-carved warhammer

Temple: Frozen castles, glacier fortresses, icy mountain caves

Worshipers: Ettins, frost giants, hill giants, ogres, white dragons

Minions: Half-fiend yetis, ice golems, ice linnorms, remorhazes

Obedience: Spill the blood of a living creature onto snow-covered ground; the creature must remain alive during the entire obedience, and must die within a minute of the obedience’s end. Gain a +4 bonus on all saving throws against cold.

Boons

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 fled 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. Kostchtchie’s current goal is the destruction of Irrisen and the recovery of the torc that contains the fragment of his previous soul, in the hope that its return might reverse his deformity without removing his immortality. 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. He is never seen without his warhammer, an adamantine maul of such prodigious size that even the strongest frost giant would have trouble wielding it properly, but which appears almost weightless in Kostchtchie’s grizzled hands. 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.

Lamashtu

The Demon Queen

CE female demon lord of madness, monsters, and nightmares

Cult

Unholy Symbol: three-eyed jackal head

Temple: caves, dungeons, natural rock platforms, standing stones

Worshipers: the insane, bugbears, derros, gnolls, lamias, morlocks, ogres

Minions: all demons and monsters (particularly yeth hounds), hyenas, jackals

Obedience: Engage in a tryst with the sincere intention of being impregnated or impregnating your partner, or sacrifice a creature that has been alive for no more than a week. Gain a +4 profane bonus on saves against insanity, confusion, and polymorph effects.

Boons

Lamashtu appears as a heavily pregnant human woman with the head of a three-eyed jackal, a raven’s wings, a snake’s tail, and a vulture’s feet. Her distended belly is crisscrossed with ragged scars, and she wields twin blades—Redlust (a blade made of sentient fire) and Chillheart (a blade made of sentient ice). The length of these blades varies from that of a kukri to that of a falchion—in art, she is often depicted with kukris, but in battle, she prefers to wield both as falchions with horrific skill.

Gnolls claim that when Lamashtu first saw a hyena, she took it as her consort, and thus the original gnoll was born. Other races tell similar stories, citing the Mother of Monsters as their race’s progenitor, in carnal conjunction with some beast. Lamashtu revels in destroying the most innocent, whether by defiling their flesh or tainting their minds. To her, a nursery is a banquet. She is a fertility goddess, but while those who pray to her are more likely to survive childbirth, their offspring are inevitably tainted. She is called the Demon Queen, the Mother of Beasts, and the Demon Mother. Despite her titles, she is not the creator of the demon race as a whole, merely the first of their kind to achieve true godhood. While many of the demon lords loathe her or envy her power, only a few (notably the demon lords Nocticula and Pazuzu) openly oppose or threaten her.

Indeed, the battles between Lamashtu and Pazuzu are the stuff of legend. While Lamashtu has greater power on her side, Pazuzu has fewer responsibilities and can thus devote more of his time to his pursuit of toppling his ancient enemy from her throne. Countless worlds bear the scars of their conflicts—conflicts that invariably rise from the slightest of imbalances, when a priest of one or the other secures an advantage over the enemy cult. Over time—be it days, years, or centuries—such conflicts escalate until finally the two demons send their direct agents (or, rarely, appear themselves) to do battle again. That Pazuzu has not yet been killed by his more powerful enemy speaks greatly to the demon lord’s tenacity—yet he has also failed so far to strike a decisive blow against the Queen of Demons. Priests of both faiths know that it has been some time since the last confrontation between these two enemies, and that the time is nigh for another. Cultists on both sides are desperate to determine the site where this conflict is to take place, so as to be there to lend what support they can.

Lamashtu is served by countless species of monsters. She is said to have created the lamia race, and her worship may have had something to do with the transformation of exiled Azlanti into the morlocks. In her Abyssal realm, she is further served by her favored daughters, seven powerful demonic sorceresses called the Seven Witches. Her herald is the Yethazmari, a winged jackal with a snake’s tail and empty eye sockets that emit smoke. She considers all other gods enemies, although she focuses on nurturing her children and expanding the lands for them to inhabit. She knows Desna hates her for killing the god Curchanus and defiling his faith, but Lamashtu treats Desna as beneath her notice. Her greatest foes are Urgathoa, Rovagug, and the demon lord Pazuzu, although Nocticula’s swift rise in power (along a trajectory of divine murder that bears more than a passing resemblance to Lamashtu’s) has recently caught the Demon Queen’s attention as well.

The Demon Queen’s church operates on the outskirts of civilization. Her worship typically occurs atop flat, bloodstained rocks or within rings of stones, trees, or logs carved with the goddess’s image. Some use a deep hole in the ground or some sort of chasm representing an entrance to the goddess’s underworld realm. Hidden cathedrals and temples to Lamashtu are unsettlingly common, both in the wilds and below the streets of urban centers.

Mazmezz

The Creeping Queen

CE female demon lord of bindings, driders, and vermin

Cult

Unholy Symbol: skull at the center of a spiderweb

Temple: Caverns, web labyrinths

Worshipers: Driders, drow, insane ettercaps

Minions: Bebiliths, retrievers, spiders and other vermin

Obedience: Bind a living creature so only a few key portions of anatomy (such as the belly, mouth, or eyes) remain exposed, allowing you to torment these exposed areas with needles, tiny knives, or poisonous vermin. Gain a +4 profane bonus on grapple checks and to CMD.

Boons

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. At the center, a sickening clot of wriggling hair boils around a roughly spherical body, the only concession toward a “front” being an immense spider’s mouth filled with thrashing pedipalps and fangs. Mazmezz has the insidious ability to wrap herself in gauzy, vexing swaths of webbing that can magically alter her form to anything she can imagine—the form of a beautiful woman or female drider is a particular favorite when she’s dealing with those she might wish to capture and keep as trophies for her horrific harem. 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 fiends grown to great size. Legend holds that the first bebiliths were spawned by Mazmezz; if true, this would explain the disgust and hatred with which most other demon lords hold the Creeping Queen.

Mestama

The Mother of Witches

CE female demon lord of cruelty, deception, and hags

Cult

Unholy Symbol: human eye balanced atop three sharp stones

Temple: Abandoned buildings (particularly churches or schools), old houses, swampy islands

Worshipers: Annis hags, banshees, green hags, sea hags, spurned lovers, vengeful widows, witches

Obedience: Perform an act of cruelty upon a nonbeliever of Mestama after spending an hour observing the nonbeliever— preferably from a vantage unknown by the vicitm. This act must, at the very least, incite the victim to tears or anger. Gain a +4 profane bonus on saves against illusions.

Boons

Patron of hags, witches, and vengeful widows, Mestama takes great delight in murdering young women on the night before their wedding day so she can take their form and wed their husbands-to-be, only to return to her true form (that of a fanged crone with sunken black eyes, talons, raven wings, and a donkey’s tail) at the height of the wedding’s consummation that evening, at which point she castrates the husband and vanishes. 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.

Mestama’s cult is a hateful one, composed entirely of eunuchs or women who live for the spread of cruelty through deception. 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.

Nocticula

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, 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. Gain a +4 profane bonus on saves against blindness and charm effects.

Boons

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. Even demon lords aren’t safe from her deadly seductions; the number of demon lords she’s seduced and assassinated is formidable—among her greatest triumphs is Vyriavaxus, the Demon Lord of Shadows. 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. Nocticula is one of the most popular demons among the drow, but she is also worshiped in places of decadence like Katapesh, Nex, Geb, and certain River Kingdoms. Recently, Lamashtu’s cult has taken notice of Nocticula’s rising power and has increased the level of hostility with her worshipers, causing some to believe that Nocticula may be close to becoming the second demon to ascend to divinity.

Nocticula’s Abyssal realm consists of dozens of islands on an immense sea of still black water. The sky is always dark here, with strange stars and a disturbingly large moon in the sky above. Each of these Midnight Isles represents a demon lord or other notable entity she’s assassinated—with each new kill, her realm grows. 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.

Nurgal

The Shining Scourge

CE male demon lord of the deserts, the sun, and senseless warfare

Cult

Unholy Symbol: a sun clenched in a lion’s jaws

Temple: Desert ruins, mountaintop monasteries, observatories

Worshipers: Dragons, mercenaries, those who fear the sun, warlike desert nomads

Minions: Desert-dwelling creatures, lions and leonine creatures (such as chimeras and manticores)

Obedience: Offer prayers to Nurgal during an hour-long ritual of self-flagellation with a salt-encrusted whip—the ritual must end at noon. 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. Gain a +4 profane bonus on all Fortitude saving throws against effects that cause fatigue or exhaustion, or that damage, drain, or penalize ability scores.

Boons

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.

Nurgal’s faith was quite strong in ancient Azlant, and not a few Azlanti ruins bear evidence of this connection in carvings that depict a fanged mouth around a sun or the presence of lion-like monsters. 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. Narrow gorges hundreds of miles long connect Kuthan to its neighboring realm, the Sea of Whispering Sands, where Nurgal’s lover, Areshkagal, used to rule before being banished to the Blood Clefts by her sister. 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.

Orcus

Prince of Undeath

CE male demon lord of death, necromancy, and wrath

Orcus Complete Statistics

Cult

Unholy Symbol: a goat ’s head with red eyes and four horns

Temple: Burial vaults, caverns, towers

Worshipers: Derros, necromancers, powerful undead (particularly liches or mummies), thanatotic titans

Minions: Undead, vermleks

Obedience: Grind a half-pound of bones from the skeleton of a sentient creature, mix with water to create a gray paste, and then eat it at the end of a long recitation of prayers to Orcus. Gain a +4 profane bonus on all saving throws against death and negative energy effects.

Boons

Although Orcus doesn’t have a strong following on Golarion (his worship is mostly restricted to the nation of Geb and certain backwater regions in Nidal), he has far more dealings with other worlds than most of Golarion’s demon lords. 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. Of course, fierce competition for worshipers with the cults of Zura and Kabriri and the church of Urgathoa is a more likely reason why Orcus’s cult on Golarion isn’t more widespread.

Orcus appears as an immense, fat humanoid with a ram’s head, bat-like wings, cloven feet, and a long tail ending in a stinger. 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.

Pazuzu

King of the Wind Demons

CE male demon lord of the sky, temptation, and winged creatures

Pazuzu Complete Statistics

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, 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. Gain a +4 profane bonus on all saving throws against effects from flying creatures and compulsion effects.

Boons

Pazuzu appears as a wiry human with eagle’s legs and talons, a demonic avian head, two pairs of bird wings, a scorpion tail, and a writhing snake in place of his genitals. 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 fly, particularly vrocks and harpies. 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 conflict with Lamashtu has prevented him from achieving greater power or perhaps even godhood himself—a fact that only serves to spur his unending conflict with the Mother of Monsters.

Pazuzu’s Abyssal realm of High M’Vania exists on the side of one of the great Abyssal rifts. 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’s personal rookery is a tangle of towers called Shibaxet—a place only his most trusted minions or his favored meals ever get to see.

Shax

The Blood Marquis

CE male demon lord of envy, lies, and particularly violent murder

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. Gain a +4 profane bonus against effects that cause bleed and figment illusions.

Boons

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.

Shax appears as a human man with a dove’s head, bird’s legs, and an immense collection of knives and other bloodstained weaponry. 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.

Shax’s realm is the appropriately named Charnelhome, an immense house the size of a city perched atop a slightly slanted bluff surrounded by a vast bog of thorny, blood-drinking plants. Each of Charnelhome’s rooms contains a different insidious deathtrap or horrific guardian—Shax is fond of releasing victims into a wing of the vast manor so he can watch them try to escape, often posing as a fellow prisoner so that the demon lord can experience the victim’s despair and fear on as intimate a level as possible.

Shivaska

The Chained Maiden

CE female demon lord of aberrations, clocks, and prisons

Cult

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. Gain a +4 profane bonus to your CMD.

Boons

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.

Shivaska’s cult has a particular interest in orphanages, and an unsettling number of these institutions have ties to the Chained Maiden. 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 floorboards work quite well to keep child laborers in line.

Shivaska’s realm on the Abyss is a gloomy temperate wilderness known as the Winding Wood. Her palace, the Ticking House, is an immense workhouse with a huge clock tower, the face of which accounts for 13 hours rather than 12. This clock is kept running by the constant toil of a small army of abducted children.

Sifkesh

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, 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. Gain a +4 profane bonus on saving throws against mind-affecting effects.

Boons

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. She seeks not to destroy the body but to twist the mind away from purity, to seduce men and women of faith into betraying their religions in blasphemous ways that cause lingering damage to their faith’s reputation in society. Her greatest pleasure is to be with a fallen priest when he or she realizes what has been done and seeks suicide as the answer, for then Sif kesh can snatch away the heretic’s soul and consume it.

Sif kesh appears as a thin human woman with snow-white bird wings and stringy black hair that drips blood. 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 floats independently, not quite moving in sync with the rest. Many believe Sif kesh was originally a powerful erinyes devil who became one of Hell’s first heretics. 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.

Sifkesh’s Abyssal realm is Vantian, the legendary City of Open Windows. 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. Vantian’s inhabitants constantly rebuild along the city’s far side, barely keeping pace with its destruction. It is said that false temples of every religion can be found in Vantian, all tended by fallen priests who took their own lives.

Socothbenoth

The Silken Sin

CE male demon lord of perversion, pride, and taboos

Cult

Unholy Symbol: eyeless snake coiled around a bejeweled staff

Temple: Desecrated churches, dungeons, harems, secret cathedrals, prisons, torture chambers

Worshipers: Deviant rulers, drow, half-fiends, hedonists

Minions: Half-fiend animals, half-fiend magical beasts, seraptis demons, succubi

Obedience: Achieve sexual release, either alone or with a partner, and then defile a page torn from the religious canon of a lawful good deity. Gain a +4 bonus on saves against enchantment effects.

Boons

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. These alliances are prone to transformation into warfare at times as disagreements and arguments flare, but it is with his hated enemy Nurgal that Socothbenoth’s battles are most legendary.

Socothbenoth’s Abyssal palace is the Cathedral Thelemic, a city-sized structure containing thousands of rooms dedicated to the demon lord’s numerous vices. Despite the deceptively peaceful sylvan wilderness that surrounds it, one need not look far beneath the surface here to see the deviant activities that run rampant in Socothbenoth’s playground.

Urxehl

Trollfather

CE male demon lord of natural disasters, storms, and trolls

Cult

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 non-evil being, burning each severed fragment to ash before moving on to the next. Gain a +4 profane bonus on all saving throws against weather-related effects and spells.

Boons

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 flames 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’s cultists are particularly active in the River Kingdoms, where trolls are common.

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 flow 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. These druids are generally not trolls, but rather humans who recognize Urxehl’s power over storms and natural disasters. Of course, other druids view these cultists as heretics at best.

Xoveron

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. If the outcrop is in an uninhabited area, you need do nothing more but wait for an hour, but if the outcrop is in an inhabited area (such as a city), no passersby should realize you are a living thing—any who do must be slain before the hour’s end. Gain a +4 profane bonus on saving throws against effects that cause sickness, nausea, fatigue, or exhaustion.

Boons

Some believe that the Horned Prince can look out of the stone eyes of any gargoyle perched atop a ruined building to watch the world below, and that from these vantage points he selects those he wishes to torment. 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.

Xoveron’s realm is an immense, ruined city called Ghahazi, located in a ragged realm of razor-sharp hills of flint and iron. 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.

Yhidothrus

The Ravager Worm

CE male demon lord of age, time, and worms

Cult

Unholy Symbol: an hourglass filled with worms instead of sand

Temple: Caverns, clock towers, graveyards, hidden cathedrals, old houses

Worshipers: Liches, those who would do anything to avoid death, worms that walk

Minions: Ghosts, leeches, swarms, undead, worm-like monsters, vermleks

Obedience: Meditate in a closed coffin partially filled with worm-infested soil or leech-infested mud. During the obedience, you must swallow or inhale at least a dozen living worms or leeches. Gain a +4 profane bonus against effects that cause slowness or magical aging, or anything that damages, drains, or penalizes ability scores.

Boons

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. Among humanity, Yhidothrus’s cultists are typically loners obsessed with the encroaching threat of old age; desperate to avoid that threat, these few turn to blasphemy and demon worship as an escape. Many become liches as a result of their obsession—a Yhidothrin lich typically appears much more worm-eaten and “moist” than the typical undead of that kind.

Yhidothrus appears as an immense worm with oily, night-black flesh and a mouth that folds back upon itself to reveal a dozen ivory, hook-like jaws around a gullet ringed with countless teeth. None but the mad can claim to have seen what lies at the far end of the Ravager Worm’s endless body, and the accounts of such lunatics are not to be trusted.

Yhidothrus’s Abyssal realm is not a single place as much as a massive network of tunnels the demon lord has bored through the surrounding strata of the Outer Sphere. 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.

Zevgavizeb

The God of the Troglodytes

CE male demon lord of vast caverns, reptiles, and troglodytes

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. Time the dance so that at the end, the creature is at the stalagmite’s base—it need not survive to the end of the dance. Gain a +4 profane bonus on saving throws against special attacks and spells originating from reptilian creatures.

Boons

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 flow 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 floating at its core. It is on this moon that the Troglodyte God slumbers and gnaws.

Zura

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 blood-drinking 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. Gain a +4 profane bonus on all saving throws against the supernatural abilities of undead creatures.

Boons

Zura rose from the corpse of an Azlanti queen who succumbed to a lust for eternal life and the flesh of her own kind. Scholars point to Zura’s acts as the start of Azlant’s fall into decadence, and perhaps even one of the catalysts for the Age of Darkness that followed. 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 rose immediately as a powerful creature—a succubus vampire who swiftly went on to gain incredible power. She became a demon lord long before Earthfall, and had that event not shattered Azlant, her growing cult in many of Azlant’s cities may well have done the job of undermining that nation anyway.

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. This dichotomy exists as well between their faiths—one can as often find Urgathoans and Zurans working together toward a common goal as on each other’s sacrificial altars. Certainly both of their religions appeal to similar sinners, with vampires and cannibals alike finding much of interest in the teachings of both faiths.

Zura’s realm on the Abyss is a mountainous realm called Nesh. 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. Nesh lies in constant darkness, and the sky above is an unusually close approximation of Golarion’s night sky. Similar to Jezelda’s Moonbog, the land of Nesh has a large number of captured humanoids harvested from countless Material Plane worlds. These poor souls are, for the most part, unaware that they dwell deep in the Abyss—yet the cruel and sadistic leaders of their small towns know, and in return for keeping the conspiracy of the truth hidden, they are well rewarded by Zura’s minions. Priests of Zura who please the Vampire Queen are sometimes allowed to hunt and cavort in this realm as a reward.

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. That these demon lords are dead is indisputable—their realms, if the Abyss doesn’t reclaim them, quickly fall to squabbling underlings or victorious demonic conquerors. 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. She would then enter the recently slain hero’s body, anchoring the not-quite-departed soul to the flesh so that she could force the hero to watch as she used the risen body to hunt down all whom the hero held dear in life. These acts swiftly made her an enemy to countless organizations on countless worlds—but it wasn’t until she chose to inhabit the body of a well-loved Desnan priestess that she went too far. Enraged at the damage done by Aolar’s use of one of her favored high priests, Desna broke several divine laws to directly infiltrate the Abyss, not only destroying Aolar, but obliterating her fortress and freeing the souls of those she had stolen from the opportunity to be judged. Desna’s invasion nearly resulted in a tremendous war, with the outraged demon lords almost united to a cooperative whole—only a fortunate series of treacheries among the gathering demonic horde caused the Coalition of Chaos to turn upon itself and collapse. Some believe that the treacheries were actually caused by a disguised Calistria, and that had not the elven goddess triggered this collapse, the repercussions of Desna’s acts would have been much more disastrous. 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.

Ibdurengian, Lord of the Red Tide

Deskari was not the only demon lord that Aroden waged war against. 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. During the height of Azlant’s time, Ibdurengian had one of the more invasive cults along several coastal cities, and after Azlant’s ruin, the Lord of the Red Tide continued to pursue and torment the dwindling numbers of Azlanti survivors. One of Aroden’s first tasks upon his ascension to divinity was to lead a host of powerful outsiders and mortal heroes to the shores of Ibdurengian’s Abyssal home to slay the demon lord in his own coral palace.

Mharah, Lady of Shame

Devious and treacherous, Mharah rose with startling swiftness through the ranks of Socothbenoth’s harems and minions. 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. Ironically, Mharah became yet another of Nocticula’s victims after she convinced Socothbenoth to kill his sister and elevate Mharah to the role of Queen of Succubi. Nocticula used Mharah’s own methods against her, such that to this day Socothbenoth rages at the very thought that he once found Mharah desirable.

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. He dwelt in an immense cavern believed to lie near Camazotz’s realm of Argahozz, and may have been one of that deity’s misbegotten spawn. Once worshiped by sinister tribes deep in the Mwangi Expanse, Vyriavaxus may be the latest of Nocticula’s notable demonic victims, but he is certain not to be the last. 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. He was eventually slain by Dispater’s armies, but not until after the demon lord brought down an entire district of the iron city—a district that remains in ruins to this day.

Nascent Demon Lords

When a demon of any race grows powerful enough, by advancing in Hit Dice, taking class levels, or simply gaining strange powers and abilities from eldritch sources in the Abyss, it undergoes a new transformation. Just as the demons themselves are shaped from the raw materials of sin-gorged larvae, demon lords are formed from powerful individual demons. Yet with very few exceptions, a full-fledged lord is never born fully formed—instead, each must build power and resources during an extended period of transformation. Demons in this transitional stage are known as nascent demon lords.

The means by which a demon can become a nascent demon lord are as varied as the lords themselves. Some might make this transformation simply by achieving a certain level in a prestige class. Others might need to undertake a strange ritual, while still others must conquer Abyssal realms and subjugate armies of fiends. It is the Abyss itself that makes the decision on whether a demon deserves to begin the transformation to lord—sometimes with the aid and blessing of a current lord serving as a mentor or patron, while other times in abject defiance of a demon lord actively working to prevent a loathed minion from making this first step to greater power.

At any one time, there exist hundreds if not thousands of nascent demon lords on the Abyss. The vast majority of these are comparatively new and will not last for long—competition and conflict between nascent demon lords is common, and wars work well to ensure only the strongest survive. While nascent demon lords might superficially resemble the types of demons they used to be, the longer they exist and the closer they grow to full apotheosis as demon lords, the more unique in shape and power they become.

Creating a Nascent Demon Lord

Demon lords themselves are full demigods, and as mentioned earlier in this book, if they were to be fully statted out, they would likely have CR scores of 30 or higher. Foes of this strength are not appropriate for use in the majority of campaigns, yet the campaign wherein the PCs strive against and eventually face off against a powerful and unique demon is an iconic plotline. This is the role nascent demon lords are built for.

A nascent demon lord ranges in power from CR 21 to CR 25, and as such works perfectly as a final foe at the end of a full campaign, with a 20th-level party facing off against the demon in a climactic battle. The best way to build stats for a nascent demon lord is to build them from scratch, customizing them entirely using the rules in Appendix 1 of the Pathfinder RPG Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Bestiary. When building a CR 21 to CR 25 creature in this manner, you should use the table below in the same way you’d use Table 1–1 on page 291 of the Pathfinder RPG Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Bestiary as a series of benchmarks to strive for.

Nascent Demon Lord Traits

Whatever powers and abilities a nascent demon lord possesses, all of them possess the following traits in common. These traits replace the normal demon traits, in many cases with more powerful variants of the typical demon racial traits.

A nascent demon lord is a powerful demon that has not yet made the full transition from unique demon to full demon lord of an Abyssal realm. Treerazer’s current exile to the Material Plane prevents him from achieving full demon lord status. Yet he still possesses the typical nascent demon lord traits, which are similar to those possessed by a typical demon, only more potent, as summarized here.

Sample Nascent Lords

The nascent demon lords presented below comprise the most powerful of their kind currently active in the Abyss. All of these nascent demon lords are CR 25 and nearing a point where any one of them could make the transition to full-fledged demon lord. For every nascent demon lord, a short description is presented along with a few notes on its personality, followed by the demon lord (if any) that serves as the nascent demon lord’s commander, the realm the nascent lord rules, its unholy symbol, and the obedience it demands from its greatest minions. Nascent demon lords can also grant Boons, but their Boons are less complex than those granted by full demon lords, manifesting only as spell-like abilities usable once each per day. The domains and favored weapon for each nascent demon lord are listed on the inside front cover of this book.

Daclau-Sar

Alignment: CE carrion, scavengers

Daclau-Sar, the Lord of Carrion, is a powerful nascent lord content—for now—to rule over the beasts that lurk in the Xorian Mountains in Lamashtu’s realm of Kurnugia. Feral and bestial, Daclau-Sar has little time or interest in politics or trickery. He appears as a six-legged, two-headed hyena with vulture’s wings. His bite causes a horrific wasting disease, and he commands all manner of scavenging beasts.

Domains: Animal, Chaos, Destruction, Evil

Favored Weapon: Spiked gauntlet

Commander: Lamashtu.

Realm: Xorian Mountains (Kurnugia).

Unholy Symbol: Hyena’s jaws clutching rotten bones.

Obedience: Eat at least a pound of carrion. Gain a +4 profane bonus on saves against disease.

Boons: 1 death knell; 2 contagion; 3 beast shape IV.

Izyagna

Alignment: CE Angry mobs, ants

Known as She of the Sevenfold Swarm, Izyagna exists not in one body but in seven. Each of these bodies looks similar—a horrific, ant-like creature. Yet each body is also capable of transforming into one of seven different humanoid forms (human, elven, dwarven, gnome, halfling, half-elven, and half-orc)—each of these forms can vary in specific appearance. The seven bodies share one mind, can command swarms with a thought, and can spread madness and wrath through a crowd like a swift-acting plague.

Domains: Chaos, Evil, Fire, War

Favored Weapon: Trident

Commander: Lamashtu.

Realm: The slums of Yanaron (Kurnugia).

Unholy Symbol: Circle of seven ants biting each other’s back left leg.

Obedience: Meditate while within a swarm of ants. Gain a +4 profane bonus on saves against charm effects.

Boons: 1 enthrall; 2 giant vermin; 3 mass suggestion.

Menxyr

Alignment: CE Graverobbing, necrophilia

Cadaverous Menxyr, known to many as the Coffin Groom, stands nearly a dozen feet high but weighs barely over a hundred pounds. Despite his emaciated and seemingly fragile frame, which he can fold up to appear like little more than a tangled mess of old bones, he possesses great strength. He can pull forth bones from living creatures, animate the dead to serve his foul lusts, and can even climb inside the bodies of the freshly dead to animate them and seduce those who mourn the loss of a loved one.

Domains: Chaos, Death, Evil, Trickery

Favored Weapon: Heavy pick

Commander: None.

Realm: The Harem Graves (Malvyrea).

Unholy Symbol: Skull wearing a wedding veil.

Obedience: Engage in acts of necrophilia. Gain a +4 profane bonus on saves against negative energy effects.

Boons: 1 command undead; 2 animate dead; 3 move earth.

Murnath

Alignment: CE Rats, sewers

Lumbering Murnath, the Horned Rat, dwells in the foul sewers below the city of Yanaron—it is said that not even Lamashtu knows the full extent of these sewers, but Murnath knows them entirely. Served by rats, chaotic evil wererats, and other sewer-dwelling beasts, Murnath himself appears as a muscular horned rat the size of a horse, with a series of thin poison spines at the tip of his tail, and paws that bear a hideous resemblance to human hands.

Domains: Animal, Chaos, Earth, Evil

Favored Weapon: Short sword

Commander: Lamashtu.

Realm: The sewers of Yanaron (Kurnugia).

Unholy Symbol: Horned rat seen in profile with a long tail encircling it.

Obedience: Meditate while floating in sewage or similar filth. Gain a +4 profane bonus on saves against disease.

Boons: 1 summon swarm; 2 beast shape II; 3 control water.

The Nightripper

Alignment: CE

Areas of Concern: Botched executions, pits

In life, the Nightripper was a prolific serial killer who preyed upon the people of no less than a dozen cities. When he was finally caught, he claimed to have murdered 953 men, women, and children with his knives, leaving them broken and bleeding to death at the bottom of pits scattered throughout the Inner Sea region. He miraculously survived a dozen executions, growing more and more broken and insane with each survival, until finally he perished and went to the Abyss. The Nightripper retained his personality and memories of life throughout his afterlife, and retains them still in his role as Lamashtu’s favored torturer and assassin. He appears as a hideously burnt and mutilated human wrapped in blood-soaked strips of black cloth and wielding a razor-sharp bastard sword.

Domains: Chaos, Darkness, Evil, Strength

Favored Weapon: Bastard sword

Commander: Lamashtu.

Realm: The dungeons of Lamashtu’s palace (Kurnugia).

Unholy Symbol: Skeletal hand with knives for fingers, partially wrapped in a strip of black cloth.

Obedience: Perform a series of cuts upon the flesh while periodically auto-asphyxiating. Gain a +4 profane bonus on all effects linked to slashing damage.

Boons: 1 spiritual weapon; 2 phantasmal killer; 3 harm.

Ovonovo

Alignment: CE

Areas of Concern: Sharks, shipwrecks

A vast, pale shark the size of the largest ships, Ovonovo can appear as a human as she wills, often doing so to command a ship of unfortunates, only to deliberately drive the ship aground so she can enjoy the panick of sailors aboard a sinking ship before she slips into the sea to assume her true form and feed on her crew.

Domains: Animal, Chaos, Evil, Water

Favored Weapon: Punching dagger

Commander: None.

Realm: The Flensing Rocks (Ishiar).

Unholy Symbol: Ship being swallowed by an immense shark

Obedience: Allow a shark to bite you and then focus on the pain while floating in seawater. Gain a +4 profane bonus on saves against fear-based effects.

Boons: 1 wood shape; 2 summon monster IV (1d3 sharks only); 3 beast shape IV (sharks only).

Shamira

Alignment: CE

Areas of Concern: Lost dreams, seduction of the pure

The greatest of the unique succubi and incubi who rule the various Midnight Islands of Nocticula’s realm is also one of her favored lovers—crimson-haired and phoenix-winged Shamira. Legend holds that Shamira is the only being who ever seduced Nocticula, although Shamira herself has the good grace and sense of self-preservation to deny such claims. She specializes in the seduction of pure souls, and often travels to the Material Plane in the guise of a priestess of a good faith to invade the dreams and secret lusts of mortals. She has a strange obsession with Sarenrae and her faith in particular; whispers that Shamira may be that goddess’s wayward daughter are not tolerated among Sarenrae’s devout.

Domains: Chaos, Charm, Evil, Nobility

Favored Weapon: Longbow

Commander: Nocticula.

Realm: Alinythia (The Midnight Isles).

Unholy Symbol: Upside-down ankh formed from a naked woman with outstretched arms and burning wings.

Obedience: Engage in sexual acts (either alone or with a partner) in the presence of a sleeping intelligent creature without waking that creature. Gain a +4 profane bonus on saves against charm effects.

Boons: 1 alter self; 2 fire shield; 3 mass suggestion.

Sithhud

Alignment: CE

Areas of Concern: Blizzards, the frozen dead

Once the master of the frozen mountains and glaciers of Jhuvumirak, Sithhud’s realm was assaulted by the armies of Kostchtchie eons ago. Sithhud lost that battle, but survived by retreating into the maze-like frozen valleys of the highest peaks of Jhuvumirak, a region that even to this day Kostchtchie has hardly explored. Sithhud’s defeat resulted in that rarest of events—an Abyssal “demotion” back to the status of a nascent demon lord, a status that the Frozen Lord has been unable to reverse. Sithhud appears as an icy skeleton of a horrifically deformed horned humanoid with a tripod-like lower body consisting of three spidery legs. His breath brings frozen death in the form of blizzards, and those who are slain by his freezing magic rise as enslaved, frozen undead. 

Domains: Chaos, Death, Evil, Weather

Favored Weapon: Longsword

Commander: None.

Realm: The Razormaze Glaciers (Jhuvumirak).

Unholy Symbol: A frost-caked, skeletal, three-fingered hand.

Obedience: Meditate while carving complex runes into the flesh of a frozen creature, or while naked in freezing environs.

Boons: 1 chill metal; 2 ice storm; 3 freezing sphere.

Treerazer

Alignment: CE

Areas of Concern: Corruption of nature, pollution

Treerazer Complete Statistics

Treerazer, the self-styled Lord of the Blasted Tarn, was once the favored minion (some even say child) of Cyth-V’sug. After a failed attempt to wrest Cyth-V’sug’s crown away from him, Treerazer fled to the Material Plane, where he appeared in the realm of Kyonin, abandoned when the elves fled Golarion. Treerazer began to corrupt Kyonin into a swampy realm more to his liking, but when he discovered the elven portal network and attempted to twist the magical gates to re-link his new realm to the Abyss, the elves returned. Treerazer lost the resulting war, but retained a portion of southern Kyonin as his realm—this is the swamp known as Tanglebriar. Treerazer lives there still, a constant threat to the elven nation as he works to find a way to become a true demon lord so he might return to the Abyss more powerful than before. World Guide: The Inner Sea provides full statistics for Treerazer.

Domains: Chaos, Destruction, Evil, Plant

Favored Weapon: Greataxe

Commander: Cyth-V’sug.

Realm: Tanglebriar (Kyonin).

Unholy Symbol: A black axe wedged in a bleeding tree stump.

Obedience: Feast on rotting flesh infested with hallucinogenic or poisonous fungus, then meditate upon the harrowing visions they provide.

Boons: 1 warp wood; 2 antiplant shell; 3 repel wood.

Yamasoth

Alignment: CE

Areas of Concern: Cursed kingdoms, vile experiments

Yamasoth, the Polymorph Plague, is a strange beast indeed. His stony body evokes the imagery of a nightmare octopus with too many tentacles, each partially connected by a leathery web. Each tentacle ends in a different method of pain, be it pincer or blade, claw or serpent’s head. Yamasoth’s “face” (if such it can be called) consists of a single huge maw filled with teeth and stinging tongues. Several eyes surround this mouth, but one hidden deep in his throat remains closed except in combat, when the lord can open it to use a terrible gaze weapon that transforms enemies into feral monsters. Yamasoth rules a vast kingdom in the cavern realm of Sekatar-Seraktis, a kingdom populated entirely by the hideous results of his strange and vile experiments into the secrets of flesh and the heresies of life.

Domains: Artifice, Chaos, Earth, Evil

Favored Weapon: Halberd

Commander: None.

Realm: Kingdom of New Flesh (Sekatar-Seraktis).

Unholy Symbol: Jagged circle containing three eyes and six spiraling arms radiating out from its edge.

Obedience: Work the flesh of your own body or the body of another creature into a strange new shape, then meditate upon the sensations this unfamiliar shape affords.

Boons: 1 alter self; 2 polymorph; 3 elemental body III.