Daemons

Petitioners are the souls of mortals brought to the Outer Planes after death in order to experience their ultimate punishment, reward, or fate. A petitioner retains fragments of its memories from life, and its appearance depends not only upon the shape it held in life but also upon the nature of the Outer Plane to which it has come.

In the bleak and perilous plane of Abaddon, The Hunted stand as echoes of their former mortal selves. Identical in appearance to their once living forms, they are plagued by a constant sense of vulnerability. Doomed to be pursued relentlessly by ravenous daemons, these souls find themselves in an eternal game of predator and prey. Yet, there is a glimmer of hope for the most tenacious; for those who endure might one day morph into the very daemons they flee from.

The least of daemonkind, cacodaemons spawn from eddies of angry, violent, and demented souls amid the mists of Abaddon. Dim-witted but utterly evil, they endlessly seek to cause pain and indulge their hunger for mortal souls. Many more powerful fiends keep cacodaemons as pets, if only to be able to harvest the tiny creatures’ soul gems. A 7th-level spellcaster can gain a cacodaemon as a familiar if she has the Improved Familiar feat.

Among the least powerful of all daemons, lacridaemons personify death by neglect or exposure to the elements, such as that suffered by those who become lost in the wilderness and die far from help, or unfortunates who become trapped in an enclosed space (like a collapsed mine) and are left alone to slowly expire. Lacridaemons’ despair is in stark contrast to their savage nature. If they’re given any opportunity, they viciously lash out, furiously attacking their mortal victims.  In death, lacridaemons continue to suffer just as their mortal incarnations did in their last days of life, consumed by feelings of abandonment, self-pity, and a gnawing sense of loneliness. They often spawn from the souls of evil mortals who died alone and abandoned—exiled criminals, reclusive and corrupt nobles, or those who died from intense exposure to the natural elements (whether the blistering heat of the desert or the ravaging cold of the arctic), such as by freezing to death or dying of thirst.  A lacridaemon stands just under 6 feet tall but weighs only 90 pounds.

These deceptive daemons personify death resulting from murder accented with betrayal. Most often formed from the souls of evil creatures killed by family or friends, vulnudaemons spread their insanity throughout the worlds by deceiving and killing all creatures they meet. Vulnudaemons stalk their prey, infecting them with a sense of impending doom and watching their reactions, learning their responses before attacking and savoring their death. These daemons serve as excellent assassins, hiding in the shadows before debilitating their enemies, or striking from the protection of invisibility in order to deliver the killing blow. When facing stronger enemies, vulnudaemons seek to wear them down through a series of attacks, nicking at them and darting off, then repeating the process until their opponents bleed out. Vulnudaemons often find themselves called to the Material Plane by cultists of deities associated with murder and assassination. These cultists often see vulnudaemons as sacred creatures favored by their deity, and rather than simply use the daemons as assassins, cultists often grant them a shocking degree of freedom to wander the region as they will, picking victims to fit their own agendas and murdering whomever they wish. Cultists who conjure vulnudaemons into the world usually take care to show the daemons a secret hand sign or other code that members of the cult can show them, lest the monsters decide to target one of the believers for an attack. Whether or not an accidentally targeted cultist has the time to flash her safety sign to the daemon should the creature attack her at a later date is, of course, another matter. Vulnudaemons stand 3 feet tall and weigh 25 pounds.

The venedaemon personifies death by magic, and so has an inborn talent for all manner of sorcery. Though as hungry for souls as any other member of its daemonic kin, the venedaemon thirsts equally for intangible wealth through the acquisition of knowledge.  Venedaemons are gaunt, and despite standing close to 7 feet tall, they rarely weigh more than 150 pounds.

Some claim the Four Horsemen created these creatures to serve as summoning fodder. Others believe that they form from neutral evil souls who commit suicide. Wherever the truth lies, ceustodaemons find themselves on the Material Plane more often than any other daemon, as they are easily pressured into service—many call these creatures “guardian daemons” as a result. Yet in the back of their wicked minds, ceustodaemons always think about escaping their bonds and ripping to shreds the ones who summoned them. Greater and lesser versions of these creatures exist. These variants can be represented by applying either the young creature or advanced creature simple templates, along with the following adjustments.

Lesser Ceustodaemon: This Medium daemon looks like a horned frog with a wide, toothy mouth. Its breath weapon is a chilling cone of ice that deals cold damage.
Greater Ceustodaemon: This daemon resembles a gigantic humanoid bear with the talons of an eagle and curling ram horns sprouting from its head. Its breath weapon is a fan of sparks that deals electricity damage.

Horrid, vulture-headed fiends whose very presence makes the air difficult to breathe, suspiridaemons personify death by suffocation and strangulation. Their flesh is discolored and blotched like the stagnant blood under a suffocated corpse’s skin, they don’t breathe, and their bodies convulse and twitch like those of hanging victims. A suspiridaemon enjoys nothing more than the last choked gasp of a victim as it wraps its tongue around the creature’s throat. Thanks to its utterly silent demeanor, it excels at committing slow, gruesome murders while hiding in the shadows. The only time a suspiridaemon makes a noticeable noise is when it loosens the tissues around its neck and inhales a booming breath— the sudden loss of air that results is enough to make foes fall ill.  A suspiridaemon is 6 feet tall and weighs 250 pounds.

While at first glance these creatures seem like enormous and foul boggards, their dangerous gait, dead eyes, and wicked claws give away their fiendish nature. In their home environment, hydrodaemons swim the sickening rivers and seas of Abaddon and the River Styx, ducking beneath the rivers of pus and bile only to leap out at enemies and rend their flesh with tooth and claw. It is said these are among the few creatures able to survive in the deadly waters of the River Styx. When called to the Material Plane, hydrodaemons serve powerful spellcasters, protecting domains dotted with pools, streams, and even sewer complexes. Associated with death by drowning, these fiends use a favored tactic to draw the most anguish from their victims. Hydrodaemons first attack with their inky black sleep spittle, hoping to render victims unconscious. With their opponents unable to fight back, hydrodaemons drag their enemies into the foul waters they call home and delight as the liquid fills their victims’ gasping lungs. If unable to drown a victim, they finish the job with jaws and claws. Hydrodaemons possess an awkward gait, springing back on their heels and leaping about like humanoid frogs. Even so, they move in an unpredictable manner, twisting their bodies with each hopping movement. Hydrodaemons can also unfurl flaps of skin that allow them to glide through the air. Hydrodaemons stand 10 feet tall and weigh upward of 3,000 pounds.

Deacons of the Horseman of Pestilence, leukodaemons serve their lord in Abaddon as well as across the planes by spreading plagues and pandemics. Leukodaemons stand upward of 14 feet tall but weigh just over 200 pounds. The skulls that serve as their heads can be replaced with any skulls, yet these creatures choose horse skulls to show their loyalty to the Horsemen. The creature’s true head is merely a blistered knob between its shoulders.

Sangudaemons personify death by blood loss. Perhaps more so than any other caste of daemon, the sangudaemon enjoys the hunt for prey, whether that prey is petitioner, mortal, or anything else that bleeds. That the souls of those who perish to a sangudaemon’s wrath are consigned to Abaddon makes these daemons particularly hated by those who hold the supernatural cycle of the soul’s journey sacred. A sangudaemon is about 5 feet long and weighs 200 pounds.

These aquatic daemons roam the lower planes sowing misery and blight. They delight in drawn-out deaths, poisoning creatures or dismembering victims to watch them slowly bleed out. On their home plane of Abaddon, piscodaemons gravitate toward the same aquatic regions inhabited by hydrodaemons, and often the stronger among their ranks end up leading armies of hydrodaemons against their enemies. These creatures serve as sergeants in the hierarchy of Abaddon, and run their units with an excess of cruelty and violence. Instead of preying on the weak, piscodaemons enjoy targeting strong, well-armored warriors, knowing the pain of their weakening poison rests poorly on shoulders accustomed to bearing heavy weights and delivering devastating blows. Piscodaemons are 7 feet tall and weigh 400 pounds.

Erodaemons are the personification of death by heartbreak. Occasionally, erodaemons will work together, but only if doing so results in a greater harvest of crushed mortal souls. In her true form, an erodaemon is 6 feet tall and weighs 150 pounds.

As personifications of death from starvation and thirst, these withered fiends spend their time destroying resources and spreading hunger. Deacons of the Horseman of Famine, these creatures visit worlds throughout the planes, destroying acres of crops and slaughtering livestock in order to harvest souls for their honored master. Meladaemons delight in the slow death of starvation, going so far as to experiment with various bodily deficiencies and mortal weaknesses. Arrogant and utterly bound to their patron, meladaemons rarely work with others of their kind and never serve any of the other three Horsemen except in the rarest of circumstances. Meladaemons stand approximately 12 feet tall and weigh 350 pounds.

These brutal daemons personify death resulting from violent insanity, such as being murdered by a maniac or torn to shreds by a pack of rabid predators. These insectoid creatures roam the Outer Planes, scavenging battlefields and following the inevitable trail of violence in those hostile worlds. They hunt the weak and dying along the fringe of battles, feeding off their victims’ suffering until they make their kill. Attacks from a derghodaemon often come from within a cloud of biting insects. Brutish and low on intellect, derghodaemons find themselves serving as front-line fighters in fiendish armies. A derghodaemon stands 9 feet tall and weighs 800 pounds.

While all daemons represent death in some fashion, thanadaemons, the Deacons of Death, represent the inevitable death through old age. Thanadaemons effortlessly work eerie skiffs along every pus- and bile-choked river in Abaddon, including the legendary River Styx. For the right price (typically 50 pp or 2 gems worth at least 300 gp each), a thanadaemon will even carry passengers on its skiff, yet those who travel with these fiends should beware—they frequently renegotiate the terms once they’ve got their passengers in dangerous realms.

Temerdaemons exist to personify accidental death. A knight falls onto her sword; a peasant trips and breaks his neck; a structure fails in ways its builders never foresaw and buries dozens of innocents— and a temerdaemon cackles knowingly in the distance. While true accidents please the fiend, it also delights in engineering incomprehensibly complex plots that lead to the slaughter of as many mortals as possible. A temerdaemon often wades into the aftermath of such catastrophes, carving apart survivors and sowing mass confusion and hysteria.  Temerdaemons only rarely cooperate among themselves, but a trio of them sometimes forms a “trapper gang” to pursue common goals.  A gangly mass consisting of a rotund torso, four arms, and four legs, a temerdaemon is 10 feet long and weighs 1,200 pounds, not counting its often bizarre collection of odd mechanical fetishes and other tinkering equipment.

Bloody representations of death by traps or torture, crucidaemons spend their existence subjecting creatures to an eternity of pain and terror. Whereas many daemons are quick to feed on the soul of mortals they capture, a crucidaemon lets its victims linger, marinating their souls in torment and pain so that when the time for feeding finally comes, they welcome their final oblivion with tears of gratitude. Crucidaemons are 6 feet tall and weigh 250 pounds.

Believed to be creations of the Four Horsemen, astradaemons live out their existence in search of souls to harvest. These deadly creatures are ravening planar predators, openly hunting throughout the void for souls on which to feed. These voracious creatures are the personifications of death resulting from negative energy or level drain. Their vile touch drains life force from their enemies, and even perishing near them sates their thirst for life and souls.

Among the most powerful members of daemonkind, the phasmadaemons personify death by fright, and conjure powers of illusion so terrifying that they steal the life from their victims. A phasmadaemon is 25 feet long from snout to tail, but can compress itself into surprisingly small areas thanks to its strange, elastic anatomy. It weighs half a ton.

Deacons of War, purrodaemons ravage the planes as generals of massive battles. They employ creative tactics and never launch an assault without carefully looking over the plans or surveying the battlefield themselves. A purrodaemon is 12 feet tall and weighs 1,300 pounds.

The towering and devastating obcisidaemon personifies the darkest elements of war. Obcisidaemons strip away the veneer of honor and battlefield glory and the complexity of wartime tactics, leaving behind only the brutal and violent truth of conflict at its core, and then divest it of any humanity to reveal naught but scorched earth and genocide. Reflecting the disgraceful values of ethnic cleansing, depopulation, and all other forms of the clinical, systematic obliteration of civilian populations, obcisidaemons are among the most powerful members of daemonkind. These paragons of inhumanity arrive in the heart of great cities and leave wastelands of rubble and ashes in their wakes. Where an    obcisidaemon walks, not even the ghosts of the dead remain to lament the destruction, for the daemon wipes out not only innocent individuals, but also their entire histories and bloodlines, ensuring that no future exists for its victims in any sense of the word.  When a mortal commits an act of genocide in life and goes to Abaddon in death, it has a chance of forming into an obcisidaemon if it survives long enough as a member of the hunted. Such individuals rarely have trouble managing the unforgiving wastes, as they have already proven willing to destroy any and all possible allies in order to ensure their own survival, making betrayal an impossibility and solitude an inevitability. A vicious soul that eventually develops into an obcisidaemon becomes a lone, wandering mass of slaughter that acts as a harbinger of undiscriminating and unforgiving death to all who dare stand in its path. In life, the soul perhaps desired to kill only a particular chosen population; as an obcisidaemon, however, the being seeks the obliteration of all mortals.  Peculiar to an obcisidaemon is the cloak of souls that seems to seep from its enormous body, a symbol of its destructive abilities providing onlookers a hint of the sheer scope of its murderous capabilities. When an obcisidaemon lays slaughter to entire populations, it does not feast on all of the souls at once, but captures victims for later use. When the fiend needs to unleash a particularly potent rampage upon a resistant population, it consumes these reserved souls in order to strengthen its powers and ensure its success in total annihilation. Some obcisidaemons have developed eldritch methods to craft and shape these soul fragments, and use them to drape themselves in the material.  Devoted to the wanton, systematic slaughter of all mortal life, most obcisidaemons serve Szuriel, the Horseman of War, who shares similar ideals. In her service, obcisidaemons act as high-ranking officers at the head of armies of purrodaemons, to take advantage of their skill at the pragmatic art of organized massacres. Occasionally, an obcisidaemon instead serves Apollyon, occupying a similar role at the head of a titanic flight of leukodaemons sowing clouds of poison across miles of terrain in its passing. Sometimes, an amassed group of obcisidaemons might trail behind an invading daemonic army, guaranteeing that no trace of the butchered mortals remains among the ashes and salted earth. These obcisidaemons not only ensure that all life perishes, but that the land is thereafter uninhabitable by any living creatures.  Some obcisidaemons serve no particular member of the Four Horsemen, instead choosing to function as independent agents of genocide and endless eons of wartime slaughter. These nomadic, self-serving beings wander from plane to plane, laying waste to one civilization after another. Some obcisidaemons intentionally spread their true names to the Material Plane, hoping for a foolish evil summoner to call upon them, knowing that no mere mortal could control their awesome power. Such summoners often end up among the first souls to be devoured and woven into the cloud of tormented spirits that cloaks the rampaging obcisidaemon.  Obcisidaemons stand 25 feet tall, have wingspans of 30 feet, and weigh over 15,000 pounds, but rumors whisper of specimens that are nearly three times this size.

While some of the more powerful daemons are servitors to one of the Four Horsemen, olethrodaemons serve as juggernauts for all of the Four. These massive creatures are the embodiment of death and destruction — the very vessels of apocalypse that daemons wish to see wrought upon the multiverse. These nihilistic behemoths roam the gray expanses of Abaddon, feasting on the souls of evil mortals damned to their realm. When on the Material Plane, olethrodaemons act as agents of destruction, spreading ruin and devouring mortal souls as they plow through cities and countrysides, bent on devastation. It’s rare for a mortal to be able to control such a potent force, but sometimes mad spellcasters utilize effects like gate to urge an olethrodaemon to visit a devastating holocaust upon an enemy region—the olethrodaemon generally does not hold a grudge against a mortal that asks such a service from it. These immense creatures stand over 25 feet tall and weigh close to 12,000 pounds, their powerful, muscular bodies covered by durable plates and head thronged with dangerous, twisted horns. Olethrodaemons stand on four stout legs, and possess an equal number of arms, each ending in wickedly sharp claws able to tear through stone as easily as flesh. The creature’s eyes, as well as its two mouths, glow like coals in a kiln. The creature feeds on souls and has multiple stomachs to digest mortal essences. While not as intelligent or scheming as many other powerful daemons (or other fiends who match their power, for that matter), olethrodaemons remain dangerous foes. They do not generally wish to lead armies and gain power by control, but rather to revel in the evil purity of annihilation. Among olethrodaemons, the greatest desire is to be the one to devour the very last mortal soul. They angle and shove for this honor, often ceding a city or group of victims to a rival if they believe that, in so doing, they might gain the advantage of positioning to consume the final soul once the multiverse has been devoured.

OLETHRODAEMON PARAGONS
Just as powerful balors become lords and pit fiends clamor for positions as infernal dukes, olethrodaemons can achieve a unique level of power among their kin. These creatures are known as paragons, and gain this level of power by pledging their loyalty to one of the Four Horsemen as a chosen agent of apocalypse. These advanced olethrodaemons specialize in their patron’s particular method of annihilation, their abilities evolving to suit the method of ruin. An olethrodaemon paragon generally has from 4 to 8 additional Hit Dice, and is usually a CR 22 to CR 24 creature. Some planar scholars postulate that olethrodaemons are actually the creations of the Four Horsemen, and that the Four worked foul rites upon a fifth Horseman, with these interactions spawning olethrodaemons to serve their will and spread oblivion throughout the multiverse. The abilities of these chosen spawn warp to the tendencies of their daemonic lords. Olethrodaemons serving the Horseman of Pestilence can infect their victims with a powerful disease by means of all their natural attacks. Creatures who succumb to this attack are affected as if by a maximized contagion spell, heightened to 9th level. Olethrodaemons serving the Horseman of War can imbue their natural attacks with additional properties. As a free action, an olethrodaemon can apply any special weapon property equivalent to a +2 enhancement to its bite, claw, gore, or trample attacks for 1 round—most of these olethrodaemon paragons elect to grant their natural weapons the unholy enhancement. Olethrodaemons serving the Horseman of Famine gain the consumptive aura ability of the meladaemon, but the nonlethal damage dealt increases to 6d6 and victims who succumb become exhausted rather than merely fatigued. Olethrodaemons serving the Horseman of Death gain the ability to inf lict a negative level on a foe each time they strike with a claw attack, or else gain the ability to cause those they damage to age rapidly and grow old and frail with hideous speed.

The apocalypse horse is less a particularly puissant nightmare or powerful equine daemon than a living extension of one of the Four Horsemen. There only four at any time: the white horse of Pestilence, the pale horse of Death, the red horse of War, and the black horse of Famine. While for the most part the Horsemen use their mounts themselves, they have been known to lend these mounts to favored daemonic or mortal servitors. The four apocalypse horses have also been known to travel the Material Plane or other planes on their own or in a group, often as a precursor to more direct attention to a world from the Horsemen. While each of the four apocalypse horses have similar statistics overall, they have unique abilities and personalities suited to their specific theme.  An apocalypse horse is similar in size to a large horse, standing 7 feet tall at the shoulder and weighing 1,500 pounds despite its nearly skeletal frame.

THE BLACK HORSE  
The Black Horse of Trelmarixian is the Horse of Famine. Its body looks particularly emaciated, with its midnight flesh clinging to its skeletal frame, showing the bones beneath in stark relief. Its body seems to tremble and shake as it moves, yet the Black Horse remains hearty and healthy despite this apparent malnutrition.

THE PALE HORSE  
The Pale Horse of Charon is the Horse of Death. Its body looks long-dead; its flesh is tinged green with mold and decay and pocked with holes that allow the bones within to show through.

THE RED HORSE  
The Red Horse of Szuriel is the Horse of War. It appears hearty and fit and almost as a living horse (unlike the other three apocalypse horses’ appearances), though it is soaked in blood and covered in gore. Often, the Red Horse manifests horrific and gory wounds on its body, but these wounds are entirely cosmetic and do not weaken the Red Horse at all.

THE WHITE HORSE  
The White Horse of Apollyon is the Horse of Pestilence. Its body looks filthy and festering, covered with foul pus-dripping sores and rancid boils squirming with maggots.

The youngest but perhaps most ambitious of the Four, Trelmarixian the Black obsesses over soul consumption, riding the line between brutal, amoral science and quasi-religious zealotry. A perpetually ravenous shapeshifting horror, Trelmarixian maintains a three-headed humanoid shape—but only just, with his frame constantly shuddering and shifting and threatening to slump into a protoplasmic slurry of bile, blood, and mucus. Trelmarixian was once a meladaemon himself, and his meladaemon servitors, while always emaciated and bestial, have become more canine in appearance under his rule. When the so-called Lysogenic Prince rose to power, he overthrew and consumed his predecessor, but he maintains a fragment of her existence within him to fuel periodic bouts of parasitic rage. Trelmarixian embodies not only starvation, but also the broader concept of wasting, both physical and metaphysical, particularly the lingering dooms of cancer, parasitism, and spiritual decay. Like the viral afflictions he represents, the Horseman of Famine behaves like his chosen concept in a concrete manner, having secretively inserted fragments of his physical form into many of his servitors. This bombards him with sensory information on a truly maddening scale, and thus Trelmarixian’s fragmented mind brims with insanity and a multitude of voices, including that of his predecessor. He still adores her in his own fashion, and she in turn speaks to him, advising as she sees fit or mocking his shortcomings like an aggressive, self-aware conscience. By force of will, he can silence the voices, but the thing that haunts him more than any of these cannot be so easily dismissed. Most daemons retain only fractured, fragmented recollections of their mortal life. Trelmarixian, on the other hand, remembers everything save for the last few minutes of his life. As a mortal, daemon-blooded tiefling, Trelmarixian exterminated all life on his world with a work of profound sorcery, but in doing so he condemned himself to starvation. Near the moment of his agonizing death, he recalls someone talking to him, asking him questions and mocking his success as paltry compared to what awaited him after death. Despite his destruction of everyone he had ever known in life, someone was there, and he cannot remember that person’s face or final words. Trelmarixian’s memories haunt him still, as does the question of whose blood his soul carried, and thus who may still have some unknown claim on him, such as a long-dead Horseman of Famine. He’s likewise haunted by the notion that he was born to be the vector for his progenitor’s return—one virus within another, waiting and incubating, to someday express itself and snuff him out as he did his own predecessor. Trelmarixian’s domain, the Withered Court, is a realm of biological and metaphysical horrors, towers spun from flesh and bone with mortal souls used like living, screaming bricks, each mournfully crying out in the constant pangs of starvation. In this realm of horrors, his servitors devour as much as they craft, warping souls into nightmarish wonders while their master continues his nihilistic work within his citadel, the miles-high Weeping Tower.

TRELMARIXIAN'S CULT
Trelmarixian is worshiped by all those touched by famine and the broader concept of wasting, including evil druids, gryphs, hungry ghosts, and victims of starvation. Trelmarixian also holds the allegiance of many of the daemon-worshiping and daemon-created urdefhan race. The Lysogenic Prince is further served by astradaemons, derghodaemons, fiendish jackals and jackal monsters, ghouls, scavengers, vampires, vermin, and wendigos, but also by those who have been driven to madness or cannibalism by starvation. Trelmarixian’s unholy symbol is a jackal skull viewed from the side as it clutches a solar eclipse in its jaws, and the spiked gauntlet is his favored weapon. He grants access to the domains of Earth, Evil, Madness, and Weather, and to the subdomains of Daemon, Decay, Insanity, and Seasons.

At first glance, Szuriel seems a triumphant, angelic figure. With her ivory skin, flowing golden hair, flawless and powerful body clothed in a coil of unsullied silk, and wings the blue-black of a raven, she appears as a personification of glory from on high—a veritable goddess of war. Up close, however, this impression quickly fades. Mirrored and black as onyx, Szuriel’s eyes bleed constantly in crimson rivulets that run down her cheeks and fall to the ground. When she deigns to smile, she reveals a mouth of jagged, razor-sharp fangs more befitting a shark or dragon than anything humanoid. Szuriel’s greatsword, Lamentation of the Faithless, has been wielded by every Horseman of War dating back to the first, and it is said to be the corrupted blade of an ancient and forgotten empyreal lord. The Horseman of War was once a fallen mortal paladin. After she was excommunicated for her sins, she became a conquering general and finally a ruling empress who slaughtered the followers of her former faith. Her own death came not on the battlefield but by an assassin’s blade, yet this merely opened the greatest chapter in her conquests by propelling her into Abaddon and, in time, the role of the Horseman of War. Szuriel makes open mockery of all angels, playing upon their thematic elements in her warped, destructive interactions with mortals, awing both the misguided and those fully cognizant of her nature. Her cults often portray her not as a paragon of destruction, conquest, and genocide, but as promising righteous victory, with the souls of fallen soldiers elevated to paradise regardless of what horrific crimes they commit. Szuriel’s armies represent the largest and most strictly organized force in Abaddon, but at any given moment, fully half of the Horseman’s armies are scattered throughout the planes in mercenary service to various Abyssal lords, archdevils, and whatever other forces purchase their services. Most times, that price is steep, as Szuriel demands living mortals or souls, or the right to consume those who fall upon the field of battle. When her armies march upon the mortal plane, they honor their commitments just long enough to make their “allies” complacent before engaging in systematic genocide.

SZURIEL'S CULT
Szuriel is worshiped by those associated with every facet of war, including everything leading up to it and arising in its bloody wake. Arms dealers, looters, mercenaries, soldiers, and warlords worship the Angel of Desolation. Szuriel also holds the allegiance of a significant number of the daemon-worshiping and daemon-created urdefhan race. The Seraph of Devastation is served by her deacon race of purrodaemons as well as carrion eaters, obcisidaemons, undead soldiers, war beasts, and warsworn. Szuriel’s unholy symbol is a pale hand and black sword, and the greatsword is her favored weapon. She grants access to the domains of Evil, Fire, Strength, and War, and to the subdomains of Blood, Daemon, Ferocity, and Tactics.

LAMENTATION OF THE FAITHLESS
Slot none; CL 28th; Weight 8 lbs.; Aura overwhelming all
Szuriel’s weapon is Lamentation of the Faithless, a blackbladed +5 speed unholy greatsword. When using the blade to attack, Szuriel regains 1d6 hit points with each successful hit. If Szuriel presents her sword as a standard action, all creatures within 60 feet that view it are blinded and affected by crushing despair for 1d4+1 rounds unless they succeed at a DC 30 Will save. Creatures with the good subtype and divine spellcasters take a –4 penalty on this save. As a standard action, Szuriel can call the sword to her hand from any distance, including across planar boundaries.
DESTRUCTION
The sword shatters and sublimates if it is ever placed in the empty, walled garden at the summit of Heaven’s mountain by a risen, repentant fiend.

Apollyon has ruled for eons, since he seized his throne and slew all potential rivals following the disappearance of his presumed-dead predecessor. The Horseman of Pestilence is also known as the Prince of Plagues, and rules from his domain of the Plaguemere, a vast realm of swamps, flooded forests, and shallow, acidic oceans. His citadel, the Throne of Flies, is carved from a titanic spinal column and set of ribs, rumored to be those of a dead god of healing or a protean lord slaughtered by the Four and dragged back to Abaddon to feast upon. While other horsemen engage in more overt acts of brutality against the mortals of the Material Plane, Apollyon and his servitors focus instead on their distinct form of creation: the crafting of new diseases and plagues capable of doing the daemons’ work for them, spreading across the Material Plane in virulent pandemics. Less known is the fact that these acts of creation also extend to artifacts and magical items intended to corrupt their recipients, and even larger metaphysical infestations that work within the goddess of death’s system to taint souls and condemn them to Abaddon after judgment. Apollyon frequently sends his minions to the Material Plane, and their actions there leave behind contagious diseases long after they’re killed or banished. When spreading ever more horrific and virulent plagues, the Horseman is not averse to granting temporary immunity to his mortal cultists in exchange for using them as carriers and living incubators, though this protection is short-lived—eventually, they too fall and their souls are carried to Abaddon amid clouds of corpse flies.

APOLLYON'S CULT
Apollyon is worshiped by those who carry, suffer from, or use disease, including neutral evil druids, vengeful lepers, wererats and the like. Apollyon also commands the allegiance of a significant portion of the daemon-worshiping urdefhan race. The Prince of Plagues is served by leukodaemons, his deacon servitor race, as well as astradaemons, diseased undead, monstrous rats, nuckelavees, otyughs, piscodaemons, and all manner of vermin. His unholy symbol is a yellow scythe, and the scythe is also his favored weapon. He grants access to the domains of Air, Darkness, Destruction, and Evil, and to the subdomains of Catastrophe, Daemon, Loss, and Night.

USHER OF THE BLACK RAIN
Slot none; CL 29th; Weight 12 lbs.; Aura overwhelming all
Apollyon’s weapon is the Usher of the Black Rain. He can cause this weapon to shift from a scythe to a composite longbow (Str +16) as a move action, but in both forms the Usher is a +5 unholy wounding weapon. As a longbow, it creates ammunition automatically as it is fired. Against foes who are currently suffering from a disease, the Usher of the Black Rain deals an additional 6 points of profane damage with each hit.
DESTRUCTION
The Usher of the Black Rain burns to ash if Apollyon’s cloak (which was stitched from the flesh of the angels whose souls empower his bow) is brought to Nirvana, washed clean there, and then buried while intoning each dead angel’s long-forgotten name.

Charon, the Horseman of Death and Boatman of the Styx, is ancient even by comparison to his kindred Horsemen. Of all the Four, he alone was an original Horseman, the first—and only—Lord of Death. Yet Charon’s title obfuscates his true focus: not simply death as a whole, which is the purview of all daemons, but specifically death by old age. Even the most virile mortals must eventually succumb to that looming specter, and in this sense, it’s unsurprising that the Boatman remains the most powerful of the Four. Like mortality’s inevitable end, Charon’s patience is legendary. Charon resembles his thanadaemons, and most presume that he modeled them after himself. Charon, however, is so ancient as to have preceded the creation of humanoid life and thus his current form is likely nothing more than a modern guise, with his original form long discarded. Daemons in Charon’s service range far and wide across Abaddon, often riding the Styx to other reaches of the cosmos, hunting souls in his name. Unlike those of the other Horsemen, Charon’s servitors often act in understated and subtle ways, yet they harvest just as many souls as others. When approached independently by a traveler, Charon sometimes simply carries the guest off to be consumed. Other times, however, he makes legitimate deals, though his bargains work toward ends hundreds or thousands of years in the making. Charon’s dealings also serve him well in other ways, with even his fellows among the Four often quietly acquiescing to his authority. In the past, Charon has bargained with dying and desperate divinities, archfiends, empyreal lords, and even the populations of entire worlds, offering them aid in return for payments of souls, knowing all the while that the bargainers were beyond saving anyway. Charon’s domain is the largest of the Four, particularly when one takes into account the fact that the River Styx stretches into or borders the others’ realms, the unclaimed wastes, and the planes beyond. Every branch of the Styx ultimately flows back to Charon’s citadel, the Drowning Court, which comprises hundreds of mobile islands, ships, and floating castles swirling around a massive central whirlpool.

CHARON'S CULT
Charon is worshiped by ferrymen and -women, grave robbers, undertakers, the undead, and so very many doomed and damned would-be immortals. The Horseman of Death is served by thanadaemons, his deacon servitor race, along with fiendish krakens, grim reapers, hags, hydrodaemons, river monsters, and numerous varieties of undead. Charon’s unholy symbol is a skull with coins over its eye sockets, and the quarterstaff is his favored weapon. He grants access to the domains of Death, Evil, Knowledge, and Water, and to the subdomains of Daemon, Ice, Memory, and Undead.