Qlippoth

The cythnigot is a foul fungal parasite that grows and thrives within the corpses of small animals. The fungus transforms the host corpse in hideous ways, adding legs or rearranging features—a rat might gain an extra pair of legs and an insectoid visage, while a cat could lose all its legs and fur and gain a snake-like body. The only thing that all cythnigots have in common is a long stalk of fungal material that extends up from the creature’s body, ending in a surprisingly strong set of fanged jaws. A cythnigot without a host body appears as little more than a foul-smelling puff ball the size of a human’s fist. Chaotic evil spellcasters of caster level 7th who have the Improved Familiar feat can gain a cythnigot as a familiar—to do so, the spellcaster must already have a Tiny animal as a familiar. Infusing this familiar with the spores results in a cythnigot that is a loyal, if rather disgusting, minion of the spellcaster. A cythnigot is about 20 inches long and weighs 10 pounds.

The hydraggon is a strange qlippoth that has mastered the use of weapons, despite its lack of hands. These creatures enjoy swimming in the waters of the River Styx, and their immunity to mind-affecting effects shields them from the river’s memory-draining properties.  A hydraggon is 7 feet long and weighs 200 pounds.

The shoggti are masters of mind manipulation, capable of seizing control of the thoughts of others and charming them into docile allies. They invade other realms in slaver bands, seeking out creatures to capture alive and return to the Abyss as charmed slaves—the fates of these poor souls is unknown, but likely has something to do with the qlippoth drive to reclaim the Abyss as their own. Although a shoggti lacks proper hands, it is capable of performing incredibly dextrous manipulations with the pincers at the tips of its tentacles. It cannot wield weapons in these pincers, but it can utilize magic items like wands, rods, staves, and the like. Shoggti are fond of wands in particular, particularly those that create mind-affecting effects that are easy to inflict on victims of their braincloud ability. A shoggti’s body is an egg-shaped mass about 8 feet long—its tentacles are about 8 feet long as well. The whole creature weighs 900 pounds.

The utukku specializes in a viciously subtle method of removing sinful souls from the cycle of mortal life. When an utukku builds a cult, it teaches its followers that if they follow its teachings, they will be rewarded not via transformation into a powerful outsider, but by assimilation into the Great Beyond itself. What greater glory than to be immortal as a fundamental part of reality? The souls of devout utukku cultists, as wicked and destructive as they were in life, do not transform into outsiders upon being judged, but instead form into new quintessence that then merges with the Abyss. In this way, these souls bolster the Abyss while simultaneously starving demonkind of the new souls they need to grow in number.  In its true shape, an utukku stands 7 feet tall and weighs 200 pounds.

The gorgoros delights in petrifying living creatures to serve as material for twisted artistic endeavors. These fiends emerge from walls to petrify and devour, and use their stone-altering magic to reshape battlefields—or petrified foes. Their grotesque art, made from resculpted victims, is short-lived; while gorgoroses don’t require sustenance, they enjoy feeding on the statues they create.  Even those who avoid petrification may not escape unscathed; it is rumored that the daughters of survivors are born with petrifying gazes and serpents for hair. Blasphemous whispers hint that this is how medusas originated.  A gorgoros measures a full 15 feet in length and weighs 6,000 pounds.

The nyogoth’s role on the Abyss is that of a scavenger. Essentially mobile clumps of buoyant intestines, these writhing creatures squirt through the air in convulsive movements like an octopus gliding through water, and are constantly on the search for anything smaller than one of their many mouths (either the relatively small ones that pinch and gasp at the tips of their intestinal limbs or the larger gaping one at their cores). They can subsist on the waste and filth left behind by other denizens of the Abyss, but particularly enjoy feeding on still-living creatures. Despite their seemingly lowly role in Abyssal ecosystems, the nyogoths are far from stupid beasts. Most are nearly as intelligent as the average human, and are capable of solving relatively complex problems when it comes to securing the next meal. As outsiders, nyogoths do not need to eat to survive, yet this does not exempt them from hunger—a nyogoth that goes for longer than 12 hours without a meal becomes increasingly violent and erratic. Such a “starving” nyogoth typically fights to the death when the prospect of food is available, and may even resort to self-cannibalism, drinking its own spurting digestive juices from its wounds in a nauseating display. A typical nyogoth is 5 feet in diameter and weighs 260 pounds, although they are known to grow much larger.

The gongorinans are the spawn of the qlippoth lord Yamasoth, although one could be forgiven for thinking of them less as offspring and more as parasites. A gongorinan’s basic shape resembles that of an immense, stocky crab, save that it lacks crabs’ aquatic adaptations—gongorinans are terrestrial creatures. A typical gongorinan has no fewer than a dozen stalked eyes, and is capable of extending these eyes from the upper edges of its body just above its mouth to a length of nearly 3 feet, giving it extraordinary vision in all directions. A gongorinan’s mouth is a complex tangle of sliding plates and toothy ridges that rasp and shriek against each other as it speaks and chews, but despite their frightening shapes, these mouthparts are ill-suited for making physical attacks; the gongorinan relies upon its arms for that. Each gongorinan has four arms, and each is a different, highly specialized appendage. The humanoid arm is used for fine manipulation or wielding weapons, while the mantis-like claw is used to shred flesh and create deep, bleeding wounds. The needle-covered tentacle is used to sting and inject a painful poison to stagger foes, while the pincer is used to snatch and hold victims close for oviposition.  A typical gongorinan stands about 6 feet tall and weighs 800 pounds. When at rest, a gongorinan retracts its limbs into its rock-encrusted body, allowing it to appear remarkably like nothing more than a large, misshapen boulder. Larger specimens known as elder gongorinans exist (and often have additional and even more dangerous arms), but these are quite rare save for in realms where Yamasoth’s influence is strong.    All gongorinans carry a brood of horrific egg masses, yet these eggs are not used for the propagation of their kind (a process governed by a more traditional and nightmarish method best left undescribed). Instead, these eggs carry within their stony shells a raw quintessence of the Abyss, infused with the ichor-seed of the gongorinans’ lord Yamasoth. Whereas most creatures are driven to breed and multiply, the gongorinans are instead driven to seek out humanoid hosts for their eggs. The implantation happens via the gongorinan’s mouth and a hideous ovipositor that’s neither tongue nor toothed, prolapsing throat, but something worse. Fortunately for most who might encounter a gongorinan, the oviposition process leaves the horrid qlippoth open to attack and cannot be performed quickly, yet to a lone adventurer caught and overwhelmed by a gongorinan, this is small comfort indeed.  Once an egg has been implanted, it takes many days to grow, and the gongorinan prefers to carry the unfortunate host off to restrain it in a hidden location for the duration. Victims are often cocooned in webs while the egg gestates. As it grows, the egg feeds on the victim’s mind, absorbing the victim’s intellect until it has reduced the host to a drooling wreck. At this point, the egg doesn’t hatch so much as it merge with the host, effecting a horrific and permanent transformation into a monstrous form. The gongorinan can influence this ultimate form as it lays its egg. It typically chooses powerful creatures already found in the region, for these “young” are loyal to their parent and serve it as guardians or playthings. Victims retain no portion of their previous personality, but those who have been rescued from this horrific fate via powerful magic do retain memories of their time as a monstrosity. Many never quite recover from these ordeals, and often develop a peculiar form of madness in which they regard their life as a monster as having been their true life, and their true form and life as the curse. The most despondent seek the promise of peace through suicide rather than endure the dreams of their life as a monster—dreams that carry within them a most horrible longing to return to the qlippoth’s arms.  Gongorinans are an industrious breed of qlippoth, and wherever they find themselves, they invariably form hive-like complexes in which to live. These gongorinan “cities” are labyrinthine affairs with plenty of chambers for their transformed children. In the Abyss, gongorinan hives can grow truly immense, with populations in the thousands, but the Material Plane is no stranger to their hive cities.  

ELDER GONGORINAN  
An elder gongorinan is a Large creature with at least 4 additional Hit Dice. For every 4 additional Hit Dice an elder gongorinan has, it gains an additional arm—these additional arms may duplicate an existing claw, sting, pincer, or hand. An elder gongorinan with additional hands can make additional weapon attacks, but these are all treated as off-hand attacks.
Some elder gongorinans have different arms; listed below are four examples of potential additional limbs.  
Club: This whiplike arm ends in a bony growth that delivers a slam attack. A creature struck by this attack must succeed at a Fortitude saving throw or be staggered for 1 round (DC = 10 + 1/2 the gongorinan’s Hit Dice + its Strength modifier).  
Serpent: This arm is a serpent capable of delivering a bite attack injecting poison that deals Constitution damage rather than Strength damage.  
Whip: This arm is a thin, segmented limb tipped with a long tendril. The arm deals slashing damage on a hit, has 5 feet more reach than normal, and attempts a free trip attack if it hits a target.  
Worm: This arm ends in a maw capable of making a bite attack. On a hit, the bite inflicts confusion for 1d3 rounds unless the victim makes a successful Will save (DC = 10 + 1/2 the gongorinan’s Hit Dice + its Charisma modifier).  

The chernobue is a living manifestation of the vile fecundity of the Abyss—a monstrous, alien pregnancy made flesh. By infecting creatures with the Abyssal taint they carry, they spread pain and misfortune wherever they flop and writhe—and with their plane shift ability, they are ready to spread their filth throughout the multiverse. A chernobue is 13 feet long and weighs 500 pounds.

Behimirons are unholy creatures born from the corruption of death itself. In a profane parody of natural birth, they slay living beings in order to use the corpses as incubators for their insectoid spawn. As with all qlippoth, behimirons are concerned more with the demons infesting the Abyss than with mortal life, and prefer butchering demons to serve as hosts for their spawn.  A behimiron’s body measures 15 feet across, or 20 feet with trunk and antennae, and it weighs over 6 tons.

The immense augnagar is relatively slow-witted. As an outsider, it does not need to eat to survive, yet it remains ravenous and feeds on anything it can overpower. The augnagar prefers the taste of well-rotted flesh— particularly rotted demon flesh—and the horrific curse its bite imparts flavors its meals perfectly. Yet the augnagar’s favorite feast is of a much more cannibalistic type. These creatures find the flesh of their own kind to be the greatest delicacy. When an augnagar feeds upon enough of its own kind, it grows enormously bloated such that it can no longer fly, at which point it uses its clawed tails to tear its body apart in a frenzy of self-destruction. From this storm of torn fat and shredded viscera emerges a fully grown thulgant qlippoth—a creature similar in shape to an augnagar, yet much more intelligent and even more dangerous. An augnagar has a wingspan of 30 feet and weighs 6,000 pounds.

Catabolignes are the devastating siege engines of the qlippoth, rampaging among demonic fortifications and unmaking everything in their path. The treelike growth on a cataboligne’s back is capable of unleashing a beam of entropic power that turns all it touches to dust, while its mouth drools a terrible flesh-eating poison. Oddly, catabolignes do not seem hostile toward proteans, who will often merrily lead these devastating qlippoth on destructive sprees.  A cataboligne is 30 feet tall and 40 feet long, and weighs 16 tons.

The dreaded thulgant is among the most dangerous of the qlippoth, for it supports an array of deadly and painful physical attacks with a wide range of potent magical powers. Born from the cannibalistic orgies of augnagar qlippoth, each thulgant exists for one purpose only—the eradication of all demons from the Abyss. Yet thulgants do not spend all of their lives hunting and destroying demons. They rule horrific hives deep in the Abyss populated by all manner of hideous minions, many of which are bound into servitude via binding spells. These qlippoth are fond of decorating their lairs with petrified or enstasised victims of great power—the more powerful the victims, the greater the prestige held by the thulgant.

The most terrible of the qlippoth, with the exception of the qlippoth lords, is doubtless the immense iathavos. Believed by many to be a singular entity, a unique qlippoth so abhorrent that even the Abyss cannot bear to allow more than one to exist at any one time, the iathavos is often encountered attended by numerous nyogoth qlippoth that squirm over its body or under its bulk, feeding upon the wastes and fragments left behind by its shuddersome passing. These nyogoths are invariably other creatures that the iathavos has absorbed and remade—they represent one of the most heinous fates that could await would-be explorers of the deepest Abyssal rifts. The iathavos crusades against the demonic scourge, but the monster does not limit its attentions to seeking out and destroying demons in preparation for the return of the Abyss to qlippoth rule. Indeed, the iathavos has the ability to shift among the various planes of the multiverse, and often travels to Material Plane worlds to systematically scour realms clean of mortal life, thus ensuring that these worlds can no longer provide the raw materials—sinful mortal souls—the Abyss relies upon to create new demons. Worlds visited by the iathavos are notable for the widespread devastation and the unusually large populations of nyogoths that remain behind to consume every last speck of decay the iathavos leaves behind. The iathavos can be called via the most powerful spells, such as gate, but its immunity to mind-affecting effects and its vast size ensure that only the most desperate or most insane ever attempt such a self-destructive act. In all known cases, the deliberate conjuration of the iathavos to another world has done little more than draw the attention of the powerful creature to that world, so that even if it is banished back to the Abyss before it can cause too much devastation, the iathavos remembers the visit. It often returns under its own power at a later date to pursue its own goals on the newly discovered world. Only if the iathavos is presented with defenders that prevent it from achieving its destructive ruin does it flee back to the Abyss via plane shift— in such cases, the qlippoth often waits for centuries or even millennia before returning to that world, for there are always easier realms to destroy. The iathavos is a powerful and horrifying monster made all the more devastating by its incredible intellect. The creature takes care to plan its major assaults on demonic enclaves or mortal cities, even though it is powerful enough that few creatures in the multiverse can give it pause. When the iathavos is slain, the multiverse typically has only a relatively short time before the Abyss births a replacement monstrosity for the defeated qlippoth. This newly born iathavos is an entirely new creature—it does not share the memories of the previous incarnation, nor does it possess any advanced hit dice or class levels the previous monster may have gained, yet its appetite and hatred for demonic life and the sins that create such life remain constant and unending. To call such an iathavos a “newborn” is somewhat misleading. Although technically a freshly created creature, newborn iathavoses do not undergo a “childhood.” They form fully grown, as presented here. Yet with each new incarnation of the qlippoth monstrosity, changes can occur. A new iathavos might have slightly different spell-like abilities, for example, or the nature of its horrific appearance might change from that presented here. As an iathavos continues to hunt and destroy, it grows more powerful—an advanced iathavos typically gains more racial Hit Dice as a result. An iathavos that gains power by taking class levels is not unheard of, but it is quite rare— most who do take levels in sorcerer.

Not all of the qlippoth lords have alien intelligences that outstrip the minds of most mortals. In the case of Thuskchoon, the qlippoth lord’s intellect is replaced almost entirely by a ravenous need to consume and feed. Now and then, the qlippoth lord gains flashes of insight and momentarily comprehends vast puzzles of reality, yet those brief insights fade quickly. These periods of insight are lengthened when Thuskchoon consumes prey, for as he digests flesh, he also digests thought, and can parasitize his victim’s minds in order to act with purpose.  Thuskchoon’s Abyssal sanctum is a vast warren of tunnels that wind through the depths of the Abyss and connect most, if not all, of the other qlippoth sanctums. Rarely does he spend time in this maze of caves, though, instead aimlessly wandering the depths of the Abyss in constant search of anything to sate his eternal hunger. Now and then, the qlippoth lord blunders through portals that bring his ravenings to other planes, whereupon it is but a matter of time before he is banished or slain and forced to start his wanderings over anew from his sanctum’s heart.  Thuskchoon measures 40 feet in length and weighs 16,000 pounds.  

THUSKCHOON’S CULT
The worshipers of Thuskchoon refer to the qlippoth lord as the Everglutton to honor his nearly mindless and nigh-constant hunger. Cultists of this unusual qlippoth lord venerate him while not expecting much in the way of intentional reward, for a core part of the faith is the acknowledgement that Thuskchoon is not particularly driven by intellect. The secrets he reveals are potent and world-shaking, yet they are accidental revelations—the circumstantial repercussions of the meandering swaths of destruction the Everglutton leaves in his wake as he lumbers through creation. Temples of Thuskchoon are converted from large caverns or ruined buildings, but the cult is nomadic and never remains in one location for long. Visions of new regions to savage and destroy constantly plague the leaders of this qlippoth lord’s cults, but now and then they may settle in a region for a few years. In these cases, they tend to carve hideous pictographs and foul Abyssal prayers into the stones that make up their temporary shrines. Just as the qlippoth lord himself can gain momentary flashes of insight from the minds of digested victims, so do his cultists constantly seek new drugs, poisons, and exotic consumables to feed upon in hopes of being granted strange visions or unexpected answers to questions they haven’t dared ask.  Thuskchoon’s symbol is a triangular rune with teeth, and his favored weapon is the greatclub. He grants access to the domains of Chaos, Destruction, Evil, and Knowledge, and to the subdomains of Catastrophe, Entropy, Rage, and Thought.

Chavazvug appears as a towering mound of greasy, slithering intestines and internal organs held aloft by five long, slender legs that taper to razor-sharp points. Twitching coils and ropes of entrails dangle below the shuddering bulk, and the entire thing steams and glows with heat. Known as the Crawling Inferno, the very touch of this immense qlippoth lord can set flesh alight and his presence can cause living creatures normally immune to fire to burn alive. Chavazvug stands 50 feet high and weighs 20,000 pounds.  Unlike other qlippoth lords, Chavazvug has chosen to focus on battling demons themselves rather than the sinful souls that spawn them. This makes Chavazvug the least antagonistic of the known qlippoth lords to mortal worshipers, yet the qlippoth lord remains uncaring in the long term for the health and prosperity of “lesser beings” that worship him.  Chavazvug’s Abyssal sanctum is a vast, crater-strewn wasteland in an immense underground cavern deep in the Abyss. Many of these craters are filled with bile and seepage, boiling hot lakes in which strange creatures roil and froth. New craters form constantly as portions of the ceiling miles above fall and plummet to impact the floor. In time, the constantly collapsing ceiling may well cause subsidence in other demonic realms far above, or even break through into the Astral Plane, at which point cultists of Chavazvug hold that their god will rise in power to become a deity.

CHAVAZVUG’S CULT  
Chavazvug is known as the Crawling Inferno to his worshipers, who venerate the qlippoth lord as a patron of fiery consumption and monstrous recursion. For the typical worshiper of Chavazvug, nothing could be closer to perfection than perishing from an unexpected bout of spontaneous combustion, only to have some form of horrific monster spawn from the steaming ashes left behind by the supplicant’s fiery doom. These worshipers believe such a fate is a reward for service, and never seek to trigger such combustion on their own. Worshipers of Chavazvug tend to be solitary lunatics, arsonists, and sadists who delight in burning helpless victims as much as they do in the choking scent of seared flesh or the hypnotic glow of a fiery conflagration consuming a building or woodland. Chavazvug’s sacred sites are the burnt-out husks of buildings—particularly buildings where demonic worship once took place.  Chavazvug’s symbol is a burning tentacled rune, and his favored weapon is the heavy flail. He grants access to the domains of Chaos, Evil, Fire, and Repose, and to the subdomains of Ash, Entropy, Smoke, and Souls.

Immense Oaur-Ooung is a horrifically prolific source of soldiers for the qlippoth’s war against mortals. It is from this qlippoth lord that a significant number of the Abyss’s qlippoth hordes emerge. If through some chance event Oaur-Ooung were permanently slain, the production of qlippoth by the Abyss would not cease entirely, but it would diminish by a noticeable amount—at least, until the Abyss churned out some sort of equally vile and fecund replacement for the slain qlippoth lord.  Oaur-Ooung’s Abyssal sanctum is a poisoned ocean with no shoreline. Here and there in its inky depths, submerged mountaintops reach in vain for the churning sea’s surface, and leviathans swim through the vastness. Oaur-Ooung is the largest among them, but she keeps no lair as her own, content to drift through the eternal ocean spawning qlippoth large and small. Some are drowned, some she consumes, but enough escape her clutches and the ocean’s depths to make their way elsewhere into the Abyss, often via churning vortices to other realms.  Sometimes, the creatures born from Oaur- Ooung’s blisterwombs are particularly powerful; it’s rumored that at least one of the Abyss’s demon lords began its existence as a qlippoth lord emerging from Oaur-Ooung. Those few who have recently seen Oaur-Ooung (and survived) claim that a blisterwomb of unprecedented size boils on her flank, suggesting that she is about to spawn something of immense power. What this new addition to the Abyss might be and what form it might take is unknown, but it surely bodes ill for mortal life on countless worlds.  Oaur-Ooung’s body is 120 feet long, but her central tentacular stalk can unfurl to a length of miles for brief moments to lash out at creatures that have the distinct misfortune of having attracted her attention.

OAUR-OOUNG’S CULT
Worshipers of Oaur-Ooung tend to be obsessed with one thing: the overwhelming desire to be transformed into a qlippoth. These cultists are not to be pitied, for their desires are not born out of shame. They believe that the qlippoth will win, and that by securing early transformation into one of these destructive beings, they will live on in the world they know will eventually replace all of reality. That they will retain none of their mortal memories or personalities is no deterrent to these people, as long as they survive in some form while the rest of their kind do not. Many have already abandoned their racial identities, repudiating their original cultures and pursuing magical or surgical alteration. Oaur-Ooung is worshiped on desolate coastlines and within the ruins of wracked or sunken ships, and sacrifices to her are often subjected to vile fleshwarping rituals in which their bodies become unholy components for transformative rituals designed to “evolve” the faithful and consume worshipers’ foes.  Oaur-Ooung’s symbol is a jellyfish-shaped rune, and her favored weapon is the trident. This qlippoth lord grants access to the domains of Chaos, Evil, Plant, and Water, and to the subdomains of Decay, Fear, Growth, and Oceans.    

Isph-Aun-Vuln appears as a human-sized mass of roiling tentacles arrayed around a large toothy maw. These tentacles slip in and out of reality, never fully existing as anything more than vapor, yet despite her immaterial form and relatively small size, she is among the most powerful of the qlippoth lords. Whereas others overwhelm their opponents through size and strength, Isph-Aun-Vuln opts for a more subversive and subtle approach, using possession and mental control of others to achieve her goal of slaughtering every creature with the capacity for sin—in other words, all free-willed mortals. Those she has no such use for she devours, adorning herself with fragments of their souls as vaporous, incandescent trophies—such will be the fate of all who remain should Isph-Aun-Vuln ever succeed at eliminating free will from the universe.

ISPH-AUN-VULN’S CULT  
Isph-Aun-Vuln is perhaps the most powerful of the qlippoth lords, so it should come as no surprise that her cult is the most widespread among mortals on hundreds of different worlds throughout the Material Plane. Many who pay homage to Isph-Aun-Vuln, who is often referred to only as the Feaster Within, do so without knowing fully what sort of entity they worship, and only follow the commands of a charismatic but insane cult leader. In many cases, such leaders have been dominated or otherwise mentally controlled by Isph-Aun-Vuln so often that they have lost all remnants of their previous personalities. Isph-Aun-Vuln’s worshipers venerate her amid standing stones perched on the edges of towering cliffs or rugged, wind-scoured mountain tops, and sacrifices to the demigoddess generally involve using magic to hurl a victim into the sky, where it is buffeted by winds before being allowed to fall to the earth below, broken and ruined. Isph-Aun-Vuln’s holy symbol is a rune within a cloud of tentacles, and her favored weapon is the longbow. She grants access to the domains of Air, Chaos, Evil, and Trickery, and to the subdomains of Deception, Fear, Venom, and Wind.