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The "Hordes of the Abyss" 3.5 book has 20 random ways for demons to die. For example, one half is consumed by fire, the other half turns to ice & shatters; demon explodes in a flash of light, leaving nothing but a vague image outlined on a nearby wall.
However, the players have fought enough outsiders now that I've made my way through most of the list.
Anything interesting & unique? I'm looking more for flavor text/harmless rather than the balrog exploding in a huge fireball that damages all around it.
__________________ "Who's more foolish: the fool, or the fool who follows him?" - Obi Wan Kenobi
How about the demon's soul gets blasted apart into little shards, each one with some memories of its former, glorious self (but none of the power)?
Pick it up and it starts buzzing. Feed it blood and you can talk to it.
__________________ "If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry."
-- Ernest Hemingway, "A Farewell to Arms" Burning Empires:Boldaq Keep on the Shadowfell
Thanks - several good ideas so far. The first demon up is a marilith. Assuming the party survives, maybe the demon type would also spur an idea or three?
__________________ "Who's more foolish: the fool, or the fool who follows him?" - Obi Wan Kenobi
It might be interesting to have the death blow to be chopping off her head, and then have her molt, but fantastically quickly (like stomping on a tube of toothpaste), with a pile of bloody fleshless arms squirting out of her translucent snakescales which are left behind .
Last edited by Aberzanzorax; 23rd April 2009 at 09:08 PM..
As the killing blow lands, a dark, swirling portal appears beside the demon. It's face is a mask of fear, as it is slowly pulled into the portal. In the distance, the characters hear a voice intoning, "You have failed me for the last time..."j
As far as a marilith is concerned, I can't help but think of a "Death's Embrace". She reflexively trying to give a demonic bear hug - trying to grab and squeeze the person with its last ounces of strength, before locking up in that position. Of course, since you dont' want this to be an attack, it can be a failure.
Add in a line about 'almost sensual writhing' and you get the point across.
Change the demon name in the fluff as you see fit.
Feeling the fatigue of this battle, you strike at the Balor peeling away flesh as entrails spill out, onto the stone floor; the body falls prone. Steadying yourself with victory at hand, you glance towards the demon as a giant Shadow hand takes form and snatches something from your prize. A haunting laughter rings out when the Shadow hand evaporates from sight.
Drawing upon your arcane power chanting a few words you release a bolt of energy at the Glabrezu. The impact centered on the torso jolting the limbs in waves of aftershocks as the corpse falls back with a thud. Wisps of brimstone smoke rises from each eye socket filling the area with the stench.
Burying your dagger deep between the slits of armor, the Hezrou cries out. The demon twists and turns to dislodge your weapon from the deepening wound, howling louder from each attempt, spilling more blood. The Hezrou hunches over, pulling you atop the corpse with dagger in hand. Looking over the battlefield you notice pools of blood dissolving the ground.
How about the demon's soul gets blasted apart into little shards, each one with some memories of its former, glorious self (but none of the power)?
Pick it up and it starts buzzing. Feed it blood and you can talk to it.
I like that idea.
1. I once wrote a story about a serial killer who dreamed he was being instructed in what to do by a demon.
The demon would never appear at night on a full moon however, even when summoned. One night the killer murdered a young woman on a full moon near sunrise.
The demon appeared at about that same time to consume the killer. When the demon did the killer fled towards the rising sun. The demon gave pursuit and caught the murderer. As he did so he had two shadows, one cast by the rising sun, the other by the setting moon. When they converged the shadow stood up and ate the demon then walked into the shadow of the killer, and the murderer was discovered by a passing car at the crime scene and was shortly apprehended by the police, and executed on a full moon near sunrise.
2. Another I can think of is an astronomical convergence where two comets collide according to a prophecy and if the demon can be trapped in a certain locale while this happens he is crushed as if caught between the comets.
3. If the demon can be caught at a certain holy place when certain conditions are met then butterflies (psyche also means soul) will appear (the souls of previous victims) and they will encase the demon in a cocoon from which he cannot escape and will be forced down to the size of a caterpillar and then frozen as a larva in that from forever. This is not a slaying of the demon but is an eternal entrapment.
4. Of course you've got the biblical references. Such as the demon inhabits a victim, then is exercised, cast into swine who then run mad and kill themselves. Or are killed by the party. but maybe he is exercised into the body of a monster rather than swine.
5. A demon is trapped in a crypt of Saints or Holy Men who then rise to do battle with the demon with the cooperation of the party. But rather than fight the demon the Saints speak scriptures to it until it is dispelled back to where it came from.
6. A relic is touched to the done which then paralyzes it until the demon can be drown or buried alive in sacred earth which reduces it to scattered bones which cannot rejoin or move.
7. There is an alchemical substance, sort of like a reverse Philosopher's Stone, which when mixed with blood and consumed by the demon will make him decrepit, mortal, and frail, so that he can be killed.
Thousands of tiny eyeless snakes burst out of the skin of the dying marilith. They tumble to the ground and slither away, each one leaving a trail of blood and slime. The tattered remnants of the marilith's skin disintegrate into ash.
Later on, the PCs encounter one of those snakes grown to colossal size.
__________________ Have you ever known a person who always behaved exactly the way you expected? Real people don't stay in character.
Of course you've got the biblical references. Such as the demon inhabits a victim, then is exercised, cast into swine who then run mad and kill themselves. Or are killed by the party. but maybe he is exercised into the body of a monster rather than swine.
Stupid, stupid Microsoft. That should be "exorcised," of course.
Stupid, stupid Microsoft. That should be "exorcised," of course.
I can have Richard Simmons appear, "Ok people, a one, two, three, four, again, one, two, three, four," and then the marilith collapses from exhaustion.
__________________ "Who's more foolish: the fool, or the fool who follows him?" - Obi Wan Kenobi
I once had a dying marilith split into the six different evil female souls that had formed it, before they were pulled back down to hell by grasping spectral hands.
__________________ - Piratecat, EN World Admin
Currently editing the 4e War of the Burning Sky adventure path. Support EN Publishing, get excellent modules!
I can have Richard Simmons appear, "Ok people, a one, two, three, four, again, one, two, three, four," and then the marilith collapses from exhaustion.
Just because it's a demon doesn't mean you need to be unnecessarily cruel Jeff. Isn't it enough you're gonna kill it?
Quote:
I once had a dying marilith split into the six different evil female souls that had formed it, before they were pulled back down to hell by grasping spectral hands.
I had a girlfriend like that once from Egypt. She survived, but I almost bought it.
I once had a dying marilith split into the six different evil female souls that had formed it, before they were pulled back down to hell by grasping spectral hands.
Nice.
Random jam:
The more powerful demons of the infinite layers of the abyss are themselves multilayered beings, recursive incarnations of the same damned soul. While usually only the outermost incarnation ever visits the Prime Material plane, sometimes a "truer" incarnation of that fiend makes it over to the mortal world. This gives them more strength in the prime material than if just their "lowest" self made it over. If such a fiend is "slain", its weak link with the mortal world is severed, and all of its "selves" from the most powerful one that made it over to the weakest lose cohesiveness. It appears to die, but then "another" of itself tears free from its form. But the link to the Prime has already been cut. It can't sustain itself. It dies as well, possibly seemingly from other means. And then "another" tears free, and so on until all of the fiend has been banished back to the Abyss.
Same thing happens when you kill the original fiend on the Abyss, except with each portion being drawn screaming into the stuff of the Abyss itself, there to remain until the plane itself sees fit to reincarnate them.
And as it dies, and it keeps going down the "line" of selves, it seems that it either becomes more and more monstrous and otherworldly(for demons that were made from obyriths, spontaneously by the Abyss,etc.), or closer and closer to the original mortal soul that became the demon, possibly screaming futilely for help to any present.
Not sure if I like it as is. Metaphysics need working out.
Last edited by Mikaze; 24th April 2009 at 09:27 PM..
1d20 Evil Outsider Death Throes
1 Appendages are consumed by the torso, which then drops to the ground like loaded luggage.
2 Appendages turn to hellfire and begin lashing the rest of the creature into burning ash.
3 Body explodes into a thousand scarab beetles which burrow into the surrounding ground.
4 Body sliced into several parts by some phantom, unseen scythe…and a howling wind is heard.
5 Creature begins reciting underworld chants as his form is slowly consumed from the bottom up.
6 Creature immediately turns to slime and splatters outwardly around the area.
7 Creature solidifies as rock, then is scattered like ash from an unseen gale wind.
8 Creature takes on a gooey form and begins swirling into a miniature vortex before winking out.
9 Creature's body folds itself in half the infamous 8 times, finally bursting in a tiny droplet of carnage.
10 Eyes suck into the skull causing the head to swell to obscene proportions before exploding.
11 Flesh is pulled into the skeleton, which finally twitches, then bursts into splinters.
12 Form goes ethereal and creature tries to flee as it is pulled into the weapon that delivered the blow.
13 Form turns to coal-black stone in an instant, now a statue forevermore of smoldering evil.
14 Form seems to be pulled backwards beyond sight and boundaries into a distant doom.
15 Form twitches in agony as unseen jaws take chunks of the creature out amidst raining pulp.
16 Head looks up in fear as the creature begins to be atomized slowly upward from the feet up.
17 Otherwordly foot appears to squash the creature into a paper-thin sheet of fleshy bone and muscle.
18 Shadow forms appear and drag the creature to the apex of the area in two dimensions.
19 Torso of the creature implodes instantly while the legs and arms explode.
20 Wings of the creature fold around it like a cocoon, and then fleshy pulp melts out of a single crack.
I wonder if it, rather than being the same being, demons could be "containters". They could contain either mortal souls or other demons they have killed (or the mortal souls from those demons).
The mortal souls end up tormented inside the demon. To advance, more souls are needed, and it stretches the skin. Only souls powerful enough and of the right sort (i.e. appropriate alignment) are usefuly in stretching the skin in this way.
I wrote that seeming far too "physical", though. I'd intended it to be much more "metaphorical".
OH, and, SPOILER ALERT for Order of the Stick (only if you haven't read like the last 10 comics):
Like V, the main demon is in control, but the souls that it carries give it power and constantly chime in and whisper to it. That is CHAOS for you with a capital "C". Just think of a Balor with hundreds of souls trapped within it's essence, all of them trying to influence it in their own evil ways.
Last edited by Aberzanzorax; 24th April 2009 at 11:12 PM..
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