Abyssal Lord Miscellany

A Miscellany of Abyssal Lords

Find the full index of Abyssal Lords on the mimir here.

Some of the most famous names of the Abyss are also among the more profane and perilous to speak aloud; wherever these entities are recorded, their passage inevitably accompanies woe, destruction, and terror on a scale few can truly comprehend. Demon lords are unique and monstrous demons whose power should never be taken lightly. Those who claim the title of Demon Prince generally have total authority over at least one layer of the plane (insofar as there is any rhyme or reason to the titles in a place so chaotic), but the Fraternity of Order has come to believe that governance is a secondary concern as Princehood is reckoned. By this evaluation, the true measure of a Demon Prince is the claim they lay to being Prince of something, some aspect of evil or fear or suffering, and that the title indicates none have successfully contested this claim to date. In a realm as infinite as the Abyss, this represents a significant achievement—how many would-be rivals have each of the below put down?

Baphomet

Demon Prince of Beasts. CE tanar’ri lord of mazes, beasts and minotaurs (he/him)

Realm: Abyss / The Endless Maze

Baphomet is a cunning and savage demon who rules over a vast labyrinth from his palace, the Lyktion. The 600th layer of the Abyss, the Endless Maze, is his domain, wherein he experiments to develop new forms of demon and unleash them upon the planes. Baphomet is a patron of minotaurs (and resembles one himself) and some evil giants; he has a longstanding enmity with Yeenoghu and shares a portion of his territory with the nightmarish obyrith Pale Night. Wickedly intelligent, Baphomet has bested would-be contenders to his title by melding bestial ferocity and brute force with understated but sharp tactics and a keen eye for analysing vulnerabilities.

Demogorgon

Prince of Demons. CE tanar’ri lord of insanity (they/them)

Realm: Abyss / The Gaping Maw

The two-headed Demogorgon rules over the Gaping Maw, the 88th layer of the Abyss, from their fortress Abysm. The first demon to be shaped from mortal souls and emotions, Demogorgon is far older than their chief rivals for the lofty title of Prince of Demons, Graz’zt and Orcus, with whom they are engaged in a cold war to determine who the most powerful demon in the Abyss will be. Unstable, violent, and filled with spite, Demogorgon makes allies rarely and enemies easily. Were it not for their sheer seniority and the power they hold through the mantle of Prince of Demons—as long as they hold this title, there can literally be no single demon more powerful than Demogorgon—they would surely have been toppled long ago. They have cultists on the Material Plane, but rarely humanoid ones—Demogorgon invades the dark dreams of creatures such as kuo-toa, ixitxachitls, and troglodytes. They have a mutual understanding with the obyrith lord Dagon, who offers counsel and lore to support the twisted machinations of the Prince of Demons. The terrible truth of Demogorgon is that each of their heads has its own personality, and that the two are at war with one another. The left head, Aamuel, is charismatic and calculating; the right head, Hethradiah, is feral and destructive. The only thing the two heads absolutely agree on is that this secret must never be revealed.

Fraz-Urb’luu

Demon Prince of Deception. CE tanar’ri lord of duplicity (he/him)

Realm: Abyss / Hollow’s Heart

When he deigns to be seen in his true form rather than a disguise or illusion, Fraz-Urb’luu is a hulking grey-skinned gargoyle with pale blue hair. As the ruler of Hollow’s Heart, the 176th layer, the calculating demon resides in Zoragmelok, his fortress city. It is situated in a mountainous valley, a kind of oasis at the centre of an infinite desert of chalky white dust under an eternally black sky. The Prince of Deception made a habit of deceiving and humiliating his fellow demon princes, who have in turn retaliated by providing the means to summon and bind him to several ambitious mages across the Material Plane. Fraz-Urb’luu remembers each indignity, and his taste for revenge runs very cold indeed—schemes within schemes have been laid over centuries in order to repay his rivals for every second he has ever been forced into some wizard’s service or trapped in an artefact. Given that he has liberated himself each and every time, one would not be wise to bet against the Prince of Deception when it comes to achieving the most unlikely revenge through sheer will and creativity.

Graz’zt

The Dark Prince. CE tanar’ri prince of base instincts, lust, seduction (he/him)

Realms: Abyss / Azzagrat

Although the Dark Prince obscures the truth of his origins, putting about rumors that he is a fallen archdevil or a demigod of hedonism, in truth his power derives from his unusual birth. Graz’zt is a child of the obyrith Pale Night by an unknown father—whispered to be no less than the Abyss itself. His heritage has provided him with great physical and magical strength, but it is his own native cunning that has parlayed these assets into a vast Abyssal empire comprising the three layers of Azzagrat, which he rules from the Argent Palace in Zelatar, his capital city. Standing nine feet tall, with yellow eyes, jet-black skin, and small horns, Graz’zt cuts an imposing and handsome figure. A patron of witches and warlocks, the Prince of Pleasure has likely sired more cambions than any other demon lord. His cults are often led by women, and he is served by many lamias who see in him a reflection of their own foul hedonistic desires. His most trusted advisor is a stark-white humanlike demon named Verin, a skilled diplomat whose pleasant demeanour does not offset the disturbing secretion of spiritual slime that forever coats him in an unpleasant oily sheen.

Juiblex

The Faceless Lord. CE qlippoth lord of ooze, slime, poison and sloth [it/its]

Realms: Abyss / Shedaklah (contested); Abyss / Molor

Juiblex is a would-be demon prince denied its goals by the contempt of its peers and the hungers of Zuggtmoy. The demon lord of oozes, slimes, and all things vile and shapeless, Juiblex resembles a vast festering blob, a shuddering thing of bile and sludge and red staring eyes. Though its knowledge is vast and complex, its goals are often terribly straightforward—Juiblex desires little more than to corrupt, befoul, and despoil. The poison that is its soul should be shared out across the multiverse, it believes. Juiblex contests Zuggtmoy for rule of Shedaklah, the 222nd layer of the Abyss, a putrid morass coated in forests and mountains of fungus. It has been working to encroach on the unclaimed 528th layer, Molor the Stinking Realm, a disgusting realm of eternal decay where otyughs serve Juiblex alongside the demons who follow its will. Juiblex rarely seeks out alliances and has few looking for its friendship in turn, but rumours persist that it may have had some kind of connection with Bwimb, Princess of Ooze.

Kostchtchie

Demon Prince of Wrath. CE tanar’ri prince of frost giants, revenge, wrath [he/him]

Realm: Abyss / The Iron Wastes

Resembling a towering but misshapen frost giant with yellowed skin Kostchtchie (pronounced (KOSS-chuh-chee) is ugly in both body and soul. Petulant, erratic, and hateful, the Prince of Wrath holds the dubious honour of being one of the youngest demon princes. He despises other demons as much as he does humanoids and virtually any other living thing that is not a frost giant – despite this fixation, however, Kostchtchie was human himself in his mortal existence, a fact he is eager to conceal even from himself. The raging demon rules the Iron Wastes, the 23rd layer of the Abyss, from his Glacier Citadel. Within this cold and mountainous realm, Kostchtchie plots endlessly against the frost giant god Thrym, the demon prince Graz’zt, and countless others who he feels have in some way slighted him. He owes a debt to the witch Tasha in her guise as Iggwilv for gifting him with his magic hammer Matalotok.

Malcanthet

Queen of Succubi. CE tanar’ri lord of seduction, temptation, sexuality (she/her)

Realm: Abyss / Shendilavri

Malcanthet sits upon the Razor Throne of Shendilavri, the 570th layer of the Abyss, which she has transformed into a paradise of rolling green hills along the shores of an ocean perpetually bathed in the glow of sunset. Towers of white stone complete the illusion of some Upper Planar haven, though within are demons given over to shocking and aberrant deeds of hedonism run amok, acts in pursuit of both pain and pleasure that would tear the mortal mind asunder to experience. Beneath every surface the corrupt lusts and writhing fleshly cravings of the layer are only barely concealed. Malcanthet is served by countless succubi and incubi as well as cambion guards. Her daughter by Pazuzu, Red Shroud, is the leader of the town of Broken Reach. She once had a dalliance with Demogorgon and now considers the Prince of Demons a hated foe. Her throne was in an ancient era contested by other powerful succubi, though her three greatest rivals—Lynkhab, Shami-Amourae, and Xinivrae—all fell before her and suffered various fates in their turn. Malcanthet commands the status of a demon prince.

&*$@£

Demon Prince of Undeath. CE tanar’ri prince of undeath, necromancy, wrath (he/him)

Realm: Abyss / Thanatos

The most triumphant example of a self-made demon prince, &*$@£ rose through the ranks from a lowly manes all the way to a mighty balor before claiming his mantle of Prince of Undeath. Contemptuous of all living things other than himself, &*$@£ desires to cast down Demogorgon, assume his title, and spread undeath through demonic cults across the Material Plane. Despite his association with the undead, he considers them little more than means to an end; he holds no regard for them save for what they contribute to his wars against Graz’zt and Demogorgon, his most despised foes—though they are but the crown of a long list indeed. &*$@£ is the very image of demonic evil, with vast wings like the night itself, a distorted head like that of a monstrous goat, a venomous serpentine tail, all borne upon a corpulent torso of rotting flesh. He has flirted with true divinity, at one point attaining the power of the gods in death as his alter-ego, a wraithlike being called Tenebrous. Now restored to life, he has been stripped of the power he once held, but his time wandering the planes as a living shadow with godhood just out of reach has left him only more hateful, more hungry for what he has tasted and lost. &*$@£ rules over Thanatos, the 333rd layer (sometimes also numbered 113), from his dread palace Everlost.

Canonwatch: This being was stripped of the name ‘Orcus’ in the epic Planescape adventure Dead Gods [2e], which struck out all references to it across the planes. I’ll be continuing with this tradition: the Googloths and SEO be damned!

Pazuzu

Demon Prince of Corruption. CE obyrith prince of temptation, pestilence, harpies, skies (he./him)

Realms: Abyss / Pazunia (contested); Abyss / Torremor; Abyss / skies of all layers (contested)

Prince of the Lower Aerial Kingdoms, dread Pazuzu was once a mighty obyrith who abstained from the War of Law and Chaos. He shed much of his obyrith nature to join with the new generation of demons, claiming absolute dominion over all skies of the Abyss. This claim is contested by few besides Graz’zt, who desires to rule the entire plane but rarely acts openly against the ancient avian demon. As well as staking a strong claim for lordship of the ungovernable Plain of Infinite Portals—so much so that the layer is usually named Pazunia after him—Pazuzu also reigns over Torremor, the 503rd layer, a treacherous place of bridges, spires, and arches held together by ropes and chains, the whole suspended above a bottomless void, where he watches with dark glee as his despised foe Lamashtu attempts to contest his control and assert her own rule.

Pazuzu targets the honest, the virtuous, and the innocent, offering them gifts and promises of all that they desire in exchange for letting his insidious touch into their souls. He hungers to drink from the fall of the noblest heroes, letting them fall to pure villainy before he returns to devour their eyes. The last thing his victims see is the final betrayal and cruelty of the Corrupter, who never intended them to serve in any way other than as meat and drink for his insatiable appetite to see all that is good, kind, and true despoiled by its own hand.

Uniquely among demon lords, Pazuzu is on passably good terms with several prominent yugoloths and even some archdevils such as Zariel and Glasya. He works behind the scenes to back the military ambitions of Leliel, apparently for no other reason than because it pleases him to see Dispater squirm. Whispers connect him with the archomental Yan-C-Bin, and the two may be conspiring together on some evil plot. Though the Queen of Chaos continues to resent him for refusing to join her cause, Pazuzu has fallen rather low on her list of priorities.

Yeenoghu

Demon Prince of Savagery. CE archfiend of gnolls, ghouls, cannibalism, savagery (he/him)

Realm: Abyss / The Death Dells

Yeenoghu is most well-known on the Material Plane for being the patron of the gnolls, whose worship he usurped from their creator. His demonic essence corrupts them and drives them to acts of wanton and petty brutality; fittingly, Yeenoghu himself is one of the most fecklessly sadistic and violent demons in existence. Ruler of the Death Dells, the 422nd layer, Yeenoghu travels about the sweltering jungles and savannahs in a massive ramshackle iron fortress dragged by a throng of tormented prisoners. He conceals from others, particularly his most hated rival Baphomet, that he lacks full command of the layer – a vast wasteland sits like a stain on his pride beyond the Screaming Peaks, a remnant of Azael, the former lord of this layer. In his most lucid moments, Yeenoghu sometimes travels to the coast of the blood-red ocean to consult with the decaying obyrith lord Bechard, who has spent millennia slowly dying and relishes what little chance the Prince of Savagery offers to wreak a few more swaths of destruction across the planes before his last hour comes.

Source: Afroakuma, first published here [Baphomet, Demogorgon, Fraz-Urb’luu, Graz’zt, Juiblex, Kostchtchie, Malcanthet, Orcus, Pazuzu, Yeenoghu,]