[ Outsiders > Fiends > Parochial > Hordling ]
Hordling
The Uncounted
Home Plane: Carceri, occasionally encountered on neighbouring Lower Planes
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
Themes: These fiends embody malice without purpose, cruelty without ambition, seeming to existing solely to spread misery and destroy whatever crosses their path.
Philosophy: Chant goes that no two hordlings look exactly alike, and that’s part of why encountering them is such a sodding nightmare—they’re thoroughly unpredictable and aggressive, and that makes them dangerous. These abominations can range from small, scuttling horrors to massive, lumbering monstrosities, each one twisted by the corrupting energies of the Lower Planes. Some sport multiple arms ending in razor claws, others drag themselves along on tentacles or hop about on springy legs that can launch them twenty feet in any direction. Their heads might be wedge-shaped, conical, or spherical, adorned with anything from bone spikes to writhing horns, while their mouths bristle with every conceivable form of fang, tusk, or crushing tooth. The stench that follows them is a nauseating churn of decay and despair, while the sounds they make range from gibbering madness to bone-chilling screams.
What makes hordlings true fiends though isn’t just their physical horror—it’s their complete embrace of meaningless evil. Unlike tanar’ri who revel in sin or baatezu who scheme for power, the hordlings exist purely to consume whatever they can devour, and ruin whatever they cannot. Some say they are the twisted remnants of fiends who’ve died on the Lower Planes and been unable to find their way back to their home plane to reform. Something about Carceri pulls them in like an evil magnet, trapping them on one of its awful prison layers. Others reckon that particularly unpleasant petitioners arrive in Carceri as hordlings. My money’s on the so-called Punishment Theory though—cutters who try to escape from the Tarterian Depths find their bodies, minds and spirits scrambled by trapped portals, malfunctioning magics or gehreleth trickery. The worst features of cutter A get mixed up with the nasty personality of berk B. No wonder the hordlings are so random, and so angry,
Paragons: The hordlings’ chaotic and individualistic nature means they rarely produce true paragons or organized leadership. Their tendency to devour each other and their complete lack of ambition beyond immediate gratification makes the rise of any singular powerful leader nearly impossible. However, some dark chant suggests that in the deeper orbs of Carceri, ancient Uncountables who’ve devoured endless numbers of their kin have become twisted beings of such concentrated malice that even the shators give them a wide berth. Whether these so-called raveners truly exist or are just another bit of barmy speculation from Sigil’s tavern philosophers remains a mystery that only an addle-cove would dare investigate.
More chant on the hordlings coming soon…
Canonwatch: †from the Pathfinder setting; ‡ Homebrew. I’ve relocated the hordlings to Carceri as the Gray Waste is already full enough—Planescape never did much with them and they always struck me as far too random for the Gray Waste. Carceri is at least more chaotic, could do with some more love as it’s got a lot of layers to fill.