[ Outsiders > Fiends > Parochial > Likhoradka]
[ Cattle’s Death | Gneteya | Korcheya | Kostolomka | Ogneya | Ospa | Oznoba ]
Likhoradka
Home Plane: Gray Waste / Oinos
Alignment: Neutral Evil
Themes: The embodiment of deadly diseases, children of Stribog, the power of pestilence
Philosophy: Each type of these feculent fiends represents, carries, and spreads a particular malaise that affects mortals. From the grippe to dengue fever, lockjaw to rabies, these outsiders exist because of the fear cutters have from catching and succumbing to diseases. Fortunately, likhoradkas are usually confined to the Gray Waste, but every so often they manage to slip across planar boundaries and visit an unsuspecting prime world. If it’s one they’ve never been to before, this is the sign to worry—for the ultimate goal of the likhoradka is to inflict widespread suffering, misery and ideally death on mortal populations. They are particularly gleeful if they manage to set off a pandemic in a population naive to their favoured germ.
Paragons: If the likhoradkas have leaders, they keep themselves well-hidden. It’s more likely that these fiends simply do the bidding of their father Stribog, and he arrogantly does not see the need for any meddling middle-fiends to get in his way—or challenge him. Likhoradkas were originally born of the horrid Zhupela, the proxy daughter of Stribog. The Slavic power of disease then further infected these creatures to create his army of pestilence. Their appearance and abilities are reminiscent of disease they represent. Their relationship to the yugoloths is dark—it could be that likhoradkas are really a type of ‘loth, or maybe they are some other, newer kind of fiend.
See also: The Pox Exchange — being a conspiracy theory about how the likhoradkas and the yugoloth are connected
| Likhoradka | Disease | Challenge Rating |
| Oznoba | Grippe [influenza] | 2 |
| Ogneya | Water poison fever [dengue] | 2 |
| Gneteya | Consumption [tuberculosis] | 6 |
| Kostolomka | Lockjaw [tetanus] | 9 |
| Korcheya | Lyssa [rabies] | 9 |
| Ospa | Pox [smallpox] | 13 |
| Cattle’s Death | Charbon [anthrax] | 16 |
Sources: Margarita and Jon Winter-Holt. Margarita notes: The likhoradkas are a homebrew fiend race, inspired by the eponymous disease-riddled spirits of Slavic mythology. While based on Slavic folklore and beliefs, the amount of actual information we have on pre-Christian Slavic deities is so minuscule that building any kind of lore out of it is impossible. However, there are a lot of folk beliefs about things these deities are thought to represent, which I have worked into the piece.
Do any homebrew stats for these creatures exist currently?
I did them for 5e, though they were a bit incomplete. If anyone is interested, I may try porting them to PF2e
I’m interested! (Do I count?) 😛
(Did you send me the 5e stats? Would be good to add those too – I’ll make a separate page for each of the beasties)
I think I did, quite a while ago. But I’ll try to cook something up for Pathfinder as well
I found your 5e stats in an old email! Only a year late… I’ll try and get them sorted this weekend! So sorry :/
any news on those stats?
Thanks for the reminder! It took me a while but eventually I found them! I’ve written up a couple of the lesser likhoradha, the others will follow soon 🙂
Do these critter have ties to Apollyon or Khin-Oin? Either as Allies or as Rivals, vying for Rulership over Sickness?
Thanks for the inspiration… you can find my answer here! https://mimir.net/places/pox-exchange/