[ Outsiders > Fiends > Orphans ]
Lilu, Tlacatecolo
Pazuzu’s Gift; Tlacatecolotl (CR 5)
Home Plane: Prime & Abyss / Layer 503 Torremor
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
Themes: Mortals cursed by Pazuzu into becoming shapeshifting demons
So, you want to know about the tlacatecolo? [tlah-kah-tee-KOH-loh]. Well cutter, this ain’t just another tale of yet another random bird-demon flapping about the Abyss. No, this is a story about corruption, desperation, and what happens when mortals make bargains with powers they don’t understand.
You see, the tlacatecolo aren’t born demons—they’re made demons. Chant goes that every single one of these plague-owls was once mortal, once someone who thought they were making a too-good-to-be-true deal with a helpful spirit. Well, they were right—sort of. That’s how Pazuzu works, after all. The Prince of the Lower Aerial Kingdoms doesn’t just corrupt—he cultivates.
The Gifts and the Fall
So: you’re a desperate berk. Maybe your village is dying from a plague, maybe drought means your family is starving, or maybe that volcano your burg was carelessly built under is belching out more sulfur than usual. So you do what desperate berks do—you call out into the darkness, begging anyone or anything to help. And Pazuzu? Well, he answers.
He doesn’t appear as a terrifying demon lord at first. Oh no, that would scare any berk away. Instead, he send a servant, or manifests under one of his false names—Pazrael, the Uncle, the Salesman—names that sound almost trustworthy. He grants your wish without strings attached or perversion corrupting it. Your village recovers. Your family eats. The threat passes. All he asks is that you don’t mention his name to others, he’s modest and doesn’t want to be inundated with people asking for help, you are a special case—surely that’s reasonable?
But here’s the thing about Pazuzu’s gifts. People notice. They ask questions. Word spreads. And when others come to you desperate for the same miraculous intervention, well… you call on him again. And again. And this time there’s a price attached. It doesn’t seem a lot to start with—a silver coin, a lock of hair, an animal sacrifice, a symbol drawn in your blood. But it escalates.
The plague winds blow cold from Torremor,
and they carry with them the echoes
of every choice that seemed so reasonable at the time
By the time you realize what’s happening, it’s far too late. Pazuzu’s curse has already taken root in your soul. You find yourself drawn to acts of cruelty, to spreading suffering. You begin to crave the touch of the things you once feared. Your body starts to change at night—subtly at first. Your eyes grow larger, rounder, more hollow. Your fingernails become sharper. You find yourself unconsciously making clicking sounds in your throat. By day, you’re yourself again, but one it gets dark, then your new form seems a little more extreme every time you adopt it.
The transformation to tlacatecolo isn’t instant. It’s a gradual metamorphosis that can take weeks or even months. Your bones hollow like a bird’s. Feathers begin to sprout from your skin. Your face elongates into a predatory beak. But the worst part is you’re aware throughout it all. You watch helplessly as your humanity slips away, replaced by an insatiable hunger to spread the very plagues that once threatened your loved ones. And then one day, you don’t change back to a human in the morning at all—you’ve slipped over completely, and you’re now a demonic tlacatecolo, a lilu thrall of Pazuzu.
What You Become
The fully transformed tlacatecolo is a nightmarish fusion of owl and humanoid. Standing six to eight feet tall on powerful talons, they’re covered in dark, mottled feathers that seem perpetually diseased. Their face is a sharp beak surrounded by hollow, glowing eyes that can see perfectly in the deepest darkness. Their hands are claws dripping with supernatural toxins.
But it’s their new abilities that truly mark that they’ve been damned. A tlacatecolo can shape-change back into an ordinary owl, which is perfect for infiltrating the communities they once called home. Their most terrible power, though, is the Plague Wind. The tlacatecolo exhales a gust of freezing, disease-choked breath that can curse an entire village with an ailment that resists even magical healing—only the death of the tlacatecolo that spread it can end the suffering of its victims.
The Question of Redemption
Can Pazuzu’s curse be reversed? The answer is… complicated. Theoretically, yes. Legends speak of destroying the source of the curse (in this case, that would mean somehow killing Pazuzu himself, which is… ambitious). A wish could certainly restore a tlacatecolo’s humanity, as could remove curse cast by a powerful blood. But it’s going to be difficult, and expensive, and here’s the irony: by the time the transformation is complete, most tlacatecolos don’t want to be cured. The corruption runs so deep that they’ve genuinely embraced their new existence. The mortal conscience that would seek redemption has been largely consumed by abyssal hunger.
The Final Journey to Torremor
And what happens when a tlacatecolo on the Prime finally gets put in the dead-book? Well, turns out that death isn’t an escape either—it’s a return home. When a tlacatecolo is destroyed, its essence is dragged screaming straight down to Torremor, Pazuzu’s realm on the 503rd layer of the Abyss. Torremor is a nightmare of twisted architecture—a tangled mass of beams, pinnacles, arches, and ladders held together by ropes and chains, all suspended over a bottomless void.
Here the tlacatecolo’s soul faces judgment not from an unbiased power like Pharasma, but from Pazuzu himself, in a mockery of a trial. Some souls are ‘rewarded’ for their service, granted the form of the hurlilu or even positions of power in the Prince’s hierarchy. Like many Abyssal Lords, Pazuzu does rather get through his minions. Others are punished for failing to spread sufficient corruption, tortured until their essence dissolves entirely, then recycled. Their memories and personalities are stripped away and discarded, and what’s left is used as raw material to create new curses inflict upon the mortal realm.
Combat Statistics: [D&D 5e]
Canonical Sources: Journeys through the Radiant Citadel [5e].
Source: Jon Winter-Holt, with thanks to Margarita for telling me about this fiend. Canonwatch: The tlacatecolotl (“owl-man”) of Nahua mythology is presented in JttRC as a unique avian fiend, linked to the Mesopotamian demon lord Pazuzu, because reasons. That makes them a shoe-in as a kind of lilu, so inspired by the plot of ‘Fiend of Hollow Mine’ in Radiant Citadel, and the Exorcist movie, I’ve homebrewed a curse that Pazuzu can put on a mortal to gradually turn them into a lilu, like a sort of demonic lycanthropy.