Chitine
Chitine grunt, chitine warrior, chitine scout, chitine marauder, chitine web crafter, choldrith
“The chitines are a failed attempt to create the perfect slave race.” That’s pretty fucking raw. They’re Drow-Frankenstein’s spider-monsters who rebelled and now have their own society, which has some similarities to drow society. They worship Lolth, and they are ruled by a caste of priestesses (choldriths).
That’s pretty good: The drow empire brought down by their own creations. The chitine now rule the fallen cities, a twisted reflection of the long-gone elves.
Cloaker
Cloaker ambusher, cloaker lord
Flat flying creatures that live underground and envelop people to eat them. It’s fine, but not that exciting.
Then the text drops the fact that cloakers gather in conclaves where they join together in a big sphere to communicate! Now we’re talking! Take them out of the underdark and put them in the air, a giant balloon made up of scores of cloakers, floating high in the sky. Individual cloakers drop off to hunt, and to carry the conclave’s demands to the towns they hover above.
Craud
Craud impaler, craud crusher, craud king
Crauds are basically giant lobsters, and I would use them as such. Big dumb shellfish, potentially dangerous, but easy to catch if you know what you’re doing. Hardworking fishermen bring them in to sell as delicacies.
Until one fateful day, when the craud king calls his subjects to war, and the shorelines are swarmed by hundreds of rampaging giant crustaceans.
Dark one
Hex knight, shadow bolter, shadow speaker
Small people who live in the Shadowfell and come to the mortal world to steal stuff. The lore speculates that they are descendants of halflings who went to the Shadowfell, but the other way around is much better: Halflings are dark ones who left the Shadowfell and lost the dark half of their selves, and that’s why they are called “halflings” now.
“Hex knight” is a cool title. “Shadow bolter”, eeeh... We are told that shadow speakers lead raiding parties into the mortal world, and they carry small clay jugs filled with Shadowfell soil. Of course! They take a piece of the Shadowfell with them, to prevent the dark ones from losing their darkness and turning into halflings.
Demon
Babau, klurichir, maw demon, greater maw demon, molydeus, nalfeshnee swine guard, nalfeshnee tyrant, quasit, ultrodemon schemer
Demons dwell in the Abyss, where eternal war rages. I imagine it much like the hell of the Doom games, all ruins and wastelands, full of demons locked in constant battle.
Babau: Demonic spies and assassins. They were born from the blood of a demon lord wounded by a devil’s sword, and they combine the qualities of demons and devils. I think these guys may be more free-thinking than both demons and devils, doing mercenary work for the various powers of the Abyss.
Klurichir: Klurichirs are spawned in the lowest depths of the Abyss, take command of demonic hordes, and start conquering. As one demon’s realm crumbles, a new one arises. A good way to keep things fresh!
Maw demon: Just a mouth on four legs that is always hungry. Simple but effective. They can be Abyssal “wildlife”, or maybe some evil guy has a big one in a pit to feed prisoners to.
Molydeus: There are seven molydeuses, who were Tharizdun’s angels tasked with protecting a shard of pure evil, and then they got corrupted. I don’t know, I don’t really care for “evil” as a tangible substance. How about: Tharizdun tried to conquer the Abyss, with the aid of his seven archangels. Tharizdun was defeated, but his angels continue the war. Now they are just another faction in the neverending conflict, albeit one that claims their goals are divinely ordinated.
Nalfeshnee: Swine-things, huh? Gotta pull from House on the Borderland here. The lore says the nalfeshnees’ demon lord father was killed by the gods, and the nalfeshnee devoured his body. I can see it, the great fortress of the demon lord on a bleak plain in the Abyss, its master long gone, swine-things waddling through its corridors. Should they find their way to the mortal realm, they will dispassionately kill and devour all they encounter.
Quasit: Tiny demons who are familiars to wizards. The text describes them as tempters, but I think that should be a devil’s job. Here’s my take: a quasit familiar lets a wizard draw magic from the Abyss to empower their spells. The “summoning ritual” for a quasit in fact creates a new demon from scratch. As the wizard channels power through the quasit, the tiny demon grows bigger and stronger...
Ultrodemon: This demon wants to get rich, for the sake of it. Number go up; capitalism incarnate. A villain that schemes not to destroy the world, but to funnel as many gold pieces as possible to their personal hoard? Sounds similar to a dragon, but I feel like a dragon would just steal or extort gold. An ultrodemon would run a business empire. They don’t really seem at home in the Abyss, the mortal world is a better place to make money. What if an ultrodemon is actually a mortal rich guy who turned into a demon to become immortal? Like with a lich type ritual, but for billionaires instead of wizards.
Derro
Derro warrior, derro thug, derro fanatic, derro harvester, derro ironguard, derro savant, warped slave
Look, are derro supposed to be evil dwarves or not? The duergar already fill that niche. But I don’t really care for duergar. And they don’t appear in this book anyway. My decision is, derro are dwarves. Moving on.
Derro are described as corrupted by the Far Realm, the cosmic horror place in the D&D cosmology. To me, the Far Realm is just outer space. I would say the derro have learned to use certain “cosmic rays” to travel between the Underdark, the surface world, and the distant stars. They now understand the insignificance of their home world in the grand scheme of the cosmos, and how the true powers among the stars could at any time end all life on the planet through their mere presence. But the derro have a plan. They will transform the world and all its lifeforms, making it compatible with the Far Realm. To this end, they kidnap people and animals using their cosmic rays. The derro expose their victims to the warping energies of the Far Realm, and take note of the effects. Subjects who survive are released, transported back to the place they were taken from. Few will believe their wild tales of being abducted and experimented on.
Devil
Corruption devil, sire of corruption, corrupted followers (lecher, glutton, monger, idler, lunatic, craven), hell knight, hellwasp colony guard, hellwasp devil, passion devil, rage devil, slime devil, swarm devil, vizier devil
While demons get the Doom hell, devils get the Dante hell (and theirs is actually called Hell).
So, the Blood War, the giant war between demons and devils, is a big thing in D&D lore, but I don’t like it. It makes the gods look lazy, like why aren’t they getting stuck in? But if they did, the whole conflict would make whatever the PCs are doing seem inconsequential. No, I don’t think gods, devils, and demons should fight each other, at least not until the seals are broken and it’s time for the final apocalypse.
Corruption devil: The essential devil, one who tempts mortals into sin and vice. The rules give them a bunch of corrupting powers, but I think forcing player characters into sin through dice rolls is cheap. Corrupt them for real! Figure out what the characters want, then offer it to them for the low low price of their eternal souls.
Corrupted follower: Mortals who took the corruption devil’s deal. I would make these the souls of the damned, trapped in Hell for eternity. Each type of corrupted follower is tied to a particular cardinal sin, but notably, there’s no Pride or Envy, and instead Cowardice is represented as a cardinal sin. Well, it would make sense for Cowardice to be a sin in D&D, what with all the gods of battle running around. In fact, let’s look at the 4e pantheon and see if we can match gods to each of the cardinal virtues and sins.
- Avandra, goddess of change. She exalts diligence, and condemns sloth.
- Erathis, goddess of civilization. She exalts temperance, and condemns gluttony.
- Ioun, goddess of reason. She exalts chastity, and condemns lust.
- Kord, god of battle. He exalts courage, and condemns cowardice.
- Pelor, god of the sun. He exalts charity, and condemns greed.
- The Raven Queen, goddess of death. She exalts patience, and condemns wrath.
These six gods would form the pantheon of the big Catholic-church equivalent religion, with the other gods having their own churches and cults.
Hellwasp devil: These insectoid devils were once demons, we are told. Wait, what? How does that even work? Devils are fallen angels. So the hellwasps are fallen demons? Angels fall when they rebel against God. Demons fall when they... stop fighting each other. Yeah, that makes sense, the hellwasp are said to live in colonies after all. I think hellwasps would be outsiders in Hell, other devils looking askance at these weird bug people who just want to build their hives and stuff.
Passion devil: These devils are kinda vaguely described as seeking to inflame passions in mortals to trick them into sin. To distinguish them from corruption devils, I’ll say that while corruption devils make mortals take their sins out on the world, passion devils tempt mortals to engage in sin with the devil itself. Whether that’s by seducing mortals into lustful devil-sex, taking a terrifying guise to frighten cowards, butchering itself for delicious meat to encourage gluttony...
Rage devil: Devil soldiers who make up the brunt of Hell’s legions, and by extension, the majority of all devils. What are they raging against? The gods, of course. Rage devils might be lent out to mortal conquerors in exchange for their soul.
Slime devil: Not actually a devil, this is an amalgamation of corrupt souls. I like that. As the aeons go by, if a damned soul forgets the very sins that condemned it to Hell, it loses hold of its form, turning into a black sludge. Vast bogs of soul sludge can be found throughout Hell, and from there, slime devils emerge to drag down and dissolve any souls that come near.
Swarm devil: A devil split into a swarm of evil flies. These would make great spies and messengers for Hell’s operations in the mortal world. Singular flies can keep an eye on enemies, or carry information between devils and their allies... A terrifying communications advantage.
Vizier devil: Hell’s emissaries to the mortal world, who worm their way into the halls of power. I would say these devils masquerade as mortals, and try to influence politics in order to create conditions where many mortals can be tempted into sin by other devils. Poverty, famine, corruption, war: all can make mortals desperate enough to sell their souls for relief.
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