Daemon, Cacodaemon

Family: Daemons

Tiny fiend (daemon), neutral evil

Armor Class 13 (natural armor)
Hit Points 7 (2d4+2)
Speed 25 ft., fly 40 ft.

STR	DEX	CON	INT	WIS	CHA
12 (+1)	11 (+0)	13 (+1)	8 (-1)	13 (+1)	12 (+1)

Saves Dexterity +2, Wisdom +3
Skills Deception +3, Perception +3, Stealth +2
Damage Resistances cold, fire, lightning; bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing from nonmagical weapons that aren’t silvered
Damage Immunities acid, poison
Condition Immunities poisoned; Senses darkvision 60 ft., passive Perception 13
Languages Abyssal, Deep Speech, Infernal
Challenge 1/2 (100 XP)

SPECIAL TRAITS

• Regeneration. The cacodaemon regains 2 hit points at the start of its turn if it has at least 1 hit point. If the cacodaemon takes radiant damage or damage from holy water, this trait doesn’t function at the start of the cacodaemon’s next turn.

ACTIONS

• Claws. Melee Weapon Attack: +3 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 2 (1d2+1) piercing damage.

ABOUT

Cacodaemons are among the easiest fiends to conjure onto the Material Plane by diabolists. They teem along the River Styx, serving both chaotic and lawful forces in their pursuit to bring souls to the Abyss where demons dwell or the home of fiends in Hell. Cacodaemons are the weakest of their kin and seek to inflict pain whenever possible in attempts to sate their unending appetite for mortal souls. Those who dally too long on the shores of the River Styx are harried by these warped creatures in hosts that grow all the larger the more a victim resists. Lank hair rises from a cacodaemon’s scarred skin, as its body is mostly a great hideous head with baleful eyes and a pair of clawed talons.

Harbingers of ruin and embodiments of the worst ways to die, daemons epitomize painful death, the all-consuming hunger of evil, and the utter annihilation of life. While demons seek to pervert and destroy in endless unholy rampages, and devils vex and enslave in hopes of corrupting mortals, daemons seek only to consume mortal life itself.

While some use brute force to despoil life or prey upon vulnerable souls, others wage campaigns of deceit to draw whole realms into ruin. With each life claimed and each atrocity meted out, daemons spread fear, mistrust, and despair, tarnishing the luster of existence and drawing the planes ever closer to their final, ultimate ruin. Notorious for their hatred of the living, daemons are the things of dark dreams and fearful tales, as their ultimate ambitions include extinguishing every individual mortal life—and the more violent or terrible the end, the better. Their methods vary wildly, typically differentiated by daemonic breed. Many seek to infiltrate the mortal plane and sow death by their own taloned hands, while others manipulate agents (both mortal and immortal) as malevolent puppet masters, instigating calamities on massive scales from their grim realms.

Such diversity of methods causes many planar scholars to misattribute the machinations of daemons to other types of fiends. These often-deadly mistakes are further propagated by daemons’ frequent dealings with and manipulation of other outsiders. Yet in all cases, despair, ruin, and death, spreading like a contagion, typify the touch of daemonkind, though such symptoms often prove recognizable only after the hour is far too late.

The Four Horsemen. Daemons flourish upon the plane of Abaddon, a bleak expanse of cold mists, fearful shapes, and hunted souls. Upon these wastes, the souls of evil mortals flee predation by the native fiends, and terror and the powers of the evil plane eventually transform the most ruthless into daemons themselves. Amid these scarred wastelands, poison swamps, and realms of endless night rise the foul domains of the tyrants of daemonkind, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Lords of devastation, these powerful and unique daemons desire slaughter, ruin, and death on a cosmic scale, and drive hordes of their lesser kin to spread terror and sorrow across the planes. Although the Horsemen share a singular goal, their tactics and ambitions vary widely.

Along with mastery over vast realms, the Horsemen are served by unimaginably enormous armies of their lesser brethren but are obeyed most closely by retinues of daemons enslaved to their titles. These specific strains of daemonic servitors, known among daemonkind as deacons, serve whoever holds the title of Horseman. Although these instruments of the archdaemons differ in strength and ability, their numbers provide their lords with legions capable of near-equal terrorization. More so than among any other fiendish race, several breeds of daemons lust after souls. While other foul inhabitants of the planes seek the corruption and destruction of living essences, many daemons value possession and control over mortal animas, entrapping and hoarding souls—and in so doing disrupting the natural progression of life and perverting the quintessence of creation to serve their own terrible whims. While not all daemons possess the ability to steal a mortal being’s soul and turn it to their use, the lowliest of daemonkind, the maniacal cacodaemons, endlessly seek life essences to consume and imprison. These base daemons enthusiastically serve their more powerful kin, eager for increased opportunities to doom mortal spirits. While cacodaemons place little value upon the souls they imprison, greater daemons eagerly gather them as trophies, fuel for terrible rites, or offerings to curry the favor of their lords. Several breeds of daemons also possess their own notorious abilities to capture mortal spirits or draw upon the power of souls, turning the forces of utter annihilation to their own sinister ends.

The Hunted. All daemons endure trials upon the plane of Abaddon, facing mind-shattering torments and paradoxes that, over eons, imbue each with the fundamental traumas and timeless hatreds that epitomize daemonkind. From the Mortal to the Eternal: A daemon’s existence begins in shock, pain, fear, and desperation. Virtually every daemon begins by crawling Abaddon’s unforgiving soil as one of the hunted. The rare exceptions to this wretched beginning are often those mortals who, prior to death, worshiped one of the Horsemen and sealed a pact that condemned them to one of these unfathomably evil beings’ clutches—and even then, at least half of these depraved spirits are betrayed by their patrons and consumed outright. Only seldomly does a mortal of exceptional evil and foul potential gain a daemon’s interest. Such perverse spirits can hardly view such attention as a boon, though. Existence as one of the hunted is terrifying and generally swift, ending in a moment of horrific violence as the soul is consumed by the denizens of Abaddon. Those elevated to serve as newly shaped daemons face prolonged trials of pain, maddening stints of gaslighting, and unimaginable cruelties. Over a span of ages, just as surely as the souls of the hunted are destroyed and digested, so are the souls of promising mortals warped and fractured into beings unrecognizable from the villains they once were. Either as one of the transcended hunted or a chosen spirit, once a soul becomes a daemon it typically turns to prey on other hunted, mercilessly reveling in its increased status, even though most are elevated only to the forms of cacodaemons. Gradually, as time progresses in spans measured in centuries, new daemons integrate into the larger societies of Abaddon.

These less powerful fiends wander Abaddon, left to their own devices until gathered together and organized by their more powerful kindred, obeying out of fear or respect. To the masses of lesser daemonkind, structure and organization come with difficulty, but their superior brethren find that their loyalty can be purchased quite easily. The mantra endlessly whispered in the ears of lesser daemons is simple: “Servitude brings safety and souls. Follow, obey, and feast.” In this way most lesser daemons fall under the sway of more powerful members of their kind.