Hey there my name is AJ Pickett, I make videos about role-playing game lore, particularly
in-depth monster ecologies.
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I've often talked about the way demons dissolve away to nothing when killed outside of the
abyss, the essence travels back to the outer planes, remerges back with the Abyss and hopefully,
somehow spawns again within one of the abyssal spawning pits, or when pulled forth by a demon
lord summoning a mass of demons all around itself.
Demons seem to emerge from the seething and corrupted matter, inorganic materials such
as walls and floors may warp and start to become more and more organic, to the point
where demons are crawling out of this noxious and rapidly mutating mass, to the point where
violently mutating towers of heaving flesh explode outwards like a flesh, fang and eyeballs
geyser, tearing apart within moments as all the fresh demon spawn break free from it.
When emerged they may seem to obey some biological laws, but they share a lot of properties with
fused elemental creatures, such as the Genasi and Genies.
Demonic energy is destructive, it warps and subverts matter, but it is not limitless and
sometimes, a demonic entity may run short on this energy, it's not a huge shock that
creatures of chaos may not have a foolproof way of respawning on their own home plane,
so, what happens to them?
The demonic entities that don't manage to manifest a physical body in the roiling chaos
and mayhem?
Well normally they get pulled back into the nightmare chaos where mind and essence get
torn into by other minds and essences, each desperately trying to reform, which tends
to break down into the lesser demons with all but blank minds, filled with nothing but
the need to consume more energy and destroy as much as they can.
The other result is the creation of a shadow demon, which are normally the result of some
sort of magical disruption to the reforming or summoning process.
This is more likely to happen in the massive, sprawling battles of the Blood War, where
high power devils are forcing demon lords to expend huge bolts and blasts of primal
power to ward off spells and masses of disciplined fiendish armies.
The demon lords will wantonly release massive surges of chaotic power to disrupt reality
and summon enormous mobs of demons, most of which will be of the mindless destruction
engine variety, but, this process also spawns a lot of shadow demons.
Fiendish armies have figured out over the eons that forcing powerful demons to summon
in other demons, or create new demons, is actually easier to safely contain and wears
down the most powerful demons fairly quickly.
Chaotic energy disrupting reality is way, way more difficult to deal with than mindless
snarling demon scum.
Well, mostly.
Anyway, the point is, magical disruption will result in partially reformed demons called
Shadow Demons.
They usually appear as wraith-like beings of darkness, a floating torso with strong
arms and sweeping wings, the menacing shape of a head and a cloak of pitch-black supernatural
shadow.
Shadow demons exist outside of the chaotic hierarchy of the Abyss, such as there is,
less subject to the overriding command of a demon lord whose chaotic energy actually
spawned them, in some ways, it seems like they feel more of a kinship to the undead,
but more on that later in the video.
Shadow demons are a fascinating foe, falling between the cracks of cosmic definitions,
they are fairly simple as a block of stats and a monster to fight, but their activities
in the multiverse are far, far more interesting thanks to how weird and anomalous they are.
While the blood war rages between the demons and the devils and the yugoloths act as free
agents making huge profits working both sides, the demons have their own internal conflicts
that are even more vicious and have been going on even longer than the blood war.
Demogorgon, Orcus and Graz'zt have been locked in an eternal war with each other and the
shadow demons have more of the sort of yugoloth role in this ever-shifting and always ready
to escalate the conflict.
Demogorgon doesn't need to rely much on Shadow demons, of course, Orcus has countless numbers
of them in his service, but is more likely to trust the truly undead spirits under his
utter command, no it is Graz'zt who makes the most use of shadow demons, particularly
his mysterious, super-intelligent majordomo and ambassador to the other demon lords, named
Verin, or Verin's alter ego named Ztefano, who always seems to be sending secret notes
or receiving secret reports from shadow demons.
Then you have Graz'zt's siblings, all rumoured to be born of the super-powerful demon lord
Pale Night, they are Lupercio, Rhyxali, Vucarik and Zivorgian, all of which are quite weird,
well aside from his sister Rhyxali who actually looks so much like Graz'zt it is obvious they
are related, but his other sister Zivorgian is a bloated, three-headed angel/vulture demon
lord that rules some undiscovered layer of the Abyss, she is known as the Lady of Ripe
Carrion, so I imagine that's not going to be a nice layer to visit.
I'd love to go into more details about his other siblings but it is Lupercio, the demon
lord of Sloth, who is of most interest, since he manifests as an amorphous mass of darkness,
surrounded by ten miles of magical darkness which is absolutely teeming with shadow demons
feeding on his limitless shadow.
As the demon lord of Sloth, he is not interested in basically anything beyond his own pleasures,
but it seems that shadow and darkness are something of a shared trait and bond between
Lupercio and his brother, and I can't help but think that lupercio basically ignores
Graz'zt using all his shadow demons, much like an infested dog is not going to worry
about a few missing fleas.
However, it is one of Graz'zt's children, known as Rule-of-three that really draws my
attention.
Appearing much like his father, Rule-of-three is a half-demon cambion working with Graz'zt
in a plan to unite the baatezu devils, tanar'ri demons, and the yugoloths in a combined force
that will unite to take over the upper planes.
Rule-of-three can be found in Graz'zt's domain of the incredible city of Azzagrat in the
back room of the Golden Opportunity Inn, or in his lodgings in the city of Sigil, he is
probably the most well-informed source of information on the abyss in the multiverse
at this point, constantly fed information via shadow demons working with his father
and other beings involved in the grand plan, which is also known as Rule of Three.
True to his name, Rule-of-three will only divulge information if seekers pay his price,
which is always three versions of a rare thing, such as three different holy avenger swords
or three of the gems which lock away Tharizdun, so, you best have a very important question
for him considering those prices.
Anyway, back to the shadow demons.
When concealed from bright light, a shadow demon is all but invisible in the darkness
and hovers around without making a sound.
They are sensitive to light, with bright light inflicting disadvantage on attack rolls, as
well as on Wisdom (Perception) checks that rely on sight.
Since they are insubstantial, they can move through other creatures and objects as if
they were difficult terrain, but a shadow demon will take 1d10 force damage if it ends
its turn inside an object, it's a strange thing to look at a truly inky blackness, even
though the demon's wings and lower half must be three dimensional, they look like flat
shadows on a surface.
They will avoid direct light and intense radiant light damage causes them considerable pain,
inflicting double normal damage, however, they have a number of damage resistances including
all non-magical physical attacks, acid, fire, thunder, necrotic and they are totally immune
to cold, lightning and poisons of any kind so they can be very difficult to kill without
radiant damage to whittle them down quickly.
Although insubstantial they do have an armor class of 13 and from 24 to 108 with an average
of 66 hit points, most attacks will pass right through them, and shadow demons make perfect
use of their damage resistances and immunities to pass through walls of fire, sink down into
pools of acid or escape into zones of frigid cold.
In the first appearance of them in the fiend folio, I actually have it right here, ah,
shadow demons also have a bite attack and they use their wings, not for true flight
but to make bursts of speed that they can do every other round, so if you want to include
that in your game, feel free, that's legit lore from the old days.
The book of vile darkness tells us that Shadow demons skitter and flit about with great speed
and a supernatural nimbleness, often being mistaken for the form of undead known as Shadows.
They are known to trade in souls when they have the opportunity, bargaining with hags
in the dismal markets of Hades or using their own magical abilities to trap souls themselves,
selling them for information and influence which gains them more status and more interesting
access to any of the countless plots and schemes going on between the major powers of infernal
politics.
This is not exactly the same as serving these demon lords and such, they tend to avoid their
company and they very rarely hang around lesser demons unless they really have to.
The book goes on to say that on the Material Plane, shadow demons sometimes work as advisors
or assistants to evil creatures of great power: a dragon, an evil king, a powerful demonologist,
or a similar villain.
Shadow demons generally serve their chosen master well, especially if they are able to
gain a great many souls while doing so.
If the souls are evil, all the better.
Shadow demons are also interested in tempting and corrupting mortals.
And if, when its master finally dies, the shadow demon is able to snatch its soul too,
all the better.
4th edition D&D went into some more detail about their soul trading, which is unusual
activity for a demon.
It says that the key difference between devils and shadow demons is their end goal.
Shadow demons are like the undead in that their aim was the complete obliteration of
all mortal life, and unlike the devils, they did not acquire souls in a bid for power and
status, well, they certainly do get some of that, but really, they just want to take those
souls and trade them off, knowing that it will most likely be the end of that souls
existence; that's satisfying enough for them.
In combat, shadow demons will use magical darkness to their best advantage, since 5th
edition has not got any shadow creation powers attributed to them, but the powers of shadow
demons should be supplemented with additional evil magic that is not shown in the basic
stat block because shadow demons trade souls for these magical powers.
Keep your players on their toes, they don't know that the shadow demon is merely casting
a limited stock of a few spells, they may just assume shadow demons can do that as normal
spell-like abilities, and you are under no obligation to make the shadow demons uniform
and predictable, their very creation is a result of disruption and chaos, often heavily
influenced by a particular power or demon lord, so by all means, give them aspects of
the abilities and features of those demon lords and powers.
One massive change to the monster listing is the removal of the spell Magic Jar, which
has always been the method the shadow demons use to capture souls in special gemstone receptacles.
When assassinating a target, they wait until it is most vulnerable and get the job done
as quickly and violently as possible, tearing their victim to pieces with their shadowy
claws.
5th edition says they are +5 to hit a creature within 5 ft. inflicting 2d6 + 3 psychic damage
or, if the demon had advantage on the attack roll 4d6 + 3 psychic damage.
I'd advise giving them the ability to stun a creature if they get a natural 20 on their
hit roll.
The creature will be incapacitated, won't be able to move and only speaks falteringly,
plus they will be unable to make any strength or dexterity saving throws and all attacks
against them will have advantage, allowing the shadow demon to tear them apart even faster.
Let the victim make a DC 14 wisdom saving throw at the start of each turn to shake off
the stunned condition.
Pay close attention to that +7 to all stealth skill checks for the shadow demon, you will
no doubt be rolling stealth checks a lot.
A version of the 4th edition shadow demon can be converted to 5th edition, with their
ability to void rake a victim with their claws, and also release a necrotic burst of shadow
from the negative energy plane.
The void rake is a melee attack exactly the same as I just listed however, the victim's
remaining hit point total becomes their maximum hit points until the end of the shadow demon's
next turn, which can be much more dangerous than it sounds.
The release of necrotic energy simply creates a 15-foot radius zone of darkness that will
cause, 1d4 necrotic damage to any living being not immune to necrotic energy that starts
its turn in that area, DC 14 Constitution save for half damage with a minimum damage
of 1 hit point.
These are just some fun options, take them or leave them.
Some interesting notes.
Ancient black dragons in particular are sought out by shadow demons due to some mysterious
link between the two, whether social or in some way biological, nobody seems to know
for sure.
Also, while a great many are involved with the schemes of Orcus, the Drow goddess Kiaransalee
is known to keep many shadow demons in her entourage.
Within the lower planes, away from the demon hordes, shadow demons tend to congregate in
spooky locations where they sculpt statues out of raw shadow stuff (they can only do
this in the abyss) and conceal portals to other planes, particularly the shadowfell,
border negative energy demi-planes, hades and so on.
Another interesting quirk is that they always tend to trap the soul of the loudest, most
evil, obnoxious and self-centred individuals they come across, other than that, their next
favourite target is the powerful minds and wills of wizards, whose souls always fetch
a very good price.
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