Hey there my name is AJ Pickett and I make videos about roleplaying games, and lots of
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be over before you know it! Continuing on with our Demon series, while
the nine hells have the nasty, pathetic little mostly humanoid blobs called the Lemures,
the Abyss has the wretched and hate-filled Manes. A manes forms in any of the countless
spawning pits of the Abyss when a chaotic evil soul it basically tossed out of the multiverse
and ends up in the cosmic garbage dump, like a congealed fart of evil, barely even worthy
of a physical form. Technically, that means that the manes are the petitioners of the
Abyss, stripped of all memory of who and what they were while they were living, mortal beings
elsewhere in the multiverse, they are now chaotic evil souls housed in a new demonic
form, also alive, but in a very different way.
I have often compared Demons and demonic energy to the way Elementals and elemental energy
works in Dungeons and Dragons lore. While the Devils are the corrupted form of celestials,
basically demons are the corrupted form of elementals, not literally, it is much more
complicated than that, but it makes it a lot easier to describe their mental and physical
traits in the same sort of terms, we have much to discuss even the most basic of demonic
creatures, so sit back, grab yourself a tasty beverage, we are about to get deeply nerdy.
Fair warning, we are going to be visiting the spawning pits of the Abyss this episode,
there will be graphic unpleasantness. Manes stand three feet (0.91 m) tall and
though they look squat and bloated they only weigh fifteen pounds (6.8kg), it becomes clear
why they are so lightweight as when slain their bodies swiftly disperse into a noxious
vapour before reforming in the Abyss a day later. Unlike most demons, who rise in power
based on how many they kill and consume, manes can also be transformed by the forces of the
Abyss itself, into more powerful tanar'ri at random. These random chaotic transformations
are highly unpredictable, resulting in something as simple as a rutterkin to as strong as a
vrock. Manes with memories retained from their mortal life the strong-willed souls and are
much more likely to advance like this. Over the eons some of the most despicable of them
have transformed into balors or even molydei, one of the many lords of ruin.
Like dretches and rutterkins, chaotic evil mortals occasionally reincarnated into manes
after dying in Thanatos, one of the layers of the Abyss known to house massive necropolis
cities of the dead, the pages of the Book of Vile Darkness, the etchings of Vecna say
It was rumoured that the mortals who were the cruelest in life before being turned into
manes were imprisoned in a place called the Pits of Despair, purported to exist hidden
underneath the Mountain of Woe. No sage or wizard had truly seen the Pits however, and
it's existence has never actually been confirmed, or I guess none who have ventured there have
ever returned. The station of manes is so low on the demonic
pecking order that to most tanar'ri Manes are viewed as sub-tanar'ric monsters, just
petitioners worthy of nothing but scorn and contempt; However, since manes are the former
souls of the dead who have found themselves in the Abyss, the number of manes is always
growing, so much so that non-tanari regard the ever-growing swarms with dread.
A majority of demon lords and demon princes use manes as a food source, also the grim
and necrodemonic Chaos Ships use Manes as a fuel source for their space warping soul
furnace engines. Being consumed in such ways will utterly destroy the petitioner soul of
the Manes but otherwise, it is very hard to truly destroy a manes even on the abyss, unless
consumed by greater demons or immolated within magic furnaces, they are endlessly cycling
through angry gas cloud to the spawning pits and the clawing and spitting mobs of Manes,
over and over again, hacking them apart with swords and blasting them to bits with spells
is just going to disperse them back to the spawning pits once again.
Manes congregate into mobs of dozens up to teeming swarms that number in the hundreds
and which provides some measure of protection just by the sheer mass and ferocity of all
the manes thronging and attacking mindlessly together. Demon lords can direct the manes
in one direction or the other, but they don't expect the manes to follow complex instructions.
One can try equipping manes with armour and giving them weapons, but unless the weapons
are fixed onto their limbs the manes will disregard them, forgetting why they were given
weapons. Their lack of intelligence does give them immunity to magical mind control, but
greater demons can whip legions of thousands of manes to march toward a target, overwhelming
it with snarling, clawing and crushing masses of manes.
Greater demons can sense sources of chaos, destruction and violence, they can also sense
the movement of the native Manes, scuttling around like snarling rivers, drawn to sites
of violence like moths to a flame. Destruction gives the manes a sense of purpose, its their
one avenue of venting their rage and frustration, they don't really understand their fate, they
just hate being weak, stupid and wretched and only want to tear down everything else
around them before it kills them first. A mane has all the personality of a drowning
rat. Although they can't speak, Manes are able
to understand simple concepts as a side effect of their limited tanar'ri telepathy and can
understand more complex commands made in the snarling and spitting Abyssal language, they
act simperingly towards higher demons, cowering out of reach, some will just obey the greater
demon's every demand, such as climbing on top of each other to form a squirming throne
of Manes for the greater demon to perch on. A rare few manes retain fragmented memories
of their mortal lives, but in most cases they are animalistic. Occasionally they gain the
self-awareness needed to recognize the gap in power between them and all that surrounds
them and so fight to improve their positions, a struggle that rarely ends in success.
Manes are repulsive creatures, their body reformed from noxious gas is riddled with
squirming maggots and patches of rancid filth. Their flesh is not as well connected as truly
mortal creatures, manes do have musculature and internal organs, but they don't work the
same way mortal creatures do. They have an armour class of 9, 2d6+2 or between 4 and
14 with an average of 9 hit points, a speed of only 20 feet per round, mainly because
they are size category, Small fiends. They have resistance to Cold, Fire, Lightning and
they are immune to being poisoned, charmed or frightened. They have darkvision with a
range of 60 feet, their claw attack is +2 to hit and inflicts 2d4 slashing damage. They
don't have any other sort of magical protection, they can certainly be sliced apart with ordinary
weapons, cold iron or magic weapons are also fully effective, but, the manes will reform
again some distance away, 24 hours after being reduced to noxious mist. The putrid swamps
of churning chaos that comprises the average abyssal spawning pit are dangerous for any
ordinary creature to venture near. This is where you find forests of twisted fungus,
tainted by Zuggtmoys spores, rotting with Juiblex's greedy slimes, sprouting hot ponds
of gurgling rock and filth which spawns some pod demons, then hotter, larger pools of glistening
blood and gore, proto tentacles of intestine with eyeballs sprouting like a rash, bubbling
geysers as screaming maws full of fangs break the sloppy surface, half-formed limbs thrash
and grab at quivering forms, crawling free of the pits, sucking lungs full of air, shrieking
as their skin hardens under toxic fumes and heat. All sorts of demonic forms can spawn
from the pits, mostly the constant froth of crawling bodies are Manes and Dretches.
Dretches and Manes do not get along, the Dretches stand four feet (1.2 m) tall and weigh around
sixty pounds (27 kg), still runts of demonkind, but far tougher than a miserable mane. You
know, considering Manes are almost like fart demons barely held together in rotting humanoid
form, and the Dretches are capable of releasing a 10-foot radius of disgusting green gas that
requires creatures not immune to poison to make a DC 11 Constitution saving throw or
be poisoned until the start of their next turn. It's not inconceivable that Dretches
could emerge from the spawning pits literally farting out clouds that congeal into manes
demons... just saying. The dretches are terrible parents to their fart babies. I'm also in
favour of all sufficiently violent demon farts having the potential to spawn manes, and because
of the sheer number of manes being spawned all over the place... things just tear most
of the manes to shreds, they are never-ending after all.
Other threats that manes have to contend with, and there are many, include Hell Hounds, Nightmares,
spirits of corruption, spirits of death, spirits of undeath, Rat Demons, demon lords, night
hags, chaos beasts and primordial entities. Manes move relatively slowly and can't always
get out of harm's way, such as getting mowed down by some soul-devouring chaos engine or
torn apart by an abyssal dragon simply for being too close to it.
Countless manes have been rounded up, captured and subjected to every kind of foul science,
resulting in suits of demon armour, swords, clubs, axes and shields crafted from mutilated
and twisted demonic flesh, more on that in just a moment. Such experiments take place
in the abyss, where the manes who are experimented on usually get destroyed, to outside of the
infinite layers, where the manes either swiftly or mercifully get reduced back to a mist state
so they can reform back in the abyss within the next day or so. Thankfully, manes typically
don't remember much of what happened to them prior to crawling out of the spawning pits
once more, they don't know if they have been crawling out of there for weeks, years or
centuries, its all just day after day or raw emotions, violence and confusion, it is a
very rare thing for manes to really have any idea what is going on in the larger picture
all around it, they only concern themselves with the needs to the immediate moment.
As mentioned, manes can and do absorb random surges of chaotic evil demonic energy from
the currents of the wretched abyss itself, which can result in the sudden birthing from
the spawning pits some form of more respectable demonic form, such as a Vrock. Vrocks may
occasionally spawn from the same soul stuff as the manes, but they would rather murder
someone than ever admit it. When a brand new Vrock rises from the pits, with no memory
of what it once was, as far as it is concerned, it has always been a vrock and all manes are
sub creature scum only good for torture and eating.
And such is the way of the manes. Of course, any demon lord has the influence
over the abyss and the personal power to elevate any lesser demon into a greater form, Orcus
is particularly capable of transforming demon minions into greater, undead versions of other
Tanar'ri forms, he has been known to transform thousands and thousands of Manes into Abyssal
ghouls to quickly and impressively swell the numbers of his dreadful horde of death. Other
demon lords exert their own form of influence and whole mobs of manes and dretches may take
on physical and mental characteristics of the demon lord whose influence they have become
caught up within, the particular unique blend of chaos and corruption that pours out of
the demon lord is soaked up and twists the lesser demons into whatever aspect of evil
and mutation that demon lord embodies. If you happen to find yourself stuck on the abyss
somewhere, the exact size, shape and unusual behaviours of the manes and dretches around
you can tell you quite a lot about what sort of power rules that particular area of the
endless ruination. Manes transformed into twisted mutations that
are so extreme no mortal creature could endure it, demonic weapons and armour are difficult
to create, not because manes are rare, but because so many thousands don't live through
the process. Magic chop shops in the riotous camps of the forces of chaos are just clouds
of stinking manes gas and pitiful screams, greater demons twisting and feeding energy
into them to craft axe heads with blades forms from horrifically distended fangs, a haft
made from living leather and bone. Others compressed husks formed like handles around
a grossly distended tongue as sharp as a sword and sizzling with eternal flames. Perhaps
even just severed and preserved manes heads, tongues yanked and knotted around their own
neck stump, when the tongue is released and head tossed, it speaks the last work of a
spell and releases an area effect magic of some kind. After going off, the Head Grenade
turns back to noxious mist and reforms another manes in the spawning pits.
In the abyss, demons are also the weapons used by bigger demons. Demons on demons, on
demons. Please hit the like button if you made it
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