Demons

The lower four layers of the Hells run on nothing but appetite. Loftile rots under Kian's unmaintained grandeur. Erosmire reduces everyone who enters to something Buuna Moc can use. Gula is hungry in the literal, geological sense, and Edaxius's presence makes everyone near him hungrier too. Anarchos dissolves whatever structure survives that far down, and Ta'amah rules it by not ruling anything at all. Where a devil's authority is written down, a demon's authority lasts exactly as long as it can be personally enforced in the room. Nothing above Invidia holds a demon back, and nothing below Invidia holds a demon's own subordinates back from it either.

Demons are not evil because something was done to them, and they will not be talked down by an appeal to a better self that does not exist. They think of themselves as beings who kept what they wanted instead of pretending they didn't want it. That is the whole of their philosophy, and it is sufficient for them.

Every demon minion in this chapter shares one trait regardless of layer: Intellect 1. They are cannon fodder, sent to the slaughter by whatever runs their layer, and they are not smart enough to know that or care. Most relish the rare chance to be the one doing the hurting instead of the one being hurt. Anything drawn from Erosmire specifically stays within the Universe Bible's content boundary: described clinically, from a distance, never as a catalogue, with specifics held as [PLACEHOLDER: Paul] until he sets the level of insinuation he wants.

At the table: a demon does not open with a deal. It opens with a demand, and it does not repeat itself. If a scene needs negotiation, that scene needed a devil.

Adored

Role: Elite Desire-Bound Where It Appears: Erosmire's private chambers, mortal bedrooms and courts touched by longing, anywhere wanting has outgrown judgment.

What It Is

Adored is Comely's answer to a harder question: what happens when beauty alone isn't enough to bring someone to ruin. It reaches past the eyes and works on the wanting itself, turning a target's own desire into the reason he lowers his guard.

Ecology and Behavior

Adored does not chase. It waits to be wanted, and it is patient about it in a way nothing else in Erosmire bothers to be.

Signs and Knowledge

Willpower (Hard) recognizes the specific unnatural pull of a target acting against his own stated interest without any obvious compulsion.

Adored (Elite)

• Skills: Light Melee 2, Charm 4, Deception 3, Perception 2.
• Attacks: Devoted Strike (Light Melee; Damage 7; Crit 4).
• Abilities: Heart's Desire - Choose one target within Medium range who can see Adored. Make a Charm check opposed by the target's Willpower. On success, the target immediately takes one action that serves Adored's interest rather than its own (moves toward it, lowers a ward, hesitates against an ally instead), chosen by the GM to fit the scene.
• Soul: No claimable coin exists; at death canon does not specify (default).

Tactics

Adored uses Heart's Desire before ever closing to melee, preferring to make a target undo itself before spending any effort finishing the job.

Applause

Role: Minion Mocking Performer Where It Appears: Loftile's crumbling amphitheaters, any mortal stage, salon, or dueling ground where someone is proud of how they look or perform.

Applause dresses like a bard and moves like one too, all flourish and bow, right up until the blade comes out. It has no interest in the plain or the practical. It wants whoever is beautiful, graceful, or gifted, and it treats their talent as a debt owed to Loftile.

Signs and Knowledge: Perception (Average) notices the too-precise mimicry of applause, laughter, or a familiar tune just before it attacks.

Applause (Minion)

• Group Size: 4-9.
• Skills: Light Melee 3, Charm 2, Perception 1.
• Attacks: Flourish Strike (Light Melee; Damage 4; Crit 5); Mocking Bow (Charm; Damage 4 Strain; Range Short).
• Abilities: Stolen Grace - Before attacking a target who succeeded on a Charm check within the last round, copy 1 Boon from that check into this attack.
• Soul: No claimable coin exists; at death canon does not specify (default).
• Tactics: Applause targets whoever just showed off, a duelist's flourish, a singer's high note, a face turned toward a mirror, and performs its own attack as an insult to that display.
• Encounter Use: Use where someone in the scene is proud of a talent. The demon should attack the performance, not just the person.

Beloved

Role: Elite Desire-Bound Where It Appears: Erosmire's private chambers, mortal bedrooms and courts touched by longing, anywhere wanting has outgrown judgment.

What It Is

Beloved is Gallant's answer to a harder question: what happens when beauty alone isn't enough to bring someone to ruin. It reaches past the eyes and works on the wanting itself, turning a target's own desire into the reason she lowers her guard.

Ecology and Behavior

Beloved does not chase. It waits to be wanted, and it is patient about it in a way nothing else in Erosmire bothers to be.

Signs and Knowledge

Willpower (Hard) recognizes the specific unnatural pull of a target acting against her own stated interest without any obvious compulsion.

Beloved (Elite)

• Skills: Light Melee 2, Charm 4, Deception 3, Perception 2.
• Attacks: Devoted Strike (Light Melee; Damage 7; Crit 4).
• Abilities: Heart's Desire - Choose one target within Medium range who can see Beloved. Make a Charm check opposed by the target's Willpower. On success, the target immediately takes one action that serves Beloved's interest rather than its own (moves toward it, lowers a ward, hesitates against an ally instead), chosen by the GM to fit the scene.
• Soul: No claimable coin exists; at death canon does not specify (default).

Tactics

Beloved uses Heart's Desire before ever closing to melee, preferring to make a target undo itself before spending any effort finishing the job.

Bloaten

Role: Nemesis Plague Bearer Where It Appears: Gula's lowest feeding grounds, mortal sites of mass gluttony or famine profiteering, wherever waste has been allowed to accumulate past reason.

What It Is

Bloaten has eaten so much, for so long, that it no longer has a shape so much as a pressure the world is applying outward. Poison, pus, sickness, and worse ooze from it constantly, from every place a body has an opening and several it should not. It is not embarrassed by any of this. It is Gula's proof that appetite without limit becomes its own disease.

Ecology and Behavior

Bloaten does not hunt so much as accumulate, feeding on carrion, waste, other fallen demons, and anything else nearby it can reach, in a frenzy to reload for the next meal before this one is finished.

Signs and Knowledge

Perception or Medicine (Hard) identifies the specific diseases it carries before exposure occurs.

Other signs include livestock dying of no clear cause for miles around, wells gone foul overnight, and a smell that arrives well before anything else does.

Bloaten (Nemesis)

• Skills: Unarmed 5, Fortitude 5, Perception 3.
• Attacks: Foul Discharge (Heavy Ranged; Damage 10; Crit 4; Range Short; target must make a Hard Fortitude check or add 1 Bane to Fortitude and Athletics checks until treated); Crushing Bulk (Unarmed; Damage 12; Crit 3; Knockdown on 2 Boons).
• Abilities: Waste Cascade - Once per encounter, as an action, deal damage to all creatures within Short range and leave the ground diseased for the rest of the encounter; a creature that ends its turn there suffers 1 Bane on its next Fortitude check.
• Abilities: Frenzied Reload - As part of its action, it may consume any fallen creature within Short range, ally or enemy, healing Wounds equal to twice its Might and increasing its Resistance by 2 until the end of its next turn.
• Soul: No claimable coin exists; at death canon does not specify (default).

Tactics

Bloaten spreads waste terrain early, then closes in while enemies fight through diminished footing, consuming anything that falls near it to keep the fight going as long as possible.

Harvesting and Trade

Variants

• Lesser Bloaten: Smaller and newer to the layer; less Resistance, still just as foul.

Carrion Cowl

Role: Minion Ambusher Where It Appears: Gula's open charnel fields, mortal battlefields, plague towns, anywhere death is already scheduled.

Carrion Cowl is a vulture made humanlike, feathered and hooded, patient around the dying and impatient with anything still fighting back. It does not mind helping death along.

Signs and Knowledge: Survival or Perception (Average) notices it circling from a distance before a fight is even over.

Carrion Cowl (Minion)

• Group Size: 3-6.
• Skills: Unarmed 2, Stealth 2, Perception 2.
• Attacks: Rending Talons (Unarmed; Damage 5; Crit 4; Vicious 1).
• Abilities: Make the Meal - If it drops a target to 0 Wounds, add 1 Boon to its next attack against a different target.
• Soul: No claimable coin exists; at death canon does not specify (default).
• Tactics: Carrion Cowl finishes the wounded rather than engaging the healthy, then moves on to the next easiest kill.
• Encounter Use: Pairs well with any fight already going badly for one side; it arrives once blood is already spilled.

Ceremonia

Role: Elite Retinue (appears in groups of 3-5) Where It Appears: Loftile's ceremonial halls, wherever Herald of Kian holds court, weddings and anniversaries touched by infernal attention.

What It Is

Ceremonia is not one demon but a matched set, identical in composure, corrupted in the same places. Each is a caricature of a devoted wife: too poised, too aware of being watched, too certain that the marriage on display is an achievement rather than a thing two people built together. They target women who take pride in a partnership, and they unmake that pride by performing a jealous, curated version of it back at the victim until the victim's own version looks cheap by comparison.

They are Herald of Kian's chosen retinue, and they know it. He does not fight while they still stand. They consider this an honor and resent anyone who forces them to prove it.

Ecology and Behavior

Ceremonia demons move as a unit, finish each other's sentences, and dress identically down to the stitching. They do not lie about facts, only about worth, telling a target her marriage was never really hers to be proud of, that it was luck, or pity, or someone else's mercy.

They rarely act without the Herald nearby. Separated from him for long, they begin to quarrel over which of them was always his favorite.

Signs and Knowledge

Perception (Average) notices the unnatural synchrony, several women moving, speaking, or smiling on the same beat. Theology or Secret Lore (Hard) identifies the Loftile marriage-mockery pattern.

Other signs include wedding finery that never wrinkles, identical wedding rings on the wrong hands, and a receiving line that has been standing in the same spots for hours.

Ceremonia (Elite)

• Skills: Light Melee 3, Charm 4, Deception 3, Intimidation 2, Perception 2.
• Attacks: Bouquet Blade (Light Melee; Damage 7; Crit 4); Curated Cruelty (Intimidation; Damage 6 Strain; Range Short).
• Abilities: Corrupted Grace - Against a target who is married, betrothed, or in a stated relationship, add 1 Boon to Intimidation or Charm checks. Spend 2 Boons to turn one nearby ally's next attempt to assist that target into a Bane instead.
• Abilities: Matched Set - While two or more Ceremonia demons are engaged with the same target, both add 1 Boon to Light Melee attacks against it.
• Soul: No claimable coin exists; at death canon does not specify (default).

Tactics

Ceremonia surrounds whoever seems proudest of their partner, isolates them from allies with Corrupted Grace, and lets Matched Set do the rest. They go in first, ahead of the Herald, and expect him to notice.

Variants

• Widow's Ceremonia: Targets the recently bereaved instead of the married, mocking grief as performance.
• Maiden Ceremonia: A younger-seeming cadre that targets betrothals and courtships rather than marriages.

Comely

Role: Minion Predator Where It Appears: Erosmire's mirrored halls, mortal courts, markets, and gatherings wherever admiration is currency.

Comely wears an idealized feminine beauty like armor, and uses it exactly that way. She seeks out men who take pride in being desired, and she makes the wanting costly.

Signs and Knowledge: Perception or Charm (Average) notices her attention is never on anyone who isn't already watching her.

Comely (Minion)

• Group Size: 3-6.
• Skills: Light Melee 2, Charm 2, Perception 1.
• Attacks: Beckoning Charm (Charm; Range Short; pulls the target 1 range band toward Comely on a hit, no damage); Cruel Embrace (Light Melee; Damage 5; Crit 4).
• Abilities: Chosen Target - Add 1 Boon to attacks against a target who has spent a check admiring, complimenting, or pursuing Comely this scene.
• Soul: No claimable coin exists; at death canon does not specify (default).
• Tactics: Comely lures with Beckoning Charm before closing to strike, physical throughout, no illusions beyond her own face.

Cracklin

Role: Minion Ambusher Where It Appears: Anarchos's static fields, mortal ruins with failed wards, anywhere structure has already come apart once.

Cracklin is a blob of pure crackling energy with no legs and no need of them. It sparks against nearby surfaces, then hurls itself bodily at whatever it has chosen to unmake, destroying whatever a target owns before it starts on the target itself.

Signs and Knowledge: Perception (Average) notices the air smelling faintly burnt and the light bending wrong nearby.

Cracklin (Minion)

• Skills: Reflexes 3, Perception 1.
• Attacks: Corrosive Spark (Heavy Ranged; Damage 5; Crit 3; Range Short).
• Abilities: Unmaking Touch - On a hit, destroy one item the target is currently holding or wearing before the attack's damage applies; once the target has nothing left to lose this way, damage applies to the target's body in full.
• Abilities: Spark and Lunge - As a maneuver, Cracklin may move 1 range band toward a target instead of its normal movement. As an action, it may move up to 1 range band and make an attack in the same motion.
• Soul: No claimable coin exists; at death canon does not specify (default).
• Tactics: Cracklin spends a round closing with its spark-jump, then commits to an all-in charge-attack once in range, preferring to ruin equipment before it ever touches skin.

Forgottens

Role: Minion Ambusher Where It Appears: Anarchos's forgetting fields, mortal ruins, anywhere something has been left to fade for long enough.

Forgottens wears the rough shape of whatever demon or person it last consumed the memory of, moves slowly, and steals a piece of whoever it hits, holding that stolen memory the way other creatures hold a meal.

Signs and Knowledge: Perception (Hard) notices it doesn't quite match the shape it appears to be wearing.

Forgottens (Minion)

• Skills: Unarmed 2, Perception 1.
• Attacks: Memory Claw (Unarmed; Damage 4; Crit 5).
• Abilities: Borrowed Face - Each hit steals a memory. After stealing three, it may spend its turn reshaping into a rough copy of the person those memories belonged to instead of attacking.
• Soul: No claimable coin exists; at death canon does not specify (default).
• Tactics: Forgottens is slow and easy to outrun, but a party that ignores it risks it eventually wearing a face they trust.

Gallant

Role: Minion Predator Where It Appears: Erosmire's mirrored halls, mortal courts, markets, and gatherings wherever admiration is currency.

Gallant wears an idealized masculine beauty like armor, and uses it exactly that way. He seeks out women who take pride in being desired, and he makes the wanting costly.

Signs and Knowledge: Perception or Charm (Average) notices his attention is never on anyone who isn't already watching him.

Gallant (Minion)

• Group Size: 3-6.
• Skills: Light Melee 2, Charm 2, Perception 1.
• Attacks: Beckoning Charm (Charm; Range Short; pulls the target 1 range band toward Gallant on a hit, no damage); Cruel Embrace (Light Melee; Damage 5; Crit 4).
• Abilities: Chosen Target - Add 1 Boon to attacks against a target who has spent a check admiring, complimenting, or pursuing Gallant this scene.
• Soul: No claimable coin exists; at death canon does not specify (default).
• Tactics: Gallant lures with Beckoning Charm before closing to strike, physical throughout, no illusions beyond his own face.

Gilt Wretch

Role: Minion Brute Where It Appears: Loftile's ruined galleries, mortal courts, and anywhere someone dresses to be noticed.

Gilt Wretch wears whatever finery it has scavenged, badly, and believes it completely. Low as it is even in Loftile, it is still certain it outranks anything mortal, and it proves this by attacking whoever looks most important: the best-dressed, the most decorated, the one carrying visible rank.

Signs and Knowledge: Perception (Average) notices it sizing up a target's clothing and bearing before choosing who to attack first.

Gilt Wretch (Minion)

• Group Size: 4-9.
• Skills: Unarmed 2, Intimidation 2, Perception 1.
• Attacks: Grasping Claws (Unarmed; Damage 5; Crit 4); Torn Finery Throw (Heavy Ranged; Damage 4; Range Short).
• Abilities: Wounded Vanity - Against a target wearing notable finery, fine armor, or an obvious symbol of rank, add 1 Boon to the attack, and the target adds 1 Bane to its next Charm or Negotiation check this scene.
• Soul: No claimable coin exists; at death canon does not specify (default).
• Tactics: Gilt Wretch ignores the plainly dressed and goes straight for whoever looks like they matter.
• Encounter Use: Put it in a scene with a visibly important target, a noble, an officer, a party member in ceremonial gear, and let it choose its own target.

Gut-Sack

Role: Minion Brute Where It Appears: Gula's feeding pits, mortal battlefields and famine roads, anywhere the dead or dying go uneaten.

Gut-Sack is mostly stomach, a sack of appetite with limbs attached. It eats anything organic, including other demons, if nothing better presents itself.

Signs and Knowledge: Perception (Average) notices it circling a fresh kill instead of engaging a still-dangerous target.

Gut-Sack (Minion)

• Skills: Unarmed 3, Fortitude 3, Perception 1.
• Attacks: Gnashing Maw (Unarmed; Damage 6; Crit 4; Pierce 1).
• Abilities: Feed the Sack - The moment a creature adjacent to it drops to 0 Wounds, it may consume the body without spending an action, healing 3 Wounds and adding 1 Boon to its next attack.
• Soul: No claimable coin exists; at death canon does not specify (default).
• Tactics: Gut-Sack fights sloppily until something drops, then stops to feed even mid-combat, an exploitable window.
• Encounter Use: Best paired with other Gula demons; let players notice it prioritizing corpses over live threats.

Herald of Kian

Role: Nemesis Commander Where It Appears: Loftile's crumbling court, wherever Kian's name still commands fear, mortal courts touched by grandiose ambition.

What It Is

The Herald of Kian can smell pride the way a hound smells blood, and he considers everyone beneath him worth noticing exactly once, to confirm it. He does not fight. He directs. Ceremonia goes in first while he watches from just out of reach, and he lends support only when it will look, later, like the outcome was his doing. He will not personally engage until his retinue is destroyed or badly broken.

The one thing that breaks this pattern is a direct challenge to his authority or his person. Insult his right to command, and he answers immediately, personally, and without restraint.

Ecology and Behavior

The Herald keeps a rotating Ceremonia retinue close at all times and treats its members as extensions of his own dignity, praised when they perform well, discarded without ceremony when they don't. He courts mortal courts the way Kian courts monuments: grandly, publicly, and with an audience he has usually arranged himself.

He is, underneath the theater, a coward with excellent taste in who else takes the risk.

Signs and Knowledge

Perception or Theology (Hard) identifies a Herald's court by its excessive, performed formality even in the middle of active danger.

Other signs include a demon retinue arranged for maximum visibility rather than tactical advantage, and a leader who steps forward only after the fighting has clearly turned.

Herald of Kian (Nemesis)

• Skills: Light Melee 3, Leadership 5, Perception 4, Intimidation 4, Deception 3.
• Attacks: Contemptuous Strike (Light Melee; Damage 10; Crit 3); Command the Unworthy (Leadership; Damage 8 Strain; Range Medium).
• Abilities: I Do Not Fight the Help - Cannot be targeted by attacks originating beyond Short range while 2 or more Ceremonia demons remain active. Any check made against him by a target who has not directly challenged, insulted, or attacked him this encounter adds 1 Bane.
• Abilities: Delayed Glory - Once per encounter, at the start of a round, without spending an action, add 2 Boons to one ally's next check this round. If that check succeeds, the Herald claims the credit.
• Abilities: Answer the Insult - The round after being directly attacked, insulted, or challenged by a specific target, he loses I Do Not Fight the Help's Bane benefit against that target for the rest of the encounter.
• Soul: No claimable coin exists; at death canon does not specify (default).

Tactics

The Herald stays back, directs Ceremonia, and spends Delayed Glory to make someone else's success look like his strategy. He engages personally only once his retinue is gone or nearly gone, or the instant someone challenges his authority outright, at which point he attacks that target specifically and does not disengage from them.

Harvesting and Trade

Variants

• Herald in Exile: Lost his court entirely; more openly desperate, quicker to engage personally.
• Rival Herald: Competing with another Herald for Kian's attention; may abandon a fight rather than let a rival claim its outcome.

Possession Vessel

Role: Elite Host / Ritual Threat Where It Appears: Summoning rites, infernal cells, desperate households.

What It Is

A possession vessel is a mortal body prepared to carry something worse. This entry covers the prepared host, not a full infection or spread mechanic. The vessel may be willing, coerced, deceived, or already too buried beneath the occupying presence to answer clearly.

Use this entry when the scene is about a ritual host and immediate stakes, not a campaign rule for spreading possession. Saving the host may be the victory.

Ecology and Behavior

Possession vessels appear in summoning rites, infernal cells, desperate households, failed exorcisms, and cult safe rooms. Preparation may involve circles, fasting, names, brands, bargains, or repeated invitation. The vessel is strongest inside the prepared space.

The occupying force often speaks with borrowed secrets. It stalls, accuses, bargains, and tries to keep the circle intact until the rite completes. The host body may show flashes of resistance when addressed by true name, loved ones, or broken consent.

Signs and Knowledge

Theology or Secret Lore (Hard) identifies the anchor structure. Medicine or Perception (Average) distinguishes unnatural strength from ordinary frenzy.

Other signs include a shadow moving late, candle flames leaning inward, voice cadence changing mid-sentence, and the host reacting to names the occupying force does not care about.

Possession Vessel (Elite)

• Skills: Unarmed 3, Fortitude 4, Readiness 4, Intimidation 3.
• Attacks: Inhuman Grip (Unarmed; Damage 8; Crit 4; Grabbed on 2 Boons); Voice Behind Voice (Intimidation; Damage 6 Strain; Range Short).
• Abilities: Wrong Strength - Add 1 Boon to Might checks that harm the host body.
• Abilities: Ritual Anchor - While inside a prepared circle, Resistance increases by 2.
• Soul: Claimable, the vessel is still a mortal under an occupying presence; at death it passes normally along the Silver Road to Sheol unless a claim exists, in which case the claim resolves at judgment.

Tactics

A possession vessel holds the circle, speaks with borrowed secrets, and stalls until the rite completes. It grapples anyone trying to break candles, salt, seals, or name-tags. It may use the host's face and memories to create hesitation.

The fight should include host-safe choices: break the anchor, call the host by name, remove witnesses, disrupt the rite, or restrain rather than kill. If the group chooses lethal force, make the cost clear in the fiction.

Evidence and Trade

Variants

• Willing Vessel: Believes the entity is patron, god, or justice.
• Coerced Vessel: Host can help if given a moment of control.
• Empty Door Vessel: The body is prepared, but the entity has not fully arrived yet.

Scrapplers

Role: Minion Swarm Where It Appears: Gula's feeding grounds, mortal battlefields after the real fighting has moved on, kitchens and larders touched by infernal hunger.

Scrapplers are tiny, countless, individually harmless demons that swarm anything wounded or weak. They are more a hazard than a fight.

Signs and Knowledge: Perception (Average) hears the chittering before the swarm arrives.

Scrapplers (Minion)

• Group Size: 6-15.
• Skills: Unarmed 3, Stealth 2, Perception 2.
• Attacks: Scrap Bite (Unarmed; Damage 4; Crit 5; Bleeding 1 on 2 Boons).
• Abilities: Feeding Frenzy - Add 1 Boon to attacks against a target that is Bleeding or below half Wounds.
• Soul: No claimable coin exists; at death canon does not specify (default).
• Tactics: Scrapplers swarm whoever is already hurt and ignore anyone still at full strength if an easier target is available.
• Encounter Use: Use as a hazard that punishes a party for leaving a wounded ally exposed.

Sin-Fed Brute

Role: Elite Bruiser Where It Appears: Cult lairs, infernal pits, punishment chambers.

What It Is

Sin-fed brutes are made by feeding vice, fear, and punishment into a body until little remains but appetite and obedience. Some began as mortals. Some were grown in infernal pits. Some are cult victims transformed into living proof that the cult can make suffering useful.

They are not subtle. Their purpose is to make negotiation end, doors break, and witnesses understand what happens after disobedience.

Ecology and Behavior

Sin-fed brutes are kept in cult lairs, infernal pits, punishment chambers, and sealed basements beneath respectable institutions. They require handlers, chains, feeding rites, or pain brands to remain directed. Without command, they smash the nearest source of stimulus.

They are often symbols of a cult's internal cruelty. Initiates may be forced to feed, brand, or punish the brute as proof of loyalty. Destroying the brute can reveal victims, brand plates, and the hierarchy that made it.

Signs and Knowledge

Secret Lore or Medicine (Average) identifies pain brands and feeding scars. Perception (Average) notices impact damage from inside locked rooms.

Other signs include reinforced doors bent outward, chains replaced often, cultists flinching at handler bells, and brand patterns repeated on living initiates.

Sin-Fed Brute (Elite)

• Skills: Unarmed 4, Heavy Melee 4, Fortitude 5, Intimidation 4.
• Attacks: Chain Fist (Unarmed; Damage 10; Crit 3; Knockdown on 2 Boons); Hook Chain (Heavy Melee; Damage 8; Crit 4; Grabbed on 2 Boons).
• Abilities: Pain Fed - The first time each round it suffers Wounds, add 1 Boon to its next attack.
• Abilities: Dread - Fear 3.
• Soul: No claimable coin exists; at death canon does not specify (default).

Tactics

A sin-fed brute smashes the nearest threat, obeys handler commands, and ignores self-preservation. Pain makes it more dangerous, so disciplined parties may control, bind, distract, or disable handlers instead of simply escalating damage.

Use the brute as evidence of the cult's methods. The room that holds it should tell the story: chains, brands, feeding trough, hidden victim names, and the person who rings the bell.

Harvesting and Trade

Variants

• Pit-Fed Brute: Larger and less responsive to handlers.
• Penitent Brute: Contains a victim who may still recognize names or prayers.
• Golden Brand Brute: Built to guard wealthy cult patrons instead of temples.

The Forgotten Beloved

Role: Nemesis Shapeless Desire Where It Appears: Erosmire's deepest chambers, the rare mortal site where longing has been given a door.

What It Is

The Forgotten Beloved has no true form of its own anymore, only the ones it borrows. It becomes whoever its target wants most, and it has done this for so long in Erosmire that its own original shape is gone even from its own memory. It is, in its own way, the most tormented thing in this chapter: endlessly wanted in every shape but its own, and unable to remember the one shape it actually wants back.

Ecology and Behavior

It does not hunt broadly. It selects one focus at a time and commits fully, wearing that person's most wanted shape until the focus is spent in whatever way Erosmire intends, described here no further than that.

Signs and Knowledge

Willpower (Hard) resists the pull of a face too perfectly matched to what a target already wanted before arriving.

The Forgotten Beloved (Nemesis)

• Skills: Light Melee 3, Charm 5, Deception 4, Perception 2.
• Attacks: Desired Touch (Light Melee; Damage 9; Crit 3).
• Abilities: Borrowed Beauty - As its action, it reshapes into the form of the person its current focus most desires; while wearing that form, checks made to resist its Charm or Deception suffer 1 Bane.
• Abilities: The Face I Lost - If a character directly and sincerely asks it about its true name or original form, it must make a Willpower check or its disguise drops for one round, overcome by its own grief.
• Soul: No claimable coin exists; at death canon does not specify (default).

Tactics

It commits to one target, reshapes early, and relies on Borrowed Beauty to keep that target from acting clearly. The Face I Lost is the only real opening the table gets, and it doesn't offer it twice if it can help it.

Variants

• Court-Bound Beloved: Attached to a single mortal household for generations, wearing the shape of whoever the current heir wants most.

The Hollow

Role: Minion Ambusher Where It Appears: Loftile's false shrines, mortal temples, processions, and pilgrim roads.

The Hollow dresses as clergy from no real faith, vestments stitched from half-remembered symbols and the wrong colors. It gravitates toward the devout: worshippers, acolytes, anyone who leans on a god's name instead of their own strength. A prayer said aloud is an invitation.

Signs and Knowledge: Theology (Average) recognizes the vestments as belonging to no known order.

The Hollow (Minion)

• Group Size: 3-6.
• Skills: Unarmed 2, Divine 2, Perception 2.
• Attacks: Broken Blessing (Unarmed; Damage 5; Crit 4); False Rite (Divine; Damage 4 Strain; Range Short).
• Abilities: Empty Rite - Against a target who has invoked a deity, made a Divine check, or is known clergy this scene, that target suffers 1 Bane on its next divine or faith-based check. The god didn't answer, and The Hollow wants them to notice.
• Soul: No claimable coin exists; at death canon does not specify (default).
• Tactics: The Hollow singles out the most visibly devout target in a fight and lets Empty Rite do quiet damage to their faith while its claws do the rest.
• Encounter Use: Strongest in a scene with clergy, a shrine, or a party member who leans on divine magic.

The Nameless Paramour

Role: Nemesis Shapeless Desire Where It Appears: Erosmire's deepest chambers, the rare mortal site where longing has been given a door.

What It Is

The Nameless Paramour is the same tragedy as The Forgotten Beloved, wearing whatever shape its focus wants most, mourning a true form it can no longer recall. Where The Forgotten Beloved settles on whoever wanders into its reach, the Paramour chooses one target and pursues them across years if it has to, patient in a way that has nothing left in it but patience.

Ecology and Behavior

It tracks a single focus for as long as that focus lives, appearing in whatever shape serves the pursuit, and abandoning a chase only when the focus is spent in whatever way Erosmire intends, described here no further than that.

Signs and Knowledge

Willpower (Hard) resists the pull of a face too perfectly matched to what a target already wanted before arriving.

The Nameless Paramour (Nemesis)

• Skills: Light Melee 3, Charm 5, Deception 4, Perception 2.
• Attacks: Desired Touch (Light Melee; Damage 9; Crit 3).
• Abilities: Borrowed Beauty - As its action, it reshapes into the form of the person its current focus most desires; while wearing that form, checks made to resist its Charm or Deception suffer 1 Bane.
• Abilities: The Face I Lost - If a character directly and sincerely asks it about its true name or original form, it must make a Willpower check or its disguise drops for one round, overcome by its own grief.
• Soul: No claimable coin exists; at death canon does not specify (default).

Tactics

Unlike The Forgotten Beloved, the Paramour has already chosen its focus before the scene begins and will not be distracted from them by an easier target. The Face I Lost remains its one real weakness.

The Nothing

Role: Nemesis Void Where It Appears: Anarchos's deepest reaches, the rare mortal site where a plane has torn all the way through.

What It Is

The Nothing is a lightless, silent absence shaped roughly like a cloud, and it wants, in the only way it is still capable of wanting, for that absence to include whatever is nearby. It does not attack in any ordinary sense. It only draws things in, patiently, the way a held breath eventually gets let out.

Ecology and Behavior

It does not move, hunt, or claim territory the way anything else in Anarchos does. It settles, and it waits, and anything that lingers within its reach for too long eventually stops being separate from it.

Signs and Knowledge

Perception (Hard) notices sound and light behaving wrong at Long range from it, well before it is visible directly.

The Nothing (Nemesis)

• Skills: Perception 4.
• Attacks: None. The Nothing does not attack.
• Abilities: The Long Quiet - Ranged attacks made against any target other than The Nothing suffer 2 Bane while the attacker is within Long range of it.
• Abilities: Feeds on Nothing - Attacks made against The Nothing that miss are simply absorbed; it gains no benefit and suffers no harm from this beyond the ordinary.
• Abilities: The Pull - Instead of acting normally on its turn, The Nothing makes an opposed Willpower check against every creature within Extreme range that it has chosen to draw in. Each success pulls that creature one range band closer to The Nothing. A creature pulled to Engaged and drawn in a fourth time is consumed entirely and removed from play. An ally within reach of the target may spend their action to assist the target's opposed check, adding 1 Boon to it.
• Soul: No claimable coin exists; at death canon does not specify (default).

Tactics

The Nothing never moves and never attacks conventionally. It selects its targets at the start of an encounter and spends every round afterward pulling them closer, relying on The Long Quiet to make it hard for anyone to help from range. The real fight is the rescue: closing the distance, assisting the checks, and getting a drawn-in ally free before the fourth pull completes.

The Uncrowned

Role: Elite Saboteur Where It Appears: Loftile's shattered command halls, any battlefield or court with a clear chain of command.

What It Is

The Uncrowned is demonic middle management, and it knows exactly what that means. It believes its own savvy outstrips its superiors, and it has the scars to prove what saying so out loud costs in Loftile. It has no interest in footsoldiers, hired muscle, or anyone simply following orders; they are beneath its notice. The moment someone giving orders comes within reach, it goes to work, not to kill them, to hurt them precisely enough that they remember exactly who did it.

Ecology and Behavior

The Uncrowned attaches itself to hierarchies, cults, war-bands, courts, anywhere a chain of command exists to resent. It rarely announces itself as a threat until the person in charge is already isolated.

It despises its actual superiors more than any mortal, but that hatred has nowhere to go in Loftile. Mortal command structures give it somewhere to spend it.

Signs and Knowledge

Perception (Hard) notices it deliberately declining an easy kill on an unranked target in favor of waiting for whoever gives the orders.

Other signs include subordinates suffering shallow, almost surgical wounds while their commander is hunted with real intent, and a demon that seems to already know the local chain of command before arriving.

The Uncrowned (Elite)

• Skills: Light Melee 3, Perception 4, Deception 3, Intimidation 3.
• Attacks: Precise Contempt (Light Melee; Damage 8; Crit 3); Withering Word (Intimidation; Damage 6 Strain; Range Short).
• Abilities: Chain of Command - Add 1 Boon to all checks made against a target actively directing, commanding, or leading others. Attacks against any other target deal 2 fewer damage (minimum 1); it is not trying to kill the help.
• Soul: No claimable coin exists; at death canon does not specify (default).

Tactics

The Uncrowned ignores footsoldiers entirely if it can reach whoever is in charge, and spends its actions making that person suffer precisely rather than quickly. It disengages from unranked targets rather than finishing them.

Variants

• Passed-Over Uncrowned: Denied command more recently; angrier, less controlled, occasionally attacks footsoldiers out of frustration.

Unfilled

Role: Elite Bruiser Where It Appears: Gula's endless feast halls, mortal cult lairs, anywhere excess has been mistaken for plenty.

What It Is

Unfilled is skin stretched over a frame that has never once been full. Every meal only proves how much more there is to want. It fights only long enough to make a kill, and a kill is only ever the start of eating.

Ecology and Behavior

Unfilled is kept, when it is kept at all, chained near a food source large enough to slow it down for a while. Cultists sometimes maintain one as a threat implied rather than shown: everyone knows what happens to whoever is fed to it.

Signs and Knowledge

Perception (Average) notices its attention snap fully to whichever target drops first, ignoring everyone else mid-fight.

Unfilled (Elite)

• Skills: Unarmed 4, Fortitude 4, Perception 3.
• Attacks: Starving Maw (Unarmed; Damage 8; Crit 3; Pierce 1).
• Abilities: Consume the Fallen - If it drops a target to 0 Wounds, it may spend its next turn's action consuming the body instead of attacking, healing Wounds equal to twice its Might.
• Soul: No claimable coin exists; at death canon does not specify (default).

Tactics

Unfilled disengages from a losing exchange the instant it can feed instead, and returns to the fight healed and emboldened.

Unravelinger

Role: Minion Ambusher Where It Appears: Anarchos's dissolving fields, mortal ruins where structure has already failed, anywhere the boundary between planes has worn thin.

Unravelinger is an unformed mass of flesh that claws and rolls toward anything with a shape, spits corrosive fluid at range, and wraps itself around whoever it catches, wearing their outline as its own while dissolving them from the inside.

Signs and Knowledge: Perception (Average) notices no clear front, back, or face on it before it moves.

Unravelinger (Minion)

• Skills: Unarmed 2, Fortitude 2, Perception 2.
• Attacks: Corrosive Spit (Heavy Ranged; Damage 5; Crit 4; Range Short); Engulfing Wrap (Unarmed; Damage 5; Crit 4; Grabbed on 2 Boons).
• Abilities: Wear Your Shape - While it has a target Grabbed, that target suffers 3 additional damage at the end of each round the grab persists.
• Soul: No claimable coin exists; at death canon does not specify (default).
• Tactics: Unravelinger spits at range to soften a target, then closes to grab and hold, using Wear Your Shape to grind the target down over several rounds.

Unster

Role: Elite Summoner Where It Appears: Anarchos's open dissolving flats, mortal ruins deep enough that nothing else has moved in yet.

What It Is

Unster does not fight. It does not need to. It is large, slow, and endlessly productive, and every attack against it only proves it right about what it exists to do: make more of itself out of whatever is nearby, and leave.

Ecology and Behavior

Unster drifts through Anarchos alone, trailing lesser dissolution demons that peel away from it as fast as it can produce them. It has no interest in territory, hoard, or command. It only moves, and it only makes.

Signs and Knowledge

Perception (Average) notices it retreating a full range band the instant it is struck, without spending anything to do so.

Unster (Elite)

• Skills: Fortitude 3, Perception 2.
• Attacks: None. Unster cannot make attacks.
• Abilities: Endless Making - As its action each round, summon one Anarchos Minion (Unravelinger, Cracklin, or Forgottens, GM's choice) adjacent to itself.
• Abilities: Wound-Born - Whenever it takes 5 or more damage from a single hit, immediately summon one additional Anarchos Minion at no cost to its action.
• Abilities: Never Stands and Fights - Unster cannot attack or be forced to. Each round, it automatically shifts one range band away from whichever creature most recently damaged it; this movement is free and does not use its action or maneuver.
• Abilities: Halved and Hastened - Once reduced below half Wound threshold, Endless Making may only be used every other round instead of every round.
• Soul: No claimable coin exists; at death canon does not specify (default).

Tactics

Unster spends every round it can making more of itself, retreats automatically from pressure, and never willingly stops summoning while it still can. Killing it quickly matters more than fighting whatever it has already made.