Pazuzu

Description

(from 3.5e Fiendish Codex I Supplement - 2006):

Although he’s a tall, well-proportioned man, this figure’s demonic features cannot be ignored. His powerful birdlike talons scrape the floor as he approaches, and four feathered wings shine with oil and writhe with smoke on his back. His head combines the features of a handsome man and a feral hawk, his cruel, hooked beak filled with a forest of needle teeth.

Mighty Pazuzu is one of the oldest of the tanar’ri princes. His realm is the skies above the Abyssal layers, and he takes great delight in the corruption of purity. 

Servants, Enemies, and Goals: Pazuzu is a unique example of survival in the Abyss. Originally one of the more powerful obyrith lords, his independence was a constant thorn in the Queen of Chaos’s side. As it turned out, Pazuzu has since evolved with the new rule of the Abyss. While he is still an obyrith, he has been accepted by tanar’ri and represents a sort of “missing link” between the two races. Due to this duality of nature, Pazuzu’s form has taken on a less horrible appearance with the passing of eons, and his form of madness ability has transformed into his current aura of servile avians. He has also gained several tanar’ri-like qualities, including the ability to summon tanar’ri.

Although Pazuzu commands the respect and loyalty of all evil things that fl y in the Abyssal skies, he is rarely forced to call upon these creatures. Perhaps alone in the Abyss, Pazuzu has no active enemies. The other demon lords seem to begrudgingly award him the skies above their realms, if only because there seems to be little there to claim. Graz’zt alone has been known to speak ill of Pazuzu, yet he has never taken direct action against him. The one demon lord that could be counted as his enemy is wretched and deformed Lamashtu, although the Queen of Monstrous Births has been imprisoned by Pazuzu on Torremor for countless ages, so she is hardly a threat to the demon prince.

Pazuzu does not lust for the rule of a realm in the Abyss (although he nonetheless controls the 503rd layer of the Abyss, and his presence is nearly constant on the 1st layer), nor does he wish to rule over his fellow demons. His goals are higher—he lusts for innocence, purity, and honesty. These sweet nectars are his greatest vice, and as he consumes them, he leaves bitterness, cruelty, and wickedness in the shells of those he has corrupted. Since these qualities are so alien in the Abyss, he logically has little interest in what dwells therein and instead turns his attentions to the Material Plane. Pazuzu has tested his ability to manifest on Material Plane worlds without drawing the undue attention of the gods who protect them for some time, and in that time has mastered the art of telling mortals what they think they want to hear.

Pazuzu’s cults start with a single soul who cries out to the demon prince for aid. Pazuzu gives this aid, and those who call on him grow dependent on his aid. They crave the power his touch can bring. Within a year, those who have called upon him invariably join or found a new cult dedicated to his teachings, where they seek to capture and convert new innocents to his vile worship.

Clerics of Pazuzu have access to the domains of Air, Chaos, Evil, and Temptation. His symbol is a twisted bird talon.

Strategy and Tactics: In a fight, Pazuzu leads with his greatsword, a murderous weapon said to have been a feather he plucked from the body of a massive demonic bird. He uses Combat Expertise to full effect, often making disarm or trip attacks with one of his natural weapons—if he fl ies, he can use his talons to slash at prey. He uses his breath weapon and spell-like abilities against other spellcasters or those who don’t dare enter into melee combat with him. 

Aura of Servile Avians (Su): All evil-aligned creatures with a natural fly speed feel a strange bond of attraction to Pazuzu. Before such a creature takes any hostile action against Pazuzu, it must attempt a DC 34 Will save. Failure indicates that the creature’s attack fails and its action is wasted. This aura extends to a radius of 120 feet. The save DC is Charisma-based. 

Breath Weapons (Su): Pazuzu has two breath weapons. The first can be used to create six swarms of locusts (all of which must be created so that each swarm is adjacent to at least one other swarm, and at least one square must be adjacent to Pazuzu). He can create these swarms so that they share the area of other creatures. The locusts attack any creatures occupying the squares and can pursue creatures that flee. 

Pazuzu’s second breath weapon is a 60-foot cone of poisonous acidic vapor. All creatures caught in this area take 18d6 points of acid damage (DC 35 Reflex halves) and must also succeed on a DC 35 Fortitude save or take 2d4 points of Strength damage from the poison. A minute later, a second DC 35 Fortitude save is required, this time to avoid the secondary damage of 2d4 points of Constitution damage. The save DCs are Constitution-based. Regardless of which breath weapon he uses, Pazuzu can only use this special attack once every 1d4 rounds. 

Summon Avians (Sp): Once per day, Pazuzu can automatically summon 2d6 elder arrowhawks, 1d6 harpy archers, or 1d6 fiendish rocs. This ability functions as a 9th-level spell (CL 20th). 

Summon Tanar’ri (Sp): Once per day, Pazuzu can automatically summon 2d4 succubi, 1d4+2 vrocks, or 1 balor. This ability is the equivalent of a 9th-level spell (CL 20th). 

Temptation (Su): If a creature utters the name “Pazuzu” three times in succession, an unholy link between the speaker and Pazuzu is immediately established. For one minute, Pazuzu can use detect good, detect law, detect thoughts (DC 22), and tongues to examine the speaker, despite any distance (physical or planar) that might separate them. He always uses Sense Motive to try to determine whether the one who calls him is trying to entrap him.

If he wishes and is able, Pazuzu can use plane shift and greater teleport to travel to the speaker’s location with precise accuracy, as long as he does so before the minute is up. Once he arrives, Pazuzu asks the speaker why he called upon the Prince of the Lower Aerial Kingdoms. Pazuzu almost always agrees to provide aid, but if he does, the caller’s alignment shifts one step closer to chaotic. If the caller’s alignment is already chaotic, it instead shifts one step closer to evil. These shifts in alignment are considered voluntary. Pazuzu never provides aid to chaotic evil creatures and often punishes them for calling upon his aid rather than using the tools he has likely already granted the creature in question. 

Pazuzu particularly enjoys corrupting paladins and takes pains to ensure that the first time he helps a paladin, no evil comes as a result of his assistance, hoping to encourage the paladin to call on him again. Aid granted by Pazuzu is typically granted in the manner easiest for the demon prince to manifest, often in the form of his wish spell-like ability.

(from 4th Edition Demonomicon - 2005):

One of the oldest and most reprehensible demon lords, Pazuzu is a master manipulator and corruptor of mortal souls. The Dark Angel of the Four Winds takes great delight in offering aid that seems beneficial, but which in fact leads to great evil and suffering.

Lore: Arcana DC 33: Pazuzu lusts after innocence, purity, and honesty more than anything else, and the mortal world is a perfect breeding ground for this precious fruit. The demon lord takes from his victims all that makes them pure, then fills their hollow souls with bitterness and cruelty. When not scouting the mortal world for his next conquest, Pazuzu can almost always be found on the 1st abyssal layer—the Plain of a Thousand Portals.

With his attention focused outward from the chaotic scheming of the Abyss, Pazuzu has not garnered many foes among the other abyssal lords. His only true enemy is Lamashtu, Demon Queen of Monstrous Births, though Pazuzu only barely considers this former consort a threat. Long ago, she betrayed the Winged Prince. As punishment, Pazuzu ate out her eyes and imprisoned her in his former realm of Torremor, the 503rd layer of the Abyss. There, the wretched and deformed hag suffered, eventually gaining the power to seize Torremor as her own. The Prince of the Lower Aerial Kingdoms now watches in amusement as Lamashtu (still bound by his dark magic) scrapes for influence and position from that remote abyssal backwater.

Encounters: Beyond his secret alliance with Asmodeus and the Queen’s Conclave, Pazuzu commands the respect and loyalty of all evil creatures that fly in the abyssal skies. Though his rule of Pazunia is unquestioned,

it is said that Pazuzu’s influence extends in secret to aerial kingdoms throughout the Abyss.

Pazuzu seldom travels alone. His personal guard is known as the Six Wings of Pazrael—a formidable troop of balor-led vrocks skilled at reconnaissance and assassination 

Pazuzu in Combat: Pazuzu rarely engages in direct combat, though his abilities make the demon lord a formidable opponent. The plague of abyssal locusts that surrounds him keeps melee and ranged attackers at bay while he spreads his pestilence across the battlefield. The demon lord delights in dominating his most powerful foes, forcing them to cut down their own allies in his name.

Pazuzu Secrets: Pazuzu is secretly an obyrith lord—one of a handful of ancient entities that predate the formation of the Abyss. Trapped in the crumbling ruins of a universe he and his kind destroyed long ago, it was Pazuzu’s idea to create the shard of evil that lured Tharizdun into creating the Abyss.

Pazuzu (in his incarnation as Pazrael; see “Pazuzu’s Cult” below) was also one of the generals who aided the fallen angel Asmodeus in the battle that claimed the life of his god. Pazuzu saw this as his chance to aid in the greatest corruption of all—the transformation of a faithful servant into an enemy of the gods. His aid was instrumental in Asmodeus’s victory, and it remains a secret known only to Asmodeus and the obyrith lord. Pazuzu’s support came at a cost—an as-yet unnamed boon still owed by the archdevil.

Pazuzu was instrumental throughout the last age in fomenting the Blood War, using his secret alliance with Asmodeus to ensure that devils and demons remained evenly matched in that endless conflict. Both Asmodeus and the Queen’s Conclave (see “The Obyriths,” page 7) used the chaos of the Blood War as a cover for the same goal—

to locate and harness the eldritch might of the seed of evil at the Abyss’s heart.

Pazuzu’s Cult: Unlike most other demon lords, Pazuzu is able to manifest freely in the mortal world. Over millennia, he has perfected the craft of seducing mortals to his will without attracting the attention of the gods that protect them. In ancient texts, the names Imdugud, Pazrael, and Typhon are associated with a benevolent entity that protects against pestilence and blesses childbirth. Folk that call on this entity have their prayers consistently answered, remaining blissfully unaware that these benevolent spirits are avatars of Pazuzu. As word of his beneficence spreads, whole communities soon become unwittingly dependent on the demon lord’s aid.

Invariably, folk touched by Pazuzu form new cults dedicated to his teachings. These people do not see themselves as evil, even as their search for blessings inevitably leads them to vile acts committed for the sake of their new master. As they spread the power of their dark patron by tempting others to ask for his aid, these thralls of Pazuzu never learn the demon lord’s true identity.

Pazuzu Out of Combat: If a creature utters Pazuzu’s name or any of his aliases three times in succession, an unholy link between the speaker and the demon lord is estab- if lished, working over any distance and across the Ja planes. For a short time, Pazuzu can examine the P speaker’s thoughts to discern whether the caller seeks aid or is trying to trap him. If he wants to and is able to, Pazuzu can appear in the speaker’s location. The demon lord almost always agrees to provide aid, but his assistance comes at a steep price. In game terms, a typical call for aid from Pazuzu can take the form of gaining a free action point, restoring a character to life or to full hit points, recharging an expended power, or some other benefit of the DM’s choosing. In exchange for this boon, Pazuzu requires a creature to swear utter obedience for a week or more—and takes full advantage of this service.

(from Planescape: For Duty & Deity - 1998):

Pazrael is a huge, vrocklike tanar'ri with gold and crimson feathered wings. Pazrael is dual-minded - sometimes he is cool, controlled, and subtle, but he also has random outbursts of maniacal rage, when all that pleases him is I grasping some sentient creature in his huge taloned feet and ripping it apart with his great beak.

In human terms, Pazrael has S 19, D 19, C 18, I 19, W 19, Ch 18. He has been known to mate with harpies, humans, and vrock, and some of the resulting cambion are his ministers and spies throughout his layer of Torremor. Others have turned against their father and seek to wrest his realm from him, with little success.

Combat: Pazrael can use the following spell-like powers at will, one per round, at 20th level of magic use: call lightning, chain lightning (1/day), cloudkill, control weather, darkness 15-foot radius death fog, flesh to stone, fly, incendiary cloud (1/day), shape change, statue, stinking cloud, symbol (one each per day of death, hopelessness, an pain), tongues, weather summoning, and wind walk.

With a 70% chance for successful gating, Pazrael can gate in 1d4 chasme (40% chance) or 1d4 vrock (60%) twice per day, Pazrael has infravision to 200 feet and can detect invisibility within 120 feet. In melee, he can attack twice per round with a huge, 7-foot-long two-handed sword +4 that inflicts 2d8 + 4 points or damage per hit to small or medium targets and 3d8 + 4 points to anything larger. Pazrael can also attack 3 times per round with beak and claws for 1d12/2d4 + 7 (x2) points of damage.

Followers and Resources: Though he rules an entire layer of the Abyss, Pazrael keeps few more possessions than he can carry. He is fond or jewelry made of rings and bracers of protection, and he always carries a set of at least six javelins of lightning.

Pazrael's symbol of rulership is called the Blinding Claw of Pazrael, an enormous roe's talon that has been embossed with gold and studded with rubies the size of vulture's eggs. The Claw has many powers, but only a few are known. Those that are include cause blindness, clairvoyance, and true seeing at will, meteor swarm, reverse gravity, and unholy word 1/day. Anyone touching it must make a saving throw versus polymorph to avoid changing into a vrock or chasme, and suffer full system shock consequences; tanar'ri are immune to this effect. The Claw can be "hung" in midair anywhere in the Abyss to provide a perch for its master.

In addition to the perch or the Blinding Claw, Pazrael has a number of perches, seals of rulership where he takes on new followers, elevates some tanar'ri to greater levels of power, and punishes others. When he is gone from any perch, he leaves a minister behind, though these are notoriously unreliable.

Plots and Goals: Pazrael is wary of Graz'zt and feels that the Lord of Shadows may have designs on Torremor, so Pazrael keeps tabs on what Graz'zt is doing by sending his own fiends to spy in Graz'zt's domain. Conflicts between fiendish servitors of the two lords aren't uncommon. Pazrael also checks Graz'zt's activities in the Prime because his own nabassu grow strong marauding on the Prime. Unknown to Pazrael, Graz'zt is fully aware or this. Finally, Pazrael is eager to discover the secrets of malign magical items of all kinds and his fiends are under standing orders to acquire them and learn all they can of their manufacture.