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Meladaemon (Famine Daemon)
Meladaemons personify death by starvation and thirst, and they revel in spreading the same despair that brought about their mortal demise. When they aren't blighting fields, massacring livestock, or tainting water supplies, they experiment on prisoners to study how long creatures can go without sustenance and the deleterious effects that result from such deprivation. Fiercely loyal to Trelmarixian, Apocalypse Rider of Famine, they serve no other beings. They work alongside other daemons if Trelmarixian wills it but are notoriously traitorous.Recall Knowledge - Fiend (Religion): DC 28
Unspecific Lore: DC 26
Specific Lore: DC 23
Elite | Normal | Weak
Proficiency without Level
Changes from being Elite are marked in red below.NOTE: The +2 damage bonus to non-strike offensive abilities (+4 if the ability is limited, such as spells) is NOT factored in.
Elite MeladaemonCreature 12
Large Daemon Fiend Unholy Source Monster Core 2 pg. 79
Perception +23; darkvision, lifesense (imprecise) 30 feet
Languages Common, Daemonic; telepathy 100 feet
Skills Acrobatics +22, Athletics +23, Deception +25, Intimidation +25, Religion +22, Stealth +25, Survival +21
Str +7, Dex +5, Con +6, Int +3, Wis +4, Cha +6
AC 33; Fort +25, Ref +22, Will +21; +1 status to all saves vs. magic
HP 245; Immunities death effects; Weaknesses holy 10
Consumptive Aura (aura, divine) 20 feet. A meladaemon emanates an aura of intense hunger. Each round a creature begins its turn in the aura, it must attempt a DC 29 Fortitude save. On a failure, the creature takes 1d6 void damage (2d6 on a critical failure) and becomes fatigued. This fatigue ends as soon as the creature eats any food.Withering Opportunity [reaction] Trigger The meladaemon is attacked by an adjacent creature, and the attack misses; Effect The meladaemon swipes at the triggering creature, which must immediately attempt a save against the meladaemon's withering touch.
Speed 25 feet, fly 50 feet
Melee [one-action] jaws +26 [+21/+16] (magical, reach 10 feet, unholy), Damage 2d12+2+16 plus daemonic famineMelee [one-action] claw +26 [+22/+18] (agile, magical, reach 10 feet, unholy), Damage 2d8+2+16 slashing plus Grab and withering touchDivine Innate Spells DC 33 (+4 dmg); 6th phantom pain; 5th fear, force barrage (at will), translocate; 4th translocate (at will)
Rituals DC 33 (+4 dmg); 4th blight
Daemonic Famine (disease) Saving Throw DC 31 Fortitude; Stage 1 carrier with no ill effect (1 day); Stage 2 enfeebled 1 (1 day); Stage 3 enfeebled 2 (1 day); Stage 4 as stage 3; Stage 5 enfeebled 3 (1 week); Stage 6 deadWithering Touch (divine, unholy) When the meladaemon hits with a claw Strike or a creature begins its turn grabbed or restrained by the meladaemon, the creature must attempt a DC 32 Fortitude save. On a failure, the creature takes 1d6 void damage and becomes fatigued. This fatigue ends when the creature drinks.
Formed In His Image
Meladaemons have always been gaunt and bestial, but they didn't always resemble jackals. When Trelmarixian overthrew the previous Apocalypse Rider of Famine, one of his first acts as a ruler of Abaddon was to forcibly twist the appearance of his deacon caste to resemble his own wicked form. He went on to imbue meladaemons with other jackal-like aspects as it suited him, further warping them and cementing their fealty.All Monsters in "Daemon"
Daemon
Source Monster Core pg. 72 1.1Denizens of the bleak and terrible plane of Abaddon, daemons are shaped by and devoted to the destruction of life in all its forms. They seek the death of every mortal being by the most painful and horrible means possible, in service to the Apocalypse Riders. Each kind of daemon represents a different way to die, and their powers are nearly always aimed at spreading that particular form of death. Through the use of these powers, they seek to drag all existence down into a pit of hopelessness and despair, and to commit all souls to oblivion.
While mortals who summon daemons usually seek to use the creatures' destructive and corrupting powers for their own ends, daemons always look for ways to spread fear, doubt, and despair wherever they go. Often, daemons disguise their plots as the workings of other fiends, knowing that such confusion compounds mortals' fear and keeps those mortals from bringing the most effective weapons. As a result, learned mortals sometimes refer to daemons as “riders” after their leaders or “soul mongers” after their largest industry.
While many fiends seek to tempt mortals into lives of nihilistic evil to increase their own numbers and power on their native planes, daemons are further driven by a supernatural hunger for mortal souls and use a variety of methods—not least of which is the cacodaemons' soul gems—to entrap them. On Abaddon and in other forbidding places across the multiverse, souls are simultaneously a delicacy, a trade good, and a source of magical power, and the daemons are among the greatest gluttons, merchants, and abusers of this spiritual “resource.”
Daemonic Divinities
Numerous powerful and unique daemon demigods, known collectively as harbingers, rule over swaths of Abaddon. Above these demigods, though, are entities of even greater power—the four Apocalypse Riders. As the eons go on, the names and identities of specific Riders change. Currently, they consist of Apollyon (Rider of Pestilence), Charon (Rider of Death), Szuriel (Rider of War), and Trelmarixian (Rider of Famine). Of these, only Charon has never fallen to an upstart. Some hold that a “Fifth Rider” once ruled over the other four, while others maintain that the eternally eclipsed sun in the skies above Abaddon is all that remains of this long-dead god.
Other Daemons
As many daemons exist as there are awful ways to die. The bloody sangudaemon personifies death by blood loss, while the skeletal thanadaemon represents death from old age. The most powerful daemons are the olethrodaemons, who represent the massive deaths caused by apocalypses and the end of entire worlds.
Soul Gems as Treasure
Soul gems are traded in illicit markets, a tradition celestials and psychopomps alike find vile. Soul gems' value varies, but they're generally worth an amount relative to the level of a gem's captive soul. The Daemonic Paradox
Daemons embody a fundamental paradox—while they are incarnations of death and seek to devour all that lives, they are themselves living creatures. Some speak of a glorious end time after which reality will finally be free of the contagion that is life itself. Most daemons give no thought to this paradox.
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