It's all very well for a hero to say he or she will go anywhere... but enough is enough! Having any dealings with the Dæmon Dimensions is asking too much.

If you've no choice but to somehow encounter this sort of thing, "if t'were done, t'were well done quickly" is a good motto.

 

 

The Dæmon Dimensions

Home to creatures of evil, various types of dæmon. No inn, no home comforts, not even a nice place to visit.

Filled with intolerably hot fumes that curls malignantly through the air, the Fauchen Halls of the Dæmon Dimensions are huge and dark. The predominant colour is a deep red that is almost black, and on the heavily studded walls of dark stone and wood (or so it seems) are tapestries of scenes of atrocity, in which dæmonic manifestations are torturing, gloating, looting, or murdering. There is a terrible underlying hum to the Fauchen Halls, the sound of tone-deaf daemons singing victory songs.

A huge table in the centre of each of these halls is usually covered with things too horrible to be mentioned. There are small black chambers which lead off into various quarters for the daemons. These are known as Screaming Closets.

In some of the halls, great iron staircases spiral upwards and upwards and upwards, and end abruptly in the middle of nowhere. The carved heads upon these staircases would make gargoyles look like beauty queens. The ceilings are so high that they cannot even be seen... but the fumes make it difficult to see anything, anyway.

In the very centre of the Fauchen Halls is another huge room, known as the Through Contempla Room. In it are various maps, many strange devices, and an enormous machine which consists of many turning wheels, chains, and bones, all churning busily around a huge gap. There is nothing in this gap usually – for this is where the dæmons try to break through into the physical world. But were there to be a rift between the Dæmon Dimensions and the physical world, then that gap would suddenly become physical air, grass, molecules, reality – somewhere in the real world of Ythor.

The Blarghi – known also as the Great Clawed Dæmons. They can assume a corporeal reality when they find an opening in space between the real world and the Dæmon Dimensions. These openings are known as rips. The Dæmon Dimensions are ruled over by Tasan, the dread Dæmon Overlord.

The Blarghi are very large... over six feet in height. They have a head that is lizard-like, save for the short beak that looks like a snarl, and the two thick curling fangs. They have one glaring red eye in the centre of their forehead (which can see into the infrared and ultraviolet spectra), and have no ears. They cannot hear at all, although sound waves of a particular type can be sensed by the gill that runs vertically down the outer belly. They do not use this ability profitably at all, as the sensing of sound waves is usually quite irritating.

Their thick, stippled red skin is as tough as armour, and protects the blarghi from physical damage. The skin cannot be pierced by any weapon, except for the Paladin Sword. Holy water thrown by clerics of Ichbin works like acid upon them, and holy symbols wielded by those self-same clerics can actually burn through the skin. They have four powerful arms, each with long double-claws on the end. These claws are capable of tearing out a man's soul if he is unprotected. The two thickly muscled legs end in cloven hooves, naturally. The speed of which the blarghi is capable is very fast indeed. They can out-run almost anything, except for the fastest horses. Their stamina is incredible. They have two stubbly wings rising from the shoulders of their top pair of arms.

Their offensive abilities include: the emission of poisonous breath coming out in a stream from their beaked mouths; the ability to claw out a man's soul; the ability to take over the mind of an unprotected human; the ability to fly short distances.

Protection against their abilities ranges from Paladin honour shields to the use of holy objects. However, it should be noted that only the pure in heart can use these holy objects with any assurance of protection.

Their defensive abilities include: an imperviousness to fire and to ordinary blades and to poisons.

Their vulnerabilities: well, you already know about the Paladin sword which pierces them... and the holy water or symbols wielded by clerics of Ichbin... Their other vulnerabilities include a hatred of singing (even though they cannot hear, singing sets up a vibration in the gill of their stomach, making them feel ill), and they are not great tacticians – except for Bjarg (the exception that proves the rule ). Their idea of a fight is to go charging in.
They are mostly impervious to magic, although offensive spells will irritate them. Defensive spells are virtually useless against them. Invisibility spells are good... but no magical protection will serve to protect a town against them.

Ways to kill them:
Hack, hack, hack by a Paladin.
Throw, throw, throw by a cleric.
Ideally - a combination of this.

Ways to force them back into the Daemon Dimensions:
Find the rip between the real world and the Daemon Dimensions - and a Paladin must give up his sword by flinging it into the rip.
OR… a living being, pure of heart, can seal it by entering the rip. It does mean death for that person. And a particularly nasty one... torn to death and eaten by demons, ugh... The soul is then trapped forever in the Dæmon Dimensions, being tormented upon the Great Banquet Table in the Dæmon Dimensions. (This might lead to a very interesting quest, to free the soul...)

Note that closing the rip will not force the blarghi back in. They'll still be there, still need to be defeated – unless they are cast back out by opening an opposing rift to the Holy Realms, and this can only be done by a cleric who has sought permission from Ichbin. A Holy Wind blows through, forcing the daemons back to the place from which they came. The drawback is that anyone in the vicinity who is not protected might be forced through the rip, too.

There may be other ways of going about the business – come up with an ingenious method, and you'll probably find it works... Perhaps.

The slodgæni - the sludgy grey-skinned dæmons. Somewhat resembling a particularly ugly rhinoceros, these dæmons have three horns on their forehead, large floppy ears with which they can hear about as well as a seventy-year-old woman, and thick reddened snouts. They are quite strong, and their hide is resistant to fire but not to extremely sharp weapons. They are considered the "dogsbodies" of dæmons, very definitely on the lower echelon. Most have been banished to the Abyss (or "The Dump" as the blarghi call it), a half-place partially within the Dæmon Dimensions. Some imps have for centuries been slaves under their overlords, these incompetent and nasty-minded slodgæni. It is the task of The Dump to provide goods for the use of the blarghi - and a smelly, nasty place it is, full of tar, more tar, and the sort of mud it's best not to investigate.