Obyrith

Obyriths were an eldritch race of demons so ancient that they predated mortal life, and even the gods. They rarely had a humanoid shape, and some said that just looking at an obyrith could drive a mortal insane.

Description
Though the obyrith race teetered on the brink of extinction, enough varieties had survived the downfall of their kind to paint a dreadful picture of the sort of shapes they once took. Their abominable forms were utterly alien and bore nearly no resemblance to modern mortal life, closer as they were to basal organisms such as insects and cephalopods.

However, the obyriths were more than just revolting, for the revulsion their appearances invoked surpassed matters of mere subjective taste. More than ugly, the forms of the obyriths were simply wrong, their noxious vileness transcending to the ranks of fact. This atrociousness extended beyond visual appearance to every aspect of their existence; everything from the sounds they made, to the foul odors they exuded, to the taste they left in one's mouth was an appalling affront to all senses. Reality itself was incapable of describing the unspeakable horrors that were the objectively offensive obyriths, and even it seemingly desired to forget their vile visages.

Personality
As demons, the obyriths were cruel creatures of great malevolence. In the absence of outside threats, they had spent much of their time in power infighting, making war with each other and conducting political schemes for power. Decadence and depravity were commonplace during their time of dominion.

Abilities
Like the tanar'ri, obyriths had telepathy and were resistant to poisons, acids, fire, and cold, although the tanar'ri were fully immune to electricity where the obyriths were simply resistant. In addition to these abilities, all obyriths had truesight, could not have their minds supernaturally altered, and healed from injury with incredible speed, the exact rate dependent on the kind of obyrith.

Whereas most demon lords had access to blasphemy and unholy aura as spell-like abilities, obyrith lords had their chaotic counterparts in the form of word of chaos and cloak of chaos.

Varieties

 * Draudnu
 * Ekolid
 * Golothoma
 * Laghathti
 * Sibriex
 * Uzollru
 * Verakia
 * Wastrilith

Obyrith Lords
Only a handful of obyrith lords survived to modern times. They were survivors of the destruction of their reality and the wars that followed the creation of the Abyss :


 * Areex: Titled the Forgotten Prince, no records of Areex could be found, and none could recall his nature, deeds, or why he was sealed in the Wells of Darkness. According to the synchronized barking of twenty-three gibberlings, Areex made a secret pact in "another place" with Bolothamogg, an elder evil said to be the void keeping reality from that beyond it. The message ordered him to go "Beyond the Stars" to pay the price.


 * Bechard: Known as the Rotting Husk, Bechard was an immense lord of decay and obsolescence that resembled a knotted whale. Formerly the Lord of Tempests, with perfect weather control, he had been beached on his own deviant shores by outside forces. He endured for millennia unmoving, dying painfully in the Death Dells under the hot sun as he involuntarily injured himself with ferocious wind and acid rain.


 * Cabiri: Called The Watching Master and the Many-Eyed Tyrant, Cabiri was a demon lord of observation that desired to see everything, whether fascinating or frightening. He used his divination powers to predict the future and scry into deeper layers of the Abyss, his recordings seemingly inspiring the cataloging efforts of the Fraternity of Order. He was imprisoned in the Wells of Darkness for debated reasons.


 * Dagon: Prince of the Darkened Depths, Dagon was a primeval leviathan of a demon lord whose presence brought a fear of the sea and all that lurked beneath the water. He was a maddeningly massive being, ancient and powerful even by obyrith standards, and yet also an isolationist that acted as an oracle for the tanar'ri from within the depths of the Shadowsea.


 * Dwiergus: Referred to as the Chrysalis Prince, Dwiergus was a house-sized soup of everchanging limbs that ruled The Fleshforges, an undulating, protoplasmic realm of hate and hunger. The eldritch, primordial demon lord was driven primarily by the desire to reshape all living things into demonic lifeforms, and implanted the overwhelming urge to remove a body part out of the irrational belief the Prince had tainted it.


 * The Malgoth: Once a demon lord of god-like power, the being known as the Malgoth was destroyed when seven jealous demon lords allied to assault its several haunted layers deep in the Abyss. Little more than an alien intelligence for eons, it managed to escape to the Material Plane city of Istivin, existing as a shadowy, formless abstract of gloom, menace, hate, and tragedy that infused the settlement itself.


 * Obox-ob: The original Prince of Demons, Obox-ob was said to be the first obyrith to rise from the primordial matter of the Abyss, an entropic demon lord of putrescence that could inject others with raw chaos stuff that consumed their bodies and souls. After being deposed and forced to retreat to the deep Abyssal realm of Zionyn, he was reduced to a patron of poison and spreader of entomophobia as the Prince of Vermin.


 * Pale Night: The so-called Mother of Demons that came to be known by the name Pale Night was an unknowable being of such awful shape that reality itself tried to hide her. To see the truth beyond the veil was to court death, her incorporeal form a harbinger of insanity and dreadful births. Seen as a mother figure by many in the Abyss, there was no knowing what horrors she was truly responsible for spawning.


 * Pazuzu: Prince of the Lower Aerial Kingdoms, Pazuzu declared all Abyssal skies as his, and few cared enough to fight him over such a claim. Though once an obyrith lord, he had somehow "evolved" into a kind of intermediate form between obyrith and tanar'ri, gaining a bond to evil creatures of the air in place of his once-maddening form. Upon the calling of his name thrice, he appeared to offer corruption disguised as aid.


 * The Queen of Chaos: Her actual name stricken from history, the self-styled Queen of Chaos led the obyriths to war against the rest of reality, specifically against the forces of law. Certainly a force of change, the Queen was behind the fall of Obox-Ob, and had killed, imprisoned, and weakened those obyriths that opposed her. She retreated to The Steaming Fen after her defeat and hadn't been seen since.


 * Sertrous: Called the Prince of Heretics, Sertrous was a minor lord of parasites and crawling things before the Queen of Chaos nearly killed him for insolence. He managed to possess a snake, and after recovering, waged war against god-devoted mortals. Though slain, his spirit bound to his severed head, the ophidiophobia-spreading fiend managed to speak words that his solar killer spread, a truth no god wanted spoken.


 * Ubothar: Known as the Thunder Below, Ubothar was a festering obyrith lord banished by the Queen of Chaos and imprisoned on the Material Plane. Worshiped by some as a destructive aspect of nature, Ubothar had spent eons slumbering deep underground. His titanic form could cause earthquakes even as he slept, and his cataclysmic awakening alone could destroy mountains.


 * Ugudenk: Referred to as the Squirming King, Ugudenk was a worm-like obyrith that primarily dug through his Writhing Realm. Seemingly immortal, it was speculated he was himself an Abyssal layer, his maw a feeding tendril that sometimes reached across the multiverse to devour at apparent random. His presence brought a fear of that which burrowed, and the crippling thought he could burst from the ground at any time.


 * Veshvoriak: Once the ruler of his own Abyssal layer, Veshvoriak had long been cast into the Iron Wastes and frozen in a glacial rift. Despite telepathically sending out ancient memories, secrets, and whispers about its wish for freedom, it wasn't clear if Veshvoriak was actually alive but frozen, slumbering, or if the long-dead obyrith's alien mind was simply emitting echoes of his last thoughts.


 * Vroth-Khun: Lurking in one of the deeper layers of the Abyss, Vroth-Khun was a gibbering, poisonous entity that had built towers from the slain bodies of his spawnlings, only to devour them and repeat the process. Like many, the Queen of Chaos banished him from the Abyss for refusing her call to war.

Other obyrith lords were known to have existed, including:


 * Asima: Titled The Unanticipated, Asima was a faceless demon lord of unfortunate surprises thought to have played a role in the creation of the Grand Abyss. Said to have betrayed the obyriths in ages past, her unrotting remains rested undisturbed for millennia, and legends said that deep in her burial mound was the identity of the members of a secret obyrith alliance.


 * Kizarvidexus: Called the Horned Duke, Kizarvidexus was described as a cloaked figure with two long, curved horns tipped in the deepest shades of red. He joined the fight against the Wind Dukes of Aaqa, managing to destroy the Wind Duke Zosiel with a sphere of annihilation before being slain by Wind Duke Icosiel. Small bits of his flesh oozed from his Well, before being scattered by a perpetual tornado and eaten by scavengers.

Appearances

 * The Masked Witches