Kastighur

Kastighurs were tanar'ri demons found in the Abyss and in the Barrens of Doom and Despair. Wicked and sadistic, kastighurs acted as the prison wardens and fugitive hunters of demonkind, tormenting their targets and captives whilst consuming their terror and despair.

Description
Kastighurs were huge, standing somewhere between tall and weighing up to, although ancient, veteran kastighurs could grow to greater, truly gargantuan sizes. They were roughly humanoid in form, with tough hides that rippling with muscles, strong arms, and powerful legs ending in cloven hooves. The hideous creatures had massive heads bearing long horns that grew slowly but continually. Kastighurs enjoyed both filing their horns and carving words or other symbols into them.

Kastighur "wore" armor of a fashion — enormous steel pieces usually bolted directly to their bodies. Giant steel helms were bolted to their necks, hiding most of their heads, and magical breastplates were, if not bolted, at least fastened to the torsos.

Personality
Depraved and cruel, kastighurs were driven by their fiendish impulses. They were brutish and not particularly bright, usually wandering the Abyss to hunt and kill at random if left to their own whims, their victims ranging from the souls of the damned to other kastighurs. The most powerful of the demons sought to enslave and torment the mightiest creatures, including other powerful outsiders, dangerous mortals, and dragons. The most delightful activity for kastighurs was breaking the wills of their victims, whether by physically torturing them or incessantly hunting them down.

Abilities
As tanar'ri, kastighurs shared many of the same traits and abilities as their kin but with some key differences, notably an immunity to acids. However, they lacked many of the magical abilities typical to tanar'ri, including the power to summon more of their kind or use greater teleport. Although they could still teleport at will, it had a chance of going awry and had a much more limited range. Compensating for this was that three times a day they could teleport even faster than usual, changing locations in the blink of an eye, and could use feather fall at will.

Kastighurs were incredibly physically powerful, and exuded an aura of terror whenever they were charging or attacking, leaving most creatures shaken by their presence so long as they were in around of them. Those gored by their massive horns during a charge could be left temporarily stunned, assuming they served the assault at all.

Combat
Kastighurs loved melee combat, relishing the opportunity to do battle, and fights with them were normally defined by their love of charge tactics and inciting terror. Kastighurs generally started fights by charging at the enemy, goring them with their horns but not moving farther than their approximately reach. If their opponents seemed stunned, they would close the remaining distance with another charge, and from there proceed to smash their opponent with slams and keep goring them with their horns. As often as was possible during battle, kastighurs charged their enemies.

Kastighurs often teleported quickly to get at least away from their foe before charging again. When attacking from the air, such as if they had flying mounts, they used teleport or feather fall to land after spotting enemies so that they could set up more charges, but might also use their teleportation powers to appear above flying opponents, grab them, and send them hurtling to the ground. However, kastighurs had some level of hesitation about teleporting since their version of the ability was imprecise and they generally didn't have time to memorize their battlegrounds. They were loathed to teleport great distances and kept even battlefield teleports as short as they could.

A kastighur's love of fear could become both a boon and a serious problem. They delighted in attacking horrified enemies to the point of being particularly effective at destroying them. In warfare however, a unit of kastighurs would often break ranks to chase after seemingly frightened foes.

Society
Kastighurs normally served more powerful and intelligent demons than themselves as jailers and hunters, tasks they found quite fulfilling. When a tanar'ri needed to track down a creature but lacked the ability to create a retriever, they called upon one or two kastighurs instead. However, a kastighur's appetites and impulsiveness could make them unreliable and frustrating to work with. They might intentionally let creatures escape just for the fun of hunting them down, and could get distracted when hunting, killing anything in their path rather than focusing on their actual quarry.

Kastighurs also despised others of their kind, seeing them as competition for the attention of more powerful creatures (such as great demon lords and generals) that could take them to new places for hunting. In the Barrens of Doom and Despair for example, kastighurs competed to serve the goddesses Loviatar and Talona, the Lady of Pain and Lady of Poison respectively. Kastighurs put aside their mutual hatred when two or more worked for the same master, but still considered each other rivals and constantly tried to outdo each other in feats of battle.

Kastighurs preferred to travel light, their most valuable possessions usually being the +2 breastplates bolted to their bodies, and what riches they found usually went to their masters. However, they often looked for magical items that granted alternative forms of movement, such as the ability to burrow underground, climb with ease, or fly.

Aside from demons, kastighurs might team up with those capable of causing fear (such as red dragons) or those that could provide them with ranged support, flying allies being particularly useful.

Summoning
Kastighurs, unlike many other demons, lacked a reliable means of traveling to other planes, and so were dependent on other demons or magic items to get them to Prime Material plane, items able to do so (such as those that granted plane shift) being especially prized by them. They enjoyed that hunting ground due to all the suffering they could savor when summoned there, which was normally done by powerful evil spellcasters using gate or greater planar ally spells, including the likes of Fzoul Chembryl, Larloch, and Manshoon on Toril.

Biology
Like many other fiends, kastighurs didn't need to eat or drink — at least not in the same way as most mortal races. Instead, they fed off the fear, panic, and hopelessness of the creatures they hunted or imprisoned, and prolonged the deaths of their victims to indulge in the the delicious emotions as long as possible.

Kastighurs were skilled trackers both above and below ground and of many planes of existence. They had keen senses that allowed them to track their prey by scent..