Sorrowsworn demon

A sorrowsworn demon was a breed of tanar'ri demon that preyed upon feelings of grief and loss.

Description
A sorrowsworn demon was a gaunt humanoid standing some 12–15 feet (3.6–4.5 meters) tall and weighing 500 pounds (230 kilograms). It had hooked claws for hands, a dusky black hide, and slender bat-like wings emerging from its back. Its face was a demonic, skeletal visage contorted into a mockery of utter grief, with a wide toothy maw and two short and twisted horns upon its high brow.

Powers
At a whim, this demon exuded an aura that provoked creatures within 30 feet (9.1 meters) to suffer intense feelings of despair and personal loss, constantly imagining the worst bereavements and failures they'd ever known or could dread to know. Those of iron will could shrug off such thoughts; the rest were overwhelmed and distracted and weakened by them.

When in battle or tormenting a victim, a sorrowsworn demon hissed and whispered incessantly, both in voice and in the mind. It could affect one thinking being at a time, to a distance of 60 feet (18.3 meters), and could change the subject of these mutterings to provoke different responses. If it whispered of past losses, whether real or made-up, a victim would become dazed as they thought on these. If it spoke of the great emptiness of history, of genocide, massacre, tragedy, and pointless sacrifice, a victim might become dangerously confused. If it promised future sorrow or taunted its victim with the futility of fighting against the inevitable, they would become stunned with fear. Only a strong will could ignore these whispers of loss.

It was also a mind-reader, using detect thoughts to raid the memories and thoughts of its intended victims for true losses and fears to taunt them with, making them more vulnerable to its whispers of loss if they were caught within its aura. As a demon, it could also communicate via telepathy to any within 100 feet (30 meters) who spoke a common language, enabling to transmit its cruel whispers.

As a master manipulator of the mind, the sorrowsworn demon was well inured to similar tactics, possessing an unholy will and a resistance to spells.

In addition to such supernatural powers, the sorrowsworn could cast the innate spells of detect magic, invisibility, nondetection, greater teleport at will; greater dispel magic, touch of idiocy, unholy blight thrice a day; and feeblemind, mind fog, plane shift, and weird but once a day. However, it lacked the power other demons had to summon others of its own or lesser kind.

The sorrowsworn demon was innately good at stealth and survival, and was well-practiced in deceit, intimidation, and knowledge of lore and magic. It had extremely keen senses and obscenely great strength and resilience.

Tactics
A sorrowsworn demon preferred to prey on its victims from hiding, using its skills and spells to remain unseen and unknown as its spied on its targets, reading their minds and gauging their strength. It then appeared suddenly among them, using its powers to weaken them before finally slaying them.

It favored a +2 glaive, striking brutal blows to swiftly fell its opponents and follow through to another. It could also smash items.

Activities
Sorrowsworn demons preyed upon folk who'd suffered great loss or sorrow. They coaxed them to ever greater depths of grief, and consumed such feelings. Creeping out from the Abyss, they only appeared in the material plane after a battle or war had come to an end, to feast on the sorrow that saturated a land with the cutting short of its youth and potential.

They often lurked about hospitals for the wounded, orphanages for those left without parents, the homes of bereft people, and at mass graves. Such places offered the greatest density of souls suffering loss to feed upon. Following the war against the Tuigan Horde in 1360 DR, sorrowsworn demons were to be found in the populations of those realms who'd lost their kin to the invaders, such as Cormyr, Sembia, Rashemen, and Thay.

They were also known to haunt fallen temples, eating the despair of clerics forsaken by dead gods like Bhaal and Myrkul, after their deaths in the Time of Troubles of 1358 DR.