Lemure

Lemures were among the weakest devils, potentially superior only to the bloated nupperibos in the infernal hierarchy. They served as the shock troops and slave labor force of the devils, made from the wicked, cruel, and selfish mortals that found their souls in Hell.

Description
Lemures were hideous, tall blobs of molten, stinking flesh that oozed across the ground as they moved. They were a formless, shivering, mass below their waists but their heads and torsos were of a vaguely humanoid shape. Even as their facial features melted and shifted they maintained a permanent expression of horror and anguish, with most constantly gibbering to themselves despite their inability to speak.

Although most were unrecognizable a rare lemure showed some memory of their mortal life by occasionally making certain facial features or nervous twitches. Even if not made through expressions, some had vestiges of their past lives as small shreds of clothing were still attached to their amorphous masses.

Behavior
Lemures were almost completely mindless and effectively incapable of making decisions, even those that concerned themselves. They sought revenge against reality itself as they blamed all the cosmos for their current condition, violently lashing out at all beings, with only the forced telepathic mandates of their superiors able to restrain their thirst for vengeance. They generally tried to avoid other devils and rampage in their hordes.

No matter from what kind of soul a given lemure was created, they normally retained nothing of their old personality or memory, although rarely a minor remnant of their memories would still be present. However, despite their mindlessness, they were capable of a primary motivation for promotion and the innate understanding, this would occur if they somehow proved themselves.

Abilities
Lemures were hard to kill as they had an inherent and tenuous, if slow, regeneration ability. Even if turned into ash, over time, they fully regenerated. One way to permanently kill them was to use holy things like holy weapon or holy water to kill them. Another method was to eat them. Out of all methods, the last was the most secure and also the one commonly used by demons. Lemure's had a complete immunity against any effects that attempted to tamper with their minds due to not having minds to manipulate.

Combat
Lemures shambled forward in infernal legions at the command of their masters' telepathy, thoughtlessly slaughtering everything in their path and stopping only at the telepathic commands of their superiors.

They usually attacked their prey by clawing them apart or beating them into submission. They were individually weak and their tactics, or what passed as such, consisted of swarming their enemies relying on their numbers. Said numbers could reach more than thousand under a single devil commander, although this maneuver did not rely utterly on the numbers. They were capable of marching in a special wedge formation that allowed them to hit more accurately.

Society
Lemures were the lowest of the devils, lacking a true name and regularly abused. They existed en masse in infernal armies that were thrown into the Blood War. When not engaged in battle, lemures were left in the fiery spawning pits of Hell to torture any mortal souls that they found swimming amid the hellfire.

It was presumed that the mindlessness of the lemures was by design so that the baatezu could easily influence the lower caste into choosing the path of evil. With this mindlessness came also a lack of "lesson" that the lemure needed to learn if it wanted a promotion As low a lemure's position was, they had a shot at high positions in the infernal hierarchy. Every lemure was at least theoretically capable of rising through the ranks up to pit fiend rank and from there to higher to nobility. For example, when a lemure had to chance to be promoted to a spinagon, it had to fight against other lemures and after it won, its skin was taken away. Underneath the skin, the winning lemure had become a spinagon. When a lemure did not manage to get a promotion, something that was effectively a matter of chance at their low station, it was over time absorbed into Baator like the petitioners, they actually were. The promotion at such a low level was something that could be done by a mere greater devil and was done when there was some demand for specialized skill. Conversely, it was entirely possible for a higher-ranking baatezu to commit such a severe crime that it was demoted to lemure-status. When this happened, the devil in question lost all memories.

Ecology
One way for lemures to be born was to create them from souls that came to Baator on death. When a soul arrived on Baator, they were shipped to torture stations and underwent unimaginzble agony, wracking their souls with pain, infusing them with fury and ringing them out of all energy. Once completely drained of energy, the souls were underwent the process of being turned into lemures through arcane rituals that corrupted them with infernal power. They could also be made from soul larva, although out of about a hundred thousand, only about a dozen were turned by the devils into lemures. Once becoming a lemure, the baatezu acknowledged the creature as part of their race and not as a petitioner. The process of lemure creation was concluded with dropping the soul to be turned into a lemure into the Maggot Pit in Avernus.

Lemures needed more frequent but short rests than higher ranking devils, stopping whenever they could to satisfy the five minutes they needed to be at fully recover. They had no sex organs.

Appearances

 * Adventures
 * Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus
 * Novels:
 * Sword Play