Draudnu

Draudnus, also called the Children of Pale Night, were obyriths demons created by the Mother of Demons for the express purpose of destroying all non-obyrith life.

Description
The fundamental aspect of a draudnu's form, their body shape, easily indicated their alien nature, as they were seemingly constructed upside-down. They stood at tall, but it was their legs that reached that height rather than their heads; a draudnu's three, muscular legs were attached at the top of their bodies while the area that could be classified as their heads was at their bottom. In place of a mouth was a single, pulsating, bloody-red eye, ringed by three arms that each ended in hooks of bone covered by hardened, scaly flesh. The main part of their forms was a misshapen mass of quivering, wrinkled flesh covered in thick, hairless, rubbery skin and dark, bulging blisters.

Personality
Draudnus were completely lacking in kindness and mercy, and any trace of benevolence that might once have been in them had long since been eradicated. They were not fueled by megalomania or greed, only a hateful, bloodthirsty desire for savage vengeance and destruction. The born killers reveled in destruction and sought to do no less than bloodily murder all non-obyirths in existence.

Abilities
Draudnus were physically formidable creatures able to surge forward, jump great distances and balance themselves well with their tripod of legs. The three flesh hooks attached to their arms were not only useful weapons, but could also be detached by the draudnu to pin an enemy to a wall or the ground, requiring both great strength or considerable escaping skills to remove it and medical knowledge to safely dislodge the hook first so that removal didn't horribly injure the immobilized victim. Detaching their hooks did no harm to the draudnu as they immediately regrew them afterwards.

Also assisting the druadnus in melee endeavors was the fact that the swollen sacs coating their bodies were filled to the brim with acid and would spray their contents everywhere around a draudnu upon being burst. Furthermore, the mind-warping influence of the Children of Pale Night implanted a sickening thought in the heads of all beings within a few dozen feet of them, the idea that something was growing inside of them.

Combat
Draudnus were relentless killers whose main priority was killing every non-obyrith they could, leading them to charge towards any such beings with their great speed and mobility before madly cutting them to pieces. However, just because they were compelled to slaughter didn't mean they were completely unthinking in the task, and they were smart enough to have some bearing of tactics, such as using hazards in a room to their advantage or "herding" their enemies to put them in vulnerable positions.

Because they wanted all non-obyrith life dead, they tried to eliminate weaker, less armored targets first, using their hooks to immobilize enemies when facing more than one opponent which allowed them to direct their ire at the immobilized prey before quickly moving on. Though they rarely allowed much time to go by without rending something, they sometimes had specific targets they wanted to focus on, and were able to defend themselves when closing the gap between them and their prey.

Society


As was typical for obyriths, the draudnus were a race in decline, their war against not only the innumerable tanar'ri but every other creature inhabiting the Abyss leaving them nearly hunted to extinction. Even if their numbers hadn't been so drastically reduced, they were antisocial creatures that only rarely working in groups larger than four. The one area of the Abyss they were somewhat common in was the Endless Maze, although even their existence there was somewhat ironic.

The draudnus in the Endless Maze were fearfully enslaved to their ancient and unknowable creator Pale Night, who it seemed didn't particularly care for their overall well-being. Despite their innate purpose of destroying all non-obyriths, Pale Night had long ago entered a kind of non-aggression pact with the layer's other resident, the tanar'ri lord Baphomet, allowing him to take most of the realm as his own. This didn't prevent the murderous draudnus from killing the Horned Lord's minions in their hopeless, never-ending war against non-obyrith kind.

Still, while the tanar'ri went about tearing the Abyss apart in their Blood War endeavors, some obyriths began to resurge, no longer content to wait on the fringes of the Abyss for the time to strike. Under the fiery sky of Banehold, an army of indescribable nightmares was starting to muster, the most numerous of which were the draudnus.

Biology
Since the Age before Ages, when Obox-Ob was the Prince of Demons, the draudnu had been born in the fields of remains surrounding Pale Night's Bone Citadel. Given that their current purpose was to rid the Abyss of all non-obyrith life, yet they predated the tanar'ri uprising, it was possible that their exact purpose differed in the past, although they were nonetheless hunters and killers. It was believed that Obox-Ob himself, who was known to have some draudnu as servants, was in someway involved with their creation, although like the Mother of Demons he held no particularly strong interest in them. One known method of creating them involved the use of the corrupted remains of celestials, with Pale Night breathing life into the bones of eladrins that tried to wage war in her realm with a dreadful whisper.