Charger Demon [Lesser Tanar'ri]

A charger demon looks like a pallid, undead centaur with ram or bull horns and a knight's full armor. Its tail and spinal mane are stiff bristles, and older ones sag so badly at the belly that they resemble gutted half-horses. Some breeds have a kangaroo-like lower half and forelimbs with hands. Their black, fluted plate looks ornamental but is unusually heavy and protects better than it seems.

These mobile shock troops strike and withdraw fast, relying on the fury of the charge rather than tactics, magic or timing. Most of their damage comes from a battering flurry of spiked hooves. A roll of 20 means the hoof crushes either a breastplate (25%) or, more often, a shield (75%), worsening the target's AC by 1; magical armor gets a save vs. crushing blow.

Each troupe favors one weapon: the two-handed flamberge (30%), a halberd (20%), a horseman's mace (20%), a curved sabre much like a scimitar (20%), or a lance paired with a sabre (10%). For missiles, 20% of troupes use short, recurved composite bows whose barbed arrows hit like +1 sheaf arrows, and 10% use heavy crossbows. Missiles they fire become spark bolts, charged by the demon's touch, dealing 2d8 electrical damage (save for half).

Once a day a charger demon can gallop skyward for up to 1 hour, climbing slowly as if up an invisible slope; it must keep moving and turns poorly, but an aerial charge can devastate ground troops. Only +2 or better weapons wound them, they shrug off cold, electricity and poison, and they have all common tanar'ri abilities. Holy water burns them for 3d6, or 1d6 from a splash.

Every pack follows one charismatic trailmaster who rules through promised plunder and threatened punishment: 8 HD, Strength 19, AC 0, movement 21, two 3d6 attacks, and the power to charge melee weapons as well as missiles with spark bolts each round. A leaderless pack rampages aimlessly until destroyed or until a new trailmaster rises.

Each of the 24 known towns is ruled by a town-lord over up to a hundred packs: 11 HD, Strength 20, AC -3, movement 24, two 4d6 attacks, spark bolts, and an 11-HD lightning bolt three times daily. Some are priests (to 5th level) or mages (to 8th), two reputedly both. Seventeen towns are fixed, named for stones, metals and colors; the seven others are the females' roving camps of tents, carts and wheeled towers, renamed at every move.

In the endless war between demons and devils, charger demons fight for hire and scavenge the dead. They expect loot for their service, and without it they desert or revolt even with battle at hand. Herds specialize as scouts, foragers, skirmishers or archers, but always refuse siege work, and orders they dislike they simply ignore by leaving.

Females number half as many as males, and the sexes live apart because they fight when mixed, meeting only to mate after a victory over the baatezu. Young ride among the camp's servants and hangers-on until they take weapons from a fallen troupe member and kill an enemy.

Each troupe bears its own banner and its lord's, such as the black-and-white diagonal slash of Zhar'vesh or the golden talon on dark red of Ossaruk. Losing the banner breaks the troupe, whose members seek service on the war-ravaged first layer of the Abyss or join another band. Demon lords use them for special missions; the upper planes fear them as the dark horsemen, and some hire on as bodyguards in the great planar city.

Charger demons consume the souls and blood of those they kill, making resurrection impossible. Favorite prey are bat-winged abyssal fiends, then baatezu, then mercenary fiends. A rare few keep twisted demons as servants; all least tanar'ri earn their contempt. They prefer rowdy melees to duels, brawl like war dogs in tanar'ri halls, and a fight with one is a fight with the troupe. They attack ram-folk on sight.