Handmaiden Demon [Forgotten Realms]

Normally a handmaiden demon is a drifting smear of foul-smelling vapor, usually ale-brown, more rarely deep red, emerald, or violet. It can stretch out wispy limbs, reshape itself to hide or reach, and squeeze through the thinnest crack. To touch the physical world it must solidify into one of three bodies: a lumpy, one-eyed pillar with eight pseudopods, like a roper or a half-melted brown candle; a giant spider; or a beautiful human or elven woman.

As gas it is AC -10, harmed only by +1 or better weapons, and unable to hold anything, since objects fall straight through it. Its touch acts as a stinking cloud spell, and casting stinking cloud on it heals 3d4 hit points. Gust of wind deals 6d6 damage if it beats the demon's magic resistance, and wind walk destroys it outright whatever its resistance, but the caster must reach into the cloud, enduring its effects, to deliver either spell. A priest whose wind walk affects several people can slay that many demons if he touches each in the casting round or the next, and those touches bar other spellcasting that round.

Every solid form is AC 10. The pillar strikes with up to eight prehensile pseudopods for 1d4+3 each, too clumsy to wield weapons. The spider is a standard giant spider, save that its bite kills by the end of the round on a failed save and otherwise does nothing. The woman fights as a 6th-level fighter, using armor, weapons, and fighter or priest magic items; centuries of practice let many specialize for 3 attacks every 2 rounds. Armor must be shed by turning to gas before taking another solid shape, or the change mangles it beyond use (a smith might salvage it) and deals the demon 4d6 damage.

In all shapes it has 18/50 Strength and 160-foot infravision and takes half damage from cold, electricity, fire, and caustic or toxic gases. The flames and fumes of a summoning ritual feed rather than hurt it, anchoring it on the Prime and fueling its passage, and while still wreathed in them it can hurl any attacking fire back at its source. Otherwise, fully gaseous, it ignores gas and acid but takes full fire damage. In the Abyss toxic gases are harmless to it, native fires barely touch it, and magical fire deals half damage.

Each round, in any shape, it may use one power: domination, mind blank, or plane shift (each ending the last), or disguising its alignment aura as any other, which fools everything short of divine detection. As a woman it can also heal 1d8+1 hp as cure light wounds, on itself or someone it touches, twice per turn. It may act, change shape, and do one more thing in a round, but never shift twice or use two powers.

These demons love domination, cruelty, and a real fight, and defiance delights them. All serve the spider goddess, who forbids them to turn on her or each other, and nothing can trick them into it. They hiss, sneer, and shriek at lesser beings, share telepathy within 90 feet to fight as a team, and hold an unlimited-range link with the goddess while on her plane or only partly materialized; using it costs the round's power, and full materialization severs it.

A summoned demon owes its caller one faithful service, then loves to slip away and roam. It prefers intrigue to slaughter, wearing its shapes as disguises and steering evil folk toward murder and betrayal, and rampages openly only if foes of its summoners or goddess threaten it during the ritual. It whispers its name to victims so survivors remember. Some have used fair forms to befriend, love, or kindly aid mortals of a prime world, righting wrongs regardless of alignment. Sages blame whimsy and a hunger for renown. The goddess ends such jaunts quickly but rarely punishes them, finding them useful for gathering news, testing her faithful, and spreading word of her growing might.

Gaseous, it absorbs nourishment from vapors and fluids, blood included. Solid, it eats living flesh with its mouths or by flowing over downed prey, whose body is gnawed by countless tiny sucking mouths for 10d4 damage per round. It must eat every 20 days and leaves only bones, sprayed out in a revolting gush or dropped in a heap when it turns to gas. Heating its gas in a sealed vessel, or boiling part of a solid form, yields an essence valued in inks and magic tied to stinking cloud, wraithform, shape change, and mind blank.