Hordling

Hordlings make up most of the population of the gray wasteland of despair, and variety is their only rule. They may be huge or tiny, humanlike, bestial or shapeless, winged or tentacled. No two look alike, and they share no common language.

The game master builds each hordling for the encounter, choosing or rolling 1d4 for its AC, movement, Hit Dice, magic resistance and size, then picking body features. Fan wings grant flight 18 with ground speed capped at 9; bat wings grant flight 12 and ground speed 12. Any hordling with hands, tentacles, or a grasping tail or toes can use weapons.

Strength and mouth come paired: 3 gives 18/50 (+1/+3) and long canines, 4 gives 18/75 (+2/+3) and small tusks, 5 gives 18/00 (+3/+6) and crushing teeth, and 6 gives 19 (+3/+7) and saw teeth. Attacks follow from the mouth, arms, tail and legs, so a two-clawed, crushing-toothed hordling of 18/00 strength attacks at +3 for 2-5+6 per claw and 3-6+6 for the bite.

Each has a 10% chance of a special attack and 20% of a special defense. All have 120-foot infravision and are turned as 5 HD creatures.

Hordlings teem without end or purpose across the Abyss's infinite layers. Petty and vile, they prey on anything weaker. Strong leaders sometimes gather them, but they are too unruly, treacherous and chaotic to keep for long.

Evil wizards sometimes summon them, though a normal summoning brings only one. The sole known way to bring more into the Prime Material is the Doomcaller, the last relic of a race from an unimaginably distant age that mastered powers it could not control and destroyed itself.

The Doomcaller is a little box with a round red gem in its lid. Pressing the gem makes it explode in a blinding flash, annihilating everything within 100 feet, user and box included. The blast opens a brief one-way rift to the gray wasteland, and 100-1,000 hordlings rush out to ravage everything nearby, with a 10% chance of a greater fiend following. The box always reforms and turns up again later.

A parchment scrap from a far desert records one such day: wizards and elven archers storming a wicked mage's black tower, the mage raising a box from his battlements, a deafening blast, and a gibbering tide that drowned the elves before a great fiend descended on the survivors.

Hordlings eat whatever they kill, usually each other. With little other food on the Lower Planes, these endless, weak creatures are common prey for stronger beings.