Manes [Least Tanar'ri]

Nothing in the deep layers of the Abyss is more pitiful than a manes. Their pale skin looks swollen, their milky eyes leak foul fluid, and their hair is thin. They have long, cruel claws and sharp teeth, and carrion vermin crawl over them, eating them alive. They cannot communicate at all.

Spells that work on the mind have no hold on these near-mindless, senseless husks. They roam in endless mobs, assaulting every non-tanar'ri they meet with two raking claws (1d2 each) and a bite (1d4). Legions are sometimes handed maces (1d8), but the manes soon forget what the clubs are for, drop them, and return to tooth and claw.

Indifferent to their own survival, manes battle on until destroyed and never make morale checks. A slain manes dissolves into a reeking cloud that reforms after 24 hours, and the acid vapor released at death deals 1d6 damage to everyone within 10' who fails a save vs. poison.

Manes move in howling, gibbering hordes that can number in the thousands. Feeble alone, they attack in such numbers that outsiders fear them. Commanding them is a nightmare, since they are too stupid to grasp orders; herded into a regiment, they soon wander off. On a battlefield, though, they make fine troops, hurling themselves at the enemy tirelessly the moment they see it, even when that does their own side no good.

Everything in the Abyss scorns manes as less than tanar'ri, which bothers them not at all. Like the dretches they are a massive, disposable force in the endless war between demons and devils, and since they cannot understand their place, they have no hope of escaping their cruel treatment.

Every chaotic evil mortal who dies on the Prime Material Plane is reborn in the Abyss as a manes. The worst are said to be held in a hidden pit of torment on the 400th layer, perhaps beneath a mountain of sorrow, but no sage or wizard has ever seen it and almost nothing beyond its name is known. Manes are the chief food of the Abyss, and one that is eaten is destroyed forever rather than reforming.