Siege Demon [Greater Tanar'ri]

Rulers of the Abyss prize these enormous tanar'ri as guards, enforcers and living battering rams. A siege demon suggests a giant bear with broader shoulders, a nightmare face blending bison and human, long apelike arms, and huge, splayed, humanlike hands and feet. Its hide runs from dark brown through sickly yellow-green to purplish gray. Too witless for anything beyond obedience, it never reaches the standing of a true tanar'ri.

A siege demon swings its two long, mighty arms for 6d4+6 damage each, and every hit counts as a crushing blow, so struck items must save. It can also stomp any foe 6 feet tall or shorter within 10 feet for 5d8, and it throws boulders like a cloud giant (240 yards, 2d12).

Besides the standard tanar'ri powers, it can use the following at will, one per round: detect invisibility, detect magic, fear (by gaze, as the wand), levitation and spider climb. Fire, cold, poison and poison gas do not affect it, it regenerates 1 hit point per turn, and it has 360-foot infravision.

Each Hit Die gets +6 hit points (7-14 per die). Size and weapon immunity grow with hit points: 140-160 hp, 21 feet, +1 weapons needed; 161-200 hp, 22 feet, +1; 201-240 hp, 23 feet, +2; 241-280 hp, 24 feet, +3.

Devil tacticians note that siege demons scale sheer stone easily, gouging handholds with their claws, but their bulk makes falls deadly: they take twice the falling damage a smaller creature would. Spells that can shove them from a height, such as forceful hand, dig, fly and levitation, terrify them, and their feeble minds leave them open to repulsion and fear magic of every kind (cause fear, fear, symbol of fear). Scholar fiends are considered the best answer to such an assault, and devils read a siege demon sent over the walls as a sign of desperation and a cue to counterattack.

Usually solitary, a siege demon matters to its kin only for the punishment it can absorb and deal out, and it cannot even gate in other fiends. Nearly all serve a demon lord with total fanaticism until the task is done or they die. Morale and retreat never enter into it, though the threat of a long drop can freeze one in place.

In the endless war between demons and devils they serve as living siege engines and rallying points, much like war elephants on some prime worlds. Many wear a citadel, a platform lashed over head and shoulders like a helmet, which the beast hardly notices; depending on its size it shelters two to four riders behind excellent cover (-7 to AC). Breaking a citadel often routs the troops around it. Devils attack from two sides so the brute whirls back and forth, battering its own riders to death, then send flyers such as scaled devils to take the platform and hack at its neck with axes, polearms and cleavers.

An owned siege demon wears a token of bondage, such as a collar, armband or implanted brand, that usually relays telepathic orders and tracks it. Unsupervised, it wanders off to rampage.

They never breed naturally. Owners arrange matings after long negotiation, guarding the pair against sabotage; the father's owner usually gets a female offspring and the mother's owner a male. The single young matures over five ravenous, shrieking years. Kidnapping, killing young of the unwanted sex and outright purchase are all common, and parents are never allowed any influence over their offspring.

These indiscriminate carnivores eat anything that moves, their own kind included, and sneak meals of lesser tanar'ri when unobserved, but they cannot digest plants. Without living or freshly killed meat one withers and dies within two weeks, so commanders feed lesser troops to their citadels. Their own flesh is poisonous, so even trolls, charger demons and mighty planar beings leave them alone.