Warden Demon [Guardian Tanar'ri]

A warden demon is a heavily muscled humanoid with dark red skin. It could pass for a red-skinned giant if not for its two grotesque heads: a snarling hound's head that misses nothing ahead, and a long, prehensile serpent's head that watches its back. It carries an ornate double-bladed battleaxe. A kind of ESP lets it speak with intelligent beings and read their minds.

Nothing surprises a warden demon, and it fights without fear, seldom giving ground. Its enchanted axe strikes at +5 to hit and damage for 2d10 and works as both a vorpal weapon and a dancing sword. Both heads bite as well: the hound for 2d6, the serpent for 1d6 plus a potent venom. A victim who fails a save vs. poison becomes a manes within 1d6 turns. The cure is neutralize poison followed by remove curse; once the change happens, only divine intervention or a very carefully phrased wish can reverse it.

Alongside the common tanar'ri powers it commands a long roster of spell-like abilities: true seeing (always on), lightning bolt (7 per day), black tentacles, improved invisibility, vampiric touch, polymorph other, animate object, charm person or mammal, suggestion, command, sleep, blindness, fear, know alignment and affect normal fires. Hourly it may try, with 35% success, to gate in 1-4 babaus, 1-2 buzzing demons or another warden demon. Ordinary and magical weapons alike fail to harm it; only cold-wrought iron and spells have any effect.

Its axe vanishes when it dies, so the weapon can only be won from a living warden demon, which then stalks the thief day and night, never resting, until it recovers the axe and the thief dies horribly.

Warden demons are the deepest enigma in the Abyss. These mighty enforcers patrol its layers looking for true tanar'ri who drift from the cause of the endless war between demons and devils. They report straight to the balors, yet even a wayward balor is not beyond their reach.

They exist only to serve the war, loyal to no individual fiend and ready to destroy any of them at the faintest hint of betrayal. Fiends below true rank are left to others, since warden demons assume such creatures are faithless by nature and kept in line only by threats and punishment.