Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes

(Nancy Kaufman) #1
detached, thoughtful demeanor
, channeling his frustra-

tion at being distracted from
pleasurable pursuits into

the actions
of a cool, efficient killer.

Cu
ltists. Graz'zt attracts most of his followers
from

the
ranks of those who seek pleasure above
all else.

He promises dark delights
and forbidden ecstasies, in

return for total submiss
ion to him. His cult gathers new

members by ci rculati
ng tracts , poems, and other works

of art that depict encounters with him.
Upstanding folk

regard these works as vulgar, wretched,
and obscene,

but the delights they
depict or describe sometimes lure a

curious soul into
learning more about the demon lord.

When a cult
beseeches him during the induction of

new memb
ers, Graz'zt sends a n emissary or an avatar

to preside over the proceedings,
which conclude with

the new followers being treated
to a night of debauchery.

jUIBLEX


The Faceless
Lord is a truly alien creature, said to be
re-

s ponsible for
spawning the oozes found throughout
the

world. Those
who s tudy such topics theorize that
every

such creature has a connect
ion to Juiblex, and the de-

mon lord sees a nd knows
all that its minions encounter.

Wherever Juiblex wanders
, it leaves trailings in its

wake
that coalesce into new slimes and oozes.
Most

sages
believe that ifJuiblex and its s pawn were
given

free rein, they would
one day overrun the universe, turn-

ing every realm into
an ooze-infested wasteland.

Cultists. Juiblex
has few cultists, and most of them are

incurably disturbed or delusional. His
mortal cultists

preach of the glorious day to come, when
a tide of slimes

and oozes will swallow the world.
These wretched fol-

lowers believe t
hat by aligning with Juiblex, they can

avoid the fat
e that awaits all other living creatures.

The lord
's followers dwell underground, whe re they

maintain a stable of oozes and
slimes that help to pro-

tect their gathering place. They
use traps to capture

sentient creatures, then feed
them to the oozes in a si m-

ulation
of what awaits all who don't reverejuiblex.

0RCUS


The bloated Demon Prince
of the Undead seeks to end


all life in the cosmos, replacing
the living with immortal,

undead creatures that answer
only to him. In this grim

future.
the many suns of the Material Plane
are extin-

guis
hed, and all hope has faded away. All that
remains is

the eternally static realm of the living dead
.

Orcus is the universe
's staunchest advocate of stag-

nation. He sees the activity
of life as noisy, crude, and

maddening. It rakes
at his senses like the claws of a rat

scratch across a hard floor. In his view
, the universe can


know peace only when
life's incessant hum is replaced

with the peace
and quiet of the world of the dead.


Cultists. Worshipers
of Orcus are heretics and blas-

phemers who see the gods of the mu
ltiverse as cruel,

unjust creatures. They resent that
mortals must suffer

and die at th
e whims of these entities. In Orcus, they
see

the prom
ise of release from pain without the demand
of

obedience. In the state of undeath
that Orcus offers , they

will be free from hunger, fear
, and worry.


People who have lost a lov
ed one to a tragic death are

especially s usceptible to
his appeal. A father stricken


with grief after the death of h
is child might seek Orcus's

intervention
in returning his child to the world a ft
er the

gods
cruelly snatched her away.

All who would become cultists
of Orcus must be

willing to become undead.
Those who commit to the

cause are admitted to
the cult. Those who have second

thoughts and attempt
to decline are destroyed, their

souls condemned to the Outer Planes while
their bodies

a re animated as skeletons and zombies.

YEENOGHU


Also known as the Beast
of Butchery, Yeenoghu in s pires

his followers to devour
any creatures they meet. In his

mind, the cosmos
is made up only of predators and prey.

To sate his blood lust, Yeenoghu ofte
n rampages

across the Abyss, killing everything
in his path. Only

those demons
that join him in wreaking carnage can

avoid his wr
ath. Yeenoghu's wanderings across the

Abyss are like the meanderings
of a storm. He and his

cultists pass through an area
like a monstrous hurri-

cane whose course can never
be predicted.

Of all the demon lords , Yeenoghu
has made the great-

est mark
on the Material Plane. Dur ing his rampage

across
the world eons ago, the race of gnolls
sprang up

in his wake. Every gnoll
is a miniature embodiment of

Yeenoghu's rage and
hunger. They mimic their creator,

killing any creatures that cross them and
respecting

only those that can withstand their fury
.

Cultists. Yeenoghu rarely acquires
cultists other than

gnolls , leucrottas, and the other creatures
spawned by

his incursions
across the planes. The few humanoids

that take up
his worship are disaffected loners, many
of

them outcasts driven away from
civilization. A cult of

Yeenoghu operates like a pack
of gnolls, regardless of

what creatures make it up. Yeenoghu
infuses them with

a cannibalistic
hunger, and they know that each vict
im

they claim
draws them closer to his presence.

ZUGGTMOY


The Demon Queen of Fungi h
as many traits similar to

those ofJuiblex. Some sages
believe she is the origi-

nator of
all fungi and molds, from the mushroom
s that

grow
in the forest to the deadliest forms of yell
ow mold.

Those
who study demons argue that Zuggtmoy
isn't

merely a patron of fungi
, and that her ultimate goal is

to meld all living creatur
es into one great organism, an

entity that s he will then join with and rule
over.

Cultists. Most of Zuggtmoy's cultists
are hapless mor-

tals that have been infested with the demonic
s pores she

cultivates in the fungi she created. The
spores slowly de-

vour these creatures'
brains, leaving them with enough

functionality
to spread malevolent fungi but robbing

them of the
will to turn against their master.

A few mortals
freely enter her service. Most are dru-

ids who
want to exterminate civilization and repl
ace it

with wild
plants and fungus, or deluded, power-hung
ry

individu
a ls who believe that they would retain
their iden-

tities w hile they bring others
under Zuggtmoy's thrall.

Zuggtmoy allows these
zealots to retain their existing

forms
if doing so furthers her a ims and helps
to spread

her children far and wide, but they are destined
for the

same fate as all the othe rs.

CHAPTER 1 I TliE BLOOD WAR

29
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