Tanar'ri, Lesser - Armanite
Time to get back on the horse! Or the undead demon centaur thingy, as the case may be. And coincidentally, that brings us to our next entry: the Armanite! Who are, if you couldn't tell, undead demon centaur thingies.
Wait. No. I missed a bit the first read: "Some breeds of armanite are more kangaroolike in their nonhuman half." That. That's fantastic. Screw "some breeds", in any game I run that's going to be the default. Pale undead kangaroo-centaur demons, with bristling spines and fluted black armor! Played completely with a straight face. Yes. See, that's what I love about this project. It's amazing the little details you can miss in these entries unless you really do sit down and read the entire thing, word for word. Obviously I spent over half my childhood just skimming these things, which is the only explanation for why I don't remember half of these awesome little tidbits. Alas!
One odd thing that jumps out at me from the entry is a note that Armanites are "mercenaries" of the Blood War. "They serve their master well but expect plunder in return", which is kind of funny, because I was under the impression that all Tanar'ri had a sort of "serve in the Blood War or experience horrible fiery death at the hands of the Balor sort of job incentive structure going on. Maybe the armanites simply have a lot of chutzpah? "Yeah, give us loot and the tasty, delicious souls of our fallen enemies, or we'll walk off the battlefield. And yeah, you'll kill us all, but then you'll be killing us and not those devil bastards. Wouldn't that be a pity?"
There's quite a bit of information as well about Armanite society. It's a bit impressive that they have one at all, given that most other tanar'ri are kind of "Yeah, they're just another part of the nameless and unspeakable hordes of the abyss", but no, armanites have gender-segregated towns and everything. They even give you the names of every single "male" town. The female towns are actually mobile, and while they have names, they change their name every time they move. So that's kind of cool.
(If you're curious: Amber, Basalt, Bloodstone, Bone, Clay, Cold Iron, Dark Spring, Gray Glass, Jade, Mageblood, Maroon, Obsidian, Ochre, Oxblood, Purpure, Silver Spike, and Steelshank.)
* "The banner is the symbol and unifying principle of each warband; without it, the armanites feud among themselves and soon their group falls apart." An Abyssal Lord, through several intermediaries and proxies, seeks to hire the PCs to steal or destroy the banner of a warband of armanites serving one of his rivals.
* An armanite devours the soul of a friend of the PCs, which most sages agree renders the person in question unresurrectable. One priest believes it might be possible, if they capture the armanite in question before an entirely hypothetical "digestion period" takes place. The one problem is that the armanite in question was female, and they'll have to track the mobile town's path through the various horrible layers of the Abyss to find her.
* The normally rarer marsupial breed of Armanites have been appearing in relatively greater numbers, while the equine ones have been noticeably dwindling. A dangerously curious sage hires the PCs to figure out what's going on with that, and gives them information on a portal leading directly to Cold Iron to start their investigation.
Wait. No. I missed a bit the first read: "Some breeds of armanite are more kangaroolike in their nonhuman half." That. That's fantastic. Screw "some breeds", in any game I run that's going to be the default. Pale undead kangaroo-centaur demons, with bristling spines and fluted black armor! Played completely with a straight face. Yes. See, that's what I love about this project. It's amazing the little details you can miss in these entries unless you really do sit down and read the entire thing, word for word. Obviously I spent over half my childhood just skimming these things, which is the only explanation for why I don't remember half of these awesome little tidbits. Alas!
One odd thing that jumps out at me from the entry is a note that Armanites are "mercenaries" of the Blood War. "They serve their master well but expect plunder in return", which is kind of funny, because I was under the impression that all Tanar'ri had a sort of "serve in the Blood War or experience horrible fiery death at the hands of the Balor sort of job incentive structure going on. Maybe the armanites simply have a lot of chutzpah? "Yeah, give us loot and the tasty, delicious souls of our fallen enemies, or we'll walk off the battlefield. And yeah, you'll kill us all, but then you'll be killing us and not those devil bastards. Wouldn't that be a pity?"
There's quite a bit of information as well about Armanite society. It's a bit impressive that they have one at all, given that most other tanar'ri are kind of "Yeah, they're just another part of the nameless and unspeakable hordes of the abyss", but no, armanites have gender-segregated towns and everything. They even give you the names of every single "male" town. The female towns are actually mobile, and while they have names, they change their name every time they move. So that's kind of cool.
(If you're curious: Amber, Basalt, Bloodstone, Bone, Clay, Cold Iron, Dark Spring, Gray Glass, Jade, Mageblood, Maroon, Obsidian, Ochre, Oxblood, Purpure, Silver Spike, and Steelshank.)
* "The banner is the symbol and unifying principle of each warband; without it, the armanites feud among themselves and soon their group falls apart." An Abyssal Lord, through several intermediaries and proxies, seeks to hire the PCs to steal or destroy the banner of a warband of armanites serving one of his rivals.
* An armanite devours the soul of a friend of the PCs, which most sages agree renders the person in question unresurrectable. One priest believes it might be possible, if they capture the armanite in question before an entirely hypothetical "digestion period" takes place. The one problem is that the armanite in question was female, and they'll have to track the mobile town's path through the various horrible layers of the Abyss to find her.
* The normally rarer marsupial breed of Armanites have been appearing in relatively greater numbers, while the equine ones have been noticeably dwindling. A dangerously curious sage hires the PCs to figure out what's going on with that, and gives them information on a portal leading directly to Cold Iron to start their investigation.