Heroes of the Horde

Only three minor complaints to this awesomely great "dog":
1. Are there many Hags around the World Ash? I mean, what does That giant Ubar-dragon and its spawn sais about this?
2. 50000 years? I mean, the Dustmen, I've read somewhere, are hanging around for ~10000 years and thats long even in terms of the multiverse. 50000 years as a Hordeling, what little sanity would be left to anyone?
3. How common is it that someone has memories of their life begone? Its incredibly rare, isnt it? I don't actually think he needs much memory to explain his behaviour - the only thing he needs is the hatred for his old world, the only thing left to him.

Will fill out later with Dark, statistics, so on.

The Lurkling with Perfect Hands

The Moaning Lady ain't the only planar who wants to be something she ain't. See, I heard this a while back--don't know how true it is, sounds a bit peery to me--but I'm willing to buy it.

They say there's a lurkling in the Gray Wastes who got sick and tired of being just a lurkling. So he figured out a way to get himself an identity--just steal it.

See, the hordlings got this trick they'll pull. If they're strong enough, they can suck other hordlings up into themselves and use them like spare parts for a little while. Well, they say this little lurkling figured out how to do it with people.

They say the first thing he did was steal himself a set of beautiful, pristine hands. Imagine that! Some ugly soddin' lurkling running around with perfect hands. Then, they say he got ahold of somebody's face--just the face, mind you. Then he kept going on, stealing up parts of other folk, snagging them one by one, always leaving faceless, legless, armless sods behind.

They say he's gotten just about everything, now--that he's so damn close to finished that you couldn't tell him from any other berk.

Except for his perfect hands.

Author Note: Yes, this is a complete rip-off of 'The Cat with Hands'.

Mordant the 8-legged

Once an immensely powerful and deceptive wizard with a crippled body, Mordant the 8-legged appears as nothing more than the head of a beautiful youth with 8 furry spider legs emerging from the side. Despite his small size and nonthreatening demeanor, he is one of the more terrifying denizens of the planes--both for his exceptional skills as a wizard and his penchant for deceit.

Mordant will approach hordlings, hags, and even mortal visitors to the Wastes, promising them arcane secrets in exchange for food, transportation, and care. Over a considerable amount of time, Mordant works to win his victims over--though no one trusts anyone in the Wastes, all he needs is to catch them asleep. Mordant will then attack his victims, biting them with his fanged mouth and injecting a paralyzing venom; after this is complete, he begins his work.

Mordant eats the head of his victim and replaces it with his own, extending his legs down into the victim's body. Afterwards, he may possess and operate their body as if it were his own--he gains all the hit-dice, innate abilities, and physical statistics of his victim (but no class levels) while retaining his spell-casting abilities and mental statistics. Because Mordant operates the body as little more than a puppeted vehicle, it eventually rots and becomes useless--every day, the body suffers 1d6 points of permanent constitution damage until its constitution is reduced to zero or below. At this time, the body ceases to function and Mordant must abandon it.

Mordant seeks to find a way to make this transformation permanent. Furthermore, he wishes to use this process on an immensely powerful physical body (either another hordling, or perhaps a powerful fiend) so as to augment his all ready considerable spell-casting abilities.

The Glutton

No one knows what the Glutton was originally, but it was probably something hungry.

The Glutton appears as a large gray monsterous humanoid with hulking shoulders and no discernible sexual organs. Instead of a face, it has only an immense open mouth lined with dozens of rings of razor-sharp fangs, all dripping with acidic ichor. Instead of fists or feet, it has massive fang-laced jaws.

The Glutton eats everything, and we do mean everything. When it runs (often on all fours), its jaws are clamping hold of rocks, dirt, and stone, gobbling them greedily up. When it attacks (and it tends to attack anything that moves), it does so by swinging its jaws ferociously at the target and jamming anything that isn't immediately swallowed up by them into the multi-ringed hole that replaces its face.

Both its jaws and its ringed mouth seem able to bite through anything that can find purchase. For the purposes of damage, the Glutton ignores damage resistance and hardness when initiating a bite attack. Because of this attribute, the Glutton is often hunted for its fabled teeth, which some claim could be used to produce weapons capable of piercing any substance no matter how hard. So far, no one's had any luck.

The Glutton does not speak. Under no circumstances will it ever communicate with anyone. It only feeds--constantly, endlessly, and without relent.

Mr. Gray

"Who do you work for?"
"Mr. Gray, cutter."

-Common planar slang for 'Nobody'

Wandering the Gray Wastes is a man who many have taken to calling Mr. Gray. No one knows his real name, or what he wants, or what he's doing, but one thing's for sure--you don't want to meet him.

Everyone remembers him differently, but a few details always remain the same. He always appears humanoid, always has smooth gray skin, and always has no face--no eyes, no nose, no mouth.

Mr. Gray seems chiefly concerned with finding secrets, and regularly trawls the murky waters of the Styx as well as the three Glooms in search of them. Just how many he's managed to pick up, nobody knows--because once he learns a secret, anyone else who knew it has a nasty habit of disappearing (after all, the less people who have a secret, the more valuable it is).

What's weirder is that no one can really seem to remember anything about Mr. Gray, nor anything that he's done. He's surrounded by a perpetual haze of obscurity; even after interacting with him, most people can't recall what they talked about or what happened. It's as if he's a living embodiment of banality--just too boring to remember.

Many night-hags have dealings with Mr. Gray, trading him secrets for secrets--a deal that's always dangerous, considering that once Mr. Gray learns a secret, that secret tends to be lost forever. Most night-hags simultaneously loathe, envy, and need him--his voracious appetite for secrets he alone knows has made him something of a pariah in the Wastes, but when a night-hag needs information that no one else has, it's pretty feasible that Mr. Gray has it (and may be willing to trade). Some night-hags reportedly even worship Mr. Gray--although this relationship is always tenuous at best.

Most people assume that Mr. Gray is a hordling, but this is not necessarily true. Night hags are completely silent on this point.

The Dark: Where do you want to start? The theories about Mr. Gray abound; everything from him being a hag's attempt at creating an Ultroloth to being Aoskar himself.

Whatever Mr. Gray is, this much is obvious: He was once a serious blood, maybe even a Power, but the night hags stole something from him--maybe his identity, maybe his name--and now he scours the Gray Wastes, looking to find the secret they stole, hungrily devouring every bit of secret knowledge he can find.

It's a known fact that almost every night-hag alive is scared witless of the possibility that Mr. Gray may one day find whatever it is they stole from him. Every night-hag except three--the Gray Coven, a group of night-hags who are hell-bent on giving Mr. Gray back what he has lost. Just what their motivations could be or what this could mean is unknown, but nearly every other night-hag in the Multiverse is willing to do everything in their power to stop them.

Mr. Gray seems to be the being that the Keepers were based on. There are just far too many similarities - what with the hunting for secrets, the gray rubbery skin, and the utter inability to socialize.

Mr. Grey as a Keeper, Mr. Grey as a 'Loth, and Mr. Grey as something entirely diferent are all cool. this is a great concept. If Mr. Grey is related to the Keepers is he a rouge of sorts or are the keepers rouge Mr. Greys or are they both serving the same purpose.

There's a lot that Mr. Grey and the Keepers have in common, and the thought came to my mind as well, to be honest. But looking closely, there's also a couple of important differences. The main difference being this:

Keepers seek people who know something related to the secret of their creation, which they want to keep.

Mr. Grey seeks secrets, because he is looking for the one secret that has been stolen from him.

Despite the obvious similarities, the difference in motivation makes them entirely different in personality - to me, at least.

I like Grythlwrolg. I have no idea how people can come up with names that original, but I like him, I really do. Just one question... does the hordling look like he has a chunk bitten out of him... or even half of him completely bitten off?

I was kind of imagining him as missing his lower half, rather than a lateral half, but either way. Oh, and he should talk like a gangsta', describing himself as

That sounds exactly like the penultimate boss in the very first Tomb Raider game. Makes you wonder if when the Night Hag doubtlessly spit out the other half, the other half didn't turn into two disembodied legs running around in some other part of the Waste.

I can live with the explanations of 1&3 (it may just a little part of the Ash that pops up somewhere away far enough), but on 2.. well, it's a matter of taste. I only say don't throw around with large numbers carelessly.

Quite true, but there is a more 'recent' history nonetheless. I mean, how long since the Great Upheaval? 500 years? Oh well, As You Like It.

First of all I like to say that I like Lurkings. Becaouse in Croatian folk lore we have similar beast called "Bijes" (Bee-yes), wich look just like that: small, impish hordling. Also they were glorified in story "How Potjeh Searched for Truth) by Ivana Brlic Mazuranic in wich 3 such malcontents try to stray 3 brothers from path of deacent folk.

Also in that story, Bijeses had they nasty boss and king, wich brings me to:

Bijesomar, Lurking King, the Terrible Emperor:
This hordling is unusualy tall and gaunt with filthy beard and cloven feet, bat wings and impressive set of horns on his brow. He wears tatered royal red robe wich somehow stays red in gloom of Gray Waste, on the head he wears the crown of gillded horns an in his hand he carries heavy wooden scepter. On his back he wears sheepskin coat.

Bijesomar is hordling lord, and some say he is the Will of horde composed entierly of Lurkings, Mephits, Imps and Quasits. Nigt hags say that his lurkings scour Gray waste for new Lurkings wich he seek to add to his horde. Bjesomar even if he dresses and acts as nobility he is bully trough and trough, who enjojes to harras his minions by beating them with his heavy wooden sceptre.
In fact he beat his Lurkings on regular bassis that they fear only him and becaouse of that fear they will never grow into true hordlings, in fact some of them had actualy shrunk because of that fear.
Bjesomar despises 3 things in existance: incompetence, deacent folk, and smoke from holy fiers. See Bjesomar has sensitve nose and he can smell purty across the planes wich sends him into fits of sneezing and koffing, wich makes him agitated, wich he takes out on his minions.
To apease his master his Lurkings go across the prime and try to coruppt mortals by making sugesstions to follow their dreams of power. You see: Bjesomar´s Lukings are wretched but cunning lot, without any power of they own so they hope that trough mortals will realise they dreams of power. His Lurkings eagerly volontear for missions to prime just to get away from they lord (and if they do well he usualy leaves them to they devices but ocassonly he drops by to give them regular beating.)

Bjesomar´s plans: Bjesomar´s ultimate goal is to turn mortals into corupted, cowardly, superstitious and most importantly godless lot, so that he can roam dark woods of prime worlds unhinged (oddly he loves dark power of nature).
Bijesomar´s court: is located in one isolated large gorge in Gray Waste where smell of purity cannot reach him. On Prime he has similar outposts infested by Lurkings, hiden in dark places of world.

Horde powers suggestions: Suggestions, Increased wisdom/inteligence, Shrink Self

Well that is it for now. If you have suggestions, please post them.