Core concept and background:
In life Ethyl Ermengarde poisoned each of her three husbands, a dumb farmer she married for love, a successful chymist she married for money, and a old man she married to complete the set.
When her soul rocketed to the Abyss it shattered on impact and from the million shards sprang a million squirming and wriggling Larva. The larva, some fat and voracious, others lean with a mean streak, all felt empty and felt no compassion. Ethyl had long ago killed that part of herself. They immediately turned on each other, biting with cannibalistic frenzy.
The larva that represented her final husband’s death devoured the first two and managed to escape the killing frenzy. In a dark cave this larva spun a crimson cocoon and was reborn as a quasit. Using her newfound power she hunted the former shards, the larva, of her soul. After devouring 3 demons she transformed again this time into a Vermlek, after 5 a schir, 7 a brimorak, and after reclaiming 11 soul shards she metamorphosed into a babau, her current form.
She was laying in wait, to silently ambush the 13th demon when she was summoned and bound by a prime material wizard who needed a guard for her wardrobe.
Pointlessly guarding the wardrobe for years wore on the babau formerly known as Ethyl and her skills withered. While guarding the clothing she became fascinated with a tuxedo. She studied each of the threads memorizing how it was constructed.
Suddenly she was freed from her pact, which could only mean that Lucian was dead. Her first act, completely on impulse, was to don the tuxedo which she had become so fascinated with She was able to wear it for less than a minute. She shouldn’t have been moved by its destruction. The emptiness she had always felt grew. She didn’t know why but Ethyl felt like she needed to seek out the other guardians enslaved by Lucian.
Appearance
This figure is of a horned humanoid dripping with blood red slime over bone tight leather. The skeletal figure wears acid burned strips of dark fabric that cling and clench but do nothing to hide her true nature. She holds a corroded spear casually in one hand.
Character goals
To manufacture a suit that she can wear.
To hunt down and devour her sisters, the demons formed from the shattered remnants of her soul.
PERSONAL TIES
The babau formerly known as Ethyl never bothered to meet and greet other demons, she was too concerned with hunting down and eating the fragments of her own soul. However whenever she summons another demon her departed husbands invariably heed the call. Hiram Stubbs, Squire Hardmann, and Jack Manley.
Recruitment questions
1. how you came to be in the employ of an evil wizard guarding her lair
Summoned and bound by ye olde evil wizard.
2. what your motivations are
Long term: to collect the shattered remnants of her destroyed soul and forge them into something new and terrible. Short term: to craft a tuxedo she can wear.
3. what the personality, quirks, habits, etc of your character are
Unusually patient for a demon, she will single mindedly pursue the goals given to her. In the unusual times where she’s nervous or unsure what to do she will restlessly play with the scraps of fabric she wears. Not used to conversing with other sentient creatures Ethyl will tend to be awkward in conversation.
4. what your character looks like
See above
5. a way that you could see your character developing over the course of the game
She will be skeptical of the other monsters at first but she will gradually come to see their value. If she manages to recover more bits of her splintered soul she will transform into a new and more powerful type of demon. When that happens her personality could potentially shift suddenly and drastically to fit her new form.
Mechanically every time she recovers a prime number of soul shards she will transform into one of the next higher CR of demon at level up. At this point that would be succubus or shadow demon. If she levels without recovering enough shards she will first remove the degenerate template and then start taking levels in vivisectionist alchemist, possibly with a template or two mixed in.
GM Monster wrote:
Can you tell me more about the story of how soul shards are ending up on the material plane, where the campaign is set?
There could be a number of reasons why her sister demons could be found on the prime material. Some could have been summoned by Lucian for the same reason Ethyl was, to guard something. Now set free the demons are drawn to each other, the only familiar thing on a strange plane. Their meetings invariably end in violence and death. Possibly the reason Lucian grabbed all the former Ethyls is a matter of research expedience. Their true names are all very similar so required less effort to obtain.
