Sangudaemon

This vaguely arachnid creature is the size of a human and is composed entirely of blood, globs of the viscous stuff dripping down its spindly legs and from its serpentine maw. A jagged set of obsidian fangs protrudes from its drooling mouth, and huge dragonfly wings of crimson blood splay from the thing’s back producing a terrifying buzz.

Defense

Offense

Statistics

Ecology

Description

Augmented Critical (Ex) A sangudaemon’s bite threatens a critical hit on a roll of 18–20 and deals ×3 damage on a successful critical hit.

Bleeding Aura (Su) Within the daemon’s aura, blood gushes from wounds at an increased rate. All bleed effects deal an additional +2 points of damage (included in the daemon’s bleed damage). Heal checks made to stop bleeding or stabilize a dying creature, Constitution checks made to The Soul Reavers den. Such lairs are gory, dark places, the walls entirely awash in blood. From the ceiling of a sangudaemon’s lair, the fiend hangs the cocooned bodies of countless victims, some still barely conscious beneath their grotesque wrappings—bindings made of hardened blood and the effluvium of devoured and regurgitated souls. A sangudaemon entombs its victims in these fibrous casings like a giant spider does its prey, slowly sucking the bodies dry of both blood and spirit. Sangudaemons keep their lairs underground or at high elevations in order to best preserve the bodies within, though when the cocoons have been completely leeched, the remnants begin to crumble into dust, and such charnel houses eventually fill with the dry, brittle ashes of victims.

Habitat & Society While out hunting in either the wastes of Abaddon or throughout other planes, sangudaemons often work in packs of up to 10 individuals, and though they hunt together, they much prefer to keep their own independent lairs to drag victims back to for slower feedings. Other daemons find sangudaemons’ potent abilities useful, especially on battlefields where blood is spilt. Piscodaemons and purrodaemons in particular find use for their services, shedding much blood in their destructive rampages and benefiting from sangudaemons’ unique and devastating control over spilt blood.

While sangudaemons sometimes spawn from the souls of blood-drained victims of vampires, the daemons and the undead share no love for one another, and many sangudaemons openly despise vampires. Some speculate that sangudaemons that hate vampires do so because they themselves were victims to the undead as mortals, and a faint and bitter impression permeates their otherwise vacuous recollection. The contempt some sangudaemons have for vampires often runs so deep that the daemons seek out these undead souls in particular, hoping to utterly consume them, as sangudaemons often find vampires’ tainted blood even more delicious than any other creature’s. A sangudaemon will at times trade numerous souls and soul gems via Abaddon’s markets for just a single vampire’s soul, so much do they delight in the obliteration and consumption of the thing.

As such outspoken hunters of vampires, sangudaemons often find themselves at odds with the goals of Urgathoa, Abaddon’s resident goddess of undeath. Though most daemons would never dream of siphoning some of her destined souls to sate their own hungers, the mere existence of the two polar forces within the blasted lands nevertheless creates an uncomfortable tension between the fiends and the goddess. What the two sides agree on is excessive gluttony, though Urgathoa’s followers often partake merely of food, whereas sangudaemons indulge themselves purely on blood.

As a caste, sangudaemons have a distinct preference for service to both Apollyon and Szuriel. Those in service to the Horseman of Pestilence live in his festering swamps and frequently incubate various hemorrhagic fevers and blood-thinning diseases within their various pockets of consumed mortal blood, keeping the diseases alive and active until they can be dispersed through new populations for maximum carnage. Szuriel, meanwhile, spreads the plague of war wherever she passes, and thus bloodshed is an inevitability; whether this large-scale bloodletting is brought on by the tip of a sword or the hungering jaws of a sangudaemon matters not to the Horseman of War, and she gladly accepts the services of the eager and hungry sangudaemons, who are driven to ecstatic revels by battlefield gore.

Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Horsemen of the Apocalypse

Source: Horsemen of the Apocalypse, p. 55