Devil, Dantalion
Image © Fenix Entertainment S.P.A., by José Muñoz. Accessed at his deviantArt here
[Monster 2000! This has been a long time in the works. Monster 1000 was Saurafer, so I knew I wanted to do some sort of big name fiend for Monster 2000 as well. The Pandaemonic Parliament project has been bubbling in my head for years, and so the first monster explicitly for it was my plan for Monster 2000 for a while. But the Goetia has 72 demons in it, and so which one to choose?
My inspiration came from @tyrantisterror and the interactive web novel they wrote last fall, We Go Bump In The Night. In WGBITN, Dantalion is a fiend dreaming of redemption, and is trying (with mixed success) to get a castle full of misfits to love themselves. And one of the major characters, Lord Dredgore, realizes that she's a trans woman and embraces her femininity over the course of the story. This is not TT's version of Dantalion, but is definitely inspired by her. And also inspired by my admiration for Pathfinder telling trans stories, and my desire to tell my own.
For everyone who's been with me for the last 2000 monsters, and to anyone who's just coming in now. Thank you.
I'm counting Dantalion as Monster 2000 without the bonus Patreon exclusive monsters. If you want to see them, or just want to pitch in a little to help out, check out the Creature Codex Patreon here!]
Devil, Dantalion CR 21 LE Outsider (extraplanar) This humanoid fiend stands twice the height of a human, with a body like a flayed corpse clad in golden armor. She has four faces, each equidistant around her head, and a crown of horns growing above them. Her wings are membranous and wide, her claws sharp, and her feet have a built in high heel. A hideous book, bound in human skin, orbits around her.
Dantalion did everything he was supposed to do, but could not account for her own desire to be happy. Dantalion was a brilliant gelugon in the service of Hell for millennia, using a network of spies and informants to keep tabs on Hell’s enemies. He was instrumental in weakening Chelish moral defenses, and his reward for the rise of the Thrice-Damned House of Thrune was promotion to a pit fiend. In this form, Dantalion continued to perfect himself, using his ability to shape devils on his own body, granting himself extra heads so he could literally see all around him. As Dantalion learned more and more of the secrets of magic, he gained the ability to assume the form of any mortal man or woman on Golarion. But then he realized; despite all of his accomplishments and accolades, the first time “he” truly felt joy was when “he” assumed the form of a woman. And being a trans woman in Hell is a very dangerous thing.
Dantalion is currently threading a very tricky needle. She used polymorph any object spells to shape her body to her liking, and uses a combination of guile and magic to keep her minions and superiors alike thinking that her feminine form is an occasional affectation instead of who she sees as her true self. She knows she can’t fool Asmodeus forever, and in fact isn’t sure if she’s fooling him now. Her appointment to the Pandaemonic Parliament was at Asmodeus’ suggestion, because her gifts for appearing as anyone and eliciting love between the loveless are useful tools in Hell’s arsenal to win souls. Dantalion is afraid that this position is a setup for a very public exposure and fall from favor. She is considering appealing to the Queens of the Night for aid, but is afraid to; they publicly support Hadriel, Duchess of Domination, who hates divergences from “traditional” femininity, and hates trans women most of all. And deep in the back of her mind, Dantalion looks across the board to demon-kind, and how one of their greatest, Nocticula, rose from evil to become The Redeemer Queen. And Dantalion allows herself a glimmer of hope.
As a noble pit fiend, Dantalion rarely finds herself in direct combat these days. Still, getting to rend flesh with claws and spells is a welcome distraction from bureaucracy, and a chance for her to put her magical studies to work. Dantalion lacks the tail and venomous fangs of most pit fiends, but she is by no means a pushover in combat. All four of her faces still inflict sharp bites laden with devil chills, but now they can strip magical protections from a target as well. She is a flexible and experimental combatant, using her natural weapons and diverse spell-like abilities in conjunction with each other. Dantalion carries a brace of scrolls and wands with her so she can use spells otherwise unavailable to her, and if she knows ahead of time who she is fighting, will tailor her equipment to their tactics. Dantalion has not gotten as far as she has by being reckless, and flees from any combat she thinks she will lose.
