Pale Night

Pale Night is an obyrith demon lord of unimaginable age, often referred to as the Mother of Demons, to whom the tanar'ri appear as mere children. An unknowable enigma shrouded in mystery, to peer beyond her veil is to witness an indescribable horror so great that it was rejected by reality itself.

Description

Pale Night appeared in a shimmer of strange light, as a diaphanous, white sheet that billowed in a non-existent wind, yet never enough to reveal what lurked beneath it. On closer inspection, the contours of the robe suggested a comely, feminine form, like that of a lithe elf or human. The phantasmal figure glided through the air, hazy and terrifying yet seductive in shape. When she spoke, her voice was low and almost inaudible, but her singing was apparently enrapturing and her robe moved fluidly, easily indicating her gestures. Besides the cloak, only white, gossamer hairs concealed her incorporeal visage, preventing onlookers from glimpsing the true, maddening wrongness of her existence.

Personality

Pale Night is no less malevolent and sadistic than the other demons of the Abyss, although luckily for many she is also utterly capricious. Sometimes she decides to murder any trespassers in her domain and puts them on display, but at others she gives them tasks or simply allows them to leave. Her actions and decisions are difficult to decipher since she rarely ever speaks, even to her own servants, and she can barely be deigned to associate with other demon lords. For a mortal to even attempt to speak to her can be considered a grievous offense worthy of death.

Divine Realm

Not all are aware that Pale Night's dwelling is a frightening structure known as the Bone Castle or Bone Citadel, a pale, white keep constructed from thousands of skeletal fingers and hands and protected by hordes of creeping claws and moving bones. Despite its delicate appearance, the brittle bones that compose it seem ready to disintegrate at any time, it is an incredibly durable structure that has not been lost by its resident even once. The tangled tower resembles a massive, grasping hand, said to be capable of animating in order to slay intruders, and is crawling with various demons. The true purpose of the structure is unknown, possibly to celebrate the wickedness of its resident given the vast galleries of her victims' fractured, flickering shadows, or perhaps to contain it.

The Bone Castle rests under a rust-colored sky in the middle of a vast, roughly circular plateau of bleached bone, and from its ramparts one can just barely see the walls of the Endless Maze. It is possible to stumble across the castle just by wandering through the Endless Maze; the entrance is a wall of smooth stone with thirteen breaches one can pass through. Though neither Baphomet nor Pale Night tries to influence things beyond the borders of their realms, and Baphomet is reluctant to even draw close, Pale Night occasionally makes her way through the Endless Maze in order to make use of a single gate. The gate leads to a different maddening labyrinth carved deep within a mountain inside Pale Night's other domain, the delirious realm of Androlynne.

Despite being a surreal realm of endless war, Androlynne is one of the most pleasant places within the Abyss since it is defined not by the conflict of evil versus itself but by the struggle of evil to fend off the forces of good. Mother's Mountain, Pale Night's occasional, looming residence, is a reminder of Androlynne's original identity that she helps keep intact, a bleak, colorless realm of misery and nightmares. However, the rest of the layer is a beacon of hope for what it represents, the power of good to change a place even as hopelessly corrupt as the depths of the Abyss. As a result of the vast number of benevolent beings residing there, ranging from chaotic eladrins and foo creatures, to the more neutral moon dogs and hollyphants, to lawful ki-rins and couatls, most of Androlynne becomes a beautiful land of bright pastel colors and rolling hills. The vivid fields are rich with flowers and other alien vegetation and the sky houses light-purple clouds of unimaginable size that sometimes take the shapes of screaming faces and at others resemble animals or random household items.

Activities

Pale Night is almost never seen beyond her Bone Castle, preferring silent isolation much of the time. Sometimes she decides to spawn new demonic abominations, while at others she is in Androlynne tormenting eladrin children, commanding her forces from the peak of Mother's Mountain or scheming against her enemies within its cold chambers.

Worshippers

Pale Night's worshiper base was almost nonexistent and cults were practically unheard of. Most of them consisted of three or four malevolent spellcasters obsessed with creating new breeds of horrible half-fiends to unleash on the world by impregnating various female creatures with raw Abyssal chaos. The cultists shared a certain view of Pale Night with many denizens of the Abyss, seeing her as a kind of matron.

Pale Night rarely created aspects and such beings rarely left the Bone Castle, only doing so on business which almost never involved the Material Plane. They freely interacted with the other demons in the citadel but when outside its morbid halls were not bothered by other demons, a situation that suited them well. They preferred their companions to be incorporeal, although strangely they never associated with the undead.

Though on the surface, Pale Night's aspects looked identical, only by lifting her veil could one see the crucial difference, albeit one that would leave the viewer comatose and with total amnesia as opposed to killing them and a difference they wouldn't remember even with the prior conditions lifted. Not even Pale Night's aspects, let alone Pale Night herself, were welcome in Faerun; even if one desired to be called, the chance it would succeed was low since both the land and its gods spurned her very presence.

Relationships

The Mother of Demons was regarded with respect and terror by the other demon lords, none of whom she counted as allies nor particular enemies. Occasionally, she sent mortals to investigate if one of her children was scheming against her, but otherwise she left the other rulers of the Abyss alone. Graz'zt, one of her potential offspring, was one of the few beings she had a cordial relationship with, and he had some understanding of her views despite rarely visiting her.

She was also known to share a bizarre symbiosis that could almost be considered an alliance with Baphomet. The eldritch obyrith had inhabited the 600th layer of the Abyss long before he arrived, although Baphomet himself was relatively ancient in comparison to most tanar'ri. By some mysterious means, she somehow repressed his feral urges long enough to offer a mutually beneficial arrangement where the two would coinhabit the layer.

The pact was still in effect and any attack against one of their holdings in the Endless Maze could prompt the other to come to their aid, although that seemed to be the extent of their cooperation. It was his relationship with Pale Night that brought Baphomet into contact with a being possibly even more primeval than her, Dwiergus, the Chrysalis Prince, which seemed to inspire him to create his Tower of Science and create new demonic abominations in his image.

History

Even during the Age before Ages, when obyriths still ruled the Abyss, Pale Night was a mysterious entity. Unlike most obyriths, who squabbled for power on the 1st layer Pazunia, she had been brooding in her tower, a nameless being lost amidst the images reality tried to hide her hateful form behind.

Back before the obyriths weren't wholly obscure and before the tanar'ri had rebelled against their predecessors, an eladrin host assaulted the Plain of Infinite Portals, weakening the already crippled demonic forces after the Queen of Chaos had fled. Several spiteful obyriths partially blamed the eladrin for the successful revolt of the tanar'ri and Pale Night was among a group of the elder horrors that wanted revenge. The Mother of Demons, through deception and magical manipulation, tricked the Royal Consort Ascodel of the eladrin Court of Stars into a pact in which she would gain the thing he was most concerned for, the safety of the eladrin children. She chased the thousands of them into Androlynne, still a monochromatic underworld deep and inaccessible to most, which she had stocked with terrible monsters. At this point, the obyriths were rapidly declining in numbers and influence, but Pale Night planned to savor their vindictive genocide with her allies before she realized what could potentially be her biggest error.

The kidnapping of the innocent children prompted celestials and other goodly creatures from across the Upper Planes to protect them, as over time an all-out war broke-out in Androlynne. Ascodel eventually died protecting the eladrin children, whose numbers were somewhere in the double digits, but their rarity only made their defenders fight more rigorously to protect those that remained and the successor Royal Consort, Faerinaal, spent much of his time personally overseeing the conflict. The pact had both bound the eladrin to Androlynne and kept them eternally young, and the celestial defenders worked tirelessly to break Pale Night's hold over them, their centuries of struggle, majority influence, and the childrens' own purity evidenced by Androlynne's new appearance. Queen of Demons

The title of "Prince of Demons" was one constantly being fought for in the Abyss, its current holder being the tanar'ri demon lord Demogorgon. Its original holder, the first obyrith, was Obox-ob, who had almost been destroyed by the Queen of Chaos and had his title given to her consort, Miska the Wolf-Spider. After Miska's defeat, there was a constant struggle amongst many demons to claim the title for themselves, but Pale Night's alien mind had no desire for it, although not out of a lack of ambition. From her home in the Endless Maze, which was relatively unscathed by the demonic civil war, she plotted for power beyond that which the title of Princess of Demons would grant her, concocting a sinister scheme to obtain such influence without even needing to fight for it. Instead, the Mother of Demons called upon an unknown entity of great power to give her a brood that would vie for the throne, for if one of her children could become the Prince, then she in turn would be the Queen.

Pale Night

Obyrith Lord

Basic Information

Titles

Mother of Demons
The White Lady
Queen of Night

Pantheons

Archfiend

Attributes

Alignment

Chaotic Evil

Symbol

A billowing white sheet draped over a starry field.

Realm

Infinite Layers of the Abyss/600th Layer/Bone Citadel

Portfolio

-

Following

Worshippers

Demon-spawning spellcasters

Domains