Demogorgon
Demogorgon is one of the most powerful demon lords of the Abyss. The first of all tanar'ri, born of the primal fears of the first mortal souls, and said by the kopru to have been born of two mothers, Demogorgon embodies Enervation, Madness, Reptiles, and Aberrations.
After becoming a hero of the war of the tanar'ri against their obyrith predecessors, Demogorgon earned the right to call himself Prince of Demons, a title he has successfully defended from all those who would take it from him. He is the third to hold this title, after Miska the Wolf-Spider and Obox-ob. His title as Prince of Demons is contested and somewhat misleading in that in the chaos of the Abyss there are no official titles and positions. He holds this title through sheer power and the fact no other demon has been able to prove themselves his superior and wrest the name from him.
Demogorgon appears as an eighteen-foot tall, reptilian (or amphibious) hermaphroditic demon with a somewhat humanoid form. Two mandrill (sometimes described as baboon) heads sprout from his twin snake-like necks, and his arms end in long tentacles. Demogorgon's two heads have individual personas, called Aameul and Hethradiah. They strive to dominate (and even kill) each other, but are unable to because they are aspects of one another. Despite that, many of Demogorgon's plots revolve around either permanently separating or uniting these two personas.
In the Book of Vile Darkness (2002), Demogorgon is erroneously depicted as having hyena heads instead of baboon/ mandrill heads.
Demogorgon can hypnotize with a gaze or drive enemies insane. His whip-like tail has the ability to drain the life energy right out of a living foe. His tentacles cause living creatures to rot away, as if by some sort of rapid leprosy.
According to kopru legends, Demogorgon has two mothers, Prukal and Shothotugg, which account for his twin personas. Dragon #357 says he was created by the Queen of Chaos. In Gary Gygax's Gord the Rogue series, Demogorgon is the brother of another demon lord called Mandrillagon.
The hatred between Orcus and Demogorgon is legendary. He is also a dedicated foe of both Graz'zt and Fraz-Urb'luu. Demogorgon has also enslaved Azuvidexus, who was formally the demon lord of primeval beasts and scaled nightmares.
Some of Demogorgon's allies include Zuggtmoy, Dagon, and the Succubus Queen Malcanthet. The currently imprisoned Shami-Amourae was his former consort. Socothbenoth hopes one day to become his lover as well. Demogorgon is also an ally of the apelike Ilsidahur, who guards the landsward approach to Demogorgon's lair and once helped him invade the Olympian Glades of Arborea.
One of Demogorgon's spawn with Malcanthet is the monstrous Arendagrost. According to WG7 he has a son with a mortal woman, the cambion Drumorg.
The death knight Saint Kargoth is one of Demogorgon's most loyal servants.
Demogorgon lives on the 88th layer of the Abyss, known as Gaping Maw. This is a layer consisting of a great sea of briny water broken by tall, sharp, ugly, rocky prominences rising out of the endless murky water into a sky of yellow mist. Demogorgon's palace, Abysm, is two twin towers shaped very roughly like tightly coiled serpents that are covered with sharp, ugly fin-like features and spines, and crowned at the top with skull-shaped minarets. The two towers are linked by a bridge near the top. Beneath the fortress are reefs and caverns where aboleth, kraken, and ixitxachitl dwell, constantly warring with each other and worshiping Demogorgon in his palace above. His towers are said to extend so far beneath the sea that it connects to the layer beneath him where he speaks with Dagon, an ancient, aquatic obyrith lord.
Numerous isles dot the layer, but they all resemble Demogorgon's palace: twin rookeries rising straight out of the sea and into the sky. Among these isles is Kolurenth, the stone fortress of Saint Kargoth, which sits atop a rocky pinnacle protruding from the sea..
The only significant landmass of the layer is a vast jungle-covered continent. Here, Demogorgon's capital city of Lemoriax is located.
Demogorgon's cult is relatively small compared to "true" deities, but much larger than those of most fiends. He is worshipped by demons, the mad, the deformed, reptiles and apes, and the ixitxachitl and kopru races.
The sacrifice of sentient beings is among the dark practices attributed to the cult of Demogorgon.
Demogorgon was once known to the ancient Aerdi people as "Ahmon-Ibor," or "the Sibilant Beast." Before the Great Migrations, his worship was widespread among the debased Flan peoples of the northeastern Aerdy coast, and somewhat less so among those Flan tribes of central Aerdy.
One of Demogorgon's earliest recorded acts in the Flanaess occurred in 203 CY, when he corrupted the paladin Sir Kargoth and transformed him and thirteen of his fellow Knight Protectors of the Great Kingdom into Oerth's first death knights.
Demogorgon is based on the invented, supposedly pagan god or demon Demogorgon, which was first spoken of by Christian scholars as a being whose very name is taboo. A creature named Demogorgon is featured in John Milton's Paradise Lost, Lodovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, Spenser's Faerie Queene, and Percy Bysshe Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, although the D&D Demogorgon shares little more than the name.
Saint Kargoth is a servant of Demogorgon
One of Demogorgon's earliest recorded acts in the Flanaess occurred in 203 CY, when he corrupted the paladin Sir Kargoth and transformed him and thirteen of his fellow Knight Protectors of the Great Kingdom into Oerth's first death knights.
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