Expanded Ecology

Like their apocalyptic master, leukodaemons are actively destructive beings. They seek to murder all living creatures, claiming each life in the name of their foul daemon liege. Although their endless supplies of plague-ridden arrows could fell whole cities, the daemons’ perverse affinities with disease and enjoyment of slow suffering lead them to prefer sowing the seeds of sickness and watching an ailment grow from a minor infection to a full-fledged epidemic. In a sense, leukodaemons have no heads. They wear bleached skulls, typically those of equines in honor of the Horseman of Pestilence. In lands where horses are unknown, though, these daemons often take the skulls of other beasts of burden or simply those of more fearsome creatures. They can remove or change their skulls as easily as other races change clothes, the seat of their senses being vested within a blistered nodule hidden beneath the bony shield.

Daemons of the Apocalypse

Seated upon thrones of corpses, the four lords of the daemon race covetously eye the aimless souls of the Material Plane, plotting cataclysms and atrocities to harvest them for their own. They are the Four Horsemen, the harbingers of the end, the daemon lords of apocalypse. Titles claimed and endlessly squabbled over by the most powerful of daemonkind, the bearers of these foul crowns are feared as the most terrible of fiends by some, honored as avenging angels by others, but known as doom to all. Serving as the emissaries and sentinels of each Horsemen are the deacons, daemons who obey not one greater daemon, but the title of Horseman alone: Leukodaemons, the deacons of disease; Purrodaemons, the deacons of destruction; Meladaemons, the deacons of wasting; and Thanadaemons, the legendary, black-cloaked deacons of death.

Habitat & Society

Leukodaemons are members of a servile caste of daemonkind known as deacons, or “destroyers,” fiends fundamentally bound to the service of the Four Horsemen, the lords of the daemon race. Each Horseman commands obedience from one race of deacon, a vast personal army sworn to serve an archdaemon for as long as it holds the title of Horseman. Should the Horseman be killed or otherwise dethroned, all subservient deacons know of the vacuum in power or successful coup, either immediately allying with the newly ascended Horseman or indulging in their typically short-held freedom.

Currently, leukodaemons serve the archdaemon Apollyon, Prince of Locusts and Horseman of Pestilence. From the Throne of Files upon the bleeding wastes of Abaddon, the archdaemon devises world-scouring plagues to increase his power beyond that of his fellow fiendish rulers, sending his armies of deacons across the planes to wreak his terrible will. When not acting in direct service of their dark lord, Leukodaemons haunt the Plaguemere, a vast swamp of festering pox pits and withered forests surrounding the Throne of Flies.

Pathfinder 8: Seven Days to the grave. Copyright 2008, Paizo Publishing, LLC, Author: F. Wesley Schneider