Demon, Seere ‘The Patron of Portals’

A common philosophy holds that the world is inherently lawful’ all things are situated at a specific, set distance from one another, for order is the true nature of the Material Plane. The Patron of Portals and his followers specialize in bending those ‘absolute’ distances, carving literal wounds in the world by traveling from one place to another via the most destructive means possible.

Originally from The Book of Fiends

Designed By Aaron Loeb, Erik Mona, Chris Pramas, and Robert J. Schwalb

Patron of Portals

Layer: The Final Highway
Areas of Concern: Travel, worldliness, caravans, black markets, monoculture
Domains: Chaos, Evil, Knowledge, Travel
Favored Weapon: Quarterstaff

The hand of Seere can be seen when a new road cuts through unspoiled wilderness, when a wealthy merchant installs teleportational portals in two cities, maximizing profit by cutting out dozens of middlemen, and when a native people are, through exploration and exploitation, absorbed into the common culture of the civilized world.

Like his allies Sabnach and Socothbenoth, Seere bears a somewhat human appearance, perhaps to appeal to the civilized folk of the settled world. The Patron of Portals stands roughly seven feet tall, with short red hair and two twisting horns peeking from his angular forehead. He otherwise resembles a normal human and often is seen riding upon a pale winged horse. Seere prefers to dress in the most stylish fashions of high society, favoring tailored coats and elaborate capes that grant him the appearance of a wealthy merchant. He walks with a slight limp, supporting himself on a mighty traveler’s staff.

Seere’s confounding layer of the Abyss, known colloquially as the Final Highway, is a void partially filled by a twisting path of hard-packed earth that winds throughout the layer and is visible from every point within Seere’s realm. At times the road stretches up a great distance, as if traversing a great hill. Such hills, however, don’t exist anywhere beyond the surface of the road itself. Those who fall from the path (or, as is often the case, are pushed from it) fall for eternity unless they slam into another part of the highway far below.

Souls sworn to Seere or captured by his agents roaming the Howling Threshold believe that the road has an end, and that those who reach it pass the test of the Patron of Portals to achieve enlightenment and pass on to some sort of Abyssal paradise.

It’s a sham ‘the road extends for eternity before looping back upon its start (no one has ever made it so far), but Seere does nothing to disabuse his subjects of their lofty goals. Of course, the majority of these folk are chaotic evil, so the typical dangers of the road ‘highwaymen, corrupt checkpoint guards requiring fees for passage, and even wandering creatures (in the form of flying beasts who emerge from the void)’are even more dangerous on the Final Highway than their counterparts on the byways of the mortal world.

Seerians believe that the physical growth of civilization necessitates the absorption of native cultures into the greater body. Small elements of absorbed societies thus eventually come to be observed by the populace at large, infusing the common culture with disparate elements in a cacophonous paean to chaos. By ‘infecting’ civilization with a multiplicity of hard-dying philosophies and belief systems sprung from the corpses of conquered lands, progress weakens society’s overall reliance on law. And with the inevitable weakening of laws, crow Seerians, the groundwork is laid for the advancement of evil.

Seerians do their part by organizing trade caravans and expeditions, hoping to turn up areas rich in resources for later exploitation. In the wild they act as guides, and in cities they often serve unscrupulous merchant companies, enhancing their ability to damage the world and displace native peoples simply for the joy of turning a buck.

Whenever a thaumaturge in service to the Patron of Portals teleports (either via his own magic or a spell cast by another) he appears at the destination standing in a shallow pool of deep red blood’ a wound torn into the sacred order of the natural world.

Obedience

To replenish his spells, a thaumaturge in service to Seere must beat a sentient creature to death with a walking stick (the thaumaturge’s Quarterstaff suffices for the task). Thereafter, in a process that takes an hour, the thaumaturge dips his hands in the creature’s blood and coats his staff with its leavings. Since it’s often dangerous to murder randomly, many thaumaturges abduct children, Halflings, goblins (and other creatures of little importance) for this grim task, keeping them in a vast dungeon just for the sate their unholy masters.