Heavy Metal Demon Guitarists (DND / TTRPG)

Description

Long three demons invaded the Feywild looking for souls to devour. A powerful Archfey hunted them down and bound them with a powerful contract - they can only devour the souls of those who they had defeated in a battle of music. The demons starved for eons until they went entirely mad (for a demon) and learnt to play the guitar. They now travel between realms challenging cocky bards and anyone else they can lure into a musical duel. The demons: * You can use the Balor statblock (see the attached image) without the Fire Aura and they can be medium or large since they haven't been well fed for so long * Their true names aren't pronounceable by mortals but they go by Rixx, Glixx and Blixx, named after rhymes they were taught in the Feywild * They've spent eons learning to play guitar and as a byproduct they've learnt common and many other mortal languages. * The Fey bargain has caused them to lose their chaotic nature and replaced it with neutral - they have had to resort to Fey trickery in order to sustain themselves * Rixx and Blixx can speak and sing, however Glixx, in his madness tore apart his jaw and can only produce guttural shrieks * They know the location of anyone they've beaten in a musical contest and have means to travel between realms via plane shift The Fey contract: * Prevents the demons from harming anyone who hasn't lost to them in a consensual musical contest * They can form a new contract with those that they've defeated in the musical contest * If they are killed they revive in the Feywild instead of the Abyss * They are effectively immortal and never have to return to the Abyss How does this contest work? Per the contract it has to be consensual, it's effectively a Fey contract between the demon and the party, the party could say no. The demons aren't going to tell anyone the the terms of the contract and if the party asks "What do we get if we win?" the demons will say "You get to keep your souls" or otherwise imply that they're going to devour the parties' souls and this contest is the only way out. In terms of how to run this - you could have a contest for your party to guess the genre of metal music: https://www.reddit.com/r/Metal/comments/1jg73i/how_do_the_different_types_of_metal_differ/ - play a few samples for them as though the demons were playing, if they guess correctly they live - otherwise.... Alternatively you could turn it into a battle of the bands skill challenge with DC15 where each player must choose a skill that they are proficient in and what they will do to contribute to an adhoc band (barbarian rolls athletics to hit rocks real hard until they sound like drums - NAT20, amazing rock opera) - the party must have 3 successes before they reach 3 failures and cannot use the same skill twice. IF your party fails this challenge fear not (unless you wanted a TPK then this is it) - the demons are willing to trade the players souls in exchange for them bringing others (the amount is up to you) to the demons to participate in musical contests. This arrangement will be a new Fey contract that they'll have entered into with the demons. Normally demons shouldn't care about bargaining like this but these three have devolved from chaotic evil to simply neutral evil - they have rights to the souls of the party at this point and can consume them at any time but more souls is better than just a few. Perhaps your party was duped into this pyramid scheme of souls by someone else. If your party is extremely crafty they might offer to break the Fey bargain - in which case you can turn this into an epic campaign for them to reclaim their lost souls. You could devise a way for the party to send the demons back to the Abyss where greater demons have long awaited them. About the models: These were fun ones to make and as you can tell from the above my head was spinning with ideas about them while sculpting and painting. I used AI tools for these and for original image prompts I was trying to make guitars but the mimic prompts got mixed in and these demons were born. For sculpting I did the usual thickened them up, added eyes, teeth, fingers, toes and all of the baseplates. The names Rixx (demon_guitar2), Glixx (demon_guitar3) and Blixx (demon_guitar1) are what came to mind as I painted them Red, Green and Blue (very uncreative and maybe I've ruined it for you if you read this far but you can rename them if you want - it's your table!) For sizing I have them at 32mm and 50mm - the Glixx and Blixx models had neat little foundations on them which I kept and turned them into custom 3mm baseplates. Personally I prefer the standard baseplates so I made these variants as well. I've printed them on FDM using a 0.2mm nozzle with 15% infill and 0.15mm layer height, printed on their backs - I would recommend 100% infill instead and 0.08mm layer height (or smaller) to avoid tearing and losing bits while removing supports - their main bodies are solid but horns, tails and spikes can easily pop off and it's a pain to glue things like that back on (or if you're like me sometimes you lose them in the mess of supports). Whew that was a lot of writing. Thanks to those who made it this far. I'm on journey this year to try to make 1000 table ready models for DND and other TTRPGs using AI tools - mostly for learning blender and fun but also to create models that wouldn't exist otherwise. You can follow my progress on Patreon here https://www.patreon.com/c/Adamnant - I'm just doing weekly progress posts now but might start plugging in content like this depending on what people like.

Statistics

Category

Tags