The Abyss contains cruel mockeries of every form of terrain in nature, and few are less hospitable than its oceans. Untold miles of open water stretch across the lower realms, large enough to swallow countless Material Plane worlds. There are things in these lightless depths older than the demons themselves, and among them are the dreaded water lords of the Abyss, the wastriliths.
A wastrilith is a piscine fiend over forty feet in length, combining aspects of an eel and an angler fish. Two bulging lidless eyes stare out of its blunt head emitting a cold blue light, and its maw is filled with long needlelike fangs. It has two spindly arms ending with raking claws, and its long spindly body ends in a powerful fluke.
Wastriliths are neither quite demons nor qlippoth, nor are they loved by either race of fiends. When the first demons appeared in the Abyss, the wastriliths were already there, and none involved themselves in the war between the demons and qlippoth. They are not formed from souls like demons nor calved from the Abyss itself but reproduce after the manner of mortal creatures, though they are immortal like other outsiders.
The Abyssal oceans are vast, and no single demon lord lays claim to all of them. Each wastrilith stakes out its own petty domain in the depths which it rules with an iron fist, often lairing in a crude temple built by its followers, a motley assortment of lesser aquatic fiends and fiendish versions of Material Plane sea life.
Despite their pretensions of rulership, wastriliths are often pressed into the service of demon lords of the Abyssal seas. Dagon, the demon lord of sea monsters, counts thousands of wastriliths as vassals in his ream of Ishiar, the greatest ocean of the Abyss, and many of them he lends to his liege Demogorgon, the Prince of Demons, in his realm of Gaping Maw. Wastriliths guard the shoals of Nocticula’s Midnight Isles and the fringes of Gogunta’s swampy realm of Mephizim, and dozens of wastriliths battle for control of the Slithering Pools of the deceased demon lord Ibdurengian. Even the River Styx is host to these aquatic fiends, lone hunters who can be found as far along its course as the Drowning Court of Charon, the Horseman of Death.
Wastriliths are rarely seen in Gladia, though Talassa’s faithful target them when they are sighted. They are rivals of calafex rakshasas, and the two types of fiend are known to engage in brutal conflicts when their territories overlap.
Shores of Swords 