[Commissioned by @menaceomysterio. I have reread The Phantom Tollbooth between now and when I wrote up the Everpresent Wordsnatcher, in part because I’d gotten multiple commissions from it. It very much holds up. In the Chuck Jones movie, the Trivium’s hands and head float separately from its body, but I didn’t take that route here.]
Demon, Trivium This well dressed humanoid is clad
in finery and clutches a cane. He has no face, but somehow bears a wry
expression.
The
terrible trivium is the demon of petty tasks and worthless jobs, an ogre of
wasted effort and a monster of habit. They are created from the souls of
taskmasters and slave-drivers, evil mortals who worked the bodies of their
inferiors so that they were too exhausted to use their minds. As such, they are
associated with mental sloth, and frequently team up with dretches, driving
those lazy demons into work gangs to accommodate the labors of their masters.
They get along well with both succubi and coloxuses, and work with them in
their schemes of ruin.
A trivium demon
is not as combat-focused as many other demons, so they prefer to avoid battle
through the use of guile and their charming magic. A trivium’s favorite game is
to entice other creatures to work themselves endlessly, performing meaningless
tasks and wasting their time. They excel as support units for other demons,
weakening the bodies and minds of enemies so that other, more violent demons
can crush them. If pressed to battle, they fight gracefully with their sword
canes and frequently use their zone of toil ability, disrupting opponent’s tactics by forcing them to mindlessly repeat their actions.
A trivium
is the size of a human. Although they have no ears, nose or mouth, they can
hear, smell and speak.
Shores of Swords 