Juiblex (JOO-b-le-ks)

Juiblex was, in short, disgusting, undoubtedly hideous to demons of all kinds and perhaps the most foul of all demon lords and deities. Its abhorrent aura was as foul as its sickening, shapeless form, a primordial soup of bubbling bile and nauseating fluid bound by a thin epidermis bathed in oil and thick mucus. 

The amorphous mass was swirled and striated with a hideous mixture of hues, primarily streaks of black and green combined with bilious browns and yellows as well as translucent greys and ambers. Caustic slime of the same colouration was constantly secreted from the sludge-spewing horror, and it was known to weep tears of encrusting black grime from the glaring red eyes that pulsated and shifted across it, peering in all directions.

The Faceless Lord was an appropriate name for the gelatinous monster since it lacked any kind of set form, adopting various sizes and shapes with ease. At rest, it was nothing more than a spread-out volume of reeking filth, but at any point it could form a simple blob or gather together into an 18‒20 ft (5.5‒6.1 m) pillar of unsteady ordure before collapsing into a rancid wave and stretching out into a voluminous pool of animated ooze.

Most commonly, however, when confronted by others, it gathered itself into a hideous heap, a 9 ft (2.7 m) cone of glistening jelly and shuddering slime. No matter the form, it could manifest dripping, trembling pseudopods in all directions to lash out and hungrily scoop up any creature that caught its attention.

Simply getting near Juiblex could be a serious ordeal; aside from the fact that he always attacked intruders to his domain, regardless of what they offered, his foul smell and loathsome look made him almost impossible to tolerate. Even by accident, his shuddering mass could expel toxic materials around his space, endangering most life nearby. Organic and inorganic materials alike quickly dissolved at his touch, particularly metal and wood, but while stone could also be melted, it eroded at half the rate. Extreme agility was required by one wielding weapons or wearing armour composed of corrodible materials to prevent them from being ruined after making contact. His touch was not only caustic but also corrosive, and if one wasn't crushed or liquefied by his lashing pseudopods, there was a fair chance that they'd be covered in a sheet of poisonous ooze.

Juiblex's favoured tactic was to make full use of his ooze-like qualities, closing the distance between him and his enemies by whatever means necessary. His gelatinous form allowed him to swiftly squeeze through spaces smaller than an inch with ease, crawl across vertical inclines and ceilings, and manoeuvre unhampered underwater. He attacked as many foes as possible, snatching them from the surrounding area and altering his form to engulf them with the intent to watch them painfully melt. His ability to build himself up before crashing down as an avalanche of ooze was particularly useful for catching multiple targets.

Juiblex's amorphous body was part of what made him especially dangerous, since he lacked any kind of targetable anatomy and was just generally difficult to injure. Trying to harm him with acid, diseases, and poisons was obviously useless, as was using blunt weapons and impact force, lightning, water, cold, or deadly gases. Radiant energy and fire were some of the few things that could prevent him from regenerating, although given his adaptable nature, fire could be an unreliable weapon, and cold iron or good-aligned weapons could overcome his resilience.

While clever enemies might attempt to exhaust Juiblex's ability to move towards them and then attack him from a distance, the Slick of Foulest Humours would find it all too humorous to send airborne foes hurtling towards the ground. Every now and then, Juiblex could vomit a particularly vile excretion, 3 ft³ (0.085 m³) cubic feet of a toxic substance that combined the effects of ochre jelly and green slime that he spewed several feet into the air. For similar reasons, he could also spew out patches of green slime, as well as to delay his enemy's approach, or break off bits of his own body to create lesser versions of himself to assist him.

Supernatural:
Many of Juiblex's spell-like abilities were related to blighting and befouling areas or desecrating and despoiling specific targets. Oftentimes his first move was to hide, possibly by turning invisible, before engulfing multiple foes and unleashing a contagion on the first. Other powers allowed him to dominate and restrain powerful beings, such as using hold monster to augment his attacks, or advance on faraway foes, like greater teleport, fly, or phase door. Also among his supernatural powers was his ability to shed a circle of darkness, which he could see through and that no light could dispel, as well as a circle of frigid cold in a radius around himself, which both followed him wherever he went and which he could activate and deactivate at a whim.

If seriously injured, Juiblex could be made to retreat, probably through teleportation, although such an escape was likely temporary. In such a situation, he would attempt to summon oozes or tanar'ri to keep his enemies busy during his recovery period, but, given his lack of association with most of demonkind, he had few options. Once per day, he could call upon a mob of stinking dretches, a few fetid hezrous, or an acidic alkilith to aid him, and either a couple of grey oozes, ochre jellies, or black puddings.

Lord of Ooze:
Juiblex was often regarded as one of the weaker demon lords, and the way he normally was, this was accurate. However, all of Juiblex's powers seemed minuscule in the face of his most threatening ability: the power to control any ooze from anywhere. Oozes were inherently tenacious creatures, able to exist in some of the most hostile corners of the multiverse, and all Juiblex had to do was focus his power to control them. In a sense, Juiblex's true form was not the one that dwelt in his abyssal layer but the combined volume of every brainless slime, pudding, and jelly in existence. The omnipresence of oozes throughout reality raised the question of why he didn't simply take over the multiverse at his whim. In truth, despite his great intellect, the vastness of Juiblex's true body far outmatched the capacity of his comparatively small mind, and he was incapable of dividing his attention and ordering all of his servants at once.

Juiblex's mere presence in an area could make the oozes of the region more aggressive and intelligent, although not necessarily both. Some oozes were no more capable than before but showed signs of malevolent intent rather than mere, mindless hunger, while others gained human levels of intelligence and telepathy without a hint of ill will towards sentient beings.

Juiblex's underground sanctum contained many useful treasures, some of which he was known to wear and use, ranging in usefulness from rings of plant control to a talisman of ultimate evil. Certain items were inexorably tied to the Faceless Lord or could be things he would consider useful to his plans.

Juiblex's true origin was unknown, although there were many theories about where the Indescribable Darkness originally came from. At earliest, he was one of the original tanar'ri, somewhere around the age of Demogorgon, but many posited that he was far older than that. The obyrith lords Dagon and Pazuzu suspected that Juiblex was himself an obyrith lord who was mostly destroyed by Tharzidun, gradually declining in importance until eventually becoming an ancient relic of the past. Some cited the presence of certain obyriths on Juiblex's plane as a sign that he came before the tanar'ri, although this wasn't concrete evidence.

According to the research of some, Juiblex was originally just part of the Elemental Chaos, part of its raw essence until the appearance of Tharzidun. When Tharzidun first planted the seed of evil, it wounded the Elemental Chaos, and at the direct site of the wound was the first mass of infection, a black, bilious collection of fluids and solids awakened to wicked self-awareness. Dark knowledge rushed into his newly formed mind as he welled up, but after the obyriths began to emerge from the Abyss, he fled deeper inside to escape the conflict, coming to grips with his new existence, reflecting upon his home and contemplating his purpose while creating new oozes wherever he went. Still, some theories suggested that he could be even older than that, that he was a being from beyond any of the planes that found its way into the Abyss and settled there.

Regardless of what was true, for as long as Juiblex had existed, he had stayed out of the conflicts by the rest of demonkind, presuming of course that he was present. He was said to have witnessed the Abyss' beginning, the emergence of obyriths, and the final battle between them and Tharzidun, but he avoided the long conflict the entire time, secluding himself in Shekdalah shortly after the war ended to drink from the Abyss and bloat himself with its power and knowledge. He did not defend his home against the gods during the Dawn War or when Asmodeus supposedly fell and took a sliver of its original shard, nor did he fight for it alongside the Queen of Chaos during the Age of Ages or involve himself in the more recent Blood War against the devils. While others throughout the history of the Abyss and those surrounding it rose and fell, the Faceless Lord always remained in the background, preparing to consume all reality, knowing the true nature of the Abyss and fully intent on fulfilling his discovered purpose.

Juiblex's only consistent opposition against this goal was Zuggtmoy, who, for her faults, had ways of keeping Juiblex in check. Once, centuries ago, the Queen of Decay used a series of potent divinations to determine Juiblex's exact location, erected a series of adamantine plinths throughout Shekdalah, and then triggered a ritual to banish Juiblex somewhere else in the multiverse. Fortunately for Juiblex, this plan only partially worked, but fortunately for everyone else, the partial success was enough to separate a portion of him from his whole, the unnecessary expenditure of power being something he tried to avoid. Part of his polluted essence was sent to the Elemental Plane of Water but was too toxic to be permanently stored there, so its inhabitants banished it once more to its own demiplane. That demiplane would become known as the Demiplane of Filth and a shard of his essence would become the Hermit. Despite the many failings of the project, it demonstrated Juiblex's seemingly inevitable descent was not as predestined as he would want.