Environment any (Abyss; battlefields and graveyards)
Organization solitary or nest (2–20)
Treasure standard

The hideous vermlek demon is one of the lower-ranking members of the demon race, barely above the dretch in power but remarkably more ambitious and intelligent than its pudgy lesser kin. They wriggle and crawl in nauseating numbers in many Abyssal battlefields or graveyards, impatiently awaiting a chance to find a humanoid body to inhabit. Outside of a host body, a vermlek appears like a fatheaded worm with four long tails, each of which ends in a wriggling nest of long filaments. In this form, the vermlek cannot wield weapons, and its bite and spell-like abilities are its only offensive options.

A typical vermlek is 7 feet long (with its filaments giving it a further 3 feet of length) and weighs 90 pounds.

Ecology

Vermleks form from the souls of those who habitually violated the dead in life, such as graverobbers, necromancers, and necrophiles.

On the Abyss, the vermleks are countless in number. A single sinful soul can spawn dozens if not hundreds of these demons in much the same way that the body the soul leaves behind spawns maggots. A newly formed vermlek can flop and writhe through the stinking Abyssal necropolises and swamps and boneyards for eons before it finds a body to inhabit, but it’s much more common for a vermlek to be “harvested” by a more powerful demon for use in a battle. Vermleks harvested in this manner are carried in huge steel cages on the backs of enormous fiendish beasts of burden, such as retrievers, and either sold to powerful Material Plane spellcasters or used in battle against humanoid foes. The classic use for vermleks in such cases is to open the cages containing the worm demons after an initial skirmish or battle so that they can slither out onto the battlefield and claim bodies from the dead, thus recycling the carrion for use in the next battle to come. As vermleks can only inhabit the bodies of humanoids, this tactic isn’t as common on the Abyss (where demons typically fight themselves or other outsiders), but in regions of Golarion where demons hold sway, such as the Worldwound or Tanglebriar, their use can be a particularly demoralizing form of psychological combat.

The process by which a vermlek inhabits and controls a dead humanoid is partially biological, partially necromantic. A vermlek’s body is boneless and exceptionally elastic—it can wriggle into a body through the mouth, a wound, or any other opening in less than a minute, eating the bones and organs within with noisy rapidity. It then settles into the cavity thus created, extending its four tails down into the torso and eventually into the hollowed arms and legs of its host, whereupon the filaments at the tips of these tails weave through nerves and muscle like a puppet’s strings. The vermlek can immediately use the body to move about, wield weapons, speak, and otherwise interact with society. The creature can control the coiling and wriggling of its body to keep its host appearing humanoid, but it can do little about the size of its body—humanoids inhabited by a vermlek always look hideously obese. Worse, the host body, which remains dead, rots normally—a vermlek that does not maintain its body’s freshness with gentle repose must abandon the rotting flesh 7 days after inhabiting it to seek out a new host.

Vermleks know that a keen eye that peers into the mouth of a host can quickly undo their deceptions, and as a result they tend to mutter or mumble when speaking to keep from opening their mouths too wide. Many use veils, helms, or scarves to hide their mouths. When confronted in combat, though, a vermlek in a host body quickly abandons its disguise, extending its hideous worm head out through the host’s mouth to give itself a secondary bite attack—doing so ruins the host body for further disguise purposes.

Habitat & Society

Vermleks can often be found at the sites of vast battlefields on the Abyss where wars with humanoids (fiendish, celestial, or otherwise) have occurred. These sites are particularly common on Kurnugia, where the fiendish gnolls of Lamashtu constantly bicker and war with one another, and on Ishiar, where the fiendish human pirates and scoundrels that dwell upon that ocean’s islands wage eternal war. These demons generally spawn in Abyssal realms like Everglut, Uligor, and the Spiral Path, where demon lords associated with the dead or worms rule, and they can be found in great number in those regions’ vast graveyards and necropolises.

Although they are often used as disposable infantry in mass battles, vermleks themselves have little taste for such activities and, left to their own desires, prefer to live in hiding among humanoids on the Material Plane if they can find their way into that realm. A vermlek fortunate enough to find itself on the Material Plane enjoys disguising itself as a laborer, gravedigger, dungsweeper, or any other lowclass role in which it can blend in while still having access to the city’s dead. A vermlek’s ghoulish and taboo lusts are only magnified by its creation, and on the Material Plane, the arrival of one of these filthy demons in a society almost always presages a sudden upswing in scandalously violent or distasteful crime.