Pazuzu

"Your mother sucks cocks in hell!"

– Regan MacNeil

Pazuzu is an ancient demon/god originally worshipped/feared in Assyria and Babylon; although feared as a master of "evil wind demons", he was also worshipped. Although this was partially to make him stay his hand when it came to doling out plagues, famine and pestilence, and to fix them when they did happen, it was also because he absolutely hated another demoness, Lamashtu, who caused miscarriages and stillbirths, and so he was a protector of pregnant women. Described as resembling a lion-faced man with four eagle's wings, the claws of a lion/eagle, and the head & body of a snake for a cock, he's most relevant to /tg/ because he was adopted into Dungeons & Dragons as part of the hierarchy of Demon Princes.

As the Demon Prince of Air, Pazuzu technically claims dominion over Torremor, the 503rd Layer of the Abyss, but is most commonly seen roaming the skies of Pazunia, the 1st Layer (not actually a problem, since obyriths can actually be in two places at once). Most other demon princes are also forced to tolerate him setting up shop in the skies of their own layers (at least those layers that have skies, of course), due to not really having a means of kicking him out. Pazuzu belongs to the minority of Demon Princes who favor a more subtle approach to corruption, such as Graz'zt and Fraz-Urb'luu; his favorite trick is using his relative freedom as a Demon Prince to take advantage of a special summoning trick, materializing before anyone who chants his name three times in succession and offering them help, mostly by literally granting their wishes, without even trying to distort the intent of their wish or anything. The first one is always free, but this just acts as bait to lure individuals into summoning him again and again, Pazuzu slowly attaching more and more strings, corrupting them to his service. Pazuzu actually prefers to courrupt Lawful Good people the most. If a Chaotic Evil person tries to summon him in this way, he will actually rip the person to shreds, screaming "The gifts of chaos and evil are already yours, you just lack the wits to use them!" Pazuzu feeds on honesty, innocence and purity, existing only to corrupt others, and thusly considers dicking around with mortals to be far more important than the petty squabbles of his own kind.

If a scholar knows well enough, there's nothing stopping them from summoning Pazuzu exactly once, wishing for a candle of invocation, and then never summoning him again... aside from the mundane temptation, that is. "Iknow I shouldn't summon him, but grrr, I really want a vorpal longsword! What's that? just sacrafice one puppy? Well I suppose I can do that..." but then it gets gradually worse and worse, until you're enslaved to him as the leader of a cult to him. Pazuzu could thus be thought of as the god of drug dealers.

Besides cults shaped from his playthings, Pazuzu is most popular with flying monsters, such as harpies, with fiendish variants of such races making up the bulk of his demonic hordes alongside infernal fliers like vrocks and his prize minions, the anzu, which resemble giant four-winged eagles with the heads of lions.

Pazuzu's symbol is a bird's claw decorated with gold or jewels clutching a plucked eyeball, with the tips of its talons just piercing the soft flesh. Pazuzu himself looks like four-winged bird-man, with talons for feet and a needle-toothed beak for a face.

Pazuzu's main rivalry is with Graz'zt, but D&D also acknowledges his enmity for the "obscure" and "weak" Demon Queen of Miscarriage & Monstrous Births, Lamashtu, whom he maimed by eating her eyes before banishing her to some layer of the Abyss. Ironically, in Pathfinder, the relationship is reversed; there, Pazuzu is the weak and comparatively powerless demon, whilst Lamashtu is a full-fledged evil goddess. Possibly because Pathfinder prides itself as being "Grimdark D&D 3.75", so it's more comfortable with a demon queen of such a nature. He still gets his revenge, though, as invoking his name as a defense against her "gifts" works, and such is his hatred for her that he'll do it, no charge and no strings attached, even for good-aligned people.

Late 3rd edition and 4th edition explained Pazuzu's uncharacteristic scheming nature for a Demon Prince as stemming from the fact he's not a Tanar'ri, but an older and fouler evil entity known as an Obyrith. Further, 4th edition also made Pazuzu the one to convince Asmodeus (who in this edition began existence as an angel) to rebel against and usurp the god He Who Was, making Pazuzu ultimately the one responsible for the existence of devils.