Orcus

The massive, bloated demon stands 15 feet tall, his immense frame a hideous combination of muscle and bloated flesh. His head is that of a ram with a great maw filled with tusks, and his thick-furred legs end in cloven hooves. Leathery wings and a barb-tipped tail complete the picture of the archetypal demon.

Orcus Lore

Characters with ranks in religion or arcana can learn more about Orcus. When a character makes a successful skill check, the following lore is revealed, including the information from lower DCs.

DC	Result
15	Orcus is the Demon Prince of the Undead. His worshippers either seek the secret of immortal undead existence or are already in his foul undead embrace.
20	The Prince of the Undead fights with the Wand of Orcus, a powerful and vile artifact whose mere touch can kill.
25	Orcus proceeded to climb through the demonic ranks over the next several thousand years, going from larva to mane, from mane to dretch, from dretch to rutterkin, from rutterkin to vrock, from vrock to glabrezu, from glabrezu to nalfeshnee, and eventually a balor. From there, he ascended to the rank of demon lord, becoming the Prince of the Undead and ruling the layer of Thanatos, the Belly of Death.
30	Although he is technically alive, Orcus’s return from death has gifted his body with the traits of the unliving.

Strategy And Tactics

Orcus relies heavily on his wand in combat, much preferring to engage foes in melee. Attacks with his free claw, gore, and poison tail are almost afterthoughts. If faced with numerous powerful foes, Orcus fights more carefully. He summons undead and tanar’ri to engage foes in melee while he provides support with finger of death, fireball, and his other spell-like abilities.

Servants, Enemies, And Goals

After becoming complacent in his eternal war with Demogorgon and Graz’zt, Orcus was recently murdered and deposed. But then, Orcus rose from the dead—an undead demon—and took the name Tenebrous for a time, hiding in the shadows of the multiverse and waiting to take his revenge. Now he has reinstated himself to his former position and reclaimed his realm Thanatos, and once again finds himself in a struggle for dominance with many other demon lords.

Orcus is no longer content to grow fat and decadent in his castle. He focuses his anger and hate on the absolute destruction of his enemies and the spread of woe and havoc among mortals. He covets Graz’zt and Demogorgon’s realms above all others, and commands a host of undead and demons that ravage entire layers of the Abyss at his whim.

Demon Lord Relationships

Against Graz’zt, Orcus’s tactics are fairly direct. He constantly sends wave after wave of his limitless undead armies against Graz’zt’s three Abyssal layers, continuing these battles eternally since Orcus can replace fallen undead soldiers as quickly as they are destroyed by Graz’zt’s defenders. This relentless assault is inexorably penetrating deeper and deeper into Graz’zt’s territory, but at nowhere near the pace that Orcus wishes.

He realizes that Demogorgon is a more powerful foe, and as a result, Orcus’s actions against the Prince of Demons are more subtle. He sends small bands of nabassu, vampires, and liches into Gaping Maw and other places Demogorgon holds sway to undertake missions of precisely calibrated assassination and sabotage. Yet while Orcus himself might not be as powerful as Demogorgon, and his realm might be dwarfed by the size of Graz’zt’s holdings, Orcus’s cult on the Material Plane is in truth his greatest resource. In particular, orcs, half-orcs, ogres, and giants revere Orcus, as do a large number of corrupt and despicable humans. His temples are usually hidden, and his worshipers form secret societies that commit atrocities and wage wars in his name. He demands living sacrifice from his cultists, and blood and skulls are important parts of the imagery used in his worship. Intelligent undead rarely serve him willingly, although many vampires, liches, and other undead creatures are forced into his service by dark pacts or compelling magic.

Clerics of Orcus have access to the domains of Arcana, Blood, Death, Grave, War. His symbol is his wand—a skull-topped black mace.

Wand of Orcus

Wand, artifact (requires attunement)
The ghastly Wand of Orcus rarely leaves Orcus's side. The device, as evil as its creator, shares the demon lord's aims to snuff out the lives of all living things and bind the Material Plane in the stasis of undeath. Orcus allows the wand to slip from his grasp from time to time. When it does, it magically appears wherever its master senses an opportunity to achieve some fell goal. 

Made from bones as hard as iron, the wand is topped with a magically enlarged skull that once belonged to a human hero slain by Orcus. The wand can magically change in size to better conform to the grip of its user. Plants wither, drinks spoil, flesh rots, and vermin thrive in the wand's presence. 

Any creature besides Orcus that tries to attune to the wand must make a DC 17 Constitution saving throw. On a successful save, the creature takes 10d6 necrotic damage. On a failed save, the creature dies and rises as a zombie. 

In the hands of one who is attuned to it, the wand can be wielded as a magic mace that grants a + 3 bonus to attack and damage rolls made with it. The wand deals an extra 2d12 necrotic damage on a hit. 

Random Properties. The Wand of Orcus has the following random properties: 

• 2 minor beneficial properties
• 1 major beneficial property
• 2 minor detrimental properties
• 1 major detrimental property

The detrimental properties of the Wand of Orcus are suppressed while the wand is attuned to Orcus himself. 

Protection. You gain a +3 bonus to Armor Class while holding the wand. 

Spells. The wand has 7 charges. While holding it, you can use an action and expend 1 or more of its charges to cast one of the following spells (save DC 18) from it: Animate Dead (1 charge), Blight (2 charges), Circle of Death (3 charges), Finger of Death (3 charges), Power Word Kill (4 charges), or Speak with Dead (1 charge). The wand regains 1d4 + 3 expended charges daily at dawn. \

While attuned to the wand, Orcus or a follower blessed by him can cast each of the wand's spells using 2 fewer charges (minimum of 0). 

Call Undead. While you are holding the wand, you can use an action to conjure skeletons and zombies, calling forth as many of them as you can divide 500 hit points among, each undead having average hit points (see the Monster Manual for statistics). The undead magically rise up from the ground or otherwise form in unoccupied spaces within 300 feet of you and obey your commands until they are destroyed or until dawn of the next day, when they collapse into inanimate piles of bones and rotting corpses. Once you use this property of the wand, you can't use it again until the next dawn. 

While attuned to the wand, Orcus can summon any kind of undead, not just skeletons and zombies. The undead don't perish or disappear at dawn the following day, remaining until Orcus dismisses them. 

Sentience. The Wand of Orcus is a sentient, chaotic evil item with an Intelligence of 16, a Wisdom of 12, and a Charisma of 16. It has hearing and darkvision out to a range of 120 feet. 

The wand communicates telepathically with its wielder and can speak, read, and understand Abyssal and Common. 

Personality. The wand's purpose is to help satisfy Orcus's desire to slay everything in the multiverse. The wand is cold, cruel, nihilistic, and bereft of humour. 

In order to further its master's goals, the wand feigns devotion to its current user and makes grandiose promises that it has no intention of fulfilling, such as vowing to help its user overthrow Orcus. 

Destroying the Wand. Destroying the Wand of Orcus requires that it be taken to the Positive Energy Plane by the ancient hero whose skull surmounts it. For this to happen, the long-lost hero must first be restored to life - no easy task, given the fact that Orcus has imprisoned the hero's soul and keeps it hidden and well guarded. 

Bathing the wand in positive energy causes it to crack and explode, but unless the above conditions are met, the wand instantly reforms on Orcus's layer of the Abyss.