The armies moved across the churned mud, utterly ignoring the ruined building on the small hillock. Even if its walls were worn smooth, arranged in such a way that you'd never know what it had once been, Fortunine had been enough battles to know that you sought any advantage you could. As the spells began to fly between the infernal armies below them, she put a hand on the nearest wall for security, memories haunting her.

“And, there!” Rhen whispered from his position nearest the fighting, which was still several hundred paces away. He watched a number of devils launch themselves through the air, swinging pikes as large as they were to come slicing through various monsters on the opposing side. But weren't they all monsters, in war? Shavarath, the very plane of conflict, made the warforged quite uncomfortable. “Those had to be the barbazu. Humanoid, staves and charging right into battle.”

Fortunine retrieved her eyes of the eagle and placed them over her face. Cross-referencing with the image Rhen held, she confirmed it. “Tentacled head, bladed glaives, red skin,” she noted. “They don't seem to have specific targets, but they ignore foes that are smaller or slower. One just speared an imp trying to flee, despite ignoring its attacks.” For the challenge of hitting a small, fast opponent? She remembered warriors who revelled in the fight like that.

Also known as “bearded devils”, the barbazu are Shavarath-native fiends that are among the most well-known extraplanar beings. Their willingness to take orders, especially those which result in it shedding mortal blood, make them one of the most common varieties of fiend encountered with Dragon Below cultists and unwise mages.

On their native plane, barbazu are often in command of other lesser devils; primarily imps or spinagons. They're also commonly found guarding the larval devils, called lemures, in any particular devil-held fortress. However, as one of the most populous, they can be found in almost any role and army. Their mercenary tendencies often find them in demonic or celestial armies too, temporarily adjusting their behaviour to please the latter until the inevitable double-cross.

The “beard” of a barbazu is not hair nor any similar substance. It is in fact anywhere between 7 and 13 prehensile, venomous tentacles, resembling a beard only in the location. These provide a natural weapon against any creature that closes with a barbazu to avoid their usual glaive. One surefire way to enrage a barbazu is to damage or threaten to damage their beard tentacles. A “shaved” barbazu is a freak among devils and is shunned by its peers.

A Strangely Peaceful Postcard from Shavarath

  There is something peaceful about this; a pleasant shrine, a lovely aurora, just a nice scene. Until you realize it is right smack in Shavarath! Nothing peaceful about that, is there? On the other hand, the dark tones mean this one would be an exceptional wallpaper. It’s the right size, too, click to see in fully wallpaper-compliant splendor. Maybe peace is what you make of it. :) :D :) p.s. I…

These creatures are among the most feared in all of the planes, though they are rarely seen by Primes.   Their own domain is nothing more than an endless battlefield of death and destruction, but what makes them scary are their unbelievably huge forces which can be found invading other planes.  Now a giant insectoid army of evolving monsters coming in an endless hoard isn’t exactly…pleasant to consider charging at you, but you know, better than a demon hoard right?  I mean sure they strip mine everything they approach and use their victims to make more, but you know that’s fine right?  Here is the problem, they don’t eat people.  They eat ideas.   Or more specifically, they eat Planes built upon ideas and so while they aren’t a direct threat to the Material Plane, the Hive Fleets are seen as one of the greatest threats in the world to Planes, as the massive Tyranid armies can cause havoc on almost all planes in their never ending quest for resources.  These creatures are infamous for their unique form of reproduction, any time they attack a plane, they can tear bits of the plane itself  off and add it   to these massive “Flesh Vaults” that they carry with the fleets, which they use to create new Tyranids.  Depending on the type of creature they consume, a new type of Tyranid is created, and they can be specialized dramatically.  These creatures are commanded by some sort of Hive Mind, though as far as anyone can tell, it isn’t centralized in any singular location but is rather a larger collective mind (similar to Many of One).  

       So can they actually win?   Nobody actually knows, they are tearing up whole planets worth of various planes but…the planes are infinite so what does that mean.  Well it is doubtful that they could destroy an actual plane but they certainly damage it, and as Planar cartographers are always pointing out, some infinite planes are smaller than others.  So while it is unlikely the Hive could completely destroy a plane, they could reduce it to a much smaller infinite plane (this is the part where mortals normally hit somebody).  However some fear that should they eat enough, the plane itself will completely collapse and have to be remade, which will drastically effect the Outer Planes dramatically.  

   On the Material Plane Tyranids are mostly unknown except when Shavarath is far away , but the occasionally scouting fleet will emerge on the Material Plane to raid for more basic resources.  These hoards will ravage the entire region of the material plane, strip mine all the resources they can grab, and return home. As they cannot use Material Plane resources to reproduce unlike ideas, Tyranids try to avoid the material plane, all losses there are permanent.  However when Shavarath is in alignment, they sometimes come in en mass and try to take over the Material Plane, nobody knows why this is as it doesn’t really benefit them in the long run.  Even weirder though, Tyranids have been known to be randomly nice, Hive Fleets have been known to wander across the Material plane not destroying but repairing the world around them to be livable and improved, creating so called “Eden Worlds”, marvelous realms of extremely alien but beneficial forms of life (ok there is the odd mana monster that eats people, but those are just hungry). These Eden worlds often are a massive source of magical resources, food, and just general usefulness.  Tyranids have even been known to land on the Material Plane and help the locals farm or rebuild their cities, sometimes even creating entirely new cities for mortals to live in.  They never explain their logic or reasoning, they just start working then leave.  In one instance a great ancient city was severely damaged by an earthquake, only for a Hive fleet to emerge and the Tyranids to rebuild the city to its original specifications.  They also have been known to randomly attack major threats to mortals as a whole, such as undead armies or the Blight.  In fact on no less than 8 occasions Demon/Devil/Daemon incursions into the Material Plane were halted by the Tyranids, and once they attempted (and failed) to turn back the Burning Legion.  Nobody knows why they do this, only that the “Eden Fleets” will almost never engage in combat on mortals until they return home, while raiding fleets will almost never rebuild the world until they return home, each flee evidently having a specific task.  

    Currently the Hives are mostly focused on trying to consume the Outlands, because the Divine Realms are too scary, and the Middle Planes are difficult to invade as they are always moving.  The major battle fronts right now they are focused on Bytopia, Arcadia, The Outlands, the Fernia, Gehenna, Abbadon, and somewhat inexplicitly the Blood Rift.   They avoid Arboria however, as that plane has a tendency to eat them, and Avalon seems to confuse their Hive Mind.  Where ever these incursions occur, they strip the entire plane bare, eating all of the natives of Pettioners, and then start taking the plane apart.  The remains of the plane are taken back home to “The Flesh Vats” massive vates of flesh that are fed by ideas and as these planar chucks are put there, new Tryanids emerge.  So invasions pay for themselves and almost every infinite plane has an infestation of these guys somewhere.   Again, nobody is quite sure if what they are doing can work, chucks of planes the size of planets have been destroyed and eaten by these bastards but again…the planes are infinite.  As a rule, natives do not like this and work to get rid of them as quickly as possible, in fact Modrons, Rilmani, Proteans, and Inevitables are so quick to destroy them that most Tryanids don’t even bother, but the good and evil planes are especially at risk.

       The Lower Planes are so distracted by their own affairs that directing their armies at hoards of Tryanids simply doesn’t seem feasible, and they can go for quite a long time before somebody notices them and kills them.  The upper planes however really can’t handle this, they are over stretched and over taxed as it is, and diverting already desperately needed forces to deal with these planar incursions just isn’t in the cards.  They mostly try to divert them off of their plane or destroy their Hive Fleets before they start reproducing, but if they get a hold then they usually try to get good deities handle this, which of course further puts them in debt to the Divine Realms and makes Eblis sad. (Eblis BTW destroyed an entire Hive Fleet by himself when they approached his realm).  Other Upper Planes have had…inventive solutions to the problem.  Bytopia regularly hires Yugoloth armies to handle them, with the hope that both sides destroy each other.  This is a pretty good solution but it means that random adventurers wandering through Bytopia always have to be on guard against a random force of Yugoloths or Tryanids running around.  Arcadia employs Armies of Fairies to keep the hoards at bay, while the Blessed Islands have taken to letting Demonic/Devil incursions unto their territory with the hope of destroying these enemies and each other.  Elysium have taken to creating massive “trap Portals” to teleport the entire Hive Fleet to a different plane, ideally Abbabon (Screw you Devils). Aborea just randomly eats them, and Heaven’s massive oceans normally handle things (though small bands can still be found in the Upper Planes. All of the Upper Planes occasionally employ adventurers to clear out bands that they can’t be bothered with, due to their constantly understaffed fight against evil taking up most of their priorities.  The Lower Planes meanwhile normally just let them eat until they can divert the forces, and then wipe them out in a massive battle that makes any other battle short of the Blood War itself seem like nothing in contrast.  Finally the Tyranids have thoroughly invaded the Realms of both the Jinn and the Elementals, who are fighting massive wars with these fuckers, often unheard of as mortals cannot easily gain access to these planes.  

      As their numbers are absolutely overwhelming, they can keep going for a long time, though even they are somewhat over stretched at the moment.  The Tyranids have only been defeated fully once when they ran right into a Darkspawn hoard, thought that is more of a tie than anything else.  The Darkspawn were eventually wiped out, but due to the Blights unique properties, the Tryanids found that they could use the Darkspawn as a form of reproduction and instead had to retreat empty handed.  It is likely that their invasion of the Blood Rift is going to end equally badly, as impressive as the Hive Fleets are, against the endless conflict of the Blood War they are simply being destroyed.  In fact, their own plane has been counter invaded by armies of Demons and Devils, both of whom were trying to wipe out the Tryanids but have instead become trapped into a fighting each other.  The Tryanids are playing with fire however, as should both sides see them as a true threat, they might unite against them and…well ask the Angels how well that went.  

     The Plane itself is rather simple, the Surface is a massive three way battlefield while the underground is the massive nests of the Tyranids as they work hard to breed more of themselves.  Three Armies (Angels, Demons, Devils) counter attacked the Tyranid forces at the same time and managed to successfully drive them from the surface of their own infinite plane, only to find themselves in conflict with each other.  The Plane is now a major battle for the Blood War, with the Angels pinned down in the middle protecting the Portal to the Radiant Throne, all the while trying to hold off the forces of the Demons and Devils while pitting the two sides against each other. Every so often all three sides will launch attacks on the Swarm, but they inevitably fall to infighting before they can maximize that effect.  The Swarm for their part finds the endless war annoying, but mostly ignore it, when a new Hive Fleet Emerges, it breaks out of the ground dramatically scattering all the combatants while it departs for a new home.