False Prophets (A Monster for King of Kings)

Onkelos then went and raised Jesus the Nazarene from the grave through necromancy... Onkelos said to him: What is the punishment of that man, a euphemism for Jesus himself, in the next world? Jesus said to him: He is punished with boiling excrement. As the Master said: Anyone who mocks the words of the Sages will be sentenced to boiling excrement. And this was his sin, as he mocked the words of the Sages.

-Gittin 57a, Bavli Talmud

In Gehenna there are certain places and grades called "Boiling Filth" [Tzoah Rotachat], where the filth of the souls that have been polluted by the filth of this world accumulates... There are certain sinners who pollute themselves over and over again by their own sins and are never purified. They die without repentance, having sinned themselves and caused others to sin, being stiff-necked and never showing contrition before the Lord while in this world; these are they who are condemned to remain for ever in this "boiling filth" and never leave it. Those who have corrupted their ways upon earth and recked not of the honour of their Lord in this world are condemned to remain there for all generations.

 -Terumah 41, Zohar

I can't find any artistic depictions of Tzoah Rotachat, but this painting of a Buddhist hell (Naraka) gets the boiling across pretty well.

False Prophet

Number encountered: 1

Hit Dice: 3+1

Attacks: 1 inveighing OR 1 exhortation OR 1 spell

Armor: as leather

Morale: 8

Daeva-summoned: Deceitful daevas summon false prophets as thralls to do their bidding.
Followers: False prophets are accompanied by 2d4 sycophantic followers, most often 1 HD undead sinners.

Foul Stench: Those engaged in melee or grappling with a false prophet have disadvantage on rolls due to the foul stench, unless they block their sense of smell in some way.

Inveigh: False prophets have the deceitful power to inveigh against some immorality and insidiously bind others against it. When inveighing, the false prophet declares some specific action (i.e. slashing with a sword, casting a healing spell, jumping, etc.) to be anathema, stopping completely any attempt to perform the specific action. Only one action can be inveighed against at a given time; when the false prophet inveighs against something else, it overrides the earlier inveighing. Spells such as remove curse or dispel evil will counteract an inveighing. 

Exhort: False prophets can exhort their followers to their greater mission. An exhortation gives the false prophet's followers advantage on morale checks and can (if declared after an inveighing) carve out an exception in an inveighing for the false prophet's followers and allies. 

Spells: Instead of an inveighing or motivation, a false prophet can choose to cast a spell. False prophets know spells such as darkness, cause fear, cause light wounds, insect plague, although the specific spell list will vary.

 

On the underside of the world, pools of boiling filth and waste hold the writhing bodies of false prophets, the most deceitful of men and women, those who inveighed against Truth and led others toward Deceit. Truth places them there, keeping them as far as possible from the light of the sun, in the company of chaos-loving daevas and other underside-dwellers. After centuries of upside-down boiling torment, false prophets have become accustomed to the pain, although the comparative euphoria of simply not being immersed in their fetid pits even for just a moment is something they can never pass up. These priests of treachery, boiling away on the bottom of the world, are sometimes dragged out to their delight by daevas and sorcerers to use their unwholesome influence, answer forbidden questions, or simply do dirty work perfect for their already soiled hands.

 

Since false prophets (of the long-dead sort) are only ever on the surface world at the behest of terrible powers, they are never encountered alone. Gibbering sycophants crowd around them and hold them aloft, ignorant of the slimy filth dripping off their bodies. Uncanny daevas, walking upside-down on ceilings and causing disease, give them orders (some even holding an excrement-encrusted false prophet on a bejeweled leash), while pale eyeless things adapted to the deep depths between the underside of the world and the surface crawl along with the entourage, caught up in the movement of it all. Sea Tyrants and their servants, unfortunate bedfellows of the daevas, look down on false prophets as failed upstarts, barely tolerated presences kept only so long as they are useful.

 

a Not false prophet: Horace Vernet's Jeremiah on the Ruins of Jerusalem (I just really liked this painting and wanted to put it somewhere)

10 of the Most Perfidious False Prophets

• Abonoteichos the Wrong: Condemned for passing himself off as an oracle, mocking divination with the writhing of serpents and his made-up god Glukos, cannibal snake-god of bread.
• Shekh el-Mal of the First City: Frogling prophet condemned for attempting to make a god out of money.
• Yusuf bar Kham: Condemned for leading ten thousand of his own followers to leap from Mount Garza to their deaths when his rebellion failed.
• Myops the Annoyance: Condemned for leading the children of his city-state astray, causing the collapse of the city walls.
• Amamba Rhos: Mythic ancestor of the Gnostic Elves, declared retroactively condemned by the priesthood for the sins of her descendants (the Elves, of course, dispute this).
• Ugarza the Betrayer: Frogling prophet infamous for seizing control of an ancient city and casting down the stone stelae of the law codes, shattering them upon the ground.
• Sajah bint Haytham: Condemned for demanding that Truth in the sky pay taxes to her and her desert kingdom.
• Fravarti of Guoxes: Condemned for whipping up the people into a frenzy against a Truthful prophet, who was hanged from an elm tree.
• Babak Nokh the Perverse: Condemned for establishing an impure commune that advocated sex with crocodiles and the eating of cats.
• Khura the Star-Eraser: Condemned for roping his followers into a scheme to climb into the sky and erase certain stars he felt were distasteful.