A while back, we talked about the Mezzoloths – mercenaries of the Lower Planes who will happily fight for whomever pays them properly.

The Nycaloth is another level up in the chain of Abyssal command, and where the Mezzoloths go out to fight and kill, the Nycaloths are more strategic in their approach. They’re smarter, larger, and tougher, and tend to be more loyal to those whom they serve (or at least as far as loyalty will take you in the Abyss).

So what sets these two flavors of Yugoloths apart from each other? Perhaps the best way to think of it is this: The Mezzoloths are your hired mercs. They’ll do what they’re paid to do, and what they’re paid to do is mainly kill the things they’ve been pointed at.

The Nycaloth, on the other hand, is more of a professional. It’s not just paid to kill things – though it certainly won’t complain about that – but to carry out longer-term strategic goals for the entity that’s hired it, and as long as the pay keeps coming and the boss treats them well, they’re happy to keep making the lives of their enemies miserable.

What this means for your table is this: while there could be any number of Mezzoloths in the campaign, they’re all pretty much interchangeable. The Nycoloth, on the other hand, should feel like an NPC. It has clients to serve and a reputation to uphold, and is far more interested in getting the job done right than in bathing the fields of their chosen battlefield in blood.

The Nycaloth, in a sense, is providing a service. A very terrible service to the entity that pays it. And that is a specific and, unfortunately, modern type of evil to introduce to your game.

Many of the villains in D&D are driven by some kind of personal or ideological motivation. They want revenge for a wrong done to them, or to remake the world in the way they think it should be. They seek power or respect or to see those who opposed them brought down, and those kinds of motivations are understandable. They come from our passions, and probably from passions that we all share.

I like to imagine the Nycaloths as fairly dispassionate creatures. They don’t get any particular joy from what they do. It’s a job, pure and simple, and it’s a job that they’re very good at.

When your Party encounters your Nycaloth, you could upend your Players’ expectations by making it not some great battle against forces that despise each other. The Nycaloth could simply look at them and say, “Well, this is why we budgeted for Adventurers.” And send the Mezzoloths at them while they fly away to attend to a more important part of their mission.

And then again, perhaps in one of the fringe battles of a fracture between the Material Plane and the Abyss. The Nycaloth looks at them and says, “Hey. Didn’t I try to kill you before?” And then sends more of their flunkies to take your Party down.

Eventually, your Party will become enough of a problem that the Nycaloth finally has to deal with your Party personally. Not because they dislike them or even care about your Party’s goals, but because they’re making the Nycaloth look bad. The whole combat encounter could basically start with, “I really don’t care about you one way or the other, but I have a reputation to maintain.”

And then the fight starts. In addition to being strong and fast and flying, the Nycaloth has a couple of interesting tricks up its sleeve in a fight. One is the Mercurial Axe, a blade that constantly changes its appearance and does force damage on top of slashing. The other trick is its Shadowy Teleport, in which – as a bonus action – the Nycaloth can turn invisible and teleport 30 feet away. What this means at the table is that it can set its goons on your Party and then vanish for a while. Then it sets itself up for an attack when the minute is almost up – attacking drops invisibility, two slashes of the axe, and then POOF. It’s gone again.

Your Players are gonna hate that.

But that’s in keeping with the overall role of the Nycaloth. They’re too important to throw away in a simple fight against some Adventurers, and if things stop going their way, it’s best to just turn invisible, lean on that Dash Action, and fly away at 120 per round. By the time their minute is up, they’re 1200 feet away and effectively no longer an immediate concern to your Players.

But – and this is important – they’ve marked your Players as a Problem.

And if there is one thing a Nycaloth is made for, it’s solving problems. Their reputation as a Professional requires it, after all.

The next time this Nycaloth encounters your enemy, it will be better prepared. It won’t just bring a bunch of Mezzoloths, but perhaps other Yugoloth foot soldiers of the Abyss as well – Dhergoloths and Yagnoloths and other horrible things. The Nycaloth will have seen your Players’ capabilities and planned against them accordingly.

If your Party is very good at fighting what the Nycaloth throws at them, then they may find themselves in the unenviable position of being at the center of this terrible being’s attention, and next thing you know, the Abyssal Incursion has a very specific secondary objective: destroy these meddling Adventurers before the Nycaloth’s boss finds out what a problem they’ve been.

Throughout this whole rivalry, it’s important that it remain professional. The Nycaloth doesn’t hate your Players any more than they hate the people their minions are destroying. It’s not about hate. It’s about getting the job done.

Honestly, that’s the most unsettling thing about the Nycaloth. It doesn’t operate out of rage or ideology or even malice. Just pure professionalism. Competence in the service of something terrible that it has no problem with.

Your Players will be battling more than just a monster. They’ll be battling a business decision.