4.5 out of 5 stars

Today’s article is part of the Dmonomicon of Iggwilv and details a relatively new demon in the D&D universe: Turaglas.  A manifestation of the chaos of the Abyss and its desire to consume the world, Turaglas has no fixed form and was not originally a primordial, unlike other demons.  He’s also of a power at least equal to the greatest demon princes (if not more powerful), but is kept in check by uneasy alliances between the different factions (of particular interest is the fact that Demogorgon and Orcus actually allied against Turaglas to seal his section of the abyss off) and his own chaotic nature.

In addition to a description of Turaglas himself, we also get his aspect, his exarch, and a race he spawned for monsters.  For more mortal foes, there are descriptions of some of his cultists (amazingly enough some people do worship a demon who would as soon eat them as their enemies).  There’s also a description of a new kind of magic item, of which 13 examples have special properties (no stat block, but details in the text).  Finally there’s a description of Sholo-Tovoth, the region of the abyss that Turaglas controls as it was known before it was sealed off.  While it is likely to have that form again should it ever be unsealed, the nature of Turaglas also suggests that features once familiar may have changed beyond recognition even while the dangers remain the same.

Mechanically, the most interesting thing in the article is the way that Turaglas changes size during the course of battle.  A gargantuan creature, Turaglas is 5x5 squares at his smallest.  This would have put him in the collosal category in 3.5, but since that category was done away with in 4e, he’s in the same category as smaller creatures.  On top of that, Turaglas can expand to be as big as the combat or story needs, potentially being 10x10 or even bigger.  As a result, running a combat with Turaglas presents an interesting challenge to the DM as no single mini can represent the gaping maw.

Overall the article is fairly good.  There’s one spot where a page reference is missing, replaced by “??.” As some one who uses LaTeX on a regular basis, I know that this is something that WotC could easily fix if they used the right program to prepare these articles and thus is especially frustrating to keep seeing.  Other than that, I can only complain about the column and a third of white space on the last page.