I had to do a lot of Demons in my Solasta run, as well as various flavours of Sorak. While Soraks aren’t a widely applicable monster class, they work great as any kind of menacing lizardman. And Demons are pretty Iconic in high level D&D. So here’s a rundown on how tended to render both..
Soraks
Soraks are the “big bad” in Solasta, consisting of an evil, shape-shifting lizardman race with a wide variety of specialized subspecies. Generally the baseline for all of them starts with this:
From there, we modify into various subspecies like
Assassins:
Warriors:
Acolytes
Shikkath Anti-Paladins
Abominations
Sorr-Tarr
Demons
Vrock
The biggest irritation with Vrock is the AIs tendency to make them more like Vultures than Vulture men. So you have to watch the order of the initial descriptors and emphasize the arms.
In action sequences, you sometimes want to portray them with their signature “stunning screech” as well.
Hezrou
Hezrou want to look “toad-like” without looking *too* toad like. The use of “balrog” here encourages “demonic but no wings”.
Glabrezu
Glabrezu are a pain in the butt. The are such a bizarre mongrel mix of things – canine head, large pincers, a second set of arms nothing like the first…. Its just a nasty combination for rendering.
“dark fantasy painting;dark fantasy painting;(gigantic anthropomorphic wolf-crab-demon,huge claws) looms out of the darkness;(gigantic wolf-crab-demon,dark red,bestial,glowing eyes);in blizzard”
“dark fantasy painting;(hulking jackal-demon,huge,horns,huge pincers,black wispy aura);large dark cavern“
“clyde caldwell painting;(hulking jackal-demon,huge,horns,huge lobster pincers,black wispy aura) looms out of darkness;dark cavern“
“blurry,smeared;thick swirling darkness;grayscale fantasy painting;(huge hulking beast-demon,horns,glowing eyes,huge lobster pincers on muscular arms) looms out of the darkness“
Succubus
Succubi, on the other hand, are quite easy. Just don’t *call* them “succubus” in the render tags, or you’ll get a 90% rejection rate from the filters. And expect a high rejection rate even without that. Other things in the scene – like adventurers interacting with her – can significantly ease the rejection rate.
Marilith
Marilith are another demon type that can be painful – simply because the AI is bad at counting – especially with things like 6 arms and 6 swords. I mostly get mine by rendering first and then using the OpenAI Editor to remove extra arms,extra tails, remove/redraw any swords that come out whacky, etc when I really care.
“jeff easley fantasy painting;large naga woman,six arms each holding swords;in old dark dwarven antechamber,green snake body,armor”
Here are some before/after shots showing the editor at work – move the slider to see the changes:
Sessroth
Sessroth was the demonic “big-bad” of my Solasta run. And he’s a good fit for a “demon-prince” sort of render. He’s also a good excuse to show off going nuts with the special effects:
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