Abalach-Re, who seems beautiful from a distance, but whose body-horror mutations become obvious when you get closer.

The Lore

Abalach-Re is a Sorcerer-Queen who rules the city of Raam as its Grand Vizier, a title she chose because she claims to rule on behalf of a (fictional) deity named Badna. Outwardly, she seems like a lazy, decadent and debauched ruler, who lets her nobles make war on each other while her police forces oppress a starving population and numerous rebellions grow right under her nose.

In reality, she’s a lot more aware of what goes on in her domain. It’s just that she enjoys the cruelty on display, and likes to see those nascent rebellions crushed. She is decadent and debauched, but even that is a fruit of her explorations on the limits of her own physical form. This research has granted her prodigious body manipulation abilities, which she teaches to her closest agents and favored children.

Abalach-Re keeps a close eye on her peers and was the one who alerted them when Dregoth got a bit too uppity. She makes sure to keep her own self-modification experiments a secret from the other sorcerer-kings, as these are her chosen path to ascension as a god-like being.

Raam’s day-to-day administration is in the hands of several noble houses, each of which controls a different district. They’re more like organized crime syndicates than anything else, constantly at each other’s throats and united only in their desire to exploit the people under their charge. They’re aided in this by the city’s police force. Its officers, the Mansabdars, theoretically answer directly to the Queen, but in practice are all in the pockets of whatever noble house oversees their beat, and are no more than brutal thugs.

Abalach-Re lets them all do it because, as stated above, she likes the cruelty. Instead of reining it in, she created an elite secret police force, the High Kuotaghas, who actually enforce her will in the city and act to smack down any noble who gets a little too confident. Kuotaghas often receive their queen’s “gifts” and as such have access to some body horror powers.

Most of the Queen’s children are part of her court or members of the Kuotaghas, but some have turned against her. She lets them, because all of ther children have unknowingly been implanted with magical locator beacons. Even the rebellious ones are useful tools to detect other rebels.

The Numbers

We get three entries here and as usual I’m going to talk about them in order of ascending level.

Street Mansabdar

A typical member of the force that should be enforcing the city’s laws but is instead enforcing the will of some local warlord in exchange for fat bribes. It’s a Level 7 Soldier with 76 HP and a speed of 6. Clad in hide armor, it’s armed with a mace and a scourge.

The Mace is our basic attack, which damages and marks on a hit. If a marked target ignores the mark, the mansabdar can use its scourge against them as an interrupt. It does the same damage as the mace, and knocks prone on a hit.

Then the mansabdar can use Beat Down against the prone target, which deals the same damage as a basic mace strike and slows for a turn. If the target stands up before the end of its next turn, it also takes ongoing 5 damage (save ends).

High Kuotagha

A trusted agent of Abalach-Re, member of the group actually responsible for enforcing her will in the city. While still tagged as a human in its stat block, this kuotagha was extensively mutated by his boss, which I’m sure will be a nice surprise to the PCs. It’s a level 21 Lurker with 150 HP, a ground speed of 7, and a Spider Climb speed of 6. It also has low-light vision.

The kuotagha fights with Claws, which target Reflex instead of AC, meaning they’re the “shreds armor like paper” kind. It can also extrude a Flesh Garrote that does the same damage and grabs on a hit. This grab inflicts a -4 penalty to escape attempts, and there is no limit to the number of victims the kuotagha can grab in this way. I’ll let you imagine how that works. All grabs can be sustained at once with a single standard action, which also does some automatic damage to the victim.

All other traits here depend on the kuotagha having one or more grabbed victims. The creature agent of the law can inflict criticals on its grabbed victims on a 18-20 (which is very generous in 4e), has a +4 to all defenses while it has a grabbed victim, and when someone attacks it while it’s grabbing someone it can shift 1 square and slide any grabbed victims 1 square to a square adjacent to it as in interrupt. This will only happen once per round, but it’s gonna be so annyoing.

And this is a regular monster, meaning you could potentiall fight a whole team of them at once.

Abalach-Re, Sorcerer-Queen

Abalach-Re is a Level 23 Solo Controller with the Leader tag and 856 HP. Like her henchthing above, she’s technically human, but “technically” is doing even more heavy lifting in her case. As mentioned above, she’s seeking a custom path to immorality that involves lot of self-bioengineering, and the fruits of this are evident in this stat block.

Abalach-Re has low-light vision, a ground speed of 8, and a flight speed of 5 with hover and an altitude limit of 2. The Spirit Flight trait gives her insubstantial and phasing while she moves.

Two of her three basic attacks can be either melee 1 or ranged 10: Telekinetic Thrust targets Fortitude, deals physical damage, slides 5 squares and immobilizes (save ends); Instinct Overload targets Will, deals psychic damage and lets Abalach-Re dictate the next move or standard action the target will take on their turn, though she cannot force a victim to use a power.

The third basic attack is Disrupting Touch, which targets Reflex and can be either Melee 3 or Ranged 10. On a hit it deals physical damage and ongoing 10 force damage (save ends). Unlike the others, which are obviously psychic powers, I think this one might be a touch spell where she stretches her arms really far.

Anyway, Morphing Power Splice lets Abalach-Re make three attacks with one action without provoking opportunity attacks, so she could use any combination of the above on the same turn.

She can also lay down a Defiling Field, creating a zone in a Close Burst 3 that lasts until the end of the encounter. Any enemy that takes damage within the zone also takes ongoing 15 necrotic damage (save ends). Thankfully this is an encounter power, but it recharges when she’s first bloodied.

Her movement power is Allocation, which lets her teleport 10 squares and then slide any enemy adjacent to her at the arrival point 5 squares. This also recharges when she’s first bloodied.

In addition to all of the above, when Abalach-Re is hit with any attack she can use Vengeance of Adaptive Flesh as a reaction. This is a Ranged 10 attack that targets Will, and deals 15 ongoing damage of the same type she just took (save ends). Like all of her other ranged attacks, this doesn’t provoke opportunity attacks.

It looks to me like she wants to stay mostly away from the PCs, using her powers to slide them into the defiling field so she can further damage them with more attacks and ongoing damage.

Encounters and Final Impressions

This is a pretty strong opening for this section, and a brief look tells me Abalach-Re is likely the weakest of the Sorcerer Kings. She doesn’t seem to have any particular resistance against being stunlocked by PC powers, so even though she’s a solo you might want to add some high kuotagha bodyguards to her fight.