Shabaloth

Identity: Shabaloth
Alignment: Evil
Category: Demon
Ability: Each night (except for the first), choose 2 players: they die. A dead player you chose last night might be regurgitated.

Explanation: Unlike most Demons, the Shabaloth attacks twice per night (except for the first night). The night after the attack, the Storyteller may decide that one of the players attacked by the Shabaloth comes back to life. The resurrected player does not know how they got resurrected.

Tips for playing as the Shabaloth:

Kill aggressively, and don’t give good team a chance to catch their breath. You are not the most… nuanced of Demons, but to be fair, nobody has ever pretended you are. Smash your way through the town like Godzilla on a good day, gobbling up any character claims who can’t block you. The Chambermaid can’t detect your bluff is phony if you’ve eaten them. With some clever picks and an ear to the ground about which players are protected at night, you can end this game in half the time of any other Demon.

Alternatively, you may want to play a more low-key game. You might be a hideous, ever-hungry monster, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t capable of a little strategy. Deliberately choosing to hide your second kill (by attacking an already dead player) can create some confusion about which Demon is in play – the good team will always be paranoid about which Demon is in play if they can’t confirm it with any certainty, since relaxing for a moment is exactly when the Po can abruptly strike. This can be helpful for you since the strategies to handle the other Demons are very different to the strategies for dealing with you, and the poor good team will be caught flat-footed once you reveal yourself! It can also help you avoid the debilitating drunkenness of a Courtier (who will be on the lookout for any reliable tell of what Demon is in play)… until you can find them and eat them, anyway.

Did the mean old town execute your Minion? Just for the crime of worshiping an ever-hungry Demon who wants to devour them all? How cruel! How unfair! Luckily for them, you are a unique Demon among your brethren, as your saliva has healing properties. Eat up your Minion’s corpse at night to try and get them brought back to life. You will be subject to the whims of the storyteller… but maybe they’ll take pity on you and give you back your beloved Minion, especially if the evil team is struggling. This has the added bonus of making your Minion look really good, since typically you only regurgitate good players.

Sometimes your acid re-flux will get the better of you (or the storyteller will decide you’re doing too well), and you’ll vomit up a good player, restoring them to life unexpectedly. This can cause a number of issues for you – for one, unless you whip out an incredibly convincing Professor bluff, this will confirm that you are in play, which may be a problem depending on your strategy. More pressing is the fact that the reborn player will most likely be considered good, and other players will trust and believe them without much issue. The best way to counter this is pretty much just to kill them again immediately, preferably before they get a chance to use their ability to learn any new information about anything.

Tips for fighting the Shabaloth: The Shabaloth tends to be an obvious Demon. When they kill twice per night, you can learn fairly quickly which Demon is in play. However, since the Demon kills twice as much as a normal Demon, the game gets to the final day fairly quickly. Once you have figured out that the Shabaloth is in play, turn your attention to figuring out which player it is. Characters like the Courtier, Exorcist, and Chambermaid can help you do this directly, which may be more effective a method than the usual strategy of figuring out who is evil by figuring out who is good – via such characters as the Fool, Tea Lady, Pacifist, and Gambler.