[PF] Help me Disguise my Marilith!

[Brauron]

This weekend, I begin running a Pathfinder Campaign, set in a homebrew world with the D&D deities (fewer new names for me to remember).

The main villain is going to be a Marilith with the skills tweaked slightly, making her a slightly better manipulator, without sacrificing too much combat ability. She's been imprisoned for quite some time, having been beaten in combat (though not killed) and dunked in molten cold iron by a powerful cleric of Heironymous in semi-legendary times. This "Iron Maiden" was then hidden away.

As the campaign begins, the Maiden's hiding place has been located by the small cult of followers on the Material Plane who've remained faithful to her through the centuries, the cult passing secretively from father to son (a throwback to my years of experience GMing Call of Cthulhu).

Once freed, the Marilith sets about enacting her master plan -- she was enamored with Erythnul prior to her imprisonment, and has conceived a plan to convince the God of Slaughter to take her as his blood-thirsty lover. To do this, she's going to draw every kingdom in the world into total war against one another.

Her first step is to convince a theocratic, totalitarian Dwarf nation in the deserts of the southeast to wage war against their neighbors. Not extremely difficult, but she wants to ensure the Dwarves do as she says. Since the Dwarves of this kingdom worship Hextor, she intends to carefully present herself as Hextor's emissary -- without actually strictly saying so. Basically she's going to approach the palace, let the guards see she has six arms and six longswords, and say, "Would you deny Hextor's messenger?"

The tricky part is disguising the tail. My immediate thought is a magic item of Disguise Self; though if I'm reading the spell descriptor properly, where it says "You cannot change your creature type (although you can appear as another subtype)" means that might not work. I'm wondering if Polymorph might be a better option?

Any thoughts?

[ImperatorK]

She's a powerful fiend. An item of Polymorph should be good. Or Fiend of Corruption prc.

[Lord Ruby34]

Mundane disguises check. Look at the disguise rules and tell me something with that many hit dice couldn't manage it. In a current game I'm playing my character managed to disguise his entire party, a group of Illithids, as bearded humans.

More plausably, you could always just use illusions to disguise the tail. Or yeah an item of polymorph.

[ffone]

Agreed with last poster; mundane Disguise should work, and in some ways is better than spells (which will ping under Detect Magic, and the caster may even recognize the aura as illusion if they have good Spellcraft.) Use the 'disguised as other race' modifier under Disguise for disguising her tail as, like, legs under a skirt.

[subject42]

Agreed with last poster; mundane Disguise should work, and in some ways is better than spells (which will ping under Detect Magic, and the caster may even recognize the aura as illusion if they have good Spellcraft.) Use the 'disguised as other race' modifier under Disguise for disguising her tail as, like, legs under a skirt.

One thing I like to do is stack the effects. Use a disguise to look like a very unattractive woman, then alter self to look like a very beautiful woman, then use disguise self to look like a different beautiful woman.

Most players tend to get into a "spells are everything" mindset, so they won't look past the mundane disguise.