What are demons in your setting, Veeky Forums? what are their origins?

>What are demons in your setting
Christian priests

>what are their origins?
England

While most religions drawn a sharp distinction between the good angels and the evil demons, the truth is uncomfortable and not widely known.

They are exactly the same thing. The gods have divine servants that perform all sorts of divine chores. Sometimes humans are effected by these tasks in a positive way, which they attribute to angels and having been blessed by the gods while at other times humans are negatively impacted by these tasks. The work of evil demons, obviously.

The Gods rarely give a shit about any specific individuals, instead caring for entire groups of people and making plans that take centuries to see completed. As such, their servants sometimes do nonsensical things or kill people faithful to the gods. It's all part of the plan.

Demons are the souls of those unwanted by their gods, who were cast aside in the abyss.

The world was created by a primoridial goddess, her children being the first gods. One of them spurred an uprising against her, inspiring cruelty and betrayal in his siblings, killing their mother before they went their separate, selfish ways.

When a powerful mortal claimed godhood and began waging his war against the fickle gods of the heavens, the Betrayer lived up to his name once more, abandoning his siblings and secreting himself deep beneath the earth to plot and plan.

He made immortal servants out of his divine energy, living constructs of the magic that made up his very soul. He plotted to slowly build an army to re-take the surface.

However, in the end, the Betrayer was betrayed, his treacherous heart corrupting his minions who chained and bound him deep within the fiery depths of the earth. To this day they conspire against eachother, siphoning magic from their evil diety to keep themselves alive, while raiding the surface for souls and life energy to expand their ranks and vie for power.

Most demons that people see though are harmless imps. Not even capable of flight, given the smallest fraction of power just to sustain them so that they wouldn't be able to rise up against the higher ranking demon lords. They are prone to infighting, but also cunning, making them a meaningful threat against many towns and villages in sufficient numbers.

They're the oldest beings in the universe. Older than angels, mortals, gods and so forth.
They are mostly incorporeal but can incarnate in the physical planes, usually as "devils" or sentient cursed objects. They can also possess people and objects in the physical planes.

Demon society is divided into many, many cliques and guilds based on common nature or agenda. For example, the Barons of Turn-Away are demons who focus on tempting mortals towards evil/chaos, the Masters of the Outer Ceremonies focus on creating prophecies and the Soulbound Guild focus on creating cursed objects for mortals to use.
I guess their society can be described as some kind of anarcho-corporatist thing with malevolence and moral degeneracy as their currency.

A demon can be purified and become a spirit, aeon or mortal soul. The demon usually must incarnate themselves before they can be purified.

>What are demons in your setting, Veeky Forums? what are their origins?

During the Big Bang, when God exploded/killed themselves in order to create everything (Mind, Body, and Soul), their soul split and divided itself into Chaos and Order.
'True' Gods and Angels evolved out of Order (yes, even evil ones) and Demons and Devils evolved out of Chaos (yes, even good ones).

Demons are Chaotic & Impulsive, but generally speaking they build themselves or specialize themselves around a specific sin that keeps them alive: Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Wrath, Envy, and or Pride- Exceptionally powerful Demons, though, tend to embody or lean towards a more generalized/multifaceted interpretation of sin and chaos, old God rules, etc.
From a cosmological or maybe biological point of view, Demonic taint spreads like mold; wafting through the ethereal bonds that connect planets housing life with other planets so they can find them, germinate, grow, and spread- creating webs that join multiple worlds, but at the same time mucking them up with corruption n' chaos. Demons won't really get out of hand unless they find a world with sapient life, otherwise Demons won't develop past very basic, "floating organs & disturbed animals".

While it might seem surprising: Demons do in fact possess free-will (unlike their Angelic counterparts). Demons are capable of making their own moral and ethical decisions and while they may be impulsive or driven by SIN, they are fully capable of doing both GOOD and EVIL.

Pic related.
Older doodle not necessarily reflective of my current work, but still true in fluff.

When a creature dies and it's soul manages to miss being reborn into something (happens a lot if some other soul jumps the cue and takes another's spot), the soul drifts around until it merges with some emotional concept or another. If that concept is a vice, they become demons.
Once they become like this, they try to get creatures to embrace the same vice they embody because it allows them to feed. Most have no interest in killing mortals because they can't really feed on that, but a few more powerful ones like to dabble in holding souls ransom from reality in order to extract power. This tends to get the god of death pissed at them though because it fucks up his paperwork.

They're "inmortal" races. Some are classic evil, some are just as any other race. I like my setting grey.

>They constitute "The Beyond"
>Basically everything beyond the edge of reality is demons
>They have thoughts but no bodies but can interact with individuals in reality with some difficulty
>When they enter reality they acquire physical form and can shape shift themselves to appear any form they want (but can't increase/decrease in mass)
>Because of this they are naturally hermaphrodites, and can breed with any living being
>They exist in two broad categories, "The Many" and "The Few"
>There are an infinite number of The Many, they have very little personality and robotically follow the will of The Few, they are all pretty much identical.
>The Few are the greatest threat to the universe, there are a finite number of them but they still exist in great numbers and when one dies it tends to come back eventually.
>There is a really long sliding bar of power when it comes to The Few, the weakest is no more powerful then what one could expect from your average man, the strongest is in the competition for most powerful thing in the setting.
>They have a natural hatred of everything that exists, perhaps it is because they don't exist in a conventional sense.
>Every now and then one of the many worlds will get invaded by demons, usually due to the inhabitants underestimating how dangerous demons really are.
>The main world of the setting called "Earth", got invaded once and the entire world was ruled by them for thousands of years, only when the Angels, a race of bird people from a near by world called "Heaven", came could they be defeated
>The angels had discovered a technology that could create rays of light that burnt demons to ash without hurting anything else after they had been invaded once themselves.
>Even when a full scale invasion isn't underway most worlds have their fair share of demons running around causing trouble as they see fit, usually weaker individuals of The Few working on their own or leading small bands of The Many.

>blue
>PHAT
>wide childbearing hips

>If anyone wishes to learn, this is all there is to know about the origin of the Nefilim: before almost everything, rebellion and conflict resulted in loss and disaster. Many of the resulting horrors were beings conceived in chaotic and corrupted ways. An accident made a place where to lock them, a prison for all that excess of wrong flesh. Once caged, were forgotten by reasons more immediate, greater and more dangerous. This place had no earth, water, fire or even air, just creatures and jailors.

>Hunger was inevitable, the only thing in common for all inside. At a moment worng in many ways, certain monsters eliminated the barriers between reproduction and canibalism, eating each other and defecating stronger spawn. The next generation, will to live and to eat combined, exponentiating their hunger beyond the others. Thirty generations later, the competition had been eliminated. Even so, they were fated to extinction, but the history of Creation is made of failed plans. When Genesis unlocked the door from outside, he freed something that couldn't distinguish between famine and gluttony.
>Arms exchanged for secrets: dialogues with the Baba Yaga triplets.

Demons and devils are githyanki and githzerai, respectively. They are fallen angels who have fled to the various intermediary planes, and they cannot manifest on the Prime Material without intervention from a mortal agent.

Demons are aliens from another dimension who invaded the dreamland of the mortal world and enslaved the gods with their unnatural power. They prey on humanity, but mortals stealing their secrets has allowed people to wield magic, and if enough humans open up enough cans of ass-whooping, the demons can one-day be defeated.

edgy

>Demons are malign entities - shapeless things that have no further aspirations than to torment mortals. In some ways, they are just as much concepts as they are real, albeit incorporeal beings. Since the dawn of civilization, there have been mentionings of these creatures, and invariably, the depiction remains the same.

>Demons are driven only to torment mortals, and the means by which this is achieved varies with the whims of the demon in question. However, demons are without form, and cannot affect the physical world, no matter their power. Thus, a demon seeks out a host - a mortal through which they can affect change. They prey on the weak willed, the halfwits and the grieving, though there are some who invite them willingly. Why one would do such a thing defies reason, as a demon never honors its end of a pact.

>Once possession is complete, it is nigh impossible for others to know, unless one was familiar enough with the host to notice the change in behavior. However, demons have seemingly no drive to maintain the bodies of those they possess. Injuries and hunger and sickness go unnoticed by the demon, and all too often, the body they inhabit falls apart. This, perhaps more than all others, is the reason that one never recovers from possession.

Mine are something similar. In my setting there is a very weak connection between the physical world and the outside extraplanar world, which is essentially like a swirling chaotic geigerverse. Anything that isn't from the mortal coil or deigned holy explicitly by a deity or religion is generally just called a "demon" or "Outer Demon" because the outside plane is generally just known as "hell".

When the dragon of chaos tiamat and the dragon of order bahamut (I just used the names of the established dragon gods, because why not) fucked to create the world, many of their scales were shed from their bodies rubbing together. Scales from the chaos goddess became demons, and scales from the god of order became angels. Over time, the two dragons became hostile towards each other and long story short, they were eventually both killed by the humanoid gods. The angels became the devils and came to reside in the level of the underworld right above the layer the demons live in, acting as a buffer of sorts.

Basically in my setting, the forces of pure order and chaos are both assholes, because they're both absolute extremes. The god of order wanted to wipe out intelligent life because it had the ability to cause disorder, and the goddess of chaos wanted nothing to have structure or certainty at all. The archangel turned archdevil turned on his god because he didn't want everything to be wiped out (although he still wants to abolish free will).

The cosmic entities that be are unambitious by nature and bored in their limitless states of higher consciousness, and demons are one of the things they've created to facilitate their entertainment. Demons are jailers and interrogators that arrive from beyond to obtain information from mortals through whatever creative means they choose and then relay it back to their masters.

Demons aren't picky and will abduct anyone from a soldier with critical intelligence to a shy girl with a diary full of dirty fantasies - anything that allows their creators to spin imaginary narratives and create momentary distractions. The most powerful of these demons imprison their charges in floating citadels and only release them once their masters lose interest, and some will go so far as to release their wards after the initial interrogation so that they can continue their lives and gain new experiences, only to return demanding new information and details, stalking them for decades.

One notable tale centers around a demon that tracked an entire family line for stories and information, creating a narrative collage of perspectives that entertained her masters for almost two centuries.

Demons in my setting are a race that vastly precedes the current, relatively mundane era. They are wholly natural but seem supernatural in comparison to modern mortals. They come in many forms and have very unusual mindsets compared to the average person. Many are quite upset with their lot in life and spread misery and terror more as a byproduct of their nature than intended malice.

My demons are ideas given life by a corrupting influence of a mad god's blood on the crystal mind of the world. Lesser demons were bred from the greater demons intermingling.

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Conglomerations of the physical manifestation of sin and vice, which sinks deep into the earth when people die. It's a kind of corrosive lava deal, and slowly eats away giant chasms in the earth. Sometimes earthquakes or dwarven delving break into the caverns and hellish miasma seeps out, and gestates demons in those infected by it.

In my setting, demons are the anthropomorphic (or whatever-morphic for the other species) souls of people who, in life, idealized or personified a concept. This is Kerin, the elf Demon of Discretion; the players rescued him from a magic prison. Back when Heaven and Hell still existed, they could travel through it freely, though on the mortal plane, their power is constrained to the interior of specific shrines that they could leave freely but never bothered to do. They are the second most powerful beings in the world after the Creator Gods. They can manifest energy, travel planes, stop time, read minds and souls, project telepathic thoughts, render their visitors hale and hearty, repair damaged pregnancies and ensure healthy birth, reverse entropy locally... anything but raise the dead or create life. They were generally very kind, sweet, gentle people, though some exceptions existed.

No, it's not a coincidence that it's similar to the ancient Macedonian concept of Daimonos, why do you ask?

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One more after this.
It's a shame the author/artist stopped updating their tumblr. It's a good AH setting.

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They are hate, they are spite, they are the never ending crusade against the world. They resent and despise it with their very beings and want to destroy for their "mother" Abyss desires it to be so.

"In the beginning there was only darkness. And it was not empty..."

Gods created world from the primordial darkness and chaos that would become Abyss and in doing so created also their own worst enemy. Like a reflection in a mirror. And so the demons appeared. Dark and twisted monsters that want to destroy all of creation and return everything to the state of comfy formless darkness.

A Demon is simply the physical representation of an individual's personal conflict at it's emotional zenith. Sins, self perceived weakness, past mistakes and regrets, all such things can manifest as a real demon. Their power is in direct relation with the worldly influence of their host, and the amount of power the host themselves grants the demon in their mind. As such a Demon of any major religious or political head can have devastating effects upon the land, bordering on the cataclysmic if such an individual gives up on fighting their demon and gives in to their suggestion and in a sense merging with their demon. A king giving up his struggle with his Desire will likely see his entire court give in to sensual degeneracy, a lord no longer fighting his Envy will see him topple his Liege and cause the country to burn under civil war, A pope struggling with his doubts of faith could see his religion shatter into a thousand denominations.

These kinds of individually powerful demons who merge with their hosts, becoming one being and causing these events are simply known as Demon Kings/Queens. Being creatures that rely on the thoughts and imagination of their host to give them form, demons can manifest themselves as voices, memories of individuals or as completely independent personalities, as beasts and monsters of all forms and sizes, and Demon Kings fully merge with the mind and body of their host, giving them complete control over their actions. The last is ultimately the goal of all demons. The worldly power of the host is not really important, it's simply a better gateway into their minds as mundane people don't typically struggle as hard with their doubts as those with the weight of authority on their shoulders do. Without complete apotheosis into a single being of one mind and body a Demon has no afterlife to look forward to. Rejection or death of the host before this simply means no longer existing for a Demon. It terrifies them.

They come from deep sea far beneath the wavees, tainting everything around them with intrinsic theological corruption. They've turned the entire ocean into a black watery hell full of mutated sea life, the unquiet dead and perils both spiritual and mortal- but with them comes great treasures too. Otherwise nobody would ever go out to sea at all.

They're seperate from the ghosts, vampires, fey, werewolves and walking dead you find on land. Werewolves and Lycans in particular harbour a special hatred for them and will target them over any human, even going so far as to abandon an attack halfway through to hunt a demon down.

They crave people's souls and with that their livelihoods and servitude. Once a demon owns your soul you are bound to them not out of any metaphysical force but purely chains of the mind: to have your soul possessed is to have what your heart desires most, just for a few minutes, and then have it snatched away to be returned at your master's whim.
In the criminal underworld and the cloistered depths of the state church you'll even find a foul trade for human souls.
Those that come to land tend to be craftier rather than violent. The same cannot be said of the krakens, serpents and leviathans at sea who sunder ships and eat sailors whole.

Every cloud has silver lining though. Without demons we wouldn't have black pearls (thought to be demon souls themsevles) or electroplasm with which to fuel our modern technological wonders. Hell, for some 10 years of fame, good fortune and wealth in exchange for eternity is better than the wretched life they would have led.

Minions of hell. I haven't thought too much into it, I usually don't use them, and when I do they're just meat for the grinder.

CYOA General has at least one PDF full of that guy's art.

as it should be.

>It's a shame the author/artist stopped updating
Didn't stop you from missing plenty of old shit.

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I will ask about these really good hotdogs. What's it all about?

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Do you have a blog? I'm pretty sure I recall stumbling across this elsewhere on the internet, but I forget where.

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Mine are extraordinarily powerful negative emotions combined with ritual summoning magic. Demon pact lore exists in my setting, but no one knows exactly where demons come from. All you know is that if your anger, lust, hatred, sorrow or whatever drives you is strong enough you can summon one. Little do people know that they're not summoning demons, they're creating them. And this construct of energy, imbued with a simplistic mind of its own based on the impulse that gave it life, is completely uncontrollable once it does what your soul wants it to. They're like nightmares given form. They follow the nature that you lent them until someone else destroys them.

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>Most assume that demons originate from the wicked thoughts of mortals given form in the lower plains. This is only partly true.

>Demons have existed long before the material plane was created and were the first attempt by the gods at creating life. In their hubris, the gods tried to create beings that would behold their forms and marvel at their greatness. This failed for as soon as they beheld their creators, wicked thoughts filled their minds and would eventually sustain them.

>Sorrow at their own twisted bodies, jealousy of the grace of the gods, and rage. Rage against their creators who saw fit to create the demons as nothing more than pets, twisted and weak so as to maintain authority as the greater beings. When the gods discovered the wickedness of the demons they cast them out to the lower planes and began a new project on the newly created material plane. In time the gods had created new servants and the demons, long forgotten, soon discovered that the wickedness of mortals fueled the abyssal races.

>The gods had finally given them a purpose, to drive mortals to evil and overthrow the gods themselves.

Who else likes demons as forces of cosmic evil?

>Do you have a blog? I'm pretty sure I recall stumbling across this elsewhere on the internet, but I forget where.

I do indeed have a work blog for all of my stuff, you can visit it right over here: spaghettiart.tumblr.com/

>I will ask about these really good hotdogs. What's it all about?

It's about two things, mainly:
1. Hell/The Red World is flesh almost all the way through; it has very little if any plants and even most of the waterways are just flowing rivers or lakes of blood (sometimes you'll get.. other things as well).
2. Demons don't do anything unless they like it or they're good at it, they're VERY personality driven beings.
So, consequentially you get a lot of Demons who are fantastic Butchers & Charcuterie(s?), we're I'm talking really magnificent, fantastic, palatable savory and delicious meat dishes that really take advantage of every resource they have available to keep things from getting bland.... And one of their biggest staple dishes is naturally sausages and hotdogs.

They're GOOD hotdogs, though, they're DELICIOUS, the best sausages come from hell, but you need to be okay with the fact that they can potentially be made out of the trimmings of over 50 sources- sometimes on purpose: you go to a big, fat, fuckin' green Demon of Gluttony and you can be sure they've combined only the most perfect, meticulous, combination of fat, flesh, and spices where in the consumption of such a perfect hotdog is a world changing religious experience.

Pictured: angelic """cooking"""

I went for a pseudo-lovecraftian vibe for the demons in my setting, while attempting to subvert some lovecraftian tropes in order to keep players guessing.

The basic gist of it:

Humans tend to call any magical entity that they do not trust "demons", such as the fae. However the "true" demons, are those beings that the gods referred to as such.

Demons are unseen entities from another star that orbits our universe, but due to its arcane and convoluted orbit, only becomes visible in the night sky once a millinium.

The moon used to be a lush, magical paradise akin to Atlantis, but the humans living there were transformed into horrific, mindless, insectile demon-spawn when they (out of desperation, when faced with a catyclism) made contact with the demons.

These lunar demon spawn attempted to devour and infect the earth, but they (and the entire surface of the moon) were incinerated before they could reach it by the settings equivalent of Arch Angel Michael (a holy blue dragon, serving the solar systems absent divine pantheon).

A few humans who were only partially infected, and thus retained their sentience, hid underground during the disaster, and later became the ancestors of the Fae. Trapped in the barren lunar underworld, they are constantly trying to return to "heaven", aka the earth.

Demons are never seen, herad, or fought directly in-game. Only their spawn, and those they touch/change. It's left ambiguous whether they are actual entities, gods, some sort of hivemind, or a natural cosmic force like radiation that's been misunderstood and anthromorphized as a conscious being. Likewise, I've also tried to subtly imply that the demons aren't "evil", and are in fact a necessary part of the cosmic balance. They are associated with life, birth, and change. Life may not be possible without them, and when the cosmic forces are balanced, they may even be benevolent and helpful to mankind..

t. Edgelord

I really like this idea

I gagged a little

The beings that populate the planes that souls come from.
There are 10 planes that demons may represent - Pride, Wrath, Avarice, Indulgence, Sloth, Humility, Mercy, Charity, Discipline, and Diligence. The planes can vary in size over time (more on this in a second). When a mortal is born, it is drawn proportionately from all the planes, such that a soul born when the plane of Pride is larger will tend to be more prideful.
Thing is, souls:
1. change over time, according to their experiences and choices; and
2. go back to the demonic planes when they die, and split back into their ten constituent components.
This leads to demons seeking out powerful souls (not all souls are the same size) and trying to sway them towards exhibiting the attribute of their plane more strongly, and then dying whilst still in that state.
For example, a succubus (Indulgence demon) might tempt a man to throw away his life to mindlessly satisfy his base desires, and then murder him in the throes of lust. A Charity demon, meanwhile, might convince a man to give away all he has, and wither away while still believing this was the right thing to do.
Demons have also been known to start religions as a way to cast a wider net.

I want to hear more about the Fae. How are they Fae-like enough to justify the name? What do they do to try to get back to Earth, and why does it succeed/fail?

Very nice. Chaos v Order > Good v Evil.
If you disagree, prove me wrong.
Protip, I would welcome a spirited discussion on this subject

Demons are effectively spiritual parasites. They don't have bodies of their own, but latch onto people and tyr to possess them. Initially they can't do anything to the host directly, but can whisper in their head to influence their behaviour. They feed on strong emotions and generally try to compel their host to extreme behaviour, the exact nature varies depending on the type of demon (greed demosn compel the host to hoard wealth, wrath demons make them angry, etc.). Once the demon has grown more powerful it starts to be able to directly compel the host, and eventually takes over the body and goes for a joyride. However, a human body can't really contain the demon's essence so once it takes over a body that body starts to mutate to match the demon's nature and eventually just breaks apart.