Tell me about those guys in your setting who ruined everything for everyone. Hilariously irresponsible precursor races...

Tell me about those guys in your setting who ruined everything for everyone. Hilariously irresponsible precursor races, sorcerer-kings with more power than common sense and gods who fucked the entire universe in ways that mortal men can't even begin to guess.

The sixteen Magi, but they did it mainly by dying. Their lives' work was sealing the world off under a firmament dome from the warring legions of Law and Chaos, then using their enormous magically-bred monster armies to exterminate the stragglers under the dome. But this took centuries and they all died along the way, leaving their armies headless and leading them to fight amongst themselves for power.
Fast-forward a few centuries, and the world is a Mad Max-esque shithole where monsters squabble over patches of dirt and resources and the strong dominate the weak. The Towers the Magi built to project the firmament all have huge magical auras that fuck the surrounding environment in different ways, turning the map into numerous flavours of death world. These Towers are ruled over by Tower Kings, some of the most powerful monsters in the world and the closest thing the setting has to god-kings. They mostly play 4-dimensional chess against each other for control over the Towers. Playable races are often slaves or food to the monsters, but on the bright side there's no shortage of oiled-up musclemen in gladiator armor.

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The gods themselves. See, the "gods" aren't actually gods. They're extremely powerful, and create miracles like life, but they still need to sustain themselves. They do this by spreading through the universe, creating words, and seeding them with the tiniest spark of life... then they sleep for a couple millennia and let that spark grow, and then wake up and consume everything. This is their life cycle. Glorified farming of sentient life.

I am playing a Magical Girl game, and the players have yet to find out that they're glorified scarecrows, chasing out the eldritch horror "pests" that would otherwise make a mess of the gods' "garden".

The Old Ones; when the Gods created the world, the left over powers and magic they had used formed together into their own sentient beings, viscous mockeries of creation.

Their true names are lost to time, but amongst their numbers were the Incomprehensible, who's mere presence could even drive minor gods to insanity. The Beast, a bastardisation of numerous animals from who Minotaurs, Griffons, Manticores, and more draw ancestry from. The Darkness, a colossal worm with pitch black skin who's deepest tunnels formed the first of the Underdark. These eldritch beings waged war against the Gods and their creations, leading to the Gods creating Demons and Devils to combat them.

I'm trying to think of a good origin story for my demons, and it would probably involve someone fucking up really badly.

What are you demons like? Where do they live?

In my world, I have the underworld which is where people go when they die. Hell or the Nightmare or the Howling or whatever the fuck the place where demons live is something else entirely. I kind of want the demons to be a bit like traditional fantasy demons; corrupted, evil, powerful, and abnormal. They are summoned only by blood magic and the torture and sacrifice of innocent virgins. Almost everything they do is to destroy goodness and purity anywhere in the world. They are combated by angels- which are the universal spirits of goodness and protection. They don't even attack anybody except for demons directly, preferring instead to turn evil people's attacks reflected against them or blinding them with holy light.

However; I also like mythology and traditional pantheons. This puts itself at odds with the almost Christian angel/demon dichotomy. As of right now, I was thinking of making traditional fantasy Gods and Goddesses, each belonging to different cultures. But then something *greater* that the angels answer to that is more universal then them. Demons therefore could be a bit lovecraftian or otherworldly, but still have that very primal evil inclination.

My setting is a bit of a clusterfuck right now, but I'm just trying to make it interesting. See what sticks.

Where do angels come from? Are demons in direct opposition to that origin, or was it something else?

The original god Itself. He tried to rush along Creation, creating microfractures in existence. The precursor race adapted those as a sort of cosmic virus which fucked up things royally. The god had to fragment Itself in archetypes which serve as basis for the various gods.

>Where do angels come from?

That's what I don't know. The universal goodness? The author? The innocence of all children? Capital G God?

Are demons in direct opposition to that origin, or was it something else?

That's what I'm trying to figure out! To explain it a little better; My game features both Blood AND Death magic. So I wanted Death magic to be the source of the undead and necromancy, but be separate to demon-summoning blood magic somehow.

I can easily start to see an implication of Angels being the spirits or entities tasked with upholding creation itself, and Demons being the destroyers. Seems generic enough.

You did say that Demons utilize blood magic though. Perhaps that's where its origin lies?

If the angels uphold creation, then the Underworld beings uphold the aspect of death, while Demons uphold the aspect of blood. Blood too is necessary for life, and is the liquid by which life survives.

It's easy to turn Demons into Khorne or however it is, but Demons don't have to spill blood all the time. Perhaps that's the fate of those they deem unworthy of life?

I guess what I'm getting at is, what if demons are a cruel and evil guardian of the lifeblood?

My PC accidentally got our WoD game stuck in a time loop. It was a game of Mage, but it was only me and a literal murderhobo (Actual homeless guy with only an erratic streak, wakes up and can use the force arcana and ONLY the force arcana one day). We were attempting to collect a bunch of maguffins that were based on the arcanas, together which could be used to reshape reality. After the hobo got a taste of power fireballing and lightning-ing things, any chance of him actually recovering the things and turning them over.

My PC's primary arcana is time, when we recovered the time arcana related thingy, I attempted to go back to the start of all these troubles to correct them, wound up going back with no memories or any ability to warn my past self, causing the scenario to replay endlessly.

Back in the day, there were three major powers ruling the world: The dragons, the djinn, and the jotunn, each having tremendous intellect and godlike power, and constantly feuding for control. The other, lesser races around lived firmly in the shadow of these superpowers: The dwarves were created by the jotunn as a servitor race, the halflings lived under the protection of the dragons (whom the halflings worshipped as gods), and the merfolk mostly tried to carve out a niche as neutral ambassadors and traders and mostly keeping out of the way.

Then the fey showed up. They'd had their own age-old feud going on in their own plane, between the Seelie and the Unseelie, and when they discovered a way to travel from the Plane of Faerie to the Mortal Plane they poured in seeking an upper hand in their own wars.

The introduction of a new player in the game of global domination upset the tenuous balance the three native powers had settled into, kicking off a brutal war that quickly escalated into previously unknown lengths of application of power. Ultimately, the war ended in a great cataclysm, the exact cause of which is unknown to the survivors. Some say it was the deliberate and intended result of a magical superweapon; others that it was an accident of some kind (but still probably related to development or use of a superweapon). Some say it was divine punishment upon the great races for their hubris and viciousness in the war.

Whatever the cause, it radically altered the face of the world. The great races were all but wiped out, those that survived being reduced to mere shadows of their former glory. The dragons were succeeded by a variety of draconic animals, brute beasts without reason and only limited magic. The wise and godlike jotunn were reduced to savage and dimwitted ogres, trolls, and giants. The djinn and fey lost the bulk of their magic, becoming ashfolk and elves (respectively).

And entirely new races emerged: The humans, and the goblinoids.

In my setting, men were basically just simple, savage, hunter-gatherers, the dominant race was not!elves, living in mesoamerican inspired pyramids and reading the heavens, etc. The planet at the time was a huge supercontinent surrounded by a vast ocean, and unknown to the not!elves, there were basically a mix between aboleths and old ones dwelling at the bottom of it. One day they decided the surface world was better and invaded. The not!elves used basically a planetary scale Spirit Bomb to destroy them all, causing the world to fracture. Unfortunately it ate all their life energy and now none of them exist as far as the humans can tell. The world is now all floating islands kept aloft by magical residue, and humans developed more advanced societies, using airships and balloon travel to move between continents.
Also the cthulus may or may not actually all be dead.

They are called the players.

I ran a 3.5 game for a long long time and I'm very fond of player actions having consequences and letting the playersdo whatever they think their characters would do. The players consistently caused untold damage on all levels throughout the realm. They where originally tasked with investigatinga cult forming. This lead to them finding a godslaying fallen hero and doing nothingto stop him. Ultimately helping him at times. I even ran a game where the few remaining gods created demigods (the players) to go put an end to this menace. They chose to faff about the realm. Sometimes they did cool things, like two people played thieves and went into a dungeon with an NPC paladin, theh handed him so much equipment, most of it magical that he walked out of that dungeon with +3 platemail and a +2 warhammer, various trinkets, and a Pegasus egg.

These where all different groups btw, im now running that game hundreds of thousands of years later where the former and last heroes of the old world took up the mantle of the gods.

First dwarfs ruined it for all dwarfs.

At their origin, they had bodies harder than steel, livers that could process purple worm poison by the bucketful with no problem...etc

Their power got to their head, and they started the culture of drinking all the time, living in tunnels so as to not be bothered by the sun...etc

Today's dwarfs have the same culture, but a much weaker(classic) constitution, due to the excessive living through the generations messing up their bodies. Future generations may be as fragile as *gasp* elves.

BDSM demons are great, I'm disappointed we don't see them more often in fantasy settings

Make the angels ignorant beyond their purpose? Make the demons irrational and hateful at the mention of good? Maybe even the angels have doubts in their faith, and they are made knowing their duties and little more. Maybe the gods and pantheons have gods and pantheons themselves. Maybe there is no greater evil the demons serve, perhaps they only abhor the purpose of the angels or the fact that they are born with one.

I'm working on some tiny settings, this one takes place in an alternate world at a 1900-level tech, but with a bit of secret magic. It got "ruined" (but not really) because of one bargain between a knight and a demon a long time ago, in which the knight unwittingly tied the fate of the world to his willpower (instead of humanitiy's). Through shenanigans the knight became several pieces of armor, tying the will of the wearers to the fate of the world instead. The demon of course doesn't intend to mention that to anybody.

There's also some angel who really doesn't plan to let that happen at all, the slight problem being that none of the knighs knows that either, and even if they did knowing which one is the angel and which one is the demon is not exactly easy or useful to the inmediate goals of the knights.

There was this wizard that just went around leaving loaded shotguns fucking all over the place.