Demons

A general page for all your demonlogy shit.

What are Demons?
YOU ARE THE DEMONS Demons are, quite simply, magical creatures. They exist as a balance to the creatures of light, namely angels and holy spirits. They aren't all Evil, just as all angels aren't Good. On the whole, demons may sway towards the Evil side of the alignments more often than not, but again not all do. Where they differ from angels and holy spirits is that demons are actually incredibly diverse in terms of demonic species. Angels are all humanoid beings, and holy spirits are limited in terms of different species, there being about 20-30 different kinds of holy spirit. There are hundreds of different species of demons, largely because unlike holy spirits and angels, demons are not bound to on element. Angels and holy spirits are always going to Holy elemental creatures, but not all demons are Dark or Fire elemental beings. In fact, the only actual element that demons cannot wield is the Holy element. Demons do not have a limit to the amount of elements they can be bound to; very, VERY rarely you may come across a demon that is bound to every element (excluding Holy, of course).

Demons are, like angels, bound by a set of ancient natural laws. Demons, when offered a soul (or something else, more later) in return for their demonic assistance, can call upon a special set of powers (which will be covered more later on as well) which they can use to assist the person offering their soul with whatever they need help with. Apart from that, demons have their set of spells and attacks. Some demons that are particularly powerful can create their own personalised set of spells that only they can use.

Demons can be found throughout the world, and even more powerful ones are usually found in the Dark Realm. There are also a set of demons that have their own Realm, these being Shadow Demons, a type of demon that is born out of the shadow of a creature that has died with certain conditions fulfilled.

Demon Species
There are many different species of demon, but they can be categorised in two ways: Element and Class. Element is fairly simple; every demon has a base element that determines what magic they use and stuff (like Fire, for example), and Class is what kind of demon that demon is. Classes are basically different groups of animals and creatures that the demons can be classed as.

Elements:


 * Fire. Fire is the classic kind of demon; the one that the likes of Satan would fall into were he amongst the demons in my worlds. Fire demons are the second most common type of demon; the first is Dark, as you may have guessed. Most demons have Dark as one of the elements they can be born of. Fire demons obviously have mastery over the element of fire, and the most common Classes of Fire demons tend to be Dragon Class demons. Fire often turns out to be Evil in my worlds.
 * Water. Not as common as most others, as often water is seen as a pure element. Whereas Fire can be represented as either Good or Evil, Water is far more likely to represented as Good than as Evil. Water demons are often Lesser Humanoid Class demons like mermaids and stuff, though you can find Fish Class demons fairly often as well. Serpentine Class demons tend to be Water elemental, as well.
 * Ice. Ice is one of the more common elements that demons are bound to, and because it's quite similar to Water, most demons just end up as Ice anyway. Ice is often represented as Evil more than Good. Ice demons tend to be Beast Class demons most of the time.
 * Wind. Wind is one of the common elements, like Ice. It's often represented as Good, but it can easily swing to Evil. Wind demons are mostly Avian Class demons, and usually you'll find that Dragon Class demons and other winged demons have Wind as a secondary or even tertiary element.
 * Earth. Again, one of the more common ones. Earth can swing either way like Wind, but tends to be Good. Earth demons tend to be Greater Humanoid Class demons, what with most being stuff like Giants and Trolls.
 * Thunder. Thunder isn't as common as the rest, like Water. It often ends up being represented as Evil instead of Good. Thunder demons tend to be...actually, anything. There isn't really an average Class for Thunder demons; they're that varied.
 * Dark. Dark is the most common element for demons to be bound to. Most often, it's pure Evil, but there are Good demons that wield the Dark element, just as there are Evil spirits that wield the Holy element. Dark demons don't actually have an average Class either because they're so widespread.

Classes:


 * Lesser Humanoid. Lesser Humanoids tend to be common human-like creatures; from the aquatic stuff like mermaids, to aerial creatures like winged people and half-human hybrids, to demons that just resemble humans, even vaguely. Lesser Humanoid Classes tend to be varied in the elements that they're bound to.
 * Greater Humanoid. Greater Humanoids are demons that are just massive human-like beings. Stuff like Giants, Orges, Trolls, that sort of thing. Often they tend to be Earth elemental demons.
 * Dragon. Dragon demons are very often found amongst the most powerful demons out there; they're fucking dragons, after all. This class is just dragons. They tend to be Fire elemental demons, most often.
 * Serpentine. Serpentine demons look like giant snakes, as you may have guessed. Common kinds tend to be Basilisks, Serpents (natch), and the many varieties of Giant Cobras. Serpentine is the most common demon Class for legendary and mythic demons, right up there beside Dragon class demons. Serpentine demons don't really have a main element that they're bound to, but usually they'll be either Fire, Water or Earth elemental.
 * Avian. Avian demons are birds, most often. General winged demons that don't fit into other Classes are lumped in here, as well. Often Wind elemental, as you may have guessed.
 * Beast. Beast Class demons are pretty damn common; pretty much every demon that doesn't fit into one of the other Classes (and that's a lot, trust me) fits in here. It's a pretty varied class, and as such doesn't stick to any one element, but the more common ones tend to be Ice and Earth demons. If there wasn't a Serpentine Class, all Serpentine demons would fall into this category.
 * Fish. Essentially the Aquatic version of the Beast Class, all Fish demons are Water elemental; no exceptions. These aren't as common as all the other classes because very often Water elemental demons will be a Lesser Humanoid or Serpentine class anyway.
 * Spectre. Spectres are ghostly demons, stuff like evil spirits and ghouls. Spectres are pretty much always Dark elemental beings, and can be defeated by using healing magic on them to sever their ties to the physical world. Spectre Class demons can be born through the death of those with particularly powerful souls; these are Ghosts. It should be noted that Spectres are essentially the baby form of the next demon Class...
 * Eldritch. Didn't see that coming, did you? Eldritch demons are...well, eldritch. Some doubt that they actually exist, as most often they are only spoken of in legends. Eldritch demons tend to unbelievably powerful; to the point that they can lay waste to entire civilizations with incredible ease. One example of an Eldritch Class demon is the Reaper, ViperSkull.

Special Powers
These are special abilities that every demon can call upon when offered a soul, even if they are magically inept (but they must not be mindless beasts). In return for a soul, demons can grant all sorts of special shit and even bend reality (to a degree) with these powers. When the person has died (or when what they no longer need the demon's assistance), the demon can take their soul and add it to their own. The more souls a demon has collected, the more powerful that demon is. Special powers include stuff like granting basic wishes, healing wounds, binding the demon to you and gaining control over it, having the demon destroy something or someone, that sort of thing. Magical goons, basically.

Definition of Demons
A Demon is a name given to any inteligent being, regardless of being a human or not, that is taken over by some kind of evil force or that has their personality abruptly altered to a viler one.

The most common case is in which a previous Demon sets their "curse" on a new host. The process of "Demonification" can take a while, in the case the "curse" is set while the host is still alive - after which, the host will start to weaken untill their movements are completely restrained and they die of hunger or some other effect of the immobility - or immediate, if they die before falling sick.

A Demon can also "curse" a new host post-mortem, as long as their corpse still has at least 50% of its integrity and less than a day has passed since their death. If they have parts of their body separated from the main portion, before the host regains conciousness, their body will reattach themselves, and when there is enough of the body for the new Demon to survive, they will wake up, already completely Demonified.

A Demon's body also changes while the "curse" takes effect. At first, they look weaker than before, but spontaneously start growing muscles, at the same time that the wounds they suffered while alive scar again, remaining that way for as long as the Demon lives.

Demons too need to eat, preffering to feast on flesh of living beings, without any specific prefference. They can feed on blood if the being is offering resistence by bitting their neck and drinking their blood. This gave them the name of vampires for a while, but seen how this didn't turn the victim into a demon, and wasn't just two tiny holes but instead a giant piece of flesh taken off on their neck, this myth was dropped.

The Powers of a Demon
Upon turning into a Demon, the host's personality will remain intact for another day, or depending on their force of will, up to a week; after this period, they start losing their sanity, and begin gaining some super-human powers, such an extreme physical strenght and regenerative abilities, as well as some cases where the Demon learns how to use Elemental Magic. This last case is completely irrestrict, the element the Demon learns to use seeming almost random; still, if the host knew some kind of magic before turning into a Demon, it is most commonly the same element they had the most affinity with, or that element mixed with Darkness.

Certain Demons who were very powerful when alive grow even greater abilities, such as expanding a living being's lifetime in exchange for, say, their soul after they die, and some of them gain powers like in vampire and ghost myths, such as turning intangible and transforming into night animals (bats, wolves, owls, and the such).

How to Kill a Demon
Demons are theorically immortal. Headshots, amputations, stabs, any kind of Physical Magic - all of those barely do any damage to the Demon at all, and even if they do cause some major damage, they can simply attach their limbs back to place.

The only effective way to defeat or kill a Demon is either damaging, removing or sealing away their soul (which, due to their state of insanity, are easily damageable/removeable/sealable, but also regenerates quickly if given the time), or by cutting their bodies to pieces that represent under 50% or their bodily mass and severing their head off, then proceeding to place the pieces in a place where the element opposing to theirs exists in vast quantity, for instance, throwing a Fire Demon's shattered body in the ocean, burrying a Thunder one in a mine, putting an Ice Demon's parts inside of a volcano, etcetera. Non-Elemental Demons, however, should be cut to as many parts as possible, and scattered as far as manageable.

Purifying a Demon's Soul
Over the passing of months or years, a Demon's soul detached from their body will slowly start to show signs of their old personality once more. The reason for this is thought to be because a Demon's "curse" is set to a being's flesh rather than their soul or mind, like a lethal poison.

Depending on how long the being was under the Demoniac effect, the process might take longer. But once they are completely rid of the "curse", they can be reset on their old body, which will slowly turn back to its usual self if they were still in good state. But the process of purification tend to take longer than a body can survive without rotting, so this is impractical.

What Are Demons?
A Demon is any metaphysical entity capable of affecting the physical world without having a physical presence. Sunlight is not a demon or several demons, since light is actual an immense number of photons. Demons are utterly unrestrained by matter and energy. In some cases they are equally unrestrained by time and space. In all cases, despite their detachment from what we call reality, they can manipulate it - to varying degrees and for a multitude of reasons.

Demon Classifications
There are three principle classifications of demons. Each classification is essentially infinite in nature - each class can have innumerable forms, powers and behaviors. The only real point of distinction, sorting past the immense variability, are their minds. From that, all else follows.
 * 1) Mindless Demons. Utterly devoid of anything resembling a mind or personality, they simply drift about, affecting the world at random in an aimless fashion. None of them are good or evil, and none of their powers are overtly benevolent or malicious in nature except by accident or coincidence. Luck could very well be a demonic influence since it comes and goes as it will without regard for anything (as long as we understand that luck is distinct from chance and from quantum mechanics).
 * 2) Sentient Demons. This does not necessarily mean intelligent demons - merely that they have some form of mind, no matter how primitive. Sentient Demons can be as simple-minded as rabbits to as cunning as Mephistopheles. As such, they can span the entire spectrum of mortality, good, evil, neutral and buttered popcorn doused with taquila. Their powers, unlike those of mindless demons, are sometimes unique to each demon, or particularly dependent upon their personality or temperament. Many can even change their powers and personalities, their entirety of self including their morality and even their classification, at any given moment (changing their classification is generally irreversible). Some use their powers to distinct ends and purposes, others do no use their powers at all and merely watch, some are so simple-minded they behave almost identically to mindless demons. Some sentient demons are intelligent and powerful enough to manipulate the physical world in such a way as to create a primitive, puppet-like manifestation. Such a manifestation, even if made of flesh and blood, with organs and biological processes, would be but cast shadows of their manipulators - damaging or destroying them would achieve no real end, other than perhaps annoying the manipulator. A very few sentient demons might even be able to create minds within their manifestations, effectively creating life.
 * 3) Ineffable Demons. These are demons that are so incomprehensible in behavior and power that they may as be from universes with completely different dimensional levels. Some are barely even in-tune enough with four-dimensional universes to do anything in relation to them. A few are completely frozen due to not being able to move within our universe. Others are speculated to exist without our dimensional boundaries, simply unable to enter. Even still, some are expect to encompass our universe and several others, and every dimensional level entailed. They could be good, evil, neutral, popcorn AND jet splinters all at once, or none of them. Really, they are called ineffable demons for a reason. Other than knowing that they are vaguely there and that they might do any number of things, we know nothing about them.

Interacting With Demons
A rather difficult prospect. At the bare bones minimum, you are attempting to communicate with a being that is completely distinct from both matter and energy. If you are attempting to contact a sentient demon, it can be as simple as speaking aloud and hoping it happens to be listening, and then hoping in addition that it will use its power to try and respond, and then trying to determine if its response was truly demonic in origin or merely an errant breeze. At worst, you have to somehow project what you are trying to convey into a media that does not exist and that we have no way of analyzing short of what we are told by demons. Communication with Ineffable Demons is right out. Interacting with beings that are neither matter nor energy is quite hard enough without having to do so with beings who are not even within our dimensional scope. As with all forms of communication, contacting any given demon can be good, bad and subjective. Basic precautions should be taken while doing so, since retaliating against such beings should they be angered is a rather bleak prospect.

The Demon World and Life
From what we know from what willing sentient demons with the appropriate understanding of both our worlds have divulged, the Demon World is, effectively, the emptiness that is between all of reality and its constituent components. Demons perceive our world much as we perceive it, although to them the entirety of it is intangible. The Demon World is, in effect, a vast, endless void filled with nothing but demons. They are blind to their own world and surroundings, seeing only what we what see, and only ever encountering one another through offchance collisions. In the manner that they affect our world, some move as though they were physically part of our world, creating physical responses despite them being apart from our world. Others claim to have inherent abilities that simply 'come naturally' to them and that they cannot fully explain which allow them to manipulate our world. Demons are mostly leery of each other, as it appears the primary source of sustenance in the Demon World for the average demon is, in fact, smaller Demons. They consume sustenance by engulfing it, and digestion is more akin to prolonged intentional torture, with the feeding Demon prolonging the existence of its prey while siphoning away what is tentatively termed 'quintessence,' in a parasitic fashion. Any given demon may provide an unlimited amount of sustenance, although it appears the larger they are, the larger the given 'stream' of sustenance is. Due to this, it is common practice that Demons seek to engulf the largest of their own kind that they can feasibly overpower while expelling smaller Demons. It is not unusual for small demons to remain engulfed within a similarly engulfed demon. Demons that have not fed upon another or who have been fed upon for an extended period of time, which varies greatly, supposedly lose their abilitiy to interact with our world, and suffer an eventual degredation of intellect until they become effectively mindless.