Tell me about your setting’s demons. What do they look like and what do they want?
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Tell me about your settings demons. What do they look like and what do they want?
Tell me about your setting’s demons. What do they look like and what do they want?
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>lmao demon is le goat but giant human this says a lot about our society
Why don't you tell us about your unique demons anon?
Yeah Japanese artist are incapable of (or simply unwilling to) actually understanding the symbolism they borrow from. A lot of visual mediums have the same problem, they're no deeper than "this looks cool."
Less incapable, more unwilling.
All artists do this. Western artists borrow all kinds of visual crap from other cultures too, usually without any regard for the context and history, instead just saying it looks cool.
And that's fine.
And it's fine when Japanese artists do it, too, it's just that you then notice it.
It's fine if you're happy with bland fantasy slop.
Man do I love crazy b***hes.
Aw, fate shit is the worst!
If you think about it, when a symbol crosses cultural boundaries, it becomes more so a symbol of its culture of origin than the specific concepts therein.
Vishnu represents India to us. Long Dragons represent China.
This use of those symbols isn't INCORRECT per se. A symbol's meaning isn't inherently tied to nature after all.
It just means it has a different meaning in a different context.
Well said.
>oh, this goat demon? Yeah I drew it like that because it looks cool.
This
based
trans
Correct. Now draw your sword, mother fricker.
... it seemed to be a harmless friend but it turned out to be fattening him to consume. Gentle as a lamb. Lamb to the slaughter. Wolf in sheep's clothing. The sheep and the goats... It's a totally fine symbol
Same with the Winged Lion. It's seemingly a noble beast simply because lions and eagles are held in noble regard in medieval symbolism. But it being a demon itself makes since because we also consider both cats and birds of prey to be cunning when it comes to catching their prey, along with being the ultimate predators of their domains; viewing all as food.
>t. actual morons who know jackshit about OP's pic
The 'goat' is no more the demon than the Lion is, or a strand of hair is.
They literally call it a demon in the comic. Also the winged lion.
That is the actual and specific word used.
What else would you call them? A demon/god/alien would all be fitting but given what the lion can do and how it acts, the people within the world calling it and all its incarnations 'demons' is logical IMO.
It is closer to a god of chaos or a god of the mythos that simply it's a fundametal force of nature such as magic given will and a personality.
Considering NOBODY uses Baphomet to represent what it was originally intended to these days in the West (they use it for Satan, originally it was to represent the union of man and beast, male and female, heaven and earth, in Hermeticism. Also the name is a really corrupted French version of Mohammad, ultimately) then I don't get why you're singling out the Japanese.
Stop speaking with extreme authority about things that are heavily heavily still up for debate and have been for 500 years
The Muhammad theory has ZERO evidence other then mahomet the French corruption of Muhammad kinda sounds similar to baphomet
Crowley literally explicitly references Baphomet as Satan. Levi’s depiction of sabatic goat was heavily inspired by the original devil tarot.
lion is better
What goes well with lion traits besides eagle ones? Maybe snake?
fotm meme comic
> fotm
what? meshi's been reasonably popular for ages anon
Flavor of the month every month for 8 years.
On a dead board.
Their existence is never ending torment and they just want to die but cant unless the universe is swallowed by primordial chaos.
>bumbgay thread
Why can't tg just be generals?
Dude. Stfu and stop. Srsly
How the frick is dungeon meshi anti-fantasy?? It literally is about defeating a demonic presence.
You should read it it is actually really good.
For better or for worse, it's definitely one of the most /tg/ comics out there.
Isekai Munchkin is good too.
If someone tricks a Paladin into poisoning someone, the Paladin is obligated to find and tend to them.
And I'm not talking about foot rubs here.
In medieval thought, poison is the tool of cowards, children, the elderly and women. In such a setting, a paladin should be none of the above.
They are in my setting though.
Then enjoy your poison use.
There is also something about poison that draws to it the mentally unwell. It might be the fantasy of making other people you dislike conveniently disappear by dying.
When there's no difference between a Basilisk and a poisonous chicken or a dragon and iguana, you are killing the fantastic part of fantasy. It's just another shitty JRPG clone with a pseudo retro style /tg/ swoons over.
You have it reversed. Anti-fantasy is having the fictional elements be categorically separate from the mundane elements of the setting. An added layer of magic spells and basilisks on top of an otherwise 'real' world.
Fantasy works by either mimicking myth-telling evoking the sense of mystery ancient people had for the world. A world in which basilisks and alraunes existed the same way all other animals did.
Not as addition to nature, but as part of the inscrutable expanse of it.
I think that there is a happy medium where the fantastic feels like something that is merged intimately with the mundane while still retaining its own separate "otherness," the sense of terror and wonder that you would associate with a dragon or unicorn in their most primal, archetypical forms, freed of all the garbage bin associations of pop-fantasy.
Dungeon Meshi definitely falls outside the medium because it drags fantasy through the sordid mud of reality instead of evoking that sense of the mythic and otherworldly. Turning fantastic creatures into weird looking aliens with their own ecologies, recipes and life-cycles isn't in the spirit of fantasy. Ancient man didn't attempt to rationalise the otherworldly until he become a sophist and atheist. There was no question of whether Phoenix paired well with seven herbs or spices or whether the Levithan laid one egg or a thousand. There was never any question of seeing if you could cross the ram that made the golden fleece with a merino. They understood and respected that the things outside their keen operated on very different rules to the mundane world's.
There's a massive difference between Sigurd eating the heart of a dragon and a punch of JRPG characters eating dragon steaks.
And don't get me started in how it brainlessly regurgitates all the same old cliches that come with fantasy "races." The codification of elves, dwarves and all the rest into aliens with pointy ears instead of spirits both familiar and fae was the death knell of fantasy.
At the end of the day Dungeon Meshi is just another modern subversion of the fantastic. Sure, there are subversions like the Last Unicorn that still retain the wonder that comes with true fantasy, but Dungeon Meshi isn't one of them.
Your 'happy medium' is just the anti-fantasy I was describing, not even watered down at all.
There's a fundamental difference between something like Meshi and, let's say, Flight of the Dragons.
In Flight of the Dragons, the insights into the mechanics of the world serve to detract from its reality. Sort of like it's trying to debunk or expose it.
In dungeon Meshi, it's used to enhance its reality. To immerse you into a magical world, and see it through the eyes of someone who would love there.
That's more than enough to make up for the fact that it uses the races.
Plus, I kinda forgive a Japanese mangaka for doing the generic stuff because a whole lot of this is not as established in the Japanese public consciousness. So it's a bit like she's done her homework and brought back the authentic experience to her home audience that are only familiar with the distorted version of 'western' fantasy.
>I kinda forgive a Japanese mangaka for doing the generic stuff because a whole lot of this is not as established in the Japanese public consciousness
I dunno. At least in the gaming/manga/anime circles the stock D&D-style monsters are pretty well known, and some of them are used far more than in Western productions.
For my part, I'd rather read a work with generic fantasy monsters/races that tries to build a coherent setting dealing with the existence, ecology, and life cycles of these things, and has fun and well-written characters, than read a work with the most inventive new monsters in fiction wherein any worldbuilding that exists doesn't make sense and I don't like the characters or the plot they're involved with, and I don't think that requires "forgiving" an author for using the generic monsters.
Okay, but you realize the use of generics does nothing to contribute to the strength of the world building, right?
If you can do it with elves and dwarves, you can do it with humans. And it feel less like you're copying your homework.
The only fundamental difference is intent - I'm sure that the author didn't set out with bad intent, but the same lack of real understanding you see
here doesn't need to be purposefully derisive to undermine the genre.
We're on a board that deals with tabletop RPGs, and it seems to me like nothing kills the wonder of fantasy that you're talking about faster than slapping a statblock on a creature and fully quantifying its abilities, which is pretty essential to a lot of playable TTRPGs. On the other hand, Dungeon Meshi is asking questions like "how do all these different monsters live together?" and "how do humans (and other humanoid sentients) interact with them?", which leads to more interesting worldbuilding than I see in most fantasy.
>it seems to me like nothing kills the wonder of fantasy that you're talking about faster than slapping a statblock on a creature and fully quantifying its abilities, which is pretty essential to a lot of playable TTRPGs.
Yes, I honestly agree. I like playing rpgs, but at the end of the day all roleplaying games are just a simulacra that lets you play out an existing genre, whether that's fantasy, superheroes, sci-fi or smut. It's fun, but it's never as good as the real thing.
On top of that "worldbuilding" is a marketing term invented to sell poorly written fantasy novels to people who have consumed so much of the stuff that they crave novelty more than anything, and because it's easier to play with your audience's expectations than create a story worth telling we get an obsession with building a "world" rather than creating an immersive setting.
To me what you want is the realm of science fiction, not archetypical stories about gods, monsters and heroes.
>In the story of the golden fleece or the roc, the people treat them as things that actually exist in the world. They can be touched, they have consequences to their lives. They're rare, but not myths.
I disagree. To an Ancient Greek the Golden Fleece was a real thing and Jason's voyage actually happened (of course it did, I can travel to the next town over and find the tomb of one of the Argonauts!), but it wasn't something that they could touch or weave into a shinny chiton. It existed in the Never-Never, in the age of Heroes, on the shores of the Black Sea, a place that was real, but inaccessible. Physical, but not part of the mundane world. All the wealth in Corinth couldn't buy an apple from the Hesperides. Same with the Roc, sure it existed, but not here in Baghdad, or on the shores of Yemen, but somewhere, far East, so far only the furthest voyagers ever returned with stories of it.
Fantasy is at heart making fiction of the myths, folklore and fancies that were once real to us. The best fantasy preserves the wonder inherent in it, but most of it simply recycles the symbols without capturing the essence.
>It existed in the Never-Never, in the age of Heroes
That's exactly my point, you're talking about the audience instead of the people within the story.
You're adding an additional layer of fiction between yourself and the story for no reason.
The difference is what's being depicted in the story.
Dungeon Meshi never explains away magic, it just adds detail.
I don't want to play armchair psychologist, but I get the sense that you've been meta poisoned.
In the story of the golden fleece or the roc, the people treat them as things that actually exist in the world. They can be touched, they have consequences to their lives. They're rare, but not myths.
It's only later, in derivative works that these things take on a more iconic, symbol like reality. Because they exist more as a reference than a real thing. Think Percy Jackson, or Fate.
You're so used to the derivative thing that you think think that's what fantasy is supposed to be, something that puts at least one-and-a-half layers of fiction between you and the magic. Something that's treated as just part of the premise of the story even in-setting.
No, not really. Fantasy is typically about venturing into a place that is not quite our real world, hence why so many myths take place in caves, the deep wood, etc. They are far away from the rest of the world and generally involve some sort of "crossing over" moment from the mundane to the fantastic. These things exist but not in our world, not quite. This is literally a step in the Hero's Journey; it is widely known as basic to anyone with a literary background. The myths are all true to these ancient people, but they are also removed from their lives.
>There was no question of whether Phoenix paired well with seven herbs or spices or whether the Levithan laid one egg or a thousand. There was never any question of seeing if you could cross the ram that made the golden fleece with a merino.
Because Phoenixes and Leviathans and the ram that made the golden fleece never existed outside the stories we made up about them, unless you're going to tell me we hunted them to extinction before recorded history began, and somehow magic kinda faded from the world over time.
Considering all the experimental breeding of livestock mankind has been doing since before they started writing anything down, you bet your ass that if there had been a ram that grew golden fleece, whoever owned it would have been lining up ewes in estrus in front of it to get more.
And as far as what spices go well with Phoenix meat, remember that the Romans had recipes for peawieners' tongues, exotic birds that to the average Roman might as well be mythological.
It is by no means modern that humanity's reaction to any other creature is "can I hunt it?" "can I eat it?" "can I domesticate it?".
Man will you shut the hell up?
Most pretentious media illiterate
How can you claim dungeon meshi is not fantasy when you yourself have a warped rigid view of what fantasy is that no one agrees with
Fantasy isn't just a tag that publishers put on a book or game. Have some standards.
>if it has any sort of logic or consistensy to it, it's not Fantasy and I can't get hard
Inane trivia inserted to dispel all sense of mystery doesn't make a story more logical or consistent, and most importantly it doesn't make it more interesting. You have fallen for the worldbuilding meme.
>AAAAAAAAAAA!
>I've been made aware how a mimic works in this world!
>Help me old angloman!
>Inane trivia
You're thinking of based Tolkien and how he was always taking you on a tour of the based history of his based setting. Tolkien's side-tracks were legitimately trivia because they weren't directly related to the story, just related to things that were related to the story. Monster ecology isn't 'trivia' if the monster is part of the story.
>to dispel all sense of mystery
Peabrain take.
>doesn't make a story more logical or consistent
It makes the world more logical and consistent, unless (as I said) it's directly related, in which case it makes the story more logical and consistent. Words mean things, and you seem to have trouble with this, like how you think "fantasy" describes your fantasies specifically and no one else's.
This post is based and dabs on the pseuds, making them seethe
>Dungeon Meshi definitely falls outside the medium because it drags fantasy through the sordid mud of reality
oh my god shut the frick up you prancing la-la homosexual man
I agree with this, though I still enjoyed DM for what it is.
You need to read more fantasy, since fricking Conan there’s been fantasy that wasn’t mytho-poetic. It’s weird revisionist cope that exists to give an intellectual air to the genre
I'm sick of idiots who have never read Conan who think it's just the exact opposite of Tolkien.
Please tell me about how the fricking alien in the Tower of the Elephant is mytho-poetic. Conan isn't anti-tolkien but it's not trying to recreate mythology either, it's Howard using a fantasy setting to write historical fiction with magic and without a commitment to historical accuracy. He literally wrote an essay about this
You're under the misconception that history wasn't intimately tied to myth and legend for most of human history.
>Side stepping the Ayy Lmao
Conan isn't about reproducing historical events (the kind of thing you could argue would be tied to mythology) as narrative either. It's about reproducing the stock elements of different historical periods and countries to create a recognizable but still exotic setting for pulp adventure stories. Read a fricking book
No matter how hard you seethe I'm not going to read your manga.
If you're the same guy b***hing about dungeon meshi or more realistically pretending to b***h about dungeon meshi bravo
>What do they look like
scary but kinda hot
>what do they want?
human wiener
I took some inspiration from the Apostles from Beserk. Every demon used to be a mortal human whose soul was so tainted by evil that it started to manifest as physical mutations. They become larger and stronger, growing claws and wings, but their addition to evil grows too until they are enslaved by their destructive impulses.
The caveat is that the further somebody transforms into a demon, the longer their natural lifespan, until eventually they will never die of old age. As much some people actively seek to purify their souls by committing acts of great evil, such as the ritual murder of a close family member, so that they can live forever. They are typically the type arrogant enough to think that as a demon they would still be in control of their own desires and impulses, but they are always wrong.
Mechanically players are able to also turn into demons, and each time they do something very evil they gain a beneficial demon mutation, but each time they must also pass an increasingly difficult check or lose control of themselves and become NPCs.
>your setting’s demons
Large, savage, incomprehensible beings that relentlessly, and mindlessly charge at any living thing and try to cause it as much pain, terror, and suffering as possible. They don't really have any mind or consciousness, they simply exist in the four underworlds where they hunt, eat, and rape. In my setting, the creation myth is that the world was born of massive beasts eating and fricking each other in an endless, lightless orgy ocean. So the theory among scholars and wizards is that's where they came from. Nobody in their right mind summons a demon in my setting, nor is there any conventional means of doing so. In a vast majority of instances, they are only encountered because one of the four underworlds shares the material plane. I guess I also want to stress that it's not really a "lovecraftian eldritch being, oh no thing beyond all comprehension!" thing, as much as it is that their form itself is the essence of shock, bewilderment, chaos, and confusion. You don't "see" them, so much as you are overcome with their overwhelming wrongness.
Devils are quite different. While also being very gruesome looking and evil, they tend to operate in a manner that humans can at least comprehend. When interacting with humans, they actually have a 3 dimensional form. You can make deals with them, they feast on souls, and like things that are tainted, so by the very principle, sure they could just kill you and take your soul now... But a corrupted soul that's been in the service of a devil, that's done vile acts, and has fallen pray to wrongness, that's even better!
My setting features four underworlds with three castes of demons and devils, which is an oddly large amount considering how rare they're actually brought up in game.
What are shitty "worldbuilding" threads like in your setting?
I got tired of thinking about how evil races survive, so I just made them all demons.
Demons and Angels both are unique in form and would drive mortal minds to madness if you were to see one without its chosen guise.
Kindof basic, but they want souls. If it weren't for the material world being such a bountiful harvest of souls demons would not give a frick about it. As it stands devouring souls is an effort efficient way for entities to increase their power. But there's a problem. They can't set foot on the material plane. If they did it'd shatter. Although they'd receive an incredible boost in power, by devouring every mortal soul they just killed, every demon in the setting would be on the offender's ass for destroying 'the mine.' And even factoring in the power increase, there's no demon extant who could take on every other demon. So they settle for the slow buildup temptation offers.
I go medieval
Medieval is always fun. I also like the idea there are warring factions in Hell since you can't expect demons with free-will to get along.
Design wise medieval and early modern are the best. Nowadays I feel like demon designs are just succubi/incubi (at least in anime and pop culture).
Where did you get that picture anon, that's literally me
Hey, we use that guy!
Most seamen pray to it because it wields the very obvious power to cause storms and loves fishing up and eating the souls of those it drowns for fun.
This guy showed up in The Gamer and looks EXACTLY like that.
They have a wide range of personal motivation, but they certainly get a kick out of misery and death and want to bust into Heaven to eat God.
Meds now
Are you delusional or just on your last level of cope? We all know it's you making and necrobumping these terrible, zero-effort threads.
>your setting
>your setting
>your setting
>your setting
>your setting
Do you not have one anon?
Do you not have one anon in your setting?
Yes, he's hiding in the corner
What are corners like in your setting? Can you elaborate further in your setting?
Talking about games and settings draws too much attention away from /misc/ threads.
It's "you're setting" sweaty
Money and lifestones.
>Red Wine or White Wine?
Dig? Dig? Dig?
For me, my demons are all elementally aligned, as they were originally elementals that were dragged into the Abyss by its dark master and changed and twisted to suit their new lord's dark wills, but even with the full force of the dark lord's power, signs of their origins still show through the corruption. For example, I was thinking that Succubi would be corrupted Fire elementals, so they'd be passionate and hot, both in terms of looks and in temperature, lol. What do you guys think? Because I need some ideas for assigning demonic archetypes to each element besides Fire getting Succubi and a Balrog-type warrior caste.
How can we put a new twist on the idea of Succubi and similar demons? For instance, I was thinking that maybe Lust demons secretly rule the infernal hierarchy behind the scenes, with no one the wiser.
We?
I do them as fat bastard sleep demons that charm themselves to look like hot men/women. They slowly suck your soul, and use that to strenght their own magical capabilities.
>Tell me about your setting’s demons. What do they look like and what do they want?
Pretty much took inspo from 40k, berserk and some dnd frickery- but for the most part- demons are irredeemable, animalistic and the embodiment of mans worst behaviours made manifest. They are a force of nature hellbent on destruction and devastation. They are evil incarnate. Unlike mortals who at least are a lot more morally complex, demons are just in for the kill- sensless, mindless, without mercy or compassion.
Some demons are bound and used as weapons/ arcane fuel- but they are volatile.
They want to die. They’re souls twisted by torture and time, and want to their torment to end, but that’s not easy, so many try to destroy the world to make sure that the gods will obliterate them.
They are survivors of an unimaginable catastrophe, warped by both its energies an the millenia of hellish existence they were forced to endure in its aftermath. There certainly exist demons that could pass for normal, even function in human society with accommodation for their strange powers and needs, but the majority have preserved themselves up to this point only by abandoning any principle higher than survival
basically FF14 voidsent
Demons can look however they want, but start more generalized and get more unique as they grow in power. They desire “energy” either magical or life force. At the start of their existence they were bound to work via contracts with mortals across the multiverse. Contracts are so legally binding that demons are literally incapable of breaking one, but legalese is still fair game. for small, weak demons it’s a buyer’s market where they constantly try to sell their services to any mortal who will listen. More powerful demons get to be choosy with their contracts and the highest tier of demon usually enter lifelong (in human terms) contracts to one extremely powerful sorcerer, a nation’s ruling class, noble family, etc.
I'm really sold on the idea that all devils are just bronze-age tyrants who got evil poisoning. I mean, really, what else would they be? What else could possibly be more appropriate?
Elaborate. Bronze age tyrants as in tyrants from the bronze age? Or does any tinpot dictator have a chance of turning into a demon?
do you think he was seriously doing anything but trolling?
lol
Kim Jong Un would have little horns by now, yea. It's a corruption of the basic metaphysics of worship, so it's not about holding actual power, it's about having your picture in everyone's living room. The thing is, even if people noticed Kim Jung Un's little horns they wouldn't necessarily understand that it was a direct consequence of his style of governance, they would think "Huh, guess he made a deal with devils", and it becomes part of the general theme of bigger devils taking credit for the deeds of smaller devils.
would be mostly accurate in my games (though I haven't seen Berserk yet), and it's also a bit like the Runelords in Pathfinder, which in turn is a bit like Dracula or what Dracula represented, "Evil people just keep getting more evil without limit" like some kind of machiavellian wuxia.
It's important to me to say that Asmodeus was the first human emperor, and if he wasn't it's just because the scale of the setting is way bigger and because Asmodeus is way older than humanity, but he still represents the primal idea of being the first-and-biggest evil, with such a head start that the other big evils will never catch up.
>tinpot dictator
>bronze age
I see what you did there, you cheeky little shit
In the Bronze Age, "tyrant" just meant any leader who got his job by putting the previous leader out of his misery. Many were seen as liberators
I really despise this atheistic world view, it’s so ignorant.
In my setting, demons are the unfortunate result of the early, primordial days of the world when the gods were still trying to work things out and didn't really know what they were doing. Because they were quite new at the whole "creating a world and its inhabitants" thing a lot of the resulting creatures were utterly horrible, so they ended up creating a separate dimension- the "descended plane"- where the shit they made that went wrong (also called "wrongspawn") could be contained. Originally the realm was assigned a god who would watch over it and try to fix the denizens in the hope of making lemonade out of those lemons, but it took about a day before he went totally insane from being surrounded by weird unnatural freaks, and all contact was severed with the descended plane.
A few thousand years or so later and these wrongspawn have evolved into various forms of weird life known as demons. Not all of them are malicious, and indeed they are so varied that there is no such thing as your "average" demon, but a lot of them are so freakishly weird that their mere presence can cause harm. There definitely are evil demons though, and the god of that realm (whose actual name is long-since forgotten) is incredibly spiteful and utterly mad. Fortunately passage between the descended plane and the surface world is quite tricky. Demons do sometimes escape to the surface world, with the results very much depending on the demon in question; some such creatures are actually friendly or at least harmless, whilst others can be mischievous, outright malevolent or simply existentially wrong to the point of being hazards.
So how common is the poor sweet misunderstood quasimodo demon? I think that's a great trope if it's done with care but it goes south so fast if it's overdone.
Hard to say, because a lot of them might qualify were they not so hideously malformed that their speech is incomprehensible and seeing them can kill the weak-willed. But they definitely exist.
Cool.
>your setting’s demons
They are Fae, just ones doing shit that mankind disapprove of particularly - all of them feed on sentient beings experiencing wonder (for better or worse: "pant-shitting terror leading to cardiac arrest" work just as well as "pure ecstasy from experiencing the most beautiful panorama ever").
Fae who prefer to feed on sin-ish feelings like lust, gluttony or violence are called demons, although they aren't different mechanically or spiritually from the random-ass cute rabbit constantly tricking your little sister into exploring the forest alone at night to watch the stars or something. Demons are just a much more blatantly bad influence than "normal" Fae usually are.
>post something Japanese on /tg/
>some homosexual pseud appears to try and tear it down
Why does this happen so often?
They know Japan is unquestionably culturally superior at this point and it makes them seethe because they aim their stuff at the people they thought themselves to have suppressed.
I like anime and this is the gayest thing you could say if you aren't actually from Japan. Sucking off another country is what turncoats and homosexuals do.
How is the most souless capitalistic materialistic un-spiritual nation of bugman incels culturally superior to anything? Even communist China is more based and tradpilled and spiritual then japcels
oh my god shut the frick up you prancing la-la homosexual man
Shut up gaymunch.
Sperging out at the sight of manga isn’t a good look anon…
They're samurai.
Okay, that’s a terrifying look. The idea of demonic samurai is pretty based, I must admit.
Devils seek to break back into the material realm to conquer it so that their beloved goddess comes back.
She won't because each demon contains a part of her as she died creating them
They're essentially malware. They don't have a physical form, only manifesting as physical alterations and erratic behaviour in the machine lifeforms they infect. The only thing that they want is to fulfil the function they were born with, which is invariably some form of destructive behaviour and/or propagating themselves as far as they can.
I presume that if demons are the equivalent of malware, then angels are akin to a properly functioning program and/or antivirus software? Also, what causes demons to come into being, and how can they be stopped?
God(s) fearing Demons > Atheist demons
There's nothing I hate more than a setting where actual hell and demons exist but there is no divine presence.
Like I can understand if the divine can't act as directly but I genuinely feel like there has to be something that holds infernal powers in check or else they get fricked.
>there has to be something that holds infernal powers in check or else they get fricked.
There is.
Different anon, but what about before modern weapons were a thing, if you'd need them to fight against demons effectively?
Moral relativism and demons is the worst kind of tripe in my opinion.
Okay, sure, maybe you don't get to necessarily call out pillars of fire and lighting from the sky with prayer to smite satan with the power of the God of Abraham, but at the very least the very existence of the demonic threat creates room for a level of heroism and virtue where men would be animated at least something approximating a divine spirit to go and fight back.
I don't think the divine is necessary for balance. After all, the forces of hell can be as weak or strong as the author wants. Maybe they're kept in check by constant in-fighting, idk.
But it feels so thematically weird to have hell without heaven.
Like, aren't demons defined by their role as the opposing force to good?
It's like yin without yang, or order without chaos.
They're drawn from a formless realm. They look like what the summoner thinks, consciously and unconsciously, they should look like. They also act according to the summoner's unconscious thoughts and ideas.
Same for angels and djinn.
Though in setting, they don't "know" that. It's just a theory some wizards have. Most people think that because the demons and things look like what religions says the demons should look like is evidence the religion is right.
They're not actually demons, at least not in the supernatural sense. They're more monstrous races; driders, naga/lamia, similar. There are a race called the Fireblood that resemble your traditional demons with wings and horns and spade/trident tails but they're just a race proficient in shadow magic. Still they're at odds with the other Races, mostly due to xenophobia from those races since the two intiially were on separate continents until people got exploring and MISUNDERSTANDINGS happened.
Like this
ngl, it pissed me off that she seemed so nice. I get that she's supposed to embody spirtual exess rather than just being a hog, but it feels weird that demons barely even treat evil as a job anymore. remember when charlie seemed exceptional because she somehow managed to be a disney princess despite being surrounded by rapists and murderers
I'm more upset about the design more than anything else. I get why Viv wanted a character like this, she got an opportunity most of us can only dream about having one of her favorite music artists voice a character she designed and basically redo one of her old videos, but said character didn't also have to be one of the seven princes.
They did an alright job with Asmodeus, but this depiction of Beelzebub as a fricking anthro dog with bee motifs is horrendous.
Bees actually are great as a symbol of gluttony because they're basically a species that who not only eats their own vomit, but whom humans domesticated to eat their vomit, which can also have hallucinagenic properties if the bees collected nectar from the right plants. The only design issue is why is she also a fox?
Because one of her first MVs was a sparkledog in a neon nightclub. Beelzebub is a reference to said sparkledog. I dunno if western hermatism had any foxlike demons to work with though.
I think that the Hellhound association is because Cerberus is in Gluttony in Dante’s Inferno.
Various kinds of types from your goat demon to succubi to the possessing ones to the fiery horned ones who are all like the worst person you can imagine. Sadistic c**ts that may occasionally want to be your friend, but also narcissistic enough that they will turn on you the moment you displease them.
If you want to coexist with them, it would be like coexisting with the criminally insane. Theoretically doable, but also not exactly advisable.
The demons in my setting are physically typical, but are incredibly resistant to not only fire, but extreme pressures. They live in a cave system atop the planet's core and like to go for a dip in the magma pools - they're dense enough to do so.
However, millennia ago, the planet's core started to cool, which is not only bad for their lifestyle, but would disrupt the planet's magnetic field and allow solar winds to blow away all the atmosphere that the surface dwellers use. As such, they engineered special red crystals that act as powerful, shapeshifting weapons and also increase feelings of anger, rage, and hatred in the wielder and those nearby. They distributed these to the surface where they sparked countless wars and generally brought about more violence and suffering. The reason for this, is that the crystals also serve the purpose of collecting emotional energy - in this case anger - and transmit it back to the demon empire at the planet's core. This energy is then converted into heat and is the only reason the planet still exists as it does today. They tried more peaceful options - crystals that encourage and are empowered by things like hope. But those didn't prove reliable enough as the humans on the surface would often lose hope. Succubi factions experimented with lust crystals, which had worse issues of reliability, even if they did get a kick out of it. Having exhausted their pool of possible emotions, it turned out that hatred was the best option for keeping the world going. So now people are always warring and killing and fighting so that the demons can secretly keep everyone alive.
My players just recently learned all this and are trying to get the elemental plane of fire to relocate a lot of stuff to the core of the planet as an alternative solution.
This image is what one of the demon tribes can turn into, a wispy, blood-red fox with only front legs that uses the tails as powerful piercing weapons.
I have loosely based each of my primary gods on one of the Sephirot from Kabbalism, each being formed from the rib of a single god, Ein Sof, that was then torn apart to create the rest of reality. The first rib removed was in haste, and was cracked so badly that Ein Sof had to bind it together with his hairs before reshaping the rib into a child. Even then, the god formed was crippled.
This 'crippled god' focuses on exposing flaws, though he is seen as an antagonistic force by all mortal religions. Additionally, the hairs which were used to hold him together were turned into his assistants. The hairs plucked from Ein Sof's head became celestials, while those from his beard became the infernals.
Celestials directly obey the wills of the other gods, acting as envoys to mortals and granting them guidance according to the religion.
Infernals perform the Crippled God's mandate, finding the weaknesses and flaws in mortals and their creations.
A mighty empire, where peace and prosperity fills every corner? Their neighbors look upon them with jealousy and band together to destroy the empire.
A holy man, well on his way to becoming declared a saint? He still has mortal urges, rediscovered when an attractive woman somehow makes her way to his direct tutelage within the organization.
An extended period of the gods dwelling amongst the mortals in harmony? A man is filled with desire to abuse the True Names of the gods and ascend to their level, creating the first lich. The gods defeat him, but flee the mortal realm and create a filter to prevent their own abuse again, causing schisms as successive generations misconstrue their teachings.
Ultimately, the objective of the Crippled God and the infernal demons is to test mortals with the hope of being overcame. That empire might become more militarily capable to defend its prosperity into eternity, or make deals to spread their prosperity to others peacefully. The holy man may reaffirm his faith to being fully canonized, or he gladly finds a pure love with the woman that becomes an inspiration to all even without a religious angle. The gods might have lost their pride and went down to the mortals' level, recognizing and assuaging the fears and temptations that create such tragedies.