Daemon
Daemons are neutral evil outsiders that eat souls and thrive on disaster and ruin.
| Horror Atmosphere | ||
|---|---|---|
| Haunting | Haunt | Haunt Templates |
| Variant Haunts | New Haunts | Exorcism |
Daemons have the following traits (unless otherwise noted):
- Immunity to acid, death effects, disease, and poison.
- Resistance to cold 10, electricity 10, and fire 10.
- Summon (Sp): Daemons share the ability to summon others of their kind, typically another of their type or a small number of less powerful daemons.
- Telepathy.
- Except where otherwise noted, daemons speak Abyssal, Draconic, and Infernal.
| Devil | Daemon | Demon |
| Archdevils | Soul Trade | Demon Lords |
| Binding Outsiders | ||
Harbingers of ruin and embodiments of the worst ways to die, daemons epitomize painful death, the all-consuming hunger of evil, and the utter annihilation of life. While demons seek to pervert and destroy in endless unholy rampages, and devils vex and enslave in hopes of corrupting mortals, daemons seek only to consume mortal life itself. While some use brute force to despoil life or prey upon vulnerable souls, others wage campaigns of deceit to draw whole realms into ruin. With each life claimed and each atrocity meted out, daemons spread fear, mistrust, and despair, tarnishing the luster of existence and drawing the planes ever closer to their final, ultimate ruin. Notorious for their hatred of the living, daemons are the things of dark dreams and fearful tales, as their ultimate ambitions include extinguishing every individual mortal life—and the more violent or terrible the end, the better. Their methods vary wildly, typically differentiated by daemonic breed. Many seek to infiltrate the mortal plane and sow death by their own taloned hands, while others manipulate agents (both mortal and immortal) as malevolent puppet masters, instigating calamities on massive scales from their grim realms. Such diversity of methods causes many planar scholars to misattribute the machinations of daemons to other types of fiends. These often deadly mistakes are further propagated by daemons’ frequent dealings with and manipulation of other outsiders. Yet in all cases, despair, ruin, and death, spreading like contagion, typify the touch of daemonkind, though such symptoms often prove recognizable only after the hour is far too late.
Daemons flourish upon the plane of Abaddon, a bleak expanse of cold mists, fearful shapes, and hunted souls. Upon these wastes, the souls of evil mortals flee predation by the native fiends, and terror and the powers of the evil plane eventually transform the most ruthless into daemons themselves. Amid these scarred wastelands, poison swamps, and realms of endless night rise the foul domains of the tyrants of daemonkind, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Lords of devastation, these powerful and unique daemons desire slaughter, ruin, and death on a cosmic scale, and drive hordes of their lesser kin to spread terror and sorrow across the planes. Although the Horsemen share a singular goal, their tactics and ambitions vary widely.
Along with mastery over vast realms, the Horsemen are served by unimaginably enormous armies of their lesser brethren, but are obeyed most closely by retinues of daemons enslaved to their titles. These specific strains of daemonic servitors, known among daemonkind as deacons, serve whoever holds the title of Horseman. Although these instruments of the archdaemons differ in strength and ability, their numbers provide their lords with legions capable of near-equal terrorization. More so than among any other fiendish race, several breeds of daemons lust after souls. While other foul inhabitants of the planes seek the corruption and destruction of living essences, many daemons value possession and control over mortal animas, entrapping and hoarding souls—and in so doing disrupting the natural progression of life and perverting the quintessence of creation to serve their own terrible whims. While not all daemons possess the ability to steal a mortal being’s soul and turn it to their use, the lowliest of daemonkind, the maniacal cacodaemons, endlessly seek life essences to consume and imprison. These base daemons enthusiastically serve their more powerful kin, eager for increased opportunities to doom mortal spirits. While cacodaemons place little value upon the souls they imprison, greater daemons eagerly gather them as trophies, fuel for terrible rites, or offerings to curry the favor of their lords. Several breeds of daemons also posses their own notorious abilities to capture mortal spirits or draw upon the power of souls, turning the forces of utter annihilation to their own sinister ends.
The Four Horsemen
Four dread lords, infamous across all the planes, rule the disparate hordes of daemonkind. Risen from among the ranks of their terrible brethren to displace those fiendish tyrants before them, they are the archdaemons, the End Bringers, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. In the blasphemous annals of fiendish lore, they are the prophesied architects of multiversal ruin, destined to stand triumphant over cadaverous cosmoses and infinities of silence before also giving way to absolute oblivion. Undisputed in his power among their kind, each Horseman rules a vast realm upon the bleak plains of Abaddon and a distinctive method of mortal ruin: pestilence, famine, war, or death from old age. Yet while each archdaemon commands measureless influence, daemons know nothing of loyalty and serve only those they cannot overcome. Thus, though the Horsemen stand peerless in their power and manipulations among daemonkind, they must ever defend their thrones from the machinations of ambitious underlings and the plots of other archdaemons.
Upon the poisonous expanses of Abaddon, lesser daemonic peers carve petty fiefdoms and posture as lords, but despite their world-spanning intrigues, all bow before the Horsemen—though most do so only grudgingly. Ancient myths also tell of a mysterious fifth Horseman, the Oinodaemon, though nearly all mention of such a creature has been scoured from the multiverse.
Daemonkind
While many claim to see absolute evil in the eons-spanning agendas of Hell or the unpredictable and unstoppable devastation of the Abyss, the features of immorality, depravity, and cruelty most truly shape the face of Abaddon. The scions of this shattered realm know no ambitions but their own, no loyalty but that wrested from them by fear or pain, and no limitations in pursuing their most wicked desires. Some underestimate daemons, viewing them as evil without form, with vague plots that fall short of diabolical schemes and constrain them from the boundless degeneracy of demonkind. In truth, daemons might be viewed as embodying evil at its purest, free from the mandates and strictures of devils, possessed of greater vision and focus than demons. They are embodiments of evil without concern for law or chaos, malice given thought and form.
All daemons endure trials upon the plane of Abaddon, facing mind-shattering torments and paradoxes that, over eons, imbue each with the fundamental traumas and timeless hatreds that epitomize daemonkind.
From the Mortal to the Eternal: A daemon’s existence begins in shock, pain, fear, and desperation. Virtually every daemon begins by crawling Abaddon’s unforgiving soil as one of the hunted. The rare exceptions to this wretched beginning are often those mortals who, prior to death, worshiped one of the Horsemen and sealed a pact that condemned them to one of these unfathomably evil beings’ clutches—and even then, at least half of these depraved spirits are betrayed by their patrons and consumed outright. Only seldomly does a mortal of exceptional evil and foul potential gain a daemon’s interest. Such perverse spirits can hardly view such attention as a boon, though. Existence as one of the hunted is terrifying and generally swift, ending in a moment of horrific violence as the soul is consumed by the denizens of Abaddon. Those elevated to serve as newly shaped daemons face prolonged trials of pain, maddening stints of gaslighting, and unimaginable cruelties. Over a span of ages, just as surely as the souls of the hunted are destroyed and digested, so are the souls of promising mortals warped and fractured into beings unrecognizable from the villains they once were. Either as one of the transcended hunted or a chosen spirit, once a soul becomes a daemon it typically turns to prey on other hunted, mercilessly reveling in its increased status, even though most are elevated only to the forms of cacodaemons. Gradually, as time progresses in spans measured in centuries, new daemons integrate into the larger societies of Abaddon. These less powerful fiends wander Abaddon, left to their own devices until gathered together and organized by their more powerful kindred, obeying out of fear or respect. To the masses of lesser daemonkind, structure and organization come with difficulty, but their superior brethren find that their loyalty can be purchased quite easily. The mantra endlessly whispered in the ears of lesser daemons is simple: “Servitude brings safety and souls. Follow, obey, and feast.” In this way most lesser daemons fall under the sway of more powerful members of their kind.
Obedience without Loyalty: Although all daemons show a strange, racial loyalty to the Horsemen and their deacon servitors, daemonic authority bears no relation to the rigid hierarchy of Hell or the survival of the foulest and most experienced in the Abyss. Daemonic authority tends to be one of territory, with a given region, location, or city ruled by a powerful individual, the ruler’s authority conferred by one of the Horsemen, a harbinger, or the daemon’s own might and ability to subjugate all rivals. Within that territory, such despots essentially rule by divine right, but their rule exists only so long as their actions please the power that invested them. of course, should such a daemonic dictator be killed by its servitors, clearly it was not fit to rule. Such lesser tyrants remain free to appoint whatever hierarchy they see fit to serve them, and so daemonic citadels and cities may possess vastly different societies. For example, the council of crucidaemons that controls the sub-realm of Ovencal contrasts sharply with the harem-autocracy of Gasping Ecstasy, dominated by the erodaemon Weeping Libation and the 35 ever-shifting members of her harem.
The Existential Paradox: Given most daemons’ origin among the souls of the hunted, coupled with their quasi-religious hatred of mortal life, an inherent paradox underlies all daemonic thought: that all things mortal must be obliterated, despite the fact that they themselves were once mortal. The reasons for this hatred of existence are as varied as the daemons themselves, stemming from lives of grief and pain, terrible and unjust ends, heartbreak and wounded pride, and more. Regardless of how their hatred comes to be, most daemons lock away any considerations of their former nature or musings on the roots of their anger, and ages of depravity and delusion scour their beings of anything recognizable as the creatures they were in life. Yet just as a gnarled willow grows from a tiny black seed, so does each daemon know its current being finds it roots in that which it most loathes. This core of self-loathing guides most daemons in their greatest profanities, allowing them to lash out at the living, spirits, other outsiders, members of their own kind, and occasionally even themselves with a viciousness that translates into an absolute hatred of all things that live, once lived, or ever might live. Such makes them the ultimate nihilists, guiding them toward a vision of a silent multiverse, an endless realm devoid of life and which, in the end, even they will be absent from. Yet as much as it loathes all things, every daemon loathes itself a modicum less, and so each strives to be the last witness to a dead eternity.
