Origin of Demons¶
"Neither the Gods nor any known scholarly body has a complete picture of where Demons came from. Some scholars and Gods believe Demons are a product of some, or even all of the theories." — On the Origin and Nature of Demons (S520)
Contested
This page is named in the open question Origin of demons. The sources give incompatible accounts, several of them as settled fact; the page presents them as the in-world debate the scholars themselves describe and does not rule between them.
No one knows where demons came from, and the demons are no help: "whether they are twisted souls, alien entities or agents of the void, even the oldest demons do not know their true origin" (S334). What is agreed is when they arrived. The Second Age, the Age of Titans, "ended with the arrival of Demons," and the Third, the Age of Demons, "saw the overthrow of the Elder Gods and the creation of the Anthu'Mithius and the Abyss" (S001). "When the Demons arrived, the Gods created Dragons to counter the threat … The demonic threat led to a fracturing of the unity of the Gods and Kalar's faction (the Younger Gods) won out" (S208). "The first verified Demons were encountered during the Eldritch Succession Wars" (S520). Everything before that first encounter is theory, and the theories are these.
The scholars' six theories¶
The in-world essay On the Origin and Nature of Demons sets out the schools (S520):
The Void Origin. "Some scholars believe that demons are extra-planar travellers who have travelled through the Void to this plane of existence. The evidence supporting this claim is in translation of some demonic texts which reference worlds that appear to have no relation to Terrun." Jeroxx's Abyssal Compendium "references several demons claiming that the host of Belphegor arrived from a world known as Oestar after having completely consuming all energy there, and that those that refused or were unable to travel through the Void are undoubtedly now destroyed." The Void and the texts cited (Lesser Texts) have their own pages.
The Nephilim Origin. "The first demons were the offspring of mortal women who had been impregnated by Nephilim. The Nephilim are fallen Einar (The Elder Gods), who have discarded or been stripped of their astral power and forced to live on the Material Plane. Like the Einar, Nephilim have no soul and are naturally immortal in form and essence." Their offspring were "abominations which left a wake of destruction and death upon the communities where they were born." The Nephilim were "decimated in the First Demonic Invasion," and "the last know Nephilim was destroyed long before the Shattering during the Elven Imperium."
The Corruption Origin. "A living soul can be drained of it's energy and then twisted and corrupted by certain rituals to turn a living being into a demon." Direct evidence is minimal, though "some secondary sources, including Lothos the Archwizard, lend some believability to it"; the texts of the rituals are lost, "including the legendary Nephilis Genesi Demonicore." To account for the number of demons, "this theory assumes that the Demons themselves have some hand in exercising these rituals."
The Eldritch Origin. The first demons appeared during the Eldritch Succession Wars, "where the Younger Gods and their allies were exterminating the Eldritch and replacing them with Elves … not just about killing Eldritch physically, but destroying or imprisoning their souls as well. Some believe the Demons were invited as allies or created by the Eldritch … while others believe the Eldritch transformed themselves into Demons so as to avoid soul death and to be an eternal scourge upon their enemies."
The Dwarrow Origin. Stories "which predate the Younger Gods and the Succession Wars" seem to describe demons in the Eldritch-Dwarrow Wars, "the Eldritch as their primary victims. Scholars argue that Demons would have been a particularly potent weapon for the Dwarrow, as they are Ethereal-based and consume their enemies soul (which the Dwarrow would be immune to, being Fae)," and because "the Eldritch reincarnation cycle was very short (a matter of months), whereas a killed Dwarrow would take centuries to replace." The essay concedes that "beyond these conjectures, there is no substantive evidence."
The Eldritch Extinction Theory, added in the later copy of the essay (S520 against S514): "the Einar may have constructed demons to permanently dispose of Eldritch souls … perhaps the strongest evidence is a historical disparity between the known population of Eldritch and the number of Eldritch souls still in existence," though others answer "that perhaps the Eldritch simply migrated to other worlds to get away from the Einar."
The essay's one firm statement is about nature rather than origin: "Demons are not quite soul-less, but their ethereal souls are radically different from the souls of other beings. Their soul is an empty vessel capable of absorbing the energy from other ethereal souls" (S520). The Eldritch, the Dwarrow, the Einar and Lothos have their own pages.
Theories Kappa and Delta¶
The newest cosmology lists demons among the cosmological beings "that as far as anyone knows have always existed. They have no obvious or known creator(s)," and offers two theories of its own (S001):
- Theory Kappa: "Demons are the negative energy half of Eldritch, which the Eldritch released in revenge for their displacement and imprisonment, or simply because they no longer had the power to contain them. Supporting evidence: Demons and Eldritch share no animosity and have been seen to avoid one another."
- Theory Delta: "Demons are negative energy Shades. As the Einar drew psychic energy from the Shadow Realm to the Astral, it created an energy deficit on the material … which formed as negative energy shades: Demons. Supporting evidence: New Demons seem to arrive/spawn in the Shadow Realm."
Theory Kappa is a refinement of the Eldritch Origin; Theory Delta is new, and ties demons to the Shades of the Shadow Realm. A revision of the lore of souls floats a related conjecture and marks it with a question: "Demons are the anti-Einar? Shared Demon-soul which acts as a counterbalance to the Einar soul (born from the expansion of power of the Einar)" (S018).
The Uk'Zarai account¶
One source gives an origin as fact. The Uk'Zarai, eight-foot horned, hooved and winged beings from the dead world Sukmaran, were brought to Terrun by the Dwarrow "to act as allies in their wars against the Eldritch." Long after, "a few of the Eldritch devised a plan to achieve revenge against the Younger Gods and the Uk'Zarai. After studying Fel magic and energy for thousands of years, the Eldritch were able to create the Elda'Primu (Spiritfire Orb). It was a device of powered by an imprisoned god which was used from afar on Uk'Zarai cities and settlements. Basically it refocused Fel energies inwards. Without their external web of supporting energy, the most powerful Fel beings consumed themselves quickly. However, the Orb's energies bound the souls of each of the consumed creatures and they became what are now referred to as Demons." A Fel sorcerer, Mephistus, "came up with a temporary plan to extend their lives for a short time, but more notably to protect the Uk'Zarai's mind during the process. Almost without exception, the process left a crazed bloodthirsty animal in place of a Uk'Zarai. After successfully helping a small segment of the remaining population transition into the first intelligent Demons, they went about exacting their revenge on the Eldritch. Mephistus now has the Elda'Primu set into his staff" and "has in the past occasionally corrupted a living being with Fel energy in order to use the Elda'Primu to convert them into a Demon" (S515). The Elda'Primu and the energies it altered, Fel into Abyssal (Fel Magic), have their own pages. The essay of the scholars does not mention this account at all; the Fifth Age lore of souls still counts the Uk'Zarai among the Outsiders beside demons and angels (S018), and the Mephistus who is an archdemon is a Religion page (Mephistus).
Children of the Void¶
The Fifth Age bestiary opens with the Void and hedges at once: "Demons are sometimes known as the children of the Void, although that supposition is without direct evidence" (S019). The older cosmology was surer: "Once wandering souls, the Demons arrived en-masse from the Void. They destroy not just forms, but also souls by consuming them … When the Demons arrived, they too were wandering souls," beings "whose form and soul are in one location (no need for a spirit)," and the Einar had made the Ethereal Plane precisely to protect their own souls from such destruction (S421).
The gods as makers¶
Two of the oldest sources make demons the work of gods. In the Overview of the Gods the Destroyer, "believed to have once been an Einar," who "simply works toward the destruction of Terrun," "tricked many of them into helping him create the Demons," so that the Dark Gods "are more wary of him" since; and each Dark God is credited with a breed, Rakkan with Blade-Demons, Necatus with Shade-Demons, Uaros with Horned and Sea-Demons, Pyri with Fire-Demons, Moros with Bone-Demons and Cordia with Frost-Demons (S429). The same book describes demons as "a cancer of the spirit": "all souls were created by Kalar, and attached to each one is the Light of Kalar. This acts as a sort of moral compass for all beings. If this is removed and then the soul sufficiently damaged, twisted and corrupted, they become a demon" (S429, S384). A regional gazetteer of the same era names the Elder God Zatan, Keeper of the Dead, "Father of Demons (created to make the spirit transition go faster)," and makes the rivalry between Kalar and Zatan the seed of the rebellion against the Elder Gods (S498). The Dark Gods and the Elder Gods are Religion's pages.
Gap
No source weighs these accounts against one another. The scholars' essay, the Uk'Zarai history, the Void cosmology and the gods-as-makers tradition never cite each other, and nothing says what the demons' own texts, which the Void theorists translate, actually record.
In Play¶
A scholar asked where demons come from will name a school and disparage the others. A priest of the old faiths will say the Light of Kalar was torn out of them. A Dwarrow ruin may hold the oldest answer, and a demon, asked, will not know.