Demon Wars¶
Contested
This page is named in the open question Second and Third Demon Wars against the Rift Wars. The Fourth Age and 2014 documents number later Demon Wars that ruin the same lands the 2020 history gives to the Rift Wars; the pages stay separate until it is ruled.
"During the Demon Wars several millennia ago, the mortal races, with help from the Gods, drove back hordes of demons and imprisoned them in a separate plane of existence: the Abyss (also called Hell)." — Introduction to Playing a Demon (S334)
The Demon Wars are the ancient war against the demon hordes that ended in the Demonic Abscission, when the demons were bonded to the Abyss and the Worldstone sealed them there. The war fills the Age of Demons, which has the surrounding history of gods and races; this page is the war itself, from the Demonic Invasion to the exile of the last demon, together with the two later wars that the sources number after it. The 2014 archive calls the same catastrophe the Demonic Apocalypse. Demons as creatures are the business of their own page; the Abscission as a barrier belongs to the Mithis Plane.1
The Demonic Invasion¶
"At first they were just a few, but soon they were appearing in hordes. They seemed bent on consuming all life and life-energy. The Einar were able to keep them out of the Astral Plane, but they were able to wreak havoc on the Material. When they died, their spirits quickly found new hosts and they reincarnated rapidly. The early races were quickly pushed to their breaking points" (S386). The 2016 essay on demons calls this the First Demonic Invasion, in which the Nephilim, fallen Einar living on the Material, were "decimated" (S514, S520). The Dwarrow origin theory holds that stories of demons predate it, from the Eldritch-Dwarrow Wars (S520), and the Uk'Zarai account makes the first intelligent demons the work of the Fel sorcerer Mephistus, who then "went about exacting their revenge on the Eldritch" (S515). The 2026 cosmology adds two theories of its own, that demons are the negative half of the Eldritch or negative shades born of the Einar's draining of the Shadow Realm (S001).
The war¶
The gods' first answer was the Primal Dragons, "created to combat the demon hordes" and "very successful, though they alone proved not enough to turn the tide" (S372). The second was magic. "The Einar collaborated to create five staves and instructed five mortals (Elves) in the use of magic, in order that they might teach others. Magic was given as a tool and weapon against the demon hordes" (S429). At first "only wizards with staves were able to work magic through the stone", and "many lesser staves and other channeling devices were also created for the wizards trained and deployed during the Demon Wars" (S429, S372). The compendium gives the first wizards as twenty Ventari taught the five spheres of magic (S372).
The demons had captains of their own. Gothmog, "Lord of Fire and Shadow, King of Balrogs", "once commanded the legions of Balrogs in the Demon Wars"; his Balrogs are imprisoned in the Abyss, but he "was too powerful to be confined there and instead had to be imprisoned on the material plane", from which he escaped "several hundred years ago" (S372). Orcus, "Lord of the Undead", "commanded legions of the dead during the Demon Wars. He was able to raise whole armies of dead instantaneously from the battlefields" (S372). Of the seven Archdemons, "Mephistus and Asmodean escaped during the early Demon wars" (S429); the compendium adds Belphegor to the escapees (S372). "Their souls are now reborn into mortal forms after each death. It is therefore necessary to keep these mortal forms imprisoned, and alive for as long as possible" (S429).
The Fourth Age outline remembers the cost to the wizards: "the Council of Wizards fell apart after most of the Archwizards fell in the demon wars (all except one, Lothos)" (S358).
The Demonic Abscission¶
"Kalar took one of the shards and with help from many other Einar (and their shards) forged the Anthu'Mithis (Worldstone, which created the Mithis Plane). The Anthu'Mithis split off a portion of the Material Plane into a separate plane known as the Abyss. This was a tremendously destructive act and shook the foundations of Terrun, triggering worldwide cataclysms. However, this allowed Demons to be caught and bonded with the Abyss so that when they reformed, they reformed in the Abyss and not the Material. This act turned the tide against the Demons, and their numbers quickly dwindled, until they were all exiled to the Abyss" (S386).
The cosmology gives the prison's plan. "The Abyss was created by the Gods during the Demonic Wars as a set of prison planes to hold Demons and other outcasts. The Seven Hells were originally Astral Shards repurposed as prisons. An additional barrier plane (the Mithis Plane) was created to keep powerful beings from being able to leave the Abyss. Each shard (one of the seven hells) was initially governed by an Einar Warden, but eventually each fell to the Demons, and the Seven Archdemons claimed one shard each" (S001, S013). The compendium describes the barrier's working: "the magic of the Abscission originally prevented Demonic corruption, by automatically banishing any soul missing the Light of Kalar to the Abyss" (S372). "Ages of working in direct competition with one another as well as the significant thinning of demonic populations due to soul drought and raging inter-demon conflicts, there are now many fewer demons than there were during the Demonic Wars" (S001).
The Abscission did not end the demons' reach. Where it is thin, rifts open: "these rifts are very difficult to close and most scholars believe that closing one simply forces another to open somewhere else" (S333). The 2014 archive's Demonic Apocalypse records what the war cost the mortal races. The Muazi, who "once built a kingdom in what is now Dragonfall", and the Gildan, to whom "the Westmarches once belonged", were "wiped out" and are extinct (S387, S498); the Innus were mostly destroyed "in the Dragon Wars and Demonic Apocalypse" (S372); the Maridan'Lothim were left "few in number" (S387). The Westmarches "were ravaged" in the Demon Wars "and as a result, the Westmarches are now almost entirely covered in Earthblight" (S387). The Dwarrow history blames "the first demon wars" for "the fall of Kahun'Darahl and the loss of the majority of their population and cities" (S529).
Second Demon War¶
Fourth Age notes record that Vaal'Dunak, the Imperial Mint town of the Amarin Empire, was "destroyed in the Second Demon War" (S360). It is now a sinkhole city haunted by green ghosts and hellhounds, with a demonic outpost building beneath it (S360). No other source names a Second Demon War.
Third Demon War¶
The 2015 regional lore records that Amarin, "an old kingdom which once covered most of the North-west, from Dalmar in the south, to Rhovun in the north, as well as from the Westmarches to Faragond", was destroyed: "During the Third Demon War, Amarin was destroyed" (S387, S498, S372). The 2020 history has no Third Demon War; its Second Rift War ends with the archdemon Asmodean laying waste to "the northwestern corner of the continent (home of the Amarin Empire)" (S386). Whether these are two names for one war is the open question above.
Earlier accounts¶
The 2014 compendium (S372, S384) has no invasion from outside: the demons were made, when "some of Rakkor's Ventari (Rakkari) conspired against the Faeries, and Demons were created. They fed off the energies of the Faeries", and Kalas "formed a new plane (the abyss), and in the process split the earth". The 2019 overview of the gods (S429) has the Destroyer trick the Dark Gods into helping him create the demons, and names the war's age the Age of Faerie. The compendium also puts the First Wizards at twenty Ventari where the overview has five elves, an open question of the survey.
Gap
No source dates the Demon Wars, gives their length, or names a single battle of the first war. The Second and Third Demon Wars are each known from one sentence.