Demons
| Demons, Devils, Damned | |
|---|---|
| Racial Characteristics | |
| Hair Color: | Varied |
| Eye Color: | Varied |
| Other Information | |
| Country of Origin: | No constant origin |
| Significant Populations: | No significant population spot |
| Language: | Infernal |
| Related Races: | Half Demons |
Race Origins
The origins of demons are spoken of in many different cultures, there are some people that consider them to be related to religion as being the messengers and harbingers of death. Though the demonic race are at times thought this because of the massive amount of powers they hold, they are not normally affiliated with any one religion.
The demonic entity begins as a humanoid creature, they must have the higher cognitive functions, be able to think and reason and most importantly of all. They have to want. A demon or a devil begins as a person who wants with all of themselves power and control. Beginning as merely a magic worker, a practioner of the arts of working with power, a person has multiple paths to entertain. When the choice is made to start following a path of dark magic, black power, the person who chooses this path has chances as much as any other being to turn back, turn aside and take a lighter direction.
Over time as all power does, the desire for power and the power itself, changes the person that wields it, over a great deal of time as dark arts are performed and the magic user takes steps into extending his or her lifetime, as the soul becomes blackened and corrupted, the demon begins to form. It takes a long time, many lifetimes of being steeped in the blackest of arts and at the end when the soul is corrupted and nearly destroyed the body normally is mangled with it. When the soul finally expires the desire for power and the amount of power that this 'person' holds must be enough to keep them alive. They feed off different elements to maintain their power and thus create pockets where they keep creatures they can feed off.
History
The history of demonic entities as all things that are steeped in power, time, and dark arts, have become muddled. People confuse demons for things of religion, or fallen angels. In reality the history of the demon is more simple and more direct. People that had taken too much power and are unable to turn back. It is rare to find one such person who is able to control the level of power, maintain the drive and desire for it, and find them still at the end master of themselves to be able to funnel all that power into staying alive after the death of the soul.
There are people who are partial demons, a human or humanoid creature breeds with a demon and the child that results from it would maintain the characteristics of both parents. The genetic mutation of the demon body after time would follow into the blood of the child that is born from it and they have as much chance to inherit characteristics of power, personality, and features as any other child. A half demon child is rare but definitely not unheard of, a half demon child carried by a female demon brought onto her by a male of another race is even more rare. Perhaps the nature of the female demon's body as it is corrupted and changed makes it an unsuitable host for a fetus but it is unlikely that a female demon would be able to carry a child to term if they could be impregnated at all. However there have been partial demon children in history that have either sought to hide what they are, embrace it and seek to become like their demonic parentage, or are discriminated against for their blood.
Over time the legends of demons and their connection to religion or religious orders has become widely exaggerated. Either due to information spread by the race as a way of confusing and muddling their existence, giving them a greater foothold into the lives of those people that they seek to use, or due to the general public's fear of the unknown. The power of these people may also add to the general impression that they are religiously connected, the combination of tales relating to angels as well as to gods translating down into the feeling that the great degree of power they wield must be religious in nature.
Culture
Demonic culture is tangled, there are many things that are along with the nature of the race themselves that is shrouded in fable and legend. The few things about the culture that are correct have been passed along through generations of demon hunters and scholars. Much of what is known about the demonic culture are things to aid others in defeating one of the entities because of the nature of this knowledge.
As a group, demons do not normally interact with one another in a social scenario, much of what they do entails them being independently able to draw people to them. Having more than one demon vying for material to nourish themselves causes more trouble to the demon in the end. A demon feeds most commonly off the particular emotion, response, or off the lives of humanoid races. Depending on the thing that they feed on, the presence of another of their kind in their feeding grounds is something they would normally seek to correct. Because of this they tend to not associate with each other for long, though some will do so to gather information about others of their race. Because of the nature of their culture and the darkness, the corruption connected to it and more often than not the willingness to dispose of each other, secrets and information about others of their kind are valued things.
One constant about the demonic culture is the power of a demon's name. At one point along the path that they follow there is a consistent need for the magic user to bind themselves to a name, something that can not be easily guessed and something that is not given out willingly. The need to bind to a name, a word of power, follows a transition that comes with the accumulation of power. The magic worker is able to reach a plateau and move forward, gathering more and more power.