Broken Wheel Cosmology: Demons

Previously Broken Wheel Cosmology posts explored different ways of thinking about gods. Implicit in the exercise is that godhood is not a yes/no state, but a spectrum of conditions across which various immortal, supernatural, and extraplanar entities exist.

D&D’s own metaphysics in recent editions support this idea. The warlock can gain many of the same benefits as a cleric through a pact with a fiend, fey, old one, or even a celestial. Implicit is the idea that the “gods” merely have a strong brand as the distributors of power to the mortal realms; but that’s not exclusive.

So how can we think about those other creatures that have god-like power? How do they fit into our cosmology? Let’s start with demons.

What is a Demon?

The chaotic planes of the demons are worlds where pure Id can shape existence. Will to power is a concrete, observable law of their universe. Will something into being, for good or for ill, and it can just happen.

Demons are repulsed by the material world, bound by inert, inoperable physical laws that individuals largely cannot influence. It’s abhorrent to demons. To them it feels like an artificial, dead, soulless, nothing-place.

How do you roleplay a demon on the material plane? Basically like a person who believes they are in a simulation of reality and wants out. A demon feels no remorse for killing or destruction, because nothing here is real. In fact, this place is a mockery of true life (demonic life). Imagine the movie the Matrix from the perspective of one of the ordinary people oblivious to the fact that they are in a simulation; to them, the movie's heroes would be like demons.

Demons are sometimes drawn to mortals who wish to bring extreme change to the world. Such mortals could be anyone from an obsessive artist to a driven serial killer to a revolutionary who wants to see the kingdom burn. The moral valence isn’t interesting or important to the demon. The important thing is the person wants to bring disruption and entropy to the system.

While demons can’t be reasoned with, they can be swayed by emotional appeals. But this rarely lasts for long. Even a relatively sympathetic demon is going to end up killing and destroying sooner or later. A demon is a bull in a china shop full of china decorated with horribly offensive anti-bull illustrations.