If you have paid any attention to the sermons in the temple, the gossip in the town square, or the warnings on the oldest books in the library at the academy, you surely know that demons are innately cruel, sadistic, soulless monsters. They have no redeeming features. They are pure evil… right?
Well... maybe. Let’s step back and interrogate what we really know about these “demons.”
The vast majority of human interactions with demons occur on the material plane. Living humans go to the home planes of the demons only very rarely, and only a tiny percentage of those who do ever return to tell the tale. Most humans on the material plane meet demons for one of the following reasons.
- They summoned them. Thanks a lot, jerk.
- They were in the wrong place at the wrong time when someone else summoned them. Sorry bystanders.
- They are the people called in to clean up after a summoning. Hello adventurers!
So most of what we know about demons comes from these incidents. Summonings come in many forms. The evil ritual deep in the woods is a classic. But it could also be a wizardly accident. Or an ordinary, run-of-the-mill massacre, which accidentally triggering a long-forgotten prophecy. Even a muttered curse from one neighbor to another, expressed with sufficient malice, can create a crack in reality that pulls a demon through.
For a demon, being summoned is not like voluntarily traveling the planes through something nice and civilized like the Plane Shift spell. It is more like a very strong force pulling them through a too-small hole. It is painful. It is frightening. They do not come through the process whole. It fragments them.
A summoned demon is an incomplete being. Most of its essence remains in its home plane; this is why demons summoned elsewhere return home when “killed,” rather than truly dying. It’s presence on the material plane is an aspect of its persona, with full senses and awareness, but merely an ego without a superego. A demon’s demeanor reflects this partial, fragmented manifestation. The malice and penchant for cruelty are reflections of the trauma of summoning, combined with the incomplete nature of their manifestation.
How do we telegraph this idea to players? Some ideas:
- There’s an excellent demon-summoning scene in the first book in the Laundry Files series, the Atrocity Archives. Playing with fundamental elements of sense and time helps make them alien.
- Arnold at Goblin Punch wrote an excellent treatment of demons earlier this year. Centering possession and focusing on the demon’s flaws, not just its powers, really paints a much more interesting picture.
- Previously I wrote about using the idea of someone who believes they are trapped in a simulation as a shorthand for roleplaying a demon. These two ideas can be used separately or together.
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