How would you make demons really dark?

[Morrus]

At the risk of infuriating people back in the 1980s, I wonder how you would go about making demons/devils what-have-you really dark and scary in your horror-themed games?

Assuming there's no worry about kids etc, and equally assuming that tedious slasher horror and gore are not the goal here, what would you do to give malevolent entities that feeling that makes you not want to turn the lights off when you go to bed, rather take just powerful critters with a bunch of immunities and Fire-themed abilities.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Are we assuming D&D chaotic evil type demons reworked- distinct from devils and other fiends- or are we just talking sentient supernatural evil extraplanar beings in general in general?

 

[Morrus]

Are we assuming D&D chaotic evil type demons reworked- distinct from devils and other fiends- or are we just talking sentient supernatural evil extraplanar beings in general in general?

No, ignoring D&D's classifications. More the concept. Evil malevolent entities from dark places, whether you call them demons, devils, whatever.

 

[Umbran]

The first technique is to not just blatantly put the beast on stage. Have the party run into the things the demon has done. Make them not just violent, not just gross, but creepy. Make it unclear what actually did the deeds - fear is generated by *lack* of understanding.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Well, I'd start by taking the approach of DarkSun took towards undead: general types, but without hard-set overarching ability/power/weakness suites. Lots of sliding scales. And I would make use of possession rules.

Like Umbran, I'd try to keep things "Hitchcockian"- keep them off-screen as much as possible. You'd become aware of them via ripples of their actions. Some actions would ripple farther and faster, of course.

Fiendish Types:

1) Destructive- these just want to wreck stuff. Those that manifest physically are usually monstrous killing machines. Those who operate via posession manipulate their (willing or unwilling) hosts to create serial killers, grifters and other sociopathic types. While destructive fiends tend to lack subtlety, do not mistake this for stupidity.

2) Manipulative- they spread evil by manipulation of persons. When they manifest corporealy, they adopt a form significant to the ones they seek to manipulate, from the fantastical to the mundane. The incorporeal ones usually operate as "voices" in the heads of those they posess.

3) Alien- their motivations do not conform to those of mere mortals, so their actions may seem illogical or counterintuitive.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I'd also take note of some of the great supernatural evils that have appeared onscreen: the Cenobites, De Niro's Louis Cyphere, Viggo Mortinsen and Christopher Walken as Satan and Gabriel in the Prophesy movies. Lovecraftian movies. J-horror/K-horror films. Even Peter Cook's take on Satan in the original Bedazzled.

Those depictions show carnality, bloodlust, retribution, caprice, and even banal humor, all of which will creep players out.

 

[Rod Staffwand]

I have a fondness for flawed and/or tormented baddies, but when you're talking about truly dark and twisted villains, you need baddies that LOVE being bad. Demons should have a passion for their work of sowing death, destruction and corruption wherever they go.

Demons mean collateral damage--nothing should be safe when one is around. Target beloved NPCs or wipe out whole communities; spread blight, disease or madness; inflict lasting damage or effects that can't be healed with a simple spell or a couple of nights of rest; and have the demon do it all with a smile on its bloody maw of a face.

Basically, just pile on the stakes making it imperative that the heroes defeat the demon--and then make it a bloody, brutal fight to remember with the demon fighting to the last with every nasty trick it can think of.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

...you need baddies that LOVE being bad. Demons should have a passion for their work of sowing death, destruction and corruption wherever they go.

There you go.

 

[gamerprinter]

I've always loved the Ravenloft concept of Fiendish Transposition, that is once you initiate contact with a powerful nether planar being, you gain one of its minor abilities, along with a fiendish minor curse or condition. The more you congregate with such a being, the more of its abilities and curses you acquire (and more powerful ones at that). After the fifth time such a congress occurs you switch places with the nether being. It now permanently inhabits whereever you originated, and you appear trapped as yourself (without fiendish abilities) in the appropriate nether plane - hell, tarterus, the abyss, whereever. There's nothing more dark and scary than that.

 

[Morrus]

Some good ideas here.

One idea I had was a bit Omen-ish. Assuming demons are eternal and patient, and have some degree of foresight, they can set up "accidents" hundreds of years in advance. That gargoyle topples at just the wrong moment....