I can't really add to the definitions I (failed to) give when asked above. The examples I gave were The Omen and The Exorcist. At least, that's the feeling I was going for.
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How would you make demons really dark?
- Thread starter Morrus
- Start date
I can't really add to the definitions I (failed to) give when asked above. The examples I gave were The Omen and The Exorcist. At least, that's the feeling I was going for.
Celebrim
Legend
In both of which, evil basically wins.
Don't confuse "the setting/plotline is dark" with "the *monster* is dark".
pickin_grinnin
Explorer
In both of those, the gist of the horror element was the corruption of innocence. The flipside of that would be the innocence of evil. For examples of that, look to "It's a GOOD Life" from the original Twilight Zone series or the devil sequence in "The Adventures of Mark Twain" (check YouTube for that).
A lot of horror relies on an immediate sense of danger or impending doom, just like action entertainment in general. Slasher films tend to fall into that category. There are other approaches that are a little less common, though:
- Evil that absolutely can't be stopped, no matter what. There is NO solution at all.
- Pain or suffering from which there will never be an escape (ex. the story "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream" by Harlan Ellison).
- Catch-22 situations where something horrible happens no matter what choice the character makes, even if (s)he refuses to make a choice (ex. "Sophie's Choice").
- The character's realization that (s)he is the true evil or monster in a given situation, and never realized it.
- Body horror of some sort, where the character is slowly becoming something undesirable, rotting away, melting, etc. Note the emphasis on "slowly" - it has to be something that draws out the despair.
Celebrim
Legend
Given that we are talking about an emotional impact on the viewer/player, I don't think that we can separate the two. Are the demons in Hellblazer or The Exorcist necessarily darker than those in other medium? Yet we experience the stories as being darker, and so the antagonists in the stories as darker. We do so because ultimately the protagonists in that setting can't win. They end up making terrible moral comprimises - deals with the devil, as it were - in hopes of making things better, but evil has won at the end. These stories would be completely different if the protagonists triumphed over darkness, and our perceptions of the antagonists would change.
I'm suggesting that if you want real darkness to permeate the play experience of interacting with a monster, you have to develop mechanics that suggest evil can't be defeated. Call of Cthulhu for example does this with the ever descending maximum sanity score, monsters that can't be defeated but only inconvenienced or delayed, and a backdrop that mindless Azathoth and his uncaring incomprehensible minions will always inevitably win in the end.
You can't separate "this monster is dark" from "evil wins". Especially in an RPG, if you want that impression, you'll enforce it mechanically. Otherwise, you'll just have another sack of XP and loot no matter what depravities you dip your imagination in to in your attempt to find darkness. Lamentations of a Flame Princess is an example of a company working in the dark. I've not been exposed to a lot of their work, but of what I have, they basically get the idea that to advance a dark theme you have to have a structure where evil wins or at the very least, that the PC's will tend not to achieve a traditional victory. Pretty much every one of their works I've seen basically is up front with the need to have reasonable expectation for failure. They deliberately put the PC's in situations where they are below the level they'd need to be to have a reasonable chance of success against the foe, and where the PC's are invited to mess with powers beyond their understanding, and where having accomplished nothing but live while probably having made the world a whole lot worse in the process is a likely ending. I'm not saying I like their stuff*, but at least they understand what they are after.
*(The reasons for that are too complex to explain, but ultimately revolve around the writer's notions about what is normal human behavior. For most of my players, past or present, the modules would be sheer and utter tedium.)
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I think you need the strong suggestion that evil cannot be defeated, sure. But the suggestion and the reality are different things.
I disagree. Especially in the flat, digital way you state it. What you need for the thing to feel dark is for the memory of it to give you a creeping sensation over your flesh, *even if you won*. And that can be achieved. I will grant that it isn't easy.
I will put a personal anecdote as evidence. The game was Deadlands. It was a six-session story, a protracted telling of a group of people from "back east" who had come to the West, only to be hunted by a Wendigo.
The GM spent a *long* time developing the conflict. He included heavy suggestions that the PCs were being targeted by this cannibal-monster due to their own moral failings. We were all underpowered, had no knowledge of our pursuer to start with, and gained information only in dribs and drabs along the way. No character had understanding of the supernatural. There was mood lighting, and musical score to help set emotional context.
When the gloom, tension, and anxiety were built over so much time, the fact that we did eventually beat the thing did *not* dispel the darkness the characters had been through. It was a powerful roleplay experience.
Also, check out the X-Files episode, "Home" (Season 4, Episode 2). It is the first episode of the series to earn a viewer discretion award for graphic content. The bad guys don't win (two of them do escape, so Mulder and Scully don't exactly win, either), but even if Mulder and Scully had brought down all the nasties, you'd still look back at it and go, "Ewww. They were... dark and disturbing." The very idea of them makes you want to take a shower to get clean, but you can't, 'cause in the shower you're naked and vulnerable. You'd not feel safe, even if they were all dead, just by the thought of them.
Celebrim
Legend
So, some generic suggestions for increasing darkness:
a) So long as the players know the powers of the demon, can identify it, and know its weaknesses and limitations, it will be very hard to have the creature be horrific. As long as players are exploring territory which is known and understood on the meta level, they'll tend to be emotionally comfortable and feel safe. Mechanically, you can implement this by having each demon be unique on some level, randomizing appearance and powers and giving each a unique name. While true uniqueness requires more creativity than you can put into random tables, having each type of demon occur in a large number of variations will keep even players familiar with the rules guessing and uncomfortable.
b) Ideally, the players shouldn't even be able to clearly delineate what a demon is. Keeping in mind my above definitions of evil, one of the problems you run into is that players making choices regarding their behavior with respect to evil will tend to not make 'realistic' choices if they are aware of the realistic outcomes. It's much easier to be rational about a game than it is to be rational about the real world. Hearing that this is castle Anthrax, even a player not playing a character sworn to chastity is unlikely to avail themselves of the eight score attractive nubile young women in the obvious trap. I suggest that in real life, you'd be much more likely to be trying to rationalize that this in no way was a dangerous situation, and if it seemed unusual and weird that you shouldn't be looking a gift horse in the mouth, that a horrible death was completely out of the question, or that even if it turned out that it was a trap you'd be able to escape from it after taking just a little bit of pleasure.
One of the things that makes demons so dangerous in literature though is that the character don't realize the stakes (at least initially), and believe that they can always achieve the upper hand, or that demons are bound by certain laws or traditions they'll respect, or that they can be bargained with successfully, or controlled, or otherwise that the demon can be manipulated to their own profit. These are ideas of course that the demons themselves advance, because otherwise they'd be a good deal less seductive and dangerous. Demons advance all sorts of misinformation about their own nature in order to conceal just how terrible they really are, so lore in your world needs to be filled with wrong ideas that everyone knows to be true. Simultaneously you need to have demons be truly dark and working toward absolutely evil ends, and for many people in the game world to not truly believe that but instead believe demons are really just analogous to human villains with understandable motives. For example, people would believe that succubae can feel real affection and even at least erotic love, that demons admire and want to reward the unvirtuous, that people can obtain demonic power by performing evil acts, that demons are happy and even joyful, and generally that the payment is worth the cost. The truth is of course that affection, admiration, happiness and any other positive feeling whatsoever is completely beyond a demon, and that they only fake these things when doing so contributes to the triumph of evil.
c) It should be basically impossible to triumph over a demon in its own sphere of influence. Violence is pretty much useless against a wide spectrum of demons, and even when violence seems to work its not actually the violence that is harming the demon but the motive behind the violence (sincere compassion for the innocent, or genuine love for a comrade, for example). In general, near complete immunity to weapon damage is appropriate and golem like near magic immunity is likewise appropriate. As thoroughly wrecked and ruined creatures, making more holes in them doesn't generally work. They are beings that are all hole already. The only way to destroy them is to 'fill them in'. Evil is relatively helpless to oppose a demon, though of course humans are never so fully ruined as to be completely helpless. To do 'damage' to a demon generally involves empowering an attack on them in some way, for example, by confessing some truth you'd rather hide an attack on a deceiver demon might be effective that would be otherwise ineffective. By professing a reason you love someone else, an attack on a hate demon might be made more effective. A wrath demon can't be harmed in anger (sorry, barbarian), but only by someone completely calm and self-controlled.
Conversely, because they are often wholly ruined bodily creatures, most demons attacks are insubstantial physical danger, but extreme spiritual and moral danger. Demons generally need to act through others, or with the permission of others. They often act like debilitating parasites or diseases, eating away the vitality, rationality, and goodness of those they attack rather than making direct physical attacks. Like predatory fish with luminescent lures, they have sophisticated ways of disguising their nature and making being eaten alive sound attractive. They'll freely promise anything to get cooperation, lie without the slightest irony, and play on whatever weaknesses they find. Demons are also aware of their weaknesses. So for example, a demon that is only really threatened when someone acts to protect an innocent victim will prefer to first demonstrate that someone isn't innocent before directly threatening them, knowing that in this way they'll be able to gain inappropriate sympathy and render themselves invulnerable. Thus, they often will prefer to act subtly for some time, cajoling and exhorting people to evil, expose their evil, and then destroy them. Ideally they'll be able to portray themselves as some sort of at least quasi-force for good, destroying evil things and acting as spirits of rightful vengeance. Of course, those that avail themselves of this vengeance or condone it, have themselves taken the first steps toward their own guilt.
In general though, lucky is the person dealing with a demon that can dispatch it as easily as having a blessed weapon. Often even demons vulnerable to such things are only temporarily discorporated by the violence, and can reform themselves within hours or days of being so 'destroyed'. Like the Tarrasque, even if you are dealing with a lesser demon that you can fight off, some sort of ritual exorcism is often necessary to permanently destroy or banish such creatures. This ritual is often unknown and the demon will have arranged ahead of time to make the conditions for setting it up difficult. For example, it might require survivors to willingly sacrifice some advantage they have gained by violence or deceit, and the demon has arranged that at least some of the persons who survive at any time are too corrupt as to be likely to do so. Or some survivors, knowing that the demon will return if they do not do so, may have believed the lie that they have not been spared, but are truly liked and admired as the demons comrade and so will have greater and additional advantages if the demon does return.
d) Set up your gameworld so that these strategies basically work. Most dark stories are filled subtly peopled with highly flawed individuals who themselves aren't innocent and who make bad choices for vile if sometimes sympathetic reasons. They tend to involve anti-villains or anti-heroes as protagonists, or worlds where evil has basically won and so the power of good is simply ineffectual and incapable of strong resistance. If you have a world filled with truly virtuous people or any truly virtuous people with powers that allow them to resist evil - basically, if you have real paladins and saints - it's going to be hard to capture that vibe. Fortunately, in my experience its pretty rare for the PC's to occupy this position themselves, and as long as you can keep secret just how potent a truly saint-like character would be in a truly dark world, you'll have a willing line of Constantines and the like bumbling through the world never quite winning forever slipping on the sliding moral scale.
From a gaming perspective, much of this would be a lot easier to make gameable in a game like Pendragon that is concerned with virtue and quantifies it, than in a game like D&D which because of its war gaming roots has at the core of its gameplay the assumption that hitting things with a stick is fun and solves almost all problems. Another problem is the tendency for D&D to look at alignment as if it is in many ways basically symmetrical, differing only by the hats you wear and the physical tropes of the team members. If you went really dark, you'd break the symmetry. Of course, part of breaking that symmetry if you really want a dark world is having only demons exist and no corresponding powers of light.
I will say that D&D does follow this trope to at least some extent, as it's not unusual in published D&D worlds to see demonic invasions, kingdoms ruled by demons, and lots of demons just hanging out in the setting acting as captains of evil so that high level PC's have something to fight. It's rare to unknown to see the reverse, a published world with angelic beings bringing good to large portions of the world and threatening to render it forever benevolent, angelic beings ruling over nations in true benevolence and justice, and angels just hanging around the world ready to be helpful and actively squash any forces of evil that arise. Indeed, it's pretty rare to see a paladin or angel introduced into a story or setting without inevitably having that character fall. The rate at which NPC paladins or angels fall in stories is nearly 100%. That's a sort of darkness in and of itself. Note that the narrative this advances is that the best way to defeat evil is to be a bit morally grey and to compromise with it. Which, if you actually had demons that weren't just high HD bags of XP and loot, would actually be a pretty sophisticated strategy for disguising their nature and weaknesses.
a) So long as the players know the powers of the demon, can identify it, and know its weaknesses and limitations, it will be very hard to have the creature be horrific. As long as players are exploring territory which is known and understood on the meta level, they'll tend to be emotionally comfortable and feel safe. Mechanically, you can implement this by having each demon be unique on some level, randomizing appearance and powers and giving each a unique name. While true uniqueness requires more creativity than you can put into random tables, having each type of demon occur in a large number of variations will keep even players familiar with the rules guessing and uncomfortable.
b) Ideally, the players shouldn't even be able to clearly delineate what a demon is. Keeping in mind my above definitions of evil, one of the problems you run into is that players making choices regarding their behavior with respect to evil will tend to not make 'realistic' choices if they are aware of the realistic outcomes. It's much easier to be rational about a game than it is to be rational about the real world. Hearing that this is castle Anthrax, even a player not playing a character sworn to chastity is unlikely to avail themselves of the eight score attractive nubile young women in the obvious trap. I suggest that in real life, you'd be much more likely to be trying to rationalize that this in no way was a dangerous situation, and if it seemed unusual and weird that you shouldn't be looking a gift horse in the mouth, that a horrible death was completely out of the question, or that even if it turned out that it was a trap you'd be able to escape from it after taking just a little bit of pleasure.
One of the things that makes demons so dangerous in literature though is that the character don't realize the stakes (at least initially), and believe that they can always achieve the upper hand, or that demons are bound by certain laws or traditions they'll respect, or that they can be bargained with successfully, or controlled, or otherwise that the demon can be manipulated to their own profit. These are ideas of course that the demons themselves advance, because otherwise they'd be a good deal less seductive and dangerous. Demons advance all sorts of misinformation about their own nature in order to conceal just how terrible they really are, so lore in your world needs to be filled with wrong ideas that everyone knows to be true. Simultaneously you need to have demons be truly dark and working toward absolutely evil ends, and for many people in the game world to not truly believe that but instead believe demons are really just analogous to human villains with understandable motives. For example, people would believe that succubae can feel real affection and even at least erotic love, that demons admire and want to reward the unvirtuous, that people can obtain demonic power by performing evil acts, that demons are happy and even joyful, and generally that the payment is worth the cost. The truth is of course that affection, admiration, happiness and any other positive feeling whatsoever is completely beyond a demon, and that they only fake these things when doing so contributes to the triumph of evil.
c) It should be basically impossible to triumph over a demon in its own sphere of influence. Violence is pretty much useless against a wide spectrum of demons, and even when violence seems to work its not actually the violence that is harming the demon but the motive behind the violence (sincere compassion for the innocent, or genuine love for a comrade, for example). In general, near complete immunity to weapon damage is appropriate and golem like near magic immunity is likewise appropriate. As thoroughly wrecked and ruined creatures, making more holes in them doesn't generally work. They are beings that are all hole already. The only way to destroy them is to 'fill them in'. Evil is relatively helpless to oppose a demon, though of course humans are never so fully ruined as to be completely helpless. To do 'damage' to a demon generally involves empowering an attack on them in some way, for example, by confessing some truth you'd rather hide an attack on a deceiver demon might be effective that would be otherwise ineffective. By professing a reason you love someone else, an attack on a hate demon might be made more effective. A wrath demon can't be harmed in anger (sorry, barbarian), but only by someone completely calm and self-controlled.
Conversely, because they are often wholly ruined bodily creatures, most demons attacks are insubstantial physical danger, but extreme spiritual and moral danger. Demons generally need to act through others, or with the permission of others. They often act like debilitating parasites or diseases, eating away the vitality, rationality, and goodness of those they attack rather than making direct physical attacks. Like predatory fish with luminescent lures, they have sophisticated ways of disguising their nature and making being eaten alive sound attractive. They'll freely promise anything to get cooperation, lie without the slightest irony, and play on whatever weaknesses they find. Demons are also aware of their weaknesses. So for example, a demon that is only really threatened when someone acts to protect an innocent victim will prefer to first demonstrate that someone isn't innocent before directly threatening them, knowing that in this way they'll be able to gain inappropriate sympathy and render themselves invulnerable. Thus, they often will prefer to act subtly for some time, cajoling and exhorting people to evil, expose their evil, and then destroy them. Ideally they'll be able to portray themselves as some sort of at least quasi-force for good, destroying evil things and acting as spirits of rightful vengeance. Of course, those that avail themselves of this vengeance or condone it, have themselves taken the first steps toward their own guilt.
In general though, lucky is the person dealing with a demon that can dispatch it as easily as having a blessed weapon. Often even demons vulnerable to such things are only temporarily discorporated by the violence, and can reform themselves within hours or days of being so 'destroyed'. Like the Tarrasque, even if you are dealing with a lesser demon that you can fight off, some sort of ritual exorcism is often necessary to permanently destroy or banish such creatures. This ritual is often unknown and the demon will have arranged ahead of time to make the conditions for setting it up difficult. For example, it might require survivors to willingly sacrifice some advantage they have gained by violence or deceit, and the demon has arranged that at least some of the persons who survive at any time are too corrupt as to be likely to do so. Or some survivors, knowing that the demon will return if they do not do so, may have believed the lie that they have not been spared, but are truly liked and admired as the demons comrade and so will have greater and additional advantages if the demon does return.
d) Set up your gameworld so that these strategies basically work. Most dark stories are filled subtly peopled with highly flawed individuals who themselves aren't innocent and who make bad choices for vile if sometimes sympathetic reasons. They tend to involve anti-villains or anti-heroes as protagonists, or worlds where evil has basically won and so the power of good is simply ineffectual and incapable of strong resistance. If you have a world filled with truly virtuous people or any truly virtuous people with powers that allow them to resist evil - basically, if you have real paladins and saints - it's going to be hard to capture that vibe. Fortunately, in my experience its pretty rare for the PC's to occupy this position themselves, and as long as you can keep secret just how potent a truly saint-like character would be in a truly dark world, you'll have a willing line of Constantines and the like bumbling through the world never quite winning forever slipping on the sliding moral scale.
From a gaming perspective, much of this would be a lot easier to make gameable in a game like Pendragon that is concerned with virtue and quantifies it, than in a game like D&D which because of its war gaming roots has at the core of its gameplay the assumption that hitting things with a stick is fun and solves almost all problems. Another problem is the tendency for D&D to look at alignment as if it is in many ways basically symmetrical, differing only by the hats you wear and the physical tropes of the team members. If you went really dark, you'd break the symmetry. Of course, part of breaking that symmetry if you really want a dark world is having only demons exist and no corresponding powers of light.
I will say that D&D does follow this trope to at least some extent, as it's not unusual in published D&D worlds to see demonic invasions, kingdoms ruled by demons, and lots of demons just hanging out in the setting acting as captains of evil so that high level PC's have something to fight. It's rare to unknown to see the reverse, a published world with angelic beings bringing good to large portions of the world and threatening to render it forever benevolent, angelic beings ruling over nations in true benevolence and justice, and angels just hanging around the world ready to be helpful and actively squash any forces of evil that arise. Indeed, it's pretty rare to see a paladin or angel introduced into a story or setting without inevitably having that character fall. The rate at which NPC paladins or angels fall in stories is nearly 100%. That's a sort of darkness in and of itself. Note that the narrative this advances is that the best way to defeat evil is to be a bit morally grey and to compromise with it. Which, if you actually had demons that weren't just high HD bags of XP and loot, would actually be a pretty sophisticated strategy for disguising their nature and weaknesses.
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The Old Pacesetter box version of Chill did this by creature abilities. Most had cause fear or terror but things like haywire, that caused things to break down or fail at the wrong time. The Big Bads also had tactics for playing with their food, they very rarely just came out swinging, they haunted the characters using their abilities to freak out the players. Stuff I think I remember: blood writing on the walls (simple message in blood), entangle (spider webs, tree roots, shower curtain), fog (reduce vision and chill effect), noises (hear things), touch (light fingers), stuff like that.
Celebrim
Legend
One example.
"I'm such a poor boy, I need no sympathy..."
Demon of Self-Loathing: This demon has the power to suggest that one is so abominable of a person, that they justly ought to be destroyed. They have powers related to obsession, suggestion, and deceit as well as limited ability to manipulate the world through telekinesis and teleportation - these later powers being chiefly used to convey physical evidence to places where it will be unavoidably noticed. They are able to magnify any failing a person has and pierce any veils of hubris and vanity the person may have erected to conceal from themselves their own depravity and weaknesses, wielding both pitiless truth and lies to their nefarious ends. Those that heed their suggestions berate themselves, become despondent, mutilate their own bodies, inflict pain on themselves, claw out there own eyes in despair, and ultimately commit suicide. Ironically, heeding any of these suggestions makes it all the easier to convince the person that they are indeed abominable and worthy of such tortures, allowing suggestions of further self directed violence to be more and more reasonable. Their powers are opposed when one person can hold another in legitimate esteem and respect and convey this respect to the victim, breaking the cycle and making the demon vulnerable since when it sees another worthy of esteem and value it is forced to reflect on its own lack of value and the loathing it ought to properly feels for itself. Because the demon knows this is its weakness, it also acts to encourage its victims to commit truly detestable acts and betrayals, and then exposes these acts, in the hopes of eliminating all possibility of pity for the victim. Observers of the victim often believe that the victim has acted so because they've experienced remorse regarding their evil deeds and so have committed suicide as is just and appropriate and see the fate of the victim as well deserved. (True remorse would be marked by a desire to set things right, and when such was done would make self-loathing harder, and so is the last thing such a being wishes to encourage.) Simply exposing this pitilessness for what it is, can often be a first gateway for educing feelings of self-loathing in the next victim. Though incorporeal and immune to physical damage from non-blessed weapons, demons of self-loathing are relatively vulnerable to attacks. However, each time they are attacked physically for any reason except to protect someone that the attacker legitimately loves and values, the attacker becomes vulnerable to their retribution and they are able to respond with a physical attack which - if it strikes the target - can approximate the violence of the worst attack the attacker has ever suffered through before OR the worst attack the attacker has ever unjustly inflicted on another whichever is worse. Attackers that have never before suffered or given serious physical injury are immune to this power. Note, that demons of self-loathing are thus particularly vulnerable to their potential victims, as any victim that breaks through their deceits and acts to protect themselves out of simple self esteem is as dangerous as even a saint with the greatest sense of compassion and mercy. As such, they will take great pains to avoid placing themselves in a position where their potential victims can fight back, but will instead whisper out of the shadows and delude their victims into believing they are only hearing the voice of their own consciousness. However, they further exploit their vulnerability by secretly promoting the belief in dark lore that the purist narcissism or megalomania is sufficient defense against their taunts, when in fact such beliefs only make those that hold them easier to show as ridiculous and increase the horror and discomfort these unwelcome revelations cause. The greater your pride, the more unendurable even the slightest failing seems. Thus, many of those that might be able to resist them are deprived of their defenses.
The true form of such creatures is often as a cloud-like net of shredded flesh burning and smoking from burning coals of self-hatred contained within, although many similar variations on such themes are known. They prefer never to show this form which both revolts them and reveals their true self-loathed nature to others. Instead they prefer to remain invisible and incorporeal and appear only as subtly wrong versions of their victims in mirrors and like reflections. Strong men appear weaker than they remember themselves being. Beautiful persons appear fatter than they remember themselves being. The more power they gain over their victims, the more horrific these images become (and the more closely the true person comes to match the mutilated horror). They are kindred to the demons of despair, disgust, guilt, and fear and may have powers and appearance which overlap these creatures, making the exact form difficult to identify. Each demon takes an identity from the statement of some crime or betrayal, and is attracted particularly to those who have committed that crime. For example, demons named Forsook-One-Who-Loved-Me-Truly, I-Wish-I-Was-Skinny, and Smothered-My-Child-With-A-Pillow are recorded in works of dark lore.
Because no demon is completely immune to the demon of self-loathing depredations they inspire great terror even in their peers, so that greater demons often use these beings as enforcers compelling the subservience of others. They in turn resist their power solely by having sufficient self-will and scathing enough wit to turn the self-loathing back on its origin before it overwhelms even such mighty beings. They also tend to lurk in the train of demons of pride, treachery and vanity, like a pack of vultures or jackals awaiting a feast.
Even if banished, a demon of self-loathing, once it is invited into the world, can return to the scene of its previous crimes in one years time so long as at least one person who remembers it believes its actions were just and recalls no victims with pity. Thus, while few are so rash as to summon such dreadful beings, once summoned they are particular hard to unsummon and they have a tendency to slowly accumulate.
"I'm such a poor boy, I need no sympathy..."
Demon of Self-Loathing: This demon has the power to suggest that one is so abominable of a person, that they justly ought to be destroyed. They have powers related to obsession, suggestion, and deceit as well as limited ability to manipulate the world through telekinesis and teleportation - these later powers being chiefly used to convey physical evidence to places where it will be unavoidably noticed. They are able to magnify any failing a person has and pierce any veils of hubris and vanity the person may have erected to conceal from themselves their own depravity and weaknesses, wielding both pitiless truth and lies to their nefarious ends. Those that heed their suggestions berate themselves, become despondent, mutilate their own bodies, inflict pain on themselves, claw out there own eyes in despair, and ultimately commit suicide. Ironically, heeding any of these suggestions makes it all the easier to convince the person that they are indeed abominable and worthy of such tortures, allowing suggestions of further self directed violence to be more and more reasonable. Their powers are opposed when one person can hold another in legitimate esteem and respect and convey this respect to the victim, breaking the cycle and making the demon vulnerable since when it sees another worthy of esteem and value it is forced to reflect on its own lack of value and the loathing it ought to properly feels for itself. Because the demon knows this is its weakness, it also acts to encourage its victims to commit truly detestable acts and betrayals, and then exposes these acts, in the hopes of eliminating all possibility of pity for the victim. Observers of the victim often believe that the victim has acted so because they've experienced remorse regarding their evil deeds and so have committed suicide as is just and appropriate and see the fate of the victim as well deserved. (True remorse would be marked by a desire to set things right, and when such was done would make self-loathing harder, and so is the last thing such a being wishes to encourage.) Simply exposing this pitilessness for what it is, can often be a first gateway for educing feelings of self-loathing in the next victim. Though incorporeal and immune to physical damage from non-blessed weapons, demons of self-loathing are relatively vulnerable to attacks. However, each time they are attacked physically for any reason except to protect someone that the attacker legitimately loves and values, the attacker becomes vulnerable to their retribution and they are able to respond with a physical attack which - if it strikes the target - can approximate the violence of the worst attack the attacker has ever suffered through before OR the worst attack the attacker has ever unjustly inflicted on another whichever is worse. Attackers that have never before suffered or given serious physical injury are immune to this power. Note, that demons of self-loathing are thus particularly vulnerable to their potential victims, as any victim that breaks through their deceits and acts to protect themselves out of simple self esteem is as dangerous as even a saint with the greatest sense of compassion and mercy. As such, they will take great pains to avoid placing themselves in a position where their potential victims can fight back, but will instead whisper out of the shadows and delude their victims into believing they are only hearing the voice of their own consciousness. However, they further exploit their vulnerability by secretly promoting the belief in dark lore that the purist narcissism or megalomania is sufficient defense against their taunts, when in fact such beliefs only make those that hold them easier to show as ridiculous and increase the horror and discomfort these unwelcome revelations cause. The greater your pride, the more unendurable even the slightest failing seems. Thus, many of those that might be able to resist them are deprived of their defenses.
The true form of such creatures is often as a cloud-like net of shredded flesh burning and smoking from burning coals of self-hatred contained within, although many similar variations on such themes are known. They prefer never to show this form which both revolts them and reveals their true self-loathed nature to others. Instead they prefer to remain invisible and incorporeal and appear only as subtly wrong versions of their victims in mirrors and like reflections. Strong men appear weaker than they remember themselves being. Beautiful persons appear fatter than they remember themselves being. The more power they gain over their victims, the more horrific these images become (and the more closely the true person comes to match the mutilated horror). They are kindred to the demons of despair, disgust, guilt, and fear and may have powers and appearance which overlap these creatures, making the exact form difficult to identify. Each demon takes an identity from the statement of some crime or betrayal, and is attracted particularly to those who have committed that crime. For example, demons named Forsook-One-Who-Loved-Me-Truly, I-Wish-I-Was-Skinny, and Smothered-My-Child-With-A-Pillow are recorded in works of dark lore.
Because no demon is completely immune to the demon of self-loathing depredations they inspire great terror even in their peers, so that greater demons often use these beings as enforcers compelling the subservience of others. They in turn resist their power solely by having sufficient self-will and scathing enough wit to turn the self-loathing back on its origin before it overwhelms even such mighty beings. They also tend to lurk in the train of demons of pride, treachery and vanity, like a pack of vultures or jackals awaiting a feast.
Even if banished, a demon of self-loathing, once it is invited into the world, can return to the scene of its previous crimes in one years time so long as at least one person who remembers it believes its actions were just and recalls no victims with pity. Thus, while few are so rash as to summon such dreadful beings, once summoned they are particular hard to unsummon and they have a tendency to slowly accumulate.
Henry
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When Russ said, "making demons really dark," my mind immediately went to this guy, and his RPG line:
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/browse/pub/2623/Neoplastic-Press
Rafael Chandler (nice guy, I've met him in person) created a game called Dread: The first book of Pandemonium back in 2002 (before Jenga-Dread). It's repackaged as Pandemonio, and his interpretation of Demonkind and their goals is some REALLY disturbing stuff - now, the setting is pretty dark and hopeless, too, mind you - but the demons, their motivations, what draws them, what puts them down, is some of most evocative stuff i've possibly ever read. Best part is, he has a "pay what you want" model now (since it looks that his RPG hobby is a sideline to him, nowadays) so its worth checking him out least. Heck, now that he's selling his stuff in PDF, I may have to go in and buy some of this stuff - I was waiting for Spite for years, and never realized he had finally released it.
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/browse/pub/2623/Neoplastic-Press
Rafael Chandler (nice guy, I've met him in person) created a game called Dread: The first book of Pandemonium back in 2002 (before Jenga-Dread). It's repackaged as Pandemonio, and his interpretation of Demonkind and their goals is some REALLY disturbing stuff - now, the setting is pretty dark and hopeless, too, mind you - but the demons, their motivations, what draws them, what puts them down, is some of most evocative stuff i've possibly ever read. Best part is, he has a "pay what you want" model now (since it looks that his RPG hobby is a sideline to him, nowadays) so its worth checking him out least. Heck, now that he's selling his stuff in PDF, I may have to go in and buy some of this stuff - I was waiting for Spite for years, and never realized he had finally released it.
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