EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
Devils and demons in my DW game are...essentially always evil, and there's a very good reason for this.
Long ago, all devils and demons were celestials, the "Servants" of the One, who claims to be the creator of all things. (There's literally no way anyone can prove or disprove this statement, so it's inherently a matter of what you choose to believe.) But the One had an ironclad rule: the Servants could never coerce mortals into following the divine plan. They could reward good behavior and mete out justice, they could entice and woo and advise, but they could not actively deny mortals the ability to choose. But then, some of them decided the divine plan was more important than upholding this rule.
And there was War in Heaven.
From the perspective of mortal beings, this war was instantaneous. From the perspective of the beings who participated in it, this war was literally an infinitely long stretch of time. Any rebel Servants who stayed as rebels and did not try to reconcile with the One? They literally committed an infinity of violence in order to have their right to coerce mortals. They're dedicated. It is nearly unthinkable that a devil would ever choose to do something else, because they spent a literal infinite period of time campaigning to be able to do what they do now. If their resolve could be shaken, it should already have been.
Demons are a slightly different story. Some were originally rebels, some were originally loyal Servants. This group...came to enjoy the chaos of the War in Heaven for its own sake. They came to revel in the violence, the destruction, the rush of the experience, the danger. These also committed an infinite series of violent acts, but for different reasons, and their commitment is much looser, much more intuitive and emotive--but, again, one would think that, if their minds could be changed, they would have been changed after a literally infinite amount of opportunities.
Each of the three sides (celestials, devils, demons) believes their side won the war. The priests (who speak for the celestials that do not appear in the mortal world) claim that the One won the war and punished devils and demons by binding their behavior and making them unable to move as they like. Devils claim that they won their independence and the right to live by the philosophy they had espoused; they embrace being bound by contracts, because they see this as being philosophically self-consistent, while still upholding the Divine Plan...just...far into the future. Demons believe they won the right to wreak havoc in the mortal world just as they had in the separate space of the War in Heaven, and don't really care that they have to spend most of their time in a dangerous heck-hole. For both types of fiends, going through the War in Heaven literally changed their fundamental essences, made them into new things that hadn't existed before.
There is, however, one (and only one) exception to the above: The party has met a reformed succubus. Or, rather, has gotten in touch with a known reformed succubus, because she's our party bard's maternal great-grandmother. Due to some very particular circumstances, this succubus was given a second chance at things, and got to see compassion and justice from someone she came to see as a friend. She also came to see how the world was actually full of some really cool and beautiful things, things that she would never have gotten to experience if everyone was allowed to just break everything all the time. This, combined with falling in love with a mortal man, living with him for his full life (and bearing children with him, one of whom became the maternal grandmother of our bard), and then retiring from mortal affairs to live in a convent, hoping that she might someday find a way to be united with her husband beyond this life.
Through helping the party defeat a different (and quite evil) succubus, gramma succubus learned that her true name had changed, and that she was no longer truly a succubus anymore, but....something else. She willingly gave away her remaining succubus powers to her great-grandson, which now means she is theoretically mortal and capable of dying and departing the circles of the world as a mortal's soul would. She has hope that she has received the One's grace because, even though she willingly gave away all her succubus powers, she has retained exactly one supernaturally beautiful thing: her singing voice, which she has used only to entertain pilgrims that visit the monastery where she's been living since her husband died.
Apart from this one, genuinely unique exception, all other demons have been capital-E Evil and there's really no reason any of the ones hanging out in the hells would be any different--they've certainly not had the centuries-long rehabilitation, reconciliation, and remorse process that great-grandma succubus got. Reformed devils are even less likely to ever occur, since their commitment is much more formal and philosophical, as opposed to the non-rational "yeah let's f**k naughty word up" behavior of demons.
So yeah. That's why all Devils are Lawful Evil, even though they all have free will. To be the kind of being that is called "devil," the person has to have made an incredibly strong commitment to law, and evil, to the point that it is essentially inconceivable that that commitment could be broken. And if, by some miraculous means, you did find a being that had had such a commitment and then abandoned it...well, by the very fact that they HAD abandoned it, truly and earnestly, they would have become a different kind of being still--something neither celestial nor devilish, but new and different from both.
Long ago, all devils and demons were celestials, the "Servants" of the One, who claims to be the creator of all things. (There's literally no way anyone can prove or disprove this statement, so it's inherently a matter of what you choose to believe.) But the One had an ironclad rule: the Servants could never coerce mortals into following the divine plan. They could reward good behavior and mete out justice, they could entice and woo and advise, but they could not actively deny mortals the ability to choose. But then, some of them decided the divine plan was more important than upholding this rule.
And there was War in Heaven.
From the perspective of mortal beings, this war was instantaneous. From the perspective of the beings who participated in it, this war was literally an infinitely long stretch of time. Any rebel Servants who stayed as rebels and did not try to reconcile with the One? They literally committed an infinity of violence in order to have their right to coerce mortals. They're dedicated. It is nearly unthinkable that a devil would ever choose to do something else, because they spent a literal infinite period of time campaigning to be able to do what they do now. If their resolve could be shaken, it should already have been.
Demons are a slightly different story. Some were originally rebels, some were originally loyal Servants. This group...came to enjoy the chaos of the War in Heaven for its own sake. They came to revel in the violence, the destruction, the rush of the experience, the danger. These also committed an infinite series of violent acts, but for different reasons, and their commitment is much looser, much more intuitive and emotive--but, again, one would think that, if their minds could be changed, they would have been changed after a literally infinite amount of opportunities.
Each of the three sides (celestials, devils, demons) believes their side won the war. The priests (who speak for the celestials that do not appear in the mortal world) claim that the One won the war and punished devils and demons by binding their behavior and making them unable to move as they like. Devils claim that they won their independence and the right to live by the philosophy they had espoused; they embrace being bound by contracts, because they see this as being philosophically self-consistent, while still upholding the Divine Plan...just...far into the future. Demons believe they won the right to wreak havoc in the mortal world just as they had in the separate space of the War in Heaven, and don't really care that they have to spend most of their time in a dangerous heck-hole. For both types of fiends, going through the War in Heaven literally changed their fundamental essences, made them into new things that hadn't existed before.
There is, however, one (and only one) exception to the above: The party has met a reformed succubus. Or, rather, has gotten in touch with a known reformed succubus, because she's our party bard's maternal great-grandmother. Due to some very particular circumstances, this succubus was given a second chance at things, and got to see compassion and justice from someone she came to see as a friend. She also came to see how the world was actually full of some really cool and beautiful things, things that she would never have gotten to experience if everyone was allowed to just break everything all the time. This, combined with falling in love with a mortal man, living with him for his full life (and bearing children with him, one of whom became the maternal grandmother of our bard), and then retiring from mortal affairs to live in a convent, hoping that she might someday find a way to be united with her husband beyond this life.
Through helping the party defeat a different (and quite evil) succubus, gramma succubus learned that her true name had changed, and that she was no longer truly a succubus anymore, but....something else. She willingly gave away her remaining succubus powers to her great-grandson, which now means she is theoretically mortal and capable of dying and departing the circles of the world as a mortal's soul would. She has hope that she has received the One's grace because, even though she willingly gave away all her succubus powers, she has retained exactly one supernaturally beautiful thing: her singing voice, which she has used only to entertain pilgrims that visit the monastery where she's been living since her husband died.
Apart from this one, genuinely unique exception, all other demons have been capital-E Evil and there's really no reason any of the ones hanging out in the hells would be any different--they've certainly not had the centuries-long rehabilitation, reconciliation, and remorse process that great-grandma succubus got. Reformed devils are even less likely to ever occur, since their commitment is much more formal and philosophical, as opposed to the non-rational "yeah let's f**k naughty word up" behavior of demons.
So yeah. That's why all Devils are Lawful Evil, even though they all have free will. To be the kind of being that is called "devil," the person has to have made an incredibly strong commitment to law, and evil, to the point that it is essentially inconceivable that that commitment could be broken. And if, by some miraculous means, you did find a being that had had such a commitment and then abandoned it...well, by the very fact that they HAD abandoned it, truly and earnestly, they would have become a different kind of being still--something neither celestial nor devilish, but new and different from both.
