Yugoloths or Daemons

[Pants]

You WIN!

And the peasants rejoiced... yaaaaay...

 

[LGodamus]

I choose you Arcanomon....lol

 

[Wayside]

You make it sound like daemon and demon haven't always been the same word. Are you trying to say also that demons don't make sense as evil? And it doesn't have anything to do with messenger as near as I can tell, the Latin word was from divine, or divinity, and the Greek root which led to that Latin word was to distribute or divide.

I think you're getting it confused with angel, which clearly does mean messenger.

Yeah, I realized I transposed Daemon for Angelos about 3 seconds after I posted, I was just too lazy to fix it. That'll teach me to try and say something meaningful on 2 hours sleep

The original point still stands though. Daemon and demon have, in fact, not always been the same word. Originally it meant a good spirit (used by Plato of Socrates' conscience, for example). For some authors, like Plutarch, daemon had at most a moral ambivalence (which is why when translating from Hebrew 'malakh' to Greek, angelos was chosen over Daemon).

The etymology of religious words can be a funny thing.. in fact 'devil' and 'divine' both come from the old sanskrit 'deva,' despite the fact that they have opposite meanings.

 

[rounser]

D&Disms aside, I now associate the word "daemon" with the concept of a little demon-like critter inside a machine that makes it work...ala UNIX, or Discworld. They're not necessarily envisioned as evil (although you probably wouldn't want turn your back on one), just overworked.

The Guardian Daemon in D&D reflects this....it's been assigned a task, and that's it's thing. Demons and devils are not known to be willing workers, and would be too dodgy to leave unsupervised.

This begs the idea of a world full of daemon-tech, with things like cameras with daemons inside painting as fast as they can (just like Discworld). I think there was an old Dungeon mag adventure which involved the idea of elementals being bound to barges to act as propulsion mechanisms - this could be expanded to ideas like fire elementals bound in furnaces, air elementals bound to sails, and earth elementals bound to mining equipment.

 

[Alzrius]

Actually it's not incorrect. It is my take, but is a superset of a similar principle used by the MM, which is (if anything) the technically and canocially "correct" take.

Actually, it is incorrect, since you didn't present your first statement as your take. You presented it as a fact, with nothing saying that that was just your take on it. In that guise, which was how I answered it, it was indeed incorrect.

Furthermore, it is not the "canonically" correct take either. You may be emulating a principle seen in the MM, but for whatever reason, they chose not to bring that to bear with yugoloths and other NE fiends. You can't extend their practice to a place it doesn't go and say that, just because it seems like the MM policy, it must be canon. Doesn't work that way.

What 2e did is no longer relevant. In 3e, bebeliths are demons, kytons are devils, and so forth. This change was intentional.

On a sidenote, what 2E did is relevant where things remain unconverted. That said, your pointing out the "irrelevance" of my statement there is taking it totally out of context. I was saying that to bring forward the past history of the nomenclature here, not using the 2E system as a point unto itself.

Ironically, you mention that the change in 3E was intentional, but as I noted above, you don't seem to consider that perhaps the lack of applying that same change to yugoloths/daemons might have been intentional also.

I never said it had been. The purpose of this poll, as I read it, is how YOU use the terms. I simply stated my convention, which followed suit with the existing 3e conventions.

As I read it, it was just a poll on the popularity of one name versus the other, that is, which was preferred, not a poll on the "how" of using them. If I misunderstood that you were just naming your way of doing it, then my bad, but you didn't say it was just your way, and any disclaimer that that was just your opinion did not go without saying.

And of course, as I said above, "following suit" with 3E conventions isn't necessarily always correct, since they aren't bound to always repeat a pattern the same way every time. They might have a reason that all NE fiends aren't "daemons".

But thank you for elucidating for those who might not have been aware.

I aim to please!

But as for me, you are not only preaching to the chior, you are preaching to the pope.

Heh, not quite, not quite. If that analogy were true, I wouldn't have had to post these further clarifications.

 

[Gez]

Psion, as you can see, arguing with Alzrius is futile.

By the way, the term "Daemon" may have not been used thus far in WotC-made monster books, because they don't have NE fiends that aren't also yugoloth; but this don't mean the word "daemon" isn't officially canon:

As you may see, the cover clearly reads: 6 daemons, 6 demons, 6 devils. Or will you say that Dragon is no longer a purveyor of canonity since it's now published by Paizo ?

 

[Alzrius]

Psion, as you can see, arguing with Alzrius is futile.

It's a pity how many people have to learn that the hard way.

By the way, the term "Daemon" may have not been used thus far in WotC-made monster books, because they don't have NE fiends that aren't also yugoloth;

Possibly, but then, they were happy to use the term "eladrin" when the ghaele was the only one listed in the MM (albeit not using the term as a header though, but it was in there). Ultimately, while we can speculate, we don't know until they tell us. "May have" 's are interesting to ponder, but bring us no closer to the heart of the matter.

but this don't mean the word "daemon" isn't officially canon:

As you may see, the cover clearly reads: 6 daemons, 6 demons, 6 devils. Or will you say that Dragon is no longer a purveyor of canonity since it's now published by Paizo?

lol, no, I wouldn't go that far. Dragon is indeed canon. I just haven't received that issue yet since my issues are heading to my home in America while I'm here in Japan, so I didn't have it to draw from as a source. For the record, I never said "daemon" wasn't a canon term either; just that we haven't seen it in 3E as of yet (that Dragon issue notwithstanding, since I hadn't seen it when I said that), so we can't say how it'd be used in the new edition (and of course, the understood rule there is that, when you don't have a new edition definition for something, the old one remains de facto).

Having looked around on the web for some information (and not having found much, I'll admit), the "daemons" mentioned on the cover (are they mentioned in the article as being "daemons"?) refer to six creatures that are yugoloths. If they are indeed yugoloths (and I didn't get some bogus info) then that by itself doesn't prove the point one way or another. It could just be using the "yugoloth" and "daemon" interchangeably, or it really could be referring to NE outsiders from a specific plane, of which yugoloths are just a sub-grouping (and the monsters in that article just happened to all be yugoloths).

Does that article make itself any more clear on that subject? If not, then although noteworthy, its not definitive (which is a shame) since it doesn't say if they're "daemons/yugoloths" or "daemons (yugoloths)".