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Yora
2011-04-13, 08:50 AM
I'm working on a campaign setting in which demon cults play a prominent role as anatagonists (and sometimes even allies), but that is not based on the common concepts "Demons plan a massive invasion to consume the world".

And where I'm getting completely stuck is finding reasons why the demons pay any attentions to the cultists and grant them magical power.
Vanity is one good reason. Being worshipped as a good on some remote and irrelevant world is quite nice and when you tire of it after a few centuries, you can simply abandon them. But simply keeping cults as pets as a primary motivation for creating all those cults is a bit lame.
But what else could a demon lord get out of it, that does not include all demons wanting to conquer the whole world?

Cartigan
2011-04-13, 08:54 AM
And where I'm getting completely stuck is finding reasons why the demons pay any attentions to the cultists and grant them magical power.
1) Worshippers grant power
2) Proxy war with the Devils. (And occasionally the heavenly outsiders)

byaku rai
2011-04-13, 08:56 AM
The guy above me has a point. Also, do these cults perform sacrifices or other such rituals? If so, that's a major source of divine power for the demons to use and exploit. And demons, by their very nature, want to spread chaos and destruction everywhere they can. Cults are good for that sort of thing.

Yora
2011-04-13, 09:03 AM
But when worshippers are a power source that is worth it for a demon lord to spend time and resources on them, wouldn't every demon want to have as many worshippers as possible?
What would keep them in check from wanting to dominate the whole world and make everyone their worshippers?

Volthawk
2011-04-13, 09:06 AM
Maybe it's not just worship that gives them power, but the sheer destruction the cults do in their name gives them power as well. If everyone worships them, there's less destruction, so they get less power that way.

byaku rai
2011-04-13, 09:12 AM
But when worshippers are a power source that is worth it for a demon lord to spend time and resources on them, wouldn't every demon want to have as many worshippers as possible?
What would keep them in check from wanting to dominate the whole world and make everyone their worshippers?

1. Not every demon is going to be powerful enough to influence the Material Plane and get worshippers. Not by a long shot. So only the ones at the far right of the bell curve are going to have cultists.

2. Heroes are going to keep most of the cults in check by snipping off bits and pieces (paladin orders, especially, are good at this). That keeps the numbers down.

3. Chaotic Evil. Most demons hate each other, so their cultists are gonna be at war over which supreme evil being is supreme-est.

4. Only a very small portion of the population would even want to be CE. Maybe fluff it so that the worship of people against their will is "impure" or some such that prevents it from being useful.

Eldan
2011-04-13, 09:13 AM
Planes of Chaos (I think) describes Graz'zt as an artist. He loves corrupting things, then displaying them in his castle in an artful fashion. So, he could see cults as patronage.

DeltaEmil
2011-04-13, 09:14 AM
This seems to be mostly a D&D 3.x thread. Or is there anything different about your demons from those depicted in the D&D-books?

profitofrage
2011-04-13, 09:15 AM
I think your problem lies in the fact the Daemon Lord DOESNT want to take over the place.

The motivations for any god..or being who gains strength from worship would naturally (if evil and greedy) want more. Maybe instead of saying flat out he doesnt want to take over. make it a priority for a later date. Maybe right now there are other things he needs to keep his attentions on? other higher teir goals that his cultists arnt trusted or powerful enough to be privy to yet.
On the idea of "why would he give them resources and power?"
If there the source of his power hes going to need to keep them around. Giving them resources and power is a way to do that. He is probably still making a "net profit of power" in terms of what he gives them and what they give him.

Cyrion
2011-04-13, 09:21 AM
"Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming--"Wow! What a Ride!""

The demons are simply in it for the fun. Conquering a world means you have to keep it conquered/govern it, an expression of Law if there ever was one. The demon lords aren't stupid- they know this, and they know how much trouble it is to keep a single layer of the abyss under control. So, this is merely a playground and an opportunity to spread chaos.

Backing cults is today's current game for the demons, and they rack up obscure demon status points in ways that non-demons simply don't understand (it's the demonic equivalent of Dragon Poker). Remember that, especially with demons, you aren't restricted to rational reasons as seen by your party.

Yora
2011-04-13, 09:24 AM
This seems to be mostly a D&D 3.x thread. Or is there anything different about your demons from those depicted in the D&D-books?
I threat demons more like Outer Plane spirits than people and you could bunch up all kinds of evil outsiders under that term, but except for that I don't think there are any big differences from standard D&D demons.
They don't have use for treasures or luxury and to them the material plane is really completely insignificant. One could maybe think of them more as creatures from the Far Realm than the Abyss. But being so alien makes it more difficult to come up with motivations.

DeltaEmil
2011-04-13, 09:35 AM
If your demons are more like far realm entities, I'd say that you look upon Warhammer Fantasy daemons. They're a strange bunch and do whatever they do (or what their god says they should do). Most do it for the kicks. Others do help cultists, because they help further the connection between their realm and the realms of the mortals.

byaku rai
2011-04-13, 10:26 AM
If your demons are more like far realm entities, I'd say that you look upon Warhammer Fantasy daemons. They're a strange bunch and do whatever they do (or what their god says they should do). Most do it for the kicks. Others do help cultists, because they help further the connection between their realm and the realms of the mortals.

Wholehearted agreement, but that may just be because I'm an irredeemable WH40k junkie. x.x

On the concept of "Why give the cultists power?", there are several potential reasons:

One-upping the other demons by having bigger, badder mortal representatives and champions.

Feedback loop: cultists give demon power, so he gives them some power in return, so they give him more power, so he gives them even more power, so... etc. Giving the cultists stuff isn't a gift, it's an investment.

The more power the pathetic mortals have, the more likely they are to use it in hilarious ways. And (especially if you use 40k daemons as a baseline) very little is more amusing to the Big Bads than suddenly pulling the floor out from under a minion who has ceased to be useful. On a similar note, giving a being more power than they can control and watching that power destroy them from the inside is as amusing to them as feeding firecrackers to seagulls is to young boys.
TL;DR they're in it for the lulz.

Tiki Snakes
2011-04-13, 10:32 AM
"Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming--"Wow! What a Ride!""

The demons are simply in it for the fun. Conquering a world means you have to keep it conquered/govern it, an expression of Law if there ever was one. The demon lords aren't stupid- they know this, and they know how much trouble it is to keep a single layer of the abyss under control. So, this is merely a playground and an opportunity to spread chaos.

Backing cults is today's current game for the demons, and they rack up obscure demon status points in ways that non-demons simply don't understand (it's the demonic equivalent of Dragon Poker). Remember that, especially with demons, you aren't restricted to rational reasons as seen by your party.

This. Demons are in it for the Lulz.
Destruction, Chaos, Confusion, creating a perverted mockery of the 'religions' that the actual Gods get so worked up about, etc etc. All good, solid reasons for demons to encourage cults and so on. And hey, if they can open a portal so you can pop through to do some stompin then all the better!

Bagelz
2011-04-13, 10:36 AM
What if your demon's did not care?
What if the cults are started by crazy charismatic leaders that have no real ties to the demons? You said your main protagonists were the cults, not the demons. They probably wouldn't start caring until the cult was powerful enough to do something beneficial, like opening a gate to their realm.

Or do your demons need living ties to the mortal world to influence it? Is possessing a human body the only way they can visit and have an effect?

Does the demon get the cultists souls when they die, to be painfully transformed into demons themselves in the afterlife (this is the way devils are supposed to work in dnd).

Cartigan
2011-04-13, 10:37 AM
So these are demons you just made up...? Then just make up a reason. I thought this was a question to understand how demons worked in existing literature for D&D.

The Big Dice
2011-04-13, 10:53 AM
But being so alien makes it more difficult to come up with motivations.
If they are so alien as to make conventional motivations meaningless, then their motivations don't need to have meaning. They could supply power to cultists because they do. Just as things in Cal of Cthulhu don't always have clear cut motivations or goals, why would demons this different need them?

The trick is, don't overthink things. Sometimes "It just does" is a perfectly valid explanation. Especially for things you can't understand.

Yora
2011-04-13, 11:08 AM
Making up reasons is easy. Making up good reasons is much much harder. :smallbiggrin:

While it's certainly not neccessary to explain everything fully, I'd like to avoid making the cultists activities completely random. Some degree of consistency would be nice, especially since I want to make that a major point of the setting.

For example the quori in Eberron ultimately want to change the nature of their home plane or something like that,
The daelkyr see making up weird monsters as an art form.
Sauron does his whole thing because of ideological reasons stemming from a disagreement with the gods.
The Shadow in Midnight has to make a new home for himself.
The Vorlons and Shadows in Babylon 5 also had a purpose which later became a matter of ideology.
Even the Angels in Evangelion had a somewhat defined goal.
Though that involved destroying the world.

What if your demon's did not care?
What if the cults are started by crazy charismatic leaders that have no real ties to the demons? You said your main protagonists were the cults, not the demons. They probably wouldn't start caring until the cult was powerful enough to do something beneficial, like opening a gate to their realm.

Or do your demons need living ties to the mortal world to influence it? Is possessing a human body the only way they can visit and have an effect?

Does the demon get the cultists souls when they die, to be painfully transformed into demons themselves in the afterlife (this is the way devils are supposed to work in dnd).
As I have things now, demons are completely independent of the material plane worlds. There is no neccessity for mortals in any way, which is why almost no demons care about them at all.

I'm considering several ways a demon can come into the world, but all require some help from the material plane. Preparing hospitable habits for demons, or providing bodies to possess, or whatever else they can come up with, but the first step must be made by mortals, usually spellcasters.

I'll look into the warhammer demons by what I know about WH sounds a lot lot like it will be "destroy everything for the lulz!". :smallbiggrin:
Harvesting souls is certainly a possibility. I'm also considering to have something like the Chaos Orcs from Warcraft or the Darkspawn from Dragon Age. Since they are demonized mortals, they would be able to move around in both the demon world and the mortal world freely, which would be quite valuable. Provided the demon lords have an actual plan for the material plane. :smallbiggrin:
In both above mentioned examples, the plan is "destroy everything, just because!" :smallannoyed:

But now I'm getting a new idea from all your suggestions and questions. If demons can usually not interact with the material plane, it's a great place to hide things from other demons.
Like a secret demonic weapon lab. Which would also provide a lot of plot hooks. Cultists are send out to retrieve some very odd things and create bizare monsters, but nobody really knows what they are for. If the cultists are successful, the demon says thank you, and nobody is the wiser.

byaku rai
2011-04-13, 11:09 AM
Destroying... or corrupting. :smallbiggrin: take a look at Nurgle.

Mastikator
2011-04-13, 11:12 AM
Maybe the demon lords have trouble operating directly in the plane where the cultists are, and use the cultists to hold ritual sacrifices so that said demon lord could consume the life essence of the sacrificed?
Maybe the demon lord gains power through this, or maybe it just tastes good.

The power the demon lord grants to his followers could be proportional to the number of sacrifices, and directly liked even. So that the cultists can earn favors this way. Perhaps in the form of some magical power or perhaps in the form of a lesser demonic servant.

Callos_DeTerran
2011-04-13, 11:52 AM
While I object on making demon lords Far Realmsy....just because, you might be over-thinking this. Just because you want their goals to be inscrutable doesn't mean they need to be alien. Take Dagon for instance. He's....well...Far Realmsy already, but his plans aren't nearly as alien. To give an example, he's fashioned a system for washing a small nation of sea elves across the sea to an area that he controls every...century (or so). Why? Because it weakens the sea elf gods because the elves lose faith in their deities when they are inexplicably washed into extremely hostile territory. Faith Dagon proceeds to pick up by giving it to the sea elves in the form of an 'effective' religion and making them choose between converting or dying. He kills an enemy pantheon and substantially boosts his own power.

Or Demogorgon. One plan involved cracking apart the Bastion of Souls (where new souls stem from) so he could cauterize the wound of him severing one of his own heads. Woulda doomed the world to do so. Nobody else would understand why he was doing that, just that he was trying too.

Lapak
2011-04-13, 12:25 PM
You could also turn this on its head if you wanted. You asked the question 'why would the demon lord grant them magical power?'

Who says he does? I don't know enough about your setting, but possibly part and parcel of what makes a demon lord a demon lord (or a god a god) in your world is that people can draw power from them through worship without any direct effort (or even knowledge) on the part of the worship-ee. Maybe being a demon lord creates an aura of power that anyone can tap into by acknowledging the demon as their master or paragon or ideal. Maybe the demon doesn't even care about them, and they know it, but they idealize what she represents and attempt to emulate her by drawing on her aura.

NichG
2011-04-13, 12:54 PM
So one thought is, if these are very alien beings they don't necessarily understand humans any more than humans understand them. Maybe they give cultists power because they want to see what cultists will do with power once they receive it?

More subtly, they're looking for something in particular, a human who has the right mentality to join their ranks, or at least to be considered. Or perhaps they don't want a human who is like them, but they want a human who has some personality or mentality that complements them in a way that is useful for them in their own efforts elsewhere. And so they give various humans power, hoping to find the one who uses it in a particular way.

Another take on that is, they're playing something like a chess game between themselves, where the rule is 'you can only have so many pieces' and the game uses the mortal world as the chess board.

Yet another idea is that they live off of some intangible quantity that mortals express. For example, lets say they consume the nightmares of humans. They use the cults they control as cooking tools and spices, changing the dreamscape of humanity to suit their fancy by creating things for humans to be afraid of and to have nightmares about.

Archpaladin Zousha
2011-04-13, 05:13 PM
I always figured the motivation behind demonic cults was that The Abyss (or whatever plane demons come from in your campaign world) was a sort of semi-sapient will of its own, and that will was essentially to corrupt and consume. The demons, as extensions of the Abyss' will, form cults because it allows them to spread their taint into the world, where it can then take root and eventually drag the world down into the Abyss, where it can then be consumed and transformed into another layer of the Abyss. While they may have differing modus operandi and ideas of their own, they all have the subconcious motivation of "Corrupt, Kill, Eat, Breed."

JonestheSpy
2011-04-13, 05:36 PM
Most fantasy worlds that involve demons and such have various rules that keep otherplanar entities from just waltzing in. They have to be summoned, invited, etc. So maintaining a cult is a way for a Demon Lord to keep their hand in (or claw, as it were). They can't interfere with the world directly, but they can direct their cultists to do so, and also use them as intelligence gatherers.

The Demon Lords don't want to simply ignore the Material Plane because if they do their rivals (Devils, Celestials, or worst of all other Demon Lords) will be unchallenged there, and grow in power and influence thereby.

Armoury99
2011-04-13, 05:47 PM
Some nice ideas so far. Hopefully here's a couple more you could use individually or combine:


Chaotic Corporations at War: As Abyssal lords rather than genuine gods, even powerful Demon's can't really harness the power of belief like the gods can. They get less from a follower's soul, and its watered down ale compared to the good stuff that bonefide deities sup on. As a consequence, a lot of a cult's power is spent sending their master more... practical things: Magic items, slaves, influence over mortal lands, etc etc. Think of the cults as a multinational corporation, with Demogorgon (or whoever) as CEO. He doesn't want to destroy the world until he''s greedily grabbed every last coper piece he can from it, as fast as possible. Now add other "corporations" run by rival Abyssal Lords and no concept of "consequences", "playing nice", and "keeping a low profile"

Bringing Down The Man: Push the Chaos angle. The Abyssal Lord wants to tear down every law, every icon of order and discipline, for ethical reasons. He really believes in Chaos: It's freedom, adaptability, and flexibility and says that only unfettered personal freedom allows people to express themselves fully. Unfortunately, he likes to express himself in brutal, violent, and nasty ways. But he'll make an appeal to join the 'cause' to Chaotic characters of all morals. He genuinely believes he's trying to free the world from tyrany.

For bonus points, have the Demon Lord actually come from the world in world in question, long ago in his mortal days.. and have suffered under the harsh regime of Law.

Waaah! What is it good for? The Blood War's already been mentioned above, but what if the Abyssal Lord is here to battle the forces of Hell, toprevent their conquest of the world? Or to muster troops and supplies for battlefields in the Outer Planes? Someone suave like Gaz'zt could probably persuade a lot of people who'd otherwise be his deadly enemies to "join me and save the world!"

CodeRed
2011-04-13, 05:49 PM
Most fantasy worlds that involve demons and such have various rules that keep otherplanar entities from just waltzing in. They have to be summoned, invited, etc. So maintaining a cult is a way for a Demon Lord to keep their hand in (or claw, as it were). They can't interfere with the world directly, but they can direct their cultists to do so, and also use them as intelligence gatherers.

The Demon Lords don't want to simply ignore the Material Plane because if they do their rivals (Devils, Celestials, or worst of all other Demon Lords) will be unchallenged there, and grow in power and influence thereby.

I like this interpretation. If Demons are a bit more Far Realmsy, it means they can't just cross over whenever they want. Having mortal worshippers is essential. The Dresden Files covers this in some detail with the Oblivion War (essentially strong demons and Old Gods cease to be because not enough people believe in them anymore). Belief is a strong enough route that would allow these Demons to manifest stronger and stronger on the Material Plane. The more people who believe in them, the more they can squeeze into our reality and take advantage of its resources (such as souls and corruptible people). If these Demons are so alien, they cannot exist in the Material Plane because of their vastly aberrant nature so this worship acts as a sort of buffer which allows them to extend some power into the cultists' world.

Killer Angel
2011-04-14, 08:32 AM
And where I'm getting completely stuck is finding reasons why the demons pay any attentions to the cultists and grant them magical power.
(snip)
But what else could a demon lord get out of it, that does not include all demons wanting to conquer the whole world?

Demons are the embodiment of Chaos, so they don't necessarily follow a scheme, or at least one understandable.
They love playing with their followers. They love lurking those puny, pathetic mortals, trying to mimic the greatness of Chaos. They love how the chaos, indeed, gains from their actions, but they love also suddenly to leave alone their most loyal followers.
They simply love the change, for the change's sake, especially if this brings consequences unknown even to themselves.

They're hedonist of chaos and evil: they could support a cult only because, once in a thousand years, a human cultist can come out with a perverted idea that sound new even to them.

druid91
2011-04-14, 08:44 AM
Perhaps it's like the salvation war stories.

Demons don't advance technologically. They're powerful,magical monstrosities, but they don't have an inventive bone in their bodies. Warfare five trillion years ago was exactly the same as it was yesterday for them.

Some demons have figured out that human beings are inventive little monsters and are basically using them as R&D for their war machine.

DontEatRawHagis
2011-04-14, 09:19 AM
I'll look into the warhammer demons by what I know about WH sounds a lot lot like it will be "destroy everything for the lulz!". :smallbiggrin:
Harvesting souls is certainly a possibility. I'm also considering to have something like the Chaos Orcs from Warcraft or the Darkspawn from Dragon Age. Since they are demonized mortals, they would be able to move around in both the demon world and the mortal world freely, which would be quite valuable. Provided the demon lords have an actual plan for the material plane. :smallbiggrin:
In both above mentioned examples, the plan is "destroy everything, just because!" :smallannoyed:

But now I'm getting a new idea from all your suggestions and questions. If demons can usually not interact with the material plane, it's a great place to hide things from other demons.
Like a secret demonic weapon lab. Which would also provide a lot of plot hooks. Cultists are send out to retrieve some very odd things and create bizare monsters, but nobody really knows what they are for. If the cultists are successful, the demon says thank you, and nobody is the wiser.

There was an old game called Ghost Master that I used to play(PC game). The Ghost Master was supposed to be very protective of territory that is "his". Just thought this might be worth mentioning.

Secondly and more importantly, maybe the demons are tied to their "portfolio".

Example

Demon of Undead - The more undead there are the more powerful he is.
Demon of War - The more fighting the more powerful he becomes
Demon of Disease - The more people infected with/die from disease the more powerful he becomes.
Demon of Famine - The more people without food the more powerful he becomes.
Demon of Celery - The more celery the more powerful he is.

Yora
2011-04-14, 09:23 AM
As a race of immortal beings that can do pretty much whatever they want while not really having any need for anything to survive, I've come up with a number of cravings and desires that could motivate a demon:

Lust for Destruction: Rage, wrath, cruelty, or just simply enjoying the rush of slaughter and destruction. Demons with this motivation probably wouldn't have the patience to create a secret cult and educate sorcerers in the secrets of magic required to perform a calling ritual. But they would make great emisssaries for more powerful demons whose greater plans require the destruction of something. give them a bunch of minror demons and insane cultists, and send them all against the desired target. The demon craving for destruction should do a fine job in taking out anything that could be a threat for the lesser minions.
Bulezaus, armanites, and hezrous feel right at home here.
Greed: These demons use the desire of mortals for wealth and luxury to exploit them and gain something that they desire for themselves. Not a great plan since eventually they don't have any use for their treasures, but I suppose it works as a background for a mortal villain who doesn't realize he's actually getting exploited by his benefactor and will eventually be discarded.
Vanity: A great motivation for anyone, but one that's actually pretty basic, is a feeling of entitlement. What the demon really wants isn't actually that important. The important thing here is, that the demon feels that he deserves and nobody has the right to deny it to him. The demon decided that he should be worshiped or rule over his own kingdom and he will go to any lengths to get that.
Succubi, quasits, and imps should work particularly well because they have the brains, but lack the power to simply make any demands to other demons.
Boredom and lazyness: You want to do something entertaining without actually having to do much? Found a cult! If you're a lazy demon but don't want others to push you around, the best way to get your wishes is to get a horde of loyal followers who do all the work for you.
With a nalfeshnee as the mastermind, this could make for quite interesting antagonists.
Exitement: When just trashing stuff up gets too boring, demons craving for exitement have to look for more refined entertainment. Gathering armies and conquering something can keep you busy for years or decades, and you have to take care you don't get exposed to early. And you also can spend a lot of time on coming up with cruel things to do with your minions and slaves. And when things start to go too well, just do something stupid on purpose to raise the stakes.
Mariliths, cornugons, hezrous, vrocks, and osyluths should all get a lot of entertainment out of this.
Dominance: Something more suited to lawful fiends, some outsiders have the natural urge to take control and make things run as they see fit. Such fiends conquer and enslave on principle. There's a full world of weak creatures that are left to do whatever they like. Get in there and bring things in order!
This is obviously something for the big guys, so pit fiends and cornugons are the most likely candidates, but mariliths also enjoy some good campaigns and invasion when they can get them.
Pride: And the mother of all bad reasons: "Because I can!" When you are powerful and successful, everything seems to be possible and close to your grasp. This is similar to vanity, but on a much larger scale and much more complex. A demon motivated by vanity believes himself entitled to things and respect, but does not have any greater goals or desires other than being feared or admired. Demons motivated by pride strive for much greater things. They allready know about their greatness, but they also feel that they have to prove it. And nothing but being at the very top of the hierarchy is enough to be sufficient for them.
This is the deep end, and therefore the domain of balors and pit fiends.

Telonius
2011-04-14, 09:30 AM
But when worshippers are a power source that is worth it for a demon lord to spend time and resources on them, wouldn't every demon want to have as many worshippers as possible?
What would keep them in check from wanting to dominate the whole world and make everyone their worshippers?

Other demon lords. If a mortal is worshiping Demogorgon, he isn't worshiping Graz'zt. Graz'zt doesn't like this. It's like that all the way down to the lowliest Dretch. They lack the more-or-less stable hierarchy that the Devils have, so there's constant infighting and chaos within the Abyss. Whenever they're not fighting Baator, they're fighting themselves. (Which is why, despite having infinite layers and Baator only nine, they can never get it together enough to really overwhelm anything.)

Anxe
2011-04-14, 09:34 AM
Maybe the Demon is like the Joker. He just does it to screw with people.

byaku rai
2011-04-14, 09:53 AM
Here's something to think about: the demons are immortal, right? And, even more so, they're embodiments of a concept (chaotic evil or whatever subdenomination of evil they are in your world).

The practical upshot of this is that none of them, not even the most chaotic, are going to be the least bit creative. Maybe they associate with humans because humans, at the very core of their being, are capable of horrific, despicable acts so far beyond the pale that no demon would even have the capacity to come up with them. Essentially, demons are consistently evil, while humans have the potential to occasionally be EVIL

Tiki Snakes
2011-04-14, 10:12 AM
A fair few people here are suggesting the ineffable, inscruitable and unknowably alien route, with the Demon Lords unable to understand or even conceptualise the way humans thing and vica versa.

But what if it was quite the opposite? That Demon Lords know EXACTLY how people really think. They see the dark, meaty truth behind existence, that every motivation is ultimately a selfish one, that for all the talk of mortal races of friendship and artistic endeavor and altruism, that the sum totality of mortal life boils down to a bloody race to pass down your genetic material at the cost of anyone and anything in your path. They understand that even the beautiful, serene elves spend their life pooping, slaughtering, struggling for domination and desperately trying to get laid.

What if Demons were simply exagerrations of everything bad about people, with the better elements stripped away to reveal what they would claim to be the ugly truth behind everything.

And yeah, I think the Joker is a pretty excellent model for Demon behavoir, especailly the most recent portrayal.

Gensuru
2011-04-14, 01:16 PM
I canīt remember where iīve come across this but iīve read that Fire-elementals burn stuff on the material plane for one simple reason: Their home is all fire. Fire is what they know and what they consider beautiful for obvious reasons. Same with humans proclaiming the human form as the best form ever what with our "divine" capability for rational thought and such. Why would a being of chaos and evil try to get people to act chaotic and evil? Because to them thatīs the natural state of things. They ALL want to live like that obviously or theyīd be devils or even celestials, no? So why not spread what you consider the right way of living to other people?

Also you can use their chaotic nature easily. You say in your campain they have no need for mortals/humans. They could care less about the material plane as it has no significance for their species as a whole. So the few demons who DO support cults might even be freaks/outsiders among their own people. The odd ones that like conjurer-type mages are interested in other planes. If through those mortal pawns you can get access to ressources from another plane? All the better. If not there is always the odd collector that just wants to have stuff because itīs unusual where he is from. "Our Lord has demanded bunnyrabbits!" Why? because there are no rabbits in the Abyss obviously^^ Essentialy the exchange might be like one side paying with their equivalent of bottle-caps that the other side for some reason considers valuable. To a demon-lord the power-equivalent of the lowest level demon-type is a joke at best, to a human getting that power might be incredible. You give them a bit of your power that you will regenerate in like 5 minutes anyways and they fall over themselves to please you for that? Why say no to that?

Frankly Iīm more of a fan of devils myself. Still if demons manage to maintain interest in a cult those same cults likely wonīt be very organized. There ought to be a reason that the Abyss with itīs several hundred levels full of demons hasnīt utterly crusehd the devils with their "mere" nine levels of hell, donīt you think? At best you have one cult leader who actually gets power from his master and uses that to maintain control over the cult. At wortst you have the drow situation with ALL cultist having a chance at their masterīs power and thus all of them competing with each other for their masterīs favor. And frankly if the latter is the case and giving them power has little to no negative effect/cost for the demon in question...why not amuse yourself with a bunch of short lived idiot-pets competing for your attention? Goes well with the pride thing for once.

As some have mentioned eariler, usually demons and devils replenish their number with the souls of mortals. In your case you somehow have them independent from those souls so iīd have to ask: where do your demons come from? Can they die at all? How do they power themselves? If mortals are utterly useless for all three of these potential problems there really isnīt much of a reason to deal with the material plane at all beyond amusement, idle curiosity or personal desire for something onle available on the material plane. Heck there was this one movie Road to El Dorado (or something like that) where the priest explained that gods demand blood sacrifice because they donīt bleed. If your demons donīt die, "paying" some of them in return for getting to observe this odd new phenomenon "death" might be a good reason as any.

The Big Dice
2011-04-14, 01:50 PM
A motivation for a Demon Lord, and a reason for him to provide powe to his followers is fairly simple.

In the Abyss, souls are currency. And because of this, one Demon Lord has got himself deeply in debt to another. Maybe Demon Poker Night went bad for him, who knows. Anyway, to repay this debt (which never gets mentioned on the Material Plane because it is Demon business and not really anything to do with anything else) the Demon Lord builds up a cult with the intent of funneling the profits to the gangster demon he owes all this Abyssal Currency to.

TechnOkami
2011-04-14, 10:09 PM
An interesting motivation for an odd type of demon: a demon who is sadistic to a very specific group of creatures: other demons. To complete his twisted pleasure, the demon takes levels in paladin/other good aligned holy warrior class. By all technicalities this should not work, but I thought it was amusing enough to share. :smallsmile:

Frozen_Feet
2011-04-14, 10:27 PM
Lust for Destruction: Rage, wrath, cruelty, or just simply enjoying the rush of slaughter and destruction. Demons with this motivation probably wouldn't have the patience to create a secret cult and educate sorcerers in the secrets of magic required to perform a calling ritual. But they would make great emisssaries for more powerful demons whose greater plans require the destruction of something. give them a bunch of minror demons and insane cultists, and send them all against the desired target. The demon craving for destruction should do a fine job in taking out anything that could be a threat for the lesser minions.

In my setting, all demons crave for destruction of the world. Difference between an imp and a de facto Arch-Demon is that the latter are rational. They know that needless cruelty does not get their way. So they plot and scheme. They win people on their side. They think in the long term. It's all to sow seeds of destruction, but that they keep as a secret.

In the end, each of their actions is step towards death of all life. You can't barter that away from them, but you can barter with them if you can give them a way to achieve the same goal faster. But all this time, they'll be trying to make it look like they're your best friends.

Doc Roc
2011-04-15, 12:35 AM
Remember, Demons often possess deeply opaque motivations in stories. Maybe they want to finish their hundred mile wide greenhouse. Maybe they want company. Maybe they want to build a bridge using the bones of their foes and platinum. It's got to vary. Can't let it be all hunter, murder, subverter.

Frozen_Feet
2011-04-15, 10:50 AM
Well, you can always vary why they hunt, murder and subvert. :smallbiggrin: In my setting most of them perceive life as a disease, since life is what keeps the two creator gods of the setting in slumber. So life has to go so the gods can awaken and continue creation. Few have slightly more amianle persons and don't really harbor hate towards anyone - they're just convinved that life is suffering, and bringing end to life is the right answer as such. Yet others believe everything came from nothing, and all would be better if it was again reduced to nothing.

The latter two kinds would hardly bother with everyday cruelty or malevolence. The middle kind might even be pretty charitable fellow, easing pain and suffering where ever it goes.