Demon Cyberpunk: The Most Interesting way to Fuse Demons and Technology?

[Mr. Mask]

Doom 4 (or just "Doom") is getting to be a hot topic again, and it has gotten me interested in an aspect of Doom's setting I always found interesting. The fusion of demons and technology. Bringing a new meaning to the ghost in the machine.

What I'm wondering is, what is the best way to combine the two diverse aesthetics? And not just appearance, but also story, mechanical threat, atmosphere, etc..


The basic questions list for working on a game or setting featuring these creatures are:

Why the mixture of flesh and technology?

It's similar to the question of why cyborgs, but this area is far more flexible. A disturbing mixture of flesh and technology is common to these creatures, and the lore question is why it is. Maybe being spirit creatures, adding material technology to their bodies helps to anchor them to the mortal plane? Maybe technology created or possessed by demons is more powerful than it should be?



What is their goal?

I don't guess they're here for sightseeing. Although demonic sightseeing may well involve rape, pillage and genocide. That could be a pretty disturbing twist--the demons weren't invading, just curiously looking around (and killing everything they found).



How do they differ from other foes?

Are they just creepier Super Mutants, or are their abilities something else? Can they do supernatural things that scream Twilight Zone, or are they just very tough? Are they only violent brutes, or do they have cunning and espionage on their side?



Pro-tips on their appearance?

Thought needs to be put into just how you nail their aesthetic, so that when describing or drawing them they're memorable to readers/players. A goat demon with cybernetic legs is more interesting than just a goat demon, but it doesn't really have the flare to be a really memorable creature.



Methods for defeating them?

This is similar to the third question, but you do have to wonder if fighting them has any special requirements for players. Do you just shoot them with big guns till they die, blessed weapons, blessed heroes, with stolen occult tech (it'd be interesting if it eventually turned you into a demon, making the demon hordes apathetic to it being stolen and your ultimately futile efforts), or by some more specific ritual or action like finding out the demon's name?



How did they get here, and what are the Stakes?

In Doom, there was something about an experiment leading to the demons appearing, but I can't remember the details. Nor can I remember if they were simply going to conquer Earth if you didn't stop them (and I think they might've done so in Doom II). Getting the players invested in the stakes and having an interesting reason for the demon's appearance would give the adventure more impact.



How does this reflect on the gameplay?

Is the game about room-clearing? Evasion? Survival horror? Resource management? How are demons engaged?



I have some ideas on the matter, but I'd be interested to hear yours.

[LokiRagnarok]

Read up on the SCP wiki on the Church of the Broken God.

http://www.scp-wiki.net/church-of-the-broken-god-hub

Strictly speaking, it's more cyberpunk with occult than demonic undertones, but it may provide inspiration.
To put it short, they are your typical cultists believing in a God of Technology which was sealed away (broken) and has to be reassambled. They will use any means available to be more similar to their god (including cybernetic augmentation) and to get him back, and in doing this, some of them become closer to demons than humans.

To read stories featuring that organization, click here: http://www.scp-wiki.net/system:page-tags/tag/broken-god#pages

I think the Bartimaeus books also had demons in effectively a cyberpunk setting. They were used to power devices, I believe.

See also: bound spirits in Shadowrun, and their virtual counterparts, the sprites.

[ImNotTrevor]

Warhammer 40k Chaos Space Marines faction is literally demons + tech + gothic influence.

I would definitely look there for influence as well.

You could also look into Hellgate: London.

Cyberdemonpunk, i guess you could call it, has been done before many times since DOOM 1. Draw enough themes from those and you could almost put together a new kind of genre.

[THEChanger]

One option might be for the demons to be the technology, rather than the flesh. Consider a 'species' of demon than manifests in this world through silicon and other metals, as very small nanomachines. Alone, without a structure to apply themselves to, 'demons' create black and red pools and swarms that slowly spread over the landscape, consuming what they can to increase the size of their host. This is the basic directive of 'demon', grow. But, when biological(or possibly mechanical/digital) structures are introduced to the swarm, the 'demon' might bind to those structures, rather than consuming them entirely. This would provide the swarm with a greater range of ways to interact with the world - a horse, for instance, corrupted by a demon swarm would give the swarm far greater speed and reaction time, allowing them to spread farther afield than they otherwise would be able to. Binding with a crane would lend far greater strength, and the ability to destroy or remove obstacles the swarm cannot simply consume. Binding with a creature with sapience...you have a demon swarm that can deliberate. Consider. Plan.

This works well in a setting where you might want your demons to be dangerous, but perhaps not necessarily the greatest evil. Sure, the goal is to consume everything to produce more demons, but the swarm can't really be said to be aware. Until sapience is introduced, or people start trying to study and alter 'demon' for their own purposes.

[ImNotTrevor]

Doom 4 (or just "Doom") is getting to be a hot topic again, and it has gotten me interested in an aspect of Doom's setting I always found interesting. The fusion of demons and technology. Bringing a new meaning to the ghost in the machine.

What I'm wondering is, what is the best way to combine the two diverse aesthetics? And not just appearance, but also story, mechanical threat, atmosphere, etc..


The basic questions list for working on a game or setting featuring these creatures are:

Why the mixture of flesh and technology?

It's similar to the question of why cyborgs, but this area is far more flexible. A disturbing mixture of flesh and technology is common to these creatures, and the lore question is why it is. Maybe being spirit creatures, adding material technology to their bodies helps to anchor them to the mortal plane? Maybe technology created or possessed by demons is more powerful than it should be?



What is their goal?

I don't guess they're here for sightseeing. Although demonic sightseeing may well involve rape, pillage and genocide. That could be a pretty disturbing twist--the demons weren't invading, just curiously looking around (and killing everything they found).



How do they differ from other foes?

Are they just creepier Super Mutants, or are their abilities something else? Can they do supernatural things that scream Twilight Zone, or are they just very tough? Are they only violent brutes, or do they have cunning and espionage on their side?



Pro-tips on their appearance?

Thought needs to be put into just how you nail their aesthetic, so that when describing or drawing them they're memorable to readers/players. A goat demon with cybernetic legs is more interesting than just a goat demon, but it doesn't really have the flare to be a really memorable creature.



Methods for defeating them?

This is similar to the third question, but you do have to wonder if fighting them has any special requirements for players. Do you just shoot them with big guns till they die, blessed weapons, blessed heroes, with stolen occult tech (it'd be interesting if it eventually turned you into a demon, making the demon hordes apathetic to it being stolen and your ultimately futile efforts), or by some more specific ritual or action like finding out the demon's name?



How did they get here, and what are the Stakes?

In Doom, there was something about an experiment leading to the demons appearing, but I can't remember the details. Nor can I remember if they were simply going to conquer Earth if you didn't stop them (and I think they might've done so in Doom II). Getting the players invested in the stakes and having an interesting reason for the demon's appearance would give the adventure more impact.



How does this reflect on the gameplay?

Is the game about room-clearing? Evasion? Survival horror? Resource management? How are demons engaged?



I have some ideas on the matter, but I'd be interested to hear yours.

Ive had some ideas and so I'm going to share them.

1. Why flesh + tech?
I personally like to think of it as Meat + Tech. I think it's more evocative of the images in my head. As for Why, if you want a reason then it is likely either because technology is just as useful to them as it is to us, OR, demons are products of humanity. Human suffering, human cruelty, compressed and refined into living matter. They are our nightmares, fears, pains, anguish, made physically manifest. The cyberpunk world is chrome and circuits, so our nightmares and pain are chrome and circuits, too.

Of course, why bother explaining? An unknown enemy is scarier.

2. Goals?: Assuming my premise, their goal is to reproduce. How? Increasing misery, debauchery, and chaos. They may even allow humans to join this cause if so inclined. And these humans may begin to shift...

3. Differ from other foes?: This depends on the setting, really. If Demons operate in secret, then their difference is that they are puppet masters. Influencing events to cause as much suffering or wickedness as possible. If they are overt in their violence, the difference is likely their methods. Demonic violence is not merely killing and pillaging. It is doing so in a way that promotes misery. They crush opposition painfully but not lethally, creating hopelessness. Then torture, consume, and flay those captured or convert the cowardly or depraved to their cause. They would be the most pure kind of evil. The kind that delights in the doing of evil specifically.

4. Appearance: I think it might be interesting to flip the equation most often presented, Demons with metal bits, to its opposite. Rather than demonic meat with attached metal, demonic metal with attached meat.
Think of it.

It lumbers towards you, a hulking stooped mass of jagged, rusted, and blood-soaked black iron, glowing white-hot at the tips of the cruel spikes that seem to cover every inch. From within the steel cage it dangles ahead of itself like a lantern, a pair of puss-weeping eyes glares out, and a sideways mouth gurgles and bites at a bar of the cage. Tendons and muscle coil around the framework of the iron in a messy tangle, leaving thick gaps as they twitch and writhe as if freshly salted, tightening around the iron spikes and savagely tugging the coarse black legs into their stomping motion. The scream has barely begun to leave your lips when its chest splits and cracks open, a slippery black tentacle oozing out and reaching towards you, splitting open with a sucking noise to reveal a set of chrome claws that snap at your legs.

This is a monster that I've never really heard of in fiction. Or really seen an aesthetic for, either. And it sounds terrifying to behold, to me.

5. Likely a mix of good-old fashioned violence and a dose of piety. Belief in a higher power may actually be helpful in such a world.

6. Well, they had to get here somehow. I think the specifics of that are less important, but I like to think that some kind of gateway to hell was opened somewhere. Or maybe hell overflowed and broke through somewhere.

7. From a game standpoint, I still need to think. It can go a lot of different ways, depending on how the demons behave.

[Squibsallotl]

There is also the Phyrexian approach, from Magic The Gathering lore.

Essentially a plane where humans (referred to as newts) are grown in vats and supervised by mechanical demonic overlords. They are indoctrinated in the worship of Yawgmoth, their god-demon, and provided with mechanical augmentations as they rise in the ranks. They are "compleat" when their flesh has been entirely replaced by cybernetics, at which point they're referred to as a "demon".

[kraftcheese]

Read up on the SCP wiki on the Church of the Broken God.

http://www.scp-wiki.net/church-of-the-broken-god-hub

Strictly speaking, it's more cyberpunk with occult than demonic undertones, but it may provide inspiration.
To put it short, they are your typical cultists believing in a God of Technology which was sealed away (broken) and has to be reassambled. They will use any means available to be more similar to their god (including cybernetic augmentation) and to get him back, and in doing this, some of them become closer to demons than humans.

To read stories featuring that organization, click here: http://www.scp-wiki.net/system:page-tags/tag/broken-god#pages

I think the Bartimaeus books also had demons in effectively a cyberpunk setting. They were used to power devices, I believe.

See also: bound spirits in Shadowrun, and their virtual counterparts, the sprites.

If they're the same Bartimaeus books I've read then kinda? I mean I remember the setting being more 20th century (it felt kinda WW1-WW2 era imo) and I don't remember any Information Age technology but i could be wrong; there was definitely a lot of demons which where intelligent, not necessarily evil and lived in a D&D Limbo style plane of ever-changing chaos who were the source of all magic power in the world (also, they called themselves djinni, afrits, marids, various other names).

Through rituals and incantations people could summon them and either bind them to their service for a time (theyd deteriorate and weaken if away from their home plane for a long time) or trap them to make a usable item (explosive Elemental bombs, scrying mirror, etc).

Because being away from their home plane and confined to a single (albiet shapeshifting) body in the corporeal world hurts them (in their home plane they exist as a big morass of consciousness and not as individuals) demons will often go all Faustian on the Sorcerer summoning them if their summoning spells and binding rituals aren't worded and executed EXACTLY right. Theyd pretty much try and find any loophole to either excuse themselves from service, mess up their masters plans or kill their master, which would release them back to their home plane.

Demons are hurt by iron and silver, and got some strength from consuming other demons or living things, and most have grudges against other demons they've met and historical sorcerers theyve served over their multi-thousand years of on-and-off service.

But yeah, theyre very good books; the first one is called The Amulet of Samarkand and I recommend it highly.

[Milo v3]

The Chronicles of Darkness game Demon: the Descent is an entire game where the players are techno-organic demons.

1. Why the mixture of flesh and technology?
Because instead of God creating the universe, there exists a machine of incomprehensible motives, power, and scope. It creates intangible angels out of spiritual energy that basically act as programs for reality, and they are sent into missions in the solid forms of made up humans. But if one disobeys their creator, the spiritual energy is taken away and all of their being is forced to merge with the human, creating a creature that is of both spiritual technology and organic flesh.

2. What is their goal?
Different demons have different goals. Some seek to destroy or damage the God-Machine. Other simply want to enjoy life with their powers and newfound freedom. Others attempt to understand how the world works. Others want to join back with the God-Machine.

3. How do they differ from other foes?
They are sorta like spies. They have immense powers and have technological spiritual powers, but they have to keep themselves hidden and covert. Otherwise the God-Machine will notice them and try to turn them back into angels. In addition, these demons hide themselves by making pacts with people to take portions of their lives away. A human could make a pact to trade away a crazied stalker and get money, and then the demon would get the crazied stalker instead, tying the demon into the human world more and making it harder for the god-machine to detect it. This also leads to most of their powers being subtle things that exploit backdoors in reality, rather than big dramatic effects.

4. Pro-tips on their appearance?
The book is full of art on different techno-organic demons, so it can be worth a look. But it's very diverse and the rules allow you to make tones of different demons from dark figures made of thousands of nanites, to horned demons with tron-lines, to massive spiders with exoskeletons of copper rather than chitin, to winged angels with cameras for eyes, to people made from code or a pillar of flame, to a woman in a fine suit who happens to have knives instead of figures, etc.

5. Methods for defeating them?
They don't have any specific bane, so just damaging them enough works. But you can impede them just by inquiring into their lives, since picking appart their cover story makes it easier for the God-Machine to realise that they are a demon.

6. How did they get here, and what are the Stakes?
Mentioned in 1, and the stakes are... the god-machine continues altering and manipulating humanity If the Demons lose and if the Demons win, then humanity loses the protection of a God-Like being.

7. How does this reflect on the gameplay?
It's a whole game so there is a lot the demons can do. Most of it is investigation, manipulation, and espionage, but you can run games where it's just combat all the time.

[Narshe]

I can give you some ideas from a Shadowrun game that didn't pan out for me, hope you like them! In a nutshell, I think the type of themes when you're dealing with demons is despair, the horror of dealing with something otherworldly, and heroic levels of sacrifice. I don't like them to be just another enemy that you need a slightly different macguffin to magically destroy completely - they should share the bejeepers out of your players, and they should face horrifying loss even if they win so they walk away with respect for what a major threat this was.



1. Why the mixture of flesh and technology?
Technology has limitations that demonic magic might surpass - for example, if you want ghostly hands reaching out of monitors to choke people, computer viruses that can suck the happiness and will-to-live out of people in a building, launch blasts of hellfire that rot flesh and rust machines and that no armor can stop, etc... And even without exotic options, there is a practical limit to how powerful you can build an engine, or how often it needs to refuel, that a demon from another dimension powered by eldritch sources simply doesn't have to worry about.

It could also be a cost thing - in our never-happened 6th World campaign, the demonic menace was going to be the last option of a poor tribe that didn't have the high technology to fight back against an alliance of corps that wanted to take their lands.


2. What is their goal?
They could have been bound against their will - either warped spirits of goodness or nature twisted into warlike forms, or ancient dead extra-dimensional creatures that just awoke into sentience after eons. Either way, they've just awoken into sentience, know nothing except servitude - but they're starting to learn fast that free will exists.



3. How do they differ from other foes?
If you're familiar with Shadowrun, it's already chock-full of robots and magical creatures - the way to build tension and horror with "demonic" creatures is to slowly introduce players to mechanical enemies that are just slightly different in the beginning, and slowly ramp up the freak-factor.

For instance, maybe their first encounter is just your run-of-the-mill cyborg guard dog with weirdly-glowing eyes, but when they kill them, mention in passing that the heads don't seem to have visible lights. Maybe build to commando soldier that are oddly misshapen, carrying much heavier and deadlier weapons than people should be able to - but for some reason they can't shoot straight, like it's their first time handling firearms. Then it's all-out bedlam, like tanks that seem to have no physical parts except for wheels/tracks and weapons, shape-shifting succubi hackers, and behemoths of unbelievable size carrying enough armor and ordnance to wipe out entire armies.


4. Pro-tips on their appearance?
Think outside the box on this. I prefer to make demons feel Lovecraftian, like they don't -belong- in normal reality, even if your normal reality already has magical monsters and intelligent military hardware. "Impossible" creatures literally made out of lava, gelatinous ooze that seems to work without any functional organs, these things are not only freaky, but they're difficult to counter with conventional tactics that PCs might use against other enemies.


5. Methods for defeating them?
You could make the demons essentially invincible in a straight fight, causing you to have to stop (or cut a deal with) whomever summoned them in the first place. Or introduce a way for the PCs to summon demons of their own (at the cost of their souls), placing them in a moral quandry about how far they're willing to go. Or you could make them weak enough to be taken out through attrition, albeit at horrifying cost of your own soldiers and equipment.

When all else fails, nuke from orbit!


6. How did they get here, and what are the Stakes?
If you go with "summoned by desperate people", it could be that they had no idea what they'd be unleashing on the planet, and now they have no way to control these unstoppable engines of destruction.


7. How does this reflect on the gameplay?
There are so many possibilities - race-against-time to find ancient artifacts/knowledge capable of sending the demons back, try to threaten or reach an agreement with the summoners, or simply trying to escape before someone else launches strategic nuclear weapons to wipe out the demons and everyone else on the same continent with them - works especially well if you're just the poor mercenary mooks brought in to wipe out what you were told was a defenseless tribe.

[Anti-Eagle]

[LIST=1] Why the mixture of flesh and technology?
What is their goal?
How do they differ from other foes?
Pro-tips on their appearance?
Methods for defeating them?
How did they get here, and what are the Stakes?
How does this reflect on the gameplay?

Flesh is a superior anchor and conduit for the demon but machines beside their usual cybernetic purposes are easier to warp the shape and purpose of making it easier to channel their energies out of their host. I suppose this works best if you establish at some point that any demon that manifests in reality is doing so through a host that's suffering horribly.

Their goal if separate from the rest of what I assume would be the rest of the horde would perhaps be that of a demonic strogg or borg. A well oiled machine that happens to be from hell and is well hell-bent on repurposing everything else into it's components.

The new doom, quake 2 and 4, the dark mechanicus of 40k... There are alot of things that fuel the aesthetic. What you want is either well oiled cybernetics attached to demons as one would expect of cybernetic demons or as I'd suggest... Creatures fused to cobbled together machinery warped and melded into something that looks like whatever you intend the purpose of the cybernetic to be.

Demons in my mind should either be as killable as everything else (in the short term) or require real effort to banish (if you destroy their body, they'll put it back together or find another host). In the first case they would require well anything, in the second ritual they would require ritual or on the easier side of things perhaps blessed or sacred weapons of some kind.

To enter reality, ritual or arrowhead. Ritual being the cultist kind, arrowhead being the accidental breaching of their reality or through science or technology the welcoming of them into reality by chance. Lots of things could be their goals. Generic demon goals, the strogg like goals I suggested above, or perhaps to thin the line between the material plane and their hell through ritual and possession.

Harder, better, faster, stronger demons. The ability to manifest themselves through machinery or technology of some kind in general and if you go with the cobbled together appearance or hard to kill demons give them the ability to regenerate by destroying machines around them for parts including player gear (if you're playing the kind of game where that's an acceptable form of attack).

[Ravian]

You could take a look at New World of Darkness's Demon the Descent. Essentially demons in it were originally angels of a God Machine, a worldwide mechanical apparatus without a clear goal or purpose. Angels manipulate reality to serve its inscrutable purposes, but when they question their orders they fall becoming demons.

The game likely has a different aesthetic than what you may be going for, since its focused more around espionage and the demons are at least somewhat sympathetic.

I will say that the demons are very heavy on the bio-mechanical horror aspect. You might want to take a look simply for some of the ideas they have for demonic forms. Lots of weird stuff in there.

[Rosstin]

My take-- Demons DGAF. They've always been around. When something new shows up, they take advantage of it. So, they found the evil in technology, just like they found the evil in everything else.

[ImNotTrevor]

I'm kind of interested in flippong the usual direction of the invasion.

What if demons actually like Hell? It's more suitible to their tastes. They're evil, sure, but Earth holds no appeal.

Then Humans build a portal to Hell. At first, demons pour through but get beaten back after a few decades. At first humans maintained a single forward base in Hell to keep the demons from attacking again...

But we discovered Infernal Iron, strongest metal ever. We discovered Adaptive Meat that can easily be used to regrow limbs (they end up red and kind of spikey, but no other ill effects.) We discover that some of the blood lakes in Hell are O-Negative!

So Humans invade hell, led and protected by soldiers specially trained to kill demons. Sometimes demons slip through and cause havok, but for the most part humanity has Hell covered.


I think that setting sounds cool as hell. xD

[Arbane]

Another place you might look for ideas is the previous edition of Feng Shui, where fascist mad scientists from The Future (this game may contain trace amounts of time travel) have been capturing demons from the Chinese Hells and using a horrifying combination of bio-engineering, cybernetics and black magic (called 'arcanotechnology') to turn them into Abominations to use as super-soldiers.

(It was mentioned in passing that the Kings of Hell are VERY UNHAPPY with this, but the line ended before anything happened, and that dystopian future got wrecked in the new edition in favor of Post-Apocalyptic.)