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Vexxaar
2018-04-28, 05:57 PM
So, my party is going to be travelling through Demon Lands soon, where civilisation ends and the world belongs to all manner of demons. I have a fair few ideas already, but does anyone have any suggestions on what might be within the lands themselves? Specifically things like land formations, strange areas, events etc? Does anyone have anything that worked really well in their own campaigns? :smallsmile:

Nifft
2018-04-28, 06:27 PM
What are demons in your world?

Are they personifications of sin?

Are they self-replicating biological weapons from an ancient interplanar war, which destroyed their targets and their makers and now the only thing keeping them from destroying all other life in the multiverse is their internal squabbling?

Are they an ancient consortium of precursor races who all fell to arcane magic addiction, and now can't survive away from the arcane-saturated miasma of the Abyss?

Are they strange interlopers from an alien reality who don't particularly mean to be evil, it's just that what they consider "nature" is what we would tend to call "evil"?

NRSASD
2018-04-29, 08:34 AM
We definitely need more information about what you mean when you say "demons".

On that note, have the demon lands always been the demon lands? Were they the lovely green hills and forest glades of King Hedunmessedup until the demons arrived? Are they expanding? Shrinking? Do the organized countries nearby send patrols or armies to clear the demons out from time to time? Does sending patrols just make things worse?

In my own campaign setting, we definitely have a region known as the Demon Lands because Demons tried to overrun this region very recently. There's the odd burned city, pillar of skulls, mysterious scorch marks and magic dead zones, especially as you get closer to the frontier.

GentlemanVoodoo
2018-05-01, 12:39 PM
So, my party is going to be travelling through Demon Lands soon, where civilisation ends and the world belongs to all manner of demons. I have a fair few ideas already, but does anyone have any suggestions on what might be within the lands themselves? Specifically things like land formations, strange areas, events etc? Does anyone have anything that worked really well in their own campaigns? :smallsmile:

As many have said more info is needed on your world setting. Though you could look into the later books of the pathfinder module wrath of the righteous. Part of the adventure is taking place in demonic lands so you should have plenty to draw from.

Malimar
2018-05-01, 03:10 PM
Here's a thing I wrote awhile back that might help a little:

On the Caustic Coast, the western shore of the Scorching Sea, nothing good or decent lives.

The environment here is gratuitously hostile. The sea belches varicolored fires and strips the hulls from wooden ships. For miles inland, the land vents necrotizing gasses at random. The Cliffs of Corruption and the Profane Peaks jut like spears from the earth, insurmountable, cutting this land off from the realms of mortals. Those few narrow passes that carve through the mountains are treacherous with paths that shift and turn back on themselves, landslides and avalanches, gremlins and malicious goats.

The sky here is never clear. Clouds the colors of bruises brood in the sky at all times, occasionally belching forth vile slushes, boiling water, blood, hailstones that are all stone and no hail, or occasionally toads, without regard for season. Sometimes, without provocation, the clouds themselves descend in a miasmic fog, choking with stench and corruption.

There are scant exploitable resources. Iron and copper can be dug from the sulfurous ground, at great cost of life and funds, but crumbles like ash in the forge. Those crops that don’t simply wither on the stalk will sprout poisonous spines and grow vile, tumescent fruits. The native weeds are universally barbed or toxic or barbed and toxic, and anyway none grow large enough to harvest. Few trees grow here; those which do are stunted and bear only hard, inedible nuts.

The coast is peppered with the skeletons of failed colonies. No nation claims these lands today. Wise mortals remain far west of the Profane Peaks.
There are no settlements here but one.

The Disreputable City lurks on the Caustic Coast, its roiling harbor barely sheltered between two craggy promontories. Iron-hulled ships sailing the Scorching Sea do trade here, at the only known port on the Sea. Monstrous crews of lesser devils and cambions crew these ships, bearing human goods to the unspeakable hells of the farthest eastern reaches of the world, and returning here with holds full of precious materials and arcane runic apparatuses crafted by the diabolical creatures that live past the Scorching Sea.

So there is money to be made in this trade, for those willing to brave the horrors: merchants, bankers, and purveyors of insurance; whores, pickpockets, and mafiosi; adventurers, scoundrels, and villains. All can become rich by the trade.

The Disreputable City has a mayor, but he serves primarily as a receptacle for bribes. It has a police force, but they’re more concerned with protecting the city’s wealth from nonexistent outside threats than in keeping the peace within the town. It has guilds and unions, but they’re too busy lining their own pockets to see to the good of their members.

The Disreputable City is not, in short, a nice place to live.

Jeez, that prose is pretty purple. Sorry.

(Players of my games may notice I reuse names sometimes. This Disreputable City has nothing to do with the other one.)

Vexxaar
2018-05-04, 06:47 PM
Here's a thing I wrote awhile back that might help a little:

Jeez, that prose is pretty purple. Sorry.

(Players of my games may notice I reuse names sometimes. This Disreputable City has nothing to do with the other one.)

That description is awesome, thanks!
In answer to everyone else, I'm thinking of classic chaotic evil demons. They're varied in nature, but their source plane is one of chaos and madness, so think horrifying demons of hell, and trickster demons who survive through cunning. The lands themselves have always been owned by these demons, so from the beginning of time demons have made the land putrid. There is a barrier that keeps the demons out, manned by powerful paladins and strong warding spells.
Hope that give everyone a bit more of an idea.

BWR
2018-05-05, 01:21 AM
Go find all descriptions you can of the Shadowlands in L5R. Get hold of "The writings of Kuni Mokuna: the First Book of the Shadowlands" and "Bearers of Jade: The Second Book of the Shadowlands" and "Secrets of the Shadowlands", if possible. The stuff may be L5R-specific but they should give plenty of ideas to work with.

Also, descriptions of the Zbri and their lands from the game Tribe 8.

Mastikator
2018-05-05, 08:59 AM
Here's an idea: the entire world was originally controlled by demons, but then human forces invaded and with a lot of effort land was carved out and made livable to humans. The humans were aided by angels (which explains how they could do it) but then there was a falling out and the humans were both cut off from their home world and the angels, the people in the demon world were left to fend for themselves.

Slowly over time the humans expanded their territory, by exploiting the lack of organization and infighting among the demons the humans could keep expanding. But only very slowly, it's not enough to drive away the demons the land must also be terraformed, the more the humans expand the more complacent the humans in the middle become and thus less willing to contribute to defenses.
The expansion plateu'd and has mostly stalled.

Malimar
2018-05-05, 10:27 AM
That description is awesome, thanks!
I'm glad you liked it.

I believe D&D 3.5e's Book of Vile Darkness and Heroes of Horror also have some evil/tainted land descriptions/effects. Fiendish Codex I & II might have descriptions of the Abyss and the Hells, too, I don't recall. And you might read some Eberron (any edition that has it) for descriptions of the Mournland.

And, going outside of D&D altogether, you might read China Mieville's Iron Council for description of the... the area whose name I forget, but it's like Eberron's Mournland only weirder. (Iron Council is the weakest of Mieville's three New Crobuzon novels. The Scar is my favorite, but Perdido Street Station also has a lot to recommend it. But those aren't as relevant to your question.) For that matter, there's a ton of other New Weird literature that deals with this sort of thing. Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach Trilogy (which I haven't read, but it's on my to-read list), especially Annihilation, pertains to a place called Area X, which might include interesting elements (you might also watch the recent Annihilation movie -- which I also haven't seen yet). But New Weird might be getting a bit outside the traditional hellscape you're looking for and into, well, weird stuff.

Ooh, Dante's Inferno! Which I also haven't actually read. I'm led to understand it's mostly a litany of people Dante doesn't like who he says are in Hell, but it probably has some environment descriptions too, I don't know.