Why do demons do what they do?

[MonkeySage]

Ok, so demons are the embodiment of chaotic evil; driven to destroy everything in sight. But my thought is, what exactly drives them to destroy? What profit motivates them to kill?

Succubi presumably get souls out of the deal, which would definitely be a big motivator... But if souls are off the table, and the souls of their victims are most likely going to a pretty good afterlife, then what else might motivate them?

I am totally overthinking this, yes, but still I figure this could be an interesting subject.

The motives of devils are pretty cut and dry; they almost always stand to gain something- removal of a rival or enemy, acquisition of a mortal soul, etc. Even the lowliest imp is on a mission to improve their station.

Daemons are simply trying to drag the world into bleak oblivion, or in some way advance themselves... I've always thought of them as kind of the worst manifestation of nihilism.

What do demons stand to gain by taking undamned lives, other than temporary sadistic thrills? Seems like it'd make more sense to use trickery, or to get those with murderous thoughts to act on those thoughts. The demon would definitely come out on top if they did this.

[JNAProductions]

Ok, so demons are the embodiment of chaotic evil; driven to destroy everything in sight. But my thought is, what exactly drives them to destroy? What profit motivates them to kill?

Succubi presumably get souls out of the deal, which would definitely be a big motivator... But if souls are off the table, and the souls of their victims are most likely going to a pretty good afterlife, then what else might motivate them?

I am totally overthinking this, yes, but still I figure this could be an interesting subject.

The motives of devils are pretty cut and dry; they almost always stand to gain something- removal of a rival or enemy, acquisition of a mortal soul, etc. Even the lowliest imp is on a mission to improve their station.

Daemons are simply trying to drag the world into bleak oblivion, or in some way advance themselves... I've always thought of them as kind of the worst manifestation of nihilism.

What do demons stand to gain by taking undamned lives, other than temporary sadistic thrills? Seems like it'd make more sense to use trickery, or to get those with murderous thoughts to act on those thoughts. The demon would definitely come out on top if they did this.

Bolded the important bit. They're not exactly known for thinking ahead.

[MonkeySage]

Fair enough, though a lot of them are highly intelligent. I guess what I meant is, why go for temporary destruction when they can do something more permanent? Succubi got that down, for example.

[Deaxsa]

Fair enough, though a lot of them are highly intelligent. I guess what I meant is, why go for temporary destruction when they can do something more permanent? Succubi got that down, for example.

Because the concept is alien to them. They could not plan world domination any more than all the cockroaches of the world could. You must remember where the demon comes from: basically the embodiment a concept (luck demon, lust demon, starvation demon, etc). These are living, breathing qualities, not people. Now specific systems will probably try to make them fit in one way or another, but then you must look to the system for their reason.

[Mastikator]

They're jerks. They don't gain anything, they go out of their way to be big 'ol meanie heads.

[BWR]

Why does any evil person do what they do?
Enjoyment and power.

And what makes you think they don't use brains and trickery to make other people damn themselves? They are chaotic, not stupid. They are chaotic, not necessarily beings with no impulse control. They do not play well with others, they do not do causes other than themselves, and they do not care about anything but number 1. They are fully capable of complex planning and manipulation, they are fully capable of long-term plots, and they are capable of patience.
They are just very open to the idea of abandoning plots and plans if something better comes along, giving their entire attention to one thing to make it work rather than trying to keep multiple things going that may fail. They are very aware of how the direct approach is often more useful (and fun) than plotting merely for the sake of plotting. Lastly, while plots may work, there is often a ton of things that can go wrong, so rather than waste energy and time putting something together that may easily fail, they think more in terms of immediate gains and gratification than other evil exemplars. A bird in the hand, and all that.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Fair enough, though a lot of them are highly intelligent. I guess what I meant is, why go for temporary destruction when they can do something more permanent? Succubi got that down, for example.

Because it's ****in' fun!!! That's seriously it. It's a little deeper, technically, but if you pinned one down and asked then that's the honest answer you get.

Technically, they're driven to it as surely as any mortal creature is driven to eat or reproduce. Setting it aside is as difficult to them as starving oneself would be to us. Except worse because it doesn't actually impede their ability to resume at any moment no matter how long they abstain.

[Hawkstar]

Fair enough, though a lot of them are highly intelligent. I guess what I meant is, why go for temporary destruction when they can do something more permanent? Succubi got that down, for example.

Because they can do both? it's not like they fear destruction. Party Vrock is in the house!

The entire purpose of a demon's existence is to keep people from having nice things. Yes, they're intelligent - but that just means they can be creative in pursuing their goals of screwing stuff up for everyone and everything around them.

They really just want to see the world burn.

[Eno Remnant]

I'd suggest that part of it, the part that hasn't been covered yet, is prestige.

Let me paint you a picture: you're a reasonably powerful demon in the ever-changing Abyss, in which new layers constantly form and disappear, and there is constant fighting amongst the other demons to control these layers. Everyone's out for power, and they'll follow anyone who can give them more, with the dreams of one day brutally murdering them and taking all they own. If you, as this reasonably powerful demon, could boast to have razed a hundred villages, slain a dozen influential clerics, and desecrated the holiest altar of Pelor, all of the other demons would recognise and respect (read: fear) your power. They'd follow you, helping you to conquer a layer for yourself - staying obedient right up until the betrayal. But hey, how sweet will it be to rule a whole layer of the Abyss before you die? Getting to kill those who attempt to assassinate you in front of the others as an example is just a bonus.

Like devils, demons do what they do to make power plays. It's different in the case of demons because they have no set structure or order. Most of them blindly slaughter their kin to climb to the top of the heap, and will mindlessly destroy mortal creatures simply because it's fun. The more innovative and clever, however, recognise that mortals are weaker than demons (by-and-large), and that being known for doing horrible things on a large scale will intimidate other demons.

Of course, most of those demons are doomed to destruction anyway, but as mentioned, demonic goals are fairly basic - kill things until you're the strongest. It's how demon princes like Orcus got to where they were, and how they stay there: by being known as the most powerful, and ruthlessly crushing resistance.

[Nifft]

Why do demons exist at all?

A) They're the shadows of emotionally-charged magic which is created when spellcasters use magic for evil reasons. This is why demons tend to have spell resistance: because they're made of magic. This is also why they're amenable to Planar Binding -- as remnants of an arcane caster's will, they have sympathetic arcane personality harmonics which summoners can exploit. Finally, it explains why they are simultaneously inhuman and all-too-human.

Plot Hook: "... and this is why the Church has a holy duty to monitor and control arcane heretics like yourself."


B) They are the living remnants of an ancient and powerful empire which suffered a doom worse than the Rain of Colorless Fire or the Invoked Devastation. Perhaps the Queen of Chaos was former mortal monarch whose battle against the oppressive Wind Dukes of Aaqa compelled her to seek horrible mutagenic magics. This is why there are "races" of demons, and why they don't necessarily get along with each other -- and also why so many demonic tools of social subversion exist. They're both a survival mechanism (to obtain more un-mutated biomass), and an advance infiltration exercise.

Plot Hook: "At last, the final secret is revealed! Now I shall ascend, and you fools are helpless to stop me!"


C) They are ancient biological weapons of war. Perhaps they were the creation of the Ur-Flan, before that terrible race destroyed their original homeworld. Perhaps they were the weapon that broke the ancient Aboleth hegemony in the world before this one -- a glance at Demogorgon's aquatic throne-plane certainly justifies that idea. In any case, they are now a weapon without a purpose... or are they? What about the next Aberration invasion? (Tsochar, Mindflayers, Grell, THOON, ...)

Plot Hook: "I will gladly sacrifice thousands of souls to save the remaining billion hearts and minds of mankind from those alien abominations."

[TheCountAlucard]

This seems pretty specific to D&D; other games and settings have demons that aren't necessarily "the embodiment of chaos and evil," or indeed, doesn't even feature alignment.

That said, I generally go with the "alien mindset" notion. They're not human - where various compunctions to be social and compassionate exist in humans from a mix of nature and nurture, demons (and not just the D&D ones!) don't necessarily have that. It's hard to even imagine.

[Pronounceable]

Demons feed on evil. They grow bigger by being eviler, all the way up to Demogorgon. Isn't that "canon"? Also they're literally made of evil and chaos, so don't need a reason.

That said, succubi should've never been demons in DnD and 4e did a smart job in removing them. Their seductive soul hunter thing is so completely divorced from the rest of demonic hordes it just looked weird. Souls are devil and especially nighthag business. Succubi should've been natives of Gray Waste, probably related to nighthags (or even straight up nighthags themselves).

Demons as embodiments of CE also should've never been placed in neat little boxes with labels and user manuals on them (on account of that being a ****ing dumb idea) but that's neither here nor there. At least they're not slaadi.

[Remedy]

Oh, dear. We're back to vanilla D&D. I'd managed to make myself forget alignments existed for a moment, but it's all coming back now.

I like Exalted's explanation for why demons act the way they do, though it's worth noting that, if we're going to try to draw a parallel between D&D and Exalted (and they're very different), the word "demon" in Exalted would cover all varieties of "Evil Outsider", not just specifically the Chaotic Evil ones.

So in Exalted, demons are in no way, shape, or form "made of evil." They're spirits, not so different from the many thousands of spirits running around in the mortal world, except that the demons were trapped in Hell along with the world's versions of titans at the end of an ancient past war. Along with Hell being the sort of place where you have to be constantly paranoid to avoid being rended limb from limb without warning, the social systems put in place reward callousness and harshly punish charity, it maintains a horribly convoluted and strictly enforced set of taboos (which are mostly an excuse for higher-ranked demons to abuse lower-ranked ones at the drop of a hat), and to top it off there's a constant background noise of the sealed titans screaming about how everything in the mortal world and Heaven must be laid to ash.

And when the demons finally get to temporarily escape from Hell, it's usually under the heel of some callous sorcerer who literally fractures their mind and both physically and emotionally abuses them into being a supernaturally obedient slave and then throws the demon at whatever task is too dangerous or tedious for the sorcerer to want himself or a human servant to do.

Needless to say, when a demon has a chance to run away from all that? They want to enjoy themselves in whatever ways they know how and stay the hell away from, well, Hell. And where they grew up, which things are "fun" and which things are "awful" tend to get a bit mixed up relative to our own interpretation.

[CharonsHelper]

Think of them like crack addicts. A crack addict can be highly intelligent, but that doesn't mean that he won't take another hit even though he knows that it's bad for him.

A demon wants the rush of the chaos/kill like a crack addict wants a hit. And he wants it right now!

[DoomHat]

I like Exalted's explanation for why demons act the way they do, though it's worth noting that, if we're going to try to draw a parallel between D&D and Exalted (and they're very different), the word "demon" in Exalted would cover all varieties of "Evil Outsider", not just specifically the Chaotic Evil ones.

~sip~

Actually it's just a step deeper and yet simpler then all that, I think, which is why it's one of my favorite interpretations of the idea of demons. At their core, what motivates demons is that they are, by their nature alone, in unspeakable pain. As it turns out, this tends to also be the major motive of a lot of real life's villains.

They yearn to fill an emptiness that can't be satisfied, because they've been fundamentally and perhaps irreparably damaged. In the Exalted universe specifically, all demons are lesser manifestations of the Titans, and the Titans have been mutilated by the epic heroes of old. These physical and psychological wounds are engineered in such a way as to force them to turn in on themselves, and become trapped in prisons of their own flesh.

Demons don't "enjoy" inflicting pain and terror on others, so much as spreading misery merely dulls their own pain. Feeling "less bad" is the closest they can get anymore to actual comfort. And on that note, there's also the understandable resentment they feel toward anyone or anything else that, unlike them, can still have joy in their lives.

[Nifft]

I like Exalted's explanation for why demons act the way they do, though it's worth noting that, if we're going to try to draw a parallel between D&D and Exalted (and they're very different), the word "demon" in Exalted would cover all varieties of "Evil Outsider", not just specifically the Chaotic Evil ones.

Exalted's Fair Folk are that setting's chaos-flavored beings from Outside.

Exalted's Abyssals are that setting's murder-everyone "Chaotic Evil" beings from not-here.

Exalted's Demons are different, and not necessarily any kind of evil or chaotic.

So:
- There are "evil" things which are not demons.
- There are "demon" things which are not evil (i.e. most of them).

[Remedy]

Exalted's Abyssals are that setting's murder-everyone "Chaotic Evil" beings from not-here.

Abyssals are human beings, and neither so easy to generalize nor really from not-here. Really, the supervillain Exalted are the Infernals according to the books themselves, but Word of God is that even they aren't, because nuance is good.

Exalted's Demons are different, and not necessarily any kind of evil or chaotic.

I pointed out the Chaotic thing. And demons are... Not necessarily malicious, but almost always harmful to people if given free reign. The alignment system doesn't really handle alien mindsets very well. (The alignment system doesn't handle anything well, but that discussion has been had a thousand times.) By D&D standards, Exalted demons would be capital-e Evil. That doesn't mean I would call them evil, or that most systems of quantifying morality would agree, but the question was about why demons engage in actions that D&D would quantify as Evil, and I found the Exalted perspective interesting.

So:
- There are "evil" things which are not demons.

I would hope that this is a given in all settings ever, unless the setting's only intelligent beings are demons.

- There are "demon" things which are not evil (i.e. most of them).

Again, it's the distinction between actual evil and D&D Evil that's causing any disagreement we might be having, I think.

[Zale]

Well, in D&D:

Demons are literally evil made manifest. They are sin given physical form and sapience.

It's kind of odd to ask why the physical manifestations of evil are evil.

It's like going, "Why does fire hot?"

Fire elementals burn things because they're made of fire.
Demons want to do evil things because they're literally made of it.

[Bohandas]

Your tears are all the pay I'll ever need...

EDIT:
The writings of the Marquis de Sade may also be enlightening for this conversation

EDIT:

The music of GWAR is also explanatory:

Spoiler

Show

"From what I've heard it's a pretty cool place
A sea of urine where rats eat your face
and a sadist like me can pursue his vocation
I'm goin' to hell because I need a vacation

We're gonna go to hell!
Toll the bell, we're goin' to hell!
Here we see the fruit of creation
Writing in slime. Blood sweetens our time
Here we seek our final salvation"
-Go To Hell
...

"But space teems with danger, the perils are countless
Enemies infinite, vengeance that's boundless!
Wars that are so fun you don't want to win!"
-Lust in Space
...

"Hatred of all things alive
War is all we know

They say war is a last resort
For me it's the only way
I have tried reading them poetry
It suits me better to slay
...
They say war is all we know
If only that were true
No matter how i work my schedule
There's always other things that i do"
-War is All We Know
...

"I want to murder everyone in the entire world
Every man and woman, every boy and every girl
Swallow up the air and earth and mutilate the worms
Kill the messenger who begs us to consider terms
...
The young are simply too dumb to live
the old are weak and unclean
the ones in the middle, they also must die
their ways are obtuse and obscene"
-Biledriver
...

"We saw the law that rules
Your lives is just a joke
'you shall not kill'?
don't make me laugh. Far from criminal, its craft.
'thou shall not steal'?
Come on get real
Do what you will, do as you feel
...
Your God's long dead
So don't waste your time
On overzealous hypocrites
Who call chaos a crime

Eat the rich
and Kill the poor
Worship always
Your masters, Gwar"
-Parting Shot
...

"In the fortress of GWAR, much torment remains
Despite all of the bodies that had been hacked in twain
So many had died in the vicious campaign
That their femurs alone made a fine mountain

The Master was no longer GWAR's sovereign
Of wealth and women they had none to gain
What goal was left for them to attain
So Oderus did call for conclave
...
booze, drugs food, 400 mule-loads high
...
Their will, to journey and slay without plan
Bring siege and terror to the cities of man"
-song of words
...

"Did you ever stay up late wondering if you'd been screwed?
Or ever really know how much money they're making off of you?
...
Formula,
we deplore your
Formula,
we abhor your
Formula,
...
We were sent here to destroy you
...
(Formula), your machine
(Formula), I find obscene
(Formula), know what I mean?"
-Nudged
...

"Welcome to the slaughter, what are going to do?
What will be your epitaph, when we get done with you?
Are you gonna cry for your momma, or are you gonna have a good time?
...
It all gets pretty crazy, bedlam all around
Anarchy, chaos rule the street, it's a RagNaRok party town!
Your head it is a turnin', your brain it is a burnin'
As your sanity slips away
The final hour's here, now grab yourself a beer
You're only king for one day
Go on and get a gun, we're gonna have some fun
Snuffin' out some fools, and breakin' all the rules
The only rule is winnin', that means a lot of sinnin'
Sinnin' feels so fine, you're running out of time!
It's always one hell of a party, when RagNaRok rolls around
RagNaRok N Roll, RagNaRok N Roll
It's time to trash the planet, RagNaRok battleground"
-RagNaRok
...

and also the entirety of their song "Metal Metal Land"

...
EDIT:

"The cycle of torment the pleasure of sin
...
I rode a tide of vengeance that could never be denied
Hail the crimson blur - violence has arrived!"
-Abyss of Woe

[FabulousFizban]

Boredom. Eternity is a long time

[Bohandas]

That said, succubi should've never been demons in DnD and 4e did a smart job in removing them. Their seductive soul hunter thing is so completely divorced from the rest of demonic hordes it just looked weird. Souls are devil and especially nighthag business. Succubi should've been natives of Gray Waste, probably related to nighthags (or even straight up nighthags themselves).

or Dal Quor

[gkathellar]

Fiends are evil because fiends are evil. Their physical bodies are formed from the thought-matter of the Lower Planes. Their forms express different facets of evil, but all fiends are outgrowths of a grand, platonic idea. A dretch is wretched cruelty, bitterness, and resentment. A kyton gives form to the desire to ruin, cage, and render invalid. Succubi are coercive, corrupting sexuality given form. A balor is a swirl of hate and rage and the essence of Impaling Things On A Spike, On Fire, In Pain. Dagon looks like You Dying In The Lightless Abyssal Depths, and you only see an eel monster because seeing it involves dying in that way. Pale Night is censored by reality itself, because it is the universe collapsing under the weight of infinite evil and chaos. Fiends do these things because they are these things, because not doing them is like not metabolizing for a human. As a wiser man than I once said: "made of malecules and cruelectrons."

In Planescape, anyway.

In general, the answer depends entirely on the game and setting in question, so you'll need to be more specific than just saying demons.

[RazorChain]

As I'm running a game that happens in medieval Europe I'm going answer this question in one word: Dualism

[Bohandas]

because it's fun

[Lord Raziere]

Because they're inherently selfish beings who can't think beyond their own desires. Evil beings like Demons simply lack any real empathy or ability to think of what other people want. Sure they can make demonic deals that seem to be offering what you want, but in that situation they are just projecting their own desire for revenge/power/greed/whatever onto you and think that your experiencing the same thing they are.

For example:
A demon is attacking a random innocent person
Innocent: "Stop hurting me! I don't want to be killed!"
Demon: "Oh, ok, so you want the power to kill anyone who might try to kill you? Thats what I wanted to when I was mortal! Here, sign this contract to become a demon like me and you can gain power to kill anyone and thus not have to experience this situation again!"
Innocent: "No! I don't want to be a demon!"
Demon: "......Your weird. I'mma kill you, because you clearly want to die weak, talking like that."
He then kills the innocent.

Basically they are bunch of psychopathic megalomaniacs, other demons are just threats to their own desires or fools to manipulate to get their own desires, the difference between one or the other being almost nonexistent. As you go higher up in the demonic hierarchy, the only difference is that the demon lords are paranoid psychopathic megalomaniacs who learn to fake civility when it suits their purposes and are constantly working to stay on top of demonic politics where you can trust literally no one, especially not the people who claim to be trusted lieutenants or whatever because that just means they're playing the long con, to the point where some demons look forward to facing paladins as enemies, because paladins seem like such an easy, obvious straightforward foe in comparison, no uncertainty, no worries about whether the paladin will "cheat" or do something clever, they're paladins after all. What could they possibly do that a demon in all their cheating, willingness to backstab, grab whatever kind of power they can, could not?

and why not have some fun on the mortal plane where people are too caught in this weird "kindness and caring" thing to properly defend themselves. I mean, they don't even constantly plot every day to kill their next door neighbor just in case they betray you first, how can these people possibly be strong, if they don't do something so basic? Demons such as them might as well be invincible among mortals. From a demons point of view, everyone else is a fool for having anything remotely resembling civilization, you can't argue with them on it, because only a fool would open their mouth to argue the logic of it when the demon will just kill you and consider it winning the argument because you left yourself open to attack.

Really its not a question of "why?" its a question of "why not?" Demons think that by having power they can do whatever they want and if they're more powerful, that is exactly what they will do. If they're less powerful, then they are cowards who want to not die, will obey until they betray you behind their back and be free again. They will always betray you, and won't think anything abnormal about it. What we consider insane, evil, psychotic and pretty much a horrible way to live your life is just normal to them. Thats why they're demons and need to be fought.

[Kane0]

I remember a bit of lore thrown around once that seemed pretty obscure, though it might have been non-canonical.
Essentially the abyss and all its infinite fiends can be traced to a particular crystalline shard that at some point lost a few bits, and the 'radiation' from it breaking is the spawning point of the abyss and its denizens. The lost bits adhered to random souls so demons commonly go around searching for them. Violence just happens to be their preferred means of playing the lucky dip game.

Fun explanation, but i don't think its true beyond that particular game

[JNAProductions]

I remember a bit of lore thrown around once that seemed pretty obscure, though it might have been non-canonical.
Essentially the abyss and all its infinite fiends can be traced to a particular crystalline shard that at some point lost a few bits, and the 'radiation' from it breaking is the spawning point of the abyss and its denizens. The lost bits adhered to random souls so demons commonly go around searching for them. Violence just happens to be their preferred means of playing the lucky dip game.

Fun explanation, but i don't think its true beyond that particular game

In 4E, at least, the abyss was made from a shard of pure evil that was dropped in the planes.

[Millstone85]

In 4E, at least, the abyss was made from a shard of pure evil that was dropped in the planes.

Dropped in the Elemental Chaos, thus making demons a subtype of elementals and the Abyss a black-hole-like whirlpool under the very forge of reality. IIRC, the shard itself came from another universe and had been given to a god for him to throw it into the Astral Sea. However, the god (probably Tharizdun) decided to alter the deal. That means demons were a bit Far-Realm-y too. Still IIRC, Asmodeus would later steal some of the shard to create the Nine Hells in the Astral Sea.

That was the non-FR lore. In 4e FR, there was no shard of evil, but Asmodeus temporarily ended the Blood War by throwing the Abyss into the Elemental Chaos. I guess it made travel between the Abyss and the Nine Hells more difficult.

I was a new player at the time, and curious about D&D lore. It took me way too long to figure out the conflicting canons.

[Pleh]

You might be making the mistake of presuming a motive is an accurate description of their character. In literary terms, demons often represent the darker aspects of humanity. They are the fabled incarnations of our own destructive desires. It's not why do they do what they do, but they are why we do what we do. Assigning motive is to attribute human qualities to inhuman characters. Perhaps demons destroy the same way fire does. It has no motive to do so, just a destructive nature that can't be separated from its existence.

[Tiktakkat]

Ok, so demons are the embodiment of chaotic evil; driven to destroy everything in sight. But my thought is, what exactly drives them to destroy? What profit motivates them to kill?

It makes it hurt less for awhile.

Being a demon is pain.
The Abyss is emptiness, and demons embody that.

Everything that is not an individual demon is experienced by that demon as a painful loss; something that has been taken from it.
They can reduce that pain, for a bit, for a time, by absorbing "their" essence back into themselves.
Typically, that involves killing and assorted mayhem, particularly among the weaker demons who do not have the intellect or will to control themselves. However, even greater demons suffer from that pain of loss, and at times lose control and indulge in violence.
And indeed, even the most powerful demon lords and princes, even those with worshippers, always experience such pain, even in relation to their worshippers. No matter how much they are worshipped, the worshipper is still separate, and thus still "stealing" some portion of the demon.

In general, all of the lower planes operate on that principle of pain, albeit with different manifestations. Demons experience it on a more comprehensive basis than any others, and thus are more inclined to random violence.
Whether that is "better" or "worse" than the tyrannical violence of the devils or the life-denying violence of the daemons is generally subjective based on which is trying to slaughter you at the moment.
Ultimately though, it always comes back to the pain, and how, for demons, destruction makes it hurt less for a little while.