Demogorgon behaviour

[Entessa]

1) I would like to ask if there is a general consensus on how Demogorgon behaves. Is there any sourcebook?

2) Does demogorgon behaviour change within the different D&D editions?

3) This question concerns a game named Baldur’s gate 2 ToB. I will leave it into spoiler, just to be sure perfectly sure no one gets the game spoiled if you haven’t played it

Spoiler

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In Baldur’s gate Throne of Bhaal, you are sent by some helmites (Priests of Helm) to enter a dungeon named Watcher’s keep that contains a being of immense power. The wards of the dungeon are weakening instant by instant and the being within the dungeon is stirring to leave.

You are tasked to read a scroll to fortify the wards. When you reach the last floor, the creature doesn’t show himself, but tells you not to read the scroll because you’ll get trapped with him if you do.
He then asks you:
> to go out and send the helmites to him
> to not read the scroll

By doing so, you gain your revenge on the helmites (that tried to trap you) and the being will gain his freedom. You can ask the creature for reward and thoughts of immense riches and artifacts come to your mind if you do.

If you go through the plan of the imprisoned creature, you discover that you just fred Demogorgon (one of his many avatars). If you free him, he immediately turns on you.

Do you think that’s an attitude coherent with demogorgon? I know that he is a CE creature, but I have still to insist that you :
> spoiled Helm’s plan,
> sent the helmites to him and he enjoyed killing them
> refused a request of Helm himself: in fact, after you send the helmites to death, a messenger by Helm himself appears and asks you to fortify the wards with a scroll written by Helm himself by reading it outside, with no danger for you.
> fred his avatar to do whatever he wants on the material plane,


and he would not reward you? Let me know. Note that in game you are no mere human, but the child of Bhaal, Lord of Murder (and turns out you are the strongest of them, so he would probably know).

[Composer99]

1) I would like to ask if there is a general consensus on how Demogorgon behaves. Is there any sourcebook?

2) Does demogorgon behaviour change within the different D&D editions?

3) This question concerns a game named Baldur’s gate 2 ToB. I will leave it into spoiler, just to be sure perfectly sure no one gets the game spoiled if you haven’t played it

Spoiler

Show

In Baldur’s gate Throne of Bhaal, you are sent by some helmites (Priests of Helm) to enter a dungeon named Watcher’s keep that contains a being of immense power. The wards of the dungeon are weakening instant by instant and the being within the dungeon is stirring to leave.

You are tasked to read a scroll to fortify the wards. When you reach the last floor, the creature doesn’t show himself, but tells you not to read the scroll because you’ll get trapped with him if you do.
He then asks you:
> to go out and send the helmites to him
> to not read the scroll

By doing so, you gain your revenge on the helmites (that tried to trap you) and the being will gain his freedom. You can ask the creature for reward and thoughts of immense riches and artifacts come to your mind if you do.

If you go through the plan of the imprisoned creature, you discover that you just fred Demogorgon (one of his many avatars). If you free him, he immediately turns on you.

Do you think that’s an attitude coherent with demogorgon? I know that he is a CE creature, but I have still to insist that you :
> spoiled Helm’s plan,
> sent the helmites to him and he enjoyed killing them
> refused a request of Helm himself: in fact, after you send the helmites to death, a messenger by Helm himself appears and asks you to fortify the wards with a scroll written by Helm himself by reading it outside, with no danger for you.
> fred his avatar to do whatever he wants on the material plane,


and he would not reward you? Let me know. Note that in game you are no mere human, but the child of Bhaal, Lord of Murder (and turns out you are the strongest of them, so he would probably know).

I don't think the sequence you cite is really about establishing the character of Demogorgon as it is about establishing the character of the protagonist. That is, I don't think what Demogorgon would or wouldn't do is important for that sequence.

For what it's worth, though, yes, I can 100% see Demogorgon doing what he does in BG2. Not because he is CE, but because he is inherently unreasonable by human standards - by which I mean his malign intelligence is simply outside the scope of our ken, so we can't really use our own ideas of reasonable behaviour as a yardstick to measure his standards of reasonable vs. unreasonable behaviour. (That is, just because you or I consider a decision reasonable or not, does not mean Demogorgon must necessarily reckon the same way.)

Also, insofar as there is any consistent lore about Demogorgon across editions (and it's pretty sparse early on), it's that he would not qualify as being of sound mind by human standards. See this article on WotC's website, for instance, which probably came out around Out of the Abyss (an adventure in which Demogorgon makes an appearance). That reinforces the idea that he would not make decisions that you or I would consider reasonable. (The article also conveniently notes the books in which Demogorgon appears.)

[Yora]

When looking for D&D books about demons in general, Fiendish Codex I: Hordes of the Abyss for 3rd edition is a pretty good one. It includes one page about Demogorgon himself and two pages about his domain.

[FrogInATopHat]

3) This question concerns a game named Baldur’s gate 2 ToB. I will leave it into spoiler, just to be sure perfectly sure no one gets the game spoiled if you haven’t played it

Spoiler

Show

In Baldur’s gate Throne of Bhaal, you are sent by some helmites (Priests of Helm) to enter a dungeon named Watcher’s keep that contains a being of immense power. The wards of the dungeon are weakening instant by instant and the being within the dungeon is stirring to leave.

You are tasked to read a scroll to fortify the wards. When you reach the last floor, the creature doesn’t show himself, but tells you not to read the scroll because you’ll get trapped with him if you do.
He then asks you:
> to go out and send the helmites to him
> to not read the scroll

By doing so, you gain your revenge on the helmites (that tried to trap you) and the being will gain his freedom. You can ask the creature for reward and thoughts of immense riches and artifacts come to your mind if you do.

If you go through the plan of the imprisoned creature, you discover that you just fred Demogorgon (one of his many avatars). If you free him, he immediately turns on you.

Do you think that’s an attitude coherent with demogorgon? I know that he is a CE creature, but I have still to insist that you :
> spoiled Helm’s plan,
> sent the helmites to him and he enjoyed killing them
> refused a request of Helm himself: in fact, after you send the helmites to death, a messenger by Helm himself appears and asks you to fortify the wards with a scroll written by Helm himself by reading it outside, with no danger for you.
> fred his avatar to do whatever he wants on the material plane,


and he would not reward you? Let me know. Note that in game you are no mere human, but the child of Bhaal, Lord of Murder (and turns out you are the strongest of them, so he would probably know).

Why are you expecting gratitude from a 2-headed demon lord who even fights with himself?

Ingratitude of demon lords, who as you note, are CE by nature, is a fairly standard trope of the entire D&D ecosystem and often one of the most dangerous things to be is a successful cultist because whatever malevolent entity you just unleashed is almost guaranteed to kill you first.

[Tvtyrant]

1) I would like to ask if there is a general consensus on how Demogorgon behaves. Is there any sourcebook?

2) Does demogorgon behaviour change within the different D&D editions?

3) This question concerns a game named Baldur’s gate 2 ToB. I will leave it into spoiler, just to be sure perfectly sure no one gets the game spoiled if you haven’t played it

Spoiler

Show

In Baldur’s gate Throne of Bhaal, you are sent by some helmites (Priests of Helm) to enter a dungeon named Watcher’s keep that contains a being of immense power. The wards of the dungeon are weakening instant by instant and the being within the dungeon is stirring to leave.

You are tasked to read a scroll to fortify the wards. When you reach the last floor, the creature doesn’t show himself, but tells you not to read the scroll because you’ll get trapped with him if you do.
He then asks you:
> to go out and send the helmites to him
> to not read the scroll

By doing so, you gain your revenge on the helmites (that tried to trap you) and the being will gain his freedom. You can ask the creature for reward and thoughts of immense riches and artifacts come to your mind if you do.

If you go through the plan of the imprisoned creature, you discover that you just fred Demogorgon (one of his many avatars). If you free him, he immediately turns on you.

Do you think that’s an attitude coherent with demogorgon? I know that he is a CE creature, but I have still to insist that you :
> spoiled Helm’s plan,
> sent the helmites to him and he enjoyed killing them
> refused a request of Helm himself: in fact, after you send the helmites to death, a messenger by Helm himself appears and asks you to fortify the wards with a scroll written by Helm himself by reading it outside, with no danger for you.
> fred his avatar to do whatever he wants on the material plane,


and he would not reward you? Let me know. Note that in game you are no mere human, but the child of Bhaal, Lord of Murder (and turns out you are the strongest of them, so he would probably know).

Here's how I would do it:

Demogorgon has three different personalities. One for each head independently, and one for the heads working harmoniously. Each of the personalities takes over at random, but believes it is always in control and has conflicting goals from the others. Essentially each personality backfills justifications for the behaviors when another personality is in control and believes they were, but the actual goals and personality changes at random. Demogorgon is thus essentially as war with itself, but doesn't know it is. Dagon can tell which personality is in control and manipulates them to keep any of them from winning.

[Cicciograna]

This has always fascinated me about Demogorgon. He is literally two identities in the same body, and yet, even though the two personalities all but cooperate, he manages to be one of the biggest, meanest badasses in the Abyss. I guess this gives a measure of how crazy powerful Demogorgon really is, holding by sheer power what others can only hope to gain with cunning and sophisticated tactics. This not saying that Demogorgon isn't cunning: it's just that all one head does could potentially be easily destroyed by the other and vice versa, and yet he's still there.

As TvTyrant said before me, it's as if Demogorgon was perpetually at war with himself: in any war he fights, the amount of enemies he is fighting is always one unit larger than his opponents'.

[Eurus]

I like to think that one of Demogorgon's intimidating factors is how much scarier he would be if he did cooperate with himself. Anyone who makes him mad enough runs the risk of his heads both independently deciding that they need to go down, and that would more than double the sheer wrath he can bring down on you. So even other demons are hesitant to provoke Demogorgon too much.

[Calthropstu]

It is COMPLETELY reasonable for Demogorgon to attack the protagonist. For 3 reasons:
1: After he kills the helmites, there is only one person anywhere near that can oppose him. YOU. With you dead there is nothing to fear for miles around.
2: If he kills you, he can claim your Bhaal essence for himself. Plus your gear at that point is pretty tasty.
3: YOU ARE THE CHILD OF BHAAL. Bhaal was a head honcho of the abyss. If you manage to claim his throne, guess who suddenly becomes his boss? I can definitely see demogorgon nipping that in the bud.

[Bohandas]

The closest things to a sourcebook on Demogorgon specifically would probably be the Savage Tide adventure path from the last few issues of Dungeon Magazine.