When the gates to the Abyss swing wide, the first demons through are often vrocks, vulture-headed scions of rage who wheel through the air on black wings or dance with the exultation of their fiendish power. Their hatred for mortals is matched only by their desire to inflict suffering through their horrible screech or their devastating dance. Vrocks form from the souls of hateful mortals who are thus given another chance to inflict their rage on the world.
Vrocks often travel in small groups so as to make the best use of their dance of ruin ability, but they rarely appear in groups larger than four. Against small groups and individuals, they swoop down without fear, hoping to play with their prey before going for the kill. Against formidable foes, they are just as happy to fly above, using their dance of ruin to cast a storm of lightning down on them.
When a sinful mortal soul is judged and sent on to the Abyss, it can become a deadly fiend—a demon. Demons are living incarnations of sin—be they classic sins like wrath or gluttony, or more “specialized” depravities like an obsession with torture or the act of treason or treachery. Once formed, a demon’s driving goals are twofold—the amassing of personal power, and the corruption of mortal souls to cause them to become tainted by sin. In this way demons ensure a never-ending supply of new demons to bolster their ever-growing ranks in the Abyss.
Demonic Deities
The most powerful demons are known as demon lords (the term is gender neutral in this case). Of these divinities, Lamashtu is the most powerful. Countless other demon lords exist, including Abraxas, Cyth-V’sug, Kabriri, and Zura.
The Nature of Chaos
Some say that the nature of chaos inherently precludes cooperation and subtlety, but demons are proof of the fallacy of this claim.
What Makes a Sin?
Some classify sin into seven categories—envy, gluttony, greed, lust, pride, sloth, and wrath. While these sins embody some of the most powerful and numerous demons, far more than seven demons exist. Any act of cruelty or destruction a mortal takes to gratify the self at others’ expense is, in effect, a sin, and any such act can spawn a demon from a soul in the afterlife.
Demonic Possession
Some demons specialize in the art of possessing creatures or objects to spread fear and chaos. In such cases a demon gains a powerful disguise with which to work its evils upon the world, a subterfuge that delights the demon.
Sinful Destruction
While they enjoy causing destruction themselves, most demons prefer to trick and tempt mortals into falling to sin of their own volition.
Demonic Locations
The sprawling, heaving, changing realm of the Abyss is the planar home of demonic life, but demons can be found anywhere the capacity to sin exists. Evil or foolish conjurers are fond of calling upon demons for advice or darker needs. When the Abyss wears through the boundaries of reality to create wound-like portals into other worlds, demons can spill over to wreak incredible havoc.
Demonic Sources
When a sinful mortal soul is consigned to the Abyss, it spends time wallowing in the mire and feeding on filth. If it survives and is not itself eaten, the soul eventually ascends into a demon, as influenced by the nature of its sin, yet most demons are themselves capable of reproduction as well. The fecundity of demonic life is perhaps the greatest—and most threatening—aspect of these dangerous fiends.
Other Demons
The Abyss may be the largest of the Outer Planes, and mortals have an equally large capacity to betray themselves, society, and the natural order of reality. With this limitless source for increasingly specialized sins, the Abyss is constantly generating new types of demons to plague reality. While the vast majority of these are swiftly destroyed and never rise again, enough survive that dozens, if not hundreds, of types of demons are known to exist beyond those listed here. The shadowy invidiak is a demon without a body, born of envious souls. The goat-faced, flame-hooved brimorak rises from the souls of arsonists. Slimy, horned blood demons spawn from assassins, boar demons from the greedy... the list goes on and on.
