Spiritual Beings: Demons

The final group of spiritual beings are demons. These are the members of the Host that rebelled against the Creative One, and now dwell in Inferno. According to the Storia, demons hate humanity for being both mortal and immortal at once. They seek to tempt mortals into sinful thoughts and deeds because a soul weighed down with sin will not be able to be reborrn, and will instead be claimed by the demons, to be tortured for all eternity.

When a demon wants to enter the world, it may do so through possession. It finds a mortal whose soul is sufficiently burdened with sin and then exchanges its own soul with the mortal's. In the course of this process, the physical form of the human is often corrupted and distorted, until it appears monstrous.

The leader of the demons is Malifer. He was responsible for bringing sin into the world, and corrupting the First City so thoroughly that the Divine One was forced to sink it beneath the ocean to cleanse it. He is also the original creator of dragons, although he lost control of them following the Hostwar and the separation of the world. He is driven to oppose the divine plan for the world, and assert his own free will. However, he is said to be haunted by a fear that all that he has done is simply another part of the Almighty One's intention...

Art: Detail from 'Heaven and Hell.' The Master of Avicenna, c. 1432.

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