Demon

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A demon is some kind of evil spiritual entity. It's different in just about every setting's fluff, but usually sports horns and/or a tail (at least when they take. Makes a great antagonist, villain, or monster of the week.

Most of this stuff starts with Judeo-Christian mythology. The old and new testaments have a few vague references to various evil others (one of which being named satan) who tries to screw with humanity and god by deceiving and tempting people with various degrees of success. After Christianity got popular, various bits of other religions and their iconography got labeled demonic, such as Venus's Pentagram or the imagery of the half goat god Pan. Eventually in the middle ages the church decided that these evil beings were fallen angels.

In addition you get things from other mythologies which are supernatural, not gods (or at most are minor ones) and are malicious, which get lumped in as Demons. Such as Yokai from Japan.

If you're looking for the warhammer equivalent, then you should probably go to the page for either daemon or daemonette . Why the fuck is there an extra 'a'? Who the fuck knows. It's greek. The E comes from the word dæmon which comes from trying to translate the greek word for godlike power, fate or just god.

Or rather, Daemon (with the a) is synonymous with a lesser god. Given that the daemons in Warhammer are actually merely small parts of their god that have been split off to do shit on their own, as well as their power, it makes some sort of sense.

Be cautious when using Demons as characters, for Demons are beloved of Mary Sues and the teenage landwhales that tend to write them. If a pimply 14-year-old wants their character to have wings, and also be edgy, said character will no doubt be a demon. If a character has to have magic? Demonic pact. Evil father? He'll be a demon - well, Raven from Teen Titans is done well but apart from that Demon parents are a minefield.

So, yeah. Exercise caution.

In D&D

Demons and devils have been part of the Dungeons & Dragons mythos since the beginning, although the precise distinction between the two has usually boiled down to the ever-trying matter of alignment - demons as Chaotic Evil, devils as Lawful Evil.

In 2e, due to the legendary Satanic Panic of 80s DnD, they were renamed as Tanar'ri (demons) and Baatezu (devils). This was also the edition of Planescape and the Blood War, a huge philosophical conflict that devoured worlds and was basically fought because demons and devils were determined to prove their kind of evil was the only true face of evil.

In 4e, demons and devils underwent a huge revamp to finally make them more than just alignment-distinctions. In the 4e mythos, demons are elemental embodiments of corruption, madness and destruction, spawned by the last remaining shard of a dead universe destroyed by entities of pure evil polluting the Elemental Chaos. This means they want to destroy the entire multiverse, than leap into the next reality and destroy it as well, and so on in adfintinum. Devils, meanwhile, are fallen angels who betrayed their own god and were twisted into monsters before being locked up in their ex-master's domain, which they have converted into a hellish prison. Their goals are to get out of their prison and take over the entire multiverse.

In the World of Darkness

Demon is the name carried by two RPGs by White Wolf: one in the Classic World of Darkness and one in the Chronicles of Darkness (or the Old and the New World of Darkness:

• Demon: The Fallen is a game of angels and demons, of redemption and debasement. Players take on the roles of the Fallen, demons recently escaped from the Abyss (Hell) and finding a world where God and His angels are absent. It is up to the demons what to do with this world and if they seek redemption or revenge on an absent God, as well as deal with the Earthbound, demons that were summoned to Earth centuries or millenia before they did and have turned to inhuman monsters.
• Demon: The Descent is a game of techgnostic espionage, kinda like The Matrix meets Dogma. Players take on the roles of the Unchained, former angels employed by the God-Machine that keeps the world running (for better or worse) which gained sentience and broke free of the God-Machine's control. These demons are required to take the identities of people to avoid detection by the God-Machine and its agents. With these new forms they seek to either create their own Hell on Earth (the old-fashioned meaning, as in a place devoid of God) or return to the God-Machine on their own terms. Intensely interwoven with the God-Machine Chronicles meta setting.