#demons have even more potential than gorgons do in this worldbuilding project. its wild.

[rxttenfish]

[slides in] Hi Hello now that I know you’re on Tumblr I must Ask as a Simp: How’s my bby Sawyer doing with your redesigns :eyes:

HI HELLO!!!! funnily i camp out a lot more on tumblr than i do twitter - that character limit REALLY does not make me happy. unfortunately, i keep getting shadowbanned from tags here (who the hell knows why), so it can be a lot harder to find me.

so!!! demons!!!

i don't really have as much down for them so far, at least in comparison to some others. i do have them intimately very tied to the magic system i worked out, and i very much want them to evoke more classical demon imagery - so more "garden of earthly delights" or "fall of the rebel angels" than... anything we typically see in modern demon designs, really!

i just think these kind of designs are far more evocative of what i want from a good demon design, and what they are, at their core. if people can demand "biblically accurate angels" (which are not all biblically accurate, but i digress) then i can demand "biblically accurate demons"!

so, what are demons exactly?

demons, in as far as my redesigns and reworked lore, are a magical species that are one of the best-known fully magic-generated species. most other monsters are already biological in nature - witches are just humans who can process and form their own magical reserves, after all. merfolk and the leviathans reasonably could evolve in our own world, given enough time and luck, and all of the pressures that influenced their form already do exist and even create convergent forms in other lineages.

fully magical species are... well, not biological. they have no meat inherent to them, and they are unrelated to anything else alive. it's improper to even call them animals, because they essentially are a unique branch of life all their own.

see: magic attracts magic. the larger any given collection of magic is, the more magic is then attracted to it, forming these ever-growing pools that can be taken advantage of. large pools of magic begin to condense down into workable magic - which is to say, magic that can actually work or be used like magic, binding down enough on each other to begin to affect the world around it. however, magic cannot remain as workable magic forever. if it's not used, it starts to fray at the edges and go weird, which is called wild magic. wild magic can be set off extremely easily, have catastrophic consequences, or it can just... spontaneously force things to start happening. wild magic can affect workable magic in the same way as a spark in a powderkeg, and its from one of these large pools of magic getting set off by a wild magic spark that entirely magic species form from.

magic holds within it some influence of what's around it and where it came from. usually this doesn't mean a lot, most of these impressions are relatively harmless and tend not to get in the way of proper spells. if the pool of magic formed in the mountains - then you get some magic with an extra fondness towards creating geological events and formations. if an animal passed through that pool of magic, even a normal and nonmagical animal, then they can leave behind some impressions of themselves onto that magic. every pool of magic has a wide variety of all the impressions that the natural phenomena surrounding it left upon that pool, and if you come and walk through or build next to that pool of magic, then it will also start creating impressions of those buildings and of yourself onto that magical pool.

all of this comes together to mean that demons are formless beings at their core. their physical bodies are ever-shifting, a constant menagerie of all of the little impressions their magic picked up on. this is partially dependent on what they're around - those that look the most human probably spend a lot of their time around humans, and thus end up picking up on those physical traits. it's also partially dependent on what they inherited - as reproduction, for demons, is a process by which they will take an excess amount of magic from themselves and combine it with another's excess magic, with this combination creating some influence on what the new demon will look like. and its also partially dependent on what the demon themselves wants to look like - as they can draw from all of their different influences to make some more prominent than others, and purposefully shapeshift their body into whatever they need at the time or simply want to look like.

seldom does a demon ever truly resemble another. usually the only way to even tell that they are all demons is through their shared ancestry - even though they all look different and work differently, they unilaterally operate a certain way under the magic that created them, which means how they interact with the world and with other magic has to obey certain rules, and there are similar exploitations to this magic (think, binding them to serve your will, or banishing them, or creating lines of salt so that they have to apologize for breaking your shit before they're let back into the kitchen)

there's also a stereotype (because of course there is) that demons are inherently chaotic or dangerous, as well as known for making shady deals which harm other people. this is... largely untrue. rather, demons suffer from the same issue that rodents suffer from.

they have to keep burning their internal pools of magic and finding ways to release it, otherwise it will grow out of control.

you know how i mentioned that magic attracts magic? when demons are born, they have relatively small internal pools of magic. just however much their parents put in to make them, multiplied by however many parents they have (because this can range from one to a frankly massive amount) - and they're mostly just maintaining that. as they grow, their internal pools get larger, but they are mostly used up in the act of maturing and becoming an adult, so there's not a ton of excess. as an adult at their "peak", that internal pool has become large enough that they can then use that for stuff like pyrokinetics or other forms of magic that we could recognize as such.

but... it doesnt stop there.

larger pools of magic attract more magic to them. while biological-based species with their own internal pools of magic have ways to safely convert this excess magic into basic metabolic processes or otherwise release them, it becomes a problem when the entirety of the body is made of magic. too much begins to build up, more than can be possibly used by the demon in question. the older they grow, the more they have, the more they have, the more they gain. if they have too much, then the magic that runs them and creates them could break - or, the same thing that happened to create them could happen, where their workable magic becomes wild magic, and one tiny spark could destroy their body and everything around them.

(this is why i always compare demons to lobsters.)

so demons will often try to find ways to burn off this excess magic. usually this is through the simplest means - with outright using more and more of it. this is where the idea of them being destructive comes from, as magic is still dangerous. it's a naturally-occurring phenomena, yes, but it can easily get out of control and having what's basically a wizard with the zoomies every day is not exactly the safest thing to be around. precautions can and do happen, and they can be as careful as possible, but people always remember when things went wrong more than the several dozen times when things went right.

there's also another method: through forming deals with non-demons.

anyone can use magic. so long as you know how it works, you can absolutely use it, but you will always need a source of magic. for those who already produce their own internal pools of magic, that's pretty easy, and they can use themselves as their own source. for those without a source of magic, they have to find a source that they can draw from, be it a naturally-occurring pool, a magic item of some sort, or another person. even those who naturally produce their own pools can find another source, and especially will do so if a spell requires more magic than they can provide.

the longest-living demons, and those who can most easily manage this excess magic, will often form agreements with others who need a source of magic. its an easy way to burn off a lot of excess magic at once in a relatively safe and helpful way, and they aren't prevented from having more than one agreement either. in theory, a demon could even live forever and entirely stave off death, but the issue is that usually there are just not enough outlets to burn off all of the excess magic and its even too hard to access all of the potential outlets to make up for it.

as for sawyer themselves, i don't actually have a ton! i know i'm definitely going to take a LOT of bat influences to them once i get to figuring out that design, potentially even riffing off the vampires and their lore, since theyre produced via magical virus. definitely give them some short white fuzz, give them a few alternate wing designs that they can switch between (fashion!!! style!!!!), see how far i can push the "uncanny beauty", and go all-in on the hearts and arteries and veins. possibly a big slit mouth, kinda feline besides being entirely out of proportion? how much i'm going to include concubus influences also varies and i'd have to think on it - since i'd probably loop that in under more dream-based magic than anything.