Comic Books
The other inhabitants of this place were not dead; however, neither were they alive, in any biological sense of the word. Humanity called them demons without understanding what it had named. There was little that demonkind had in common with the legions of damned souls with whom they shared the infernal marches. However, they were all agreed on one thing. This was as bad as it got. It couldn't get any worse.
— The Sandman (1989), Issue #22
Fan Works
He was an immense and muscular figure, bipedal, though with arms that stretched past his knees. His batlike wings stretched in the night air, flapping a few times as they shook off the last bits of pitch. Four horns gleamed in the starlight, and four eyes glowed red as he took in his surroundings. He grinned, revealing a set of teeth somewhere between a shark and a paper shredder.
Literature
My dear Goodman Mather, there is not a demon in Hell who was not once something quite other, and more interesting. In the land where the Euphrates runs green and sweet, I was a grain-god with the head of a bull. In the rough valley of the Tyne I was a god of fertility and war, with the head of a crow. I was a fish-headed lord of plenty in the depths of the Tigris. Before language I was she-who-makes-the-harvest-come, and I rode a red boar. The earth answers when I call it by name. I know its name because we are family.
—Gemegishkirihallat/Agnes, The Bread We Eat In Dreams, by Catherynne M. Valente
He feared as well the devils his grandmother had told him about, and that he might meet one in the rain and in the dark. They were half man, and half lion, and they would call out to passers-by and beg them to help carry a bundle of wood. If the passer-by were foolish enough to stop, the devil would kill him with a pointed stick and devour him. Once such a devil had killed and devoured the inhabitants of a whole village, save for one woman and her son who had run away and hidden in a cave. When the boy grew up, Konyek's grandmother had said, he made bows and arrows, and the arrows he poisoned. One day, the devil saw smoke coming from the fire the boy had lighted, and came to eat him. But the boy was waiting for him, concealed in a tree, and shot the arrows at him. At first the devil thought he had been stung by gadflies, but when he was dying, he gave the boy secret directions how to recover the people of the village he had killed, and all their cattle as well. And in their gratitude, when the villagers came to life again, they elected the boy as chief.
They moved fast because there were beings with whips urging them along. It took me a moment to register.
Okay, Carpentier, you're in Hell and there are demons in Hell. There were things on the red-hot wall that might have been demons if you could have seen them clearly through the fog. There's Geryon, certainly a monster. Of course Big Juju can make demons.
But I hadn't wanted to believe it.
Now I was looking at them. They were black-skinned rather than the red I'd expected, and they were uglier than I could have imagined. They were using whips twice as long as themselves. They screamed at the laggards.
Okay, Carpentier, you're in Hell and there are demons in Hell. There were things on the red-hot wall that might have been demons if you could have seen them clearly through the fog. There's Geryon, certainly a monster. Of course Big Juju can make demons.
But I hadn't wanted to believe it.
Now I was looking at them. They were black-skinned rather than the red I'd expected, and they were uglier than I could have imagined. They were using whips twice as long as themselves. They screamed at the laggards.
Tabletop Games
They aren't shape-changers, strictly speaking. But they do seem to wear many faces and forms. Moreover, their identity is strictly a mystery to most hunters. They appear to offer deals. Or they show up as chattering imps serving some inexplicable purpose (inexplicable until later, when the purpose is revealed, at least). They might sit on the banks of a river, wailing a cacophony as their sorcerous master's corpse floats upon the waters. They might become cats or owls or steal bodies as part of some hellish pact.
Who does hold a demon's leash, if any? Is it Lucifer, as the Lucifuge would have any hunter believe? Are lesser demons in thrall to greater demons who are held as slaves to truly unknowable beings? Do they serve vampires, sorcerers or Devil-cursed wolfmen? Could they be rogue agents, free from some spirit world, or released perhaps from a broken Hell itself?
Even the Lucifuge, which holds truck with such creatures and sometimes even holds the leashes (however temporarily), doesn't have good answers, though it tells compelling lies.
Who does hold a demon's leash, if any? Is it Lucifer, as the Lucifuge would have any hunter believe? Are lesser demons in thrall to greater demons who are held as slaves to truly unknowable beings? Do they serve vampires, sorcerers or Devil-cursed wolfmen? Could they be rogue agents, free from some spirit world, or released perhaps from a broken Hell itself?
Even the Lucifuge, which holds truck with such creatures and sometimes even holds the leashes (however temporarily), doesn't have good answers, though it tells compelling lies.
—Hunter: The Vigil, First Edition corebook
Daemons are beings of pure psychic energy, warped embodiments of emotion given ghastly purpose. They are every mortal nightmare given terrible form, a tide of destruction that has shattered civilizations and annihilated proud armies beyond counting.
— Warhammer: Chaos Demons Army Book (7th Edition)
"What are we? Your scholars claim we exist only to tempt you, yet in a very real way we are you. We are your own desires, your own fears, your own ambitions and rages, given form (if not flesh). How can you fight us? Only by fighting your own Humanity, and why would you want to do that? You would be fighting against life itself. For what is Chaos but life?"
— Tzaal, momentarily lucid Horror, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay: Old World Bestiary — A Compendium of Creatures Fair and Foul
Theatre
Faustus: How comes it, then, that thou art out of hell?
Mephistopheles: Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it:
Mephistopheles: Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it:
Video Game
Garcia: Demons are not very talkative.
Johnson: What have they to talk about? Once your soul rolls into town, that's it. You're damned, and Fleming doesn't let anybody off the hook.
Garcia: He sounds like a real dick-tator.
Aggression is all demons have known. They are... abandoned children, feral children, grown spiteful with longing for what they cannot possess. They glimpse your world through the cracks. They are summoned and prostituted by gutter mages, amateurs, who know nothing of these iron shores! So you see, contrary to popular literature, it is humanity that corrupted demonkind.
— Theodore Wicker, The Secret World
Web Original
Contrary to popular belief, some demons do, in fact, have some remains that they leave behind once they've expired. Most of them amount to piles of ash with some teeth and horns, but in some cases- specifically if they're eliminated in extreme cold- they leave behind more intact specimens.
This one, for instance, is- yes, I know, it's mostly made up of phalluses. Quit laughing. This is what an incubus looks like without any glamour on it. We managed to dissect it, and found that its structure was not carbon-based, silicon-based, or even sulfur-based. This is an arsenic-based organism. You may have heard about the discovery of arsenic-based bacteria by Felisa Wolfe-Simon's team in 2010? Unfortunately, that was discredited, but this... this gave new light onto the shores of hell.
Incubi, of course, take on more attractive forms than this in order to seduce and damn innocent women. This one, when it was alive, took the form of a fifty-year-old man wearing a rather tatty wolf costume in the middle of a convention hall. Naturally, nobody would be alone with him, and he was booted out by the staff.
In case this point hasn't been made clear: the forces of hell are not the most intelligent. The Devil Inside is, honestly, the most accurate portrayal of demonic possession we've seen put to film.
This one, for instance, is- yes, I know, it's mostly made up of phalluses. Quit laughing. This is what an incubus looks like without any glamour on it. We managed to dissect it, and found that its structure was not carbon-based, silicon-based, or even sulfur-based. This is an arsenic-based organism. You may have heard about the discovery of arsenic-based bacteria by Felisa Wolfe-Simon's team in 2010? Unfortunately, that was discredited, but this... this gave new light onto the shores of hell.
Incubi, of course, take on more attractive forms than this in order to seduce and damn innocent women. This one, when it was alive, took the form of a fifty-year-old man wearing a rather tatty wolf costume in the middle of a convention hall. Naturally, nobody would be alone with him, and he was booted out by the staff.
In case this point hasn't been made clear: the forces of hell are not the most intelligent. The Devil Inside is, honestly, the most accurate portrayal of demonic possession we've seen put to film.
—Practical Demonologist, "Excerpts from Training Seminars for Lesser Known Foundation Careers", SCP Foundation
