Why aren’t demons running the world? What’s preventing them from taking anything they want, killing anyone they want? And what do they want anyway? Is corruption a thing in a world with no heaven or God? Do demons have an agenda or goals? Why aren’t they represented in any faction? Even the 7th version of the QS doesn’t give answers. Why does Setarra need Scurlock’s help with anything? Why do demons need the PCs help with anything?
Why aren’t demons running the world?
Why aren’t demons running the world?
Or are they running the world?
I suspect the ghost barrier around Duskvol has a lot to do with it. Also, the barrier between life and wherever the demons are. Not that this is precisely spelled out.. but thinking about the answers might be part of the collaborative element of this game.
Interesting question! You could take the Judeo-Christian perspective: demons don’t want to run the world. They want the world to run in a particular way, and brute force wouldn’t accomplish that. They want to change behavior.
The Emperor alone keeps us safe from their wrath and power!
My take on it is that they have certain limitations in place, such that they need humans to perform certain tasks for them. For example, in my game there was a demon that contracted the PCs to retrieve an item for him that was stored in a vault under the Church of the Ecstasy of the Flesh. The explanation was that the place was awarded out the wazoo, and prevented him from entering the building. As to why he didn’t just set the place in fire and sift through the wreckage, maybe he’s under orders from someone more powerful to not draw too much attention to himself, or maybe he’s not allowed to act directly.
The problem with demons is that they ALL each want to rule the world… their way. Which means constant intrigue and so forth as they wrangle between each other using their followers. The world’s already wrecked… who’s to say that if they warred outright wouldn’t push it into complete ruin?
I suspect if you asked a demon who was in a truthsome mood why demons don’t run the world, you’d get a throaty laugh. But they DO run the world.
But not A demon, DEMONS. The nature of evil is to destroy itself.
Interlaced alliances and promises can quickly draw demons into conflict with each other if not carefully managed, and the thing most able to slay a demon is another demon. They are all working their schemes and playing their games. That’s more fun than outright rulership anyway.
All of them know that the ones at the top are targeted by the ones at the bottom, and that has a somewhat leveling effect on their society.
The only thing that keeps Frothlyne from going down the street gutting everyone is that Duvaraque controls the Eyestone which is an ancient egg, and Frothlyne still hopes to get that egg. Duvaraque, on the other hand, has an investment in the human enterprise on that street, as there are a number of scholars feverishly working at a glyph puzzle about Doornail, which will reveal his weak spot and detail a weapon to take advantage of it.
Another demon has a noble in his thrall, and part of the deal with the noble was the noble will turn over regular sacrifices and his soul, and in exchange he gets temporal power as long as his unnaturally extended life lasts. Interfering with that noble’s power interferes with the deal, and draws attention from another demon.
So the shallow answer is that demons are constantly sparring with each other through proxies, which is a rich source of factional disputation and scoundrelling.
The deeper answer of what they want is an open question that you may wish to answer for your own game table. Some suggestions include:
* They are banished from the nether realms for failure, and the only way they can redeem themselves is to pull part of the Shattered Isles across the finish line into the nether realms altogether.
* Demons are formed by corrupted mortals through occult manipulation to become powerful creatures. The longer the Shattered Isles are steeped in the Ghost Field, the more demons will emerge, eventually taking form spontaneously. Vampires are forerunners of this trend, and it will worsen in time.
* The powers of Hell are regimented and bureaucratic in their horrible way. Moving out to a suburb allows entrepreneurs to make deals and run games on each other by proxy; this is a neutral city at the edge of a massive cold war between demon factions. Consider the Shattered Isles a Casablanca of sorts.
* The only demons in the Shattered Isles are political prisoners too important to eat back home but banished for misbehavior. The stakes here are amusement only, until their time in the penalty box is over and they get back to the real challenges.
There’s not that many of them and they ain’t makin em anymore
I feel silly now–my browser didn’t update with the new comments, so I didn’t see them before doing mine. =p
I always thought that they Do rule the world, but they primarily do so by manipulating (or outright controlling) people – especially those with lots of Trauma upon which to feed. And that, while they may manifest and have real power, this is tough for them because of their metaphysical “distance” and its often easier for them to get some mortal to do it. I also am a big fan of World of Darkness’s third-tier of play though.. :>
My group has been playing it that demons are a gruesome reflection of a person, that are conjured into being by truly heinous and depraved acts. They are exemplified by their vice, and act accordingly. The flip side is, if the human that spawned them is killed, they lose their anchor in this world, and dissipate within a couple of days.
You may read another game to help you: Magister Lor Although it seems have no place at the same universe as Blades in the dark, some elements mentioned in the text are used in the Blades in the Dark game lore, like the pressence of the devil Setarra. In Magister Lor are mentioned that the Strelai confined demons long ago, possibly in some kind of prison, maybe in another dimension, that could will be the city of U’Duasha.
You can also assume that the destruction of the gates of death that made the emperor immortal has affected the demons somehow, or maybe the emperor is the latest and most powerful Strelai that keeps the demons locked.
Demons in the Blades universe can now be easy killed on the material world, their bodies and energies are being consumed slowly by the ghost nature of this new world and they have lost their powers, except for the great demons like Setarra, of course!
Thats why they need humans to perform some tasks…
Everyone else’s answers are awesome; I obviously swallowed a bit of the kool-aid!
I don’t expect the Blades rulebook is ever going to give you all the answers you asked for there. Blades takes a somewhat lighter hand narratively speaking, preferring to leave blanks that cause you to ask those questions. It wants you to ask those questions, and they are good questions to ask. It also wants you to answer those questions yourself, or start discussions about them, either with your own group or here on the boards.
Basically everything is going according to plan because you asked the questions, and so many great answers were given.
Ruling the world? That’s thinking too much like a human. Demons are “the first beings, brought into existence at the origin of reality, as the primal forces of the universe coalesced into the elements of nature.” Do you really think beings of such alien primordial origins care about such petty things as ruling over the world of humans?
Whatever their goals are they aren’t the same as ours. Humans (and vampires) are just useful tools for their arcane alien schemes.
It’s completely possible that since the cataclysm that broke the world, there is no other place for Demons to live as it all got subsumed — earth, heaven, hell. Maybe they aren’t sure what to do any more themselves either. Many of them are likely just making their way in the world of the Shattered Isles just as much as we are. Some of them might be trying to fix the world to get it back to how it was. Some of them might want to rebuild a new world for themselves outside of this one.
Demons likely aren’t ever truly comfortable in the Shattered Isles. A primordial fire demon knows they could set the entire town on fire and rejoice in the flames, but they also know that the fires would only last so long. Better would be to find a way to remake a new world where flames never extinguish and where it could truly feel at home.
I’m of the opinion that demons are concepts incarnate, and so only have pseudo free will. Unless they are a demon of dominion, they aren’t interested in ruling. They are, however, interested in inspiring certain behaviours and occurences in the mortal world. I see them as primal forces that can be called upon, the physical shape that they take is a strange one that is alien to them, most of the time they exist as ethereal energy. They aren’t interested in directly affecting the world.
All are at least partly right, and probably partly wrong too. Sub for future reading
I heard that in Iruvia, some positions of power are openly held by demons.
The Immortal Emperor is definitely maybe a demon.
Because Doskvol is actually hell. God has seperated himself from Doskvol at the demand of the humans. Demons, like humans, are slaves of their own self-idolatry. They are too self-involved to be able to rule over others.
The awesome thing about unfathomable alien beings is that their minds and desires are unfathomable and alien. 🙂
So, to summarize what seem tome the most workable suggestions here (not to belittle other answers, which make for fun discussion):
* Demons are their own factions, focused on rivalries with other Demon factions; they mostly neutralize each other.
* Demons are incomprehensible forces of nature, without discernible plans and goals of their own, maybe just general desires (“foster chaos and corruption”?)
* Demons are scary and mean, but kept in check by the Immortal Emperor/ the Lightning Wall / liberal use of Demon’s bane wards in all government institutions.
It seems many people tried to explain why demons wouldn’t rule the world. I said run the world. There’s a huge difference between world domination and wrecking havoc on the setting, which is more where my issue with demons lies.
I’ve ran a campaign (starting around the 1st quick start), so my players and myself have answered these questions on our own, with little input from the setting. I was wondering what, if anything, could be done to prevent the game from hurtling down into that abyss…
Dotan Dimet why, the efforts of high minded and noble hearted, what else? Of course, whether that’s your scoundrels or not is sorta the point of the game.
Let’s not overestimate the demonic population. I feel like there just aren’t enough of them running around to make this question an issue.
I think the text about demons may be misleading.
Probably the word “immortal” is problematic, since it can be read as “unkillable” not just “timeless, ageless.” Demons can be destroyed by physical means. This isn’t explicitly stated in the quick start. It probably should be.
I imagine a demon to be about as physically dangerous as a rhinoceros — certainly a big problem for a guy with a sword, but far from an unstoppable force.
(This touches on a broader point of the setting that is only implicit in the quick start: Everything is physical. Everything can be hurt. There are no invulnerable beings. Even ghosts aren’t ‘spirit’ (whatever that is) they’re clouds of electroplasmic vapor.)
Maybe I’ll add a thing or two about the rarity of Demons, as well. I imagine maybe only 100 left in the whole world.
It’s one of those legacy laden monsters – everyone has their own version they’re familiar with. Like zombies and vampires.