Orcs as demon-corpses

So the etymology of orc is a bit complicated. Originally it appears in Beowulf as orcneas, meaning "demon-corpse." Tolkien used it as inspiration for his orcs, and C.S. Lewis anglicized it to orkny/orknies. As I've mentioned in prior posts, they're named after Orcus, the Greco-Roman demon of oaths. Although the "oath" part has long since been forgotten, both in the depictions of orcs themselves and the depiction of Orcus in fantasy fiction.

Some authors and bloggers have used this etymology as a springboard for reimagining orcs as demon corpses created by Orcus. Both because of its perceived novelty, and because it avoids bizarre moral questions like "what do we do with the baby orcs?" Perhaps these orknies are created by necromancers from spawning pools, perhaps summoned by devil's forgemasters in corpse shells, perhaps they are transformed from demikind through foul applications of alchemy... the possibilities are endless.

Links

• https://flintlocksandwitchery.blogspot.com/2020/09/the-orc-renaissance.html
• http://swordsandstitchery.blogspot.com/2020/04/blood-for-bacon-another-ecology-of-orc.html
• https://daegames.blogspot.com/2018/05/dungeons-delvers-where-do-baby-gnolls.html
• https://daegames.blogspot.com/2021/05/inherently-evil-races-arent-bad-game.html
• http://archonsmarchon.blogspot.com/2020/04/orcneas.html
• https://dailyadventureprompts.tumblr.com/post/637422331142307840/monsters-reimagined-orcus-the-dead-god-patron
• https://ingmaralbizu.com/about-orcs-and-our-fascination-with-barbarism/

Cacoastrum, cagaster, iliaster, iliastrum, et al

While reading Mongoose's Infernum, I came across mention of "iliaster." One google search led to another, and I found myself referring to Paracelsus, Steven Brust's To Reign in Hell, Carl Jung, and so on. The search results have been screwed up by extraneous anime garbage, but I managed to find the origin and etymology of these words.

Iliaster and cagaster, also known as iliastrum and cacoastrum and other permutations, (the former sometimes spelled with a "y" at the start) are neologisms from the work of medieval alchemist Paracelsus. I've been completely unable to determine what they actually represent in his works due to a lack of reference material (fuck you internet), but I have been able to determine their etymology.

Iliaster, iliastrum, yliaster, or yliastrum et al comes from Latin hȳlē ("fundamental matter") + -aster/-astrum ("incomplete resemblance") or astēr/astrum ("star"). Possibly a play on the resemblance between the latter. Therefore, it means something like "matter of the stars" and/or "matter-like." Wikipedia calls it a synonym for prima materia.

Cacoastrum, cagaster, or cagastrum et al comes from Greek-derived caco- ("bad") and/or Latin cacō ("to defecate") and the same suffix as above. Again, possibly a play on the resemblance between the two. Therefore, it means something like "an ill star" and/or "shit of the stars." The former sense was used as a term in medicine relating to germ theory.

Fiction goes in completely different directions:

• Infernum used iliaster as the name for the power source used by demons and angels, which was only produced by God and human souls.
• To Reign in Hell used cacoastrum as the name for the substance of raw chaos and iliaster for the stuff of order.

I did consider using the neologisms in my own worldbuilding, but it's been so long that I don't even remember my original ideas. Oh well.

Incubae and succubae

I learned something interesting about incubi and succubi recently. The words themselves are derived from Latin. The stem incub- means "lie above," whereas succub- means "lie below." The endings -a and -us are feminine and masculine, respectively.

So that gives us four demons to work with. The incubus is a masculine demon who lies atop his victim, whereas the incuba is his feminine counterpart. The succuba is a feminine demon who lies below her victim, whereas the succubus is her masculine counterpart.

There is so much more to explore, including nightmares, cambions, malcubi, and more. Unfortunately, I'll have to save those musings for later...

Demonic ogres and ogre mages

In folklore and anthropology, an ogre is any man-eating giant. They are not a race: any giant who eats men may be labelled an ogre. Folklore and fairy tales have never distinguished them as a distinct race. Based on tales like Puss in Boots, D&D bestiaries introduced the "ogre mage" and later spun it off into an entire family of "oni" very loosely based on Japanese folklore. As would be expected, the writers often misunderstood the original myths.

Kishi, the two-faced incubus

In previous posts I discussed myths related to hyenas. Here is another post in that vein:

Fairy tales in cultures around the world share the motifs of the "murderous bridegroom" and "murderous stranger." In Angola, legend tells of a demon named kishi. The kishi pretends to be a handsome man, but conceals the face of a hyena on the back of his head (talk about two-faced!). He uses the human face to charm unsuspecting women, then the hyena face eats them. As with other tales in this vein, the moral of the story is for women to be wary of unfamiliar men.

In modern times, the kishi has appeared as the subject of novels like The Kishi: An Esowon Story. It has appeared as a monster in fantasy gaming, too. Hence this post.

On the naming of demons

Demons (and other fiends, I don’t distinguish here) in fantasy gaming have undergone a few naming schemes over the last forty-odd years.

Originally they were named with numerals, but that quickly became unwieldy once they got to "Type V demon"/"Type 6 demon"/"Sixth-category demon" and beyond. Although the Dante’s Inferno-inspired supplements by Judges Guild and Spellbook Games apparently expanded this scheme by adding Latin letters, such as a "Type 3B devil". Similar numerical expansions are apparently used in other OSR products.

In later editions of D&D the demons got gibberish names (apparently meant to be demon language) by species like balor, marilith, and glabrezu. This also quickly becomes unwieldy because these names don't mean anything in English. There are a bazillion demons and those names aren't memorable.

Many writers across many 3rd-party publishers opted to use simple descriptions of the demon’s obvious shtick, such as ice devil, fly demon, two-faced demon, jester demon, etc. Pathfinder 2e takes this approach: balor becomes "fire demon", glabrezu becomes "treachery demon," marilith becomes "pride demon," shemhazian becomes "mutilation demon," succubus becomes "lust demon," vrock becomes "wrath demon", etc.

I see nothing inherently wrong with all of these approaches. I think it makes sense for all demons to have numerical indexes, names in the demon tongue, and descriptive names in English.

Inspiration for the abyssal larvae

In an older post, I wrote a bit on the origins and appearances of the monster called "abyssal larva." I briefly alluded to their mythological inspiration in the larvae or ghosts from Greek mythology. However, I suspect that the abyssal larva may draw from Biblical imagery as well.

In Mark 9:44-48, Jesus says that "their [sinners'] worm does not die," referring to the Greek larvae. In Christian philosophy, pangs of conscience or envy are metaphorically described as a "gnawing worm" on the soul. Sinners and sin itself are often conceptualized as worms.

As I mentioned in my prior post, some depictions of the fantasy larvae may add that it matures into a locust demon. Such locust demons are described in the Book of Revelations, with disturbing features like human faces and scorpion stingers whose venom causes agony but never death.

Eschatology never ceases to amaze.

Faun, incubus, and satyr?

According to the Malleus Maleficarum, the faun, incubus, pan, and satyr are different names for the same demon. Medieval Christianity demonized the image of the rustic god Pan, which inspired the popular depiction of the devil with goat features. In fantasy gaming, the incubus and satyr are depicted distinctly (the faun is rarely depicted separately from the satyr, and the pan is nonexistent).

I think a way to represent this in fantasy gaming would be if the incubus monster was created from the faun or satyr by some means. Perhaps a faun or satyr who turns evil becomes an incubus, or vice versa? There are any number of ways to represent this transformation.

Demons of the katardi family

So I had an idea for a monster. The premise of this idea is that the "wendigo" mentioned in Stephen King's Pet Sematary (the novel and both movies) was not a wendigo. Instead, I posit that this cemetery demon was the same sort of demon as seen in the Evil Dead movies.

Jud is the one to imply the the soured ground is haunted by a wendigo. Given that he is not Mi'kmaq and probably heard distorted versions of the folklore, he could have easily been wrong about the nature of the demon. Just like Blackwood and King themselves!

The cemetery demon displays none of the characteristics of a wendigo as it appears in Algonquin stories. It is not limited to acting during the winter, but acts year round. It is not motivated by greed or gluttony, but by more generic malevolence. It does not go around killing and eating people, nor possessing victims to do the same. Instead, it torments its victims with misfortunes, psychological manipulation and (as of the 2019 movie adaption of Pet Sematary) vivid hallucinations a la The Shining or Poltergeist. It possesses and reanimates the dead, using them to terrify and torment the living a la The Evil Dead or The Exorcist.

Stephen King's The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon featured a "god of the lost" who fans conflate with the cemetery demon from Pet Sematary, but there is no evidence of this in the story itself. Both demons appear and behave completely different. In the novel, the god of the lost appears as a wasp-faced demon that torments lost travelers with paranormal SFX until they die of exposure. Perhaps more importantly, the supernatural events of the novel are ambiguous and could have been entirely imagined by the protagonist. Only the 2019 movie adaption of Pet Sematary suggests any similarity when it adds hallucinations to the demon's repertoire. Addendum 10/4/2019: The "god of the lost" is similar to "Oz the Gweat and Tewwible," an imaginary demon that Rachel conceived to represent the influence of evil, the specter of death, and the bad luck inflicted upon the family by the presence haunting the cemetery.

In the Evil Dead movies, the "kandarian demon" possesses both the living, the dead, inanimate objects and trees as "deadites" in order to torment and kill people. Much like the cemetery demon needs victims to bury bodies on its burial ground before it can reanimate, the kandarian demon needs to be invoked by spells from the Sumerian Book of the Dead before it can possess victims.

There is a funny coincidence that I have to share! In the script for Within the Woods, a short film intended to pitch The Evil Dead to studios, the kandarian demon was called "Tinga." It was described as an spirit that protected the Native American burial ground (as if we did not see that trope a bazillion times). When the protagonists violated the grave of a medicine man, it killed and possessed victims as deadites.

Sound familiar?

Thus, I was inspired to make a connection between the cemetery demon and the kandarian demon. The reanimated dead in Pet Sematary are not wendigo zombies, but deadites!

Which brings me to another idea...

In an early draft of the script for The Evil Dead, the demons are described as members of the katardi family. The katardi inhabit forests and, while dangerous and omnipresent, cannot possess victims unless invoked or resurrected by reciting spells from a six-volume book of the dead. Only the high priests of the Ca'n Dar tribe were allowed to have these books, because they alone could control the demons.

Forest demons named katardi, huh? The common thread between the cemetery demon, the god of the lost, and the kandarian demons is that they inhabit forests, display crazy SFX, and have arbitrary prohibitions. In Minnesota, tales told to tourists describe the "wendigo" as a protector of forests. Is that a solid basis for imagining a new family of demons? Seems good enough to me!

Addendum 11/6/2019: YSDC CthulhuWiki has a page on deadites. It made the same connections.

Mephits

Mephits are elemental imps, serving the same simple role of messengers and spies. They are one of those throwaway monsters that shows up in most monster manuals but nobody pays attention to and whose backstory is constantly changed by the writers.

In AD&D the mephits were imps summoned from the lower planes to animate elemental forms. Later they were tweaked so that they were created on the lower planes, and typically had a low life expectancy since they were often used to send insults.

Starting with 3e, mephits were no longer tied to the lower planes. This change did nothing to make anybody care about them more. Curiously, Necromancers of the Northwest gave them a detailed ecology as a web enhancement for The Traveler's Guide to the Elemental Plane of Fire. In this ecology, mephits may arise spontaneously on the ethereal plane, born to two mephit parents, or created by magic as servants. Mephits that are born or generated lack an elemental affinity, though they might be able to gain one later.

Derek Holland suggested a few new varieties of mephit, such as gilded mephits, number mephits, and shadow mephits. He further suggested a new disturbing origin for mephits: children cursed by magic and enslaved by villains. This creates a moral dilemma for our heroes.

Relevant links

• http://legacy.aonprd.com/bestiary/mephit.html
• https://d-infinity.net/blog/derek-holland/new-mephits
• https://d-infinity.net/blog/derek-holland/new-use-mephits
• http://www.necromancers-online.com/articles/ExoticEncounters/2016/20161205.html
• http://www.necromancers-online.com/articles/BestinClass/2016/20161206.html
• http://www.necromancers-online.com/articles/BestinClass/2017/20171219.html
• http://5e.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/mephit.htm
• http://themonstersknow.com/mephit-tactics/
• https://www.reddit.com/r/DnDBehindTheScreen/comments/3vblot/mephits/
• https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Mephit
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mephit

tribes of the centaurs, part 6: the fused riders

During my research, I have come across mentions of centaurs which resemble a rider fused to his horse rather than a human torso replacing the horse's head. These include the Black Devil of Yucatan and Shoshone myth, the Nuckelavee of Orcadian myth, and the the todorac (plural todorci) of Slavic myth.

The Black Devil is described slightly differently by region: "A jet-black Centaur in the mythology of the Mayan Indians of the Yucatan" and "A jet-black stallion of Shoshone Indian myth. The Black Devil has fiery red eyes and sharp teeth. It is said to stalk and eat humans." I could not find any other references to the Black Devil in my research. I notice slight visual similarities to the cadejo of Central American folklore, which sometimes appears in forms resembling black horses.

The Nuckelavee is a grotesque monster resembling a fusion of horse and rider without skin. It has flippers instead of hooves, a single huge eye in the horse head, arms that reach to the ground, and its human head is huge and hangs off its neck. It causes all sorts of misfortune such as plagues and disasters, but as a sea monster it may be repelled with fresh water. It seems fairly well-known in English during my research. It appears in Pathfinder as a fey monster.

The todorac (Cyrillic: Тодорац, plural Тодорци) is a demonic horse/rider fusion that seems inexplicably associated with Saint Theodore Tyron's Day. I couldn't find much information on them in English, but they appear to have an article on the Serbian Wikipedia. They appear in a folk motif in which a girl in a mill or cemetery is threatened by one with having her organs wound on an iron reel.

Sources

• Giants, Monsters, and Dragons: An Encyclopedia of Folklore, Legend, and Myth by Carol Rose
• The Black-man of Zinacantan by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy
• "Cult of the Saint in the Balkans" by Mirjana Detelic

Mythology demons and fantasy gaming

If you are a student of world mythology, then you might have noticed that the definition of a demon is fairly nebulous. In modern English it refers to evil spirits generically, particularly those who possess people or torment souls in Hell. Every religion has evil spirits, and aside from being "evil" (i.e. their whole shtick is to cause disaster, disease, or other unpleasant things), they don't have anything in common.

D&D's demons, or fiends if you want to use the game jargon (I won't), are closely based on medieval Christian conceptions of demons. That is, they live in Hell and torment the damned. They may or may not be fallen angels. They want to enter the mortal world to cause bad things, typically by possessing hapless victims or making pacts with wicked people.

Demons in world mythology are extremely diverse beyond this stereotype. The appellation of "demon" itself is more accurately a description of behavior than of origin. Although mythologies with underworlds and hells typically described them as being inhabited at least partly by demons, demons are by no means limited to living in hell. Plenty of demons inhabit the mortal world and have no connection to hells or the underworld. They simply exist.

This may be seen in the origin of the word "demon" itself. It comes from Ancient Greek, where it referred to the personified spirits or deities of the human condition and abstract concepts. There were generally two types, the benevolent eudemons and the malevolent cacodemons. Few of them appeared in myths, but in an amusing coincidence both types were often chthonic or underworld deities as well. In English, the word "demon" used without qualifier refers to the equivalent of cacodemons. This shift in meaning came about as a result of Christianization, which demonized all pre-Christian spirits when converting the pagans.

Although plenty of gods and spirits in mythology can cause great suffering, what distinguishes cacodemons specifically is that they cannot be placated. Many gods were amoral and their attitude toward you was proportional to your interactions with them. The Greek gods were psychopaths, rapists, and had insanely fragile egos, but their wrath could be placated by offerings and obedience. Even eudemons can inflict horrible punishments if you piss them off. Cacodemons cause suffering because they can and nothing will drive them away short of exorcists.

In ancient times, diseases were believed to be caused by demons. Then they were believed to be punishments inflicted by the gods for bad behavior. Then they were believed to be caused by imbalances of humors and miasma. Then germ theory cast away these superstitions and showed that diseases were caused by tiny invisible pathogens, not punishments or humors. Ironically, the ancient belief in demons had far more in common with germ theory than any belief that came between them. When you get right down to it, how much difference is there between a demon possessing your body to cause illness and a pathogen swimming in your bodily fluids to cause illness?

Despite their malevolence, cacodemons in mythology are sometimes known to serve protective roles. The wind demon Pazuzu had a rivalry with the miscarriage-causing she-demon Lamashtu, so amulets depicting his likeness were used to protect pregnant women and children from Lamashtu. The gorgons were so terrible that their visage turned onlookers to stone, but amulets depicting their likeness were used to protect the temples of oracles. The logic here being the ancient "fight fire with fire."

There some evidence that so-called demons were worshiped in addition to being feared. The distinction between demons and gods was itself sometimes fuzzy. Presumably this operated on the same logic as the psychopathic Greek gods: praise them to appease their wrath. (For example, statues of Pazuzu depict him with a phallus the size of a snake, or even literally a snake. This despite him never being associated with virility except in his supposed protection of pregnant women.)

Something I wanted to do was to adapt these diverse depictions of demons to fantasy gaming. Demons are not simply alien creatures from the lower planes, but personifications of the abstract. Diseases are caused by demonic possession, natural disasters are caused by demons of the skies and seas, the visages of certain demons may ward away their rivals, and Death itself is an ambivalent chthonic demon who reaps souls without judgment or malice.

Ecology of the abyssal larva

Larvae are fiendish petitioners in the D&D cosmology. Their exact ecology has varied in different editions. They are known by many names: abyssal larva, demonic larva, soul larva, soul maggot, soul worm, etc.

Demon brood idea: manalishi

As suggested by Mongoose Publishing's The Slayer's Guide to Demons and Encyclopaedia Arcane: Demonology, demons or fiends are divided into a number of broods (tags in D&D 5e rules). Each brood descends from a member of demonic royalty, and are named for their founder plus the suffix of -ka meaning "brood of." For example, the tanar'ka and are the brood of Tanar, the baate'ka are the brood of Baate, the yugo'ka are the brood of Yugo, and the tzaretch'ka are the brood of Tzaretch. Other broods named in the literature include the vang'ka (insectoid demons), jartas'ka (shadow demons), and nuyul'ka (mind worms).

I present another brood: manalishi'ka. The manalishi, or "scaly devils", are fiends with distinct reptilian features. They were originally introduced in OSRIC as an OGL substitute for the closed content abishai devils, although they were renamed to scaly devils in later reprintings. The name originates from the title of a song by Peter Green.

Garnfellow proposes that manalishi are dragon eggs transmuted into devils. I would go a step further and propose that the manalishi include a variety of other scaly fiends, like dorvae and lernaeati*. I've got tons of ideas for a draconic family tree but that's for another time.

*From Monsters of Porphyra. Called "savant hydras" in Creature Collection and "hydranoids" in Monster Geographica.

ADDENDUM 11/22/2019: In the Scarred Lands' Creature Collection series, reptilian devils like the savant hydra and heartclutch are the servants of the LE god Chardun created in mockery of his reptilian mother the titaness Mormo. I think I could take inspiration from them too.

Disease as a spirit

I have been considering switching to Mythras and Classic Fantasy (a variant of RuneQuest) for some time, since I feel it is a better fit for my campaign setting than the idiosyncrasies of D&D. Among other things, Mythras is based on the premise that the fantasy world has fantasy physics as opposed to D&D operating on the premise that the fantasy world operates like modern science describes the real world with magic crudely tacked on. For example, Mythras treats disease as a spirit rather than a pathogen. More information below the break.

Demons, devils, fiends and filler

D&D invented demons, devils and daemons to fill spaces in the alignment grid. While the conflict between the lawful devils and the chaotic fiends did make for an interesting spectacle, the daemons (or yugoloths in later editions) were pretty boring since their entire shtick was being mercenaries for the other two. The distinction was also undermined by the demons and devils lacking any kind of unifying aesthetic or motif. In fact, all three were created using the same random number tables in Appendix D.

Demons in Mongoose Publishing

In 3.x/d20/OGL, demons or "fiends" were divided into a number of subtypes or races such as "demons" and "devils." In the original Dungeons & Dragons setting these were called baatezu and tanar'ri, but of course those names are closed content. Not to be deterred, some publishers developed substitutes. Mongoose Publishing in particular published numerous books dealing with demons. These weren't consistent with one another due to different writers, but they build on recurring ideas.


Encyclopaedia Arcane: Demonology (reprinted and updated in Encyclopaedia Arcane Compendium, Volume I) introduced the concept of demonic broods, families of demons descended from demonic royalty and named for their founder. These included the baate, tanar and tzaretch (the latter in a web enhancement). The baate and tanar are clearly substitute names for the demons and devils from the SRD.

The Slayer's Guide to Demons further stipulates that the suffix "ka" is appended to brood names, since the name consists of the name of their founder and the "ka" suffix means brood. Therefore, the tanar'ka are literally the brood of Tanar, the insectile van'g'ka are the brood of Van'g, the shadowy jar'taska'ka are the brood of Jar'taska, and the disembodied nuyul'ka are the brood of Nuyul. (I prefer to write the names as vang'ka and jartas'ka because the excessive apostrophes are unnecessary and caca is Spanish for "excrement".)

The Book of the Planes, The Book of Hell, The Planes: Zahhak, and The Planes: Feuerring all went on to explore parts of the lower planes. The Book of the Planes introduced a generic lower plane named Infernum. Initially it referred to the lower planes generally, but when expanded on in The Book of Hell it became the first layer of the lower planes from which the other lower planes were accessible. The Book of Hell introduced the concept of "noble devils," houses, corruption points, "iliaster" harvested from the damned, etc. The Planes: Feuerring explored some of the geography of Infernum, particularly the titular "ring of fire" separating it from other planes. The Planes: Zahhak detailed a minor lower plane ruled by despair (named for a dragon in Persian myth).

All of this musing on demons reached its peak in the custom campaign setting Infernum. Infernum introduced demons as player characters, recycling many concepts introduced in the prior books like breeds, houses, iliaster, etc. These were spread across three volumes: Book of the Damned, Book of the Tormentor, and Book of the Conqueror. The setting was based very closely on Dante's Inferno, in that it aimed to depict the Hell of Christian mythology rather than generic fantasy.

D&D aberrations, celestials, fiends, etc in a Moorcockian context

D&D took the chaos/order alignment trope from Moorcock and then added good/evil onto it, even though this is unnecessary. I decided to go back to the original Moorcockian model for my setting, but this means that the various monsters like aberrations, celestials and fiends need to be re-contextualized.

For those who are not experts on Moorcock's multiverse, the epic conflict is between law and chaos. Neutrality is a law because it demands a balance between law and chaos. Chaos rejects this because it is chaos, and law decides to enforce the balance. At some point law goes overboard and decides the only way to preserve the balance is to destroy chaos, which violates the balance in the other direction.

This conflict is fairly easy to understand but is at odds with the conventional D&D alignment system, which has law/chaos playing second fiddle to good/evil. The Moorcockian alignment system doesn't define good or evil in cosmology terms, except insofar as imbalance is evil because it is anathema to life.

The typical terminology for the Moorcock alignments is lawful, chaotic and neutral, but this terminology is inaccurate since it neglects the subtleties I mentioned previously. In a world where chaos is ascendant, there is little functional difference between law and neutrality; in a world where law is ascendant, the reverse is true. The generic fantasy setting is the former, and the characters are nominally associated with law/neutrality. This isn't to say that harmful manifestations of law cannot appear in a world where chaos is ascendant, but it is vastly less common than harmful manifestations of chaos.

The various spiritual entities would have different alignment associations compared to the standard.

• Aberrations would represent chaos, full stop. While different groups of aberrations might behave in a seemingly lawful manner, that is due to chaos' inherent tendency toward diversity.
• Celestials would represent balance, law and neutrality. They are active in that they actively fight for the balance.
• Elementals represent neutrality in its purest form. They are generally reactive to imbalances, and actively maintain conditions suitable to life (e.g. the weather).
• Fey would represent chaos, but to distinguish them from aberrations they are tempered by the presence of neutrality and law.
• Fiends would represent any kind of imbalance, whether toward law or chaos.

Earthbound evils

While demons typically arise within the lower planes (and are largely trapped there), some people are so evil that their souls may become demons without ever leaving the material plane. Likewise, some terrestrial spirits may become so corrupt that they are twisted into demons. Some may build fleshy bodies for themselves or reincarnate within family lineages. These earthbound evils are commonly known by names like div, oni, rakshasa, and sahkil depending on the local culture. Pathfinder introduces all of these as new races of demons, but I prefer not to split hairs. The rakshasa and ogre mage in the MM are examples of such demons, but they come in many more varieties (see the PF bestiaries for ideas and then build them using the DMG guidelines).

Demonic aesthetics

My problem with the demons and devils is that they lack unifying motifs. Each side is a grab bag of random designs and their hierarchies and behavior are more similar than not. I have a few different ideas for explaining why demons look and act the way they do, and making a clearer distinction between demons and devils.