Friday, July 17, 2020

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.

Oni and rakshasa


In Japanese folklore, the oni are the cultural equivalent of Western ogres and just as generic ("ogre" is the standard translation of "oni"). If you took the myths about Greek, Norse and Celtic giants and translated them into Japanese, then "oni" would probably be considered an acceptable cultural translation. The Chinese demons Ox-Head and Horse-Face were adopted as oni named mezu. Western ogres appear in Japanese fantasy art and are generally depicted with features of oni such as horns and animal skin clothing; they are typically described explicitly as a type of oni. By some accounts, the jorōgumo is an oni. Just like giants and demons in the West, oni are generic monsters rather than a specific race.

The stories of oni are believed in part derived from Buddhism, which brought over Hindu stories of demons and ogres like the rakshasa and yaksha. Japanese dictionaries define a rasetsu (rakshasa) as an evil oni that eats people (although all oni are evil and eat people). While oni are typically considered vicious man-eating monsters just like giants are in the imagination of the West, they rarely have the capacity to be nice or at least ambivalent. This capacity for both good and evil is true of lots of monsters in world mythology.

Most of the differences between oni and Western giants is cosmetic and may be chalked up to the idiosyncrasies of culture and oral storytelling. Due to differences in the development of religion, the oni encompasses the concepts that giants and demons do in the West. (By comparison, in Greek myth the giants were sometimes described as being the children of the primordial parents Gaia, "Earth," and Tartarus, "Hell.") Oni torment sinners in Hell, they may arise from the souls of the damned, and so forth. Unlike Western conceptions of demons, however, oni that appear in the human world assume the forms of cannibal giants rather than possessing people or haunting places.

Demons and ogres

The ogre archetype appears in many cultures around the world: the Algonquin baykok and wendigo, Arabic ghoul, Hindu rakshasa, Japanese oni, Persian div, etc. The foreign names are often translated as “demon”, “giant”, “ogre”, and so forth.

The idea that giants, particularly man-eaters, are demons visiting from Hell is a fascinating one that is very different from typical Western fairy tales. It sounds like a really interesting idea to explore, since otherwise in fantasy gaming demons are generally relegated to the lower planes and only rarely being summoned to fantasyland. There is an amusing piece of trivia: ogre is derived from Orcus, a cthonic deity of oaths in Greek and Roman myth.

Several cultures have giants and titans serve a role analogous to demons, or otherwise have blurred distinction: Greek giants and titans, Irish fomori, Norse jotun, Arabic iblis, ifrit, jinn, and shaitan, Persian div, Hindu asura and rakshasa, Athabaskan wechuge, etc.

In fantasy gaming

In Dungeons & Dragons, the oni were introduced evil humanoids from the Asian-flavored fantasylands. Not much was done with them. (I'm pretty sure Power Rangers: Wild Force did more with them. Yes, oni appear as the villains of a season of Power Rangers.)

In Pathfinder, the oni are fallen nature spirits, and rarely recently deceased evil people, They assume the forms of humanoids, including giants, to sate their base urges. They, for whatever reason, wear stereotypical Japanese oni masks. They are arbitrarily a different race from rakshasa, who are here defined as the souls of evil people who were reincarnated on earth as demons. I don't know why a distinction is made when they share an origin.

Additionally, Pathfinder turns ogres (the D&D fantasy race) into inbred hillbilly stereotypes a la all those old horror movies. I already discussed how I wasn't a fan of this was in another post, or at least I should have already said so. I'm not a fan.

Research links

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