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.

My lycanthropes are different

In my setting, diseases are caused by disease spirits a la RuneQuest, OpenQuest, Mythras, etc. Lycanthropy in particular is caused by lycanthropic spirits. Lycanthropic spirits are creations of the beast lords, a subset of the primal spirits venerated by barbarians and druids.

Why exactly lycanthropic spirits exist is a matter of debate, and it’s an excellent opportunity to segue into a discussion of the beast lords themselves. D&D and derivatives like Pathfinder never had particularly sensible theology. They have a bazillion redundant deities, when real religions pair down redundancies. Relevant to the beast lords in particular is that D&D and Pathfinder have a bunch of animal deities distinct from their beast lords. It’s quite common for so and so demon lord to be the patron of beastmen races or lycanthropes or whatever, typically invented ad hoc. It’s common for beast lords and demon lords to overlap in portfolios, which again is needlessly complicated. (There’s no reason a god can’t have multiple types like fey and fiend or whatever, but that’s D&D for you.) I don’t need a bunch of redundant deities like Pazuzu the lord of the skies and the lord of vultures too. I’m not interested in wasting my effort on a bazillion one-note deities. To that end, I’m just going to generically refer to a “beast lord of lycanthropes” or whatever whenever it’s necessary. Gods in my setting are just power sources, and simply don’t exist whenever they aren’t needed. I’m like Eberron in that respect, because it’s simple.

The default types of lycanthropy (and their alignment) in the 5e SRD are werebear (NG), wereboar (NE), wererat (LE), weretiger (N), and werewolf (CE). There can, of course, be an arbitrary number of lycanthrope phenotypes. Werebats, weresharks, entomanthropes, entothropes, quasilycanthropes, monstrous lycanthropes, etc. I'm going to ignore those for right now.

By default in 5e the lycanthropy is passed pathologically and struggles with the alignment of the infected. The monster manual depicts this as a horrible affliction like in horror movies, seemingly ignoring the fact that the werebear and weretiger are not evil. As Keith Baker helpfully points out, lycanthropy is a curse either way. Regardless of alignment, lycanthropy causes profound personality changes. Not only that, but it is very easy to spread epidemics. The RAW lycanthropy seemingly having a mind of its works quite well with my interpretation of lycanthropy as spirit possession. Even the good alignment of the werebear invokes Anne Rice’s The Gift, which interpreted pathologic werewolves as chosen heroes or something.

Each of the five types of lycanthropic spirits is associated with the beast lord of their animal aspect, as well as the generic lord of lycanthropes. Unlike in standard D&D, my setting practices genuine polytheism. Lycanthropic spirits are beholden to the lord of their animal aspect because that’s just how the beast lords roll, as well as to the lord of lycanthropes because that lord provides the whole transformative disease linked to the full moon and harmed by silver yadda yadda. I’m not sure whether the lord of lycanthropes should be the same as the moon god or not, but if the gods are just arbitrary mental shortcuts created by religions invoking a universal power source then it doesn’t matter either way.

5e lycanthropy doesn’t make a distinction for heritable, induced or cursed lycanthropes, but that’s easy enough to change. There aren’t any rules for dealing with infection like there were in 3e, since it wasn’t intended for lycanthropes to be playable, but that can easily be homebrewed.

• Typical lycanthropes are pathologic lycanthropes: they are possessed by a lycanthropic spirit that struggles with their mortal soul unless they embrace the curse or train in controlling it or whatever (in any case, D&D is NOT suited to playing as a lycanthrope due to game balance). They may be infected by another lycanthrope, or inherit it from their parents. They can be cured by exorcising the spirit.
• Heritable lycanthropes don’t have the internal struggle, because the lycanthropic spirit is their soul. As such, they cannot be cured of lycanthropy any more than an elf may be cured of being an elf. In other words, you need to cast a reincarnate spell.
• Lycanthropic spirits can be bound into tokens, such as a ring of Hircine. This allows the wearer to gain the benefits of lycanthropy without actually becoming infected, or for a pathologic lycanthrope to control their condition without relinquishing control to the spirit or training in self-control. (Yes, this references The Elder Scrolls.)
• Lycanthropic spirits may be bound to hosts by a curse, such as the spell curse of lycanthropy. This doesn’t necessarily allow the cursed victim to transmit lycanthropy themselves. If they can transmit their curse, then the curse escape clause probably remains the same for the secondary infections.

In general, the rules for lycanthropy are arbitrary and will depend on what atmosphere you’re going for. A horror setting like Ravenloft emphasized the unpleasantness of lycanthropy (such by requiring you to kill the patient zero of the infection before even attempting a cure, and giving every curse a specific escape clause rather than letting the party breeze through curses with abjuration spells), but that isn’t strictly necessary in a more lighthearted setting. I’m not sure which mine is.

Since D&D doesn’t lend itself to playing as a victim of lycanthropy, you’re probably better off looking for a lycanthrope class on DM’s Guild or something. I found over a dozen results on a casual search.

Anyway, I take a lot of notes from all the 3pp published for lycanthropes over the past two decades. The Complete Guide to Werewolves was particularly useful because it listed a bunch of ways (many taken from folklore and popular culture) for contracting and curing lycanthropy. For example, a character could contract lycanthropy from “picking the lycanthropic flower” or “being born on Christmas.” A character could cure lycanthropy by “being struck on the brow three times with a silver knife” or “eating the heart of the werewolf who infected you.”

So I suppose my lycanthropes aren’t that different aside from the logical beast lord connection and the spirit possession angle. Oh, and I'm taking notes from Eberron's depiction of lycanthropy, too. Lycanthropic spirits aren't mere animal spirits possessing humans, otherwise they'd act like the animal. No, they're spirits of how humans perceive those animals. An evil werewolf spirit will turn its host into the Big Bad Wolf from fairytales. A good werewolf spirit will turn its host into a wolf-loving tree-hugging hippie living in the wilderness. While lycanthropy might have been a natural gift at one time, now it has been corrupted and turns innocents into weapons. As the beast lords themselves are amoral as far as humans are concerned, both good and evil lycanthropes can worship the same beast lord. Or there might be multiple competing lords with the same portfolio. I still need to work through my theology!

Here are some brief example titles for the beast lords relevant to the core lycanthropes. The names come from historical religion, so anyone can use them because public domain.

• Artemis/Luna, lord of the moon, silver and lycanthropes
• Lycaon, lord of wolves
• Moccus, lord of boars (and pig-faced orcs)
• Artaius, lord of bears
• Bast, lord of cats (including tigers)
• Ninkilim, lord of rodents (including rats)

Here are some supplements that might be helpful to read:

• The Complete Guide to Werewolves by Goodman Games
• The Complete Guide to Wererats by Goodman Games
• Slaves of the Moon: The Essential Guide to Lycanthropes by Green Ronin
• Curse of the Moon by Sean K. Reynolds
• Bite Me! Series by Misfit Studios
• Blood of the Moon by Paizo

Curse of lycanthropy, version 2

In an earlier post on lycanthropy in D&D, I divided the condition into three types. However, this was a mistake on my part as I forgot to include the first and second edition iterations. In this post, I present an expanded and revised version of my previous taxonomy.

All iterations of lycanthropy in D&D may be categorized along three common axes. These axes are: whether the condition is acquired or inherited and how, whether the lycanthrope is a natural at self-control or afflicted without it, and whether the lycanthrope is infectious or not.

This results in roughly four broad types of lycanthropy, or alternately therianthropy, and several subtypes. Here a lycanthrope, or therianthrope, is defined broadly as a humanoid who can transform into an animal. This taxonomy is closely based on that presented in the D&D 2e Monstrous Manual.

• Type 1 lycanthropy is a disease as seen in horror movies. It is transmitted by the natural attacks (and potentially body fluids) of type 1 lycanthropes. Type 1 lycanthropes have no control over or mental faculties during the transformation, but may train themselves otherwise.
• Type 1b lycanthropy is identical to type 1 lycanthropy except that type 1b lycanthropes cannot transmit lycanthropy.
• Type 2 lycanthropy is hereditary. Type 2 lycanthropes carry and transmit type 1 lycanthropy, but display full control over and mental faculties during the transformation.
• Type 2b lycanthropes are identical to type 2 lycanthropes except that they transmit type 1b lycanthropy.
• Type 2c lycanthropes are identical to type 2 lycanthropes except that they do not transmit lycanthropy. They may transmit other diseases, however.
• Type 3 lycanthropes use a magic token to transform, such as a swan maiden’s cloak, a selkie’s sealskin, or a ring of Hircine. They retain full self-control and cannot transmit lycanthropy.
• Type 4 lycanthropy is contracted as a result of a curse, such as the spell curse of lycanthropy. Type 4 lycanthropes are otherwise identical to type 1b lycanthropes.
• Type 4b lycanthropy is identical to type 4 lycanthropy except that they may transmit type 4b lycanthropy.

Obviously this taxonomy is arbitrary and lycanthropy may be categorized in other ways. For example, the most recent fifth edition of D&D restricts the usage of the term lycanthropy to contagious lycanthropy and not human-to-animal transformation in general. For the purposes of popular recognition, I will use lycanthropy to refer only to those conditions caused by curses and diseases, such as werewolves and wereboars. I will refer to human-to-animal transformation and vice versa collectively as therianthropes. I will otherwise refer to type 2c lycanthropes, as defined here, as zoanthropes. I will refer to animal-to-human transformations, such as jackalweres and wolfweres, as antherians.

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.

Curse of lycanthropy

The nature of lycanthropy has varied immensely across the past four or five editions of D&D. Here is my attempt at a framework which accounts for all of them at once. More information below the break...

The principle of four humors

A common peeve of mine is the tendency for fantasy writing to rely on real science to inform how the fantasy world works rather than on the obsolete scientific theories believed by the classical philosophers. So forget everything that you know about real world biology. This is fantasyland, where real physics take a back seat to fantasy physics!