Demon

"Demon" is the Caldonian name for extra-dimensional humanoid creatures who, like angels gain sustenance by absorbing external energy directly. Unlike angels, demons must absorb this energy from the lifeforce of living creatures. The higher the lifeform, the better quality energy, the best energy, of course, coming from sapient creatures like elves , cerebrek, and humans. This made their introduction in Caldonia fairly rocky. The lifeforms in the demon home dimension are metaphysically distinct from those in Caldonia in a number of significant ways, and can feed demons without any personal harm. Not so in Caldonia. Initial contact with sapients in this dimension resulted in misunderstanding and, ultimately, a nontrivial number of deaths. It is from this that demons have received their reputations and name. In their own language, demons are known as jahannan (singular: jahan). They do not come from "evil" planes of afterlife punishment, and they are no more likely to serve a powerful evil overlord than any other sapient. But since humans perceived the initial contact as deceitful, and are down to this day alarmed by the manner demons take sustenance, they call them demons. Demons as a group, having warped senses of humor, have done little to quell this misconception. In fact, it is a common practical joke for two demons, when in the presence of unfamiliar Caldonians, to stage an argument about whether elf or human lifeforce is more delicious and/or nutritious to demon biology. The argument is moot, as there's no objective way to measure these traits, and all demons know that cerebrek have the highest quality lifeforce.

Basic Information

Anatomy

Demons, while generally humanoid in shape, are easy to distinguish from other sapients, diverging more than even cerebrek and feren do from human morphology. The most significant (visible) divergence from human morphology is size. Male demons are half again as tall and broad as a typical human. The extra size accommodates their redundant, distributed organ systems. Circulation, nervous systems, respiration, digestion, and even endocrine systems all have multiple copies of every necessary organ scattered through their bodies. Even their skeletons have a queer duplications of each bone (the "femur" for example, looks like three bones fused together along their length). The plurality and dispersion of hearts and brains (and other organs) makes demons rather difficult to kill with violence and contributes to their long-lifespans. At the base of their spines, demons' tails are of varying thickness and length, from a few centimeters to a meter or more. Their horns are most frequently above and behind the ear, and curl in a circle either forward or back. However, horns can come in many different patterns (such as corkscrews or swirls, flat or round), "treading" (smooth, screwed, or even rifling), and orientations (forward, back, or outward). Rarely, a demon will have more than one pair of horns.

Genetic Descendants