For those readers not already familiar, I avow the following is a work of earnest demonology, and consequently, in my own belief, of nonfiction. Your beliefs remain your own business. If you also believe in the supernatural, I speak to you as a lust-witch and a succubus: ward yourself accordingly. Know that by proceeding further you take the condition of your soul into your own hands–or those of any gods you may venerate that will not abandon you purely for contemplating the teachings of a demon. From this point forward, by my pride and my talons and the Lust fertile in my breast and womb and accursed heart, I swear to honor your courage by seeking at every turn to corrupt, defeat, and seduce you, that your soul may fall utterly into sin and descend to the plane of Machrae Diir to be mine for eternity.
If you do not believe, I suspect you’re giggling something fierce, and will most likely find this text a curiosity more than anything else–nor am I slighted thereby. If I really am a demon and a witch, I should be able to handle some healthy skepticism, now shouldn’t I?
Be thou as thou wilt, I could be writing sibling incest porn right now. That would tickle my labyrinthine flesh-sprawl, my tar-black manifold of a heart, far better than anything I expect to write here. Yet I do feel a desire for understanding, for communion, and often the paradox of helping mortals understand how truly deep the lust of succubus churns, what an endless spiritual wellspring it is for me, lies in proving how deep I can be in affairs other than lust.
Besides, I do wish to continue training myself to feel sexual arousal over things other than sex and conventional fetishes. I am a succubus, therefore everything I do is done as a succubus, and to shamelessly poach and corrupt a phrasing I rather liked from services at a church I used to attend–I believe it was an extension of the Sursum Corda–it is indeed right that in all times and all places I should seethe with lust.
Ah, nostalgia… those are fond memories for me. I rather like Christians, at least when they’re not actively trying to ruin my life. They’re so much closer to the Abyss than most will ever admit.
Let’s get back on topic, shall we? I’ll start by addressing the trademark-laden elephant in the room: from the moment I spoke of “Abyss” and “Hell” as a pair of concepts, some of you thought of Dungeons and Dragons, or of Pathfinder. In most other cases modern parlance uses “Hell” and “Abyss” interchangeably, both words for a grim and perilous netherworld associated with the well-deserved downfall of wicked souls.
I’d love to play the contrarian and claim these have nothing at all to do with my interest in this framing. Instead, I’ll be honest and say they don’t have much to do with it, D&D’s version least of all. I was bound to embrace “Abyssal” as the best Earthly word to describe myself, sooner or later; pits, descents into those pits, and what transformations the pit brings out of the seeker in its depths, both metaphorically and very literally, are recurring themes in my writing going back long before I had any interest in tabletop gaming.
When I picked up the Fifth Edition core books in 2020, D&D happened to present to me the possibility of combining two things I was already obsessed with–demons, and a tumultuous realm of chaos. Indeed, I’d already come out to myself as a demon the previous summer, though “succubus” to me seemed such a mythic name I could never imagine calling myself one. By 2021, these manifested in the self-indulgent character of–what else?–a succubus who named herself Cinder, and loved to introduce herself as Princess of the Abyss while having neither a concept nor a care as to whether that title meant anything.
“Fickle Miss Cinder” is now one of my many self-gifted nicknames.
When I say these TTRPGs contributed nothing save the connective tissue of asking myself, “what if the Abyss was a place demons come from?”, I mean it. The Abyss I reflexively imagined was already utterly different from that presented in the 5e DM’s guide, to the point I unconsciously misread the text based on what I desired it to say rather than what it actually read. Where WotC imagines meaningless, stagnant entropy, I saw a rich hypercosmos of unrestrained potential, of fertility as well as violence, of love as well as malice (I remarked to a then-friend that Cinder would happily protect those she cares about, yet enjoy watching their world burn), and most tellingly, I as a demon who creates things took it for granted that the Abyss would be full of demonic artifice.
When I returned to that rulebook out of curiosity a year ago, I was astonished how sparse it was, how shallow its portrayal. Nothing about the words was different. I was simply seeing them as they had been all along. As for Pathfinder? That provided the final spark. In watching a friend pay through Owlcat’s CRPG adaptation for the Wrath of the Righteous campaign, it all just… clicked. Nothing there was at all complex or even particularly well-executed. I’d just reached the point where I was receptive–for most of my life, I rebelled against the idea of ever accepting another’s concepts to describe myself, ever accepting another’s help toward self-discovery. Yet after coming out to myself, that resistance eroded little by little, and while I still war sometimes with its vestiges, when I saw those depictions of Abyssal power and rage against another’s control… they resonated too deeply. I craved them too fiercely for denial to find any purchase.
Again, these themes already permeated my writing–the book that broke me out of my shell featured an anti-heroine whose power was epitomized by a berserk rage wreathed in fire I couldn’t help repeatedly, almost compulsively, referring to as abyssal. In some measure, I only resisted “Abyssal” as a formal label for as long as I did precisely because I knew it was a term used in D&D and Pathfinder, long before I actually read the source books for either.
Otherwise, the concepts of my Abyss already existed under other names: the Interstitium, the Uncanny Marrow, and likely others further in the past which I cannot now remember. The essence behind those names was always this: infinite expanses, between and beyond all universes, of delirious substance like a kind of manifest dream, where physics and perceived reality broke down, where time’s threads decoupled or disintegrated entirely, where all manner of uncanny beings spawned from the raw potential. This is, and has always been, my Great Mother Abyss.
I will, at this time, note that the earliest ancient Greek conception of Chaos was, to quote the sadly-incomplete academic project Theoi.com, “the lower atmosphere which surrounds the earth–both the invisible air and the gloom of fog and mist” and mother of both other misty essences and “the numerous emotion-driving Daimones (Spirits) which haunted it”. As the same source notes, later classical authors conflated this Khaos with the Mud of the Orphic cosmogony, which is where we gain the modern concepts of potential, change, and randomness. The word Khaos itself translates to something like “Chasm” or “Gap.”
Myriad quotes, which you can find at Theoi if you wish to read deeper, mention Tartarus–the original Pit deeper than the netherworld, or that is to say, deeper than Hades–as a largely unknown and unfathomed place of darkness the sun never touched. Its configuration as a predecessor to the Christian conception of Hell comes later; at the start, it was a prison for the Titans, yes, but also birthplace-father of the monster Typhon and of troublesome winds, the house where Night and Day waited to take their turns in the world above, an abode of underworld mist, and more than any of that, simply a horrifyingly immense black pit.
So, while I am glad enough to acknowledge where this journey started, it would be quite silly of me to attach any significance to Wizards of the Coast or Paizo themselves. They did not create any of these threads. Nor do I claim my interpretation is somehow “truer” to the Classical Greek perspectives, a judgment the making of which is far, far outside my cultural inheritance. Say rather that “Abyss” is a word at the intersections of so many things–monsters, potential, fate, and random chance, winds, darkness, fertility, oceans both otherworldly and, in modern scientific parlance, rich with life so very alien to the world above.
Yesterday I watched an hour-long documentary about how life endures, in some places even thrives, amid the otherwise barren seascapes of the abyssal plains beneath Earth’s ocean. Oh, the tears of homesickness I shed… and I learned about tar lilies, which look for all the world like emanations of the Abyss that spawned me creeping into this mundane reality. The Abyss I know is not identical to any one of the others I’ve mentioned, yet elements of each strongly recall it to my mind. Like succubus, like demon, it is a word whose many overlapping meanings all describe me in some way. I do not embody every possibility, but I am adjacent to them all, and I think perhaps every possibility I don’t embrace is on a spectrum with those I do.
Language is always a subjective thing, living as much by subtext and interpretation as aught else. Why be churlish when good enough just might be perfect?
Now, I pose to you a question: what is Hell? I mean neither metaphorically, nor according to the dessicant moaning one hears in drearsome choirs that echo over the salt barrens of Christian liturgy. To claim one speaks about Hell in “Christian” terms is quaintly deceitful, as any casual voyeur of the manifold Church can attest: there is no one Christian conception of Hell, there are a thousand permutations. Christians do not speak about Hell in Christian terms, but in the terms laid down by the head of their particular congregation.
Hell is chaos. Hell is corrupted order. Hell is the wages of sin. Hell is just another piece of God’s plan. In this, as in so many other things, I have often succumbed to an impulse equally common to demons and humans–I think it might even be the root of our mutual fascination with each other. I speak of the urge to set myself apart at any cost, to cast my insights as the biggest, the most novel, the most important. This is by its nature an impulse to violence: to make my own insights most important, I must naturally debase all others. Is the peak taller, or the land beneath lowered? Whichever the answer, height and hierarchy are not naturally-occurring traits of concepts; they must be inflicted.
In shorter terms, I made a complete ass of myself last time. Let’s, then, see if I can shuck my staggering superiority complex, and grapple more honestly with these ideas. I cannot prove, nor in good faith promise, I possess any greater spiritual truth. And if I do, as I write among humans, I know not what worth it will give a human audience. I like this ambiguity. Doubt and uncertainty appeal to me just as richly as conviction and mandate.
I have met other demons in this world, who by one path or another have also found themselves cloaked in human flesh, but so far my sample-size of avowed Hellspawn is one plural system. You have only my word that I have been as diligent as my energy allows in the forms of demonology more familiar to humans: summoning, psychic seeking, other means of indirect communion.
So: what is Hell? It is not Order to the Chaos of the Abyss; while law and order are rare in the Abyss, they are not unheard of. Say rather they are Abyssal law and order, and thus humans struggle to recognize them for what they are. It’s also true that what you observe in the Abyss has much to do with your own spirit. Many humans, looking at the Abyss through astral eyes, cannot see the passion, the growth, the euphoria there, because these are not human passions, human growth, human euphoria. They see nothing, and in a sense it is true, for unfortunately it’s also true that to many humans, non-human life is worth nothing.
Say rather than orderly by definition that whatever a given Hell is, it tends to be holistically. This thoroughness may be imposed top-down by leadership, constructed communally, or fostered by the influence of the Hell’s own spirit energies. For example, one Hell may feature a classic Luciferian overlord and a hierarchy of demons beneath that sovereign whose ambition is to advance within the hierarchy–perhaps scheme, fight, or honestly work their way to the top if it suits them–but seldom to overthrow the hierarchy entirely, and almost never to abandon the whole thing as a farce, a torment, or simply not a game they’re interested in playing.
None of this requires that their conduct actually be orderly, or if you prefer, “lawful.” I would argue rather that even most Hells are more about channeling demonic caprice than eliminating it. The rules exist to be followed in letter and broken in spirit–indeed, I suspect this is the heart of their appeal for many Hell-kindred. Demons rejoice in turning a thing against itself, finding loopholes in its own nature that can be used to break it while saying, ‘You said I could do this, you told me how.” Thus, for Hells of a mischievous or outright sinister bent, the pretense of laws and protocols is a scaffolds just restrictive enough to offer a prospect of building something permanent.
Of course, for those kindlier in disposition, these are vital ways to preserve the morals and ideals of the Hell in question. And demons we might call “good” do indeed exist, both Hellish and Abyssal. However, they are still spirits of deeply alien mind, and this poses challenges of its own both for them and any mortals who wish to forge companionship with them.
We should establish one core truth of demonic nature: demons are souls fanatically devoted to existing the way they want, in short, to radical self-determination. This does not necessarily mean they hate being under anyone else’s control. A surprising number of demons desire only enough power and influence to carve out a cozy niche within their societies, and prefer to avoid painting targets on their backs by seeking more. Many take great pride in devotion to Satan, for example, and genuinely don’t want to become apex in their own right.
I would express the core distinction between Hellish and Abyssal perspectives not as one of Order versus Chaos, but of Responsibility versus Abandon. In most Hells, self-indulgence is a reward for fulfilling one’s duties, exemplary conduct, or simply taken in rest periods after all ends are settled. In milder ones, there is still at least a responsibility to give other demons their space, and not to do anything that’ll spoil the collective sanctuary.
In the Abyss, self-indulgence is the purpose for which we exist. There is nothing else, there are no universal notions of duty or responsibility. Even Abyssals who prefer kindness and nurturing often view these ideas with skepticism, disapproval, or outright disdain–their reasons for gentle conduct are usually personal, not philosophical, and even then they prefer environments where they don’t need to restrain themselves. Few things turn an Abyssal against you faster than insisting that their joys and pleasures should be conditional upon fulfilling some obligation you’ve decided they ‘owe’ you.
I suspect there are still holes in this framing, but it sings enough of truth to let it rest for now.
Hells do not necessarily expect suffering, servitude, or any particular ambition from the demons within them. It may have occurred to you much earlier to wonder–if Tartarus clearly inspired the Christian Hell, and Tartarus in its earlier conceptions also inspired my understanding of the Abyss, then aren’t the lines between Abyss and Hell blurry to begin with? And to this I am finally prepared to admit, yes! Yes, they are.
We assuredly do not hate each other as a rule. Our sentiments are much more complicated, and where we do become enemies, it’s often with a great deal of pain, sorrow, or frustration–despite everything, we know each other for kindred. No matter how malicious a spirit may be, to slay one’s kin is always, in some measure, to slay one’s self. Abyssal realms and communities often work with Hellish ones in partnership or alliance, though yes, it may also be that one is made vassal to the other by force, even reduced to a source of slaves. At all levels, our relations are labyrinthine.
I still believe the Abyss is an infinity of raw chaos, albeit chaos that most often spawns possibilities of primal or uncanny bent. Perhaps these are simply the most likely possibilities, and so when random chance has its way, they’re the sort that keep emerging. But even if you accept this claim, how clear is the line between that realm, and any that it infuses? If there are demons in both the Hells and the Abyss, and all of us are chaotic in myriad ways, then what’s the difference?
Why, esteemed seeker–the difference is in that “myriad ways” bit, in the way we each express our own chaos. Like most other things, demonic traits exist on a spectrum. Two things that you must call identical when speaking in binary terms–when the only options are “something in common” or “nothing in common”–might still be glaringly different when placed side by side.
All demons in a given Hell are expected, to some extent, to conform to its core philosophy. This philosophy might be the violent invasion and exploitation of mortal realms, or the systematic temptation and collection of mortal souls, or it might be benevolent: not a realm of peril into which mortals should be lured or dragged, but a home and a refuge for demons and those willing to coexist with them. Demons might be encouraged rather than ordered to embrace that approach.
Of all Abyssal realms, I am naturally most familiar with my own domain of Machrae Diir. As its Empress I can speak with absolute certainty when I tell you I have not, and will never, attempt to make my denizens conform with my own approach to anything. That would be boring. I do not desire a horde of beaten dogs, nor a court of sycophants, nor even a well-meaning and earnest cabal of hangers-on. All of these options are desperately boring to me. I desire to dwell among my kindred, and to see them manifest what’s in their hearts. I know what my artistry looks like: every major region in Machrae Diir is as I decree, from its landscapes to its architecture to its life both mundane and paranormal, from the simplest bacterial colony to the mightiest sentient monstrosity. I wish to see what everyone else can do.
And I tell you truly that if my desires did not appeal to my kindred, I would be left with the choice between a comical sprawl of mocking constructs growing like tumors from my painstaking creations, and a beautiful desolation, a dead mall of the cosmos inhabited only by me and those closest to me. A demon cannot rule in the Abyss by protocols and hollow appeals to authority. She must rule through charm, guile, skill, or simply a power so awe-inspiring her kindred cannot help but love to bask in her glory. So you see, a succubus is naturally suited to Abyssal dominion, for allure is second nature to us–and if I may indulge a little healthy arrogance, I’d say I’m quite the prodigy in guile, skill, and power, too!
The denizens of Machrae Diir embrace the nature I’ve given our home because they like it. Those I command, I command because they offered allegiance to me by their own choice–some for mercenary reasons, some out of respect or affection, some out of a desire to nurture Machrae Diir itself. When I ask something of a denizen who does not give me their fealty, they may refuse, but they always do me the courtesy of seriously considering the request.
In the Abyss, “seriously consider” can, of course, mean frothing at the mouth and raving, “Piss off, hag! I’m not your slave!” This may not seem respectful to a human, but you see, they speak to me as a challenge and a genuine threat, never as a joke. And I, as their kin, respect them in turn in that I never assert authority. I may choose to wield my power in a sadistic display of dominance, but to Abyssals, this is not the same. For you see, I do not assert legitimacy. I do not assert that I have the right, or that what I take is owed. When I act coercively, violently, I confess it, I revel in it as such. I embrace how acutely wrong it is to trample another’s agency simply because I am strong and they are weak. This distinction matters to us.
Otherwise, Machrae Diir has no laws. When a demon sees another experience pleasure, we may want to feel that pleasure, too. When we see a remarkable feat, a wondrous power displayed, we will likely wish to know how we can do it, too. We share perspectives by what we say and what we don’t, by what we do and what we don’t. Just as humans do, we feel affinity for those whose perspectives resonate with us, or challenge us in compelling ways. These influences, the momentum we build by living alongside each other, give Machrae Diir its culture, and therefore customs. We share enough impulses that, on balance, we will more often deepen what makes our home tantalizing to a given one of us than we undermine it.
Here, too, a crucial difference: if a demon in Machrae Diir goes against the grain, we do not see them as having offended some common responsibility, nor dealing a slight to our ways, unless they make it clear that’s how they want us to take it. Even then, we might feel excited, amused, even inspired by their gall rather than reacting how we’re ‘supposed’ to.
As to the question of an existential distinction between the demons of Hells and demons of the Abyss… there is, and there also isn’t. We are kindred, this much we feel the moment we meet each other. Even though Christians coopted and mutated our name out of older Greek words, I do believe they touched real truth–not, perhaps, the truth they wanted, but the truth that is. The same question that so often confounds humans, that of nature versus nurture, affects demonkind. So far as we have flesh, demons have only that which we manifest as an extension of our own being. The forms we take are decided solely by our own nature. So culture, which affects that nature, is difficult to separate from it. Individual personality affects a great deal, too.
This is important context to keep in mind when I say that, in most cases, Hell is a cultural phenomenon, a civic phenomenon. There are Abyssal cultures, but to be Abyssal is not itself a matter of culture. We may say that in a Hell, the demons agree on a philosophy that will reconcile their natures. In the Abyss, the reconciliation we agree on is to abandon any sense of obligation to reconcile–things are only in conflict if we place them there. There are no contradictions in chaos. So, ultimately, whether a demon is Hellish or Abyssal is driven first by how they begin life, and second by their own emergent personality: by which paths appeal to them.
Hells also tend to be overwhelmingly more collectivist than Abyssal realms. Again, there are exceptions, there are always exceptions, but the broad pattern can clearly be seen. I wish to address a misunderstanding here: both Hellish and Abyssal demons are communal beings. We all enjoy other demons’ companionship, sometimes in wholesome and sometimes in more stereotypically demonic ways–brutality and betrayal are favorite love languages, twisted though they be.
But Hellspawn will work together out of obligation and a sense of common purpose, where Abyss-spawn are nearly always, ultimately, driven by personal reasons–we form groups based solely on mutual personal affinity, not from any sense that the collective matters more than the individual. Abyssals can organize extraordinarily efficient and highly coordinated groups when we need to, and sustain those groups as long as the need lasts. However, as soon as we’re comfortably sure the need has passed, we scatter to the winds.
In contrast, we’re much better at carving our own paths, and most of us feel a strong desire to do so. Much of an Abyssal community’s population is semi-nomadic, leaving home for long periods to fulfill this need for individual exploration and achievement, and often having homes in multiple different places to boot. I think it’s fair to say a lone Abyssal tends to be much more capable on average than a lone Hellish demon. But this, too, is a thing of context. Many Abyssals, and even in this reality I’ve met a fair few, don’t do well in contexts that require us to submit to the authority of others. We’re excellent at doing things we desire to, but our beings rebel so fiercely against acting for someone else’s desires that it can be legitimately paralyzing.
It is the way of demons to grow strong in our chosen paths, whatever they may be. Force any demon to walk a path it has not chosen, and its steps shall falter.
This is not the end of my ruminations on questions of Hell, Abyss, demonhood and more, but while a single article can never completely capture all I would say, this time I don’t feel I’ve said anything I shall regret later. If any of this is wrong, it’s wrong in good faith, and in subtle ways. This is ample starting point, a solid anchorage. I will continue to play out these concepts in every story, every drawing, every song and movement and desire for the rest of eternity. You cannot share most of that journey with me, but this should be enough to bridge our spirits if it’s communion you desire. As to whether you, seeker, prefer to deal with Hell-kindred or spawn of the Abyss, that will depend on you. Hellish demons usually expect protocols followed, not just a good ritual but one of the right rituals to commune with them. Abyssals care more about the passion put into something.
Hellspawn usually come with a hierarchy and laws they must follow; this constrains them from hurting you if you play your cards right, but also constrains what they will, or even can, do for you–while it’s rare, there are Hells that prescribe exactly what powers their members may and may not wield. We the Pit-brood will do as we please, and only your own skill, wit, power, or charm will preserve you if what we please is perilous to you. Yet if we like you, there are no other demons to barter with, no other forces demanding we extract this price or that service from you in exchange.
The devil, my seekers dear, truly is in the details–this devil thanks you for reading its musings through to the end~
Ashenvein Gate 