If demons were bound to hell, or a similar dimension, what advantages or uses could they get for making bargains, deals or pacts, besides owning souls?
I'm thinking of something for a D&D campaign, in which demons of increasingly higher power can take larger and larger body parts in return for skills, but what use could they have for body parts in the real world?
Well, depending on how much you want to stick with the "bound to hell" part, perhaps the body parts serve as an anchor in the real world. Sort of like a lich's phylactery. Maybe it doesn't allow them to manifest in the physical world, but does grant them additional power in their home dimension? Or, maybe they build flesh constructs out of the body parts they take, using these to retrieve magical McGuffins in regular reality by proxy.
Or maybe they're just sick fucks and like to hurt people, and enjoy seeing people give up their physical body (ie. something demons would value highly if they can't have one) for temporary magic boons.
>>47875534
Flesh construct is a pretty good idea, should tie in nicely to a totally-not-Dracula who lords over his subjects and demands a blood tithe.
Of course, all that blood isn't just for him.
>>47875467
Demons have endless fun torturing you. If you plead them to stop, they will use you as a tool to spread suffering and misery to others. To interact and make pacts with them you have to essentially dismiss protection of gods. You can have all power you want but you won't enjoy it for long.
>>47875534
Instead of/in addition to making constructs to serve their aims, they could also "take" body parts in the sense of corrupting human parts and using those directly.
>An unscrupulous mortal bent on revenge makes a deal for the strength to murder his enemy, gaining a demonic arm with wicked claws. It serves him well, but also can seem to have a mind of its own, impulsively lashing out to harm innocents.
>A wife, suspicious of her husband, strikes a deal to learn if he's being unfaithful, gaining a fiendish eye that sees beyond mortal sight. The demon can see through this eye as well, letting him gather useful info about goings-on in the mortal realm, and can ocasionally use the eye to embed hypnotic suggestions in others.
That sort of thing.
>>47876409
>>A wife, suspicious of her husband, strikes a deal to learn if he's being unfaithful, gaining a fiendish eye that sees beyond mortal sight. The demon can see through this eye as well, letting him gather useful info about goings-on in the mortal realm, and can ocasionally use the eye to embed hypnotic suggestions in others.
I'm totally stealing this idea, anon.
>>47875467
The souls they collect are actually worth very little. The true value is in getting mortals to accept small pieces of demonic essence into themselves that replace bits of the lost soul. Sure, the mortals may derive some minor magical benefits from harboring such a demonic connection, but that gives the demon anchors outside their prison. With enough outside connections, a demon could potentially leave hell completely and escape their imprisonment. Imagine an entire species of interdimensional gypsies known for flaunting rules and travelling where they will. Imagine this race betrayed and imprisoned in a bleak entropic hell-scape that exists between dimensions. You'd do anything to escape, wouldn't you?
How can I make demon summoning rituals difficult enough so that only the most powerful people would be able to do it?
Or some kind of 'ban' that meant once you made a pact with a demon of a particular level, your next pact had to be with a demon of a higher level?
>>47877399
Just require the rituals to have an arbitrarily High required skill level in a magical skill like knowledge Arcana or spellcraft.
>>47877399
Just have the requirements be expense or really obscure.
>>47875467
In my setting, demons and devils are, essentially, eternally hungry. Consuming the energy of physical things increases the total energy contained within themselves. Souls are the most efficient food for them but even being present in the physical world allows them to siphon off energy from the physical things around them.
Devils are most orderly and most likely to contract with sapient mortals for souls.
Demons are more wild and can me more content to simply exist on the mortal plane (via summoning) and absorb ambient energy with nuggets of living energy when they can get it.
>>47876409
I like this idea a lot, though I feel if should be rather subtle. The second one is good. The first would be cooler if instead of randomly lashing out, the demon arm would occasionally pocket things and have them fall into the demon's lap.
Getting change back at the bar? There's a few copper missing. Picking some fruit? You're one short of a dozen.
