A Demon's Name is an Inside Joke

    One thing I've been museing about for quite a while, dispite having no real use for it in my games, is names for demonic entities. I was always very interested in the nature of the demons described in The Screwtape Letters, and why exactly they would have such strange names.

    The form of naming presented in this article is mostly tied to the nature of demons in the Age of Odds setting that I've been running, which is fairly divorced from the Christian background of the idea. Technically the Age of Odds is science-fantasy, but I'll strip the idea down to more of a fantasy idea.

    Demons torment mortals. They torment mortals because they believe that mortals deserve to be tormented since they come up with ideas such as war and it's ilk. Demons are actually quite nice to each other, as long as the other demon hasn't aided a mortal. To do so is unforgivable, and deserves the same torment that demons unleash on mortals. 

    A demon's name is an inside joke that you are not in on. It is based on the most terrible thing that a demon has done to a mortal, which is also a demon's greatest source of pride. It has been said that knowlege of a the origin of a demon's name gives a mortal some level of power over it, but most of the people who have said this end up dragged into Tartarus at some point.

1d10 Demon names of this type

1

William Trespasser

2

Equator of the Humors

3

Canary Blue

4

Brown Backed Billy

5

Redjacket

6

Princess Peel

7

Peppercakes

8

The Loveless One

9

Just-a-Scratch

10

Rattling Tenor


  
As an aside, I'm going to try to post smaller things like this on the blog more often, I now realize that I basically haven't updated this thing since July.

Comments

  1. Zoe NyxDecember 5, 2020 at 3:37 PM

    I like this idea. There's the added fun of people learning where demon names come from, but not why the one they're talking to is called "Mr Snuggles".

    ReplyDelete
  2. dbirchDecember 14, 2020 at 9:21 PM

    Great stuff. I haven't thought about The Screwtape Letters in years. These names remind me of ship names from the Culture novels.

    ReplyDelete

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