Mythology - The Residents of the Abyss

Oct 29, 2013 10:23

I'll do a third entry now, then pause for a bit.  This one documents what sorts of creatures live down in the Abyss, and tends to detail a bit more of the “evil” side of Gil’s nature than the others have.  If you read this, keep in mind, it’s the mythology of a fundamentally evil creature.


"It’s much better to reside in Hell as staff than as a guest."
Within the Abyss, there are two broad classes of occupants.  Loosely, we’ll call them the “staff” and the “guests.”  The Guests are the mortal souls condemned to this particular pit of Hell, the Staff are the Demons who “attend to” the Guests, ensuring their stay is as unpleasant as possible.
There are actually two classes of Guests in the pits within this mythology: the ones who were condemned there, who “should be” there based on what they did during their lives, and those sacrificed to the Demons, whose souls now belong to the Demon lording over the pit, as its personal “play-things.”  While one could say the damned “belong there,” the sacrifices don’t, and their presence is the first of a number of signs that something isn’t quite right with creation.
Just what the Demon Lords do with their “play things” varies greatly, both between the different Lords and between which of the sacrifices they’re dealing with.  Gilrandree will certainly have a small collection of souls sacrificed to him which he keeps around for entertainment.  Some of these will simply act as servants within his realm, some taking on the role of his harem, and some he’ll simply abuse: while he can be nice and friendly much of the time, he IS a Demon, and a Demon Lord at that.  He is a creature of a fundamentally evil nature, and, at times, it shows.
In terms of the “staff” of the underworld, there are again two broad categories: the Demon Lords, of which there are precisely thirteen, each ruling over one of the pits of hell, and the Common Demons, of which there are countless.  The Abyssal pits are manifestations of the Lords’ wills, so they are, within their own pit, virtually all-powerful, as mentioned before (this is NOT true outside their pit, where they may actually be LESS powerful than some of the more powerful Common Demons).
Below them are the Common Demons.  There is no real ranking among them, but they can be loosely divided into two groups, the Greater Demons and the Lesser Demons, largely determined by sentience.  Greater Demons are sentient, speaking beasts, while Lesser Demons are little more than animals.  They are powerful, dangerous animals, but basically of that intellect.
Demons are constantly moving between these roles: A Demon Lord may have been a Lesser Demon just a few thousand years before, and will almost certainly eventually fall to that level again.  The battles within the ranks of the Demons are largely surrounding this: Every Demon wants the power and authority of becoming one of the thirteen Lords, and are constantly scheming and hoarding power to reach that level.It's funny as I reread these... They seem really short and superficial now, especially this one.  I'm not doing more than minor editing of the text now, as these are more notes than anything else, but maybe one day I'll try to put together a single detailed description of the mythology based on these notes.

mythology

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