Demons vs. Mankind Concept
My friend and part of my oft mentioned roleplaying group., Reuben Ternes, and I got to talking one day about writing a book together. After a few brainstorming sessions, we settled on a semi-futuristic society where demons rose up and waged war with mankind. Ultimately, mankind is losing has been beaten back to heavily fortified holy grounds by the armies of Hell.
While this is not a unique concept, our angle was to paint the demons as sympathetic characters who had been abused and tortured by mankind and its religious zealots. While they are no doubt craven beasts from Hell bent on “doing what demon do”, they have also suffered at the hands of man, having had friends and loved ones captured or destroyed by way of the religious rituals of humans.
As excited as I am about this idea, I had to step back to focus on my own book. I hope to revisit this with Reuben at some point in the future, however.
Enjoy!
Balthazaar heard the last of the priest’s last precious, life-sustaining air gurgle from his mouth. With a flick of his wrist he snapped the elderly man’s neck for good measure and then tossed the broken body to the church floor where nearly a dozen other clergymen lay torn and bloodied.
He spat on the priest’s corpse, the gob of phlegm sizzling loudly as it began to fry the deceased man’s sightless eyeball. Seconds later the orb popped, unable to withstand the acidic nature of the greater demon’s spit. Balthazaar curled up one corner of his mouth with disdain.
He was a general in his Lord’s army but first and foremost he was a Bael’a’an, a child of Bael, ruler of the Ninth Circle and overseer of all the Eastern lands of men. The burden, laden heavily upon his shoulders by the Lord of Flies himself, was to decimate these places of opposition where men came to pray for blessings to support their own desires in this war.
It has been the fifth such church he and his small band of soldiers had hit in as many days. They had suffered but one loss while slaying many score of the enemy’s clergy, but in truth there had hardly been a challenge in this latest directive.
These were nothing more than country churches with simple priests who harnessed no ability to call down any real power from their gods. And so Balthazaar and his Murder of demons and Hellspawn, hybrid creatures made from the unholy union of man and demon, had rolled over their victims like the rivers of flaming pitch that flowed through his homeland.
Home. He longed to be back in the Ninth Circle, with its mighty capital city of Cain and the obsidian palace where he had first been conjured by Bael himself. Instead, he was trapped by duty here on the plane of men, with its endless stretching sky of blue, creatures of a frailty that was unheard of within the Circles, and of course the ephemeral and weak-minded men and the puny gods they so worshipped.
Balthazaar snarled again at the carpet of carnage laid low before him by the fury of his wicked, hooked blade of cold, black steel. Just then, one of his lieutenants approached.
“My lord,” the demon said with all reverence, taking a knee and bowing his head as he spoke. With a grunt from Balthazaar, he stood and started to deliver his report, but stumbled in his words as his eyes were momentarily drawn to the Bael’a’an general’s massive horns.
Balthazaar reached up, probing the three-foot protrusions from his scalp until he felt a squishy mass of something he must have gored in the battle. He slid it from his horn and observed it to be the forearm of one of the humans. In its grasp remained one of the holy symbols of the goddess for which this temple had been built, Daya, a goddess of nature and fertility.
Tossing the limb aside, the Bael’a’an gestured for his lieutenant to continue.
“My lord,” the lieutenant began again, “we have completed our sweep of the church. The clergymen have been torn asunder. As we speak their bodies are being collected for the spoiling ritual. Those humes who sought refuge within have been appropriately slaughtered to the last man, woman, and child.”
Balthazaar nodded. “Excellent. And what of Myphyxl?”
The lieutenant almost imperceptibly glanced away before continuing. “He is…ravaging the nuns in the convent, as per his norm.”
Once again, the great demon’s lip curled up in disgust. Myphyxl, a hellspawn himself, was the captain of the two score who were at Balthazaar’s command. The raping of the nuns or clerical women of any sort was a necessary ritual for only from this could more hellspawn be created. It was a most unholy of ceremonies and therefore one that was almost never permitted. It was also one that many demons like he had a tremendous distaste for. However, in a time of war, especially this one, it was regrettably the most necessary one to continually resupply their ranks.
Sure, the legion of demons, daemons, succubae, and shadow people could take many more times the battering of their human opponents, but even so, their kind was outnumbered 100 to 1 or worse in this war. If they were going to end the growing threat of mankind once and for all before mankind wiped them from this plane and their own, the impregnation of holy women and proceeding desecration of their swollen wombs was vital. The humes might call it a “necessary evil”, Balthazaar thought to himself and even allowed himself to chuckle.
“Inform Myphyxl to be quick about it. Tell him I ordered him to make it not about the pleasure this time,” he instructed his lieutenant with disgust coating his every word. It turned his stomach to think about the wily hellspawn captain thrusting and grunting over and again as he forced himself upon nun after nun with an insatiable hunger. It was completely unnecessary to complete the ritual that way when every hellspawn could simply penetrate and inseminate on command, but some, like Myphyxl, took a sordid pleasure in feeding into the carnal desires familiar to the human part of them. “Tell him I ordered him and his troops to complete the deed with all haste,” he instructed. “We have our orders.”
The lieutenant left him. Moments later a collection of troops arrived and began gathering the fallen priests about him for the despoiling ritual that would prevent their souls from ascending to the planes of their human gods. Balthazaar approached the altar at the front of the church. With one sweep of his arm, he cleared it of the various trinkets and symbols the holy men and women of the temple used for their rituals. He then allowed his broad-shouldered, red-skinned 10-foot frame of tightly packed muscle to collapse wearily upon the altar.
He was not physically weary from the tour of duty though. A Bael’a’an like him could go weeks without rest and battle dozens of humes without fatiguing. No, he felt emotional exhaustion creeping in, and deeply so. When the humans had slain his wife and children, trapping them first and then exorcising them out of existence, it had almost destroyed him. Broken, wracked with guilt and pain and sorrow, and unable to find direction for months, he one day had practically thrown himself at the feet of Bael, begging his lord for this assignment. He had convinced himself that the eradication of mankind for the good of demonfolk would fill the hole within him that was left when his beloved Ca’al, his fearless boy Pssltun, and his sharp-as-a-daemon’s-barbed-tail Tillookamun, his precious little girl, were ripped from existence and his life.
It hadn’t though. And although he didn’t want to admit it aloud, deep down he knew even winning this war wouldn’t fill that hole. Nothing would.
But he has his orders.