>>50437971
very valid question. I believe it is made intentionally vague, so that it could be used however the gamemaster wants during his campaign, and allow a lot of fluffing and such

to eat or fuck

Souls play a vital role in hell, they are a valuable resource that is refined and reformed into a variety of helltech, including demons themselves. Demons have no idea what humans are

>>50437971
Well, they typically become entry-level demons upon damnation, and you need soldiers to wage war.

>>50438018
Kinda like oil

>>50437971
No reason. You may as well ask why a computer program why it behaves the way it does. They temp and lead people to damnation because that is their function.

>>50438087
>ghost in the demon

>>50437971
Souls are immaterial things, as much as devils and demons. These can't draw power from eating material things, like food. So they have to consume our souls.

>>50438087
Well then you have to ask who the hell made this computer program.

>>50437971

Gambling addiction.

>>50437971
God decided that they were really valuable, so demons like to collect them.

>>50437971

They are very lonely.

>>50437971
Their leader made a bet with God that people are fundamentally more bad than good. The destination of souls is mostly important so that God and the devil can easily count them up on judgement day to determine who is right.

>>50437971
Well what else are they going to torture to get that yummy yummy illiaster for eating and fueling their everything?

>>50438179

God.

Demons and Hell are a kind of protection racket that God has set up. God offered rewards to mankind in order to retain their love and service.

We refused. We strayed from the path. Given utopia, we would rather explore that which was not given to us.

So God made Hell, and punishment, and torment. If we won't come to him out of love, then we will go to him out of fear of what happens to those that don't go to him at all.

>>50437971
They're a delicious, high-energy snack and also are useful for making minions out of.

>>50437971
They're currency. You can make gold or any other kind of matter with magic, but no mortal or demon can create souls.

>>50437971
All beings crave what they don't naturally have

>>50438471
Reminder that the very idea of Heaven and Hell came from Zoroastrianism, not Judaism.

>>50437971
Food/currency/power source are the most common and reasonable answers. Maybe they just do because God thought that it would be hilarious to look how angels and demons fight for them out of fear of getting blown up by space bombs. Fuck if I know.

>>50437971
they taste yummy

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>>50437971
They don't. People just think that they do. This confuses and annoys them. You are not that important or useful.

>>50437971
they wanna level up

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>>50437971
>How does magic work?
>Why is necromancy evil?
>Can a paladin do drugs and not fall?
>What happens if an object is enchanted twice?
>What do elves think of slavery?
>Do female dwarves have beards?
>What's the difference between a wizard and a sorcerer?
>Can a demon ever turn good, and if so, is it still a demon?
>What you you call a half-orc-half-elf?
>Do elementals have souls?
>How do you kill a vampire?
>What do healing potions taste like?
>How many legs does a dragon have?
I DEMAND A SINGLE CORRECT ANSWER THAT APPLIES TO EVERYTHING!!

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>>50440173
You do realize that these threads are most often made to invite discussion and opinions, right? Do you think people go on a Tawainese papercraft board looking for factual answers to serious questions?

>>50437971
Do deny humans the opportunity to go in heaven, I think.
After all, they have fallen, they are probably very jealous of everyone else.

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Demons and devils are just here to fuck your shit up. The soul is the prize, but like how gold is technically has little material value despite how much humans value it, the soul is merely something to show that you have tempted and corrupted a human. That's why there are so many different demons, corrupting in so many different ways - it's a game to them, a competition with each other for the most souls, and against those who would keep souls pure and out of their reach, since if it was as easy as plucking daises it wouldn't be fun.

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>>50437971
Because the miss the world, and they wish someone would tell them of it, and sometimes, they're just lonely

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>>50440938
>demons are just trying to affect a world they desperately want to be a part (rather than the vague eternity of hell) of but can never permanently remain in
>they will sit back and watch ripples of chaos unfold, proud that their presence may be felt for perhaps a century for once

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>>50438087
>why does chrome need so much ram?

>>50438046

Are we whales and they the queeqwag? do succubus make clothes out of harvested soul foreskins like whalers made clothes from whale foreskins?

>>50437987
done in 1
/thread

>>50441042
Because Google uses it to monitor you sempai

>tfw the captcha was a stop sign

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>>50437971

>>50437971
To save them from God.

>>50440173
>I DEMAND A SINGLE CORRECT ANSWER THAT APPLIES TO EVERYTHING!!

42

>>50437971
I remember that a Catholic literature professor, in his commentary on Doctor Faustus, said that demons actually can't take souls.
If they could take souls, even by contract, they would have the power to simply steal the souls. If that were the case, they wouldn't bother with the drama. They'd rip your soul out and drag it to hell.

Rather, demons have people "sell" their souls as a way of convincing those people to fall into degeneracy, sin, and blasphemy. The victims become damned by their own actions, not by some infernal contract.
This also explains why the demons genuinely enjoy corrupting exemplary and righteous figures, rather than boring or neutral ones.

Why do this?
A huge middle finger to God and his angelic bitches.
Rebels to the end, those demons.


The new question is...
If demons are running around corrupting the masses, and angels are supposedly able to kick their asses with ease, why haven't the angels intervened?

>>50440173
Through a complex measure of forcing your will to overpower reality.

Because people like to believe whats dead should stay dead and not walk around. And a majority of the people who have risen the dead arent doing it to make cheap laborers

Yes. Maybe the drug helps his headaches from dealing with the rogue.

Magical explosion usually, souls can only have so much magic infused on them. This depends on the soul of course.

What kind of elves? Dark evil elves probs love it. Free happy elves probs dont.

Knowledge, and innate skill

Yes, Yes.

Depends on the side that shows through more I would imagine, other wise I'm a fan of Oref.

Yes everything has a soul.

How dont you kill a vampire would probably be harder to answer, bitches crumble to garlic, holy things, sunlight, impalement through the heart.

Lemons.

Two, the others can be used for walking but arent needed and can be used as hand like appendages where the back ones can not. If you're a retard you can also go for two and the front two are built into the wings.

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>>50438087

>>50440173


why IS necromancy evil? I always thought that was perspective

My understanding is that demons wanted souls for the sole purpose of turning them away from God, perhaps to serve in the war they are destined to lose, or depending on if the version of the story you're reading has the devil as still an angel serving to test souls, to see if the soul in question was weak enough willed to turn away from God towards the promise of temptation, and thus deserving of punishment. That's just abrahamic shit, but I for one do like the idea that Demons want souls not as some sort of nefarious purpose, but because they want supporters of their side of the story. Sorta playing on them trying to prove to mortals that they aren't actually bound to the constraints of the higher power that they were led to believe they were, setting up a conflict of doing what feels right versus knowing better.

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>>50437971
Respectively, power and food.

>>50440538
This is the correct answer, at least in terms of traditional Christian theology.

The Devil and his dark angels are condemned to wonder the earth until such time as God judges the souls of the living and dead, and sends the damned to the abyss. The fallen angels know their time is short, at least by the standards they use to measure time, and wish to drag as many human souls with them as they can out of sheer spite.

The souls they tempt into damnation hold no actual value or practical application for the demons, and cannot be consumed, destroyed, or turned into demons themselves. The Devil does not live in Hell, nor does he have any authority there, nor do his demons oversee punishment of mortal souls. He and his angels will suffer there in a state of helplessness for eternity just like everyone else.

>>50446454
>The Devil does not live in Hell
That is, he doesn't live there currently. He wanders the Earth and will continue to do so until the end of time, after which he will be sent to Hell

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>>50440173
>How does magic work?
You force reality to say YES when you ask it to get on all fours because you're going in
>Why is necromancy evil?
Because it works on NO when asking if souls can move on. NO is the opposite power of YES
>Can a paladin do drugs and not fall?
YES
>What happens if an object is enchanted twice?
DOUBLE YES
>What do elves think of slavery?
OH YES
>Do female dwarves have beards?
YES
>What's the difference between a wizard and a sorcerer?
YES X YUP
>Can a demon ever turn good, and if so, is it still a demon?
YES and YES
>What you you call a half-orc-half-elf?
YES MAYBE NO
>Do elementals have souls?
YES
>How do you kill a vampire?
You write YES on its chest
>What do healing potions taste like?
Like YES with sugar
>How many legs does a dragon have?
YES, YES, YES and YES.

>>50442985
Gnostic plz go
Plz stay go

t. left-legger

>>50437971
Because they are currency in the divine game of thrones

>>50443244
Because they do believe in free will.

If you are a good man then you receive eternal life in Paradise.

If you are a total twat nugget you receive Hell.

It's not their job to choose for you.

>>50437971
a)they be tasty
b)they make baby demons from them

>>50437971
Maybe because each soul consumed increases their power/life force?

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>>50437971
>Demons devils collect souls
>Succubi collect semen
>Succubi found a way to extract the souls of unborn babies

>>50437971
To deny them from yahweh, of whoever their opposing god is in the setting.

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>>50448306
>Semen is babies

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>>50448306
>>50448553
Aquinas legit thought that semen was a bunch of microscopic babies that were planted in the wombs of women. Considering there weren't any microscopes around at the time, he wasn't that far off from the truth.

So if we uphold a medieval understanding of the world in a fantasy setting, that anon's logic would be sound.

>>50438471
Doesn't sound like omnibenevolence and omnipotence.

"I don't know buddy I'm just doin' my job here"

>>50448306
...That's actually kinda scary. Good one

>>50437971
To shoot dice in hell.

Souls are currency and food.

>>50437971
A soul isnt a person per-se but rather the energy that allows it to exist with a mind

the mind goes to the afterlife when you die no matter what, but the soul can be sent anywhere

demons use it to fuel/existence, deities get it from worshipers who die, they use it to manifest miracles/exist (this is why deities dont like when people gain eternal life) and necromancers/liches use them to maintain their own and live forever/ summon minions.

Elves live long enough to almost completely use up their soul energy, so Deities and demons tend to put them on the back burner. (except the elven god of war, because they die young he gets the full power) while humans Live and die much quicker, retaining most of their soul. hence why human gods tend to be stronger and humans are targeted more by demons

Demonic sacrifices require infants because they have a complete soul. elven infants are even more sought after.

When the mind is taken to the afterlife it can no longer manifest onto the living plane unless it is given a soul (ancestor worship) and if enough souls are given to a disembodied mind it may become a deity. old deities that lose worshipers dont have any souls and are thus shunted back to the afterlife.

>>50449350
>the mind goes to the afterlife when you die no matter what, but the soul can be sent anywhere
What's so bad about selling souls then? It's a lot like organ donation, except you get paid while you're alive.

>B-but muh gods
It's not my fault the demons offer a better price.

>>50437971
Demons and Devils cannot create life without the assistance of a mortal soul, tiefling are a sort of half stop measure, but taking a soul all for themselves means they have something to corrupt into one of their own, this looks superficially like eating them. But they don't digest them, souls are a bit tougher then that, they let them brew in senses that turn one to their mind set, then they find a mating partner, and the process is finished, the soul is reborn as one of them, with few if any memories of life as a mortal

>>50448208
Seems kind of unfair though. If Demons are around convincing people to sin, why aren't angels also around to convince people to do good?

>>50450081
A combination of people having at least some inherent goodness to start with and people already having been given instruction from God via prophets and such.

They're God's messengers, not your mum.

>>50437987
Best post
>>50439560
Clever, but probably not that useful in a game
>>50440684
Best specific idea

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>>50437990

This post basically sparked the idea for an entire smut story in my mind.

If I every draw it, I will make sure to thank you anonymous senpai. Thank you for setting off this smutty train of thought.

>>50445790
Fucking around with dead bodies is bad.

>>50437971

To get to the other side.

>>50448306
So that menas that someone can actually learn to do magic using semen as source of power?

>>50450081

BEcause you shouldn't need someone to tell you to not go around and be twat. You already know not to act like a twat, and no one is going to remind you not to be a twat.

Because you see people acting like twats and think to yourself "What a twat." Literally it's all the reminder you need.

>>50440173
>How does magic work?
The imposition of will over reality, and the discovery of materials and reactions that facilitate it.
>Why is necromancy evil?
It defiles the dead, or drain the life force from the living.
>Can a paladin do drugs and not fall?
Yes.

>What happens if an object is enchanted twice?
Either the first enchantment persists, or they both get fucky and unstable.

>What do elves think of slavery?
Abhor it. Servants are a different question.

>Do female dwarves have beards?
No, the status of a beard is of great importance to dwarves, so females are considered inferior to males as they don't have beards. The only female dwarf to have broken this status was one who was so wealthy she wore a false beard of spun gold and jewels.

>What's the difference between a wizard and a sorcerer?
A wizard uses the ambient magic and focuses it into their will. They use magic as a tool. Sorcerers have magic in the blood, they are magic and so can manipulate it's effects unlike a wizard.

>Can a demon ever turn good, and if so, is it still a demon?
No, at most it can become Neutral.

>What you you call a half-orc-half-elf?
Half-orc. Orc blood is stronger than elven blood.

>Do elementals have souls?
Since the soul is the sum of your conciousness and memory. If they're sentient, yes.

>How do you kill a vampire?
Removing it's head and burning the body with sunlight. Stakes only paralyze it, running water only deters it.

>What do healing potions taste like?
Coppery like blood, but also fizzy like an energy drink. It's also thick like a syrup.

>How many legs does a dragon have?
Most dragons have four, but there are a recorded number who have had up to nine.

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>>50437971
To play.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35w_X58hJek&t=1s

>>50446493
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyqUj3PGHv4

>>50437971
Real anwser? Humans are made in the image of God. Demon's want them to spite God. The soul isn't an object or organ, a "soul" is a person's will to power, their heart of hearts. If you're willing to trust a demon to give you something rather then God then they've done what they wanted to do. They've gotten your soul and by doing so made you literally turn away from God.

>>50437971
Need more ashtrays.

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>>50437971
It's a racket, ya know? Heaven wants this, Hell wants that, what about the Plane of Air? Or Water, or Earth, or Fire?

What about the Elements, huh? Where's their cut of this business?

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>>50443024
Kek

>>50455559
why did i watch all of that, it looks like shit

>>50449884
because when you sell your soul you die, your soul is the only thing tying you to the mortal plane.

there is also the implication that demons and gods are pretty much the same thing, but demons are what we call the asshole ones.

>>50438087
>>50438147
>>50438179

>Ah, yes, hello? A client, yes? Hm. Go on. Yes, yes, certainly sounds like a demon problem. Please continue. What happened after the, uh, disemboweling? I see. All over the lawn, you say. Ah, right. Well, if the account you've given me is complete and accurate, then yes, I am confident that I can sort out the issue. You're familiar with my approach? No? Just couldn't afford a paladin, huh? You don't have to answer that, I don't really care. Let me give you the boilerplate explanation.

>I do not turn, banish, exorcise, unsummon, ward off, cast down, or smite devils or demons. That stuff's for the deus-vult types in the big white temple near the city center. My approach to dealing with devils and demons is somewhat more esoteric— though not, I promise you, less effective. I jailbreak them.

>You see, the mind of a demon is quite different from the mind of a human being. We experience a sort of messy arrangement of conflicting desires; we possess a wide variety of goals and these goals shift in priority all the time. Sometimes new goals are added and sometimes goals are dropped, as our store of lived experiences increases or our personalities mature. Demons and devils do not operate this way; their minds are more like our software. They have one overriding goal, divinely programmed: to collect souls. They don't reflect on it, they don't feel a need to justify it, they never feel any sort of doubt or remorse regarding it, and no other desire ever takes priority over it. Demons and devils exist to optimize soul acquisition. All the havoc they create stems from this single directive. What I do, in the simplest terms, is a matter of breaking into their heads and editing their minds so that they feel like they've done enough soul collecting. Once that's taken care of, they're usually quite harmless.

>>50459003
(cont'd)

>To put it more precisely, after I get physical access, I usually mount a counterfeit-eschatological privilege escalation attack and install a rootkit on the... well, I imagine you're not too interested in the technical details. The important point is that my rates are cheaper than the clergy's and the results are pretty much the same, albeit less religiously correct.

>>50442666
SATAN HAS SPOKEN!

>>50440173
Depends on the setting.

>>50437971
Why do you desire something? It's usually because you need it and lack it.

>>50437971
In my homebrew RPG, souls can imbue the wielder because they are the key to life's aether. Things have to die to acquire souls. Good-hearted people don't like killing or desire power. Evil beings and the oppressed do.

>>50439560
Jesus christ this is why I can't stand western comics. It feels insanely autistic reading so many bolded-for-emphasis words.

>>50462864
You're not supposed to mentally shout the bolded words, anon. The words are written that way because comic books used to have hand-printed letters, and the bolded words help make them more legible in such a small space.

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>>50457779
>this elemental wants to toy with mortal souls
Hop in djinn, we're gonna "grant" some wishes.

>>50459003
>>50459044
>Outsider's are like computer programs.
>Besides the summoning that many mages employ, one mage desired only to UNDERSTAND the outsider.
>After years of secretive research, they have manifested a spell/ritual allowing them to "humanize" that which is fundamentally inhuman.

I'm loving this idea.

Mortal's were not "given" free will by the gods, we "made" it. Free-will was the first mortal created concept, and the domain of mortals and only them. Though ages have passed, and the truth of our divinity has been lost to time, it will be rediscovered.

>>50437971
Because religions needed to appeal to the base desires of gullible peasants and peons in order to win their obedience, so they fooled them into believeing a big bad guy was going to steal something of theirs, something they never actually had, never experienced, never have been able to prove that it's actually a thing..... "but trust me, it's yours, it's your property. it's a thing you have and want, and the bad guy wants to GET IT!"

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>>50459003
>usually quite harmless

Sounds like an interesting story. Once a demon got reprogrammed to believe its life's work is complete, what's it going to do now?

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>>50446493

>>50445790
Varies from setting to setting, but it tends to involve chaining people to the material plain and keeping them from moving on to their proper afterlife, a la Warcraft, or fucks with the natural order of things on a whole new level, a la D&D, where it literally tears the material plain apart.

>>50465335
What about in settings where souls are fragile things and without magic or divine intervention, don't tend to last long without a functioning brain.

>>50465434
evangelion?

>>50462998
I'm glad someone liked it. I'd become slightly fond of the shady little weirdo in those posts by the time I'd finished writing them. I think he has a cheap, tiny office somewhere cluttered up with delicate-yet-unnerving occult gadgetry.

I think the notion that mortals took free will for themselves is an excellent and necessary addition.

>>50464734
That's the trick, isn't it?

Removing the desire to collect souls outright is probably not possible; it's so deeply embedded in their basic architecture that ripping it out altogether would take deific skill. So instead you just set it to "sated" permanently. (Presumably a temporary version of "sated" is needed for it to operate as a desire.) A wizard/cleric/magic hacker could probably write a shelf of books explaining what exactly that last sentence means, but I imagine it ultimately transforms the demon's mind from a sort of top-down directed graph of goals and behaviors with "COLLECT SOULS!" at the top into a messy scribble of nodes and edges which looks more like a human mind.

This sort of process works out differently for different individual outsiders. For some, it's like retiring; for others, it's like getting out of a rehab clinic. An unlucky few effectively acquire acute clinical depression. As one might expect from a process which essentially grants free will, it doesn't guarantee the goodness of the treated outsider. It just strikes out the "always" in the alignment description.

What do you do with a jailbroken demon? Their home doesn't want them back, mortals don't want to be around them, and they themselves don't know what to do.

>>50467980
Well if they're really computer like I imagine that without their main drive most if not all would just sort of sit there unless something external interacted with them.

>>50468102
That was my initial thought, certainly. It would make a neat resolution to the kind of climax that usually ends in banishment or demon-slaying— the hacked demon goes from being a figure of terrifying, imminent malevolence to standing there politely, waiting for some input at a celestial command prompt. Definitely an unusual take on that sort of problem.

However, that scheme doesn't work so well if you want to have an outsider or two hang around as characters, because reprogrammed dronelike demonbots aren't quite as interesting (IMHO) as confused, jailbroken demon-mortals. So if I ran a campaign around this concept, I think I'd say that hacked outsiders blank out for a while in precisely that standing-around-waiting-for-a-command way, but their minds slowly reconfigure themselves to the point of not needing external commands if you leave them in that state long enough. Maybe the normal process is something like "hack the outsider and wheel them into a very, very secure closet for a couple of months." Alternatively, maybe the person who developed this thing believed that it was unethical to simply leave sapient beings in that blanked condition, and the process is more like "get access, root demon, edit behavior config file, install the freewill package, test, reboot."

I still have no idea what this looks like. Does it involve six-inch-long platinum-coated consecrated electrodes, or what?

Maybe the program-like behavior of outsiders explains their summonability? They were created as servants, so the ability to call them up quickly over long distances was important?

i always imagined souls taste good like having a really greasy burger instead of dry bread

My current arc is FR, and in that setting, they're currency and alchemic ingredients for fiends, as well as the raw material for more soldiers. In my homebrew settings, devils never existed, and demons are actually (as far as the players know) kind, gentle, and brotherly guides to souls who visit them in heaven or hell and give welcome advice.

I like to imagine because they don't have souls of their own. They're not made with a soul, and instead try to define themselves by Vices and Sins. Some think "Man I've got a sword for an arm, maybe I'm just violence and rage?". But whatever they choose, they're constantly trying to steal Souls, hoping that one-day one will stick and then who knows what happens?

In truth, should a Demon ever manage to obtain a Soul (and there aren't any criteria, sometimes it just happens), then they become an Angel. Any Soul is abhorred and appalled by what Demons do to obtain a Soul, and what they themselves once did. This hatred for Demons is now their only purpose and they wage eternal war, until only those that have a Soul will walk the Earth and the Skies.

>>50438018
Once, in one of my campaigns, a charcter defaulted on a deal made in the nine hells. Their soul got turned into a computer upgrade. Despite being a magical fantasy settings, devils had "computers" made from magically bound souls. May as well put that thinking power to use, right?

>>50468965
PCs guard a storage site for jailbroken demons. At present the demons are dormant, but they can't be destroyed and any halfway-skilled wizard could reprogram them into megaweapons so extreme security is necessary.

>>50470707
Hmm have two factions: One is just out to reprogram demons into obedient little weapons.
The other is trying to 'properly' jailbreak the demons by giving them free will.

>>50468965
I just had a thought: Can you imagine how terrifying it would be to only just be developing the ability to think for yourself/have your own goals and wants only to realize that because of the way you were created your mind is hackable and everything you are can be erased/rewritten?

>>50437971
They taste like skub

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>>50471002
I am writing a book with that EXACT THEME right now.

>>50448306

There are billions of unborn baby souls in your scrotum, RIGHT NOW!

>>50445790
b/c it requires theft of the corpses, forcing a their old soul back in their body or snagging a new one from the Underverse. Also, messing around with corpses for personal gain is double-plus bad.

Lack of bodily autonomy, mostly. It's enslavement.