The Demon Realm:
Haven, of course, is a flat world, the mortal realm is on the side commonly held to be the upside, or topside… though such distinctions are meaningless… the so called underside is the home to Demons.

To the Denizens of Haven, it is known that once the Demons warred with the Gods, though the cause is not known, and were exiled to the Demon Realm. It is known that demons are dangerous and untrustworthy, but that they do have to observe their own rules.  The Magi who study such things understand that Demons are beyond Fate, that common divinations and prognostications can not predict or account for a Demon’s actions, and by extension, a sure sign of demonic involvement is prophecies failing to come to pass, the failure of simple divinations and so forth.
Demons, it should be understood, don’t actually have much cause to come to the mortal realm, though they may have motivations much as any man might.  Granted a place of their own, by ancient treaty, they made a world more suitable to their natures… and while some may find the mortal realms more pleasing, most do not.  

To mortal eyes, the world and the gods all seem to work together in harmony, more or less…. At least compared to the apparent chaos of the Demonic.  In actually, the Old Gods had eons to build a world that was acceptable to all of them, even before the arrival of Demons, and eons more to refine it, perfect it, before mortals first appeared. A vast number of things were created after the fact to accommodate mortals, including vast hosts of lesser gods to run things in the Mortal realm.

In contrast, the Demon Realm is much less refined, less cohesive because it is vastly younger, and the oldest, most powerful demons never undertook the effort to make it easier for the weakest of their kind to thrive there… much less common mortals.  That said, there is not much difference between the most common forms of demons and mortals, and mortals have learned to survive in the demon realm.

To get to the demon realm it is necessary to either find a portal linking the two, be summoned by someone in the demonic realm, or to go to the very edge of the world and climb several miles along the rim. Most portals and summons take advantage of the peculiar nature of the barrier that keeps the Realm from being dissolved by the Sea of Chaos upon which it floats, and it is possible, though rare, for those seeking to use such means to be diverted to either the Divine Realm of the Gods or the Land of the Dead, while the climb (or much more rarely, tunneling through the world) is merely physically taxing and dangerous.  Demons, of course, may use the same means to enter the mortal realm.  Only the most powerful demons have the means to return under their own power, but many lesser (but powerful) demons may have followers in the Demon Realm who can summon them back.

One of the most important distinctions between Demons, well, everything else, is that for Demons there is no distinction between Soul and Flesh.   One of the more frustrating facts of life for more predatory demons is that eating the flesh of mortal creatures is not as… enriching… as eating the flesh of their fellow demons.  Even the Gods make this distinction… when the Divine enter the mortal realm they clothe themselves in flesh, when performing their divine duties (Such as the Sun soaring across the sky) they may clothe themselves in their ‘true flesh’ or their ‘divine flesh’.  Demons have no such need.

However, much as the old Gods manifest in the structure of reality, so too do the oldest and most powerful Demons, or selected proxies, manifest as the reality of the Demon Realm. The greatest mountains are forged from the flesh-souls of a dozen demons, the oceans and rivers of greenish sludge are the liquefied flesh of N!xalia, called by some She of Life, the progenitor of most of the lesser demons.

The Demon Realm is a world of sand the color of dried blood, washing over glossy black stone, the petrified remains of demons who lost the will to live.  Mortals who die here do not become ghosts, nor do they turn to the realm of the Dead, but persist in rotting flesh, until only their soul, made manifest, remains… and those who have experienced this walking death often fall, buried by the sands until they too are black stone.

A black sun, Ge-tchu, hangs in a washed out yellow sky that barely conceals the maddening sight of unformed chaos beyond.  The sky is the shadow cast by Ge-tchu. (Gay-TuhChoo, not Get-you).  Rivers of greenish sludge churn turgidly over this harsh and barren land.   Ge-tchu was chained to the sky by the Eldest, whose name is unknown to all mortal men and most gods, and set on fire for some ancient sin… and during the nights he bathes in the soothing (to a demon) ‘waters’ of N!xalia and is reknewed, for She is his mother, or so the Demons say.  The very center of the Demon Realm is the great mountain Yraju, whose name means legion, for it was made of the bodies of those slain in the war against the Gods. Yraju is full of tunnels and caverns, homes to the most powerful Demons, and her jagged flanks are dotted with foul and smokey factory fortresses of Talos and the keeps of the Demon Lords who rule the lesser kinds of demons.  Smaller towers and keeps may be found throughout the Realm, all made of the same black stone, or more rarely the reddish stone of Yraju, from whence the sands flow. The least demons make their homes of bricks the color of rust, made from the soil where the red sands mix with the river sludge.  Entire cities may be found in the realms.

The rarest of buildings are the towers of the Dealyreath, which are made of grey stones brought from the mortal realm. It is said that in the earliest days, the Dealyreath built a mighty city of brass at the feet of Yraju, but when they turned on one another they destroyed it, and its walls were taken by the denizens of Yraju as trophies.

The vast majority of things made in the Demon Realm are made of only those materials, for there are no mines of gold or iron or other things, the only forests are made of demonic plants… though such wood may be used by those bold enough to gather it, in time it too will petrify.  However, demons are not adverse to claiming prizes and sacrifices of material things from the mortal realm, and as most demons are immortal (though many of the least breeds have spans more akin to mortal races), they can accumulate quite a bit. So too, the Demon Realms have not suffered the periods of Banality, when the Gods shut down the magics available to Mortals, and so they can cast the most potent of magics, the creation of matter from the raw stuff of chaos, though they must make obeisance to Ge-tchu, who is the Guardian of the Way, or drink deeply of N!xalia… for She is endless, and it is said that some of her tributaries flow into and from the Sea of Chaos that waits to dissolve the world.

Orders of Demons:
The Eldest, the First Demon, who found Haven in the Divine Age and led his, or her, fellows to it from the Sea of Chaos (or, in some theories, created the rest of the Demons in the Sea of Chaos in order to have an army) remains unique in that this being is the only thing to ever leave reality for unreality and return.   There is a lot of speculation as to the name of this Demon, but unquestionably he exists, and is the most powerful of all demons. Beyond that, only a tiny handful of the most powerful and least communicative beings in all reality know any more than that.  

The Elder Demons: Creatures of the Divine War, the Godswar, beings who have swum the Sea of Chaos that dissolves and remakes all things, these are powerful beings as strong as any God. Ge-tchu and N!xalia are two of these powerful beings, almost incomprehensibly alien. None have ever been successfully summoned to the Mortal side of Haven, and should one ever appear in Haven it is certain that a second Godswar would begin.  It is the threat of their might that keeps the Gods from being overly protective of the Mortal realm from minor demonic visits, or so it is said.  These demons officially may enter Heaven on diplomatic business, and over the eons one or two may have even been reaped by Death, and some portion of their essence resides forever after in the Realm of the dead.   Indeed, perhaps most notable of all the Elder Demons is Oi, called the First Dead, whose sundered heart tore an abyss through unreality, and whose body and soul were sundered by the divine sacrifice that killed him, and who was reborn as The Barrier and Death.  

Demon Princes:
 It has been said that the Demon Princes were the first generation of Demons born in Haven, crafted from the essence of Chaos to exist in this place, as footsoldiers in the Godswar after the death of Oi.  Certainly they have more in common with mortals than they do with their sires, having fixed and limited bodies that at least have a passing familiarity with reality.
In truth, the Demon Princes are merely the most powerful of all the lesser Demons. While many were, in fact, the creations of the Elder Demons during the Godswar, a large fraction of them are more minor demons who clawed their way into the highest tiers of power over the eons.  It is said that all of the Demon Princes have six fingers per hand, and so 12 is said to be a sacred number to Demons, though if this means that a demon that grows powerful enough will gain (or lose) fingers is unclear.  It is clear that the ranks of the Princes contain 144 of these potentates.  It is also clear that a Demon Prince is somewhat more powerful than the lesser Gods, but among their kind they are not worshipped, but are viewed instead as kings or emperors.  The vast majority of the Princes live only in Yraju, but they have been summoned to the Mortal Realm from time to time, and according to legends they are large enough, and powerful enough, to lay waste to cities without recourse to magic.

Examples: H’x’du, called the Principle of the Air, depicted as a freakishly tall man with twelve arms, each bearing a curved sword (held so as to resemble a whirlwind), and four eyes spaced around his bald head.  H’x’du accepts as sacrifice birds, particularly raptors of all sorts, and is blamed for the extinction of the Kilirea in the Golden Age.

G’sh’k, called the Shadow Lurker, a bearlike beast figure with six talons on each of six legs, and 144 wickedly curved teeth in a snarling maw. G’sh’k has no eyes nor ears, and hunts purely by smell, and his barbed tongue is used to slurp the brains of intelligent kills from their skulls.  If he is summoned, the Demonologist must sacrifice themselves , but he may be then unleashed to take revenge upon the people who have wronged the summoner.  Those slain by G’sh’k, including the summoner, do not enjoy the peace of death, but their rent souls persist in a beastial state, savage and untamed, forever after.

Ruksa, the formless.  Ruksa may take any form he, or she, wishes, mimicking perfectly in form and behavior the target. It is this way that Ruksa may even enter the chambers of the Gods and is believed to be the patron of assassins. The only way to spot the demon is that Ruksa can never have other than six fingers on one had.  To summon Ruksa it is necessary to provide a living sacrifice, whose form the Demon will take during its time on the Mortal realm. It is said that the demon will refuse the sacrifice if anyone knows the victim has been taken for this purpose. To seal a pact, it is also necessary to allow the demon to live in the form of a family member of the summoner, meaning that a loved one must also be sacrificed.  It is said that this Prince may only be slain in its natural form… though ominously, it is also said that Ruksa has no form because it was taken by the Gods.

Dbarra:  Once a minor Demon Lord, this bloated fiend has grown in power of the last millennia is a ‘half god’, worshipped by cannibals.  Dbarra grew powerful enough that he attacked and ate I’ku!i, an ancient Demon Prince, and took her power.  Dbarra is a bloated barrel shaped man-thing, with arms for legs, and horrific black talons on all four hands.  He has no neck, but a massive, shark fanged maw with his eyes inside his mouth, and a massive fanged penis that drags in the dirt.  A few depraved souls believe he favors rapists as well as cannibals.  He is favored by several varieties of undead, including vampires and the more intelligent ghouls.  To summon Dbarra it is necessary to take two victims, one to be consumed by the summoner(s) and a second as a feast for the demon. He never manifests in the mortal realm personally but rather animates a large mass of stone or wood as a ‘proxy body’.   Dbarra, for reasons lost to history, has a particular hatred of Elves… this may be related in some fashion to the cannibalistic feast of the followers of Dealyryeath at his moment of Apotheosis.

There are, of course, more.

Demon Lords:
The myriad rules of Demonkind, these are the creatures most people think of when they think of demons. This type of demon is summoned most frequently, and the vast majority of demonic lore references these demons. Each is unique, as the Demon Princes are, and they have a wide range of levels of power.   While they are unique, unlike the Princes, the Lords are more likely to resemble one another superficially, and also to resemble mortal races.  

v'Suthk:  One of the more powerful Demon Lords, though less for any effort on her part (and she is undeniably female), than through her popularity among Demonologists.  v'Suthk resembles a tall buxom woman with exotic features (including some common demonic staples as talons on her hands and fangs, and exotically patterned skin), and always appears nude.  She accepts living women as sacrifice, preferring young and virginal women above all others, and these sacrifices she always takes back to the Demon Realm with her.  She has the ability to incite blind lust in those she wishes.  While she can be summoned for sexual purposes, this is always a bad idea, for no demonologist has devised a way to survive coupling with her.  She does have the ability to drain the souls of men second hand… that is she passes on her ability to consume her lovers to another woman (or shares it among several women, weakening the danger of her gift commensurate with the number of ‘shares’.) and so she is summoned often by women seeking revenge on their lovers.   She has spawned a ‘race’ of lesser demons known as the Daughters of v'Suthk who, collectively, share her gift (thus each coupling with a Daughter sends a tiny fragment of the lover’s soul straight to the demoness… a small enough amount that it is never noticed until too late, perhaps a day at a time). The Daughters are all beautiful and lusty creatures, thus she is frequently summoned to arrange long term service of Daughters to Mortals, rather than risk dealing with the lesser demons individually.  v'Suthk is said to have been born, unique and perfect, from N!xalia, walking from the demon sea.

Wva-ge: This demon lord is said to be the last member of an ancient and extinct ‘race’ of demons born of Ge-tchu, born of his wrath and agony at his punishment. Wva-ge is a twelve foot tall man apparently made of rusted iron, burning with an eternal fire that flickers blackly like the light of Ge-tchu.  Wva-ge is summoned by either the sacrifice of the summoner’s left hand, or by shedding the blood of a blacksmith, and he provides a weapon to the summoner.  This weapon is always enchanted (and typically made of the black soul of a dead demon) and powerful, but if the summoner does not kill with it each day, then the summoner dies to feed the blade.  Dozens of such cursed weapons (for they will offer their powerful benefits to anyone who accepts their power) litter the landscape. Wva-ge feeds off the souls of those slain by these weapons, making them profane in the eyes of the Gods (Particularly the Smith, who intended the souls of the dead to serve the Great Engine).  The Emperor of Tenebria is said to possess several of these weapons, including a headsman’s axe used to execute the worst criminals in the Empire (though how the headsman can use this axe without suffering Wva-ge’s curse is unknown).

Vuzak’te: a child of G’sh’k,  and the scion of an entire, if blessedly rare, race of demons only slightly less fearsome than Vazak’te.   This demon has six arms and four legs and two heads.  Neither head has a mouth but rather a horrific maw full of fangs and mandibles that dribbles constantly a stream of toxic, acidic saliva that dissolves the flesh of the afflicted.  Vuzak’te is notable for spawning a large number of horrific lesser demons, including the Luiia, the Uutkca and the Bohk!a.   Vuzak’te leads a horde of his kin across the deserts of the Demon Realm, nomadic and predatory, feeding off of weaker demons and stray mortals that cross their path, like a horde of giant locusts.  When summoned, a difficult process involving several sacrifices that must be released to run freely, Vuzak’te occasionally brings a number of his lesser kin with him and cannot be ordered but more… aimed at enemies.  

Lesser Demons:
The vast majority of demons are roughly as powerful as the mortal races. It is rare to find a unique demon of this kind, but rather entire races of similar lesser demons.  One notable difference is that all demons are essentially ageless, there are no child forms, no old demons…  they are not truly immortal, for the lesser demons do die, withering away until they petrify.  Few demonologists even know a fraction of the lesser demon races, and they are rarely summoned directly. It is more common to summon a Demon Lord to gain access to large numbers of lesser demons to use as footsoldiers… or special sacrifices for other dark magicks.  If a ritual or enchantment needs demonic blood or flesh, it is often easier to acquire it from a lesser demon than from one of the powerful lords.

‘Familiar’ Demons:  Children of Ruksa, or so it is said, these are  a very weak race of demons who have the power of skinwalking, able to ‘possess’ a body of a small creature (no larger than a toddler) and wear it as their own… though this kills the body, sending the savaged soul onto its eternal rest. They are very popular among demonologist and even ordinary wizards and witches as pets.   They are rarely seen in their natural forms, which are small twisted creature that scuttle about on all fours and hide in shadows, avoiding direct light, with a barbed tail with a weak poison that causes incredible itching around the wound.

Daughters of v'Suthk: These demons resembled beautiful women, slightly fey looking (pointed ears, somewhat wild), with delicate fangs and talons and ruddy skins.  The Daughters have two notable ‘powers’, the first is that their exact appearance changes subtly to match the desires of the viewer (with multiple viewers it will settle into a sort of average of the common ideal of beauty), and the ability to produce and even nurture mortal children from blood and semen.  The Daughters can, in fact produce (as any demon with sexual characteristics) hybrid children with mortals in the usual fashion, but the children ‘created’ by the Daughters are ‘purely’ mortal, with only the taint of the demonic magic making them different than ordinary children.  

Jujia:  This race of demons appears to have been created solely to serve the Dealyryeath that live in the Demon Realms. Of course, the only proof of that this is they history of the Jujia is that these demons are only ever seen in the presence of the Vile Ones.   Like many demons, the Jujia do not stand erect, but tend to scuttle about (sort of like scrawny, hairless apes). These demons have large, heavily clawed feet, but their hands are long and spindly, delicate and suitable for delicate tasks.  Jujia attack by leaping upon their foes and tearing at them with their feet and biting with fanged mouths.  Witnesses describe these demons as looking like dried bags of leather wrapping a jumbled collection of bones or sticks, topped by great gemlike eyes.

Demonic Beasts:   The difference between lesser demons and demonic beasts is not one of power but of intellect.  There are demonic vermin, even tiny insects, an greater beasts like the kin of Vuzak’te.   Most demons are more aggressive and dangerous than their mortal analogs, but then too, most demons are more aggressive and dangerous than mortals, even accounting for levels of power.

Demonic plants:  Most of the plantlife in the demonic realm is as purely demonic as anything else, even to having a lineage to a demonic prince or Elder. The plants largely ‘feed’ on the red sand and black stone, drinking the thick sludge that a few wags have called ‘demon water’, and so they can grow.  They are not, however, adverse to more predatory feeding, with soporific pollens, blood drinking vines and saw grasses.   There are a few scattered forests, rare though they may be, which are almost entirely populated by a variety of demonic plants… or beasts that are fearsome enough to withstand the onslaught, much quieter than mortal forests.  Demon wood is a useful material for enchantments, though extremely rare as no one has discovered a means of summoning plants, thus the only way to get it is to travel physically and collect it personally, or negotiate with a powerful (and dangerous) demon for the substance.   Some demon plants are similar enough to beasts to be summoned, but such strange creatures are not ‘woody’ in nature, more like aggressive weeds and vines than ‘trees’.

Verra the Demon Goddess:

Few things will set of a theological or Demonological debate faster than bringing up the existance of Verra, the Demon Goddess.  It is thus necessary to discuss the nature and role of Verra in the demonic scheme of things.

There is a popular if not well supported theory that Verra is the Eldest. Let us simply point out that no scholar of the Demonic actually believes this theory.

In terms of raw power, and general respect among Demons, Verra is the most powerful of the Demon Princes. She even has the six fingers of a Demon Prince. However she is not, it is believed, one of the traditional 144 Demon Princes, and does not reside within Yraju with the others, but has a floating citadel that orbits the vast Demon Mountain.  This citadel is, as befitting a God, more a floating city-realm, occupied by demonic and divine servants of the Goddess, and just as the Demon Princes have the power of a God but are not worshipped (or rarely so), so too does the Goddess have the power of a Demon but IS, in fact, worshipped by Demons, just as she is worshipped by mortals.  

Verra can not be summoned, however, but somehow crosses freely between the realms as she wishes.  Like many of the more alien gods, her motives are inscrutable, though she easily communicates with mortal and demonic worshippers, and is known to violate the divine mandates freely (making her one of the more active Gods in Haven).  For reasons of her own she has spread demonology to the mortal realm, teaching mortals the secrets of summoning demons, and has caused one of the foulest (by human standards) of demons to be worshipped as a god, granting him a small measure of divine authority.

Verra does accept sacrifices, as a Demon, though she choses which supplicants to respond to, and what to do if she arrives, as well as more traditional worship.

A large number of cognates of Verra in the mortal realm take on trickster aspects in legends and myth, perhaps as a feature of her refusal to obey Divine Laws unless it suits her, though among demons she has no such aspect.  Her demonic worshippers ascribe to her the belief that she taught the Elder Demons how to make the lesser demon races, which would make her a very old God indeed... perhaps even an Old God, with memories of the Godswar, utterly at odds with her general approachability by mortals (though in this she shares a small measure of similarity to the Sun and even Death, both of whom vastly predate Mortals, yet both have communicated without using lesser gods as mouthpieces directly, and take mortal forms in many myths). As Verra does have some relations with motherhood in the old tenebrian traditions (where she is most understood), this may not be as far fetched as it sounds.

The Citadel of Verra:

A vast floating palace-city floating above the red sands of the Demon Realm, slowly circling the great mountain Yraju. As a display of power, the exterior walls are made of the black stone of the demon realm, though many of the interior walls and buildings are made of mortal realm stones and metals.  The Citadel is laid out as a grand, cyclopean city, occupied by a variety of demons (including more than a few of the powerful Lords) and mortals, including a few races that have not been seen in the Mortal Realm for an Age or more (rumors of immortal survivors of Irem persist, if unproven).  The more powerful and beloved live in the interior quarters of the Citadel, which has most of the features of an actual city... though one solely dedicated to the worship of the Goddess whose home it is.

The House of Verra lies in the very center of the Citadel, and resembles a giant ziggurate-temple made of some metal unknown to mortals, one that reflects the black light of Ge-tchu as Gold reflects the golden light of the Sun.  A giant statue of Verra, serpentined, many armed and terrible towers over the citadel, crowing the House of Verra, and though the statue is made to have a front and back, no matter which angle one approaches the House, the statue is always facing towards the viewer, a manifestation of her divine power.

It is said that the inside of the House of Verra is larger than the Citidel itself, and that with are doors that lead to Heaven, to the Realm of the Dead and, of course, to the Mortal realm, that there are a thousand, thousand gems in her throne room, each allowing her to look out through the eyes of her many statues.  Of course, nothing without the power of a god could actually say what was within, for lesser beings simply can not perceive or remember what lies within.

Note to self, replace Hell-Forge post eaten by internet failure.