Strap yourselves in, because we’re in for a huuuge multi-entry. So huge, in fact, that this post is just an introduction to it, and each individual demon will get their own.

To understand the what 4e demons are like, we have to talk a bit about the cosmology of D&D 4th Edition, which is significantly different than that of previous editions.

Fourth Edition’s cosmology has been nicknamed the World Axis, because it’s more, well, vertical than the wheel-shaped Great Wheel of earlier editions. You have the World at the center, with its fey and shadow echoes to either side. You have the Astral Sea above, and the Elemental Chaos below. We’re focusing on that last one here.

The concept of the Elemental Chaos is that you take all the elemental planes which used to be separate and make them the same place. It’s the natural home of both traditional elementals and what used to be called “quasi-“ and “para-“ elementals back in the AD&D days. It’s also the home of the Primordials, titanic elemental beings who came into existence at the dawn of time and decided to create the world just for kicks. They would eventually get a bit tired of it, and begin thinking of destroying the whole thing and building something else.

The gods came into existence in a similar way up there in the Astral Sea, and when they saw the world they quite liked it. They went to war with the Primordials to stop them from unmaking the world - angels and archons, which we already saw, were the rank-and-file soldiers in this Dawn War.

Now, legend has it that long before even the Dawn War, there was this god named Tharizdun. He saw the other gods and thought it would be swell if he was lord over them all. He roamed to the ends of the universe looking for a way to do that, and somewhere out there he found a tiny shard of ultimate evil. Tharizdun wasn’t a nice fellow even before touching the shard, but after he did that he was completely corrupted.

So he took the shard to the deepest part of the Elemental Chaos and planted it there like a seed. This seed sprouted and swallowed everything around it like an expanding black hole. Everything and everyone in there was completely corrupted. Tharizdun tried to lead an army of corrupted elementals out of that cyst of evil to conquer, well, everything, but the other gods banded together to stop him and seal him up in a place only they knew. They couldn’t destroy the cyst, though, so it remained.

This cyst is the Abyss. The corrupted elementals are Demons. Demons don’t belong in the cosmology the way elementals or even Primordials do. Demons are wrong.

Demons don’t want wealth or power. They have no use for the souls of mortals and don’t care about corrupting them. Demons only want to destroy as much as possible before they themselves are destroyed and reborn in the Abyss to do it again. They only organize through intimidation and brute force, with stronger demons bullying weaker ones into servitude. Visually, they’re all terrifying monsters. The one whose looks are closest to those of a person has six arms and and the lower body of a snake.

The strongest demons are the Demon Princes, primordials who were caught in the Abyss when it formed and were corrupted. They include a lot of the classic “usual suspects” of D&D: Orcus, Demogorgon, Baphomet… There’s also Lolth, a goddess who became kind of an honorary archdemon after she moved into a region of the Abyss called the Demonweb Pits. It’s quite likely the influence of the Seed of Evil has corrupted her as much as it did Tharizdun.

Demon Prince-level baddies get their own separate entries: the Demon entry is for the non-unique monsters beneath them, which can still be quite badass themselves. The next posts will cover these.

The Monster Vault has several demons that don’t show up in the Monster Manual. That’s because these particular demons show up in the Monster Manual 2 and 3! They are: the abyssal eviscerator, the babau and the dretch. Since they do show up on the Monster Vault, I’ll talk about them using information from those later Manuals after I’m done with the MM demons.