Several bound folios
Info for Demon Summoning.
Intro
These large, parchment pages are bound by a wooden clip. They are obviously each loose-leaf folios, all part of some larger work.
There are four folios total. To examine a particular folio, type:
Read folio1 Read folio2 Read folio3 Read folio4
folio1
Most void scholars and even some lay folk have heard tale of demonkind. The most common image associated with such tales, legends, or firsthand experience tells of beasts which are so horribly strong or wickedly alien that even the least of them are formidable.
What fewer know is that there are a class of demons which are specifically a mockery of the spirit world. These creatures seldom have explicit shape, or form, but they do have much of the intangible nature one normal sees in spirits. Unfortunately, demons such as this seldom possess the benevolent or at least indifferent natures of the free form spirits of mortals. Rather, these are filled with a great hatred and malevolence, often directed at mortals and even other demons who possess material form.
Doubtless there are many, perhaps even an infinite number of such demonic spirits in the Void. However, there are three broad categories of them of which we in the dark arts are aware.
folio2
Firstly, there are the "devouring spirits", which seem to thrive in the presence of the twin excesses of gluttony and starvation. These spirits are generally dark and wispy, and filled with insubstantial mouths, each clamoring or reaching for some sustenance, forever unable to feed themselves, as they have no form.
While commonly fond in the torturous mazes of the Void, these spirits are often called to serve by scholars. Rather than fighting or serving some immediate use, however, the wise scholar will keep such a spirit at his side until he encounters a likely victim. At the time, he will order the spirit to actually possess his target!
Victims afflicted by the mental presence of the spirit will be consumed with a ravening hunger, and be forced to eat food at a nearly constant rate, or lapse into the worse sort of behavior. Documented instances of ghoulish cannibalism abound, as well as the famous case of Nemlith Caridor, whose was possessed by his own demon. Powerless to resist, Nemlith devoured an entire bowl of poisoned fruit, which he had been in the habit of duping unfortunate subordinates into eating.
folio3
The second type of vaporous demon-essence is more powerful. Known only as the "tenebral horror", this spirit appears as a noxious, yellow mist, in which dozens of all-too real jaws clatter mindlessly.
Tenebral horrors are reputed to roam the streets of Logor, lurking in the alleys and cul-de-saacs of that dread city. There, they feast on what smaller demons they can tear the flesh from, as well as the occasional succulent mortal soul.
Scholars who can manage to control these demons use their hunger for blood to good advantage. When bound, these demons will obligingly engulf opponents of the scholar, their jaws feasting with abandon. The wounds left by the thing tend to fester, being unlike any normal wounds. Care should be taken that the scholar who conjures the horror does not become its victim.
folio4
The third, and final type of the immaterial demons known are the so-called "unclean spirits". Totally dark and immaterial, the area surrounding these beings is generally cloaked in swaths of frigid air. Pale lights of lifeless blue shine from the depths of the demon, but these seem primarily designed to intimidate, as they can sense living things in most any environment.
Little is known of the origins of this demon, but it has been conclusively proven that powerful magic-using demon lords have been sighted with them in attendance, or used by them as a herald for speaking through possessed mortals. Curiously, these defiled spirits were prominent in the court of Xiganath, who was served by Nyogthua, one of the twin lords of demonic magic. One hypothesis accepted by many scholars is that the unclean spirits are actually created from the souls of mortals, but in a crude, brutal fashion, that copies the structure of the soul into a demonic matrix.
The most powerful archmages can bind and control the unclean, forcing them to serve at their side. Like the devouring spirit, the unclean can be ordered to possess enemies of the void scholar, assuming a partial command of their body! Those afflicted with the presence of an unclean spirit often take up a similar demeanor and behavior, unwittingly becoming more like their demonic master. Holy ground becomes anathema to them, as does the practitioners of various forms of positive energy. Most alarmingly for the victim of such an infiltration, the presence of a being of negative energy within their minds leaves them vulnerable to command by practitioners of the void.
The tale is told of a minor king in the Rirro Jagka, who was afflicted in secret by such a demon. The cunning void scholar who used the spirit ordered the king to appear in public, and admit that he had been dabbling in the void. Such was the public outcry that the spirit scholars were brought in to test the king, who promptly went mad and attempted to murder them. Deposed and exiled, it was revealed that having no heirs, he had left the kingdom to the void scholar. And, by the time the demon had left the king, he was living like an animal in the wilderness, and was promptly stoned when he returned to his city.
