May as well update this again 👁️👁️
Once again, this is pulled from a variety of semi-random conversations, so things may jump around or not have a perfect layout.
The Demonology of the Bug World!
There are two main classifications of demons. Soulborn and Innate Soulborns were- well- born from souls.
Soulborns are often the ones that are more akin to demons in real life religious and mythological depictions: malicious, malevolent, chaotic, etc. A lot of soulborn will steal souls, but not all of them. Some simply get their power from the built up raw emotion and refusal to get better in their own original soul from when they were alive. They can be classified respectively as Soulsteal and Souldraw. An example of Soulsteal would be “Garret” or now the Bored Voice/Noisy made by @pagurus-san . And example of a Souldraw would be Garudo, also made by Pagurus
Then, Innate demons. These demons are entities created by Hymenoptera (or each other) and serve as her divine servants. There are several classifications, each with their own job in the Great After.
Tormentors: Hellborn demonic entities that act as the dangers in the trials. They are the “demons” that people going through Hymenoptera’s trials have to face before entering the Kingdom of After.
Curators: The hellborns who create the tests. They read into each fallen soul and design a test perfectly suited to them.
The Archival Ward: Hellborns keep track of every being that enters and leaves the afterlife. They also decide which ring souls go to.
Retrievers: Hellborns that go out to retrieve rampaging soulborn demons in both the afterlife and the realm of the living. Basically the demon task force.
Servers: Hellborns that work within the kingdom of after tending to all the souls. They make sure everyone who passed the trials gets to the Kingdom safely, and make sure everything is properly taken care of, and everyone is comfortable.
Guards: Hellborns that protect the Great After and everything the resides in it. Their goal is to protect every soul that enters. Whether from outside forces or each other, they are what hangs in the balance of every soul that leaves its body from crumbling to the forces of destruction.
The Anchor: The highest ranking divine servant of Hymenoptera, at one rank below her, and one of my characters. Keeps all souls anchored to the afterlife and has a distaste for soulborn demons due to the trouble they often cause. Often takes part in the same affairs as the retrievers within the bounds of the realm of the dead. They do not leave the Great After unless it is the most dire of circumstances. They also happened to be played by me.
Soulsteal soulborn demons don’t always eat the souls they get. Some horde them like dragons. Even the ones that do eat them though, the soul won’t “digest” very quickly unless the host is dead. Souls are an essence based thing, not something actually physical, so the energy needs time to disperse. Sometimes it just happens to disperse in a demon’s stomach.
The demon also doesn’t need to be there to steal a soul. This is why contracts and “demon hands” work. If a bug signs a contract that hands their soul over, as long as a follower of a demon has a demon hand, the soul can be stolen.
Magic is a type of raw energy. It can be born from a soul, but is not *entirely* dependent on one. That’s why magic like potion making can exist. Dispersed energy. Magic that never latched onto something like a soul. Typically, when magic is separated from the soul, it very quickly disperses as it no longer has a conduit to attach to, however- it is still energy, and if a demon is strong enough. Strong like the Bored Voice for example. They can draw that magical energy into a point and store it in a “battery” (by battery, I mean anything that can be used to store magic. A scroll, a bottle, an artifact, a gem, a focus point, etc), and from there the magic can be “harvested” and used freely
Dealing with Soulsteal demons and their contractors
There are three main Flonase demon types that fight. Guards, Retrievers, and Anchor.
These three types of innate demons are typically the ones that deal with soulborns and their contractors (a contractor being a follower of a demon who will retrieve souls for them in return for some sort of favor). Some are armed with weapons, some use body features like claws or teeth, some use their inherent magic.
Contractors are the easiest to kill, as they are, 99% of the time, mortal bugs, and can usually be killed by other mortals, maybe with the help of magic charms depending on how powerful they are.
The demons themselves though are much harder to kill. That’s why (typically) only the aforementioned innates deal with them. Though, it is not impossible for a mortal to kill them. If you can get ahold of a strong enough weapon (typically blessed by a divine being such as Hymenoptera), you can kill them. Certain poisons, such as a very specific poison made from pothos and red spider lilies, two of Hymenoptera’s symbolic plants.
If a demon is scarily strong, and news catches wind, more often than not, Anchor will be the one to search for it in an attempt to destroy it.
Also, and this one has never truly been done in recorded practice, but if you can convince a soulborn demon to somehow sell away their own soul, they are very liable to lose their power as well, rendering them no more powerful than any other wayward soul.
There are other ways, but these are the most common (aka the ones I have thought the most about)
Summoning a soulborn demon
There is a list of stuff typically used to summon demonic entities.
Enough magic power, either internal, from some sort of magic holder, or from an artifact or magic beacon.
The correct alignment of sigils, the more accurate you can get your sigils that faster your conjuring (as sigils kind of act like coordinates across the different levels of the Great After), however I have never actually created any sigils so do whatever you want there.
A conduit, something to tie the Soulborn to in the living world, the more personal the item is to the Soulborn, the stronger the connection.
And, of course, a “portal”: this can be a drawn spell/summon circle, an alter, a sacrificial pedestal (if giving a sacrifice for the summon which can increase longevity of the summon, but is not necessary), a mirror, a literal portal, etc.
Optional things are sacrifices (can increase longevity, food, gifts, … lives) and hosts (can allow the summon to move around easier or have a tie that makes the summon easier each time, dolls, plants, corpses, etc. The more conscious/intelligent the harder it is to make into a host)
There are- dozens of options for all of these though. Do not feel like you need to stick to a cookie cutter method.
When it comes to how a demon is referred to, in a way, names are kind of- egregoric? The names themselves don’t necessarily need any meaning behind them- more so- if souls give a demon physical power, names give them influential power. The more well known their name is, the more they are feared, the more they can persuade, the more they are called upon, …the more souls they can get.. They don’t need a name necessarily, either. If they get powerful enough, scary enough- others will make names for them, spread them around. Often times, rumored titles have more weight than any other.
This is info from two different conversations barely edited. There is some repetition and continuity strangeness.
Anchor has a deep hatred for most soulborns, but they can still reason out a trolley problem. Not attacking a demon that hasn’t stolen souls in order to find and eliminate a demon that does steal souls is a deal they will make and a promise they will keep.
A few bugs know vaguely of Anchors existence- but he is a very allusive being. Most living beings don’t know about them at all let alone how to summon them. But- there would be two main ways to go about that. Either try to break out of hell from the inside and get captured and pulled back down by him. Or find one of his chains (seemingly infinite chains traveling up and down the levels acting as his main way of transport between them). They are found scattered around empty wasteland occasionally and are typically hidden behind a very powerful illusion.
The only way to get out of hell without alerting Anchor is with outside help, such as a summoning circle. But- that doesn’t stop people from trying.
Some have attempted to fly out, making their ways up through the layers and towards the surface. Some have tried to break out with magic. Some have tried to disguise themselves as innate demons and get out that way. There have been a million different attempts in a million different ways. But- every time they fail. Because, without outside help disabling this *very key part of the system,* … something inevitably alerts Anchor. And a chain with, well, an anchor attached to it, wraps around them and pulls them back down. That’s the reason demon attacks in the realm of the living are so rare. It’s not often things can get out without alerting the security system. And even if they do get out, Anchor sends a team of Retrievers after them.
TLDR: you can try to escape, but chances are, without outside help, some internal system will alert Anchor and he *will* find you.
If you are looking for one of the chains, and can manage to see through the illusion of the chain in some way and bang on it enough, Anchor will sense something is happening show up through the chain. They are connected to him and, not only do they act as a means of travel for him, they can sense the world around them similar to whiskers through touch or vibration receptors through echolocation or pheromones through antennae.
Basically, if you can shut down the illusion that hides them and cause enough sensory input, he will woosh through said chain to your location at record speed (just be careful because his natural response to things being out of order is weary hostility).
All hellborns work for Hymenoptera. But some soulborns can also decide to work for her. There is something called a Convert where, rather than become a demonic entity or simply move to the Kingdom of After, a bug can choose to be “converted” into a demonic entity to work as one of Hymenoptera’s servants. They’re still soulborn but they’re a demon out of choice for good rather than bad. This is quite rare though, and they must be judged either by Anchor or Hymenoptera herself.
Similarly, innate demons can, if they go through the right processes and procedures, change the type of innate demons they are. Take, for example, @0mr-friendly0 ‘s character Melz, a demon who went from a Tormentor to a Retriever.
A little blurb said by Garuda/written by Pagurus that I really liked and will make you read
“Afterlife is a strange place. It defies everything you know, and at the same time, it can be anything you can imagine. To characterise it as briefly as possible, the afterlife is just the way you need it to be. Problem is, you don’t always know what it is you need. But they know. They will put you right where you should be.
When a bug dies, their spirit goes to the Underworld, the domain of the merciful goddess of Death, queen Hymenoptera. If the bug has unresolved issues, which is almost always the case, they have to go through trials before they can be welcomed in the great Kingdom of After. Every trial is designed specifically for every individual bug, so they could work on their problems and become better. Everyone gets a different test, and, like I said, it could be anything."
Reiterating some stuff on ghosts vs souls
Okay, so- souls and ghosts are.. painfully complicated. But I will try to explain it best I can.
“Ghosts. Something prevalent and abundant in the bug world. (Obviously). It can take a long time to file into death, so many souls are given the opportunity to wander about before they truly pass on. They may appear in the living world, even interact with it, but they are not apart of it, trapped in a subdomain of reality. Not alive, not quite in the Great After. When they fully pass on, it is rare for them to reappear as true ghosts, many simply leaving an “essence” behind. Traces of themselves that are detectable but unable to interact or be interacted with.” This was is taken directly from the original ask post I made that this has been reblogged from, just for re-clarification.
Souls and ghosts are- hm. All ghosts contain souls, but not all souls are ghosts. A ghost requires a soul AND a conscious to be separated from the body, but remain together, and not move on to the afterlife. If the soul does not have a consciousness attached, it cannot be a ghost. If a ghost moves on to the afterlife, it cannot remain a ghost, and simply becomes a full spirit in the afterlife.
In terms of “image retention”, ghosts can fully become the shape of their previous body to whatever degree they would like, as they are a fully conscious being. And when they pass on, they leave behind an essence, ecto, a sort of residue that forms and allows them to hold that shape. When the ghost moves on, the ecto no longer has a “host” to attach to and keeps a blurry rendition of the last shape it held and sits in a “repetition” state (it does a randomly chosen action, typically one of high relevance or routine from the host’s life, and does the motions until it fades out and the ecto disperses.)
SOULS on the other hand! ARE EVEN MORE OF A WEIRD ASS THING! A soul IS capable of making a shape! But it doesn’t use ecto, so it’s much harder for it to do. At least- in the overworld. Spirits don’t need ecto to retain a shape in the afterlife. Just conscious thought. A lone soul doesn’t have conscious thought, however, if before separation it was attached to someone with strong enough, emotions, wishes, power, goals, and the like, it can take a vague form, not too dissimilar from residual ecto. However, it will not have a face, outside of maybe blank eyes depending on the strength. It will be foggy, typically being mostly just a shape. And it will not have any body modification in any way. No hairstyles, no clothes, no piercings, no surgeries, no growths, no magical attachments- nada. Just a blank slate in a similar shape to the base body of the original. They are able to form that in the afterlife. It is much harder in the overworld or overworld subdomain, as they cannot produce ecto without a consciousness. But, as an energy, if there is no conduit drawing their power, they can release a light that takes an even vaguer shape of the being, same restrictions, just even harder to tell.
Also, without a consciousness, a soul does not have a “thinking” process, and are simply “reactive”. Depending on the stuff I mentioned earlier (motives, emotions, power, etc.), they will react in different ways to external stimuli, similar to how the conscious would react to it, but the reaction for a soul is just that. A reaction. There is no greater thought in what they do, as they are not the conscious.
Sleep is a “vulnerable” state, where the fabric of reality doesn’t really apply all that well. Which, in turn, allows for realms and magics to essentially be able to run rampant and interact with each other in dreams. Main reason why so many visions happen in dreams. This is also why gods, demons, and other powerful beings can contact or be contacted in dreams.
Bodies WITHIN the afterlife
There aren’t “bodies” in the way we think of them just lying around in the afterlife. BUT- the spirits have the physical forms that act as stand in bodies so they can properly endure the trials.
The most vulnerable state a soul can be in when in the underworld is “en pass”, aka when they are transported across the layers to their trials, as that’s when they are the least guarded by actual innate demons.
How What Awaits It (the trial areas) of the Underworld look
It’s-kind of “subjective” in a way? It’s hard and convoluted to describe. It really heavily depends on where you are. In terms of the trial areas, there are hundreds of layers, for every emotion, sentiment, concept. etc. Rage, beauty, lies, grudges, doubt, pride, etc etc etc. There are billions if not trillions of bugs on earth, so hell is always busy and needs a lot of places for a lot of different people. Some are filled with fire and lava, others are empty rooms, some are infinitely spanning hallways of office buildings.
The largest factor though, is the bug themself. The trials are specifically tailored to each one, and built around their personalities and what they need to improve on. They are meant to, sometimes metaphorically, but sometimes even literally, face themselves and the worst parts of themselves. And that is different for everyone.
The one commonality is that is the case across the whole place though- is it’s unsettling. There is always a feeling of unease, things always feel uncomfortable, nothing is ever happy. It’s typically not to the point of being traumatizing- but it’s always just- it doesn’t feel right to be there. Ever. At any point.
The worst part though, is you are stripped of your security. The things you hold most protected are foreign. For example, Feraster’s khopesh, the weapon they have carried since childhood and has saved their life several times, wouldn’t do *anything* while there, and they would have to learn to exist in different ways. It’s stripping bugs down to their most vulnerable state.
Also, despite the layers, unless you’re in a structure, there is no true sky or ceiling anywhere. It just kinda goes up into a vaguely colored fog around 100 meters up. And it’s empty, too. A lot of it, when not in a specific trial, is just- empty, barren space and you won’t see anyone, demon or spirit, for a long ways.
The most horrifying spaces though, are ones taken over by malicious soulborn demons. Sometimes intentionally, sometimes even just peripherally if strong enough, soulborns can twist a portion of land to be similar to them. Say a demon is water based, their “claim” of land would become like a horrifying watery abyss of some sort.
Some examples of things you could find- A crowd full of faceless people, a vast empty sea, an abandoned mansion, a house with a clock that ticks ever so slightly too loud, etc etc etc. The trial areas are nigh-infinite so you will find nigh-infinite little miseries and misfortunes.
(This next part is info added on and taken directly from another conversation, so there might be some reiteration)
The Great After is also a lot of empty wasteland space, and it is different depending on what level you are on. Dry wasteland? Wet wasteland? Fiery hellscape? Empty void? Liminal environment? Kinda up to you what you wanna do for that, and if you want to just pick one or travel between levels.
Also it terms of trials, due to all the empty space, you won’t often be going through them but rather by them, unless they’re larger trials like some sort of city simulation or a “group” trial (which is rare and typically used for individuals who died in conflict with each other).
But- be creative with those if you wanna go through them or just mention them, almost anything goes, and in terms of whose trials it could be anyone from a chronic procrastinator to a serial killer.
The afterlife is massive and there is a lot going on all the time because there are a lot of dead people all the time. I mean- Hymenoptera’s kingdom alone is dimensionally several times larger than the Earth, and the trial levels are even larger than that
TLDR: It’s confusing. Hell is really big, and there’s a lot going on, and a lot of it looks very different. Some places depend on the spirit, some places are warped by demons. There are hundreds of rings/levels/plains/whatever you wanna call them and they only really have vague themes. Kind of just- the best way to describe it- is think of scenarios that would make you vaguely uncomfortable for some places (normal hell trials), empty uncomfortable expanses for some places (places between trials), and terrifying twisted scary places for where demons have taken over. Draw what you want, because if I were to describe it all. It would take probably years just to pick it all apart.
The Kingdom of After itself is a whole different can of worms, and will be explained at a later date.
Blehhhghghgh that was the longest update yet, took a full two hours to write and everything (please, Tumblr, don’t kill me when I post this. I will genuinely cry). I’ll update more at another time!
