Daemons - based on Egyptian gods - Ushabati models

[Damon]

The reason their background is 'more that of the inquisitor' is because they were created in order to punish her. Their sole purpose is to inflict their Gods' punishment on her. They wouldn't exist if she didn't exist. They were only created because of her, they were only granted entrance into the physical universe because of her. They are not ancient daemons, they were created out of their respective Gods' hatred towards Alexandra. Therefore their background is formed round the Inquisitor.

They don't necessarily get on, they have no loyalty to each other, however they have a common goal. There's nothing to stop them from turning on each other once they have done their God's work.

She is not an insignificant human - she has killed many daemons and so is a direct enemy of the chaos God's. She has been a hindrance to their work and so not only do they wish to remove her but they wish to punish her for what she has done. It was no true hardship for the Gods' to set these daemons on her. The daemons were already created within the warp as they are formed of the Gods' hatred for Alexandra all the God's had to do was grant them passage into the real universe and give them physical form.

They are daemons, not possessed humans or daemonhosts.

They know that if they die they shall be banished for a thousand and one days hence why they fled. They each slaughter countless humans to try and preserve their diminishing presence in the real universe, to gain more power so they are able to kill Alexandra. Who knows they may even try and kill each other, seeing that as a more impressive sacrifice to their Gods.

Their true name is as of yet unknown as they are new daemons. The God's hatred for Alexandra which they were created from cannot have been around before Alexandra was, so the daemons were not around before her either. Therefore their names cannot be known to humans as they only  just passed through the warp. Also the daemons know they need all the strength possible and so won't announce their true names, as this would be a key weakness that could be exploited.

Inquisitors could easily find out about them by seeing the havoc they cause. These daemons aren't just hiding away, subtly influencing people. They are doing anything to survive, slaughtering thousands of humans. The only thing worse than a daemon is a desperate daemon!

[SpanielBear]

The Chaos Gods personally- this I feel may be difficult to justify in terms of fluff. Their interest falls on mortals in terms of influence on specific vices and emotions- and there are Trillions of us, so one mortal is unlikely to hold their attention for long. Dealing with the Emperor- five minutes work: steal some babies, twist some loyalties. And no disrespect to Alexandra, but if she's even equal in power to the emperor then we have a problem...

What the Gods do have, however, are flunkies. Servants, minions, vassals, slaves- Daemon Princes. What I can see happening is this Daemon hunter to have personally upset three independent princes serving the greater powers- three seperate occasions of heroism and thwarting of evil. That these three 'lesser' entities would take umbrage and try to avenge the insult is far more within the bounds of fluff and scale.
It also would mean, background wise, you have a lot more to play with- who the princes are, what Alexandra did to them, how the punishments/agents they sent after fit her specific crime... the list goes on.

[Damon]

@SpanielBear - I love the idea of it being Daemon Princes that she has upset. As you said it's much easier to justify and allows for more interesting back ground. Thanks

[SpanielBear]

Anytime, I'm glad it was useful 

[InquisitorHeidfeld]

The reason their background is 'more that of the inquisitor' is because they were created in order to punish her. Their sole purpose is to inflict their Gods' punishment on her. They wouldn't exist if she didn't exist. They were only created because of her, they were only granted entrance into the physical universe because of her. They are not ancient daemons, they were created out of their respective Gods' hatred towards Alexandra. Therefore their background is formed round the Inquisitor.

Other than that Daemons are not created by the Chaos gods but birthed by events which influence the currents of the Warp it is still a weakness in the background that they are described only in reaction to a human tale.
Their true names are a part of them, as much as your brain is a part of you. It is their self, it defines them, it may never have been discovered but it must exist.

She is not an insignificant human - she has killed many daemons and so is a direct enemy of the chaos God's. She has been a hindrance to their work and so not only do they wish to remove her but they wish to punish her for what she has done. It was no true hardship for the Gods' to set these daemons on her. The daemons were already created within the warp as they are formed of the Gods' hatred for Alexandra all the God's had to do was grant them passage into the real universe and give them physical form.

When the Chaos gods last properly cooperated it was due to the prospect of millions of incorruptable warriors capable of bringing order to the entire Galaxy.
The Primarch project was not even supposed to be the creation of the Adeptus Astartes, the Primarchs were to have been the first, not the greatest.
And even then they couldn't work together for more than the theft of the children before they each started to put their own plans in play and attempt to thwart the plans of the others.

They are daemons, not possessed humans or daemonhosts.

Daemonhost and possessed creatures are made from a physical body and.... Gee, now let me think...

Daemons are immortal creatures and there are many ways by which they may feature, traits such as these may feature later and thinking about them helps to solidify what the Daemons themselves are, it is simply a part of the character. You wouldn't usually meet the parents of a character but that doesn't stop you thinking of them.

Inquisitors could easily find out about them by seeing the havoc they cause. These daemons aren't just hiding away, subtly influencing people. They are doing anything to survive, slaughtering thousands of humans. The only thing worse than a daemon is a desperate daemon!

They have fled and they wish to survive, why should they stay in the Material? Why not simply allow themselves to melt back into the Warp?
Ping! no more threat of banishment.

They seem yet more like they're there to be killed, like good monsters, which is not how (for my money) they should be used.
Each should be a character in their own right, each should have as much of a part in a campaign as any Inquisitor or Rogue Trader...
The feeling that they're there to die in a proper end-of-level-boss-fight is reinforced by the lack of background, of legend, of their motivations and so forth. The only way to eliminate them from the game seems to be to track them, trap them and kill them afterall. If they had true-names recorded somewhere in the Inquisitorial libraries then they could be forced, if they had motivations those could be manipulated... Every bit of background you add gives options within the story, if Darth Vader was just a bit guy with a lightsabre then the Emperor would have killed Skywalker and crushed the Rebel Alliance but he was more than his costume.

What I'm trying to draw out is precisely that - you have a costume and something to stand in it (a model and a statline) but it's nothing without the character behind it.

[Charax]

Wow. this background makes the daemons, and by extension the gods who created them, look absolutely stupid.

I mean, it's not unusual for someone to write a character's background so it makes daemons seem ridiculously inept, but it's somewhat rare when that background is for the daemons themselves.

Rarely do the four Chaos Gods agree on anything especially when it involves the physical universe. However there is an individual who has greatly angered each one of them, Inquisitor Alexandra Veritas. She has slayed many daemons personally and led forces of Grey Knights to banish even more of the daemonic pawns of the Gods.

Absolutely no different to tens of thousands of other Inquisitors. Also it's "Slain"

Her years of daemonhunting have not gone unnoticed by them, the greatest insult was when Alexandra banished one of the 666 most powerful daemons.

Well, that would really have pissed off whichever God that daemon served, but it would have pleased all the others greatly.

Also throwing something that epic into the background without any explanation or elaboration is just Mat Wardian.

Although the life of a mere mortal is but a flickering light to the Chaos Gods, Alexandra has done much to insult the Gods in her brief mortal life in the physical universe.

So has Stern. So has Eisenhorn. So has pretty much every Malleus Inquisitor in existence. Aside from this one example of banishing a single daemon of vague power and indeterminate God, there's no reason for her to be special.

Normally the Gods would not waste their time on a mere mortal, however they all want to punish Alexandra for her work. Each God has sent a powerful daemon through into the physical universe to each inflict a terrible punishment on Alexandra. Khorne's punishent is for his daemon to consume the flesh from Alexandra's body whilst she is still alive. Nurgle's punishment is to inflict one of the vilest and most pestilent diseases upon her. Slaneesh will overload all of her senses causing excruciating pain and suffering, whilst Tzeentch will warp her half eaten body into a hideous spawn of chaos.

This I have no issue with. The gods can be quite petty. However these are not "Powerful" daemons. Powerful Daemons can bend worlds to their whim, shatter reality with a word and drown Solar Systems in blood. These guys can mildly annoy a somewhat obscure Inquisitor who once did something vaguely notable.

The four daemons burst forth from the Warp and attacked Alexandra. She fought them for hours, whilst the warp rift remained open allowing the foul daemons to draw immense power from the warp. Alexandra was tiring, having to battle against four incredibly powerful foes.

This is where you start making the daemons seem stupid. For a start, is giving her four foes really the best use of an open, stable warp rift? Swamp her in Nurglings for god's sake! for all the energy it takes to summon four "powerful" Daemons and reinforce that power over hours they could have deployed a whole army of Daemons to stop her.

Also, she banished one of the 666 most powerful daemons. Does that imply that she's a foe where "attack head-on" is likely to win you the day?

Whilst the daemons were busy fighting, Godric and her banisher managed to close the warp rift

after Hours? wow. Well done guys - you see where deploying a whole army of less-powerful daemons may have been a smarter tactic? some could have protected the supply line to the Warp. These Powerful daemons are stupid.

shutting the daemons off from the immaterium. The daemons continued to fight but their powers grew weaker as their link to the warp and the chaos Gods they drew power from was severed. Alexandra took advantage of their lessening powers and managed to slay the daemon of Slaneesh. The three others realised that they now lacked the power to kill Alexandra and so scattered. Now they each travel around the physical universe wreaking havoc and slaughtering human lives to preserve their presence in the physical universe.

Or they could just let their energies dissipate back to the Warp and actually do something smart like plan or strategise. Voluntarily retreating to the warp isn't "Banishment" or "Losing", daemons operate primarily on hit-and-run tactics from their home turf of the Warp. If they really wanted physical bodies so badly they'd possess something/someone, it takes far less energy than maintaining a full physical presence of their own.

and it's not like this is something they wouldn't know, they're daemons - the mechanics of their existence is second nature to them. even the most mindless warp-creature carries an instinct for possession when they wish to enter the physical realm.

They each believe if they sacrifice enough human lives to their respective God they can gain enough power to inflict their punishments on Alexandra and thus gain the favour of their God.

ok, there's something fundamentally wrong here: The fact that they're independant daemons, with their own thoughts and plans and desires is a mark of their Gods' favour - if the Gods were displeased with them they'd either be pulled back into the Warp by force or reduced to Spawn, or lesser Daemons. the fact that they can believe something already marks them out as being favoured.

When their physical forms were created they took on the guise of the Egyptian gods. They were symbols of immense power and were greatly feared by the humans and so seemed the perfect forms to take. However each deaemon still displays aspects of their God. Those humans ignorant to the ways of daemons know them by the names of the Gods they represent. Their true names are still unknown.

So...you're directly equating the Egyptian Gods with the Big Four now? I mean it makes sense on some level but it's a pretty major leap to just take for granted like that.

[Damon]

Hmmm maybe I have to go back to the drawing board in terms of the background.

[MarcoSkoll]

You're actually quite lucky they match up to those Chaos Gods, because there's a very easy way to keep them Chaos god themed, but without a Slaaneshi one (killing a daemon only a temporary way to be rid of it, and actually destroying its essence being nearly impossible)...

...place their creation pre-Fall. No Slaanesh, no Slaaneshi aspect.

That also gives you a very generous time period to write about their former nastiness.

[Charax]

not entirely true. Thanks to the funky temporal physics involved in dealing with Warpspace interaction with realspace, there were actually daemons of Slaanesh that preceded the creation of Slaanesh itself.

Not *many*, mind you, but they were there

[MarcoSkoll]

Of course, but usually the idea of a "coven of daemons" relates to the major powers, not every not-yet-god there might be, or even the minor deities that might exist. (Malal/Malice, Ans'l, Mo'rcck, Phraz-Etar... there are a few.)

[SpanielBear]

Maybe there is a Slaaneshi one. The other three daemons know there is a Slaaneshi one. Alexandra knows there is a Slaaneshi one. She keeps receiving omens, hints and dark clues about the presence of the Slaaneshi one...
But no-one's ever seen the Slaaneshi one!

After all, how paranoid and terrified would that make someone- you know that there are four things hunting you. Every time you face them it takes every trick, every fibre of your being to fight them off, they still keep coming, and you've never even faced the full complement yet. Each time, each day, every encounter, you'd just keep thinking  "maybe this time..."

[MarcoSkoll]

That sounds like a great idea... aside from the fact it makes me think of school leavers' pranks.

You know, the one where you put three things around the school they don't want to be there (sheep, blow up sex dolls, lists of teachers' passwords - that sort of thing), then number them 1, 3 and 4.

Watch everyone panicking over finding #2.

[SpanielBear]

Oddly enough, thinking of it as a school leaving prank only makes me more convinced that it's something that a Slaaneshi daemon would do... only with extra spikes, leather and depravity. After all, it isn't what Alexandra does when she encounters the daemon that's interesting, but what she's willing to do in order to find it.

[Charax]

Mind games seem more of a Tzeentchian ploy to me.

Hell, the whole egyptian motif in itself is very Tzeentchian, look at the Lord of Change

[MarcoSkoll]

I would have said the same as Charax. Yeah, I can see daemons doing that, but playing a long game isn't a very Slaaneshi thing...