Demon's origin in first Doom.

[Ravick0]

Hi there.
(I'm not sure if it should go here or in Everything Else, but...)
 

I was talking to some friends about how, in the Universe of the first two Dooms, every person who dies can generate 3-4 soldiers for the forces of Hell.

Say, the bad guy's body can become a zombie, his soul can become a LostSoul, the guy himself can become a demon, and, if that demon is reanimated, he can become a revenant.
 

But then we did run into some questions: A LostSoul is a type of demon, right? Or some kind of ghost? And how do other types of demons start existing? Can a person who was very bad in life become a Baron of Hell when he/she die? Or is this a bloodline and do Barons, Imps, Cacodemons and so on reproduce in Hell normally? Can weaker demons become stronger ones? I mean, just like an imp lives as an imp for ages and then become another type pf demon?
 

Note that we are not talking about the latest games in the franchise, where the revenants are creations of UAC and stuff like that, but about the original games.
 

What do you think?

[Stupid Bunny]

Doom has a neat aesthetic because it has a really blurry line between arcane fantasy and gritty sci-fi and never clearly draws out where that line is. Revenants are a prime example of this, a reanimated skeleton with some kind of armor on, where it’s unclear if it’s reanimated by magic or cybernetics or both (I like to think the latter though again without defining what is done by which, they just work together in some way beyond our understanding). Cacos and barons and such all are full of blood and guts but also have powers beyond scientific explanation; even more so the archies, where sorcery is clearly at work. Pain elementals on the other hand are of hard tangible (punchable) flesh but go up in a puff of smoke and fire and more fucking skulls and then are gone.

 

I don’t think of the demons as earthly animals that breed and feed like we know, nor as spirits incarnated from the souls of sinners or anything like that, with exception of lost souls as suggested by the name (revenants are more in the category of formers, I guess, as a form of flesh/bone undead). The demons are creatures inhabiting a world where blood and flesh and magic and technology all coexist in a perverse and strange way, spawned by some unknown combined mechanism of same for the singular purpose of spreading unpleasantness across hell and beyond.

[reefer]

I've always thought of it like the zombie men and their counterparts were all marines who say "sold their soul" to the other demons and joined their cause, while said demons are just a completely different thing than humans and former humans as a whole. not sure though, just fun to think about.

[blueyosh43]

I always viewed the demons as just pre existing creatures. A mommy imp meets a daddy imp, and another imp pops out, etc. They're real beings, just from another dimension. Dead marines can get their bodies possessed, and that's where it ends. As far as revenants, the skeleton doesn't resemble any other demon so the reanimated blurb from the manual doesn't really make any sense, but it is cool though as a concept. I can see lost souls being a sort of supernatural being, perhaps reincarnated sinners as others said. Just doomed to roam hell as a shitty, dumb, skull with no body. 

[mrthejoshmon]

I've always subscribed to the idea that the demons are horrors from somewhere we just don't fully understand or comprehend, using both magic and technology together, they also appear to either collect, capture, torture or consume souls implied by the agonised faces in the walls.

 

Why do they have flesh and blood? Why do they have organs? Same reason as us, whilst they may just be forces of malice and evil personified, they're still basically animals/people (there is an intelligence there, building weapons/temples). Almost like purpose built animals/people/golems, whatever made them did so with purpose and the organs are basically like components to a machine to keep em running.

 

I mean if you think about it, what is more horrifying than a monstrous brutish evil creature coming to not only kill and torture you but also devour you too? The murder and violence is terrible enough but now it has a biological imperative to do such things to you.

 

The technology based monsters? Enhancements made by whatever cruel intelligence conjured them, or in the case of things like arachnotrons they probably made it themselves or repurposed UAC tech according to the manual. The more magical creatures like Pain Elemental are in the name, like a fire elemental from fantasy, raw energy, magically given form (the energy being pain).

 

Do they reproduce? No, I reckon they just get made. They're magically conjured from evil energy, maybe built in vats (like a golem), they're essentially produced over being reproduced (which is why they are all the same malicious thing). Maybe the SpiderMastermind makes Arachnotrons or maybe they split off like horrifying tumors, maybe they just get grown in a vat, made by twisted magics from 

 

Why do some have "holes"? Waste from devouring victims.

 

I think we're going too deep though, because it's like asking why demons in any setting are what they are. They're fantasy sci-fi, they're both aliens and demons and it don't need much thinking about, the disbelief of magic in a world where literal hell exists.

[zokum]

I think it's a mix. Some are regular creatures that breed, some are conjured. Some are augmented by stolen/observed human technology. Revenants and Lost Souls are reanimated magically, and revenants are then modified. Most of the demons seems to mirror humans/humanoids. They most likely had some sort of information about earth/humanity before the invasion. It is unlike that the Spider Mastermind was 'built' after the invasion had started. To be honest, it all just doesn't make that much sense and the cyclical idea from Doom Eternal is a reasonably good explanation as to why it is like it is. Bases on Phobos and Deimos do not make sense either. Especially with the size/gravity/climate depictioned. The muscles on a demon do not make sense, so it is most likely magical in nature.

From a lore point it is interesting how the new demons in Hell on Earth are tougher and many of them are cybernetic. Going from only bosses being augmented, we now got revenants, arachnotrons, mancubi that are all augmented. Already in the original, we saw multiple cyberdemons. A clear hint that these entities are not unique.

[Helton342]

if i remember in the 2016 and Eternal lore, it was stated that a lot of the fleshy demons were originally animals that Hell corrupted, while other demons get conjured like golems. And others are reincarnated through magicks and tormenting technology

[LadyMistDragon]

blueyosh is saying the closest to what I always thought. No, I don't understand why the demons seem fascinated with cybernetics/augmentations and at a certain point, it doesn't really matter too much. Pain Elementals are quite interesting though, in that the souls they can spit out at a seemingly infinite manner have to come from somewhere. I suppose the vastness of the cosmos is such that they could pull from many different expired lifeforms.

 

But yes, most of them probably reproduce because it's a little hard to imagine them doing otherwise :P.

[DNSKILL5]

I feel the former humans are basically just like the pig cops in Duke 3D. They’re repurposed, their former self is no more. Just their bodies remain but the men they were before are dead. 
 

I always viewed Doom’s hell as more of an alien hell, it may have some loose connections to the biblical hell but it feels very alien and their intentions don’t feel entirely clear because how would we truly understand to begin with?

Edited April 11 by DNSKILL5

[Ravick0]

The idea of demons living as regular species in another place/planet is something I like. The only thing that bothers me is that they seem to be all carnivorous and there is no prey beings in Doom's Hell.

But, hey, as magic is also a thing there, maybe they can feast on humans that gets in Hell or so.

Edited April 14 by Ravick0

[zokum]

A lack of prey/herbivores make sense in a hell-army. You want your 'soldiers' to be hungry carnivores. Prey most likely exist either as other worlds to invade or something conjured or grown out of a bog or a vat.

If you look at most human armies over the centuries, you would assume we're only one gender and that most die very young (pre 30), since all of the soldiers are fairly young. An army in no way represents the eneral population. The episode 3 places we visit are most likely bastions of fighters, not 'farms'. Given that lost souls are conjured endless lessly, food might be as well. There's certainly enough corpses, beating hearts and other edible things to indicate meat is readily available.

[Ravick0]

Wow, it makes me want to make maps about the other parts of Hell! Just like, the areas were daily stuff happens, villages and wild habitats! Man, I guess I just got an idea fora mod!  @_@

Thanks! 

[Maximum Matt]

I believe the lore at the time implied that the cybernetic enemies (cyberdemon, spider, aracnotrons, mancubi, revenants) were the results of secret UAC experiments - the realisation being that the company have been 'working' with the aliens/demons for some time before the invasion.  That there was a Betruger character in charge of betraying humanity and was working with the enemy, before they used our own technology against us (including teleportation tech).  Makes them extra evil when you think of them that way.  

One of the few good ideas in the Doom novel was the idea that the enemy force created its' soldiers in accordance with Earth's Christian view of hell and demons - meaning they 'designed' the Baron Of Hell to look like the stereotypical image of the Devil (and like, cloned them or whatever).  That can also work with the caco (that Lovecraftian picture they were based on IRL) and the imp (brown pointy monster, boogieman or something).  Don't know what the demons could be based on but c'mon, it's an awesome design for a creature.  

And I've said this before, but the zombies are UAC workers/soldiers that have been 'zombiefied' by the Arch-Viles, I think - it fits with their attack (they can lock eyes with you and send you insane within seconds, unless they consider you too dangerous and light you on fire and blow you up Scanners-style instead) and can fit with the fact that there's none in Doom I - a whole bunch of them moved through the Phobos and Deimos bases, brainwashing all the staff as they went on their way....to EARTH...

So yeah, that's the way it went down.