Demons in WFRP started out as something of a hodge-podge. The first edition rulebook contained generic entries for the different ranks of demon, a thinly disguised Balrog from Tolkien and the Citadel life, death and plague elementals, which Graeme Davis had sensibly reclassified. It was all pretty uninspired (with the exception of Tony Ackland’s evocative artwork).

That all changed with Realm of Chaos, which unveiled the Chaos gods’ demonic retinues. The new demons were marvellous feats of grotesque imagination. They were also, I suspect, well suited to a tabletop battlefield. But in my opinion the direction they took was poorly suited to the role-playing game.

First of all, the threat they posed was purely a martial one. That’s to be expected in a wargame, but for a role-playing game it was too restrictive. Demons should be devious and manipulative. They should represent the manifold faces of evil. But in Realm of Chaos they became just another monster.

The demons were also not individual. There was very little to distinguish one Great Unclean One from another. The demons I would have liked to have seen would have been unique creations. Creatures like Astaroth or Demogorgon, with long histories of deceiving and manipulating mortals.

In the wake of these defeats Agrippa was consumed by anger, shame and dread. He feared the armies of Talabheim and Middenheim would arrive at any moment to slaughter him and seize the throne at Nuln. His wits perturbed by panic, he sought out Calidus for advice, who presented to him the most desperate and dangerous of measures. To this Agrippa agreed. Calidus called forth the infernal spirit Achorax and the young emperor entered into a most dreadful bargain with the demon. On Geheimnisnacht the demon would destroy the two older emperors, and thereby Agrippa would be left with an unchallenged claim on the Imperial throne. Yet the demon’s price was high: the moonlight of that night would also be the last seen by Agrippa’s daughters, who would be condemned to an eternity of torment in the Abyss. The fatal Geheimnisnacht arrived and Achorax claimed his payment. Yet the demon’s work was not done in Nuln. Two days before the night of the Twin Moons, the Emperor Konrad had succumbed to a sudden and mysterious illness and the Middenheim throne had passed to his twelve-year-old son, Arnulf. Achorax held to his bargain and that night tore asunder the two older Emperors: Lothar and the hapless Agrippa. – Dietmar von Humboldt, A History of Sigmar’s People, XVIII.43

Another issue was the uneven distribution of power in the demonic hierarchy. Demonic servants and lesser demons were close to each other in strength and posed only a moderate challenge to PCs. Greater demons, though, were vastly more powerful – so powerful as to be largely unusable in the role-playing game. This created a gap for a demon that could challenge a party of advanced PCs.

Again the hierarchy suited the wargame, where the classification provided rank and file troops, mounts and commanders, but it served the role-playing game poorly.

There was also the matter of nomenclature. In Realm of Chaos GW started its practice of using “daemon” instead of “demon”. Presumably the extra A was considered exotic, but this is in my view a trick fantasy games resort to too often. Readers have to wade through a mass of unnecessary AEs and Ys (wyrm, aethyr, aelf, etc). Such variant orthography seems to me to add nothing to the ideas. Moreover, GW’s new usage was contrary to standard English. Demons are malevolent infernal creatures, but daemons are benign inspiring forces.

The demons I would have liked to have seen would have been closer to those in Jon Quaife’s RuneQuest article in White Dwarf 92 (which probably helped to shape many of my thoughts on this subject). Those demons are varied and colourful, and present interesting role-playing opportunities.

Jon Quaife on RuneQuest demons in WD92

The Realm of Chaos demons are wonderful creations, and provide Warhammer with some of its most characteristic monsters. They are far from “diabolical”. But that’s exactly my point.

Title art by Les Edwards. Used without permission. No challenge intended to the rights holders.