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DF2010:Demon
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[edit] Demons
Demons inhabit Hell. At this time it appears that they are randomly generated at worldgen, creating unique fun for every player. Examples of possible demons include giant centipedes made of ash that hunger for blood, eyeless mosquitoes that spit icicles, and emaciated fruitbats with giant clicking mandibles. Demons begin to spawn exactly one frame after you open Hell; the amount spawned can range from 10 to over 100. As long as Hell is unsealed, demons will continue to wander in from the edges of the map indefinitely, due to having populations that are functionally infinite.
All demons share certain traits, however. They are represented by an ampersand (&). They are all able to swim in and breathe water and magma, and capable of flight, building destruction, speaking and learning. Further, they are immune to traps, pain, fear, nausea, stunning, exertion, dizziness, fevers, fire, any sort of poison, extremes of heat and cold (even if made of materials that would suggest otherwise). They are very large (size 10000000, smaller than a megabeast, but significantly larger than a giant and 167 times the size of a dwarf). They don't require sleep, food, or drink. Inorganic demons are especially difficult to kill; literally tearing them apart (severing their lower and upper bodies) will kill them, but this is far beyond the capacities of an ordinary dwarf, and if the creature is a blob (whose lower and upper bodies are inseparable), it will be truly immortal. If you have deactivated compressed saves, the raws for given world's demons (as well as forgotten beasts and titans) can be found in the world.dat of its save folder.
Certain types of demons, those described as "being twisted into humanoid form" and marked with [UNIQUE_DEMON] instead of [DEMON] in world.dat, will occasionally escape the underworld and earn/create statuses in goblin or human civilizations; among humans, they pose as gods, while they take over goblin civilizations through more direct means.
[edit] Demon Generation
Although the exact algorithm used to produce demons is unknown, something of the algorithm can be gathered from the string dump and analysis of demons. When generating a demon, the game begins by picking a creature from a predefined list, which is fixed and includes creatures not found in vanilla DF (such as kangaroo, anteater, ankylosaurid) and more general shapes (blob, quadruped, and humanoid). It is granted spheres, with a preference for "negative" spheres like misery, death, and torture. If inorganic, a material will be chosen (such as salt, fire, ice, or vomit). If organic, it will get some sort of randomly-colored covering (such as feathers or hair) and/or have some feature (such as its eyes, nose or skin) removed. It will be granted a few "extra" features, like a tail, a trunk, or a shell, and a flavorful descriptor (such as "it knows and intones the names of all it encounters"). It may get some sort of special attack (such as a poisonous sting, toxic breath, fire breath). It will finally be given a name consisting of an adjective and a noun. The adjective will be based on the creature's color, its material (such as "inferno" or "snow"), what animal it's shaped like, or a descriptor (such as "winged" or "skinless"), and the noun chosen from the following list: demon, devil, fiend, brute, monster, spirit, ghost, banshee, haunt, phantom, specter, or wraith.
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Little do demons know that though their claws and fire cannot pierce the adamantine sealing them away, a simple copper pick can dig right through it with ease. Armok forbid these unholy creatures ever get their hands on one.
