Chapter Six: Demonic Curses
There are many types of demons as described by various types of religions, and there seems to be common ground between them all. Here will be described the major types of demonic entities. Please note that being demonic does not necessarily mean evil as most religious people are inclined to believe. Also, demons serve a purpose when it comes to limiting the numbers of various animals, peoples, and spirits. Some demons are useful for increasing the populations of said beings. Others help with biological decay while others still help with emotional troubles. In addition, demons may fit into multiple types and generally keep the abilities they had previous to becoming a demon and retain their demonic abilities once they become an elemental spirit or divine spirit.
One of the key characteristics of a demon is a lack of inhibition, an unwillingness to stop, or general mischievous or malicious behavior. Elemental spirits have the possibility of becoming demons just like demons have the possibility of becoming elemental spirits (see page 46), which means that demons, with work, can actually become divine spirits while divine spirits can actually become demons, given enough time and conscious effort on the spirit’s part.
This chapter discusses the types of demons there are and what sorts of curses those types tend to place upon people. They can be anything from changing hair color, to causing acne, to violent diseases, to death, and to full-on possession or madness.
Section One: Entropic Demons
These are demons that operate on the principle of destruction. They vary in their subtlety but they tend to cause acts of violence, bloodshed, death, and general destruction. They love breaking things and weaker ones are often called poltergeists.
...One of the most famous entropic demons was formerly a sand elemental spirit that doubled as a tanuki spirit (see page 49 under Section Two: Geographical Spirits and page 127 under Section Eleven: Animal Spirits). It is considered to be primarily entropic, though it can also be considered a sin demon of the sub-types of Wrath and Lust (see page 406 under Section Eight: Sin Demons). It was called Shukaku by a Shinto Priest and the name has stuck ever since. Its children tend to be incubi and/or sand spirits. They tend to help increase the world population in some areas while others will cause immense sandstorms in the various hot deserts of the world. A rare few of Shukaku’s children are simple tanuki spirits who guard wild tanuki from predators.
Known Curses of Shukaku (and Children)
Insomnia
Shukaku and its tanuki children (both of the sand spirit variety and the simple variety) are extremely paranoid and hate to be caught unaware and therefore do not sleep. They are typically jealous of people who sleep and will either give them insomnia or horrible nightmares. Simple sleep aid medication has been known to counteract all but the strongest of such curses. Ritualistic behavior, such as bedtime stories or a nightly glass of warm milk, is also known to resolve such curses. On rare occasions, a stronger cure is needed; such a cure may be simple, such as the burning of a great deal of calories through exercise, or it may be more complex and involve religious activity, the help of divine spirits, the assistance of certain types of elemental spirits, or the help of a sin demon of the sub-type Sloth.
Bloodlust
Shukaku and most of its children love a good fight or love to kill. Some of them hang around battles and wait for the killing to start. Rather than attack the spirits of the freshly dead, they seek out the weakened minds of those who had killed for the first time and try to influence their thoughts to become more violent and vicious. Sometimes, complete possession happens and the men and women involved in the battle end up committing horrible crimes later on.
Uncontrollable Lust
All of Shukaku’s children are passionate lovers; some of them go to the extreme and become incubi. An incubus that is a son of Shukaku loves to watch sex and will curse people who watch or look at pornography with an uncontrollable urge to masturbate or have sex. Some of these incubi take it further and cause people to cheat on their regular partners. Also, they will possess people in the act of sex simply to feel the sensations, but they never control their hosts except to increase endurance and/or intensity. Unfortunately, these incubi, unlike other types of incubi, are insatiable and have been known to cause death by exhaustion in their hosts. However, these sons of Shukaku hate rapists and will bring along a friend of theirs to give the rapist some sort of death curse or disease.
Emotional Distress
This sort of curse only happens when one of the more wrathful children of Shukaku is in the presence of a particular human for too long. The human could become manic depressive, bipolar, wrathful, or any other number of psychological disorders.
Section Two: Anarchical Demons
These are demons that love chaos and disorder. They also love pranks and comedy and are useful for increasing the happiness in a person’s life. Unfortunately, they also tend to go to far and make a person’s life miserable...