Name of Species: Half-Demon

Race Appearance: While generally human in appearance, a Half-Demon corrupted bloodline is borne witness by their curving horns and long, prehensile tails (3-5 feet in length), as well as glowing red eyes. Additionally, Half-Demons’ hair, which screws toward darker hues, grows naturally around their horns, with many allowing it to grow long.

Genders: Male and Female

Life Span: 150-300 years

Compatibility: As a general statement, most Half-Demons live in stark opposition to their neighbors, save other Half-Demons. The majority of their numbers still live in subjugation to either the demons that spawned them or to those that gave them their power, thus making them forces for corruption. The few that have broken away from the lords of Anon often live in isolation from other races, their visible connection to the forces of the abyss, as well as predilection for savagery and the dark arts, a deterrent to finding their place in any non-demonic community.

Mythology: While lacking a true religion, most Half-Demons give homage to whichever of the myriad hell-beings dwelling in Anon which gave them either their powers or provided them with parentage.

Common Strengths: All Half-Demons, as can be discerned from the name, have some connection to the demonic forces of Anon that has subverted their human heritage; in some cases this is from parentage (one demonic parent, one not), but it may come from a willing renunciation of a person’s original race to take on the qualities of demon in exchange for demonic power. As such, while their non-demonic qualities may be as myriad as the various races, they generally possess great levels of physical strength, as well as a natural gift for the dark arts. Additionally, they have the ability to understand the infernal language, as well as move comfortably through darkness by aid of their superhuman night vision and tracking abilities.

Common Weaknesses: As a spawn of Anon, any power of Hirael has the potentiality to prove antithetical to a Half-Demon’s powers. Half-Demons, like their fully-demonic cousins, tend to keep to the shadows and the darker places of the world, as light, while not deadly to them, may inhibit their powers or even confound their senses. Additionally, Half-Demons live in a constant state of attempting to balance their non-demon side with their infernal one, causing wild mood swings and violent outbursts; indeed, one of the great fears amongst all Half-Demons is to slide down into a state of demonic beastliness, losing whatever powers they had from their shared parentage in the process.

Place: While Half-Demons are rare among the nations outside of Anon, they usually be found in the darker corners of the world. History records that the great human city-state of Ba’thran was once ruled from the shadows by an entire clan of Half-Demons, but that empire has long since been consumed by the snows of the mountains and their rulers consumed by their own dark powers.

Races: As Half-Demons are not a race as properly understood, any member of any other race can either give birth to (provided that the other parent is a full-blooded demon) a Half-Demon or can become one through a demonic pact.

Other: Half-Demons rarely live in groups with one another, especially since the fall of Ba’Thran. Secretive, they are not the type to make their presence known except by means of a proxy or a messenger, who will in turn direct others to their location. Almost universally distrusted in all realms – citizens of Hirael despise them as demonic and thus aberrations, denizens of Odebar hate them as traitors to their kind, and the hordes of Anon view them as sycophants at best and mercenaries at worst – the few Half-Demons that roam the world of mortals usually do so as crimelords or warlords or dark wizards in the remotest of kingdoms.

Additionally, Half-Demons that are the result of the physical union between a demon and a mortal are almost exclusively the result of a full-blooded demon and a mortal of pure heritage (i.e. not a half-race themselves). Any other permutation of parentage either results in a child, provided it survives long enough to be born, that is taken over from birth by the demonic instincts and descends into a state of animalistic savagery or becomes an abomination that is neither demon or mortal.