Livian Demons

Livian Demons are the most abundant sapient species on Life. They can be found all over the world, but are most common in the northern hemisphere. Because of how much more common they are than other types of demons, the term demon usually refers to Livian Demons in a Livian context, and for ease's sake Livian Demon will be shortened to just demon whenever referenced.
Unlike a more traditional view on demons, Livian Demons are just another of many species found on Life. Rather than evil spirits, they are people who make their own choices and who function pretty similarly to humans in terms of mortality and food necessities.

by ElithianFox

An Introduction

Creatures of darkness, Livian Demons have their their nimble build, their versatile organs, and their strong sense of diplomacy to thank for their uncontested abundance in the world. At the dawn of their existence, they shaped strong alliances with the dragons that already inhabited the world and managed to take over most of the northern hemisphere as their numbers grew. These days, relations with their former allies have crumbled and war efforts threaten their whole existence.
Things weren't always so bright for them as their current glory days. Demons one day appeared on the world and survived only by the kindness of their dragon allies, who showed them how to survive and settle on this terrifying world. As humans caught wind of their presence on the world and unfairly linked them to the evil demons described in their religion, they launched the idea of the demon as a lesser, immoral creature that would persist for millennia in both demon and non-demon societies. In some places they became hunted, in others shunned and outcast.
The demons later known as Northerners and Westerners found their luck in the northeastern reaches of the western continent, while the Easterners settled on the more eastern reaches of the continent right by it and the Ashen and Southerners found their homes on the southern islands. It's been a fairly long time since most societies had to worry about being driven out by another species, but most conflict comes from other demons. With the descendants of the demons' first allies pushing into Northerner territory with a terrifying military force, their hold on the world is once again being threatened.

Physical appearance

Demons are a humanoid creature on first sight very similar to humans. They are on average smaller and thinner, sporting less fat and body hair. Most notable are their skintone, which can take on shades or reds, oranges, and greys, their horned skull, their pointed ears of medium length, and their slim tail ending in an arrowhead. They show a wider variety of iris colours, with purple and amber eyes being a common sight next to brown, blue, and green ones. The tips of their fingers are shaped to be claw-like, but this trait is a mostly visual one with little combat advantage. Some races show hair colours humans don't, like a brown to black gradient. One notable feature not many see due to clothing is their lack of visible primary sexual features, tying into their reproductive system. Lastly, demons have teeth fit for an omnivore focused mostly on meat and have notably longer canines as well as sharper premolars and molars.
They are far from the most intimidating looking creature out there, even if they show more predatory features than the other species resembling humans do. To the contrary, demons' tendency to be slimmer than humans and their slow ageing process combined with the historical early age of death gave them the stereotype of looking youthful, even earning them a reputation of being a cute and non-threatening creature in some cultures. Now that demons live longer it's far less uncommon for them to grow out their full adult features, making them look a lot rougher and older and growing to human heights. Even as older individuals, demons still tend to look slightly younger than humans of their comparative age group.

Behaviour and Culture

Nature

One of the largest stereotypes to exist against demons is that they are violent, evil gremlins who work only for themselves. None of those apply to Livian Demons as a collective, especially since the darkness that makes up demons' bodies has no more a moral alignment than a their body temperature has. Some revere their natural darkness, others shun it, and yet others aren't aware of it or simply don't care about that detail.
Historically, demons have been known to be altruistic and empathetic people who easily form new bonds and accept new allies among their ranks. Like all societies, they had their fair share of good and bad individuals and leaders, or destructive and nurturing regimes, of attackers and defenders. Modern demons have grown towards xenophobia, but this is far from the default opinion. Demons tend to have a strong emotional intelligence and be more grounded in feelings than in reasoning, albeit with a strong rational capacity to support their decision making when they need it.

Perspectives and Values

Many demonic societies see themselves above other creatures, as their significant difference in digestion and their non-mammalian reproduction system sets them apart from the beasts. Many societies consider demons as a species that was created, and it's notable how widely accepted a pre-existing notion of the evolution of other species is based on how 'designed' demons look. Demons were there long before written or even spoken language, so there exists no proper account on just how old the species is. Many scholars speculate it to be at least 30 000 years.
Demons tie a lot of importance to sciences and magic. Like most other Livian cultures, they don't see that big a divide between science and magic, only difference being how much of a physical application magic has over the mostly theoretical basis of other sciences. Any possible distaste of magic was fuelled by their allies who couldn't cast it, and a demon-focused anti-mage movement is only a modern concept. Demons always seek to broaden their horizons, but war, dangerous wildlife, and inaccessible areas have consistently held back this goal.
Gender is less important across a large majority of demon cultures. Both have their own roles and stereotypes, but they don't usually extend to parenting roles, power positions, and job options. Demons tend to use more gender neutral terms when it comes to position; while they do have words like king and queen, other words like swordsman and actor already apply to both genders and don't need editing if applied to the other gender. Abundance of both seems to be evenly spread out, though men are more likely to take higher risk jobs than women.

Magic

Like many of the creatures that evolved on life, demons possess the organs necessary to collect mana energy and channel it into something useful.
Mana is the energy that naturally radiates from some matter in small quantities, other in larger. In Life's case, it radiates from the planet itself. The energy is as good as inert, but many creatures evolved a way to capture this energy. In mammals and sapient species this ability is a very rare occurrence, but all demons are born with it. Demons have an organ that works like a magnet for mana energy and that channels it into the nervous system in such a way that it receives an active potential. The more mana energy is circulating by the nerves, the more inactive this magnet becomes. This is also why there's a maximum amount of mana that can be stored.
The organ that attracts mana energy and redirects it into the nervous system is located between the stomach and the liver, central in the body, and connects with the spine. Other organs involved with magic are located on the ventral side of the heart and inside the prefrontal cortex, all aligned in the medial axis. The function of these two organs isn't yet known, but they're speculated to be there because of the strong concentration of nerves and blood vessels important in conducting mana energy.
Demons have two uses for mana: passive and active. Their passive use is mostly in their digestion and metabolism; their bodies use the energy to create the correct enzymes and carry out some other processes in the body. Their active use involves spellcasting and magic. The body always keeps a reasonable amount of mana available for bodily processes that can under no circumstances be accessed by active magic.
Lastly, demons are creatures of darkness. This is a comparable term to how they are for example warm blooded creature, as opposed to cold blooded ones, and like darkness and light magic has no link to morality. Creatures of darkness attract mana energy that is lowly charged, which they can then either convert into other energy through some schools or cast directly in the darkness school.

Anatomy and Physiology

As far as outward appearance one can note when encountering a demon goes, the similarities with humans end there. Their internal workings are a different story - as a species that was designed and created rather than evolved by chance, they intrinsically draw upon magic for large part of their macroscopic metabolism and survival. As a result, many organ systems have been adjusted accordingly, combining the engineering capacities of the sapient mind with the calculative potential magic holds. Their digestive system is almost entirely based on wasting not a single nutrient that enters the body. Their reproduction also differs, which is ultimately what sets them apart from mammals.

Digestion

Demon digestion relies on the idea to use as much of the ingested nutrients as possible through the use of a wide array of enzymes. The demon digestive system is far more reactive to what enters it than the human stomach is and thanks to its magical component has the ability to come up with new enzymes altogether, based heavily on the concept of specific immunity. Demons have a total of three stomach sacks, of which one is technically not a functional stomach.
Because of how passive the attraction of mana energy is, the body has a ridiculously high output of metabolic energy and therefor with the correct amount of food is an incredibly efficient machine. To fuel these reactions, demons are more dependent on heat than humans are, and being cold can be enough to tackle a demon's health, even kill them in the long term. Plenty of time spent around fire in colder areas is a must for survival.
You will find the following primary organs:

• The first stomach sac. This first sac is far more of a preparative organ than a digestive one; it recognises what type of food entered the digestive system and helps the body decide if said food can be digested with the most common enzymes produced in the stomach or by newly made enzymes, or if it's indigestible and has to leave the body as quickly as possible again.

• The second stomach sac. This is nearly identical to the stomach humans have. It functions roughly the same as a human stomach, but has the ability to separate properly digested nutrients from undigested or insufficiently digested food. It sends these nutrients to the intestine for final digestion and absorption, while the improperly digested food is sent over to the third stomach sac.

• The third stomach sac. Also referred to as the death gut in many cultures for a good reason. This stomach sac prepares its own enzymes based on the normally indigestible matter that enters it, in part using magic to find the correct shapes of an effective enzyme. Sometimes mana itself is the exact enzyme needed. This organ has a turnover rate of about once per two weeks before the entire organ is renewed, simply because it has a dense and expendable internal lining to deal with how effective the enzymes are.
  If after this sac, something still isn't properly or safely digested or something toxic remains inside the sack, it is sent back to the weak oesophagus through a regurgitation duct. Considering the strength of the acid in this sack, eating the wrong types of food can make such a regurgitation not only painful, but straight up deadly as it destroys all flesh it encounters on its way up. The worst offenders are excessive amounts of meats that induce enzymes easily capable of breaking down the rest of the demon's body, and cellulose-intensive foods that require tougher methods to break down.

• Intestines. These are relatively short, especially compared to humans, as the belly needs extra space for the organs that help make the third stomach sack's enzymes. Their creator was pretty certain demons' digestion would result in full digestion of anything that enters the intestines, as the large intestine has grown shut near the end and doesn't allow for the passage of any waste that may have built up. Any waste that did enter the intestines is small enough to enter the bloodstream and leaves the body with the help of the kidneys. Should large parts end up in the intestine, the only option is for it to go back out through the oesophagus.

In short, demon digestion is all about waste nothing to the point where it induces a common method of death. Demons are picky eaters who will rarely try a completely new food without the confirmation another demon ate it and survived with an intact oesophagus to tell about it. In theory they should be solid survivors who can safely test out any foods they can find should they get lost, but the death gut has such an averse effect it severely limits what demons dare eat. It does help in making it much harder to poison a demon, but in return there still are plenty of foods that demons can't digest that'll simply come up again. Demons are known to thoroughly chew their food. Noticing they're generally healthier as their first stomach sac can better recognise toxic particles in well chewed food, they adapted their behaviour without full knowledge on the mechanisms behind the process.
The upside of this complex and dangerous system is how much more energy-efficient their digestion is. What humans eat in one day, demons have to eat in three to five to properly survive. Many cultures reflect this in either serving much smaller portions every day, or dividing the week into designated food days where human-sized meals are eaten followed by days without any meals. This system is still water-intensive, so demons drink from two to three liters a day to function.

Reproduction

[This section is a stub and is far from the full picture. More will be added at a later date]
Demon reproduction sets them apart from mammals. Rather than being based on a large gamete in a stationary phase and a small gamete in a mobile phase, demon reproduction is based on two near-identical mobile gametes. Because of the similarity between the gametes necessary to create a viable zygote, the sex of the involved parents is irrelevant. Gestation happens outside of the body in a tunicate-like sac that gets its energy through filter feeding water, but babies are born fairly prematurely at six months as this method doesn't sustain the finishing details of gestation.
Because of the irrelevance of the sexes of the parents, same sex attraction can be passed on to offspring and sexuality demographics don't resemble humans'. Most demons are bisexual, with homo- and heterosexuality sharing the second place as the less common sexualities. Notable is that in an overwhelming majority of cases, the sex of the baby doesn't pass on like it does in human genetics, but the only options are the parents' sexes. Two women produce a female baby, a man and a woman have a 50/50 chance on a male or a female baby.

Basic details

Origin

Speculated to be created
Went on to naturally evolve

Species age

At least 30 millennia, thought to be older

Body type

Humanoid

Sapience

Human intelligence and awareness

Races

Northerners
Easterners
Westerners
Southerners
Ashen

Averages

Average lifespan

20-30 years under poor conditions
60-70 years under average conditions
100-120 years under good conditions
Maximum lifespan ~200-250 years

Average height

159-174cm
5'2-5'8

Average weight

50-70kg
110-154lbs
Note: average height and weight vary wildly between races and ethnicities.

Stages of Life

Infancy and Childhood

Birth - 10 years old
Demons largely line up with humans at this age in terms of mental and physical development. This stage is about playfully discovering and learning about the world without worry.

Adolescence

11-19 years old
Puberty kicks in and the first secondary sexual characteristics show up, like growth of breasts, muscle and fat distribution by sex, and slight bone distribution. Features like body and facial hair and bulking usually don't happen in this stage yet. Adolescents are expected to mature and prepare for their young adulthood.

Young Adulthood

20-54 years old
In this stage, demons' longevity comes into play. From start to finish, during this stage the rest of puberty's features show up. Boys and girls become men and women in this stage. Demons become more independent over time and are ready to be an adult by the middle. They are already sexually mature but usually don't get together with people outside of their age group.

Adulthood

55-150 years old
Now as good as finished, the adulthood is the longest period. Most demons don't make it very far into adulthood due to living conditions, but in recent times the lifespan has increased due to medical and hygiene advancements and many more reach adulthood, even live quite a few years into it.

Late Adulthood

151 years old - death
A stage usually only reached by the rich and the healthy, most demons die before they become elderly. By this stage, the body has already started showing some traditional signs of ageing, and as the stage goes on the body becomes grey and broken.

Future additions

Extra info that will be added to the article at a later date

• Full reproduction and childbirth section

• More on behaviour and culture

• Relations with other species

• History

• Appearance variations, mutations

• Health

• Technological advancements

• Current research efforts