The Ninth Demon Lord will Trigger a Third Unmaking
The First Unmaking and the Second Unmaking both caught most Scarterrans (and presumably the Nine) completely flat-footed.
There is a general superstition that good and bad things come in threes, so a great many Scarterrans believe that a Third Unmaking is likely if not inevitable and there is lots of speculation about what form it will take and when it will happen.
One common speculation is that the next Unmaking will be triggered by the supposed Ninth Demon Lord enacting a slow burn scheme.
Summary
The basic theory is that while eight Demon Lords were known to be destroyed, a nineth Demon Lord remains trapped in the Void or else is hiding in a remote location in Scarnoctis or Scaraqua playing the long game.
Exactly how or what this long game entails is a matter of speculation, but it is likely the end result for Scarterra will be cataclysmically baddasd.
Historical Basis
There were eight known Demon Lords that commanded the Demon armies during the Second Unmaking. It is widely believed that each of them was the antithesis of one the Nine
For those who have basic math skills, eight is less than nine. So this begs the question, "Why haven't we seen the nineth Demon Lord?"
Variations & Mutation
There is no consensus on which Demon Lord matched with which god or goddess of the Nine.
For instance, The Extinguisher tried to block out the sun which could make her an anti-thesis to Khemra. The Extinguisher tried to trigger a famine which could make him an anti-thesis to Korus. The Extinguisher relied on pooling arcane power which could make him an antithesis to Greymoria.
Because there are at least three possible thematic pairings for every Demon Lord, no one is certain who the missing nineth demon Lord is tied to but many believe it was anthesis to Maylar, Phidas, or Zarthus.
Depending on which deity the last Demon Lord is connected to, this determines how people speculate the Demon Lord is hatch its plot.
Cultural Reception
Whenever something awful and inexplicable happens, it is likely a someone will claim it is from the machinations of the nineth Demon Lord. It is also likely that someone will debunk them as a crazy conspiracy theorist.
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