User blog:Galeah/Interview to Archmage Ambrose Percival, Professor in the Saint Welsple Academy, on the subject of the creation of Demon Realms.

Interview to Archmage Ambrose Percival, Professor in the Saint Welsple Academy, on the subject of the creation of Demon Realms.

Arthur T. Varrus (interviewer): It’s a pleasure and an honour to meet such an internationally renowned scholar. We are very grateful that you accepted to lend some of your valuable time to our humble newspaper, so you could enlighten us about this dangerous and touchy subject.

Professor Ambrose Percival: Oh, my, you flatter me, Mr. Varrus. I’m just a humble researcher; it is me who am honoured to receive this opportunity.

Arthur T. Varrus: Don’t sell yourself short, Professor Ambrose. Everybody knows that you are the foremost expert on Demon Realms in the western hemisphere, despite claims from your former student Saphirette Spherica…

Professor Ambrose Percival (visibly uncomfortable): My late student Saphirette was a brilliant student with a bright future ahead of her; she was way more clever and talented that I have ever been, and if she had lived a few years more, she would soon have easily surpassed me… Sadly, her impatience, her youthful lack of caution, her disregard for the dangers posed by Demonic Energy… Because of those, Saphirette Spherica is no more, she was assimilated by a Dark Matter, a powerful demonic creature, who now wears her face and uses her name…

Arthur T. Varrus (carefully, softly): So…you don’t acknowledge the current Saphirette Spherica as the same creature as your former pupil…

Professor Ambrose Percival (sad): Saphirette wasn’t just corrupted by Demonic Energy, she was subsumed by a demonic being much more powerful than she was.

Some of my colleagues didn’t believe it. I didn’t want to believe it, either. We hoped it was all a mistake. Some of us tried to contact her, in the vain hope of discovering the rumours were wrong… But *Professor Ambrose looks very uncomfortable * our letters were answered with nothing but open requests of carnal intercourse for men, and invitations to become Succubi for our female colleagues. She didn’t answer any of our actual questions, she didn’t acknowledge our concerns…

We tried to use the most neutral, purely scientific tone, to approach the subject in a way that wouldn’t provoke her anger or opposition, to find a common ground in pure science, an unbiased medium that would allow even monsters and humans to communicate… but sadly, true logic seems beyond her now…

You see, Saphirette… I mean, the creature that calls herself Saphirette, didn’t find a husband during the corruption of Polove. Other monsterized women seized all available males before her... That frustrates her and makes her suffer… she’s literally starving for Spirit Energy; she can sustain herself and her Elementals absorbing environmental Demonic Energy, thanks to her powers as Dark Matter, but for her, it is like a human subsisting on stale bread and raw lettuce only…

You would think that would make her take a hint, wouldn’t you? If she keeps corrupting pure lands, many more Mamono will suffer like she does, and it will become worse with every generation. And she will make it more difficult for herself to find a mate…

Despite that, she keeps enthusiastically corrupting more and more land, and encouraging others to do so. We spoke to her in terms we thought she could understand, we told her about the lack of men the Monster Girl inhabitants of those lands would suffer… but she didn’t acknowledge our objections… she sent us long reviews on the production of dairy and fruits and corn and cotton, presenting them as a huge success of her strategy… And when we answered “but the Mamono in those lands don’t want milk, or cheese, or wheat or barley or oranges, they want men, and you are causing a shortage of those! you are replacing a famine with another!”, she would ramble about her own needs, and request a lover to be sent to her, but she never considered stopping the corruption of human lands…

I think I have some insight on the workings of her mind now… Corrupting pure lands is a basic instinct for a Dark Matter so much as finding a mate is; she can’t stop pursuing both against all logic. That expansive instinct is exacerbated by the motivations of the late human Saphirette, who wanted to use Demonic Energy to increase the bounty of her homeland. I think that part of herself was passed down from her past human self to her new monster self. Demonic Energy evaporates aspects of the human personality that are obstacles for its own mission, and encourages those that are favourable to its attainment…

It is a great tragedy, and, as her teacher, a great personal shame… I should have taught her better… I knew of her desire to save Polove from poverty and famine, of her impatience, of her frustration because of our limits as human magic users and of her refusal to accept the knowledge transmitted by others as true unless she had checked it experimentally… She was very fond of the experimental method, our young Saphirette…

I know exactly what she was trying to do; she had spoken about it before, from a purely theoretical point of view: She knew that Demonic Elementals increase the bounty of nature, while Dark Elementals corrupt it into a twisted demonic parody… but she also new that Demonic Elementals won’t change into Dark ones until they receive a lot of Spirit Energy from their Covenanter, hence, if the Elementalist who binds them is a woman, the Demonic Elementals won’t receive Spirit Energy, and they won’t become Dark Elementals…

We all told her it was impossible. We all told her that Pure Elementals who become Demonic would corrupt a female Covenanter into a Succubus, and that they would all together find a husband to share… But she refused to listen… she was convinced that there was a way to keep her Elementals on a leash, stopping them from corrupting her… We told her of the dangers, we forbade her to ever try it, we threatened to inform the Order, we tried to bribe her with tempting posts in our academy and in the civil administration of Welple… she pretended to obey to reason, but she escaped in the dead of night instead…

You have to understand: She was just sixteen, a mere child… she still hadn’t even bound any Elemental of her own… We thought her heretical theories a mere excess of youth. We thought she had years, decades to mature before she found any Elemental… We were so very wrong…

Arthur T. Varrus: I’m sorry for your loss. You seem to have been very close to her.

Professor Ambrose Percival (sad): Thank you. I think saying she was like a daughter to me would be a gross exaggeration… I think I would kill myself if my own daughter suffered her fate. But I can truthfully say that she was my favourite pupil…

Arthur T. Varrus: It is quite surprising that you were able to communicate with Saph… with the Dark Matter, and even more that you are willing to speak openly about it. Aren’t you afraid?

Professor Ambrose Percival (waves a hand): We made sure to request permission from the Inquisition before starting our correspondence, and we quickly received it; they were as eager to learn about… the new Saphirette as we were. They read our letters before they were sent and the answers before we got them.

Arthur T. Varrus: But you DID have trouble because of Saphirette, didn’t you?

Professor Ambrose Percival (calmly): Yes. Her fall made us, her teachers, all suspect. I was a particular object of suspicion because of my approach to scientific work…

You see, I think science must be pure, unbiased, neutral. In order to discover the truth, we must approach every issue with a clean mind, free of prejudices, and register only facts.

Afterwards, we must pass our discoveries, the pure information, to the technicians, engineers, magicians and strategists whose job is to turn that unbiased information into useful tools to achieve our society’s, country’s and Church’s ends. And it’s the job of educators and propagandists and preachers to elaborate that information in a way that can be transmitted to the masses.

They say that, in my effort to make a good scientist out of Saphirette, I failed her as an educator. And they are right. I failed as a teacher. I should have treated her more like a child and less like an equal, I guess, I should have slowed her advancement instead of encouraging it… so she didn’t become too powerful too soon… but it’s too late for regrets now…

That doesn’t change my view of Science. Science must remain pure, pure logic and pure search for pure truth…

Arthur T. Varrus: Speaking of pure science, back to the issue of the creation of Demon Realms…

Professor Ambrose Percival (more relaxed): Oh, yes. Everybody knows that Demon Realms are created by the Demonic Energy exuded by monsters, but, how many monsters and for how long are required to create a Demon Realm?

Barring the presence of very powerful monsters, like Ice Queens, Pharaohs, Dark Matters, Dark Elementals and ancient Youkos, we have to discriminate between cases in which the presence of monster is long established and permanent, and those in which it is the consequence of a sudden massive arrival…

In the case of a massive arrival, so long as the monsters aren’t too powerful, the creation of a Demon Realm happens when their number approaches that of male humans in the area…

Arthur T. Varrus: That’s a lot of monsters!

Professor Ambrose Percival: Well, yes. You see, think about this: Monsters exude Demonic Energy all the time, don’t they? And human males exude Spirit Energy all the time. A Demon Realm is created when Demonic Energy is more plentiful than Spirit Energy.

The percentage of monsters and human males who are married to each other isn’t relevant. Married monsters produce more Demonic Energy than single ones, but human males married to monsters produce more Spirit Energy too, and while monsters absorb a large amount of their husband’s Spirit Energy production, the husband absorb and store a large amount of their wives’ Demonic Energy too…

Human women aren’t a factor. They produce very little Spirit Energy, and they absorb into their bodies both Spirit and Demonic Energy in similar amounts, so they don’t affect the composition of the environmental energy field…

A lush natural environment can slow down the process: Animals and plants generate some amount of Spirit Energy, and absorb some Demonic Energy into themselves, acting as sinks for it.

However, if the presence of monsters is prolonged in time, the amount of monsters able to provoke the change is way smaller…

Arthur T. Varrus: Why?

Professor Ambrose Percival: Because Demonic Energy is more durable and resilient than Spirit Energy.

You see, all natural living beings produce and consume Spirit Energy. Some beings, like human males, produce more than they use, and release the excess to the air. Other beings, like human females, produce less Spirit Energy than they need, and have to take the rest from the environment. Both genders and all other natural animals take Spirit Energy from their food and drink. We live inside an ever-renewing cloud of Spirit Energy.

Spirit Energy that isn’t assimilated by other livings beings ends breaking into Elemental Energy, the same way a body goes back to the earth and becomes it...

Demonic Energy is different. It isn’t a part of Nature and has no part in natural cycles. When produced and released to the environment, it just stays around. Animals and plants store Demonic Energy, but their natural processes don’t burn it, it is just passed from prey to predator in ever-increasing concentrations. Human women absorb and store Demonic Energy too, but they don’t use it so long as they remain human. Human men take it from contaminated food and from intercourse with monsters, but they can’t use it…

Generally speaking, natural animals and plants and human beings won’t burn Demonic Energy in place of Spirit Energy unless they have exhausted their reserves of Spirit Energy due to disease, starvation, intoxication or wounds; when that happens, women quickly become monsters, men become Incubi, and animal and plants become the warped creatures of the Demon Realm.

Monsters consume Spirit Energy from their food and from human males and produce Demonic Energy, which they use for their body’s processes, for magic and for movement, but the amount of Demonic Energy is –barring starvation –always greater than the amount they use. Incubi just keep storing Demonic Energy and producing and using Spirit Energy, and they won’t burn Demonic Energy unless they run out of Spirit Energy or they are denied normal food (in which case they will feed on their stores of Demonic Energy).

Animals and plants from Demon Realms have a large amount of Demonic Energy stored inside, but they don’t use it; they keep producing Spirit Energy.

So you see, Spirit Energy is consumed or broken down into Elemental Energy all the time, while Demonic Energy just floats around or is stored.

Arthur T. Varrus: I see. So, in case of a long presence of monsters, how many monsters are needed to create a Demon Realm?.

Professor Ambrose Percival: Hard to know, because the number of monsters rarely remains static for a long time, it fluctuates, but I would say that even one monster for every ten men may be enough. One monster for evey three or four men are assured to create a Demon Realm over a moderately short period of time.

Also, if we are speaking of a long period of time, the number of married monsters does matter: Even if both husband and wife produce similar amounts of Demonic Energy and Spirit Energy, the former remains around, while the latter is consumed or broken down…

Arthur T. Varrus: And, how can such a situation come to happen?.

Professor Ambrose Percival: Well, first of all, we have settlements that are founded by monster themselves. Hornets, Honey Bees, Giant Ants, Khepris, Dwarves, Trolls, Dark Elves…etc., create their own villages and towns. Queen Slimes are towns by themselves. Those places are Demon Realms from the beginning.

Then you have mass migrations or invasions of monsters. When monsters learn that they are accepted in a realm or settlement, they flock there in search of husbands, and can quickly reach critical numbers. Invasions of the Demon Army usually are trailed by a large retinue of single monsters eager to catch a husband in conquered territory.

Infectious or parasitic monsters, and those who purposely monsterize human women they meet can replace the female half of a human settlement quite fast too. Matangos are particularly dangerous, because they can spread their spores without being seen, so by the time authorities learn what is going on it is often too late and a large percentage of the population has breathed them already…

If monsters are allowed to live side by side with humans, they can just compete and outbreed human females. A monster's biology is completely geared towards finding and keeping a mate: Their human parts tend to be attractive; they are always young-looking; they seek mates all the time, try every tactic they can think of, are willing and eager to have sex and make sure human men know it; they are way less selective than human women, specially if they  perceive a scarcity of single men; many of them have powerful Charm magic, and all of them can use Demonic Energy to make human men perceive even their monstrous parts attractive and to make the sex with them addictive… And also, if desperate enough, almost all of them will resort to rape, using Demonic Energy to make the victim fall in love with them…

In addition to all that, if a settlement or realm accepts monsters living among them, that means they aren’t too prejudiced against them, which makes finding a willing mate even easier.

Human women are in a comparative disadvantage. In settlements were women coexist with monsters, spinsters who can't find a husband are always human women, not monsters…

Despite that, human women have an advantage that compensates their lower effectiveness when it comes to catching a mate: Their much, much higher fertility rate.

Barring disease or early death, human women can produce large families, while monsters are often unable to produce more than one or two children.

Given that advantage, human beings should be a growing majority in every mixed settlement, easily outbreeding monsters, were not for a factor: Monster girls tend to gather even from large distances in places where they are accepted and allowed to find a husband… Monsters’ relative population growth in mixed settlements is usually not due to their natural population growth alone, but due to immigration.

To make things worse, the presence of monsters tends to provoke a flight of human women, especially of those with high standards when selecting a mate, to avoid the competition of monster girls. Even when monster girls are a small minority, they tend to monopolize men before marriage, having sex with many of them until they find the one they will choose as their husband, which causes men to delay their marriage (because they can have free sex with many different monsters), and provokes the perception among human women that men are interested only in monsters…

Another problem is that monsters and their husbands sometimes live concentrated in small areas. Even if monsters are a minority in a settlement or realm, if they live concentrated in certain neighbourhoods or villages, those places will become small Demon Realms, and human women who live close to them or walk through them will suffer monsterization.

I think that one of the reasons Zipangu hasn’t still become a Demon Realm is that their monster population is quite evenly distributed across the country, and since they are quite widely accepted everywhere, they don’t have a reason to concentrate in any place, but they are thinly spread among humans. Hence, there aren’t neighbourhoods or villages or towns where monsters gather that become small Demon Realms, and human women, on the other hand, have no reason to fly from the presence of monsters, because they will find them in similar numbers anywhere they go.

Also, Zipangu culture praises big families, so human couples have a lot of children and keep the human species a majority in the islands…

Arthur T. Varrus (worried): Are you sure you want me to write that? Such praise for Zipangu could be…

Professor Ambrose Percival (shrugs): Zipangu has its weaknesses too. Monsters have climbed to the upper echelons of society, controlling it: Gyoubu Danukis have seized control of the economy, Inaris and Ryus control their religious life, Kunoichis and Ochimushas tend to make themselves consorts to feudal lords, the former manipulating their husbands and directing their policies according to the wishes of their clan elders, and the latter turning their fiefdoms into Demon Realms in order to ensure that their daughters inherit them…

Also, every time a plague hits Zipangu the number of human beings is reduced, while the number of monster and Incubus (both immune to disease) isn’t affected, so the relative percentage of monsters slowly grows over the centuries. Sooner or later, Zipangu will be at risk of becoming a Demon Realm too.

Arthur T. Varrus (relieved): Oh… well, I think I can write that without getting into trouble with the Inquisition… So, are there any telltale signs that an area is going to become a Demon Ream?

Professor Ambrose Percival: Many of them. The first is an increase in libido among humans, especially among women, because of the stored Demonic Energy. They will feel excited, energetic, happy, more carefree and less inhibited.

Both animals and people will be healthier. Plants will grow faster and better due to the Demonic Energy that impregnates the ground.

Arthur T. Varrus: That doesn’t sound alarming…

Professor Ambrose Percival: Next, the dead will start to crawl out of their tombs…

Arthur T. Varrus (shocked): I retract my previous statement…

Professor Ambrose Percival: You see, people in those places tend to have a noticeable amount of Demonic Energy stored inside of their bodies, and even after death, Demonic Energy tends to get attracted to female corpses as they are to any object that is woman-shaped, hence why dolls always become monsters if exposed to Demonic Energy…

Arthur T. Varrus: Put professor, if that’s true… shouldn’t ALL dead monsters become Zombies, since they all are saturated with Demonic Energy?

Professor Ambrose Percival: That’s an excellent question, Mr. Varrus!

Arthur T. Varrus: Is it?

Professor Ambrose Percival: Yes. You see, monsters usually never die until they have exhausted their reserves of Demonic Energy. Demonic Energy protects them against diseases, and regenerates any damage, be it from poisons or from wounds. That’s the reason they always look youthful, and the reason they seem so durable and resistant, both during combat and during sexual encounters, the reason they can fight armed men while naked, the reason a tiny Fairy can take a member…

Arthur T. Varrus (shocked): PROFESSOR!!

Professor Ambrose Percival (embarrassed): Sorry, sorry, I was speaking from a scientific perspective. What I mean is, Demonic Energy keeps their body together, preventing cuts, ripping, breaking and rupturing, and closing the wounds when those happen…

A monster can only die in two ways: Due to old age, or due to physical wounds so numerous or massive than Demonic Energy can’t close them.

Monster have long lifespans compared to human beings, but in the end their bodies gradually lose the ability to generate Demonic Energy, same way natural beings lose the ability to generate Spirit Energy when they grow old. When that happens, they are no longer protected against disease and aging, and when they stop producing Demonic Energy at all, they die.

Interestingly, Demonic Energy seems to prioritize physical attractiveness and reproductive ability over all other functions; when unable to keep young the whole body, Demonic Energy focuses on keeping skin, muscles, bones and reproductive organs young, so the monster still looks young and is able to breed until the end of her days, sacrificing other organs. Dissection of the corpses of ancient monsters who died due to old age revealed that those parts of their bodies I mentioned had the characteristics of a twenty years old, while their brain, heart, lungs, liver, kidneys…etc., looked like those of a ninety years old.

Arthur T. Varrus: Fascinating.

Professor Ambrose Percival: Isn’t it? Well, there is a reason for that: Monsters who keep having intercourse with their husband keep receiving Spirit Energy and feeding on it, which keeps them alive for much longer…

Of course, even an Incubus isn’t beyond the ravages of age, so eventually their Spirit Energy production will decrease too…

But the point is, when a monster finally dies of old age, she usually has very little Demonic Energy in their bodies, and the little they keep is skin deep, so they usually don’t become Zombies.

Younger monsters can keep their elders alive for much, much longer infusing them with Demonic Energy, but even that has its limits: A young monster can keep her parents alive infusing them with her Demonic Energy, and if she has an Incubus husband, she may be able to keep the grandparents and great-grandparents alive too, but in the end, there is a limit to the amount of people even a monster and Incubus couple can sustain with their energy…

If an old monster has learned the techniques of Demonic Energy manipulation of the Khepri, or to write Demonic Energy-attracting talismans like those of a Jiangshi, or has the assistance of a Dark Matter, she theoretically could live on environmental Demonic Energy forever. Having Golems gather Spirit Energy from young men for her could work too.

Arthur T. Varrus: What about monster who die violent deaths? Shouldn’t their bodies be full of Demonic Energy?.

Professor Ambrose Percival: They usually aren’t. I already told you that monsters use Demonic Energy to protect themselves against wounds. When a monster fights a human, she uses her Mana to protect herself and to regenerate the damage she receives. They usually use their attacks to project their energy against the man they are fighting, preparing him for intercourse (or in the case of a woman, for monsterization), so they rarely provoke serious wounds either… the fight between a monster and a human warrior most often looks like a mock combat, with both opponents fiercely slashing and stabbing and clawing and biting each other, but provoking very little visible damage…

Such a fight can end in two ways: The monster defeats the human, rapes him and Demonic Energy enthrals his mind. Or the man defeats the monster and sometimes kills her. When that happens, the monster has already exhausted all her Demonic Energy trying to subdue the man, protecting herself against his attacks and regenerating her wounds, so there isn’t much Mana left in her body.

Sometimes a monster dies due to a wound so grievous and big that even Demonic Energy can’t close it, like a decapitation or midsection; when that happens, the Demonic Energy in her body will spend itself ineffectively trying to close the wound, and when she finally dies, the corpse won’t have any left… Such deaths are quite unsightly, since the mutilated body will keep living and moving so long as there is Demonic Energy left…

Arthur T. Varrus: I think I have heard about those. Don’t such corpses become Dullahans?

Professor Ambrose Percival: Very rarely. Most Dullahans are made from monsterized human women or are born from other Dullahans. However, if a monster is close to her husband when she is decapitated she may be able to reach him and start sucking his Spirit Energy to keep herself alive despite her wound, quickly turning into a Dullahan.

Arthur T. Varrus (creeped): Uuuuugh!

Professor Ambrose Percival: Verily. Anyways, some monsters, such as Dragons, are so powerful and have so much Demonic Energy that they come back as Undead thanks to the leftover Demonic Energy in their bodies and in the richly saturated environment in their lairs, but usually only if there is a strong desire in the deceased monster…

In the case of human women who have a lot of Demonic Energy inside their bodies, monsterization will happen spontaneously if they get sick enough that their generation of Spirit Energy is compromised or are wounded badly enough that most of their Spirit Energy escapes their body. Such women will become non-Undead monsters before death if they have enough Demonic Energy to survive, and will become Undead if not…

If they have enough Demonic Energy to reanimate their bodies, they will become Zombies, and if not, they will become Ghosts. Ghosts also require of some lingering desire or regret that will help them cling to this world, desire or regret that will usually be twisted by Demonic Energy into something romantic or sexual…

If bodies are buried in a Demon Realm they will absorb Demonic Energy from the earth and air and will often become Zombies even if the were almost devoid of Demonic Energy when they died. Single monsters who died yearning for a mate and married monsters whose husband survives them and who are buried in Demon Realms are most likely to come back that way. In some Demon Realms many monsters come back that way, and some Bright Green Demon Realm transition to Dark Demon Realm due to the growing number of Undead…

However, it should be noted that human men and Incubi can only come back as “Zombie Incubi”, which can only be made by powerful and skilled necromancers, not by accidental infusion of environmental Demonic Energy, which means that it isn’t so easy for males to come back. Married monsters usually will refuse to come back if their husband has already passed away…

Arthur T. Varrus: After the rising of the walking dead, are there more signs that a land is going to become a Demon Realm? (not that any more signs are necessary, I think…).

Professor Ambrose Percival: Next to the dead, animals and plants will start to become corrupted, turning into the twisted creatures of the Demon Realm. Tentacle Plants, Prisioner Fruits, Raging Mushrooms, Sticky Mushrooms… etc., will start to grow spontaneously. Domestic animals will grow big, strange and scary looking, and wild animals will become tame.

That is the last warning to escape the area. At this point, it is often too late for women, save those who have a very strong force of will and access to magical means to extract Demonic Energy from their bodies; many of them will become monster-like in their behaviour and thinking process, and many will become Succubi if they loss too much Spirit Energy due to disease or wounds, or rise back as Zombies if they are killed.

It is easier for men to return to a normal life, but they will have an increased libido forever, and will most often desire intercourse with monsters. Also, monsters, even those who were tame and meek before, will often try to block the escape of men, raping them if they resist. That is the last warning for monster too, to secure a man before human women become monsters and claim their share…

Women who still stay will become monsters (most often Succubi). Men will remain human for longer, but they eventually will eat contaminated food or have intercourse with a monster, and they will become Incubi.

Arthur T. Varrus: About what you just said about monsters trying to secure human men before newly monsterized women do it… There is a question I wanted to ask you… I know that monsters are generally monogamous, and try to not steal men from each other, but, what about human marriages? Do they respect them?

Professor Ambrose Percival: It depends. Savage monsters who live in the wilderness won’t ask before attacking a man, and won’t listen to his pleas if he claims to be married; most of them don’t have a way to know if he’s telling the truth, anyways. Afterwards, if they decide not to keep the man, he can return home, no harm done, from the monster’s point of view. If they do choose to keep the man as a husband, they will allow him to bring his wife or lover as a second wife, if he insists in doing so…

Monsters who live side by side with humans and most monsterized women will tend to respect human marriages unless they really like the man or they are desperate for a man. If so, they will accept a polygamous marriage arrangement too…

Arthur T. Varrus: Thank you… back to the issue of Demon Realms… is there a way to undo the damage?.

Professor Ambrose Percival: It is possible, but it’s a very difficult thing to do. First, you need to remove the monsters, which is very dangerous, since entering Demon Realms means a high exposure to Demonic Energy. Women should never take part in such endeavours, since they would for sure become monsters.

Once the monsters have been driven away, it is necessary to kill all animals and to burn everything. Fire won’t destroy Demonic Energy, but the wind will disperse the smoke and ashes, diluting the Demonic Energy in a larger area, enough that its corrupting effects won’t be serious anymore. It is important to avoid breathing the smoke and ashes, especially for women.

Next comes the hardest part: To cleanse the soil. Fast-growing plants must be planted, and once they grow, they must be harvested and burnt. This process must be repeated year after year until the plants have absorbed all the Demonic Energy from the soil.

It is a very expensive, time-consuming process, and too hard to apply in a whole country, but it has been successfully used to cleanse small Demon Realms.

If a Demon Realm were left untouched after its monster inhabitants were driven away, it would eventually clean by itself, but it would take centuries, and there is a high risk of recolonization by different monsters…

We of the Department of Magitach of the Saint Welsple Academy have tried to devise ways to speed the process, with little success. We have reversed-engineered the mana-refining mechanism of a captured Golem, and rebuilt it at a larger scale. We have copied the Demonic Energy-attracting talismans of Jiangshis. We built a large wooden tank, covered the surface with the talismans and put the mana-refining device inside. The machine succeeded at draining Demonic Energy from the environment and distilling and concentrating it into semisolid balls, but it wasn’t efficient enough to cleanse a large area. It would require a pyramid-sized machine to cleanse a city or small country…

The concentrated Demonic Energy could be used to power spells or magitech, but taking into account that it can be used only inside Demon Realms, it is of little use for humans… Ironically, we have created a eternal energy source… that only our enemies can benefit from…

Arthur T. Varrus: …

Arthur T. Varrus: I think it will be better if I don’t include the description of your machine in the interview…

Professor Ambrose Percival: …

Professor Ambrose Percival: You are right. Thank you…

Arthur T. Varrus: You told me that you would speak about several monster-friendly countries that became Demon Realms…

Professor Ambrose Percival: Yes.

It is important to stress this: Any and all monster-friendly countries have eventually become Demon Realms. Zipangu looks like an exception, but if you look at it for an historical perspective, it Demon Realms have expanded a 300 % over the last century, largely due to use of Ochimushas as bodyguards by daimyos, and to the deployment of Kunoichis against rival daimyos.

Ochimushas try to become wives to their lords, and tend to try to push their own daughters as heirs, sometimes going so far as to monsterize the whole fiefdom. Kunoichis aren’t so extreme, but they take control of enemy lords, and when their vassals realize it and rebel, they control them in turn, corrupting feudal society from the peak downwards.

In addition to that, their economy and religious structure is controlled by monsters like Gyoubu Danukis, Inaris and Ryus. They exist in a delicate balance that is slowly but inexorably leaning towards the monsters’ dominance…

But I will speak about three countries in our own western world: the neutral Kingdom of Weizen, the monster-friendly city-state of Mykonos in Sapphire Island and the Bright Demon Realm of Emerald Island.

Case one, Weizen:

Weizen is a peripheral region, belonging to the territory of the Order, but where there is some tolerance for the most peaceful monsters.

It is a medium sized kingdom (86000 km²) in the south, it has a mediterranean climate, with very long, hot, dry summers and very short, mild winters. Autumn, Winter and Spring are quite rainy. The country basically consists on a big, triangular alluvial plain, the Vale of the Viridian River, encased between the sea and two long, tall mountain ranges, which protect the country againt the cold, northern winds. From mid-September to the beginning of May wet winds from the sea enter the Vale and are trapped by the mountains, releasing their moisture over the country.

It never snows in the plains, and there are barely any frosts. Winters are so mild that it could be argued that Autumn is succeed by Spring without a real winter in between, and certainly it isn’t unusual for some maples to keep their red leaves when almond trees are already flowering, as soon as January.

There is a rich agriculture of rice, wheat, barley, oat, millet, maize, potatos, legumes, sunflower seeds, sugar beets, olives, oranges, almonds, cherries, peaches, pistachios, peanuts, wine grapes and in the highlands, of apples, pears, chestnuts and walnuts. Pigs are bred in large numbers and fed with acorns, being the base of the national cuisine. Cows of two varieties are bred: large-uddered milk breeds, which are kept in stables, and long-horned meat breeds, which live outdoors and feed on pasture all year round. Goats and wool sheep are plentiful too. Wine is a very important produce.

The dominant religion is the cult of Ares, of which the king is a fanatic. Because of that, the national army is very well-trained and powerful for a country of its size, which has prevented the more aggressive monsters from the forest and mountains from causing too much trouble, and has kept the Order from taking disciplinary action against this too lenient realm. Among the people, on the other hand, the most popular religion is the worship of Eros, which is tolerant of monsters too. The tolerance enjoyed by the monsters is largely due to the influence of these religions.

The worship of the Chief God is the third largest religion, now that the worship of Poseidon has waned to almost insignificance. The priesthood of the Chief God pushes for a stricter treatment of monsters, but their influence is small when compared to the churches of Ares and Eros.

In Weizen, Kobolds and Cu Siths are legally possessed as pets, Dwarves, Weresheep and Holstaurs are allowed to live in human settlements, Werecats and Wererabbits are tolerated in the countryside, Unicorns are treated with respect and allowed to live in peace in the forests. Centaurs, Lizarmen and Jinkos are even allowed to join the army, so long as they are affiliated to the Church or Ares.

There are Harpy, Dwarf and Goblin settlements in the mountains. The Harpies have created a postal service, and thanks to that they are gained acceptance. Dwarven traders from the mountains and even Goblins visit human settlements. Yetis and White Horns who dwell high in the mountains are well-liked as friends of Humanity.

Despite the aforementioned tolerance, there is some degree of moral reprehension towards men who have sex and breed with monsters, especially in the bigger towns and in Kingsmoat, the capital city, and the preachers of the Chief God tend to seek and rebuke these men, warning them of infernal retribution. The inhabitants of Kingsmoat mostly seem repulsed by the thought of a child-looking creature engaging in sexual relationships, and they feel that being in a relationship with a being that is part animal is unnatural in some way. If a man were to marry an adult-looking, human-looking monster like an Elf, Damphir, Kejourou, Titania, Apsara, Cupid, Valkyrie, Trumpart or Nurarihyon, chances are he would have little trouble, but such monsters are largely absent in Weizen.

Men who have children with their Kobold pets or who have fallen in love with Werecats move away from the bigger settlements to avoid the gossip of their neighbors and the harassment of the faithful of the Chief God and retire to the more tolerant countryside, often to the more isolated areas, such as the highlands, the mountain vales and the edges of the Kingswood, where relations with Kobolds, Cu Siths, Holstaurs, Weresheep, Werecats and Wererabbits are tolerated.

In can’t be denied that there is quite a bit of hypocrisy among the denizens of the capital. They all know how Dwarves, Kobolds, Weresheep and Holstaurs are born, but they refuse to acknowledge it, and while most of them accept and are even friendly to such creatures, they mock their fathers.

Husbands to Centaurs, Lizardmen, and to a lesser degree to Jinkos, suffer of similar stigma, but those monsters are powerful, proud creatures that count on the powerful protection of the Church of Ares and of the crown, and they can afford to dismiss the gossip and reproach of the commoners with a smirk.

Dangerous, uncivilized monsters are persecuted and expelled or killed, but in spite of this, Slimes, Alraunes, Grizzlies and other monsters that kidnap human men are slowly increasing their numbers in the Kingswood, the greatest forest in the kingdom, in which only men who are already married to monsters dare to enter.

In the depths of the forest there is a swamp that is a small Demonic Realm, in which Bubble Slimes, Giant Slugs, Matangos, Tentacle Plants, Devil Bugs and Vamp Mosquitoes live, and Sticky Mushrooms, Rabid Mushrooms, Pseudo-Matangos and Fruits Prisoner grow. This swamp is considered a cursed place, and nobody dares to enter it.

In the past, there were many human villages and hamlets in the mountain vales, and many shepherds took their goats and sheep to graze to the mountain meadows during summer, but human presence in the mountains have steadily reduced over the years. Orcs, Ogres, Werewolves, Werebats and Grizzlies have been increasing their presence in the mountain ranges over the years; small gangs of Orcs, Ogres and Werewolves come out of the mountains down to the plains to steal cattle and men from time to time, and it is rumored that even Dwarves and Goblins are way less civilized in their own turf up in the mountains than down in the human settlements…

Periodical attempts have been made to prevent too many monsters from living together in the same place, trying to disperse them. The Sabbath and the cult of the Fallen God are forbidden under pain of death, and all parasitic monsters and all monsters of the Demon type are to be executed on sight. In the past there had been mass deportations when the Demonic Energy concentration reached alarming levels.

The most important neighbor and ally of Weizen used to be the city-state of Mykonos, controlled by the Church of Poseidon. The relations are cold now, not only because the Church of Poseidon is considered heretical by the Order, and the monarch is not allowed to maintain official contact for them; the citizens and the ruler of Weizen are also resentful because Poseidon's monsters prevent them from fishing the seas or participating in maritime trade. On the other hand, Weizen can’t to cut off commercial traffic with Mykonos, since it would become isolated from the rest of the world.

The Church of Poseidon used to be the third (and at times the second) most popular religion in Weizen, but it is outlawed nowadays. The people of Weizen are terrified of the sea monsters who sink ships and kidnap the sailors, and they fear even more the Nereids, drown women who come back from the sea and visit their relatives under human guise, luring them to the sea, were they drown their own daughters and sisters and mothers, turning them into Nereids, too, and kidnap the men, taking them to the bottom of the sea, to become husbands to monsters. To the eyes of the people of Weizen, the Nereids are terrorific demonic revenants, the stuff of nightmares…

The high number of sea monsters provoked by the presence of monster-friendly Mykonos means that fishing and sea trading is a high risk, almost suicidal endeavor, and living near the sea is highly dangerous due to monstrous kidnappers and to Nereids, who attack even women. The coastal areas are becoming depopulated, save for a small minority of sailors and fishermen married to Mermaids and Merrows, the only sea monsters who are tolerated (but still mistrusted) by the folk of Weizen, thanks to their reputation as mostly safe creatures. Flow Kelp and Sea Slimes are somehow tolerated too in a few points of the coast, because they are perceived as too stupid to be really dangerous, and some men are married to them too. Those few men married to sea monsters keep the small amount of maritime trade and fishing that still exists in Weizen.

At first sight, Weizen looks like an idyllic place, a kingdom were humans thrive while the more peaceful and civilized monster are tolerated, the best of both worlds. However, it is clear that monsters are slowly advancing. The citizens and rulers of Weizen are at a crossroads... They don’t dare to use forceful measures against the monsters for fear to provoke a response from the Demon Army; the shadow of Lescatie hanging ominously in everybody’s memories… But if they don’t do anything, they don’t have to fear just the potential birth and expansion of Demon Realms within their territory; the Order could take action and invade Weizen to “save” it from monsters, and if they do so, Druella could send her own army to “liberate” Weizen from their oppressors. It is a situation that will require exceptional tact and cunning from the government and people of Weizen.

It would probably have been easier and less traumatic if they had adopted sterner policies against the monsters, more in line with the rest of Order-aligned human kingdoms, from the beginning….

Case two, City-State of Mykonos in Sapphire Island:

Sapphire Island is south of Weizen. It has a surface of  around 5500 km², and it is quite flat, with no mountain range of significance, a bit warmer and quite drier than Weizen. Because of that, their agriculture is less productive, and they have always depended a lot on fishing and sea trade to sustain themselves. It is politically dominated by the city-state of Mykonos, which is currently an Oligarchy, controlled by the most powerful merchants of the island.

Because of their dependence on the sea, the cult of Poseidon has always been dominant in Sapphire Island, and when Poseidon changed sides and her Church was denounced as heretical, they refused to stop worshipping her, casting away the Chief God instead. It wasn’t just a matter of love to Poseidon, or of needing the sea to feed themselves; the sea was also the source of the wealth of the merchant elites of the island, and they weren’t willing to renounce it no matter what.

In order to be able to keep sailing and fishing the seas, many seamen took sea monster wives. Such men became much sought as sailors, pilots and captains, thanks to the protection their wives offered to their ships against other monsters. The Oligarchs bargained with those men, who became their favored employees and collaborators,  and later, they even made deals with the sea monster themselves, using the Church of Poseidon as middlemen, securing their trade lines in exchange for concessions, mostly related to allowing sea monsters to visit the human settlements in broad daylight and to take human husbands without suffering harassment. Thanks to that, the Church of Poseidon gained even more influence.

Not everybody was happy about that. Sea folk not married to sea monsters were divided, split between their affection to their beloved goddess, and the primal terror towards the sea monsters that for centuries had preyed on them. They could tolerate and even like Mermaids, Merrows, Apsaras, Flow Kelps and Sea Slimes, who were mostly friendly and weren’t known for dragging men under the sea, but they were terrified of Scyllas, Krakens, Charybdys and especially of Nereids, the Revenants of the Sea, who would now and then, without provocation, catch a man and take him away forever, or drown a woman and turn her into one of them…

They also resented their dependence on sea monsters' husbands to be allowed do their jobs, and the privileged position those monsters' husbands obtained. Not all men wanted to marry a sea monster, many of them were already married or were in love with a human girl, or wanted to have human children, and those felt like their goddess had taken the sea from them and given it to monsters. Humanity had been de facto expelled from the sea, since only men married to sea monsters and who would therefore have only monstrous children could safely travel by the sea and live from it, denying an important source of food and wealth to the humanity. How were human families going to produce children if they were denied the necessary resources? And if everybody were to marry sea monsters, where could the next generation of human sailors come from?

Slowly but steadily, the number of men married to sea monster grows every year, while the rest grow more bitter and more fearful of the beautiful Nereids that walk their streets and smile to their children, and of the Krakens that trail their ships and sometimes grab a sailor from the board. A trickle of human families are leaving the coast and moving to the dry inlands, were they become farmers, poor, but safe from the sea they feel has betrayed them and of its beautiful terrors.

The city of Mykonos, all the while, has become richer and more beautiful than ever, a work of art made of glass and coral and marble. The Oligarch families, which now trade not only with nations across the vast sea, but also with the undersea kingdoms, have become each as rich as kings, and have taken to adopt the regalia of Poseidon. The head of the Church of Poseidon is a Sea Bishop now, as is a large part of the priesthood in the city of Mykonos. Some Oligarchs have even approached the priestesses, asking to marry them, as way to secure their power. Some of those have a human wife by the side and a human heir too, to preserve their bloodline; others don’t care even about that, charmed by the beauty of the sea monsters…

There is a College of magic in Mykonos, founded by Cerulean, a magician of the Order rescued from the sea by a Sea Bishop, who became his wife. Other teachers at the school are wizards rescued from shipwrecks by Mermaids, Merrows and Nereids and turned into their husbands, some are former sorceresses of the Order, who drowned and became Nereids. The presence of the school drew Demonic Elementalists from the pro-Mamono branch of the Elemental Faith, and Dark Mages who had voluntarily transformed themselves into monsters, and wizards who had made pacts with Imps and had become Incubi, and wizards of the Order that had become Succubi and Incubi while crossing Demonic Realms. Even some Sabbath witches teach there, trying to attract recruits.

Before the creaton of the College of Magic there was just an Elementary Magic School in Mykonos, staffed by humans,  which mostly gave elementary magic classes to children and teenagers, preparing them for attendance to institutions of higher education in the continent, but when the Church of Poseidon was deemed heretical and Mykonos broke with the Order, the rulers of Mykonos tried to create higher education courses, and they began hiring monster and Incubi teachers to teach upper magical instruction. The parents protested, and Cerulean decided to found a separate institution with his fellow Incubi and monsters, hence the birth of the College of Magic of Mykonos, which offers a higher magical education to the citizens of the island.

Technically speaking, the College offers a top notch magical education. In practice, however, the presence of both human men and monster girls in the same classrooms means that they are constantly distracted. Monster and Incubi teachers are too tolerant of disruptions and distractions and breaches of discipline, so long as they are sexual or romantic in nature, to the great annoyance of the female human pupils, the only ones who take their classes as seriously as they should. It is said that the College of Magic of Mykonos produces badly educated monster magicians, mediocre Incubi magicians, and superbly educated, angry human female magicians…

Case tree, Demon Realm of Emerald Island:

Emerald island is a volcanic island with a surface of 2500 km2. It is quite more mountainous than Mykonos, quite more rainy, and with warmer winters. It’s climate is almost tropical, but its highlands are quite temperate all year round.

Like Sapphire Island, Emerald was dominated by the cult of Poseidon. Apparently the fishermen soon took to marry friendly sea monsters (Sea Bishops, Mermaids, Merrows, Flow Kelps and Apsaras) to be able to exercise their trade safely, transforming the island into a safe sanctuary and a destination for monsters exiled from the continent and their husbands, who only wanted to live in peace without conflict. Single Fairies, Harpies, Sirens and Gandharvas arrived on their own attracted by stories of the coexistence of monsters and humans and settled on the foothills of the volcano. Salamanders and Ignis occupied the volcano from the time of the previous Lord Demon.

There were also Sea Slimes, who were generally not married, but prowled around the island in search of men. Several Charybdis and Krakens dwelt in the waters around the island.

The coastal zones were completely under the control of the sea monsters, which captured or seduced men on the high seas or on distant beaches and brought them to the island and occasionally seduced the natives of the interior.

The reefs that surrounded the island had been converted into towns and cities by the sea monsters, so that the seabed near the coast constituted a great Demon Realm.

The population of monsters suffered a great increase when the leaders of the kingdom of Weizen and the city-state of Mykonos (which at that time still hadn’t broken with the Order), both of which had been tolerant of the more peaceful Mamonos until that point, were alarmed by the conversion of many towns and villages in small Demon Realms.

Rather than using violence, they spread the word that the Order planned to launch a great Crusade against them, causing the monsters and their husbands to flee en masse to Emerald, much further from the coast than Sapphire Island, And therefore more secure.

Large numbers of monsters exiled from the mainland settled in coastal towns dedicated to agriculture. The coast was all part of the Demon Realm, so agriculture was very productive, and couples could devote much of their time to sex. The daughters of these couples migrated to the interior of the island in search of husbands, or seduced the sailors rescued from the sea and taken to the island by married sea monsters. These men used to come from ships sunk by Krakens, Charybdys, and Sirens.

The interior highlands had many, very dispersed small villages, mainly dedicated to intensive rice farming, supplemented with maize, dryland cereals (during the dry season), legumes, tubers, vegetables, fruit trees, livestock for local consumption and aquaculture. Most of those villages were inhabited mainly by humans with a minority of tame monsters, with only a few of monster communities, which constituted small Demon Realms.

The volcano, whose steep skirts were covered by forests, constituted a Demon Realm. The chimney was inhabited by Salamanders and Ignis, the hillsides and the summit by Harpies and Gandharvas that looked for their husbands among the men of the interior, and the foot by towns of tame monsters that were able to obtain good crops in the forest thanks to the Demon Energy.

Polygamy was normal among the inhabitants of the island, some men having several human wives, several monster wives, or a combination of both. The high fertility of humans allowed them to remain as the majority population on the island.

The blood of Merrow and Mermaid was easy to find on the island, so the longevity of the inhabitants was far greater than normal. The very old or very sick inhabitants used to become Incubi and monsters, eating Prisoner Fruits, throwing themselves to the sea to become Nereids, or with the help of friendly monsters. Because of this custom, the population of monsters grew steadily.

For a long time, the island looked like an Utopia of coexistence. However, as the number of monsters grew, their Demonic Energy began to affect their human neighbors, starting a chain reaction: The more monsters there were, the more human women were transformed, increasing the generation of Demonic Energy. In addition, these women did not give birth to more human children, but to monsters.

Eventually all the men on the island were transformed into Incubi, and all the women into monsters.

Sea monsters could still find husbands attacking foreign ships or visiting the mainland's beaches, and the Harpies could migrate to the mainland in search of men during their mating season, but terrestrial monsters depended on the shipwrecked sailors brought to them by married sea monsters.

However, as neighboring countries took action against sea monsters (by recruiting their crews among seafarers married to sea monsters, or simply stopping sea travel altogether), the supply of husbands reduced steadily. The population of sea monsters continues to grow today, thanks to their wide range of action and their longevity, and that of the terrestrial monsters is maintained thanks to the availability of Merrow’s and of Mermaid’s blood, which prolongs the life of men, but the younger monsters have it hard to find a husband. A growing number of young terrestial monsters are taking to the continent to find husbands, but many prefer not to leave their birthplace and resort to polygamy. This latter option is becoming less viable, however, as the arrival of men declines.

The island is in a state of stasis, with existing couples staying alive thanks to the Mermaids and the Merrows, while barely any new couples formed. The Order's experts are sure that when the blood of Mermaids and Merrows ceases to work, a few centuries from now, the island will depopulate and return to its former state, except for the coasts, which will continue to be a Demonic Realm so long as the sea monsters keep bringing husbands. The other option is for the monsters to use necromancy to resurrect themselves and their husbands, transforming themselves into Zombies, Wights and Zombie Incubi, in which case the island will become a Dark Demon Realm.

For now, however, the calm is absolute, with every Incubus taking a new wife or two every century (three or four wives is normal right now), and the most daring monsters crossing the sea in search of greener pastures.