is making a Permanence Ward from a Demon Bone rather tricky?

[Plane]

PF2p124:
"all the symbol parts must be cut from the same bone.
The body of the symbol must be one piece without flaw or separation of connecting points"

I know you can use godlings/gods/dragons too, but they at least seem to follow normal physics in terms of leaving corpses...

I used to think that was the case for various Lesser Demons (PF2p315) and that they would be the easiest source of harvesting these bones (weak creatures, easy to dominate, rarely missed) but it seems like the Rifts Dimension Books have altered the metaphysics of demon death to impede this strategy?

Dimension Book 10 Hades page 19 "Death of a Demon" in August 2007
"They suffer the pain of the ordeal and appear to die, dissipating into a pile of ash or a mist, both of which smell of sulfur before vanishing altogether"

This appears to indicate that to take the bone of a demon, you can't kill them - you'd have to harvest it while they are alive?

I'm not even sure if that works though - I know vampires who have their limbs cut off have the limbs immediately turn to mist, so maybe dismembered demons also have their limbs ash/mist when dismemberment happens in other dimensions?

Deevils seem to work a bit differently than Demons, per DB11 (Dyval) pg 16 "Death of a Deevil" has more options besides sulfur-smelling ash/mist though:
"the physical body disintegrates into a puff of foul smelling smoke, a pile of ordinary ash or sand or worse (see table below)."

The Deevil Table (not sure if Demons are meant to use this too? Hades didn't have one) does have options like smoke (no remains) sand (max 12 ounces of bone) ash (no remains) internal rift (max 18 ounces of bone) or overhead rift (no remains)

Given that you need one flawless bone to put an entire ward phrase (not just the permanence ward) I don't think these "ounces" options are necessarily adequate, we don't even know if it's a singualr bone or like microscopic dust fragments of bone.

Where you seem to get a Deevil Bone is with killing them on Dyval - "during this period, the teeth, claws and bones of a slain demon may be gathered,
cleaned and preserved" is described about a rotting period that lasts 8-28 hours. After that point it is "mulch and mucous" and I assume you can't harvest the bones anymore...

A permanence ward takes 120 hours to carve though so you couldn't do all that work in such a short period... so how exactly are people going about preserving these bones they harvest in Dyval so that a diabolist can later work with them?

No rot-rate is listed so barring any kind of rules for demons leaving bones when slain on Hades I figure we could just borrow the 4+4D6 hours that Dyval uses, and maybe even that interesting death table. It's not canon but they seem counterparts who would use similar mechanics.

Adventures in the High Seas page 31-33 still has the rules from Rifts Africa on a Necromancer being able to wear a demon skull or demon skull for extra powers but it seems like this would be a lot more rare now that such body parts have to be harvested by killing demons in other dimensions instead of ones who were summoned to the Palladium world?

Given the rarity of gods/godlings this would make it seem like dragon hatchlings might actually be the prime target for harvesting bones for permanence wards on Palladium Fantasy - am I wrong or is there possibly an underground demon-trade happening where demons get perma-killed in hades for magical supplies on PF?

I'd wager the Death Demons since you can create an unlimited supply of them from slain mortals and because they're a danger to other demons.

[Grazzik]

First, great analysis.

Second, the following are all house rules I've used to address this.

• I treat demon and deevil death the same way, using the deevil tables. Cinematically it may be different, even as far as differences between individuals of the same demon type for show, but the outcome is the same.
• Rifts WB35 pg 25 says that, in Hell Pits, as they are extensions of Hades/Dyval, the infernal do not disincorporate. So, corpses galore in a Hell Pit or Hades/Dyval. Sure, I'd see chopping off arms and legs with no disintegration - these are supposed to be domains of pain and misery after all.
• As long as the bones are cleaned, they won't turn to mulch. I figure the rotting corpse is like super strong battery acid eating away at the bones. Clean the gunk off and the bone is good. Perhaps a good boil or roasting in an oven, whatever the GM see fit. It would be funny if a PC suggested using large quantities of lemon scented wet naps to clean off the gunk - as GM, I might allow it just for the visual... but the player would HAVE to act it out!!!!
• Anywhere else, using the deevil tables, those pieces of bone are like gold flakes gathered by gold panning. Bring them to a necromancer or other mage with the right abilities and/or spells to meld the bone pieces into a larger piece, even maybe shape it the way you want it. I read "same bone" as referring to the object, not literally the one bone from the one infernal. That way all those ounces from various infernals add up.
• Though as GM, I might throw a bit of wonky spice into things if a player were to try mixing demon and deevil bone fragments into a single artifact... maybe even when mixing fragments from differing demon types. Depends on my mood.

Third, I'd see a corpse/bone trade during the minion war as demons raid Dyval and vice versa. Easier to d-teleport home limbs and corpses of your enemies than to try capture them alive. Raids on Hell Pits too. I see the disincorporation being the result of the act of death - the release of the infernal's essence catastrophically damaging the body. So, if already dead, one could teleport a corpse from Hades to anywhere else. It would still be rotting, perhaps at a faster rate though (GM discretion).

[Plane]

[*]Rifts WB35 pg 25 says that, in Hell Pits, as they are extensions of Hades/Dyval, the infernal do not disincorporate. So, corpses galore in a Hell Pit or Hades/Dyval.

I forgot that part about the hell pit, it's a nice catch. Who knows maybe there's a hellpit somewhere in PF where they can also harvest body parts without going off-planet.

Sure, I'd see chopping off arms and legs with no disintegration - these are supposed to be domains of pain and misery after all.

In a hellpit or elsewhere? I'm thinking along the lines of "hey I summoned an Alu and chopped off his arm and sent him back to hell so I could sell his arm" exploitation issues.

Back when Rifts Africa introduced "hey necromancers wear demon skulls" issue they didn't really have this stuff going on AFAIK so you in theory had necromancers going around decapitating Balrogs to get magical powers from them whenever they invaded Rifts Earth, but now this requires extradimensional adventuring/trade and is more complicated.

Though I guess that rarity might explain why Archill the Necromancer (Rifts WB6 south america page 163) opts for a dragon head instead of a demon head.

There are also demons not explicitly defined as belonging to hades or dyval so I assume those ones can leave corpses just fine for diabolists and necromancers and their trading buddies.

Triax and the NGR being full of gargoyles (sub-demons) raises additional questions since Hades explicitly talks about gargoyles reincarnating in hades. I think at some point house rules were posited about it being different if the gargoyle eggs were laid/hatched off-hades (like maybe you need to be a demon born on hades to reincarnate there?) but Im' not sure canonically if it ever got addressed. Aside from Death Demons I think the sexual reproduction of Gargoyles is the only known way to increase numbers of demonic creatures unless we can't vampires (who were less often referred to as demons after the 80s)

[*]As long as the bones are cleaned, they won't turn to mulch. I figure the rotting corpse is like super strong battery acid eating away at the bones. Clean the gunk off and the bone is good. Perhaps a good boil or roasting in an oven, whatever the GM see fit. It would be funny if a PC suggested using large quantities of lemon scented wet naps to clean off the gunk - as GM, I might allow it just for the visual... but the player would HAVE to act it out!!!!

Ah so you figure mundane treatment is enough? I wasn't sure if magical intervention was needed.

[Grazzik]

[*]Rifts WB35 pg 25 says that, in Hell Pits, as they are extensions of Hades/Dyval, the infernal do not disincorporate. So, corpses galore in a Hell Pit or Hades/Dyval.

I forgot that part about the hell pit, it's a nice catch. Who knows maybe there's a hellpit somewhere in PF where they can also harvest body parts without going off-planet.

Maybe in the Great Rift. Possibly an ancient Hell Pit in the Craven Flatlands that doesn't go to Hades or Dyval, but a dimension full of Chaos Demons or others...

Sure, I'd see chopping off arms and legs with no disintegration - these are supposed to be domains of pain and misery after all.

In a hellpit or elsewhere? I'm thinking along the lines of "hey I summoned an Alu and chopped off his arm and sent him back to hell so I could sell his arm" exploitation issues.

Only in Hell Pit or Hades/Dyval. Elsewhere, poof!

Back when Rifts Africa introduced "hey necromancers wear demon skulls" issue they didn't really have this stuff going on AFAIK so you in theory had necromancers going around decapitating Balrogs to get magical powers from them whenever they invaded Rifts Earth, but now this requires extradimensional adventuring/trade and is more complicated.

Though I guess that rarity might explain why Archill the Necromancer (Rifts WB6 south america page 163) opts for a dragon head instead of a demon head.

There are also demons not explicitly defined as belonging to hades or dyval so I assume those ones can leave corpses just fine for diabolists and necromancers and their trading buddies.

Consider the Chaos Demons in Chaos Earth SB1. There's also the Red Flame Demons of the Nightlands (NB SB2 / Conversion Book 3). There's the demons of the Yama Kings in the China books. You can always come up with your own demons... Hades and Dyval are only two of infinite dimensions.

Triax and the NGR being full of gargoyles (sub-demons) raises additional questions since Hades explicitly talks about gargoyles reincarnating in hades. I think at some point house rules were posited about it being different if the gargoyle eggs were laid/hatched off-hades (like maybe you need to be a demon born on hades to reincarnate there?) but Im' not sure canonically if it ever got addressed. Aside from Death Demons I think the sexual reproduction of Gargoyles is the only known way to increase numbers of demonic creatures unless we can't vampires (who were less often referred to as demons after the 80s)

As far as I'm concerned from what I've read on countless other topics re this, it was an oversight and those subdemons don't reincarnate. They lay eggs and die like the rest of us. Others may play it differently or twist themselves into knots to explain the books, and good for them.

[*]As long as the bones are cleaned, they won't turn to mulch. I figure the rotting corpse is like super strong battery acid eating away at the bones. Clean the gunk off and the bone is good. Perhaps a good boil or roasting in an oven, whatever the GM see fit. It would be funny if a PC suggested using large quantities of lemon scented wet naps to clean off the gunk - as GM, I might allow it just for the visual... but the player would HAVE to act it out!!!!

Ah so you figure mundane treatment is enough? I wasn't sure if magical intervention was needed.

That's what I do. Others may want to complicate things. Though I might toss in a skill roll if someone were to have a related skill for butchering a demon carcass. A fail could mean a flaw developed in the bone or the cleaning wasn't thorough.

[Plane]

it was an oversight and those subdemons don't reincarnate.
They lay eggs and die like the rest of us.
Others may play it differently or twist themselves into knots to explain the books, and good for them.

Oversight could apply if it wasn't mentioned but pg 20 explicitly mentions "Rebirth Date" for "Lesser Demons, Sub-Demons and the Fallen" which continues to pg 21...

"Gargoyles appear one third their size and have misshapen vestigial wings."
"Gurgoyles and Gargoylites have no wings or tails at all and appear at half their normal size."

So there's very much an intention to have some breed of these things who go poof like other demons...

That doesn't have to mean all of them though. We have different breeds of things after all - there's a Vampire Intelligene out there who can create water-vampires, another vampire intelligence whose master vampires can survive their exodus, etc. It stands to reason there could be gargoyles bound to hades and others who aren't.

That'd explain why some gargoyles sent from hades might go poof when killed while others leave corpses behind for the NGR to dissect and turn into zombie-borg infiltrators.

It does raise interesting questions about the possible history behind that schism though...

One way we explicitly know a mortal human physiology can start to operate that way is by a Demon Priest casting Demon Rebirth (Dimensional Outbreak page 12) which reincarnates someone as a Greater Demonic Mortal. This doesn't quite tie them to Hades like most demons though since "When the character dies again as a Greater Demonic Mortal, he is dead once and for all and cannot return to life again."

Not clear how absolute that' meant to be though - like just "doesn't discorporate like lesser or greater demons - just the one time" or "you have to cast Demon Rebirth a 2nd time to get another respawn credit" or "can't even use the usual resurrection spells humans do" as the context is kinda vague.

One interesting oversight there is page 121 where the Lifespan of a LESSER demonic mortal is pretty clear:
"If killed in battle, Demonic Mortals actually die, unlike demons, who are eventually reborn in Hades (unless killed in Hades)."

Page 123's description of the Lifespan of a GREATER demonic mortal has no such note...

GDMs have a more explicit link to their Lord (and the Greaters that serve it) than LDMs, they're outright called "Raging Demons" and their Raging Giant power is described "transform into a bestial demon of vengeance"

Based on that an interesting middle-ground take on things might be that a GDM who dies in giant form dies as a demon and gets reincarnated if they die off-planet (perhaps locked in that giant form in their next life?) but one who dies untransformed dies normally and doesn't discorporate? It'd be an interesting halfway point.

[Library Ogre]

I'd also point out that "made from demon bone" predates a lot of the details about demon death.

[GoliathReturns]

I'd also point out that "made from demon bone" predates a lot of the details about demon death.

I'm not only going to second this point, but add in that area lot of the "demons and deevils don't leave remains" aren't from actual PF books. They're RIFTs sources. While it's a megaversal system, there are, at times, issues between them.

--
GS

[Grazzik]

it was an oversight and those subdemons don't reincarnate.
They lay eggs and die like the rest of us.
Others may play it differently or twist themselves into knots to explain the books, and good for them.

Oversight could apply if it wasn't mentioned but pg 20 explicitly mentions "Rebirth Date" for "Lesser Demons, Sub-Demons and the Fallen" which continues to pg 21...
...

My house rule was based on the comment made by the author of DB10 posted here (scroll a third of the way down). I usually try to keep things like this simple, as it is not really germane to the playing of an adventure. Though it is up to the GM to play as written in the book if they prefer.

@ Library Ogre and GoliathReturns, well noted. The intent was not to say Rifts rules are canon in PFRPG, but that in the absence of clear and consistent rules from PB on this and other matters, these were my house rules and the best source for a GM to craft house rules are other PB books that offer some degree of an answer, despite the likely inconsistencies that will creep in. Of course, it is the GM's prerogative to ignore them and do what they want to do.

[ShadowLogan]

I'd also point out that "made from demon bone" predates a lot of the details about demon death.

It's also possible that there could be something about the Palladium Dimension itself that changes the rules that could leave behind such bones.

[Prysus]

It's also possible that there could be something about the Palladium Dimension itself that changes the rules that could leave behind such bones.

Greetings and Salutations. This quote reminded me about something I wrote a while back. After Hades came out, I remember giving this some thought as well. And fairly sure Hades is described (at least at one point) as basically the same as the Palladium World (only like 3 times bigger, I think).*

*If no one else remembers this, I can try to find the quote (if it wasn't something I randomly heard at a convention or something and then just thought it was canon).

So I kind of came up with the idea that it was a linked dimension (similar to how Earth and the Nightlands are linked in Nightbane). Full article for anyone interested:

https://www.prysus.com/dimensional_elements.htm

Anyways, just thought I'd share. Maybe someone will find it useful. Farewell and safe journeys.

[Grazzik]

It's also possible that there could be something about the Palladium Dimension itself that changes the rules that could leave behind such bones.

Greetings and Salutations. This quote reminded me about something I wrote a while back. After Hades came out, I remember giving this some thought as well. And fairly sure Hades is described (at least at one point) as basically the same as the Palladium World (only like 3 times bigger, I think).*

*If no one else remembers this, I can try to find the quote (if it wasn't something I randomly heard at a convention or something and then just thought it was canon).
...

DB10 pg 121, Topology of Hades, 4-5x of Palladium World

Honorable mentions:
PFRPG LotD 1 pg 154 - warped reflection of Palladium World
DB10 pg 11 - Hades is the demonic version of an unnamed world

[ShadowLogan]

It's also possible that there could be something about the Palladium Dimension itself that changes the rules that could leave behind such bones.

Greetings and Salutations. This quote reminded me about something I wrote a while back. After Hades came out, I remember giving this some thought as well. And fairly sure Hades is described (at least at one point) as basically the same as the Palladium World (only like 3 times bigger, I think).*

*If no one else remembers this, I can try to find the quote (if it wasn't something I randomly heard at a convention or something and then just thought it was canon).
...

DB10 pg 121, Topology of Hades, 4-5x of Palladium World

Honorable mentions:
PFRPG LotD 1 pg 154 - warped reflection of Palladium World
DB10 pg 11 - Hades is the demonic version of an unnamed world

Can also add Dragons & Gods to the List pg202 "A warped refection of the Palladium World" (possible spelling error in text, refection is an actual word though its meaning here... was "reflection" the intended word?). With a few other snippets on the same page, and a few more in the following pages (specifically on pg208 and pg212 and pg218, and some places have dimensional portals connecting the two).

Wasn't thinking of this specifically, more like something connected to the Old Ones or the dimensional fabric itself (like how some worlds are MDC and others aren't).

Though now that it was brought up I have to wonder how the Land of the Damned is mirrored in Hades? Is it cursed?

[Grazzik]

Though now that it was brought up I have to wonder how the Land of the Damned is mirrored in Hades? Is it cursed?

Perhaps it should be an isolated region of pure wholesome goodness with outposts of invading angels trying to redeem the wicked of Hades... however, it is instead the Forest of Pain full of monsters, but few demons. The Great Rift equivalent is the Great Abyss though just a mess of dimensional rifts and a potential Deevil invasion point. That said, I'd like to think it was a spot you'd find a number of good guys trying to get a foothold - similar in theme to the camps of heroes in the Waste of the Nightbane Nightlands.