Daemon AUs were inspired by the book series His Dark Materials, by Philip Pullman. You might have watched the movie The Golden Compass, or the tv show His Dark Materials. Pullman himself was inspired by the ancient greek practice of daemonism.
Daemon AUs got popularized in fanfic following the books, since they are essentially about talking animal familiars. Thinking of that, I decided to make this guide, to inspire new ideas for your fandoms and fics
Here's some trivia from the series, which you can pick and choose from at your own tastes when making your AUs.
- Daemons are the physical manifestation of a person's soul.
- A daemon's personality is influenced by their human's subconscience, and is often a balance of the human's personality. For exemple, someone more outgoing might have a daemon who is more shy.
- When you're kids, it changes forms between various animals. As you mature into adulthood, it settles on a single one and never changes again. The age can vary from individual, but it's a milestone of growing up.
- The species of the animal they settle as is a metaphor for their person's personality. You can make much symbolism about that.
- Daemons have more fantasy-sounding names that are very different from human names, and often have lots of meaning.
- The parent's daemons name the child's daemons.
- Daemons are usually the opposite gender as their human, but that is not a rule.
- Daemons can talk. Their main role is to talk to and advise their humans.
- Daemons will usually only talk to their humans or between other daemons, but it's not forbidden for a daemon to talk to another human.
- They are not actual animals, and therefore not driven by animal instincts, but they can have animal abilities like hearing, smelling, etc.
- Daemons can't be too far apart from their humans, they walk together at all times.
- When you hurt a daemon, it's human feels the same pain, and vice versa.
- When you kill a daemon, it's human also dies, and vice versa.
- It's the biggest taboo in the series to touch a daemon who is not your own - but sometimes the AUs adapt it to being lesser degrees of serious, or to mean a shared moment of deep intimacy. You can decide what it means for your AUs.
Attention: from here on, the list is heavily taken from the books' lore and worldbuilding, so it may contain spoilers.
- The HDM series has a multiverse that can be travelled across, and the world where people have daemons is only one of those universes.
- Characters from worlds without daemons will get their own if they travel to one who has.
- Daemons, are made of Dust - the most basic subatomic particles that also constitute the universes, and they grant sentience and drive to living beings. When when they die, the daemons scatter away into a pile of Dust.
- There is a ritual that makes it possible for people to walk apart from their daemons. In the series, the Witches do it as a tradition, even if it's described as being very emotionally painful. But then once it happens it's over, though.
- Another way to do it is separating from your daemon while a living person at the Land of the Dead - the dimension all people go when they die, and where daemons are not allowed.
- The ritual of separation is different than cutting off someone's daemon. In this case, the soul is separated from the body, rendering both human and daemon mindlessly traumatized, never able to be a full, complete being again.
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