Daevinity Worldbuilding Info

[Alicorn]

Oooh, yes. I declare that there are Deep Forests in Fairyland somewhere.

I mean, "what would the average daeva do" is kind of a weird question. What would the average human do if you made them indestructible and gave them a daeva power?

[DanielH]

Here’s how I think about your question. Imagine a world of sentient humanoid beings, where nobody at all had fine motor control. The inhabitants of the world could still move around, and might be able to do everything we can do as a civilization eventually, but it would be a lot harder for them. I find this situation analogous to a daeva appearing in the mortal world. Imagine the inhabitants of that world being able to call you and inhabitants of our world into their world, to be scribes for a day or something, under roughly the same binding-and-deal conditions of daeva. Now imagine you were answering such a call and found yourself unbound in an unfamiliar version of that world. You have passing privilege (a fairy wouldn’t, but we haven’t seen one of them accidentally summoned). What would you do? What do you think most people would do? My money is “help those around them, but not have a greater ambition; maybe try to get sent back; maybe get paid an extreme wage for your unique skills”.

Actually, I find that an interesting question anyway.

[Bluelantern]

Oooh, yes. I declare that there are Deep Forests in Fairyland somewhere.

HELL YES! :D

I mean, "what would the average daeva do" is kind of a weird question. What would the average human do if you made them indestructible and gave them a daeva power?

Here’s how I think about your question. Imagine a world of sentient humanoid beings, where nobody at all had fine motor control. The inhabitants of the world could still move around, and might be able to do everything we can do as a civilization eventually, but it would be a lot harder for them. I find this situation analogous to a daeva appearing in the mortal world. Imagine the inhabitants of that world being able to call you and inhabitants of our world into their world, to be scribes for a day or something, under roughly the same binding-and-deal conditions of daeva. Now imagine you were answering such a call and found yourself unbound in an unfamiliar version of that world. You have passing privilege (a fairy wouldn’t, but we haven’t seen one of them accidentally summoned). What would you do? What do you think most people would do? My money is “help those around them, but not have a greater ambition; maybe try to get sent back; maybe get paid an extreme wage for your unique skills”.

Actually, I find that an interesting question anyway.

If I was a Daeva, I would help as best I can. I sort try to don't assume that my response is the average.

To explain: earlier I was talking and thought on the scenario where Rory Gilmore summons a Daeva that isn't one our heroes. End result: She spends years in a coma, and only wakes up in Fairyland after her death, her version of Earth ruled by a group of Daevas. I made myself sad >.>

When I try to correct my general bias with the "average people not being completely horrible" factor. I usually think that the Daeva wouldn't be... noticeable, they might help in some ways that they can help easily and help in ways that Daeva usually can't.

[DanielH]

So, as I understand it, the binding recognizes deals involving summoners’ souls as valid (allowing the demon to leave the circle) and automatically being fulfilled (allowing the demon to be dismissed). This seems odd, given that demons can’t and don’t actually get the agreed payment in these deals.

Also, I hope no asshole demons realize this, but about ⅓ of the time, they can take their summoner’s soul with them to Hell, and bindings allow daeva to do things to their summoners if they don’t get paid.

[Bluelantern]

So, as I understand it, the binding recognizes deals involving summoners’ souls as valid (allowing the demon to leave the circle) and automatically being fulfilled (allowing the demon to be dismissed). This seems odd, given that demons can’t and don’t actually get the agreed payment in these deals.

Also, I hope no asshole demons realize this, but about ⅓ of the time, they can take their summoner’s soul with them to Hell, and bindings allow daeva to do things to their summoners if they don’t get paid.

I guess it depends on how the summoner perceives the deal? To the summoner, the soul-taking happened so they don't have nothing else to do.

How newborn Daeva know how to answer summons?

[Alicorn]

Daeva may choose to work for effectively nominal transactions, such as souls or IOUs or whatever air they breathe during the course of their task, if they wish.

If a demon kills their summoner, the summoner might go to Hell, but demons can already do unboundedly many whatevers to each other; bindings do not apply within the concordant worlds.

Newly started daeva can feel summons and may take them just as a sort of exercise in the equivalent of motor control; to know what they are ahead of time, though, they'd need to learn some language and talk to some other daeva first.

[DanielH]

I didn’t mean to imply the binding would hold across the summoner’s death; I meant that, since the demon wouldn’t receive a soul, they could harass the summoner until they receive payment. In the case of a soul agreement, killing the susmoner in the hope they go to Hell seems sincerely relevant to taking the summoner’s soul with them to Hell when unsummoned.

I see how a soul deal could be understood like an IOU deal, but also how it could be understood the way I said. In that case (and in other ambiguous-deal cases), who gets the benefit of the ambiguity?

[Alicorn]

The general conceit of the rare soul-involving deal is that the summoner agrees that the demon may take their soul. Summoners don't know how to cough up souls on their own, so it's not part of the deal.

[Nemo]

How long has the secret about souls lasted? Because bartering with a daeva for reliable information is an obvious thing to do, and Cam's reasons for keeping it secret are less obvious. I would have expected most people who find out that demons can't take souls to tell people.

[DanielH]

And thus the summoner has paid right away, having given permission, and the demon is still bound against killing the summoner to get said soul to Hell? And I’m still interested about the general case of ambiguous deals: if a deal is ambiguous such that there is a genuine disagreement about whether the summoner has been paid, can the summoner dismiss the daeva? Can the daeva work to extract payment from the summoner?

As an example, let’s suppose a demon is to make me lunch for “a list of recently-published books”. The demon mmkes me lunch, I eat it, and I give the demon a list of all books published in theblast month; the demon expected all books published in the last year. Can I dismiss the demon? What can they do to get a better list?

For that matter, what if there’s ambiguity about whether they’ve made me lunch (say, I always have dessert with lunch and consider it part of lunch, and they haven’t made me a dessert), and I haven’t yet paid them? Can I dismiss them because the task isn’t complete?