Society of Hell

As the title says.

A general discussion on the society of Hell in the classic Doom games.

Some question hooks include the governmental system, what's it like to be [insert monster], what's the social ladder, daily life, reactions/relations to the human race, etcetera.

I think that in terms of social structure, if such a thing even exists in hell, ignoring the IOS, SMM would be pretty much at the top for being the actual driving force behind the invasions... Kind of like a weak boss, but good at pulling the strings. Then comes the cybie, the vile, the barons, and the rest of the ilk, imo...

Hell be like a ghetto, and Doomguy is actually the booty daddy running the joint.

all menial tasks are delegated to the zombie classes being as they are essentially robots who feel no pain

the demons have basic income and are free to pursue careers in more distinguished fields like art, science and tuition

if anyone gets too rich they get fed to the mancubi

demons think humans are cute and make drawings of them with exaggerated eye structure

https://www.doomworld.com/greenpile/

This should provide a useful insight into some of the aspects of their life.

36 minutes ago, yakfak said:

if anyone gets too rich they get fed to the mancubi

lol but then what is the point of making money :/

Demons and hell knights are born only to be eaten sooner or later. That's why they are also called pigs and goats behind their backs.

Spectres use their ability and hide in the sewers to avoid that fate. Barons of hell are also safe: they have a contract with the upper class, which says that the barons won't be eaten as long as they help the government to catch hell knights that attempt to escape.

Lost souls, cacodemons and pain elementals are slaves used to deliver mail and other goods. Yeah, there is heavy discrimination against anything that flies.

Arachnotrons, masterminds and cyberdemons are forever trapped in the power stations and essentially exist only as an energy source.

It all started when an army of Wolfenstein SS guys appeared and slowly took over hell.

10 hours ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

I think that in terms of social structure, if such a thing even exists in hell, ignoring the IOS, SMM would be pretty much at the top for being the actual driving force behind the invasions... Kind of like a weak boss, but good at pulling the strings. Then comes the cybie, the vile, the barons, and the rest of the ilk, imo...

I personally disagree on the arch vile. I would say in the grand scheme of things the arch vile would be sort of like the mad scientist of the regime. he does all the experiements, stays in the background doing support. SMM is definitely up top, she doesnt like getting into the big fights so she sends the rest in.

31 minutes ago, Phade102 said:

I personally disagree on the arch vile. I would say in the grand scheme of things the arch vile would be sort of like the mad scientist of the regime. he does all the experiements, stays in the background doing support. SMM is definitely up top, she doesnt like getting into the big fights so she sends the rest in.

I always imagined the arch-viles to be like the "holy men" of hell's forces. This explains their "healing" ability, the magical nature of their attacks, and also why nothing will infight with them.

There is no social hierarchy in hell. They have achieved equality to a degree that we have only dreamed of here on earth. Why do you think a "lowly" zombie guy does not consider a cyberdemon to be above retribution, if he takes rocket damage?

:-P

2 minutes ago, 42PercentHealth said:

I always imagined the arch-viles to be like the "holy men" of hell's forces. This explains their "healing" ability, the magical nature of their attacks, and also why nothing will infight with them.

Not sure about this one...

Why not? No monster will intentionally harm an arch-vile, because they are the servants and representatives of <whatever dark deity>, and they fear arousing the wrath of <whatever dark deity>.

Makes sense to me...

3 minutes ago, 42PercentHealth said:

No monster will intentionally harm an arch-vile

true for every other monster as well...

AVs can infight though, and things fight back, is what I'm saying.

From the Doom wiki:

Quote

However, monsters (including other arch-viles) damaged by an arch-vile's attack will never retaliate because there is an exception in the source code that prevents other monsters from targeting them.

The infighting is always one-sided with these guys. If one gets hit by a revenant, it will begin attacking the revenant, but the revenant will not fight back.

If my knowledge serves me right, I think it's just more difficult to get Archviles to infight because of their form of attack. It deals splash damage, though, which should theoretically allow them to infight.

On topic, I just picture the Spider Mastermind giving tap-dancing lessons on a podium in front of Arachnotrons, who all follow in sync. All other parts of the society are drab in comparison, apart from the Barons' tea parties of course.

^Still no sure about this... I've seen Barons deliberately attack viles during a chillax map I played, and that didn't happen because I was standing in a good place... I was watching that from like 30 meters below... May have been a sourceport-issue though, or some other shenanigans. Regardless, I've seen quite a few viles die in the thick of it the last few days... ;-)

7 minutes ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

May have been a sourceport-issue though, or some other shenanigans. Regardless, I've seen quiet a few viles die in the thick of it the last few days... ;-)

Laying the possibility of bugs aside, the only way for arch-viles to die "in the thick of it" would be for them to take sufficient damage from stuff targeting you or targeting each other. I've never heard of a bug allowing something to target an archie, but someone who lives in the source code would be much better qualified to make that statement.

EDIT: One place I like to kill AVs with "infighting" is in map 15 of Scythe 2. There's a bit where a cyberdemon and two archies spawn in the starting room, but they are trapped in an area with a couple of pillars on either side. It's not hard to get the cyberdemon to hit the archies with splash damage, and after that the archies will attack the cyber, but he will continue to target the player.

6 minutes ago, Kapanyo said:

On topic, I just picture the Spider Mastermind giving tap-dancing lessons on a podium in front of Arachnotrons, who all follow in sync.

I read some post some place that some person likes to imagine the SMM and arachnotrons stumbling around on rollerskates. I thought it was kinda funny. :-)

13 minutes ago, Kapanyo said:

If my knowledge serves me right, I think it's just more difficult to get Archviles to infight because of their form of attack. It deals splash damage, though, which should theoretically allow them to infight.

Nah, it is actually a hardcoded exception. In the part of P_DamageMobj where they set the target, the target switch is rejected if the source is an Archvile.

If a baron was actually going at a vile without you being in a good place, then it probably is a source port issue. I don't know of any port that actually changes this under the default configuration, but some like ZDoom do let you turn it off through DECORATE/ZScript.

11 minutes ago, 42PercentHealth said:

EDIT: One place I like to kill AVs with "infighting" is in map 15 of Scythe 2. There's a bit where a cyberdemon and two archies spawn in the starting room, but they are trapped in an area with a couple of pillars on either side. It's not hard to get the cyberdemon to hit the archies with splash damage, and after that the archies will attack the cyber, but he will continue to target the player.

Note that, any source-port related issues aside, viles deal splash damage, and cybies/SMMs are immune to splash damage. That being said they take no dmg from the vile, hence they won't fight back ever. Unless of course there's some trickery at work.

16 minutes ago, 42PercentHealth said:

I read some post some place that some person likes to imagine the SMM and arachnotrons stumbling around on rollerskates. I thought it was kinda funny. :-)

Oh my ~ demon pond-skaters!

6 minutes ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

That being said they take no dmg from the vile, hence they won't fight back ever.

There is a "non-splash" component of the AV attack, which is like 20 points or something. So the big kids do take some damage, but only if they are the target. Even then, I think an imp fireball does more. Also from the Doom wiki:

Quote

The cyberdemon and the spider mastermind are immune to blast damage, so it takes an arch-vile much longer to kill one of these enemies than one might expect.

5 minutes ago, 42PercentHealth said:

The cyberdemon and the spider mastermind are immune to blast damage, so it takes an arch-vile much longer to kill one of these enemies than one might expect.

aka practically never... I also wasn't aware that small chunk wasn't splash or blast... Funnily enough I can't remember that a cybie flinched when blasted by a vile for that matter... You gotta think at some point that should have happened... It probably has without me noticing, but still...

Here's an old post I made on the subject of Archvile and PE infighting.

In an old, very particular version of ZDoom, it was indeed possible to cause an Archvile to be targeted by other monsters without making other modifications to the game, but the circumstances had to be highly staged and rather improbable in actual gameplay. Besides, it was probably a port- and version- specific bug.

And, as one can read, misunderstanding the difference between the Archvile being normally immune to infighting targetting (TRUE) and the Archvile being immune to friendly fire (FALSE) is an old recurrent problem...

When I read the topic, I immediately remembered those dead barons in Tower of Babel...

38 minutes ago, Kapanyo said:

I just picture the Spider Mastermind giving tap-dancing lessons on a podium in front of Arachnotrons, who all follow in sync.

I wish I could find that dumb map I made years ago with a spider mastermind "dancing" on a giant DDR pad in Hell. The link is gone and I think I deleted the original.

Well, I picture Hell as thus.

All the monsters you see in game are actually troops, lesser clones of some demonical spirits who run the whole joint, and that is why every imp looks the same, as does every mancubi looks like any other mancubi. They are probably cloned by magick, or in case of zombies, possesed.

If anything, we should consider monsters as weapons (lost souls are self guiding bullets) of the grand demons, but weapons still need hands to operate, and that is why we have the cyberdemons and spider masterminds. I say masterminds are masterminds, they are tasked to conquer planets the demon spirits send them too, and are relays of information, and that is why they need those huge brains. It isn't quite easy to mentally process information from hell and send it to every monster that comes through the portal (in that case, arachnotrons are just cables, a extension of the mastermind's will, and they would serve as backups or probably RAM). Cyberdemons would be in charge of training, adaption and surveillance, as they would keep sending information to the Big Demons for them to look through and decide the next course of action. Also, the Cyberdemons have to guard the portals, literally guard them, while Masterminds and some offscreen brainiacs would keep them open.

Archviles sound like what basically Big Demons figured out after Earth. It won't be easy! So they send in Archviles, clones of some strange alien they found travelling between dimensions, to serve as physical support and to keep the numbers in check.

The spirit in charge of zeddites cannot be cloned, but can be multiplied by its own will, and the most scariest part of it would be how independent it would be from the Big Demons. It is basically a sentient mushy spirit cloud, and it could take over the entire universe. So the Big Demons captured it and weaponized, designed it to start and potentially end invasions (like, just pushing a button which sends a pulse through the planet/satellite they are invading, and whatever turns turns. Sometimes it didn't work, sometimes they didn't even have to send in rest of the troops), and as such have imps to keep a check on squads, and have knights, and barons etc.

Everyone else are just examples of what a army should be/look like. Pinkies are basically dogs, sniff and bite and drool and all.  Spectres are the same, just invisible. Cacos are air support, Pain Elementals bombarders, Mancubi artillery, Archviles are supports, and pretty much everything else follows the standard formulae.

So yeah, Hell (at least what Doomguy visits) is just a series of factories and training grounds for the Big Demons (who are somewhere else, in Super Hell?) to use to mobilize their troops.

Interestingly, I consider all Icons of Sins to be actual Big Demons, manifested in physical forms, and immediately locked to the ground, and would be warriors of the Big Demons (I assume there would also be priests and some workies), since they have the ability to perpetually produce weapons at infinite amounts of time and use them all at the same time. It is just that they are mostly occupied with producing troops, and either have a strict code of honor (to give the foe a fightning chance) or just don't bother setting up defenses, or the examples we meet are actually fucking stupid and have every other Big Demon facepalming.

Icon of Sin: Hey look guys *grunt* *pillar in front raises*

Everyone else: *collective sighing* Not only you are acting like a child, but you are also bringing yourself into trouble.

Icon of Sin: lol liek I care

Everyone else: I mean, that Doomguy could use it to kill you! Its nearly the perfect height to enter that stupid skull of yours!

Icon of Sin: So what? I want to give him a fightning chance, I feel bad for the guy! Plus, you know this hole I drilled in my head is cool as fuck, so fuck off!

Everyone else: *collective sighning* Fine, whatever, get destroyed we won't care.

1 hour ago, Megalyth said:

I wish I could find that dumb map I made years ago with a spider mastermind "dancing" on a giant DDR pad in Hell. The link is gone and I think I deleted the original.

Wait, say what? Could it be this one?

Yeah, that's the one.

Not that any of this really matters, but I see Hell as more of an ecosystem than a society. Terms like "training" and "surveillance" feel like they have little to no grounding in any monster behavior I've ever seen, and even the sense of heirarchy only seems to exist insofar as the tougher monsters come out on top more often when infighting. I've seen plenty of temples in wads I think of as canonical, but I think Hell is too surreal for a term like "religion," and I suspect that they are less like functional religious institutions and more like part of the landscape.

I think Hell must absolutely be some kind of organized force and not simply a collection of animals; it is far, far too directed to simply be an animal intrusion (a la the Xen invasion in Half-Life). Evidence of this includes:

• Organized responses (demons tend to teleport in when you grab a key or enter a "trap" room, instead of strictly by random as with Half-Life's Xenians)
• Explicit organization- the Cyberdemon is mentioned to be some kind of lord, and the Spider Mastermind is controlling the invasion as the highest strategic mind.
• Mention of feudal rank titles in certain monsters (the hell knights and barons of hell)
• Constructed temples, rituals (e.g. TNT's Human Barbeque)
• Some degree of support among demons- Arch-Viles resurrect friendlies that have died, something that an animal would not have a reason to do

You could also make the point of demons using slain human soldiers as resurrected zombie cannon-fodder, but given the vagueness of id on what exactly former humans are, I take them to simply be possessed humans (having a healthy skin tone, no obvious damage to the body, and dying in a few bullets or one close-up shotgun blast much like actual humans would, instead of taking meat shots as zombies would).

As far as I'm concerned, Hell must have some kind of feudal system- we obviously see the highest lords (Spider Masterminds, Cyberdemons, led by the Icon of Sin or some other demonic supreme leader) at the top. Arachnotrons, given their similarity to the Spider Mastermind, may be its personal troops or something similar- their high level of cybernetic enhancement hints at a sort of elite status. Following this come the normal lords (Barons of Hell) followed by their armies (Hell Knights). Cacodemons and Pain Elementals seem to be animals, as are Demons and Spectres.

Mancubi may be a mid-level caste- perhaps recyclers of some kind, given that they gorge themselves on a variety of disgusting things. Arch-Viles are popularly seen as priests, given their healing ability. Imps seem to be a peasant caste that makes up the bulk of armies and probably does such things as farming and other menial work. At the bottom come possessed humans- slave labor, probably, and cannon-fodder soldiers serving as guards or other auxiliary troops.

Given the sophisticated cybernetics of Hell, possessed human scientists may serve a role in research and development- I wouldn't be surprised if some scientists got into a sort of impromptu cult in the months leading up to Doom, were possessed, and taken to Hell to fit cybernetics to some high-ranking demon(s).