05 Of 05 - Modern Compendium: Kishin Family, Part 4 - Night Owlman

05 of 05 - Modern Compendium: Kishin Family, Part 4 - Night Owlman

First off, a bit of a confession; when I scheduled Owlman for this ALL AMERICAN FIREWORK DEMONFEST, I, uh, thought Owlman had been reported in the United States. I figured hey, we already did Thunderbird, we need an avian to stand in for the Bald Eagle, let’s do Owlman. Imagine my shock when I went back to my research and realized he’s an English critter. Whoops. ^^;

Oh well. Press ahead anyway! Owlman is a Cryptid first sighted in Cornwall, specifically in the village of Mawnan. The first reports painted a picture of a winged man with huge glowing eyes and clawed feet, hovering above the church steeple. Since then, there have been multiple sightings of the beast, all following along similar lines.

Many different solutions to the mystery of the Owlman have been suggested. Some say that the village church lies on a major leyline, and that the Owlman may be an embodiment of the spirit of the land, wreaking vengeance on humankind. Others point out that there are in fact colonies of Eagle Owls nearby, which have a wingspan of something like six feet and whose eyes are enormous and reflect light quite well in the dark. Or, given that the first person to seriously write about the Owlman was a well-known hoaxer named Tony Shiels, it’s entirely possible that the whole thing is just a joke that got out of hand.

At any rate, many people have compared the Owlman to North America’s Mothman, a fact which has always confused me. The Mothman is widely regarded as a sort of latter-day Banshee, bringing warning of disaster along with its menacing fly-bys, but the Owlman has never been seen to do anything but chase folks around and screech a fair bit.

Because of the general shakiness of its base of belief, and because it’s not generally considered actually dangerous or powerful at all, the Owlman sits very low in the Night family. Right at the bottom, as a matter of fact.

For more info on this and every other demon in the Modern Compendium, have a look at our Data File, right over (here).

04 of 05 - Modern Compendium: Kishin Family, Part 3 - Haunt Flying Dutchman

One of the more unique ghost stories to be passed around in the last hundred years or so, the Flying Dutchman is one of the cornerstones of the traditional ghost ship story. Though it is fairly uncommon to come across someone who genuinely believes in the Dutchman these days, its mythology has been spread far and wide by sailors, and in modern times, by the series of Pirates of the Caribbean movies.

Tales of the Flying Dutchman may have begun circulating as early as the 17th century, but our earliest actual record of the ghost ship is from 1795, where George Barrington writes in his book, A Voyage to Botany Bay, about a Dutch ship that was lost off the Cape of Good Hope. Thereafter sailors would report a ghostly ship that would attempt to run them down, chasing them all the way to port before vanishing in a black cloud.

These stories were extremely popular for their time, but by the 20th century, people were eager to explain sightings of the Dutchman as drunken illusions on par with the manatees-turned-mermaids, or as a specific kind of mirage called a Fata Morgana, which creates a mirror image of a ship in the sky above the horizon.

Though not many people still believe in the existence of the Flying Dutchman, its mark on global culture is profound and unmistakable. This pedigree is more than enough to secure it a position at the top of the Haunt family.

For more information on and links to every demon in the Modern Compendium, have a look at our Data File, right over (here).

04 of 05 - Modern Compendium: Kishin Family, Part 5 - Dragon Mokele-Mbembe

One of the most famous Cryptids, Mokele-Mbembe is actually an excellent example of the way cultural mythologies color the way different societies interact. Physically, it straddles the divide between lost beast and sea serpent, while the mythology associated with it flits between pseudoscience and spiritualism.

See, in the Congo River basin region of Africa, locals have stories of a massive, wrinkled beast that wades in the rivers – the name “Mokele-Mbembe” actually means “the one who stops the flow of rivers.” They describe it as a nature spirit, a territorial beast, and a guardian of the water.

However, to westerners, the Mokele-Mbembe is something else. Explorers who visited the region in the early 20th century heard tales of a wrinkled, long-necked herbivore in the waters and, rather than taking the local’s stories at face value, decided they were describing a sauropod dinosaur. Since then, the Mokele-Mbembe has been taken up by Cryptozoologists as a likely living fossil, a survivor from prehistory when dinosaurs roamed the earth.

There is, of course, little evidence to support this theory, but the effect that the overlay of Cryptid mythology on Mokele-Mbembe has had on the imagination of the west is undeniable. Stories of long-lost dinosaurs in Africa have influenced countless popular movies, from King Kong to Land of the Lost, and helped to establish Africa in the minds of westerners as a place where mystical beasts wandered free.

In Shin Megami Tensei terms, Mokele-Mbembe is a mid-range Dragon. Like most of its family, the critter is largely defensive in nature, but it is also one of the few demons to learn Doping, making it a valuable addition to any player’s Compendium.

For more info on this and every other demon in the Modern Compendium, have a look at our Data File, right over (here).

01 of 05 - Modern Compendium; Kishin Family, Part 4 - Kishin Liberty

First off, I have to apologize; this was supposed to go up on the 4th. I always underestimate how busy the holidays can become. But the rest of the month’ll be full of Mom and Apple Pie, so it’s not a total loss. ^^

Anyway, Liberty! I actually considered doing Uncle Sam, but it turns out that Lady Liberty actually has a long – and I mean long – history behind her. Way back in Roman times, they worshiped a figure called Libertas, a goddess seen as so powerful that she was often equated with Sol Invictus, one of the central gods of the late Roman Empire.

The Statue of Liberty was a gift from France, where Liberty had come to prominence during the French Revolution. Hell, for a time Notre Dame was actually re-christened as a sort of temple to the “Cult of Reason,” and who did they turn to for a replacement for the Virgin Mary? Liberty.

The figure of the statue itself is actually used as a national personification by both the United States and France, where she is sometimes called Marianne. For a while, Americans knew her as Columbia, too, but that practice mostly fell by the wayside as Uncle Sam came to popularity in the 1930s and 40s.

Liberty is an incredibly popular figure in modern society. She’s appeared on everything from money to postage stamps to little souvenir figurines. And if having your likeness in millions of homes isn’t worship, I don’t know what is. Liberty is incredibly powerful, but she’s actually the second highest level Kishin. And the one demon above her is… Special.

For more information on this and every other demon in the Modern Compendium, have a look at our mysterious Data File, right over (here).

01 of 05 - Modern Compendium: Deity Family, Part 3 - Deity May Queen

The May Queen is a demon that shows the difference between what the basis of a myth actually is, and what people think it is. In modern times, the May Queen is a young woman elected to preside over May Day celebrations, to walk at the head of the parade and open the holiday dances. Historically, the May Queen is related to ancient tree worship, as this figure is closely connected with Maypoles, and the celebration of the return of spring. She wears a white dress to symbolize purity, and flowers in her hair to celebrate the renewal and rebirth of nature.

However, the May Queen is a myth whose historical fact has been largely overtaken by popular folklore. There is a popular and persistant urban legend that, somewhere in the murky depths of time, the May Queen was actually a sacrifice in waiting. Supposedly the people of English villages would select a young woman, give her all the best that they had to offer, and then, after May Day had passed, sacrifice her to some vicious pagan god. No doubt bloody stone altars and obsidian knives were involved.

However, and this is important to note, there is no evidence that I can find to actually back up the idea that this was ever done. As far as I can tell, someone somewhere just thought it sounded like a neat thing to tack on to the May Queen, and it stuck. Equally important is the fact that this gory and disturbing footnote to May Day is in fact very widely believed. No doubt the horror film The Wicker Man and its atrocious-bordering-on-comical 2006 remake are at least partially to blame, but whatever the cause, society at large has no trouble imagining a vicious start to this May Day tradition.

In any case, it is unfortunate for the May Queen that the version of any myth that matters for any practical purpose is the one that people actually believe in. And so the May Queen that gets into the Modern Compendium is the one with the disturbing backstory. The May Queen actually sits on the lower end of the Deity family, due in part to the dubious nature of belief in this version of her, but also because May Day celebrations aren’t hugely widespread outside of Europe and select parts of North America.

For more info on this and every other demon in the Modern Compendium, have a look at our Data File, right over (here).

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Warning! Fusion error

Warning! Fusion error

Program was forced to close by a remote observer Source detected 37.2350° N, 115.8111° W Message included: WARNEDYOUWARNEDYOUWARNEDYOUWARNEDYOUWARNEDYOUWARNEDYOU

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03 of 05 - ModWARNEDYOUium: KishiWARNEDYOUPart 4 - Enigma JHVH-1

A bizarre paWARNEDYOUWARNEDYOUed pseudo-religion known as the Church of the SubGenius, JHVH-1 is inteWARNEDYOUWARNEDYOUon of the hierarchical nature of religion. JHVH-1 is known as a cruel and capricious alien god, WARNEDYOUWARNEDYOUWARNEDYOUunclear. The Church says that JHVH-1 came to Earth and reveaWARNEDYOU J.R. “Bob” Dobbs, who received WARNEDYOUWARNEDYOUWARNEDYOUom the deity. The fact that Bob Dobbs looks, apparently, exactly like Ward Cleaver should tell you about how WARNEDYOUWARNEDYOUelf takes these stories.

The Church is a mashWARNEDYOUWARNEDYOUWARNEDYOUopular culture, adopting parWARNEDYOUWARNEDYOUristianity, UFO religions, conspiracy theories, and even the Cthulhu mythos into a deliberately self-contrWARNEDYOUlogy, resulting in an overarching philosophy that parodies even itself. The Church celebrates “devivals,” urges it WARNEDYOUWARNEDYOUk towards Slack, and believes in an elaborate conspiracy dedicatWARNEDYOUWARNEDYOUworld and brainwashin WARNEDYOUWARNEDYOUWARNEDYOU none of these ideas are ever fully explained. It’s a little bit like if Monty Python had invented a religion – the nonsense isn’t coveriWARNEDYOUWARNEDYOUonsense is the point.

Though fairly old bWARNEDYOUWARNEDYOUndards, the Church of the SubGenius has maWARNEDYOUWARNEDYOUopularity through the new millenium, and stilWARNEDYOUWARNEDYOUWARNEDYOUfollowing. Between this and the fact that JHVH-1 fits so squarely into the Enigmas that they might as WARNEDYOUWARNEDYOUWARNEDYOUanother, this deity fits nearly at the top of its family. Though WARNEDYOUWARNEDYOUWARNEDYOU would fit this deranged embodiment of chaos is beyond me.

For more info on this and WARNEDYOUWARNEDYOU the Modern Compendium, have a look at our Data File, right over (here),

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