They just speak infernal and abyssal usually. Why not have their own language and call it "abaddonian" or something
Could be the same as the good aligned planes, they don't have a seperate language for each plane, they all speak celestial.
And since Abaddon is sort of a buffer between law and chaos on the evil aligned planes (the river Styx flows from Abaddon through the mealstream, often touching Hell and the Abyss), so it does make sense they speak both infernal and abyssal.
According to Hero Lab they do. While Hero Labs is not an official product it is licensed from and has close connections to Paizo.
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The outside answer is of course one of history - lawful evil and chaotic evil fiends came first and got all the focus, Pathfinder copied this, and when they put neutral evil fiends in they didn't bother adding a new language for them.
My opinion is that they should have one, which in keeping with the other fiendish languages is called abaddoni.
Abyssal seems to delight in its own irregularity and variety of expression. Infernal follows strict rules but of such complexity it can seem as disordered as abyssal to the novice speaker, full of homophones and words that change their meaning entirely with the addition of an apostrophe.
By contrast, a scholar who sets out to learn the tongue of daemons will find it a refreshingly straightforward endeavor to begin with, though this blessing sours once they learn the language better.
Most consider it extremely ugly, short sentences made from a combination of hisses and clacks and guttural noises, the most unpleasant of which seem reserved for words such as life, mercy, charity. The language also lacks synonyms or common idioms and its grammatical structure is rigid, hampering attempts to express a concept in multiple ways. As a result creating abadonni poetry is immensely difficult.
The limitations also encourage conversation that is brief and to the point, minimizing the time one must speak to another. It lacks loan words entirely - new words are created when necessary, and proper nouns that last long enough (such as the name of a world or god) are given new names in abadonni.
The only area the language seems given to any creativity is in words relating to pain and death. Some of these may be mistaken for synonyms, but in fact represent distinct acts that are usually lumped together - few mortal tongues, for example, have single separate words for being devoured alive by beasts, and being devoured alive by the larvae hatching from one's own flesh.
To be truly fluent requires memorizing hundreds of terms for all the forms of suffering that could befall the student. As such it is advised to make sure one is of stable mind, for malaise can spawn from the study of this vile tongue.
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Personally, I would fluff it as language in general is sort of anathema to daemons. Language is about creation, either actual construction or construction of concepts, and daemons want to destroy, bring the universe down to a single concept, then destroy that concept for an eternity of silence.
Interesting idea. Reminds me of 1984 (the book not the year)
Daemons don't get enough love. They're soul eating architects of extinction and genocide on a multiversal scale with no sense of duty or wanton urges. Daemons are Evil without mercy, honor, or pity. This sets my mind racing with ideas. I use daemons more often than both demons or devils in my campaigns because they're just so stinking COOL to me. I would love to see more information about Daemons, Abaddon, and even a full blown adventure path based around them and the urdefhans they created. But for some reason they're always overlooked in favor of devils and demons.
Personally, I blame Aroden.
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One word: Telepathy.
But, having said that... I could personally support them having their own language in PF2. I give them their own language in my home game (but my home game deviates in some ways from canon).
But at the same time, their thing in print is their propensity to be observed as being deathly -silent- to observers. They have telepathy and that's the bulk of their communication between one another, which of course most others' can't hear. Oblivion and silence is their thing and in a way that works in poetic fashion, even if to a minor extent it's an after the fact rationalization.
I'm not sure if there was intentional design work for PF that had them without their own language, or just a carry over of legacy from 3.5 that didn't give NE fiends their own language. But again I could support giving them their own language as it significantly fits them more to have their own in PF (as compared to yugoloths in D&D, which they've significantly deviated from to be their own, richly fleshed out, stand-alone creature type that I'm truly proud of, both with my own work on them, and with everyone else that has contributed to telling their story)
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Didn't a daemon create the first demons in Golarion lore?
Yes indeed. For which they paid a hideous price when those demons basically rewrote the substance of the Abyss, multiplied beyond reason, and in time assaulted Abaddon (during which assault Lamashtu slew two members of the Four).
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While I prefer the ideas laid out above, the explanation I always went with was that they spoke a pidgin of Abyssal and Infernal that you could only understand if you knew both or spent a lot of time with daemons.
What I wanna talk about is how the word “demon” and “daemon” should, logically, be pronounced the same.
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Didn't a daemon create the first demons in Golarion lore?Yes indeed. For which they paid a hideous price when those demons basically rewrote the substance of the Abyss, multiplied beyond reason, and in time assaulted Abaddon (during which assault Lamashtu slew two members of the Four).
Note that, although demons were initially created by a daemon, the qlippoth ruled the Abyss up until then.
Abyssal was probably (a variant of) the qlippoth language in origin.
Infernal might be derived from Asura (inhabited Hell before Asmodeus arrived), Celestial (Asmodeus was supposedly one of the first celestial beings), and Draconic (Dahak supposedly made Hell into "a place of agony and flame"). Or it could be a creation of Asmodeus.
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Didn't a daemon create the first demons in Golarion lore?Yes indeed. For which they paid a hideous price when those demons basically rewrote the substance of the Abyss, multiplied beyond reason, and in time assaulted Abaddon (during which assault Lamashtu slew two members of the Four).Note that, although demons were initially created by a daemon, the qlippoth ruled the Abyss up until then.
Abyssal was probably (a variant of) the qlippoth language in origin.
Infernal might be derived from Asura (inhabited Hell before Asmodeus arrived), Celestial (Asmodeus was supposedly one of the first celestial beings), and Draconic (Dahak supposedly made Hell into "a place of agony and flame"). Or it could be a creation of Asmodeus.
Compounded of course by the fact that much planar prehistory is presented (intentionally so!) via unreliable and potentially biased sources.
About the only sure thing is that near to the start of it all you had proteans and qlippoths fighting each other for eons after their very antithetical to one another realities came into contact, and then at some point both of them noticed the gods and other outsiders and both were like, "Where you heck did all you dumb kids come from? Get off our lawns!" XD
About the only sure thing is that near to the start of it all you had proteans and qlippoths fighting each other for eons after their very antithetical to one another realities came into contact, and then at some point both of them noticed the gods and other outsiders and both were like, "Where you heck did all you dumb kids come from? Get off our lawns!" XD
And even that is only "sure" insofar that both proteans and qlippoths tell essentially the same story - their respective plane was the first, then the other group's plane showed up, then the after a while the other planes came.
So, qlippoths and proteans agree that the Maelstrom and the Abyss were the first two planes, but they disagree about which one came first and which one second.
But in the end, it's not like either of them, neither qlippoths nor proteans, are really reliable sources, given that neither of them are known for their honesty and their stories just happen to give them each legitimacy as "firsts" with everyone else just being a corruption of their perfection.
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But at the same time, their thing in print is their propensity to be observed as being deathly -silent- to observers.
This has been the way I play the Daemons. They do not speak to or acknowledge their victims, and the only time my Players have heard a daemon reply, was one of the players in the role of a superior, receiving a hollow confirmation from the conjured daemon.
Even the Thanadaemons, (a favorite of my Players for being the taxi of the fiendish planes) doesn't speak, as it expects the PCs to already know the rules and it's fee per living soul that steps aboard its skiff.
The only daemon I've had that took on a speaking role, was an Erodaemon masquerading as a captured sibling of one of the PCs. They never caught her, and went through so much trouble to keep her safe, which was hard for me to keep a straight face during play.
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The only daemon I've had that took on a speaking role, was an Erodaemon masquerading as a captured sibling of one of the PCs. They never caught her, and went through so much trouble to keep her safe, which was hard for me to keep a straight face during play.
My exception was the meladaemon Inusalia (as featured in Planar Adventures in Malikar's Keep in Negative Energy) who was exceptionally talkative and beguiling in her station and role, partially due to that position of power, partially her nature as basically a drug addict in need of specific souls, and partially bleedover from my tendency to play arcanaloths (who partially inspired meladaemons) as "chattyloths" as I've been accused of. ;)