What Makes The Succubus So Terrifying In Dungeons and Dragons?
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- Опубліковано 7 лют 2025
- Ultimate lore of the most seductive demons for your fantasy roleplaying.
NOTE: The Medieval period, also known as the Middle Ages, was a time in European history that lasted from the 5th to the 15th centuries.
The Witch Hunt, Inquisitors, and Demonology
Large-scale witch hunts and accusations of witchcraft began in Europe in the early 15th century and lasted for approximately 300 years. These were mostly conducted in secular courts. In France, approximately 2,000 witch trials occurred between the years 1550 and 1700. The majority of people targeted were women. While some women admitted to their alleged powers, most women vehemently denied the accusations. Those who were charged were typically women without a male protector, such as spinsters, or widows. Many of the accused, while not convicted, were still subjected to a lifetime of suspicion and fear.
Early handbooks on witch hunting are a source of context for the European witch craze. In 1486, German churchman and inquisitor Heinrich Kramer (often known by his Latinized name Henricus Institoris) published a handbook for interrogating witches. The Witch Hammer (Malleus Maleficarum), both controversial and very popular, contained step-by-step instructions for inquisitors on methods of interrogation, and became a widely consulted late medieval text on witchcraft.
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42yr old Gronard here -- this is one of my goto and favoourite channels --
Thanks! You're still a youngin!
thanks for writing and providing so much science for our pretend games!
Aten produces such high-quality mini-documentaries. Pre-Tolkien myth, legend, and history, plus treatment in the only game that matters, and practical tips for maximizing enjoyment at the table. I only wish I could convey appreciation more fully. Thank you, Aten.
You're welcome! Glad you enjoyed it! You're awesome!
Thanks Aten! Cool stuff, as always! Can't wait to see the Drama channel version 🙂
Wonderful video, Aten. I can listen to you and Seth Skorkowsky discuss this stuff all day long. ❤
Thanks! Seth is great!
Awesome video! I didn’t really catch the through line until you mentioned it and my wife and I both applauded. Though she did spend the whole time making reference to “three fiddy” to my chagrin.
Special delight for me… I have that Lamia figure and I also painted mine in leopard Rosetta spots. I hadda squee at that.
Wonderful work Aten. I love Succubi and ghosts in D&D. They mess with a party like no other monsters.
Awesome!
Wonderful work as always and definitely something I can use when designing y upcoming Greyhawk campaign. Thanks!
Awesome, thank you!
Another great video full of inspirations for my horror campaigns. Ah, succubus! Our favorite death-by-snu-snu demons!
Glad you enjoyed it!
This was fun! I certainly enjoy just D&D lore, from yester years, but the real world influences are also fun. I did say say, several times, "Wow, some of these models mist be old", just because I don't believe modern sensibilities would allow for too many people to make them, today. I also dipped into In Nomine, in my head, a time or two, which was also fun, after hearing about Lilith.
Yes, all but one are from the 80s and 90s. The full figured dark skinned succubus I purchased from Reaper minis just for this video. It's metal and of course comes unpainted (as are all the others).
Love the combination of both historical and fictional lore. Look foreward to more vids!
Glad you like them!
I love the concept of Lilith and Sammael. I've been writing a book with those two characters in it!
This video, as always, is so good.
And I didn't know that about sleep paralysis, but that makes total sense.
Thanks! Good luck on your book!
Here’s the thing with game mythology. It doesn’t have to match mythology in the real world. In your setting at your game table, these creatures can behave however you design them to.
That's right. I don't often use real world mythology but I find it helpful to teach it to others as a starting place to develop their own ideas.
Sleep paralysis is super fun lol. I’ve had it on and off since I was a kid. I can totally see it fueling all kinds of demonic nightmare fuel. Some people are just naturally prone to it. If you are prone to it, it’s actually a halfway step to lucid dreaming, so that can turn something terrifying into a lot of fun.
What I like to do with monsters like the succubus/incubus is have them end up being the ‘hidden boss’ of a campaign or story arc. The party thinks, at first, they’re fighting an evil tyrant, criminal mastermind or whatever but it ends up being the succubus manipulating all the things from the shadows.
Instead of having the big bad necessarily be some huge big hit dice damage sponge, it’s more about outsmarting the fiend and her minions and tracking them down before some time limit expires that’s tied to the plot. Much like the latter part of the novel Dracula, where the heroes race to stop the count before he becomes invincible on his home turf.
It’s a believable story setup because, well, politicians are often self absorbed jerks who think with their naughty bits 😅
It should stop after puberty. As an adult it really is a warning sign that youre under too much stress. Sleep paralysis and the Satanic Panic are what lead me into becoming a professional paranormal debunker.
BTW - do you know the story of the Hmong deaths (from sleep paralysis related stress) that gave us the Nightmare on Elm street franchise? It's a early 80s true "ghost story." They really thought they were being attacked by supernatural creatures and died from massive heart failure.
@ Stress is definitely a trigger but I’ve had it many times when not stressed at all.
And yeah… I lost two sets of DnD books to the satanic panic. Was not a fan, to state it mildly.
@ I did not! Thanks. That sounds like an interesting Wikipedia rabbit hole to chase down.
Fantastic lore, Aten-thank you. The background is super helpful. 😊
Glad you liked it!
enjoyed another video of yours. thank you.
Thanks for that!
Great video! Your dedication to research and delightful sarcasm never disappoint!
Thank you for your time, effort, and generosity!
Really interesting video! Lots of fuel for my future games. Really appreciated the scientific explanation at the end
You're welcome! I'm glad it was helpful! Last year I was giving a paranormal lecture on these and at the end a woman came up and introduced herself. She's a PHD sleep doctor and she thanked me for correctly explaining the topic. She has had a lot of patients who think they're being attacked by demons or ghosts and she has to explain the science to them. This is something con artists in the paranormal field capitalize on to take advantage of vulnerable people.
Thank you for the lore. Great video, keep it up!
You're welcome! Thanks for being amazing!
Another great video man, thanks for the hard work :D
Appreciate it!
Awesome research. Thank you!
Thank You!!
Thanks! Super useful as always!
Happy to help!
Great vid, dug the minis.
Appreciate it!
Great job as always! Thank you for this video… And for the scientific explanation …
Glad you enjoyed it!
No notification, but I'm here in 35 minutes. We Need to appease the Evil Algorithmic Overlords so they push your content.
You're awesome! Thanks for the support!
Been watching your stuff for a while. I enjoy what you are doing. Are all the minis your own/painted by you? I imagine you put a ton of work into these videos, so asking you to reference painters/manufacturers is probably a jerk move, but it would be cool.
Keep it up. Great work
Happy to answer any questions. I began collecting minis in 1980. I have thousands and making videos is giving me an excuse to pain my piles of shame and touch up minis I painted in the 80s and 90s. The vintage minis are Grenadier, Ral Partha and Leading Edge. Lately I've been adding to my collection with Reaper minis and a few random lesser known brands that make metal minis. Yes, I paint them all myself - one handed since my left hand is paralyzed (from an injury in 2001. I stopped painting from 2001 until 2022.
@welovettrpgs well your figs look great. Glad you are powering through despite disability. Check out Black Magic Craft he has some great videos on painting without full motor unction.
As always top-tier content. 👍
Much appreciated!
Looking forward to the rest of the series
Thanks!
I don't think I'll be able to use a succubus or incubus soon for my campaigns, but your video definitely makes me want to try using them at some point.
Thanks! I do feel these work best as adversaries to an important NPC rather than a PC.
My girlfriend and I have just liked and watched your video all the way through.
Thanks!
@@welovettrpgs One of the things that I think fascinates people about demons and devils is it's an encounter with the dark face of the mystic masculine and mystic feminine. It's what Jung might have defined as coming to terms with our shadow selves. I think that's why it has such power and draw.
By the by--I noticed your note at the end. Do you have a patreon where we can support the channel?
@@andrewlustfield6079 I'm not ever going to do patreon as I dont wish to have that type of relationship with viewers.
@ I respect your choice
cool vid and informative
Thank you!!
The Demonomicon of Iggwilv: Malcanthet article in Dragon Magazine #353, they actually stat out incubi as separate monsters that you absolutely don't want in your campaign... given that they were literally r**ists. To quote: "Incubi see what they want and take it by force."
Yeah, I have all of those. I don't agree with promoting SA. edit to add: I mean the author of that article was either ignorant of real world myths or chose to ignore it. In any case they intentionally introduced SA and I may mention that briefly when I cover the Demonomicon but I prefer to not give that type of stuff oxygen. Thanks for understanding.
One of the best
Thanks!
Another hit
Thanks!
My issue with 5e though is that devils and demons one law bound while the other chaotic with succubus for both...(i know each has its own potential lore with devils being fallen angles of love and succubus for demons being able to procreate but felt very undefined meh). Great video, what were your thoughts of the religious hate for DND which caused them to rename demons/devils with the other alternative (Tanar'ri) and devils (Baatezu).
It's worth checking out the YT channel ESOTERICA on the Hebrew origin of Lilith and prayer bowls.
Agreed they have great info.
❤🔥❤🔥❤🔥❤🔥
Thanks!
You give "sleep paralysis" too little credit friend. Spending time with a succubus is what you're supposed to do as an ancient initiate. And it can be highly consensual. They have a lot to teach. I wrote this in a light-hearted way, but the amount of evidence is huge: Supernatural creatures seek out humans and sleep with them. You said it yourself, Lilith was a protector for some time, and not the most evil'est of bad. Naturally, with christianity and the witch hunt, every supernatural encounter was demonic and should be forbidden. And if you think "it isnt real" maybe you mean, "it isnt observable by others" I would tend to agree more. What others CAN observe are the side effects (for better or worse). The vampire "bite" that leaves the "victim" dazed and weakened - this is a sign of the loss of reality that results, as the creature takes reality from your presense on earth, but you are given a strengthened supernatural presense in return. It's not for everyone.
Respectfully, I used to be an occultist in the late 80s. Today I'm a professional paranormal investigator. If you can produce factual evidence of paranormal entities I can make you very wealthy. However no one has ever been able to. I wonder what that means. I used to be a believer but after years of education and study I am now confident that none of it is real. I now work to debunk fraud that takes advantage of vulnerable people. Again, if you can provide actual, factual, legitimate evidence then I can make you very very wealthy. There are multiple organizations offering lots of money for provable claims. Look up my friend Kenny Biddle's UA-cam channel. He's one of the best investigators in the field. Let me know if you can produce evidence. Thanks.
@ Then we could split the money! I'm with you here, the point of the word "supernatural" is that these phenomena are not part of consensual reality (what you call real). There can never be proof because proof operates within the causal, natural world.
However, experience itself is more real than can be proven or pinpointed through the scientific approach - and I claim all of our lives have unprovable, yet very real aspects. The unprovable self-reported phenomena gets lumped in with the accepted, psychological, just to make sense of the reports. Here we flush the baby with the bathwater. Sleep paralysis, it has to be! But sometimes, it isn't.
Add to this the unsolvable mind-body problem of the psychological-physical world split, and we have an unprovable basis for pretty much all of our stuff. Give me one free miracle ...
Your recounting of editions' changes is, as usual, spot on.
The 5th Edition did, indeed, initially try to fix the succubus alignment and classification issues, but, they then screwed them ALL up in the 'new' books. WotC strikes again.
Interesting. I avoided the new stuff.
@welovettrpgs I have, as well
I'm going by the multiple reviews of the new books I have seen