An Incubus (pl. Incubi) is a male demon described in various folklore as appearing in the dreams of female humans to seduce them.
The Nightmare by Henry Fuseli
The word incubus is derived from the Latin incubus (“nightmare”) and incubare (“to lie upon, weigh upon, brood”). The female counterpart of the incubus is the succubus.
Origins and History
One of the earliest evident mentions of a demon sharing qualities with an incubus comes from Mesopotamia on the Sumerian King List, circa 2400 BC, where the hero Gilgamesh's father is listed as Lilu. Lilu is described as "disturbing" and "seducing" women in their sleep, while Lilitu, a female demon, is described as appearing to men in erotic dreams.
Two other corresponding demons also appear in Mesopotamian accounts: Ardat lili, who visits men by night, and Idlu lili, a male counterpart to Ardat lili who visits women by night and begets from them. Ardat lili is derived from ardatu, the word for "a woman of marriageable age", while idlu lili is derived from idlu, meaning a "grown man". These demons were originally storm demons.
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In modern representations, an incubus is often depicted as a beautiful man, seducer, or charming figure, rather than as demonic or frightening, to attract people instead of repulsing them. Repeated interactions between an incubus and a woman will lead to sexual activity, a bond forming between them, and ultimately sexual intercourse, as he requires fluids to survive.
In medieval Europe, union of an incubus or succubus and a human was supposed by some to result in the birth of beings half-demon and half-human. The half-human offspring of such a union is sometimes referred to as a cambion. Legendary magician Merlin was said to have been fathered by an incubus.
The Late Latin word incubus ("a nightmare induced by a demon") is derived from Latin incubō ("nightmare, what lies down on one whilst one sleeps") and further from incubāre ("to lie upon, to hatch").
Characteristics and Abilities
Shrouded in secrecy, the androgynous Incubi live in the world's greatest cities, advancing the ways of art and culture through their highly attuned sense of aesthetics and liberality. Masters of the ways of seduction, the Incubi lure many lovers of every race within their domiciles to them through their greatly developed empathic abilities known as Amour.
Beautiful beyond compare with a strong sense of creativity and the glamourous, Incubi can be found in many areas of employment involving the patroning of the arts and ways of thinking. Because their ways of thinking are so open compared to that of the societies they live in, they only prostrate the illusion of conformity, a guise so convincing it scant draws attention to their true nature.
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Living their lives on the thrill of death and adventure they love freely and perpetrate every area of society. Even political positions are unsafe from the gentle penetration of the Incubi.
The 'Three Marks' have deadly applications in combat:
- Amour: Empathy would be the best word to describe Amour. It is the power to know their prey, their feelings, their desires, their thoughts, and sometimes even the depths of their hearts. With ease and at some distance they are able to tell which emotions you are feeling, and when they touch you, this insight grows even stronger. It is at a maximum during copulation. During sex is when they are able to read thoughts and penetrate deep into dark corners of your heart to know things that might even be secret to yourself. The union made during copulation not only allows an incubus to know your mind but also to manipulate it. They plant seeds of ideas and emotions inside you to twist your mind.
- Ardeur: Passion and fire, Ardeur is the power to seduce and charm. Its main manifestations are in the voice, the eyes, the touch, and the scent of the incubi. Their voices and their eyes are hypnotic; their orbs lure the prey to be lost in their depth while their voices are to the ears what silk is to the skin. The more you hear them, the stronger their power over you grows. Their scent is a drug, and the more aroused the incubus gets the more intoxicating it becomes, causing a melange of excitement, arousal, and light-headedness. Their movements are sensual, their touch enticing. Their saliva, sweat and nectars are strong aphrodisiacs. These are all passive abilities, always present since the incubi cannot “switch them off”. It could be said that incubi are a drug, the more you expose yourself to them the more addicted you become. They make you passionate, obsessive, and they could make you lose yourself.
- Amortir: To deaden and to steal is the purpose of Amortir. An incubus’ eternal youth is stolen vitality, which in turns make the poor victims age faster. Instead of eating food, incubi may also choose to feed on strong emotions others around them might be feeling. They can siphon wrath, love, hate, fear and others of that kind from a distance, but just like most of their powers, it is easier and stronger when there is physical contact. Yet the most dreadful aspect of Amortir is the ability to rob others of their beauty. For example, when an incubus craves for the eyes of a person, they would seduce and sleep with them. The day after, the incubus will wake with his prize and the prey would wake blind and with withered eyes.
Of course the three black marks also have their uses. The claws are sharp and long enough to tear through flesh, and incubi have also hit others with their horns to stab them or knock them down. However, when it comes to physical combat, the incubus’ deadliest weapon is the tail, which can extend to be twice their body size and can pierce a body with remarkable precision and speed.
Cultural Variations and Folklore
A number of folklore/mythos relating to or similar to the incubus is seen around the world.
- The alp of Teutonic or German folklore is one of the better known.
- In Zanzibar, Popo Bawa primarily attacks men and generally behind closed doors.
- "The Trauco", according to the traditional mythology of the Chiloé Province of Chile, is a hideous deformed dwarf who lulls nubile young women and seduces them. The Trauco is said to be responsible for unwanted pregnancies, especially in unmarried women.
- Perhaps another variation of this conception is the "Tintín" in Ecuador, a dwarf who is fond of abundant-haired women and seduces them at night by playing the guitar outside their windows - a myth that researchers believe was created during the colonial period to explain pregnancies in women who never left their houses without a chaperone.
- The Southern African incubus demon is the Tokolosh. Chaste women place their beds upon bricks to deter the rather short fellows from attaining their sleeping forms.
- In Swedish folklore, the mara or mare is a spirit or goblin that rides on the chests of humans while they sleep, giving them bad dreams (or "nightmares"). Belief in the mare goes back to the Norse Ynglinga saga from the 13th century, but the belief is probably even older.
- In Assam, a northeastern state of India, it is mostly known as pori (Assamese: পৰী, meaning "angel") (pari in Hindi and etymological cousin of fairy). According to the mythology, Pori comes to a man at night in his dreams and seduces him.
- In Turkish culture, the incubus is known as Karabasan. It is an evil being that descends upon some sleepers at night. These beings are thought to be spirits or jinns. It can be seen or heard in the nightmare and a heavy weight is felt on the chest. Yet, people cannot wake up from that state.
- In Ukrainian folklore, the "perelesnyk" is a significant figure resembling an incubus and associated with meteors, lightning, and fire. This supernatural being was believed to transform into a fiery dragon or young man, entering homes through chimneys, doors, or windows to seduce women by taking on the appearance of deceased spouses or lovers. Considered both seductive and perilous, the perelesnyk gifted treasures at night that turned to worthless items by daybreak. Its touch could drain vitality and hasten death. Countermeasures included uttering "amen" or wearing a crucifix.
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Scientific Explanations
One scientific explanation for the incubus concept could fall under the scope of sleep paralysis, as well as hypnagogia, as it is common to experience auditory and visual hallucinations in both states. Typical examples include a feeling of being crushed or suffocated, electric "tingles" or "vibrations", imagined speech and other noises, the imagined presence of a visible or invisible entity, and sometimes intense emotions of fear or euphoria and orgasmic feelings.
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These often appear quite real and vivid, especially auditory hallucinations of music, which can be quite loud, indistinguishable from music being played in the same room. The combination of sleep paralysis and hypnagogic hallucination could cause someone to believe that a "demon was holding them down". Nocturnal arousal etc. could be explained by creatures causing otherwise guilt-producing behavior.
Additionally, some crimes of sexual assault were likely passed off as the actions of incubi. Some authors speculate that rapists may have attributed the rapes of sleeping women and men to demons to escape punishment.
Incubi Lifecycle
Only when an incubus and a succubus mate is an incubus born. A succubus could bare the child of another race and an incubus could impregnate a female of another race by having sex with the opposite gender to acquire the genetic information necessary, but the child would have no inheritance whatsoever from the incubus or succubus.
Childhood (Birth - 20): Contrary to popular belief, incubi are born genderless. Somewhere during this first stage they will identify more with one of their parental figures, whether the mother or the father, and in trying to mimic them they will assume their first gender. Sometimes, an older brother or sister, or another mature incubus to whom they are exposed becomes this hero figure. Children rarely get sick because they are nurtured with much care, and they are known to be extremely curious about everything, especially people.
Adolescence (20-40): Once a strong sexual drive is awakened, adolescence is said to have begun. During this period incubi tend to explore themselves by exploring with other people their own likes and interests. It is at this stage that they forge their personality, build their character, and shape their individuality. As they are trying to find their singularity, they often shift in gender, sexual partners, and friends.
Maturity (40 -100): An incubus is said to have reached maturity when they finally have a solid personality. It is here that the distinction between succubae and incubi is done, even though they are not treated differently. Gender changing also stops here, not because they lose their ability but because it leads to psychological traumas and problems. Theoretically, an incubus or succubus that changes gender once he/she reaches maturity dooes not have a stable personality and will likely meet an early death. They are seen by their race as insecure and frail.
Incubi Characteristics
Incubi are known to be hedonists. These slaves of sensation are always consumed and consuming in seething desire. They are very liberal, especially when it comes to sexuality and tend to have sex regularly, often collecting people as trophies. Their personalities are obsessive and addictive, and they fancy drugs and alcohol.
Unlike other races, the incubi do not have a government or habitat of their own. Ever since they can remember, they have infiltrated other societies and adapted to them. They gather where the largest civilizations can be found, where large amounts of wealth are concentrated, in big and sleepless cities.
Manual labour, science, business and all those boring professions are disliked by the incubi. Instead, this majestic race produces musicians, dancers, painters, sculptors, poets, actors, and other geniuses of the arts. They are in love above all with beauty, prisoners of their artistic visions and sensitivity.
Incubi also favour positions in politics, and they do well due to their charm and charisma. Politics offers them power and a way to spread their liberal ideas. It also offers them wealth, the second thing they love the most. Truth be told, if an incubus is not living in luxury he is probably travelling with a theatre, some musicians, or any kind of artistic group.
Anarchy is the only way to describe their organization. While no one is considered to be the ruler of the race or to possess any authority over it, some incubi families are more respected than others.
Incubi Family Life
Given the fact that an incubus’ reputation is greatly determined by their family name, it is no surprise that family does play an important role in their lives. Parents are often concerned about increasing or at least maintaining the honour of their name, so the children are nurtured most carefully. During their adolescence, incubi are very frail and if their parents did an awful job during their childhood, they would most likely not survive to maturity.
Once a child reaches maturity, the outcome of the family can vary. Some remain together and support each other, some have a couple of members leave but endure, and others break down completely and each continues their own path. According to an incubus’ ethics, the responsibility owed to the families comes to an end when the children are grown. After that, every relation may be dissolved, and remaining together is a personal choice of each member that can depend on many things such as economic reasons, emotional stability, common interests, etc.
It is not common for any mature incubus with ties to any youngling to abandon a family, and this does not reduce itself to just the parents but also to the older brothers and sisters, and any other figure a child has grown attached to.
Finally, with families that do stick together, incest is relatively common. Incubi do not make a separation of “maternal love”, “paternal love”, “brotherly love”, or even “loving as a friend”. They simply love, and if the object of said affection is charming enough, they would want to express their love physically. Such relationships are not considered by them morally problematic although the societies in which the live in often deem it twisted and sick. As a matter of fact, some proud families encourage incest to maintain the purity of the bloodline. Since incubi biology is different from that of humans, the bloodline does maintain itself strong and pure instead of producing crippled offspring.
Incubi children tend to receive outstanding educations. They learn more about the arts, culture and history than about sciences, although they do receive good bases on that too. Parents play the role of main educators, and what they often do is have them receive the same education as the other children in society, whether it is by sending them to the same institutions or by hiring a teacher, and then complimenting that with their own life styles and knowledge.
Culture of Secrecy
A culture of secrecy has been created by the incubi, because if everyone knew all their secrets, they would get a very bad fame and could be persecuted and hated. Living would then become much more difficult. For that reason, most people that have incubi friends never come to know it. Their race is considered a legend, because it is generally believed that you would have a higher probability of being struck by lightning than seeing one.
Because they are always depicted in their true forms, people are convinced that incubi are a form of beautiful demons with tails and horns that seduce and kill their victims by either sneaking into their bedrooms while they dream or when they find them alone on the streets. That legend was first created by humans, but incubi have helped keep it alive.
A cultural event called symposium is very famous among incubi. They are usually hosted by the very wealthy among their ranks and it is a gathering where all incubi are welcome to come and feast freely for days. The purpose of these symposiums is pleasure yes, but also networking. Incubi enjoy being amongst their kind and this event is the main opportunity to meet others, because they are few in numbers and it is hard to find others in such a large world. In these parties, their main cultural hobby can be seen in all its majesty, gossiping.
Symposiums are a good example of how secretive incubi are, because within them only the very powerful incubi dare bring their beloveds if they are of another race. Why? The incubus race has produced a myriad of important figures in the literary arts, performing arts, and visual arts. Nevertheless, they do not have a “racial style” because they have always blended with the styles of other races, partly because of their secrecy. In other words, incubi have contributed to the advancements of the arts and culture but not created a niche under their name.
Incubi always speak at least two languages, Noldorin and the language of whatever society they are living in. Noldorin is an ancient language that demons also speak and it has evolved throughout the years. Currently, the Noldorin of the incubi is different from the one of the demons, but they are mutually intelligible.
There was a very old tradition of having the first name of their children end in “ian”, “an” or “anne”, such as “Luanne” and “Carian” but few follow nowadays.
Religion is probably the most hated thing by incubi because it usually goes hand in hand with strict ethics. They believe it imprisons the minds of people, makes them dull, annoyin...