The True Nature of the Swarm-that-Walks
Hey there, everyone. This is my first post on this sub and it’s gonna be a long one, but the few of you who are also weirdly obsessive about alignment/the Outer Planes/different flavors of Evil in Pathfinder might like it. I’ve played through WOTR a few times, done days-long deep dives into Pathfinder lore, and lurked this sub for a couple of years. Today I want to talk about the Swarm-That-Walks.
Owlcat describes the Swarm as “the path of ultimate Evil” and as “an all-devouring monstrosity”. I’ve seen plenty of debates on this sub about where the Swarm fits into the alignment scheme and in Pathfinder cosmology in general – that is, we have a Mythic Path for every alignment already, and most of them are tied to some kind of Outsider and their corresponding Outer Plane, so where do we put the Swarm?
We need to look at its qualities before we assign it a category. Using information from the game, we know that the Swarm is defined by:
1. Hunger: “You are overwhelmed by hunger, as well as hatred toward the food that dares to refuse to satisfy that hunger,” etc. The path’s theme is called The Hunger Eternal. This one’s obvious.
2. Nihilism/Hatred of all life: As above, also “Do you really wish to become an enemy to everything that lives,” “There is more hunger and hatred in you than one mortal’s soul can contain,” “I hate both of you. I hate everyone… Everyone!” “Your rage binds you to this place – a deep abiding hatred for demons, deities, mortals… a hatred for everyone, and everything,” “I’ll consume all of Golarion,” ”To truly become the swarm, you must direct your hatred and hunger against yourself.”
3. Uniting others in opposition to you: “You have chosen a path that is unspeakably vile – one that would make even demons shudder,” “Stop! Don’t do it! Listen – this is even worse than falling into the Abyss,” “If you plan to become a greater threat than the current rulers of the Worldwound, then I will become your enemy,” “The goddess and the demon lord stand before you – they are so different, but now the expression in their eyes is the same – revulsion tinged with horror,” “An evil that even demons despise. I don’t want to have anything to do with you,” “You accepted a gift of power from the Abyss – but you have eclipsed your benefactors in unholiness,” “Frightened by the creature the Commander has become, the generals of the crusade have stirred the remnants of Drezen’s garrison to revolt.”
You know the drill. All your companions leave you, the crusader armies fight against you, Drezen becomes a depopulated ruin, demon lords and goddesses unite against you – and importantly, this does NOT happen on a Demon, Devil, or Lich path. A few of your companions leave in Lich and Demon, but not everyone – not even if you choose to be the edgiest, most tyrannical demon ever. If you go down the path of the Swarm, you become something worse than even Deskari – you become an enemy to all life on the Prime Material Plane and on all the Outer Planes, including the Abyss. What could be worse than the Abyss? What could be worse than Demons?
The beings that created them.
The Swarm-that-Walks is the Daemon path.
No, Daemons are not the same as Demons. They’re much, much worse. They are the Neutral Evil denizens of Abaddon, and in the same way that Devils embody tyranny and control and Demons embody corruption and sin, Daemons embody annihilation and oblivion. They are nihilistic fiends that want to reduce the multiverse to a silent, wrecked tomb. Led by the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, they aim to consume the souls of all mortals and devour the denizens of every Outer Plane. The daemons then will consume each other, and then the last daemon will gaze upon a silent cosmos and kill itself.
There is no reasoning with daemons. They don’t want to control you like devils, they don’t want to corrupt you like demons. They want you to cease to exist entirely.
From Book of the Damned 3, “’Daemons might be viewed as embodying evil at its purest, free from the mandates and structures of devils, possessed of greater vision and focus than demons. They are embodiments of evil without concern for law or chaos, malice given thought and form.”
Now let’s go through the qualities of the Swarm and see why they match up with the characterization and motivations of daemons:
Hunger: Daemons aim to consume everything. They are characterized in Amber Stewart’s Book of the Damned 3 as hunters and eaters of life. The major planar city on Abaddon is called “Awaiting-Consumption”. They are described as “schools of predatory sharks” and as “planar wolves”. Apollyon, the Horseman of Pestilence, is said to (together with his servitor daemons), “feed on [their] victims like ravenous locusts”.
Nihilism/Hatred of All Life: BOTD3 also says “Daemons… lash out at the living, spirits, other outsiders, members of their own kind, and occasionally even themselves with a viciousness that translates into an absolute hatred of all things that live, once lived, or ever might live. Such makes them the ultimate nihilists, guiding them toward a vision of a silent multiverse, an endless realm devoid of life and which, in the end, even they will be absent from. Yet as much as it loathes all things, every daemon loathes itself a modicum less, and so each strives to be the last witness to a dead eternity.”
Uniting others in opposition to you: Daemons don’t play fair. They steal souls in transit on the Astral Plane before Pharasma’s judgment, which causes Angels, Devils, Demons, etc. to work together to guard the River of Souls. They are banned from the Boneyard for this reason – the Devouring Court of Abaddon is totally empty. Pharasma even allows one devil and one demon to stand at the gate and try to persuade souls to choose their afterlives instead of Abaddon.
From BOTD3, “No creature in all the cosmos garners as much hatred as the daemon, as it hungers to destroy the very souls that sustain and populate the other outsider races and enrich the gods themselves. If they remained confined to their own wasteland, Abaddon’s children would be a danger only to those whose evil natures carried them there, but daemons regularly cross their own borders in pursuit of their sickening ends. Created to hunt and destroy life, their unrestrained predation has garnered the enmity of the other outsiders, who guard their borders and even band together across ideological divides to protect the River of Souls.”
Even the most evil members of your party leave you in disgust and terror after you become the Swarm. I think it’s clear to see that this is the true Daemon path, because I don’t see anything else in Pathfinder cosmology that garners as much antipathy for the same reasons. Owlcat may not have characterized it as the Daemon path – I think Daemons only appear in Alushinyyra one time as guards at the slave market – but in my opinion, there’s nothing else it could possibly be.
My last piece of evidence is the new Prophet of Pestilence archetype that came out in the latest DLC. It’s a new kind of Shaman that is devoted to Apollyon, Hoseman of Pestilence, and the archetype is very clearly geared towards a swarm playthrough.
Anticipated questions:
But the Swarm isn't evil, it's just hungry!
I see this all the time and it only gets more irritating. Natural swarms of vermin are not evil, they're neutral because they lack the intelligence to be moral. You, the Knight Commander, choose to murder and consume all life in your path. You understand that people don't want to be consumed, and you do it anyway. As the quotes above show, you are canonically motivated by hatred of all life. The Swarm path is gravely immoral and deliberately evil.
Isn’t Rovagug also universally hated, and doesn’t he also want to consume all of reality?
Yes, the argument could be made that the Swarm is the path of Rovagug, but if that were true, then I think you would have cultists of Rovagug pledge allegiance to you on the Swarm path. Plus, Rovagug is venerated and respected for his destructive power by orcs (as well as humans from some barbarian nations). Rovagug’s followers seem to destroy things because they love it, not because of a cold, genocidal hatred of all life.
What about Ghlaunder?
Ghlaunder is the demigod of parasites, diseases, and insects. This is true. However, Ghlaunder is all about infection and corruption – not destruction. Destroying something without leeching off it first is actually anathema to him. His cultists do work well with cultists of Apollyon, but in the end, Ghlaunder needs a world of mortals to feed from. If they’re all consumed, then what?
But Deskari…
Is a Demon Lord, and is allies with other Demon lords like Baphomet and Pazuzu. He is wary of Lamashtu, the only true Demon God (besides Nocticula, but she’s in Elysium now anyway). He wants the Worldwound to cover all of Golarion – he wants to rule Golarion and make it a home for demons, he doesn’t want to destroy all life (mortal and outsider) on it.
Why do you care about this at all?
I’m fascinated with Daemons because they can’t be reasoned with or truly understood. It’s easy for humans to comprehend the motives of Devils and Demons – and also, both of those fiendish races can be bargained with in such a way as to benefit their summoners. There are no deals with Daemons that do not end in ultimate ruination. Plus, I love the horror genre, and Abaddon (as another poster once said) is Horror World.
Whew! There’s a lot more I could say about this, but I don’t want this post to get too rambly, so I’ll leave it there for now. Many thanks to u/Shemeska for creating all of this amazing Daemonic lore for us to enjoy, and thanks to Owlcat for making such an incredible game!