Doom Headcannon

DANTE'S DOOM HEADCANNON

Doom has a small handful of things inspired by/taken directly from D&D, right? Well, there's a good reason for that. Doom takes place in the distant future of a D&D setting. The general population has more or less left magic behind and progressed beyond medieval era life into a post-modern life, and they're experimenting with the idea of interplanetary migration by means of sending their military to a nearby planet with civilian employees from a large military contract corporation (UAC) to simulate something akin to normal life while they terraform to see if any problems arise, be they mental, physical, or social. The UAC is one of the few large groups that still practices magic, and that's not really any big secret to the military.

Something odd happens when they suddenly lose contact with their base on Deimos, one of Mars' two moons. The military gets the UAC to agree to do a quick planeswalk through Hell to reach a spot where they can open a return portal to the material plane exiting on the moon. Hell is the Lawful Evil plane, whose denizens (the Devils) spend their days punishing those that have earned what they're being given and not just wreaking wanton destruction on whatever catches their eye. Everyone a little bartering, maybe a little contract signing, and minimal punishment in return for otherwise safe passage to the spot they need to get to. However, everyone is taken by surprise when all of Hell uncharacteristically bursts forth and attacks the entire fucking colony, leaving everyone there dead except for one poor son of a bitch named Stan that was lucky enough to be overlooked. So what the fuck happened here? Why did the normally business-y/contract-y plane of Hell suddenly go apeshit like that? And for that matter, why does everyone from Hell suddenly look so massively different from one another? There's an explanation for this, too.

At the time of the planar portal opening up connecting the material plane of Mars to Hell, Hell is being invaded by the Abyss.

If Hell is the plane of Lawful Evil (never punishing without reason, and -always- able to find a reason), then the Abyss is decidedly the plane of Chaotic Evil, whose denizens (the Demons) don't bother with finding reasons or feel the need to explain themselves when they decide that everything around them needs to be destroyed. Hell and the Abyss are almost always locked against each other in constant wars, and always over the same obvious thing: "Should evil be done for reasons, or just because?". If either plane should ever conquer the other, the rest of the planes are completely fucked because the winner will turn their philosophies on everyone else, and both planes are so powerful from an eternity of fighting each other that it's extremely unlikely that anyone will ever stop them. Every so often, one of the two planes pulls a stunt that takes the other completely by surprise in an attempt to bring a sudden surprise end to their warring, and they gain a big upper hand. How did the Abyss surprise Hell this time? Remember that moon base on Deimos? Yeah, the Abyss took it and used it as an entry vehicle. THE ENTIRE FUCKING THING. And the UAC was unlucky enough to open a portal up onto the ensuing fight and wound up on the pissed-off end of both parties.

I don't just come to the conclusion that the Abyss is invading Hell because it sounds fucking awesome; I can offer up evidence supporting it. If the Devils just decided they're pissed off at everyone, they would have punished the group with death, closed the portal themselves, and the situation would just end there with Stan trapped alone on an empty fucking rock with no way to contact anyone. That still leaves us able to question what the portal opened up on though: was it Hell getting invaded by the Abyss, or could it have actually been the Abyss being invaded by Hell, or perhaps we have it all wrong and we didn't open up on Hell OR an invasion, but just the Abyss how it is on any given day? I have yet more answers for your questions: it did indeed open up on Hell. I can be certain about this for a very big reason, and that reason is the Icon of Sin. Let's ignore the Icon of Sin that appears at the end of the Doom RPG, because it really doesn't work that well and it's very boring. Instead, let's look at the Icon of Sin as something other than a monster. In fact, let's change what we refer to when we say "Icon of Sin".

The Icon of Sin is not an individual. The Icon of Sin is a governing position, comparable to the U.S.'s President. Barrack Obama is the President, but that just means that he has the presidency, it does not mean that he is the position itself. We are talking about the Icon of Sin as a position, and as a position the Icon of Sin can be held by anybody. When the position of the Icon of Sin is given to someone, that someone is put into the position by means of their head being skewered on a pike (this is Hell after all, everything is a punishment). Placed on the pike like this, it can contact their brain directly, and the pike channels the brain's signals, giving the person awarded the position control of the titanic body of the Icon of Sin. The "untold miles" of limbs controlled by the IoS are tentacles that can project psychic waves, used to control very large groups of Devils to quickly do tasks that would otherwise take a long time on account of being subjected to multiple points of view, red tape brought on by unnecessary points of view, etc. The tentacles are also used for other various purposes, but the ability to control Devils is all that's important here.

So why did I go to the trouble of fleshing out what the Icon of Sin is like that? Partially because what the IoS turns out to be at the end of the Doom RPG is disappointing and I wanted something better, but mostly because the rest of my headcannon shaped it without my help. Do you wanna hear about how that happened? Well too fucking bad, I'm gonna tell you anyway.

So the Abyss just blindsided Hell with an invasion force out of fucking nowhere, then the UAC happened, and the situation culminated in an uppity recruit that was sent to Mars for disciplinary purposes walking into one end of Hell and walking out the other side having gone the character level equivalent of approx. Lv.3 to Lv.15 (which is a fucking huge gap in D&D), and even having wiped out most of both the Abyssal army and the Infernal army, and even the Abyssal General that led the charge that started this whole fucking mess. Now if this invasion was just any other invasion, Stan would have exited Hell and walked out onto a pristine Earth, exactly as he left it when he was put on the shuttle to Mars. Why does he discover more extraplanar monstrosities here? Because the Abyssal army's invasion was actually SUCCESSFUL. They had a goal in mind with this invasion, and they achieved it! The goal of this invasion was dreamed up by one lone Chaotic Evil human planeswalker that got into the right spidery ear in the Abyss. He convinced the Spider Mastermind to strike at Hell and charge the Icon of Sin in an attempt to overwhelm its defenses and enable a small group to reach the pike, impeach the current -head- of plane, and put the Planeswalker in power. Stan had no idea that this was going on, and he walked right past it to take the Queen when the King was wide open.

So now the Planeswalker has complete psychic control over the Devils, and of course the Mastermind throws her allegiance in with the new Abyssal Icon of Sin. The war has ended, and Hell has been taken over. It is time to teach the rest of existence the philosophy of which evil is the best evil, starting with the shining jewel of the Material Plane: Earth!