Knights & Knaves Alehouse

Are lemures considered devils? (My gut reaction is no, they're not.)

For the purposes of special abilities? I would say not.

I would say no. I think the source material for the monster related to some sort of evil spirit (or lesser entity). Here from wiki (for what its worth).

In Roman mythology, lemures (singular lemur) were shades or spirits of the restless or malignant dead, and are probably cognate with an extended sense of larvae (sing. larva = mask) as disturbing or frightening. Lemures is the more common literary term but even this is rare: it is used by the Augustan poets Horace and Ovid, the latter in his Fasti, the six-book calendar poem on Roman holidays and religious customs.[1]

Lemures may represent the wandering and vengeful spirits of those not afforded proper burial, funeral rites or affectionate cult by the living: they are not attested by tomb or votive inscriptions. Ovid interprets them as vagrant, unsatiated and potentially vengeful di manes or di parentes, ancestral gods or spirits of the underworld. To him, the rites of their cult suggest an incomprehensibly archaic, quasi-magical and probably very ancient rural tradition. Four centuries later, St. Augustine describes both the lemures and the larvae as evil and restless manes that torment and terrify the living: lares, on the other hand, are good manes.[2]



Of course the not mentioning them as devils or demons in the MM and their ability to be on the prime material seems to suggest another sort of haunting like entity as well.

I put them on the same level as larvae - something that can be promoted to a devil.

I'd say they are not devils, even though they are under the carpet "Devil" category. Unlike the rest of the listings under Devil, they are not listed as one behind their name (where all the rest have Lesser devil, Greater devil or Arch-devil tags).

- Wheggi

Yeah, lemures are listed under Devil in the MM because they're part of the "Nine Hells Ecosystem," but I would definitely not grant them all of the standard devil abilities and immunities.