Lord Loss (character)

Lord Loss is the Demon Master and main antagonist from Darren Shan's ten-book series, The Demonata. Lord Loss is the only character to definitely have appeared in all ten books.

Appearance
Lord Loss is described as having pale red, lumpy skin, and eight arms (which are frequently described as being mangled). He has no heart, and instead simply has an open hole in his chest filled with deadly, venomous snakes. He bares a pair of very dark-red eyes with jet black pupils. Instead of having legs, strips of bloody flesh hang from the edge of stumps where his feet would normally be shown, and so he moves about by levitating. The many individual cracks in his skin, which seep blood every time he even slightly moves, give his demonic appearance a nice touch as well. He is the only Demon Master that somehow is free to travel between the Demon universe and the human universe by Windows. Any other Demon Master would have to wait for a mage to create a tunnel between the universes. His human compainon's name was Juni Swan, also known as Nadia Moore.

Unlike any other demon in the book, Lord Loss feeds on the sorrow of humans, and because of this, he is not interested in mindless killing. He is described as the cruelest character in the books, and enjoys bringing slow and painful deaths upon humans. Two of the three times that people betray their allies, he does not permit them to live. He also kills people in the cruelest and most sadistic way possible. In Slawter, he kills a young girl by literally sucking her dry of blood. In Bec he kills a woman by tormenting her with zombies of dead children that resembled her children that were killed by demons.

Again unlike any of his demonic fellows, Lord Loss is greatly intelligent, and has mastered the use of human languages. His speech pattern is characterised by a tone of immense sadness, coupled with the use of quite a sophisticated vocabulary; he rarely uses abbreviations, and always addresses characters by their fulls names as opposed to nicknames. On several occasions, he has displayed polite and elegant mannerisms which contrast sharply with other more bestial behaviour undertaken at the same time: for example, at the end of his chess game in the first book, he graciously escorts Dervish Grady to the portal to the Demonata Universe, and then tries to rip his throat out moments later.

He lives in a castle made of webs. These webs vary from thick to thin, all extraordinarily strong, in order to make the mechanisms of the drawbridge work, etc. There is a moat with demon sharks at the bottom, but instead of water there is empty space. In many ways, Lord Loss bears a resemblance to a spider: His eight arms and the fact that he sometimes moves by crawling across his webbing all suggest an arachnid quality. In addition, his throne is in the shape of a spider.

The Demonata
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In Lord Loss, the title character is first seen killing the family of our protagonist, Grubbs, accompanied by Vein and Artery. Using his power to cure lycanthropy, a game of chess is instigated against him by Dervish. Dervish rushes to save Grubbs when he's threatened, then Grubbs takes his place and makes a bad game worse. But once he notices that Lord Loss is feeding off his misery and desperation, he puts on a disinterested façade and storms to victory. Because of Grubbs' insults to both the game of Chess and Lord Loss himself, Lord Loss vows to make the Gradys suffer, a vow that intensifies in venom as the series progresses.

Demon Thief
Lord Loss masterminded the cruel plot to slowly drag Kernel towards him and, using the First Board stolen from the Druid Drust in Bec, let him realize the truth about Art. Kernel was responsible for turning Lord Loss's familiar (Artery) into a human (Art), which led to Kernel discovering his powers.

Slawter
Lord Loss was the only Demon Master in the town of Slawter. Before the demons were released, he gave a speech to the crowd. He then unleashed his demon followers. He had a fight with Dervish and Grubbs, but eventually they escaped with the 34 survivors of the cast and crew. During his fight with Grubbs all his arms were severed, but after Grubbs ran away he regrew them using magic. Lord Loss vowed to make the Gradys' deaths even more long and painful, then proceeded to kill all the people remaining in Slawter in the most painful ways he could think of.

Bec
Lord Loss purposefully assisted in stopping the demon attacks on Ireland, due to the fact that the human world was where he got his power from, through misery and sorrow. However, he did not wish any of the group that destroyed the tunnel to live (although Bran survived). It is in this book he first learns about chess, as he sees Drust playing it. He also sours Bec's "victory" with an admission to the futility of their mission, claiming that closing the tunnel had been for his benefit and that he had been crossing for centuries before that. Half way through he gives Bec some of his powers. Unfortunately for him that included part of the Kah-gash

Blood Beast
Lord Loss is not seen until the plane scene where he and his demons start killing people on the plane. He rips the lower half of a woman's face off and feeds it to Artery.

Demon Apocalypse
Lord Loss is first seen in the beginning of the book from the continuation of Blood Beast. Then afterward, at the cave, before and after Bec, Grubbs, Kernel and Beranabus time travel through the power of the Kah Gash. Lord Loss battles with them in order to open the tunnel and allow thousands of demons to pass. In this book, he displays affection for his (technically) human servant Juni Swan, grieving in an "almost human" way when she is killed. This is the only occasion on which he has shown genuine care for a mortal, and it is implied that the two may have shared a romantic relationship. Indeed, Juni professes her love to Lord Loss before she dies.

Death's Shadow
Lord Loss does not appear in this book, except for speaking through Cadaver's mouth. It is the first book of the series he has not appeared in.

Wolf Island
Lord Loss makes no apperance, he is only mentioned.

Dark Calling
Lord Loss is seen when Grubbs Grady, Kernel Fleck, Bec McConn, Dervish Grady, and Meera Flame temporarily destroy Death's or The Shadow's body.Grubbs Grady and Dervish Grady also find Bill-E Spleen's soul has gone. As he is unable to use magic to protect himself from the torment. Death or The Shadow is with the demonic army and attacks them. Lord Loss is angered when Meera kills herself to finally kill Juni Swan (originally a Disciple, she turned to the Demonata after her resurrection in Demon Thief). As a result,she can no longer come back to life. Lord Loss battles with Bec and Bec is left behind when the Disciples escape. However, Kernel saw that their struggle seemed to be a weak facade and believes that Bec has made an alliance with Lord Loss. If this is true, the Kah-Gash, is in the hands of a Demon Master.

Hell's Heroes
Lord Loss is seen firstly in the dream of Grubbs Grady, when he seems to be treating Bec with great love and care (as with his previous assistant Juni Swan). He leads her through his castle and encourages her, showing her torture rooms and the contained victims, whom he tortures with great care and affection. It is stated that he whispers words of sorrow and kindness whilst torturing them. He then transports into the Original Board (taken from Drust in Bec) upon Bec's request, and secretely makes a deal with her. Lord Loss is next featured when Grubbs, Kernel, Kirilli Kovacs, Timas Brauss, Shark and the werewolf nicknamed 'Moe' enter his world to escape the demon master of the previous world. Lord Loss battles Kirilli, Shark and Moe but is described as 'playfully slapping them away' and seen to be toying with them, as he is too powerful on his home world. He then requests Bec to kill one of them, and is greatly pleased when she instead destroys all the souls from the Board, allowing Death/The Shadow to enter through Bec. The Disciples then flee his world.

Lord Loss is seen again at the final battle, where he is blasted and temporarily paralysed by Grubbs. However, Bec opens the tunnel allowing more masters to cross. Grubbs notices here for the first time that Lord Loss is a weaker demon master. When Grubbs, Kernel and Bec reset the original Board universe using the Ka-Gash, Lord Loss is placed back in his world in a white square. The Ka-Gash then wipes out all the demon masters but upon arriving at Lord Loss, they learn of the deal struck with Bec, that is to spare his life if he agrees to help her concuct her plan. Grubbs is unwilling to agree, but Kernel and Bec convince him by saying that the world needs a evil, to remind them of what's good and making Lord Loss promise not to allow major crossings. Grubbs grudgingly agrees and Lord Loss is left alive as the last demon master. It is stated that he will now act as the omnipresent figure of malevolence in the minds of all sentient beings, and will continue causing misery and woe for all. He will also co-ordinate crossings so that history will play out as before, although all crossings will be stopped at the point when Bec was born so as to stop Death from becoming conscious.

Personality
Lord Loss is an ancient demon who feeds off the sorrow of humanity, and through this has a morbid love of humanity. He is extremely sadistic though this is partially because he needs humanity's suffering and sorrow in order to survive. He loves to cause as much pain, both mental and physical, as he can and needs pain the way a human needs food and drink. Lord Loss kills people in the cruelest ways he can think of; in Bec he has the zombies of Orna's own children eat her alive all for his entertainment. Lord Loss speaks in a sad tone of voice and is very skilled at speaking the human language.

Despite his cruel nature, Lord Loss appears to be less evil than the majority of the Demonata. It turns out that he does, to a certain extent, feel pity towards the humans he torments. He can also feel some genuine attachment towards others and is genuinely devastated when Juni Swan is killed. He also calls her "My Swan". Perhaps Lord Loss' most honourable trait is that he never lies and whenever he makes a promise he would stick to it. Ironically he uses this as a weapon against Bec. Because he cast a geis he had no choice but to kill her, since he had made a solemn vow.

Powers and abilities
Other than his obvious demonic abilities, Lord Loss gained an obsession with chess, one of his only similarities to mankind, and has become very good at it. He can also travel between the Demonata's world and Earth, which no other Demon Master has accomplished without using a tunnel (though, Lord Loss is only able to do so because he once was a piece of the Kah-Gash). Lord Loss has also been able to combat Beranabus, Bec and Dervish on equal terms and the fact that Beranabus needed to call on his Demon side in order to survive indicates that Lord Loss might be even more powerful than he is. Despite this it turns out that he is actually one of the weaker Demon Masters, though he later becomes quite probably the strongest one after Grubbs, Bec and Kernel remake the universe. Lord Loss has also become very proficient at speaking English. He also has the ability to feed on a persons pain, which he needs the way a human needs food and water.

Trivia

 * Lord Loss is the first demon to be named in the Demonata.
 * He is the only Demon Master able to travel through Windows.
 * He was part of the Kah-Gash.
 * He also is apparently one of the weakest demon masters, as seen in Hells Heroes.