The Qadištu (カディシュトゥ, Kadishutu)? is a group and race (女魔, Joma)? of demons that appears in Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance.
Members[]
- Lilith (Leader)
- Naamah
- Eisheth Zenunim
- Agrat bat Mahlat
Associates[]
- Tiamat (God)
- Glasya-Labolas (Servant)
- Samael (Patron)
- Yoko Hiromine (Vessel)
Profile[]
Also known as "The Goddesses of Vengeance," the Qadištu are a group of female demons that appear in Vengeance. All four members are named after the four angels of sacred prostitution who have allegedly mated with Samael, and their goal is to revive the primordial goddess of chaos, Tiamat, who was slain by the horned god. Through this means, the demons instigate mass chaos and destruction throughout all of Tokyo, and anyone killed by them will become Magatsuhi and be absorbed into one of their Magatsuhi collection orbs, and a Nahobino had to be used as a sacrifice to resurrect the Mother of Chaos. Despite they never seem to cause more suffering than what's needed, the four are still extremely sadistic demons who take great pleasure and enjoyment in causing suffering and destruction as long as they can afford to. They were also revealed to be behind the deaths of Shohei Yakumo's parents.
They will only appear if the protagonist decides to "hold the hand" of a girl that will drive the world into chaos at the start of the game (this locks the story into the Vengeance Route right away; otherwise, the events of the original V will be enacted instead).
The Nahobino runs into the group for the first time when he and Yoko Hiromine encounter Naamah in the outskirts of Kamiyacho, who underestimates him as a mere human and tries to use them both as sacrifices inside her domain. The Nahobino comes out victorious and she releases the two, but not before the rest of the group shows up and the group leader Lilith declares they have found the key to the resurrection.
The group is encountered several times again during the Lahmu arc. On one trip to school, the protagonist encounters Naamah and Glasya-Labolas slaughtering people in the subway and collecting their Magatsuhi, only to be defeated by the Nahobino and driven away by the presence of Nuwa and Yakumo. After Lahmu is defeated, Lilith kills Sahori alongside Tao, chiding the demon as a pawn before announcing that inducing prolonged suffering might create more Magatsuhi for them to collect than if they would kill everyone in their path before leaving. While Sahori is still dead, Tao is automatically revived here by a mysterious being.
Later on, Eisheth orchestrates the mass vanishing of students previously attributed to Lahmu trying to "save" them by maiming off body parts they "hate" the most and tries to straight-up kill Miyazu Atsuta under the premise of "saving" her from her illness. She was barely stopped short of killing Miyazu, but managed to gather huge amounts of Magatsuhi and in retaliation Mastema turns all humans and demons in the Fairy Village into salt pillars alongside the ones in Da'at and Tokyo. In a similar vein, Agrat disguised herself as a fortuneteller and spreads a plague; while this plague does not kill living beings, it inflicts massive pain on those affected by it in order to get a continuous supply of Magatsuhi. This "plague" is in truth the result of a machine that absorbed Magatsuhi from their targets continuously. By the time the party confronts Agrat, they have already gathered a sufficient amount of Magatsuhi to resurrect Tiamat.
The party later reaches the Tokyo Government Building where Lilith is fought alongside the other three members as Bethel's forces combat the Demon King. Despite winning against Lilith in the battle, she manages to fatally injure Tao and sacrifice the Nahobino, although the protagonist is saved by Aogami's apparent sacrifice, and Yoko is convinced by Lilith to resume her vengeance against the world as a disgraced goddess, Lilith transforming herself into a glowing ball of energy to infuse into Yoko. With Aogami's sacrifice, Tiamat is resurrected and destroys a huge portion of Tokyo, resulting in Nuwa and (indirectly) Yuzuru Atsuta's deaths. The Qadištu were never seen again after that, with Naamah, Eisheth, and Agrat having sacrificed themselves to Tiamat to fuel her resurrection. All four demons are unlocked for special fusion after the Nahobino, now fused with Tsukuyomi, collects their Talisman & Periapt, which was left behind at the sacrificial site behind a rock, close to the Magatsu Rail that would take the Nahobino to Shakan.
From this point on, Yoko would hold their torch and, in the Chaos ending, she and the protagonist will successfully destroy the universe and liberate it from the Mandala System, but according to several other demons in a subsequent playthrough, they only liberated a single universe rather than the multiverse as the Qadištu desired. This is due to the way the Multiverse works, which ensures all omnicidal events will not affect more than one world.
It is revealed in an endgame sidequest called "The Serpent King," provided by a projection of Mastema, where the target, Samael, confesses that after the horned god slayed Tiamat, several worshipers of the serpent, including Samael himself, summoned the Qadištu from another world in hopes of them enacting vengeance, making them also essentially an extradimensional existence. In-battle, Samael can summon copies of the four members of the Qadištu to support him and attack the Nahobino's party.
Race[]
Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance[]
All Qadištu demons have an innate ability that supports other demons of the same race. If all four of them are present in the protagonist's party, fielded and in the stock, then they gain access to the Magatsuhi skill Qadištu Entropy.
Samael also has a passive that supports the Qadištu race despite not being one of its members. He was however, one of the demons who summoned them from another world into the Shin Megami Tensei V universe.
List of Demons[]
| Demon | Level |
|---|---|
| Naamah | 63 |
| Eisheth | 66 |
| Agrat | 68 |
| Lilith | 72 |
Etymology and Influences[]
In the in-game universe, according to a Throne NPC in the second floor of Shakan, the word "Qadištu" means "Devoted One" in ancient tongue.[1]
"Qadištu" is an Akkadian term stemming from the predecessor civilization's Sumerian "Nu-Gig,"[2][3] which could be used to refer to a woman deemed untouchable, which implied that she would live on the street, but could also refer to women that served as a caste of priestesses, wet nurses and midwives in a higher status.[4] The word Qadistu contains the Semetic root "qdš" which refers to "holy" and appears even in modern Semitic languages such as Arabic.[4] Therefore, "Qadistu" would be seen as having an important role to play in society, but the profession of midwifery and wet nursing in tandem with the possible association towards priestesses nonetheless made them "untouchables" who could not bear their own children even if they were allowed to marry men.[2]
In Assyrian societies, Qadistu appear to have become more fully repressed to men as their second wives.[4] Their term was used interchangeably with amtu.[4] This word meant "female slave" in conjugation with words derived from the Semetic root "abd" which referred to slaves and servants, as further exemplified by the modern Arabic "Abdo" having a similar meaning, indicating said subservience.
A common misconception was that Qadistu were female prostitutes and shunned for their open sexuality, though this is no longer accepted by Assyriologists and appears to have been a result of pushing newer ideas of sexuality onto the ancient Middle East.[2]
The four demonesses who appear as part of the in-game Qadistu are nonetheless all associated either with malevolent whoredom or sacred prostitution in reference to this misconceived earlier idea.[5] The specific framing of these four Qadistu demonesses all draw from the Jewish kabbalistic (i.e, non mainline and canonical) foundational work, the Zohar, though the word "Qadistu" does not appear within it itself.
Within the Zohar, they are wives of Samael according with Lilith, herself of Babylonian origin where the real Qadistu originated, being outright treated as his female counterpart and the mother of demons.[6]
Gallery[]
Videos[]
Trivia[]
- The Japanese race title of the Qadištu, "Joma," was previously an obsolete rendition of the Femme race, having only previously used in Majin Tensei II: Spiral Nemesis.
- As a rival organization of morally black demons who share a common goal to end the current world order with the protagonist that appears in an alternate timeline, they are similar to the Divine Powers in Shin Megami Tensei IV Apocalypse. Their omnicidal goals and status as extraterrestrial lifeforms are also similar to The White from Shin Megami Tensei IV.
References[]
- ↑ Walkthrough Part 22 Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance (Japanese Voice) 4K HDR PS5 Youtube.com. (Jun 18, 2024); Throne to Nahobino: "Demon who walks on hallowed ground, hear me. The name "Qadištu" means "Devoted One" in ancient tongue."
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Karahashi, Fumi (2017). "Royal Nurses and Midwives in Presargonic Lagaš Texts." The First Ninety Years.A Sumerian Celebration in Honor of Miguel Civil. De Gruyter. pp. 159–171. doi:10.1515/9781501503696-010. ISBN 978-1-5015-0369-6
- ↑ https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/epsd2/cbd/sux/o0036485.html
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 Stol, Marten (2016). Women in the Ancient Near East. De Gruyter. doi:10.1515/9781614512639. ISBN 978-1-61451-263-9
- ↑ Julia Cresswell, The Watkins Dictionary of Angels: Over 2,000 Entries on Angels and Angelic Beings
- ↑ Zohar, Moses De Leon