Cambion

Half human half demon
In European mythology and literature since at least the 19th century, a cambion ('/k//æ//m//b//i//ən/) is the offspring from the union between a demon parentwhether incubus, succubus or other type of demonwith a human parent. In the word's earliest known uses, it was interchangeable with changeling.

Since at least the 19th century, "cambion" has taken on a further definition: the child of an incubus or a succubus with a human parent. In 1874, Victor Hugo's Toilers of the Sea defined a cambion as the son of a woman and the devil. It also appeared as a hybrid of human and demon in Dungeons & Dragons' 1983 Monster Manual II. The concept of offspring born to humans and demons was a subject of debate in the Middle Ages, but did not have a widely accepted name. The influential Malleus Maleficarum, which has been described as the major compendium of literature in demonology of the fifteenth century, states that demons, including the incubus and the succubus, are incapable of reproduction:

text=Moreover, to beget a child is the act of a living body, but devils cannot bestow life upon the bodies they assume; because life formally proceeds only from the soul, and the act of generation is the act of the physical organs which have bodily life. Therefore bodies which are assumed in this way cannot either beget or bear. Because of this inability to create or nurture life, the method of the creation of a cambion is necessarily protracted. A succubus will have sexual relations with a human male and so acquire a sample of his sperm. This she will then pass on to an incubus, who then corrupts and strengthens the seed. The incubus will, in his turn, transfer this sperm to a human female and thus impregnate her. blockquote|text=Yet it may be said that these devils assume a body not in order that they may bestow life upon it, but that they may by the means of this body preserve human semen, and pass the semen on to another body.

Modern writers have sometimes used the term cambion for Merlin, who in Arthurian legend is the son of a mortal woman and an incubus. The Dark Horse Comics character Hellboy is a cambion, being the offspring of the demon Azzael and a human woman, Sarah Hughes. The DC Comics character Raven is a cambion, being the offspring of her evil demonic father, Trigon, and a human woman, Arella.