Demonic Duck

The **Demonic Duck** is a minor recurring character in El Goonish Shive. In canon, he only appears when a distraction is needed and he is summoned. A character will stumble into an awkward situation, try to use the duck as a distraction and either flee from the situation or change it to be less awkward. The duck will then usually grumble about feeling used. The exception to this is in the Grace's Birthday Party arc, in which he plays a minor role as another guest, reveals he's high school educated, torments Justin a bit, then leaves after making it up to Justin. He is featured a lot in the sketchbook. Apparently, it is also capable of creating very convincing illusions which are capable of fooling multiple senses at once. According to the duck himself, it comes with being a master of distraction. He appeared on the road trip to restore the ability to summon Hammers being used as a distraction by Sarah. He then proceeded to leap out of the car (claiming being called for that was "a waste of his talents"). This ended about as well as one can expect leaping from a moving car could possibly end, although it is implied that he survived due to being magic and essentially a summon. It turns out he is not really demonic at all; people just assume he is because of how he looks.

## Magic

Very little is known about his powers, but he *always* appears when someone says "*Look! Isn't that a demonic duck of some sort?!*" when the said person needs a distraction (unless he's on strike). It's later confirmed to be a teleportation of sorts, and that he has "duck senses" that allows him to detect when someone needs a distraction. He's also a "master of illusions", which allows him to create fully tactile illusions within an entire room.

## Trivia

* The Demonic Duck takes his job very seriously and has not enjoyed Sarah's misuse of his powers.
* The Demonic Duck appears to have two different eye colors in different appearances. This discrepancy may not be canon however as the instances in which he has black eyes (such as his picture on this page) are in the sketchbook only; The only appearance of him in color story comics has him with yellow eyes. Then we have this which was apparently created from EGS Main Story Comic for 2005-11-21 and appears to be fan made. If Dan accepts it as canon, the discrepancy can be explained as the duck modifying his appearance from this normal form.
* The Demonic Duck is a member of the local distraction union.
* The demonic Duck believes that shapeshifting is a rather complex form of magic, but this is ironic, since not only is shapeshifting quite common in El Goonish Shive, but, according to Tedd, creating an illusion as a disguise that fools both the senses of vision and tact and that also affects surrounding machines would need far more amount of magic energy and conscious manipulation than actual shapeshifting requires EGS Main Story Comic for 2011-10-19, and the Demonic Duck proved to be capable of the two former examples during Grace's birthday party. This implies that the Demonic Duck is far more powerful than most characters (including *himself*) would even bother to think.
* Dan identifies Demonic Duck's gender as "he" in title of EGS Main Story Comic for 2005-12-16 ("He Came to Distract, but He Stayed to Party").
* The Demonic Duck is missing from main story for a long time, but he did appeared in NP recently.

## References

1. ↑ EGS Main Story Comic for 2002-09-06 ("At Least You Can Get In Trouble For Leaving Class Early")
2. ↑ EGS Main Story Comic for 2005-12-16 ("He Came to Distract, but He Stayed to Party")
3. ↑ EGS Main Story Comic for 2010-05-03
4. ↑ EGS Main Story Comic for 2005-02-23
5. ↑ EGS Main Story Comic for 2010-05-03
6. ↑ EGS Main Story Comic for 2006-01-02
7. ↑ EGS Main Story Comic for 2006-02-03
8. ↑ EGS Main Story Comic for 2005-02-23 ("Initial Reactions are Promising!")
9. ↑ EGS Main Story Comic for 2006-02-03 ("This is Why You Don't See Many Duck Jesters")
10. ↑ EGS:NP Comic for 2018-04-23