Went through almost all of this yesterday, but now I'm going to go back and just post some thoughts on Paizo's daemons. (There's also an interview with Shemmy in the editor's queue waiting to be approved..."Hint Hint Nudge Nudge Wink Wink" as Darkwing Duck would say)
Memorable things from my first pass were the scientific experimentation of the daemons, their subtypes born from mortals dying in different ways, and their fascination with - and simultaneous loathing - of mortal life.
As a book focusing on nihilistic fiends, this was a dark book. We're treated to daemons born from things as disturbing as children left to die in the cold, and as sad as despairing but evilly aligned suicides. Thankfully, this manages to be handled well as its clear that the nature of reality requires heroes to combat such evil and in some cases injustice.
The depravity and lunacy of the daemons is at the forefront, and the text mentions that they are so insane as to murder those that summoned them - such is there hatred of life. I like this, that evil leads to such weakness, as usually it seems we are presented with the celestials as foolish and bumbling but fiends as masterminds unaffected by their status as exemplars.
The psychology of the daemons is really well done, and probably the thing I keep going back to. They hate life, but come from life, and this leads to a strange obsession with life on their parts. More than the other fiends, daemons seem interested in the creation of life, which they tell themselves is based on making new engines of murder. I like having fiends that try to rationalize their own actions, these flaws and insecurities make them more interesting than engines of destruction incapable of goals/relationships or master manipulators who can't be beaten.
One nitpick - The mention of infant fat used to make candles. On initial reading this took me out of the text, it seemed sorta over the top...then again, daemons are so obsessed with our deaths it kind makes sense they'd want to revel in the death of those so young.
The other thing that felt like it was heading into grimdark territory was the idea of daemons born from evil suicides. It does make sense, and does fit the themes, and it specifically states these souls were evil. Guess it might just be too dark for me to use, it isn't exactly a complaint against the text though.
There is a lot more good stuff, curious if others have gotten the book and what they think of it.
I wanted them to be flawed and almost things of pity in a way, to distinguish them from the yugoloths. While the 'loths can be construed too easily as tools of their own makers, the baernaloths, guided by a perfect hand and never having to feel such mortal emotions as doubt, the daemons aren't as lucky.
The daemons are adrift, lost in every sense of the term, and filled with a gnawing sense of self-doubt and self-hatred given their origins. They also don't have anyone to answer their questions, to give them meaning, to give them direction other than the Four. And the thing is, the Four are just as adrift as the rest of them, albeit with godlike power and more knowledge.
The closest thing that they had to a baernaloth creator/mentor/father-mother, the First, well they killed him, or at least they tried. The only thing they had to ground them, they bound and each year they worship it, torture it, and devour bits of it like a perverse sacrament to keep it from coming back, and yet it's almost like they're begging for approval as they do so. These aren't the all-knowing puppetmaster 'loths, these are wretches born of the worst of mortality, who exist to devour the world and perhaps then end themselves.
As for the infant tallow candle, perhaps it was a bit over the top, though the intent was to have them be the creations of batshit crazy mortal cultists invoking their masters in the process to stamp the wax and provide its power. Given the focus on life/death, it made sense in a way to have a perversion of birth become a window for their influence. But if it's too over the top, I hope it wasn't that often it went into Grimdark territory.