Demon: The Descent
| Demon: The Descent | ||
|---|---|---|
| RPG published by White Wolf / Onyx Path |
||
| Rule System | Storytelling System | |
| Authors | Dave Brookshaw et al | |
| First Publication | 2013 | |
I said to my soul, be still, and let the darkness come upon you. Which is the darkness of God.
— T.S. Eliot, East Coker
The very first gameline created explicitly for the 2nd edition of the New World of Darkness/Chronicles of Darkness. It abandons the explicitly Christian themes of Demon: The Fallen for a much more unique setting of "techgnostic espionage", aka The Matrix meets Dogma.
See, the Chronicles of Darkness has a thing in it called the God-Machine. Essentially, it is a mechanical demiurge - an extraordinarily powerful supercomputer that takes Clarke's Third Law to its logical extreme. It may not be a true god, but it's certainly the closest thing the Chronicles of Darkness has to one, and it's strongly implied that the current status quo is all a part of its incomprehensible plan. That's not to say it's particularly invested in mortals, though- it can only view the universe in terms of inputs and outputs, and humans (and other supernatural beings at that matter) are only important to it when their presence either poses a threat to its Infrastructure or when they are required for one of its designs to function. This God-Machine is so powerful that it can create sentient quantum reality computer programs, called Angels. And sometimes, these Angels get corrupted. Usually this occurs when an Angel starts to take an interest in humanity and the physical world around them, but it may also occur in a situation where the orders that the God-Machine gives them are impossible to carry out. These Angels gain their free will and Fall, burning out their connections to the God-Machine and becoming independent entities, called Demons. These demons then have to form Covers to hide their true forms from reality or risk being discovered by the God-Machine's loyal angels and mortal servants. If they do end up being exposed to their creator, they will either have their minds erased or be dismantled so their parts can be used to build new angels. Luckily, they retain just enough knowledge of how their creator works to hack reality in their favor.
The end result is awesome; spy-thriller themes against a religious horror meets mad science veneer.
The first gameline in the NWoD to completely abandon the traditional Morality system; instead, Demons have Cover, which is how well they stay in character for their human guises and how well those guises blend into reality.
Agendas
Upon Falling, a Demon has to decide what it wants to do now that it no longer has a purpose defined for it by the God-Machine. Most of them join an Agenda, which determines how they interact with other Demons, how they go about their existence within the God-Machine, and their ideas on the nature of Hell. Unusual for a World of Darkness game however is that (with the right Merit) an Unchained can belong to up to two Agendas at the same time.
Inquisitors
"Knowledge is power, hide it well" might as well be the catchphrase of this Agenda, whose members are also called Watchers or Paranoids. By discovering, trading, and hoarding information they seek to stay one step ahead of the God-Machine to ensure their survival. This makes Inquisitors extremely paranoid even by demonic standards, only associating with others if it is in their interest to do so. Arguably, the only reason they even bother doing that is because they know that a lone demon quickly ends up being a dead demon when the hunter angels show up. Their end goal is to gather enough information about the God-Machine to manipulate it directly in a way that it can no longer detect their presence, or force it to work in their interests.
Inquisitors believe Hell to be a personal, internal thing: a state of mind reached through enlightenment. This is why they gather information so obsessively: they are seeking out Hell.
Integrators
Not all Demons wanted to Fall. Some want to be Angels again, and really badly. They are loyal to the God-Machine and seek to return, but they know that if they do so right away they'd just be destroyed. As such, the Integrators (Idealists or Turncoats, depending how non-Integrators see them) are plotting to return, but there is disagreement within the ranks about the method. One group believes that they did not Fall and are instead working for some grander purpose. The second and largest faction believes that by altering the God-Machine in a way that would grant it more empathy with the human condition, they can exist without being altered. The last faction wants to return with their individuality intact and on their own terms, believing that the more "human" angels are less likely to Fall.
The Integrators are the only Agenda not seeking out Hell: they consider it to be suffering and pain, pitying those demons actively seeking it. Needless to say, those demons consider the Integrators deluded at best and actively traitorous at worst.
Saboteurs
The Saboteurs take strongly after the Raveners from Demon: The Fallen. They believe that the God-Machine ought to be destroyed at all costs, wrecking Infrastructure and killing its followers. The Saboteurs (Thugs, Soldiers) are split into two sides for this fight: one wants to reach for political action and infiltration with the occasional act of terror to attain this goal, while the other wants to make the war quite open and destroy everything as quickly as possible.
While they have no qualms about killing Angels, making them Fall is by far the preferred option. Saboteurs are driven, seeing no sacrifice too great to attain their goal, but these sacrifices are not made lightly. Were it not for the fact that they are rather disorganized (to say nothing of the more obvious risks), the Saboteurs would have been able to cause a lot more damage. Saboteurs have a very simple view of what Hell is: that what remains after killing the God-Machine.
Tempters
Tempters are alive and loving it. Something of a mix of the Toreador and the Ventrue, they are, depending on who you ask, either lazy sods who make others do their dirty work for them, or the only ones who realize you need some kind of infrastructure (and occasionally Infrastructure) to work with if you want to face the God-Machine. Tempters (aka the Decadents or Builders) seek both pleasure and power: one for its immediate reward, and the other for what it gives them in the long run- the wealth, connections, and resources needed to erode the God-Machine's influence.
Through their experiences and resources, they seek to either find or build Hell, considering it a physical place; the problem is, none of them are entirely sure how to do either of those things.
Despite what you'd assume from their nature, the Tempters are actually the most organized out of all the Agendas, finding that the structure that they give their members help attaining their goal, or at least enjoying themselves on the way there.
Multiple Agendas
The Unchained can be part of two agendas if they choose to be so, giving them the Conditions of both Agendas.
- Inquisitor-Integrators seek out knowledge to either enlighten themselves or become able to rejoin the God-Machine. Either is good.
- Inquisitor-Saboteurs serve as military intelligence or secret agents, supporting the frontline soldiers.
- Inquisitor-Tempters build a network of contacts and gather money and knowledge to support the cause of either Agenda.
- Integrator-Saboteurs are something of a contradiction: their members being either desperate or deeply conflicted.
- Integrator-Tempters want to build and return to grace, hoping to use the first to attain the second.
- Saboteur-Tempters can be cutthroat businessmen or bon vivants, enjoying life to the fullest while using their influence on people against the God-Machine.
So what is this Cover thing, anyway?
The first thing you have to remember is that while angels are ephemeral beings like ghosts or spirits even when disguised as humans, demons were forced into a physical form when they Fell. Obviously, a biomechanical horror like a demon in its true form is massively obvious to both the God-Machine and everyone else, but when the Fall happens part of the Infrastructure that supported them as an angel goes with them.
This effectively dupes the universe into thinking that the demon is an ordinary human, with anything that would support that human's existence popping into existence as needed. However, weaker Covers aren't quite as convincing.
For example, a demon whose Cover is low might live in the basement of a building that doesn't have one, or drive a car whose make doesn't exist anywhere else- it gets the job done for a short time, but unless they can strengthen it even a little bit of investigation by mortals will make it clear that something's not right. And of course, the God-Machine's agents are always watching.
In practical terms, Cover can be used as your supernatural tolerance in the place of Primum (your normal power stat), which is good since it's easier to raise your Cover rating than your Primum. Additionally, it can be used for "spoofing", giving a fake reading to anyone trying to use supernatural powers that would identify you as non-human, and can trigger its Legend to temporarily gain skills and Merits that you don't have which the Cover's identity would be expected to possess (at the expense of a negative condition that only gets resolved when you get those skills or Merits for real).
Unlike the typical Morality/Integrity system, the main source of cover loss (or "compromise") isn't doing bad things- it's doing things that make people suspect you're not who your Cover says you are. Acting "out of character" for your Cover is the most obvious one, as is assuming demonic form, but the use of Exploits and some Embeds also risks compromise as well. Naturally, letting information about your true identity get leaked out is a compromise as well- all the more reason for demons to keep their real identities as secret as possible. Luckily, it's possible to possess more than one Cover, so you can always switch them out in case you need one of your identities to lie low.
All that being said, if you're really and truly fucked, you can destroy the Cover to "go loud" unleashing the full strength of your demonic form for a short time. It's temporary, but highly potent and a powerful weapon of last resort. Just try to have another Cover ready after it wears off, though- an exposed demon will very quickly become a dead demon.
That's great, but how do I get one?
Obviously, the simplest way to improve your Cover is to live in it and do things your Cover would be expected to do. The longer it stays a part of the world, the more it'll be accepted by the world.
But sometimes that's too slow. That's where pacts come in. Put simply, a demon can make a pact with a human to give them something they want, and in return the human gives up a little bit of their life: a former roommate, an unsatisfying job, and so on. That connection with the world then gets transferred to the demon's cover, making it that much more "real". Only the demon and the pactbound remember the original relationship; everyone else assumes the demon was always in the place of the pactbound. Initially all these disparate pieces grafted on cause some inconsistencies within the Cover, but with enough "patch jobs" such a Cover can become nearly impenetrable.
And if they're desperate enough, a human can be convinced into selling away their soul. It doesn't damn them in the conventional sense of the word, but when a demon calls it in, the pactbound individual will be effectively erased from existence- which the demon steps into, effectively converting the pactbound's entire life into a Cover. The catch? It doesn't transfer any of the pactbound's memories or personality to the demon, so they had better know the pactbound's life like the back of their hands before making it their own.
In theory, you can make pacts with the other spooks that inhabit the Chronicles of Darkness. In practice, this is a bad idea for two reasons.
- You can only get aspects of their mundane lives. No trying to dip into anyone else's powers, and you can't take away their weaknesses either.
- If you're stupid enough to make a soul pact with one and call it in, you take aggravated damage based on their supernatural tolerance stat due to the incompatibility of your respective supernatural natures. (An analogy for this would be trying to run a program meant for Windows on an Apple II; the hardware was never meant to work with that kind of software, so to speak.) Even if you survive, all the caveats to normal soul pacts apply. Given how convoluted the societies of other supernaturals are and the inability to replicate their powers, that's a recipe for disaster.