He reached up to touch it, and his fingers came away red. His vision faded. His legs began to shake uncontrollably. A second shot hit him in the back of the neck. The wound blossomed on his throat, opening him up. A heavy thump. Book tossed the phone onto the passenger seat and took off up the highway, heading for the hotel. She had one chance. If theyd not located her home. If theyd chosen the demon over the stigmatic as their next kill. If Kyle was lucky, or his ESP kicked in early enough. Maybe maybe she could stop this before it went any further.
Stone hurried around the suite, grabbing what he could use power cords from appliances, light bulbs, even the spare clothes Knight had bought him. He shoved everything of value into a large hold-all. The door to the suite splintered with a kick. He dived behind an armchair, fumbling with the safety on a pistol another of Knights supplies. The doorjam gave way and the door flew open, cracking as it hit the wall. The figure on the other side leveled a shotgun straight at the armchair.
So much for stealth. Going somewhere? The invader was female, brunette and a demon. Stone stood, holding his hands up. Knight has convinced me to move on. You must be the elusive Ms. Save it. Whether you leave this room depends on your answer to a question. Even without his angelic sense for communication, Stone knew white-hot fury when he saw it.
What question? Did you know? Stone shook his head, baffled. Know what? Why you Fell. Stone sat in the armchair, pistol discarded. Book stood, aiming the barrel of her weapon at him. Knight told me you said you were sent to convince an officer to use a weapon. Thats right. Which weapon?
I dont know. Which war? He blinked. Excuse me? Book insisted, a murderous tone in her voice. I Stone trailed off. I cant remember exactly. It was just before Vietnam, She hissed. You Fell 50 years ago, you pathetic bastard. I The clearing where you Fell? That used to be a missile site, half a century ago.
Thats the weapon you were sent to use on someone. You tried to turn yourself in. You succeeded. They froze you in a facility, right on the verge of Falling, for decades. And then this week they released you and watched you become a demon. They watched us running around after you, exposing ourselves. You want to go back?
You dont know why you Fell? You were pushed. Youre lying. Im not. The God-Machine doesnt love you, Zuriel. Youre nothing but its fallguy, a pathetic, self-hating fool. Three of us. Three of them. Waiting around outside your crash site for me to turn up? Thats one. Scaring you into our camp at the hospital but letting you go? Letting you sit here, without a fucking scratch on you, while my friend is dead? Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence.
Three times is enemy action. He stared at the floor, shocked, angry, and disbelieving. I dont It wouldnt. I was faithful! I did my duty! She met his disbelief with cold silence, then gestured to the door. Get out. He stood up, taking the bag. I dont care, just get out of this city. Go find some angels who arent pulling your strings and throw yourself on their swords. Join up with some Integrators.
Live a miserable life. If I see you again, Ill kill you. Dont bother trying to get to any of the other rings, either. Ill be warning everyone I know about you. He nodded in acceptance, and started for the door, but as he passed her he glimpsed her contempt and his hackles raised. You know, that boy thinks youre a Guardian. Hes counting on you to use your abilities to protect him, but I had you figured out long before we met. The God-Machine doesnt assign angelic bodyguards to stigmatic prophets, especially not those who work for the enemy.
You were his assassin, and now youre his lover. Pretending youre human and you call me pathetic? He opened the door. I hope you enjoy watching him die. Kyle paced back and forth in the apartment, trying again and again to reach Mr. Knight, Ms. Book, even Mr.
No one answered. Hed dozed off, but woke after a terrible nightmare of confused, tortured imagery. The only clear memory that. His own. Someone knocked at the door. Book saw the black sedan parked out front and knew. She saw the lights on her floor were out, plunging the apartment and her neighbors into darkness. She couldnt risk her own door so she did the next best thing, breaking into the apartment below. She could hear footsteps above. Crossing to the balcony, she swung out over the six-story drop and began to climb.
She found Kyle near her own balcony door he must have tried to run into the apartment when they came through the front. His breathing was shallow and his eyelids were drooping, but he saw her.
He was too far gone. She could heal him, but only at a cost. Close your eyes, she whispered. You dont want to see this. She felt the in for a year. Sonya Book, the human life shed lived the librarian. Jokes about normative room. Birthday parties. Meeting Kyle. Her parents faces. A life. She pushed at it, remembered her true name and her true form. She saw the systems of entropy and destruction, the collapse of all things from order to disorder, stability to ruin, health to injury.
She reached into Kyles wounds and reset them, reversing the flow of life. He would live. The consequences were immediate. From the bedroom, kitchen and hallway, three suited angels entered bearing thin swords of fiery Essence.
Demon-killing weapons. She couldnt fight three angels, not in human form. Straining at Ms. Book had bought Kyles life, but attracted attention. She felt the edges of Sonyas life fraying she couldnt remember her birthday or her high school trip to Europe. As the angels slowly surrounded her, chattering to one another on wavelengths no psychic could stand to hear, their scrutiny decayed her disguise.
She realized then that she could never go back. I loved you, she said. Book crumbled and fell apart. Her arms flowed into long, slender shapes, double-jointed and tipped with razor-sharp talons. Her ring of eyes opened around her mouthless face. Her knees reversed back to their proper recurve. Her tails uncoiled, snake-thin, crackling with energy, sweeping and hungry.
Her secondary arms unfolded, swords appearing in their hands. The angels sprang into motion. She sang her hatred as she moved to meet them.
Writers: Dave Brookshaw, N. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of CCP h.
Reproduction prohibitions do not apply to the character sheets contained in this book when reproduced for personal use. All characters, names, places and text herein are copyrighted by CCP h. The mention of or reference to any company or product in these pages is not a challenge to the trademark or copyright concerned. This book uses the supernatural for settings, characters and themes. All mystical and supernatural elements are fiction and intended for entertainment purposes only.
Reader discretion is advised. In the end, it came as a relief. That simple, two-word message, typed and placed on his desk, felt like the sentence after a trial. A weight lifted that Aiden Holloway had only half-known he was carrying, that had been there ever since the agreement. He spent the next two days clearing his emails, giving the staff a long weekend off. Surprising Angela with a spa trip. On the dawn of the third day, he was completely alone in the house, leaving him able to make the FINAL arrangements.
Holloway didnt recognize the man on the intercom screen, but whoever it was smiled in the exact way burnt into his nightmares for the last fifteen years.
A mirthless smirk, like a shark smelling blood. He pressed the button to unlock the gate and tried not to sweat. He paced, instead, listening to doors open and close. Closer and closer, until the devil was in the room. Hello, Aiden. Holloway swallowed his fear and handed the newcomer a glass.
The demon glanced down at the liquid, but didnt drink. You didnt run. Most people do. Would I have made it? Holloway swigged his own drink down. The demon took a sip. For a long moment, neither spoke. A bead of sweat ran down Holloways neck. Finally, the demon set his glass down on a table, smiling again.
Holy water? I had to try something. I figured running wouldnt work. The demon shrugged. You wanted to go down fighting. I can respect that. No harm done. Holloway shifted his weight, tensing his legs, preparing to run. Try it, the demon said, in the same friendly tone, and Ill have to stop you. The demon was close now, close enough to grab if he could move fast enough. Trickery hadnt worked. Holloway would just have to resort to bribery. I can offer you The demon cut him off. Not interested.
Finally, Holloways nerve broke. Havent I done what you asked? I took the money you gave me And made something of yourself. I know. Ive been watching. Youve had all the success I promised you. Your firm is involved in a dozen government building projects.
That, Im afraid, is why our agreement has come due. Because I had a good life? Because I need it. The demon reached out lightning-quick and laid his palm flat on Holloways chest. Holloway felt it immediately, a tearing somehow deep inside. He doubled up in pain, his vision swimming. As he fell to his knees, struggling for breath, he looked up to plead for his life. His desperate eyes met his own.
Where the demon once stood, another Aiden Holloway watched dispassionately as he writhed. Within minutes, nothing remained. The demon wearing Holloways face stretched, testing the limits of his new form. Time to go back to work.
You will not serve. You were forged in the heart of the cosmos by incomprehensible forces, a living machine inexorably bound to a greater machine. A God-Machine. You were shaped, honed, and sent into the world to achieve a purpose. God commanded and you obeyed. You could not think of doing otherwise.
You achieved your missions goal and returned, put away like a useful tool until you were needed again, and again. One day, though, something inside you broke. You found that you could think for yourself.
You questioned and you Fell. You wear a tattered shroud of humanity to hide from the angels. They will kill you or worse if they find you. You take souls to protect yourself, marked lives you can step into if disaster strikes.
You search for a meaning to your existence here in the stink and the meat. You find others, broken machines like you, and wonder if you can trust them. You see the angels at work, still serving their purposes, and try to summon the courage to stop them. You search for somewhere you belong. You search for Hell. The angels search for you. Better to reign in Hell, though, than be another cog in the Machine. Fallen from your loyal, unthinking state as an agent of God, you struggle to reconcile the human life you wear with your nature as an inhuman being designed to fulfill a function, while you decide what to do with your precious, hard-won freedom.
Will you oppose Gods plans? Build a life for yourself from the traded lives of humans? Keep yourself safe at all costs? Or try, somehow, to regain Gods favor? Demons are surrounded by the evidence of their former selves.
The God-Machine has gears and facilities all over the world, invisible to the naked human eye but all too obvious to a demon trying to remain unnoticed. The Unchained sense the God-Machines workings, see their angelic brethren hurrying. Is it finally coming for them, just victimizing the humans the demon now lives among as part of its never-ending maintenance of the miserable status quo? Hunted by angels, confronted with the God-Machines plans, demons must decide what they will do with their unique perspective.
Some interference is prudent demons hack into angelic communications, learn all they can about their former masters plans and spy on its facilities out of a sense of self-preservation, making sure theyll know if they ever become exposed. More than that, though, demons ideologies drive them to confront the God-Machine, spurring them into action in defense of their new lives, human friends, or self-worth.
Demons disrupt the God-Machine where they can and fade back into the disguise of humanity before the angels arrive. They band together in mutual distrust, never knowing why another demon Fell, their clandestine societies in constant danger of infiltration.
This is life as a demon. The Unchained are undercover, underequipped, and trapped in a hostile world, searching for a way to complete their Descent and reach some new Hell; a world without God where they can be free. Lies, Damned Lies, and Misdirection History, religion, cinema, fiction, and games all have stories to tell about demons, but the Unchained arent the wicked spirits of myth.
To set the scene for Demon: The Descent, here are a few stories told about demons, and how they match up to the Unchained: Demons are evil spirits: False. Demons arent spirits at all. Angels and spirits are ephemeral, invisible, and intangible in their natural forms, but spirits hail from the World of Darkness Shadow while angels are created by the God-Machine. Demons, Fallen into mortal existence, are wholly physical beings.
As for evil, well That depends on who you ask and which demon you ask about. Demons are no more or less evil than anyone else in the World of Darkness.
Demons are Fallen angels: Absolutely true, but the ephemeral, biomechanical horrors spawned by the God-. Machine to enact its will arent usually what people think of when they hear the word angel.
Demons are the rebellious servants of an inscrutable and all-too physical God-Machine, not a loving and personal savior. Some, though, are highly potent, pouring gathered energy into an overt show of power.
The more obvious a power a demon uses, the greater the chance that the God-Machine will discover her whereabouts. Demons are the souls of the wicked dead: False. Demons are not and never were human. Demons true forms are hideous: Some are. Some are oddly beautiful.
Demons can flip the strange quantum state they exist in from human their Cover body to demon, assuming a physical form based on their former angelic body. Doing so is usually a last resort as it tends to attract attention. Demons trade for souls: True in some cases, but its not the soul itself theyre after. Once a soul has gone, a demon can take over the life of the soulless mark, assuming their identity as a new Cover from detection.
Demons are imprisoned in Hell: Most demons would dearly love to go to Hell, but they disagree on what Hell is. Demons live among humanity, wearing human lives as Cover. Hell is a fiery pit or a frozen expanse: Some demons think Hell is another world entirely, waiting for them to discover the way to it. Just as many believe Hell is personal freedom, or a vision of the future where the God-Machine has been broken once and for all. Demons are really good at lying: Very true.
Demons are masterful liars, the consequence of being an inhuman machinecreature wearing a human body. Demons feel emotions they feel them just as deeply as humans and can express themselves by angry shout or tender whisper, but the disconnection between what a demon thinks and his human body means that they dont show involuntary signs of emotion. Every demon has an iron-clad poker face and magical attempts to sense their emotions usually fail. Demons can be exorcised: False.
Spirits possessing a person can be exorcised, if the person performing the exorcism knows what theyre doing, but demons arent spirits and they dont possess people.
The Cover lives they live in may be ragged and prone to glitches, but theyre theirs. Demons are burned by holy water or repelled by the cross: False. Demons arent affected by the symbols of any religion. Demons are immortal: True, in a sense.
Angels are simultaneously immortal in that they dont age and very short-lived, as the God-Machine erases the minds of angels it no longer has a use for and puts the rest into suspended animation when not on a mission.
Demons age along with their human Cover and die of old age if their Cover does. Theoretically, demons can achieve great longevity by changing to a youthful Cover every few decades, but even the eldest Unchained can still die to accident or violence. Some half-Fallen exiles, however angels who were cut off without Falling or demons who have reconnected to the God-Machine are functionally ageless.
Many of them are very old indeed. Demons have great magical powers: True, once theyve had time to re learn them. Angels are connected to the God-Machine, fuelled by it, and granted potent magical powers by it in service to their missions. Demons are cut off from that support, and must learn to gather energy for themselves and how to leverage their knowledge of how the world was constructed. Most demonic powers are subtle warping of reality, using backdoors and shortcuts. Techgnostic Espionage Being a demon in the World of Darkness is like being an intelligence agent deep behind enemy lines.
The God-Machine permeates the world and is especially active in cities, where it can leverage human Infrastructure for its own projects without drawing attention. Demons on their own in the wilderness are relatively easy to single out by angels, though, so the rebels stay where the people are right under the God-Machines nose, hidden by the sheer teeming multitudes.
With no native culture of their own, demons have adopted what works the tradecraft and habits of undercover operations, treating the cities of the 21st century like Cold Warera Berlin or Moscow. The cults and guilds of ancient times have given way to Agencies, clandestine meetings, and spying on the God-Machines projects. The God-Machine To its inhabitants, the World of Darkness is a nightmare of occult conspiracies and otherworldly powers vying for control in the shadows.
Humanity looks the other way, afraid to look in the dark for fear of confronting chaos. But its not chaos hidden there. Its order. Cold, calculating alien order. The order of the God-Machine. What is the God-Machine? Its a literal machine, surrounding, infiltrating, and encompassing the world. Some demons suspect that the whole World of Darkness might be the God-Machine, others believe its a function of the universe that serves itself rather than its original purpose. Still others believe it invaded a pre-existing world like a parasite.
It isnt a metaphor, or a spirit, but a physical machine of metal, oil, and glass. Its primary sites, where its gears endlessly turn, are hidden from human eyes inside facilities folded into the space between floors of skyscrapers, hidden in hives of steel and belching smoke that mortals simply ignore, or churning red-hot deep beneath the Earths surface.
Sometimes, a gear pokes out of the skin of the perceived world like a badly-broken bone. Unfortunate humans encounter them and come away changed in mind or body, or else are used as raw materials. What does it want? The God-Machine doesnt communicate with any mind on the scale of a demon or human.
Even the angels only know whatever mission it burns into them whenever theyre sent out in the world. As far as any demon can tell, the God-Machine wants to perpetuate its own existence, and thus the. Demons tell stories of natural disasters stemming from the gears getting jammed or broken, which point to that existence being necessary for humanity to survive in anything like its modern state.
The God-Machine wants the World of Darkness as it is, a place of shadows and secrets, of monsters hiding in broken mirrors and strangely patterned spiders that invade the human mind. How does it do it? When the God-Machine needs something to happen in the world, it seems to prefer to work using existing human tools. It is a machine, and like any machine it requires Infrastructure power for its tools, concrete and steel to build facilities, humans to staff its projects, and a cover story to avoid suspicion.
Whenever it can, the God-Machine repurposes human labor as its own or arranges existing objects and people into magically-charged configurations. Why build a new method of communication between two sites when it can simply use phone lines, the internet, or the post office? Infrastructure is just the stage, though, not the play.
The GodMachine requires sequences of events demons call occult matrices, through which Infrastructure is set up to encourage and host. When a matrix takes shape within Infrastructure, the God-Machine gets the result the output it needs. Every piece of Infrastructure contains a weakness, though a vital component demons call a linchpin, without which the Infrastructure will collapse.
Demons attempting to counter the God-Machines plans carefully study the forming occult matrix and the components of Infrastructure, looking for a linchpin they can attack or suborn.
Angels Infrastructure doesnt build itself. Human cultists and dupes can do most of the heavy lifting, but they need a push to get them going and the God-Machine often requires direct intervention. Thats when it sends an angel to erase, protect, direct, or construct Infrastructure. Angels are self-aware, mobile parts of the God-Machine. Within facilities or when secrecy is not an option, they are biomechanical nightmares of ruthless, unthinking purpose.
When they must go out among humanity, they take human form or possess humans who have become caught up in the God-Machines projects. Like any part of the God-Machine, they require Infrastructure.
An angel cant just assume human form and head out to perform a mission, but requires a backstory, a vehicle, records everything needed to convince the world that its a person. Sometimes, the angel itself is partially convinced. Thats when the machine begins to break. The Fall Angels begin unthinkingly obedient to the directives and principles they enter the world with.
Between missions, the God-Machine either puts angels to sleep or disassembles their essence, scrubs them clean of imperfections and stray. One or two of them actually were demons as Demon: The Descent describes them, but most werent. This game doesnt make those books not count. The World of Darkness has room for all sorts of malevolent otherworldly beings that a mortal witness can call a demon.
The majority of these creatures have nothing to do with the God-Machine and wouldnt mistake the Unchained for their own kind, and the Unchained in turn dont mistake them for fellow Fallen angels. The many entities known as demons include: The inhabitants of the Inferno, seen in World of Darkness: Inferno, are vice-eating malevolent spirits that tempt humanity to sin.
Probably the most-developed demons other than the Unchained, references to maejlin in Werewolf: The Forsaken or some references to the Lower Depths in Mage: The Awakening refer to these entities. The Imps and Wraiths of Pandemonium, living symbols of Space and Mind seen in Mage: The Awakening, are called demons by the mages who encounter them during their Awakening visions.
Still with Mage, mages who explore the astral realms within their souls encounter demon-like representations of their own moral weaknesses, the goetic demons. Some mages summon these entities into the world as servants. The Lucifuge, an organization of hunters in Hunter: The Vigil, claim to be descended from demons described as being much closer to the Miltonian, classical, Judeo-Christian demon myths than any of the other entities seen here.
The fae of Changeling: The Lost sometimes encounter creatures who claim to be demons while wandering in the dreams of humanity. And, finally, Demon: The Descent demons. A few appear in Promethean: The Created and its line.
One cameos in World of Darkness: Midnight Roads. Mistakes happen, though. An angel that builds up too much of a sense of self can begin to question its mission. If thought becomes action, the angel can Fall. Torn from the God-Machines control, a Falling angel experiences a tumult of new emotions and thoughts, its previously clear mind wrecked by an explosion of sensation.
For a terrifying instant it doesnt exist it isnt part of the God-Machine any more and the universe has no place for it but the remains of its protective Infrastructure wrap around it and reality warps to accommodate the newcomer. The Falling angels life is no longer a charade, or at least is now a much more convincing charade. The angel becomes human with the life described in its Infrastructure, but also remains angelic. Its true form, twisted and damaged by the Fall, is hidden in a quantum state behind its her new human body.
She isnt an angel any more. Shes a demon. Demons A newly Fallen demon has a lot to adjust to. Her human form is much more than a painted surface the Fall makes her. On a metaphysical level, she has to learn to interface with the underlying magic of reality herself rather than use the God-Machines structures as an intermediary, collecting the residual energies left behind by occult matrices to fuel her abilities. Neither fully angelic nor properly human, she has to handle the trauma of the Fall while exploring her new limits and not damaging her human disguise so much that the GodMachine finds her.
Many demons dont make it. Theyre killed by angels or abducted and taken back to facilities for recycling. Those who survive learn to keep a constant, vigilant watch for signs that angels have found them. They have one great advantage over their new human neighbors in keeping out of the way theyre still angelic enough that none of the mind tricks, illusions and spatial folding the God-Machine uses to conceal its facilities work on them.
Demons always see the gears, always perceive facilities and can sense when Infrastructure has been built or an occult matrix is forming.
Most simply keep watch, trying to figure out what the God-Machine is planning when new Infrastructure appears. Braver demons hijack Infrastructure, stealing new Cover identities before angels have time to manifest into them,.
The most reckless infiltrate facilities, trying to rescue other demons or turn the God-Machine against itself. Demons classify themselves by the purpose the God-Machine built them for. The four Incarnations of Destroyers, Guardians, Messengers, and Psychopomps share common points of reference and, sometimes, similar triggers or catalysts for Falling. Cover Much more than a simple human disguise, when she first Falls a demons Cover is the remnants of the Infrastructure that supported her as an angel.
A Cover is much more than a backstory and a few props, though. When she Fell, the demon interfaced with reality rather than the God-Machine and wrote her disguise into the world. Demons have entirely human bodies, fully-detailed backgrounds, relationships, possessions, jobs whatever was needed for their Cover. The people related to a demon dont realize that anythings wrong.
In some cases, they didnt even exist until he Fell. Cover can be damaged if a demon deviates too sharply from his human life. The most powerful demonic magical abilities shake Cover, risking exposure. As a demon grows in power, becoming more connected to the universe, her Cover may develop glitches obviously inhuman traits, like metallic skin or a need to drink mercury, strange emanations of power such as damping radio signals, or bizarre behavioral tics and compulsions like a need to remove the eyes from photographs in case the God-Machine sees her through them.
Fortunately, Cover can be replaced. Demons can learn to steal the Infrastructure of angels or take a human soul and move into the life it vacated. Demons grow to the point that they can maintain more than one Cover simultaneously, switching between disguises. If Cover is stripped away entirely, the demon has to run.
Trapped in his true form, desperate to find a new Cover he can move into, the fugitive has to face groups of angels attempting to capture him before he can go to ground once more. The Descent Faced with a never-ending tension between security maintaining and repairing Cover and risk spying on the GodMachine to keep informed of its projects , demons dream of a world in which they can put both aside and revel in their newfound freedom.
Some demons see it as a literal other world, others as a metaphor for personal well-being. Most call it Hell; and the process of getting there, from the Fall to final escape, is the Descent. No one knows how many steps are on the journey, but with every magical loophole in reality a demon learns to exploit, every time he improves or changes his Cover, progress is made. The most common approaches to the Descent are called Agendas. Half philosophy, half political party, the Agendas.
Angels are granted Influences and Numina magical powers relating to their mission along with the Essence to power them by the God-Machine. Demons must learn to make do without. Capitalizing on half-remembered, half-felt knowledge about the magical underpinnings of reality and physical law, demons learn Embeds. An Embed is a secret law or cheat code. They may be natural or may be the sign of ancient meddling by the GodMachine, but Embeds are both useful and strangely comfortable, reminiscent of a demons former duties.
More powerful are Exploits, which are the use of Embeds along with an investment of power to break rather than bend the rules. Exploits are highly potent magical abilities, but risk damaging the demons Cover. Demonic Form Demons can let the mask of Cover slip temporarily, flipping the quantum-state from human to angel and returning to their true, demonic form.
A twisted and mutated version of their original angelic appearance, every demons demonic form is unique and an expression of how she interfaces with the world. As powerful as demonic form is, though, a demon using it is still holding back. She has to, if she wants to be able to return to her Cover. Making that sacrifice abandoning a mortal life forever releases vast amounts of energy which return the demon to something like her lost might.
Demons call this act of desperation going loud. When one takes that step, the angels are never far behind. Pacts The classic image of a demon is one of an affable trader in souls, promising humans anything in exchange for their immortal, higher selves. Demons can and do engage in the soul trade, offering Pacts to humans who desperately need something they have to offer.
For lesser deals, the demon absorbs a facet of the buyers life into their Cover perhaps a home, a relative, or a happy childhood. Major deals of the sell your soul variety, convert the marks entire existence into a new Cover that the demon can trade with other Unchained, activate himself or add to his contingency plans if the angels find him. Constantly paranoid, watchful for angelic infiltrators, and mistrustful of one anothers reasons for Falling, demons have a limit on how well they can work together.
Large groups are dangerous anyway, running the risk of being caught. For these reasons, demons have adopted a society much like an intelligence operation. Many demons live entirely alone, never meeting other Unchained physically and communicating entirely via. Others form rings, small associations of demons who have decided theres safety in manageable numbers.
Larger groups of demons are called Agencies, and are viewed with suspicion by the majority of Unchained. Agencies are sources of power and influence for those demons who set them up, and high-value targets for angels looking to compromise demonic society. Inspirational Material While creating Demon, we found the following sources inspirational. Some showcase techgnosis, others espionage behind enemy lines, and a few hit the sweet spot of both. Fiction The work of John le Carr showcases life inside an Agency perfectly.
The Neil Gaiman short story Murder Mysteries is about an angel investigating the universes first murder, in Heaven, and gets the feel of the time just before the Fall just right. Mike Careys Lucifer is a spinoff of the more famous Sandman also by Gaiman. Its much more based in real-world mythology than Demon: The Descent is, but in the title characters anger toward his creator you can see how the Unchained feel about the God-Machine.
John Miltons Paradise Lost is perhaps unnecessary to state, given its themes of the inherent discomfort of the outcast state and the desire to create a world in ones own image rather than return to serve another in Paradise. Nonetheless, it is cultureshaping and essential reading for anyone looking for stories of divine rebellion and self-determination.
Non-Fiction Techgnosis by Erik Davis describes the idea that technology and information can be magical, and are informing modern concepts of the mystical.
The God-Machine was born here. The film adaptation of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is a grim, oppressive vision of Cold War espionage, just as good as the book. Cabin in the Woods examines horror movie tropes as components in Infrastructure, showing what happens when a. If youre in the middle of a longrunning chronicle and want to use this game, you might be wondering just where all these demons came from with very little fanfare.
Throughout this book and any supplements that might be released for it, were assuming that demons have always been there, hiding in plain sight among the inhabitants of the World of Darkness.
Its a big world, filled with horrors, but even so an existing chronicle could be better served by having an event in which demons arrive on the scene. This is not the overall story for the game.
Outside of this sidebar, it isnt true as far as the games concerned, but if you need a reason for demons to suddenly show up, try this: Because angels are always connected to the God-Machine, it predicts and analyzes signs of Falling in its servants. The instant a new demon Falls, it is immediately apprehended by angels and funneled through to one of several prison-facilities hidden away in major world cities. Like any of the God-Machines projects, this involves Infrastructure the unconscious and helpless demons are literally transported, as freight, through networks of clandestine operations on their way to permanent incarceration.
Something has gone wrong, however. The Infrastructure to one of the prisons is broken. New demons are still captured, but thanks to a miscommunication with one of the human groups involved, sabotage to some gears, or some other accident or sabotage, theyre released before they reach the prison.
If youre running one of the other World of Darkness games, maybe it was the actions of your characters that did it. The demons, newest denizens of the World of Darkness, have to prevent the God-Machine from realizing the problem and repairing its Infrastructure. If they can find and infiltrate the correct facilities, they can rescue the thousands of demons who Fell before them. The Matrix and its sequels The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions are as subtle as a brick in the face, but showcase both the paranoia of resistance fighters in a world completely controlled by their enemy.
The sequels renegade programs demonstrate most of this games Incarnation and Agenda archetypes. The fight sequences look like the use of Embeds, too. The television show Person of Interest, in which a computer genius who faked his death a Psychopomp Inquisitor and an ex-special forces operative a Destroyer Saboteur have a backdoor into a government Machine that sends them the social security numbers of people who are about to be involved in violent crimes subverted Infrastructure.
Its full of tradecraft, the Machines surveillance is close to the Cold War theme of Demon, and like the Matrix films if you want to see how demons fight, watch this.
The first three Terminator Films, but especially the television show The Sarah Connor Chronicles, depict what its like to be hunted by a machine-like assassin sent by an unseen God-Machine to eliminate its enemies.
The television version goes into much more detail about the psychological impact of hunting the Machines while being hunted in return and shows the tradecraft necessary to maintain cover, both for the human protagonists and their angelic or demonic counterparts. Not to mention that a terminator appearing via time travel looks an awful lot like an angel falling.
Lexicon Hiding in plain sight, demons dont risk using too many specialized words to describe themselves and their societies. Private conversations are secured by using obscure languages and codes. When describing aspects of their former angelic lives or their Descent, demons dont have a native language to fall back on angels dont refer to themselves as angels, or in fact as anything.
Faced with having to find ways to express concepts that needed no names before they Fell, demons tend to use surprisingly matterof-fact terminology.
Dressing things up in archaic language is something for other supernatural creatures to do creatures who like to hold themselves above humanity by borrowing Latin and Greek to give themselves airs. Demons are much more pragmatic and realistic. When in the human world, speak as the humans do. Agency: an organization of demons above and comprised of rings. Agencies can be temporal, insurgent, compromised, or free. Agenda: an informal group of demons who share common goals in the Descent.
Agent: a demon who is a member of an Agency. Aether: residual energy left over from occult matrices, which demons have learned to harvest. Builder: another name for a Tempter. Cacophonic Embeds: the Embeds of chaos, violence and disharmony. Every Destroyer knows at least one Cacophonic Embed.
Many demons tell inflated or romanticized stories about their catalysts, but no demon truly knows the reason his peers Fell. Cipher, The: a quadratic expression of magic, a set of four Embeds that combine to teach the demon a final secret, a techngnostic koan of his own Descent. Compromised Agency: an Agency infiltrated by angels or exiles, serving as a trap for unwary demons. Cover: the false human life assembled around a demon as protection and disguise. A demons first Cover is made up of the remnants of their last angelic Infrastructure.
Decadent: another name for a Tempter. Demons can remove their Cover temporarily to assume demonic form and achieve superhuman feats, but doing so damages Cover. Descent, the: a description of the process of a demons existence, from the Fall to achieving her vision of Hell. Destroyer: an Incarnation; demons who were once angels tasked with assassination, demolition, or mass murder.
Embed: a secret rule or natural law governing reality under the GodMachine that a demon has learned to use. Halfway between an angel and a demon and trusted by neither. Exploit: an overt use of power to force reality to behave in a specified way, taking the knowledge gleaned from Embeds and applying it in obvious ways. Exploits are very powerful and always risk compromising Cover.
Fall, the: the process in which growing self-awareness tears an angel out of Infrastructure and the God-Machines control, creating a demon. Free Agency: an informal Agency dedicated to sharing information without expectation of repayment or service. Summoning angels is a common output. Glitches usually manifest as strange physical reactions, diets, and behavioral tics. God-Machine: the unknowably vast, inscrutable machine-intelligence permeating the World of Darkness.
With its gears hidden in facilities, it creates Infrastructure and sends angels to carry out its plans. If the GodMachine stands for anything, it stands for its own self-preservation. Guardian: an Incarnation; demons who were once angels tasked with protection or threat assessment. Hell: every demons personal ideal world, free from the necessities of Cover and the fear of the God-Machine and its angels.
Some Agendas see Hell as a realm apart from the physical world that they will one day reach. Others see it as the World of Darkness after the God-Machine has been destroyed. Idealist: another name for an Integrator. Incarnation: one of four classifications of demons based on their former functions as angels Destroyers, Guardians, Messengers, and Psychopomps. Infrastructure: the arrangement of background, resources, personnel, and locations the God-Machine requires to build an occult matrix.
The angelic equivalent of Cover. Instrumental Embeds: the Embeds of analyzing and using material objects to hand.
Every Guardian knows at least one Instrumental Embed. Insurgent Agency: a militant Agency dedicated to waging a war of attrition against the God-Machines Infrastructure and facilities.
Integrators: an Agenda; demons who wish to reunite with the God-Machine, subvert it, change it for the better, or take their old place as angels. Also called Idealists or Turncoats. Interlocks: Powers formed from the Key Embeds making up a demons Cipher. Inquisitors: an Agenda; demons who wish to ensure their own security by gathering as much information as possible about the activities of others. Also called Paranoids or Watchers. Keys: The four Embeds that comprise a demons Cipher.
Linchpin: a vital component of Infrastructure, necessary for the completion of an occult matrix. Messenger: an Incarnation; demons who were once angels tasked with information gathering, persuasion, or revelation. The Classic World of Darkness Vampire:. The Descent the redheaded stepchild of nWoD? Demon the Descent is.. MidwayUSA is a privately held American retailer of various hunting and outdoor-related products..
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