Demon The Fallen
Keith Cogswell
Demon: The Fallen is a role-playing game and a fictional setting from the World of Darkness line by White Wolf Game Studio. The player characters in the game are demons; fallen angels who were cast out of Heaven after siding with Lucifer in a thousand year war with God. The game line was intentionally set up with a limited number of books to be published.
In Demon: The Fallen, players assume the role of one of the rebel angels who defied their Creator for love of humanity and for their rebellion were cast into the Abyss, a prison hidden deep beneath the lands of the dead. Over the millennia, the angels have been twisted by their suffering, manifest in the form of their Torment.
As the Sixth Great Maelstrom rages across the kingdoms of the dead, cracks have appeared in the walls of the Abyss, cracks small enough to allow the smallest and weakest of the Fallen to escape. Fighting both the force of the storm and the pull of the Abyss, they have made their way back to the material realm.
The only way they can remain there, however, is by taking a host - preferably a mortal whose soul was weakened enough to allow the Fallen to gain a foothold and protect it from the ravages of Torment.
The process of possession exposes the Fallen to the mortal's memories. In the majority of cases, this has no effect. A minority of Fallen, however, discover a deep-seated streak of humanity in their hosts, be it love, courage, ambition, curiosity, or even rage - something strong enough to shock them out of their Torment, to remind them of the angel they once were, even if only for a moment. These human memories and emotions act as a bulwark against Torment, shutting out the memories of the Abyss, restoring the Fallen to some semblance of sanity.
The seven Houses of the Fallen, the Sebettu, were created by God in the first days of Creation. It is impossible for a Fallen to change their House; it is, in a very real sense, the core of their beings, an essential part of who they are.
Upon their escape from the Abyss, the Fallen divided their society into five Factions based on their outlook on humanity, God, and themselves. Each Faction is composed of like-minded demons who, although from different Houses, share similar goals.
Demons relate to mortals in two special ways: they reap Faith from mortals in order to gain power, and they can engage in pacts with mortals, creating thralls. Earthbound use a variation on the latter technique to create particularly warped individuals, and also require constant worship by their mortal followers.
Demons have a number of innate powers that are rather low-key but constantly "on". In addition to these, they can manifest their Apocalyptic Forms, the remnants of their true angelic selves, and use their Lore of Creation to create a variety of effects. All demonic powers require Faith to function - if a demon runs out of it, he becomes a mere mortal with strange memories until he regains some of it.
One other important characteristic of the Fallen is their immortality. Though their host bodies can be destroyed and their spirit forms sent back to hell, they don't die; they will only weaken and become increasingly consumed by pain with each "death". The only way a Fallen can actually die is if their soul is consumed by another Fallen.
The Fallen face two main groups of antagonists: mortal demon hunters and Earthbound. The lords of the Fallen comprise a third group, but one that won't be important early in the game. Vampires, hunters, and mages are the three supernatural factions most likely to cross swords with the Fallen at one time or another.
Demon: The Fallen is a 2002 tabletop role-playing game released by White Wolf Publishing. Set in the World of Darkness, players take on the role of a demon - a fallen angel who descended to the Garden of Eden with Lucifer, only to be condemned to Hell after a long war with Heaven. The game focuses on "infernal glory" as its central theme for storytelling and character development - the acquisition of power to restore the Fallen's grace as well as to potentially reconnect with humanity, all the while staving off their own agony and evading monstrous demons.
The War in Heaven began when an Elohim (angel) named Ahrimal, one of the Seers, foresaw a disaster in the future - a disaster which God had either directly orchestrated or would allow to happen. The Elohim debated whether or not to act against God in order to prevent this disaster; many argued that it would be safer to do nothing, because their action could potentially be the cause of the disaster. Lucifer, one of the Heralds as well as the first and greatest Elohim created by God, was the first to make a conclusive decision in favor of rebellion, and he became the leader of the rebel Elohim; the Fallen.
These Fallen revealed themselves to humanity in order to bring them the light of forbidden knowledge and awareness. In doing so they incurred the wrath of God, who had given humanity the potential to be aware of the Word, the good and evil, yet had not intended Man to have this kind of awareness yet. The humans, Adam, Eve and their descendants, had been given gifts that they could not use due to their initial innocence, and Adam and Eve are portrayed as having had only rudimentary knowledge and awareness, solely concerned with their survival. During the war that followed, the sin of Caine taught the Fallen how to kill and many grew twisted and evil. In the end, the Fallen lost the war, and were banished to the abyss of Hell as punishment for their transgressions. Lucifer was not among their ranks and wandered the Earth aimlessly after the war until finally setting down in modern-day Los Angeles.
This background provides a possible explanation for the conflicting origin stories of the other games in the Classic World of Darkness setting. Reality is presented during the Fall as being far less static and banal than it is in the modern game settings. The world went from being populated by two humans to having billions of humans with various civilizations and pasts existing at the same time (even when those pasts were contradictory to each other). One could deduce from this that the answer to which game provides the correct world origin story is: all of them were correct, all at the same time, and all at that one crucial point (the Fall).
Due to the sixth maelstrom (caused by other supernaturals in the World of Darkness), the Gates of Hell that kept these demons from escaping their prison have begun to weaken, allowing the weakest of the Fallen to escape. However, to continue existing on Earth, a demon must find a suitable host for itself: bodies with weak souls, for example: comatose patients, severe drug addicts, the severely or clinically depressed, or suicidal people. The demon severs the weakened soul from the body and takes its place inside the host, merging with the host's memories and emotions, and continues existence on Earth to follow its own personal agenda while still balancing out the life of its vessel and the machinations of their demonic superiors to whom they are still bound.
While the mortal body provides the Fallen with a shield against the full memory of their torment in Hell, they are sometimes hindered by the memories and feelings the mortal soul left behind. The personal agendas of the demons vary from individual to individual; some demons wish to finish the war against Heaven, believing the disaster is still to be averted, some wish to take revenge upon humanity, believing humans are the primary cause for the war and the overall ruined state of the world, while other demons want to reconcile, repent for their sins and be able to return to God who, along with the remaining Elohim, has seemingly vanished from Creation for reasons unknown, leaving the unattended world to fall into chaos and despair.
All characters must choose a "House" and a "faction". The seven Houses are similar to classes or character categories in other RPGs, to clans in Vampire: The Masquerade and similar groupings in other White Wolf games. The different factions are based on the demons' personal opinions and positions regarding the war, and have been formed before the War or after their escape.
All demons can use special magical powers called invocations, or Lores. All demons have access to two common Lores: Fundament, which allows them to suspend the laws of physics to perform superhuman feats, and Humanity, which allows them to commune with and manipulate mortals. Their other three Lores are determined by their House. All demons have an "apocalyptic form" or "visage"; this is an image or shadow of their true nature, their form before they were forced into mortal bodies. They can be demonic and horrible to behold, or angelic and beautiful, depending on the level of Torment a demon possesses in comparison to their Willpower.
Upon their emergence, the Fallen quickly discovered that they were not the first to escape the Abyss. Hundreds of other demonic spirits were summoned back to Earth in the intervening centuries through the use of sorcery, and were then anchored to objects in place of the bodies possessed by the Fallen. This unnatural connection had left them hollow, tormented, and possessed of alien emotions and thought processes, as these artifacts do not provide the buffer against the memories of their suffering in the Abyss. The five Archdukes, lieutenants of Lucifer, were the first of the fallen angels to be summoned back to Earth. These included Asmodeus, Azrael, Dagon, Belial, and Abaddon, but were soon followed by hundreds of lesser-known demons. These "Earthbound" are immensely powerful, having had centuries to practice their abilities to perfection, as well as having been worshipped as gods by deranged cults for millennia. The rise of organized religion, as well as the Age of Enlightenment drove them into hibernation, but the return of the Fallen has led to the awakening of many of the Earthbound, who take steps to revive the cults which worship them, as well as enslave or destroy the Fallen. Every Earthbound possesses their own goals, but most involve the enslavement of humanity so that their potential can be harnessed to achieve the ends of that individual Earthbound.
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