Demon The Fallen Rulebook Pdf
Curtis Cassel
The penultimate game set in the old World of Darkness and the last using the title layout of X: The Y (Orpheus was the last game set in oWoD), in Demon: The Fallen you and your friends take on the role of demons, fallen angels who have escaped Hell and now live among humans. The premise is pretty cool and the lore and mythos behind it is for the most part well written and with a great deal of interesting ideas and an interesting story. A notable criticism of where the game fucks up is how it's heavily centered around the Abrahamic religions. This is rather odd given the number of pagans working for White Wolf at the time, and their love for the non-Abrahamic faiths clashes with the fact that one supplement outright states that every other religion was created by the Earthbound and are thereby false... and then goes to reveal that Abrahamic religions were created by Lucifer to de-power the Earthbound and are therefore equally false. The game is interesting in that it is exactly what Jack Chick and his friends were going on about with the Satanic Panic: you play as a demon who tries to tempt people into making pacts that give them dark powers and makes them worship the forces of hell, all for the glory of your master Satan. This makes Demon: The Fallen one of the most elaborate Aristocrats jokes of all time.
In the beginning, there was God and despite being all powerful, he got lonely so he fashioned beings who were like him yet unique, the first beings known as Elohim, or Angels. Creating seven Houses, each with specific skills, objectives and powers they helped God in His works. This mirrors the whole "God created the world in seven days" thing from the Genesis Chapter from the Bible. Paradise was being created in preparation for the arrival of the epitome of God's work, His most glorious creation: Humanity.
When He was finished and created Adam and Eve (after some drama involving Lilith getting tossed out), leaving them content in the Garden of Eden, he made two decrees to his Firstborn. First, they would love Humanity as much as they loved God. The Elohim considered this to be a given, but agreed because they reached the consensus that God did not want them to feel bad for loving Humanity as much as they did. The second was far more difficult: they would only observe Man and never interfere with or reveal themselves to Humanity. The Elohim were at first disappointed, for they all were in awe of Man and wanted to befriend and help them achieve their divine potential, nevertheless they heeded God and obeyed.
For a while things were calm and peaceful, with the Elohim's observing of Humanity being like watching a pair of very inept Let's Players. An Angel named Ahrimal foresaw a terrible catastrophe that would befall the world and undo all the hard work the Angels had done to help Man and forever mar the race of Man. He reported this to his superiors but was ignored. God's response to this was pretty much "If you knew what I knew you'd understand." Some Elohim took up this offer but were seemingly destroyed and left unfindable. Those Elohim bothered by this began a great debate as to whether or not they should interfere and help save Mankind from this impending cataclysm and at the same defy God. It was the favored son and mightiest of the Archangels, Lucifer Morningstar, who rallied an third of the Elohim and left Heaven to finally interact with Humans. This of course angered God, so when the Archangel Michael arrived, told Lucifer and his kin to face punishment, and that the works of the rebels would be unmade he flatly refused and whupped Michael's ass. Michael retreated but called a curse on each of the Houses:
The first blow came from God Himself. Shielding those faithful to Him God essentially place a divine bitchslap upon reality, filling it with entropy and ruining Paradise. Oh sure, it did not destroy the world outright but scarred it enough to break endless perfection. Initially the angels on both sides were naive and kind in a way. Fights were on many different levels, from physical battles to acts of physics meeting. Those who lost were captured and imprisoned: the Fallen to be processed later and the loyalists to deprive God of His soldiers and to try and seduce them. This meant that the war was a bloodless one, until a local man ruined everything. He had joined the Fallen while his brother had remained faithful to God. The man observed his brother make a sacrifice to God and was rewarded with His love. This drove the man into a rage from jealousy but also love. For he loved his brother as much as he hated him, and he loved God as much as he hated Him. So the man decided to make a sacrifice of his own, that which he cherished the most was given to God. It was an act of love, an act of jealousy; an act of kindness, an act of hatred. The man killed his brother, the man gave his brother to God. This first act of cruelty, of murder, of hate and desire, changed the angelic host and the rebel Fallen forever. As a punishment the Lord set a mark upon the man, lest any finding him should kill him.
This turned the war for the bloody. Lucifer's lieutenants, the Fallen Belial, Abaddon, Dagon, Asmodeus and Azrael, each took command of a host of Fallen and began to wage their wars. They were successful but ruthless: exterminating or enslaving those who would side with God against the Fallen. The successes kept mounting up so Lucifer decided to enact his Great Experiment: uplifting Humanity to their true potential. He appointed ten of the most learned of Fallen and gave them the task to teach something to Humanity:
Unimaginatively called the Ten, these Fallen set out to be the teachers of Humanity. For a while they did quite well and Humanity grew to unimaginable heights. Some Fallen however were distressed by this: because if Humanity was to master all of Creation, what use would the Fallen be? A nameless traitor suggested that in order to remain the masters of Humanity, perhaps it would be possible to create something new to lord over the humans. Asmodeus, Abaddon and Azrael being to formulate a plot to create a new race of beings. These things would be born from Fallen and humans, making them subservient to their Fallen progenitors but lording over Humanity in their masters' name. This saw the creation of the Nephilim: possessing the gifts of Man and Fallen, but terrible to behold in visage or potential. They quickly began to dominate their cities, but they made a grave mistake when they turned on the Ten. This lead word of their existence to Lucifer's citadel, who purged them with fire and sword. This great battle left the world in tatters and created the Shattering.
Lucifer had made a miscalculation: the Fallen were teaching Humanity too much, too fast. They began to buckle under the weight of their divinity, eventually snapping. In an attempt to make Humanity like God its own divinity proved to be too much. The most critical failure however was that this caused Humanity to lose its mastery of the One Language, a primordial tongue used by all of mankind to speak with one another. They drifted apart and began to forget of the Fallen, starting to think of them as legends and myths. All that they had built was lost or abandoned, and the Fallen were left with nothing.
At this point the loyalist Host struck. One by one their citadels fell, their inhabitants imprisoned. After 40 days and 40 nights of battle Lucifer's own stronghold was breached and the Lightbringer was bound in chains of fire. Dragged off the Fallen were sentenced to banishment into the Abyss, a place utterly devoid of God's touch. Once the final Fallen were cast inside its gates were shut, never to be reopened. They quickly discovered that one of their kin was missing: Lucifer himself was not with them. The agony of being utterly devoid of everything but those around them began to drive the Fallen slowly insane, decrying Lucifer as a traitor who sold them out. And that was the last anyone heard from the Fallen, until...
Lucifer had indeed not been locked in the Abyss. He was sentenced to wander Earth alone forever. He did not sit idly and began to plot the resummoning of his kin, starting with his five Archdukes. The summoning was difficult, so Lucifer taught the secrets of magic to people all over the world. When he was done the peoples of the times of antiquity, unaware of one another, began five great rituals to summon their "gods". They had prepared great Reliquaries to house their gods, giving Lucifer's followers physical bodies in the world. Said objects resembled their associated Fallen in some way. All five of the Archdukes were summoned at the same time to places all over the world:
Upon being summoned Lucifer contacted them, but to his horror realized that his Archdukes had been driven utterly insane. They scoffed him and began to expand their cults in an attempt to lord over Humanity as the Earthbound, the first of the demons. Their main objective was to harness worship, which gave them the ability to work their dark powers and remain in the world. Their reign was terrible and harsh, punishing severely and driving others into acts of greater and greater depravity. They did not enslave entire nations: instead they aimed for the highest ranking official within a nation and seducing them into their cult. Some of these cults were quite public as religions: Marduk, Nergal, Apep, Zahhak and Bastet are but a few names for these fronts. The secrets of summoning demons began to spread out, and more and more Earthbound were summoned to the world. The Lightbringer sought allies, but all rebuked them and promised Lucifer a future in which only they would rule.
Lucifer found allies in the most unlikely of corners: Humanity. Specifically a tribe that told the history of the world as it had actually happened. They had no sorcerers of their own and were too insignificant for the Earthbound to conquer. These people, the Hebrews, started to received the secret guidance of the Morningstar himself. Earthbound caught wind of this and tried to tempt the Jews, but they turned out to be very resilient to their efforts. Solomon, successor to King David, was a seeker of knowledge. This put him into eventual contact with the Phoenicians, who were willing to teach him if he took upon the worship of the Earthbound-in-disguise. Solomon agreed and began to learn a great deal of things while at the same time building temples, shrines and performed rituals and prayers. A staggering total of 72 Earthbound were involved this way, with Solomon eventually building them all a great temple under Mount Moab. When it was done he withdrew an ancient Assyrian parchment and began to perform a ritual. Each of the 72 Earthbound were bound into a single bronze urn that Solomon had prepared. He then brought it out to the Dead Sea and dropped it into its depths, never to be found again.
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