Editing Demon: The Fallen (section)

== Important Aspects of being a Demon ==
=== Innate Powers ===
Demons all come with a whole slew of powers built in, much like how Vampires and Werewolves do. These are usable by all Demons, regardless of their House, Faction or Faith or Torment scores.

* Demons are immune to mind-control and supernaturally-induced fear. Note that it lets them see through mind-control invisibility/illusions like Vampire Obfuscate, Changeling Glamour and anything Mages do with the Mind automatically. In fact they don't even notice those effects exist.
* Demons are immune to possession; technically, it's the host who's immune to possession, because the Fallen got there first. A Demon with 0 temporary Faith can be pulled out of its host and then either thrust into a new host or thrown back to the Abyss.
* Demons can see through illusions and supernatural concealment with a Perception + Alertness roll. This has a Difficulty of the highest the target's Faith or Torment score when a Demon is involved, or Difficulty 7 when dealing with a non-Demon.
* Demons in Apocalyptic Form can soak Lethal damage.
* Demons can spend a Faith point to heal all Bashing damage or one point of Lethal damage.
* Demons do not age as long as they have at least a single point of temporary Faith. If they lose all their temporary Faith they start aging as normal, so no "catching up" years. Recovering even a single point pauses their aging again.
* Demons are immune to disease as long as they have at least a single point of temporary Faith. If they lose all their temporary Faith they can get ill as normal, but once they recover even a single point all diseases are immediately purged from their bodies.
* Demons are highly resistant against poisons and drugs. When poisoned/drugged a Demon rolls their Stamina + their Faith rating as long as they have at least one temporary Faith point. Success lets them be unaffected by the substance or soak damage. This is not optional, so if you ''want'' to get drunk or high go you would need a lot more of the stuff than humans do to kick in.
* Demons are unable to conceive or get pregnant. A Demon that takes over a pregnant body will experience a miscarriage. (A Demon that doesn't is a plot hook in the Storytellers Companion)
* Demons can detect those who speak their Celestial or True Names (see below) and if the speaker is either their Thrall or another Demon they can establish a link to converse.
* Demons can detect the use of supernatural powers in a nearby area equal to their Faith score in miles. They can roll Perception + Alertness to detect roughly where this happened and how powerful it is, but not the exact nature of the power or its location. They can use their knowledge of the area or maps to pinpoint an exact location with four, maybe three successes. Most demons don't know how to interpret powers of other supernaturals, seeing them as a garbled mess or corrupted versions of their own Lores, as mages, werewolves and vampires (other than Caine) didn't exist back in their days.

=== Names ===
Demons all have three names: Host Name, Celestial Name, and True Name. Host Names, if you didn't figure, are the names of the people whose identity Demons steal when possessing someone. The Celestial Names tend to be "angel-styled" such as Michael, Gabriel, Raphael and Uriel. Their True Names are eldritch and nearly unpronounceable, if at all: any given demon's particular True Name can contain things like rustling of paper, or a choir of a thousand children chanting in adoration. Knowing someone's Celestial Name gives you an uncomfortable catalyst by which to reach or empower effects of supernatural funsies you may wanna use against them and knowing someone's True Name gives you heavy amounts of influence over them letting you easily hold them by a leash, so long as you're careful with keeping a steady grip and close track of said leash.

=== Possession ===
The Fallen feel the pull of the Abyss on their essence and must possess a physical object to remain in the mortal world. The most common vessel is a spiritually-damaged person, one who has little grasp of what makes them "human," such as a coma patient, burned-out drug addict, or someone on the verge of suicide. A thrall may allow its master to possess him, in which case the possession automatically succeeds. Upon possession, the Fallen comes into contact with the host's memories and emotions, two things the Fallen never experienced before. The Fallen must somehow reconcile its own existence and torment with a sudden rush of love, hate, fear, and recollections in order to integrate with the host, survive on Earth, and find a path to forgiveness.

It is possible to possess an inanimate object. The Earthbound have done so. The vessel-to-be must have a strong "resonance" with Humanity; for example, a typewriter on an office clerk's desk is insufficient, but the typewriter of a struggling novelist is. As well, the Fallen's personality influences how well it can integrate with its object vessel. Taking an object as a vessel is quite limiting, so the Fallen use it as a last resort.

=== Faith & Pacts ===
God supplied his angels with the resources they needed to use their powers in the creation of the world. After the Fall, the rebel angels were cut off from this power. The ones who escape the Abyss find that human souls, made in his image, can substitute for the power of God. There are two ways that the Fallen can extract this power from humans: reaping it or making Pacts.
* Reaping souls requires the Fallen to reveal themselves as explicitly supernatural entities while interacting with the targets, such as intervening in a fight while wearing the Apocalyptic Form and tearing the skin from an attacker. This is a short-term quick fix of Faith that tends to cause hunters and other supernatural powers to start asking questions.
* Pacts are made with willing humans by exchanging a service for a continual trickle of Faith. It takes time to set up a Pact, which involves the demon fulfilling the mortal's wish and the mortal accepting the gift in return. Once established, only the demon can end a Pact and the mortal becomes a thrall.

Mortals generate anywhere from 0 to 5 Faith:

* 0 Faith means that the person is horribly deprived of something to believe in: they are the most jaded and empty people on the planet. Demons cannot make Pacts with people like them because there is no Faith to use.
* 1 Faith is reserved for hardcore skeptics to whom faith does not come easy.
* 2 Faith is the average for humanity: they'll believe, but don't go out of their way to engage in their belief.
* 3 Faith is for the hardcore believers who put large amounts of time and money into their Faith, for whom their belief is an integral part of their life. Hilariously, hardcore political activists with strong conviction in their cause are also here (yes, even radical atheists).
* 4 Faith is for the most intense and profound of believers: the kind that would live in a monastery, endure imprisonment or act in locations that are an active threat to their lives.
* 5 Faith is for those who ''are'' their belief. The most learned religious rulers, those who are truly willing to give everything for their faith and are capable of remaining true of faith when enduring the most difficult of trials.

You can also make pacts with some supernaturals, most notably Mages (and they usually have a crap ton of faith), but the link created between you two makes you vulnerable to those assholes sniffing out your True Name and reversing the deal, making YOU their slave. It is theoretically possible to form a pact with a Werewolf (if you manage to convince it to not rip you open on the spot), but it tends to fuck them up and turn them to the Dark Side rather rapidly, and once they're there they would turn on their demon master... so not recommended. Vampires due to being dead and thus having no spark of creation have no Faith, although Ghouls are free game, even though blood bonds would all but guarantee that they would be more loyal to their vampire masters than you.

A Faith Potential of 2 is the most common amongst Humanity. When heading in both directions the people with such a Faith Potential decrease in number, with there being only a handfull of people with a Faith Potential of 5. Note that this does not have to be a faith in God or another deity: aside from religion philosophy, ideology and science are all valid things to believe in. Hell, according to the book ''Damned and Deceived'' even the faith in a celebrity, which can be a religion in and of itself, can be sufficient to generate Faith.

The Faith Potential is how Faith a mortal generates to be used in Pacts. Half of the total amount of Faith Potential, rounded up, can be used by the Demon to fuel its powers. The other half ''has'' to be spent on the abilities granted as part of the Pact. These abilities are:

* Repair chronic injuries or impairments: let the cripple walk, heal the blind and so on. Also includes healing a terminal condition like cancer.
* Convert it into 10 freebie points that can be spent on Attributes, Abilities or Willpower: Attributes cost 5, Abilities cost 2 and Willpower costs 1. This can easily skyrocket a Thrall's Willpower, grant them a whole new Ability or increase an Attribute significantly. They cannot be raised above their regular maximums of 5 though.
* Grant one of the Demon's inherent powers such as immunity to mind control, see through illusions, detect the use of powers and so on. Using them requires a Willpower (difficulty 7) roll to use.
* Give a limited version of an Evocation the Demon can use. These costs more than usual: one point of Faith per dot the Evocation has. So a one-dot Evocation costs one point of Faith while a three-dot one costs three points of Faith. Using them requires a Willpower (difficulty 8) roll; this roll doubles as the roll for its effect.
* Bestow one of the enhancements from the Demon's Apocalyptic form. With a Willpower roll (Difficulty 6) a Thrall can use the power for one scene.

Mortals with a Faith Potential of 1 require the granting of a power without generating Faith, but a skilled Thrall with such a low potential can still be used for their skills. Those with a Faith Potential of 2 and 4 have a one-for-one trade: one point of Faith, one point for an ability. With a Faith Potential of 3 and the rare 5 you can go either way: you have a number that you ''have'' to spend on abilities but you have some leeway in whether you want to gain more Faith from this particular Thrall or want to give them more abilities to make them useful. After engaging in a Pact a Thrall gives its Demon master a number of the unused Faith it generates at sunrise, up to the Demon's maximum Faith amount. This means that a clever Demon who makes Pacts all over the world (or even better: with an astronaut right before they got to space) has access to a constant stream of Faith to fuel its abilities.

If a Demon manages to nuture the faith that one of its Thralls provides this Faith potential can grow, allowing for larger Pacts to form. In case a Thrall outgrows its Pact it has to be redefined to grant the Thrall more power. If this is ignored though a Demon can simply opt to reap more Faith, if the used-to-unused balance is not distrubed of course.

=== Torment ===
After being subjected to countless millennia of torture and horror, the Fallen Elohim have been reduced to Demons. The more evil the demon acts on Earth the more Torment he accumulates, this can be both good and bad as it grants both strengths and weaknesses. In game mechanic terms, you typically have to fill out a bar of Temporary Torment before you gain a dot of Permanent Torment, the former which can be removed by doing good and selfless deeds and the latter with experience, though Permanent Torment is hardcapped at 1. You gain Torment in both shapes by being evil. Once you hit 10 Torment, you're essentially one of the Earthbound. Holding such anger means any living host you take rapidly falls apart, forcing you to possess an object instead. In short, it's not meant for players to indulge and is typically answered with a "game over" akin to when Vampires lose all their Humanity/Path of Enlightenment score and become a mindless beast.

Unlike Humanity which goes from 10 being a saint to 1 being a monster, Torment is reversed: 10 turns you unplayable and 1 makes you a saint. It is rumored amongst the Fallen (especially the Reconcilers) that it is possible to attain the forgiveness of Heaven and become Elohim once again. This would be Torment 0, creating a state somewhere in between Golconda and Ascension. At this point a character would no longer be playable either, but there are not hard rules for how to do this. As such, it's up to the Storyteller to consider if redemption is even possible in their game. Of course, each level of Torment has its own sins linked to it:

{|class=wikitable cellpadding="1" cellspacing="0"
|-
| align=center | '''Torment''' || align=center | '''Hierarchy of Sins'''
|-
| '''10''' || There is no sin. [[Fist of the North Star|You're already damned]]. Why not do whatever you want?
|-
| '''9''' || Casual violation of others: murder for no reason, thoughtless cruelty and torture, near-mindless savagery.
|-
| '''8''' || Premeditated violation of others: plotted murder or assassination, systematic destruction of another, long-sought revenge.
|-
| '''7''' || Sins of passion: murder in a fit of rage, giving in to feelings of hate, anger, jealousy, or irrational prejudice, encouraging the same in others. Destroying particularly inspirational or meaningful objects. Doing personal harm through addiction or other self-destructive patterns of behavior.
|-
| '''6''' || Destruction of the works of others, inflicting intentional emotional harm through cruelty or neglect.
|-
| '''5''' || Accidental violations: doing harm to others through carelessness, negligence, or thoughtlessness. Neglecting duties or responsibilities. Betraying another's trust.
|-
| '''4''' || Theft from or deception of others without just cause. Breaking your sworn word.
|-
| '''3''' || Doing harm (physical, emotional or spiritual) to a mortal for any reason other than self-defense or the greater good.
|-
| '''2''' || Doing harm to any moral creature for any reason other than self-defense or the [[greater good]] (a disrespect for the order of Creation). Permitting any lesser sin in your presence without at least trying to prevent it.
|-
| '''1''' || Any act of cruelty, selfishness, or thoughtlessness. Allowing any such act in your presence without trying to prevent it. An unwillingness to sacrifice for the greater good.
|}

Defilers, Fiends, Malefactors, and Scourges all start at 3 Torment, while Devils, Devourers, and Slayers start at 4. Torment 4 is the rough equivalent of Humanity 7, putting the latter group on par with the other game lines while giving the former group a head start.