Editing Demon: The Fallen (section)

=== Paradise Won ===
The big one. This is not just a conflict between the Fallen and the Earthbound: it's a conflict between them and humanity as a whole. It all starts off with people starting to receive all sorts of revelations to shake them from their cynicism. It starts off with simple instances of divine providence and revelatory dreams, but it builds up to angelic visitations and the devout manifesting stigmata all the way up to divine acts of healing via prayer or people suddenly performing supernatural feats. During the buildup of these miracles a global movement, the Order of the Herald, starts to spread the good word and just so happens to set up a chapter house in the home town of the players. They start off with acts of charity but eventually start to perform bona fide miracles: healing the sick, empowering the weak and fixing handicaps. The book claims that these are the works of the Imbued from [[Hunter: The Reckoning]], but there's more to them than that. Sooner or later the Order starts to attract the attention of both the locals who eagerly join, as well as the players. They will quickly discover that the Order of the Herald has many people with high Faith ratings, which makes them excellent Thralls. The problem is that somehow the Order seems to be keenly aware of what demons are, and those few who deal with the Fallen face immediate expulsion from the Order. Furthermore, the members of the Order cannot enter Pacts even if they wanted to. Why?

Because they are the Thralls of ''Lucifer Morningstar''.

Oh yes, ''Shaitan'' has played his hand and it's a winner. Strangely enough the book also claims that the Imbued are powered by Lucifer, which is at odds with Hunter's claims that the Imbued are powered by the Ebon Dragon and the Scarlet Queen, whom might very well be the last two angels on Earth. This would mean that either Lucifer is not aware of the source of their power... or he does know, making things even more complex. In either case, the Imbued make for formidable Thralls, giving 3-4 Faith for a normal Thrall if not using the rules for the Imbued... and 7-10 if you are. That's right, you're looking at a ceiling of 10 Faith per Imbued. Lucifer's not using all that Faith for his own gain: he pumps all of this Faith into his Thralls. Consider that one point of Faith can be turned into 10 Freebie Points, or turned into immunity to mind control or fixing permanent impairments... let's just say that these Imbued Thralls are BADASS. And that's just one of them: once you consider that there's an entire order of them you know that you shouldn't fuck with the Order. If the players pick up on this they can choose to protect the order from a distance from outside threats, including other Fallen. Eventually the Earthbound start to put two and two together: the Order of the Herald is Lucifer's army. Attacks start to take place all over the globe, but the Order is prepared. Blood runs through the streets in cities all over the world, and the party can pick a side in the conflict in their home town. If they've been helping the Order previously and keep it clean, the Order will reluctantly accept them as allies. If they ally against the Order they will all be gruesomely murdered, after which the servants of a local Earthbound will roll in and claim the town for their own. Large numbers of people will be dead, the damage goes up into billions and the people cry out for salvation.

[[Just As Planned|All according to Lucifer's plan]].

Lucifer once again reveals himself in Los Angeles, in the same spot he did last time. News crews rush to the scene, and once set up Lucifer delivers a short but passionate speech, calling the entire world up in arms against the forces of darkness and its minions lest humanity becomes enslaved for all time. With a gesture of his hand he raises up a great obsidian tower: the new Genhinnom. No longer in hiding, Lucifer takes to leading humanity against the Dread Kings himself. A few days later he receives his first challenge: at the head of a great horde of lesser demons, Thralls and cultists walks the Great Beast himself: Belial. He howls a challenge to the Morningstar and the two start their terrible duel. Their fight lasts for a week, reduces the City of Angels to rubble and [[Fist of the North Star|the Morningstar receives seven terrible wounds]], but at the end of it all Belial falls before Lucifer. The death of his most powerful enemy sends a clear signal to the Earthbound, Fallen and humanity alike: the Morningstar's crusade will not be denied. The Luciferans quickly bow to their leader and after a short duel with Belphigor, the leader of the Faustians, that sees Lucifer temporarily die only to come back like he always does the Morningstar takes charge of the assembled Fallen and the war starts in earnest. The Morningstar's campaign is as methodical as it is ruthless: one by one the Earthbound have their cults and Thralls destroyed, shortly followed by the Dread Kings themselves. It's not very fast and not without losses, but it works. The entire planet is at war, the most horrible chemical and biological weapons are used and more than one Earthbound gets nuked out of existence. The death toll passes the ten digits and the Earth is laid to waste... but it's working. Human society is reshaped into a ruthless meritocracy with zero tolerance for crime, a police state where public executions of enemies of humanity and secret informers being the norm. The Earthbound find it more and more difficult to obtain human cultists, and the war finally tips to the Morningstar's favor, which lets him kick off the second part of his campaign.

He had deemed the Fallen to be irredeemable, and therefore ordered the destruction of ''all'' of the Fallen, ''including the players''.

If they avoid the initial purge the players and their surviving Thralls escape to the ravaged countryside, where survival is difficult. On top of that Lucifer reveals a new tactic: he has trained entire brigades to use their Faith as a weapon against the Fallen, a variation of the disbelief that humans once unintentionally used to undermine the powers of the Fallen. It works the same, but in practice it means that you don't even need a dozen humans to utterly shut down the powers of a demon. With their defeat imminent the remaining Earthbound have banded together and have sent envoys to the players to give them a mission: recover the hidden body of Belial. The players are forced into cooperation, recovering the body with great difficulty and handing it over to the Earthbound. The most powerful Malefactors of their kind then proceed to graft a weapon out of the remains: a single dart of bone infused with Belial's hatred. The weapon is presented to the players and they're given a second order: arrange an audience with the Morningstar on behalf of the remaining Fallen to discuss terms of surrender, then use the dart to strike Lucifer down. If used the dart finds it way to the Morningstar's heart with unerring accuracy and strikes him dead, allowing the players to escape in the ensuing chaos. This, however, is the bad ending: the final stages of the war will see the demons lose and leave Earth a barely habitable ball of rock for a small handful of starving humans. No, the good ending hinges on a very Christian concept for a very Christian game:

Forgiveness.

By forgiving the Morningstar for what he has done to them, to all Fallen, they prove to Lucifer that they are still the angels that they once were. Lucifer knows this: he suspected that there would be an attempt on his life during the negotiations, and that the players would have to make a choice. The choice of hatred and that his actions were just, or that everything that had happened ever since the initial rebellion against God was but a tragic mistake. Lucifer is tired of the fighting and is willing to risk his life on the chance that the Fallen can be redeemed. If the players prove him right he considers all of the remaining Fallen to be redeemable and welcome them back, depriving the last few Earthbound of their servants. The last part of the war will be short yet costly, but at the end all of the Earthbound will be sealed into the Abyss. Lucifer and the Fallen still on Earth will have enough combined power to usher in a new Age of Wonder. A final point to consider for them however was the Abyss: there are still many Fallen in there and they're not sure what to do with them. Perhaps they can be released and returned to Earth in a controlled fashion to heal them of their pain like the Fallen were and join their kin in this new world of forgiveness and greatness.

Of course Lucifer wouldn't risk ruining the whole thing just yet by telling everyone that the reason he started the rebellion was because God ordered him to, but hey, baby steps.