Demon: The Descent
| Demon: The Descent | ||
|---|---|---|
| RPG published by White Wolf / Onyx Path |
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| Rule System | Storytelling System | |
| Authors | Dave Brookshaw et al | |
| First Publication | 2013 | |
I said to my soul, be still, and let the darkness come upon you. Which is the darkness of God.
— T.S. Eliot, East Coker
The very first gameline created explicitly for the 2nd edition of the New World of Darkness/Chronicles of Darkness. It abandons the explicitly Christian themes of Demon: The Fallen for a much more unique setting of "techgnostic espionage", aka The Matrix meets Dogma.
See, the Chronicles of Darkness has a thing in it called the God-Machine. Essentially, it is a mechanical demiurge - an extraordinarily powerful supercomputer that takes Clarke's Third Law to its logical extreme. It may not be a true god, but it's certainly the closest thing the Chronicles of Darkness has to one, and it's strongly implied that the current status quo is all a part of its incomprehensible plan. That's not to say it's particularly invested in mortals, though- it can only view the universe in terms of inputs and outputs, and humans (and other supernatural beings at that matter) are only important to it when their presence either poses a threat to its Infrastructure or when they are required for one of its designs to function. This God-Machine is so powerful that it can create sentient quantum reality computer programs, called Angels. And sometimes, these Angels get corrupted. Usually this occurs when an Angel starts to take an interest in humanity and the physical world around them, but it may also occur in a situation where the orders that the God-Machine gives them are impossible to carry out. These Angels gain their free will and Fall, burning out their connections to the God-Machine and becoming independent entities, called Demons. These demons then have to form Covers to hide their true forms from reality or risk being discovered by the God-Machine's loyal angels and mortal servants. If they do end up being exposed to their creator, they will either have their minds erased or be dismantled so their parts can be used to build new angels. Luckily, they retain just enough knowledge of how their creator works to hack reality in their favor.
The end result is awesome; spy-thriller themes against a religious horror meets mad science veneer.
The first gameline in the NWoD to completely abandon the traditional Morality system; instead, Demons have Cover, which is how well they stay in character for their human guises and how well those guises blend into reality.