Origin and Nature

The gods were all once men a long, long time ago. Men and women who became so accomplished at the recently rediscovered art of fleshforming that they were able to create for themselves new, perfect bodies. Bodies that could not be damaged, would never age or die, truly immortal. As time passed and these individuals continued to not age and grow stronger their influence became all the greater. Some humans began to worship on their own, others assumed the identity of pre-created pagan deities.

History and Realm

As their power and influence grew, different groups came more and more into conflict and the world was half torn apart by the fighting between these powerful beings. Finally they met and settled on an accord of peace and non-interference. Creating for themselves their own pocket dimension in which to retreat peacefully into, a realm called Asgard, Olympus or any one of a number of other names. From there they continued to have some limited interaction with the human world, often venturing into it in disguise or taking it upon themselves to help certain favored individuals but mostly remained aloof and apart from it. Masters of fleshforming, they have filled their world with various amazing and dreadful creatures, as well as semi-human servants and vassals.

Offspring

Sometimes a god will sleep with a human while visiting the human world, at times they do this while in the visage of another, such as the human’s lover, at other times they do not. The reasons can be as varied as falling in love with a human to a simple lark. The chance of a god impregnating or being impregnated by a human is low, about one tenth of the chance of a human with a human but can happen. These offspring are known as god children and their descendants are called demigods.

Supernatural Deals

Gods generally care more about the spirit of the deal than the letter of it, and consider it binding. Attempts to cheat them are usually met with horrible wrath although they won’t go back on their word, it’ll just be of less use to you once you’re dead.

Combat

Gods will usually fight for a while, but after they get hit enough will decide they don’t like it much anymore and fuck the hell off.

Lieutenants and Agents

Lieutenants

Gods work through angels, angels are 100% loyal and are really simply an expression of the god’s will although they may be quite intelligent and powerful of their own accord, wingless ones are usually preferred for work on earth. Angels think nothing of sacrificing themselves for their cause.

Lieutenants rarely operate alone and with their group they’re typically more than a match for a small group or even society, taking them out requires a coordinated attack by several societies, which is fairly well and strategically implemented. These plans will usually go horribly wrong if someone tips the bad guys off about them.

Agents

Godly agents are usually people who the gods have visited in some sort of vision, while they often appear as their pantheonic identities, other times they’ll take on the guise of an angel or Jesus or whatever suits that person’s particular religious beliefs. They then typically charge their agent with some quest, some gods are very protective of their agents, while others don’t remotely care. Depending on the strength of an agent they can usually be defeated by an individual, or small group of three or so.

General Behavior

Gods almost never come do stuff personally, almost entirely working through agents and lieutenants. About two thirds of gods are friendly towards humans.

Origin and Nature

Similarly to the gods, the lords of the Fae were once humans who became extremely accomplished in fleshforming. Unlike the gods however, they had no interest in power, leadership or responsibility. Rather, they were hedonists who used their power only for their own pleasure, rendering themselves immortal but not entirely unkillable. They created their own realm very early on. The Other is a world that is forever caught up in a never-ending party. Over the centuries however, increasing boredom has led to entertainment becoming more and more extreme and the lords of the Fae have long since lost any sort of human empathy. Entertainments vary from simple stories and dance to brutal life or death contests and recreational torture.

Interactions with Humans

The Fae sometimes journey into the human world, taking on any form they choose when they do so, male, female, or animal. Sometimes they do this in order to capture people to bring back with them to serve in the Fae world forever. Those chosen in this way may end up simple entertainers, or fighting for their life against brutal and monstrous creations. Almost no one ever escapes from the Other after they’ve been captured, and those that do are rarely the same.

Sometimes they journey out in order to play pranks on the humans, as a sort of vacation. These pranks also are very variable, some are incredibly mild, and may even end up helping their target, such as arranging things so that a homeless bum becomes a millionaire overnight. Others can be incredibly cruel. The Fae are masters of manipulating fate, having given themselves a natural ability to do so, an elusive magic that can intelligently manipulate a thousand small variables to bring about a desired result, seemingly simply as a result of luck.

Offspring

Every now and then, a Fae will sleep with a human. This is rarely done for simple pleasure however, and never for anything as trite as love. It is almost always part of some prank, such as sleeping with a man in the form of his wife while she is stuck in traffic and watching the ensuing argument, or impregnating a young religious girl and wiping from her mind the sexual encounters so she has no explanation for her pregnancy for her parents. The chance of impregnation is low, about one tenth the chance of a human impregnating another but can happen. These offspring are called fae children and their descendants are called faeborn.

Weakness

Fae are unnaturally sensitive to magnetic fields and can even be kept weak and near incapacitated by those that are powerful enough. Even their descendants show some signs of this vulnerability, being made slightly dizzy by strong fields and when struck with ferromagnetic weapons.

Supernatural Deals

Fae love to play word games, and usually are looking to trick people trying to make deals with them to suffer some awful fate. They love rules lawyering, but are very good sports when beaten, since they care less about winning or losing than they do the game.

Combat

Fae will almost never join a fight personally, and will simply run away once their soldiers and monsters have been defeated.

Lieutenants and Agents

Lieutenants

Fae usually work through humans or monsters of their own creation, these are often very strong but are more designed to evade direct conflicts in most situations. They are not particularly loyal to their masters as much as they are expressing their natures. The Fae made them to cause mischief and so they will, but not necessarily in the way the Fae intended. Humans lieutenants are usually more straightforward and are simply doing it for money or power, or fun or sex, the consequences of their failure are usually less dire than that of demons, although depending on the Fae can still be pretty fucked up.

Lieutenants rarely operate alone and with their group they’re typically more than a match for a small group or even society, taking them out requires a coordinated attack by several societies, which is fairly well and strategically implemented. These plans will usually go horribly wrong if someone tips the bad guys off about them.

Agents

Fae agents are people or creatures they’ve manipulated or fleshformed somehow, or very often a luck manipulated figure. They might turn a person into some sort of monster, just to watch what happens, or give them the craving for the flesh of a particular person they dislike, but rarely stoop to giving them actual instructions. Otherwise they’ll use their ability to Influence luck direct someone down a certain path, over the course of a year or two they can quite comfortably take a man from a wealthy and influential position to a homeless wreck obsessed with revenge. They don’t care about the lives of their agents exactly, but do care that they go out in an interesting way and last to get there.

General Behavior

Fae almost never come do stuff personally, almost entirely working through agents and lieutenants. Not all Fae are antagonistic, about a third of them can be considered generally friendly towards humans.

Origin and Nature

Demons are biological weapons, fashioned a long time ago by wizards in an attempt to win a war in another realm. They now run that world, which is called Hell. There are billions of demons in hell and more are regularly being made. Hell is run by a central administration headed by a group of archdemons, believed to number twelve. These are unbelievably powerful sorcerer demons and are responsible for running hell as well as creating most of the other types of demons.

Powers and Influence

Several of the upper echelons of demons, including archdemons, can influence Earth, they have the ability to reach their magic across to affect things. They use this power to make things worse where they can and often to improve the life of those who agree to do their bidding on earth.

Demons of varying strengths are known to offer smaller bargains to benefit people at the price of making them more vulnerable to dark influences, raising their invitation level.

Weakness

When they were first created demons were given a vulnerability to quartz in order to make controlling them easier. While this ultimately failed, they and their descendants still have this weakness today. Even powerful demons may be incapacitated by a quartz stake through the chest and demonborn all become weakened when struck by quartz weapons.

Supernatural Deals

You will never come out of a deal with a demon with the world being a better place, you may end up ahead personally however. Demons are all about maximizing suffering, and will generally stick to deals as long as that happens, they will break their word the second they are robbed of that opportunity however and have no tolerance for word games. They also tend to hate people who aren’t afraid of them.

Combat

Demons sometimes run away and sometimes fight, and can even fight to the death sometimes although players would rarely if ever be in a position to actually fight a demon given they’re all sealed away in hell.

Lieutenants and Agents

Lieutenants

Demons typically operate through vassals, humans or supernaturals who’ve gained power through a Faustian deal and are now beholden to the demon. Supernatural lieutenants working for demons can often be even stronger than typical supernaturals, and would require large groups to eliminate in a direct fight. Vassals want what their master wants, usually to an unhealthy degree, the level of suffering inflicted upon them if they fail is pretty insane, they will lie, cheat and steal if necessary to obtain it, it’s not uncommon to see a Vassal put themselves through incredible suffering just to make sure they succeed.

Lieutenants rarely operate alone and with their group they’re typically more than a match for a small group or even society, taking them out requires a coordinated attack by several societies, which is fairly well and strategically implemented. These plans will usually go horribly wrong if someone tips the bad guys off about them.

Agents

Demonic agents are people who they’ve made deals with demons but not granted particularly remarkable power, or those demons have fleshformed or had their lieutenants manipulate. They love to work with corrupt police officers in particular, and often will jack them up physically slightly although the officers are unaware of it. They also enjoy corrupting people and using their influence to force their employees to do work for them. They consider agents utterly disposable and generally employ them for singular tasks or to support a lieutenant.

General Behavior

Demons almost never come do stuff personally, almost entirely working through agents and lieutenants.

Eidolon is the term for a variety of different spiritual entities which draw their power from belief, sacrifice, and the arcane and work in and through the world.

Origins:

Eidolons have multiple possible origins, some are created by Fae, Gods or even powerful magical users to serve them or their interests. Sometimes Eidolons are created by accident when a large magical working is undertaken. Some are born from local belief and dreams and some used to be people who have transformed themselves into an Eidolon, usually as part of a quest to eventually ascend into godhood or a similar level of power.

Powers:

Eidolons have limited direct power but have significant ability to work through other agents. They can generally control animals, weather and machinery but their main strength is working through human agents. Eidolons have significant powers to influence and manipulate people as well as the ability to grant them great powers and boons to enhance them. They can also often possess people, even frequently against their will and this is their only real way of experiencing the physical world. It is common for Eidolons to possess people and then encourage or manipulate them into doing exciting or interesting things for the Eidolon to experience. This often includes extremely dangerous activities and even often fatal ones so the Eidilon can enjoy the sensation of death before moving on. Eidolons can create and/or control more minor spirits and ghosts and often use them as their agents to spread their goals and progress their interests.

Eidolons do not have their own source of power, they need to draw on supernatural power from other sources. Sacrifices, either of life or blood help them gain power, so does power channeled through belief, worship and other sacrifice but the most reliable source of power is arcane objects. The valuable resources that supernatural societies hold in their vaults often serve as some of the best sources of power for Eidolons.

Types:

There are no specific rules on what an Eidolon can be, but there are several broad types into which they tend to fall.

Fae:

Common origins for Fae Eidolons is that they begin as some sort of spirit of mischief that achieves a higher level of sentience and power or that they are created by a true Fae to serve their interests or goals and grow from there.

Divine:

Divine Eidolons are usually created by a God to be some sort of servant or further their interests. They usually are aspected in a way very similar to the God that created them, such that Eidolons created by a war god are often heavily focused on war and warlike activities. Some gods support their Eidolons ascending and even want them to become a lower ranked god in their divine court but often the Eidolon resents their divine master and are trying to ascend behind their back and/or as a way to break away from their court and control. These can often be particularly complex entities since they both resent a particular god while still being made in their image.

Demonic:

Demonic Eidolons are almost always created by demons as a way to influence Earth in a way they generally cannot do while being locked in hell. Its also common for demonic Eidolons to be humans who have been transformed as part of some deal or pact, either done to them or something they have sought out themselves in a quest for power and immortality. Demonic Eidolons almost always have the same innate desire for suffering as other demons do.

The behaviour of demonic Eidolons is usually typified by the demonic interest in suffering, they tend to use their followers to try and create and promote suffering and rarely can help themselves from also forcing suffering upon their followers. This is often their greatest weakness as they try and walk the line between maximizing the suffering and not driving people away.

Ghost:

Ghostly Eidolons are ghosts who have been able to obtain enough followers or power after their death to ascend into something more powerful. They are as varied as the humans who died to become them but often are fixated on the circumstances of their death and any injustices they suffered or other grudges they had while alive.

They often try to use their followers to carry on any missions or grudges they had in life, wanting them to attack the descendants of their enemies or embody the lifestyle or culture they used to have.

Cthulian:

Cthulian Eidolons come from the void and almost nothing is known about their origin. It is suspected that at least some of them used to be human however. Cthulian Eidolons often ascend into either powerful monstrous forms or ethereal entities but either way they always seem to disappear from the world shortly afterwards, presumably returning to the void for unknown reasons.

Cthulian Eidolons goals are quite alien and difficult for people to understand, they are often unspeakably cruel but do not seem to enjoy it in the same way as demons and often have their followers do things which make no sense at all to the members of the cult. Hunger is the only common theme among Cthulian Eidolons and they often will possess a human while they are feasting or become fixating on people consuming unusual things such as drinking blood or engaging in cannibalism.

Primal:

Primal Eidolons are usually formed from the worship of Nature or when a particularly remarkable and unusual animal dies but some are also human shamans or nature worshippers who are using it as a way to ascend.

Their interests vary depending on the origin of the spirit, those which are evolved natural spirits are often deeply focused on preserving and growing the natural world, fighting against industrialization and civilization. Those who come from animal origins have goals which are heavily influenced by the type of animal they are, predators encourage their followers to engage in more predation and may enjoy possessing people while hunting. Pack animals have cults which are more communal while other animals might be more contemplative or playful.