History TabletopGame / DemonTheFallen

** This is the trademark weakness for the Neberu, the fourth House: it was curiosity of the unknown that led to their downfall, and it's a need to investigate mysteries that afflicts them now. This curiosity usually stems from an unforeseen chain of events that arises over the course of their actions. Most Fiends wants to know why this happened, focusing their analytical abilities to find the source of the anomaly, and in so doing losing sight ofthe task at hand.

%%* SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong: The secondary goal of the Reconcilers, if contact with God is not possible.%%Is?

%%* SpeakOfTheDevil: Comes with the territory.

** The demons as a whole were this bar a very few of them, trapped in Hell for most of history and only occasionally summoned by magic users for a brief time before being returned. The Sixth Great Maelstrom opened holes in Hell that the weaker end of the demon hierarchy can slip through though the more powerful demons are still trapped, at least for now.
** More specifically Earthbound were imprisoned in objects by masters of holy magics, guided (rather ironically) by Lucifer to stop their growing power and keep them in slumber. Unfortunately the Maelstrom woke them up as well and, while they are still a lot weaker than they were, they're getting back into the swing of things alarmingly uickly.

* VillainousUnderdog: The books stress that most modern-day exorcists are perfectly ordinary people who have learned that demons walk the Earth and decided to do something about it, lacking supernatural abilities, training or even much of an idea of what they're fighting. They can still be dangerous through sheer determination and because the demons are unlikely to see them coming, but they don't have much hope of making a dent in demon-kind as a whole.

** The search for knowledge, in every field, is the purpose of every member of the Cryptic, one of the factions of the fallen.
%%* SelfInflictedHell: There is no punishment in the Abyss but the rage and pain of those trapped within it.%%Example arguing with itself.
%%** Or is it? The demons are described as existing several dimensions above humanity's ability to comprehend, while modern day Earth is a single plane of existence. The Abyss is ''nothing'', leaving the demons with only their rage, pain, and each other for millennia, able to see/feel the World of Darkness. Which isn't pleasant, seeing as how it's a CrapsackWorld.%%Example arguing with itself.

%%* SuperpoweredEvilSide:

%%* {{God}}:

%%* GothicPunk: It's the World of Darkness.

%%* HumansAreFlawed: And apparently by design.
%%-->'''Lucifer:''' Humans aren't perfect. They weren't meant to be.

* OffendedByAnEnemysIndifference: The rebel angels of the House of the Dawn could have born any curse that God could have laid upon them, since their pride would have worn it as a badge of honour for their courage to stand against the Almighty. So instead God didn't curse them like the other Houses were cursed, he merely named them as "Devils" and leaving at at that. The impression that they were not worth cursing and the resulting damage to their precious pride hurt them far more than any curse ever could have.

%%* OurAngelsAreDifferent
%%* OurDemonsAreDifferent

%%* PlayingWithFire: The Lore of Flames of the Devils.

%%* ReligiousHorror

* ProphecyTwist: Some powers of Lore of Patterns point the fallen towards key events, allowing him to execute a ForWantOfANail scenario -- but the vision provides the key event without context (and if the evocation has got warped, the meaning will be exact opposite)

* AlienGeometries: The Lore of Paths can bend space for any number of effects; it's possible to, in effect, turn a crack in the wall into a six-foot-wide corridor or change the angle of a street you're driving down.
** Once, during the War of Wrath, Malefactors cut off an entire city from normal reality by simply removing any path between it and the rest of the world. The Loyalist Host started down the road to the city, and ended up on the other side without finding it.

* BadBoss: The Earthbound, unsurprisingly.
-->'''Blaysiel:''' Imagine working for a boss who's got [[PointyHairedBoss no idea what year it is or how you do your job,]] but he wants you to take your job seriously. He wants that so much he's willing to [[YouHaveFailedMe kill you if you fail,]] just to make a point.

* DisproportionateRetribution: Almost impressively, as the Fallen weren't to a man the most sympathetic of people by the time they had lost the war against heaven. Still, condemning '''each and every one''' of them to [[AndIMustScream never-ending anguish and suffering]] (to the point that it's likely even the nicer Fallen were DrivenToMadness and turned into spiteful horrors) was a pretty petty thing to do.
** Though that is not ''exactly'' what happened. Each and every Fallen was condemned to a place where only they were and nothing else. The Anguish and the Suffering they produce themselves.
*** On the other hand, being fundamentally cut off from ''everything'' in reality is described as a torture greater than any other, even for a being that isn't fundamentally connected to everything in reality, so its hardly their fault it hurts. There's a reason prolonged solitary confinement is a torture even for humans, after all.

* EldritchAbomination: The Earthbound. Some demons got dragged out of the Abyss early by mortal sorcerers, and that ''really'' didn't help anything... "Normal" demons also can turn into this.

* ElementalPowers: Every House has at least one of these.
** PlayingWithFire: The Lore of Flames of the Devils lets you do this.
** BlowYouAway: The Lore of Winds, used by the Scourges. The Defilers' Lore of Storms is a mix between this and MakingASplash.
** DishingOutDirt: The Lore of the Earth, used by the Malefactors.
** [[LightEmUp Light 'em Up]]: The Lore of Light, mixed with [[MasterofIllusion powerful illusion]]
** WeatherManipulation: Some powers of the Lore of Storms.
** GreenThumb: The Lore of the Wild, employed by the Devourers.
** {{Necromancer}}: The Lore of the Spirit, of the Slayers
* EmptyShell: What demons can do to a human if they steal enough faith or use other means of mental trauma.
** This is also the usual state of those humans eligible to be hosts for the Fallen. Stated possibilities include vegetative-state brain damage, drug overdoses, catatonia, and the like.
* TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt: There's a reason this was the last of the gamelines...

* {{Glamour}}: The Lore of Radiance.

* {{God}}: Obviously.

* GodIsEvil: Here things get confusing. The general demon line is "God is a dick, and we were right to rebel". The problem comes when you realize that ''God's'' version of events is never told. Every account of the War of Wrath is from a demon's first-person viewpoint, and they don't seem to line up. Even the demonic accounts claim they did some truly horrible things ''before'' getting sent to Hell. There's a faction, the Reconcilers, who have as their central conceit that God was ''right'' about the whole mess. All that said, God doesn't do a lot to counteract the general "God is on the bad side" line, having denied humanity sapience without a word of explanation (even the angels who were loyal admitted that one).
** The overriding feeling is more "God is Apathetic." Given the fact that the World of Darkness is such a [[WorldHalfEmpty crapsack world]], perhaps He just gave up on the whole thing. Not to mention that a free and sapient humanity managed to ''create'' the CrapsackWorld, even without the presence of the Earthbound; after all, many of the supernatural threats were once human.

* GothicPunk: It's the World of Darkness.
* [[GravityMaster Gravity Master]]: The first power of the Lore of Fundament, [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Manipulate Gravity]], allows a Demon to [[InaSingleBound leap enormous distances]], [[NotQuiteFlight hangs suspended in the air]] or plunge at her foes like a meteorite and is a common lore favored by all the houses.
* TheGrimReaper: This used to be the job of the Halaku.

* HaveYouSeenMyGod: God and the loyalist angels are nowhere to be seen in the modern era; one supplement gives guidelines for making angels, though.
** Oh, and Lucifer is AWOL as well, having never been sent to the Abyss. He's supposedly WalkingTheEarth though and messing around with the MetaPlot of other gamelines.

* HopelessWar: [[TabletopGame/VampireTheMasquerade After Caine invented murder]], Lucifer essentially lost control of three of his five legions, and many of those renegade Fallen didn't take long at all to more or less spiral into StupidEvil. The Fallen who kept their shit together were pretty much fucked from word go because they had to spend almost as much time and effort fixing their fellows' screw ups and bullshit evil experiments as they did resisting the heavenly host.
* HornedHumanoid: The Apocalyptic form of the [[CharmPerson Lore]] [[EnlightenmentSuperpowers of]] [[SuperEmpowering Radiance]] provide horns.
* HowTheMightyHaveFallen: It's right there in the title. The demons used to be capable of creating life, moving mountains, engineering entire parallel dimensions and similar feats of literally divine might. In their current state, they are reduced to using a handful of limited parlour tricks to wheedle a mere trickle of the Faith they need out of humans who are, quite frankly, also just a pale shadow of [[OriginalMan what they were.]] Subverted with the Earthbound, who are described as being in some ways ''more'' powerful than they were as angels - though [[WithGreatPowerComesGreatInsanity at the cost of even what little sanity regular demons have managed to hold on to.]]

* HumansAreFlawed: And apparently by design.
-->'''Lucifer:''' Humans aren't perfect. They weren't meant to be.
* HumansAreSpecial: A decidedly cynical and downplayed take on this. Humans ''are'' special, each one having a spark of divine creativity in them that demons can never hope to emulate, making them capable of reshaping the world according to their will and coming up with endless wonders - and maybe one in a million actually makes good on that potential, with the rest just acting like stupid, selfish apes. Much of the demons' frustration throughout history has come from just how difficult it is to make humans get their asses in gear and act like the elevated beings they were meant to be.

* ImmuneToMindControl: All Demon hosts are immune to all mind-controlling effects including hypnosis, thanks to being already possessed by a demon. They are still susceptible to IKnowYourTrueName, however.
** They are also vulnerable to methods that affect the physical body/brain rather than the spiritual mind/soul. As an example they are explicitly able to be subjected to [[TabletopGame/VampireTheMasquerade a vampire's Blood Bond.]] On the upside (for the demon) leaving the body for a new host removes any such effects.

* KnightTemplar: A great deal of the angels who didn't rebel, if demons are to be believed about this, and some of the ones who did.
** Most particularly Usiel, who never joined the rebellion but Fell anyway because he slaughtered an entire valley of people just to get at Gaviel.

* {{Mana}}: Faith, which is harvested from mortals, either willingly or, erm, less willingly…

* MySpeciesDothProtestTooMuch: There is no love lost between the Fallen and their angelic brethren.

* NiceGuy: Ahrimal/Detective Gerhard Leibner is an entirely benign, genuinely altrustic and well-meaning demon upon his return to the world. He was apparently drawn to his host because he was something of a KnightInSourArmor, being an idealist who had his hopes crushed repeatedly by the cynical Classical World of Darkness. Ahrimal admits Gerhard was more or less a shell of a man by the time he arrived and took control of his body.

* NotInThisForYourRevolution: The Ebon Legion consisted of those demons who were committed to the war against Heaven but who were in it solely to further their own interests. In the modern day, the more cynical Faustians are this compared to their more idealistic peers - they want humans to be healthy and plentiful, yes, but only because they want more worshipers feeding them Faith and doing their bidding.

%%** OurDemonsAreDifferent
* OurSoulsAreDifferent: Angels/Demons don't actually ''have'' souls. They're the celestial equivalent of software, and they can be deleted or made into hand puppets if someone discovers their true name. Demonically possessing a human (even an EmptyShell) gives them direct access to a human soul, which lets them experience (among other, less pleasant things) real love for the first time. This is part of what frees them from Torment after leaving the Abyss.

* {{Permafusion}}: When demons possess mortals in ''TabletopGame/DemonTheFallen'', the result cannot be separated into its constituent parts any more under normal circumstances as the demon displaces the mortal's soul, leaving behind a mindless, soulless shell if the demon is later exorcised (and it's not fun for the demon, either, who actually benefits from being grounded by mortal morals, memories and sensations, as they stave off the horror of [[AndIMustScream the Abyss]]).

* ProphecyTwist: Some powers of Lore of Patterns point the fallen towards key events, allowing him to execute a ForWantOfANail scenario - but the vision provides the key event without context (and if the evocation has got warped, the meaning will be exact opposite)

* SatanIsGood: While there are options offered for making Lucifer a deceitful SmugSnake who led the Fallen to damnation to serve his own petty ambition, the default is that he is and was idealistic, heroic and determined to save humanity. Since he never suffered in Hell, he has a Torment rating of 1, making him ''almost'' an angel. Of course, GoodIsNotNice - he's got his eyes firmly fixed on the fate of all of humankind, making him decidedly cavalier with the lives of individual humans and demons.
** That said, Lucifer's {{Pride}} still lead to his fall from grace, so to speak. [[AlternativeCharacterInterpretation It is just that the story plays around with the context of exactly what that meant.]]
* SeekerArchetype: This is actually the trademark weakness for the Neberu, the fourth House: it was curiosity of the unknown that led to their downfall, and it's a need to investigate mysteries that afflicts them now. This curiosity usually stems from an unforeseen chain of events that arises over the course of their actions. Most Fiends wants to know why this happened, focusing their analytical abilities to find the source of the anomaly, and in so doing losing sight ofthe task at hand.

* SelfInflictedHell: There is no punishment in the Abyss but the rage and pain of those trapped within it.
** Or is it? The demons are described as existing several dimensions above humanity's ability to comprehend, while modern day Earth is a single plane of existence. The Abyss is ''nothing'', leaving the demons with only their rage, pain, and each other for millennia, able to see/feel the World of Darkness. Which isn't pleasant, seeing as how it's a CrapsackWorld.
* SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong: The secondary goal of the Reconcilers, if contact with God is not possible.

* SpeakOfTheDevil: Comes with the territory.
* SpiderLimbs: The high-Torment apocalyptic form of the Neberu's Lore of Patterns.
* SuperpoweredEvilSide: See WithGreatPowerComesGreatInsanity.

* TransformationOfThePossessed: Elohim with the proper Lore can do this to their host.

* WellIntentionedExtremist: Lucifer was of course the original one, and other demons can fall into this when their Torment is low but their ambition remains high (as is the case with the nicer sort of Faustians). In fact, it's implied to have been an intrinsic part of the angelic mindset even before the Fall - at Torment 1, representing the highest moral state a demon can realistically achieve, a demon is forbidden from showing "unwillingness to sacrifice for the [[TheNeedsOfTheMany greater good]]."

* LittleMissAlmighty: It is implied that the (old) World of Darkness's God is female; the folks pushing this are [[ConsummateLiar Devils]], and the text itself refers to God as male, so take from that what you will.
** Of course, given that God is said to exist on multiple levels of reality at once, this is likely to be true. God is female, male, both, neither, a third (and probably fourth) gender that doesn't exist in life on earth, and, and...

*** On the other hand, being fundamentally cut off from ''everything'' in reality is described as a torture greater than any other, even for a being that isn't fundamentally connected to everything in reality, so its hardly their fault it hurts.

* HornyDevils: The Defilers run largely on this trope.

* CouncilOfAngels: How the universe was run in the old days.

* OurAngelsAreDifferent
** OurDemonsAreDifferent

* ReligiousHorror

* AGodAmI: The Earthbound present themselves like this to their cultists, and many of them are insane enough to seriously believe in this.

* CreativeSterility: A subtle example. Angels (fallen or otherwise) can ''create'' like nobody's business. What they can't do is ''innovate.'' Only God or humankind (who are created in His image) are capable of creating entirely new concepts - angels can follow their instructions, improve on their overall designs, make a few personal flourishes within an established theme, and even take their ideas [[GoneHorriblyRight further than they]] [[UpToEleven thought possible]], but they can't conceive of a truly original idea.

* [[GravityMaster Gravity Master]]: The first power of the Lore of Fundament, [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Manipulate Gravity]], allows a Demon to [[InaSingleBound leap enormous distances]], [[NotQuiteFlight hangs suspended in the air]] or plunge at her foes like a meteorite.

* FiveManBand: In the War of Wrath, the Legions followed this pattern.
** TheHero: The Crimson Legion, loyal to [[BigGood Lucifer]] and following his vision of building a better world in the ruins of Eden.
** TheLancer: The Ebon Legion, as cynical as the Crimson Legion was idealistic, [[NotInThisForYourRevolution looking to make things better for themselves first and foremost.]]
** TheBigGuy: The Iron Legion, whose foremost concern was the protection of the human race.
** TheSmartGuy: The Silver Legion, with its focus on [[MadScientist research and innovation]].
** TheChick: The Alabaster Legion, made up by those demons who didn't have any major ideas of their own and just sort of tagged along with the others on the major campaigns. They did, however, create the afterlife for the entire rest of the World of Darkness, when everyone else wasn't looking.

* NumberOfTheBeast: There are six hundred sixty-six Earthbound. Likewise, Lucifer's True Name, when translated into binary and written in eight-point type, covers exactly six hundred and sixty-six pages.

* [[GravityMaster Gravity Master]]: The first power of the Lore of Fundament, [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Manipulate Gravity]] allows a Demon to [[InaSingleBound leap enormous distances]], [[NotQuiteFlight hangs suspended in the air]] or plunge at her foes like a meteorite.

* {{Mana}}: Faith, which is harvested from mortals, either willingly or, erm, less willingly...