PDA

View Full Version : DM Help Pseudoscentific Angel, Devils and Demons



Filippo
2015-05-23, 09:17 AM
Hi you all!
I have a long run campaign setted in a almost classic fantasy world that will soon face a "christian mythology Apocalypse" as in Book of Revelation or Apocalypse of St. John. (in a way not dissimilar to the Bastard! japanese manga).
The setting itself is a complicated patchwork of a lot of ideas-themes-charachters-stuff taken from every source imaginable (mangas like Bastard! and Berserk, games like Warhammer, Warcraft, Dragon's Dogma, books of a lot o kind including the bible itself, even bits from campaign I played before, including a 16 years long Italian LARP campaign called "Adunanza"... and of couse, a pinch of OOTS^^).

Long story short let's say that in the epic level teir of the campaign the PC will face the war between Angels and "God"(complicated matter explained later) VS Devils and Demons. I want to add in a bit of modern day phisics and I ask you (expecially if you are competent in the matter) an opinion, both on fluff and rules.
So let's start with the core of the matter!

(I used spoiler instead multiple post to avoid breaking forum rules and wall of text, hope it's not wrong)

"God" (or better, the Creator): a misterious being that created the universe, using the power of "doing" an his own "will". It desired something and reality accomodates itself in a mostly "scientific" manner (so, there was a big bang, for example). Devils think it could have done better...
Angels serve and can "perceive" it, but only their prophet, the Metatron, can hear its voice


Demons: when in the big bang occourred the Creator separated matter and anti-matter. He needed to create an unbalance between the two to prevent anihilation, so he put away anti-matter in a supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy (for semplicity sake, let's suppose there is only one galaxy in this universe, as the matter is unclear for everyone). For some unknow reasons, anti-matter followed almost the same process as matter, utimately developing life. So we have demons (as anti-matter life forms) and Hell (as the antimatter black hole). Demons are strange creatures, capable of splitting or fuse (body and mind), all inerenty evil. They use this capability to split in lesser demons or fuse in more powerfull ones, or even combine themself with another kind of creature (but they need access to soul energy to do so, see below)
Demons wants nothing but to escape Hell, and the only way they have found is using the particular energy of the living being that live on the only populated planet of the galaxy. This energy is called soul. It may or may not be the cousciousness of the individual, but seems so (it's the same energy that creates ghosts). Evil souls tend to be attracted from Hell, where demons annihilate them to gain energy that in some way ease their torment (souls are of some kind of matter that is apparently impossibile to completely destroy always slowly regeneretig iself, so Demons use them to gather matter to destroy other demons or parts of hell with it to obtain energy. It's the only know way to made matter and antimatter interact without complete annihilation of both. Souls seems to suffer a lot when used this way). With arcane magic is it possibile to summon demons, in a kind of "very long way teleport" and give them enough energy to exist for a short time the matter universe. They are almost limitless in number.

RULES: basically i use the normal Devils and Demons for them regardless of aligment and distinctions (Tanari, batezu etc are all kind of demons in my setting). All of them need some kind of soul connection to manifest(summmoned, improved familiar or something like that). Arcane magic of all kind is in some way infernal in origin. Some parts of Hell have follen on the PC world during history and are used as focus by Arcane magic users. Dragons are a particoular kind of demons who managed to get out of Hell and become patialy made of matter. Evil people can, in rare circumsances, fuse their souls with demons when they die and become demons themselfs. The first undead are people who are frozen in this transformation (long story) so count as demons.

Angels: they are 4D (four dimensional) creatures made almost of pure energy at their natural state, able to interact with the base 3D universe by concentrating on their "projection" (witch is 3D!). So the "winged man" is the shadow of the real angel. Their feathers are coplicated engine that can litteraly "produce time" (so they can move faster than light, Gold Saint style) out of matter and energy, or energy from matter and time or matter from time and energy in a very efficent way. They percive time in a different way when not in "3D" form, so they could have some form of time travel from the point of view of the PC(not sure about this point, I mean, I don't want time travel in my campaign, more a "demi-Doc Manhattan from Watchmen" prospective). They can "sing", emitting vibration of any frequency, capable of wonders like dissolving atomic bounduaries and matter manipulation. They collect good alligned souls (a very difficoult thing to do for them at the present time for reason too long to explain) as "perfectly resonating objects" they can made vibrate at a specific frequency to produce massive ammount of energy they can use to empower themself (So, souls are weapons for them, not a need).
They follow what they call "The will of God", so they oppose to everything threatens to change the rules of the universe, especially reality-bending powers (which they possess ad use, but only "for the Will of God")
They have 9 ranks, but the more powerful the more abstract they are. So Angels and Archangels are the soldiers and generals, all the others are more like increasingly powerful weapons they use (I want to burrow the "starships an giant robots" theme from Bastard!). Angels can lose parts of themself, like an eye, the heart, a hand (this always means changing personalty, as their "body", "mind" and "spirit" are proyection of the same "object") and so and can, but rarely do, split and fuse themself like demons. They are few in number.

RULES: the weakest angel is around the power of a level 20 character, commonly even above cr 20. An angel can use his wings to produce a time stop effect, regerate himself or project energy for damage. Alteratively they can use their matter/energy/time manipulation to produce effects of a Miracle. With their voices they can produce sonic energy/holy power/disintegration attacks. Very hard do kill, even for a same power entity, as you must someway reach the 4D "Real Angel". Can use souls to empower (longer time stop, more regeneration, more damage and so).


Devils: Angels who willingly diverge from the Will of God undergo a complete transformation called "falldown". They become 4D creatures made almost of hyperdense matter, loose all their feathers. As Hell gravity attraction extends to the 4th dimension their true "body" "tends" to go there and they almost cannot escape.
They lose powers granted from ther wings and voices, but they became master of space bending through gravity, so they still can travel faster then light. As residents of Hell they rule over lesser powerful demons and use souls to obtain massive quantity of energy from their own mass and the anti-matter they almost "live in". They can built themself giant biological body as they are master of anything "corporeal". They can bend reality with their will with a process humans call "Arcane Magic", in an innate manner, without pronuncing spells. Less powerfull devils naturally set things on fire around them when they manifest in the 3D universe as a friction reaction to their massive gravity field fighting with power they use to interact with reality. More powerfull ones frozen things as they take away even energy from the surrounding. They have no clear ranks as their power is variable and they tend to refuse autority and their number is around those of the angels

Rules: same power level as Angels, they are absolute masters of teleportation (and summoning) and can warp things (transmutation) , force fields (abjuration), bodies (transmutation and necromancy) and minds (enchantment).
Tons of hp(something as angel x10) and strong Damage Reduction and can generate effects similar to wish. Most powerful devils can create time stop effects bending time, at the cost of a lot of energy. Lesser devils tends to have fire attacks while greater use negative energy and cold. Hard to kill as angels.

Sorry for very long post and bad English^^;;

I specify I don't want to discuss nor reference real religion, only use names an concepts as is widely done in D&D and other games all around. If, even with this clarification the topic is not ammissible, I have no problem if moderators wil close/delete it. I add that I'm writing this after a second though I had after posting

Crake
2015-05-23, 10:14 AM
How do you handle called demons, which are brought permanently over to the material plane? If you haven't got something in mind there, perhaps calling a creature requires actually binding it with part of your own soul (hence the name planar binding), allowing it to exist as matter until it completes your bidding and is sent home.

In a way, this would result in summoned demons much more similar to those of world of warcraft, ones that actually like being summoned, and are willing to serve their master, simply because service to a master beats hell by a long shot. Of course, binding your soul to a creature of pure evil has it's drawbacks, and would eventually corrupt the binder, possibly to the point where the demon could steal their soul entirely and send them to hell, while being able to live permanently on the material plane, free of burden, suffering and of course, subservience. Other options could include stealing the souls of other mortals, freeing them from and allowing them to kill their master (although some demons may thank him instead, for giving them the opportunity in the first place, double thumbs up if the master is the one who killed the innocents) etc etc.

I'm just rambling at this point, but one final thing before i go, antimatter is unable to come in contact with matter, else it annihilates. If you want more of a pseudoscience, go with dark matter, and call hell an alternate dimension where dark matter exists.

Filippo
2015-05-25, 11:06 AM
Great ideas Crake, thank you!
I have immediatly added them to the setting, the "soul link" was perfect to explain an already seen Imp familiar!

Thanks for the suggestion about dark matter, but I think i will continue to use the "Antimatter Demons" theory, adding the fact that the energy called soul has the other unique property of greatly slowing down annihilation process, so that with this "shield" Demons can exist in realty, still they struggle to remain there as it actually refuse them.

I forgot to mention that I don't want classic "planes of existence" in my setting, only things like ethereal plane or shadow plane, so no new worlds, but "other views" of the same universe. This way, for example, Hell is a phisical place.