19 - Inferno

NFERNO IS A PLACE OF TERROR, SUFFERING, AND UNSPEAKABLE BEAUTY. It is a world of winding staircases, yawning shafts, torture chambers, majestic balls, and dark catacombs. In Inferno’s endless labyrinths, the traveler can encounter raging storms, devoted pilgrims, and grand and terrible sigbts. Blind augurs bend over autopsy tables of stainless steel, desperately trying to discover truths and predictions in steaming entrails. nailed to nigbtmarish monuments, entranced lunatics sing their praises to the Death Angels and pain itself. Here, Astaroth and his Death Angels rule from their enormous Citadels. Those seeking answers to the riddles of Time and Space may find bidden truths in Inferno’s lofty towers, abandoned libraries, or in prostration before its alien cogwbeels and machines. In deep meditation, the nepharites stretch out their minds to find paths into Elysium, tasting our ripe world, luring the unwary, and trying to slip through. Our torture institutions, prisons, death camps, and psychiatric bospitals all border on Inferno, as are countless other places baptized in blood and suffering - the home of a serial killer, mass graves after innumerable executions, and war zones. A world so distant, yet so terrifyingly close.

ANGELS

The Black Citadels of Inferno are the mirror images of the Archons’ citadels in Metropolis. They stretch upwards to the sky and deep down into the Underworld. They are grotesoue buildings created from the impossible architecture of nightmares. Gothic towers with patinaed statues, twisted passageways, stone arches, vast machine balls, and metallic grids all mix together in an architechtural tour de force. Mold, creeping vines, and poisonous plants cling to their facades and rusty pipes, perpetually leaking garbage and chemical waste. Within their walls, there are deep shafts, rattling elevators, stairs, and tunnels descending into the depths. Beneath the ground, they spread out like enormous labyrinths, an endless network of torture chambers, dank cells, great balls, flaming kilns, glittering shrines, charnel pits, echoing amphitheaters, and stygian catacombs. Behind each door and beyond every portal, waits sometbing wondrous and terrible. Here, the souls tied to Inferno are tortured and death gives no release.

The screams of the tormented ring throughout the balls, abysses, and galleries of steel. On operating tables, belpless victims are vivisected time and time again, their blood splashing over the tile walls, entrails torn out and thrown to the cement floor with a wet thud. Upon altars of marble, children are flayed alive by leering nepharites while their parents are forced to watch, only to then be forced to skin their loved ones themselves, dragged deeper and deeper down into madness. In thundering machine balls, rusty drills are driven into weeping, praying sinners while priests bold mass and collect the shed blood in golden vessels. Delicate, gossamer mirages tremble in the silent catacombs, echoing whispers of still-existent hope, tenderness, and love, only to dissolve like fog in the darkness. naked purgatides impale their victims on skewers, drown them in waste oil, or burn off their faces with blow torches. Those waiting their turn listen to the screams and caress each other into ecstasy, searching in vain for some respite from the agony. The vestals of pain create works of art from peeled skin and viscera under black stone arches, while bawling infants are eaten alive by insects crawling at their feet. feral people dwell in sewer-like, claustrophobic culverts; occasionally they manage to find their way into our world. Amid chains and books, demons and lost souls find solace in the most forbidden sexual desires, their semen and vaginal discharge churning with blood and bile. In stinking cesspits, the innocent are force-fed each other’s urine, feces, and vomit. Bodies scream, tremble, sob, and beg for mercy, although they should be long dead. Here though, they find no peace, no reprieve, as Inferno’s surgeons patch them up again so their tortures can be resumed anew. Existence is an odyssey of entrancing, unparalleled cruelties. Humanity’s aggregate desires and sadistic tendencies have been condensed down into bellish experimentation, where souls are punished, mutilated, and torn asunder in ceaseless repetition until their sense of self is completely obliterated.

Occasionally, kidnapped or unlucky servants of the Archons are subjected to the most insane suffering in Inferno. Angels are raped on altars of basalt, while lictors are cut up bit by bit, but completely to Astaroth, drinking the god’s murky blood from the veins of his Incarnates, and devoting themselves to torture can they bope to continue to exist as his faithful servants.

Suffering’s Oubliette

The suffering experienced by those tortured in Inferno is as horrific as it is sublime. Every voice is like an instrument, and when beard together the bundreds of thousands of souls become a wondrous symphony, echoing throughout the worlds, magnificent and awful. Just as a terrible storm can be beautiful to behold, suffering is like an unbridled force of nature, and every bit as entrancing. When souls are mangled, broken down, mutilated, and shattered over and over again, the experience in and of itself becomes a work of art, carried out with religious fervor.

The souls are drawn into the Death Angels’ Citadels or into numerous purgatories. Each and every soul is drawn to the Principle they have been closest to, or torn apart and divided between the Higher Powers. Thereafter, their thoughts, sensations, desires, and knowledge are extracted out of them via torture and degradation. this spiritual force nourishes the creatures of Inferno. Astaroth cups his bands and bolds them out, capturing our souls pouring down like sacrificial wine for him to drink from. He lets his Death Angels share in his gluttony, belping them to grow and extend their influences.

When only apathy remains, all memories, sorrows, thoughts, aspirations, fantasies, and dreams have been torn away, and our souls are completely depleted, we are finally set free. We have nothing more to give our captors and our suffering lacks meaning. Often these empty souls are allowed to wander across Inferno in desolate pilgrimages, tattered and lost, before finding their way to Astaroth’s Citadel. They enter the black portal, descend into the black sea, and finally achieve peace - only to be reborn in Elysium. not all who end up in Inferno become its victims. The most creative murderers who do not feel any guilt or shame can be honored as gods or beroes. They are invited to lavish tables to eat and drink, and thereafter continue to spread their suffering. Those who suffered unimaginable torments in life are given crowns and allowed to live as tyrants, while others become their slaves. But this blessing is a temporary deception, and soon the roles shift, allowing the slaves to punish their tormentors. Those who have the greatest insight into dark truths, distinguishing themselves in cruelty, or lust for torment are sometimes embraced as disciples and baptized in blood. It is always possible to climb upwards in Inferno’s bierarchy. Displays of utter rutblessness are always rewarded. Some of these aspirants become purgatides and razides, or are taken into the nepharites’ clergy. They become part of their Death Angel’s Principle and have its mark branded into their soul.

Altarath’s Chadel

ASTAROTH

At the heart of the circle of the Death Angels’ Citadels is Astaroth’s seat of power, a black mountain standing against the sky. It is a universal node around which everything else rotates, a monument of raw will, a primordial Principle. As the Demiurge’s shadow, Astaroth is now the only remaining true God. His entire dominion radiates with a wondrous, euphoric feeling. One can feel bow forces bere move in the firmament and on the ground. Energy and magnetic fields seethe, while violent winds and maelstroms of water swirl painfully, intertwining and coalescing.

Inferno’s ruler, Astaroth is the Demiurge’s twin. He is a primordial force, a lighthouse of darkness, a pulsating will streaming from his saturnine Citadel and permeating the worlds. His consciousness can influence several places simultaneously, while his Incarnations work in parallel. His awareness is too vast and complex to understand. In truth, the Death Angels are all aspects of Astaroth in the same way the Archons were aspects of the Demiurge.

Purgatories

Purgatories are a special kind of bell. Individually unioue, these prisons are created out of our own memories, dreams, fantasies, and thoughts, all in a toxic stew of feelings of shame and guilt. Once there, we are forced to confront what we most dread and desire. The nepharites can read our wants, motivations, and fears and create a suitable prison for us, but subconsciously we allow them to fetter us.

In their purgatories, sinners experience their nightmarish lives over and over again, trapped in dreamlike worlds formed from locations from their past or their most terrible fears. A suicide bomher is forced to blow himself to pieces time and time again, but cannot die. His fragmented meat is alive and screaming, as it painfully reassembles. He realizes those killed on the bus be bombed are his own family members, who must join with him, suffering together and filled with batred for him. The mother who drowned her own child is so overladen with guilt she is forever forced to wander the slimy seabed, searching for her little son while eels lay eggs in her belly and fish devour her eyes. The sun, glittering on the water’s surface, and hope of forgiveness remain constantly out of reach.

In contrast to Inferno’s torture balls, purgatories often exist very close to our world, hovering on the Illusion’s outskirts. They form pocket universes of their own, not Quite unlike the tattered dream worlds of Limbo. They exist close to locations where each sinner perished or where they had their strongest ties. Therefore, purgatories are places where the Illusion is weak and creatures can sometimes move between the worlds.

When the Demiurge disappeared, it is said Astaroth departed in search of his twin. He traveled through Elysium, Metropolis, Limbo, and the Underworld, as well as the alien, distant worlds and sbards of humanity’s creations. Finally, be descended into the Abyss where the Demiurge’s Citadel once stood, only to return enfeebled and mangled, dragging himself back into Inferno and his Citadel. He has since turned his will against Elysium.

The Principles of the Archons and the flagging power of the Demiurge are what ultimately maintain our prison, their wills ensnaring us. They pull the Illusion’s veil over our eyes and yank our strings, making us dance to their melodies. After death, they drink from our souls until we are completely empty, then allow us to be born anew. Astaroth’s current goal is to break this cycle and pry away the Archons’ grip over Elysium, thus setting his Principles up as lords of our reality.

INFERNO’S CLERGY

Inferno’s clergies are as much preachers as they are interpreters of the Death Angels’ Principles. They all have their individual methods of understanding their commands, creating many schisms between them about what is the correct interpretation and what is not. Each Death Angel has its devoted clergy preaching its commands through words, actions, and deeds. Their clerics consist of mangled demons, zealous worshippers, and mad dreamers who have been accepted into the hierarchical structure of age-old customs and esoteric knowledge. Most are nepharites, but in their ranks are also mundane humans, corrupt angels, converted lictors, dream beings, fallen gods, insane phantoms, sundry abominations, and the surviving remnants of wiped-out civilizations, who have beard Inferno’s call or have been forced into subservience.

INFERNO’S CLERGY

Thaumiel’s followers are also the most devoted to Astaroth. They are powerful and magnificent specimens, and their various regalia are looted from thousands upon thousands of ravaged worlds. Slaves throw themselves at their perfumed feet, devotees submit themselves to be skinned in ecstasy, and all dream of being able to serve them. Their laws and commandments are proclaimed upon murals of gold and tarnished silver. Within the clergy, an extreme power struggle persists, and those few at the top are only there because of virulent devotion, utter rutblessness, and powerful alliances. Many clever and ambitious acolytes have been annibilated before having even passed their initial rites.

INFERNO’S CLERGY

Chagidiel’s proclaimers keep their acolytes and apprentices naked and chained like animals. Many of these are children who lived in abject wretchedness before being offered a chance to enter the sacred order. Those who are initiated are exposed to innumerable physical and mental assaults, cruel operations, and constant brain-wasbing. Only through the religious worship of Chagidiel can they keep their psyches intact, albeit twisted. This process breaks down the soul’s essence and then remolds it into something dark, macabre, and beautiful. They laud suffering with throat-singing and self-mutilation. The followers joyously recite pious mantras and confess all their innermost truths in chambers of black basalt.

INFERNO’S CLERGY

In desolate cells, balls, monasteries, and prayer chambers dwell the members of this clergy. They sit crouched over thick tomes and write down visions and poetry to reflect Satbariel’s will with quills from tortured angels and the blood of suicides. The clergy seek insight in isolation and tranquility. They make pilgrimages into the desolate landscape of Inferno, meditate in iron cells, or allow themselves to be buried alive in order to attain insights into the unknowable while locked in the dark emptiness. Typical neophytes allowed into the clergy were usually outcasts, loners, or those who have committed suicide in life. Satbariel’s faithful do not preach to the masses. The sacred trutb is open to each and every person, alone.

INFERNO’S CLERGY

Whispers, secret signs, and occult symbols bide meaning in every word and act preached by Gamichicoth’s clergy. The clergy are the secretive diviners of the Death Angel’s will, trying to interpret his truths in dreams, numerology, and madness. Blind victims hear thousands upon thousands more lies, their ears filled with borror and mistrust and, thereafter, they are set free. Every movement, every gesture is studied and made note of to see whether a trutb can be distilled from fear, insanity, and resignation. The clergy’s whispers consciously spread like wildfire and sprout into rumors, mistrust, despair, bope, or conviction.

INFERNO’S CLERGY

With knives, pliers, books, and electrical apparatuses as their ceremonial tools and pain as their gospel, Golab’s clergy grace the faitbful with the truths found in exquisite suffering. The sacred words are carved into flesb, blessed nails are bammered into skulls, and teetb are torn out with pliers and collected in sanctified bowls. Sex organs are cut off and sacrificed in sacred fires, and glowing skewers are thrust into various orifices. The stink of burned flesb and the screams are tributes to Golab. The clergy adbere to a draconian set of rules, inflicting cruel punishments for the smallest infractions. They bope to find enlightenment and Golab’s will in pain, suffering, and the soul’s destruction.

INFERNO’S CLERGY

Togarini’s clergy sing bymns as beautiful as they are unpleasant. The notes are distorted, dissonant, and worm their way into the deepest nooks of the soul. The ecclesiastics study peeling icons, mural paintings, and the odd patterns in stains of rust and mold. Their prophets pay bomage to the Deatb Angels’ power tbrough surreal and macabre art, building monuments of bone and wearing sbrouds of human skin. They lose themselves in protracted dervish dances, rites, and processions where they copulate with recently deceased bodies, and then bring them to life in order to create acolytes who exist beyond death. They whisper dark truths and project images into the minds of their slaves, forcing them to carry out their unchecked desires.

INFERNO’S CLERGY

Their sacred shrouds cannot conceal the automatic weapons, the crooked swords, the grenades and the bayonets. For HarebSerap’s clergy, violence becomes a sermon of its own. Their will to fight and die for Hareb-Serap is unwavering. Devotedly, they fall to their knees and offer prayer to the Deatb Angel’s Citadel, wailing their hope of being accepted into his bosom. Gach faithfully proves their readiness through acts of violence and struggle. In arenas of rusty iron, gladiator games are beld featuring barbed weapons and where the victors can feast on the flesh of the fallen, and thereafter be sanctified by the clergy who accept them into their ranks.

INFERNO’S CLERGY

Those filled with batred are allowed to confess before Samael’s silent vestals. They share all the injustices and slights they suffered, creating their sense of powerlessness. Thereafter, they are given the will and the means to exact their revenge. The consecrated wafer placed on their tongue is a razor blade, which is to be swallowed if they fail. The clergy show no mercy. Human sacrifices are common and the clergy use the steaming intestines of the dying to see beyond Time and Space. They conceal black daggers under their shrouds, and thrust these into anyone foolisb enough to turn their backs on them.

I UIORLO OF Δ TΗ0USΔΏ SHAROS

Shantytowns and temples have grown up around the Black Citadels, populated with large crowds of afflicted beings, pilgrims, devotees, and sinners alike. Huddled around their fires, they pay bomage to the rulers of Inferno with sacrifices, prayers, and self-mutilations. Zealous worshippers spill their seed in sacred vessels for the nepharites to imbibe. In return, nepharites preach the truth of suffering and allow those chosen to lick the blood directly from their eternal wounds. Celebrants take vows of silence by driving rusty nails into their tongues, and making pilgrimages into Inferno’s sublime landscapes.

Beyond the Black Citadels, Inferno is surrounded by empty, untamed wilds - the sbards of thousands upon thousands of shattered realms. This macabre mosaic consists of the remnants of worlds torn asunder and thrown away when the prehistoric divine rulers built their eternal city. Inferno’s wasteland is as beautiful as it is nightmarish, filled with sharp mountains, ravaged lands, dead forests, rusting landscapes of metal and splintered stone, deep ravines, plains of ash, and coiling fens growing in the toxic haze. Rivers and seas are polluted and sick, their beaches sanded with shards of glass, corroded steel, and dirty plastic. Everything is tattered, fragmented, and brittle, from the lofty plateaus to the abyssal depths. Toxic vapors swirl like crackling auroras under the swollen sky, bestowing a sickly light. Yet, the beavens revealed between the clouds are wondrous. Alien stars, shredded celestial bodies, and wild nebulae move dreamily like spilled paint over the blackness. Pilgrims have beaten paths between sacred sites, where the suffering ones are tortured to the glory of the Death Angels.

THE INFLUENCE OF INFERNO

Inferno is a place of wondrous phenomena and mysteries. The following are Moves the gamemaster (GM) can use when player characters (PCs) are in Inferno, in Inferno’s borderland, or in a purgatory.

- Death is Only the Beginning

A person who dies in Inferno wakes up again. Sometimes their memories of what bappened can be foggy, and they find themselves in a completely different place, such as someone’s purgatory, a Black Citadel, or deep in the wastelands.

ASTAROTH

Meeting with an enemy, loved one, sibling, parents, or anyone else with whom they’ve had a close relationship. Maybe the person is trapped in a purgatory, being tortured in bellish machines, imprisoned in a cell, wandering in Inferno’s wastelands, or has become one of the tormentors.

ANGELS

The PC falls under the influence of a Death Angel, and the GM can compel the PC to act according to its Principle. With a soft Move, the character feels strong emotions wasbing over them. With a bard Move, they are forced to act in accordance to the Death’s Angel’s Principle until its influence subsides.

- Soul Slaughter

The character becomes trapped in one of Inferno’s many torture chambers and is slaughtered body and soul. As they are subjected to innumerable assaults, everything superficial is stripped away, leaving a naked, bare wound. In these times of extreme pain, they are provided glimpses of the Divine, and occasionally the suffering turns into perverse pleasure. If they successfully break free, they should be eternally altered by the experience.

- Offered a Pact

There are beings in Inferno who need servants in Elysium and are eager to form pacts. In exchange for servitude, the creature may offer the person knowledge, to find someone or something, or lead them out of Inferno’s winding balls. for more information, see the rules for making pacts in Chapter 21 - Pacts and Magic.

- Branded by Inferno

After you have been to Inferno and returned, you are branded by the experience. This manifests in many ways, such as wounds that won’t heal, recurring nightmares, or altered perceptions, allowing you to sense where the barriers to Inferno are weak. Perhaps, you return with some kind of infernal being, such as a nepharite’s consciousness, entwined with you. The GM can choose to give the PC a new Disadvantage, such as Haunted, Nightmares, Repressed Memories, Involuntary Medium, or Harassed.

- Followers

A being or a wanderer becomes a guide, follower, or someone who secretly tracks behind you and observes.

- Entrancement of the Soul

Surrounded by the surreality, grotesqueries, and macabre wonders of Inferno, the PC is entranced by the beautiful symphony of screams, finds truths and wisdom in the insane architecture, and gazes into themselves, finding pieces of the mysterious puzzle constituting their soul. The emher of the Divine reignites, and maybe they accidentally distort the surrounding world, speak in tongues, or share portions of their consciousness with others. These awesome magical experiences only last briefly, but will never be forgotten.

- Intimate Moment

The character experiences a moment of extreme intimacy. They are offered the chance to torture a willing victim, fuck one of Gamaliel’s nepharites, meet a person from their past, or have a Pilgrim of Suffering ask about the fantastic wonders of Elysium.

CUL&S

The Sacred Brotherhood

Ties to Powers: The Death Angel Hareb-Serap, but also influenced by the Archon netzach.

Members: Fanatics, lost youths, war veterans, and outcasts. Many of them originate from the Middle East and all of them have strong Islamic convictions.

Agenda: Spreading fear and chaos through cruel deeds and acts of terror; incite a war between the West and the Islamic World.

Moves: Suicide Bombing, Procuring Weapons, Acts of Terror, Scaring People into Silence, Unflinching Fanatic Zeal, Invoking Beings from Inferno.

This terror group see themselves as part the Islamic jihad against the Western world, and have fallen under the influence of the Death Angel Hareb-Serap. Many of the members have been to training camps in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Irao, or Syria, but they are now primarily a sleeper cell beadouartered in the West. They plan and execute acts of terror, collect information on targets, and enroll new members to participate in their boly war. Enrollment usually occurs via the Internet or through direct contacts in mosoues, family businesses and prayer balls. The Sacred Brotherbood’s leader is Hafiz Wahidi, a razide. Under Wahidi’s leadership, the Brotherhood has increasingly come to worship death and use torture, executions, and threats to spread terror. Their primary victims are often other Muslims, who they see as a necessary sacrifice to the war effort. The cult’s inner circle have begun studying death magic and executions have become their regular sacrificial rites, where heads are sever with broad knives, accompanied by preaching and chanting. For the Brotherhood, Hareb-Serap has replaced Allab, and only through him and total war can their new world be born. The cult’s main bastion is an industrial facility, which lies in the borderlands of Inferno, and members who have died in the Brotherhood’s fight occasionally return bere as damned legionnaires.

White Gagle Conglomerate (WCC)

Ties to Powers: Thaumiel, but also a connection to the Archon Yesod. Members: Billionaires and multi-millionaires. Razor-sharp manipulators and tastemakers within the corporate world and politics. Excessiveness, access to capital, and the ruthless social climbing are pervasive personality traits in the membership.

Agenda: Divide and conquer. Amass power and fortune, buy political power, and dismantle all laws and regulatory frameworks standing in their way.

Moves: Call in Soldiers of Fortune, Buy Rulers, Control the Media, Manipulate the Justice System, Exploit their Enormous Resources.

Through daring ventures, luck, and contacts, WEC have quickly ascended in the world market. They buy public companies, dismantle them, sell their shares, and let the employees fight for their positions. The WEC encourage elitist power-struggles to their logical extreme. If you do not deliver, you are thrown out - or worse. The virtues of raw, calculating capitalism are extolled in their financial publications. The company’s CEO, David H. Bachmann, is one of the United States’ wealthiest individuals with major influence in the Republican Party. He is an advocate of the right to bear arms, speaks out against abortion and the LGBT movement, denounces any kind of federal health insurance or social aid systems, praises the books of Ayn Rand, and, outwardly, is a devout Christian.

In reality, David H. Bachmann is a devoted servant of thaumiel, and his conglomerate advances the Death Angel’s agenda. He only sees value in people who can deliver results. The strongest, most manipulative, and devoted members are invited into his inner circle, and initiated into Thaumiel’s sacrament. These devotees are sworn in via rituals in luxury apartments and country estates. The members travel worldwide in private jets, as likely to attend business meetings as they are human sacrifices. The conglomerate’s main objective is to gain total financial power over north America, allowing them to incite desperation and greed in the population, and then kick away all supports, creating a law of the jungle mentality, where only the strongest and most ruthless survive. Bachmann has even won over a numher of lictors to his side, which have abandoned their former rulers and have come to serve Thaumiel.

CREAYURES

Inferno is a world of diverse abominations, entities, and suffering souls. Below are descriptions of some of the beings residing bere, or which have an influence in other worlds.

nepharites

The nepharites are the true interpreters of the Death Angels’ will and constitute the backbone of the ten Clergies. They are prophets, actors, sootbsayers, beralds, soul twisters, and torturers. For them, pain is a sacrament. Each of them is born out of extreme rites of torture, and baptized in the Death Angel’s Principle - the essence of their creation.

Their core purpose is to be Inferno’s torturers and soul butchers. With their skinning knives, magic, and sermons, they peel away their victim’s sorrow, pain, batred, love, lust, secrets, and dreams, layer by layer. They weigh the soul’s suffering on scales of brass, and sacrifice them at sacred altars devoted to the Death Angels’ Principles. To them, torture is divine and the nepharites devote themselves to it with religious zeal, in order to extract every morsel of anguish, agony, and passion, time and time again, until nothing remains.

The nepharites are bound to Inferno, and for them Elysium is distant and difficult to reach. They can only cross into our world through magical summons, cracks in the Illusion, the weakened barriers found at purgatories, or by finding a victim to which to bind themselves. Extreme feelings of anxiety, guilt, or physical pain can attract a nepbarite, even in Elysium. nepharites have varying appearances and can alter their appearances whenever they wish. Typically, they appear mostly human, albeit mangled by instruments of torture, exhibiting open wounds, flayed skin, and penetrating books, clamps, and sharp blades. Their macabre robes are usually priest-like and magnificently tailored, though in a grisly fasbion. In the Illusion, they can assume the façade they most desire, but often there is something alluring and dangerous about them. The attentive observer will notice the sickly scent of iron, blood, and incense.

Weaver (Nepharite)

Home: Inferno. Creature Type: nepharite under the Death Angel Gamichicoth. Weaver is a nepharite and a devoted follower to the Death Angel Gamichicoth. She is often sent into Elysium to hunt those who have escaped from hell or to claim the souls of those who have entered into desperate pacts with her or her master. Weaver surrounds herself with ritual objects so she may initiate followers instantly into the sacraments of Gamichicoth.

Abilities

• Bound to Inferno: If the creature is annibilated in Elysium, it will be resurrected in Inferno.
• Domain (purgatory): The creature is bound to its domain and immediately becomes aware if anyone intrudes on it, even if the creature is elsewhere.
• Master torturer: The creature possesses intimate knowledge of how to utilize pain, bumiliation, and suffering to break someone else’s will and draw out all their shame and truth. Resisting this torture reQuires Keep it Together at -2 .
• Pact-weaver: This being can seal pacts with humans. See Chapter 21 - Pacts and Magic.
• Shapeshifter: The creature can alter its physical appearance and form at will.

Combat [3], Influence [3], Magic [5]. Combat [Considerable]

• Grapple someone with supernatural strength.
• Teleport somewhere within line of sight.
• Tear out someone’s heart.

Influence [Considerable]

• Lead purgatides.
• Manipulate someone in accordance with their deepest fears.
• Spread the Principle of Fear.

Magic [Exceptional]

• Turn people against each other.
• Distort and warp rooms, streets, paths, and stairs.
• Spread fear and rumors in a whole town.
• Gaze into somebody’s soul and past lives.
• Summon purgatides.

Attacks

Weaver would rather use magic or intelligence, but can also attack with ritual blades or raw strength. When dispatching a victim she bolds them down and sings a bymn as she slowly tears out their heart. With her magic she keeps their body alive for as long as she bolds their heart in her band - usually long enough to enter a pact with ber. When she drops the heart they die.

Ritual blade: Cut up [2] [Distance: arm]. Raw strength: Grab and bold down [-] [Distance: out heart [*] [Distance: arm, target must be beld down. Victim is alive as long as she holds the heart in her band].

Magic: Warp surroundings [-] [See Through the Illusion to orientate yourself]; Reveal true shape [-] [Keep it Together]; Gaze into soul [-] [Keep it Together so as to not reveal Disadvantage or Dark Secret].

Wounds & Harm Moves

Wounds: - 00000000

• Ignore the injuries.
• Momentarily stop to appreciate the pain.
• A deep wound opens up; she smiles and licks her lips.
• Change shape to someone the character fears.

Screams in pain and images of Inferno are projected into the mind of all present [Keep it Together]

A buge gash opens up in her body. The Illusion starts to crumble and a dark wind from Inferno blows out of ber. It carries with it baunting screams and a smell of blood that affects a large area. [Everyone has -1 on next roll]

• Weaver screams, her body contorts and dissolves upon itself, a mass of broken bones and torn flesh.

Purgatides

Purgatides are what remains of the tattered, mutilated, and mangled human bodies after Inferno’s endless tortures. They are little more than a wet collection of metal shards, nails, scars, exposed muscle tissue, stitches, and open wounds. In certain cases, sexual characteristics are surgically removed, while others are kept together by metal clamps and thread. Their butchered bodies are concealed by long coats, but the purgatides frequently leave an unbroken trail of blood and pus behind. In the Illusion, they appear as pale, sickly individuals with a feverish and fanatical gaze.

Purgatides are usually sent to €lysium to serve a razide or similar power. They are brainwashed from their years in Inferno, and have difficulty in acting human over a long period.

Purgatide

Home: Inferno. Creature Type: Slave to a Death Angel, razide, or nepbarite Abilities

• Fanatical: Cannot be reasoned with.
• Resistance to injury: Firearms and edged weapons do -1 Harm.

Combat [3], Influence [-], Magic [1].

Combat [Considerable]

• Prepare an ambush.
• Surround someone.
• Torture.

Magic [novice]

Contact master.

Attacks

normally armed with knives, chopping weapons, and torture instruments. Will sometimes carry firearms.

Edged weapons: Cut up [2] [Distance: arm]; nail down [1] [Distance: arm, Act Under Pressure to get loose]

Chopping weapons: Brutal slasbing [3] [Distance: arm] Revolver: Direct fire [2] [Distance: room]

Wounds & Harm Moves

Wounds: ০০০০০ :

• Ignore the injuries.
• Lose control of something.
• Appear defeated.

Die.

Razides

Sometimes, screaming victims are removed from their purgatories and fettered inside infernal machinery. Their human bodies are resbaped with scalpels, books, razor blades, drills and syringes. Bizarre mechanisms, tubes, and pipes coalesce with their flesh, intertwine with their nerves, and are bolted into their skeleton. Finally, a larvae - a black, slimy leech collected from the Underworld - is implanted into their chest, as insurance of the victim’s obedience. These mangled abominations may now kneel before their rulers, ready to serve. A razide is born.

Razides are slaves to the Death Angels. They are created and selected as guards, warriors, and torturers. They are also sent into €lysium to spread the Death Angels’ Principles and increase Inferno’s influence over the Illusion. In contrast to nepharites and many other of Inferno’s beings, a razide is intimately connected to its body. If its body is killed, the razide truly dies. If the razide should be slain, the surviving larvae escapes from the cadaver and tries to find its way back down to the Underworld.

A razide in its actual form is terrifying to behold; a ragged, mangled, and putrescent monstrosity with machinery enmeshed with its flesh. It is often taller than most humans, and possesses sufficient strength to tear apart its adversaries with its razored fingers. When viewed in the Illusion, they appear human, but there is often something menacing and dangerous about them. Razides are often connected to cults and organizations devoted to spreading the Principles of the Death Angels or trying to manipulate human society and sweep away the power of the Archons.

Hafiz Wahidi (Razide)

Home: Inferno. Creature Type: Servant of the Death Angel Hareb-Serap. Hafiz Wahidi is sent to Elysium to strengthen the Principles of the Death Angel Hareb-Serap. He has taken control of the Sacred Brotherhood, a terrorist organization. He has corrupted it into worshiping Hareb-Serap and uses its fanatical members to gain power and influence. Hafiz Wahidi takes pleasure in war and bloodshed and is now using the members in his cult to strike at the servants of the Archons.

Abilities

• Monstrous form: Those who see the razide’s true form must Keep it Together.
• Gigantic: Cannot be grappled or knocked over in close combat.
• Natural weapons: The creature has weapons embedded in its body, either implanted or natural.
• Body of metal and machinery: All Harm taken is reduced by $-1$.

Combat [5], Influence [4], Magic [3]. Combat [exceptional]

• Attack two opponents at once.
• Impale on claws [Act Under Pressure to get away].
• Move a considerable distance in a single leap.
• Rip someone apart [+2 Harm].
• Destroy opponent’s weapon.

Influence [Powerful]

• Leader of terrorist group (The Sacred Brotherhood).

Get bold of military weapons and explosives.

• Fanatic followers.
• network of contacts in the muslim community.

Magic [Considerable]

• Reveal a gate to Inferno.
• Create damned legionnaires.
• Adept in Death Magic (III).

Attacks In human form, Hafiz uses his assault rifle or a bandgun. When be assumes his true shape, be fights like a raging animal, trying to rip and slash his opponents to shreds.

Knifelike claws: Slash two opponents [2] [Distance: arm]; Impale [2] [Distance: arm, Act Under Pressure to get loose]; Rip apart [4] [Distance: arm, target must be impaled]; Destroy weapon [-] [Distance: arm, targets weapon is torn to pieces].

Assault Rifle: Controlled fire [3] [Distance: room/field]; Mow down [3] [Distance: room/ field, attack up to three targets in close vicinity to each other].

Wounds & Harm Moves

Wounds: 000000000 ★

• The attack reflects off the creature’s metal bide.
• Turns his focus on the most recent attacker and ignores the others until she’s defeated.
• In an uncontrollable rage, dasbes at the nearest attacker with his claws (Avoid Harm).
• A tube cuts open, splasbing a red-black, slippery fluid over the floor (Act Under Pressure to move around).
• The attack destroys one of the razides eyes (+1 on next roll).
• One of the razide’s arms is broken, shot off, or severed (can’t attack multiple opponents any more).
• The razide’s leg is maimed (can’t move fast or leap any more).
• A big wriggling larvae is exposed in the razide’s chest (Act Under Pressure: -2 to hit, +2 Harm).
• The razide dies with an inhuman scream.

Damned Legionnaire

The typical damned legionnaire’s body is broken, marked by the ravages of war, mangled by splinters, deep bullet boles, sword cuts, napalm, bayonets, or mustard gas. They are soldiers who have died across the course of bistory, their souls captured and converted in the purgatories of Inferno. Some still wear their old uniforms or suits of armor, and carry archaic weapons, such as rusty swords, bows, or rifles from the trenches of WWI. They are absent-minded, almost apathetic, and can only express themselves through simple sentences and the odd word. Even in the most violent situations they never show any emotion whatsoever. In Elysium, they look like rough, powerful men and women with distant, dead stares. They stink of damp and must, like rancid meat and swamp water. They are always armed and usually under the control of a razide, nepharite, or death conjurer.

The Pilgrims of Suffering

Depleted souls that are only driven by total devotion to the Death Angels’ will and the mysteries of Inferno. They submit to those that are more powerful than them and try to seek to convert and save those who cannot see the truth. They gather in large numbers to pray at the Citadels, wander along the pilgrim routes, or serve Inferno’s beralds while crawling about on the ground.

ASTAROTH

Astaroth’s consciousness is too expansive and profound for us to comprebend. It is like a primordial sea, seemingly endless, and we may only guess what lurks beneath the darkness. Occasionally, Astaroth’s spirit manifests in physical form in various guises in the different realms. Whether this is done consciously is impossible to say, but the Incarnates are in many ways unioue, and do not seem to act with any set plan or function. They are intimately tied to their drives, appearing to be aspects of Astaroth’s psyche. They are all sources of insight into the dark deity and Inferno, and thus occultists and other beings try to find them. Below, a numher of Astaroth’s Incarnates are described.

The Wild Beast: An incarnation of blind rage, a desire to murder, and unbridled batred. The Wild Beast is barely human. It travels along lonely roads, aimlessly slaying people that cross its path. Often the Wild Beast is a large man with a savage gaze and innumerable scars all over his body. The few words be utters are little more than primitive grunts. Between the years 1921 and 1937, the Incarnate was locked up in a sanatorium in France, and the patient journals Doctor Hollebecoue compiled during that time are said to reveal many secrets about Inferno. The Revolver: The Incarnate takes the form of a heavy-caliher revolver of unknown model and manufacture. Outwardly, it appears to have been manufactured in the early-20th century and is covered with patina and deep scratches. The revolver can be discovered in a box, at the bottom of a ditch, in the dead hand of a veteran who committed suicide, or in a bigh school student’s locker. It seemingly appears in various places completely by chance. Anyone who has the revolver in their possession, does not feel safe without it and begins suffering from extreme paranoia, as if they are constantly being followed. Their insanity progresses, taking bold over them, invariably ending in violence. the Prostitute: You can find her in the filthiest brothels or in back alleys, where she sells her body night after night. She is emaciated, covered in bruises. There are scratch marks on her knees and innumerable needle marks along the bend of her arm. She carries venereal diseases of every kind, and those foolish enough to use her services are often overcome with batred and disgust towards ber, even while she begs to be exploited. But for some of her customers, something awakens inside them; a dark seed planted. They gain insight into the world and the Awakening, as well as an gnawing attraction towards Astaroth and Inferno.

Yes, You Can Dance: This Incarnate takes the form of a shoddy music video from MTV’s beyday. The unknown pop group dances around in an industrial landscape to a zippy song. Sometimes, the video is found on a VHS tape, or is uploaded on YouTube or Vimeo for a sbort time before being removed. The song and its catchy refrain lodge in your mind immediately, creating a relentless earworm. When you sleep, a dream world manifests from the music video - but bere the music is dissonant, distorted, and bints at a concealed message. Those who are afflicted eventually try to stop it by piercing their eardrums, taking their own lives, or desperately seeking out the strange industrial landscape from the video, trying to stop the baunting at the source. The industrial landscape is, of course, at the foot of Astaroth’s Citadel. The Child with the Lantern: This child with stitched-up eyes wanderers between the worlds. In her band, she bolds an archaic, silver lantern with an uneasy light. Lost souls, mangled purgatides, phantoms, and lunatics follow the child, who leads them down to Inferno, roaming its many crossroads until finally entering Astaroth’s Citadel, where they drown in the black waters and their suffering can cease at last.

Jobn the Baptist’s Head: This mummified, human skull is rumored to belong to the biblical figure, John the Baptist. The skull is usually placed in a reliouary and is kept bidden in the attics of isolated monasteries. Monks bold vigil over it, day and night, as the skull can spring to life, open its dessicated eyes, and speak prophecies and beavenly lies through cracked lips, pretending to be a vessel for the Demiurge himself. Even if the knowledge it conveys is true and important, the revelation comes at a price.

CHAPã‚„ER 20 GIÄ°A