Since you asked! RPG Review: DEMON - Servants of Darkness, part 1
Be warned, this will have to come in installments. The book is just too chock-full of good stuff to be covered in one review.
The book itself goes for $25 and is from HERO Games. It's part of their Champions line, superheroic roleplaying. Typical Champs is of a later Silver to Bronze Age in tone, but DEMON is a different kettle of fish entirely. This is a very dark book about some very dark people indeed.
So, Part the First, the History of DEMON:
The opening chapter covers the history of DEMON proper and of its founder, one of the most fascinating and wicked villains I've ever read of in an RPG book, Luther Black. It is amazingly well done, reading more like a Tim Powers novel than a game supplement. A few examples of the initial section's writing to suffice:
February 29, 1896, the Rue Morgue, Paris, France
"A distant bell tolled the midnight hour, February 28th becoming the 29th and Black's birthday, only his 41st since his birth 164 years before. As the bell struck the twelfth stroke, Black heard a gendarme and a whore at the crossroads ahead finish their transaction in Latin. Black looked to the moonless sky. The heavens had reversed themselves, the Southern Cross visible in the Northern hemisphere for the first time in millennia... At the crossroads [just ahead], just beyond the whore handing over Roman denari to the gendarme, Luther Black took the left-handed path."
"He walked along the street, dark eyes scanning calmly from the left to the right, looking for the next sign... The night winds howled down the street behind him -- Hecate's hounds chased his scent and closed with their prey -- and Black wrapped a scarf over the flat crown of his top hat, knotting it under his chin to hold his hat to his head. The knot was square, two ends crossed over to form a crossroads of sorts, and hid him from the eyes of the goddess, who found his trespass into her domain an affront."
Black wanders a Paris formed of all the city's ages put together. He hears the roar of the revolutionary mob as Madame Guillotine takes another head in the distance. A rumble fills the skies and he looks up to see flying machines with Maltese crosses stenciled under their wings. He wanders across similar sights until he finds a bookstore with only one book that he can clearly see, an ancient octavo with a title in Latin, Liber Terribilis, the Book of Harrowing. He takes his birthday gift and leaves, to use it and see where it take sit for the 164 years remaining to him.
The rest is similar, leading through the Pulp era, World War 2, postwar America, and more. It uses information already established in other Champions book from HG, but you don't need them to appreciate what's said here. It also uses various occult ideas, but again, as pure entertainemt and without requriing a knowledge beyond what the book itself gives. (If you can stand Manly Wade Welllman's use of occultism in his books, you can take this.) Black avoids using his book until after he and his fellow black magicians in the Circle of the Scarlet Moon are almost destroyed after magically killing their worst enemy, the Archmage. He moves to America and begins researching the Book of Harrowing. He discovers things called the Kings of Edom, the Qlippoth (actual beings in Jewish kabbalism and mainstream Judaism; here they're as much Lovecraftian horrors as anything). He intends to use them to restore both his and the Circle's power. And when they refuse him, Black leaves the Circle to found his own occult group.
In 1918 we find him in New York, creating a new group as a cover for his real goal, DEMON, a group loyal to him alone, that will aid him in gaining power from the Kings of Edom. It's a Satanic cult practicing human sacrifice on the surface, but underneath it's something even worse. Black finally sees the Kings in 1925, despite the interference of pulp hero Jack Fool, and loses his mind. He goes from seeking power from the Qlippoth to seeking their freedom in exchange for worldly power. The book also lists some other Pulp-era plots involving (at least in one case), the HG versions of Charlie Chan, G-8, and Fu Manchu. Many of these schemes are foiled by Jack Fool, who has somehow become an incarnation of the Fool archetype represented in the Tarot. The guy is made a heroic figure, which mkes his end all the worse -- for Black corrupts his closest allies and sacrifices Jack's soul to the Archdemons with the Crystal Skull of Lubaantum. Many decades later, he recalls Jack from the Netherworld as his broken slave and assassin. That is a repeated lesson through the book -- Luther Black won't just break your body or shatter your mind, he'll damn your soul and make you his slave.
Black is forced to scatter his DEMON cultists through the American government and military-industrial complex, with many of them brainwashed to forget their DEMONic loyalties until summoned by Black (the Satanic Panic, anyone?). There is then a REALLY fun bit comparing this world's superheroes to the magicians of the past: "In their aliases, [Black] saw the sorceror assuming a name to protect his true one, the essence of his being, from his enemies. In the iconography of their costumes, he glimpsed the occult geometries and symbols he had mastered over the last century and a half. In their forthright and unyielding moralities, he recognized the universal principles and archetypes [the superheroes] embodied. In their superhuman powers, he remembered the stories of lost ages [when] men wielded power enough to rival the gods." This all gives Black the perfect way to hide his group's goals from the ignorant eyes of the mundane sheep. Hide DEMON behind the mask of supervillainy.
Black refounds his group again, recruiting an Inner Circle of 12 occultists and evil sorcerors to be the 'faces' for his organization. They engaged in a lot of very Silver Age plots, from summoning Aztec gods to fight El Santo on the Dia de los Muertos (El Santo won, of course), to stealing the Elgin Marbles and calling forth the Music of the Spheres, to aiding Rasputin(!) in an attempt to destroy Russia and America both. These are all smokescreens for his real effort -- using the Basilisk Orb to not foresee, but create the future he desired, the one wherein he would call forth the Kings of Edom on February 29th, 2012, and rise from death to rule the world alongside them. He did this on the island of Ponape, and the ensuing tidal waves and earthquakes roused by his sorcery brought in first the US Navy, and then the Sentinels (one of the 'Big Two' American superteams) to stop him. Black was on the verge of seeing the last few elements of his plans unfold, at which point they would have been preordained (the big power of the Basilisk Orb -- it doesn't show you the future, it creates it as you desire) when the Orb was taken away by Meteor Man (this world's Green lantern). Black didn't care: he'd seen enough. Whisked away by air elementals under his control, laughing even as he tore his eyes from their sockets ("I have seen my future will come true; there is no need to see anything else!") and already plotting how to make the vision come true.
He then does so over the next decade, killing his Inner Circle to replace them with a a better one by means of the enslaved Jack Fool. DEMON gets a little out of hand as the higher-ups kill each other; various DEMON Morbanes try everything from recreating Nazi Germany in Argentina to freeing Dracula to using disco to summon the Antichrist. Killing his flunkies keeps Black busy until 1986, when he uses DEMON to attack Boston, sacrificing 100 men and women to the ten Archdemons of the Tree of Death (the anti-Sephiroth, leading to the Qlippothic Realms) to create a tower rising 10,000 feet high and send hordes of demons rampaging through Boston. And then he calls forth Sharna-Gorak, the last great servant of the Kings of Edom. Gorak is dead, but even so, when the Edom Gate opens just the sight of him kills Black's assistants. Their minds just blink out like matches in a hurricane. Black tries to call forth all of Gorak's remaining power, casting aside all of his black magic, occultism, and demonology in the process to create the Left Hand, Black's own version of the Holy Ghost. Black is foiled again by not just heroes, but the criminal organization VIPER. His rite is spoiled and the backlash of improperly absorbing the highly toxic energies of the qlippoth leaves Luther Black, the most powerful sorceror in human history, a shattered cripple.
Black then puts DEMON back together one more time, forming a new Inner Circle of five (who, all unknown to them, will be the vessels through which he will summon the Kings of Edom). He uses his various personal servants -- Jack Fool, Asmodeus (the remains of one of the former Inner Circle, now reduced to an undead slave), and the Left Hand -- to put the group together, and to make every effort to ensure that his future comes to pass and that on the last day of his life, he will summon the Kings of Edom and force them to make him their equal by sacrificing all humanity to them. And then Luther Black will achieve his apotheosis and reign alongside the Kings over a shattered and insane universe forever.
Really, the history section shows us Luther Black basically putting himself beyond redemption in the Christian sense; killing everything human or decent inside himself for the love of power. He sacrifices his sanity, his sight, and ultimately his very body for the chance to join five Lovecraftian horrors as the new lord of the universe if everything goes as he desires (and he's worried, because some things have already gone awry). Obviously, real and sincere efforts at utter damnation are not easy in this fictional world.
But in the rest of the book we see just how good a job Luther Black and DEMON have done -- and they've done a very good job indeed.
Crap, that was the best I can do, and I still feel like someone trying to describe Hawaii by showing you a handfull of sand, a piece of pumice, and a glas sof salt water and saying, "It's like that, only more so, and better."
I'll try and do better with the later parts if anyone wants to see them.
The book itself goes for $25 and is from HERO Games. It's part of their Champions line, superheroic roleplaying. Typical Champs is of a later Silver to Bronze Age in tone, but DEMON is a different kettle of fish entirely. This is a very dark book about some very dark people indeed.
So, Part the First, the History of DEMON:
The opening chapter covers the history of DEMON proper and of its founder, one of the most fascinating and wicked villains I've ever read of in an RPG book, Luther Black. It is amazingly well done, reading more like a Tim Powers novel than a game supplement. A few examples of the initial section's writing to suffice:
February 29, 1896, the Rue Morgue, Paris, France
"A distant bell tolled the midnight hour, February 28th becoming the 29th and Black's birthday, only his 41st since his birth 164 years before. As the bell struck the twelfth stroke, Black heard a gendarme and a whore at the crossroads ahead finish their transaction in Latin. Black looked to the moonless sky. The heavens had reversed themselves, the Southern Cross visible in the Northern hemisphere for the first time in millennia... At the crossroads [just ahead], just beyond the whore handing over Roman denari to the gendarme, Luther Black took the left-handed path."
"He walked along the street, dark eyes scanning calmly from the left to the right, looking for the next sign... The night winds howled down the street behind him -- Hecate's hounds chased his scent and closed with their prey -- and Black wrapped a scarf over the flat crown of his top hat, knotting it under his chin to hold his hat to his head. The knot was square, two ends crossed over to form a crossroads of sorts, and hid him from the eyes of the goddess, who found his trespass into her domain an affront."
Black wanders a Paris formed of all the city's ages put together. He hears the roar of the revolutionary mob as Madame Guillotine takes another head in the distance. A rumble fills the skies and he looks up to see flying machines with Maltese crosses stenciled under their wings. He wanders across similar sights until he finds a bookstore with only one book that he can clearly see, an ancient octavo with a title in Latin, Liber Terribilis, the Book of Harrowing. He takes his birthday gift and leaves, to use it and see where it take sit for the 164 years remaining to him.
The rest is similar, leading through the Pulp era, World War 2, postwar America, and more. It uses information already established in other Champions book from HG, but you don't need them to appreciate what's said here. It also uses various occult ideas, but again, as pure entertainemt and without requriing a knowledge beyond what the book itself gives. (If you can stand Manly Wade Welllman's use of occultism in his books, you can take this.) Black avoids using his book until after he and his fellow black magicians in the Circle of the Scarlet Moon are almost destroyed after magically killing their worst enemy, the Archmage. He moves to America and begins researching the Book of Harrowing. He discovers things called the Kings of Edom, the Qlippoth (actual beings in Jewish kabbalism and mainstream Judaism; here they're as much Lovecraftian horrors as anything). He intends to use them to restore both his and the Circle's power. And when they refuse him, Black leaves the Circle to found his own occult group.
In 1918 we find him in New York, creating a new group as a cover for his real goal, DEMON, a group loyal to him alone, that will aid him in gaining power from the Kings of Edom. It's a Satanic cult practicing human sacrifice on the surface, but underneath it's something even worse. Black finally sees the Kings in 1925, despite the interference of pulp hero Jack Fool, and loses his mind. He goes from seeking power from the Qlippoth to seeking their freedom in exchange for worldly power. The book also lists some other Pulp-era plots involving (at least in one case), the HG versions of Charlie Chan, G-8, and Fu Manchu. Many of these schemes are foiled by Jack Fool, who has somehow become an incarnation of the Fool archetype represented in the Tarot. The guy is made a heroic figure, which mkes his end all the worse -- for Black corrupts his closest allies and sacrifices Jack's soul to the Archdemons with the Crystal Skull of Lubaantum. Many decades later, he recalls Jack from the Netherworld as his broken slave and assassin. That is a repeated lesson through the book -- Luther Black won't just break your body or shatter your mind, he'll damn your soul and make you his slave.
Black is forced to scatter his DEMON cultists through the American government and military-industrial complex, with many of them brainwashed to forget their DEMONic loyalties until summoned by Black (the Satanic Panic, anyone?). There is then a REALLY fun bit comparing this world's superheroes to the magicians of the past: "In their aliases, [Black] saw the sorceror assuming a name to protect his true one, the essence of his being, from his enemies. In the iconography of their costumes, he glimpsed the occult geometries and symbols he had mastered over the last century and a half. In their forthright and unyielding moralities, he recognized the universal principles and archetypes [the superheroes] embodied. In their superhuman powers, he remembered the stories of lost ages [when] men wielded power enough to rival the gods." This all gives Black the perfect way to hide his group's goals from the ignorant eyes of the mundane sheep. Hide DEMON behind the mask of supervillainy.
Black refounds his group again, recruiting an Inner Circle of 12 occultists and evil sorcerors to be the 'faces' for his organization. They engaged in a lot of very Silver Age plots, from summoning Aztec gods to fight El Santo on the Dia de los Muertos (El Santo won, of course), to stealing the Elgin Marbles and calling forth the Music of the Spheres, to aiding Rasputin(!) in an attempt to destroy Russia and America both. These are all smokescreens for his real effort -- using the Basilisk Orb to not foresee, but create the future he desired, the one wherein he would call forth the Kings of Edom on February 29th, 2012, and rise from death to rule the world alongside them. He did this on the island of Ponape, and the ensuing tidal waves and earthquakes roused by his sorcery brought in first the US Navy, and then the Sentinels (one of the 'Big Two' American superteams) to stop him. Black was on the verge of seeing the last few elements of his plans unfold, at which point they would have been preordained (the big power of the Basilisk Orb -- it doesn't show you the future, it creates it as you desire) when the Orb was taken away by Meteor Man (this world's Green lantern). Black didn't care: he'd seen enough. Whisked away by air elementals under his control, laughing even as he tore his eyes from their sockets ("I have seen my future will come true; there is no need to see anything else!") and already plotting how to make the vision come true.
He then does so over the next decade, killing his Inner Circle to replace them with a a better one by means of the enslaved Jack Fool. DEMON gets a little out of hand as the higher-ups kill each other; various DEMON Morbanes try everything from recreating Nazi Germany in Argentina to freeing Dracula to using disco to summon the Antichrist. Killing his flunkies keeps Black busy until 1986, when he uses DEMON to attack Boston, sacrificing 100 men and women to the ten Archdemons of the Tree of Death (the anti-Sephiroth, leading to the Qlippothic Realms) to create a tower rising 10,000 feet high and send hordes of demons rampaging through Boston. And then he calls forth Sharna-Gorak, the last great servant of the Kings of Edom. Gorak is dead, but even so, when the Edom Gate opens just the sight of him kills Black's assistants. Their minds just blink out like matches in a hurricane. Black tries to call forth all of Gorak's remaining power, casting aside all of his black magic, occultism, and demonology in the process to create the Left Hand, Black's own version of the Holy Ghost. Black is foiled again by not just heroes, but the criminal organization VIPER. His rite is spoiled and the backlash of improperly absorbing the highly toxic energies of the qlippoth leaves Luther Black, the most powerful sorceror in human history, a shattered cripple.
Black then puts DEMON back together one more time, forming a new Inner Circle of five (who, all unknown to them, will be the vessels through which he will summon the Kings of Edom). He uses his various personal servants -- Jack Fool, Asmodeus (the remains of one of the former Inner Circle, now reduced to an undead slave), and the Left Hand -- to put the group together, and to make every effort to ensure that his future comes to pass and that on the last day of his life, he will summon the Kings of Edom and force them to make him their equal by sacrificing all humanity to them. And then Luther Black will achieve his apotheosis and reign alongside the Kings over a shattered and insane universe forever.
Really, the history section shows us Luther Black basically putting himself beyond redemption in the Christian sense; killing everything human or decent inside himself for the love of power. He sacrifices his sanity, his sight, and ultimately his very body for the chance to join five Lovecraftian horrors as the new lord of the universe if everything goes as he desires (and he's worried, because some things have already gone awry). Obviously, real and sincere efforts at utter damnation are not easy in this fictional world.
But in the rest of the book we see just how good a job Luther Black and DEMON have done -- and they've done a very good job indeed.
Crap, that was the best I can do, and I still feel like someone trying to describe Hawaii by showing you a handfull of sand, a piece of pumice, and a glas sof salt water and saying, "It's like that, only more so, and better."
I'll try and do better with the later parts if anyone wants to see them.