Revising the Devil Arcanum to be not cartoonishly evil?

The Devil Arcanum has consistently gotten a bad rap in the official books, which has been unable to paint them as anything other than an NPC-only villain faction. Even in the Major Arcana book! The only times I've seen someone try redeeming them was in two old articles from the Chaosium Digest: "The Devil Arcanum" by Peter Larsen and "The Devil Arcanum and the Future" by Nick Christoforidis. Even the French version tried a similar route when they realized The Devil wasn't very interesting as is.

I also need to revise The Devil for my reinterpretation of Nephilim psychology in which they're a "higher self" brought about by the fusion of a human soul and an elemental spirit. What you would call a symbiotic perspective, I guess?

One way I thought of to reimagine The Devil is as the occult equivalent of the “Return to Monke” internet meme. The Devil rejects human civilization and culture, even despises it for its decadence and hypocrisy. They have comparisons and contrasts with The Hermit, The Hanged Man, and The Moon.

The Hermit’s and The Devil’s simulacrum was alienated from society even as a muggle, but where The Hermit decided to seek refuge in isolation within wilderness retreats and monasteries, The Devil sought refuge within the Id.

The Devil and The Hanged Man both embrace one side of their nature while rejecting the other. The Hanged Man rejects magic and occultism in favor of the banality of mundane life. The Devil rejects mundane life in favor of pure elementalism. Unlike the Hanged Man’s permanent state of Shouit, the Devil doesn’t lock themselves into permanent states of Khaiba. Khaiba eventually results in the dissolution of the sufferer, so the Devil needs alternate means.

The Devil and The Moon both reject human nature. Both see the other as more enlightened than the other Arcana, but less enlightened than themselves.

The Devil respects The Unnamed Arcanum even if their alliance is ultimately one of convenience, but this is based on the Shabs' believing the Major Arcana's general myths about Selenim nature. The Unnamed Arcanum detests The Devil even more than they detest the Cultes des Goules, but tolerate them because they need as many allies as they can get even if said allies are delusional anyway.

Like the other Arcana, the Devil is divided into factions that exemplify variations on the path. Most modern Devils are “Shabs” that give the whole Arcanum a bad name among the other Arcana. They only have fragments of the knowledge possessed by the Old Guard Devils, who are far more enlightened and philosophical by comparison (see Larsen's article for details). It’s comparable to the difference between Hollywood Satanism and LaVeyan Satanism or the Temple of Set.

One ancient faction or fraternity is the Cult of the Dragon, who founded the worship and emulation of The Dragon whispered about by Strength and The Wheel of Fortune. Unlike Shabs who thoughtlessly worship this force like cultists of the Great Old Ones, the inner circle of the Cult of the Dragon has far greater desires. They seek Agartha by becoming dragons themselves using a combination of sacred architecture and sorcerous grimoires (see Nick's article for details). (This Cult is unrelated to the fraternity of the same name in the French version that opposes the Arthurians. I just liked the name.)

Under my symbiotic perspective, The Devil doesn't actually hate humans as a concept. They are human themselves in body and soul, but despise humanity's delusions of morality and hypocritical desires. They're perfectly willing to work with the Cultes des Goules who embrace their true natures and this is where most simulacra are recruited from. Even before incarnation, simulacra with sympathy for The Devil were alienated from and disgusted by the decadence and decay of human society. In the modern era it has become easier than ever before for The Devil to find willing cultists and sympathetic simulacra.

Yeah... still feels pretty villainous. Hmm... I've got one more idea:

The Cult of Seth is an ancient faction of The Devil founded by the Nephilim worshiped by Ancient Egyptians as Seth. Seth was originally venerated by the Egyptians, particularly the Hyksos, as a god of natural disasters and constructive chaos. It was he who fought the demon Apophis on behalf of the solar god Ra, a story that is clearly a metaphor for The Devil's true relationship with Agartha. Seth saw The Devil not as a path opposed to The Golden Path, but complementary to it. By studying and controlling elemental chaos, Seth was uniquely prepared to fight the manifestations of Yazāfat (destructive chaos) that threatened The Golden Path. The Sethians still believe in this fight, even if Strength and Justice are disgusted by their existence. One of the practices that made the Sethians unpalatable were their carefully orchestrated "pranks" (alluded to by the clearly satirical The Contendings of Horus and Seth) that exploited the butterfly effect to cause domino effects of chaos to prevent entropy and stagnation from taking hold. After all, forest fires are a natural part of the ecosystem and Smokey the Bear made thing worse by interfering with the natural course. Supposedly the Sethians played a key role in prematurely kicking off the Fall of Rome, making the social and economic effects far less destructive than they otherwise would have been. The Sethians despise the Cult of the Dragon and the Shabs, seeing them as dangerous pawns of Apophis.

Hope you enjoyed! I might do more posts on The Devil in the future...

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

“Fixing” the setting

These posts assume that the reader is already familiar with Nephilim , so don't expect an explanation of the game here. In addition to the clunky rules, and probably more important, the Nephilim game had fluff that alienated players in the Anglosphere. The rulebook frontloaded potential players with millennia of lore that they had to keep track of. Perhaps the most criticized aspect was that the titular nephilim were presented as parasites who possessed unwilling human hosts to pursue their agendas. While players were seemingly okay with playing murderous psychopaths in other games of the 90s, apparently body-thieves just weren't kosher. The English mailing list had numerous debates over this during its heyday. Rather than rehash those here, I'll cut straight to the point: in my revision of the setting, the nephilim are fusions of a human being and a soulless mindless elemental spirit . The human soul (Sol, Solar-Ka) provides will, purpose, desire, etc. The elemental spirit...
Read more

Simplifying the rules

One of the problems with the Nephilim game was that its rules, a variant of the venerable  BRP , were overly complicated and probably not all that well suited to it. The French version eventually dropped BRP entirely starting in its third edition, and the current fifth edition uses a dramatically simplified rules system. This has inspired me to devise my own simplified rules system for the English adaptation. I'm not going to convert to Fate like certain others have tried . The task resolution system will still be BRP's roll under d100 with difficulty levels and variable results. But all the character traits will change. The standard attributes/characteristics are Air-Ka, Earth-Ka, Fire-Ka, Lunar-Ka, Solar-Ka, and Water-Ka. These represent the physical, mental, and spiritual aspects of the character. For nephilim characters, these also represent supernatural aspects. Rather than distinct skills, characters are described in freeform terms and given general competence ratings....
Read more

The spiritual pentacle and the elements

Image
In this post I explain the spiritual meaning of the Nephilim’s pentacle and the Ka-elements themselves. Although linked to specific game statistics, like Fire to Strength and Moon to Charisma, all of the elements have physical, mental and spiritual correspondences and manifestations.  It’s not one or the other . You don’t have to posit different cultures all have different elements to explain varying beliefs. Real occultism isn’t supposed to be accurate in the game world anyway, but the result of information leaks and cargo cults by muggles. Liam Routt gave a good explanation in  his old FAQ : (I’m putting it between horizontal rules because blogger has issues with formatting) The Spiritual Pentagram Traditionally, the pentagram represents our spiritual, mental, emotional and physical composition: Fire Doing—Fire is energy, the power to act. But it is pure action, undirected by thought or feeling. Air Thinking—Air is thinking, ideation, mental activity, but it can...
Read more