How can angels stay on long-term missions?

[KieranMullen]

In "Demon: The Descent" (p.348) we learn

Materialization lasts for one hour per success on the activating roll. When the duration ends, the entity fades back into Twilight. Physical contact with a Bane or removal of a prerequisite condition can cause the Condition to end early.

However, we also meet angels (which are ephemeral by nature and live in Twilight) that have missions that last for years. How do they stay materialized? In addition, angels obtain their human form when Materialized using the "Mortal Mask" Numina. The description (p.351) states that its duration is limited to a few hours. How can an angel have a mission that lasts for years?

[Bunyip]

Bunyip when in cover like you say and protected from essance bleed would they still have to pay 1 per day for activity and/or would the cover-as-infastructure provide 1 essance per day and cover base operation?

Living in cover takes care of an angel’s daily essence expediture. You don’t need to keep track of that aspect.

Bunyip that makes a lot of sense. Can the Angel switch in or out of Cover at will like Demons can? And would they be in Twilight or Materialized? Also- thoughts on using Form Powers as Numina?

What angelic cover can and can’t do is entirely dependent on what the GM wants it for. Most angels are never going to switch cover because their purpose has put them into a cover to fulfil that purpose. They’ll leave cover when the GM decides the mission is over.

This doesn’t mean that the Storyteller/GM might not come up with a requirement that has an angel switching between covers. But that scenario would still be a specific part of the role.

Wait - if angelic Cover is Infrastructure, then it has to have a Linchpin, right?

See what I said above about being such a small, focused scale that it doesn’t follow the rules for Infrastructure. At the moment, no, it doesn’t. In a hypothetical future where we explore and detail how angelic cover works, it might.

[KieranMullen]

Wait - if angelic Cover is Infrastructure, then it has to have a Linchpin, right?

[Arcanist]

Bunyip that makes a lot of sense. Can the Angel switch in or out of Cover at will like Demons can? And would they be in Twilight or Materialized? Also- thoughts on using Form Powers as Numina?

[Mr.F.I.X.]

Bunyip when in cover like you say and protected from essance bleed would they still have to pay 1 per day for activity and/or would the cover-as-infastructure provide 1 essance per day and cover base operation?

That is how I've been running it but I'm curious on how one of the writers would view it.

[Bunyip]

Angels should deserve their own set of rules😔

If OPP ever does a Demon 2nd edition and I’m on it, I have quite a lot of ideas around clearing up how angels work.

[Bunyip]

You know, I never thought of running Cover as being a mobile instance of the Infrastructure Condition. An Angel who has a mission to protect someone with a Destiny is going to regain a decent amount of Essence, especially if they can stay near their summoning Infrastructure.

I know I’ve written about this on the forum before but this is more or less correct. Angelic Cover/bodies are basically infrastructure (deliberate use of lower case “i”) operating in a such a focused and small scale way that they don’t follow the same rules for larger scale Infrastructure.

In brief, if an angel has a Cover with a physical body, they have that body full time as long as they want and stay material without Essence bleed. If they don’t have that kind of Cover they are ephemeral and use Manifestations.

Angelic Cover doesn’t have a rating, the God Machine just writes it into reality and it does what it says it does. It also isn’t subject to degradation unless the angel does some really weird outside normal stuff. Even then the angel might have the right Numen to fudge these gross violations, and if the angel is operating without God-Machine instructions the GM will patch it all up anyway with a bit of time.

[Arcanist]

You know, I never thought of running Cover as being a mobile instance of the Infrastructure Condition. An Angel who has a mission to protect someone with a Destiny is going to regain a decent amount of Essence, especially if they can stay near their summoning Infrastructure.

Also, regarding Essence Bleed, it occurs to me that Spirits in the Shadow and Ghosts in the Underworld are treated as Materialized and that does protect them from Essence Bleed.

[Mr.F.I.X.]

Well, I was ready to argue with you on that front but looking into it you are in fact correct. Only anchor says it out right and the essance bleed section does say that the ability would say if it protects against essance bleed.

That is rather interesting but I can only assume that the angel would be designed with some protection from essance bleed by GM design. Perhaps cover as infastructure protects against essance bleed itself and maybe that is it's largest benifit. Though that is not supported RAW so it's a 'maybe' not a 'certainty'. I do wonder if an angel having fettered to their cover would fit better but with the limitations of fetter I'm not so sure.

[lnodiv]

It's not "their relevant condition". It's "outside a suitable Condition" and it's written in the Condition whether it offers that protection or not. Anchor is unique because it's the only baseline Condition that protects against Essence Bleed. Otherwise you have use the higher Conditions like Fetter, Materialize, Possess or Claimed. (Which is why spirits tend to become Ridden in Werewolf since they aren't protected by Resonant either.)

That's a good catch, and something I hadn't caught. I'd assumed that Infrastructure, like Anchor, was a 'suitable Condition' for this.

[Tessie]

It's not "their relevant condition". It's "outside a suitable Condition" and it's written in the Condition whether it offers that protection or not. Anchor is unique because it's the only baseline Condition that protects against Essence Bleed. Otherwise you have use the higher Conditions like Fetter, Materialize, Possess or Claimed. (Which is why spirits tend to become Ridden in Werewolf since they aren't protected by Resonant either.)

[Mr.F.I.X.]

Protection from Essence Bleed would be an additional effect since Infrastructure alone doesn't grant such protection.

They wouldn't suffer from essence bleed while in infrastructure just like a ghost near their anchor or a spirit in a resonant condition. Essence bleed only occurs when ephemeral beings are outside their relevant condition.

[Tessie]

In the few instances I've toyed with the idea of including mechanics for angelic cover, I always just settle on treating it as a mobile Infrastructure that surrounds the Angel. This means the Conditions necessary for their manifestation are always present, no Essence Bleed, etc.

Protection from Essence Bleed would be an additional effect since Infrastructure alone doesn't grant such protection.

[Mr.F.I.X.]

This is in truth a matter the community has debated back and forth because of both it not being stated directly in the rules on angel creation and the listed sample angels you presented.

As to your point of an angel choosing to do something without instruction the angel might be close to falling. However, the angel may have broader instructions that allows this 'choice' to be in fact just following their mission and not a choice of free will. So yes, in some cases such could signal or lead to a fall but some missions have flexibility of reaction encoded in them (one would assume).

As to the fact that angels do not have a cover rating listed, you'll find mentions in the section of cover that the GM no longer maintains a demon's cover so an angel's cover would be maintained as required. As well the only main drawbacks of low cover are the ease at which you are detected by the machine which is not an issue when you are a component of the machine.

[KieranMullen]

I had focused on the crunch of Manifestation of Ephemerals and so had forgotten that the fluff refers to angels having Cover. I have read elsewhere that the section in the DtD on Ephemerals is basically repeated in other splats as general rules for Ephemerals. As such, the specific rule that in a DtD game angels have Cover should supersede the general case.

Unfortunately all the angel descriptions give the angels the Materialize manifestation even if they have Cover, and many of them have the Mortal Mask Numina. This seems misleading and a waste of a Numina slot. The angels in the DtD also do not have a Cover rating, so there was no indication that they have a Cover.

One interesting consequence of the rules for Materialize is that an angel who is acting in Twilight could choose to Materialize without specific instructions from the GM to do so. They would need to find or arrange Infrastructure for this purpose and perhaps create their own posse of cultists. They would be skirting the edge, but not quite Falling.

Yet.