Werewolf and Demon: The Fallen

[Nicolas Milioni]

Hi guys. It occurs to me that despite a world of difference in themes and approaches, Werewolf: The Apocalypse and Demon: The Fallen have one point.in common.
both Werewolves and Demons have hard evidence for their creation myth to be real. Demons remember seeing the God who made the,Werewolves saw servants of gaea and the Triat for themselves. Which made me wonder how would you combine the cosmology of the two games if you had to? Can the cosmologies conexist?

[TwoDSix]

Demons remember a time from before the Gauntlet, and before the Umbra as we know it. But they've also spent thousands of years in near complete sensory deprivation with only each other to get angry at, their memories are mostly reliable in broad strokes (and might not even be related to what they claim to remember).

Most likely the majority of the layered reality demons remember is the Umbra. Those who have escaped into the world know they can't see or interact with the other layers of reality, but not why. It's feasible a later development would have them discover the Guantlet, but the ToJ happened before the line could develop that far. They might be a tad more familiar with the High Umbra mages frequent than the Middle Umbra fera mostly deal with, but if one crossed the gauntlet they'd likely interact with every level of the Umbra at once (yes, even the Low Umbra). It's probably another reason the story of Demon stayed in the human world.

The slightly thornier issue is the Abrahamic God versus the Triat, both being Creators with a capital letter. We're also likely talking about something closer to Judaism* than any of the later Abrahamic religions, and I'll be honest I only know about Jewish lore and theology where it crosses over with Christian lore and theology, so in practice probably basically nothing. But working from my days as a Christian I suspect we're going to want to say that the AG is part of the Triat or a combination of the three. If she's just one of them the best candidates are the Wyld (a source of so much creation it's dangerous) and the Weaver (if we take the interpretation that Lucifer causing the fall was on her orders). If we slip into Christian mythology then we can probably assume that the AG is all three of the Triat, and demons are the third of the angels that were Weaver-dominant.

* Oh the writers were probably working from Christian mythology, but from what I remember off the top of my head it's less likely in-universe.

[Saur Ops Specialist]

Don't Fallen have memories that are also heavily corrupted or at least altered to dovetail those of their hosts? Because W:tA doesn't have that kind of ambiguity with regard to Gaia and the Triat. Whatever the Garou or Fera believed before their Change, it doesn't really change the nature of the beings that they're dealing with. In this, D:tF is actually "fake similar", much like Mage.

Hat's off to how Demon's abbreviation became a positive kind of edgy over time, though, even more so than W:tF...

[TwoDSix]

I'll admit that it's been a while since I've read my copy of DtF, and that it has basically no third person setting narration (which every other line does). Therefore WtA is probably more authoritative, but that kind of messes with the core premise of Demon.

But the demons are probably right in the broad strokes: there was a Creator, the Creator made Beings who created Reality, about a third to a half of those Beings rebelled and kick-started civilisation, but lost and were thrown into a whole lot of Nothing which the weakest have now escaped from. Yes it doesn't really mesh with WtA lore, but you can make it mesh if you want to.

Which is what the question was, how do you make it mesh.

Another option is that the Triat are archangels and successors to Lucifer and Michael. But I don't like that idea, so I didn't go with it.

At the end of the day the answer is that 'none of the cosmologies of WoD really mesh'. If you want cosmology that meshes together between gamelines you want CofD, but a lot of that relies on splats with otherworlds not using the same ones (Uratha have the Shadow, Mages the Astral, Geists the Underworld...) with only minor crossover (Strix may be from a Mage plane).

[Black Fox]

This is how I would reconcile it.

God is above the Triat. The Metaphysic Trinity is just the real "physics" of reality. It's how He decided things work.

The Triat is simply Werewolf mythology concerning the Metaphysic Trinity of Dynamism, Stasis, and Entropy. In other words, while the Garou have a lot of knowledge about the nature of the world, they've gotten it wrong and have anthropomorphized the Metaphysic Trinity. This is not to say there are not extremely powerful Umbrood that could easily be confused for the "Wyld", the "Weaver", or the "Wyrm" but ultimately much of Garou lore about the higher natures of reality is myth and not fact. But 99.99% of the time, it is good enough.

The actual true head devils of Abrahamic mythology - Lucifer, Beelzebub, etc. maybe even creatures like Leviathan - are the Neverborn slumbering in the Labyrinth. The portions of the Labyrinth closest to Oblivion is the real Hell. Human theology though is just as imperfect (if not more) than the Garou. So the Abrahamic monotheists, just like the Garou, get some important things right, but lots of wrong too. (I would also add that other human religions can also be depicted in this way - nobody is always right, but there are plenty of people who are also not always wrong.)

However, just as Garou belief can shape the spirits so they are comprehensible to them can human belief. Demons are spirits too, just from the Astral plane not the Middle Umbra. As they get closer to the finite world of reality, rather than the transcendent realm of the eternal, they basically get confused and believe a lot of what consensual reality tells us about them as they adapt to the laws of the reality they are entering. They lose a lot of knowledge (but not all of it) of actual reality.

The Demons of Demons: the Fallen, the Demons detailed in the Astral Plane, and the Demonics of the Tempest are equally demons and equally not the "real" demons. Depending on the ST they are either different manifestations of the same entity, manifestations of different entities, or a mix of them plus "false" demons.

Gaia is "just" a Celestine. The Garou just revere her more because that's where they keep all their stuff.

The "Wyrm" as the Garou understand is either just their stand-in for the philosophical problem of evil, or an mythologized entity that represents aspects of Lucifer, Leviathan, and/or Ialdabaoth or a compilation/conflation of them (and possibly other beings).

[Shakanaka]

I do it the opposite way. Yahweh is a servant of the Weaver.

[Asmodai]

I do it the opposite way. Yahweh is a servant of the Weaver.

The Patriarch angle. It works well.

I honestly feel that Demon and Werewolf cosmologies are mutually exclusive. Both settings are dependant on aspects of Faith being provably True and while you can have interesting game choices when a character doubts their Faith and understanding of how the world works, there needs to be a Truth to the universe that matches the core expectations to the game. I've found that Demon cosmology is toxic to Werewolf and vice, versa and am generally of the school that keeps the streams apart to ensure that the setting stays coherent.

[Rhywbeth]

If I were to do the work of putting them together I'd lean on Changeling/DAF lore with everybody being a prodigal and the Mists of Creation and the Firstborn (whom the Elohim belong to).

Hammering it out is a lot of work for something that will never really mesh properly though, and they tend to step on each other's moods, and so for the sake of coherency, I tend to just not have them together and have two different WoDs. In my "True" WoD all game lines exist except DtF. The Triat/Metaphysical Trinity/Primordia are the deity/deities of the setting.

DtF is part of a different WoD which is Abrahamic fiction with only HtR, WtO and VtM as part of the whole.

[Shakanaka]

WtO is more explicitly agnostic than leaning into the Abrahamic side though. I'd say the closest it peers with is Greek Mythology on the western side, and on the eastern side (Dark Kingdom of Jade) it levies more closer to a high fantasy version of Taoism and Chinese folk religions.

[Rhywbeth]

WtO is more explicitly agnostic than leaning into the Abrahamic side though. I'd say the closest it peers with is Greek Mythology on the western side, and on the eastern side (Dark Kingdom of Jade) it levies more closer to a high fantasy version of Taoism and Chinese folk religions.

True, and that's how I like it, but for stories under the theme Wraith has an Abrahamic interpretation to draw from (Abel the first wraith, Eve as the Lady of Fate, etc)