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Now Dark Eras is out for everybody here are some notes on playing Demon in the 15th Century, as well as writeups for Istanbul's distinctive angels and, most excitingly, rules for making Covers from the echoes of people written out of the timeline. I hope people like 'em and I hope you enjoy the chapter!
Compromise in the Godless City
If the God-Machine is absent, or near-enough absent, how does compromise work in 15th/16th century Istanbul? There are several options. The simplest is to have it work as normal, but tweak the Machine’s responses slightly. Since hunter angels are rare (though the Legion is always an option), other servants, less fettered or valued, might be sent instead; cultists, Integrators, Echoes and loyal Exiles. The Sentinels, Nunci Lucis, Doorkeepers or rival demons might also begin to spy on - or even hunt - an unsubtle demon. The compromise Conditions can be used as normal for these alternatives.
You may also want to consider using the rules for the Exclusion Zone found in the Storyteller’s Guide. These could be further tweaked in ways that do not benefit the Unchained – perhaps all Embeds and Exploits suffer a small penalty to activation in the city, since these rely on the God-Machine’s occult backdoors. This penalty might not apply at former Infrastructure, further increasing its value to demons within Constantinople.
Embeds and Exploits
Naturally some of the more technologically focused Embeds and Exploits are useless or very rarely useful in the 15th century. Many of them can be reworked or reskinned, though. Merciless Gunman could easily become Merciless Swordsman. Demon Car arguably becomes even more awesome as Demon Steed.
Crafting Temporal Covers
This is a way to make new Covers without making Pacts and without the huge risks of angel-jacking.
It’s possible to weave a Cover out of the echoes, paradoxes and other temporal flotsam and jetsam left behind when the God-Machine’s servants violate the timeline. Doing so is a two-part process. Firstly, the remnants must be found and examined. The Storyteller decides the Cover rating of the final Cover – the demon must find an equal number of Clues to create the cover, using the rules in the Chronicles of Darkness rulebook. Clue might include physical evidence left at such a missing person missing’s home (found using Investigation), odd memories from former friends and acquaintances (best found through Social interaction) and echoing voices and ghostly phenomena (best deciphered using Science or Occult).
Once the requisite number of Clues has been collected, the demon rolls Intelligence + Resolve, even if they have Clue elements equal or greater than the required number of clues. They may even attempt to create a temporal Cover early. Doing so imposes a -1 to the roll for each missing clue, however, and the total Cover rating is decreased by the same amount.
Dramatic Failure: The demon absorbs all the paradoxes, unable to separate a Cover from them. They must test for compromise with a penalty equal to the rating of the Cover and may never again attempt to create this Cover. Glitches gained as a result of this roll usually have a temporal nature (eg, the demon appears slowed-down or sped up, their speech can be heard moments before their lips move, they blur when they move or leave a series of after-images behind them, all clocks stop or start running backwards in their presence).
Failure: They fail to create the Cover. They may try again, with a cumulative -1 penalty to their dicepool.
Success: The demon may spend Experience to create the Cover as normal.
Exceptional Success: The new Cover’s final rating is increased by one for no Experience cost.
Istanbul’s Angels
Creating these angels was incredibly fun. I designed them so that people could steal the ideas, or the wholesale angel, and use them in other settings and games. With a restrictive wordcount, I quickly realised there wasn’t going to be space to write stats for these guys in the chapter. This was actually rather freeing and lead to them all having unique abilities tricky to model using existing game mechanics… That said, what follows are my attempts to do just that.
Compromise in the Godless City
If the God-Machine is absent, or near-enough absent, how does compromise work in 15th/16th century Istanbul? There are several options. The simplest is to have it work as normal, but tweak the Machine’s responses slightly. Since hunter angels are rare (though the Legion is always an option), other servants, less fettered or valued, might be sent instead; cultists, Integrators, Echoes and loyal Exiles. The Sentinels, Nunci Lucis, Doorkeepers or rival demons might also begin to spy on - or even hunt - an unsubtle demon. The compromise Conditions can be used as normal for these alternatives.
You may also want to consider using the rules for the Exclusion Zone found in the Storyteller’s Guide. These could be further tweaked in ways that do not benefit the Unchained – perhaps all Embeds and Exploits suffer a small penalty to activation in the city, since these rely on the God-Machine’s occult backdoors. This penalty might not apply at former Infrastructure, further increasing its value to demons within Constantinople.
Embeds and Exploits
Naturally some of the more technologically focused Embeds and Exploits are useless or very rarely useful in the 15th century. Many of them can be reworked or reskinned, though. Merciless Gunman could easily become Merciless Swordsman. Demon Car arguably becomes even more awesome as Demon Steed.
Crafting Temporal Covers
This is a way to make new Covers without making Pacts and without the huge risks of angel-jacking.
It’s possible to weave a Cover out of the echoes, paradoxes and other temporal flotsam and jetsam left behind when the God-Machine’s servants violate the timeline. Doing so is a two-part process. Firstly, the remnants must be found and examined. The Storyteller decides the Cover rating of the final Cover – the demon must find an equal number of Clues to create the cover, using the rules in the Chronicles of Darkness rulebook. Clue might include physical evidence left at such a missing person missing’s home (found using Investigation), odd memories from former friends and acquaintances (best found through Social interaction) and echoing voices and ghostly phenomena (best deciphered using Science or Occult).
Once the requisite number of Clues has been collected, the demon rolls Intelligence + Resolve, even if they have Clue elements equal or greater than the required number of clues. They may even attempt to create a temporal Cover early. Doing so imposes a -1 to the roll for each missing clue, however, and the total Cover rating is decreased by the same amount.
Dramatic Failure: The demon absorbs all the paradoxes, unable to separate a Cover from them. They must test for compromise with a penalty equal to the rating of the Cover and may never again attempt to create this Cover. Glitches gained as a result of this roll usually have a temporal nature (eg, the demon appears slowed-down or sped up, their speech can be heard moments before their lips move, they blur when they move or leave a series of after-images behind them, all clocks stop or start running backwards in their presence).
Failure: They fail to create the Cover. They may try again, with a cumulative -1 penalty to their dicepool.
Success: The demon may spend Experience to create the Cover as normal.
Exceptional Success: The new Cover’s final rating is increased by one for no Experience cost.
Istanbul’s Angels
Creating these angels was incredibly fun. I designed them so that people could steal the ideas, or the wholesale angel, and use them in other settings and games. With a restrictive wordcount, I quickly realised there wasn’t going to be space to write stats for these guys in the chapter. This was actually rather freeing and lead to them all having unique abilities tricky to model using existing game mechanics… That said, what follows are my attempts to do just that.
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