Powerful and trecherous servants that can help the PCs or make them wish they had never been born.
A Demonic slave is a soul that agrees to obey whoever owns its talisman in exchange for corporeal life. If the talisman that controls it is destroyed or their owner dies, the contract binding them to the corporeal world is broken and it goes back to the world of the dead, which it will avoid at all costs. Demonic slaves make great bodyguards and have been used as enforcers, thieves, spies, and lovers for their owners.
Demonic slaves have neither compassion nor malice toward the human race. They only follow orders. How well they are treated by their owners determines how their orders are intrepreted and carried out. Smart owners are polite.
If a demonic slave is ordered to rob a bank, it will do so, but if the slave is mistreated, it will shapechange to it’s owner, rob the bank, shoot a guard and a couple of cops, and leave fingerprints and DNA all over the place.
GMs should recall stories about genies and what can happen when wishers are greedy, shortsighted, and stupid. (Not that the player characters are any of those things, heh, heh, heh.)
The talisman is a physical object that can only be destroyed by its owner. It can be bought, sold, traded, stolen, and inherited like anything else. PCs who wish to steal one will be wise to remember that one of the first orders a slave gets is to protect the talisman.
The Sleepers are known to posess one and Alex Able probably has at least one as well.
Demonic Slaves cannot do magic, but many of them have been around for centuries and have picked up a few things they can pass along to inquiring minds. They have a unique skill called Jack-of-all-trades that can be used in place of any skill except for magic and combat.
They can also shapechange into any person, down to fingerprints and DNA.
Beginning stats
Body 100 (Like hitting a brick wall)
Struggle 50
Speed 50 (Nimble little minx)
Dodge 50
Initiative 50
Mind 50 (Trivial pursuit champion)
Jack-of-all-trades 30
Soul 70 (Spookily perceptive)
Know how to screw people 50
Many Demonic Slaves are centuries old and gain experience the way characters do. Here are some stats for older slaves.
Body 150 (Did you get the number of the truck?)
Struggle 90
Speed 75 (Where did THAT come from?)
Dodge 70
Initiative 70
Mind 70 (Fount of all wisdom)
Jack-of-all-trades 60
Soul 90 (Mind reader)
Know how to screw people 75
Remember that Demonic Souls can’t do magic but can do anything else. If players get their hands on one, make em pay.
I assume these demons are different from UA demons. The mere fact that they obey without question seems to suggest this. UA demons also want to possess a corporeal body as a means, not an end, and exist to continue satisfying some kind of obsession.
Lastly, the ability to produce a corporeal body from thin air for the demon sounds rather powerful. Maybe the talisman could be used as a way to cause permanent possession of a specific demon for the one who wears it? You could divide the talisman into two parts: one for the owner and controller of the slave, and one for the victim who the demon possesses. The “master” talisman might be the only way to remove a “slave” talisman from the possessed victim.
Overall, though, I feel Unspeakable Servants better serve the role you’re trying to fill (without the shapeshifting, of course).
I like the classic Mischeivious Genie angle, but these demonic slaves seem a bit cheaper than I’ve come to expect from UA Magick. My question is: where do they get the material “stuff” to shapeshift in the first place? Are they made out of old junk or corpses, like the Unspeakable Servants mentioned above? Or, are they “ectoplasm” maybe(mostly moisture from the body of the person who owns the talisman?) That’d be cool, while your genie is out running errands for you, you’re a dehydrated brittle shell, rotting in a cot or an emaciated freak sitting downtown at a juice bar slamming back watered-down punch and carrot juice. And it might be neat if the demonic servant was always, ALWAYS capricious, no matter how nicely you treat them. Or, you could go with the classic “magic/demonic deal = spiritual corruption/physical addiction” angle, where the deal seems great at first but the wishes always go a LITTLE bit wrong, so you always have to make JUST ONE MORE wish, that the demonic servant is happy to grant… so long as you keep drinking lots of fluids.
Unqualified capriciousness sounds good to me too. How you treat ’em should seem to have an effect, but if you’re mean they justify it as revenge, and if you’re nice they justifiy it as taking initiative to help you (and simply misunderstanding what you really want).
I like the idea of demonic slaves justifying their fickle attitude to themselves as much as to their “masters.” That adds a nicely cruel touch. Perhaps that’s why they “serve” in the first place – these creatures grow out of that need to displace our own guilt contrasting with our need to do things we feel guilty about. Maybe that’s why the talisman is indestructible, it’s more symbolic than real. Something like that old saw, the silver cord that connects a soul to a body. In that way, the demonic servant would be something like your own evil side or, rather, your own naughty side.
That might be an angle, too. It’s powerful enough to do what you REALLY want, no matter what you actually tell it to do.
But that makes them sound more like the 23-sided die, which is way too upfront about it’s crippling uselessness to be a good UA gadget.
Knowing (or, at least, learning quickly) that your latest kick-butt mojo won’t make your life any easier (and, in some cases, may be making it worse) is part of the charm of UA Magick, to my mind.
Besides, a Body 100 creature that SEEMS to follow your orders is hardly cripplingly useless. Just because it always does horrible things doesn’t mean you can’t use it to bluff, to cheat and to transcend nasty situations.
Plus, I still don’t know what it’s MADE of? I mean, does it just appear as a fully-formed human male? Is it a real-life version of the crude etchings on its talisman? Is it made from smokeless fire? Does it assemble itself from the words on your talisman or walk out of the nearest pool of shadows? Is it just something you imagine is acting or that the universe implies is there to cover up granted wishes? Is it, I would like to know, ectoplasm, imagination or stolen flesh?
I was talking about the “what you really want, no matter what you say” part.
As I understand it, the real horror of most discrete UA unnatural phenomena is that you could stop using them whenever you want, but it just seems to keep being almost worth it. That’s interesting, it’s playable.
Something that you have absolutely no direct control over, and very little indirect control, isn’t.
No, I see what you’re saying. But I was rather thinking of the “world of our desires,” angle, the idea that what we want is often pretty horrible indeed, as opposed to what we think we want or what we hope we want, as people.
It’s really just an excuse for me to throw at my players when they complain about the apalling behavior of their new toy. It helps to have one handy, even though, I suspect, we all expect our genies to be meanies.