The unknown, and Renegades and the Game.

[PenitentDemon]

Have been curious on the unknown for a while (the fallen angels who never pledge themselves to a prince, as described in the angelic players guide)

whats likely to happen to a outcast, running with a renegade gang who falls. since he now has no attunements to speak of, only whatever songs he knew.

Are they likely to shrug and be more at ease with him now, or to grow paranoid, as he hasnt betrayed a prince, and if he sold them out to asmoesdoes, could probaly get a cosh position.

Unless one of thems a wordbound who can grant him attunements. or rites.

with the game it depends I think on a lot, if hes captured in the company of renegades Id imagine theyd not care a brass that he didnt "run" from a prince.

at best he'd be given "one last chance" to swear aleigance to a prince, of the gamesters choosing, otherwise that "technicality" would be ignored and they'd have another renegade to torture to death.

[Jason]

That sounds like a great seed for an outcasts-only campaign: either the PCs are all outcast angels, with one NPC buddy who Falls in the first session, or you just push the PCs toward potentially dissonant situations until one of them Falls, and see how they deal with it...

[JCD]

I dunno. Nothing says 'I'm Sorry' to an Angelic Superior more then a large string of demonic skulls, no matter the flavor.

So, as a demon, Renegade or other, I'd have a REAL ISSUE with an unsworn Fallen Outcast.

[robkelk]

Originally Posted by JCD

I dunno. Nothing says 'I'm Sorry' to an Angelic Superior more then a large string of demonic skulls, no matter the flavor.

I suspect Archangel Novalis would disagree.

[PenitentDemon]

Think it would do much for one looking to make peace with asmoesdoes?

[Attercap]

Originally Posted by PenitentDemon

Think it would do much for one looking to make peace with asmoesdoes?

So long as the skulls were all renegade demons, sure!

[Whitelaughter]

If an Outcast is running with Renegades, then trust issues would already have needed to be worked out.
That said, it cuts both ways - a Renegade shouldn't have any problems being accepte by Fate if they can claim (even partial) credit for an angel Falling!

There are other ways to get Rites and Attunements, besides Superiors. Ethereal Domains, Pagan gods, the Archive in Hell all provide them. Cunning Renegades could pass themselves off as Soldiers of Hell and seek to earn them from lesser WordBound - since a demonic Rite auto-damns a human, then pretending to be a 6 Force mortal unaware of the war might make it comparitively simple to get a Rite.

Smart Renegades though want to stay below the radar, so are going to avoid spending essence on anything to avoid creating disturbance (just dump excess into Limbo on the offchance that a member of your gang is there and you haven't heard about it yet).
Renegades who feel safe will probably trade Songs with each other; and learn Numinous Corpus from zombis they create. That requires being well away from the war; since they are best off keeping moving they'd probably operate from a trading vessel and keep quiet when in port.

[chris the cynic]

Two things have been brought up that are, I think, quite different. The original situation being brought up was "sold them out" now we're discussing "a large string of demonic skulls." I'm going to address the second situation first.

Originally Posted by JCD

Nothing says 'I'm Sorry' to an Angelic Superior more then a large string of demonic skulls, no matter the flavor.

Originally Posted by PenitentDemon

Think it would do much for one looking to make peace with asmoesdoes?

I can't cite any sources to back this up, but I feel like that's not going to help out with Asmodeus too much.

If you come up to Asmodeus and say, "Hi, we've never met before, and I've been running with Renegades for a while, but I'm totally loyal to Hell and just to prove it I've slaughtered all of the witnesses who might be able to say otherwise," I don't think that's going to get a response of trust and gratitude.

Eliminating a Renegade is a basic rite, but that has to be understood in the context that he gives it out to his servitors, beings that he already comes as close to trusting as he is ever likely to come (which probably isn't that close, but it's a lot closer than he'd get with strangers.)

For an outsider to curry favor I think he'd want more than the Renegades' elimination (unless he had a personal interest in the Renegade in question, then it becomes a matter of what that interest was.) I think he'd want the Renegades themselves. Otherwise he has only the outsider's word that the demons were killed because they were Renegades and not, say, because they knew something incriminating about the demon killer standing before him.

I would guess that Asmodeus always suspects an ulterior motive, and if you don't have one you definitely don't want to be the only one he can torture to find that out.

-

If I had been part of a group of Renegades and then I wanted to get on Asmodeus' good side the first thing I'd do is think twice, thrice, and probably a few times after that. The Princes of Hell might be willing to say that all is forgiven to a fallen angel, but most fallen angels have probably never been in the company of Renegades. The fact that I basically skipped the whole "servant of Hell" thing and went straight to Renegade has got to make them wonder if I'll go Renegade again, after all I've done it before. That isn't true for most of the fresh Fallen.

Anyway, if I wanted to get on Asmodeus' good side my first impulse would be to not let anyone know I had been in the company of Renegades in the first place. Just show up, "Hi. I've Fallen. I can tell you all about Heaven and my former Archangel, though the information might be a bit out of date because I was Outcast for a while before I Fell," and not mention the whole bit about falling in with the only group Hell can be argued to hate more than the angels of Heaven.

If I didn't think that would work, if I thought that it would be known that I had been on the same side as Renegades, my strategy still wouldn't be to kill them all. First off, that would be HARD, but more importantly that would eliminate the one thing I had to offer besides myself: Them.

I'd try to get in contact with the Game and offer my services in doing the first thing mentioned in this thread, that being selling them out. Every live Renegade I can bring into the Game represents valuable intelligence. The fact that I'm not eliminating witnesses makes it look like I have nothing to hide.

If Asmodeus is going to know I was with Renegades I most emphatically do not want him to think I'm trying to hide something about it. Because if Asmodeus thinks I'm hiding something from him, something about Renegade demons, I'm probably as screwed as a demon can be without Kronos or Kobol taking a personal (and uncharitable) interest in one's life.

If I want to curry favor I want to deliver Asmodeus something he can use, dead demons are not that thing. That's what he expects from people already working for him in the course of doing their job, I need something sweeter.

There are some concerns though

Even when it comes to selling out the others there would still be some serious risks. When I tried to contact the Game I'd be a demon without a Prince, they might just capture me then and call it a job well done. They could interrogate me to find out what I knew without ever offering me anything better than execution for helping Renegades.

Even if they did leave me free to carry out the selling out process, what's to say that when the others were captured they wouldn't capture me too, claim the entire thing as their idea, take all the credit and leave me to be treated as a captured renegade? Unless I've personally contacted Asmodeus, I have to trust whoever I've been in contact with in the Game that I'll get credit for helping. Does anyone actually trust those guys? Can I afford to?

-

What it all comes down to in the end is that, unsworn or not, I'm a demon who was part of a group of Renegades. It's going to be difficult, though not impossible, to play that in a way that works out well wrt Asmodeus.

My odds of success are going to be slightly better than a demon who went Renegade, but I'll face a lot of the same hurdles.

I think my best bet would really be to leave the whole "ran with a Renegade gang" thing off my resume. That, and try to make sure that I have the protection of a Prince who don't like Asmodeus very much so that if it ever comes out I'll be protected.

-

I appear to be incapable of writing a short post, sorry.

[PenitentDemon]

Originally Posted by chris the cynic

I think my best bet would really be to leave the whole "ran with a Renegade gang" thing off my resume. That, and try to make sure that I have the protection of a Prince who don't like Asmodeus very much so that if it ever comes out I'll be protected.

-

I appear to be incapable of writing a short post, sorry.

Asked this before but whats a princes protection likely going to amount to in most cases?

Or an archangels for that matter, it says that Michael "protects his servitors" from Dominic.

Lobbying, threats of declarations of war, or political denouncement, in cases of blatant abduction , especialy if you feel Asmoesdoes just HAPPENED to pick one of your best servitors, for a lenghthy interrogation, coincidence of course.

likely to vary , as on one hand you dont want to get into war with hells best spymaster, and lucifer's pet... on the other hand... you dont want to be seen as toothless.. ESPECIALY if you hes coming up with charges out of nowhere to weaken your organization.

[chris the cynic]

I need to proofread better, "I have the protection ... so that ... I'll be protected," is pretty redundant.

-

Anyway, that's going to depend very much on the exact details of the case. Asmodeus is very unlikely to take a personal interest in the case. He has all of Hell to spy on after all. (I leave as an exercise to the reader whether a hostile Prince would be more or less likely to be actively obstructive in a case that Asmodeus was personally involved in.)

Protection means protection from the Game's organization. Probably most of what a Prince could do would be in terms of disruption and non-cooperation.

No one is going to want to go to war against Asmodeus, but Asmodeus isn't going to want to go to war against them either. He's not going to knock over the board and change to a more violent game over a pawn he doesn't like.

So we're not talking about armies or anything here. Something more like keeping you continually in places the Game can't reach. Misdirecting any investigations the Game has into you. That sort of thing. And misdirection shouldn't be too difficult in Hell. There is an entire band of demons known as the Liars after all. Presumably every Prince knows of some of Asmodeus' spies and lets them think they've gone undetected in order to feed them bad information. I'm sure you can think of things Princes can do to slow down or throw off an investigation.

Of course the best weapon would be truth. If a Prince finds out that someone is doing something of which the Game would not approve, is he going to run off to Asmodeus and tell him, or is he going to keep that fact in reserve so that it can be used to redirect investigations? If in the process of sniffing around an apparently loyal demon (you) who may have been associated with Renegades before coming to Hell demons of the Game should stumble onto actual treason on the part of someone else... well naturally they'd follow up on the treason they stumbled across.

Though that only works once. (First, a Prince isn't going to want to waste all his secrets on one servitor, second it would look suspicious if it happened more than once.)

But the primary thing is simply going to be keeping you out of the hands of the Game. Saying that you can't be spared. If your Prince refuses to let the Game deal with you until there is hard proof, and they can't get that proof without interrogating you, well then you should be relatively safe simply because you aren't important enough for Asmodeus to risk disrupting the game over. Sure, his spies will investigate further, they always do, but unless there something compelling out there it's going to be much harder for Asmodeus to get his hands on you if you're a servitor than if your a demon without Superior. And the ideal situation is if your Superior is openly hostile to him, because then your Superior has no reason to cooperate.

If the Game actually gets possession of you, well you know what they say about the secret police and elephants*, so at that point you could be pretty well screwed unless you are really important. The important thing is probably keeping that from happening.

-

* A bunch of sheep arrive at the Russian boarder looking to leave. The boarder guard asks why, the sheep respond, "It's the secret police. The Central Committee has ordered them to arrest all elephants."

The border guard says, "But you are not Elephants."

The sheep respond, "Try telling that to the secret police."

I imagine that the jokes demons make about life with the Game constantly looking over your shoulder would be similar to the ones that those living in the USSR made about their lives with respect to the secret police.