Page 125 - Hunter the Vigil - Mortal Remains

CHAPTER FIVE: TO HELL AND BACK

with her ever-knowing. Partial Cover is far easier for hunters to Purposes
figure out, for the conspiracy only goes so far.
Institutional demons can be divided into roughly the same
Fiendish Flaws purposes as greater demons.
Each greater demon has one little gap in its Cover, a Fiendish Cryptics gather intelligence. They know what consumers
Flaw that no amount of trickery can erase. Here are some examples: buy. They know who they call. Their constituent employees ex-
ploit personal information as if it didn’t belong to someone.
A tattoo-like glyph on the demon’s forearm that’s visible Heaven forbid the creature is a government agency, with access
through clothing. to the ability to act on that information. It doesn’t worry about
“terrorist” or “un-American.” It just sees a disruption to its sys-
Flowers die whenever the demon passes by.
tem, and moves to possess or destroy.
A thirst for battery acid. Libertines exploit society’s endless need to be entertained.
They’re not all movie studios and media companies. Sometimes,
The demon’s blood stains faintly reveal his current they’re the casinos off the highway or the liquor store that’s always
Cover’s features. fully stocked and never makes the right change. They play both
sides of the pornographic-religious complex that keeps believers
Mottled skin shows patterns that blends circuitry with ashamed of their urges while paying to indulge them. They’re
hieroglyphs. the churches that pack stadium seating and blast salvation from
jumbotrons, even as they solicit donations for a private jet.
Must shake hands with the left (sinister) hand.
Demolishers are the institutions that exist to crush soci-
Reeks of industrial solvents. ety. Sure, they seem like they do something useful. The payday
loan store that occupies a harmless-looking unit in a strip mall.
Only speaks in rhyme. The massage parlor next door. The urban planning commis-
sion that razes homes in the name of development, but never
Wounds scar in the shape of an upside-down pentagram. builds anew. The phone company that always finds a reason to
disconnect the lines of the “undesirables.”
TVs only broadcast static, regardless of manufacturing
year or condition. Unholy Strengths of

The demon suffers from a temporal distortion and Institutional Demons
seems to skip or rewind.
Institutional demons, for all they seem rooted in our ev-
eryday lives, aren’t entirely real. They manifest as fears of the
Institutional Demons establishment as much as they are the establishment. As such,
they possess characteristics similar to greater demons.
Some demons don’t bother possessing humans at all. They
don’t take one face at a time; they have many. They don’t live in Attributes, Advantages,
a posh apartment downtown; they’re the entire building. They and Merits
don’t corrupt a Wall Street brokerage; they are the brokerage. Institutional demons possess Power, Finesse, and Resis-
Institutional demons are the monsters that “help” society tance Attributes. They use these when resisting magical effects
function. Hunters can’t kill them, but they can diminish their – which do work against demons, provided you can find a per-
influence. Instead of demonic possession, these demons are son or thing that embodies the demon.
the masterminds operating vast flows of personnel processes, Their Willpower is equal to the total of all of their Attri-
information, and above all, “outreach” — a euphemism that de- butes. Institutions can draw on extensive resources.
scribes how they inflict their corruption upon the world. Institutional demons typically possess the Allies, Contacts,
The nature of an institutional demon is enigmatic. Are and Retainer Merits at high levels, though their reach often
they fallen creatures who oppose the demiurge like greater de- goes beyond those Merits.
mons do? Are they broken processes of creation, like lesser de- Cover
mons? Hunters aren’t sure. Some work to preserve the status
quo. A development company pursues contracts to gentrify an An institutional demon is wrapped in layers and layers of
old neighborhood, keeping the poor poorer while the demon Cover. It can provide human agents with the advantages of a
and its investors become even wealthier. Some seem genuinely greater demon’s Cover at the cost of two Willpower points per
committed to change. A startup is at the forefront of American mortal instead of one. Agents usually aren’t aware that they’re
energy independence, while oil spills and derricks fed on hu- being helped out – these humans assume they had the object
man blood are damned. or contact all along.
Regardless of what, if anything, they serve, institutional de- An institutional demon’s Cover does not mask its super-
mons make the World of Darkness a little darker each time natural nature, but successfully detecting the influence requires
they succeed. They’re not grand conspirators. They are entities a person or thing that embodies the demon, such as a human
who care about their own survival — regardless the cost. agent or significant object.

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