Page 125 - Chronicles of Darkness

those spirits into itself and grows larger and more powerful.
As spirits become more powerful, they become less pure as
reflections of their origins and more thematic in nature. For Other Entities
example, the spirit of a single owl grows by consuming other
owl spirits. As it consumes spirits of night, hunting, the prey The ghosts, spirits, and angels presented here
its owl eats, and other owl spirits, the spirit subtly changes. By aren’t the only ephemeral entities to exist. The vari-
the time it is an independent, thinking being that no longer ous Chronicles of Darkness games have used the
follows the physical creature that created it around, it has spirit rules this section provides to represent many
warped into an exaggerated spirit of silent nocturnal hunting. different beings, from the inhabitants of an astral
The Essence it consumes also has an effect — an owl spirit world visited by mages, to demonic owls made of
smoke with a strange connection to vampires.
evolving in an urban area feeds on different Essence than one
in the countryside, and its appearance is colored by its diet. Just as ghosts, spirits, and angels are slightly dif-
When mortal characters encounter spirits, something ferent, adapting these beings to use the rules here
has gone wrong. Some spirits are capable of using their pow- involves setting out both where they follow these
ers through the Gauntlet and, as their self-awareness grows rules and where they don’t. Future books may de-
with power, decide to create food sources for themselves by tail ephemeral entities particular to those games.
influencing what sort of spirits and Essence will be created
around them. The true culprit behind an unusual pattern
of domestic murders, for example, might be a murder spirit
using its abilities to escalate arguments into homicides. with hydraulics, gears, and hissing machines surrounding
The spirits that mortal investigators encounter in the the angels while keeping them fed with Essence. They’re
physical world are refugees and escapees, those that crossed always guarded.
the Gauntlet to flee the constant risk of being killed and Being essentially tools designed by an intelligent, if unknow-
absorbed by larger spirits. They constantly strive to main- able, creator to fulfill specific functions, angels are far more
tain their Essence, desperate to avoid returning to their specialized than spirits or ghosts. They’re also usually more
own world. Without an easy source of Essence, spirits must subtle and able to go unnoticed even when Manifested, but are
anchor themselves like ghosts, finding an object or person extremely single minded, aiming to complete the task they’ve
that reflects their nature and tying their ephemeral bodies been sent for and then vanish. The God-Machine sends angels
to them. The spirit remains intangible — and is often actu- to make adjustments to Infrastructure and its plans when some-
ally “inside” the host — but is safe from starvation as long as thing has gone wrong and the gears can’t self-correct. Angels
the host generates enough Essence to feed it. By influenc- hunt down individuals who have failed to die at the proper
ing the host, or humans interacting with a material host, to time, acquire replacements for lynchpins that have unexpectedly
more closely reflect its nature, the spirit gets a ready supply failed, and make corrections to the flow of causality, carefully
of Essence and may move on to more permanent forms of setting up minor events (the closing of a door, the drop of a
possession. Many items thought of as having wills of their pen, a sudden distracting sound at just the right time) which will
own, or as being cursed, actually house spirits. have increasingly-large repercussions. The Conditions needed
to bring an angel into the world, though, are much more com-
Angels plicated than a ghost’s anchors or a spirit’s essence, requiring
layers of Infrastructure, precise timing, and occult maneuvers
Functions of the God-Machine which are barely understood. Occult literature is filled with
Unlike ghosts, who feed by being remembered and angel-summoning rites, but they’re mostly useless — if mortal
struggle to maintain their grip on the world, and spirits who cultists participate in calling an angel to a mission, it will be
flee their own Darwinian hell to carve a foothold in mate- because they are themselves part of the Infrastructure it needs.
rial reality, angels are both temporary visitors to the mortal
The God-Machine isn’t some far-off thing lurking in a dis- Game Systems
realm and its only true “natives” among ephemeral beings.
tant dimension; it’s here, in the material world, built from Ghosts, spirits and angels share a broad set of rules, with
mechanisms hidden from sight by guile and magic. When minor variations to cover situations such as spirits reaching
cultists summon a spirit, it journeys from the Shadow. When across the Gauntlet.
an angel is needed, the God-Machine is as likely to build the
angel right there as direct an existing one to journey to the The State of Twilight
site. When angels are reused, they spend the downtime “rest-
ing,” dormant, in storage facilities hidden by the very deepest Unless they Manifest or use a power to appear, ephemeral
Infrastructure. Sometimes, cultists and prying outsiders who beings remain in their insubstantial state when in the mate-
witness the gears catch glimpses of these facilities — cavern- rial world. This state is described as “Twilight.” To beings in
ous chambers, folded neatly into impossible spaces, filled Twilight, physical objects appear pale and semitransparent,

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Horrors and wonders-antagonists