Those Who Bring Strife

by me, click to enlarge

DEMONS OF THE TENTH ORDER—Those Who Bring Strife

The Nephthyd or Nehemoth, The Daughters of Night, The Demons of the Tenth Order come twisting on their long bellies, igniting strange passions. Their bodies have the appearance of beautiful women and of strange beasts. They can be summoned but will also call to lost souls in the night, unbidden. They whisper secrets and advise rash action. Their aspect is pleasant and immoral, their goal universal discord.

Their true names have ten syllables, like Agratma’hlat’li’lit’naama’heish’eth and She Whose Voice Is Red Rich And Merciless. They may be summoned when the semiplanet Eris conjoins the Moon by inspiring ten equidistant suicides in a decagonal pattern.

Demon City stats

Calm: 6

Agility: 7

Toughness: 8

Perception: 6

Appeal: 9

Cash: 0

Knowledge: 8

Calm Check: 9

Cards: Moon (18), Empress (3), Queen of Cups (10), Ten of Pentacles

Special abilities:

Demonic: Demons don’t need to breathe or digest, don’t age, and are immune to poison, etc. and cannot be mentally controlled with psionic abilities. Animals will avoid the demon in any form. Explosives cannot harm these demons but firearms can.

Sixth Sense: All demons are supersensitive to danger, hostile emotions and signs of past trauma or the supernatural.

Shapeshift: These demons can appear to be ordinary women, dogs, serpents, or nocturnal birds of any kind. In any form they will have red specs on their bellies.

Emerge from the Darkness: If unwitnessed, Nephthyds may step into any shadow in the city where they are summoned and reappear through any other.

Claws: These allow the Nehemoth to inflict damage and grapple in the same attack.

Kiss of Frenzy: The kiss of these demons allows the creature to select one of the target’s desires and force it to dominate their personality. The emotion must be one that the target already feels in some capacity. The target may make a Calm check to resist vs Intensity 9 once per hour.

Ten Plagues: The Nehemoth often offer to afflict the enemies of the mortals they prey upon. They may inflict each of these effects once every ten days: Turn up to 1000 gallons of water to blood, cause a rain of frogs to afflict a 100 foot radius for 10 minutes , give up to 10 targets lice for ten days, cause a distract halo of flies to surround up to 10 targets for 10 days, cause anthrax in up to 10 cattle, afflict a target with painful boils (-1 Toughness), cause hail in a 100 foot radius for 10 days, cause locusts to swarm a 1000-foot radius for 10 days, cause darkness over a city-sized area for three days, cause the death of a target’s first-born.

Seduction: Any one who lays with a Demon of the Tenth Order must serve her for 100 days in the form of a beast of her choosing.

Weaknesses:

The holy symbols of any faith causes a demon to make a Calm check or flee until they are out of sight. The intensity of the calm check is equal to the degree of fervor of whoever is wielding it (1-9). In the case of an incidentally encountered symbol (a glimpsed church steeple, for instance) the intensity is 2.

Touching a holy symbol, including holy water, does damage to a demon as an ordinary physical attack.

Speaking the true name of demon causes it great pain, and the creature must make a Calm Check against the speaker’s Calm each round to avoid obeying the attacker.

These demons delight in the red glow of true neon light, and must make a Calm check vs an Intensity of 9 to move out of its light should they see it.

Donate to the Demon City Patreon here