Demons and the Faithless

[Mikael]

Hello

Here´s a stupid question. I thought I would ask it here before my players ask me.

Given that we have a game where the demons will become manifest, i.e., they are not just "bad luck", why is the rest of the world not run over by the demons, without the Dogs to protect them?

And before you say, "who says it isn´t?" The Dogs might think so, but it won´t wash. The world of the Faithless might be full of Pride and Sin, but there are also happy families and no armies of flesh-eating sorcerers wielding demonic fire.

Is the Faith actually making the Faithful vulnerable to the demons?

See, I told you it was a stupid question.

+ Mikael

[lumpley]

Well, the truth is that if your game goes Back East you should use the town creation rules, and if your game doesn't go Back East then Back East doesn't even exist. Does it?

Ask a Dog, however, and here's the answer: the demons don't care what nonFaithful do. They just go ahead and let the nonFaithful live their lives however they like, no need for sorcery or possession or anything like. Why? Because the demons already own them.

Yes, joining the Faith brings you to the attention of the demons. Of course it does. It makes you their enemy.

-Vincent

[Mikael]

Hmm. So essentially every Faithful person is "fighting the good fight" for humanity, his or her life on the line, and the Dogs' job is to keep the army in fighting condition. Dig.

+ Mikael

[Neal]

When a player asked me recently if he could bring in a Faithful character from Back East, of course I said Yes.  He asked me what Back East was like, and I gave him the glimpse from the rulebook.
"So, is it like a total Sodom and Gamorra?" he asked.
"Does it need to be?" I asked back.  "You tell me."
He hesitated.  "More like Limbo, I guess.  They got everything but Hope."

I liked that answer.  The Faithful have Hope, and that's what the demons can't stand.

[Vaxalon]

I agree, Neal.  "What is the nature of Back East" is a question best left, I think, to Back East characters.

[Neal]

I agree, Neal.  "What is the nature of Back East" is a question best left, I think, to Back East characters.

I think that's one way to look at it, though my response to the player was intended more to tease him into making some statements of his own about his character.

I know I have my preferences about Back East, drawn mostly from my reading (check out Timothy Gilfoyle's City of Eros for a scholarly study of the spread of prostitution Back East during the very decades Dogs takes place; check out George Foster's New York by Gas-Light for a colorful and raunchy contemporary account; check out any book about the murder of Helen Jewett and the subsequent trial of Frank Robinson for a glimpse of how bad things can get, and a notion of why sending a group of Dogs briefly Back East is something I'm aching to try). 

Still, as Vincent points out, if it's not in play, it doesn't exist.  There's no point worrying about it if it doesn't come into play; that just leads to splatbooks and confusion.  Or as someone once told me, "Ain't no good guessin' what a bat's flyin' after."

[Vaxalon]

Why would Dogs go Back East?  Perhaps a group of young Faithful have gone to a Back East University to pick up some skills that the Faithful despearately need, and even though the Ancients have chosen the most well protected site for them that they could, nevertheless every community of Faithful, no matter how distant, must be visited by Dogs periodically.

[Neal]

Fred, I like that scenario.  In the early days of the LDS, there were some rather vicious examples of persecution to congregations Back East.  Then as now, folks were willing to do some rather horrifying things in the name of "right religion."  A GM could easily call upon a group of Dogs for a very special mission to one of those urban congregations.  Or he could just set his game there from the start.  In fact, a Dogs in Gotham campaign might bear some interesting fruit.  Instead of road agents, corrupt TA guys, and renegade Mountain People, the Dogs could encounter intolerant citizen militias, corrupt ward bosses, and dens of vice and sin.  Same structure, with something wrong in a branch working out to Pride, Sin, False Doctrine, and so on, but with an urban flavor, more soot than sand.  And the Demons would want much the same thing as before: isolate and threaten the branch, then turn it inside out.  But in the city, they've got so many more tools at hand.

Also, the city needn't dominate a game when it comes into play.  Consider a group of Dogs who are looking into "wrongness" in a branch and find that someone near the source of the wrongness has fled Back East.  For example, the town I'm running next week features an incestuous and adulterous relationship between a girl and her uncle.  When the girl gets pregnant, the uncle suddenly remembers business in an eastern city, and he departs, rather than share the girl's shame.  The Dogs might decide to hunt him down, or they might not.  If they do, the whole hunt might be conducted as one prolonged conflict, or a conflict and its follow-ups: Tracking Uncle Peter; Confronting Uncle Peter about his sins; Returning Uncle Peter to the branch (or judging him on the spot).  If I need color and additional conflicts, they're right there at hand: the red-light districts, the penny theaters, the oyster cellars, the burlesque galleries.  If the players just want to be done with Back East and return home to the desert, we can do that too.  As with other things in DitV, much relies on whether the Dogs see this city as a "person" or a storage place for "furniture."  Do they bear a particular grudge toward the city?  If not now, how about after they've been there three or four times?  That's their call, but if a GM plays the city to the hilt, the players might just adopt a personal attitude toward its institutions and its citizens.