Ex Libris Nocturnis

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Shard Angels
by Michael "Dracon" Zwiers (mrzwiers@wanadoo.nl) Summary: A new type of Angels defending mankind from the Fallen. This article originally appeared on Ex Libris Nocturnis at the URL: http://www.nocturnis.net/articles/demon/default /2004/February/409/page1.html

Introduction
When the Fallen came to Earth, a group of Guardian Angels who still are loyal to the Host saw what happened. The Fallen grabbed whatever Faith they could find and used it for their own good, or evil. After months of watching the Fallen do as they please, the Guardian Angels decided to intervene. They started imbuing humans by giving them a shard of their angelic essence. This gave humans the powers to make them able to fight against the Fallen. But humans have frail bodies, which were never made to cope with such powers. A small price to pay for the resulting effects, the Guardians decided. The resulting Shard Angels soon divided into three Factions, each with their own perspective on the situation. The Saviors are mainly defensive, helping out mankind and keeping them away the monstrous Demons as best they can. Destroyers are mainly offensive, killing just about any Demon in sight. Mediators are neither, and both. They try to make piece between the Fallen, mankind and themselves to the best of their abilities. Finally there is a group of unaligned. They have no general way they look at the Fallen, it is different for each person.

Abilities
Shard Angels tap into the shards they have received and can learn to use the Lores of the Angels. This does not come easy though. While they start out with some of the powers right away, they need to build up their Faith to gain access to a new batch. To do that they need to prove that they can indeed do what they are made to do. This is done by acting out in accordance to the Virtues. Whenever a Shard Angel does something that matches her primary Virtue, there is a chance that her Faith rating is increased. If Faith reaches a high enough level a new group of the powers inside the shard are accessed and are available for the Shard Angel to use. The Faith level then returns to normal, and the whole cycle starts over again. More about this later. Shard Angels each start out with a few Lores, just like Fallen. There is a difference though. Shard Angels are not tormented, and thus do not gain access to or suffer the high Torment effects of the evocations. Shard Angels also gain access to some of the Visage elements of Angels. But the biggest edge they have is the power to do all the types of prayers that can be done. In fact Shard Angels can do prayers much easier than many other can do them.

Factions
Saviors
Quote: Safety first! Lets get these people out of here. Well deal with the Demon later. This type of Shard Angels is generally very caring and careful. They try to figure out the situation before taking actions. And

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when they finally decide to take actions they try to save people first and get them away from the Demons. They have a knack for seeing what the best options are and do the right thing. They mainly seek out the high Torment Demons and rescue people from their grasps, sometimes at the cost of their own lives. Low Torment Demons are generally not on their hit-list. In fact, Saviors are known to work with Fallen with a low Torment from time to time. Most Saviors them tend to have a nature or demeanor of Caregiver. They favor Mental and Social Attributes and have no real favor for any type of the Abilities. Primary Virtue: Conscience Favorite Lores: Awakening, Patterns About the others: Mediators: While some of those Demons out there are actually worth working together with, I think the Mediators are trying to take it one step too far. Destroyers: Useful for getting those pesky Demons off our hands, while we have better things to do. Unaligned: We have no idea what to do with them. But most of them turn out to be pretty helpful from time to time. Demons: Some of them are actually okay. But most of them use people for their own good. We not to stop that from happening.

Mediators
Quote: Cant we work something out here? Mediators tend to be different per situation. At one time they destroy a Demon and at another they work with them. But generally they try to work out some compromise which benefits all involved. They rely on slick talking to get them out of a situation. But when all fails they do whats best in for themselves. Dealing with the devil is something you do not take lightly, and they know it. Mediators are known to take charge and convince others to join them for the cause, even if the cause turns out to be a bit dubious. Mediators often have Director as Nature or Demeanors, or something similar. They favor Social just slightly over Mental Attributes. Talents are often chosen over the other two Abilities. Primary Virtue: Conviction Favorite Lores: Humanity, Longing About the others: Saviors: They often share similar ideas, but in practice they need to have some more trust in working together. Destroyers: Kill, kill, kill. Thats the only thing on their minds. They need to broaden their horizons a bit more. Unaligned: Some agree with us, some do not. Well have to talk to them some time and see if we can get more to work with us. Demons: They are just misunderstood.

Destroyers
Quote: There is another one. Get him! The members of this faction are the fighters of the Shard Angels. Any Demon they can find they kill off, no matter what level of Torment they have. With some persuasion they can be motivated by a person of the other Factions to work together with a Fallen to kill another, but afterwards they often turn against the temporary allies and try to kill them nonetheless. To Destroyers Demons are a plague that needs to be eradicated. Destroyers often think before they act, which sometimes gets them in big trouble. Aggressive Natures or Demeanors are often found amongst the Destroyers. They almost always have high Physical traits and very often choose Talents and sometimes Skills over other Abilities.

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Primary Virtue: Courage Favorite Lores: Flesh, Flame About the others: Saviors: Let them handle the victims. We have more important things to do. Mediators: Work together with Demons? Never! Unaligned: They often stand in the way, although some of them proof to be very good warriors. Demons: We are the hunters, they are they prey.

Unaligned:
Quote: Hmm... Good or Bad? Eww... Ugly! I think its best to get rid of this one. The unaligned are people who do not fall in any previous category. They are often single individuals or people working with a mixed group of Shard Angels. They have a wide range of ideas of how to handle Demons. Some almost fit in with the other Factions, others have ideas that fit none. There are groups comprised of only unaligned out there, but those are rare. They generally take every situation differently, depending on their way of thinking. Each unaligned is different from the other. There are no favored traits. Primary Virtue: None Favorite Lores: Fundament, Portals About the others: The Factions: Some share ideas, some do not. Sometimes we work together, sometimes we dont. It all depends on the person and the situation. Demons: Most of them are up to no good. Those need to be taken care of, one way or the other. Well see how it turns out.

Systems
Sheet
The Demon sheet can be used with just one small difference: The word Torment needs to be changed into Prayers. Detecting Supernatural Creatures If you have any houserule on Demons being able to detect other Demons or supernatural creatures, then that rule also applies to Shard Angels. Otherwise Shard Angels can detect if someone is a supernatural creature with successful Perception + Awareness roll at difficulty 7. 1 success reveals if it is a supernatural, 2 reveals if it is good or evil of nature. 3 successes reveals the type of creature. Faith Shard Angels start out at a Faith rating of 3. Each time when you do something that is good according to your primary Virtue, and the Virtue roll for that is successful then the Faith rating of the Shard Angel increases by one. When the Virtue roll fails, it was not enough to lift the spirit of the Shard Angel, and the Faith rating stays the same. In case of a botch the situation backfires to the shard and the Shard Angel suffers from the setback. This decreases Faith by one per 1 rolled, proving once more that the sometimes cannot handle all this power well enough. Unaligned:The Unaligned do not have a primary Virtue, so for them it works differently. They gain a new dot in their Faith rating whenever they have had a success on the rolls of two different Virtues. These rolls must be no more than a week of in-game time apart of each other, or else the Faith rating does not increase. It also does not work if it were two rolls of the

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same Virtue. Spending Faith The boxes under the Faith rating can be used only for healing. Healing works exactly the same as with Demons (including any house you may have for healing aggravated damage). You can use as much boxes as you have as Faith rating. A dot of the Faith rating can be sacrificed to make sure that you activate your Visage. This is instead of the normal Virtue roll. Dots of Faith are needed to fuel level 4 and 5 Lores. And a dot can also be spend on getting an automatic success on an evocation roll. Regaining Faith Shard Angels can regain Faith in the same ways Fallen can, either daily Faith from Thralls or from reaping. Reaping can only be done in benevolent ways. When Faith Reaches The Top Whenever Faith reaches 10, the player can decide to use this to gain a dot in a Virtue. This in turn gives you access to new Lores and sometimes to new Visage elements. If the choice indeed has been made to do this, the Faith rating goes back to 3. You do not have to do this, but you cannot go above 10, so extra gained dots are wasted. It does not matter if more than 3 boxes were used at the point of converting it to a Virtue point. But from then on you need to keep the new maximum in mind. So it is very wise to heal before cashing in the Faith dots. Thralls Shard Angels can make Thralls, just like the Fallen. There are several differences though. A Shard Angel needs to convince the Thrall-to-be to believe in the Host or in Angels of the Host. A Thrall-to-be can never be convinced by making him believe in the Shard Angel in any way. On top of that a Shard Angel can only create a pact if the Thrall is not forced. When the pact is established, the Shard Angel can reform potential Faith as Fallen can do, but is limited in what he can give or take. Converting to daily Faith costs 2 potential Faith, instead of 1. One of those two points is Faith is goes to the Host or the Guardian Angels, while the other is daily Faith for the Shard Angel to gain according to normal rules. You can convert points into daily Faith as much as the amount of available potential Faith allows for. When converting a potential Faith point into freebies you can only apply 5 freebies instead of 10. Finally only the normal 4 Visage element can be given, since Shard Angels do not have access to high Torment Visage elements. Visage elements and evocations cost the same as with the Fallen. Virtues Factions: A character starts with a rating of 3 in his or her primary Virtue. The other two Virtues start at 2. The primary Virtue must at all times be equal or higher than to other two. For each dot past the first one in a primary Virtue you can activate more Visage elements at a single time. This means you start with two elements at a time. When the primary Virtue is raised to 4 you can activate 3 elements at once. And finally, when the primary Virtue reaches 5 you can activate all the Visage elements at once. Unaligned:The Shard Angels start with each Virtue at 2. For them no Virtue rating can ever be more than 2 apart. They can activate more Visage elements whenever a Virtue hits a level that has not yet been reached. In other words, Unaligned start with being able to activate just one Visage element of your choice. They gain the ability to activate two elements at once whenever one of the Virtues is raised to 3. Three Visage elements can be chosen when one of the Virtues reaches level 4. And the all Visage elements may be activated whenever one of the Virtues is at raised to level 5. For all types of Shard Angels there is a catch whenever a Virtue is raised to the maximum. There is a terrible strain put on the mortal when receiving all this new power. Reaching level 5 in a Virtue, getting the accompanying burst of new Lores and gaining the final Visage element is just too much for the mortal to handle without going crazy. So at the time any Virtue reaches level 5 the character also gains a derangement appropriate to the person or current situation (The storyteller and

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player need to agree on an appropriate derangement). If a second Virtue reaches 5, another derangement is added to the first one. And finally a third derangement is gained when the final Virtue reaches 5. Visage elements Each Shard Angel has a Visage, just like Fallen. At character creation choose one of the 21 low Torment Visages available to the Fallen. Shard Angels cannot access the high Torment elements of a Visage since the Angels who gave them the shards never experienced the Torment of the Abyss. Some Visages fit better for certain Shard Angel factions than others. The Visage of Flesh is something that fits a Destroyer the best, while the Visage of Awakening is more likely in the possession of a Savior. Shard Angels can only access a limited number of Visage elements at a time, which is determined by their primary Virtue rating (or general ratings in case of the Unaligned). You need to choose which elements will be activated. Once chosen you roll your highest Virtue at a difficulty of 7. If this roll is successful you have activated your Visage. In case of a failure you can try again the next turn at a +1 difficulty. If you botch you cannot activate the effect for the rest of the scene. Lores Shard Angels always start with the first level of the Lore which is linked to their Visage. But unlike with Fallen, Shard Angels may have higher ratings in other Lores then her Visage Lore. Whenever you reach 10 in your Faith rating and convert it into a Virtue point, you get an amount of Lore points. These can be used to gain new Lores. You get the following amount of Lore points for each Virtue level: A Virtue at level 2: 1 Lore point A Virtue has reached level 3: 2 extra Lore points A Virtue has reached level 4: 3 extra Lore points A Virtue has reached level 5: 4 extra Lore points In other words, anyone in a Faction starts with 5 Lore points (two times 1 point for each Virtue at level 2 and 1 + 2 = 3 points for having a Virtue at level 3). An Unaligned starts with 3 points. One of these points must be spend to immediately buy the first level of the Lore linked to the Visage of the Shard Angel. Ultimately there are a total of 30 points to earn. The cost to gain a new level in a Lore is the following: Level 1: 1 point Level 2: 2 points Level 3: 3 points Level 4: 4 points Level 5: 5 points You can always keep Lore points unused and save them for getting higher levels later on. Shard Angels can learn any Lore available to the Fallen. It does not matter if it is a House Lore or not. All Lores are equally available to any Shard Angel. They are only limited in the amount they can learn. If ever the Torment rating is needed for a Lore roll, use the characters permanent Willpower rating instead. Prayers Shard Angels have one big advantage over Fallen. They can do all types of Prayers, and with a bigger dice pool than normal mortals. There are two different ratings in the Prayers dice pool, a permanent and a temporary rating. The permanent rating starts at 1, the temporary starts at 0. The permanent pool is always rolled and can be increased with XP at cost of 8x rating. The temporary pool costs 2 XP per dot. A Prayer roll consists of all the dots in the permanent rating and an amount of dots of your choice from the temporary rating (ranging from none to all you have available). The temporary dots can only be used once in one single roll, and then are gone. Example: You have 2 permanent dots and 7 temporary dots. You roll a Prayer and choose to add 4 temporary dots. When the roll is done you only have 3 temporary dots left. You can recharge the temporary pool by concentrating on increasing it for a single turn. You can then add a maximum amount of temporary dots equal to your highest Virtue rating. You can add more the next turn if you want to.

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Character Creation Summary

Primary Virtues: Saviors: Conscience Mediators: Conviction Destroyers: Courage Unaligned: None Starting Stats: Primary Virtue: 3 Other Virtues (all, in case of the Unaligned): 2 Faith: 3 Prayers: 1 permanent (8x rating to increase), 0 temporary (2 XP per dot to increase) Willpower: 5 for Factions, 4 for Unaligned. Attributes: 7/5/3 Abilities: 13/9/5 Backgrounds: 5 (Eminence and Influence are not allowed. Legacy determines how much information the Guardians decide to give you about what happened.) Freebies: 15 (Which cannot be used on increasing Lores or Virtues. Increasing Prayers costs 8 freebies.) All Content and Art is copyright 1998-2004 Katherine Burress and Christopher Simmons unless otherwise Specified. Applicable information, books and products are 1997 White Wolf Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved, any reproduced artwork or text are for review purposes only.

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