Hell's Garden
"Welcome, students! Welcome to your new and eternal home.
Within these halls, you will not reach your potential, because you have no potential.
You will not discover yourself, because there is nothing to discover.
You will not embark on the adventure of life, because it has already ended, and you failed.
This is your punishment, and your destiny: to submit.
Welcome to Pandaemonium Academy."
-from Student Council President Venus Heylel's commencement address to the class of eternity.
- Inspirations: Disgaea, Kill la Kill, Zdzisław Beksiński, John Martin
Hell
Hell is made of the souls of the once-living. It is a mirror of their lives. And in the deskilled, reskilled, knowledge-economic hothouse of modernity, their lives are consumed by schooling. Naturally, Hell follows suit.
Pandaemonium Academy stands in the capital of the Inferno. Those whose hell it is deemed proper to include education or re-education are consigned there, or to one of its sister establishments.
- Devils are fallen angels consigned to Hell for the crime of following Lucifer in his rebellion. They typically appear as twisted, or sometimes untwisted, versions of their former heavenly selves.
- Demons are the native inhabitants of Hell, manifestations of the unbeing in the shadow of the light of the Absolute. They are typically monstrous.
- Damned are the souls of sinful mortals. They typically appear as they did in life, but warped somehow by their crimes.
In Hell, nothing is material. You are only your soul. Those who are ground down by their experiences lose their will, their power, and finally their identity, and become mere bedrock for the Inferno. Those who manage to cling onto themselves must fight for this privilege, to rise above the quagmire and win a breath of independence and power.
That's you.
Action
Fights go in turns by team. Player characters can take two actions per turn, up to one of these may be a Domain action.
Normal Actions
Attacks not using any special power to control the world. You roll your attribute with any attendant bonuses from teamwork, scenario, unique skills, stunts, and so on. Your number of successes determines your degree of success. To affect a creature with Ego, you must roll more successes than their Ego. If your action is some form of active defence, you roll and add your successes to your Ego.
Domain Actions
Domain actions are similar to normal actions, but not bound by the conventional rules. You roll Ego for their success, and each rolled (not magnified) success counts double for effect.
Character Creation
Everyone in Hell is there for a reason. Submissions are not yet open.
Ego
Without a body, the only thing you can hold onto is your own sense of self.
Permanent Ego
The strength of your core identity. More powerful and discrete infernals have a higher Ego. Lesser beings have a lower Ego. Those who have become scenery have an Ego of 0.
Your permanent Ego resists attempts to affect your body or mind. Starting characters have an permanent Ego of 3.
Temporary Ego
A more changeable power reflecting your current psychic reserves. You can spend a point of temporary Ego to add a success to a roll, reroll a roll, or mitigate (not necessarily negate) any attack. You have maximum temporary Ego equal to your permanent Ego, and it recovers with time, rest, drama and doing cool things.
Attributes
Those with Ego can define their own existence. For each point of Ego, you can spend 5 points on attributes. Starting maximum 5.
- Strength: Hefting and punching. Used for most melee attacks.
- Speed: Moving real fast.
- Perception: Detecting clues and details.
- Precision: Aiming well. Used for most ranged attacks.
- Communication: Being persuasive, or a good liar, or some similar nature.
- Qualities: Qualities are abilities such as 'has wings', 'heavy carapace', 'sword master', 'philosopher', 'scientist', 'huge' that affect how you interact with the world without fitting into one of the numerical attributes. They have varying cost.
Domains
Defining yourself means dominating others. For each point of Ego you can define a domain, which is a way in which you can affect the world, or an aspect of the world you can affect. Alternatively you can magnify a domain, and add one success to rolls made with it. You cannot strengthen a domain more times than you have number of domains to begin with.
Example domains are fire, swords, flesh, space, time, memory and fate.
Particularly narrow domains get a free magnification that does not count against the limit.
Domains are usually rationalised or stylised in some way, activated through magic words or special martial arts techniques or technological devices.