Nephandi Classifications

HTML by Will Franqui (wfranqui@nmsu.edu)

The main confusion about the Nephandi comes from the categorization of three distinct classes of being under one common grouping. These classes have distinct motivations and powers, and different tactics are required for each of them. Be forewarned that each category has a huge variety of beings, and there are exceptions to the general run of tactics. Let my recommendations to you be a guideline rather than hard rules. There are no hard and fast rules in this game. That is the only rule that one must pay attention to.

The first class of beings that are generally classified as Nephandi are those beings from the High Umbral realms encompassing the various vices that most people term evil. When one has the concept of a sin, one can usually find an Umbral source reflecting that concept. The usual term for these beings is demons. Some speculate that the Catholic Church, with its heavy emphasis on the evils of many practices, created many of these beings which haunt our world today. The Celestial Chorus denies this, but their viewpoint is not a neutral and unbiased one.

Demons in many ways are the most benign of a bad lot. Keep in mind these beings derive power from the reinforcement of their particular vice, and thus demons of adultery encourage extramarital sex with accompanying extramaterial guilt. Demons of alcoholism would like to see everyone with rotting livers and shattered hopes. Demons of fear and despair have been the doom of many a mage. They are out to corrupt you and they are experts at this dreadful subject.

On the other hand, they're not as bad as the second category, the servants of something the Garou call "the Wyrm". Whether or not the Garou legends are correct, there is a vast spiritual corruption in the Umbra. Some cosmic force is broken and twisted, and is corrupting the rest of reality, seeking to annihilate it for its own twisted purposes. That this force is insane is somewhat in question, as the whole notion of sanity at that level is difficult to define. But there are creatures that for notational purposes I'll call Wyrm-spawn out there. The force they serve has countless manifestations, and so there is great variety in the servants as well.

They seek the corruption and ultimate annihilation of reality. In this they differ from demons, who wish to preserve reality to inflict more evil. A plaque demon seeks everyone to be sick, and derives some pleasure from wiping out chunks of population due to death. But they are also in general careful to preserve survivors of the plague, in varying degrees of health, so as to ensure future generations to infect with their diseases. A plague-bearing Wyrm-spawn wants to wipe out all life with its diseases. It may seek the annihilation slowly, to prolong its own pleasure, but in the end it wants everything completely and totally dead.

This difference has led to occasional antagonisms between Nephandi and demons. My general policy has to been to encourage this friction when present, but I'm not so foolish enough as to try to create it in the first place. First and foremost, there's a big danger the demon will get corrupted by the Wyrm-spawn, as has happened quite a few times. The other big problem is that they often have the same short term goals, and may try to form alliances and screw each other over later. Sure they'll come to blows, but only after the damage has been done. I try to break up such alliances by promoting the differences in subtle ways, forcing an early break.

The third category is a bit distinct from the other two. Many mages have theorized, and I concur, that there are other worlds that do not revolve around the Tellurian. Beyond the Horizon there lie other worlds, other systems of realms. The Technocracy has worked it out, and on the purely physical level, removed these systems to light years away, then enforced the speed of light barrier to keep these places far away from us. Isolation on the physical level, while ignoring the fact that the Umbral realm plays by different rules.

These realms are not recognizable to us. Formed totally independently from Gaia, they do not necessarily follow the same laws of nature. Indeed, from what I've seen, I doubt we'd recognize anything about these strange realms. Many of these beings don't seem to follow the same rules of time and space that we do. I'm not even sure they necessarily have the same duality of matter and spirit that we do, though when they are in our realm, they are forced to play by our rules somewhat, though interpreting their existence in terms of our rule setups lead to amazing side effects.

There are a couple of universalities. They seem to have minds, though vastly different than our own, and they also use Quintessence, which strikes me as a strong argument in favor of the theories that posit those two Spheres as being more fundamental than any of the others. These universalities don't do us any good, and in fact are a real problem in that these Aliens, as I dub them, are interested in harnessing our reality as a giant Quintessence pool, to pipe back beyond the Horizon to their own realms.

There seem to be multiple categories of Aliens, and not all of them seem to function as a harmonious whole. Trying to take advantage of these rivalries would require gathering enough information about them to be able to play Alien politics, and that sort of information gathering is a trifle too dangerous for me to recommend to anyone. The two categories I've broken Aliens down to, and this is only my experience guided by my human intelligence, which may be getting all the facts wrong, are the Plunderers and the Harvesters.

The Plunderers have a "drain the Quintessence and run" strategy. That makes them easier and harder to deal with. On the one hand, its easier to drive them off, on the other hand, you have to maintain a watch on various Nodes and other vulnerable spots. The Harvesters set up long term housekeeping, and may even be interested in colonization. They are easier to detect, since they have to build installations. On the other hand, raiding an Alien installation isn't exactly what I'd call a good time.

The main dangers to the average mage from the Aliens tend to be more on the physical level, though many want to harness mages as allies and promise alien knowledge and technology as benefits. The Technomancers, including the Sons of Ether and Virtual Adepts, seem especially vulnerable to this approach, though their technology does seem to have an easier time fighting the Alien threat, probably due to similarity. They are also not above capturing even the most mystic mage and doing some nasty spell/implants to convert them over to their side. The mixing of the human and inhuman usually drives any of these converts nuts. This insanity makes them harder to predict, and more dangerous thereby.

In fact, the biggest danger the Aliens pose is that they are unpredictable. Demons and Wyrm-spawn are nasty and corrupt, but they are to a large extent comprehensible. (indeed, that is what makes them so dangerous, we can understand their thoughts, and there lies their temptation) Aliens manifest unpredictable powers and their thought patterns aren't like anything we've seen. Don't try to second-guess an Alien. Work on flexibility and be prepared for anything. Get a decent size group with overlapping Spheres and work on trying strange stuff. Don't hesitate to experiment. Often these buggers manifest the weirdest vulnerabilities.

So my general advice is to try to figure out which category the potential Nephandi are from. It can often be hard to distinguish Wyrm-spawn from either demons in the case of spiritual corruptors or from Aliens in terms of physical weirdness from the Deep Umbra. In the case of demons, a little virtue goes a long way. Driving them into the Deep Umbra, maybe weakening their grip on the local mundanes by instilling a little virtue in the masses goes a long way. The Celestial Chorus is usually the best for handling this problem. Don't hesitate to call them in for assistance or at least for consultation.

The Wyrm-spawn can be trickier, since they work on the chain-letter principle. Turn one person into a destroyer/corrupter and let them convert others and so forth. Wiping them out is the easiest option. Stomp them flat. Just be careful they don't infect you with their poison. Many will forgo their objectives of building a toxic waste dump if they can secure a mage's soul in the process. Go for the offensive. They want to damage the world. Take them out before they can do that. Talk to the local Garou, see if you can work with them (best to let the Verbena or the Dreamspeakers approach the Garou, especially the latter).

Aliens are the simplest to deal with. Kill them. Actually, there may be Aliens who are interested in helping us and being nice to us, but I haven't met that many and frankly, I'd be suspicious of their lore in any case. The big problem is trying to figure out how to fight them. Don't assume the same trick works twice, or even once. Notify the Technocracy. They hate the Aliens just as much as we do, and they have more firepower to deal with the threat. Let them get themselves bloody in the process, just make sure they enforce their "no Alien tech" policy. Their R&D guys are too weird already.

Good hunting, remember, vigilance must be eternal.

Lord Jonathon of the Violet Rose

Order of Hermes

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