SHEDIM, The Corruptors

A postal employee drives to work with an automatic weapon and opens fire on his boss's office. A teenager assaults a homeless woman, calmly cutting out her eyes and tongue so she can't identify him. A dentist grabs a tooth-puller, cranks up the nitrus and before she realizes it, the cup next to the chair is full of her own teeth --

-- and somewhere in the space between here and there, a fleshless demon smiles and moves on to his next host.

Senseless and random mayhem is no less a part of modern life than it was in the past, but humanity shouldn't be so conceited as to think it sinks to the darkest depths of selfishness entirely without guidance.

The human race holds as great a potential for malevolence as it does for divinity, and no Band of demon contributes more to the day-to-day corruption of humanity than the perverted, bodiless Shedim.

Resonance
Like their heavenly counterparts, the Kyriotates, a Shedite cannot generate his own vessel on Earth and must survive by possessing the body of a living human. But unlike the Kyriotates, Shedim don't have -- or cannot bear -- the selflessness that comes of controlling multiple vessels at the same time. The Shedim resonance is much more insidious than that.

While possessed, the host consciousness floats in a serene, dreamlike state, fully aware of what its body is doing and believing that it's still in complete control of itself -- and, to a certain degree, it is. A Shedite desensitizes his hosts to obscenity by bending human minds to his celestial will, convincing them that such perversion was their idea.

These body-hoppers can't let a day go by without being despicible to somebody. The point is to keep people from doing things that could generate benevolent Essence, giving power to the side of good. Forcing a child molester to be nice to children doesn't serve the cause of evil, but coercing a police officer to let an escaped felon enjoy the hospitality of his home is evil.

Every Prince gives his Shedim different specific missions as well as restrictions, for next to the Calabim these demons are the most dangerous to let loose upon the Earth.

Dissonance
But a Shedite's constant drive for corruption isn't of his own free will. The demon will generate dissonance every day he does not force his host to do something against his nature. It doesn't have to be something big, some of the greatest evils started out with the tiniest of indiscretions. It must, however, be an act of selfishness that indisputibly causes harm: stealing or destroying property, infringing the rights of others either purposefully or through carelessness -- you know, the usual.

Shedim generally pick the quiet ones, normal looking folk full of inhibitions and hang-ups. But once a moral line has been crossed, nothing less than that will count toward preventing a Shedite from acquiring dissonance for that period of demonic possession. A Shedite will start out with minor sins and spiral down into blackness from there until his host is up on a tower popping off students, at which point he leaves the wretch to deal with the aftermath. Many Shedim hosts who are driven that far will kill themselves before the authorities can, furthering the cause of evil by robbing the world of its sense of justice.

If a Shedite's victim is killed while the demon's still inside, the dark soul will gain a point of dissonance.

Manner and Appearance
If it could be said that there are any genuine "devil worshippers" among the throngs of Hell, any demons who genuinely and devoutly owe their ultimate loyalty to Lucifer, it would be the Shedim. They're the ones who spray pentagrams on concrete pylons. They're the ones with the tattoos of horned red-faced heads in front of blazing pitchforks. They're the ones at concerts who hold their arms high with thumb, pinky and index fingers outstretched, stick out their tongues and scream, "Hellfire, I serve . . . YOU!"

The twisted Shedim kick-start the engine of evil which idles in every human's mind. As such, they're the Band of demon most generally despised by the angels, and some of the demons don't take too kindly to them either. Shedim don't really get along with the Djinn -- the Stalkers are sore about how hard it is to keep track of the Fleshless -- and they're absolutely despised by the servants of Lilith.

The Djinn and the Shedim do have something in common: an utter disregard for the state of their bodies, only the Shedim have it worse. A Shedite treats his body like an indestructible drunk with an endless supply of rent-a-cars. They'll run a corporeal vessel into the ground, leaving short of its death. If his host dies suddenly with the Shedite still inside, he'll generate a point of dissonance by being drawn so close to oblivion.

In their celestial forms, Shedim appear as shimmering black clouds of limbs, wings, eyes and other mostly (thankfully) unidentifiable organs, pulsing to the beat of infernal madness.

Game Mechanics
To possess a victim, a Shedite must make a successful Will roll to invoke his resonance and enter the victim's body. If the host, for some reason, doesn't want to be possessed by a demon, he may make a Will roll to resist.

The check digit of the demon's successful roll serves to modify the Shedite's Will when he applies it toward controlling his host for the remainder of that possession. The check digit of an unsuccessful resonance roll (or the host victim's successful roll, whichever is higher) is the number of hours the Shedite must wait before attempting to possess that victim again.

While inhabiting a body, the host consciousness will go along with most actions the demon wants to take -- talking to people, walking around, etc. In a fog of dream-logic, seeing angels and demons won't disturb the Shedite's host any more than it would the possessor himself. In a situation which might be considered odd, but not against the host's nature, if the demon is comfortable then chances are the victim will be too.

At least once a day, the Shedite must make a contest of Wills against his victim, and make his host do something sinister. Admittedly, sinister is relative, but it must be something that undeniably causes someone harm in some way, whether or not the person is aware of it. (For example, stealing a roleplaying game from a hobby shop that's full of them may not be noticed right off, but it does count as selfish and evil.) Even in the most cruel and abusive human beings, a Shedim can find something that repulses them to think about, much less do themselves. If a day goes by without this happening, the demon gains a point of dissonance.

The demon must make additional Will rolls for additional evils -- most Shedim tend toward quick and easy evil, avoiding carefully orchestrated evil unless they utterly dominate their hosts.
Once a day, at any point that the Shedite attempts to sway the mind of his victim, the host consciousness may make a Perception roll to realize he's not really in control. Give the poor sap a +1 modifier to the target number for every full day he's been possessed this time around.

A successful Perception roll while possessed gives the host mind that roll's check digit as a modifier to his Will when fighting off the demon's dark urgings. This advantage lasts until the human gets a good night's sleep . . . and, once rested, is again just as vulnerable to the Shedim's powerful will as he was before.

A Shedim may stay as long as he likes, but his victim grows more and more difficult to handle as the days pass. The demon can leave his host at any time, manifesting in his celestial form, but has to make a successful resonance roll to enter another vessel.

When the Strength of a Shedite's host vessel is reduced to zero or below, the demon is expelled from his victim. If the human's Strength is reduced to the negative value of his Corporeal Forces in one blow -- or otherwise killed outright -- while the Shedite is still inside, the demon will get a point of dissonance for his trouble.

For every hour the demon's Forces are homeless, beyond a number of hours equal to his Corporeal Forces, the Shedim loses 1 point of Will. While in his celestial form, if the Shedim's Will is reduced to zero from to the pressures of existing outside a host vessel, his diabolical soul will plummet back to the Hell he came from.


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