Both Heaven and Hell have always worried that,
someday, some sort of unambiguous evidence would
appear that would reveal the War to the mass of
humanity. It's just that nobody ever expected that it
would be shrink-wrapped - or available in any computer
store with any pretensions towards coolness, for that
matter.
This unlikely camel's straw is a new video game called
Demon Hunt. The premise is fairly straightforward:
the protagonist plays a human that goes off on
missions to take down an escaped denizen of Hell.
Simple enough, and harmless ... theoretically.
Unfortunately, the problems with Demon Hunt (from the
average celestial's point of view) are convoluted,
dangerous and all too concrete.
The first problem is that the types of demons involved
are instantly obvious to anyone with a fragment of
knowledge about the War. It doesn't go so far to use
the names Calabim, Habbalah and/or Shedim... but
calling them 'Entropies', 'Whippers' and 'Slavers'
isn't fooling anybody in the know. Worse and worse,
they act like their inspirations. Whoever wrote the
code for this one either had extensive experience with
all three types of Infernals or else managed to grab
the War Faction's training manuals on the recognition
of same, or possibly both.
The second problem? This game is sharp. The code is
clean, elegant, with no bugs. The soundtrack kicks
serious ass, you'd swear that the AI engine is
actually thinking, the various boards are well
designed and tricky and the action is fast and furious
- and that's just the freeware version. The full game
offers a multi-player option and a plethora of
missions, ranging from standard 'shoot everything that
moves' to 'search and contain the one Slaver in an
airport without anyone else noticing'. In other
words, it's almost physically addictive.
With the above two problems in mind, the third one
almost pales in comparison. Almost. It would seem
that the designer apparently had managed to 'borrow'
some reference materials from Jean, as well as from
Michael or Laurence. There's a lot of gadgets
available that can detect, kill and/or capture demons,
and most of them have direct analogues to items that
Lightning has been quietly sitting on for the last few
decades 'until the time is right'. The revelation of
this has notably increased the noise level in Council
meetings lately: the War Faction has been not quite
politely inquiring why they weren't told about these
fun new toys, at least, and they haven't been liking
the answers.
In short, Demon Hunt, despite the soundtrack (which
has not yet revealed any sort of hidden metaphysical
meaning, despite constant playing by dedicated
researchers), has the potential to be one of the most
useful demon-hunting tools Heaven's ever seen - and it
retails for $39.95. Unfortunately, eventually
someone's going to put two and two together and come
up with 'Hey! These buggers are actually wandering
around!' - then proceed to post this epiphany on every
computer board that he or she can access.
This will be bad. The last thing anybody needs is
even a distorted version of the Truth out there. Hell
doesn't want to be shot at and too many of Heaven's
defense strategies require a human populace that won't
joggle their collective elbows. This, of course, will
explain neatly why the PCs get involved.
A little back-story seems appropriate, here.
Obviously, either disaffected Servitors of Lightning
or Technology are up to their eyebrows in this
problem: astoundingly, the obvious answer is perfectly
correct. In fact, it's the fault of disaffected
Servitors of Lightning and Technology. You see, once
upon a time there was a certain Outcast Ofanite of
Lightning (Camiel) who got that way from arguing one
too many times that the Archangel of Lightning's
policy of suppressing anti-demonic devices among
humans, well, sucked. Normally, Jean probably would
have just reassigned the Servitor, but it really isn't
a good idea to give even an Elohite Superior the
finger.
At any rate, while wandering around Camiel ran into
Mariel (no relation), Renegade Lilim of Technology.
Mariel's own revolt against the system wasn't nearly
as ideologically based as Camiel's: she just liked
being Queen of the Geeks too much to want to bother
with corrupting any of them. Her innate ability to
epitomize the sleepless nighttime fantasies of every
computer nerd out there wired to like girls was
netting her a much more fulfilling life than working
in some stupid Infernal lab would, after all. Alas,
Vapula disagreed. The Lilim was trying to quietly
gather enough cash to decamp to greener pastures when
she ran into (literally) the Ofanite.
It was a match made in somewhere: both Camiel and
Mariel are wizard computer programmers, and they more
or less hit it off from the start. Camiel wanted to
get humanity to be prepared for the inevitable day
that the War went public, Mariel wanted lots and lots
of cash - and both were in agreement that anything
that screwed over Calabim, Habbalah and Shedim was a
meritorious act in and of itself. Demon Hunt was the
eventual result. A mass posting of the freeware
version (coupled with the successful pitching of the
product - via an otherwise worthless cutout - to one
of the few software companies not even slightly
influenced by the Media) followed. Then the two
packed their laptops and got the Hell out of Dodge.
Finding the authors of this little unfolding disaster
may be somewhat difficult: they both know damn well
that people will be looking for them, and they have no
intention of making the exercise easy. Tracking the
cash will end at the cutout: from there, it will take
a certain amount of digging, legwork and judicious
resonance use to follow the trail, 'aided' no doubt by
the various other entities looking for the pair.
Bear in mind, of course, that the other teams may not
have the same aim in mind as the party.
Eventually, dedicated searchers will find the pair
comfortably ensconced on a very nice tropical beach,
sipping tropical drinks and idly watching the horizon
like a couple of paranoid-yet-contented hawks. It all
depends on who catches up with them first, you see.
Michael would be optimal, followed by Nybbas, Janus
and, oddly enough, Furfur - though the last that might
just because of the secret levels. You see, there's a
boss level where you get to go up against (and
eventually extinguish) a really ugly Entropy covered
in flames...
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