Thus Spake Zaranephilpal/Akuma
Contents
What are Akuma (and are they too easy to make)
Nephilpal - 03/31/2004 10:17:04
Akuma are either:
1) Mortals adopted as Demon Blooded using the Endowment Charm.
2) Exalted who undergo transformation with Investiture of Infernal Glory.
3) A wonderful name for infernalists yanked from the chapter of the KoE book 1000 Hells (written by none other than our very own beloved GCG). Hey, I figured he'd get a kick out of the homage.
The converted Exalted are Infernal Exalted. Dukantha is one of those. Yes, he's got some amazing unique powers. I chock those up as 20 pt. akuma-only Merits (or whatever the appropriate point rating would be). You could use my system to create someone like Dukantha, no problem. Heck, his whole "I may only come to Creation during Calibration" thing is definitely a major Flaw.
As for Infernal Exaltation being easy, gods no. Converting a Solar to an Abyssal requires Void Circle Necromancy to be sure, but that's a minimum of Essence 5. Did you see the Essence requirements and prereqs on that Charm to make akuma? Yikes. Also, whereas an Abyssal is functionally an inverted Solar with a fair amount of autonomy (apart from the little detail of the tainted fate and curse), an akuma is completely rebuilt from the ground up and chained tightly. Akuma are functionally extensions of their master rather than simply agents thereof. They are truly slaves in every sense of the word.
--Neph
Nephilpal - 04/07/2004 13:07:07
Let's be clear what's going on:
Akuma are either:
1) Mortals turned into Demon-Blooded with an Endowment. These are sometimes called lesser akuma.
2) Exalted of any non-Primordial type (i.e. every type except Abyssals and Alchemicals) twisted into Infernal Exalted by means of the Charm Investiture of Infernal Glory. These are sometimes called greater akuma. Dukantha is an example of this.
The 50 Solar Essences (not 100) given to the Ebon Dragon have some purpose yet to be revealed.
The Yozis do not create Exalted, but unlike the Deathlords, they are quite easily capable of perverting almost any variety of Exalt. These are the akuma.
--Neph
On how much the demon princes change Akuma
Nephilpal - 03/31/2004 12:56:29
Well, that's certainly a possibility. Actually, rearranging Virtues is often part of the Exaltation process. Changing a character's Nature isn't, but a total body/mind/soul rewrite would tend to mess with anyone's personality.
--Neph
Akuma and Virtue Flaws
Nephilpal - 03/31/2004 14:34:31
I think by default you'd have a Virtue Flaw if you had one before, but I see no reason akuma couldn't have a merit that gets rid of that little problem.
--Neph
Akuma design decisions, and a contrast between Akuma and Abyssals
Nephilpal - 08/04/2004 13:39:10
You all are right on several points. The decision to build akuma the way they are did have a lot to do with "arbitrary" thematics. I don't know that I like that word, though, because it implies the decision came out of nowhere. That just isn't true. I built the akuma based on the fragments we had in print and with careful attention to all setting elements you've seen (and some you haven't, and no I won't elaborate).
First of all, let me reiterate some of the behind-the-scenes reasons that akuma exist as they are. My assignment for the PG was to write a merits and flaws chapter with a second part of the chapter dedicated to various God-Blooded. Infernal Exalted were not in the outline. I ended up overwriting a LOT, so much so that it got split into two chapters. I had just whipped out the Exalted God-Blooded rules and it suddenly hit me: "This could probably work in reverse, too." So I messed with it, and bam, I realized I had already built the skeleton for Infernals. I had already overwritten and I knew that more Infernal stuff probably wasn't coming in a long, long time, so I said, "Aw, what the hell, what's a few more words."
The decision to call them akuma and use the whole "total reshaping" model came straight out of the now out-of-print supplement Thousand Hells for Kindred of the East. I had always loved that book and it was actually GCG who wrote the akuma rules for it. I decided I would make my Infernal Exalted an homage to the developer, my way of tipping my hat at how cool his work was and how much it had inspired me.
As for the people who complain that Dukantha doesn't match up, I say that his unique powers are high cost Merits. Everything else synchs nicely. Amusingly, this is an accident. I hadn't seen the draft for Blood and Salt when I design the Infernals. The two books were back- to-back, so it was too close to have the files (and way too close to have the book). It just happened to work out harmoniously in the end, much to my delight.
Those are the out-of-game background reasons. Here are the in-game reasons and breakdown (especially compared with Abyssals):
1) Akuma are damned, where Abyssals are doomed. Both get a heap of power out of the deal, but the end result is different. Akuma live as direct slaves. They have precisely as much free will in the immediate sense as their masters allow. If the Demon Prince says "Jump!" then they do. Immediately. The End. Malfeans don't order Abyssals around that way, and even if they tried, Abyssals aren't wired that way. On the face of it, you would think that Infernals have less free will. I would argue that isn't necessarily the case. An Abyssal has more room to make decisions or rebel or whatnot, but his destiny is fixed. He will murder the world and spread death like a plague. Period. If he tries to play nice, Resonance will do the dirty work for him. He can cheat a little and kill "bad" people and play the tortured antihero role, but the Malfeans are generally ok with that. Killing is killing, and as long as the deathknight is still dragging the world into shadow by inches and degrees, the neverborn approve. An Abyssal may live until the end of days, but that isn't a gift of immortality. The key words are "end of days." The Malfean agenda is THE END, and that means that every Abyssal only comes with a limited warranty. They will perish helping to bring the end of the world or they will perish when they end the world, but they will perish. Horribly. Permanently. Abyssals get all the immediate free will they want to contemplate this. Crazy ones get off on it, all excited over the prospect of Oblivion. Not so crazy ones realize they are riding on a sinking ship and realize that they can't get off. That usually drives them crazy. Which is worse in the end? Going where told and being what you are commanded and remade to be like akuma? Or standing at the edge of the whirlpool looking down and knowing you're going to fall no matter what you try to get out of it?
Free will is harder to define when you look at it that way.
Also consider that the differing agendas of the Yozis and Malfeans call for different kinds of servants. As Scott Taylor once aptly noted, the Primordials had these perfect servants given almost unlimited free will, with the one caveat that they could never personally rebel. They called them gods. The Yozis learned from their mistake and if/when they break out, you had better believe that the leash on the world will be a lot tighter. Yoxis aren't just planning to break out of their prison; they're planning for their eternal rulership of the world to follow. Malfeans don't plan for maintaining their power after they win. All they want is annihilation, ad the Abyssal Curse keeps every single deathknight firmly dedicated to that task one way or another.
2) On the matter of fate, akuma are completely reprocessed. Abyssals aren't. In the creation of an Infernal, The demon or Yozi consumes and digests the Exalt that pledges themselves, and excretes something... new... from the raw material. The akuma becomes something between a demon and an Exalt, sharing qualities of both while wholly neither. Each Infernal is an artificial component of its master, but not one of the usual souls. It's self-induced mutation to assimilate an Exalt, kind of like growing a third eye. Second and Third Circle Demons are outside fate because they are part of a Primordial, so akuma are too.
Abyssals aren't part of a Primordial. They're tainted, and they almost certainly have a perma-Charm to put them outside Fate (which would also be likely to inhibit any chance of redemption), but they aren't completely removed yet by default. It's that tiny thread of potential redemption that holds them in the system, as far as I can tell. You can't read their fate in the sky unless you consult the stars of the Underworld, but they do have a fate somewhere. Akuma don't. Their fate terminated at the moment they "died" and this new being was built out of their scrambled bits. Akuma can't be redeemed any more than any other demon can be redeemed.
3) Redemption (continued). Once you make an Abyssal, the Solar Essence stays twisted into that darkened pattern unless it is cleansed. Because the change is more of an inversion than anything else, it's possible to go back. When you make an akuma out of a Celestial Exalt, you aren't twisting her shard. You're taking her apart into component motes and leaving the Essence largely alone. What you do is rebuild the creature so that the Essence flows in new ways. It's like rebuilding a car engine. You set the battery off to the side for a bit and fiddle with the wiring and then hook it up again. You haven't changed the Essence, you're just attaching it funny through a demonic transformer. Not a great analogy, I know. I hope it makes sense, though. If you wreck the car (kill the akuma), the shard has all its couplings screwed up, but it's still the same inside.
And no, DB akuma don't have akuma babies. At least I never intended for them to. They might be Demon-Blooded which later Exalt as DBs, though. Becoming an akuma is way too personal for a birthright. You have to accept it. You have to be that stupid.
I'm sure there's more to say on this, but I'm not sure what so I'll stop now.
--Neph
