Daimonion

Daimonion

Daimonion
Clans	None
Bloodlines	Angellis Ater, Azaneali, Baali
Sects	Ashirra, Independents, Sabbat
Rituals	None
Combination Disciplines	None
Rarity	Legendary
Play Status	Closed

No vampiric power is as hated and feared as Daimonion - perhaps specifically because it is a vampiric power in name only. Based on summoning, bargaining with, and doing the work of the terrifying demons, the discipline grants incredible power to its wielders at the price of the corrosion of their souls and the hatred of almost all other living things that interact with them. Even among beings considered monsters, Daimonion users are considered hideous, dangerous threats to be destroyed by almost everyone, and thus most of the handful who practice it among the Baali and other obscure bloodlines find it prudent to do so in secret.

Basic Powers

Sense the Sin

By touching a being, a vampire may use this power to see briefly into their souls, learning their most shameful desires and worst moral failings. This power does not grant true telepathy and cannot be used to find out specific information, but its results are always accurate, even if the person in question had no idea they harbored such horrors.

Fear of the Void Below

A vampire with this power may inflict a horrific, nightmarish terror on others, giving them visions of the Abyss, dread home of the demons themselves, so that they suffer acute mortal terror. Humans immediately and irrevocably go mad, with most dying shortly thereafter, often of self-inflicted wounds; supernatural creatures are hardier, but are still prone to being paralyzed or forced into gibbering shock by the overwhelming fear so that they are slow to respond and incapable of finesse.

Intermediate Powers

Conflagration

By calling upon their infernal masters, the vampire with this power can visit the torments of the halls below on their enemies, summoning up demonic flame that tortures and consumes. The flames deal aggravated damage and force any vampires present (other than the Daimonion user) to struggle against the urge to succumb to Rötschreck. Such flames are clearly otherworldly in nature, usually appearing as black or even as some other substance entirely to untrained eyes, and it can be very difficult for a vampire to use this power without outing themself as a servant of demons. (If they leave witnesses, anyway.)

Essence of the Netherworld

By reaching into the primal darkness of the demonic realms below, a vampire with this power can drag some of it into the world of humanity, a place that it is directly antithetical to it. The resulting swarms of insects, crawling living rot, and glowing black flames, crawling from shadows or coalescing to lick across skin, are automatically horrific and terrifying to all who encounter them, and they cause extensive damage to the world around them, including causing metal to rust and twist, wood to warp and fall to ash, and living things to wither and die if exposed for too long. Supernatural beings struggle to not succumb to terror and madness, often gibbering or fleeing if they manage to avoid severe injury, and most mortals do not survive the experience (and certainly don't survive sane if they do).

Psychomachia

Vampires with this power can visit fear unlike any other on their enemies, simply by touching or making eye contact with their hapless victim. When they do, the victim suddenly sees a vision conjured up of their greatest fear or trauma; this apparition is perfect in every way, perhaps even slightly exaggerated by their fear, and furthermore has solid physical presence, being capable of causing physical touch and harm to the vampire's victim. The apparition is not truly sentient, but will act with reasonable motivation and an appropriate intelligence level for the particular fear it represents, and is visible to everyone in the area, although only tailored to the particular target of the vampire's ill will. The horrible vision remains active until it is destroyed or the sun rises, whichever comes first.

Advanced Powers

Condemnation

With this power, a vampire doesn't actually curse their enemy... but their enemy certainly thinks that they did. This power causes a victim to become obsessed with their past sins, from the miniscule to the massive, and to believe that karmic retribution in kind is going to happen to them any second. While nothing in particular does happen, most victims become helpless in their fear and confusion, and more than a few end up punishing themselves much more effectively than any curse could ever do. The inescapable sense of impending doom lasts for approximately a week.

Curse

A vampire with this power may actively inflict the curse of the demons on those who displease them, striking them with injury, infirmity, insanity, or worse. The vampire chooses the particulars of the curse, which might be anything from cursing a rival to be incapable of learning the truth to inflicting horrible diseases or calamitous bad luck upon them; once they have, the curse takes effect, dogging their feet for the next several nights. Victims of this power often struggle to survive its effects long enough for them to dissipate, and whispers abound of demonic elders who can call down curses so potent that their effects on their targets are permanent.

Elder Powers

Concordance

This power allows a vampire, through great force of will, to permanently manifest a small physical imitation of the great forms and powers of their demonic masters, such as horns, wings, claws, or some other useful demoniac feature. This feature grants them whatever abilities it normally would, such as flying or increased ability to do damage, and is also considered a badge of honor among infernalists, who view being visually similar to their masters as one of the greatest signs of their favor. It goes without saying, of course, that this power makes it essentially impossible to hide the vampire's supernatural nature from onlookers.

Diabolic Lure

Nothing drags someone closer to the lords of the abyss than the loss of their convictions, whether they take the form of religions, philosophies, or just the common-sense patterns they've observed all their lives. With this power, a vampire can exert great force of will to rob their victim of some of their moral certitude, causing them to permanently lose one dot on their morality path. Creatures which do not have morality paths are unaffected, but those who do are profoundly altered, and vampires especially run the risk of falling to Wassail.

Glimpse the Gulf Beyond

The horrors of the world of the demons are indescribable to most beings on this side of the veil, but the vampire with this power can briefly change that, ripping open a hole in the fabric of the world to show the terrors beyond. Anyone who beholds the rift immediately suffers from two new derangements, which remain active for up to a month; anyone foolish enough to touch it during the few seconds it remains finds that their limb instantly and painfully withers, becoming an inflexible dead stick that cannot be healed.

Hell-Born Investiture

Once they have taken this power, a vampire no longer has a choice about receiving demonic physical features; now, each time they use any Daimonion power, they may spontaneously manifest a new feature. As in Concordance, this feature may be anything that can reasonably be said to relate to the vampire's demonic patrons, often horns or tentacles, and becomes a permanent part of the vampire, impossible to remove; even if it is cut off or destroyed, it will regrow the next evening. Some vampires use their powers with gleeful abandon upon achieving this state, knowing that doing so will bring them ever closer to resembling the demons they serve, while others attempt to limit their use of powers, worried that soon enough they will be unable to hide their true natures from those who hunt them.

Ignore the Searing Flames

The demons that the vampire serves now grant them security that no others of their kind can boast: with this power, they become completely immune to the effects of fire. Flame no longer burns them, even the enhanced fire of other Daimonion powers or the blood sorceries of Thaumaturgy, nor does it trigger Frenzy, and they can handle and play with it with impunity, living up to the vision of infernalists as cackling flame-wreathed fiends.

Bring the Plague

With a simple touch, the vampire with this power can inflict a hideous creeping plague upon their victim; its exact effects are up to them, but whatever they choose, it is disabling, horrific, and degenerative, eventually ending in severe handicap or death. The plague affects not only mortals but the supernatural as well, even other vampires, and is virulently transmissible, making it easy for it to cause an outbreak where it is used. Only the vampire who used the power, and any other tainted by infernalism, is immune to the disease.

Infernal Servitor

The vampire with this power is so deeply entwined with their demonic masters that they can call upon the lesser demonic powers to serve them in turn, as if they were powers from below themselves. The servants they can call are small and crafty, usually imps or messenger demons, and can perform mischief, scouting, or guarding duties, although they are not willing to put themselves in harm's way or fight for a lowly vampire. Servants summoned with this power remain until the vampire next sleeps, or until they are directed otherwise by a more powerful demon.

Summon the Herald of Topheth

A vampire with this power now threatens the integrity of the world itself: they may use this power to tear open a rift to the Abyss, into which they can not only look, but out of which a demonic creature may come. Such demons can enter the world in their full forms, similar to the Earthbound, and and are hideously dangerous and monstrous, invariably causing massive havoc and horror in the world when released. The rift remains open for up to ten minutes; during this time, looking into it can inflict madness, touching it can cause permanent injury, and anyone foolish enough to try to enter it is guaranteed never to return, lost to eternal torment in the great demonic prison below. The demon returns into the rift (whether it wants to or not) at the end of this time.

It should be noted that the vampire has very little control over use of this power; they cannot control what sort of demon comes through (or even if one does; while most demons are likely to seize the chance to escape the torment of the Abyss, even for a short period of time, they may be otherwise busy or consider involving themselves in whatever the vampire is currently doing unappealing or not worth the trouble). They also cannot compel the demon to do anything in particular, nor is it bound to either help or even avoid harming them if it doesn't feel like it, and thus many infernalists prudently get out of the way once such a rift is opened and come back later to see what effects its presence might have had.

The Re-Embrace

Infernalism is often compared to an illness, and the vampire with this power can truly infect others with it, forcing them to become servants of the demonic alongside them. By feeding a willing victim some of their blood, they may transform them from the outside in, granting them the ability to learn Daimonion regardless of their clan or bloodline; when they do, their target becomes just as visibly infernal to those who know how to look as any other demon worshiper.

Adramelech's Wrath

The balefire of the hells is one thing, but a vampire with this power can reach into the cosmic powers of the demons, directly shining the sun down upon an enemy as if they were standing outside at midday. This is not real sunlight, and does not touch or affect other people in the area beyond the vampire's target, but when used on a vampire, it causes them to burn with all the fierceness caused by the real sun. Such a victim immediately panics, most likely entering Frenzy, and has only seconds to attempt to escape or disable the vampire using this power in order to survive.

This power calls down a pseudo-light that does not effectively illuminate much, but it acts spiritually as if it were the real sun. This means that there may be unintended effects when using it around other supernatural beings, such as shapeshifters with sun-aligned powers.

Contagion

When they use this power, a vampire unhinges their jaw and exhales a horrific oily fog, which fills an area of up to one square mile with a choking, unpleasant mist. The mist soaks everything and everyone in that area in evil and violence, causing old discomforts to erupt into conflicts, rivalries to become murderous fights, and those harboring secret, cruel desires to suddenly decide to act upon them. The fog devastates the area for the remainder of the evening, and can only be counteracted by escaping its radius.

Unleash Hell's Fury

With this power, a vampire need not destroy their enemies with sunlight; they can instead torture them with it indefinitely, breaking down their minds and wills from afar. By meditating on an item or body part belonging to their victim, the vampire can cause them to feel all the unspeakable pain of being burned by sunlight while they sleep that day, no matter how safe and dark their actual resting place. The victim awakens nerveless and exhausted and is unable to get any restful sleep; if the vampire continues to afflict them with this power for at least three consecutive days, they begin to hallucinate sunburns during the night while they are awake as well.

Call the Great Beast

With this power, a vampire can summon a greater demonic beast to wreak havoc at their command, usually appearing as a terrible monster several times larger than a human with all the demonic attributes and hideous details that might be imagined. The creature appears and savagely destroys or devours all living things in the area; it is extremely powerful and can defeat even elder vampires or powerful shapeshifters, but it takes absolutely no direction from the vampire who summons it, and will not distinguish between friend or foe. Once all living (or undead) things in the area are dead, the demon returns whence it came; while it will usually ignore the vampire who summoned it, more than one infernalist has discovered that trying to get its attention a little too vigorously can only end one way.

Spew Wide the Pit

As in other Daimonion powers, a vampire with this one may tear a rift open between the world of humanity and the world of demons; but where before they could only allow one middling-powerful demon to briefly come through the opening, they can now create huge rents in the fabric of space, allowing multiple such creatures to pass through. The rift remains open longer, as well, often up to an hour, at which point it finally recalls the beings that used it and seals itself up, leaving whatever carnage occurred behind for humanity to deal with.

Open the Way

The most dedicated of demonic servants know that their days are numbered: eventually, one way or another, the dark powers they serve will consume or devour them. Some choose to go out on their own terms, making their deaths one last sacrifice to serve the infernal masters they love so much; by intentionally taking their own lives, spilling all of their blood on a prepared altar or sacred site, the vampire may rip the veil between worlds in half so powerfully that it allows one of the greater demons to come through into the world of humanity. Such demons are more than capable of destroying entire countries, sparking off wars, committing genocides, or otherwise massively damaging the planet, and although the vampire will not live to see their ascendance, they know as they are devoured on arrival that they have, finally, achieved their destiny.

Important Things to Keep in Mind

Daimonion always ends badly for its practitioners, with no exceptions; a vampire who ties their fate to that of a demon is doomed from the moment they start down that road (although many of them would tell you that the road itself, and the fun to be had on it, is the entire point). Once corrupted by Daimonion, vampires are hunted pariahs amongst their fellows as well as living with the constant knowledge that their demonic patrons might at any point decide to repossess their power (or worse, ask them to pay up for it).

The moment a vampire uses Daimonion for the first time, they are indelibly marked by permanent writhing dark streaks in their aura, which are visible to vampires with Auspex as well as to other supernatural creatures that may be able to see auras, such as fairies or mages.