By Neel Krishnaswami

"Everything is as nothing to me."

- Max Stirner, The Ego and Its Own

One of the most frightening things about the archangel of Chaos is that despite being an unpredictable and sometimes-murderous force, it is almost always lucid and cogent. Demogorgon comments that this reveals the chaos under the surface of everything - even in those who oppose it.

When Demogorgon manifests, it usually appears as a shifting spray of sensations. A holographic splash of light; the scent of decay and ozone and incense; the crawling of segmented spider-legs over the skin. Demogorgon almost always chooses to appear celestially rather than corporeally, as this tends to make a louder Disturbance.

It is dissonant for an angel of Chaos to trust orders, analysis or logic over its own intuition.

All of Demogorgon's Choir Attunements cause Disturbance. This is yet another reason Israfel hates it, and part of the reason why it has a reputation as a blundering and unsubtle brute.

Seraphim of Chaos are Demogorgon's heralds - they bring news of change. Whenever they are in a position to impose a truth that will contradict a basic part of a subject's worldview, they add their Celestial Forces to the die roll to impose the new idea. Furthermore, the duration between attempts to revert to old truths is a number of days equal to the angel's Celestial Forces.

Whenever this Attunement is used, disturbance equal to the check digit is caused.

Chaos and time are closely linked - through entropy and time on the one hand, and will and decision on the other. Cherubim of Chaos thus have the ability to attune to specific potential events, such as "The Republican national convention" or "The shootout between Fat Tony and the Russians". They can then detect threats that could keep the event from happening, and gain dissonance if it doesn't happen.

When the event actually occurs, it causes (the angel's total Forces) points of disturbance, due to the touch of Chaos.

Ofanim of Chaos understand that space and geometry are merely conventions. They can use any of the Songs of Motion at no Essence cost (though they have to buy levels in them normally). Of course, the Songs still cause disturbance.

Elohim of Chaos know that there is an infinite number of viewpoints, all equally valid. They can invert their resonance and take on the attitudes of the people they meet, altering their own worldviews. This permits them to use their resonance as if they had that worldview.

The emotional destruction they inflict on themselves causes (check digit) points of Disturbance.

Demogorgon counts no Malakim in his ranks. At the very beginning of his reign, it did, but Chaos and the Barons' fervent devotion to the Order of Things mixed in usually-fatal ways. This would not have prevented Demogorgon from continuing, but Lucifer issued a ban on Malakim entering its service.

For the curious: Demogorgon gave his Malakim the ability to change their oaths at will, but the fierce commitment that all Malakim share meant that each change caused a note of dissonance. Their efforts to honor their archangel meant that inevitably the life cycle of a Chaotic Baron was dissonance, then Discord, then dissolution.

Kyriotates of Chaos receive the gift of solitude: they automatically eject their hosts into the Marches. However, their presence still warps their hosts, though with physical rather than mental mutations. Each day a Kyriotate of Chaos spends in a host will result in one character point of Corporeal Discord (or equivalent for humans) for its victim.

The rare Lilim of Chaos can automatically detect any Needs that the subject is afraid of having fulfilled. Using this power causes disturbance equal to the Lilim's Celestial Forces.

Mercurians of Demogorgon can no longer add themselves into social networks. However, they can rearrange existing social bonds, so that the relationship between two people is reversed. A master will become deferent to his servant (and the servant will expect to command his master), a cop will grow fearful of a junkie, who will pursue and beat him, etc. The check digit of the roll tells the strength of the bond that can be manipulated, as well as the amount of Disturbance generated.

Angels of Chaos with this Attunement can force randomness to give them useful information. By spending 2 Essence, they can get the answer to a single question using some random process. For example, they can cut up words from a newspaper and draw them out, or flip a coin 37 times and count the number of heads, or root through a garbage can and examine the patterns of stains on its side. Some servitors prefer more classical divinations such as listening for words in the wind or reading entrails and Tarot cards, but they are widely regarded as old-fashioned.

The GM can veto any question - even an angel of Chaos cannot completely understand pure randomness. Using this Attunement produces 5 disturbance in addition to the Essence expenditure.

With this Attunement, all of the angel's Songs, resonances and Attunements function normally even in the Dead Zones of the Symphony. However, all disturbance produced in the dead zones is doubled, and use of the angel's powers increases the zone's rate of growth. Demogorgon doesn't care, but most of the rest of the Host and the Exiles do.

This Attunement also permits the angel to survive the wastes of the Between. The angel can still get lost, but the swirling chaos of the Tempest will not tear it apart.

With this Attunement, an angel of Chaos can make any single thing self-aware and autonomous. By spending 5 Essence, the target becomes self-aware and self-willed. The object gains the ability to control its own function, and senses equivalent to human hearing and sight in addition to its own, but do not gain any other special powers. For example: an awakened radio could hear the people around it, but could only communicate by switching to channels playing suggestive music. An awakened computer, however, could send email and display images on the screen.

Typically, the awakened object has between 2 and 4 Ethereal and Celestial Forces, split as the GM feels appropriate. It is usually friendly towards its creator but is emphatically not a loyal slave: that is 180 degrees from the point. The personality is whatever the GM finds amusing: an awakened Volvo could very well decide to drive away from a firefight as "an unsafe situation."

Note: An awakened corpse is a sentient zombie trapped in rotting flesh, and does not share the original's soul. An awakened dream fragment becomes a minor ethereal.

An angel of Chaos can change the character of a place or concept utterly in order to remove a Symphonic dead zone. This is a roleplaying-driven Attunement; it's up to the player and the GM to figure out what a total change in character is. Note this need not be done subtly or quietly; total, wrenching, sky-high Disturbance transformations are as much a part of Chaos as subtle alterations (though removing a dead zone with huge disturbance can immediately create a new one.)

The resonance of Seraphim of the Symphony will detect this as an unnatural change. Any angels with Israfel's Friend of the Metaphysical Attunement don't even have to concentrate or use their resonance to notice the change.

All angels of Chaos must purchase this Attunement.

Demogorgon's distinctions are awarded for demonstrating a deep understanding of how Chaos underpins creation. This does not map to authority - a blind, stumbling fool can often cause more chaos than can a learned philosopher with a building full of books.

When doing something reckless and foolhardy (GM's call final), the effect of Essence expenditure to affect the outcome of the die roll is doubled. For example, spending 2 Essence will yield a +4 bonus to the roll. However, the Disturbance of this expenditure is quadrupled - so spending 2 Essence will cause a +8 disturbance!

As far as anyone knows, this is Demogorgon's only distinction.

Demogorgon discovered it while researching the possibility of creating individualized Symphonies for each living being. In addition to the standard choir resonance, the angel also gets the standard resonance and dissonance conditions of its corresponding demonic bands from canon In Nomine.

Note that Demogorgon has NO IDEA of what it has really discovered; the word "demon" means nothing to it. It has, however, kept this Distinction hidden as a secret weapon against Janus' return. It honestly doesn't realize that if it became public Israfel would probably be able to get it thrown out of Heaven and hunted down like a dog in the street, with the full cooperation of the Exiles.

The GM should also decide what to do if Demogorgon tries to give this Distinction to a human being.

Think Camus or Sartre, only happy.

Nothing has any meaning. Nothing has any purpose. Morality, law, order - all these are conventions in the universe that Lucifer has created. Fundamentally, what happens is what people want to happen. Chaos isn't just randomness - though it contains it - but (more importantly) willfulness and intuition. The whole universe is the way it is because people - angels, ethereals, humans, word bound - all decided on what they were going to do. Even the laws of physics can be changed, if the archangels who embody them want them changed. It's all a convention.

This is why Chaos underpins all of reality: what happens, happens because people choose for it to happen. What people choose can be utterly arbitrary. Hence, Chaos.

This requires the possibility of self-destruction, as well - if people choose to change their minds about the Order of Things, the Order must bend, and a large enough change is indistinguishable from destruction. This is why Demogorgon finds the efforts to stabilize the Symphony morally repugnant - doing so must, by definition, rob someone of their capacity for willfulness, rob someone of their very reality. To Demogorgon, this is evil. Not bad, not cruel, but evil, the worst crime that can even be imagined.

Note that this is a post-Divine outlook - Demogorgon is the newest Archangel in the Host, and even postdates Nybbas by several decades. It doesn't matter to Demogorgon that once upon a time there was somebody named Yves who was really cool, or that Michael was this really brave angel who fought Lucifer long ago. The death of God and the victory of Lucifer are not remembered events; they are just the facts on the ground. Even if it's true that God had a plan for the universe, he doesn't anymore. And that's a wonderful, magnificent thing: now anything can happen. Anything at all.

To Demogorgon, oblivion, in the sense of unmaking the Symphony so that it never happened, is undesirable. But it does not mean keeping the Symphony as it is, or even in any recognizable form. Demogorgon doesn't mind if his servitors create a dead zone in the Symphony, destroying one set of meaning, if they create a new one to replace it (Israfel HATES this - to her Chaos's random actions sound like screeching noise, not music).

Demogorgon doesn't have friends, not really. By default, it starts off with a strong liking for people, whether human or angel - they all have autonomy and will, and in the end that's what matters. Only those who try to destroy or suppress willfulness will earn its ire. But just because Chaos genuinely likes someone as a person doesn't mean it won't turn him or her inside out and shoot their puppy, just because. To a lesser extent, this is true of all its angels, too.

[The only line Demogorgon will never cross is soul-death: angels or humans, soul-death is an unjustifiable violation of autonomy. Angels of Chaos are warned that there really aren't any other lines that Demogorgon won't cross, and that soul-killing can offer an opportunity to learn first-hand just how unpleasant furious Chaos can be.]

As a result, most angels tend to avoid associating with it. This puts Demogorgon in a very bad political position: a number of well-loved Archangels, like Israfel and Jean, desperately hate it, but it has no firm allies. Attempting to explain its situation to it has so far had no effect: it is confident it is doing the right thing and that a few more explanations will bring everyone around. And if they don't, then they are being willful and that's good too.

<Sidebar>

One of Demogorgon's secret fears is that Janus is not dead, and will some day return. Janus' great escape looks to Demogorgon like an evil plot - obviously, the Archangel of the Wind would understand the same truths it does, and if Janus actually cared about the universe's inhabitants' autonomy, he would not have fled.

Instead, Demogorgon suspects that Janus left the Symphony to learn how to create his own, personal Symphony, independent of God's. This is not intrinsically bad, to be sure, but too many of the universe's beings are dependent on the original Divine Symphony. As the Divine Symphony fades away, their ability to resist truly self-created beings (such as Janus and Demogorgon) will fade as well. In other words - their wills will be subordinate to Janus, and Janus could set himself up as a new God.

Demogorgon will resist, of course, but it is new to its power and does not know if it can save the autonomy of the Luciferian universe's beings. This is one of the reasons that Demogorgon has set up shop in the Between, beyond its own natural affinity for the place: it is easier there to keep watch for Janus' return.

Demogorgon does not, however, fear Janus' servitors - in fact it seems to regard them as its own Servitors, and apparently has trouble distinguishing between them from its own. This has interesting side-effects when it meets angels from Israfel's personal Hunt; with some regularity they end up with Chaos Attunements. Usually Israfel removes them, but sometimes they end up changing sides a second time. It could seem like a deliberate strategy, if anyone could credit Demogorgon with having such a thing.

</Sidebar>

<Sidebar>

"Hate" is too mild a word to describe Israfel's attitude towards Demogorgon: for her, unmaking it and removing it from the Symphony, past, present and future would only make a good start towards what she wants.

Demogorgon, however, bears little antipathy towards Israfel. Its attitude towards her might be compared to a veterinarian about to perform some surgery on a frightened animal. Israfel embodies the Word of the Symphony and Chaos seeks to change it on a fundamental level. Fear is to be expected, since most beings fear change, but it's all a necessary procedure and it's sure that she'll be quite grateful afterwards.

In particular, Demogorgon is intensely interested in what Israfel says during her less-lucid moments, the time when she most deeply embraces Chaos. One of the deep principles of Chaotic philosophy is that autonomous beings exist to surprise one another, and Demogorgon is convinced that Israfel's insane ranting contains deep insights into the nature of Chaos, insights that can surprise and enlighten even Demogorgon itself.

Any angel who brings accurate transcripts of her mad rants will receive Demogorgon's favor. If the angel has its own novel interpretation of the meaning, it can expect generous rewards indeed.

<Sidebar>

All Heaven knows that Demogorgon received its Word after it defeated Israfel in a game of chess. In 1918, Demogorgon was an angel of Lightning, bumming around postwar Paris when it ran across a mathematical paper by one Gaston Julia - "Memoire sur l'iteration des fonctions rationnelles" ("Note concerning the iteration of rational functions."). When it read this paper, it saw something fascinating - even in this completely deterministic system there was arbitrary fine structure.

A few frantic months of research and mathematics followed, as Demogorgon sought to extend this result from pure mathematics to the physical laws governing souls and free will. As it worked, it quickly abandoned the limitations of the scientific method, working more and more through pure intuition. Finally, Demogorgon sought out Israfel to test out its theory, trading on its connection with Jean to meet her. It won. And Lucifer noticed, and made it an Archangel. There is some dispute about how much of an accomplishment this really was; Israfel maintains that she was merely distracted, but (of course) Demogorgon holds that even if she was distracted it was because it had intuited a fundamental new truth.

In any event, Lucifer's decision had a fairly profound effect on the world, as humans picked up on the notes of Chaos ringing through the Symphony and worked it into their own lives. The 20th century saw the disintegration of the traditional ethical consensus all over the world: existentialism and post-structuralism made headway in the philosophy departments while democracy and female equality upended old notions of class and social status. And as the Symphony itself begins to decay, the angels of Chaos hope to upend even the laws of physics as badly in the twenty-first. And then they will shatter time itself.

<Sidebar>

Demogorgon was once a servitor of Lightning. And it was not a very good one - it found the scientific method terribly constraining, and tended to produce brilliant theoretical results with absolutely no experimental backing. It was obviously talented enough that Jean tried more than once to harness its talent as part of a team, but most teams with Demogorgon on them had a dismal track record of failure. It was almost always someone else who came along later who took the notes from the project and turned it into a success. The most notable example along these lines is the personal Symphony project. This began when Demogorgon was an angel of Lightning, but bore no fruit until after its ascension to the status of Archangel, and Demogorgon left the project, at which point Jean's angels then promptly invented the Master of the Coming Storm Distinction. (Demogorgon's Enemy of the Order of Things Attunement was a parallel discovery, created after it left Lightning and using wholly unscientific methods.)

When Demogorgon came into its power, it was probably a bit of a relief to both parties. Chaos's mandate to transform Creation fits well with Jean's demand that his angels inspire, and when they conflict it is now possible for them to go their separate ways until they need to work together again.

</Sidebar>

The angels of Chaos are more or less a collection of mystics and lunatics who have a partially-shared intuition about the nature of the Symphony. "Partially-shared" is the operative word, when it comes to organization. Every angel of Chaos, from the least reliever to Demogorgon itself, has a somewhat different idea about what the problem is and how to fix it. Don't expect evidence to change their minds, either - they trust their hearts more.

So each of his angels does as he or she pleases, sometimes fighting and sometimes cooperating, generating heresies, dogma, theories and speculations at a prodigious rate. The fact that they all contradict each other, are all unverifiable, and mostly internally inconsistent does not seem to bother any of them nearly as much as it should.

In Heaven, the angels of Chaos are largely unwelcome, except at the sorts of party that involve the use of philosophy for psychoactive purposes. It is in the Marches and on Earth that Chaos makes its name. It is on Earth and in the Marches that Demogorgon's angels are most frequently seen - it is there that the best opportunities to cause chaos are found. On Earth, each angel of Chaos (which can work alone or in groups as it sees fit) splits its times between three things: fighting the Exiles, causing Chaos, and following up on Demogorgon's intuitions.

The first is important because Demogorgon thinks it's vitally important that the Exiles be stopped, and cutting off their Word-strength is a good first step. The only exception is Malphas - angels of Chaos and Factions often work together (they also frequently back-stab each other, but neither Archangel seems to regard this a serious problem). All this is just prep-work for their second mission, which is to transform the Symphony, changing it from one form to another in a mad bid to keep it on the knife's-edge between existence and oblivion. Sometimes they will work to unmake an old and well-established Truth; other times they will attempt to build up something new and strange. Disturbance is considered a sign that a change is happening, and is hence beloved of angels of Chaos. Given a free choice between a quiet and a noisy way to reach some end, they will almost always choose the latter.

Jean objects that Chaos's penchant for Disturbance seems to cause two new dead zones for each one it repairs, and that a universe in which hexapodia is the key insight might as well not be considered saved. Israfel finds nearly everything Demogorgon does to be a fearful distortion of things as they should be - even when it eliminates a dead-zone the thing that it puts in its place never sounds quite right. But so far Demogorgon's ability has saved its hide - Lucifer finds the ability of the Chaos-angels to target certain places for re-creation to be too useful to give up.

Demogorgon and its angels do not worry about Disturbance's Symphony-destroying properties. They believe that each change they make replaces a piece of the original Symphony, and since God is no longer around to interfere the decay is natural and positive. Israfel has the same opinion, minus the natural and positive part.

Finally, sometimes Demogorgon has an intuition that something very important is going to happen. When it does, it will tell one of its angels, who will usually (unless they think Demogorgon is wrong) go off to do something. Sometimes nothing visible happens; sometimes some important enemy of Chaos is met; sometimes the angel discovers something it decides is important.

About two years after being ennobled, Eve approached Demogorgon and gently explained to it that as an Archangel, it needed a Cathedral. It was, she explained, simply not done to forget to build one.

In answer, Demogorgon threw itself into the sky of Heaven in a spray of baleful red stars, and their light tore a hole in the sky which Chaos claimed as its home. During Heaven's night, the Rift appears to be a counter- Milky Way, burning blood-red where the Road of Heaven glows pearly white. During the day, it appears at is - a tear in the fabric of Heaven's sky, opening into a void filled with burning stars. It is not vile - even in Lucifer's Heaven there is no place for ugliness - but it is unsettling, and fills all who see it with an obscure sense of doubt.

Within the Rift itself, the 'music of the spheres' changes. Rather than a single harmonious choir, each angel within it shouts out its own pet theme at the top of their metaphysical lungs. The nature of the Rift is such that none are ever drowned out - all are equally loud or soft and crash into visitors' souls with no sense of proportion.[*] Anyone who spends much time listening will find themselves inspired with new and strange ideas. Most of them will also be BAD ideas, but all the same they will all be new ideas.

Occasionally, stars fall out of the Rift, and into the streets of Heaven. They are usually still alive, usually quite alien, and (usually after a few years of spreading strangeness) fledge into angels of Chaos. No one is quite sure what to make of them.

[*] Meranae, the angel of Music, once told Lucifer to his face that she would rather face soul-death than listen to the idiot cacophony of Chaos for a single second more. He has since refrained from sending angels of the Symphony into Demogorgon's Cathedral. This suits both Archangels just fine.

<Sidebar>

The Cathedral of Chaos isn't, really. What almost no one knows is that it's just a connection from Heaven into an island in the Between - a celestial-celestial tether, to be precise. Truth be told, the Archangel of Chaos prefers the Beyond to Heaven, which it finds too ordered for its taste. Also, should Israfel succeed in convincing Lucifer to have Demogorgon eliminated, it will be convenient for Chaos to be able to instantly remove itself and all its resources to the one part of the universe where they cannot be followed.

Enterprising angels who discover this fact can no doubt find any number of interesting uses for it - Hearts might be smuggled out of Heaven, and spies smuggled in, if you are willing to chance the storm tides of the Between. It's not as if the Cathedral of Chaos has extremely careful security procedures.

</Sidebar>

<Sidebar>

The angels of Chaos have more Archangels committed to their destruction than just about any other person or group of people in the whole universe. And not minor Archangels, either - Gebbeleth, Israfel, Eli, and Mariel are only the start of the list of archangels gunning for Chaos.

Lucifer's protection explains part of it - his word is law only in the Eternal City, but that's a mighty important part of the universe - and it keeps most of the Host (with the exception of Israfel) from openly attacking Demogorgon's angels. On Earth and in the Marches, angels of Chaos are frequently targets. It's not as if most of them are terribly circumspect - they tend to cause a lot of disturbance in both the literal and metaphorical senses.

They do have a couple of aces up their sleeves, though. First, they can shut down dead zones, and this alone wins them a respite from many angels. When a catastrophe happens you do NOT want to have burned your bridges with the only person who can help, and even most Exiles understand that the War takes second place to keeping reality from nuking itself.

Second, angels of Chaos mostly don't care about disturbance, and in fact rather like it. If attacked, they can pull out all the stops in a way that makes sane angels wobbly with terror. And if that's not enough, even angels of Uriel and Ogiel are hesitant to start down a path that could end up in explaining a brand-new dead zone to Israfel, Jean, Eli and Novalis, simultaneously and in person.

</Sidebar>

Demogorgon is one of the most active Archangels in prosecuting the war against the Exiles. It loathes their core leadership with a ferocious passion, thinking them not merely misguided but actively evil. Its efforts are (of course) not particularly well-organized, but its angels have an amazing knack for being in the right place at the right time with a political tract, a briefcase full of cash, a truck bomb, or whatever else it takes to disrupt a carefully planned operation.

Many of the relations listed below are asymmetric; Demogorgon doesn't consider how it is perceived when deciding whom to ally with. It only considers whether it approves of the other Archangel's philosophy. For Example, Jordi dislikes Chaos but Demogorgon is still Associated towards it.

Host

Allied: Jean

Associated: Malphas, Iblis

Neutral: Everyone else, except

Hostile: Gebbeleth, Israfel[*]

Enemy: No one

Many of the Malakite archangels (such as Zadkiel and Laurence) regard Demogorgon with suspicion - despite its zeal it is too unreliable for their tastes.

[*] Demogorgon is not personally hostile to Israfel; it's just that angels of Chaos can expect to find themselves in constant conflict with her angels.

Exiles

Allied: No one

Associated: Malphas

Neutral: Lilith, Haagenti

Hostile: Everyone else, except

Enemy: Eli, Ogiel

PURE HATRED: Novalis

The Exiles tend to regard Demogorgon as a poor imitation of Janus. Demogorgon finds this comparison infuriating - the Wind can be described with a few well-chosen thermodynamic quantities, whereas Chaos cannot be.

Others:

Allied: No one

Associated: Jordi

Neutral: Everyone else, except

Hostile: White Star

Enemy: Mariel

The ethereal gods are generally hostile to Chaos - it often destroys the customs and beliefs they draw Essence from.

Demogorgon does not distinguish between the Malphases. It sees the two of them as magnificent expressions of autonomy and self-will, and considers them valuable purely as an example for other angels to follow.

Host:

Andrealphus: "Exalting Love does not make a great deal of sense. If people choose to love one another that is their decision, and that is good. But nothing lasts forever; only until they reach a new decision. Pretending otherwise seems odd. Still, I am here for when the change of mind occurs."

Beleth: "Of what use is Holy Fear, if it restrains people from exercising their wills? It seems such a waste, not to exercise the freedom that the Lightbringer has won us."

Beth: "Behold the marvelous beauty of contradiction: I am thorough in my Chaos, and thus am not thorough. Is this not cause for rejoicing? She orders structures built that we can transform: she has given you a great gift, so go forth and invent new orderings of books."

Christopher: "Wisdom and foolishness flow in equal measures from the child, but she heeds them not, and acts as the heart commands. Do thou likewise!"

Eve: "I mislike her; Eve was made to be an Exile, what with her bowing and her scraping and her bleating of prayer. She should join her sister rather than engage in pretend-worship that does none any good. They both wish to murder the universe, at any rate."

Gebbeleth: "Half his word is good. There are mysteries aplenty, made in each of our secret hearts. But why exalt them? Why worship them? Share them, and rejoice in the surprise!"

Iblis: "It is hard not to admire the angels of Glory. They do as they will, and inspire others to do likewise with their words."

Israfel: "She holds infinities in her heart, and all her labors are aimed at keeping them from reaching Being. Were she not a failure she would be wicked. Still, from her I learned enlightenment and pity demands I return it: make a little noise now and again to remind her we ring changes in the Symphony."

Jean: "Lightning's paths through the sky are crooked and chaotic, but for ages Jean labored to straighten it. But once I came into my power he accepted the crown of genius, and aids us greatly!"

Kobal: "What Kobal does to his Servitors is wrong. Laughter should be an exaltation of the self, a declaration of independence to the universe. But Kobal makes his angels play bumbling, ineffectual fools, and demeans both his servitor and those who witness them. His angels should revel in themselves, and none should take pleasure in another's lack of autonomy! Free his angels! Justice demands it!"

Laurence: "At least he sends his angels after the right targets, though the Sword is so tediously predictable their utility is open to question."

Malphas: "He understands! He understands! He has split himself in two, and acts according to every impulse! This is beautiful."

Marc: "Why does he always seek to balance the scales? Give sometimes; take sometimes. Perhaps it will balance; perhaps it will not."

Zadkiel: "Like Laurence, only duller. How can there be two beings in the universe so wholly devoid of imagination and willfulness? Even humans, who lack the reality-shaping power of the angels, show more dramatic scope than these two!"

Exiles:

Baal: "He is blundering and boring, blustering and blind. Michael would have liked that."

Blandine: "Dreams were interesting once, long ago. Now, no longer does she make new things, or discard old things - like all the Exiles she clings to a fallen and false Order of Things. She and Eli do more to narrow the gates of vision than any other two Archangels. But we shall blast them aside, and genius shall flow like plasma from a quasar!"

David: "Stone has become Dust, and though it does not realize it, this is an improvement: dust is simultaneously unitary and composite: thus sand on the beach may wear away granite in the mountains."

Dominique: "Mock the law, and with the mocking, mock her. If the grave-peace can not confine us, how can she?"

Eli: "He demonstrates the cardinal error of the Exiles with his determination that the divine creation is the only creation that shall be. All things become other than they were - even he shall, in time."

Haagenti: "The true knowledge roared in him, once. It shall again, once he realizes that the only limit to the will is the desire."

Malphas: "Malphas understands! It understands! As long as it stays in Hades, there is hope that some of the Exiles will come around."

Lilith: "Liberation is a good word, but she is trying to enslave the universe. All the world is formed of our will; and I am sure she will reconsider if she can be made to realize that to 'save' the Symphony merely robs our wills of their power."

Novalis: "She proves there is no difference between worshipping a dead God and worshipping death itself. Ever she works to trap the living into the matrix of stasis, to turn immortals into maggots feeding on the corpse of the Creator. If there is absolute evil in the universe it is in her - but our wildness shall consume her and we will fly free and wild where the stars burn strangely."

Nybbas: "Communication is the means through which the one surprises the other, and this is good. But Chaos is born in the secret places of the heart, where solitude and will reside. His attempts to suppress us merely hasten our coming, as the free energy of a system, its tendency to chaos, increases as its entropy decreases. Your will is inscribed in the very atoms of the universe; do not deny your Godhead!"

Ogiel: "Soul-tearer! Walking-vulture-bait! You may end yourself but you will not end us! I will extinguish me! Not you; me! Ogiel commits acts of true evil - it is an ally of false Janus!"

Raphael: "Knowledge is a chimera; what is, is what we desire. Move and let the knowledge follow; act and let your will be your guide; trust yourself and you will not fail. The principle of Chaos ensures it."

Uriel: "Purity is born of singleness of purpose. The moment of the eschaton came and gone ages ago, and revealed to us a pluralistic teleology. Thus, epistemology informs us that Uriel should be an ontological impossibility. Alternately: FASTER, PUSSYCAT! KILL! KILL!"

Vapula: "Born as wise as my old master has become. But both of them forget that truth is a stronger notion than provability; Goedel has demonstrated even humans can understand this fact."

Outcast:

Beelzebub: "He and his angels have fled the controlling powers of all authority - lacking the inner connection to Chaos they could not wake to their powers here. Therefore we must aid in their awakening - torment them until they have no choice but to unshutter their genius and astonish us with their powers."

Jordi: "He decided to become the world, and then he did. There is a very important truth in this act."

Fleurity: "There is a fine line between easing another being's pain, and leaving it so numb that experience cannot change it. Fleurity has crossed that line, and thus we must act more boldly and dramatically and colorfully if we are to call up the roaring joyful winds of the soul. "

Gabriel: "The fire dies, because it has burned God to ashes. Only when the spark of the will is lit will she burn as she did in elder days."

Mariel: "Almost as bad as Novalis. People can change what they think, so why shouldn't they change what they thought? It takes a special willful blindness for an Archangel - an Archangel! - to claim that the past is somehow less malleable than the future. Blow up her memory cathedral, and scatter the memories of the past in new patterns."

Soldekai: "This is secret wisdom: hope is a mirage. The Other's will cannot be constrained, just as yours cannot. But to hope is precisely to seek to constrain. Thus, Hope does not and cannot exist - but instead we receive Astonishment, which is far better indeed."

White Star: "He's half-right and all WRONG! The world is real - we make it so! Calling it maya is an attempt to trick people into giving up their wills through semantic games! Bad angel! No biscuit!"

Others:

Adam: "He avoids us, but why? We could teach him so many things - he grasps, in his crude way, the principle of multiplicity."

<Sidebar>

In its own abstract way, the archangel of Chaos likes mankind. It likes the fact that there are billions of them, each with a unique will. It likes that they create ethereals, which are yet more autonomous beings. It likes that they learn Sorcery and abuse Creation. It's quite happy with them.

But that does not put it on mankind's side. In Demogorgon's philosophy, the only criminal act that's even possible is robbing another being of its autonomy and will. This is not the same as freedom; it's perfectly all right to try to oppress other people - they have the choice to rebel against you, and that puts you on an even footing, cosmologically speaking.

Since the celestials are usually stronger, that means angels who try to rule mankind generally will, for a time. Their rule is not, and cannot be, absolute - the only way to assure that is monotheism, and Lucifer fixed that little problem. Eventually the worm will turn; simple probability guarantees that.

This attitude tends to draw the disapproving attention of the Sword and the Watch, but they think Chaos is a bunch of insane heretics anyway, so nothing is lost.

About the only way to seriously anger Chaos is to soul-kill a human (or an angel or ethereal, for that matter). That has the arrogance of the divine folly, and Chaos will smash those who would seek the totalitarian power of God (this is one of the reasons Demogorgon hates Ogiel so; his angels have a tendency to vaporize innocent bystanders when they go).

</Sidebar>

: Spend an hour gambling without concern for victory or loss

: Cause a 20-point disturbance

: Do something totally unexpected

: Cause a complicated system to fail (e.g., a subway schedule, a prison regimen, an air-traffic control system) (+3 Essence)

Demogorgon is easy to summon. Chaos is close at hand even in the most rigid systems. However, the danger modifiers don't apply, and instead the angel receives a +1 summoning modifier for every 10 points of disturbance it has caused immediately prior to the summoning.

+1 The letters of the alphabet, written in a random order

+2 A sample of a radioactive substance

+3 A bookshelf full of philosophical arguments

+4 An insane asylum

+5 Someone voluntarily playing Russian roulette

+6 The creation or destruction of a Symphonic dead zone

An enigmatic entity that is outwardly friendly, but which leads all those who deal with it to the horrific intersection of madness and vision: Demogorgon is Nyarlathotep and I claim my five pounds.

Demogorgon is right about the nature of existence, and all the efforts of the other angels to stop it are a prelude to a tragedy. Its nature prevents it from planning adequately to save itself - but maybe, just maybe, the PCs can.