Game: Demon: The Fallen (White Wolf Publishing, 2002)
My Experience: Today closes out this event’s Week of World of Darkness with the last standalone WoD core game. I fell in love with Demon as soon as it released – weirdly for me, being staunchly agnostic/atheist for most of my life, but as a story toolkit, it’s an amazing and underrated piece of work. I spent about two years tinkering with a LARP adaptation of it and successfully played one of my more enjoyable LARP PCs as a testbed for some of that work.
Tom Hartman/Viatiel, Darkness on the Edge of Town
Tom Hartman spent his whole life trying to reach some kind of freedom. He only snatched jagged fragments of it. A few years of happiness with Maria. Nights at the garage wrenching with Sonny. A quarter-mile at a time, as that bald dude said in the crappy movie that got all the kids interested in racing. But the mill closed down, the jobs went away, Maria drew away and eventually left when he couldn’t give her the life she wanted, and Sonny – well, it’s best not to speak of Sonny in earshot of Tom.
After the funeral and the wake and the bonfire up in the hills, when the last of the old mechanics and racers clapped Tom on the shoulder and mumbled hollow ritual words of sympathy and encouragement and went home to their families… well, when it was all over, Tom went back to an empty house, walked out to an empty garage, pulled up a stool, and stared at the empty place where a tool chest used to sit. Eventually, he found the bottle where Sonny kept always it. Right next to the pistol.
From there, events proceeded as one might expect – to a point, anyway. Tom emptied the bottle and filled the chamber. Thought about saying goodbyes, decided there was no one left who’d care about hearing it. He was just starting to put pressure on the trigger when Viatel, ancient artificer-angel who once knew the names of the stones and taught humanity the concepts of road and wayfarer, came screaming up out of untold millennia of imprisonment in the Abyss. Fought his way through the Maelstrom, blind and hurting and hungry and desperate. Saw the dimmest flicker of kinship in a mortal soul on the cusp of dissolution. And poured himself into the vessel that was Tom Hartman and ate him and filled him like a hand inside a sock puppet. And, in doing so, became Tom. Mostly.
Folks say Tom Hartman changed after the funeral. He never had much purpose before, that anyone could see. Wasn’t good for much, truth be told. Now he’s got a knack for working with his hands that he never showed before, and a head for business that none of his kin (God rest ’em all) ever had. If he’d ever shown a lick of those qualities before, well… things might’ve turned out different for him.
Folks tend not to talk about the other side of Tom’s newfound industriousness. Yeah, he set up shop in a new place (damn shame about the fire at his old partner’s garage), and he’s fast becoming the go-to guy for fixing things. But they avoid discussing the fact that he’ll also… well, how best to put it?
Tom Hartman will fix things for you.
And while he’s doing that, Viatiel uses every job to piece together a better understanding of how this new world works – and how it’s broken.
Traits
House: Malefactor
Faction: Cryptic
Nature: Judge
Demeanor: Pedagogue
Attributes
Physical: Strength •••, Dexterity •••, Stamina (untiring) ••••
Social: Charisma ••, Manipulation •, Appearance •••
Mental: Perception ••, Intelligence (analytical) ••••, Wits ••
Abilities
Talents: Alertness ••, Brawl ••, Dodge ••, Intimidation ••, Intuition ••, Streetwise ••, Subterfuge •
Skills: Crafts •••, Demolitions •, Drive (racing) ••••, Firearms •, Survival ••
Knowledges: Finance •, Investigation •, Medicine •, Religion •, Science •
Advantages
Backgrounds: Influence •, Pacts ••, Resources ••
Lore: Lore of the Forge ••, Lore of Paths ••
Virtues: Conscience ••, Conviction ••••, Courage ••
Faith: •••
Torment: •••
Willpower: ••••• •
Equipment
well-equipped workbench
Leatherman multitool
gooseneck crowbar
Buck knife
antique Zippo cigarette lighter
Smith & Wesson Model 19
1970 Chevrolet Chevelle SS
Notes and Afterthoughts
The World of Darkness has always, with the usual exception of Werewolf, focused on what happens in cities. But my World of Darkness has always had a working-class side heavily influenced by my own upbringing in Kentucky and by the music of Bruce Springsteen. Witness, again, Oakley, Kansas, as well as Route 66 – and, well, several characters I’ve already cranked out for this challenge. Tom is very much the dark flip side of yesterday’s Neville.
Since Demon first released, several years before Supernatural made hunters in muscle cars a meme, I’ve had an image stuck in my head. It’s night, under an interstate overpass outside some town that the interstate bypassed a generation ago. At the side of the forgotten two-lane county road in the interstate’s shadow, fragments of glass from previous collisions here glitter like diamonds and rubies. A ’60s muscle car is parked on the gravel shoulder. Sitting on the hood is something that looks like a man of indeterminate age, wearing jeans, a leather bomber jacket, a t-shirt. Aviator sunglasses pushed up on his head. Unlit cigarette dangling forgotten from the corner of his mouth. Nothing at all in his eyes. He’s alternately staring at the stars and the yellow line down the center of the asphalt, waiting for someone. When they arrive – well, that’s when things get interesting.
Softly, the car’s stereo is looping two Springsteen songs, two parts of the same story. Racing in the Streets (forever carved into my brain, thanks to Tracker7, as a song about redemption through drag racing):
For all the shut-down strangers and hot rod angels
Rumbling through this promised land
Tonight my baby and me, we’re gonna ride to the sea
And wash these sins off our hands
And Darkness on the Edge of Town:
Lives on the line where dreams are found and lost
I’ll be there on time and I’ll pay the cost
For wanting things that can only be found
In the darkness on the edge of town
That’s where Viatiel lives.