With all the World of Darkness gaming going on here at the gate for the past while, I thought I'd take time to focus on the impetus for our last campaign, Hell Bend. I've got a lot of the books from this line, and I've wanted to take the time to let players really experience the contents of each one. I knew the Book of Spirits would be one of the first ones I'd introduce into the setting, and I knew that Inferno would follow shortly after.
Inferno is a World of Darkness supplement that explores the nature of demonic spirits. These kinds of dark spirits hail from the titular Inferno, or Hell. OOOO...spooky Satan stuff, right? Isn't that what they warned us about in the 1980's?! Haven't you spent the better part of the last twenty years telling people gaming isn't Satan worship, Dave Bone?! What the Hell?!
What the Hell, indeed.
I thought about how to approach this for a long time, the subject matter being what it is. Upon first seeing this volume in a lot I bought, I thought Inferno was going to be a really hokey approach to the whole thing...but I was surprised. I didn't find the Leveyan hokiness or a barrage of uncontrollable and largely incoherent "gothic-punk" blasphemies against Christ. I read it anyway...and was very surprised. What I found instead was a rather adult treatise on what evil means, on the nature of evil, and how it can be interpreted in many, many ways.
The crunch of the book is a sophisticated system governing a specific caste of dark spirits that feed on human sin, unlike normal spirits which feed on Essence. These evil spirits are literally linked to a Vice. It is theologically neutral in the delivery - your demons could be Judeo-Christian...or not. Fancy a Pinhead-style once-human demonic entity? Examples and classifications are provided...but you are encouraged to be as vague as you want as to the true nature of these specific kinds of evil spirits.
From a strictly rules-oriented standpoint, in Inferno a demon is an evil spirit that has certain qualities that differentiate them from other similar spirits. Not all dark spirits are demons, and not all demons started as a spirit wisp. These are different in classification than normal spirits, and in many ways have far more capacity to truly wreak havoc on a setting. In addition, because of this alternate nature, can cause some dark things to come to the fore on your gaming night. Of course, we love black comedy here at the Wargate.
In the end, this volume specifically is NOT going to be for everybody. It's going to depend on your spiritual leanings, and your strength of character. I won't comment on my own personal spirituality, or that of my game group, but I will state that we all felt safe in exploring the subject and it was never an issue. Of course, there are demonic armies at the Wargate, so who cares about a few more disembodied voices? The demons presented in Inferno are (largely speaking) immaterial as any other spirit. They are truly reflections of terrible things from within ourselves, unlike so many Balrogs, Pit Fiends and Bloodthirsters who are just 'roided out boogeymen.
I also would like to state that even though Hell Bend was a story chronicle about demonic entities, I have yet to write a Satanic story. I just can't bring myself to do that.
Because Satan is really hokey.