Pacts

Demons are salesmen, the masters of the deal. Just as the God Machine creates Infrastructure in order for its angels to work most efficiently, the Unchained are adept at manipulating mortals in order to better achieve their goals. The art of making pacts with humans is an ancient one, one of the greatest tools in a demon’s arsenal. Lacking the ability to create angels or Infrastructure in the same way that the God Machine does, demons can gain security and Cover from these infernal bargains instead.

Pacts allow both demon and mortal to acquire something of great value to them. For mortals, this can be anything from influence to the hearts of men and women to riches, but some things are more difficult to grant than others — and thus more costly for the one making the deal. Demons gain fragments of Cover, devoted cultists, or even human souls.

All demons can forge pacts, and this ability does keep more than a few demon philosophers awake at night. Exactly how do they come by this ability? What does it mean? Angels cannot create pacts in the way that demons can, but angels are often bound to the parameters of their mission.

Regardless of exactly how it works, pacts remain one of the easiest ways for a demon to maintain a power base in the human world. Their secrets are closely guarded, but at the same time, a demon is sometimes measured by the pacts they have drawn up. Well-made contracts or simple quantity are both often seen as a status symbol among the Unchained, and not without reason — a demon with powerful pacts is demonstrably dangerous.

Mortals that make pacts with demons are known as pactbound.

WHERE DOES THE MONEY COME FROM?

Some demons theorize that making pacts is very much like banking with the stuff of the universe: a sort of instinctual knowledge about how to transfer “funds” from one “account” (in this case, the entirety of a living entity’s existence) to another. Others look at it like rewriting the code of the cosmos, creating a new program with data from another person. Another theory suggests that pact-making is a new ability with no direct analogue among angels or other agents of the God Machine. Just as the demons have become something new and unique, their new perspectives bring new powers.

A demon can sign a pact with a mortal and grant that mortal riches (Resources), friends (Allies), wisdom (Skills), health (Stamina) or almost any other benefit. Why doesn’t the demon use this power for herself, then? How can a demon manipulate reality in such a gross manner through pacts, when Etudes and even Cadenzas are so much more specific and narrowly focused?

This question is the source of much speculation among the Unchained, particularly Tempters and Inquisitors. The going theory is that a pact manipulates reality in much the same way an Etude does — the demon uses established metaphysical pathways to attract the kind of change he needs. Put another way, the potential is already there for the human to become rich (the money exists, it just isn’t hers), popular (those people are out there, they just don’t know or like the pactbound), wise, or healthy (within the person’s DNA is the possibility to be smarter or healthier). The demon isn’t manipulating the world, just individual variables.

The support for this theory is that whenever a demon creates a pact that alters something external to the human signatory (Allies, Resources, and other such Merits), something happens out in the world to balance it. A pactbound becomes wealthy and somewhere a rich man dies with no heirs. A pactbound gains a dedicated group of assistants (Staff), and somewhere a scientist’s budget is slashed, forcing him to fire his lab techs.

As above, so below. What has fallen may rise again. It’s a principle with which demons are well familiar.

Patch Jobs

Demons bargain for human souls. Everybody knows that, even if stories tend to be vague on exactly why. Contrary to popular belief, it’s not to drag souls off to Hell to suffer eternal torment, but rather to graft bits of those souls onto their own Cover in order to bolster it. Demons refer to this as a “patch job,” and it’s one of two ways they can use human beings to increase their Cover.

When a demon makes a pact, they may stipulate some aspect of the other party’s life as the consideration. When this pact is called in, their Cover absorbs that piece of reality, effectively “editing out” the human and “editing in” the demon. The demon and the human both remember reality as it “really” is, but other directly-affected parties simply remember the demon as having always been involved in their lives with no recollection of the person they replaced.

Just like other elements of a demon’s Cover, the change isn’t 100% real. While it’s enough to pass casual inspection, a thorough investigation may reveal holes in the story. Also, only people directly affected by the switch have their memories altered. Not surprisingly, demons prefer to make these sorts of pacts with loners, recluses, or people without much family.

For example, take a demon who makes a bargain with a young man, trading his relationship with his girlfriend for wealth and power. When the deal is struck, the demon’s Cover absorbs that relationship – as far as the girlfriend is concerned, she’s been dating the demon all along. Obvious signs of their relationship are likewise altered, such as prominently displayed photos of the couple. Depending on the demon’s Cover rating, things like the old photo albums in the hall closet or the ticket stubs from the play they saw on their first date might not be. Likewise, the girlfriend’s family and friends remember her dating the pact-making (now ex-) boyfriend, not the demon. Depending on the nature of the relationship and the people in question, this might get blown off (“Huh, I guess things didn’t work out with Mark”) or raise serious alarms (“You guys were getting married in March! What do you mean you don’t remember?”)

Soul Pacts

The easiest option is to bargain for a human soul. This comes in the form of a pact, but it’s much more significant than the pacts used to bolster an existing cover. When a demon calls in her marker on a soul pact, the unfortunate human is consumed by the demon’s Primum, body and soul. More than mere destruction, it’s an annihilation of the character as a concept, leaving behind an empty, ragged hole in reality. Before the universe self-corrects this obvious error, the demon steps into the hole, inserting herself into the human’s life as though it had always been hers. The dead pact-maker becomes her new Cover. Her human form now exactly resembles the pact-maker’s (barring any glitches, of course), and the human’s personality and character become the guidelines for compromises.

Wish Pacts

On occasion, a demon will need to take drastic measures to get away from their pursuers. Maybe multiple of their Covers have been sniffed out, maybe an angel has a bead on them, specifically. Sometimes a demon just wants a change in pace.

Wish pacts are the black sheep cousins of soul pacts. Instead of destroying a soul and taking the unlucky mortal's very existence as an identity, the demon instead hides within their pactbound's - specifically known as a pactholder - soul. This comes at a severe cost to the demon, but offers a number of interesting benefits, including immediately throwing off all angelic hunters.

The "Cover" provided by a living human is infallible, as long as the pactholder exercises discretion in their newfound abilities. Still, a forced cooperative, limited life is not one that comes easily to many demons.

Cult Pacts

Demons often have small cults to serve them. Mortal servitors do more than satisfy a demon’s vanity, since they can provide shelter, information and even Cover, in a pinch. This benefit grants a demon a following of cultists as per the Cultists Merit.

The pact does not have to be signed with a large number of people. One signatory is enough to create the cult. This person becomes the leader of the cult and other members gravitate toward them over the course of a few weeks. Using a pact is faster and cheaper in the long run compared to the demon building a cult on their own, but it carries a risk — if the pact is broken, or if the cult leader dies, the cult falls apart.

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