Devil Guns

Rules for a tabletop game

When the deal was done, the man stood confused, for the devil had given him a gun, and he had not wished for one. The razor-sharp trigger, guardless and uninviting, represented to him the adage para bellum: beware, blood-spillers, for violence is a glutton, your own will not be spared where you did not spare. He thought also of morituri te salutant, although he had never thought himself a fighter; he reflected on dulce et decorum and imagined that old irony engraved on the barrel of his revolver, but when he looked, he only found smoothness and a glint, and a hole, and the inside felt dry, and he thought that it invited not the finger but an eye, and that the blackness met his gaze as if saying “abandon all hope ye who enter”. And as he pried his pupil from the void, the barrel occupied all his view, extending forever, and for an instant he understood that its meaning could not be found in the grammar or the phrasebook.

It laid in the smell of sulfur.

Instructions

To use these rules, three people are required at a minimum. This is because there are three roles: Heresiarch, Devil Gun and Protoseraph. However, the role of the Devil Guns accommodates a larger number of people. A prototypical situation would include a Heresiarch with three Guns, with the Protoseraph facilitating the use of the rules by becoming familiarized with them beforehand.

The use of these rules is apparent from the text itself, but the section on the Protoseraph gives the clearest sense of the order in which things happen.

Devil Guns requires use of a coin with two sides, ▲ spike and ● sphere. Whenever it is flipped, keep note of the results as a running tally. This record is public. Other records should be kept by each person as necessary.

The Heresiarch

The Heresiarch, beloved child of the Pontiffs, has hands of nacre. Only their iridescent fingers can wield the Devil Guns. This is their purpose: to stain mother-of-pearl so that the Protoseraph may die. The indifference of the Absolute God is the principle upon which all of reality rests. The debased world of things is a cataract in its all-seeing eye, a hollowed-out bone in its perfect ossum, gnawed by the Demiurge, the Betrayer (yet the Absolute God knows nothing of loyalty and betrayal). The Demiurge has created a world of laws in imitation of the world of preordained harmonies. In its pride, the Demiurge does wonders and miracles. Its domain is the second thought, the what-if, the why-not; it proffers the inexplicable upon its believers with pointless regularity.

The Heresiarch must travel through the Axon until they reach the Divine Cerebrum.

1. Rule of action

Their famished vessel is weak and tired. As a consequence, the Heresiarch is feeble, their mind dull and their manners unrefined. Yet they know more about the world than a Devil Gun, as they have been educated by the Pontiffs in matters metaphysical.

When the Heresiarch attempts a perilous action (e.g. grasping a ledge, feigning knowledge, enaging in an unarmed tussle), toss a coin and call it ▲ spike or ● sphere. The Heresiarch succeeds on a good call.

2. Rule of frailty

The body of the Heresiarch can be wounded, just like any body.

Taking a wound while injured results in loss of consciousness. Being injured once more while unconscious results in a certain end.

Eating the bones of the dead restores balance of the humours.

3. Rule of taboo

Frailty of spirit leaves the Heresiarch susceptible to the whispers of the Devil Guns. As long as the Devil Guns are in consensus, the Heresiarch must do what they say. The counsel of the Guns will be ignored when it goes against the taboos:The commandments of the Protoseraph are a mockery of the religion of the Pontiffs, but so are the Heresiarch's taboos.

While injured, the Heresiarch cannot contravene the will of the Guns.

4. Rule of purity

The anathematic Guns can only be reloaded by pure hands. The Heresiarch's digits will shed ichor whenever they transgress one of the Protoseraph's commandments.

Firing a Devil Gun while ritually impure will empty the cartridge. If the Heresiarch becomes impure by the act of shooting or hitting a target, the cartridge will also become empty.

Ichor can only be washed off in absolute secrecy.Within the Axon, the Demiurge compulsively manifests the structural mind. Behold as it makes the neurotic dirty, saying: come hither and scrub your fingers, which you yourself have stained; it is I that offers you the water of clarity.

5. Rule of gnosis

The commandments of the Protoseraph are secret: they can only be revealed through action. The Heresiarch can claim to know a commandment.

If the Heresiarch is right, they achieve gnosis and the commandment is revealed. Choose a Cherub to follow you:

If the Heresiarch is wrong, they blaspheme. A random commandment is revealed (it becomes unavailable for gnosis).

Revealed commandments are added to the Heresiarch's taboos.

6. Rule of traversal

Movement through the Axon is difficult. In order to move toward the Divine Cerebrum, the Heresiarch must use implements. Implements will always lead to one or more exceptional people, but only within the current sphere of the Axon.There is nothing in the Axon except thought. Hideous surgery has conjoined the body of the Demiurge with the mind of the Absolute God. The Axon connects many spheres, each one determined by the many human psyches that lend cohesion to its chronotope. The Pontiffs teach that every sphere exists in three axes, the Axis of Ego, the Axis of Id and the Axis of Superego. Whether dissassociation of the axes and subsequent dissolution of the spheres will occur automatically upon the death of the Protoseraph and the separation of the Demiurge from the outside world is still an open question.

The Pontiffs always help the Heresiarch out by making these two implements available:

7. Rule of religion

The Pontiffs have raised their favourite in the stricture of piety. Religion, they teach, is the form of the mind. The distorted world of the spheres makes it something more.

The Heresiarch can reshape the spheres to some extent, but they can only abide by a single discipline. When using a discipline, pay the cost. Then create an Omen. The effect of an Omen is felt whenever ▲ spike or ● sphere manifests.

The Devil Guns

T. The Devil delights in multiplication and feeds upon existence. Every misbegotten heaven has a crevice upon which it lays its eggs. The Devil only causes pain, and yet it acts without malice. When the Devil makes a deal, a Devil Gun is born.

1. Rule of trigger

When the Devil leaves behind one of its guns, a series is set in motion that, in retrospect, will take the form of the tragic. If the victim of the foul arm set out, in those final moments of thought where clarity pours into the mind as if the last light tried to dissolve all barriers, if the victim set out to reconstruct the manner in which the finger came to rest on the trigger, they would find a smile with no end. The Devil creates worldly guns to humble the Demiurge and the Absolute God, by showing them what little it takes to move a soul. The Devil creates sorcerous guns to humble humanity and the Absolute God, by showing that ignorance is the mother of desire, the universal womb that begets power. The Devil creates ineffable guns to humble humanity and the Demiurge with the unwavering rigor of causes.

When the Heresiarch fires a Devil Gun, toss a coin and call it ▲ spike or ● sphere. The shot lands on a right call.

2. Rule of receiver

Devil Guns produce effects homologous to that of firearms. Veiled from the Pontiffs, the Heresiarch has learned what the Devil contrives through its creatures.

When a Devil Gun is fired, the corresponding effect is produced as if it were an Omen. Every Gun has one receiver.

3. Rule of barrel

A Devil Gun's barrel is always rifled with grooves that bite into reality. Thus their effects are modulated with the consistency of law. Every Gun has a single kind of rifling.Devil Guns are contemptible. Their pain is not sentience (all machines feel), but psyche. Inert by nature, the ideal nature of the world within the Axon's spheres will awaken the Guns to otherness. They project their inner life in a simulacrum of agency. It is unclear whether this is the fulfillment of the machinations of the Adversary or an unhappy accident.

4. Rule of depravity

The hatred of a Devil Gun spills from their cup. It is not enough for the Heresiarch to shoot: they must drown in the ichor of vice.

As long as they inhabit the Axon, Devil Guns seek to inspire the Heresiarch to depravity, so that their mother-of-pearl hands will not forget the weapons after their mission is fulfilled.

Each Devil Gun chooses a vice to encourage. Keep a tally of sins committed. If the sins in a vice number over 50, the Heresiarch is depraved.

Sin marks can be consumed instead of accumulated toward depravity.

The Protoseraph

T. The Devil delights in multiplication and feeds upon existence. Every misbegotten heaven has a crevice upon which it lays its eggs. The Devil only causes pain, and yet it acts without malice. When the Devil makes a deal, a Devil Gun is born.