With “Angels & Demons” as the collective August topic of German RPG bloggers, and with the “demon” half of that equation already covered by a previous article, what lay nearer than taking a closer look at one of the many figures briefly touched upon in the setting description of SLA Industries – Angel?
Without reiterating the whole story (to be found in SLA Industries XS, pp. 20-21), Angel is the initial product of SLA Industries’ arcane biogenetic research into the creation of life and living spirit from dead and souless matter. Created from one of SLA Industries’ enigmatic founding figures, the immortal killer and cult leader Intruder, Angel inherited his father-twin’s combat abilities and psychotic rage but none of his balancing care, compassion or spiritual depth. Angel was reduced to just the destructive aspects of the more complete and complex Intruder. Others saw this as a refinement.
As with many other things, SLA Industries provides just a rough framework concerning figures such as Angel. When bringing the gods (or angels) of SLA Industries directly into the game, some extra thought has to be put into how this can be done. This prompt to make the game your own was always one of the great strengths of SLA Industries in our eyes – it gives you enough material to get the associative ball rolling and little enough that you can keep it rolling (and have to keep it rolling) for quite some time.
For Angel, our eyes were drawn to his connection with Intruder, the hatred between the two, and to their shared function as the Head Office’s executioners. To get these to the table, we thought about possible powers/special rules which Angel (this version of him) might have. We omitted Stats beyond these special rules for sake of simplicity (our experience being that what values are considered sufficiently “godlike” vary considerably from group to group and even campaign to campaign).
000 Angel – System Notes
Stormer Regeneration – Angel regenerates as a 313 Malice Stormer.
Clockwork Killer – Angel can be at any location right before the target of one of his assassinations arrives there. It is unclear whether this is due to his superior abilities as an intruder or if there is more to it.
Karmic Intrusion – Angel does not die if he is reduced to 0 HITS. Additional damage does not reduce his HITS below 0 but is instead transformed into stress (1 AS per HIT) which is directly assigned to Intruder.