Realistic or Modern Infernal Intervention - Lore

[ZacksQuest]

This page will compile all the lore on factions, locations, characters, organizations, and prior events. Currently, only basic knowledge on history and factions are available but will be expanded upon as the RP continues.

The page has been edited and abridged for grammar and readability.

History- From The Aether War to The Discovery Event

Aether

Aether is the term in this setting for the soul, specifically the electrochemical energy produced by the brain that maintains its own personality and has a seemingly unlimited creative threshold. The gods discovered the human mind is an unconscious magnet that sucks the Aether out of their universes and uses it to power their untapped creative potential.

The Origins of the Universes

In the beginning, the first gods to walk the universes were all universally powerful, able to bend dimensions, molecular bonds, forces, energy, and the elements to their will without question. Their downside was their lack of intelligence, having the mentality of children playing with toys. Eventually these gods learned to mate, and the children who took their place lost some of that power but made up for it by being exponentially smarter than the last. This continued for a long time for most universes until they reached a generation of immortal gods who were powerful to a limited degree but highly intelligent.

Using their intellect, the gods soon learned how to poke tiny holes in reality, which led to their discovery of the universes around them, each populated by their own gods. Once they learned how to tear open much larger holes, they crossed the threshold into other worlds, and in those wildly different realms they fought base wars for supremacy over one another. These widespread battles only stopped when entire universes just ceased to exist, with only their footprints in other universes showing they had ever been there.

The gods of wisdom across the multiverse convened and learned that the universes couldn't support their own existence any longer, due to all the electrical power known as Aether lost when the armies of those universes flowed out en masse, and collapsed in on itself, taking everything spawned from it into oblivion with it. There was an even more alarming discovery made: the Aether of every universe was slowly beginning to drain because of the tears in reality, and there was no conceivable way to stop it.

The Discovery of Earth

The gods scoured every other universe in a desperate search for the place the Aether was going, and their search finally ended in the universe housing the planet Earth. This universe was alien to them, autonomous and self-regulating with no gods whatsoever, only low animals and semi-intelligent creatures who could barely create tools out of resources. It wasn't until humanity reached its bronze age of antiquity that the gods learned the truth: the Aether lost was being drawn into the brains of the predominant apes of the planet, known as humans, which was making them vastly more intelligent than the other animals of the planet.

Two universes were the first to take decisive action to reclaim the Aether, who would become known respectively as the Semitic pantheon and the Greek pantheon. They began becoming mentors to human ingenuity, bringing over technology from their universes and crafting miracles to win their favor. In exchange for bountiful harvests, plentiful children, and a successful society free of suffering and death, the humans they reached out to offered up their souls to the gods. The gods took the Aether from the human soul, finding that once it left the body it was leagues more potent, and the two universes flourished. Both of the pantheons repaid them with the gift of magic, created by imprinting the mystical power of a specific god onto a human's Aether, who could channel it through willpower and spread the knowledge to others. Envious of their success and intrigued by the human race, the other universes set up territory, committed to the soul trade, and became known as the pantheons.

Monsters, Demons, and the Undead

Not all pantheons were content with the territory they had and the amount of souls they received. Angered by the frequent successes of the larger pantheon, and living under constant fear that their harvest of souls wouldn't be enough to sustain their universes, the forces of several pantheons converged into one warlike force that began tearing the social order apart. Corrupting the human souls with negative elemental power that the other pantheons could not use, teaching them dark, destructive magic, engineering wars, genocides, plagues and disasters only to reap the thousands of souls lost, and mercilessly slaughtering any other god who got in their way, the enemies of the peace became known to god and human alike as a demon, a force of destructive nature. The pantheons who still worked semi-honestly fought hard to suppress the growing demon menace, with even one of the original pantheon's leaders, the Semitic god Ba'al, joining their forces and becoming crowned as a demon king. The god who replaced Ba'al as the king, a being known as Shaddai, single-handedly rallied the gods into a fervor and with tactical genius and the combined forces of gods and human mages alike defeated the demon threat, banishing them to a closed-off realm where they could survive the destruction of their universes, but were warped, twisted, and reformed from the matter around them when their universe died, turning them into hideous monsters on the outside to match their horrific actions.

Not all monsters came from the realm of man, and not all monsters that lurk in the other universes were native to that universe. Many of the oldest and deadliest monsters, such as the dragon, dire wolf, phoenix, hydra and the giant squid, were already on Earth as the pinnacles of evolution in their era. However, with gods from dozens of universes, demons, and the expanding faction of human mages converged onto one planet, Aether was overflowing on the planet- everything and everyone was getting saturated by it, including plants, rocks, the sky, the water, animals, celestial bodies, and even human beings whose Aether tolerance was low enough to become poisoned by the overflow. Monsters emerged, some humanoid like harpies, dryads, ogres, naiads, hekatoncheres, centaurs and cyclopses, others bestial monsters such as the dreaded nucklelavee, hellhounds, minotaur, hippogrif, and abath, among others. The majority of these creatures were rounded up by the combined efforts of humans, demigods, and gods, and placed in a heavily guarded prison universe. Only the most deceptively humanlike, such as the lycanthrope, or the most godlike, such as the beings now grouped together as the Fae, escaped the widespread purging of monsters. Today's monsters that still reside on earth outside of those two groups now live in fear of their livelihoods being stripped away, hiding themselves in the darkest corners of the Earth hoping for a change in the status quo.

The overflow of the Aether did not just affect animals, plants, and the inanimate. It also affected the dead, and after some time the overflow of Aether in the universe meant that not all the souls in the universe were harvested. In fact, some souls in the universe were so twisted from their wickedness in life or powerful from their affinity for black magic that they could never be used as fuel. These became the undead horde, the liches and zombies, the boggarts and ghouls, the vampires and the revenants. Their leadership among the revenants were the most ruthless tyrants to ever walk the earth, from Xerxes to Napoleon, and those that had the brains to band together banded under one of these powerful spirits beneath the banner of the Nation of the Damned. These, too, were kept constantly in check by the combined forces of humanity and godhood.

King Arthur and the Pantheon Monopoly

Over all this time, pantheons rose and fell. Some lost territory and fled to the protection of closed off universes to save themselves from the sweeping hand of nonexistence when their universe collapsed. Others were killed, down to the last man. Others were involved in a great many internal struggles and couldn't keep track of their hold on humanity slipping away. Several powerful ones, such as the pantheons of East Asia, West Africa, and Central America were smart to keep far away from the microcosm of gods in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. There, one figure began to claim a true monopoly on godhood, one that would take over a third of the world. It was Shaddai, the very same god whose ruthlessness and affinity for battle cast the demons out into another realm.

One by one, starting with his rebranding on Earth to a benevolent, outwardly peaceful god, his new pantheon comprised of countless angels and deified humans to whom he granted power took the world by storm. He supported countless nations, empires, and factions along the Mediterranean and across the whole swath of Europe, siding with the Holy Roman Empire, British Empire, and Ottoman Empire under a different name. His Saints went out, hunted down some of the hidden monsters of the world, his angels manhandled the pantheons of other people into submission while his preachers did their work converting entire nations to his side. The former gods that shared Europe and the Middle East deferred to him for a supply of souls that he loaned out at the cost of servitude. The several dozens of denominations his faith had created began infighting, an action which Shaddai did little to stop, as no matter which side lost the war would give him an influx of millions of souls.

His most infamous action was to set up the Knights of the Round in the Kingdom of Albion, before it was turned into the British Empire. He sided with King Arthur, and employed the help of magic users such as Moerlin and Nimueh to aid Arthur in becoming a powerful king before using him for his true intention: the complete and unconditional destruction of magic-using society and the remaining monsters of Europe. Cracked down even harder by the Inquisition and brought to religious frenzy by the 1500's, Shaddai's power seemed limitless and his complacent capacity for violence seemed never-ending. He was not evil, never used black magic, and never manipulated people on more than a psychological level, but among the good and righteous he was one to be feared and remained so for a thousand years.

The Scientific Singularity and the Discovery Event

There was one element that Shaddai did not expect during the supremacy of his Heavenly Host. His complete subjugation of all the other pantheons around him and the assertion that the other gods should not be worshipped destroyed humanity's belief in them, as well as monsters, demons, the undead, and magic. He only began realizing the true ramifications of the hypocritical action when humanity stopped believing in him as well, passing him and his angelic army off as ancient fiction. This was further supported by the advent of human technology, as the Aether without anywhere to go, no god to offer their soul's power to, no monsters to devour it and no magic to use it up except in small societies practicing parlor tricks, began gathering in the collective brains of the people, and the things they did with it were their own brand of magic. The Renaissance, The Industrial Revolution, the age of robotics and computing, and vast advances in medicine, transportation, entertainment, and quality of life made them further the assumption that organized religion was a suppressive force.

This was the critical mass event for the pantheons of the multiverse. Humanity stopped caring about them, praying to them, or offering any Aether up to them because the monopoly on faith destroyed the balance carefully cultivated by Shaddai's own progenitor and contemporaries.

Just before the technological singularity would take place, where humans would create technologically advanced AI whose neural network would surpass even their own, the gods convened and unanimously decided to reveal themselves.

Across the world, in every single country, among every single major population center, the gods revealed themselves in the flashiest, most supernatural methods available to them. They began, from a city-to-city basis, reigniting the magical fervor in nature and humanity both. They allowed small tears in all the universes, showed the now hyper-competent humans the other realms that they hailed from. The leaders of the pantheons converged in front of the United Nations themselves and said, before a joint chiefs council of all member countries, the truth about gods and their extra-dimensional status, and the scientific reasoning behind their existence in an Earth that is otherwise based entirely in a self-regulated universe of math and automation. They explained their motives for gathering human souls, the plight old forgotten gods get, the history of their actions and power structures. Nobody could refute it. All eyes were off technology, and even though human self-reliance was still touted as important, a resurgence of magic, mystery, gods, and monsters. This era of gods and humans was different though. Humans understood the logic and pretense to gods' existence, and their coinciding relationship was more of a mutual partnership than ever before.

However, this event known as the Discovery Event, while saving the gods and bringing about a golden age of Aether harvesting, created several side effects that nobody anticipated. Humanity, being technologically adept even in this new age of magic, combined magic and technology and poked holes in universes that shouldn't have been open, releasing the combined forces of every creature and demon locked away. Some human factions remained staunchly conservative, wishing to put an end to all godly interactions in the mortal world and condemn them all to nonexistence, while others saw it as an opportunity to draw power for themselves by capitalizing on the soul and magic market. Magical factions came into a resurgence, but so too did black magic. The monsters, including those that have been in hiding on Earth for centuries finally had a chance to step out into the light. And perhaps most dangerously, the collapse of Shaddai's monopoly on faith and the all-encompassing "every faith is true" revelation of the Discovery Event put every pantheon back to square one in regards to territory and influence. Governments and corporations worked directly with gods, and in order to get souls formerly benevolent gods either had to turn to corruption or direct takeovers of territory and land to survive.

The balance was only re-established for a short time, and immediately the turmoil seemed ready to tear the entire multiverse apart.

The Infernal Intervention Team

The Infernal Intervention Team

One faction almost caused the balance to shatter. The combined forces of the Infernal Empire converged onto humanity like a growing plague, throwing people into a dark age. They controlled countries, took over corporations, held prominent positions in the military, and began culling the masses. The gods fought valiantly alongside unpowered and magically gifted humans alike to combat the scourge, and in their desperation the major players of Earth devised a team of highly competent, powerful soldiers to use guerrilla tactics, espionage, infiltration techniques and deadly forms of magic to take control back from the demon scourge. Over a period known as the Hellish Year, they finally succeeded with the aid of gods and the combined forces of humanity and all the other races, and the same alliance that created this temporary team of powerful infiltrators decided to make it permanent, an organization outside of any one faction but serving the interests of all of them meant to protect the Earth and by extension all life in existence from any potential threats to the balance. This system has been in place for the four decades that passed since the Hellish Year, and the balance has managed to hold fast. The organization called itself the Infernal Intervention Team, a moniker used for them unofficially during the Hellish Year, and it expanded to include over a dozen teams of some of the best and brightest to engage in operations that pit them regularly against demons, faeries, powerful monsters, rogue gods, dark mages, and unscrupulous human factions among a slew of other potential threats. Their missions include retrieval, rescue, crisis management, and de-escalation in addition to infiltration, espionage, sabotage, manhunts, and direct confrontations. Their scope extends beyond the Earth to all the realms, and their place in the new era of Earth is the reason why it's been able to last.

Factions - Allies

The Olympian Pact

While sixteen pantheons signed and fiscally support the Infernal Intervention Team, Mount Olympus is one of four active supporters and suppliers for the team as far as pantheons go. Primarily encompassing the Greco-Roman gods and led by the Olympians, this faction raises their kids to become members of the team. While some of them have fallen from grace and some even became instigators of incidents requiring action from the II Team, the majority have grown up past their early, pettier days and become a rational body.

The Egyptian Pantheon

The animal, desert realm of the Egyptian Gods is another of the four active supporters. Formerly lead by Ammun-Ra, currently the throne is split between Queen Isis and King Horus and they are famous for their imbuing powers to those who seek justice and having a high standard for spiritual purity, either giving impure souls to underworld pantheons or destroying the consciousness and using them as fuel.

The Valkyrie Squadron

The warlike Norse gods of their own agency Valkyrie act as the third primary contributor from the pantheons. Led primarily by Freya and Idun, Valkyrie offers up soldiers to aid in conflicts that could potentially lead to an end-of-Valhalla class scenario.

The Heavenly Host

Once the conquering pantheon that secured an entire third of the world in his prime with his prophets, angels, and Saints, the Heavenly Host led by benevolently powerful Leon Shaddai is an ally that leaves the other contributors feeling uneasy. While he is weakened, he is by no means a pushover and still runs of the strongest factions in the setting. However, his human worshipers are divided into denominations, and many atrocities committed in his name were not forcibly rescinded at his request like other pantheons have been starting to do. This combined with his violent history as one of the most destructive, vengeful gods to ever walk the earth make Leon Shaddai a powerful ally but one that perhaps should be kept at a safe distance.

The Western Mages' Guild and The Goodwitch Association

Two magical unions that have the same methods and goals as one another, these two organizations combined hold the vast majority of benevolent magical clans, specifically those that stray far from black magic, who have begun to act as two representative democracies to teach humanity about their magical potential through magic schools and internships. All jobs that involve magic users generally hire from these groups unless the job is less than legal. They aid in missions that involve dark magic cults and organizations.

Treeshapers

Summoners, Vodun practitioners, and elemental druids largely come from this offshoot, one of the few factions to embrace black magic but in a regulated version that denounces any use to control, torture, and kill fellow people without express authorization. They generally believe in artificially combining human intellect and Aetherial power with the essence of an elemental, demon, or spirit that will inhabit and share the consciousness 50/50 with the human.

The Order of the Balance

Masters of a zen form of magic, these monks ascribe to an Eastern philosophy and generally pray to the gods of east Asian pantheons. Their powers come from learning to harness only one ability involving forces of the universe, such as heat, friction, gravity, and rotation, and beginning by manipulating it on the smallest observable scale before discovering inner peace while pushing that one ability farther and farther with hypothetically no upward limit. They have physical longevity, mental security, and the most powerful among them can match wits and powers with the leaders of some pantheons, but they are ultimately a peaceful organization who do not seek out more power and never seek out conflict.

Factions - Adversaries

The Infernal Empire

The upgraded, far-reaching version of old Judeo-Christian Hell formed by gods who escaped to Gehennom after forcibly corrupting and stealing souls out of desperation. Its hierarchy of demons and former gods ranks in the tens of thousands, with the entirety of Hell divided Mafia-style into several main branches subdivided into families. Each have different goals and means, with some corrupting souls to claim later, some being in charge of deal making, some in charge of keeping tabs on or sabotaging competition, and some involved in killing and reaping souls through warfare or destruction. While leadership has changed to be regulated by a ten-demon council known as the Infernos, the individual clans and especially families are usually not given any punishment for their actions. Major clans include: The Goetian Clan, whose forces include families Belial, Ba'al, Asmodeus, and Paimon among others; The Verum, whose forces include families Satanachia, Agaliarept, Nebiros, and Syrach among others; the Oberonica Clan, whose forces include families Egyn and Spyrion among others; the Nuctemeron Clan, whose forces include families Hahabi, Eglun, and Tarab among others; the Grigori Clan, whose forces include families Yeqon, Gadre'el, and Samyaza among others; the Sephiroth Clan, whose forces include families Samael and Lilith among others; and the Chthonic Clan, whose forces include families Verrine and Oelliet among others. As well as being the adversary it was created to defeat, this faction is responsible for between 40%-60% of all incidents that require the Infernal Intervention Team's action. Not all of the Infernal Empire's forces are completely bad, and allies within the organization are some of the best informants and allies in operations at times.

The Fae Kingdoms

A conglomeration of the wild spirits of Celtic, German, and French folklore and mythology, formed by the overflow of Aether into the natural world. They are adept at their own nature-based technology and experts in the alchemical field, infamous for being more unpredictable and deceptive than their more out-and-out demon cousins of the Infernal Empire. The Kingdom is, too, divided into several factions that rule fiefdoms in the realm and claim different hours of the day on Earth to strike. Some, like the Apostles of Samhain, are almost ghost-like in their powers like boggarts, banshees, dullahans and nucklelavees. Others, like the Tuatha de Danaan, are out and out gods who oversee the actions and do political and diplomatic damage control for their less controlled neighbors. The majority, though, are tied to the seasons and many to the elements. They cannot tell lies so they must deal in half truths, but their contracts are dangerous and negotiation with a member of the Fae is not recommended.

The Demigod Project

An enemy organization to the Infernal Intervention Team but with a similar means, Demigods Unlimited is a for-hire band of mercenaries who are also tied to demons and gods, primarily Greco-Roman or Norse Gods. They work with the more unsavory factions, human and god and demon alike, doing their bidding if something needs doing under the table with no fingers pointed. Their current leaders are Jason, X'balanque, and Gilgamesh, who separately run three outfits of the organization and are all classified as highly dangerous adversaries.

The Shadow Loa

A group of god-like spirits who are guilty of a few crimes, including child sacrifice, possession, and necromancy. While the majority of Rada Loa of Haitian and African Vodun are allied with the pantheons that support the Infernal Intervention team, this offshoot of the same pantheon are emotion eaters who feed off of suffering caused by magical activities. They are a major supplier of cults and if not for their more playful, independent insanity and devil-may-care stance on their actions, they would rank far higher on the most wanted list. The most infamous clans are: The Ghede Family, led by Papa Ghede; the Baron family, led by Baron Samedi and Maman Brigitte; and the Troublemakers, led by Erzulie Dantu.

The Nation of the Damned

A cabal led by the undead whose members include liches, ghouls, vampires, lycanthropes, and infamous humans who have attained godlike power in spiritual form. Includes some of the biggest monsters and warlords in history who return time and time again, reincarnating into a new body or working in the shadows in a spiritual form. Led by usually whichever of the highest ranking three (Vlad Tepes III, Tomas de Torquemada, and Elizabeth Bathory) is currently alive and in the oldest vessel. These spirits are so corrupted their souls cannot be harvested, and the leadership of this faction acts as essentially a magical virus that can imprint itself on any magic-using technology or person and steal some of their skill and drain some of their Aether. Those who are touched by any of these creatures are likely to become one of them.

The Knights Templar

An order of knights that were granted knowledge of the other universes hundreds of years ago and were granted the skills to set up a foothold in the multiversal order of things. Based off of the works of their teacher, "The Enlightener", who is now known as the demon queen Baphomet, the Knights Templar have mastered a black magic art of capturing souls, spiritual beings, and even the essence of gods without consent or proper ritual and implanting them into anything they choose, including puppets and enchanted weaponry. Even without this ability, their military might and tactics rival that of even the Infernal Intervention Team's finest, and a tussle with them may need guerrilla tactics to overcome.

The Order of Nine Angles

A more recent faction also attributed to the demon Baphomet, the Order of Nine Angles takes the worst aspects of Theistic Satanism and takes it up to eleven. Biomancy, necromancy, death magic, blood magic, infant sacrifice, psychomantic hexes that control the mind, and even magic that embodies the absoluteness of nonexistence, this cult is one of the most infamous black magic cults around and many of their members are also virulent racists who tout half-demon supremacy.

The Bookmakers

One of the most ingenious and powerful of the dark human factions that the Infernal Intervention team could face are the Bookmakers. These people can essentially warp reality, and are comprised of former writers of horror fiction both online and in real life. The creatures they create, which have powers on par with a god or demigod and are based off of urban legends, modern folklore, and internet monsters, are formed using a special kind of dimensional magic mixed with the ability to cast spells through written word taught by the Bookmakers' leader, an enigmatic figure who taught his first disciples on an internet forum for writer's block. The site he recruited on has since been shut down and the group has gone into hiding, but there has been no evidence of the creatures being disbanded or destroyed.

The Tulpa Corporation

One of two corporations profiting off of human potential. Their phrase, "mind over matter", is being utilized through their technology that uses the same mechanics as the Bookmakers but sells it for a profit. They are guilty of multiple human rights violations and have enough sway in third world countries that they can cull the entire populations to use as test subjects, usually selecting the most traumatized or neurodiverse of the population to be part of their Tulpa Project, which allows thoughts to become a sort of false dream-like reality through affecting peoples' perceptions and brainwaves. With literally more money than God and a backing from a percentage of the population who do not want pantheon interference in human affairs and wish to have their own power over their own souls, they are more tackled on an individual situation involving test subjects running amok than any steps being taken to truly demolish their endeavors.

Elysium Enterprises

An unscrupulous company whose goals are far loftier than the Tulpa Corporation, whose motives are entirely for profit. Elysium has plans towards creating a new universe with their technology, whose spiritual power is as useful to Earth and the Other Side as any human soul, and then underselling to the pantheons for a profit. They have no qualms with draining the power of gods and completely obliterating human souls to do this, and they have their sights set on the items and sources of power that could give them enough energy to accomplish their lofty goals at the cost of the balance of power.

The Sarkic Republic

A country of dark magic users and monsters living together seems like a safe haven for those who wish to be separate from the overall world. But like many non-magical communes, they hold a darker secret, and it's said that anyone who joins the Republic may never again leave. Some say they all share the same circulatory system, and are all connected to the same brain. In any case, this entire country of biomancers is one to be feared and fought against to the bitter end.