Mixed Cell
the default broad campaign, combining investigation, containment, monster hunting, rites, faction politics, and occult conspiracy.
The world is normal. That is the lie that keeps it alive.
Do not touch the relic. Do not name the thing in the mirror. Do not trust the child if its shadow is facing the wrong way.
The priest can save the girl. The hunter can kill the thing inside her. Pray you brought the right one.
When the impossible leaves fingerprints, the case belongs to us.
Every faction knows one truth. Every truth is incomplete.
Magic does not make you more complete. Magic hollows you out so something impossible can fit inside.
Angels are good. Angels are not safe.
Pray for help. Pray harder that the answer is not an angel.
These hold in every campaign. A rule that contradicts one of them loses.
Noah's Flood shattered the great rift into a fixed set of hidden Shards, a little past 120,000 of them, scattered across the world. The count was set at the shattering and never grows: a Wound is a Shard waking, never a new Shard.
The Wound escalation scale is: Cold Shard / Waking Shard / Open Wound / Weeping Wound / Breach.
Cognitive dissonance rewrites the impossible into the mundane. This is called Merciful Dissonance.
The Church is broadly a positive and competent force against supernatural evil, though human, flawed, and often slow.
answering ultimately to the Pope.
They may be as effective as any institution in the moment of confrontation.
They are rare, terrifying, and catastrophically powerful. Their arrival means something has escalated far beyond normal containment.
Devils are fallen angels with fallen authority — they can bargain, bind, accuse, collect, and exploit spiritual law.
Spirits are non-human entities from between-spaces — Threshold Watchers, Hollow Walkers, and elder presences that the Hollow has produced. Human souls displaced into living bodies are dybbuks (harmful) or ibburim (redemptive). These categories are distinct and require different procedures. Confusing them has consequences.
No separate cosmic pantheon. Ancient fallen beings, high-authority devils, and Hollow-thin regions can produce dread without requiring new cosmology.
Exorcism, relics, blessed weapons, consecrated ground, and rites give mechanical advantage — not instant wins.
It is accessed through five tiers. Each tier costs 1 permanent Wound Point.
Magic does not make you more complete. It hollows you out so something impossible can fit inside.
No single faction owns the complete picture. Expertise silos are intentional.
The setting is Christian supernatural horror, not comparative theology.
the default broad campaign, combining investigation, containment, monster hunting, rites, faction politics, and occult conspiracy.
Lyncean/Vesper/X-Files-style impossible investigation where evidence and institutional denial are the central pressure.
Latchkey-centered relic retrieval, classification, containment, breach response, and cursed-object procedure.
Black Road/Supernatural/Hellboy-style monster hunting, folklore research, fieldcraft, and weakness exploitation.
Lantern Index/Candleless/Vesper cases about forbidden workings, cults, black-market relics, names, contracts, and human adversaries using supernatural leverage.
Order/Watchfires/Associated Organization cases centered on exorcism, deliverance, sacramental or holy authority, spirit work, and direct confrontation with demons, devils, or displaced souls.
Something impossible has happened. Characters investigate, identify the true nature of the threat, acquire what they need, and confront it — with the full chance that they win the fight but deepen the corruption, or save the body but lose the soul.
You can see the truth others deny. You can investigate the impossible. You can use faith, rites, relics, research, weapons, and wit to survive. You bring one expertise no one else at the table has. You can save people who will never know they were saved. You will pay a price for power. You will stand against evil without becoming safe from it.
Incomplete evidence, hidden supernatural causes, possession, relic accidents, false miracles, demonic deception, devilish bargains, ghosts with unresolved business, spirits out of place, monster attacks, cults widening Shards into Wounds, conflicting faction agendas, public disbelief, witness cognitive dissonance, innocents in danger, moral compromise, and time pressure.