New Eden is between Houston, Texas and New Orleans, Louisiana laying on the Louisiana side. A straight shot down the I-10 provides plenty of traffic but New Eden doesn’t seem to possess anything worthwhile to stop for most travelers. Passing by it seems like so many small towns in the American Bible Belt, beautiful and cultured as a prize fragrant rose just enough to cover up the whiff of rot from within.
Located within Angels Parish it sits as the Parish (county) seat. Smaller cities are small farming or fishing townships. Nick naming itself in 2000 as “The Silver City” as part of a mass marketing campaign with the slogan “a slice of Heaven” to boost commerce resulted in a influx of business that brought a population boom.
With the population boom came a available workforce allowing Good Neighbors Farm corporation to set up shop employing many in town, even at the cost of most family owned farms for several generations being bought out and rumors of genetically altered crops being grown. With available income abundant the Pair a Dice casino opened, much to the dismay to the formerly dry county to allow drinking and now gamboling. Belmont Research seeing the success of the small town growing has opened a large facility while land prices were reasonable and good privacy for the location.
1st edition History
In the beginning, The Creator created angels to enact His will and shape all of Creation. Seven Houses were made, and the duties divided among them. And as The Creator’s finishing masterpiece, humans were created. God nestled inside each of them a divine spark that not even the mightiest of angels possessed… a soul.
Angels were commanded to love the humans, and to also never reveal themselves to the humans. Loving the humans was easiest, but as time went on the humans remained ignorant, wandering around as beasts and not realizing their potential. This worried many of the angels, who foresaw a time of great turmoil in the future for them. Not knowing what this turmoil would be, they wanted humans to be capable and prepared for the strife ahead, so after much debate, a portion of the angels in heaven decided to break one of God’s commandments and reveal themselves to the humans. Lucifer led this rebellion.
The Age of Wrath began with the Fall, when angels led by Lucifer decided to reveal themselves to humanity. The punishment for this transgression was a series of curses laid upon each House of the rebel angels, followed by God reaching out to corrupt his own creation. The surviving rebel angels reorganized themselves into five Legions and fought back, attempting to restore the world to perfection and protect those humans who had accepted their gifts.
The Silent War
The early stages of the Age of Wrath were characterized as a "silent war" fought as one-on-one duels between loyalists and rebels. These duels took place on abstract levels of reality and were not fatal or even particularly violent; once it became clear that one angel would inevitably win, both sides would withdraw and acknowledge the victor.
The First Murder
After Caine slew Abel, murder was invented, and the Age of Wrath took a darker turn. The rebel angels were now willing to kill loyalists (both human and angelic) and were galvanized by their new power. Many were also disgusted by Caine's sin, and found they could no longer love humankind as they once had.
At this point, three of the Legions broke faith with Lucifer, each going their separate ways to pursue their own agenda towards Heaven and mankind.
The Time of Atrocities
During this period, the Ebon and Silver Legions perpetrated terrible abuses on the mortals under their protection. Once the Host were pushed back to the fringes of creation, Lucifer brought the rebellious legions back under his control.
The Time of Babel
Lucifer then commissioned ten angels known as the Watchers to tutor humankind not just in the secrets of creation, but also of Heaven, and thus permit them to challenge God in power. This resulted in the Civilization of Ashes, which quickly grew to rival the bastions of the Fallen in power. A few angels, fearful of losing their power over humankind, sabotaged this plan by creating the Nephilim. These half-angelic, half-mortal beings overthrew the Watchers and attempted to rule humankind directly; Lucifer was forced to lead another war to wipe them out.
The Shattering
The Civilization of Ashes crumbled under the burden of knowledge humankind was unprepared to wield. Humankind fractured into multiple tribes with mutually unintelligible languages and abandoned their greatest cities and creations. They also abandoned their faith in the Fallen, who were swiftly conquered by the Hosts and punished for their crimes.
The Abyss.
Inevitably, the rebels lost and were marched in chains into The Pitt. All except Lucifer, who was inexplicably absent once the gates of Hell closed and the rebels looked around in the emptiness. None of the Fallen knew what had happened to Lucifer, many blame him for abandoning them, or think him dead. The Abyss was a world of absolute nothingness that drove most fallen insane from sheer isolation and Instantiability. With nothing but themselves most turned inward and were transformed by their own thoughts, fears, regrets, and losses. In the late part of the 20th century cracks began and some demons were able to escape.
As spiritual beings, the Fallen need an anchor to the physical world if they wish to remain there. To continue existing, a demon must find a suitable host for itself: bodies with weak souls, for example: comatose patients, severe drug addicts or suicidal people. The demon severs the weakened soul from the body and takes its place inside the host, merging with the host's memories and emotions, and continues existence on Earth to follow its own personal agenda. While the mortal body provides the Fallen with a shield against the full memory of their torment in Hell, they are sometimes hindered by the memories and feelings the mortal soul left behind.
Those who take a soulless human host become the True Fallen, while those whose existence has greatly degraded that they can only reside in inanimate objects become the Earthbound. A human host has the disadvantage of being unable to hold all the Fallen's memories, and also only allows a trickle of power compared to what the Fallen used to be able to accomplish. On the upside, however, the lingering memories and values of some hosts can restore the Fallen to sanity and help them restore and nourish their Faith after their long imprisonment.
As their mortal hosts are already possessed in a manner of speaking, it is almost impossible for a Fallen's host to be possessed by another; however, especially strong acts of will may be able to push a demon out, in which case they must find another host or be returned to the Abyss.
Themes
Recovering Old Artifacts and Lore: These objects may either be dangerous and wreaking havoc on Creation, or still hidden and much sought after.
Summoning High-Ranking Fallen: Fallen of the player characters' status were sent out to pave the way for the return of their masters.
Control: Fallen will probably try to establish a power base without attracting too much attention. Power, however, always draws attention.
Redemption Through Good Deeds: This may be a goal for any faction except Raveners - how to repair Creation. However, each of the factions would go about this in a completely different way.
Second Wave 25 ish years later a more cracks have formed in the Abyss have formed and a second wave have arrived on earth. Where as the First wave had nothing to start from they relied on the old ways of thinking. This lead to a mixed bag of success and failures. If nothing changes, then nothing changes as the Mortals say.
The Truth- The main catalyst was no longer knowing the truth of what happened. Merging with the humans clouded the memory of what happened before in Heaven, along with the trauma of the Abyss, and realization that their thought patterns were not only their own but merged with their mortal hosts. No one can honestly say they remember God intact. The floor worker usually isn't on first name basis with the cooperate CEO right? The Creator has replaced God because no one remembers who was directing them individually and all the creation myths someone remembers preforming.