The False
Delusion is for chumps. Who has time to waste on savior complexes and pointless philosophical arguments while the Contagion takes the world by storm? No one can cure it. It’s God’s own cancer, not the flu. It’s the fundamental flaw in the code, the fatal error that brings reality crashing down.
Those of us who have any sense don’t throw ourselves onto our swords for the sake of a doomed crusade. We look out for number one and do what needs doing. Anything else is a cute lie others tell themselves to pretend they’re anything like these glassy-eyed mortals who blunder through their infection like rats in a maze. Sooner or later, the Sworn will see it too. Or they won’t, and they’ll all die. Win-win for us, the False.
Factions
Like the Sworn, the False are groups of disparate su- pernatural creatures who band together as a reaction to the Contagion. Unlike the Sworn, we’re not interested in wearing kid gloves. Some of us want to preserve the world as it is, while others don’t care; the important distinction between Sworn and False is in our attitudes. The Sworn put a high price on the value of teamwork, and they want to get rid of the Contagion once and for all for the good of the many. Plenty of them are individually genuine monsters in deed as well as name, but they accept compromise in the name of saving the world. Those of us who take up with factions of the False either don’t think the world can — or should — be saved, or some of us go about saving the world in a way that’s just as destructive as letting the Contagion rage. We wield the Contagion as a weapon, manipulate it for our own gain, or just throw up our hands entirely.
Many of us are those who already oppose the individual beings that make up the Sworn, either for existential reasons or out of deep-seated enmity. Some False don’t even make a conscious decision about the Contagion one way or the other; we’re just too hungry, fallen, or craven to conceive of a cure or of real cooperation. Others may join a False group because we’re minions of something more powerful, or because someone offered us something in exchange for our aid.
But some among the False weren’t always this way. When the Sworn lose hope, get petty, or fall too far, they can reach a point where something inside them breaks, and they see the bitter truth. Then, they learn that we really were right all along, swallow their pride, and turn False.
Vector: Contagion. All False wield dominion over the Contagion itself, each in their own ways.