Lucifuge

The Lucifuge

Status: The Lucifuge

New Initiate (•): You have just joined the Lucifuge. At this level, you have been taught that you have powers, if not how to access them. You've bought into the philosophy of the organization. You may have been to Milan once, but mostly you receive instructions via telephone, if you receive them at all. You have been given your Thirteen contacts. You may spend dots on the Castigation Merit. Experienced (••): Having been brought into the organization, you've learned enough about them, and had the chance to exchange viewpoints with other Lucifuge such that you may be invited to join one of its philosophical Factions. Gain the Specialty associated with the Faction you join. Veteran (•••): You have defeated many terrible things, and have developed a reputation among your fellows for being able to keep a secret. You're in regular contact with Milan, and can visit there and consult the library any time you can afford to get out there. You have access to two extra dots of Resources or Library, which can only be used for the purposes of the Vigil. Elder (••••): The seniormost Lucifuge agents all have suites in the Milan Holdings, although they are rarely given the opportunity to enjoy them – they are at the forefront of the Lucifuge's crusade, and often overseeing a good many efforts around the world. They have also been taught to be sensitive to the strange occult signs of infernal presence, reading the signs to help direct their missions. You gain living quarters in the Milan Holdings. You also gain the Omen Sensitivity (•••) Merit; when using it, the Storyteller will always tell you if the omen has to do with infernal or demonic topics. An Intimate of Milan (•••••): You meet frequently with the Lucifuge, and she has given you several missions personally. She offers her guidance to you as needful, and you are considered to be among her circle of intimates (insofar as anyone is). You gain the Lucifuge as a Mentor ••••; you may spend Experiences to increase this to ••••• afterwards.

Members of the Lucifuge call themselves "the Seventh Generation." Each of them is an inheritor of an infernal lineage, and brought into the Lucifuge as a last resort. There, they will transmute their demonic potential into a useful, well-controlled occult tool for fighting demons and other monsters, or they will die trying.

Endowment: Castigation. The Lucifuge learn strange rituals that allow them to reshape their demonic potential into tools that are (relatively) safe to use. In many ways, the rites of Castigation are a trade-off: instead of that potential being used safely but transforming the Lucifuge into a demon, they are instead volatile and dangerous, occasionally injuring the Lucifuge, but carry (almost) no risk of transforming them.

Headquarters: The Milan Holdings

As their name suggests, the Milan Holdings are located in Milan, Italy. They consist of several properties around the city, including a particularly old villa and estate grounds that most in the Lucifuge generally agree were probably the Lady of Milan's original home (though she herself finds the question useless and irrelevant). The buildings that are part of the overall Holdings include not just the villa, but also two expensive apartment high-rises with fine restaurants, nightclubs, and boutiques on their ground floors, a hospital, several of the older buildings at the University of Milan, a small country church, and several private houses of particularly elegant and expensive provenance.

More importantly, however, the Milan Holdings are all connected by an old series of catacombs, which in addition to providing passages between above-ground Holdings, also contain safe-houses, long-term infirmaries, the Archivio (the Lucifuge's central lore repository and library), a few clusters of cells for long-term imprisonment of monsters or traitors to the Lucifuge, and a variety of other constructions of use to the group.

Organization

The Lucifuge is organized very loosely: at the top, it is run by the Lady of Milan, who can and does pass on missions to those beneath her. At the bottom, it is composed of Lucifuge agents who each know thirteen other members of the 666 Lucifuge members, one or two who are Veterans or possibly Elders of the group. The upper tiers can and do pass missions on from the Lucifuge to the rank and file, but this is rare: more often the rank and file identify problems in their local areas, and pass word of them up the chain. Lucifuge are encouraged to join cells of other hunters, to learn more about not just the monsters, but other hunters, although they are aware of the danger of some hunters' reactions to their Castigation powers. Many Lucifuge simply do not reveal their membership in the organization.

The Leadership

The Lucifuge does not have an organized hierarchy or leadership other than the Lucifuge herself.

• The Lucifuge, aka the Lady of Milan. A Milanese noblewoman of at least a millennium in age, the Lucifuge acts as the matriarch of this particularly hell-bound family. She is the oldest and most powerful of its members, and is said to have started the organization, though only the group's most trusted historians and archivists are given access to those ancient records. She is genteel and powerfully charismatic, appearing as a woman in her late forties to early fifties, with a regal grace to her. She does not often emerge from the holdings the Lucifuge maintains in Milan, but when she does, it is with a crack team of powerful and skilled Lucifuge hunters, and usually the Chevalier Theleme as her immediate bodyguard.
• Le Chevalier Theleme is a centuries-old member of the Lucifuge, and often considered the Lady of Milan's right-hand man. He is certainly her favored agent and assassin, a skilled fencer whose Castigation rites only heighten his ability to bring violent steel to monsters. He is handsome, and charming, notorious as a hedonist and sybarite who can often be found on the edges of high society.

The Bloodlines

Though the infernal bloodline crops up here and there, skipping entire generations throughout humanity's ever-branching progress, the fact is that the Lucifuge has identified several families where the taint is particularly strong and/or perfidious, showing up again and again over successive generations. Some of these families are:

• The Belladonnas: An old Milanese crime family that merged their interests with the Sicilian Mafia when it found its way into the rest of Italy, individual Belladonnas can be found in crime organizations all throughout Europe and the Americas. The Belladonnas aren't even really aware of their infernal taint, though individual Lucifuge Belladonnas keep a close eye on their family's many, many branches, to make sure that those who show the signs are brought in. As is so often the case with such old Italian families, it is the old women in the family who know that there are certain members of the family who can be called should any of their grandchildren begin to show strange signs.
• The Woodwines: Old European money, the Woodwines rose to prominence in the 1700s thanks to an infernal pact made by Celeste Woodwine. She bore the demon a child as part of the pact that ensured her husband and family's incredible financial success, but that child was discovered by the Lucifuge. Since then, the Woodwines have produced Seventh Generation in their lineage, with enough of their membership turning from the Lucifuge or being missed by it that they give into their demonic natures and keep the infernal blood fresh in the lineage. The Woodwines are often considered effete and decadent, given to their own pleasures over the mission of the Lucifuge. Still, the Lucifuge herself still considers Emeleen Woodwine one of her foremost confidants and friends.
• The Wrights: Originally an Irish lineage whose infernal origins can be traced to an infernal pact made by a blacksmith, the Wrights main contribution to the Lucifuge is through the phenomenon of the Wright Twins: a strain of infernal manifestation which appears as a set of twins born each generation, of alternating sex (male one generation, female the next). In these twins, one will bear tremendous infernal potential, while the other is almost entirely human. The Lucifuge watches these twins carefully, as there is known to be some faction of demons with a vested interest in these children. They have so far been stymied from getting their hands on any of them, but the demons seem very focused on their efforts. The Twins aren't the only Lucifuge to have cropped up among the Wright clan, however; there are several Wrights within its membership who are part of other branches of the family.
• The Yeagers: Generally considered to be a clan of backwoods American hillbillies, the Yeagers are dedicated hunters who keep a close eye on their kin. The family keeps its secrets, and even non-Lucifuge members of the family may take up the Vigil for a while. They can be found in multi-generational family enclaves throughout the American South and up into New England (although the Appalachian and Yankee branches of the family do not get along).

The Factions

There are three major faction within the Lucifuge, largely philosophical leanings rather than sub-organizations.

• The Denial: Empathy (Discern Intent). The Lady of Milan's own philosophy states that the Devil is callous, selfish, and utterly evil, and that those monsters who invoke or draw upon this power or nature must be destroyed utterly. Those that rebel against their evil natures can be left alone or offered redemption, but its intent and actions must be measured and ascertained.
• The Reconciliation: Weaponry (Knife). This strange faction believes that the world's monsters are themselves the chains of evil which bind Satan to his wickedness, and that if he can be liberated from them, he will repent of his sin and reconcile with Heaven. When this happens, man will likewise be elevated from sin and perfidy. Thus, the utter destruction of all monsters is vital to the redemption of Satan and the salvation of mankind from evil. Members of the Reconciliation recognize one another by the rosewood handled knives they wield.
• The Truth: Academics (Research). These academics are wholly unconcerned with monsters outside of the Lucifuge. Instead, they seek to understand the nature of evil by uncovering the truth about their own lineages, and those of other Lucifuges around them: they exhaustively investigate and spy upon other Lucifuge members, finding out as much as they can about one another. They frequently uncover dark secrets about their fellows, and they do not hesitate to use those secrets to their own advantages.

The Thirteen

Each member of the Lucifuge who is not part of its leadership is given "the Thirteen": the names and information for contacting the thirteen Lucifuge closest to them geographically. They are expected to check in with one another occasionally, and to call upon one another for assistance where possible.