The World of CAIN

KEY: People. Size. Area. Distance, Speed, Magnitude.

CAT 0: One. Human size. Personal. Touch. Average human. Small.

CAT 1: A few. Heavy furniture. A few people. Same room. Fast human. Noticeable.

CAT 2: Small group. Large animal. Entire room. Across the street. Fast animal. Large.

CAT 3: Large group. Vehicle. A few rooms. Down the block. Car. Very large.

CAT 4: A crowd. Large vehicle. Whole building. A few blocks away. Train. Massive.

CAT 5: A huge crowd. Building. City block. Across town. Maglev. Destructive.

CAT 6: Thousands of people. Large building. Whole neighborhood. Visual range. Airliner. Overwhelming.

CAT 7: Many thousands of people. Skyscraper. A whole town. Over the horizon. Jet fighter. Cataclysmic.

Physical Manifestation of your Sin or Blasphemy.

1. EYES: Typical Appearance or Manifestation: Black or altered sclera, white iris, split, slit, or duplicate pupil.

2. JAW: Typical Appearance or Manifestation: Split or extended jaw, pharyngeal jaw, fangs, black tongue, viscous saliva.

3. BACK OR CHEST: Appearance or Manifestation: Spines, lesions, skin discoloration or warping, rapid regeneration, hardened or loose skin or scales, vestigial wings, extra ribs.

4. ARMS OR HANDS: Appearance or Manifestation: Claws, split hand or harm, extra arm, twisting skin or muscles, discoloration, extra fingers.

5. SKIN, HAIR, OR LEGS: Appearance or Manifestation: Major discoloration or bleaching, transparent skin, warping of gait, digitigrade or multiple legs, patchiness, change in hair color.

Cain’s research division, responsible for countermeasure production, weapon development, exorcist research, and sin or anomaly imprisonment. It is also responsible for the training of exorcists and the honing of their abilities, running the monthly category assessment tests. TEMERITY has, unfortunately, cultivated a poor reputation within CAIN for ruthlessness, mostly due to their hard training regimen and their secretive nature, even within the organization

CAIN’s boarding organization, responsible for the upkeep, education, maintenance, and well being of exorcists, as well as their deployment to the field. Many psychics manifest powers in adolescence, therefore there is an extensive schooling, exercise, and nutrition program to keep them in good mental and physical shape. Exorcists are the organization’s highest value assets - they are well taken care of, providing they prove their worth. In a sense, CASTLE is both father and mother to the exorcists and is their closest point of contact to the organization. Most people they interact with in their day to day will be CASTLE staff. Exorcists are not allowed to reside outside of approved facilities though allowances can be made for outside trips or excursions for well being and leisure. During such trips they are tightly monitored. CASTLE maintains CAIN’s mundane security wing and military forces, including heavily armed and well trained ‘scramble’ teams of mundane humans with special anti-psychic training, dubbed ‘untouchables'. They are typically recruited from a pool of international convicts and deployed in tight circumstances against sins where exorcists cannot be allocated in time. These teams have a high expected fatality rate and cultivate a certain pride in their activities.

Cain’s intelligence service, responsible for tracking sin emergences, exorcist recruitment, and the monitoring of rogue psychics. Utilizing CAIN’s orbital surveillance platform SERAPH and the Heaven Eyes, a group of specialized precognitive exorcists, they are able to not only track sin activity across the globe but also predict future activity with a small degree of variance. They are also responsible for, in extreme circumstances, deploying ‘veil’ blanket memory modification, as well as the defrosting and launch of extremely powerful reserve exorcists (deemed: Virtues) to critical situations

The governing body of CAIN, responsible for the clandestine nature of the organization and covering up most Sin activity, which is often explained by ‘unexplained’ disappearances, gas leaks, industrial accidents, chemical spills, or natural disasters. CAIN has roots in most major governments, but is not subservient to any of them. The board is made up of eight elders chosen by succession and a secret vote. Their real identities are kept a secret even to the organization itself and they are only referred to by their titles. They rarely meet in person, and in practice while there is a ranking (upper four and lower four), none of them are in charge. The lower four are rumored to all be extremely powerful exorcists of Category 5-7 but this is unsubstantiated.

CAIN’s human staff number in the tens of thousands and are highly trained and inducted under oath. The entire organization is broadly split into four sub-organizations, each of which sometimes finds itself at odds with the other.

CAIN officially does not exist and operates on a clandestine basis. Its operating charter has its basis in the old hermetic orders and was established by the Covenant of Worms in 1684. It’s headquarter building is in XXX in the XXX ocean and has extensive boarding, research, and training facilities. World elites and leaders are typically aware of its existence, but may scramble to grasp the true meaning of its activities. CAIN tightly regulates its research into the phenomena of grace, and therefore mundane governments are always one step behind CAIN, which has not only its technological edge, but a trained cadre of high level psychics at its disposal. Officially, the organization’s goal is to eradicate all sins. Unofficially, it has many of its own goals and agendas, which often clash internally. Astute observers might note that its goal is not a long term solution, something the organization is aware of, but dogmatically denies.

CAIN is the global supranational organization for the execution and disposal of supernatural phenomena. Buried in a dozen massive subterranean facilities worldwide, it’s behemoth machinery exists for one purpose: to wipe out the stain of humanity’s sins. Without the organization, humanity would eventually collapse under the weight of its own evil. Exorcists are the tools of CAIN, high potential psychic individuals who can exercise the necessary self-control to use their powers as a weapon. CAIN is responsible for their recruitment and monitoring, as well as their training, upkeep, and education, and takes this as its secondary driving purpose. The organization is extremely well resourced and has access to many global facilities and deployment sites, including the SERAPH orbital rail and surveillance network. Despite this, it remains a relatively small organization, by necessity due to the nature of its activities.

Lords are righteous and moralistic sins driven by a deep and irrational sense of purpose and moral injury. Lords are born out of a profound sense of loss. This often occurs when someone’s life is irreversibly altered by tragedy or misfortune - such as illness, death, or accident. The Lord is the manifested desire to rewind time and return to the world as it was before the tragedy. They construct a kingdom, an elaborate prison dimension, where reality inside alters to to hosts’ whims, often returning them to a time or place before the tragedy occurred, but eventually driving them to greater acts of paranoia and cruelty to those trapped inside in an effort to never allow their life to change again.

Lords commonly manifest in: • people who have lost loved ones to illness or accident • people whose fortunes and stations in life have drastically changed • people who have themselves been impacted and permanently altered by illness, injury, or accident

Primary emotion: Fear

Appearance and Psychophysiology: Lords are powerful, imposing figures that present an archetypical ‘guardian’ figure to their hosts, sometimes manifesting as an authority figure like a soldier or policeman, and sometimes as something more divine, like a god or an angel. They have extremely tough armor and are excellent combatants, able to fight off any perceived threats to the new order they impose with ease.

Behavior: Lords are righteous and moralistic to the extreme. Unlike other sins, justifying their own behavior is important to them. To the Lord, their kingdom is a better and more just version of reality, and their construction of it is a gift to its new inhabitants. They may couch their behavior and the rules of the new kingdom in the language of religion or law, as seen fit by their hosts. They are usually measured, polite and refined in their manner and speech and regard their hosts as the rightful liege and master of the new kingdom, and any intruders as a nuisance.

Toads are crafty and avaricious sins with a very unique behavior pattern. They are by far the most intelligent sins, and present puzzling opponents to most exorcists. Toads are born out of deprivation and unfulfilled material needs. Therefore, unlike most other sins, they are extremely goal oriented. Once manifested, their primary need is to acquire as much material wealth as possible for their hosts. They revel in greed, driving their hosts to more spectacular heights of excess.

Toads commonly manifest in: • people suffering from major housing, job, or food insecurity • people who are exploited at work • people in crushing financial debt

Primary emotion: Indulgence

Appearance and Psychophysiology: Toads are bulky but surprisingly fast sins with a great degree of manual dexterity. They often have prehensile tongues or double jointed limbs, and convey these features onto any hosts they are fused with. They are capable of squeezing through tiny spaces and leaping great distances. The gaping mouths of toads have space extending properties and are capable of storing an unreal amount of physical material - many rooms worth in some cases. All toads have a strong, not entirely unpleasant odor about them - something between carpet cleaner and expensive cologne.

Behavior: Unlike other sins, who typically want to fight or escape exorcists, toads are fond of catching them in conversation to gloat or verbally spar. Toads are cunning, sharp tongued sins with a fondness for speech and tend to be witty or charming, with a good sense of humor. They seem to enjoy what they do and revel in excess as much as their hosts - although they are typically extremely impatient and may be cruel to slow or unwilling hosts.

Centipede sins have such a horrific and putrid reputation they are avoided when possible by most senior exorcists. Most infamously, they have extremely high potential to cause a mass death event even before a sin event happens. Centipedes are born out of born out people’s desire for escapism through death. They occur when a person has a been pushed into a place where they begin to fantasize a world where a disaster happens that is so bad it saves them from their circumstances. Often this desire is tinged with a deep misanthropy and hatred for society in general. Nobody can reliably trace their root, and they can manifest in nearly anybody - office workers, artists, students, the unhoused, bosses of major corporations, corner store owners - anybody.

Primary emotion: Hatred

Appearance and Psychophysiology: Centipedes are manifested catastrophes, born from the darkest images of their hosts psyche. They exist only to cause such horrific violence and death that the hosts’ previous worries evaporate. As their namesake, they typically manifest as insectile abominations, taking on all the characteristics of what a ‘monster’ should be. Their main identifying physical characteristic is their venom, which is inimical to human life and creates a (very) rapidly expanding problem for exorcists.

Behavior: Centipedes are hatred manifest. They hate the world, they hate humans, and they hate their host especially for calling them into being with their petty desires and wishes. Everything they do is seeped in spite. They are, however, extremely protective of their hosts - wishing to have them live and witness the horrors that they have unleashed upon the world. Given enough time and space, a centipede will wipe all life from its domain, until only its host remains. It is theorized they would then, unlike other sins, demanifest on their own. This has never happened, as all centipede sins have a listed 100% execution rate.

Ferocious and violent, hounds are enormously dangerous, wild sins that are rage personified. Hounds are born out of a seething desire for vengeance or justice. They are primarily defined by a deep resentment or anger that is sometimes generalized, but more often directed towards a specific person or group of people in the form of a grudge. When a psychically sensitive person’s unprocessed anger boils over and can no longer be contained, a hound is born.

Hounds commonly manifest in: • Murder victims • Someone who has suffered a deep injustice from someone who has power over them - like a landlord, bank or boss • Someone who has been deeply wronged, bullied, or abused by a specific person or group of people

Primary emotion: Vengeance

Appearance and Psychophysiology: Hounds are active, constantly moving sins that twitch or spasm with barely concealed rage. They often take an animalistic form and may exhibit animalistic behavior such as running on all fours and biting even if they are humanoid in form. They are typically lithe and extremely fast and strong. Humans have an innate fear of them and can sense their presence even if they can’t see a hound. Its surviving victims often describe feeling a primal dread, a sense of being hunted by a wild animal.

Behavior: Hounds are by far the least communicative sins, sometimes exhibiting only animal-level intelligence, and exist mostly to hunt, maim, and kill. They will sometimes exhibit canniness and will stalk or wait to strike their victims until the opportunity arises, but more often than not when they site a victim they will simply barrel through all obstacles, tearing everything apart until their target is ripped into pieces or they expire. Hosts fused with hounds exhibit incredible strength, speed, and durability and often have extremely hot body temperatures. They may exhibit extreme mania, violent tendencies, and restlessness.

Serene and charming, idols radiate an otherworldly beauty and poise. Unlike other sins, they possess the unique ability to appear visible to the graceless, and often take humanlike form. Idols are born out of the basic human desire to be wanted and loved. In this way, they are sometimes regarded as the most generally benign in their intentions. However, much like other sins, their manifestation draws on the dark side of the human psyche and usually pulls their hosts into greater acts of vanity and control.

Idols commonly manifest in: • Failed actors, singers, or performers. • People who suffer an extreme lack of fulfillment. • People who have been abandoned or have lacked any human connection or love.

Primary emotion: Desire

Appearance and Psychophysiology: Idols commonly appear as humanlike in form. They may appear as someone desired by their host: their hosts’ ideal romantic partner, a parental figure, or a best friend. When fused with their hosts, they may enhance their hosts into ‘ideal’, more perfect versions of themselves, usually enhancing features a host deems desirable, and eliminating those seen as undesirable. They have a godly, otherworldly beauty to them that can be stunning to humans, especially the graceless. When forced into a corner, or when they want to display their power, idols are capable of taking other, more terrible forms.

Behavior: Idols radiate charisma, and unique among sins, draw other people to them, usually coalescing into a massive cult. Their voices and appearances are hypnotizing to the graceless and they are able to issue commands or suggestions that humans find nearly impossible to ignore. They can be charming, funny, and find it intolerable when they are not the center of attention. At their worst, they represent the worst aspects of love and desirability - absolute, almost sadistic control and selfishness.

Enormous, misshapen, and hideously powerful, ogres are a common sin type that is nonetheless quite dangerous compared to others. Ogres are born out of people’s sense of inadequacy and failure, shame, and self-hatred, or just a deep desire for misery. When someone psychically sensitive falls into a deep hole of loathing and hopelessness, an ogre begins to form in their psyche and take root.

Ogres commonly manifest in: • people ground down to a pulp by life - bullying, traffic, debt, overwork, etc • people who suffer from a deep, existential self loathing • people dealing with extreme grief

Primary emotion: Despair

Appearance and Psychophysiology: Ogres are almost always extremely large, strong, and bulky and manifest a typical malformed, monstrous appearance, often due to the low self worth of their hosts. When fused with a host, the host may appear to be a worse, ‘uglier’ version, as they judge themselves. An ogre’s mere presence sucks the energy and life out of a room, even if mundane humans cannot see it, lowering the temperature. They are associated with frost, mist, mud, and ill weather. When pressed in a fight they are enormously strong and durable, able to rapidly regenerate from their wounds, tear a human in half, and ignore even extreme punishment.

Behavior: Ogres are unusual in that they are extremely anti-social, self deprecating, and conflict averse for sins, and usually just want to be left alone. It is extremely rare for ogres to manifest post mortem and they are typically very emotionally attached to their hosts. They are often co-dependent and may spend their time tormenting or comforting their host, sometimes both, preferring to push them and those around them into self destructive behavior or a deep laconic haze.

Like exorcists, sins are rated on a category system, from 0-7. Category 0 sins are weak comparatively, but still as strong as an average human. Category 1 and 2 sins are easily capable of overwhelming and killing a human. Fighting a higher category sin may be hard, risky, or impossible depending on the category differences. Category determines the scale and power of a sin’s abilities. A CAT 2 sin can produce an effect that can suffuse an entire room. A CAT 5 sin can produce an effect that suffuses an entire building.

Sins take one of three forms. The form of a Sin has no impact on its capabilities.

• Form I/Severed: The most common type, a severed sin is free acting to its host, a psychic being made manifest and acting with its own needs and desires. This form still has an innate connection to its host. It may not necessarily require its host to be alive (especially if it manifested post mortem), and may be either malicious or helpful to its host.

• Form II/Fused: A fused sin has fused to its human hosts’ body or corpse, forming an amalgam being. The sin is typically but not always the dominant being in this arrangement. Form II sins vary in appearance, and can look very humanlike. Humans may sense something ‘off’ about the person even if they look normal.

WARNING: !PERCEIVING A FORM II SIN THAT IS NOT HUMANLIKE WILL CAUSE UNCONSCIOUSNESS OR RAPID ONSET CRANIAL HEMORRHAGE IN GRACELESS HUMANS!

• Form III/Bound: A rare form that occurs when a human or exorcist is able to control and command a type I or II sin. This sin may originate from their own body and mind, or may be bound separately.

As exorcists are defined by their agendas and blasphemies, sins are defined by their type. CAIN assigns and names these types based on broad criteria. A Sin’s type determines not only the kind of opponent exorcists will be facing and its various abilities and details but also the tone of the story that the hunt tells. The six types of sins are:

• Ogre: A massive sin that feeds off despair and summons a choking miasma to cloak and smother the area

• Idol: A charismatic sin that manipulates and pulls strings from behind the scenes, forming a cult around itself.

• Hound: The embodiment of rage, a hound usually manifests post-mortem - forming a grudge against a specific group of people and hunting them down violently.

• Centipede: A vile sin drawing its power from hatred and escapism that is widely feared for its ability to infect and transform hordes of mundane humans.

• Toad: Unusually intelligent sins that delight in material wealth, they covet what their host could not have, and steal to form a massive hoard from which they draw their power

• Lord: Appearing after their host suffers a calamity or tragedy, a lord appeals to their sense of nostalgia and loss, restoring them to their former glory and creating a parasitic pocket reality called a kingdom that slowly consumes the real world.

Sins have a broad range of appearances, from the monstrous, to the animalistic, to the incomprehensible. Some even appear human, or can inhabit or fuse with the bodies of their hosts, passing for human in some circumstances. Sins are classified with the following: type, form, and category.

Sins are the failures of mankind made manifest. They typically appear when someone with naturally high levels of grace suffers a traumatic event, the influx of emotion rapidly expanding their psychic potential to levels that their body and mind cannot handle, as their powers warp or even rip free of their body. In essence, sins manifest when CAIN cannot locate a potential exorcist in time. It is CAIN’s duty to shepherd these individuals and each sin is a failure of its purpose. The manifestation of sins is very rare in society in general, though troublingly this rate, and the percent of humans affected by grace in general, is increasing slowly but inexorably over time. Most people cannot see sins, though some sins are partly visible to graceless humans, who find the information hard to process. Humans can always sense the presence of sins without sight of them, though they may describe them as ghosts, evil spirits, or malevolent presences.

Humans leave impressions on everything they touch. You can do more than touch. Perform psychometry.

PSYCHOMETRY IS BANNED ON CAMPUS - CASTLE REF 0094

Slice the body and soul with a carving knife. Materialize a spiritual blade.

Fact: Jaunt users are the most likely of all exorcists to ‘hollow’ during sleep and leave an empty shell. This occurrence is very rare but its cause is unknown and it is 100% fatal.

The contents of your mind are as solid to you as plain reality.

Fact: Corporeal palace manifestation by exorcists is still under investigation by TEMERITY.

With the will of a wielder, even Sins can be controlled, bound to specially prepared talismans in spirit form.

Fact: Under Code 864 of the CAIN doctrine, Binding is punishable by death. However, CAIN offers a stay of execution for Bind Exorcists in their employ.

The way things are is not the way they had to be. You can choose, filtering the threads of possibilities and inviting them to meld with the real world.

Fact: CAIN doctrine clearly states the existence of ‘alternate’ realities is currently unproven.

Your shadow is animate and hungry. It knows the future.

Fact: This alter self usually manifests in puberty and only you can see it, remaining invisible even to other exorcists. Common belief holds the ‘shadow’ seen is a component of your own future death.

Surpress the innate properties of the universe. Lie to God. When you speak, your words become fact.

Fact: Using Smother on CASTLE agents is punishable by death.

Manipulate space as a sculptor works with clay. Manipulate distance, step through space on a whim.

ALERT: Abuse can lead to extreme personnel loss. Use with caution.

Imbue objects or living beings with sudden and sharp burst of velocity.

Fact: Has the highest fatality rate of untrained users, who usually die from falling.

Manipulate the direction and flow of time itself.

Fact: This power is relatively new and, as it stands, is barely understood. Fortunately temporal events are tightly regulated by TEMERITY through a captive Sin called the Spindle.

Manipulate potential energy to create flashes of extreme heat or cold. The most potent, and most dangerous of blasphemies - to others and its user.

Fact: Ardence use would be considered inhumane against human soldiers.

Project a spot psychic field of incredible density and durability. This often takes the form of a metallic shimmering surface, visible only to the psychically sensitive.

Fact: Tension users are highly likely to experience ‘locked in’ syndrome episodes at least semi-regularly until they are able to master their powers. See field manual.

Your blasphemies are the psychic phenomena that you have been blessed with (or cursed with, depending on your point of view). Blasphemy manifestation is spontaneous and follows no real pattern other than tending to appear in late adolescence, but the phenomena that manifest can be broadly classified into a number of types. They are extremely powerful supernatural abilities that allow their users to surpass human limits. These powers are created by a high concentration of grace, an unknown force that causes a sinseed, a tiny tumor like growth in the shape of a tiny angel or devil like figure to manifest in the brain (or rarely, the heart), theorized to be the source of these powers.

TENSION ARDENCE FLUX VECTOR GATE SMOTHER WHISPER EDIT BIND PALACE JAUNT SYMPATHY