The Ephemerides

Many elements contribute to the Illusion, created by the Demiurge, which keeps us imprisoned far from our rightful power as the gods we were born to be. Among the more devious safe-guarding devices meant to keep the Illusion intact are the ephemerides, unwitting servants of the Demiurge and the Archons.

Ephemerides are just like humans in all respects. Yet they lack one crucial element: a soul. The soul is what makes us humans, and it is a fragment of what made us gods before the Demiurge imprisoned us in the Illusion. The ephemerides never were gods. They live their life as servants to the illusion, and when they die, nothing remains.

When the Demiurge trapped us in the Illusion, we were numerous. Since the beginning of time, we have been reincarnated again and again; some few of us have perished and been destroyed, some few have awakened, but the original number has not dwindled that much - though it did not grow either. Yet the human population of the world became more numerous with each generation. Neither war nor famine could reduce that number for long - and today there are more people alive than at any time before. How is that possible? How could there be more souls today than there have ever been before?

The answer lies in the ephemerides. The ephemerides were supposed to be a self-governing element of maintenance for the Illusion. They resemble our white blood cells in that regard: whenever the integrity of the Illusion is threatened in any way, ephemerides converge at the offending area and reinstate normality. Ephemerides called for Jesus' death; ephemerides burned Joan of Arc and condemned Galilei; and when the Demiurge left and the Illusion began to crumble, ephemerides multiplied like cockroaches and swamped the world. Today, only one in ten persons is a human with a soul; the others are ephemerides.

The ephemerides are not consciously working against the Awakening. They themselves cannot awaken, and as they lack a soul they invariably have an immutable mental balance of 0. They function in society. They can be teachers, wives, children, social workers, politicians, anything. They are totally oblivious to anything but the Illusion. They are incapable of creative and individual thought, though they might feign that well. They have no real individual personalities to speak of - each seems to be cast to a template: the caretaker, the religious fanatic, the lawyer, the parent, the gangster. Ephemerides can often be described by just one word or a single expression. Then it appears that everything about them is said. Ephemerides fulfil a role and not much more. They are the extras in the movie of our lives.

Whenever people are about to Awaken, they shake the foundations of the Illusion in their vicinity. If many people ever Awaken at the same time and place, the Illusion might break apart for good. The ephemerides are stabilizers - as long as they are that more numerous than those who may Awaken, they give some sort of coherence to the Illusion.

Note for GameMasters

The ephemerides are not meant to be primary antagonists; they are a concept which is designed to explain the largely ignorant masses in a reality which breaks down visibly. At the GM's discretion, the presence of ephemerides may have a stabilizing effect on the Illusion; it may not break down as easily, especially in places which open to Metropolis or any other place outside the Illusion only occasionally. On the other hand, ephemerides have a knack of not being there when the strain on the Illusion becomes too much; and ephemerides are masters of rationalization who will find a natural explanation, possible or no, for anything that does not fit their Illusion-based template of reality.

Ideally, the players will never know that the ephemerides even exist. The GM should especially guard against the players using the ephemerides as a shield against Illusion breakdowns. There is nothing substantial to differentiate between ephemerides and humans: biologically they are exactly the same, and one can be the parent of the other. Ephemerides only lack a soul. Therefore, they cannot be artists, although they may well be able to cherish art in a purely receptive way or may be plagiarists who create technically perfect copies in style or content; and while they can be scared, tormented and even driven insane, they will never be able to pierce the Illusion; they will never accidentally or willingly stray into Metropolis, and when they die they are not transferred to a purgatory, the Inferno or the Elysium - they simply do not exist any longer.

Ephemerides do not necessarily oppose the players knowingly; they do not fight against an encroaching evil which they cannot perceive. They may be genuinely concerned about your mental health; or they may just ignore you. Players cannot be ephemerides (there would be little fun in that), but any number of NPCs can. There is no mechanical difference between ephemerides and humans with the single exception that ephemerides do not use mental balance - even if they go insane, they do not develop the adverse effects on the mental balance table. They can be psychopaths, neurotics, schizophrenic, or talk incessantly to themselves. They do have an aura, but it doesn't show the more extreme colours and as a whole tends to be more uniform in ephemerides if you watch them over a longer period if time. But there is nothing in the aura itself that definitely marks them as ephemerides.