Does Your Savage Worlds Game Need a Demagogue?

Monster Brief: Mixed Foes II for Savage Worlds

Writing and Colors by Steven Trustrum
Illustration by Scott Harshbarger

Copyright 2016 Misfit Studios

This content appears in the Monster Brief: Mixed Foes II for Savage Worlds PDF.

Tr’ump Demon a.k.a. Demagogue Demon

The tr’ump demon subrace, also known as demagogue demons, are infiltrators, charlatans, and ruiners of individuals and civilizations alike. Their purpose is to insinuate themselves into the uppermost levels of bureaucracy, religion, and/or business, be it at local, regional, or even national levels on behalf of their more powerful masters. By doing so, they sow dissent and confusion, turning populations against each other and ruining economies.

When everyone is at each other’s throats, the tr’ump demon steps forward to take over or offer salvation for a steep price. This price can be rooted in the mortal world, like turning over one’s position and standing or wealth and power base. It can also be more ethereal (and damning), such as requiring payment of one’s soul.

Demagogue demons are not particularly competent in a fight—they do not possess any especially impressive combat skills or abilities. Instead, they use their wealth to hire mercenaries and bodyguards. They will also employ their charms to convince their followers to blindly leap to their defense. As such, physical confrontation is the last resort for them—they’ll use insults, charm, deception, and threats as much as possible to get others to fight their battles for them.

The tr’ump are convinced of their own superiority over other races (and even many other types of demons). This arrogance is simultaneously one of their greatest strengths and most significant weaknesses. Although it grants them the confidence to make bold moves, it also can’t help but rear its head in embarrassing and damaging ways while the demon is attempting to endear itself to “lesser” beings. Also, because they believe their kind to be singularly superior, demagogue demons are prone to inbreeding, going so far as to frequently taking their own children as consorts in secret.

These demons are nearly indiscernible in appearance from humans, with only tiny horns atop their head or high on their forehead to give away their true nature. Many hide this fiendish feature beneath a wild hairstyle or some manner of head covering.

Attributes: Agility d6, Smarts d6, Spirit d4, Strength d4, Vigor d4

Skills: Fighting d4, Persuasion d8, Taunt d8

Pace: 6; Parry: 4; Toughness: 4

Hindrances: Arrogant, Overconfident

Treasure: Rich

Gear: dagger

Special Abilities

• Charm: These demons can use the puppet power using their Spirit as their arcane skill. They have 10 Power Points for this purpose. The target must be able to hear the demon’s words for this ability to work.
• Demon: +2 to recover from being Shaken; Immune to poison and disease; Half damage from non-magical attacks except for cold iron.
• Dumb Luck: Once per day, a tr’ump can reverse any die roll that does not go in their favor, be it their own or someone else’s with the demon as the roll’s subject. This could be any roll, such as damage, attack, skill, etc. This ability changes the outcome so it works in the demagogue demon’s favor, considering the result to instead be the absolute minimum required for the roll to have been in the tr’ump’s favor.

The roll to be influenced must be announced immediately following the roll and before any other action is made.

• Feed the Mob: Once per day, a tr’ump can choose to put an enchantment behind their words while directing their speech at an audience of five or more. This grants them a +2 bonus to Charisma checks for 5 minutes per die step of Vigor (e.g., 5 minutes at d4, 10 minutes at d6). Increase this bonus to +4 if the speech’s topic is something the audience feels strongly about or if they are Friendly towards the speaker, as per the Persuasion skill. An additional +2 bonus is gained if the speech uses demagoguery to focus on a single characteristic that sets most of the audience apart from the speech’s subject matter (e.g., nationality, race, gender).
• True Sight: The demon can see the true nature of things. Visual illusions do not work, nor do disguises (be they mundane, super-powered, magical, etc. in nature). Something that has undergone a shape change of some sort is also seen by the demon as its true self.
• Weakness (Cold Iron): Demons take normal damage from cold iron weapons.

Donn Awld

So far as the public is concerned, Donn Awld has been a prominent merchant and social-mingler operating within the city for decades. His start in business began when he took over his father’s business following the latter’s death. In truth, the money and merchant house belonged to another, older demagogue demon that was slain by his masters for one too many failures. With his “father’s” holdings as his own, Donn Awld set out to cause economic and political strife that would serve his master’s needs.

Foremost among Donn Awld’s strategies to have the city’s population (and even nobility and government) beholden to him is to create vast building projects that all fail for one reason or another, none of which can easily be blamed on him. When disaster becomes apparent, investors approach Donn Awld to buy out their stake in these projects, putting them in debt to the demon in ways that go well beyond mere money. Despite these failures, Donn Awld is still able to convince the bored wealthy and greedy merchants alike to invest in his on-going endeavors—to them, his name still brings prestige and value despite the demon’s many failures.

Donn Awld has been married to human women of beauty and prestige three separate times, resulting in a total of five half-fiend children and eight grandchildren. His wives are unaware of this demon’s true nature, although his children and grandchildren are brought in on the secret when they are old enough to begin questioning the nature of their own otherworldly abilities. In each case, the child has joined the family business and aids in furthering their demonic sire’s or grandsire’s machinations.

Having established an economic empire, Donn Awld has recently begun pursuing political objectives. Ultimately, his goal is to take over the highest possible position in government; depending on where the Gamemaster chooses to locate this villain, doing so could mean running for public office or overthrowing a monarchy or the like. He has begun with a grassroots campaign appealing to commoners at a visceral level. Donn Awld manipulates their fear of anyone taking what they believe should rightfully be theirs, be this the supposed work of foreign powers, other races in communities dominated by a single race, the nobility, and so on. He has gained substantial traction with this approach, and it seems certain his plans will greatly disrupt the local political scene at best, or cause outright unrest and revolution at worst.

Despite being inarticulate and a frequent rambler prone to barely coherent tangents, Donn Awld is able to utilize his kind’s natural abilities to bolster his own talent as a natural orator. He is incredibly skilled at preying on his audience’s fears to convince them to follow him, even when doing so is contrary to morals, ethics, and beliefs they otherwise hold dear. To them, Donn Awld’s opinions and positions just make sense, all truth and fact to the contrary. He also makes extensive use of tactics of obfuscation, misdirection, and deflection to avoid directly addressing topics that counter his opinions, instead using lies and passive aggressive threats to stoke the fires of fear and hatred in his audiences.

He is a hateful, cowardly being at heart. He is also incredibly misogynistic and racist—believing in the superiority of demonkind and males in general—making him a natural at selling superiority of this or that nature to the masses.

Donn Awld appears as a human male in his later years. He has greyish-red hair that is awkwardly swept over to hide the small horns sprouting from his upper forehead. His skin tone is often abnormally dark for someone who doesn’t spend his days in the fields performing labor. This demon enjoys beautiful clothes, but will sometimes wear more common attire in an attempt to appeal to the unwashed masses as “one of their own.”

In a fight, Donn Awld will first attempt to put any opponents off balance, making extensive use of Intimidation, Taunt, and similar means to convince his foes he is more dangerous than he actually is or to buy them off. He will also seek to maneuver himself into the best possible position on the field of battle—one that provides him the best vantage while limiting his enemies’ access to him.

Hiding behind a screen of bodyguards is Donn Awld’s chief strategy. From this position, he will seek to convince or trick any nearby bystanders into defending him. If forced to fight directly, he will first attempt to escape when possible, but will strike with his dagger if no other option presents itself. He will not throw his dagger (thus robbing himself of its protection) unless absolutely necessary.

Donn Awld Savage Worlds Statistics

Attributes: Agility d6, Smarts d6, Spirit d4, Strength d4, Vigor d4

Skills: Fighting d6, Intimidation d6, Knowledge (local area) d6, Knowledge (history) d4, Knowledge (language) d6, Persuasion d12, Taunt d12

Pace: 6; Parry: 5; Toughness: 4 (8)

Hindrances: Arrogant, Overconfident

Edges: Dodge, Improved Dodge

Treasure: Treasure Trove

Gear: dagger +3 damage & fighting (Armor; Arcane d8, 10 Power Points), ring of avoidance, greater ring of protection, several potions of healing

Special Abilities

• Charm: These demons can use the puppet power using their Spirit as their arcane skill. They have 10 Power Points for this purpose. The target must be able to hear the demon’s words for this ability to work.
• Demon: +2 to recover from being Shaken; Immune to poison and disease; Half damage from non-magical attacks except for cold iron.
• Dumb Luck: Once per day, a tr’ump can reverse any die roll that does not go in their favor, be it their own or someone else’s with the demon as the roll’s subject. This could be any roll, such as damage, attack, skill, etc. This ability changes the outcome so it works in the demagogue demon’s favor, considering the result to instead be the absolute minimum required for the roll to have been in the tr’ump’s favor.

The roll to be influenced must be announced immediately following the roll and before any other action is made.

• Feed the Mob: Once per day, a tr’ump can choose to put an enchantment behind their words while directing their speech at an audience of five or more. This grants them a +2 bonus to Charisma checks for 5 minutes per die step of Vigor (e.g., 5 minutes at d4, 10 minutes at d6). Increase this bonus to +4 if the speech’s topic is something the audience feels strongly about or if they are Friendly towards the speaker, as per the Persuasion skill. An additional +2 bonus is gained if the speech uses demagoguery to focus on a single characteristic that sets most of the audience apart from the speech’s subject matter (e.g., nationality, race, gender).
• True Sight: The demon can see the true nature of things. Visual illusions do not work, nor do disguises (be they mundane, super-powered, magical, etc. in nature). Something that has undergone a shape change of some sort is also seen by the demon as its true self.
• Weakness (Cold Iron): Demons take normal damage from cold iron weapons.

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