By Horn and Claw

The players are souls reborn in the pits of Hell reserved for those who lived the most depraved and shameful of existences in the mortal world. They emerge from the nightmarish slime as beings known as Larva. The lowest of the low in the ranks of the underworld, they must fight and claw their way to the top. 

Character Creation
Initially, characters have no name. They have no identities and retain no real knowledge of their former life save one thing. 

They do remember, vaguely, the nature of the crimes and sins committed during their short time in the realm of humankind. Emotions, images, and nameless faces swirl in their minds, haunting them as they crawl and hunger for the life forces that devouring souls deliver. Players are encouraged to think up what may have brought them to this lowly state of existence or roll on a table provided.

Statistics
There are three core statistics for each character: Life Force, Power, and Will.

Life Force, which begins with a score of one represents what is considered health in some role-playing games. Accumulating Life Force points allows a character to also gain Power.

Life Force is tracked as Maximum Life Force and Current Life Force. When taking damage or suffering other effects, the Current Life Force is drained. Maximum Life Force is used to rise in Power and for determining how much Life Force is drained from members of the same horde when a character is consumed by another.

Current Life Force is only replenished by devouring the souls of other denizens in Hell. Once a character’s Current Life Force is equal to its Maximum, only then does the consumption of Life Force raise the Maximum score.

Characters also begin play with one point of Power. This represents effectiveness in combat, whether it be brute force, unleashing forces of mystical energy, or crushing an opponent’s will. Usage is detailed in the Combat section.

Will represents psionic defense. It acts as a barrier against mental attacks and protection from being enslaved into the service of another. Some attacks do damage to both Life Force and Will. At the start of play, a character’s Will is zero. With each rise in Power, the Will score is rolled anew using that Rank’s Will Dice.
Character Advancement
In order to rise up the ranks of the demons of Hell and hope to become a Demon Lord, characters must defeat and consume the Life Force of other characters, whether a player or non-player character. After this defeat, the opponent’s Life Force is then absorbed into the character’s.

Power	Required Life Force	Will Dice	Rank	Abilities Gained	
1	1	0	Larva	Consume soul	
2	10	1d6	Skitterling	Bipedal movement and arms	
3	20	2d6	Imp	Limited flight	
4	40	3d6	Mephit	Second attack	

Hordes of Hell
Society in Hell is inherently tribal. Players must work as a team, known as a horde, as their souls are linked for eternity. Selfish in life, they are now forced to think beyond themselves or suffer forever. Assisting each other in devouring other lost souls, devils, and demons is the only way to advance in the hierarchies of Hell.

If a horde member loses its Life Force by being absorbed into another character, all of its hordemates also suffer. The absorbed character’s Maximum Life Force is divided by the number in its horde. This is then drained from every other horde member’s Current Life Force.

Combat
Initiative goes to the side that takes action first, with other sides following. This may take some adjudication from the GM and agreement among the players as to what makes sense. The same order repeats each round of combat.

An attack is made by rolling a number of d6’s equal to a character’s Power. The target makes an opposing roll using the same formula. If the attacker’s result is equal to or higher than the target, the attack is successful and a number of Life Force points is absorbed equal to the difference in the two numbers.

Once a being’s Life Force reaches zero or lower, the physical body is destroyed and the soul reincarnates as an anonymous larva in the Larva Pits.

Mental combat is resolved in the same way, however if a mental attack is made which can result in possession or enslavement this occurs when Will reaches zero or less. At this point, a PC becomes an NPC until it’s captor is defeated.