Nega-Demon Serum
Description: a transparent vial filled with a golden-white fluid that glows in the darkness, yet casts no shadow. Don’t bother trying to analyze it, either. It’s not that the Nega-Demon Serum isn’t really there; it’s that, from the Serum’s hypothetical point of view, nothing in the physical universe really is.
Powers: Comprehensively destroying Evil schemes, plans, machinations, and eventually the evil entities involved with them, apparently.
For some miraculous reason, Evil-aligned entities have a real problem when it comes to understanding just what ‘Nega-Demon’ actually means. They invariably assume (again, miraculously) that it just means ‘a really, really awesomely powerful demon;’ so when some evil-aligned entity finds a vial of Nega-Demon Serum (and then they discover that the stuff is just more real than anything else in the area), he will get a twistedly smug smile on his face and squirrel away the Serum for an emergency. Usually he doesn’t wait too long for the emergency, either. There’s just something about having a glowing vial of drinkable transcendent power that encourages a certain amount of reckless risk-taking.So they drink up; and that’s when Evildoers’ days start getting wrecked.
The basic thing about ‘Nega-Demon Serum’ is that ‘Nega-Demon’ is a pretentious way of saying ‘opposite of a demon.’ In other words, it’s Angel Serum. Specifically, Archangel Serum. Drink it, and congratulations! You now have the powers of a minor Archangel for about five minutes or so. The bad news is, you also have all the attitudes, prejudices, and inclinations of an Archangel, very much including the one about ‘Smiting the Forces of Evil.’ So it’s going to be a very exciting five minutes for everyone around you. And don’t bother with saving throws or resistance checks; the time for that sort of thing was when the entity was debating whether or not to drink the Serum.
Fortunately for player characters, the new, temporary Archangel will graciously assume that anybody actually fighting the Forces of Evil (or just being imprisoned by them) at the time that the Serum gets drunk probably at least has their hearts in the right place. If they’re Good-aligned, they don’t have to worry about a thing, really; for everybody else, well, the Archangel will always concentrate on Smiting the most Evil entity within reach. Which means that running away is an option for non-Evil characters; actually Evil ones should instead run away very hard. They admittedly may still just die tired, but maybe they’ll live to repent of their sins, too.
As for the Evil entity that drank the Nega-Demon Serum? Well, they’re still in that glowing whirlwind of righteous fury and celestial violence, somewhere: and while the effects last they’re getting five minutes’ worth of pitiless self-awareness and terrible cosmic insight into their own, pathetic condition. This is not good for mortal brains; even those who survive the process aren’t good for much Evil, afterward. In fact, some of them are no longer good for feeding and dressing themselves.
Guess they shouldn’t have chosen of their own free will to drink the stuff in the first place, hey?
Somewhere, in one of many timelines, a Dr. Jekyll who was both luckier and more cautious than most of his oounterparts smiles. His path was longer, trickier and more dangerous then he had expected and the unexpected pitfalls he could have fallen into had been both many and quite horrific but he had now been vindicated. He had finally Shown Them. He had Shown Them All! ^_~
A multiverse Dr Jekyll story would be great fun. There’s a version of him in Marvel comics, but only a few alternate takes apparently.