in_nomine-digest Friday, September 14 2001 Volume 01 : Number 2373 In this digest: IN> Blood Donation Eligibility Guidelines Re: IN> Some thoughts Re: IN> What with one thing and another,this subject came up last night Re: IN> Blood Donation Eligibility Guidelines Re: IN> Blood Donation Eligibility Guidelines Re: IN> Blood Donation Eligibility Guidelines Re: IN> What with one thing and another, this subject came up last night Re: IN> What with one thing and another, this subject came up last night Re: IN> christian values Re: IN> What with one thing and another, this subject came up last night Re: IN> What with one thing and another, this subject came up last night IN> Snuggles Choir IN> Now that's Loyalty IN> Arcangel's Adventure IN> Adventure Hook: Mommy and Daddy have secrets Re: IN> Now that's Loyalty Re: IN> Blood Donation Eligibility Guidelines IN> Re: Christian values Re: IN> Now that's Loyalty Re: IN> Re: Christian values Re: IN> What with one thing and another, this subject came up last night Re: IN> christian values Re: IN> Re: Christian values Re: IN> Re: Christian values ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2001 15:10:56 -0400 From: Elizabeth McCoy Subject: IN> Blood Donation Eligibility Guidelines And, just to prove that some things _should_ be around, even if off- topic... >The American Red Cross has Blood Donation Eligibility Guidelines posted at: > >http://www.redcross.org/services/biomed/blood/learn/eligibl.html Some local blood banks may have more/different requirements; you probably want to contact them first. Remember, if you can't donate today, donate later -- at the _least_, the supplies will need replenishing. - --Beth, List Admin http://www.sjgames.com/in-nomine/listrules.html ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2001 14:42:07 -0400 From: Elizabeth McCoy Subject: Re: IN> Some thoughts At 10:34 AM -0700 9/13/01, Michael Walton wrote: > Thank you, Amanda. I needed this, whether or not anyone >else did. I'm not complaining. (Though if anyone else wants to post something like this, pray, drop a note to Ye Friendly List Admin first? I don't want off topic to get out of hand. (Which doesn't mean that I won't approve it, necessarily. I just want the chance. O:> ) ) - --Beth, List Admin http://www.sjgames.com/in-nomine/listrules.html ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2001 13:04:10 -0700 From: Kish Subject: Re: IN> What with one thing and another,this subject came up last night Omentide wrote: > > Remember a vessel can survive without its host, it does not do very much > but it does not die. A Vessel disappears into potentiality without its host. Unless the host uses the Song of Projection to leave it, or leaves it in a Body Bag. So does this indicate that you disallow the Song of Projection for Soldiers, or that they die if they use it? - -- Kish ICQ# 28085879 AIM Kish K M ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2001 16:03:36 -0400 From: Cameron McCurry Subject: Re: IN> Blood Donation Eligibility Guidelines Elizabeth McCoy said unto us: > Remember, if you can't donate today, donate later -- at the _least_, the > supplies will need replenishing. Especially by next week. I'm waiting a bit myself. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2001 15:10:14 -0500 From: David Edelstein Subject: Re: IN> Blood Donation Eligibility Guidelines Elizabeth McCoy wrote: > > And, just to prove that some things _should_ be around, even if off- > topic... Well, if you're going to allow this, I'll point out you can also make monetary donations to the Red Cross (for those of us who currently have toxic chemicals in our bloodstreams and thus cannot donate blood). http://s1.amazon.com/paypage/PKAXFNQH7EKCX/002-9965260-0182431 http://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/gen/relief-outside - -David ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2001 16:20:15 -0400 From: Whistling in the Dark Subject: Re: IN> Blood Donation Eligibility Guidelines At 3:10 PM -0500 9/13/01, David Edelstein wrote: >Elizabeth McCoy wrote: >> >> And, just to prove that some things _should_ be around, even if off- >> topic... > >Well, if you're going to allow this, I'll point out you can also make >monetary donations to the Red Cross (for those of us who currently have >toxic chemicals in our bloodstreams and thus cannot donate blood). > >http://s1.amazon.com/paypage/PKAXFNQH7EKCX/002-9965260-0182431 > >http://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/gen/relief-outside I'm in David's boat, and was very glad to have the second way of helping out. - -- Eric Alfred Burns - Impudite of Secrets -- or Mercurian of Revelation (candidate for the Word of Obscurity) ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2001 16:41:09 -0400 From: "William J. Keith" Subject: Re: IN> What with one thing and another, this subject came up last night The canon call has already been made on this. In G:IN (p. 11), it is clearly stated that Vessels are medically indistinguishable from human beings. They have DNA, blood types, cellular structure, navel, and all the rest. Even the "miraculous" abilities to survive without food, or be unaging, will be inexplicable to a doctor. There *isn't* a biological reason for them. A Vessel corpse could only be differentiated from a human's by lack of use in certain areas, such as a minutely detailed examination revealing that the stomach had never been used, or the apparently-healthy gonads had never functioned, for example -- but these are results of their use during their existence, rather than faults of their construction. Here is a direct quote: "...a GM will be justified in assuming that Heaven and Hell can keep up with improvements in diagnosis technology!" This would tend to suggest that Vessels are crafted rather than made to a Symphonic pattern, at least to me, but that any except the newest and most creative tests will react to a Vessel as they would to a human. In a crossover game with vampires, I would say that drinking the blood of a Vessel is no better or worse than drinking from a normal human, save that a Vessel would replenish its supply faster. On the other hand, there could easily be a deliberately-added supernatural effect that prevents Vessel blood from being used by vamps. William ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2001 18:32:11 -0400 From: Walter Milliken Subject: Re: IN> What with one thing and another, this subject came up last night At 16:41 -0400 9/13/01, William J. Keith wrote: >The canon call has already been made on this. In G:IN (p. 11), it is >clearly stated that Vessels are medically indistinguishable from human >beings. They have DNA, blood types, cellular structure, navel, and all the >rest. Even the "miraculous" abilities to survive without food, or be >unaging, will be inexplicable to a doctor. There *isn't* a biological >reason for them. This is not necessarily canon for IN; we added this because GURPS tends to be more detail-oriented, and the possibility of crossover games in high-tech environments pretty much demanded some more definitive statement like this. >A Vessel corpse could only be differentiated from a human's by lack of use >in certain areas, such as a minutely detailed examination revealing that >the stomach had never been used, or the apparently-healthy gonads had never >functioned, for example -- but these are results of their use during their >existence, rather than faults of their construction. Here is a direct >quote: "...a GM will be justified in assuming that Heaven and Hell can keep >up with improvements in diagnosis technology!" This would tend to suggest >that Vessels are crafted rather than made to a Symphonic pattern, at least >to me, but that any except the newest and most creative tests will react to >a Vessel as they would to a human. This statement reflects a somewhat different issue -- that vessels don't have a normal metabolism, and their energy comes from outside. At some point, it will probably be necessary to have vessels *simulate* metabolism in a way similar to the way they handle eating and drinking -- not required, but they do it. Since GURPS includes a lot of ultra-tech medical stuff, I raised the issue, and this was Elizabeth's fix (much shorter than trying to explain everything in detail, as I am about to do below). My own take on things is that vessels are "borrowed" Symphonic patterns, which can be tweaked by Superiors as needed; mostly it just saves them effort to borrow an existing pattern than to build everything from scratch. The pattern is sort of "frozen", in that a lot of processes that would normally take place at the cellular level and below are suppressed, and replaced by celestial processes that don't follow physical laws. However, they can be "turned on" when needed, such as digestive processes. This "freezing" applies to whatever is inside the vessel; thus, celestials don't get sick, because viruses and bacteria have their chemical processes suspended while in the body, and thus can't multiply normally. (This has some implications in a very close medical examination of a living vessel, since some of the usual intestinal flora would be mostly absent.) The "freezing" only applies while the celestial is "there" (or if the vessel is in a Body Bag); thus, when the body dies and the celestial is sent back to the celestial realm, the normal chemical processes immediately start up, and the body decays normally. Anyway, there would come a point where very high-tech medical instrumentation might detect the fact that the celestial's cells aren't reproducing normally, or the ADP/ATP cycle isn't happening, or the like. At that point, something would have to be done to upgrade the mimicry of normal processes to include things that aren't currently bothered with. Even now, there are some medical tests (such as metabolism measurements, glucose tolerance tests, and some cardiac performance tests) which might give funny results if applied to a celestial who wasn't deliberately trying to "pass". So this statement applies to either option for vessel "tech" -- it's just that different levels of abnormality show up at different tech levels. In either case, the vessel needs a "fix" for its now-discernable celestial nature. >In a crossover game with vampires, I would say that drinking the blood of a >Vessel is no better or worse than drinking from a normal human, save that a >Vessel would replenish its supply faster. On the other hand, there could >easily be a deliberately-added supernatural effect that prevents Vessel >blood from being used by vamps. I can think of several ways to handle this (I'm not a V:tM fan, so some of these may conflict with V:tM canon): - blood drinking is a purely physical process; thus vessel blood would work just like human blood. Esoteric effects of vampires would be linked to physical causes (like injecting odd chemicals into the victim while drinking); celestials would tend to resist such effects better than humans, but would generally still be susceptible to them to some degree - blood drinking is partly physical and partly metaphysical; the vampire might get some sustenance, but might lose esoteric aspects (such as binding the will of the victim). - blood drinking is mostly a metaphysical process, and the physical act is mostly symbolic; in this case, a vessel would be just like a human, except the celestial would have a lot more Forces and Will than a human, and resist some of the normal effects, where a human might not be able to. The last option would take a lot of careful rules-tweaking by the GM to figure out exactly what all the interactions would be. - ---Walter ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2001 19:05:36 -0400 From: Kirt Dankmyer Subject: Re: IN> christian values Dave wrote: > If Laurence is Malakim, with the usual "Thou shalt not suffer an evil to > live, through choice" oath, amongst others. And the patron of > Christianity - how does he reconcile his nature and duties with the > Christian credo of forgiveness, turning the other cheek and all that jazz. The answer (though this applies more strongly to Dominic than Laurence perhaps) is he doesn't. Reconcile his nature and Christianity, that is. Angelic support for Christianity is largely political, and is more of "we think that humans should believe this rather than something else" than something angels should take seriously. -Loki ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2001 09:10:11 -0400 From: damienw@juno.com Subject: Re: IN> What with one thing and another, this subject came up last night On Thu, 13 Sep 2001 16:41:09 -0400 "William J. Keith" writes: > In a crossover game with vampires, I would say that drinking the > blood of a > Vessel is no better or worse than drinking from a normal human, save > that a > Vessel would replenish its supply faster. On the other hand, there > could > easily be a deliberately-added supernatural effect that prevents > Vessel > blood from being used by vamps. Depending on how vampires are being treated (IN vamps, WoD vamps, whatever) I'd say in a game where the blood is a simple physical need. there's no particular effect. In a game where the symbology is more important, or blood is supposed to have a mystical potentcy, blood from a Vessel should react to a vampire in a big, possibly painful fashion. It would be entirely defensible to have a vampire be consumed by holy fire from the inside-out if they drunk from an angelic/saint's vessel. (Demonic ones, on the other hand... in a game where vampires are definitely "evil", a demon's blood should be potent but damaging, I'd say. Kind of a vampiric super-stimulant.) - --- damienw[et]juno.com "To kill a man between panels is to condemn him to a thousand deaths." - Scott McCloud ________________________________________________________________ GET INTERNET ACCESS FROM JUNO! Juno offers FREE or PREMIUM Internet access for less! Join Juno today! For your FREE software, visit: http://dl.www.juno.com/get/tagj. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 00:30:06 +0100 From: Omentide Subject: Re: IN> What with one thing and another, this subject came up last night >It would be entirely defensible to have a vampire be consumed by holy >fire from the inside-out if they drunk from an angelic/saint's vessel. >(Demonic ones, on the other hand... in a game where vampires are >definitely"evil", a demon's blood should be potent but damaging, I'd say. >Kind of a vampiric super-stimulant.) Not sure. A vessel is a vessel whether made in Heaven or Hell. It is simply a celestial vessel. A fallen angel can still inhabit the same vessel. A vessel is therefore a shell in which the celestial can reside no matter whether angel or demon and the content of flesh, blood and bone etc, remain the same. Drinking a saint is a different matter..... Ashley. Ashley and Hilary omentide.omentide@virgin.net http://freespace.virgin.net/omentide.omentide ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2001 22:54:21 -0400 From: "Charles Phipps" Subject: IN> Snuggles Choir >Ok, that was weird. _Good_ weird - it made me laugh - >but really fragging bizarre. You'll need to add the >Elohite response/counterresponse, though... Oh of course Elohim: How can anyone give up the ooshy gooshy emotions that make us feel all warm and fuzzy inside? That's just wrong! "GET THE HELL AWAY FROM ME! Oh your so cute I AH *dissonance* AH! *dissocance* Stop trying to *dissonance* cheer me up!" - -Charlemagne _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2001 23:14:59 -0400 From: "Charles Phipps" Subject: IN> Now that's Loyalty "Alexander" Soldier of Michael Cor-3 Str-6 Agi-6 Eth-3 Int-6 Pre-6 Cel-3 Will-6 Per-6 Skills: Dodge 6/, Driving (Plane 3/, Sailboat 3/, Car 3/), Economics 2/, Fighting 6/, Housekeeping 6/, Langages (Latin 3/, Greek 5/, Arabic 3/ Chinese 3/, French 3/, Old French 3/, Spanish 3/), Large weapon (broadsword 3/, Mace 3/, Battleax 5/), Riding (Horse 5/), Small Weapon (Gladius 3/, Dagger 3/), Security 3/, Repair 3/, Tactics 6/, Theology 5/ Songs: Song of Entropy (Cor 6/), Song of Healing (Cor 6/) Special Attunements: Can summon Michael's attention as a favored servitor Alexander is relatively young for a celestial but frickin OLD for a human being, at last count he was recorded as being something about 2,731 years old. Now while this is amazing enough as it is, it's not Alexander's longeivity that makes him so unique in Heaven's service but the fact that Alexander's position in Michael's army is to take all the @@*@ (to not put too harsh a langage on it) jobs of his angels. It is generally believed that Alexander was at first a Spartan Greek who had the misfortune to encounter a Balseraph playing traitor to Sparta among his people's command to the Athenians. Mistaking the creature for the God Ares he promptly killed the God in hopes of incurring divine favor....ah those strange greeks. Oddly enough it worked as he entered into the service of a Cherub of War who had been hunting the Demon. Using the song of entropy on the man Alexander to keep him young, the Spartan proved a firm ally of the Michaelites and was 90 years old when his Cherub master was finally soul-killed by a Calabim. Alexander instead of taking up the "pension" of a peaceful mortal life requested being assigned to another group of angels and his service was less than enjoyable.... Michael's crew can be a rowdy lot and viewed their "assigned servant" as little more than the man who was to stay out of the way during the real fighting and handle all the day to day details of life and keep the house fit. In effect Alexander became a slave but considered the job of being a divine being's servant better than life as the richest man better...toughed it out. When Michael finally did a performance review of his angels 600 years later he was remarkably displeased by his wandering servitors treatment of the human soldier but rather surprised to find that the soldier had pulled his angels arses out of the fire often enough that he had proven a great asset. Chastizing his servitor he offered Alexander a dubious promotion. For more than a thousand years Alexander has served as Michael's own private set of eyes and ears to the failings of his servants both in military matters and ethics. Alexander is thus assigned as a "soldier" to the service of angels that Michael feels has potential but arn't living up to because of stupid mistakes or some personal flaw (sloth, pride, the usual). Because of the Song of Form even Michaelites who talk about Alexander never know if he's much more than a legend or not... Especially when his personality doesn't stray much beyond "Yes sir.", "Whatever you say sir.", "Happy to be of service", "Not a problem" etc. Thus it's never possible to tell whether Alexander is in your service (or one of his guises) or just a very competant soldier. Thus servitors are best to treat their soldiers well or end up getting reported to Michael directly they are complete idiots. Probably Michael's intent from the get go. _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 01:47:52 -0400 From: Daniel Sauve Subject: IN> Arcangel's Adventure Beth, you amaze me. Walter, you are incredibly lucky. Pyramid subscribers are in for a treat this week. - -- Your GM Daniel Sauve (in nomine, shadowrun, earthdawn, hero unlimited) ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 02:13:19 -0400 From: "Charles Phipps" Subject: IN> Adventure Hook: Mommy and Daddy have secrets Daniel Sturm is living what might be construed as a relatively benign lifestyle with his two childen and amazingly attractive wife who is kind, good natured, and active in community charity. She's alittle tall but he's a fair sized man himself and that's nothing to complain about...by today's standards she's really not that much above average. Laurence the head of the Celestial Host wants this family, specifically the mother and children investigated rather throughly and events around it looked over from top to bottom. The reasons have something to do with his presently in trauma Cherub Tiel whose vessel had it's back crushed and head peeled from the top of it's body by someone's bare hands. This situation Laurence wants investigated carefully because Daniel Sturm as minister-head of the Nondenominational Christian Outreach Program is a prophet and one of Laurence's most tried and true unknowing servants (though knowing is relative because while he's never been contacted he's quite aware angels are amongst us) in bridging the gaps between the faiths and doing the Lord's will. and the chief suspect for the rather handy mauling of Tiel is his wife Angelina. Yes this is a complicated situation but Laurence has been walking on eggshells regarding genocide against "evil creatures" since Uriel's Purity Crusade and there's evidence that Angelina Sturm is not necessarily a demon in the service to Hell or an Ethereal but may in fact be one of the Missing Grigori or a Nephilim. Laurence is not a Superior to hesitate on actions but Tiel was a member of Uriel's death squads dispatched to eradicate any Nephilim who might have espaced the Great Flood when the time came and had a fanatical hatred of them and the Grigori. The situation is made more complex because Laurence is aware that Daniel has built much of his faith around some unfortunate near-idolatrous comparisons of God to his wife. Laurence blames himself for missing the pitfalls of courtly love in this case. Laurence has thus decided to do something uncharacteristically cowardly by leaving it up to the PCs to decide what to do and dealing with the situation as they see fit. Possible solutions that may present themselves... * Replacing Angelina with an identical looking angel or saint in vessel so that his vows to a true servant of God may be honored and that he may recieve the devastating news once he's safe and secure in Heaven. (PCs had best behave themselves or they may get saddled with the job) * Leaving the situation alone as Angelina may prove to be a perfectly normal girl who can crush diamonds in her hand... * Slay the heathen witch when she is revealed to be the fire breathing, forked tongued, horrofic demoness that she is! Slay the kids while your at it! (This of course should be broken to the young man carefully) * Wait until Tiel wakes up and get the REAL STORY which is that a drunken gang of Baalites blew the crud out of him and have an explosive planned... * Discover Angelina is a Nephlilim and so is one of her sons (the son who pulls the heads off kittens and is currently Hellsworn....) but she's trying to redeem herself before God and thanks her father the Grigori for teaching her the song of form.... Your choice - -Charlemagne _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 05:51:02 -0700 (PDT) From: Michael Walton Subject: Re: IN> Now that's Loyalty - --- Charles Phipps wrote: > "Alexander" > Soldier of Michael Heh heh -- oh, the possibilities... ===== Michael Walton, #9805-068 The next time someones says "Talk is cheap," remind them of how much Oprah Winfrey makes. __________________________________________________ Terrorist Attacks on U.S. - How can you help? Donate cash, emergency relief information http://dailynews.yahoo.com/fc/US/Emergency_Information/ ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 14:17:38 +0000 From: "Jo Hart" Subject: Re: IN> Blood Donation Eligibility Guidelines I'm in two minds about donating to the emergency funds. It's very worthy, but I keep remembering that the US is the richest country in the world, and its citizens probably don't need *my* fiver when there are people starving in very poor third world countries. Anyway, if anyone in the UK wants to give money, I suggest going via: http://www.allaboutgiving.org/helpingusa/donate.cfm It's a "helping the USA" fund that has been specially set up to enable tax efficient donations from UK tax payers. jo >From: David Edelstein >Reply-To: in_nomine-l@lists.io.com >To: in_nomine-l@lists.io.com >Subject: Re: IN> Blood Donation Eligibility Guidelines >Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2001 15:10:14 -0500 > >Elizabeth McCoy wrote: > > > > And, just to prove that some things _should_ be around, even if off- > > topic... > >Well, if you're going to allow this, I'll point out you can also make >monetary donations to the Red Cross (for those of us who currently have >toxic chemicals in our bloodstreams and thus cannot donate blood). > >http://s1.amazon.com/paypage/PKAXFNQH7EKCX/002-9965260-0182431 > >http://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/gen/relief-outside > >-David _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 11:16:50 -0400 From: "Charles Phipps" Subject: IN> Re: Christian values [By remembering that verse where Christ told his disciples to go out and buy swords (I forget which of the Gospels has it; I'm terrible with addresses). Turning the other cheek is the Christian policy for dealing with individuals; for institutionalized persecution, it is permissible to fight back. As the AA of the Sword, Laurence knows this only too well.] Aside from Jesus saying "I come not to bring peace to the world but to bring a sword" Jesus never once advocated violence and the Sword in this case is clearly metaphorical. The cleaving of one man's perceptions of God away to the holy truth of God. Laurence however is a servant of Uriel and ironically like the Catholic faith had been corrupted from its' original doctrine of nonviolence by circumstance (In Catholicisms case it was the bloodthirsty ways of the Romans and Barbarians and Uriel's service for Laurence) In effect Laurence is a true christian, pleasant, nice, promotes it's values.... Yet doesn't ba an eyelash slaughtering evildoers. Pacifist Christian angels probably see this as a betrayal of his faith while Laurence just says "Hey Michael's doing it, Christ cast out DEMONS so he can't be happy about them..." etc. Sad but true. - -Charlemagne _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 12:50:46 -0400 From: "Jeffery Watkins" Subject: Re: IN> Now that's Loyalty Very well done. A good way of either helping angelic PCs in a tight spot, or after a series of losses, or even reminding angelic PCs who The War is all about. Great write-up. Jeffery _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 10:09:17 -0700 (PDT) From: Michael Walton Subject: Re: IN> Re: Christian values - --- Charles Phipps wrote: > Aside from Jesus saying "I come not to bring peace to the > world but to bring > a sword" Jesus never once advocated violence Then who was that guy with the whip driving the moneychangers out of the temple? That's the kind of Christianity that Laurence advocates; "I'll ignore insults, maybe even attacks on my person -- but mess with God's House and you've got a fight on your hands!" The example of Christ clearly shows that some things are worth fighting for. It just happens that individual pride isn't one of them. ===== Michael Walton, #9805-068 The next time someones says "Talk is cheap," remind them of how much Oprah Winfrey makes. __________________________________________________ Terrorist Attacks on U.S. - How can you help? Donate cash, emergency relief information http://dailynews.yahoo.com/fc/US/Emergency_Information/ ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 19:37:26 +0100 From: "Dave" Subject: Re: IN> What with one thing and another, this subject came up last night I know its not Canon, but I always liked the autopsy scene from the Prophecy. So....what about if a vessels level dictated its authenticty. At level 1 it would look human (assuming the vessel is a human) from the outside but inside any one with a knowledge of anatomy is going to know " there are meant to be nerves in this bit and you don't get muscles here!?" all the way up to level 6 which is indistinguishable from a normal human. The problem I've given one of my players is that he suffered vessel death - no real problem - got given an identical vessel, picked an argument with the wrong angel, vessel death again. Now he's wandering around in a third vessel again identical to the first two whilst unbeknownst to him MI9 are very interested in the two identical corpses. And they've seen him (the still live one) walking about and getting into trouble. Dave ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2001 20:08:17 -0700 From: "Perry Lloyd" Subject: Re: IN> christian values > Dave wrote: > > > If Laurence is Malakim, with the usual "Thou shalt not suffer an evil to > > live, through choice" oath, amongst others. And the patron of > > Christianity - how does he reconcile his nature and duties with the > > Christian credo of forgiveness, turning the other cheek and all that jazz. > > The answer (though this applies more strongly to Dominic than Laurence > perhaps) is he doesn't. Reconcile his nature and Christianity, that is. > Angelic support for Christianity is largely political, and is more of "we > think that humans should believe this rather than something else" than > something angels should take seriously. > -Loki From what I've read of the original game (and what little I've understood), the ethics presented in Christianity are intended for humans dealing with humans. The rules for Angels are different, as they must battle what humans cannot successfully, that is to say, their tasks include hunting down and destroying Demons because humans cannot. As for Laurence's take on violence against humans, even hell-sworn . . . this an area the GM can use for contrast control. Will Laurence refrain from killing even Sorcerors and Soldiers of Hell (because they're still human) or will he and his be willing to slay a hundred innocent humans to save the lives of a million ? Does Laurence shoot the hostage or not ? is another way of looking at it. SFAIK, because Angels aren't humans (and there's no definitive proof of Christ's existance, in the American game at least), they aren't bound by Christian morals. whoo-hoo. - -Perry perrylloyd@hotmail.com pl312993@oak.cats.ohiou.edu http://www.geocities.com/perrylloyd "The man who strikes first admits that his ideas have given out. " - --Chinese Proverb ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 15:20:35 -0700 From: "Perry Lloyd" Subject: Re: IN> Re: Christian values > > Aside from Jesus saying "I come not to bring peace to the > > world but to bring > > a sword" Jesus never once advocated violence > > Then who was that guy with the whip driving the > moneychangers out of the temple? That's the kind of > Christianity that Laurence advocates; "I'll ignore insults, > maybe even attacks on my person -- but mess with God's > House and you've got a fight on your hands!" The example > of Christ clearly shows that some things are worth fighting > for. It just happens that individual pride isn't one of them. Um, I'm not sure that the violence of overturning tables quite equals the violence of riddling people with bullets, or lopping off people's heads. IMO . . . - -Perry perrylloyd@hotmail.com pl312993@oak.cats.ohiou.edu http://www.geocities.com/perrylloyd "J'ai vu Dieu. Elle est noire, communiste et lesbienne." Anne-Marie Fauret ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 13:55:06 -0700 (PDT) From: Michael Walton Subject: Re: IN> Re: Christian values - --- Perry Lloyd wrote: > Um, I'm not sure that the violence of overturning tables > quite equals the > violence of riddling people with bullets, or lopping off > people's heads. Of course not. But to say that Christianity is a strictly pacifist religion is misquided at the very least. Christ advocated (or at least approved of) violence under certain circumstances. The thing that He never supported was the use of deadly force. This is a good place for RL Christian ethics to intersect with IN. Laurence is a follower of an essentially nonviolent faith who recognizes the need for violence to deal with certain problems. The catch? His beliefs (and, as a Malakite, his honor) don't allow for the use of deadly force against Humans (demons are an obvious exception; even Christ didn't balk at smacking them around). A literal interpretation of this means that it is Dissonant for Laurence to kill a Human. If your campaign uses this option, it handily explains why Laurence has non-Christian angels in his service; he's smart enough to know that some Humans deserve killing, but he can neither do it nor order it done. Thus, he sends angels who aren't bound by the same code into those situations and tells them to use their own judgement. ===== Michael Walton, #9805-068 The next time someones says "Talk is cheap," remind them of how much Oprah Winfrey makes. __________________________________________________ Terrorist Attacks on U.S. - How can you help? Donate cash, emergency relief information http://dailynews.yahoo.com/fc/US/Emergency_Information/ ------------------------------ End of in_nomine-digest V1 #2373 ********************************