in_nomine-digest Wednesday, October 24 2001 Volume 01 : Number 2421 In this digest: Re: IN> Re: Eastern Religions Re: IN> Hardcore servitor Re: IN> Fun With Remnants Re: IN> Hardcore servitor IN> Temporal Displacement Device IN> Vapulan Time Travel Re: IN> Temporal Displacement Device RE: IN> Two Relics IN> Anti-Christs IN> Uriel's crusade Re: IN> Temporal Displacement Device Re: IN> Vapulan Time Travel IN> Why can't demons have kids Re: IN> Vapulan Time Travel Re: IN> Regarding Ethereals Re: IN> Anti-Christs Re: IN> Temporal Displacement Device Re: IN> Regarding Ethereals Re: IN> Vapulan Time Travel Re: IN> Regarding Ethereals Re: IN> Hardcore servitor Re: IN> Why can't demons have kids Re: IN> Regarding Ethereals Re: IN> Temporal Displacement Device Re: IN> Why can't demons have kids Re: IN> Why can't demons have kids Re: IN> The Cells of Notre Dame Re: IN> Regarding Ethereals IN> Re: The Purity Crusade ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2001 06:11:06 -0700 (PDT) From: Michael Walton Subject: Re: IN> Re: Eastern Religions - --- Jonathan Walton wrote: > people I've talked to in the countryside and > in other parts of China don't seem to be willing to admit > any real belief in traditional religion. I suspect that they'd be even less willing to discuss that with an outsider than they would with one of their own people. Xenophobia is a powerful force. > Now, I'd love to see a write-up of all the > Socialist icons as Ethereals Moe did one of them a while back, IIRC. And I'm sure that there's a Socialist counterpart to Uncle Sam. > the GMG > says there are no Ethereals from the traditional Chinese > religions (Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism). True -- but remember that Buddhism isn't originally a Chinese religion and that there _are_ Ethereals associated with it. Buddhism is the "completed" form of Hinduism (same relationship as between Judaism and Christianity, just replace the Messiah with the Buddha), and Buddhists revere the Hindu gods. In the case of China, the names were changed to integrate the foreign belief system into their indigenous culture. That bit of cultural legerdemain is what got them close enough to the Japanese gods (whose origins owe more to Shintoism than Buddhism) to form the August Prosperity Collective. ===== Michael Walton, #9805-068 "The surest way to keep a secret is to make people believe they already know the answer." - -- Fremen saying __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Make a great connection at Yahoo! Personals. http://personals.yahoo.com ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2001 06:16:22 -0700 (PDT) From: Michael Walton Subject: Re: IN> Hardcore servitor - --- Cthulhu wrote: > Lucile > Habbalite of Hardcore I'm not a big fan of Furfur myself, but this Servitor works OK (interesting Discord, btw). Of course, there's an easy way she could square things with her old boss; just do what she does in such a way as to break up a band. A few rounds of that and Malphas will see her as being more useful to him after she left his service. Not that it would stop him from driving a wedge between Lucile and her new boss by pointing that out to Furfur... ===== Michael Walton, #9805-068 "The surest way to keep a secret is to make people believe they already know the answer." - -- Fremen saying __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Make a great connection at Yahoo! Personals. http://personals.yahoo.com ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2001 09:20:37 -0400 From: "Jason F. McBrayer" Subject: Re: IN> Fun With Remnants On Tue, Oct 23, 2001 at 02:02:28PM -0500, Earl Wajenberg wrote: > Jason F. McBrayer wrote: > > > Hmm...I'd rule that the Song of Succor used in this way would cause > > the Symphony to treat the Remnant as a Celestial again. > > But you'd have to think to test the possible Remnant with the Song > of Succor. Oh, I wasn't suggesting using it as a Remnant detector. Someone else suggested that a Remnant assassin could use a relic with the Song of Succor to make itself more effective while remaining resonance-invisible. > > > Cherubim (and Djinn) can't attune to a Remnant, of > > course. > > They can't? Can't they attune to inanimate objects? If those, > then why not to Remnants? Hmm...good question. Maybe they can. I think a case could be made either way, but canon is a little unclear on the question, IMO. - -- +----------------------------------------------------------------+ | Jason F. McBrayer jmcbray@carcosa.net | | The scalloped tatters of the King in Yellow must hide Yhtill | | forever. R.W. Chambers _The King in Yellow_ | ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2001 09:40:43 -0400 From: "Jason F. McBrayer" Subject: Re: IN> Hardcore servitor On Wed, Oct 24, 2001 at 05:02:52AM -0500, Cthulhu wrote: > Lucile > Habbalite of Hardcore > [...] > Comment, criticisms, flames? > Nice PC for a demonic game. Probably also a fun recurring NPC - not likely to be a major nemesis for the PCs, but one of the "usual suspects" when something bad is happening. - -- +----------------------------------------------------------------+ | Jason F. McBrayer jmcbray@carcosa.net | | The scalloped tatters of the King in Yellow must hide Yhtill | | forever. R.W. Chambers _The King in Yellow_ | ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2001 14:48:13 From: "Michael Cleveland" Subject: IN> Temporal Displacement Device "Team six is in position, sir." Hapshet nodded his acknowledgement. The Technologists the he had under his command were all seasoned veterans, so he knew he had little to fear. Still, the Djinn was more than slightly nervous, and for good reason. The Lightning Tether that he was about to lead an assault on had weathered more than its share of storms, and its Seneschal was a traitor to their glorious Archangel. Vapula had made his wishes clear - the Tether was to fall before the night was through. Getting out of his car, he checked his earpiece and vocal connections one last time and then looked at his Gamester counterpart. "All right, let's do this. Remember, Technology calls the shots. You're here as an observer and nothing else." Before the Gamester could argue, Hapshet started moving towards the building. On the outside, it looked like a plain office building, but he knew it was going to be a lot more interesting than that. Placing his goggles over his eyes, he waited a moment for the tactical displays to initialize and then dropped his voice into his command voice. "This is Operations. Mission timer goes active in fifteen seconds. Remember, we have guests with us, so no screw-ups on this one. One and two take west entrance, three and four take the south. Team five, you boys stay outside until we hit resistance. Six, the Game contact says your beacon for your insertions is stowed and secure, so you should come in within thirty yards of the locus. Remember, estimates on response time give us only a ninety second window, so if we don't nail it inside two minutes, we're in trouble. Go." The Djinn listened as his team muttered assent, then focused all his attention on the dots flashing before his eyes. Only a few years back, he would have actually had to accompany the team inside the building, but with the latest revision of the battlefield comcomp, he could stay and do the real work of commanding the forces. His two bodyguards would alert him if the enemy was advancing, so he could just sit back and - "Operations. Team five reports loss of contact with team one. Engaging." Hapshet shook his head violently, and then looked at his display. Team one was falling rapidly, much faster than he had calculated. Something had to be going wrong. And where the hell was team six? The locus couldn't have been that well defended - he'd specifically set fifteen of his finest on that task. Things could be this bad at twenty-seven seconds... "Team One, report." After a few moments, a reply came back. "Heavily engaged. Forces not what we expected. Enemy pressing forward." "Download gun camera footage and telemetry to my link. Standby." The Technologist growled to himself - this couldn't be happening. All of these people were good, too good to get taken down by the servitors of the so-called Archangel of Lightning. He reached down to make sure his sidearm was functioning properly as he waited for the video feed to filter into his goggles and... "What the -" - -------------- "Team six is in position, sir." Hapshet nodded his acknowledgement. He wasn't feeling too well today, and he sincerely wished that his team had more time to plan, but sometimes you had to make due. He looked over at his Gamester counterpart, who was looking back at him and pointing at his shoulder. "What's that flashing thing?" The Djinn looked down at his shoulder, and paled as he saw a metallic band pulsing with greenish-yellow lights on his upper arm. "Damn. We've got to change plans. Something's wrong. I told you this place was a deathtrap." The Calabite looked over from his seat. "Listen, I understand your fear of Lightning, but Asmodeus has commanded that you -" The Technologist shook his head. "No, no - you don't get it. This thing - it's a temporal displacement device. Only goes off about two seconds before you die. Takes you back to a few seconds before the event that caused your death, and it gives you a second shot at it." The Gamester blinked twice, then shrugged. "Then don't do what you did last time. If you just got a glimpse into the future, then use it." Hapshet rubbed his temples, trying to get the pain to leave his skull. "No, it's not like it's that simple, you moron. If you know the future, you lock yourself into a specific temporal loop, so to get around that the device strips the ethereal force that had those memories. I don't remember how things went wrong, all I know is that they did." The Calabite rubbed his chin thoughtfully for a moment. "Well, the plan had called for you to split your forces and insert from three points. Perhaps we should make only one point of entry. Maybe that will work better." "Maybe you're right. Let's go..." - ----------------------- "Team six is in position, sir." Michael Cleveland Gulf Coast Geotech _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2001 14:49:59 From: "Michael Cleveland" Subject: IN> Vapulan Time Travel Vapula truly hates it when people tell him not to do something. For several months, people have been trying to press upon him the idea that time travel is just one of those things that not even angels are supposed to experience. Kronos and Asmodeus have been nipping at his heels constantly, whining about 'temporal paradoxes' and 'undoing fates' and 'end of the world' and other things like that. Vapula puts up a token fight because it's expected of him - after all, the idea that a demon would try to limit his work is somewhat repulsive to him. Besides, he already knows. Time travel is a lot simpler than most people think, really. Humans figured it out in the eighties all on their own, albeit in a Star Trek movie. Janus or Eli figured it out as well, apparently, but they're going about it the wrong way. Yes, going faster than the speed of light outside a very rigidly configured magnetic field will do it, but the energy required is astronomical. Not to mention inefficient, what with friction and energy to maintain the magnetic fields and all... The real trick is to get enough energy together in one spot, then transmute it from one form to another in a _very_ short period of time. This can be problematic, in the sense that the symphony says that one cannot simply get 100% efficiency when changing energy from one state to another. Attempting to do this will either typically fail horrifically, or will tear a hole in space-time that may prove difficult to close as it manifests in the corporeal plane as a singularity. Most people would look at the movie 'Event Horizon' and see the potential problems with any Technology that involves a black hole anywhere near a planetary system, not to mention on a planet. Then again, only a true Archangel could watch a horror flick and find divine inspiration. If the Symphony won't allow 100% efficiency to be achieved, then one simply removes the Symphony from the equation and work from there. It is a well-known fact that after a symphonic disturbance, there are ripples. Using the rock in a pond analogy with the Symphony, one finds that when you drop a rock into a body of water, the water moves away from the rock, but is quickly replaced by the rest of the water rushing in to fill the empty space. If one finds a big enough rock, though... By (relatively) careful use of the Song of Celestial Cacophony, one can actually throw a metaphorical rock large enough to clear a space outside the Symphony in which to work. If one assumes that a 1000 point disturbance can be achieved by a servitor with 6 Celestial forces for anywhere between 28 to 167 points of Essence, this is infinitely more efficient that Archangel Jean's estimate of 1.2 million essence. Of course, there is less than a second before the Symphony rushes back in, so one must be quick, but it can be done... Going forward in time is easy, once one has gotten the symphony out of the way, with its rules of space time and such. A simple variant of celestial motion will get you where you want to go. The essence requirements are high, but if God had wanted this to be simple, all this wouldn't be required. Still, for a trained servitor of a great Archangel, going forward is simple. Going backwards, on the other hand... One uses the same method, really. But there are complications. Once one has come from the future into the past, one finds oneself caught in a loop unless you go back before the time of your creation - the subconscious mind forces you to replay the events that led up to the temporal experiment, which then sends you back to do it again and again and again, ad nauseum. Since one typically goes back to change a specific thing, there is a way to go back in time without becoming caught in this sort of loop, but it has its own problems. Since it is the fault of the mind replaying events that causes the loop, one gets around this by stripping an Ethereal force which contains some of the memories of future events. This allows you to work with impunity, however by removing the ethereal forces that contain knowledge of the future, the demon in question often has absolutely no idea what it was they wanted to change, only knowing that _something_ didn't go right... And what happens to those that go back before their creation? Well, most of them have never been retrieved, so very little data exists on what it does to one's mental state. It's assumed that they eventually go insane as their creator brings them into existence, creating a sort of 'Name-Friction', similar to the Word friction of Gabriel and Belial. However, a few Habbalah that were sent back have been retrieved, with interesting results. While they report no abnormalities in their psychology, over time they begin communicating with the Divine more and more often, receiving additional directives from God that they are unwilling to discuss with anyone, even other Habbalah. Vapula has quietly made it a point to discorporate said Habbalah and bind the forces into relics that are then given over to Calabim to be dismantled. One can only guess at what sort of things Vapula finds heretical... Michael Cleveland Gulf Coast Geotech _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2001 10:00:54 -0500 From: "Erich S. Arendall" Subject: Re: IN> Temporal Displacement Device > "Team six is in position, sir." What can I say, Mr. Cleveland, other than I like? I like very, very much. Powerful, but the memory leakage doesn't make it /too/ powerful. My only questions regarding the artifact are: Do the users retain the knowledge of how many times it's been used? and When can I have one?