That being said, In Nomine continues to gain support from all sorts of people. Our GenCon demonstrations not only ran smoothly but were a lot of fun, too! Big celestial thanks to Jeff Koke for helping out with demos, and Eric Tobiason for his sketch of Druiel, the angel of Teenage Death.
One of my most interesting GenCon introductions was to Alex Klesen, one of the original French In Nomine playtesters and a staff member for Ideojeux, the company currently producing the original game. Alex showed me the newest French In Nomine supplement (by the prolific French developer G.E. Ranne) and we drank a lot of coffee.
But when is In Nomine coming out? Judging from the number of phone calls we get about it, inquiring minds want to know. As soon as Illuminati: New World Order goes away, we'll get back to the angels and demons, put the finishing touches on everything and ship it out. With any luck, you and I will both have copies of the game before Pyramid #11 gets too old on the shelves.
In the meantime, ``Angels in the Architecture'' will continue to provide interesting background material as we advance towards the game's release.
After the sun goes down, the Idiot Box comes alive. Its Ethereal appearance is somewhat ominous, with huge wrought iron handles asymmetrically welded to the front of the case and an endless procession of ants coming and going through its back to the wall socket. While barely having the intelligence of a dog, it is still very much aware of its purpose and its Need.
Its purpose is to guide humanity toward selfishness, but it regenerates Essence only after being watched attentively for two solid hours. After generating the required Essence, it will seek to invoke Rapture to insure a steady source of Essence.
After luring in an appropriate victim or victims, the Idiot Box will emit a loud ethereal hum, a low clarion call to any imps in the area like ringing a triangle for dinner. Idiot Boxes make good hangouts for imps, especially with a human captive to nibble on.
Imps and Idiot Boxes usually build up symbiotic relationships, with imps luring humans to the television and the Box holding them in place while both parties feed.
These Boxes are rare enough that the angels haven't devised any specific way to detect one, but common enough to be a nuisance. A Box's roughly hewn appearance almost insures it will fall into the hands of only the lower class; one might wonder what Vapula and Nybbus have in plan for the elite -- perhaps something with a sharper image.
If the Idiot Box is destroyed on the corporeal plane, it will be free to roam around as it pleases until it manages to scrape together enough Essence to create a new vessel or meets its more permenant ethereal demise.
If the Idiot Box is successfully attacked and destroyed on the ethereal plane, its corporeal vessel will no longer function correctly. Only a skilled technician with plenty of spare parts will ever get it running again, but better advice might be to leave the evil thing in a junkyard.