Overview of In Nomine

A few of my players haven't played this game before. Here's a quick rundown of the game. Some of these are links to other places in this document, others go to documents of their own.

• The General Game Concept.
• Angels and Demons.
• Choirs.
• Bands.
• Superiors.
• Ethereals.
• What happened Last Time.

"...Man, proud man,
drest in a little brief authority,
most ignorant of what he's most assured,
his glassy essence, like an angry ape,
plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven
as make the angels weep." --- William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

The general game concept is that of the secret war between Heaven and Hell, vying for influence and control over the mortal world. The player characters are angels and demons. (Angels, in this case). They try to do the right (or wrong) thing, satisfy their Superiors, and in general, fight a War for all of reality.

There's a game term that's hard to get a grasp on immediately, but since it is so central, we need to define it here. That's "the Symphony". This is the general term for all of Creation. The idea is that angels and their fallen counterparts can "hear" Creation, and influence it via "Songs", which produce nifty magical effects and can be detected by other angels and demons.

Angels and demons represent relatively pure portions of the Symphony, which means that if they act in ways that go against their "Symphonic nature", they get flaws and begin to act more erratically. This is called "Dissonance", and is discussed more below.

The angels try to preserve and help the Symphony, but have to be careful because their interference produces disturbance just as much as demonic influence does. The demons try to twist and distort the Symphony for their own horrible purposes.

Angels and Demons

"In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love; they had five hundred years of democracy and peace and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock." --- Orson Welles, 1949

Angels are manifestations of the will of God. (Do they have free will? They appear to have as much free will as humans do.) Demons are Fallen angels.

To know about Falling, you have to know about Discord. Every angel has a "nature" - act contrary to that nature, or contrary to the Symphony in general (sin, for example), and you become Discordant (the 'nature' of the angel and the 'acts' of the angel don't mesh up well.) This can cause all sorts of problems...become too Discordant and you Fall. Discord and Dissonance are to some degree, in-character, the same thing. In game terms, a "Discord" is a disadvantage related to having too much "Dissonance". In these pages I'll generally use the two interchangeably, though.

As an example, Lucifer's Discord was Pride. Thought he was Mr. Cool because he was the Angel of Light and Light got created first out of everything else. He managed to convince a bunch of other angels (by playing on THEIR Discord) to follow him in a revolt. And that got us where we are today.

Choirs

Choirs are "sorts" of angels, "species" if you will. There are 5 main Choirs, with a few minor ones that serve specific purposes:

• Seraphim. Seraphim are the embodiment of truth - they can hear lies scratching across the music of the Symphony no matter who speaks them. Telling a lie produces Discord in a Seraphim - and there is no such thing as a "little white lie".
• Cherubim. Cherubim are the embodiment of loyalty and stability - they can attune themselves to an object, place, or person, and gain insight into it, preternatural knowledge about it, and strong abilities to affect it. Letting something be destroyed that they are attuned to is Discordant in Cherubim.
• Malakim. Malakim are the embodiment of justice and honor. They can discern whether or not someone is honorable, and how much they possess. Acting in any way dishonorably is Discordant to the Malakim - and the Malakim do not Fall, they merely evaporate.
• Elohim. Elohim are the embodiment of objectivity and reason. They can detect a person's feelings - because they themselves are able to stand back from their feelings far enough to get a good look at them. Elohim receive Discord whenever they let their feelings get the better of them.
• Ofanim. Ofanites are the embodiment of energy and movement. They can discern the quickest way to get anywhere and use it, in their roles as hyperactive heavenly messengers. Inaction is Discordant to Ofanim.
• Kyriotate. Kyriotates are the embodiment of multiplicity, of number. They have no real form of their own, instead possessing mortal vessels when they visit the material realm, sometimes many mortal vessels at once. Allowing a vessel to deteriorate after they have possessed it for a time is Discordant to Kyriotates.
• Mercurians. Mercurians are the embodiment of Humanity. They are in tune with all the things that make humans human and are especially good at detecting and evaluating relationships between humans. It is Discordant for Mercurians to hurt human beings.

Demons also have "species"...

• Balseraph. Fallen Seraphim, these demons are the embodiment of lies. They can give their lies the force of delusion in the minds of their victims - it is only Discordant if the Balseraph gets caught in a lie.
• Djinn. Fallen Cherubim. They retain the ability to attune themselves to objects - but they use it to stalk, harass, maim and destroy. However, they are still prohibited from directly harming their prey (though they decidedly do not gain dissonance if the prey is destroyed or harmed!) Sometimes, though, they may even gain the same obsession over an attunement that they used to have as Cherubim...they hate that.
• Lilim. Lilim are not Fallen - their leader, Lilith, never Rose. They have the ability to detect people's needs and, if they can fulfill them, to bind those people to their unholy will for some return task sometime in the future! It is Discordant for Lilim to break a deal.
• Calabim. Fallen Ofanim. Calabim are the embodiment of entropy. They have the ability to lash out with pure destruction at their whim. It is Discordant for the Calabim to screw up while doing this.
• Habbalah. Fallen Elohim. Habbalah have so indulged their feelings that they have gained the ability to detect other's feelings and alter them - in the worst possible way. It is Discordant for Habbalah to fail to go with their feelings.
• Shedim. Fallen Kyriotates. Though Shedim have lost the ability to possess more than one vessel, they have gained much more control over the mind of the person possessed - who comes to believe that it is they themselves who are doing all of the terrible things that the Shedim make them do. The Shedim gain Dissonance if they fail to make a vessel deteriorate morally every day.
• Impudites. Fallen Mercurians. Like their Heavenly counterparts, the Impudites have a close tie to mankind, but their nature is inhumanity. They are capable of draining Essence from people and leaving them weak and weak-willed. They do still gain Dissonance from killing people.

"California is a place in which a boom mentality and a sense of Chekhovian loss meet in uneasy suspension; in which the mind is troubled by some buried but ineradicable suspicion that things had better work here, because here, beneath that immense bleached sky, is where we run out of continent." --- Joan Didion

Last time, Kim's character (a Malakite of Eli) and Ryan's character (an Ofanite of Marc), were assigned to investigate first, the release of a nightmare spirit from the Marches into the real world, and second, what that release was meant to cover up. What they discovered was that the nightmare spirit was meant to cover up for a pair of demons who had come across looking for a defecting Soldier of Hell. Fortunately, the Soldier had managed to make contact with a dream-cult run by a refugee Ethereal Chinese spirit. After some negotiations and ass-kicking, the angels managed to get the Soldier into the Marches to begin the long process of redemption and send the demons screaming back to the pits of hell.