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Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.
I think my spin on Kobal would be that he's preparing Haagenti to devour a Word. Not simply the prince or demon holding it, but the very metaphysical concept. That is his mission from God: to do the unthinkable and scour an evil Word from existence. I could see the irony appealing to him: the mere Angel of Laughter and Hell's jester striking a blow against evil that not even Michael had been capable of.

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Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.
I'd like to continue with the Superiors series. May as well keep at it.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.
Oh boy. This is going to be special, isn't it? Ironically he's probably happier with Dominic/Dominique's personal dress code than any other of the [potentially] female-identifying archangels.

I've been idly drawing up a homebrew archangel in part to claim patronage over the Protestant movements for the campaign I'm thinking of pitching to my players, as that seems a distinct oversight though one excusable given this game's origins in France.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.
I do like the idea of an archangel who Redeemed to get the job, but also making that character a Muslim who almost became the Demon Prince of Fanaticism is... unfortunate.

My personal stab on a Protestant archangel is an Archangel of the Sea, a keeper of heavenly mysteries who cherishes the human spirit of exploration and is intensely distrustful of large-scale organized religion in general. She points to the decline of Christianity in Europe and says that's because religion became official, politics and religion became too intertwined.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.

Mors Rattus posted:

I'd go with The Waters, rather than the Sea, since that's a Word with a solid history. (Formerly held by the Ofanite Oannes, sister to Gabriel and Janus, but slain by Belial in the middle ages.)

I've noticed that Words belonging to slain Archangels and Demon Princes don't seem to ever be reused directly, but rather incorporated into other Words. My outline for Aurora, Cherub Archangel of the Sea, is that she'd been around for a long time as a potent Servitor of Jean and was chosen by Yves and Gabriel as Oannes' replacement. Her elevation shortly before the dawn of the Age of Exploration began in Europe was probably not a coincidence, though she has a great fondness for seafaring cultures throughout human history, particularly the 18th century British Empire and the ancient islanders of the Pacific who spread across that ocean and may have been the ones who colonized Australia and South America.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.
I think my interpretation of Khalid would be to remove his near-Fall and make him far more empathetic with people - say, make his attitude towards Dominic along the lines of "A difficult Word indeed to bear. Fear not, Dominic, the day will come when you will lay down the burden you have carried for so long." He may not like Dominic, and indeed may hate him personally, but also have faith in Dominic and his part in God's plan.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.
True, but I was just using that as an example of how I think I'd interpret and portray Khalid: the Archangel of Faith, a being with infinite goodwill towards others and a resolute belief that there is a spark of genuine goodness in everyone. His wrath might be terrible when someone betrays the faith he has freely given them, but even then he doesn't lose hope in the other.

Being a grumpy, judgmental person who is liked by almost no one but who is nevertheless a devout and whole-hearted servant of God and good when the chips are down is territory already pretty well covered by the likes of Dominic, Michael, and from the sounds of him, Jean.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.
On the other hand, I quite like Yves' first outing.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.
Or when people talk about God working in Mysterious Ways, the Angels of Destiny are the Ways in question. Or play Paul Atreides. See and comprehend all possible futures, do whatever is necessary to guide the universe towards the best possible future.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.
Might as well continue with the Superiors, I think.

Khalid rubs me all sorts of the wrong way and I think is badly written, and Gabriel is also very off-putting to me, but I really like Yves and to a lesser extent Blandine.

I think I'd give Yves a bit of a Paul Atreides feel to him, being able to see the future and what a horrific burden that is. Bringing humanity to the golden path may well be beyond even the capabilities of the first and greatest archangel and God's right hand, but he nevertheless perseveres and almost no one in heaven has an inkling of the weight on Yves' shoulders.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

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and the potoo loves you.

Hypocrisy posted:

I feel the opposite. The archangels have pretty much all been decent sorts, at least to humans if not each other. The most hostile ones would seem to be Michael and Dominic and even that feels pretty tame. I guess a bunch are mad at Eli too but all of the archangels accepted his angels when he left.

Dominic, I feel, is fundamentally decent but he's an archangel with a difficult and unpleasant job that puts him under enormous pressure, and Michael's not much different.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

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and the potoo loves you.
I think it comes down to the Words they bear. Of course Gluttony, Lust, and the Media are fun and cultivate human appetites. That's the point of their Words.

I think how I'd play In Nomine would be that Heaven by and large presents ideals to aspire to. It's hard. It's not fun for most people. It's removed from Earth and human life and experience.

Thus the temptation of Hell. Hell is very human. It's easy to understand, it's fun and it doesn't expect you to do anything you don't already like doing.

It's the fundamental conflict. Do humans take the hard path to heaven, or the easy road to hell?

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

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and the potoo loves you.

Covok posted:

Followers of the religions of the book would probably rejoice so a significant portion of the human race would, most likely.

Until they find out that heaven and hell really aren't much like what their holy books say, much less how factionalized they both are. Novalis alone would make many hardcore conservative Jews, Christians, and Muslims poo poo a brick. And finding out that Blandine and Beleth were once the heavenly epitome of romantic love, two female-presenting archangels (originally)?

As for my notes on using In Nomine, I think I'll eliminate Jordi, fold his portfolio in with Novalis, and replace him with the Archangel of the Sea/the Waters I've been mucking with.

In fairness to the game, In Nomine is very 90s so of course there's an ecoterrorist archangel.

Cythereal fucked around with this message at 23:55 on Jan 31, 2016

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.
I'd be interesting in playing a Malakim of Destiny, probably taking some inspiration from the real life tradition of prison preachers. Always have one hand reached out in trust and hope, but have the other clenched in a fist.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.
Each to their own. I wouldn't play it that way and don't agree with the entire premise of doing so, but eh.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.

Count Chocula posted:

It just feels like they need to try to make Hell evil by inserting things like Haaganti's cannibalism, and they're easy to remove.

Haagenti is Gluttony. You really thought he wouldn't be evil? It's hell.

To me, only a few of the demon princes have been interesting so far: Nybbas, Kronos, and Asmodeus.

On the other hand, I've found heaven in In Nomine very interesting with the exceptions of Jordi and Khalid, and the latter is salvageable. They're the custodians and guardians of the world created by God, and that's an incredibly difficult job.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

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and the potoo loves you.

Count Chocula posted:

But with a few exceptions, they don't seem to actually LIKE or even care for humanity, except in some disinterested, paternal way. Heaven's goal is to drag humanity into some stupid war. Heaven wants us to eat and gently caress and pose and burn and die, and loves when we do those things we'd do anything. It's telling that Heaven doesn't have anyone watching over death, the most natural process (though I guess it was only supposed to come into being with The Fall?).

Besides, Hell has a sense of humor and fun, and every Prince seems to spawn a bunch of potential plots - the last one lets you run Demonic Paranoia. Where's the cheeky counterpart to the Hellish Media?

Hell also wants to drag you into exactly the same war, incidentally, for exactly the same reasons. To demons, humanity is nothing but cattle. They care about you the same way you care about prime beef.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

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Count Chocula posted:

Ugh. Other than this, I was liking Valefor as a Fantomas/Diabolik/Lupin/Jean le Flambeur style stylish thief/mastermind. I do love the 'Kobal kinda sucks, replace him with this guy' sidebar.

It's hell. Valefor is a demon prince. This are not nice people, and their primary purpose is to enslave and/or destroy the human race and all of heaven.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

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DAD LOST MY IPOD posted:

i don't know about you but i can't enjoy any roleplaying setting where all of the characters, villains included, don't share 21st century Western liberal standards and sensibilities

All I'm saying is, hell is the bad guys. They're not going to be nice, and they're going to take their Words to the same extremes as heaven does.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

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I'm kind of disappointed that Hoodoo Blues doesn't cover Florida. Florida in centuries past was a very Southern state, and the south parts of the state were considered a hellish watery jungle by Army soldiers fighting the off and on wars with the Seminole.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

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Hostile V posted:

If Hoodoo Blues did Florida, it would need its own drat supplement to cover the entire state and then some. On the other hand, Super Florida Man RPG would be a great tabletop RPG to play or run.

"I shoot at the ice cream van with my assault rifle!"
"That's not in your gear but I'll allow it."

Eh... There's genuine history to Florida that could be really interesting in Hoodoo Blues. There's north Florida and the Panhandle which are more traditionally Southern, there's the historic cigar industry boom in the Tampa area, the endless and deadly swamp-jungle of South Florida and the very angry and hostile Seminole fighting the US Army in what borders on Vietnam With Flintlocks, the coastal fishing villages, and the glittering port city of Key West - one of the richest cities in the world in the Antebellum period.


Also, continue with Superiors, please.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

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Black August posted:

Eli... is nothing like you'd think he is, after you play with him enough with the people who wrote the books. Eli is kind of batshit conceptually.

I dunno, he seems like the 90s counter-culture archangel striking back against The Man with drugs, sex, and rock'n'roll as heavenly good things.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

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Black August posted:

Yeah that's exactly what I mean. That's his Derek Pearcy circa-1995 image. dude gets a bit of a deeper brush here. Not one I all agree with, but that's par the course.

My overall spin on this setting, which I do intend to try starting a game for on a different site once my real life affairs settle down some, is that both heaven and hell are more or less ready to throw in the towel to an angelic victory, but the War is being prolonged by hardliners on both sides: most notably Lucifer.

The central twist, as I'm conceiving things, is that Lucifer was the second soul created by God, and like Yves he saw the entirety of the Symphony from beginning to all possible ends. Ultimately, the Symphony could go in two different ways: Yves is more or less the consciousness of one possible course of reality, and Kronos the other. What Lucifer saw, however, is that both creation's Destiny and creation's Fate ultimately involve the end of the celestials. That is what Lucifer rebelled against, and in my take on things why his moment of Falling was his murder of Azrael, Archangel of the Dead. Lucifer prizes his own existence above all else, and it was the knowledge of her eventual destruction that brought Lilith into his fold.

Lucifer's goal, then, is to play both sides against each other for all eternity: prevent creation from reaching its Destiny or Fate.

Unfortunately for him, things are approaching the point of no return despite him slowing things down immensely. The rise of Leviathan, my homebrew Archangel of the Sea, in the 15th century was a bad sign for Lucifer's plans and Leviathan herself is a young but powerful archangel. Nybbas was Lucifer's response, a counterweight to keep the War going. Unfortunately it worked a bit too well and indirectly lead to the ascendance of Haagenti, who unbeknowest to all but Lucifer, Yves, and Kronos is a dire harbinger of the end times. Then Khalid returned to heaven, another ominous portent.

Lucifer and Lilith want to live forever, but creation - earthly, ethereal, and celestial alike - is quickly spinning out of their ability to control.


The PCs would be put into the middle of a complex and sensitive situation on their first outing together, unbeknowest to them another situation watched very closely indeed by Yves and Kronos.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

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and the potoo loves you.

Black August posted:

Sounds good. That's why In Nomine is really fun; it gives you an excellent toolbox of characters and concepts and allows you to twirl a lot of knobs to match your taste. I managed to run my game as Street Mythic, where I had a lot of simple street level stuff, mixed with Earth-shaking events that nobody was actually aware of, since it followed a hidden war inside of a hidden war. In Nomine is utterly fantastic if you want to explore the really mythic and mystic aspects of religious concepts, despite its boxed standard of kind of explainable and logical stuff. Setting supports AUs like it was a dirty habit and it was passing out needles. The Game Master's Guide is an excellent read, as is the Infernal Player's Guide.

Yeah, my premise boils down to Lucifer and Lilith being terrified of death and willing to do anything in order to avoid it. They're supported by a few Princes and Archangels who share their fear or who don't want to acknowledge that ultimately humans are more important to the Symphony - more important to God - than the celestials are. They've prolonged the Earth experiment by thousands of years, yet the signs of the coming apocalypse are still happening: the rise of Leviathan and Haagenti, the return of Khalid, Kobal's plans.

For those in the know, at this point the only question is how it ends: in Destiny or Fate.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

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Black August posted:

Just make sure if you run it as a game you don't turn it into Superiors: The Drama, while the PCs sit around twiddling their wingtips. One good solution to that, apart from the usual of "They are their Word and operate at a Superior level, they don't have time to pal around or solve any problems, that's why you exist" is to take it a bit further in terms of PC agency and say that Superiors CAN'T intervene in certain events, even really big ones, because they are so tied to the Symphony that anything they do that isn't within the confines of their Word could end up ruining their operations from massive backlash. So they have to petition, beg, threaten, trick, and convince the players to do all manner of big dangerous things to see any benefit.

Yeah, my intended way to play it is with a MAD situation: if any Superior gets directly involved from one side, Superiors from the other side will also get involved, and neither side wants that. Even Michael and Baal understand that the Symphony is a delicate thing, and the very nature of Superiors is anything but delicate - thus why none have done much on Earth since around the 18th century. Even if it weren't for the celestial cold war, Superiors resonate so powerfully with the Symphony that their very presence on Earth typically has enormous consequences, much less them doing anything. When Superiors set foot on Earth, nations fall.

The PCs are heaven's elite proxies, therefore, capable of acting in places and doing things that Superiors can't.

In fact, that's my planned explanation for what Eli is up to: he's experimenting with ways to dramatically reduce his impact on the Symphony to give himself much more freedom to act.

Cythereal fucked around with this message at 00:54 on Feb 6, 2016

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.

Black August posted:

Oh, that's a good idea. He's Creation and a Mercurian as well, so he'd have the best chance. It also makes the Grigori and Dark Grigori something of an impact when used, since their entire schtick is being so close to humanity in divinity that they can blend right in without the Symphony kicking up too much of a fuss.

Yeah, my take on the nature of Superiors is that each represents the entire metaphysical force behind the Word they represent. The celestial realms are a buffer of sorts where they don't really affect the Symphony, but Earth's rapidly climbing population is in part simply because Eli is on Earth. He doesn't have to will it, it just happens because he is Creation. When Laurence set foot on Earth, the Crusades happened. For my homebrew replacement for Jordi, the very act of Leviathan, Angel of the Sea, ascending to the status of Archangel started the Age of Discovery in Europe decades before it otherwise would have.

Superiors are individuals, sure, but they embody primordial forces and affect reality - affect the Symphony - just by being there.

Which is why the campaign I plan to run hinges on the PCs and other seemingly mundane, low-ranking angels and demons, and the ethereals and humans. They can act where the Superiors simply cannot without catastrophically destabilizing a delicate situation.

This also leads to my planned take on Dominic: few people in heaven like him, and fewer still truly understand him. But whatever accusations anyone will level at Dominic, the one they will not (except maybe Khalid and Gabriel) is that Dominic is unjust. He is what his Word demands of him, and almost everyone would agree that Dominic works very, very hard to hew his Word to heaven.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

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Black August posted:

I want to like Litheroy and his concept is solid, but HYPER SERAPH just gives me so many headaches, I just regulate him to being a former child of Raphael and a crazy wandering prophet type, still only a Wordbound. Less Superiors would be better, God in Heaven believe me when I say that. The French version has shitloads.

Again putting in my two cents worth, my take on things when planning my own campaign is that "Superior" is just a title. Most Superiors got their rank for their sheer power and longevity, but others received the title through politics and mark someone politically important in heaven or hell.

My take on the Council of Heaven is that adding a new seat is a very big deal: Leviathan inherited Oannes' position a couple hundred years after his death, Khalid held the spot used by Jordi in the base game, and Laurence and Marc filled the holes left by Azrael and Raphael respectively. It's a huge debate in heaven at the moment that Orc, Angel of the Network, is on the verge of archangel status and is being considered for the Council.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

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Simian_Prime posted:

"I was a Nice Guy angel on the Celestial Ladder, but now I'm a Superior PUA... Thanks to the Andrealphus Method!"

I'm not sure why this guy exists, myself. Isn't the search for knowledge and whatnot supposed to be part of Yves' bailiwick in addition to Destiny?

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

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The Lone Badger posted:

Litheroy isn't about obtaining or keeping knowledge, he's about spreading it around.

Isn't that Jean, then?

I get he's supposed to be angelic Sherlock Holmes/Indiana Jones, but I'm still not sure why he's an archangel as opposed to just a notable Wordbound serving Yves or Jean.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

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Black August posted:

The GMG has a whole meaty sidebar devoted to just that idea!

I think that's the take I'll use for Litheroy in my planned campaign if anyone brings him up, unless the rest of his writeup impresses me: powerful Wordbound who doesn't really have a Superior he answers to on a regular basis, but not a member of the Council and not remotely on the power level of the archangels.

He also runs a bit counter to my planned homebrew addition, Leviathan. Leviathan is the Archangel of the Sea, and beyond taking care of the oceans themselves she's also the keeper of heavenly mysteries as waters once separated Earth from Heaven. In other words, her primary job besides maintaining the oceans is erasing evidence of the War on Earth and keeping humanity at large from learning the truth about the celestials. The dissonance condition for angels of the Sea is to tell any human the truth about celestials, the celestial realms, or the War - unlike Khalid, Leviathan's angels cover up evidence of demons and Hell, too. They can encourage individuals to find the truth for themselves and even point them in the right direction, but Leviathan adores the human spirit of exploration and discovery, and would never simply give a human the answers they seek.

Then again, Leviathan is also working on expanding her Word to include space travel - she may or may not be [part of] the reason why people have gotten so used to talking about space and space travel using naval terminology. One of the ideas I'm considering for the first adventure hook is that Leviathan is attempting to turn the Sea of Tranquility, the place were humans first set foot on the Moon, into a Tether. It would be the first off-Earth Tether claimed by any celestial, and another dire portent to Yves and Kronos.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

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Black August posted:

There's a ton of fan material for Minor Choirs and Bands - it's easy to assume that most every Archangel and Prince has made a celestial based off of their Word, like Blandine with Menunim. The thing is with Lilith, Lilim are strong, and a unique product, or at the least a violently patented and protected one, because the second someone else figures out how to make Lilim or one of them makes Prince without her Mother's consent, Lilith is FUCKIN' DEAD.

Lilim aren't even quirky, they're just, you know, Pretty Green Women From Hell Who Force You To Do Stuff, and they existed in an RPG culture rife with nerds who were more interested in jerking off and being the coolest best forever than actually playing a drat game. So they got out of hand real fast.

Again, every time you feel the urge to toss a Lilim in there, ask if the much more common Band, Impudites, who are CENTERED around charming people, wouldn't be a better choice. Lilim are excellent as the semi-uncommon and brutal contractors who exist to see your soul bent over a hot cauldron if you back out of a deal, and demons, without a gun to their head, will always back out of a deal if they think they can get away with it.

Or you could go Screwtape Letters with it and Lilim fill in as the bureaucracy and legal department of Hell. That could be Lilith's secret to staying alive in Hell: the Lilim are the glue of Hell's organization simply because they're about the only ones who can ensure the management and supply of Hell's legions actually gets done. They're not the glamorous succubi you normally hear about, but your average Lilim is the Hellish version of an office drone or truck driver.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

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Black August posted:

I wish there had been more players like you around when the scene was still hoppin' :sigh:

It's kind of off-topic and I don't have PMs, but would you mind if I ran my currently planned band attunements for my homebrew archangel past you? Or might just be time to bite the bullet and upgrade.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

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Ratoslov posted:

Litheroy seems like the nicest Superior to deal with. Eli's a close second, but he's, y'know, insane even by Superior standards. Yves is niceish, but he's also cryptic, which I have mentioned I have a intense dislike of.

While I think the whole story of the time Andre banged Roy is cute, I do gotta wonder what circumstances it could possibly have occured in, given Litheroy's stated 'SMASH DEMON FACES' stance.

Litheroy reads to me like a guy who would press a giant red button labeled "DO NOT TOUCH: WILL DESTROY HEAVEN IF PRESSED" just to see what would happen. Have to imagine there's a full-time team of cherubim running damage control on him like there is for Gabriel.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

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Ratoslov posted:

Pretty much every superior would be hellish to work for. Eli is an exception here, but that's because Eli is completely AWOL.

Most of them seem pretty reasonable to me, especially if you go with the mindset that angels fundamentally are not human and don't think quite the same way we do. Even if not, most of them seem to be fairly reasonable bosses as long as you share their Word's idea of purpose. You're an angel, you've got a job to do.

Litheroy really strikes me as a guy who does far more harm than good even though he's ostensibly on heaven's side.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

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Night10194 posted:

In D&D I recall seeing it was an intentional ploy of the Gods, but then the D&D Gods are a bunch of bloated parasites and hypocrites who deserve death at the hands of a glorious revolution. :ussr:

To the contrary, in the Forgotten Realms gunpowder was a direct gift from the god of invention to his faithful and his clerics could wield an arquebus contrary to normal cleric weapon restrictions. It was a very recent thing, though, restricted to Gond's priesthood and the distant island nation of Lantan. Then 4E happened.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

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Black August posted:

Malakim are awful warriors way way better suited to helping keep contracts, settling disagreements, and doing rescue operations.

I'd almost think this is on purpose: being warriors is not what God created the Malakim for, they were supposed to be judges and adjudicators among men and angels but lost their way with the Fall, similar to Dominic.

That's something I think I'd like to note in my planned campaign when the PCs meet with or at least see Superiors: this is not what they were created to be, except maybe Yves, and certainly not what they or their Words were intended to do. Yves, I think, might even express a little long-suffering frustration about that: he knows what they were meant to be, what they still could be, but the only other person in all of creation that he can talk to who has the necessary concepts, much less the words to express them, is Kronos. Even when an angel sees the likes of Laurence, Novalis, or Jean, they're seeing something fundamentally broken and less than what it was intended to be.

Out of curiosity for my planning and thinking, can celestials with vessels drown or be restricted in the water? Thinking about giving all angels of the Sea a flat immunity to drowning and the crushing pressure of the ocean depths. Kind of necessary for an archangel of that Word and whose Tethers accordingly tend to be deep underwater.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

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Terrible Opinions posted:

The wall is also by itself why I'd argue no god save Kelemvor can actually qualify as good aligned in Faerun. He was the only guy who looked at the status quo and went "holy gently caress that's evil" and actually tried to do something about it.

Then got bitch slapped by Ao for it.

Also, the severity of the Wall varied dramatically from depiction to depiction. Most people are probably familiar with it from Mask of the Betrayer, but other Forgotten Realms material had said that only those who actively reject the gods end up in the Wall - the benevolent gods especially are merciful and take in the souls that have been judged by Kelemvor but didn't worship a god in life out of preference or simple ignorance. The Wall is the punishment for those who explicitly reject the gods, even those who simply never cared for religion in life get taken in by a god who matches the person's otherwise ethos in life.

Gann would have been Walled due to his explicit, knowing rejection of the gods according to this version, but Safiya would have been picked up by Oghma or Mystra.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

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The Forgotten Realms setting is a mess, suffice it to say, and Mask of the Betrayer picked one particular interpretation of it.

It's me, I'm the one who always sides with Kelemvor and got a warm fuzzy feeling when my paladin of Kelemvor got special dialogue with the big dude about how the Knight-Captain was his greatest mortal champion and that paradise awaits her at the death god's side - later, it's not yet time for her to leave the mortal world.

Zereth posted:

Isn't Ao to the gods as the gods are to ordinary mortals?

Yes. Ao only ever showed up in the Realms when gods hosed up big time, and he would commence beatings until order was restored.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

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Black August posted:

Y'know there's a reason that mass furious violent deicide is a thing in pretty much every setting I run.

Each to their own. I hold the complete opposite view, that submission to the cosmic order is a good thing.

I kinda hold Lilith as one of the biggest assholes of In Nomine and one of the two main people keeping the War going.

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Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
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Black August posted:

Litheroy is a pretty cool dude. Believe me when I say that a naive super-truth spitting happy snake is vastly preferable to how most Seraphim are, which is usually arrogant, socially impossible, violently adverse to lies, disdainful of humans, disdainful of every Choir below them, and about as easy to talk to as an actual basket full of enraged vipers.

Eh, I think I prefer interpreting Litheroy as a hair away from Falling and generally being more of a problem for heaven than a help. In an ideal world, he'd be fine. But he's not in an ideal world, and doubly so when interacting with humans.

He's as arrogant and socially impossible as they come, just in a different way from usual.

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