Fall of the Malakim (?) available

[Rocket Man]

Actually, Michael's not too far away. Death Valley is close enough to make a strike possible if it becomes necessary. :)

[Phoenix42]

Originally Posted by Rocket Man

Actually, Michael's not too far away. Death Valley is close enough to make a strike possible if it becomes necessary. :)

Yeah, I heard that too... I also heard that some Baal-demons were seen along the coast... surfing, probably ^^

But I guess Dalilama is right, gang warfare is more Malphas' area of expertise - I was just wondering, because Michael isn't above funding skinheads, so why not the Eastside 14s or 3/78s, or whatever the name of the respective gang happens to be :)

[Dalillama]

Originally Posted by Phoenix42

But I guess Dalilama is right, gang warfare is more Malphas' area of expertise - I was just wondering, because Michael isn't above funding skinheads, so why not the Eastside 14s or 3/78s, or whatever the name of the respective gang happens to be :)

I thought that was David?

[Rocket Man]

Originally Posted by DAlillama

I thought that was David?

In canon, yes. David believes in the importance of group unity and according to Sup1 is behind some of the non-racist Skinhead gangs. In his opinion, even a street gang is a step upward ... its members have at least learned how to function in a common interest, even if it's a base one.

That said, if there were members who were willing to fight for the right, Michael wouldn't turn them down. There's a reason that both Archangels are part of the "war faction" in Heaven.

[tHEhERETIC]

Originally Posted by Phoenix42

*lol* <-- yes, we actually were... ^^

Yes, somehow I have yet to hear of someone from LA who liked the place. The best I heard was from someone who visited it once and he said "yeah, it's not so bad. And if you wear the right colours, the gangs don't even shoot at you..." Which reminds me of another point - what with all the turf wars in LA, how come Baal and Michael aren't around? Too small-time for them?

Heeey! I'm from LA (actually the Inland Empire, which is just east of), and that city is life and breath to me. For one thing, I have such street smarts--I get horrified at some of the things people here (outside of Seoul) believe and do, the precautions they don't take, the little things that scare them. Unattended running car? Are you mad???

I love LA but let's face it--LA is safe like New York is polite. I just figured IN was following that time-worn trope that LA is damned and would be fun to blow up periodically.

[Matthias Wasser]

People go to LA to fulfill their individualistic dreams, it's extremely decentralized, its economy is based on beauty and lies. It would be Infernal even in a backwards setting. (As opposed to San Francisco, which would flip to Infernal in a backwards setting.)

Originally Posted by DAlillama

Nah, that sounds more like David and Malphas. Mike and Baal aren't going to waste time with these kind of amateurs...

LA is one of the major economic centers of the military-industrial complex. (Its levels of gang warfare, on the other hand, are weak compared to most large cities in the global south.)

Originally Posted by tHEhERETIC

I love LA but let's face it--LA is safe like New York is polite.

Actually, there was a study a few years ago that found New York to be among the politest of cities, and this accords entirely with my experience.

[Phoenix42]

Originally Posted by tHEhERETIC

Heeey! I'm from LA (actually the Inland Empire, which is just east of), and that city is life and breath to me. For one thing, I have such street smarts--I get horrified at some of the things people here (outside of Seoul) believe and do, the precautions they don't take, the little things that scare them. Unattended running car? Are you mad???

I love LA but let's face it--LA is safe like New York is polite. I just figured IN was following that time-worn trope that LA is damned and would be fun to blow up periodically.

...and you were probably right :)
But it's nice to see somebody who likes the city after all - although loving and liking are two different things, of course. I like Mainz (most of the time, outside Carneval). Love? Forget it. I love Britain (for the food, mostly - yeah, being British helps with that). Like? Not really. People are strange, I guess.

Anyway, where was I?

Right. Sorry about the David/Michael mix-up. Somehow I got my wires crossed with Michael funding blood cults and David funding skinheads (now how could I mix those two up?). Thanks to all who corrected me :)

[JCD]

I just bought and started reading the book and I already have a question.

The demons will destroy any unknown angels they capture. How do they do that? Not how do they destroy them (Mostly it's just vessel kill)

I mean: how do they find unknown angels. The only way a Celestial can be found is if they make disturbance or are harmed by another Celestial and make no disturbance when harmed. (This ignores Soldiers use of Songs and Essence, of course)

The city proper of L.A. is a minimum of 21 miles to the side and the metropolitan area is 69 miles to a side. It would take a pretty loud and obvious angel to be found among the 3.7 mill (city) or 14 mill (metro) population.

Have the demons populated the city with relievers? It seems that a halfway discrete angel could live there a LONG time without being found.

What am I missing?

[Archangel Beth]

PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE CELESTIAL BEHIND THE CURTAIN!

Ahem.

Derek, as near as I can tell, was a great GM for the handwave. The PCs were too busy hanging onto the safety bars of the roller-coaster, and/or too willing to follow the genre he set up, to ask inconvenient questions like these. GMs who use a different style frequently need to back things up a bit more.

Ways to discover angels include heavy reliance on Lilim, and Lilim of Lust are extremely useful in this regard. Angelic Needs like "infiltrate this hellhole" are kind of suggestive. Shedim playing host-hopping are also potential informants. But, in truth... LA is just too darn big; the demons have some chance of eventually finding angels, and presumably they've got some really great demons lodged in position to check IDs, credit cards, or other forms of getting along as a human... But what they really have is hype. (Hmmm. Nybbas' fine hand may be involved!) Hype, a demon-Tether-heavy area, and a Prince who thinks that it's his own personal extension of Perdition. About the only Archangel who could get a really good angelic network into the place is... Jordi, really. And Jordi doesn't give a hiss for the extremely human-focused stuff in LA. (Then there's Michael, but he'd probably use Saints. Laurence has a prayer with "role of a dead hero," but you gotta figure that the demons in the local town hall(s) are onto that.)

Mostly, the Archangels have ceded LA to Hell, and are just keeping it besieged. (In similar fashion, demons have ceded other cities to angels: most notably Notre Dame. Notra Dame? i kant spel gud know mor. I believe San Francisco is canonically angelic, and in non-canon, we gave Boston to angels for our games.) Heaven might be able to spend a lot of resources to uproot the demons, but it could turn the cold war "hot" in nasty ways, and take resources that would be better-used in places where the demons haven't gained so much memetic ground that the humans might well just keep on behaving Hellishly even without their Infernal instigators.

"Destroy" could be done with recourse to various Songs or threats to innocent bystanders ("go celestial or the hostage gets it"), much as we managed to nuke a would-be Seneschal in a game once -- but it would probably be easier to say that "destroy" is being used a bit theatrically and the more common result is "vessel-killed."

Does that help?

[Omegonthesane]

Originally Posted by Archangel Beth

"Destroy" could be done with recourse to various Songs or threats to innocent bystanders ("go celestial or the hostage gets it"), much as we managed to nuke a would-be Seneschal in a game once -- but it would probably be easier to say that "destroy" is being used a bit theatrically and the more common result is "vessel-killed."

This assumes that most angels, knowing that one present angel will do more good than one present human in the short and the long run, and that they are facing annihilation while the human is facing a slightly shorter trip to their eternal reward, will not simply laugh in the demon's face and kill the innocent person themselves. Even Mercurians and oath-breaking Malakim would typically rather suck up some dissonance than be obliterated far as I know.

Servitors of Flowers might conceivably be a bit stymied (as, hilariously, would be Servitors of Judgment, with the not hurting someone more than they deserve) but could probably write the human off without even gaining dissonance, if they've got no way to prevent the death other than their own destruction (presumably followed by the demons laughing and killing the human anyway once you've lost all Corporeal Forces and can no longer stop them).