Free Lilim, the Guildhall, and the Corporeal Plane

[tbug]

When Free Lilim are on the corporeal plane they don't have an easy way to contact (or travel to) the Guildhall, as far as I can tell. They pretty much need to find a Tether or else follow someone and hope to end up in a friendly Principality.

Can Free Lilim on Earth contact the Guildhall in any way? Perhaps, for example, there's generally a member of the Secretarial Pool stationed in, say, Los Vegas or NYC. If they keep the same phone number then even a Free Lilim who has been Corporeal for some time can still call in if she needs to.

I guess my question is twofold. 1) Is there canon related to this (that I just haven't found)? 2) How are other people handling this in-game?

[William]

How easy do you need? The Guildhall has Tethers that lead to it (most of Freedom's), like any other Principality. Contacting Hell is always tricky, but can be done at an allied Tether or using the Celestial Song of Tongues, just as for any other demon, assuming the Lilim knows someone to contact.

Now, Free Lilim rarely have Hearts to descend to... that's just the breaks of being Free.

[tbug]

Originally Posted by William

How easy do you need?

My campaign is taking place in a fairly sparsely-populated area. It's hundreds of miles to the closest Tether of Freedom, and several hours drive to even the closest infernal Tether (and that's not even to Shal-Mari). Having a phone number that connects to the Guildhall would be enormously convenient.

This strikes me as being something useful for Lilim in much of the world. Sure, the USA and Europe and parts of Asia are quite densely populated, but there are lots of places on the planet where it's stinking inconvenient to get to a Tether. What about all the Lilim on cruise ships, for starters?

[William]

If such a Lilim lacks a Heart, the easiest way for her to go up is to follow someone else to their Heart, doubtless paying for the privilege. Lacking a convenient fellow demon, the easiest way for her to get to Hell is to sleep, entering the Marches, and then travel to Beleth's Tower and enter Hell from there. She may then travel within Hell, leaving a sleeping body behind, and return to it by waking up when she desires.

A phone which connects the two realms is simply impossible (under normal rules; a unique phone which dials up Hell or Heaven every now and then would make an amusing artifact!). The closest you will get is a relic of the Celestial Song of Tongues and an agreement from the person on the other end to repay the Essence it took you to use it.

[tbug]

I'd forgotten about the possibility of entering through Beleth's tower. Thanks! I'll check Heaven & Hell and see which Principality borders it.

I wasn't thinking in terms of a phone that connects the planes. I had something more along the lines of a secretary stationed somewhere in the corporeal realm who could act as a liason, probably stationed on a Tether. Presumably she'd nip up and down every couple of days, or more often if there were an urgent message.

I suppose that there could be voicemail accounts, too. You'd just spool all the messages at one end and send a courier package with a DVD containing them down to the other end. Presumably this would need to be some sort of relic or something so that it could function on both the corporeal and celestial planes, but I expect that someone over at Technology could whip something up.

I don't desperately need this for plot purposes; I just need to portray the Free Lilim as intelligent and resourceful, and this seems too obvious not to exist in some form. I suspect that many Lilim would pay an hour-Geas or a point of Essence for this sort of service, particularly those who'd have trouble returning to Hell without a Heart or convenient Tether.

[William]

Your idea of a courier service is very reasonable; it costs Essence to descend to Hell, but a Lilim at a Freedom Tether who can pay for a demonling assistant to schlep discs packed with emails to Hell, say, once an hour, would be able to turn a profit easily by charging a very light fee for the service. A sufficient subscriber base paying 1 Essence per month, longer contracts available for low-level Geases, would probably manage fine. Even non-Lilim would probably appreciate the service.

Lilim are very helpful.

They even charge a relatively fair price. Usually.

If you think about it, Hell could hardly get along without them...

[tbug]

The discs could even be reliquaries, taking Essence back to the service's headquarters. This would not only transport the fees, but would give the discs the ability to show up in the celestial plane.

Okay, there are at least two corporeal locations, one of which is at a secret site and only accepts stuff via TCP/IP packets. This will take some work, but I can detail this out.

There isn't an equivalent group of angels who wander Earth Heartless but still in need of talking to the folks back home. Still, I'm thinking that if nothing else the good folks in Commerce Park need fairly continuous data flow in order to stay in business. I expect that they'll have something similar in place.

Something to ponder. Thanks for the input!

[RadLilim]

For talking back to Heaven, I've never seen any reason why email can't work. With Ork's Networks and the firewalls Jean can set up, email should be easy to send back up. Granted, the angel in questions will need some computer knowledge.

[tbug]

If e-mail can travel from Earth to Heaven then surely it can travel from Earth to Hell. How do Ork's TCP/IP packets travel between the planes? Can encoded data travel a Tether the way an encoded celestial does? Maybe they need some sort of encapsulation.

Sure, the angel managing data transfer at the Tether site would need some computer knowledge, but for everyone else it wouldn't be any different from checking e-mail via any other method.

[milliken]

Originally Posted by tbug

If e-mail can travel from Earth to Heaven then surely it can travel from Earth to Hell. How do Ork's TCP/IP packets travel between the planes? Can encoded data travel a Tether the way an encoded celestial does? Maybe they need some sort of encapsulation.

I'm not sure exactly what's in canon (though I'm pretty sure there's nothing on contacting the Guildhall from Earth), but I have a couple comments:

1) Orc is the [bethedit: Kyriotate] Angel of Networks; it seems likely that it's going to be net-connected *wherever* (and *everywhere*) it is, by virtue of its Word.

2) In our games, there are several Kyriotate Seneschals of Lightning who can serve as electrical conductors between Earth and Heaven (via Kyriotate bi-location and Seneschal powers, they're always simultaneously present at both ends of their Tethers), and who can thus bridge Earthly communication systems into the Cathedral of Lightning. In our games, Marc also takes advantage of this, but normally leaves the actually cross-planar connections to Lightning. We've not really established the capacity of the connections -- it may be fairly limited.

It's probably not unreasonable for Vapula (or Nybbas) to have found some way to effectively pull of Jean's trick of using a Tether as an inter-realm connection.

The more old-fashioned Archangels and Demon Princes are likely to have Tether-based courier services of the type people have discussed here, with Tether staff taking messages on each end and sending them along when enough accumulate, or the message is obviously urgent (though the latter is usually a case where people will either invoke their Superior, or possibly use Celestial Tongues).

As far as Lilim go, and the Guildhall, I'd expect every Lilim on Earth has a cell phone packed with useful numbers (often of sisters), and including those for the Freedom Tethers. Don't forget Free Lilim often have minor Geases on other demons as well -- they can always call up someone who owes them a favor and tell them to go back to Hell with a message to drop off in the Guildhall. This is easy if the demon is from one of the Shal-Mari group, which is fairly plausible for a Free Lilim.

Lilith herself may have arranged a sneakernet e-mail relay between Earth networks and computers in the Guildhall, for her own use, and might allow her daughters to subscribe to it for a nominal rate, say an essence per month.

Actually getting back to the Guildhall personally is harder, but there's probably not a lot of reason to want to go there, as long as the Lilim's not in big trouble in the corporeal realm. So many more opportunities for favors on Earth, you know....

---Walter