Creating A Superior

[tHEhERETIC]

Oooh, I see a rivalry brewing between your angel of Magic and Hatiphas, demon of Sorcery. The latter falls under Fate. The former, if it were me, would straddle Jean/Lighting and Michael/War, just as Nisroc (Spies) straddles War and Judgement, though in the chain of command he's War's baby.

Maybe build up to an endgame where Magic and Sorcery duel to the death, with the PC's actions having a heavy influence on who wins.

[Shiftkitty]

By "30 years old" I mean that I created the world for my first shot at DMing 30 years ago when I first got that Moldvay set.

Magic is not too common, certainly not Forgotten Realms common. I like to keep magic relatively rare. Most people know about it, but very few encounter it on a regular basis. They get by without it, but if it's needed badly enough, they might know who they can turn to. You're going to have to plow your own field if you want food to grow, but if the dam is in danger of breaking, some magical help might hold the water at bay until the situation can be fixed. So maybe it's just a little below Greyhawk. You won't find a wizard in every town or city. You might find an herbalist in many villages or a hedge-mage here and there, but the ones who can truly call themselves wizards are few and far between. When one is learned to be in town, they often get offered exorbitant amounts to work for the local ruler (which is another nice little situation Hell is taking advantage of...).

I think before any duels to the death I should wait until I have funds to buy that book johndallman was talking about. Although I do have the PDF of "On Ferme!", which I think covers something about sorcery in there. (Sigh! Time to learn more French!)

[Archangel Beth]

Originally Posted by Dalillama

This world's version of Jean might not be an AA at all, but is the Angel of Lightning under either Magic

Or Jean might be AA of "the Spark," which includes the Spark of Magery...

This isn't actually as far-out as it might be, in that the proto-canon (which is, of course, not actual canon) for Jean is that he, Rafe, and Yves were kind of a Corporeal/Ethereal/Celestial // physical/mental/spiritual split. He has intense knowledge of workings of the physical world, with "lightning" incorporating the various forces that bind things together. (Basically, "energy" fuels a lot of quantum physics. Also, Elohim are bald in celestial form because it allows the heat to radiate from their Giant Brains better, and Jean is a Very Big Elohite. Or so goes local in-game fanon. >_> )

If you assume that Magic is part of the physical world, and a known part, then it would make sense that Jean would have it. (It's also equally possible he'd supervise the Angel of Magic, or that the AA of Magic would've been a Jeanite at one point; sticking Jean with the Word-twist is an exercise of Conservation of NPCs and/or Make The PCs Twitch.)

If Magic was considered part of the mental sphere of things, then it would have been Raphael's, and not necessarily reassigned after her death. (Then again, if there were an Angel of Magic, it might've gone to Destiny or Lightning -- though having the Angel of Magic working for the Sword might be a fascinating twist! Or the AA of Magic allied with the Sword!)

If Magic is a spiritual thing -- and with the similarity to Songs, there's a case to be made for that -- then Yves pretty clearly gets it, with roughly the same parentheticals as for Jean, above.

Likewise, if Magic is a creative urge -- and one could argue that a talent for magery is like a talent for painting or singing! -- well, hi there, Eli! (And if there isn't an Angel of Magic, just Magic as part of Creation, extra fuel for Dominic having his hissyfits about Eli's walkabout!)

In a world with Magic as a known thing, you might want to beef up Sorcery somehow, so that there are Things You Can Do (if only you risk your soul) that "mere" Magic can't...


...I dunno if this helps the actual game in question, of course. >_>


If you're familiar with GURPS, http://www.sjgames.com/in-nomine/art...insorcery.html may be of interest.

[Shiftkitty]

We have magic as very much a physical part of the world, so I'm going to drop it at least in Jean's sphere of influence so as not to drop it directly in his lap. My players tend to be of technical and scientific leanings, so they tend to watch sword & sorcery movies and ask how such a thing like a fireball spell (for example) would be created in our real world. (We've stopped entire games to look up what would happen in reality if such-and-such was real, or how much force would it take to knock Dwarf "A" off of bridge "B" if he was holding on to a rope with a Strength of "C", etc. FYI, don't EVER send a flaming arrow into the gullet of a dragon that's about to breathe out a cloud of coal dust while flying straight at you... It's just the sort of thing we do!)

Many of Trom's inventions in our old game were a mixture of magic and machine. His self-propelled cart was his first successful experiment (even if it did get him run out of a few towns full of superstitious people). He had been working on harnessing natural electricity before his "ascension", so I figure he'd probably want to hang around Jean a lot!

Perhaps Heaven sees the advantage of magic in this new arena and rather than Trom gunning for AA status, maybe he's being pushed that way? Also, as my husband brought up, Armageddon is supposed to affect all of Creation, isn't it? Who says it's going to happen only on Earth? Hell may be trying to trigger it prematurely elsewhere, where it thinks Heaven isn't looking. And there sits the lonely little planet of Mondia, unaware of the tug-of-war it's about to become embroiled in...

[Jason]

Oh, this just reminded me: In Nomine canon (I think the Angelic Player's Guide) briefly mentions that there is an Angel of Mysteries named Raziel (an Ofanite, as the Word encourages humans to keep moving toward discovery). In Hebrew lore, Raziel is traditionally thought to have passed a book of magic on to humanity through Adam and Eve, which later fell into the possession of Enoch and Solomon, making Raziel kind of an angelic Prometheus.

[Shiftkitty]

Dang. I need more money for more books. All I've got is a hard-cover, black 1997 rule book, a book with a bunch of artifacts, etc (can't recall the name), Superiors 1 and some free stuff from e23 (besides the French PDFs).

[Rocket Man]

Originally Posted by Jason

Oh, this just reminded me: In Nomine canon (I think the Angelic Player's Guide) briefly mentions that there is an Angel of Mysteries named Raziel (an Ofanite, as the Word encourages humans to keep moving toward discovery). In Hebrew lore, Raziel is traditionally thought to have passed a book of magic on to humanity through Adam and Eve, which later fell into the possession of Enoch and Solomon, making Raziel kind of an angelic Prometheus.

ISNorden has used an Archangelic version of Raziel in our own campaign (with Sorcery or The Occult being promoted to a Princely Word as well). You might PM her for the details.

[Archangel Beth]

Originally Posted by Shiftkitty

Dang. I need more money for more books.

Save $1 a week, and you can get a new PDF every few months? O:>

(In Anime would be 3 weeks... Eli would be 8 weeks... GURPS IN would be 15 weeks...)

In the case of the APG, you might want to read the errata first -- there's a fair amount of it (the APG was going to press just as I was gathering the reins in my iron fist), and some of it might be informative enough to count as "free stuff!" O:D

http://www.sjgames.com/in-nomine/errata/ to get to the errata pages for everything, and tantalizing tidbits of ...erraTa!

[Shiftkitty]

Thanks! The errata has whetted my apetite for the book, though. Now I just have to figure out how to get 1$ a week. Yeah, my paycheck is gone before I get it. My husband is on disability, but his check arrives after we're already in the hole. We've gotten a few things caught up, though, so I might Merry Christmas myself with a few downloads (assuming some new catastrophe doesn't eat up my Christmas bonus!).

[Archangel Beth]

Having the errata whet your appetite is... a good thing, from my point of view! Annoying that saving up is that hard, though. O:(

At least I remembered all the free samples that my old home page links to? *wry* (Not all the links are to the full article, but a fair number are...)