your personal Canon

[Orlin]

I think one of the biggest issues I've had with In Nomine is the way that the Superiors are written up. I just don't like most of them; their names, their words, and in many cases their personalities just make me sort of frown and think "How could I make it closer to what I want?"

I also want to take the mood and make it darker. I'm not a particular fan of the lighthearted humor, but there are some things that I particularly enjoy. One of them is Nicole and her fetish for white, the whole "Demons love lasagna" idea is also pretty brilliant. Little things like that make the game comical without going overboard.

I'm really uncomfortable with the French names. It seems to me that there just isn't enough Hebrew to go around. I was looking at some of the suggestions that were offered, based on the way that other people had re-written the cannon to suit their needs, and I really liked a lot of what I saw.

So I got to thinking, and I decided that I would start by re-structuring the top and going down from there. Instead of the "Seraphim Council," I decided that "The Council of the Sephiroth" might be more interesting. While the Seraphim are still considered to be one of the greatest choirs, the Council of the Sephiroth is considered to be the highest form of angelic government. I modeled the Archangels after the 10 Sephirah (leaving out Da'at and placing Metatron at the top). After the war began, Metatron basically went into silent contemplation. She sings the Trisagion whenever the council convenes, but she doesn't place votes -- thus leaving nine angels who can vote on any form of legislation. In most cases, majority rules; in other cases, the consensus must be unanimous.

In most cases, Gabriel and Sandalphon do not attend the meetings held by the council. Once in a great while, if something is particularly important to Khamael, Gabriel will show up just to vote against him.

For the most part, I've decided to use the Sephirah as seats of power. The angels are not precisely word-bound to their respective Sephirah (although I did give it some thought, because of the abstractness and vague, broadness of them) but instead, the Sephirah are sort of like amplifiers. The Words of the angels that sit on the council seat are attuned to the Word of the Sephirah, but they aren't defined by them. The sources that I've discovered had some discrepancies regarding which Archangel ruled which seat, but in the end I basically picked what I wanted and swapped out two of them.

This is what I have so far:

01. Keter | The Crown | Archangel: Metatron | Word: Eternity
02. Chokmah | Wisdom | Archangel: Raziel | Word: The Book
03. Binah | Understanding | Archangel: Tzaphquiel | Word: The Garden
04. Chesed | Lovingkindness | Archangel: Zadkiel | Word: The Aegis
05. Gevurah | Judgment | Archangel: Khamael | Word: Karma
06. Tiphereth | Harmony | Archangel: Uriel | Word: Purity
07. Netzach | Victory | Archangel: Michael | Word: The Sword
08. Hod | Submission | Archangel: Raphael | Word: Redemption(?)
09. Yesod | The Foundation | Archangel: Gabriel | Word: Zeal
10. Malkuth | The Kingdom | Archangel: Sandalphon* | Word: Creation

I've toyed with the idea of making Eli the Biblical equivalent of Elijah, who was said to be swept up into the heavens by a whirlwind. From what I've gathered, scholars argue over whether or not Sandalphon (His name means "He who wears sandals") is said to be Elijah, who was rewarded by being transformed into an angel. The more I think about it, the more and more I enjoy the idea of elevating Elijah into the choir of Mercurians and making him into the "Eli" of In Nomine. The only trouble is that comparing the Biblical Elijah to the Eli of IN is sort of like comparing Samuel L. Jackson to a more cunningly intelligent version of Tommy Chong.

Another problem that this poses, for me at least, is that it feels like I'm severely limiting the amount of Words I'm willing to use for Superiors. In many cases, I feel that I'd only be changing the character's names (Novalis would make a great Tzaphquiel, Gabriel is the same character, and I <3 Dominic too much to throw his personality away -- but attuning him to Judgment as well as Karma might make for some interesting personality quirks.) The only way that I could consider changing it would be to expand the amount of archangels by setting some of the Words presented in the IN core to be just below those of the 10 Archangels of the Sephiroth -- more likely than not, that's what I'll do.

Then the problem becomes this: if someone is serving an Archangel of Lightning, but ultimately falls under Sandalphon (or some other ranking archangel) how do I do his attunements, resonances and distinctions? The best solution that comes to mind is to force players to pick ONE angelic Superior, and that's who s/he'll ultimately serve.

I like the idea of a servitor being unlikely to see his Superior. I REALLy like the idea that most servitors don't see any angel more than two ranks above them. I've even begun to devise a ranking system.

I think my problem is that I don't know where to STOP. The old saying "If it ain't broke, don't fix it," begins to come to mind. I've already gotten to the point where I want to start changing the names of choirs, but there is a part of me that feels like that would really be a pointless gesture. I don't know much about Greek or Hebrew, but I've learned a great deal after doing some serious digging (not enough to accurately transliterate Hebrew text, as you can see above, but enough to know that some choirs could be tinkered with.)

I've thought about renaming the Lilim to the Gamaliel and the Shedites to the Chaigedelim, but ultimately it all comes down to semantics. "Lilim" pretty clearly implies that the cast is "all female." If I wanted to rename them anything, "Succubi" would probably be the best route.

I guess I just wanted to see what other people have done with the cannon, and what ideas I might be able to bounce back and forth with other, more experienced, IN players?