In Nomine Game Tales

The PCs in my game are all angels. It's definitely a bright, high-contrast game, and not taken too seriously. I don't define the demons much, and fudge their abilities. Most are just 'demons', aka hellfodder, led by one or two that actually have a Band. The campaign is set in the United States. As the GM and players all live in Australia, we tend to play fast and loose with both the geography and the laws and culture - "All I needed to know about America I learnt from the movies and the television, and it wasn't the Discovery channel."

Other notables include Sariel, a Seraph of Judgement and the party's contact in a group the PCs have dubbed 'The Cleanup Crew'. This group is a MiB-like squad of angels responsible for cleaning up the aftermath of celestial conflicts before they can end up on the front page of respectable national newspapers.

The PCs have Sariel's phone number on speed dial.

The Party:

• Johannes -- a Malakite of Judgement. AKA "John Smith, Federal Agent, Department of Justice". He actually remembers to use his Resonance occasionally, and is perhaps the most level-headed of the PCs.

• Sajax -- an Ofanite of Fire. AKA "Jax, Bounty Hunter". Smite is his favorite attunement. Explosions are his trademark. This angel singlehandedly causes more Disturbance than the rest of the party and all the other angels and demons they meet in the game.

• Spiritus -- a Cherub of Lightning. AKA "Ty Benson, Electrician." Demons sometimes inexplicably mistake him for Johannes, which causes him no end of trouble, and he is attuned to Sajax, which also causes him no end of trouble.

• Saxum -- a Kyriotate of Stone. AKA "Jason Stone, Backpacker." So far his resonance has been less than successful. The brick of the party (literally), his usual tactic is to make himself a target, in his rather lifelike stone vessel, and then lay the smack down on the offenders.

• Occasionally Mike and Nicholas, Ofanim of the War and Sword respectively, show up to lend a hand.

Adventures So Far:

• "Get the large box that you don't know is the Ark of the Covenant across the United States using a Cannonball Run car race as cover (and you even more don't know that it's a fake and you're the diversion)." Many cars were wrecked during this episode.

• "Chase the renegade with the tabby cat vessel all over the city using a needle relic attuned him whilst dodging/fighting the demons who are also chasing it." The party discovered a restaurant run by a Balseraph, and both the demon and Johannes and a large portion of the restaurant got incinerated when Sajax indirectly blew up the building (it involved Smite, a burning Balseraph, and a pile of gas cylinders). They never did catch the tabby.

• "Investigate the spooky old hotel in the middle of nowhere." The kyriotate discovers that animals ignore his resonance with ease, and hopes he gets some more Will soon. It might have something to do with the Cat Lord staying at the hotel, or it could just be sucky dice. Meanwhile, the angels try to figure out the secret of the third floor, whilst keeping Sajax from burning the place down.

• "A simple little reconaissance duty at the docks." Oh boy, Saxum blew his stealth roll. Oh look, they're smuggling drugs and guns via submarine. Watch the demons try to escape in the submarine while the angels try to stop them. Listen to all the disturbance as the submarine misses the underwater tunnel exit and rams the wall, and the warehouse built above the hidden sub pen collapses as the whole structure gives up the ghost amidst fire and destruction.

• "Interlude: the Ofanite of Fire saves the crew of a runaway gas tanker." Just in time to be at ground zero when it hits a pole and goes KABOOM. The tanker is vapor, but Gabriel manifests within the fireball and gives Sajax his tenth Force.

• "Visit the nice Soldiers of God in a small town, then meet the not so nice Ethereal Nightmare in the sewers below". All praise Cthuhlu. Watch the angels quote Rutger Hauer: "We need BIGGER GUNS!" Saxum's stone vessel falls down a bottomless pit. Oops. Fortunately he has the Song of Corporeal Motion, and flies back up.

• "Keeping up one's Role: Meeting the Mob." Johannes goes to do Federal Agent stuff in a small west coast city. The other angels tag along, and some hitmen mistake the Cherub for the Fed they were ordered to take out. Saxum does a Superman impression, complete with flying through a sixth-story apartment window and having bullets bounce off his chest. Fortunately it is night-time, so the only people to see him are the mobsters and the cops don't believe their story ("yeah, sure buddy, tell it to the judge").

• "Pizza with Habbalah, Calabim with Motorbikes." {to be updated; see Tale #1 below for a highlight}

• "Mysterious Voices and World War Three." {to be updated}

There'd been a meeting of the angels. After it was over, the party's Cherub, Spiritus, ascended to Heaven to get a Kyrio of Lightning to help tap a phone switchboard, while the rest of the PCs went elsewhere in the city. A demon lurking nearby rolls an Infernal Intervention, totally noticing the Cherub descending with Kyrio in two back to the Earthly alleyway next to where the meeting had taken place, and suddenly feels very buffed up. Spiritus and the Kyrio (Rosaek of Lightning) are just about to leave the alley - Rosaek having collected a convenient pigeon - when the demon blocks their path. Uh oh.

Sajax finally arrives for the meeting, having been Elsewhere. Spots a guy (the demon) walking out of the alley, smirking. His fleeing-justice-sense tingles. On a hunch he checks out the alley. Finds bloodstains, some pigeon feathers, and the Cherub's ruined vessel stuffed in a dumpster. Sajax runs out of the alley and chases after the demon; a motorcycle pursuit ensues. A few minutes the angel loses sight of his target as the demon pulls ahead, disappearing around a corner. So as Sajax zooms around the corner too, the now stationary demon - a calabite - smirks and blows the front wheel off the angel's motorbike.

The ofanite performs an absolutely amazing agility roll without even resonating, and flips and rolls to a standing pose even as his bike flips and crashes to a noisy demise. Smiles at the awestruck demon, before hitting it with a Smite backed with all ten of his essence. After the flames clear, the only remains are the calabite's smoking boots, and Sajax gets the rush of three new points of Essence from his Rite. Sajax decides to take the demon's bike, which had been left running and turns out to be a Driving talisman.

Johannes meanwhile gets in a scuffle with a biker demon. Too many mortals are around for a proper demon-whacking and the malakite is not faring well against the demon in hand to hand after the demon Celestial Motion's his handgun away. Johannes glances around for a means of escaping from all the onlookers so he can cut loose with some Songs. Divine Intervention. Well, there doesn't look like any easy way out, but two cops choose this moment to run up and rugby tackle the demon.

However the demon, a djinn, had managed to attune to Johannes during the scuffle... now after Johannes meets up with Sajax late in the evening, they find a motel to stay at ("we don't need to sleep, but our role does"). At 5am the malakite goes down to the underground car park so he can drive across town to spy on a conference (plot element). Guess who's waiting for him...

The djinn, who I'd described as a reedy little guy in biker leathers, this time has brought a big beefy friend along. Johannes gets lucky, and spots the reedy guy (but not the bruiser, amazingly enough) before they spot him. Hides behind a car. Uses cellphone to ring Sajax, who is still inside the motel. Sajax says sure, he'll be right down. Djinn at this point realises that hey, his attuned seems to be -in- the car park, and starts looking around. Johannes decides to wait for his backup, and also move to a better hiding spot. Stealth roll. Infernal Intervention.

(paraphrased) "You duck across to crouch behind a rather nice Mercedes Benz. The first thing you notice, as you glance around, are these big shoes. With big feet in them. Attached to big shins. You look up... and up... at this huge 6'6" guy, half as wide, who looks like he's just stepped out of a roaring twenties mobster movie. With his friend, Mr Machine Gun." The expression on the player's face was priceless.

Johannes immediately resonates the bruiser. (dice clatter). "His most noble act in the past week was to... beat the snot out of an angel for his friend the djinn." Johannes makes an extremely good 'roll under the Mercedes to get away' roll, and only gets a few bullets in the side as he does so. Whereupon he immediately sings Ethereal Form and keeps rolling under and out the other side. Where the reedy guy (djinn) in leathers spots him with an amazing Perception roll...

Djinn: (pointing) "There he is! Get him!" Sajax: (arriving up just in time to see this) *SMITE* (blast of fire with six essence behind it blows a nice charred hole through the djinn from behind). "Got you!" cackles Sajax.

The djinn crumples to the pavement (dead as a doornail, having failed his Dodge roll abysmally). The bruiser still fails to spot Johannes, but does see Sajax smite his djinn buddy, so he immediately hunkers down behind the nice Mercedes and tries to shoot the ofanite through the gap underneath. Sajax takes a graze to the shin and an unlucky hit in the side - the same place where he, yesterday, got ruptured when a Calabite he was pursuing resonated him. (a little bit of adding insult to injury on the GM's behalf). Sajax is is all out of essence, having blown it all (literally) on the djinn, so dives for cover. Then he gets the essence rush from his Rite (slay demon for 3 essence, as the player reminds the GM).

Johannes, feeling much more confident now that he is invisible, goes to shoot the bruiser as the latter dives over another car for cover, and another Infernal Intervention is rolled. His gun exploded in his hand, and the Ethereal Form song he had running disappeared too. The big bruiser is about to take advantage of this when the Ofanite uses up the three essence he got back from slaying the other demon to try to smite this one. Bruiser tries to dodge, and rolls a Divine Intervention. Unfortunately for the Hellfodder, he's on the wrong side, and is vaporised in a blast of holy fire.

Postscript: Sajax discovers why the calabite's bike was left running - it was stolen from an angel, and had the 'requires brief silent invocation to start'. Of course, he discovers this only when he goes to leave the underground car park on the (no longer running) bike...

The material presented here is my creation, intended for use with the In Nomine system from and owned by Steve Jackson Games, by whom it is neither official nor endorsed.