tenthplague (tenthplague) wrote in in_od, @ 2008-02-21 14:15:00 |
|
|||
Current mood: | excited |
Current music: | Seven Deadly Sins, Flogging Molly |
Convention
[[Okay, first some notes:]]
[[I’m working on a Google Map of In Nomine: Austin, but Google is being really slow (as in, completely stalled) so I’m putting that off for a bit. When it is complete, it will have marked on it all of the locations in IN: Austin that are not present on our own iteration of Earth, but I am not going to bother remarking real places and things. In general, I encourage you to use the Internet to look up anything I mention in which your character might have interest. Much of it is probably real, and I will be glad to see players taking advantage of information gleaned beyond my posts. If I do not contradict it with what I write, it is fair game for you.
[[I also want to make a statement about identifying celestials. The game states that there is no way to do this while a suspected celestial is in a corporeal vessel, without the celestial giving him- or herself away first. I can see some value in that concept, but it threatens to create a lot of frustrating downtime involving celestials passing each other like ships in the night, completely oblivious to one another. In an online game like this one, where progress is going to be slow anyway, I feel like this rule needs to be altered slightly.
[[What I am proposing is that the very presence of a celestial in the corporeal realm disturbs the Symphony, but the disturbance is so slight that it is usually concealed subconsciously by the celestial’s own control over the corporeal realm. How this translates into game terms is that a suspicious Symphony-sensitive individual can make a test against Perception, reduced by his target’s Corporeal Forces, and the result will tell him whether he is conscious of the celestial nature of his target. Please note that this does not tell a suspicious perceiver whether the target celestial is an angel or a demon. That still has to be figured out the slow way.
[[Celestials can also make themselves obvious to a single celestial observing them directly by expending a point of Essence. The effect can last for up to a minute per point of Essence spent, but it is usually executed as an instant flash of revelation. This is a more subtle method than revealing the totality of one’s celestial form in the corporeal realm, but it still gets the point across. Note that this method does reveal one’s faction, whether holy or diabolical, as well as one’s choir or band. Celestials other than the one targeted by this ability still have the usual chance of detecting the expenditure of Essence, but they remain unaware of the faction of the user.
[[The final note that I want to make for now is that everyone should have their own three six-sided dice. I am going to be doing a lot of rolling for your characters behind the scenes, but there will undoubtedly be times when I expect you to make your own rolls, and you should be prepared. Make sure that one of the dice is colored differently, to denote the check digit. I am certain that I do not need to ask you not to cheat when I ask you to roll and report the results.]]
Austin, Texas. Live music capital of the world. The laid-back state capital is an odd staging ground for the latest conflict in the celestial War between Heaven and Hell, but it is where we set our scene, nonetheless.
It’s an unusually balmy evening in February for Austin, when the Stainless Steel tour bus pulls into a municipal parking lot a block down East 7th Street from the Red 7 Night Club, and a pigeon that has been watching the bus since it arrived within the city limits perches on a nearby fence. The band will be performing on the Red 7 Patio as part of the South by Southwest music festival in two weeks’ time – but as usual, thanks to Nick’s driving, they are very, very early.
The band pops into Red 7 anyway, to get their parking validated, and has a brief but pleasant conversation with Alejandro, the event coordinator. After plans for the festival have been discussed and everyone has said their goodbyes, Alejandro offers, “Hey, our kitchen is being renovated, but if you guys are hungry there’s a place down on 6th called the World’s End Tavern that has good beer and does killer nachos.” He looks puzzled for a moment, almost as though he had intended to say something other than what he had said, but then shrugs it off. He smiles, gives a wave, and walks away.
Lilly Baristani, party girl heiress to the Baristani fortune, is in town for the South by Southwest festival in two weeks, much like Stainless Steel, although her reason for being early is demonstrably less fun. In a creative but ill-conceived bid to get her dead father’s company to foot the bill for her trip to Austin for the festival, she expressed an interest in attending an investor’s meeting for Lipogon, a European liposuction technology that Baristani Trading had helped through the FDA approval process. The meeting was so dull as to be almost not worth the free trip, but then, Lilly did make three acquaintances out of the deal.
She met Jonathan Manne, his assistant, Molly Dawson, and Dr. Adrian Connors at the hors d’oeuvres table following the presentation, and over conversation it became obvious that the three of them had certain interests in common that had nothing to do with liposuction. So now the three of them are in Lilly’s limousine, scouting downtown for a place to find a drink, when Molly points out the window at an authentic-looking Scottish pub and says, “What about that one?”
Not far from either Red 7 or the limousine, walking eastward on 6th Street, Nicki Legion is out on the town again for the seventh night in a row, and with a full pool of Essence, to boot. Austin is turning out to be a lot more fun than she expected. So far she’s spent every evening in a new club and has yet to need to pay for a hotel room. She passes a quiet-looking joint called Casino el Camino and comes across a pub that looks like it was transplanted, beam by beam and stone by stone, from the Scottish highlands. The placard creaking in the faint breeze created by the cars on the one-way street reads “The World’s End Tavern,” and it seems to be doing enough business to generate a pleasantly human hum underscoring the distinctive sound of a live Irish folk band.
A few blocks to the east, in the bell tower of a dark, old gothic cathedral that hadn’t been there the month previous (although none of the locals would have been able to tell you that), the Preacher looks out through the leering gargoyles and spiked buttresses and over the park. He is pleased by the sight of the humans worshipping there, enjoying the unseasonably warm weather, but he is troubled by something deeper. He has been experiencing visions, since arriving in Austin. This is not an unusual thing, for him, really, but these visions come without the aid of sacred substance, and they are always of the same thing – an old Scottish tavern called the World’s End. His thoughts bring the image of the place to his mind once again, and he frowns, wondering if God is directing him to find the place, and if it could really be in Austin. It seems unlikely, but then, he is standing in the bell tower of a church that is eight hundred years older than any other building within a thousand miles. Pulling a cell phone from his pocket, he dials information and learns to his surprise that the pub is little more than a few blocks away.
Inside the World's End Tavern, Az sneezes suddenly and loudly, barely managing to cover his mouth in time. A young boy with a tray of dishes scowls up at him. "Ew."
"Sorry, Jack," Az chuckles. "You know how it is."
Jack rolls his eyes. "Gesundheit. I'll fire up the second grill."
"Thanks, Jack. Hey, John!" Az calls out to the bartender. "Looks like we have new patrons on the way. Stay on your toes!"