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Wednesday: [w] We locked Wednesday up with the In Nomine Infernal Player's Guide, and this is what happened.

Here are things. Since every demon is a beautiful and unique snowflake, these things apply in all sorts of different and interesting ways which are up to you to interpret. (In case of this particular thing, there will be an exclamation point!) However, these things will, to some extent or another, apply to every demon in some way. Except for Lilim! They're cute, so instead, they get to do something else.

They're also pouty. (Look. Breasts!)

Here are some more things. They do not apply to Lilim, because the Lilim are off doing something else. Did we mention that the Lilim are a really special case? GEASES. And nipples. And pouty!

Also, Andre will have sex with Lilim. He likes Lilim. He is vaguely naughty and not at all inclined to have sex with the chair, or the cat, or the dog, but he will probably have sex with the Lilim. Not you. Just the Lilim. Using the fuzzy handcuffs and the novelty prophylactics he picked up at the Spenser's Gifts, he will have sex with the Lilim. Who are, you realize, an exception. We will talk more, later, about the naughty prophylactics of Andre, Demon Prince of Really Boring Sexxor.

But, first? Lilim.

The Lilim are the last of their kind, and have cat ears, and geases, and do everything adorably in a sexy sort of way that involves the use of their phenomenally violet-eyed nipples pouts and their amazing business sense. Did we mention that, basically, they are an exception to everything? No, really. We went through every single paragraph and added: Except Lilim. (See p.146, "Lilim are Cooler than You;" p.172, "You Totally Need to Bone a Lilim," p.244, "Did We Mention the Geas?") In fact, we actually considered rewriting the Shedim section to be all about the Shadayim. Even Bright Lilim are special because -- get this -- they still get to be Lilim! They're just Lilim who fight for the side of the angels with their clarified breasts and their otherwise unchanged personalities.

(In passing, Djinn are really creepy, but strangely compelling. Also, Habbalah make some perverse amount of sense, and -- oh, did you want to know more about Impudites? I'm sorry, I think you meant Lilim! They're hot.)

Oh, also, Lucifer does some stuff sometimes, and oh my god, you so do not want to cross Asmodeus because he's a total asshole. Except...

Yeah. GEASES! GEASES! GEASES! geases. Jesus...

[EDIT from an hour later: I went back to reading about Redemption and what was the first thing I saw? "When a demon is redeemed, he becomes the divine analog of his former Band (except Lilim)" Emphasis mine. AUGH.]

[EDIT from even later still: And then I got to the part where it was all, "Bright Lilim are the most specialest choir ever because there's, like, only twelve of them, and they're so pretty and their wings are the best wings in the history of wings and they follow Laurence around and swoon and it's so cute! They're the best! Ever!" and... dude. If there's only twelve of them, who cares?]

[EDIT the next morning: Crap. How'd I forget to reference the cat ear thing?]

Posted by Wednesday White at May 15, 2005 8:29 PM

Comments

Comment from: AndrewWade posted at May 15, 2005 9:40 PM

Anyone else feel like they just had their heads thrown infront of the engine to a jet? That kind of a current could tear a man's flesh right off his bones.

But I like it.

Comment from: Dave Van Domelen posted at May 15, 2005 10:32 PM

The squeaky wheel gets the Geas? Except for Lilim wheels.

Comment from: gwalla posted at May 15, 2005 10:50 PM

So, in the Infernal Players' Guide (which is what game again? I lost track), Lilim are basically anime catgirls?

Comment from: Moe Lane posted at May 15, 2005 10:52 PM

Damn, woman, it took some IN Listies years to get to that point of anti-Lilimism. Eric, be proud of your 133t 1n N0min3 radiat0n ski11z... ;)

Comment from: Wednesday posted at May 15, 2005 11:00 PM

gwalla: In Nomine. Title clarified.

They're not really catgirls. Except for that they should be just that special; I'm thinking of that one Harry Potter Sueverse comic with Sparklypoo House in it.

Comment from: Christopher B. Wright posted at May 15, 2005 11:13 PM

So then is In Nomine a next-generation World of Darkness product? It sounds like it's trying to tap into the same vein of annoying...

Comment from: Eric Burns posted at May 16, 2005 2:45 AM

Christopher -- In Nomine's a fantastic game. I'm the one who's been forcing it into Wednesday's brain introducing Wednesday to it.

There's just... well, a few elements that leap out at new readers, sometimes....

Comment from: Eric Burns posted at May 16, 2005 2:48 AM

It's also worth noting that while I'm not anti-Lilim, per se... I'm very pro-Impudite, and all too often Lilim get used where Impudites should be.

(Which isn't the IPG's fault, mind, but still...)

Comment from: KenM posted at May 16, 2005 5:01 AM

I've never played this game (or any other tabletop game, though my roommates next year my have something to say about that) but good pun.

Comment from: Christopher B. Wright posted at May 16, 2005 9:13 AM

Well, once upon a time Vampire was a fantastic game... unique and groundbreaking, even. Then all the developers woke up one day and said "hey, we didn't realize how interesting this game was when we first made it. Now that we're aware of it, let's see how thoroughly we can screw it up!"

... but don't get me started.

Comment from: Wednesday posted at May 16, 2005 9:27 AM

[Eric: dude, you might wanna clarify the markup which failed in your first comment there.]

I woke up this morning and discovered that "except Lilim" also applies to the breakfast and stuff.

I'm going to go take my sinus crap and phone up the optician. Except Lilim. o_O

Comment from: Jon Lennox posted at May 16, 2005 11:01 AM

The thing that annoys me about "Lilim" is that they're using the Hebrew masculine plural to refer to feminine beings in the singular. It's almost as if, say, their sole encounter with the word was when Neil Gaiman used it in Sandman.

Comment from: Chris Anthony posted at May 16, 2005 12:22 PM

For the record, Wednesday and Christopher and Jon, you aren't alone in being bothered by some of this stuff. In Nomine is actually an adaptation of a French RPG; the English version was pretty much written by one guy, Derek Pearcy; and Derek vanished from the game line years ago, leaving the rest of us to pick up after him.

Believe me, in the eight years since In Nomine was released, we've been over the "Lilim are Mary Sues"/"Lilim have a weird name"/ at least once, on the mailing list, the Pyramid newsgroup, the SJ Games forum, or in private discussions. And some of us are desperately waiting for a second edition to be green-lit, so that we can fix the problems we see.

Comment from: siwangmu posted at May 16, 2005 12:42 PM

Um, what's geases? Breasts? Am I the only one who's never heard the word?

Comment from: jpcardier posted at May 16, 2005 2:54 PM

Meh. (physical shrug). Lilim are the usual "sexy girl" suspects, because, really where would the demons be without sex? "We're the bad guys, and we love kink!" gets a lot more folks interested than "We're the bad guys, and we'll rip out your spleen!" Not that there's anything WRONG with spleen ripping.....


Really, as anyone who plays RPG's for more than a moment knows, nothing is as cool as a crossbreed. I don't know what it is, but a vampire isn't as cool as a vampire/werewolf. Which isn't as cool as a vampire/werewolf/mage. Which isn't as cool as vampire/werewolf/mage/doorknob/fairy/black ops/negaverse/hellspawned/trollop. With breasts larger than your head.


Lilim are crossbreed fanservice with fanservice sex appeal thrown in. And sex appeal is part of most RPG's. Along with most comics. And most television shows. And almost all beer commercials. Really, breasts make the world go round. ;)


Segue: Really, Andre is rather "nudge, nudge, wink, wink" in Infernal Players guide. I really got the "No he's bad! bad!" vibe out of how he treated the Demon of Strippers in the Los Angeles guidebook. Which was how an abusive pimp treats his stable. It made me uncomfortable, but brought across the Demon Prince vibe. Mind you, the most uncomfortable I have ever been in a In Nomine game dealt with a Shedim pledged to Andre. Shedim are vile.

Comment from: quiller posted at May 16, 2005 4:26 PM

A geas is a magic curse that compels the recipient to accomplish something in order to be rid of the curse. Failing to do so generally makes the recipient die slowly. I'm not sure if this is the exact meaning being used in IN, however.

Breast singular refers to the front chest region of a person or creature. When used in the plural however, it generally refers to the mammaries of a female human or humanoid being, unless you are in a chicken place, where it refers to plural helpings of cooked chicken chest.

Comment from: Wednesday posted at May 16, 2005 4:31 PM

The breast is also a good place from which to launch your giant robot's attacks. For example, breast missile, breast fire, breast burn, breast hurricane...

Comment from: Trevor Barrie posted at May 16, 2005 5:47 PM

The only In Nomine book I have is the core rulebook, and I notice it says that while most Lilim are female, male Lilim aren't rare. Would I be correct in assuming that the line so far hasn't really followed through with the notion of male Lilim being reasonably common?

Comment from: Jacopo Belpo posted at May 16, 2005 5:55 PM

The origin of the word Geas is from ancient Irish legend, where it referred to a taboo that a King or hero could not break without dire consquence.

I think that Geas as an active compulsion rather than a passive prohibition started with Dungeons and Dragons, but I could be wrong. It's a compulsion in In Nomine.

Comment from: Doug posted at May 17, 2005 8:59 AM

"I think that Geas as an active compulsion rather than a passive prohibition..."

So are breasts. Well, for most folks that play RPGs or the like. I suppose that if the secular version of In Nomine or some other D & D analog would use them as a powerful talisman. "The power of the breasts compels you!" would likely be a quite popular warding ritual, though I doubt it would be much of a repelling one. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Comment from: Steve Jackson posted at May 17, 2005 8:19 PM

Wow. I really enjoyed Wednesday's snark, and recommended it to others, and from the reactions, I fear read it all wrong.

I took it as a highly caffeine-fueled rant about how much fun it looked like it would be to play/write about Lilim and go Totally Over The Top (tm).

Not so? Awww.

Comments on comments:

Yes, Impudites and Habbalah get neglected sometimes in favor of the Lilim, when really, the Imp/Hab tools are better for a given dramatic job.

I know that some people see the Lilim as pure fanservice. Well, whatever. You get out of a story what you put into it. Maybe it's the green. Do people get mesmerized by the greenness of it all? This background wasn't really created with the service-needing fans in mind, if you get my drift.

I will take the blame / claim the credit for the Brights. I do hear the "What's the point of including a Choir that has only a dozen members?" question occasionally. Well, yeah, there must be hundreds of Bright Lilim characters out there in various campaigns and stories. So what? I sure don't expect every GM to care what all the other GMs are doing. No GM should say "You can't be a Bright. They're all taken." There are some neat possibilities in being a member of a statistically-nonexistent 'race' - one that everyone has heard about and most have never seen. Can be played as anything from Sparklypoo to Maximum Angst. A good storyteller could do both at once. Or at least in close succession.

Derek's alleged errors in ancient Hebrew grammar as applied to genderless spiritual beings, yeah, right, that's a big issue with this background which must be addressed before any self-respecting person can play.

Those enthralled by the evil green breastness of it all MUST visit Mia Sherman's www.chibihell.com. Do it now. Aren't they kyoot?

Comment from: Copperbird posted at May 18, 2005 1:04 AM

I never found it helped that the line editor was so obviously in lurve with lilim, and used to write semi porn fanfic about how her favourite lilim characters got it on with the various superiors and other malakim with bondage fetishes.

Just saying. I love the game. Lilim don't warrent the amount of focus they get. Other demons really are more interesting.

Comment from: Elizabeth McCoy posted at May 18, 2005 2:51 PM

The Line Editor would like to respectively state that while she has written semi-porn fanfic, and while she has written favorite Lilim characters, and while she has written Malakim with bondage fetishes, she has not written her favorite Lilim characters into semi-porn fanfic with either Superiors or Malakim with bondage fetishes, off the top of her head.

(Most of my Lilimsmut tends to wind up with the Game involved somehow, actually.)

Comment from: siwangmu posted at May 19, 2005 3:22 PM

Probably no one will see this now, but thanks to those who helped me out! I actually did think geases was some sort of slang for breasts or something (read the snark that way--is hilarious!). Also, since, as I said before, this probably won't be seen, I feel free to have a fangirl moment. OH MY GOD IT'S STEVE JACKSON, HE'S REAL. OH MY GOD!

Comment from: KenM posted at May 20, 2005 8:18 AM

Again, I don't know from role-playing, but, Jon, -im isn't always masculine in Hebrew. Just normally. I mean, since we're talking about (apparently powerful) demons, it could even be the plural of magnatude. Elokim meaning one god, Behemoth meaning one great beast (even though it means beasts). Also, when everything has gender, sometimes individual words' genders don't makes that much sense. Like how all paired body parts are feminine in hebrew (eyes, ears, hands, feet) except for, um . . ., breasts. So, no worries.

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