04 Saturday Feb 2023
Posted in Ethereals
“Russian warship, go fuck yourself”
Zmiinyi Island, which has also been known as Snake Island and White Island slingshot into international prominence as a symbol of Ukranian defiance when the island’s small military garrison refused to surrender to a pair of Russian warships during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Continue reading01 Tuesday Nov 2022
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Within the core In Nomine setting Persephone in chief among the Greek Chthonic gods, having taken over the responsibilities of her husband Hades who was lost during the Purity Crusades. As the de facto leader of a major Ethereal faction, she can be considered a Superior for most purposes.
Persephone is not happy about trading Hades’ to Asmodeus, but the Prince of The Game has, surprisingly, kept his word to the underworld goddess and had not allowed Beleth to force any of the Chthonic gods into her service. That said, many choose such patronage willingly. Hekate and the Furies are well known for working with the Princess of Nightmares, on the other hand Thanatos and Charon generally throw their lot in with the Prince of Death.
Classically Persephone is the goddess of spring and child of the harvest. She is associated with the pomegranate as it is the seeds of that fruit which bound her to spend 4 months of each year in Hades’ domain.
As a goddess of both new growth she is also associated with fertility and rebirth.
Elements
Suggested Attunements
Blood Seed
Persephone will occasionally be convinced to allow one of her servants a seed from the pomegranates of Erebus. Consuming the seed will rob the servant of 1/12th of their life, but shall also grant them the ability to see specters freely (including those using songs, possessing mortals or objects, and those using other supernatural powers).
Cost: 4 CP; Gain Need (Spend 1 hour in Erebus)/2
With GM permission, a PC may negotiate to redistribute when they give their time to Erebus. For example 2.5 days/month or 1 month/year might also be acceptable. However, until the Need is met the PC will gain no essence from the passage of time nor from any rite.
Servants of Persephone often have an especially green thumb. This is one of her oldest and most frequently granted attunements. Those with the Breath of Verdure may cause any plant to sprout or blossom just by breathing upon it. If this is done out of season the plant will return to its normal state after 1 day.
Prerequisite: Servant must never have committed a blood sin (murder or manslaughter)
Cost: 2 CP; foreswear all murder and manslaughter
There is no specific mechanical effect created by the vow to Persephone, but willingly breaking the vow causes a permanent loss of the attunement, and violating it while under a supernatural compulsion still requires an act of atonement before it can be used again (typically some form of mythic feat).
A servant of Persephone may enter the Marches through the mind of a dying human. The servant must themselves be asleep or in a meditative state before succeeding on a Precision roll. The servant must have seen the dying individual in life, but the two may be anywhere in the world. The servant gains a +2 bonus to the TN if they are physically touching the subject. In order to succeed the subject must be unconscious and on their way to either Hades (the gate to Hell) or Erebus. The Check digit indicates the number of minutes the servant may stay in the subject’s dreams (if successful) or how long must be waited before trying again (if not).
Cost: 4 CP; Half the Servant’s Warmth
(Servant must gain either Vulnerable [Cold]/3 or Cold Blooded/2)
Not all servants of Persephone began that way. Those with a Stygian Compact sunder their ties with another Superior in order to gain the ability to perfectly mimic death. Only the Barons of Saminga or the resonance of a Seraph can pierce the disguise.
Cost: Surrender an Attunement from another Superior.
As a Superior, Persephone should probably be well beyond the ability of any PC to defeat in any long term and meaningful way. However, if you want to make a principle goddess capable of being overcome, I would suggest putting her at about 16 Forces.
Also, should she be defeated entirely, some other aspect of her will undergo apotheosis so long as she still has worshipers anywhere in the world.
If your intent is to make her a big bad, you can always treat her like any other Superior and have most of the week-to-week conflicts involve one of her subordinates (such as Moros the God of Doom or Hekate Goddess of Witchcraft and Poison).
29 Saturday Oct 2022
Much like the Olympians, the Greek Chthonic gods were hurting a quarter century ago. The Gods were effectively dead, and Persephone had to rely upon modern goddess worship to garner any essence at all, and Hecate (who was the real breadwinner of Erebus) had reached an agreement with both Beleth and Kronos to spread nightmares and teach magic (respectively).
This has, of course, changed with both the increasing acceptance (and disregard) of wicca and the the emergence of modern Helenism.
Continue reading22 Saturday Oct 2022
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One of the first Wordbound that In Nomine ever introduced was Lynoure, the Demoness of Shadow Shapes. Nap Retep is one of those shadow shapes, and he isn’t just any shadow shape either, he’s from the tribe of Pan.
Many of the shadows of Peter Pan are headstrong pranksters, but Tep is an outright predator. He hunts by attaching himself (quite literally) to humans who are themselves predators, observes their actions and their darkest fantasies, and then targeting children with those same actions in the dead of night: stealing their childhoods before a Pan can abscond with them.
Monstrous as he is, Napre believes he is helping children by teaching them the horrors of he world (though he also takes great joy in being the one to teach them).
Continue reading11 Tuesday Oct 2022
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Killer tomatoes were always more camp than horror, but much of the power they had amassed has dissipated since the end of the 90s, when the last Killer Tomato film was made.
Continue reading24 Saturday Sep 2022
This has been one of the quarter-century updates I have been least eager to write. Partially because my interested in the Egyptian gods hit its zenith some time in Elementary school, and partly because even now most of the information I can find on the worship of the Pesedjet (Ennead) and other Egyptian gods comes through a British colonialist lens.
The formal ancient worship of Heliopians ended in the 14th century BC when Akhenaten (Amenhotep IV) officially replaced the pantheon with the monotheistic worship of the sun god Aten.
Continue reading30 Tuesday Aug 2022
Netflix recently released the first season of its screen adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series.
This story has been one of my comic recommendations for In Nomine players for a very long time, and the Netflix release has been quite faithful. In fact, removing the infernal politics that DC had created for its various storylines in the late 1980s might actually make the story even more applicable to the game.
Continue reading27 Saturday Aug 2022
Within the world of In Nomine the August Prosperity Collective is an alliance of Shinto, Ainu, and Japanese Buddhist gods, along with a wide array of ghosts, spirits, and monsters that have chosen to work together with Nybbas to keep their legends alive.
The strategy has proven exceptionally effective, but it has allowed Nybbas to play favorites.
Continue reading05 Tuesday Jul 2022
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As any self-identified queer with a sense of history knows, cultural identity can be forged and maintained by embracing an epithet originally intended shame, denigrate, or mock.
In the case of The Deplorable, they are the living archetype of an identity forged racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobes deciding that they would embrace and take pride in these qualities rather than question why they followed a lying narcisistic grifter and womanizer as the champion of their faith. As a cultural icon, they are a synthesis of aspirations of the described population and the contempt of their political opponents.
Continue reading02 Saturday Jul 2022
When I first drafted this post I started with a brief overview of the past 25 years of American history, but holy pizzicado is that a depressing exercise. And in retrospect, it’s completely irrelevant.
American Exceptionalism was already a myth based in denial when In Nomine launched in 1997, and that has not changed. If anything, the spirit has only gotten stronger as ever greater degrees of faith are necessary to sustain the belief.
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Book of the Neglected 