In Nomine Revisited: The Game: Vice Division.

The Game_ Vice Division – Google Docs

The Game: Vice Division

The official name is actually the Unnatural Vice Division, which sounds surreal until you understand what the Game means by it. Basically, both angels and demons can suffer from two different kinds of dissonance. There’s Word dissonance, which comes from a betrayal of the celestial’s Superior’s overall vision; and there Band dissonance, which comes from a betrayal of the celestial’s own inherent nature. The Game’s theoretical purpose is to stamp out examples of either as being a hindrance to the War. A dissonant demon is one step away from being a Discordant demon, which is one step away from being a Renegade demon, and so forth, so the Game acts proactively.

This is all very straightforward, except that certain Princes provide Band attunements that will mitigate or eliminate a demon’s Band-dissonance restrictions. This is their privilege, of course. The entire point of being a Demon Prince is to enjoy the right of imposing one’s Will upon lesser beings, which emphatically includes one’s Servitors. The organization of the Game is neither able nor willing to contest this.

However, the demons that have been so favored by their Princes are potential, unique risks. They can quite easily set a bad example for Band-mates of other Words. For example: an inexperienced Impudite of Gluttony working with an Impudite of Dark Humor might learn dangerous and even treasonous habits — particularly if the latter thought that the former doing so would be funny! This leads to problems for the Game down the line: problems, headaches, complications and not-fun paperwork.

The Game therefore makes it a point to check on certain types of Servitors to make sure that they are not — inadvertently, to be sure! — degrading the performance of other types of Servitors. Nothing especially onerous, of course. Merely an examination of the relationships that the demon in question has with its Band-mates, cross-checked with recent contact reports in order to determine whether it has an unusually high percentage of troublemakers for friends. If not, then there is no problem at all.

But if there is: well, clearly the Game will need to investigate further. As this is an admittedly subjective sort of situation, it’s fairly easy for a sufficiently accommodating demon to make it clear that it is a victim of an unfortunate statistical glitch, nothing more. Said accommodation generally takes the form of a minor service for the Game; many demons will even volunteer at the first hint, which of course goes a long way to assuage the worries of the hardworking agents of Prince Asmodeus.

This is extortion, of course. But Demon Princes tolerate this particular form of extortion mostly because the Game doesn’t overuse it, and it often just involves the killing of an inconvenient human. For that matter, Demon Princes are not predisposed towards trusting inter-Word relationships among their Servitors anyway.

All of this affects the following, in varying degrees of intensity: Habbalah of Lust, Impudites of the War, Shedim of Infernal Fire, Impudites of Dark Humor, Balseraphs of Fate, Calabim of Fate (the first because of the bad angelic example they set, the second because — well, it’s as good an excuse as any), Shedim of Factions, Shedim of the Media, Djinn of Death, Shedim of Death, Impudites of Death, Shedim of Theft, Shedim of Technology, Habbalah of Secrets, Habbalah of Drugs, Lilim of Greed, Shedim of Greed — and both Shedim of the Game, and demons with Asmodeus’s Humanity attunement. The last two groups are, if anything, watched more closely than any other. They are, after all, the only ones with any sort of pretense to knowing what they’re doing when it comes to covering their tracks.

The material presented here is my original creation, intended for use with the In Nomine and GURPS systems from Steve Jackson Games. This material is not official and is not endorsed by Steve Jackson Games.
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