In Nomine Revisited: Clarice, Lilim Princess of Ambition.

I had to go looking for this one.

Clarice, Lilim Princess of Ambition – Google Docs

Clarice
Lilim Princess of Ambition

The world is there for the taking.

Such a tragedy, the death of Mammon — he was truly an inspiration to Hell. He showed such drive, such energy, such focus on promoting both his Word, and the War. It was tragic how Mammon lapsed first to despair, and then suicide. Tragic, and criminal: those that hounded him so should have contemplated how so many vital operations of Hell were jeopardized by their petty little internal quarrel with the Generous Prince. As it is, Mammon’s loss can never be made good.

Still, one must move with the times.

Dissonance

At least once per day, demons serving Ambition must encourage another person to do something to achieve her desires. Note that it is not dissonant for good desires to be encouraged, which is a fact that Asmodeus has duly noted. If the subject ever comes up as part of an investigation; while Clarice would accept the “enlightened self-interest” and “long-range strategy” defenses from her most useful demons, as a practical matter rank-and-file Servitors would be thrown to the Game. And a Servitor won’t know whether she’s rank-and-file until she’s put to this particular test.

Organization

Clarice currently relies on a relatively small (but growing) group of demons who have worked out that they are most likely to survive and thrive by increasing Ambition’s overall power, which should keep them loyal for the foreseeable future. A Servitor of Ambition can revel in whatever titles that she desires — provided that she can handle the responsibilities, which will be determined by the Princess. How she goes about handling her responsibilities, and who she uses for it, is likewise up to the demon, with a small set of restrictions from her Princess and a rather larger set from the Game. Servitors of Ambition are, in other words, still setting up their organization — or, put still another way, they are still trying to amalgamate a large number of pocket empires into one, smoothly-running, group. Servitors of Ambition are less likely than Servitors of Greed to engage in internal struggles with each other, but they are still more likely to do so than the rest of Hell.

The Princess of Ambition also has full control over Mammon’s old organization. She is currently “processing” those demons; it is clear to everyone involved that she is deliberately taking her time about it. While not being formally admitted to, it is generally accepted that Clarice wishes to have a minimum of old grudges and conflicts brought over from Greed to Ambition, and is thus giving Servitors from the former group the opportunity to resolve matters. It is argued that this strategy is also yet another way for Ambition to demonstrate its willingness to accommodate the Game and its long collective memory, but that is firmly speculative.

It is also rumored that the long-term plan is for Mammon’s financial institutions to be spun off eventually to a new Demon of Greed (not a Demon Prince), but that is even more speculative.

Band Attunements

Clarice “privately” considers almost all of Mammon’s Band attunements to be useful enough, in their historical context, but nonetheless overly specialized. Wealth is a tool for her, not the prize, so while she will offer Greed’s old Attunements as a prize for good service the Princess of Ambition much prefers that her Servitors use her own.

Balseraph
A Balseraph of Ambition may use her resonance to ensure a favorable reaction roll. The CD is the higher of the Balseraph’s Celestial Forces, or the CD of the successful resonance roll. Supernatural entities get to make a Will roll to recognize that they are being affected, but neither successful resistance nor contradictory activities done by the demon will cause her dissonance when using this ability.

Djinn (Restricted)
Clarice would actually prefer not to have Djinn — they are notoriously difficult to rouse to Ambition — but they are too useful. She gives them the ability to break their resonance without risk of dissonance, should a “better” version of their attuned become available. Clarice uses Status as the rule of thumb for determining better/worse versions of human beings.

Calabite (restricted)
Calabim of Ambition get one extra note of Essence from any of Clarice’s Rites, provided that they somehow manage to incorporate a successful use of their resonance as a legitimate part of their fulfillment of the Rite.

Habbalite
Those Punishers serving Ambition can block physical feelings of discomfort and pain in anyone that they touch. The effects last for one day. This will not, of course, prevent the target from hurting himself; merely keep him from noticing for a while…

Lilim (restricted)
Clarice does not make Lilim. Clarice does not know how to make Lilim. This has been made very clear to everyone. She does, however, allow them the ability to raise by one level (maximum still 6) any Geas gathered in exchange for a favor that will fulfill the target’s ambitions.

Shedite
Shedim are slightly rarer than average in Ambition’s service, as the Princess apparently shares her lesser Sisters’ distaste for the Band. Shedim of Ambition may add their Ethereal Forces to their host’s Emote and Fast-Talk rolls (other Bands with this Attunement may do the same to any person that they are touching).

Impudite (Restricted)
Unsuccessful uses of the Charm ability by Impudites of Ambition will only provide immunity to the target for (CD) minutes, not hours.

Servitor Attunements

Clarice does give out Mammon’s old Servitor Attunements; in fact, she is becoming known as having something of a free hand when it comes to bestowing Cashing Out upon demons of other Words who have done Ambition a service. Still, she has her own powers to bestow.

Obstacles on the Way to Greatness
With a successful Perception roll, the holder of this attunement can detect the person best in a position to thwart the demon’s current goal or ambition.

Triangle Trade (Demon of Envy)
The demon may look at any two people and know whether Person A has something that Person B badly wants, or vice versa, or both. On a successful Perception roll, the demon will even know what those things are.

Distinctions

As noted above, Clarice is flexible about titles. Her Knights and Barons are largely self-selected, with the caveat that if one cannot immediately handle the workload implied then one will be swiftly destroyed. Rewards for being able to survive the experience include three unique Rites per rank (allowing up to +4 Essence per day) — and the right to whatever fancy title appeals. Her Captains, on the other hand, retain both the title and the powers of Mammon’s Captains of the Motherlode; they are also probably the most powerful faction in Ambition’s organization. Clarice personally chooses new Captains: Mammon’s old Captains were the first ones processed from the old organization.

There is one additional Distinction:

Demon of the Year
This is a half-step Distinction, and Clarice is very choosy about who she gives it to. The Princess has announced that, every year, a new attunement based on one of her Servitor’s ideas will be made available to holders of this Distinction. Once the year is up, the attunement will be replaced with the new one, and so on. The first one provided was Triangle Trade, which at least suggests that suitably useful attunements might be later made available in permanent form.


Relations

Clarice has chosen to ally herself with Asmodeus and Kronos, as opposed to the Shal-Mari bloc of Princes. Some whisper that she is instead their creature; but she has so far been careful to at least not appear too dependent upon them.

Allied: Asmodeus, Kronos (These two Princes are also Allied with Clarice)
Associated: Andrealphus, Beleth, Malphas, Nybbas, Vapula (Andrealphus, Malphas, Nybbas, & Vapula are Associated with Clarice)
Neutral: Baal, Haagenti, Lilith, Valefor (Baal, Beleth, Kobal, Lilith, & Valefor are Neutral to Clarice)
Hostile: Belial, Kobal (Belial and Haagenti are Hostile towards Clarice)

Andrealphus: “A pity that some of them have to grow up, isn’t it? I found the contrast to be very exciting, though. But she needs to remember her friends.”

Asmodeus: “ This should prove to be more usefully straightforward than the previous arrangement. As long as she is in control of her Word, of course — Mammon’s fate should be instructive on the inadvisability of a Prince losing such control.”

Baal: “I didn’t care about Mammon, and I don’t care about Clarice.”

Beleth: “She wishes to be on better terms. I have not the faintest idea why, and less interest.”

Belial: “They should have just given her to me to be her new boss. Ambition Burns, doesn’t it?”

Haagenti: “I think that she’s scared of us. Or maybe she’s just scared of me. And I wanted Mammon for myself.”

Kobal: “I guess that she wasn’t a permanent secretary, after all. Hey! I wonder if she made Mammon the permanent secretary, right there at the end — hey, just a joke, sweetheart: no need to be irrational about it. I’m sure that we’ll get along just swell.”

Kronos: “Abandoning the point of damnation to focus obsessively on the shinier tools of damnation was always Mammon’s abiding flaw. We will at least not have to put up with that in his replacement.”

Lilith: (murmuring) “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

Malphas: “She loathes me personally, which is of course a shame — but she is quite appreciative of my Word, and I hers, so I can only wish that she was less prejudiced towards me and mine.”

Nybbas: “Ambition! Got to have it if you want to get anywhere with my Word! Talent, industry, skill — you can buy that. But you can’t buy being hungry for it.”

Saminga: “I have an ambition. I don’t expect her to help.”

Valefor: “I never thought that I would ever say this about a Lilim who managed to become a Princess, but she’s… dull.”

Vapula: “Her Word is a powerful motivator. It should be entertaining to see if she can live up to it.”


Role in the War

Unlike Mammon, who seemed determined to profit from the War, even if it meant losing it — at least, that was the accepted post-mortem conclusion — Clarice appears to have fully subordinated her personal desires to the goal of achieving as swift a victory for Hell as would be possible. This is, of course, not really believed by anyone not terminally naïve, but it remains true that Ambition’s Servitors are very much in the front lines of the War these days. They concentrate on retail corruption of souls, trusting that enough bad examples will encourage the rest of humanity to follow suit; flash and celebrity is now merely a tool, not the goal. And everything is a matter for Ambition.

All of this implies a certain quick turnover in staff, but the survivors are often very good indeed.

Rites
Clarice does not support Mammon’s old Rites. She finds them, in fact, fairly stupid. A Servitor may request one of Greed’s Rites to be reactivated in his particular case, but only as a part of a reward for good service.

* Cause a person to cause harm to another for personal gain (twice per day). Note that a little harm is perfectly acceptable.

Chance for Invocation: 2

Invocation Modifiers
+1 A badly written self-help book
+2 A politician’s private journal of names, phone numbers, and desires
+3 A bottle of poison
+4 A person who has murdered for personal gain
+5 The central council chamber of any national assembly
+6 The authentic crown of any currently ruling king or queen

History and Personality

Clarice. Quiet, quiet little Clarice.

Drop-dead gorgeous, of course — Mammon would insist on nothing less for his personal secretary — but not what you’d call outgoing, or expressive, or even independent. She was just there, and had been since time out of mind. In fact, the Prince of Greed himself sometimes seemed to forget that Clarice was actually sentient; it was notorious that his primary use of her was as a portable storage of all the information that might be useful to Greed as a whole, but certainly not worth Mammon’s own infinitely valuable regard. Clarice was just another possession, acquired because she matched the Prince’s current décor and kept because she was useful enough. And the truly pathetic part about it all was in how she simply accepted this, as if this were her expected lot in life. Many demons over the millennia had tried to suborn or seduce her; all had failed. Clarice was simply too dull to be anything except slavishly loyal to her Prince.

It was thus a peculiarly sadistic tragedy that she was the one to encounter the Prince’s corpse.

It had been a bad week for Greed: bank shortages, a few Tethers disrupted, several important Servitors defecting (one successfully) — and, worst of all, a random security audit by the Game. Clarice herself had been “requested” to come in and have a routine three-day interrogation under the lights, which was of course a slap in the Prince’s face right there. As if Mammon would be fool enough to tell his secretary anything that might be used against him! He depended on her for her memory, not her discretion, judgment, or ability to reason. Clearly, they were all against him, and in such a petty fashion, too; but enough petty insults and slights, piled up, can crack stone or steel. Or even a Prince’s Will.

All in all, it must have been tragic for Clarice to return to her master’s sanctum, only to find him slain by his own hand, his shattered Heart still placed where he could adore it.

The internecine warfare that promptly took place in Greed raged from Mulciber’s to the Bullring, with everything from lawsuits to pitched battles between mercenaries. The Cartel shattered under the strain, as factions of old, powerful financial firms beggared themselves in order to destroy suddenly-hated rivals. Many Servitors of Greed attempted to flee; fewer succeeded, and not a few were preemptively picked up by the Game. And throughout it all, Clarice and her staff kept Mammon’s Head Office inviolate and protected. It soon became clear that the Head Office was the only place that was any sort of refuge for a Servitor of Greed at a disadvantage — and many of them were increasingly disadvantaged, as the fights dragged on.

Eventually, of course, the fighting died down; one faction of Greed finally got enough of an upper hand to break the others to its will. It took longer for one demon of that faction to kick down enough of his compatriots to credibly claim Mammon’s mantle. It took almost no time at all for that demon to be crushed out of existence (to the point of his very name being lost) when he attempted to take possession of the Head Office: Lucifer had already determined that Clarice — quiet, quiet little Clarice — was eminently suitable to be made Mammon’s successor, and it took only a few exceptionally public displays of overwhelming violence against the slow of brain for the rest of Greed’s old organization to agree.

And no, nobody’s quite sure whether she had planned this all along. It seems impossible on its face; how does one fool a Demon Prince for any length of time? For that matter, how does one go from being a regular demon to a Princess in one move? Since her apotheosis, Clarice has demonstrated the power drive and relentlessness associated with her Word, to be sure — but did she really have it beforehand? Was her old aura of diffidence and banality merely a poise? She is not especially outgoing, even now: very businesslike, very goal-oriented, certainly highly self-controlled.  But not outgoing.

It’s all very bemusing.

Principality: The New Quarter (Hades)

Ambition’s financial offices still maintain addresses in Shal-Mari, as does Mulciber’s. Considerable amounts of funds, time, and effort have been spent in creating and maintaining Greed’s old infrastructure there, after all; it seems pointless to waste all of that. However, Ambition’s administrative complex has been moved to Hades, where it is growing by leaps and bounds in the area that was cleared for it.

Given a location equally accessible to the Soul Yards, the Halls of Loyalty, and the Archive — this should tell you a good deal about the favor that Clarice enjoys with Asmodeus and Kronos — the New Quarter bustles. Ambition’s tastes run to impressively large symbols of excess, so cavernscrapers are the rule; roughly three-quarters of them are still vacant, but the Princess clearly intends to vigorously expand her organization quickly. The New Quarter is also one of the comparatively few places where a damned soul can almost relax: demons charge them 1 Essence per day to be allowed to stay and actively work on Ambition’s behalf for a 12 hour shift. Very, very, very clever damned souls can parlay this into an actual full-time job, which pays nothing – but does exempt the soul from being taxed for Essence. The New Quarter is also probably the only place in Hell where the old, ignored Revolutionary-era rules against casually tormenting the damned are actually enforced. It’s not that Clarice cares about the talking monkeys, you understand: it’s that she’s interested in results, and happy to provide both the Game and Fate with the opportunity to engage in social experimentation.

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