Sorcery, Purity, and other bits of loose canon in Mile Higher Club

According to the Corporeal Guide—my main source for sorcery in the IN universe—I am slightly off canon, but only slightly. Most sorcery simply doesn’t work on angels, with the rare and IMHO peculiar exception of binding (tutela) where its effects are minimal. The game mechanic for this is that angels cannot engage in Will wars (Theurgy sidebar, pg 44). What I have in mind is a bit more nuanced.

Angels do not (as opposed to cannot) engage in Will wars as individuals because they’re instruments of the Symphony. An angel new to the corporeal realm doesn’t think of himself as an individual in any sense, and so cannot battle wills with anyone. An angel who has spent significant time in vessels has come to think of himself as himself a bit more, and thus can indulge a will war with someone by momentarily separating his will from that of the whole. An angel who has spent most of his career Earthbound is used to thinking of himself as a guy rather than an instrument, and he might be bluffed into forgetting that he is part of a whole. Such an angel could be summoned, bound, even exorcised as long as he fails to remember his true nature. Doesn’t happen often, almost never. Well, not for more than a few minutes anyway.

Even so, working sorcery on something celestial is difficult at best. Demons hide this fact by showing up to even ineffective summonses, the better to cut a deal. It’s a contest of wills even when it isn’t a Will War (pg 42) per se, and humans run on a lower scale than celestials. It’s possible for a sorceror to win this, but it’s bad odds. He can improve these odds with the use of Essence.

What, a human spending Essence? It’s very rare that any human, even a trained sorceror, can use Essence except in an emergency (Core, pg 46 sidebar). There are however a number of rituals for taking and storing Essence for just such uses (Corporeal 40-41). This Essence can be used to power up any sorcerous spell by duration, strength, or effect—GM’s discretion in this case, and I try to be conservative except where the Greater Plot is concerned.

Given the sound and flavor I have set into this campaign, such ‘borrowed’ Essence will contain the sounds of its origin. Essence taken from a demon will be rock ‘n’ roll or other cacophony J ; of an angelic origin it will follow classical lines and may reflect the instrument of the particular choir; of a human, animal, or ethereal origin I will somehow make it earthier.

Ethereals…that’s a long story. Lacking the EPG but having a degree in Philosophy that focused on polytheism, I have a unifying theory of how ethereals work and I can just hope it’s not too far off canon.

Uriel, Archangel of Purity, came to Earth and slaughtered as many mythological creatures as he and his servitors could get their hands on. Giants and dragons and the like were physical, flashy, and relatively easy. Fairies and (off-canon) vampires and their ilk were mostly wiped out, but a few adapted and some may even survive to this day, in hiding. Other undead, the vampires of canon and mummies are sorcerous constructs so were not part of this purge. The gods were particular targets of Uriel, and any physical manifestations of them were destroyed quite thoroughly. Their ethereal forces fled to the Marches were they were hunted down, some fleeing to the Far Marches and some to Nightmares, where a rare few escaped Uriel’s wrath. A few, weak and tired from the hunt, hid in certain sacred places that could contain ethereal matter on the corporeal plane—sacred wells and springs and the like. The Oracle at Delphi was just such an ethereal, bound to a place and hoping for pilgrims to feed its life.

As their worship faded, even these ethereals dissipated. An ethereal being that lacks a physical form requires belief to survive, and belief of a certain quality can empower or even create a god. The number of worshippers is important, but more important is the passion put into the worship (sorry if I’m taking a left turn to Wraith™ here). Ten followers who put a flower at an altar every Sunday will produce less power than one acolyte who thinks about his god every day and cries on its altar because he can’t hear the god speak. A unity of belief is important too, which is probably why the Greek gods haven’t made a comeback—too many of their believers are too casual, but they also have radically different ideas among themselves about how those gods look, act, and sound.

Once a god has reached a certain level of belief-power, that god can start converting that ethereal power into Essence. I haven’t worked out the particular math on this, only that it isn’t easy. An ethereal god needs so much belief power just to exist outside the Marches—inside of which he is carefully monitored by Blandine—that having Essence that does anything but sit there is unheard of. Still, while Delphi may be dead of neglect, there are other newer ethereals who may yet be anchored to this world. Buddha—not the historical figure but the jolly monk of the statues—might be approaching that level. The Wiccan goddess, should her followers ever find a cohesive vision, is another such candidate. It’s a good thing Nybbas hates ethereals, or we’d all be in trouble.

(For those who are curious, this ‘theory’ of ethereals is from metaphysical idealism, described to me in my college years as radical subjectivism. For those of you without a philosophy degree J this is the best explanation I can find: http://personal.ecu.edu/mccartyr/american/leap/idealism.htm )