IN> Hellsworn Ghosts

[Elizabeth McCoy]

At 9:30 AM -0700 9/10/06, Jonathan Lang wrote:
[...]
>see the possibility of the Force that was granted by Hell being lost
>in celestial combat. [...]

With the small problem that it's very hard for a human to _get_ into
celestial combat in the first place.

Maybe in the Marches...

For myself, I would tend to go one of three ways. The first way would be
that the nature of the HellForce is that it is burrowed into the 
Force-configuration, shielded from the outside Symphony by the normal
Forces. That would tend to make it always the last Force of its kind
(Corp, Eth, Cel) to be stripped. That would guarantee that the 
battlefield surgery would leave the Hellsworn 
>[...] a vegetable, a Remnant, or dead before the Hellsworn Force is 
>obliterated.

Some might find that a better bargain than leaving it alone...

The other way would be to make it random, indeed; I think that would
actually be part of a _brighter_ setting.

However...
>[...] the bit about losing a potential Force as well as an actual one
>implies that you're at least partially right: the Hellsworn stain
>_does_ extend beyond the Force itself 

That leads to the #3 and probably most compatible option, which is that
the HellForce is either burrowed into the configuration so it is always
the _last_ Force to go, or that it _shifts_ -- the Hell-nature is tied 
into the bundle of Forces, and not to any one Force.

(This is also compatible with the whole Lilim Force thing -- it's not 
that you can find it and sort it out, but that it permeates the 
structure of the being. So you can't yank out a Lilim Force without
paring down the Lilim to that last Force...)

To take out the HellForce (or Lilim Force?) would therefore involve
peeling the Forces into a "crippled" configuration that nipped the 
sucker out -- but left the Forces unable to grow back in that place.
Perhaps it requires cauterizing the thing in some Superior way, so
that the Helltaint can't slip out of the isolated Force and take up
residence in another one.

>I would say that this is usually true.  However, Mirror Ghosts are
>explicitly an exception to this; and I'd wager that Superiors are
>another.

Superiors are, by nature and design, often exceptions to everything. O:>
-- 
--Beth, arcangel at io.com / archangel at sjgames.com  In Nomine Line Editor  
http://www.io.com/~arcangel/