IN> Spiders are supposed to have Ethereal Forces?

[Jonathan Lang]

James Walker wrote:
> Jonathan Lang wrote:
> > If they dream, yes.  As I see it, a spider with an
> > Ethereal Force is
> > no more bizarre than a spider that dreams.
>
> Meanwhile, according to 'Supporting cast' in the base
> book - cats don't.

Can you give a page reference for this?  I don't recall anything in
the core book that says or implies that animals can't have Ethereal
Forces.  And in fact, the spirit of Blackie the friendly sedan stands
as testimony that animals _can_ have Ethereal (and Celestial) Forces
as well as Corporeal Forces.

Also note that the official rules break down whenever you deal with
excessively tiny or huge creatures.

> Cats dream - anyone who has seen them trying to chase
> something while asleep knows that.
> But they can't learn to program computers - and if
> they had a single ethereal Force, the IN rules would
> allow them to.

Not necessarily.  In Nomine is full of examples where the capabilities
of a being are restricted by that being's fundamental nature: the free
will of angels and demons is curtailed by their Dissonance Conditions,
for example.  It is not unreasonable to assume that Ethereal Forces in
an animal's pattern lead to exceptionally clever animals that
nevertheless lack the capacity for abstract thought.  The official
rules for animals in In Nomine have not (yet?) been published.

> Actually this is beside the point - a PC can be
> reduced to zero Ethereal Forces by Celestial combat
> and still enter The Marches. So possession of Ethereal
> Forces can't matter. And someone without Celestial
> Forces (say, a Remnant) can be sent into The Marches
> with the Ethereal Song of Sleep.

I'll have to double-check that "zero Ethereal Forces due to Celestial
Combat" bit, as ISTR quite the opposite.  And the point about Remnants
is irrelevant: lack of Celestial Forces keeps you out of the Heaven
and Hell, not the Marches.

> Your typical spider won't have any Forces - a Strength
> of 1 would make them as strong as a weak human, after
> all. Also, if insects had Forces, then Kyriotates of
> Animals wouldn't be able to possess swarms of them, as
> each Force would require one of the Domination's
> Forces.

Again, the rules for animals haven't been written yet AFAIK; they
certainly haven't been published yet.  I wouldn't be surprised to
learn that animals, being natives of the Corporeal Realm, are required
to have a positive number of Corporeal Forces, but that tiny animals
(definitely including insects, arachnids, etc.) are forbidden from
having a Strength score higher than zero.  I certainly wouldn't be
surprised at _some_ sort of size-based Strength cap for animals.  And
I wouldn't be surprised with a ruling that tiny animals either share
Corporeal Forces (e.g., a swarm of insects has one Corporeal Force) or
each have fractions of a Corporeal Force (e.g., a swarm of insects has
a total of one Corporeal Force).

-- 
Jonathan "Dataweaver" Lang