Gabriel's Own Personal Apocalypse
By Julian Mensch
Genre: Low-Contrast Black Comedy
Synopsis: Belial gets medieval, Kobal gets Biblical, Vapula's bugs get it on, Gabriel gets psychotic, Las Vegas gets torched and Heaven gets Bambi, the new Bright Lilim Archangel of the Divine Fire
WARNING: This adventure seed is epic in scope and likely to leave mile-wide scars in the fabric of any chronicle. It s recommended to be run as a one-shot with new characters. It works as a convention
game, or when everybody is drunk. Despite this, it s definitely an
adventure for role players; it concerns Superiors and has virtually
no combat potential. Oh yeah, and the players might die arbitrarily
if they try to take on Gabriel.
Background
Two days ago, one of Belial s older Servitors was informed that he
was being recalled to Hell for treason; he d been used as a scapegoat.
Being a Calabite who really, really hated Gabriel, he figured it
would be nice to go out with a bang rather than be tortured in Hell
for eternity. He captured one of Gabriel's most beloved servitors,
tortured him, violated him and finally soul-killed him after using
torture to force him Celestial. Then, he Soul-killed himself, as
he had nothing to lose and wanted to deny Gabriel the chance to
punish the cruel. Gabriel arrived in Vegas too late to help, and she
never left. Instead, she fell into a state of deep grief over the
loss of her beloved Servitor, and went to a church to pray. There,
she ran into...:
Bambi, Free Lilim IST Lust. Bambi is a bimbo. She is not terribly
intelligent, dresses in trashy, provocative clothing and every other
thing she says is either a bubble-headed duh comment or sexual
innuendo. She has slept her way to the top in Las Vegas because no
one ever assumes that owing her a favour is harmful, and they think
they can always welch if she asks anything inconveniant. Bambi is
currently living in the penthouse of the Luxor and turning it into
(even more of) a tribune to Lust. Unlike most Lilim, however, Bambi
is not a user. There are two things she genuinely enjoys in this
world; the first leaves her hot and sweaty, but the second is helping
people she genuinely likes fulfilling needs for the sake of fulfilling needs. Also, while not overly smart, she has an uncanny kind
of cleverness at times; she embodies the paradox of being both very
selfish and very altruistic.
Anyway, Gabriel throws a screaming fit at God in the Church over
the unjust burden she feels she was given. Bambi tried to comfort
her, sensed a Need and offered to take on the burden. When Gabriel
said she could never handle it, Bambi unknowingly assured the Archangel
that she could, whatever it was. Gabriel Resonated this statement as a
Seraph would, saw it to be Truth and gave the Divine Fire to Bambi.
(It is the Truth - Bambi might be a bubblehead, but she s deeply,
deeply compassionate and very much a strong-willed survivor; better
able to cope with the Word-friction than Belial ever was.)
Meanwhile, Kobal learns of Gabriel's loss and sends some Servitors
to play a cruel prank on her in her moment of weakness, implying
that if the want to keep their Forces, it best be something rather
impressive. The Servitors borrow some genetically engineered locusts
from Tartarus and decide to release them throughout Las Vegas in a
mockery of the Biblical plague. Gabriel steps out of the church free
of her burden and face-first into a chittering, swarming omen. The
end is here it s time for her to sound the Final Trumpet and do
what she has always wanted to do - pour free God's wrath on the cruel
and the wicked. What better way to start off an Apocalypse than by
nuking the Strip? Sure, she kills tens of thousands of innocents,
but the cruel suffer, and that's what Gabriel cares about. The
resulting disturbance - an Archangel nuking a square block screws
up the Symphony enough to prevent anyone from manifesting there...
except the players, who were either just in the right area or were
sent to investigate before Gabby blew the Trumpet. Gabriel then
gives Belial eight hours to show up, before she starts randomly
torching more of the city. (Of course, Belial will stay right where
he is. Kronos wants Gabriel to meet her fate, and got Lucifer to
promise Belial that if Gabriel Falls, she'll be made a Servitor of
Belial. Gabriel's not doing anything dissonant and is in no danger
of Falling, but Belial is too dense to realize this.)
The Situation
Gabriel is running about in Celestial Form torching the city.
Bambi is calling in every geas she has, now, and running damage
control from the Luxor, which she's turned into a field hospital of
sorts. And she's being a little free with the Song of Healing, which
should allow players to find her via disturbance, even in the aftermath of Gabriel's stunts. She only has around 12 Forces (and around
50 Word-forces at present), which means the Divine Fire is leaking
out all around her. Artists in the Luxor are prone to random fits of
manic inspiration. People are seeing the Celestial forms of angels
all around them (making subtlety hard). People are having visions
of the future, and prophecy is at an all time high in Las Vegas.
Needless to say, every extremist religious group in the world is
trying to get to the city as fast as they can - even if the Divine
Fire didn t bring that about, a rampaging Archangel would. Martial
law has been declared. The military is moving in. Whatever other
apolalyptic chaos the GM can invent occurs.
There's another problem as well: Vapula's locusts are multiplying
fast, very fast, and what began as a prank could turn into a
genuine plague. Being Vapulan, they are resistant to toxins,
physically resilient, breed up to 60 times faster than normal locusts
and, depending on the GM's desire for camp, might have Songs or other
special powers. Regardless, they are hungry, they are completely
overrunning Vegas and if they aren't stopped, they could very well
decimate a large portion of Earth's plant life and overrun other
cities completely. Of course, the Divine Fire could clean up the
pests, because unlike Belial's (and now, Gabriel's) Word, it has the
power to destroy selectively. But Bambi doesn't have the skill to
use it like that.
Bambi is, at this point, very interested in Redemption largely
because Andre will likely investigate, and running a field hospital
is not the kind of thing he wants his servitors doing. For that
matter, encouraging tender, caring sexuality is probably not
high on his list either, nor is persecuting pimps. There's just one
catch: she wants to Redeem, if and only if she gets to be an Archangel. She has the Divine Fire, after all, and has slowly begun
realizing the implications of that. Never a girl to give up an
oppurtunity, she is in true Lilim fashion willing to Cut A Deal(tm).
To be fair, she's also concerned that if she gives up the Fire, it
will come into Gabriel's hands again (it probably would) and she's
understandably not feeling very pleased with Gabby at the moment.
She will have several logically solid but comically delivered reasons
why she should keep the Fire and become an Archangel. For the first time
in her life, she truly, really feels hope, and it will be like
pulling teeth to get her to give that oppurtunity up.
Bambi also has a geas/6 on Gabriel, but has no way to get close
enough to call it in without getting burnt to a crisp. Go to the
Glades in Heaven would be a really handy favour to ask of her at
this point, as Michael could probably restrain her - if the players
could safely get Bambi in range to claim the geas.
The players' role is mostly to talk to Bambi and, later, Gabriel,
and try to reach some kind of compromise. Gabriel presently feels
utterly empty, consumed in despair and grief; she wants the Apocalypse now because she wants to face Belial... and die. She knows,
somewhere deep inside, that she has been as cruel as those she
burns; a clever character might be able to exploit that and get
her to kill herself. Bambi might be able to channel the constructive
aspect of the Fire to reinspire hope in Gabriel, if anyone thinks
of it. Really, it s a very freeform scenario; players could come
up with pretty much anything in response.
Theme and Tone
This is a very absurd, silly scenario about people who are feeling
very real, painful emotions. It's funny, but it's also very dark and
tragic. Bambi will inevitably lose the Fire = barring all other
options, once Gabriel recovers from her episode she'll force-strip
the Word from Bambi, killing her. If Gabriel dies, the Seraphim
Council will force-strip Bambi and give the Fire to David, Novalis,
Michael or Yves. Dominic will protest, especially if the Fire is
being given back to Gabriel, but ultimately Heaven will ignore him
and Gabriel's actions will be blamed on Word-friction with Belial
as usual. Gabriel will return to her normal duties, and Novalis will
send down a bunch of Servitors to try and clean up the mess. If Bambi
gives up the Fire, she'll still go for redemption - she really has no
choice -- but she will likely be destroyed in the attempt. After
losing the Fire, she too will be filled with despair and emptiness,
and in a theological scenario, despair is the highest sin. That,
after all, is what this Apocalypse is about: not fire, but ashes.
* If you have the books, Soldekai works well as the Servitor that Gabriel loses to inspire all this.
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