No; less. Asuka has no celestial heritage whatever. And that, in itself, is what makes her so remarkable.

Asuka is the only normal human who can operate an Evangelion.

Look at the record.

First Child, Rei Ayanami: An Earthbound angel.
Third Child, Shinji Ikari: A Nephallite.
Fourth Child, Jon Ellison: Celestial hybrid, mostly infernal.
Fifth Child, DJ Croft: Current incarnation of Saint Longinus, who can master any weapon.

Others who have piloted EVAs:

The Ellison brothers: Same as Jon.
The Ayanami sisters: Fallen clones of Rei (Djinn).
Tabris: At the time he activated an EVA, he was a Habbalite (Fallen Elohite).

Everyone there has some touch of the celestial. Just having the extra Force that gives a Soldier of God her sensitivity to the Symphony isn't enough, or there would have been dozens, maybe hundreds of EVA pilots available to NERV, assuming the Marduk screening was administered to a decent percentage of the world's remaining population.

So you see, in a way, Asuka is the most distinctive ("unique" is an absolute, there are no degrees of uniqueness) of the Children of Project Evangelion. All the rest of them had been touched by the celestial (or infernal) before they began their careers as EVA pilots; they're all in some way aberrant. Asuka is not. Her special factor is innate and independent from the fact that she's a six-Force human.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor in Chief, Netadmin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/

This raised something particularly unimportant, but that hasn't stopped bugging me: Yui Ikari was a Grigori or Nephallite? Just something I'd like to have settled so my brain will let me work.

-The One

"These children get to go to a special place made entirely of food...I like food."

Well, one example I can think of is from Redneck's Dark Victory campaign..

MALAKIM:

Malakim of Lucifer are sworn not to kill humans unless they seek to kill or have killed others. They are also sworn to spare the truly repentant. With a resonance roll, they can tell if a subject has deliberately caused fear of themselves in another being, or if that person has murdered another recently - how recently depends on the check digit. However, with this knowledge comes the knowledge of whether or not the subject regrets their actions, and if that subject wishes to undo what they have done, the Malakim may not strike against them.

Off hand.. it might explain why Rachael didn't give into the old Malakite tradition of moshing demons mercilessly the first time she laid eyes on San. The black-wings-and-broadswords set don't react too well to demons.

No, no; that's simply because Rachael isn't stupid, like the standard exemplar of the Choir, Laurence. Rachael knows the difference between "infernal" and "evil".

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor in Chief, Netadmin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/

It is true, I guess, that having Laurence as a 'shining example' to aspire to can really muck around with your world view.

Hmmm... I suppose Asuka may not be simply human after all... I might give it some thought.

Otherwise, due to Celestial politics... I suppose I was at first surprised to see Gabriel as a woman. I know the angel of the trumpet is not shown in the Bible as either man or woman, but then again, angels are oftentimes shown as either masculine or genderless. It struck me as odd, especially how the Bible is also against women head leaders. I've yet to come across a church that has a female head pastor. Still, I guess Gabriel isn't the head of the council... that's indeniably God... or for the moment, Michael. I like the part about them all looking modernised. ^_^

Hmmm... I'll leave to conspiracy theories to Gryphon. He seems much better at them thatn I am. ^_^

in the In Nomine canon, angel might be male, female or genderless in celestial form but their vessels are usually male or female because... well, most fo them are human vessels it's a bit of a binary set solution. An angel with more than one vessel (Archangels for example) might well have both male and female vessels. In the canon, Gabriel was primarily male up until storming out of the Seraphiom council about a millenia back and since then has prefered female vessels.

Since Gabriel is clearly part of the council again, the above might not be relevant but most In Nomine players default to thinking of Gabriel as female. (Of course, the demise of Moloch as Demon Prince of Fire might have done Gabriel a favour in terms of sanity since she wouldn't be sharing her Word anymore).

As a side note on Laurence, despite the broadword up his arse, there were fairly solid reasons for him to be in command of Heaven's armies. He is one of Heaven's most capable asskickers and he was a favored servitor of the previous commander. The main alternatives were Michael, David and (at least in his own mind) Khalid. Of the two archangels. Michael held a major grudge against Dominic, with whom he'd have to work closely and David while an old and mighty Malakim and a genuinely quite capable strategist isn't too good at making decisions in a hurry. Under the circumstances bringing in a little new blood probably seemed like a good idea.

drakensisthered

It might be a touch of that, although it's quite possible that she prefers it that way.

>As a side note on Laurence, despite the broadword up his arse, there
>were fairly solid reasons for him to be in command of Heaven's armies.
>He is one of Heaven's most capable asskickers and he was a
>favored servitor of the previous commander. The main alternatives were
>Michael, David and (at least in his own mind) Khalid. Of the two
>archangels. Michael held a major grudge against Dominic, with whom
>he'd have to work closely and David while an old and mighty Malakim
>and a genuinely quite capable strategist isn't too good at making
>decisions in a hurry. Under the circumstances bringing in a little new
>blood probably seemed like a good idea.

There's also the fact that it is War, and Laurence did understand that. The problem only really came when he let his hatred of Lucifer overcome his thinking to the point that he made a deal with Natla or one of her agents. After that, he tried to cover it up. That's when the problems kicked in.

Matrix Dragon, J. Random Nutter
My LiveJournal
Everything goes better with Ninja

It wouldn't surprise me if Laurence were somehow hiding a vast amount of Discord -- after all, as someone (Gryphon?) said, the only thing keeping him from Falling was the fact that he was a Malakite...

-- Bob
-------------------
Bill Gates is a white Persian cat and a monocle away from becoming another James Bond villain: "No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to upgrade." -- Dennis Miller

Perhaps he managed to jusitfy his action by his own code of honor.

A moral tightrope to be certain, but Malakim are admittedly some of the nastiest angels around that you can find without any Dissonance or Discord.

Malakim of Lucifer, in addition to the two universal Malakite oaths, have a third oath which all the Virtues of Light must swear: I shall slay no human save the murderous, sparing any being who is truly repentant of his or her sins. With a resonance roll, these Virtues can tell if a subject has deliberately
caused fear of themselves in another being, or if that person has murdered another recently - how recently depends on the check digit. However, with this knowledge comes the knowledge of whether or not the subject regrets their actions, and if that subject wishes to undo what they have done, the Malakim may not strike against them.

--- from In Nomine: Dark Victory, an unofficial work by yours truly, not canon for NXE

Redneck

Kris Overstreet, aka Redneck Gaijin
http://www.wlpcomics.com
White Lightning Productions - huge tracts of land for sale

Sounds cool, any way the rest of us can see this?

-The One

"Tragedy is when I cut my finger, comedy is when you fall through an open sewer and die." -Mel Brooks

Kris used to have a very cool set of pages for this campaign, which I found via links on the SJG pages for In Nom; I don't know if he still has them up, but given his recent call for new players, I think it's pretty likely.

-- Bob
-------------------
Bill Gates is a white Persian cat and a monocle away from becoming another James Bond villain: "No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to upgrade." -- Dennis Miller

-The One

"My God, not only are ghosts real, but their innards are made out of children!"

Actually, I lost the old DVPBEM archives in a HD crash. The Archangel of Archives, who has revived her DV character for the new game, says she has the archives, so I may rebuild that page one day.

In the meantime, I'm not going to tackle archive websites for the new game until the first chapter is finished. Right now, I'm regretting having five US-based players and one UK player...

Redneck (but I'll try to make it work)

Kris Overstreet, aka Redneck Gaijin
http://www.wlpcomics.com
White Lightning Productions - huge tracts of land for sale

-The One

I don't know how sainthood works in IN heaven, but I do know how canonization works down here. If the church got the whole, classified story of what happened, they would at least consider her for sainthood. If they don't know about the celestial aspects to this War, she is still one of the heroines that protected us in our darkest hour, like no soldier ever had. One miracle attributed to her to get her Beatified, another to make her Canonized, but that is that.

Of course, death (plus a hundred years, preferably) is a prerequisite for canonization, but that's par for the course--you can't get into the Hall of Fame until after you retire, whether in sports or religion.

--rR

Hmmm. Of course, this brings up the vitally important question, what date is St. Asuka's Day?

- CD

April 1. Duh.

t.

p.s. I am tickled pink to see my suggestion was taken seriously. I bow to the four corners of the world and praise the authors - not your best work, but a worthy one.

Trigger Argee
trigger_argee@hotmail.com
Manon, Maccadon, Orado, etc.
Denton, never leave home without it.

"Pretty ambitious for a tree, isn't it?"

I dunno, seems to me that it'd be one random day during the year that the celebrant _felt_ like celebrating it. So... whenever you feel passionate enought to celebrate... celebrate.

April first seems more like St. Bacon day.

Mistral

<edit for added thought>