I was the author of the Corporeal Player's Guide for In Nomine. Some material got cut, either because it didn't pass playtest muster, or for lack of space.
The advantages below, intended for humans only, were deemed too powerful. Use them with caution in your campaign; they can be very unbalancing, and will also introduce non-canonical abilities to humans.
Some mortals are unnaturally tuned in to the Symphony, and can hear certain strains above all background noise, even above their own deafness. They can hear disturbances, even if they are not Symphonically aware.
For 4 points, a human is attuned to one kind of disturbance. This can be Songs, the sound of a celestial entering or leaving the corporeal plane, the sound of corporeal damage inflicted by a celestial, the sound of a human being killed by a celestial, etc. Humans without Symphonic awareness (Corporeal Player's Guide, p. 22) can roll to perceive disturbances made by that source. Mundanes may be very confused by the noises they hear; though they receive information about the disturbance as usual (In Nomine p. 55), they probably have no idea what it means! A human who does have Symphonic awareness gets a +2 bonus to hear that kind of disturbance.
A human who is attuned to Songs may also learn them over time, if exposed to them often enough. (See Liber Canticorum, p. 13.) He must meet all the usual requirements in order to actually perform any Songs. However, there is a deeper form of Symphonic attunement. For an additional 2 points, a human can be attuned to a specific Song, and able to perform the Ethereal version of it, thanks to a very narrow link to the ethereal plane. For another 2 points, his attunement extends to the celestial plane as well! Even with a Symphonic attunement, no mortal with less than 6 Forces can perform any kind of Song.
Note: A Symphonic attunement is a rare gift, one that often drives its recipient insane! It's mostly intended for NPCs, and definitely not intended to give human characters a convenient way of getting around the limitations on what Songs they can perform. You must be born with a Symphonic attunement; it's not something that can be acquired later in life, even with the help of a Superior. Superiors can bestow the Ethereal Connection and Celestial Connection attunements (Corporeal Player's Guide, pp. 27-28), but even they don't know what produces the rare human able to hear and play in the Symphony naturally.
Some mortals have a touch of Divinity or Infernal taint from birth, while others attract the attention of Higher Powers later in life, through unusual piety or unusual depravity. Some believe it is a sign of celestial ancestry. Almost always, they have a great Destiny and/or a terrible Fate.
Celestials are inevitably drawn to these mysteriously favored mortals, hoping to push them towards or away from whatever greatness has been laid out for them. Even without overt meddling, Favored humans always know instinctively from an early age that they are meant for something special, and that Someone is watching over them. With all this influence, humans with Divine Favor usually turn out extremely virtuous and tend to live exemplary lives, while those with Infernal Favor are usually identified as "bad seeds" early on. But there have been startling exceptions on both sides . . .
Divine or Infernal Favor costs 4 points per level; humans may buy up to 6 levels. It has the following effects:
Since the entire sorcery rules were revised in the CPG, there wasn't room to add any additional skills and rituals. Here is one that didn't make it, but which you might like to give sorcerers in your campaign: Curse.
The sorcerous skill Curse is knowledge of how to manipulate the Symphony itself to bring about your will.
Some Curse rituals can actually be used to bless, but the selfish nature of sorcery makes it more difficult to do good than harm. These rituals are very powerful, as they affect the Symphony directly. As a result, they tend to have a high cost -- no doubt responsible for originating the "Threefold Law."
The subject will suffer bad luck at the worst time. If performed successfully, the subject may resist with a Will roll (ethereals and celestials add their Celestial Forces). If he fails to resist, the next time he tries to spend Essence to improve a d666 roll (consciously or unconsciously), that Essence will not be spent! Instead, the victim's roll will suffer a penalty equal to the check digit.
Time: 10 minutes
Essence: 2 x the check digit
This ritual works exactly like Jinx, above, except that the target does not need to resist, and instead of replacing the bonus for an Essence expenditure, the check digit will add to the subject's roll. A successful performance of this ritual on the victim of a Jinx will also dispel the jinx.
Time: 10 minutes
Essence: 2 x the check digit
This ritual deprives the victim of his "luck" by preventing him from regaining Essence. If the victim fails to resist with a Will roll (plus Celestial Forces for ethereal and celestials), he will not receive his daily Essence regeneration for CD days. This ritual does not prevent Rites from working, nor does it prevent the victim from receiving Essence from others or using reliquaries and spirit jars, etc.
If this ritual fails, it affects the sorcerer instead!
Time: 30 minutes
Essence: 3 x the check digit
One of the most malevolent rituals, but completely unpredictable in its effects, a Calamity can be resisted with a Will roll (plus Celestial Forces for ethereals and celestials). If it is not resisted, then sometime in the near future, Something Bad will happen to the victim. The sorcerer has no way to influence exactly what will happen or when, but the check digit determines how bad it will be. A CD of 1 will result in a mere inconvenience, such as catching the victim in a traffic jam when he's late for work. A CD of 3 will cause something with serious repercussions, such as an important document being lost in the mail, while a CD of 6 can cause any misfortune that does not directly kill the subject.
If this ritual fails, it affects the sorcerer instead!
Time: 1 hour
Essence: 3 x the check digit
This ritual can remove the effects of the Jinx, Luckless, or Calamity rituals, above. The ritual is treated as a Contest against the malign ritual.
Time: 1 hour
Essence: 3 x the check digit
This ritual can affect local weather patterns. Some sorcerors, notably among tribal peoples, have studied the Curse skill only to use this ritual -- it used to be taught by many ethereal spirits.
If the ritual is performed successfully, the local weather is "pushed" in the direction the sorceror desires. (The area affected is up to the GM -- use the smallest region capable of sustaining its own local weather pattern, with a county being about the largest possible area.) The check digit determines both the duration, in hours, and the intensity of the effect. As a general rule, the temperature can be raised or lowered by 5 degrees Fahrenheit times the check digit, or generate other weather phenomena of equivalent severity. Thus, a check digit of 1 can cause only minor, barely noticeable changes, while a check digit of 6 can cause dramatic changes, but nothing supernatural; the ritual can bring rain during a drought, or diminish a tropical storm to a stiff breeze, but it can't bring snow to a hot desert or summon or banish a hurricane.
Time: 4 hours
Essence: 3 x the check digit
This ritual afflicts the victim with long-term misfortune. The subject may resist with a Will roll (plus Celestial Forces for ethereals and celestials). It has two effects on those who fail to resist. First, every day, the victim must make a Will roll or he will not gain his daily Essence. (This does not affect Essence received from Rites, transfers from others or from reliquaries, etc.) Secondly, the victim will be plagued by a constant string of inconveniences and minor disasters. This is nothing that affects dice rolls, but the GM should engineer something inconvenient and annoying to happen to the character at least once a day, and anytime the GM has arbitrary discretion over the outcome of the character's actions, he should make the result bad. Nothing supernatural or wildly improbable should happen to the victim, but he will definitely feel like he is "cursed."
The curse lasts for a number of weeks equal to the check digit of the ritual. There is no known ritual that can undo it -- however, killing the sorceror who placed the Curse will end it . . . If this ritual is performed unsuccessfully, it affects the sorceror!
Time: 3 hours
Essence: 3 x the check digit
Here are a few weapons that were cut from the Corporeal Player's Guide.
| Weapon | Power | Accuracy | Skill Required |
|---|---|---|---|
| Polearm (Halberd, etc.) | +6 | -2 | Large Weapon ¹ |
| Rapier | +2 | +1 | Small Weapon |
| Hammer, Mace | +2 | -1 | Small Weapon |
| Katana | +3 | +1 | Large Weapon |
| Spear ² | +3 | — | Large Weapon |
¹ Requires two hands
² Power +1 if used with two hands or thrown
There simply wasn't room to include more human agencies, so these didn't even make it into the first draft. I haven't developed any of these very far, but perhaps you will find an adventure seed or two herein.
These groups are unaffiliated with any celestials, but sometimes run into them, for various reasons.
Matsuzaka, Inc., is one of Japan's largest conglomerates, selling everything from steel to missile guidance systems to automobiles and consumer electronics. Matsuzaka is also collaborating with ethereals. Spirits, once revered as kami in Japan, now conduct corporate espionage in the Marches, spying on the dreamscapes of CEOs and engineers and marketers working for rival companies, and trade the information to Matsuzaka executives in exchange for Essence (provided by a pair of sarariman sorcerers) and worship. Matsuzaka management's inner circle is composed of militant right-wing extremists who long for a return to Japanese nationalism and reverence for the old ways. Matsuzaka's ethereal "helpers" try to keep their extra-curricular activities secret from Nybbas, as they don't wish to damage their relationship with the August Prosperity Collective (The Marches, p. 104).
One of the old pagan gods, his power greatly diminished since the Purification Crusade, had almost faded from existence when a sudden trickle of Essence rejuvenated him, and attracted him to the corporeal plane.
It turned out a popular fantasy novel, in which he (or a reasonable fascimile) was a main character was spinning off computer games, movies, and other media imagery. Millions of people (mostly adolescent boys) were reliving his mythical adventures (albeit in greatly distorted form) and then dreaming about them at night, thus providing him with Essence and worship, of a sort.
Alerted to the possibilities in modern storytelling techniques, where a properly packaged myth could generate millions of "worshippers," the god began looking for writers, game designers, and anachronists in the Marches. He recruited other ethereal spirits to help him, and soon they had inspired an organization on Earth: the Society for the Preservation of Myth.
Ostensibly an educational foundation that collects world mythology and presents it in books and on websites (and has recently won funding for a video series), the Society continues to be guided by its ethereal patrons . . . who are now trading Essence and favors with other spirits, in return for attempting to influence their unwitting human minions to exert efforts on the ethereal client's behalf.
Dr. Marla Green was an emergency room intern when the paramedics brought her a Zombi. It was newly zombified, but had no Ethereal Forces left; all it could do was blink and drool. Dr. Green spent a week trying to halt its spreading necrosis, but failed to save its life, not realizing that her patient died before she ever laid eyes on him. The demon of Dark Humor who laughed himself silly over the young doctor trying to resuscitate a Zombi didn't know the good doctor had an unusual aptitude for medical experimentation.
Twenty years later, Dr. Green has learned a lot about undead. She's learned so much that she can actually restore some semblance of life to mummies, vampires and Zombis. She's become more than a little unhinged, being frequently exposed to the undead, but they keep coming to her clinic, informed through the underground that a mortal knows how to improve their condition.
The Necrosis Foundation is dedicated to learning more about the bizarre condition that causes flesh decay, a stunning drop in body temperature, and a near-cessation of involuntary functions. Dr. Green hopes to someday find a cure, but is hampered by the fact that no one in the medical establishment believes her case studies.