In Nomine Anime: Notes on Risky Safety

There are many spoilers for Risky Safety in this page.

I have a friend who had a severe misconception of what In Nomine is all about, and who is willing to watch a good anime series. I decided to show him Risky Safety as a decent example of a slightly-variant, low-powered In Nomine campaign. However, this friend is the type who likes to compare fictional examples to what's the rulebook, so I had to come up with at least basic descriptions of the characters ...  This isn't a complete In Nomine writeup of Risky Safety, but it should be enough for a starting point for a GM's own writeup.

(Risky Safety is a 24-episode anime series; the episodes are each ten minutes long. It was written by Rei Omishii, the person who wrote Sorceror Hunters ... but Risky Safety is, in my opinion, much better. The first episode is available from the translating company for legal free download in QuickTime format.)

The story is about two Celestial Spirits who share the same body, and the people that they affect the most (and who affect them the most).

Setting Changes

As with almost every other work of fiction, the Risky Safety world is slightly variant to the canon game world.

Major changes

• Celestials who lose enough forces in Celestial Combat become Celestial Spirits instead of Remnants.
• There are no Gremlins; all Demonic Spirits are Imps (and Imps can fledge into any sort of demon).
• The Purity Crusade ended far earlier than in canon. Ethereals are not confined to the Marches (although they are weakened), and are not necessarily at odds with Heaven.

Minor changes

• Celestial Spirits have dissonance conditions: Relievers have the Seraph dissonance condition, and Imps have the Djinn dissonance condition.
• Demons of Saminga are called "shinigami" in this setting, and are more interested in collecting human souls than in killing humans (the latter is a fringe benefit). They like pretending that they're the only type of demon.

Characters

Important characters

Risky

Imp (working on re-fledging to Impudite) of Saminga, Bound/6 to Safety.

Safety

Reliever (working on re-fledging to Mercurian) of Novalis (I think; she seems to be the best match, and Safety's Superior is shown as a blonde female), Bound/6 to Risky.

Moé

Symphonically Aware normal human.

Yuya

Normal human.

Lani

Normal dog, spends most of the story affected by one of Safety's Arrows (see below) and in love with Safety and Risky.

Less-Important characters

Fazzy

Symphonically Aware normal human, with the potential to become a Soldier of God. (Fazzy's father appears to be a Sorceror, possibly on the side of Heaven, but there's insufficient information to be sure of anything about him.)

Koiuji

Minor Ethereal Spirit in the August Prosperity Collective, with Love and Divination affinities (she can share brief visions of the future of lovers wih those lovers) and a 2-Force "miniature human" vessel.

Ma-chan

Malakim of Jordi, with a dinosauroid Vessel. (It's still an animal ...) His oaths are the two usual, "never raise my paw to another Angel", and one unknown one that didn't come up in the series. (We see Ma-chan's Heart in his story. Ma-chan's opponent is a Primal Fire Ethereal who's taken up with Belial.)

Resources

Very few Resources of any sort are shown in the series.

Risky's Scythe appears to be a seriously-warped (almost Vapulan, but non-technological) relic that can repair anything broken by Risky, with a minor demonic twist (e.g. a repaired photo of a pop idol shows the idol "mooning" the camera). It might also be a low-capacity reliquary. Of course, it can also be used as a normal scythe, and its blade's tip comes to a sharp point. Risky has not linked to the scythe.

Safety's Bow is a Corporeal Artifact with the Summonable feature. Safety has linked to it.

Safety's Arrows are one-use Relics. We have seen her use Arrows that affect their targets with the Song of Ethereal Attraction, one Arrow that affected its target with the Song of Celestial Essence, and one Arrow that duplicated the Calabim resonance. (She was extremely reluctant to use that Arrow, and ended up wasting it.)

The material presented here is the creation of Rob Kelk. It is based on the intellectual property of Rei Omishii, and is intended for use with the In Nomine system from Steve Jackson Games. This material is not official and is not endorsed by Mr. Omishii or Steve Jackson Games. In Nomine is a trademark of Steve Jackson Games in the United States of America; no challenge to this or any other trademark is intended by its inclusion here.