Dylan has gathered Isaac the Malakite and Zachariah the Seraph of the Wind as his official posse. Isaac teaches Dylan Demolitions/2, to help him blow stuff up. They go to the Halls of Technology, and face down a suspicious receptionist, who had probl ems the last time Dylan was there. It turns out that there has already been an equipment req. put in for them. They get told to go to a room that has his weapons in it. In the room, on the table is a .38 revolver, a box of fast-load clips, two blocks o f C-4 with detonators, and another translation device. There is nothing else in the room and the table is bolted to the floor. Odd, it’s like Technology doesn’t want them to take the table as well. They head back to the Seraphim Council.

Maxwell goes down to go see Star. He gets smoochies. "Your lawyer is gonna be the Archangel of Judgment," he tells her. He asks her what she wants, and Star requests some lemon sorbet. So Maxwell goes to the Marketplace and gets her what she asks. When Maxwell comes back, Star tries to get some nookie, and Maxwell gives in. When all is done, he goes to find the Stonies, get a few to act as guides. Afterwards, he heads back to the Seraphim Council.

Leah finds a few other (three) Malakim of War. He sits down and starts sharpening his axe. {Names: Ishmael, Meribah, Seneh.}

Dana was talking to Joel and Regulus about starting Judgment back up, and building the Spires, and making new Servitors, and stuff. She runs into Dylan, who has his Windies. Zachariah tries to explain to Dana about how she can make the world very Win dy-friendly. They go and join the whole group.

"I wave to them but I don’t get too close because they’re Windies and they’re scary." - Leah.

They go and find Michael. Michael debriefs them on the mission, including telling them specifically that they are not to be captured and they are not to give up any information to Dominic at all costs. Michael advises them to kill or murder fo r information, anything that is necessary to get the job done. He wants anyone who looks like a prisoner freed, because this is the last chance. He intends to flatten the place and bring this new power structure in Hell down.

The group leaves and discusses what to do outside. Maxwell and Dylan put on their Kobalite suits as everyone gets into vessel. They sit down and discuss tactics and plans. Leah figures out marching order, and gives some advice about how the group sh ould space itself.

"I try to do tactics, but all I can think of is Lucifer!" - Allen

"There’s no I in Judgment, but there is a Me." - Steve

They pass through the Groves, and it’s obvious this is where Michael is staging his army. Dana fills her pockets full of stones for her Malakite of Eli attunement. They get to the great gaping maw entrance to the Labyrinth. The Labyrinth is totally abandoned. There is simply no one there. The gems are still glowing in the walls, the veins of precious metals are untouched, the workshops are empty. This time the place is filled with just echos and memories.

They get to the big double doors where they had faced Dominic before. The hole in the wall is still there. There are little piles on the floor: remains of the dead who came with them to rescue Laurence, the ones who died. This is where the Stonies en d, they refuse to go past the doors and into Hell. Maxwell hands them over for final rites.

They walk into the room where Laurence was held. The chains with the hooks still hang from the high domed ceiling, caked with old dried blood, swinging in an unknown breeze. Dark brown and red splatters across the cross inlaid in the white marble flo or. Eight doors are closed, leaving from the room. Maxwell requests the map from Dana, with a successful application of tactics figures out a way to get from the room to the nearest group of celestial prisoners. Leah suggests that Zachariah goes with M axwell to open locks.

They go through the door into a long white hallway, with a white linoleum floor. They walk for a while, and the fluorescent lights above start to flicker, and making the light dim and dance.. They look at the map, and they haven’t gone anywhere past the door. According to the map, they’re just standing right outside the doorway. They turn around and go back into the main room to try another door. They open another door, and it’s another long white hallway. They try going a little while, but it’s the same hallway. They turn around, and Leah discusses some of his theories about the way the doors work. They go down a third hallway, and this time at the point they keep turning back there is the dripping fresh arrow drawn in blood that points down the hall, and the words "this way"….

Someone knows they are there.

The hallway turned into row after row of heavy steel maximum security prison doors. Behind a few are the sounds of scurring. After looking at them, the group realizes that the doors are electronically locked. Zachariah fiddles around for a moment an d gets the door open. They open the door, and hiding in the back is some sort of shape which comes shuffling forward. This is a damned soul, tortured, eyes burned out, confined here for eternity. They throw it back in quickly and slam the door. They m ove on.

As they pass through, the cells become more filled. The floor has become dirty and nasty, coated with unidentifiable substances and filth pushed up into corners. Rats scurry along the walls. Arms reach out to grab the angels as they pass by, sometim es snagging clothing. Soon it begins to become more open cells with bars for doors, and the interior of the cells alternate with holding chambers and torture chambers. In some of the torture equipment there are souls, but no demons.

They are passing a cell in which is inhabiting a soul who is screaming, "Let me out! I was put in here unjustly! Help me, man! Help me! They haven’t fed me in a month!" He’s in an unbuckled straight jacket and is throwing himself against the bars. Leah resonates on him, and gets the worst thing this guy has done in the last year. He learns this soul was a mass murderer, who hijacked a church bus full of schoolchildren, drove it up to a mountain retreat. Before he was killed, he had mu rdered and eaten most of them. Leah cuts off the man’s his hand and shoves it back to him. "There’s something for you to eat."

At the end of the hallway, they run into a Djinn dressed as a security guard. Maxwell and the Malakim jump him. He dies quickly. He had keys and a taser and a pair of handcuffs.

They go through the door and on a dias is an old, rusty electric chair. There are two ways to go from here, left and right. Before they head left, on the right, a guy comes running out with a Russian machine gun. He opens up into Maxwell, but doesn’ t hit anything. Maxwell leaps over and cuts off the guy’s arm. The guy yells, "You! You killed me! I want to kill you, bastard!" It’s the soul of the guy Max killed in the Game Tether DMV. Leah snaps his neck, and Dana picks up his gun.

Down the hallway they can start to hear the screams of the tortured. They start to actually see the demons doing torture. The demons don’t bother to stop as the angels pass.

They come to the end of the hall and find themselves standing on the overlook to the large judging room. Below them are human souls – and a celestial or two – in a huge line, winding around posts. The desk is enormous, and behind it are three black r obed beings. Over them, hanging in the air, is a huge black hammer. On one side is an Executioner in a black mask. He stands before a block and an enormous pile of bodies. A soul is pushed before a judge, where it is judged Guilty for some minor infrac tion, and it is pushed over to the Executioner as the judge behind the desk calls, "Next!"

The angels pull back to discuss what to do. There is a route on the map, which will take them down to the entrance of the room. The plan is that the Windies are going to start a riot and create chaos while the rest rush the demons. They make their way down.

Dana creeps up to the door and sings a song of light. Goes off, about half of the souls are are blinded! Windies go in and start picking locks on fetters, but the souls just stand around looking blinded and confused. One of the Judges stands up and points at them and yells, "Guilty! Bring them to me!" The souls, pushed by something deep inside, starts to attack the group.

"Hey, I have a gun too! Ho ho ho!" - Dana

• Max rolls a 666 when singing the song of shields….

Leah and the Malakim of War start cleaving their way through the mob of souls to get to the front. Dylan frees the one angel, a Mercurian, from his fetters, and the freed angel starts attacking souls like a berserker. The same thing happens when the other Windies free the fettered demons. Dana tries to remove the Mercurian’s discord, but she starts to really mess him up, as it comes off too fast, too much. The angel screams.

Leah sings Thunder, which takes down waves of humans. The Malakim rush to the front of the crowd, and two of them go down under songs of entropy. Dana starts to think about what to do. She looks around, and Maxwell is nowhere to be seen.

Maxwell is running up there to kill the Executioner, and suddenly he’s falling and falling and falling into blackness. He wakes, and he is in his vessel, in the suit, hanging from a thousand hooks piercing his skin. He is there in the dark for a whil e until he hears the sound of dripping. And dripping. And sizzling. And the rush of robes over stones.

Dominic faces him in the blackness, and tells him that he will kill him…. Slowly… painfully… over thousands of years so Maxwell can think about what he’s done, and repent for his crimes and understand. No more will he be allowed to take Dominic’s toys away, not when his toy was so… close… to breaking.

"I’m starting to search the memory banks to figure out what his favorite toy might have been." - Maxwell

After Dominic leaves, Maxwell rips his arm off of the hooks, screaming in pain. He hangs there stunned for a while. As he starts to recover, he can hear the whirring of drills. Because he’s dislodged himself, the drill presses across his cheek and ag ainst his temple instead of eye sockets. When he recovers, he pulls the hooks out of his other arm and slumps down, but the pain is enormous. He ends up laying on the slick blood coated floor. He lays there for a while until he decides to celestial son g of motion himself off the chains. He comes to, and finds that still has the hooks in his body, hundreds of them in his legs and his back. He can sense his heart but not ascend. He can sense Soulpiercer but not get there. And he’s in the inky blacknes s of Dominic’s Cathedral.

In the main room, it is just a matter of time before the Demons at the front desk are utterly overwhelmed by the angels and killed. It turns out to be too many on three. The Executioner just watches and giggles. Then they kill the gigging Executione r.

They have lost Maxwell, but they have to move on. They open a big door in the wall. They go through a series of doors, and start passing through an area which is filled with celestials of some sort.. maybe ethereals…. They pass what once was a Malaki te hanging on a St. Andrews Cross. Most of his parts have been transposed to electronics - some of which short out occasionally. He twitches and cries out in pain as they pass.

As they stand there and discuss what to do, the doors fly open and demons pour out screaming, "Kill the Baalites! They’re attacking!"

"I don’t know what would be useful…. Except this machine gun!" - Susan

Dana opens fire and quickly runs out of ammo. The demons are not so much interested in killing the intruders as butchering their prisoners. There are demons trying to kill angels, angels trying to kill demons, demons butchering prisoners, angels free ing prisoners – the Windies got their chaos. Dana gets everyone corralled into one place and ZING, the porta-tether.

They end up in the Glade with some frying toasty demons, some strange ethereal beings, and a small smattering of different angels. Dylan resonates on the ethereal beings, but they’re very bizarre, like a strange form of Fae from the outer marches. Da na learns how to redeem demons really incredibly fast, mostly by some crazy experimentation. She loses three. She save the fourth, except it lost a bunch of forces. They drag their people in the Groves, where the Michaelites are starting to march out a s fast as possible….

Flaming edge graphics from Our Domain Gallery of Graphics
The "In Nomine" and "flaming feather" graphics are
(C) 1997 Steve Jackson Games, Incorporated.
Used with fnord.