In Nomine: Lightskimmers.


Description: Essentially a sail-powered catamaran, if catamarans and their sails were made of glittering prisms of light that manage to brilliantly, yet painlessly, sparkle. There isn’t really a standard model anymore; but if there was, it would comfortably seat about twenty.  The artifacts are built for speed, not durability. Anything that manages to hit a lightskimmer can likely disable it with one shot, but these days nothing or no-one with less power than a Superior can hit a lightskimmer.

Major Ability: Lightskimmers can sail anywhere there is light, in all three planes of existence.  Note: there is no way to disguise the appearance of one. Or make people ignore the presence of one.

These artifacts are old.  They predate the Fall, in fact; when angels needed to travel long distances on one of the three planes, they took a lightskimmer, and traveled in some style.  Their manufacture was the responsibility of Servitors of Light; while Lucifer (as Archangel of Light) did not make every lightskimmer, he did create the first ones, and always created the best ones.

But most of them were destroyed in the Fall, of course.  The rebels at first had a vast fleet of commandeered lightskimmers to press their assault on the Heavenly City, and no angel that was on the battlefield that day will ever forget the sight of rainbows tumbling and burning as they were broken and cast to the ground, one by one.  Lucifer’s personal lightskimmer was the last to be destroyed; and he in his Pride did it himself, so that no angel could later claim that they slapped the Lightbringer out of the sky. And once Lucifer and his rebels had been sent to Hell, Heaven chose to let the remaining lightskimmers decay into prismatic dust on the celestial wind. It was less painful than remembering the Host’s loss.

Still, a few survived; generally they were the ones on the ethereal plane, which is about the only place where someone can use lightskimmers these days.  They’re impossible to hide, so using one on the corporeal plane will immediately get a lot of angry attention from celestials trying to hide the existence of the War; and using one on the celestial plane will just get angry attention. But in the ethereal plane lightskimmers can genuiniely hope to avoid unwelcome attention, or at least escape it.  

Interestingly, nobody is now going to be fully comfortable when traveling in a lightskimmer.  Mortals find the artifacts subtly unwelcoming; none of the fixtures ever fits right in a human’s hand, and even sitting in one of its chairs makes mortals quickly feel like they are three year olds being allowed to stay up too late by over-indulgent adults.  Ethereals have difficulty making lightskimmers go at all, and soon learn to never, ever trust one; if a boom or wire can suddenly shift in a way to fling an ethereal over the side, it will, eventually (and possibly maliciously). As for celestials: demons who travel via lightskimmer end up full of bluster and insecurity, while angels grow more melancholy and oppressed, the longer they stay on board.

But if somebody needs to go somewhere in a hurry, these are the artifacts to use. These artifacts are fast.  Not quite teleportation, but usefully fast, and without using Essence or celestial resonances.  That’s worth a little discomfort, surely?


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