Editing Supernatural Law: New Orleans (section)

==Cosmology, Politics and Supernatural Beings==
So the governments have treaties with the powers of alien realms. What are those powers like? Well, the answer is "numerous". For example, Fey Realms is a blanket term that covers countless Courts, as the Fey call their realms. Simply due to their number, it is not uncommon to find gateways to Fey realms, but they are strange places where time flows at a vastly accelerated rate but nothing really ages. Visiting is not recommended.

More specific and unique realms exist, but they tend to be harder to reach. Somewhere out there are Asgard and Avalon, although the only known gateways to those realms exist in Northern Europe and British Isles, respectively.

Generally, human nations tend to have treaties with any Other Side realms that see at least semi-regular traffic through known gateways from within their national borders. However, there are two powers that everyone has to treat with. The Hosts. Hosts of Heavens and Hells. Angels and Devils.

===Angels and Devils===
Heavens and Hells are the most powerful realms, and the oldest. It is possible that they have always existed. Among the multitude of Other Side realms, they are the nuclear armed superpowers that no one wants to provoke.

The hosts are competing powers, hostile to each other. But they do not fight wars. Not anymore. Legends tell that they once did and universes fell, but they are evenly matched. The conflict always ended in peace talks and treaties. And now their relations and behavior towards each other is bound to countless treaties and agreements, and they are bound to them in a way humans would have difficulty understanding. Literally unable to break them. So they maintain civil relations. Exchange envoys. Maintain embassies.

The hosts still compete though. They are embroiled in an eternal cold war. Diplomacy. Espionage. Sabotage. When human nations started negotiating with the Other Side, it was the Hosts that laid out the rules. And they maintain an active interest. Even New Orleans has Consulates for the Consuls of Heaven and Hell. (There are actually multiple Heavens and Hells, but in common parlance they get lumped together.)

There are two main reasons for the Hosts to have an interest. First, human souls. The Hosts collect souls. For what purpose, no one knows. They neither explain nor allow visitors to the parts of their realms where the souls are taken. But there are no pacts written in blood involved in the process of soul collecting. The hosts have treaties for the division of souls. There is a realm, dubbed Purgatory by humans, where the souls claimed by the Hosts go for eventual processing, division and transportation to their final destinations. The Hosts do not claim all the souls, and their rules are as mysterious as their reasons.

The second reason for the Hosts to have an interest is proxies. The Hosts are kept from conflict by their treaties, but humans are not bound by them. Both of the Hosts have created and maintain distinct bloodlines of Hell- or Heaven-empowered humans. Devil Blooded and Angel Blooded. Despite their empowerment, they remain human enough not to be bound by the treaties, and the Hosts engage in limited conflict through them. Raids, commando strikes, assassinations. However, sometimes the Host-Blooded balk at following the orders of their patrons and strike out after their own destinies. They are not bound, after all.

A research published in the 1950s claims that in their natural state, both Angels and Devils are immaterial beings that resemble geometric shapes. But the research was based on confiscated Nazi research papers and is considered of questionable reliability. It has never been confirmed and the Hosts are not very forthcoming with information. What makes it hard to say anything reliable about the natural forms of Angels and Devils is that they are expert shapeshifters, capable of assuming numerous shapes both material and immaterial.

The Hosts also have ranks. While they are in common parlance all dubbed Angels and Devils, it is actually rare for Hosts of that rank to visit. In New Orleans, the only known ones are the two Consuls. Above them are Archangels and Archdevils, but little is known of these beings, or whether there are more ranks above them. The activities of the Hosts on Earth are most commonly performed by their human and half-human agents, and on the occasion that Hosts take direct action, the beings sent are their foot soldiers. Devas and Asuras, a step below actual Angels and Devils.

Devas and Asuras lack the shapeshifting abilities of their superiors. They have only been observed in human forms, and even that is a single form they cannot change. It is possible that they cannot create physical forms themselves and are provided with ones when sent to our world on a mission.

As a rule, all the Hosts prefer to be flight capable, and even Devas and Asuras can manifest a pair of glowing wings with a carrying capacity far exceeding their size.

All Hosts are exceptionally dangerous beings. The only thing in our world that can harm their otherworldly physical forms is fire, and even that does not have full effect. Magic works just fine, and hosts have even trained their human proxies in the distinct disciplines of Devil Slayers and Angel Killers, and this training has since spread to other people. It is debatable whether destroying their physical bodies truly kills the Hosts, however.

Hosts are expected to obey our laws while in our world and are subject to arrest if they break them. The Consuls have diplomatic immunity, but even that has limits. By the Edinburgh Treaties, Hosts are forbidden from influencing secular authorities. (Religious authorities are fair game.) They tend to circumvent this by influencing a person before he becomes a secular authority and then just let him run. But manipulating such a person into a position of authority is a treaty violation, and blatant tampering like that has been known to happen.

OCD Detectives rarely have need to interact with the Consuls, that kind of thing is handled at diplomatic levels. The one member of the Hosts they on occasion do have to interact with is an Asura. '''Azharbel the Hell Cop'''. He got assigned to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina stirred up all kinds of trouble, and has since been looking around for anything that might upset the Archdevil of Law, or Azharbel's direct boss, the Consul.

Being a Devil thoroughly lacking in compassion and empathy, Azharbel does not make arrests. And when he does, it is even worse, for that means that someone is going to get dragged to Hell. So when OCD Detectives and the Hell Cop end up on the same case, it is always a race to beat the Asura to the target.

===Demons===
Some beings you should never enter into pacts with. Demons being the most well-known example. They are notorious soul poachers who subsist on suffering.

Devils do not do deals written in blood, Demons do. They appear to have no realm of their own, but flit through other realms, looking for gullible or desperate people to trick into bargains. Demonic bargains are always heavily lopsided in the demon's favor, but this is not always immediately apparent.

Demons are highly individualistic and difficult to categorize. Some appear harmless, others terrifying. Some are brutish and violent, others cunning and subtle. Some are immaterial beings who possess people, others can manifest physical bodies. Some focus on collecting souls, others go around causing misery and suffering that they take nourishment and pleasure from. But there are similarities between them too. Such as the fact that any pact with a demon always ends in suffering. And when demons are concerned, not even death is an escape.

Even worse, some demons are capable of just plain stealing a person’s soul, no pacts or agreements needed. Most often this is done through an elaborate ritual murder. And in such a case, freeing the stolen souls is possible as long as the demon does not manage to smuggle them out of our realm.

Everyone takes a dim view of the soul stealing the Demons do, both human authorities and the Hosts. And one time when OCD Detectives might find themselves working with Hell Cops or Agents of Heaven - or even both - is when a powerful demon slips through.

===Elementals===
Volatile and dangerous beings. Except for earth elementals, who are deeply philosophical and devout pacifists. For a long time, mages used to summon them to do their bidding. Even after the treaties, for the elementals have little society, no government, and no force to represent them. They are, however, self-aware and intelligent. And summoning them away from their native environment causes them physical and mental anguish and robs them of their freedom of action. So it did not take long for the Elemental Rights Movement to form. The summoning of elementals was banned in most parts of Europe after World War II, and in Canada not long after that, but in US an influential lobby group funded by wealthy mages and corporations specializing in arcane or alchemical products has resisted such legislation, citing the damage it would do to US business interests.

The elemental workforce has been largely invisible to the common mage community, and the lobby group managed to have its way for decades. It took social media to undo their efforts. After an image of earth elementals passively resisting in a sitting strike even in the face of physical abuse went viral in the younger mage community, the law against elemental summoning was finally passed late last year. But many people represented by the failed lobby group were utterly incensed. It is highly likely that in the near future the law will get broken often. Perhaps even publicly, in an attempt to force a supreme court case.

In New Orleans, that might result in a huge problem, though. For two decades, Water Court of water elementals has had a strong foothold in the City, having their base of operations on the bottom of Mississippi River, inside a sunken steamboat. They have slowly been taking other elementals under their umbrella, and they follow their own laws over human ones, only grudgingly trying to avoid confrontations with OCD. Any elemental slavery, and Water Court would take the law into their own hands and use it as a club.

===Liches===
There is a millennia-old ritual, reputedly dating from ancient Egypt. The ritual of Lichdom. It allows a mage to cheat death by anchoring her soul into a special object called a phylactery. While cadaverous in appearance, a liche does not fully die as long as the phylactery remains intact. But there is a cost. Every time the liche would die, by accident or violence, someone else dies in her stead. And the liche has no control over who dies. It could be anyone within several miles of the phylactery.

Liches are extremely few in number. The ritual is difficult, even for a powerful and experienced mage. And the costs of failure may be worse than death. Few people try it, even at advanced age or while facing a terminal illness. Even fewer succeed. And liches are not immortal. They need copious amounts of alchemical substances to maintain their bodies. And should their phylactery be destroyed, they die instantly.
Ritual of lichdom is a felony these days, and in New Orleans, no permit of residency for a lich has been granted, and even getting a visitor visa is a hurdle. Not that liches generally travel, most are paranoid about the security of their phylacteries.

===Spirits and Homunculi===
Many beings of the other side are immaterial. Some can manifest physical forms but most can not, and when visiting our realm the latter are either severely diminished or even completely incapable of entering unless they can obtain a physical body. For much of history, this was done through two different methods. The first method being possession, an involuntary takeover of someone’s body. Often highly harmful to the host person. The second is channeling, where a person forms a link with a spirit and voluntarily cedes partial control of his body to the channeled spirit. The latter method usually involves a pact of some kind.

Modern era has brought the third alternative. The Homunculi.

There have always been people who have mixed magic and science. Alchemy, the mixing of magic with chemistry, is the most widespread and well known. But magic has also been combined with other fields of science. Many names have been suggested for different combinations and some, such as technomancy, have caught on. But in common parlance, and somewhat misleadingly, people tend to just add “alchemy” to the name of the field. Mixing biology and magic would be called Bio-Alchemy, and so on.

Homunculi are created by Gene-Alchemy. They are half way between Flesh Golems and clones. In effect, a homunculus is a lab-grown human body with just the most basic autonomous functions and no consciousness of its own. Ripe for possession.

Some magi create homunculi in order to summon and bind spirits to them, creating supernatural servants and minions. Others offer them for sale to the beings from the Other Side willing to visit our world. Every homunculus is an expensive creation, but powerful beings from the other side have ways of paying the price.

By Law, homunculi are required to be tattooed with serial numbers and registered, so in case of trouble the police will know where to go asking questions. But there is a thriving black market trade for unmarked homunculi, to be used for purposes the police would object to.

===Vampires and Werewolves===
Though these beings are powerful, they are also cited as examples of what happens when one wants too much out of a pact. For while mages are still mostly human despite their otherworldly powers, and most definitely inhabitants of our world, vampires and werewolves are no longer quite human although they can pass as them. They also have difficulties surviving in our world, needing special diets to keep their otherworldly part of falling ill, and possessing strange vulnerabilities.

No one knows for sure what people entered into pacts that turned them into vampires and werewolves or when exactly this happened, but most theories suspect primitive tribes living in what is today Eastern Europe. Nor is it known what being or beings they made pacts with, although the answer is unlikely to be anything good. It stands to reason that the timeless Hosts would know, but both Angels and Devils steadfastly refuse to answer questions about the subject. It is possible that vampires and werewolves were created as proxies in some otherworldly conflict, for they seem to have an instinctive loathing of each other. While this does not make them automatically fight each other upon meeting, it does make coexistence strained and violence more likely to happen.

====Vampires====
Physically powerful and capable of enduring damage that would kill a human twice over, vampires can still die of injuries other than decapitation and a stake through the heart, although anyone who has faced one can understand where the rumors about their unkillability come from. Vampires also eat food just like anyone else, but they also need a daily diet of fresh blood to keep from wasting away. The blood needs to be from a human and freshly drawn from the veins. Animal blood is useless to a vampire and stored human blood rapidly loses the mystical qualities a vampire needs.

Vampires are also vulnerable to sunlight and certain symbols. Particularly holy symbols. And this does not in any fashion depend on the religious views of a vampire or the person brandishing the symbol. An atheist vampire would be repelled by a Buddhist waving a crucifix. In fact, the symbol does not need to be brandished by anyone. Stepping into a house of worship or a cemetery would be impossible for a vampire. At least a young one, for they build up resistance as they age. A young vampire would suffer burns at sunlight and recoil hissing from the sight of a cross, but an old vampire would merely suffer extreme discomfort at sunlight or within a church.

Vampires do not breed in normal fashion but they can create new vampires by draining a human of blood and then infusing the victim with some of the vampire's own blood - and a hefty amount of the mystical power that courses within a vampire's veins. The process is taxing, but even a single vampire can eventually repopulate their numbers. Despite this, they are rare creatures. Largely because their vulnerabilities make it difficult for vampires to hide if people become aware of them. Yet they cannot live far away from humans either because of their daily need for human blood. A single vampire needs a herd of several hundred humans to feed from without adversely affecting their health. For a long period of history this made vampires solitary creatures, because another vampire in the area meant competition for the blood source. So they lived far apart, either as warlords ruling over a territory and exerting a tribute in blood, or as champions of primitive tribes, protecting their people and being supported by them. The spread of civilization largely brought such arrangements to end. Either vampiric lords and protectors were no longer needed or wanted and they perished in uprisings, or they died defending their territories against more numerous and better armed opponents.

One might perhaps think that the era of large cities would have led to a population boom of vampires, but that was not the case. The large number of human residents can in theory support a large vampire population but it also brings a threat of discovery. A single vampire needs a herd of several hundred, and the members of their herd come in contact with countless people. The more vampires, the greater the risk. Younger vampires, with their more blatant weaknesses, are especially prone to attract notice, so in the era of cities, few were created. To add to the problems, the authorities are perfectly aware that vampires exist, even if they contribute to keeping it secret. So assuming that vampires are even allowed residency, in the cities they usually have to live under highly restrictive laws.

So it is actually rare to find vampires living in cities. Mostly they live as they always have, in small communities. Either they find a remote small town or village where they can build a personal relationship and deal with the human authorities, or they form their own communities, such as by setting up a cult compound.

In New Orleans, there are two registered vampire inhabitants.

'''James Alexander''', a former Confederate soldier, went to Civil War as a living man. And returned to his family as a vampire. Initially shocked, his family then came to hide and aid him. And as he aged and his tolerance to vampiric weaknesses grew, James came to aid his family in turn. Today the Alexanders are a very well off family, and the true nature of Uncle James is a family secret.
James feeds by prowling the nightclubs. Tall, dark and handsome, with the manners of a gentleman and vampiric charisma, James can show a man or woman a good time. And being exhausted the next morning is just a sign of a night well spent, right?

During the day, he tends to wear fully covering clothes with a cowboy hat and sunclasses, but can otherwise move about. At night he dresses in a more leisurely and revealing fashion.

The vampire known only as '''The Count''' came to New Orleans during the era of Spanish rule, but he may be even older than that, and is definitely the eldest vampire in the region. On the surface he seems to be the archetypal brooding vampire, residing in a historical plantation house outside the City and receiving few visitors besides the ever changing number of call girls he feeds from.

The Count is less anachronistic than the appearance tells though. He has known to have remarked that he ''got into computers back in 1945 when ENIAC was still hot''. The Count owns a number of businesses that he runs from his home, he has quite a patent portfolio in electronics and computing, and he haunts several local online forums under a variety of pseudonyms. And the user ''KikUr4ss99'' who just pwned you in a FPS match, that you are sure is using cheats, may just have vampiric reflexes.

====Werewolves====
Werewolves have an easier time passing off as human because although they are capable of turning into fearsome monsters, they look outwardly human. And their vulnerability to silver is not as blatant as the vampiric vulnerabilities. But they have their own dietary needs. Every week, a werewolf must eat copious amounts of raw, freshly killed meat. It does not have to be human flesh, animals work just fine as a food source, but the meat must be unprepared and from a fresh kill. Stored or cooked meat loses its usefulness.

Another problem for werewolves is that their change is in part instinctive. Although they can fight the instinct, they feel an urge to turn at stressful situations and when they are physically injured.

A third problem is that werewolves can only have children with other werewolves. They can actually turn a human into a werewolf by biting and then infusing the bitten victim with a large amount of their mystical energy reserve, but that does not result in a true werewolf, but instead a terror weapon or a disposable shock trooper. Infected werewolves, called Ferals, have no conscious control over their transformation or what they do when transformed. They are driven only by rage and instinct. Only natural born werewolves have control over their change and actions.
Since werewolves do not need humans as a food source, can only breed among their own people, and usually face restrictive legislation at best when living among humans, they are an even rarer sight than vampires in human cities. Usually they live in remote rural areas, in their own insular communities. Werewolves are highly clannish, but different clans and families strive to maintain good relations and intermarry regularly. They have to, for werewolves face a constant threat of inbreeding. And inbred werewolves turn increasingly less human and more monstrous.

There are no werewolves in New Orleans proper, but in the countryside out of town, '''Clan Sauvage''' own a tract of land. The werewolf clan keep to themselves and do not encourage visitors.

===The Fey===

The Fey are fickle creatures and generally do not concentrate in a certain area but move as the mood takes them. The exception is the Goodnight Street in French Quarter. Officially it is known as a bit of a tourist trap. Hole in the wall food stands, souvenir and craft shops, street peddlers selling trinkets, and such. Everything is open day and night.

The entrepreneurs are all glamoured Goblins, and a mage who knows what to ask can find all kinds of things here, from ingredients, potions and talismans to imported (read smuggled) Fey goods.

Goblins play fast and loose with the laws, and Goodnight Street is a notorious source of illegal goods. Raiding the street would be futile, for the Goblins have lookouts, and the illegal goods would vanish faster than you can say Rumplestiltskin. Besides, the Goblins also deal in information which OCD occasionally has use for.

Other kinds of Fey are only an occasional hassle, and then it is rarely anything serious. Except for the Dryads. For some reason they have taken the local sex workers under their wing, and if a John gets nasty, so will the Dryads. A Dryad can drain a man into a husk, and although they rarely go that far, hospitals on occasion get some really weird cases in ER.