Editing Supernatural Law: New Orleans (section)

===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.