A Recap, of Sorts
What's Apparently Going On
Dominic has his hands full trying to keep the New Crusade under control. Thankfully, his Servitors have remained True to Judgement, but he's trying to check the loyalty of virtually everyone else … and the strain is beginning to show. The rest of the Council is unwilling to give Dominic quite the authority he needs to stamp out the movement, so the best that the Archangel of Judgement can do is to keep things more or less under control.
The New Crusade has forced Dominic to set new priorities, unfortunately. He's apparently already had to tone back his search for Eli, to the point that Hell has worked out that they might just be able to contact and subvert the Archangel of Creation without anyone noticing. Things are getting chaotic.
And, in the privacy of his inner sanctum, Dominic allows himself a pleased grin. Everything's going according to plan.
Belial is toast.
Surprise, Surprise, Surprise
People really should pay more attention to Judgement's dissonance conditions. Gabriel is practically the archetype for "an innocent punished unfairly", and the Host thinks that Dominic wants to put her on trial for heresy? Granted, she's insane, but there's a cure. Eliminate the Word-friction, and the Archangel of Fire should be able to eventually recover.
Dominic is ashamed that it took him so long to work this out. Until about a century or so ago, he really was reluctantly trying to get Gabriel put on trial. The Archangel of Judgement does have a tendency of not normally thinking "outside of the box", and he couldn’t see any other way to keep Fire constrained. Subconsciously, of course, the wisdom of such a course of action troubled him greatly, leaving him open to making a watershed decision when he discovered the first hints of the New Crusade.
So, why hasn't Dominic just openly called for a Crusade?
Well, aside from the fact that no one in general (and Michael in particular) would actually believe his motives, and the fact that an open attack would probably fail, and the fact that Dominic doesn't really trust any one else to control this movement … there's no reason at all.
The Vignettes tell the story, really: the Archangel of Judgement has quietly taken over the New Crusade, and is subtly arranged matters so that Belial will find himself a target, very, very soon. Of course, there's the problem of Infernal Fire's allies: for this to really work, Dominic needs a diversion.
Well, Eli's always been quite diverting, anyway…
The Archangel of Creation has been playing a dangerous game for the last five decades. To save Gabriel, he's pretended to be an amnesiac, shallow slob who's practically begging for a Fall… just so that, at the critical moment, Hell is too busy trying to corrupt him to give Belial any useful help, and Heaven is too busy disapproving of Dominic's 'persecution' to discover what's actually going on. Even if it works, there's going to be a lot of acrimony flying around.
But if it works, well, what price the sanity of one of the noblest entities in Creation?