Satan
Malakite of Judgment
Angel of Temptation
By Moe Lane
| Corporeal Forces: 5 |
|
Strength: 10 |
|
Agility: 10 |
| Ethereal Forces: 6 |
|
Intelligence: 12 |
|
Precision: 12 |
| Celestial Forces: 6 |
|
Will: 12 |
|
Perception: 12 |
| Word-Forces: 16 |
Skills: Detect Lies/6, Dodge/5, Emote/6, Fighting/5,
Large Weapon/6 (sword), Knowledge (Ethics/6,
Theology/6), Ranged Weapon/6 (shotgun)
Songs: Light (Corporeal/3, Ethereal/3, Celestial/6),
Motion (All/3), Nimbus (Corporeal/3), Retribution
(All/2), Shields (All/3), Tongues (Corporeal/3,
Ethereal/3)
Attunements: Malakite of Judgement, Inquisitor, Angel
of Temptation
Extra Rites:
- Tempt someone without lying to them.
- Have someone resist one of your temptations (not cumulative with above)
Vessels: Human male/4
Roles: None
Dissonance: 0
Discord: None
Artifacts: None
Oaths:
- "Suffer not an evil to live, if it is my choice."
- "Never surrender or be captured by the forces of
Lucifer (Satan is even less willing to let this happen
than most Malakim. He does not ever want to meet up
with his former boss, for reasons that should be
obvious).
- "Never go too far while performing my tasks."
- "Always make sure that those I successfully test are
not harmed by the experience."
No, no, NO. Put down the Milton and step away
slowly. The author got it confused.
Well, it wasn't really his fault: the theologians were
the first ones to get things all muddled up. And
that's mostly because of St. John: an examination of
the books of Job and Zechariah will reveal the picture
of a Dominican just trying to do his job, not the
Great Beast. Unfortunately, when you walk around with
a name derived from the Hebrew word for 'accuser',
mistakes like these can happen - especially when a
primary source is more interested in getting the
prophecy written down than in providing footnotes.
Anyway, Satan has his share of issues. His job is
probably the least appreciated in Heaven: after all,
who can like somebody who's trying to actively subvert
your virtue?
Unfortunately, there's a very good reason why an Angel
of Temptation is so necessary: complacency. The last
thing that the Host needs is humans and celestials
that are good out of habit. Virtue like that can
shatter like a tea cup on a stone floor the first time
that it gets seriously tested. People should be good
because they've faced up to the alternatives, weighed
the options, and decided to reject evil anyway - but
to do that, they need to be tested.
That's where Satan comes in. He worked for Light,
sure: he even once shared the same Choir as his
Superior. But he made his own choice during the First
War, and never regretted it. After the dust had
settled, the new Malakite ended up working for
Dominic, specializing in humanity. He was very good
at his job, which eventually led him into serious
trouble.
You see, when Dominic caught wind of a certain prophet
in the Near East, he naturally sent his best
Inquisitor to check out the situation. The results
were later deemed ... unfortunate. Jesus came through
His tests with flying colors, but was apparently not
too pleased with the fact that Heaven felt the need to
have a Malakite Inquisitor to rake Him over the coals
for over a month. Worse, Satan walked away from the
whole thing with absolutely no clue whether or not
Jesus was the Son of God. This did nothing for his
career prospects, especially since the person that he
was supposed to test ended up founding a world
religion.
The Malakite has wanted to change his name more than
once in the past two thousand years: thanks to his
unfortunate interaction with Jesus, the latter did not
remember him fondly - and later Christian theologians
took His irritation and ran with it. Pretty soon, the
garbled story was that Jesus had had it out with the
devil himself - and, hey, what's one more name for the
Prince of Lies? The name shows up in the Old
Testament, after all...
Personally, the Malakite is fairly lonely (having
blessed souls run screaming the first time that they
hear your name will do that to you). Really, he's
only doing his job, for the love of God. There are a
lot of angels with distasteful jobs. But, even in
Heaven you get those who like to rationalize a
dislike, so Satan spends as much time as he can on the
Corporeal plane, trying to make sure that people
aren't getting spiritually lazy.
Well, when he isn't bursting into Black Masses and
eviscerating everyone there that calls on Satan to
protect them. That isn't really part of his job, but
it does relieve his frustrations a bit.
Angel of Temptation: As Angel of Temptation, Satan
automatically knows what would best tempt another to
renounce the cause of Good. He doesn't know how
tempting it is, or whether the person would be able to
resist it, unfortunately. He also may isolate an
individual to tempt them, via an elaborate illusion
(this is what he did with Job. Jesus stared him down
and told him to go through it in real time). The cost
for the latter ability is 8 Essence: Satan gets half
of the Essence back if the target successfully resists
the temptation).
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