Empatheias Application

[warriorscribe]

⌈ PLAYER SECTION ⌉
Player: Cherry
Contact: CherryFlight
Age: 26
Current Characters: N/A


⌈ CHARACTER SECTION ⌉
Character: Enoch
Age: Immortal, 385~400? Appears mid-20s-mid-30s.
Canon: El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron
Canon Point: End of chapter 9, running on a surge of determination

Background: Enoch was the first, and to his current time, only, human to be brought up to Heaven while still alive. He remembers that he was brought up, and that he worked as a scribe, but it's been over three centuries since he's been there, so he doesn't remember anything but the most outstanding details. Why hasn't he been in Heaven? Because a group of angels called the Grigori decided they wanted to live with humans so badly. Like betrayal-level badly. They stole some Fruits of Wisdom (that's the game's weapon cache) and fled Heaven. There was a slight problem with their plan, though: when an angel and a human have a kid, that kid is a Nephilim - in this canon, creatures that seem small and cute at first...but they're in constant pain, and eat one another to seek an escape from it. Each of them contains trace amounts of vileness (a substance that is more or less corruption itself), and this accumulates as they eat one another. Eventually, this corruption reaches a threshold, and the Nephilim mutates into a Fire Nephilim, and then it is no longer harmless to humans. Fire Nephilim are consumed by their pain and anger, and rampage uncontrollably. They could level an entire village with no survivors all too easily. And because the Grigori were hidden away in a tower in a pocket dimension, with a veil that even God couldn't see through, Heaven's ruling body, the Council of Elders, decided the best bet was to flood Earth and start anew - if Earth will fall into ruin, better it be under their control and allow them to rebuild. Naturally, their scribe protested. Enoch was granted permission to return to Earth and track down the Grigori himself. If he could capture them and return their souls to Heaven, the Nephilim would vanish, as their existences are tied to their angel parent's.

Again, they were in a pocket dimension. This made them very hard to find. In fact, it took Enoch 365 years to find them. No, he wasn't an angel. He had just been made immortal, as he discovered soon enough. Immortality sounds like a pretty good deal, doesn't it? Your body doesn't age and break down, there's always time to finish any projects you start...but among mortal company, it's a double-edged sword. Your friends and loved ones will age and die and leave you behind, and those in power will be jealous. And even before refined sciences, there will always be those with exactly the wrong mix of curiosity and lack of ethics (good thing Enoch never encountered someone like this. Or if he did, we were never shown). In an era and location where marriage was often a social contract and expectation, and Enoch had to avoid standing out too much, it was inevitable that he would lose again and again - we are never directly shown such, but his reactions to new people later speak for themselves. Such as when he finds the Tower the Grigori are hiding in and meets a little girl named Nanna - she's giving him important information about the warrior Ishtar, who's supposed to lead the Tower to freedom, but he doesn't even dare to respond. He's so bad at guarding his heart (more on this in the personality section) that he doesn't say a word.

Though things seem to go rather smoothly when he finds the Tower. Ezekiel flees to a higher floor, he successfully imprisons Sariel and clears up one of the largest groups of Nephilim in doing so (the game presents Sariel in a sympathetic light; this is not a mistake), he learns Baraqel was eaten by one of his own children (and then he got a little help from his own (future) kid in dealing with that), and he gets a rude introduction to high technology in Azazel's floor, but ultimately Azazel flees higher, too.

And then there's Armaros. Right away, this was different. Lucifel calls Armaros Enoch's "good friend" as they move between floors. Enoch can't remember Armaros, so he couldn't confirm this, but then Michael tells him he had told Armaros about his experiences on Earth. And furthermore, Armaros isn't even like his fellow Fallen Angels - the resistance group in the Tower, the Freemen, aren't afraid of him, and there's even implied communication between them, as they know of his "feelings of friendship towards a human he met in Heaven", and even think that this could help him repent. And then there's his Nephilim - it's not even a regular Nephilim, it's a Water Nephilim, which the Freemen say is at peace. The game's creator has said that Water Nephilim grow naturally like any other animal, as well, they don't even eat each other. And then Armaros doesn't even open with an attack - he was under the delusion that putting on a show could convince Enoch to join him, he wanted his friend back. And obligingly, not wanting to attack a nonaggressive opponent, Enoch doesn't fight him directly, only fending off his crazed followers that come after him on the stage until Armaros realizes Enoch was serious about this capture thing. Out of options, he meets him in full armor to fight, and fight they do. And then Belial, a prince of The Darkness (opposed to Heaven, should say enough), interrupts. Remember Nanna? She'd been following Enoch all this time. Well, Belial's decided Enoch would make a nice weapon, and he captures her as bait to coax him into jumping into The Darkness. Enoch is angry, angrier than we'll ever see him again, at a child being brought to harm, and despite Michael and Armaros both calling after him, he hurries to jump after her.

The Darkness is not a nice place.

Before this, Enoch had the opportunity to see the pits, gathering some remains of Ishtar's bones and with them, fragments of her prophecy she'd left behind to guide the Freemen. The pits were horrible places where the voices of those who had been trapped there (and there were many, because the Tower had another catch: people who died there never saw Heaven) called out in a nightmarish gurgling cacophany. The bottom contained a pool of vileness which rose ever so slowly, tinting the walls red, and there were platforms, as if to provide escape, but nothing at the top - those agile enough to outrun the vileness would have nothing left to do but wait to be consumed by it anyway. Enoch was only capable of escaping them because Ishtar's spirit led him to where a projection of Armaros (identified as such only in the manual and Complete Guide, identifiable through inference because his hand motions are repeated exactly when he reaches for Enoch after he jumps) could pull him back out. But if he were to fail, the vileness would ensnare him and pull him under, and he would emerge corrupted, wearing armor like those of the Grigori, and consumed by his inner pain and anger. (What we won't be told until the official novel is that the enemy Wisps that have been seen throughout the game are involved in physical torture as well, aiding the corruption process by cutting their way into a person's body and releasing vileness directly inside them)

In this case, he is puppeteered by Belial. And once again, Armaros helps him, though this time with the help of Lucifel and the Archangels. Though Lucifel is focused on the mission, and as such, it seems more efficient to simply leave Armaros behind. And so Enoch and Nanna are rescued at their savior's expense. Nanna is just fine(for now); Ishtar's spirit had entered her body to escape The Darkness, as she had been wandering it since her death hundreds of years before. Enoch isn't so lucky. His physical body remains unconscious and is encased in a protective block of carbonite silver while his still corrupted soul ascends to Heaven to be cleansed.

Cleansing, it turns out, is something Enoch has to do himself. Vileness corrupts not from without, but from within. Everything it draws on comes from the person themselves, and Enoch must overcome his own pain and doubt to purge the vileness. His doubts haven't been aired directly within the narrative, because he's been hiding them away so well. All that smooth sailing hasn't been so smooth on the inside and now he has to confront them when they've been amplified and taken over his mind, under stress of having been recently tortured, at that. The knowledge of hardship on Earth and that the Grigori genuinely wanted to help, the fact that he's been killing men who only fought for what they believed in just like himself, the fact that Sariel genuinely loved his lovers and family, and Armaros...everything about Armaros. It takes him several hours, but in Heaven time flows faster, and ten years pass on Earth. Nanna is loyal to her hero, and tries to encourage him. Until the Freemen are cornered by the remaining Grigori's armies. Their leader, Sin, is killed, and the loss of both Enoch and her father figure awakens Ishtar's spirit and causes it to merge with her own. Nanna as a separate identity is lost and Ishtar is reborn - and in the meantime, Lucifel managed to preempt the Tower's soul-snatching and help Sin up to Heaven, where he tells Enoch about what Nanna has been going through, indirectly comparing their situations and telling him that she must overcome her fear and doubt and lead the Freemen.

And then Ishtar, grown, speaks, resolving to her childhood hero that she will pick up where he left off and end the false evolution of the Tower. The reminder of his mission, and the strength in her voice in spite of her terrible loss and even centuries in The Darkness, inspire him, and he purges the vileness. After facing a representation of his own inner darkness and subduing it in battle, he breaks free from his silver casing on Earth, determination renewed.

It is this newfound vigor that will draw Empatheias to him.

Personality: In the beginning, our only clues to Enoch's personality could be found in a blurb on the now-gone official website for the game. The first thing on his character page was this quote: "No problem. Everything's fine. All will be as God commands..." The first two sentences are his catchphrase, the third added by the localization team to underscore his piety and never seen again. What a versatile catchphrase it is! It can be used at face value, simply telling someone who's asked that he's doing well or that something they want to do is all right. But most of the time it's as reassurance to others or himself, whether in denial or in agreement with how he actually feels - sometimes, he is genuinely optimistic, but often enough it is a mask for his doubts and crises of faith.

Why crises of faith, you might ask, when his piety is one of the two defining traits listed in the blurb? Enoch is extremely pious, very faithful to God and Heaven, and willing to take a lot of pain and keep going for the sake of his beliefs. But he is human, and he can't help but recognize that God and Heaven have, directly or indirectly, caused him this pain. Taken him away from his family on Earth. Made it so he can never have a steady family again. But the presence of this recognition is not the lack of piety. I talked about the pits in The Darkness in the history section, and what happens should Enoch fall into the vileness. What had no place in that discussion was that, without Belial's control, what drives him is a desire to destroy Heaven and The Darkness both. It's a testament to that very piety, that such resentment and pain directed at Heaven only comes to light...well, in the dark. Of course he feels them - he is human, after all. But it's not a thing he wants to show, clearly not something about himself he likes or wants, and on top of that he is still so faithful he will not ally himself with The Darkness, either.

The next defining trait is his purity or pure heart. This isn't a childish innocence, no, he's quite old, after all. But there is an optimistic streak in him, and his sense of morality has fewer shades of gray than you'd expect from a jaded old immortal. In fact, though he is jaded and wary of new relationships, and though he's seen some of humanity's ugliest sides firsthand, he never loses his faith in humanity. Even under vileness, with all his doubts, anger, resentment, and fear on display, there was never an echo of that jealous king who ordered him killed. Even if his pain is twisted into a desire to destroy Heaven and The Darkness, there is no sign of resentment against Earth, and no sense that Earth does not deserve to be saved. If it doesn't come out under vileness, chances are it simply isn't there. This is his purity, and this purity leads into his most striking character trait...

...Enoch is empathetic to a fault. At some point in the game's development, a prototype trailer was released, featuring a visual pun on the phrase "love your enemy". That was only the beginning. With the game's release came context, and we saw his overactive empathy in action - never overtly told, but there. There, in the way he had to say nothing or risk pain when he met Nanna, not even allowing himself even the tiniest response. There, on display in Heaven as he fought his doubts - shall we examine these? Chapter 9 is essentially dedicated to Enoch's characterization, showing us what this silent, bold warrior we've been controlling all this time has been feeling, and this is highlighted in the battles he faces that represent his doubts.

First is the tutorial battle where he fights representations of the Grigori taking the Fruits of Wisdom. He's aware that what they did is wrong, and hurts more than it helps, but understands completely they only wanted to ease the hardship of life on Earth. Second is a battle with three Martyrs - unarmed, so there is no focus on the weapons they stole, only on the men he's had to kill (and when he has killed them, where has he sent their souls?). These are men in identical dress, of about the same height, wearing face-concealing masks. And he cannot dehumanize them. It's easy to doubt he's capable at all. Next is a reprise of his battle with Sariel. Sariel's level consisted mostly of playgrounds for the Nephilim, where they were watched over by the spirits of their mothers (Michael comments they are "bound" to Sariel as if this is a bad thing, but consider where their souls might be if he hadn't bound them...). Sariel seemed to care about those he lived with, and protected his world not like a king or god, but like a clan patriarch. If the game's sympathetic spin seemed odd, it will no longer - it was sympathetic because Enoch was - but wouldn't show it. While the real Sariel taunted Enoch nigh constantly, this representation of him is mostly silent, like the victim he is from Enoch's vileness-laden perspective.

And then there's Armaros. Armaros, who fell because Enoch kindled an interest in Earth by talking to him about it. Armaros, who lost his voice when he fell. Armaros, so devoted to his friend he followed him into The Darkness and faced him even in his weakened state to save him. Enoch may not remember his friendship with Armaros. But Armaros is the largest of these doubts, the one which corresponds to the longest timeskip within the intermittent scenes of what's happening on Earth. Due to his empathy and purity, Enoch has a tendency to blame himself more than he'll ever blame others (which has recently been confirmed outright by Ceta, a manga adaptation which takes place in an alternate timeline but still holds pertinent characterization and world information). And he blames himself for what's happened to Armaros. Just like the Sariel battle, all you need to do is listen - the real Armaros was very quiet. But this one is vocal, giving that whale-like cry again and again. The loss of his voice is central to Enoch's pain in this regard.

Even non-sympathetic characters like the unhinged Ezekiel are not exempt. Though it is beyond his canon point, when he defeats her, he goes to her side and stands beside her as her physical body dies, so she doesn't have to die alone. And in the prequel manga Exodus, all it takes is meeting a person for him to worry for their safety, even if that person made him intensely uncomfortable in that meeting.

That's a lot of words to say he has boundless empathy and compassion. It's only by the stakes involved and the magnitude of his loyalty to God that he doesn't attempt to act directly on it with the Grigori - in any other situation, it can absolutely get him in trouble. All it would take is a skilled manipulator.

This empathy leads to other problems, such as a disregard for his own safety when another person is at risk. In the game, we see this when he leaps into The Darkness to try to save Nanna, and in Exodus, he leaps into a tornado to save a human soul, and then off Heaven's edge to try to break up a fight. He is too empathetic, too heroic. Only luck and timely intervention have prevented it from killing him so far, and should his own will to live falter this will only grow worse.

How easy is it to make him despair such that he has no will to live? It's hard to tell if you aren't being told, because Enoch lives so much for other people already. What seems like a calm exterior may be hiding deep distress, and when he has nothing else to focus on or gets a moment alone, or is pushed to the breaking point, it could come to light easily where we don't see it in the game (confirmed in Ceta, where Enoch remarks on the verge of a defeat that he no longer has a reason to be alive anyway).

Mostly, however, this despair is masked by sheer determination - and just because it's sometimes a mask doesn't mean it's not real. Even in the greatest pain, even under Belial's control, during that battle Enoch will make himself vulnerable as he struggles against it (though he's unable to break it: the moment of freedom turns him over to his pain and he only ends up thrashing in it before Belial regains control). On the flip side, it also makes him stubborn, and prone to not listening if he's made up his mind to do otherwise. This can be very good, as it ensures there is indeed a plot for his game, but I shouldn't have to tell you it doesn't exactly help the recklessness I mentioned earlier.

On a more lighthearted note, if you've seen any gameplay at all, something will catch your eye very quickly: Enoch is flashy, adding unnecessary spins and flips to almost everything he does. This could be due to a number of things, such as a love of adrenaline (sure does make you feel young again! And there is that adrenaline-charged grin when he picks up the Veil weapon for the first time) or simply for fun (in Exodus, he does dance on a table with Armaros), and the strongest canonical evidence we have for it is in Ceta, where Enoch is mesmerized by the energetic, graceful way Lucifel fights. Considering every tutorial screen in the game is Lucifel pausing time to teach Enoch about the subject at hand, it need not be confined to that timeline alone. He could have easily seen Lucifel fight for himself while we were given button explanations. (In fact, this is further backed up by Ceta, as we see Lucifel fight with a weapon for the first time and his style matches Enoch's, implying he taught Enoch his style rather than Enoch making one up to fit the weapon.) This shows that he's actually quite eager to please and impress others. Given his empathy, it makes sense: he's happy when others are. He will probably exacerbate many a chain reaction.

Additionally, Enoch has a learner's mind. He's very curious, and asks questions about almost everything, as revealed in a character interview (this was also a crux of his characterization in the Book of Enoch, itself). He also picks up new concepts very rapidly. With a little instruction, he is able to pick up three rather unusual weapons and use them effectively on short notice, and this is taken to an almost comical extreme when the same is done for a motorcycle - he even manages to use the vehicle effectively in combat during Azazel's stage. It shows he has an open mind and embraces the unknown rather than being afraid of it. But this rapid learning must be under pressure - all of these examples were in life-or-death situations, and for all of this he doesn't know how to swim, indicating that it takes these exceptional circumstances (and the time to inspect or be instructed even a little) to trigger this and he doesn't simply master every new thing he encounters instantly. His learning rate is still probably better than average, but not without the mistakes and blunders of normal learners. By the way, combined with his stubbornness? This makes him a meddler. He'll get into things whether you like it or not. He did, after all, contest a ruling Heaven made.

Other than that, the things canon sheds light on are little ones. Writing was an important thing in his time so he can't abide the destruction of books without very good reason (and will even apologize to them if he drops them or knocks them over, and will go out of his way to try to catch a falling book), he's possibly bisexual (a character in a later work that is literally a piece of him is in love with a male character, and then in at least one point in works featuring him the narrative makes it a point for him to openly admire Lucifel's appearance...), despite his literacy he was a peasant (possibly family friends of a priest or well off for peasants? Or just because, you know, direct descendant of Seth.), he talks to animals he owns (same idea as talking to books?), when woken from deep sleep he has a tendency to fall back asleep without warning, "purity" doesn't mean "doesn't curse" in his case (this one fooled me for two years before we got Ceta)... You get the idea. Little things.

When it comes to other people, with most he is quiet and closed off unless there is some reason to talk, whether they're in trouble, he's in trouble, or he needs information and they haven't taken it upon themselves to start talking like Nanna had. It makes it hard to get close to him at first, and I've already said why this is. But he just can't hold on to his heart - if he was good at keeping everyone at arm's length, he would still be able to minimally socialize while doing so. But no - Nanna, our best example, gets no response at all. But this assumes the other person is mortal. Fellow immortals are another story. Fellow immortals will not age and die, and fellow immortals will understand. Once he learns a person is immortal, his true, outgoing nature will likely begin to show itself in full. Or, perhaps if he feels safe or needs to talk, he'll spill everything to a mortal - he encountered a Freeman who escaped on his search for the Tower, which is what allowed him to find it in the first place. But it's more than a lifetime later before he actually arrives, and the Freemen know all about him, including his immortality. This implies he told that Freeman everything. But immortals are certainly much more likely to get him to open up first (unless, of course, he learns death is impermanent for everyone).

In fact, the two most important canonmates he could ever have are immortal, and are so important to him they get mentions all their own.

Let's start with our sarcastic deuteragonist, Lucifel. However close to Lucifel or not he may have been in Heaven, Enoch is certainly very close to him now. The relevance of the "searching" sequence in chapter 1 is lost on a lot of people the first time, except to serve as acknowledgment of the passage of time. I could dissect that the same way I did chapter 9, but that's for another day. In regards to Enoch and Lucifel, the interaction in question happens around the 80-90 year mark. After meeting a man he'd met before, now old and dying (and perhaps one of many), he comes to Lucifel, distraught. (Crying, if one looks closely.) Lucifel explains the gift of immortality. Then pauses. "Huh, me?" he says. "I'm not going anywhere." How rattled did Enoch have to be to worry that an angel would die on him? But, as depressing as the scene was, that was definitely a solidifying moment in their bond. From that point on, Lucifel was the one who wasn't supposed to die. Lucifel was his anchor. Humans will age and die. Armaros, he is bound to fight and either kill or imprison. The Archangels are in the form of swans and often high above. Lucifel is the one who isn't fated to leave him. In addition, Lucifel is a literal anchor, saving his life should he miss a jump or pausing time (seriously, he's the game's pause function!) to give him new information, let him take a breather or time to review what he's learned. Enoch owes Lucifel his life and his sanity alike, and he has a tendency to put the angel on a pedestal, whether speaking to or of him. And God help the person who would threaten him. Because the human mind has a tendency to scale down rather than up and focus on the immediate (ever heard the saying about how a soldier can go fight for his country but he'll wind up fighting for the guy next to him?), it's entirely possible that Lucifel provides more motivation now, in the sense of not letting him down, than Enoch's original motivation. In fact, that could be a factor in why his doubts are so damn persistent, if he's lost the scope.

Next up is Armaros. I've already said much of what I needed to about him, so this won't be a huge chunk of text like Lucifel's. But Enoch is likely to have accepted the idea that he and Armaros were friends in Heaven and if presented the opportunity to rekindle that friendship without consequences to his mission, he will probably pursue it. He and Armaros share a sense of curiosity, a love of song and dance (Enoch says he's not good at it, but he agrees with little resistance and seems to enjoy himself from the start), and a sensitivity to others' feelings.

And one last thought on his interactions with others: Though he's a patient man, rudeness is harder for him to tolerate, especially if someone insults Heaven, the angels, or some other person or concept he holds strong loyalty to. He's not likely to be extremely rude in return, particularly if he also respects the person being rude. He may be blunt, angry, or he may walk away...or, he might get a little sassy. So he can have a bit of an attitude. I can't imagine spending 300+ years with Lucifel helped that any.

Abilities:
General stuff: He's been alive for over three centuries so he's probably immune or highly resistant to most diseases, he's pretty damn athletic for all the fighting he's had to do, and he's a fast learner, which I described in the personality section.

Endurance: Not necessarily an active power in and of itself, but it should be noted that Enoch has a tougher body than a normal human – in the beginning of chapter 6, he is slammed into the ground by a pair of flying enemies that had captured him. He gets up slowly, and staggers as he does, so it's clear he's in pain and disoriented. But it doesn't interfere with him from beyond there. Where a normal human would have suffered several broken bones if not have been killed outright, Enoch is in a perfectly playable state after that scene, able to run at normal speed shortly after leaving the bodies of his captors behind.

Holy Armor: Enoch's body is protected by a special suit of armor. The reason this is here in abilities is because this armor can't be taken from him. Rather than taking it off in any normal sense, he would instead simply will it away. It redirects physical damage caused to itself, cracking and then breaking in five distinct stages before he's unprotected. However, he still feels pain as if he'd been caused that damage. And, as noted in the "Rapid-Fire Recovery" power, it is so intrinsically linked to his willpower that he can regenerate it in a dire situation. Because it's more or less a part of him, or a part of his will, it's possible healing abilities could repair it, as well. (Mods?) In the game, broken pieces can be recovered by items shaped like wings of blue light called Lights of Blessing. (Naturally, it's the mods' call whether these items show up or spawn somewhere, or if Enoch's armor recovers some other way – it would only make sense that it could recover over a long period of time if left alone, or after a good night's sleep like the good HP bar it wants to be. Or maybe he can spend emotion drops to repair it?)

Double Jump: Enoch can jump off the air as if it was solid ground once. After that, his feet must touch solid ground again before he can repeat it. He is also capable of, by "winding up" in a crouch, "chaining" the height of two vertical jumps into a single very high jump.

• Attack Suspension: Related, when Enoch is in the motion of attacking while in midair, he is suspended until the attack ends, at which point he resumes falling as normal.

Purification: Enoch can purify something tainted by the product of The Darkness (basically Hell), called vileness. His hands must hover about an inch over the tainted surface unobstructed, and purification requires a continuous movement. All effects of purification are lost if he is interrupted during the process, though if he was very nearly finished the purification may hold anyway. He can purify a person, but only surface vileness (as opposed to internalized vileness that alters one's form), and it takes much more concentration to do so. (Suggestion: Perhaps the effect of any embodiment of darkness/evil may be considered the same as vileness, so long as it works as a taint of sorts? Mods' call, of course.)

Rapid-Fire Recovery: In the game, when Enoch is about to die, the player can quickly press the input buttons to revive him with a few pieces of his armor or the full amount, I haven't found the pattern to that (his health being measured by the state of his armor). On difficulties other than Easy, this gets progressively harder to do the more it's done. Obviously, this represents Enoch continuing on by sheer force of will, that will weakening slowly as he finds himself calling on it more often. (Suggestion: I can usually pull off about 5-6 recoveries per chapter, so he may get one "guaranteed" recovery and then each subsequent attempt decreases the chances by 20% until he dies? I swear to you I roll honestly.)

Dependent Ability: Overboost: Enoch calls on Uriel's power to begin slowly regenerating lost armor and to increase his capabilities. Uriel himself appears as a shade of sorts to follow up on Enoch's own attacks. He can also put all of his remaining strength for Overboost into a powerful attack based on his current weapon. This will probably not work without a version of Uriel present in the game, however, other characters who are souls by their nature may attempt to fill the same role? Canon is never clear on how exactly Overboost works, only that it is triggered by Uriel "sensing his aggression in battle" (mechanically, it builds to a threshold based on damage both dealt and received, in a pattern I don't know exactly).

Currently Dependent Ability: Ceta: A floating island summoned from Heaven, possibly part of Heaven. It contains a mechanism at its base that finds a target and encloses it in a dome of energy for a contained, extremely powerful purification with the force of an explosion. Enoch himself cannot use this power, not at the state he's in, or in any state he could be found in within the game, and indeed it will be many more centuries before he's able to use it on his own. The only reason he was able to use it once was because a spirit - that of his son - amplified his power and drew it out for him. So he won't be able to use this at all in-game, and on the off-chance we get a Methuselah, there's probably no Heaven as they know it anyway. So, yeah, totally nixed here unless you guys say otherwise for some reason.


Other:

He's coming in with:

Jeans: A gift from Lucifel to go with his armor. The jeans are indestructible, considering he's been wearing the same pair for three centuries. They don't block damage, they just can't be destroyed, themselves. Like if they caught fire it would burn his legs but the denim itself wouldn't burn.

Freemen's Notes: Just a handful of things the Freemen wanted to tell him while he was there.

Fragments of Ishtar's Bones: They're just bone fragments. They have a slight enchantment on them that causes them to recite the piece of the prophecy attached to them but other than that there's nothing special about them.

Oh, and his pendant is a stylized white wing.


⌈ SAMPLE SECTION ⌉
First Person Sample:
A Dear Mun thread, I hope the meta element is okay. And if it's not:

*He's found a graveyard, and his thoughts are wandering. He doesn't realize he's broadcasting them, and the vision of the graves, to everyone within a few miles.*

Burial grounds...is this one large family, or is everyone in the city buried here when they die? Community graves are...interesting. It doesn't matter who your family is, being here is a reminder that you will one day come here to rest. They made me feel that way, once. Oh, but I can't remember how it felt...

*There is a heavy sigh, echoed in his physical voice.*

I wonder...with so many different worlds represented here, is there anyone here who understands this plight?


Third Person Sample:

This wasn't right. How could they take him; Nanna (that had been Nanna, right?) was out there all alone, doing the very job he had been sent for! How could he leave all his work to one of the very people (a blind woman, no less!) who had been waiting for him to come save them? What kind of hero would do that, show up and then leave it all on the people who had already fought so hard just to survive?

And now it wasn't his own doubts holding him back, but this place! He had to find a way out.

He made his way down city streets, tense with worry. The air was suddenly cold and wet, mist clinging to his skin and hair. He came to a stop, glancing about in bewilderment. The mist swirled around him, responding to his confusion, and he looked up, to see the sky was clear. There were no conditions for fog or mist, and there had been none at first...what was going on here?

In his state of heightened alert, he caught movement out of the corner of his eye, coming from his own person - there was something shimmering at his hip, something not his armor. He lifted the roughly wing-shaped crystal pendant with a hand, watching gleaming droplets slide down its edges to pool at the bottom. What in the world was that, and what was it filling with?

A ray of bright sunlight touched his face, drawing his attention as people walked by, talking animatedly. He watched them move on, the sunshine following them. The way they were talking, it sounded as if...they were from different times. That's the only thing that made any sense; one was describing events that involved the other, but the other didn't seem to know about them. It seemed so confusing, he had to admire Lucifel for somehow managing this naturally. But if this place was removed from time, then...then everyone was safe, for now, weren't they? There was no hurry to find an exit. As if mimicking the way his body sagged in relief, the mist lowered to the ground and rolled softly around his feet, thinning until it was nearly transparent. It was a calm sort of look, the kind of mist he'd like to sit and watch from somewhere slightly raised. In fact, he decided to do just that, finding a bench and sitting down to watch the mist he'd made, and to get his bearings. To find an exit, he would have to explore. Exploration needed rest, and a way to track his progress. Doubling back, he'd found, was a bad idea.

But he'd wait for someone who might be able to point him to a map to pass by. A load on his shoulders had been lightened and the mist was a lovely sight.

Questions: Can visual ideas or memories be broadcast through image transmission? Can you sing in telepathy? If so, can you do things your physical voice wouldn't be able to do, like reverb or "filters" and stuff?