Enoch (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
warriorscribe) wrote2014-10-20 05:44 pm
warriorscribe) wrote2014-10-20 05:44 pm
Apprentice Wanted Application
PLAYER INFORMATION
Name: Cherry
Timezone: US Central
Personal Journal:chierii
Player Contact:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
CherryFlight
Characters in Game (previously too): N/A
CHARACTER INFORMATION
Name: Enoch
Canon: El Shaddai
Gender: Male
Age: Immortal, 385~400-ish, appears late 20s-mid 30s.
Suitability: He’s over 300 years old, I think we’re set.
Species: Human (with a bit of divinity)
Genitalia: Just your standard male genitalia down here, nothing special.
Canon Point: Immediately after the game’s end.
History: Okay, buckle up. This ride is gonna take three hundred and seventy five years. Don’t worry. The bulk of that is montage.
Basically, Enoch was a guy so pure and so pious he was taken up to Heaven to live and work among angels. Unfortunately while he was up there a group of angels called the Grigori were finalizing their plans to fall, because they wanted to live with humans so very badly. Problem is, angels and humans don’t just have normal cute little babies. They’re cute, all right, but Nephilim literally suffer just from existing. They eat one another to try to ease it, but you see, each one of them is carrying trace amounts of vileness (you can just read that as “impurity” for now, it’s the essence of corruption), and when they eat one another they eat this too. One Nephilim gets enough vileness and they turn into a Fire Nephilim which goes on rampages everywhere. This is very dangerous, needless to say. But they couldn’t find the fallen Grigori, so they decided they’d have to flood Earth. BUT WAIT. They have someone with free will around now and he decided to exercise it by calling them out on that bullshit. Yep. Enoch protested against the Council of Elders, Heaven’s ruling body. And that’s how we got our game: he was sent out to find and capture them for himself, with five archangels as his guides: your standard four, Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, and Uriel, and the only one to retain his human shape, Lucifel.
That was gonna take a while. See, they’d hidden themselves in a shroud of distorted space, to quote Lucifel, and that made them very hard to find. If Enoch hadn’t been made immortal, well, he would have died long before finding them. Yeah, you read that right. Immortal. He’s permanently stuck physically at 30-ish or whatever. Sounds like a good deal, right? You haven’t been reading fiction lately then. Yeah, yeah, immortality has some great advantages and some of us would thrive on what others would call disadvantages. Enoch is not one of these people. More on that later, that belongs to the next section. To make things worse, Azazel, one of the leaders of the Grigori, was sending flunkies after him, trying to stop him before he reached the Tower. That’s their home. Creative name, isn’t it? Anyway, that meant Enoch had to keep moving around and taking aliases. He got up to seventy-one other names, across three hundred and sixty five years, before he finally found them.
So begins the bulk of the game. First up is actually getting inside, led by a large and rather friendly Nephilim that waves at him as if urging him to follow. Turns out that Nephilim has attached itself to a little girl named Nanna, who was looking for Enoch from the moment he arrived and meets him on the first floor, which belongs to the only female Grigori, Ezekiel. Well. Okay. Searching for Enoch. She’s blind. But that’s besides the point. She’s the one who tells him Nephilim aren’t monsters and they’re just hurting and she also talks about this Ishtar lady he’s apparently supposed to be resurrecting but he’s never even heard of until now. Nanna’s interrupted by one of Ezekiel’s pet (giant, vileness-infused) pigs and Ezekiel herself has fled. We’re off to a great start, aren’t we? Next up is Sariel’s floor, and he’s successfully captured. Important details in the personality section. Again. Baraqel’s floor is interesting because we get to see a Fire Nephilim’s...uh, birth. And then it goes on a rampage. And Enoch has to chase it and find ground high enough to fight it. He hears a voice while this happens, telling him he can’t use his full powers but otherwise being kind of confused. Anyway. Turns out Fire Nephilim eat their own parents too because no sooner has he fought it than another one with a pattern on its skin (and called a “Baraqel Nephilim”) emerges and immediately eats Enoch. He’s saved by the voice from before! It belongs to a human soul the game bills as Methuselah – yep, his own son! From the future for some reason but yes. He can fly so he just pulls his dad right out of the Nephilim’s innards and uses his crazy flaming helmet to unlock some kind of power in Enoch that calls forth a giant floating island from Heaven with a drill on the bottom that destroys the Baraqel Nephilim in a cloud of dust. And the residual power leaves Enoch able to float under his own power for a little bit, which is pretty cool. Got all that? Okay, next is Azazel’s floor! It’s a giant metropolis. Meaning instead of platforming we get driving. On a motorcycle. That is all.
Oh, and Azazel’s run away, too. Coward.
Next up: square peg, round hole. That is, Armaros. 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.
Okay, hold up now, let me talk about The Darkness for a second. Just a second, I mean it. It’s not nice. It’s where vileness comes from. Vileness itself amounts to emotional torture and it’s delivered via physical torture. There, that’s all you need to know.
So Enoch’s just jumped into, literally, the depths of hell. He’s been there before, mind, in the pits, where he’s been collecting some of Ishtar’s bones that still have some of her prophecy left in them. But this time he’s off-camera. So that means he’s in trouble. It’s time for a character switch. Armaros comes to his rescue, but not soon enough to avoid him being corrupted. So he has to subdue him. And then Lucifel takes Enoch and just leaves him there. It was for the mission, but still. Jerk.
They rescued Nanna too, and she seemed to be fine. Incidentally, Ishtar’s soul had been wandering too – she got out by hitching a ride in Nanna’s body. Enoch, on the other hand, gets to pull a Han Solo and chill out in a block of silver because his soul needs to be cleansed. Which means he actually has to overcome the pain and self doubt and all that nasty stuff the vileness had inflicted on him on his own. That whole chapter actually belongs in the personality section. Basically though it only takes several hours for him, but time in Heaven flows weirdly, so it was ten years on Earth. But Nanna didn’t just grow up in the meantime, you see. Ishtar’s soul entered her body because it was her body. The reincarnation just didn’t work out right because she was trapped in The Darkness or something. Nanna as a separate identity was lost and now it’s just Ishtar. If it was an app for her I’d be wondering if she remembers two childhoods or just one. But it’s not, so I won’t. Ishtar swears to her childhood hero that she’ll basically finish what he started, reminding Enoch he has work to do, and he purges the vileness and returns to his body. He continues on up the tower to Arakiel’s floor, where they learn he had already died before this whole thing started, and Ishtar is discovered, her body covered in vileness. He reaches out to heal her but she stops him and urges him to go on because she’d been fighting Ezekiel and she’s just on the other side of the door Ishtar had sealed shut. Enoch does as he’s told and goes on, fighting Ezekiel, and then moving on to the leader, Semyaza’s, floor and fighting Azazel. Azazel attempts one more boss transformation than usual but is cut off by a taunt from Belial, followed by a creature that comes up out of the ground like it was water, and makes it into water, to boot.
Just like Armaros had in his battle.
It is Armaros, in fact. Corrupted, just like Enoch had been, except his shell isn’t a suit of armor but a hulking monstrous thing that is very definitely Final Boss Material. He has cycling immunities, meaning Enoch has to keep picking up different weapons throughout the fight. It could have actually ended with any of the three (whichever you ended Azazel’s fight with, actually), but for our purposes we’ll say it was a Veil that finally wound up knocked out of his hands. Enoch has no way of damaging Dark Armaros any further without a weapon, but the other has no interest in attacking him. He simply stands there, while outside the arena, Ishtar pulls herself towards the fallen Veil, manages to lift it, and tosses it back to Enoch (despite the weapon’s considerable weight, these two are badasses), enabling him to finally put Armaros to rest after his ten years of torture.
Enoch purifies Ishtar, and the two approach what was supposed to be Semyaza’s life support device. Except he isn’t in there. Lucifel (incorrectly, but it’s not revealed in the game) assumes he’d died too, and takes Ishtar off somewhere, presumably for Enoch to meet after he’d shut down the Tower.
Except he wouldn’t be meeting them, because he’d find himself standing in front of some weird sign.
Personality: Okay, serious writing time. 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 for a second. What had no place in that discussion was what happens when you fall and land in the vileness there. Without Belial's control, what drives him under corruption 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. If it was I wouldn’t be apping him here. 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 during his search. 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 – which I said I’d examine. 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? The catch about the Grigori’s deal with Belial is that the souls of the humans that died there didn’t even touch Heaven.). 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 that replaced his voice 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. 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. (As both mods here have seen...)
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 dances 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.
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 the motorcycle in 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.
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 the nurses under the castle can cheat death)
In fact, the three most important canonmates he could ever have are immortal (though he doesn’t know it for one of them yet), 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 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 now let’s talk a little about Ishtar since he’s at a canon point for it. He’s smitten with her at this point. She has earned his respect, trust, and admiration. In fact, if not for a certain Mistress, he’d have settled down with her in isolation on Earth (and learned of the very happy news that she’s immortal too!) rather than return to Heaven. She’s a strong lady and part of me suspects Enoch is attracted to people who are stronger than him in some way because those three hundred years in The Darkness? She’s going really strong in spite of that. (but it still takes them 53 years to have one kid and I’m sure it’s because both of them are traumatized. You get no points for guessing who that kid is.)
Anyway, 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/Weaknesses:
Angelic Endurance/Stamina/Constitution: 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 Azazel’s level, he is slammed into the ground from above the skyline by a pair of giant mechanical flies 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. Speaking of running, he can keep that up, interspersed with combat, for a long time without slowing down. I guess the only weakness attached to this is his threshold for passing out under pain is probably increased too.
Holy Armor and Rapid-Fire Recovery: 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. When it is gone and he is about to be subdued, he can use Rapid-Fire Recovery. Which is exactly what it sounds like - 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. In the game, broken pieces can be recovered by items shaped like wings of blue light called Lights of Blessing, but if he regains it here it will probably recover over time instead. Weaknesses are: He still feels pain as if he’d been caused damage in the first place even if it isn’t reflected on his body, and in spite of the regeneration in Rapid-Fire Recovery, it doesn’t hold up as long as you’d think. Additionally, Enoch’s willpower weakens as he performs Rapid-Fire Recovery and it becomes more and more difficult to do. Eventually, it becomes impossible. I can generally pull off six per chapter but I’ll cap it at 5 with one guaranteed and decreasing probability.
Double Jump and Attack Suspension: 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. 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 vileness, or supposedly any other thing that is corruption itself. 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. He needs this power to use one of God’s weapons at its full potential, as any Fruit of Wisdom activated outside of Heaven yields a tainted weapon, which is as weak as they come.
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 in the first place, but I suppose both of them would have to unlock it for it to work. Or maybe just Uriel. Either way he must be able to purify to initiate it.
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, probably.
Magical Item: Fruit of Wisdom: Enoch had a Veil at the end of that battle. Unfortunately a mundane thing can’t be both a shield and gauntlets so it’s just reverted back to a Fruit of Wisdom. It’s a glowing blue apple that gives off a faint hum, but of course it’s no longer magical in any way, just weird. Maybe it’s not even humming anymore. He’d have to spend two regains to get his weapon back in full, one to re-enchant this item so he can pull out a weapon and purification so he can use it at full strength. He could pull out any of the three weapons at that point, and each comes with a pair of abilities. I’ll submit those to you if and when it happens, if that’s okay?
Clothing Enchantment: Jeans: Enoch’s jeans are literally divine. Lucifel summoned them for him. They’re indestructible. They don’t prevent any damage, they just don’t rip or burn for themselves. Of course, they’re just a normal pair of jeans until he regains this.
RP Samples:
Sample 1:
Enoch stared at the woman, confused. “I’m sorry?”
“A cock reading! Like palm reading, but with your cock instead.” The woman raised a hand to her chin, and added, “That’s what you’ve got in those pants, right? I’ve heard some of the, uh, outsiders have something different.”
“Er...” It was a good thing he’d managed to pick up that piece of slang almost immediately. Context was a wonderful thing. “Yes...” He didn’t really feel like having a stranger’s hands all over him right now. He also didn’t want to know what she’d heard about the other people the Mistress brought in... “But I don’t have any money.”
Silly him, assuming it was purely for a profit. “Oh that’s okay! First time’s free! Like a trial. You just have to tell your friends about me, okay? And come back for another!”
“Why would I want multiple readings of my future done?”
This seemed to give the fortune-teller – cock-reader - pause, and she sputtered a bit before saying, “Well, if you take what I tell you into account, you’ll change your future, right? Won’t you want to know what your new future is?”
Enoch took a deep breath. She was starting to give him a headache. “But the...veins, or whatever you’re reading, won’t have changed.”
“It’s all about context, of course! Come on, what do you have to lose? Let Cassandra the Mysterious read your cock.”
My dignity, he thought, glancing at the people who stopped to look their way. But then again, he’d kind of given that up the day before, hadn’t he? Apparently, feeling humiliated at the idea of wearing a rabbit costume as part of someone’s sexual fantasy meant he wasn’t really cut out to work at the fucksmith. Fair enough, really. He’d only given it a try for the free food during breaks.
What could it hurt, he decided, following her into her tent. She was clearly desperate for something, if not money or fame, if she was willing to argue with him over something so complex.
As it turned out, he had a little dignity left to spare, feeling disgruntled as he walked away with an awkward gait, a borderline-painful tent in his jeans, and a nonsense “prophecy” about being his world’s undoing. Ridiculous. He’d just saved it. Some things weren’t worth it, even if they were worth nothing at all.
Sample 2:
He didn’t know what the misunderstanding was. The man hadn’t seemed jealous, and he had a few too many beers (his tolerance used to be higher, what happened?) to really make sense of everything. All he’d said, finding himself more drunk than he should have been, was that he’d lost track of how old he was. He didn’t even remember how they came to be talking about their ages. His drinking partner didn’t believe he was immortal (who would?) and said he had a way to prove it.
Oh. That would be why it was getting so hard to think. He reached up and gripped the handle of the dagger still stuck in his gut, but couldn’t will his arm to pull it out. He dimly recognized he should be in searing pain, but mostly he just felt fuzzy-headed. Drunk. His last thought was that he needed to sleep it off.
“I don’t understand,” he mumbled groggily to the inhuman nurses. The castle. They’d said they were under the castle. “I’m not...” He swallowed. He didn’t feel hungover, but his mouth was dry all the same, and there was an unpleasant taste on his tongue. “I’m not one of her apprentices.”
Still, who else could possibly revive the dead? Or so they said. It felt odd, going down without a struggle. Not having his armor. Not being able to just keep going even for a little while. Just buckling and staying down. It kind of put things in perspective. He’d come a long way from...wherever it was he started. He didn’t remember. He let one of the guards show him out, and stood at the palace gates for a long while, for the first time taking it all in. In spite of his considerable strength, even for a normal human, he felt fragile, weak. Vulnerable. Part of him considered going back in, asking the Mistress for a chance at learning magic so he had some form of self defense. He wasn’t sure. His steps away from the castle were slow.
Name: Cherry
Timezone: US Central
Personal Journal:
chieriiPlayer Contact:
Characters in Game (previously too): N/A
CHARACTER INFORMATION
Name: Enoch
Canon: El Shaddai
Gender: Male
Age: Immortal, 385~400-ish, appears late 20s-mid 30s.
Suitability: He’s over 300 years old, I think we’re set.
Species: Human (with a bit of divinity)
Genitalia: Just your standard male genitalia down here, nothing special.
Canon Point: Immediately after the game’s end.
History: Okay, buckle up. This ride is gonna take three hundred and seventy five years. Don’t worry. The bulk of that is montage.
Basically, Enoch was a guy so pure and so pious he was taken up to Heaven to live and work among angels. Unfortunately while he was up there a group of angels called the Grigori were finalizing their plans to fall, because they wanted to live with humans so very badly. Problem is, angels and humans don’t just have normal cute little babies. They’re cute, all right, but Nephilim literally suffer just from existing. They eat one another to try to ease it, but you see, each one of them is carrying trace amounts of vileness (you can just read that as “impurity” for now, it’s the essence of corruption), and when they eat one another they eat this too. One Nephilim gets enough vileness and they turn into a Fire Nephilim which goes on rampages everywhere. This is very dangerous, needless to say. But they couldn’t find the fallen Grigori, so they decided they’d have to flood Earth. BUT WAIT. They have someone with free will around now and he decided to exercise it by calling them out on that bullshit. Yep. Enoch protested against the Council of Elders, Heaven’s ruling body. And that’s how we got our game: he was sent out to find and capture them for himself, with five archangels as his guides: your standard four, Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, and Uriel, and the only one to retain his human shape, Lucifel.
That was gonna take a while. See, they’d hidden themselves in a shroud of distorted space, to quote Lucifel, and that made them very hard to find. If Enoch hadn’t been made immortal, well, he would have died long before finding them. Yeah, you read that right. Immortal. He’s permanently stuck physically at 30-ish or whatever. Sounds like a good deal, right? You haven’t been reading fiction lately then. Yeah, yeah, immortality has some great advantages and some of us would thrive on what others would call disadvantages. Enoch is not one of these people. More on that later, that belongs to the next section. To make things worse, Azazel, one of the leaders of the Grigori, was sending flunkies after him, trying to stop him before he reached the Tower. That’s their home. Creative name, isn’t it? Anyway, that meant Enoch had to keep moving around and taking aliases. He got up to seventy-one other names, across three hundred and sixty five years, before he finally found them.
So begins the bulk of the game. First up is actually getting inside, led by a large and rather friendly Nephilim that waves at him as if urging him to follow. Turns out that Nephilim has attached itself to a little girl named Nanna, who was looking for Enoch from the moment he arrived and meets him on the first floor, which belongs to the only female Grigori, Ezekiel. Well. Okay. Searching for Enoch. She’s blind. But that’s besides the point. She’s the one who tells him Nephilim aren’t monsters and they’re just hurting and she also talks about this Ishtar lady he’s apparently supposed to be resurrecting but he’s never even heard of until now. Nanna’s interrupted by one of Ezekiel’s pet (giant, vileness-infused) pigs and Ezekiel herself has fled. We’re off to a great start, aren’t we? Next up is Sariel’s floor, and he’s successfully captured. Important details in the personality section. Again. Baraqel’s floor is interesting because we get to see a Fire Nephilim’s...uh, birth. And then it goes on a rampage. And Enoch has to chase it and find ground high enough to fight it. He hears a voice while this happens, telling him he can’t use his full powers but otherwise being kind of confused. Anyway. Turns out Fire Nephilim eat their own parents too because no sooner has he fought it than another one with a pattern on its skin (and called a “Baraqel Nephilim”) emerges and immediately eats Enoch. He’s saved by the voice from before! It belongs to a human soul the game bills as Methuselah – yep, his own son! From the future for some reason but yes. He can fly so he just pulls his dad right out of the Nephilim’s innards and uses his crazy flaming helmet to unlock some kind of power in Enoch that calls forth a giant floating island from Heaven with a drill on the bottom that destroys the Baraqel Nephilim in a cloud of dust. And the residual power leaves Enoch able to float under his own power for a little bit, which is pretty cool. Got all that? Okay, next is Azazel’s floor! It’s a giant metropolis. Meaning instead of platforming we get driving. On a motorcycle. That is all.
Oh, and Azazel’s run away, too. Coward.
Next up: square peg, round hole. That is, Armaros. 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.
Okay, hold up now, let me talk about The Darkness for a second. Just a second, I mean it. It’s not nice. It’s where vileness comes from. Vileness itself amounts to emotional torture and it’s delivered via physical torture. There, that’s all you need to know.
So Enoch’s just jumped into, literally, the depths of hell. He’s been there before, mind, in the pits, where he’s been collecting some of Ishtar’s bones that still have some of her prophecy left in them. But this time he’s off-camera. So that means he’s in trouble. It’s time for a character switch. Armaros comes to his rescue, but not soon enough to avoid him being corrupted. So he has to subdue him. And then Lucifel takes Enoch and just leaves him there. It was for the mission, but still. Jerk.
They rescued Nanna too, and she seemed to be fine. Incidentally, Ishtar’s soul had been wandering too – she got out by hitching a ride in Nanna’s body. Enoch, on the other hand, gets to pull a Han Solo and chill out in a block of silver because his soul needs to be cleansed. Which means he actually has to overcome the pain and self doubt and all that nasty stuff the vileness had inflicted on him on his own. That whole chapter actually belongs in the personality section. Basically though it only takes several hours for him, but time in Heaven flows weirdly, so it was ten years on Earth. But Nanna didn’t just grow up in the meantime, you see. Ishtar’s soul entered her body because it was her body. The reincarnation just didn’t work out right because she was trapped in The Darkness or something. Nanna as a separate identity was lost and now it’s just Ishtar. If it was an app for her I’d be wondering if she remembers two childhoods or just one. But it’s not, so I won’t. Ishtar swears to her childhood hero that she’ll basically finish what he started, reminding Enoch he has work to do, and he purges the vileness and returns to his body. He continues on up the tower to Arakiel’s floor, where they learn he had already died before this whole thing started, and Ishtar is discovered, her body covered in vileness. He reaches out to heal her but she stops him and urges him to go on because she’d been fighting Ezekiel and she’s just on the other side of the door Ishtar had sealed shut. Enoch does as he’s told and goes on, fighting Ezekiel, and then moving on to the leader, Semyaza’s, floor and fighting Azazel. Azazel attempts one more boss transformation than usual but is cut off by a taunt from Belial, followed by a creature that comes up out of the ground like it was water, and makes it into water, to boot.
Just like Armaros had in his battle.
It is Armaros, in fact. Corrupted, just like Enoch had been, except his shell isn’t a suit of armor but a hulking monstrous thing that is very definitely Final Boss Material. He has cycling immunities, meaning Enoch has to keep picking up different weapons throughout the fight. It could have actually ended with any of the three (whichever you ended Azazel’s fight with, actually), but for our purposes we’ll say it was a Veil that finally wound up knocked out of his hands. Enoch has no way of damaging Dark Armaros any further without a weapon, but the other has no interest in attacking him. He simply stands there, while outside the arena, Ishtar pulls herself towards the fallen Veil, manages to lift it, and tosses it back to Enoch (despite the weapon’s considerable weight, these two are badasses), enabling him to finally put Armaros to rest after his ten years of torture.
Enoch purifies Ishtar, and the two approach what was supposed to be Semyaza’s life support device. Except he isn’t in there. Lucifel (incorrectly, but it’s not revealed in the game) assumes he’d died too, and takes Ishtar off somewhere, presumably for Enoch to meet after he’d shut down the Tower.
Except he wouldn’t be meeting them, because he’d find himself standing in front of some weird sign.
Personality: Okay, serious writing time. 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 for a second. What had no place in that discussion was what happens when you fall and land in the vileness there. Without Belial's control, what drives him under corruption 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. If it was I wouldn’t be apping him here. 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 during his search. 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 – which I said I’d examine. 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? The catch about the Grigori’s deal with Belial is that the souls of the humans that died there didn’t even touch Heaven.). 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 that replaced his voice 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. 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. (As both mods here have seen...)
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 dances 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.
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 the motorcycle in 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.
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 the nurses under the castle can cheat death)
In fact, the three most important canonmates he could ever have are immortal (though he doesn’t know it for one of them yet), 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 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 now let’s talk a little about Ishtar since he’s at a canon point for it. He’s smitten with her at this point. She has earned his respect, trust, and admiration. In fact, if not for a certain Mistress, he’d have settled down with her in isolation on Earth (and learned of the very happy news that she’s immortal too!) rather than return to Heaven. She’s a strong lady and part of me suspects Enoch is attracted to people who are stronger than him in some way because those three hundred years in The Darkness? She’s going really strong in spite of that. (but it still takes them 53 years to have one kid and I’m sure it’s because both of them are traumatized. You get no points for guessing who that kid is.)
Anyway, 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/Weaknesses:
Angelic Endurance/Stamina/Constitution: 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 Azazel’s level, he is slammed into the ground from above the skyline by a pair of giant mechanical flies 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. Speaking of running, he can keep that up, interspersed with combat, for a long time without slowing down. I guess the only weakness attached to this is his threshold for passing out under pain is probably increased too.
Holy Armor and Rapid-Fire Recovery: 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. When it is gone and he is about to be subdued, he can use Rapid-Fire Recovery. Which is exactly what it sounds like - 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. In the game, broken pieces can be recovered by items shaped like wings of blue light called Lights of Blessing, but if he regains it here it will probably recover over time instead. Weaknesses are: He still feels pain as if he’d been caused damage in the first place even if it isn’t reflected on his body, and in spite of the regeneration in Rapid-Fire Recovery, it doesn’t hold up as long as you’d think. Additionally, Enoch’s willpower weakens as he performs Rapid-Fire Recovery and it becomes more and more difficult to do. Eventually, it becomes impossible. I can generally pull off six per chapter but I’ll cap it at 5 with one guaranteed and decreasing probability.
Double Jump and Attack Suspension: 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. 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 vileness, or supposedly any other thing that is corruption itself. 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. He needs this power to use one of God’s weapons at its full potential, as any Fruit of Wisdom activated outside of Heaven yields a tainted weapon, which is as weak as they come.
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 in the first place, but I suppose both of them would have to unlock it for it to work. Or maybe just Uriel. Either way he must be able to purify to initiate it.
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, probably.
Magical Item: Fruit of Wisdom: Enoch had a Veil at the end of that battle. Unfortunately a mundane thing can’t be both a shield and gauntlets so it’s just reverted back to a Fruit of Wisdom. It’s a glowing blue apple that gives off a faint hum, but of course it’s no longer magical in any way, just weird. Maybe it’s not even humming anymore. He’d have to spend two regains to get his weapon back in full, one to re-enchant this item so he can pull out a weapon and purification so he can use it at full strength. He could pull out any of the three weapons at that point, and each comes with a pair of abilities. I’ll submit those to you if and when it happens, if that’s okay?
Clothing Enchantment: Jeans: Enoch’s jeans are literally divine. Lucifel summoned them for him. They’re indestructible. They don’t prevent any damage, they just don’t rip or burn for themselves. Of course, they’re just a normal pair of jeans until he regains this.
RP Samples:
Sample 1:
Enoch stared at the woman, confused. “I’m sorry?”
“A cock reading! Like palm reading, but with your cock instead.” The woman raised a hand to her chin, and added, “That’s what you’ve got in those pants, right? I’ve heard some of the, uh, outsiders have something different.”
“Er...” It was a good thing he’d managed to pick up that piece of slang almost immediately. Context was a wonderful thing. “Yes...” He didn’t really feel like having a stranger’s hands all over him right now. He also didn’t want to know what she’d heard about the other people the Mistress brought in... “But I don’t have any money.”
Silly him, assuming it was purely for a profit. “Oh that’s okay! First time’s free! Like a trial. You just have to tell your friends about me, okay? And come back for another!”
“Why would I want multiple readings of my future done?”
This seemed to give the fortune-teller – cock-reader - pause, and she sputtered a bit before saying, “Well, if you take what I tell you into account, you’ll change your future, right? Won’t you want to know what your new future is?”
Enoch took a deep breath. She was starting to give him a headache. “But the...veins, or whatever you’re reading, won’t have changed.”
“It’s all about context, of course! Come on, what do you have to lose? Let Cassandra the Mysterious read your cock.”
My dignity, he thought, glancing at the people who stopped to look their way. But then again, he’d kind of given that up the day before, hadn’t he? Apparently, feeling humiliated at the idea of wearing a rabbit costume as part of someone’s sexual fantasy meant he wasn’t really cut out to work at the fucksmith. Fair enough, really. He’d only given it a try for the free food during breaks.
What could it hurt, he decided, following her into her tent. She was clearly desperate for something, if not money or fame, if she was willing to argue with him over something so complex.
As it turned out, he had a little dignity left to spare, feeling disgruntled as he walked away with an awkward gait, a borderline-painful tent in his jeans, and a nonsense “prophecy” about being his world’s undoing. Ridiculous. He’d just saved it. Some things weren’t worth it, even if they were worth nothing at all.
Sample 2:
He didn’t know what the misunderstanding was. The man hadn’t seemed jealous, and he had a few too many beers (his tolerance used to be higher, what happened?) to really make sense of everything. All he’d said, finding himself more drunk than he should have been, was that he’d lost track of how old he was. He didn’t even remember how they came to be talking about their ages. His drinking partner didn’t believe he was immortal (who would?) and said he had a way to prove it.
Oh. That would be why it was getting so hard to think. He reached up and gripped the handle of the dagger still stuck in his gut, but couldn’t will his arm to pull it out. He dimly recognized he should be in searing pain, but mostly he just felt fuzzy-headed. Drunk. His last thought was that he needed to sleep it off.
“I don’t understand,” he mumbled groggily to the inhuman nurses. The castle. They’d said they were under the castle. “I’m not...” He swallowed. He didn’t feel hungover, but his mouth was dry all the same, and there was an unpleasant taste on his tongue. “I’m not one of her apprentices.”
Still, who else could possibly revive the dead? Or so they said. It felt odd, going down without a struggle. Not having his armor. Not being able to just keep going even for a little while. Just buckling and staying down. It kind of put things in perspective. He’d come a long way from...wherever it was he started. He didn’t remember. He let one of the guards show him out, and stood at the palace gates for a long while, for the first time taking it all in. In spite of his considerable strength, even for a normal human, he felt fragile, weak. Vulnerable. Part of him considered going back in, asking the Mistress for a chance at learning magic so he had some form of self defense. He wasn’t sure. His steps away from the castle were slow.