Post by Mephistopheles on Jun 1, 2012 21:04:05 GMT -5
[style=width: auto; text-align: center; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; font-family: times; font-size: 15px; letter-spacing: 5px; text-transform: uppercase; font-weight: bold; border-bottom: 1px solid #666666; color: #994758;]Mephistopheles
Basics
| [atrb=border,0,true][atrb=style,background: #333333; vertical-align: top; opacity: .8; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 25px; padding-right: 15px; height: auto; width: auto; overflow: auto; margin-left: 30px; margin-right: 10px; margin-top: 5px; margin-bottom: 15px; color: #000000; font-size: 11px; border-radius: 20; -moz-border-radius: 20;] NAME: Mephistopheles NICKNAMES: Mephisto, The Magicman, sometimes goes by "Johann". ORIENTATION: Pansexual. DATE OF BIRTH: Unknown. AGE: Ancient; his body is eternally twenty-four years old. GENDER: Male. OCCUPATION: "Dealer". HOMETOWN: Hell. CURRENT LOCATION: Transient. GROUP: Demon. PLAYER NAME: Mikey. |
Appearance
| [atrb=border,0,true][atrb=style,background: #333333; vertical-align: top; opacity: .8; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 25px; padding-right: 15px; height: auto; width: auto; overflow: auto; margin-left: 30px; margin-right: 10px; margin-top: 5px; margin-bottom: 0px; color: #000000; font-size: 11px; border-radius: 20; -moz-border-radius: 20;] CELEB CLAIM: Boyd Holbrook. HAIR: Flaxen blond; usually slicked back. EYES: Silver blue; cold and lifeless. COMPLEXION: Soft and deathly-pale. BODY TYPE: Lean, wiry. HEIGHT: Six feet, two inches (6'2"). WEIGHT: One-hundred and fifty pounds (150lbs). |
PERSONAL STYLE: Despite being what he is, Mephistopheles is hardly the most imposing figure one can bump into on the street; he most likely is, however, the most alluring and elegant. From his height, to his wiry physique, to his slicked-back hairdo and near impeccable taste for clothing biased toward business wear, every single aspect of the demon’s appearance is but the result of careful planning and design, aimed at transforming his mien into something that may draw a human’s attention. He is, after all, in the business of procuring souls, so it should come as no surprise that he would seek to attract people toward himself through his looks, among a plethora of distinct means.
But even his best efforts at making himself as delectable as a human can be do little to keep the air of dread that is constantly birthed by his demonic presence from showing through the façade. His skin is always cold to the touch and cadaverous, all but free of all traces of blush and not unlike a corpse’s, and his eyes, a mix of intense blue and shimmering silver, glisten in the light with alluring grace, but without it they are algid and visibly lifeless, absent all signs of emotion even when the rest of the body is not. This unnatural touch to his personal aura makes Mephistopheles unmistakable even amid a crowd, to the point that certain creatures may react to it upon sensing his proximity.
Regardless, the demon can still pose as quite the elegant human being and fool a great many observers. His gait is slow and casual, unhurried but still firm. His stance his proud and unwavering but inviting rather than intimidating, and his voice sweet and mellow, sometimes tinged with brotherly timbres and inflexions that mimic sincerity. Same goes for his gestures and general mannerisms. The demon can play the part of the gracious host and generous patron almost like none other. By virtue of body language alone, he has proven capable of fooling even those who cannot be fooled, and even now he may continue to fool many of them, capable of making many forget that he is a demon and that it is not in a demon’s nature to be truthful or reliable.
Personality
GENERAL PERSONALITY: 3 good paragraphs
LIKES:
DISLIKES:
STRENGTHS:
WEAKNESSES:
Powers, Abilities, Skills
POWERS/ABILITIES: Mephistopheles possesses many of the attributes that most demons are associated with; his strength and speed are considerably greater than those of a mortal being, he has the capacity to possess mortal bodies, and the power to sense the inherent malevolence inside living creatures, namely humans. However, he also possesses certain gifts that are rare if not all but unique to himself; namely the following:
- Immortality – Like most if not all infernal and celestial beings, Mephistopheles is immortal. The demon himself is immune to the effects of age, illness and injury, while his body requires no form of sustenance whatsoever to survive in the mortal world, and it can recuperate from almost any kind of damage inflicted upon it without any kind of detriment.
- Teleportation – Mephistopheles has the faculty to travel great distances in the blink of an eye by distorting space in such a manner that displacing from one point to another would require no movement whatsoever. This ability to distort space at will allows the demon to disappear and reappear anywhere he wishes within the confines of the mortal world. When this power is in use the air around Mephistopheles appears to shatter and collapse unto itself for a fleeting timeframe.
- Soul Contract – The power of the soul contract is not uncommon to demons, but the particular kind of bond that Mephistopheles’ own creates is proprietary to himself. It allows him to bind the soul of a living mortal to his own being in exchange for a service – in his particular case, in exchange for the knowledge and power to practice some form of magic. Once the terms of the contract are fulfilled, the soul of the mortal in question becomes irrevocably the property of Mephistopheles, for him to use as he sees fit.
- Hellfire – Like many demons of a certain rank, Mephistopheles is capable of conjuring forth the flames of hell to aid him in whichever way may be required. His command over hellfire is similar to that of a mortal’s pyrokinesis in that it renders Mephistopheles immune to the effects of fire and heat; yet, because it is fire brought forth from the pit, it cannot be put out by any mundane means, which means its flame will not extinguish until that which it is burning has been consumed.
- Illusion – Mephistopheles has the rare ability to tamper with the perception of beings around him to create mirages and spectacular around them. He often uses his power to show his intended marks wondrous visions of what life would be like if only they were to sign their souls over to him. Plain mortals are especially susceptible to the deception of Mephistopheles’ powers of illusion, but their effectiveness diminishes when used on beings with some sort of power, and it is absolutely useless on celestials.
- Ars Arcana – Mephistopheles counts himself among the few beings in creation to possess infinite knowledge of the occult. All the practices of witchcraft, alchemy and sorcery, all forms of magic that have arisen throughout the ages, including the dangerously powerful Enochian and Solomonic magics, which allow one to bind angels and demons respectively, are known to him and he is a master of all of them. By making use of the bond of the soul contract, Mephistopheles is able to practice magic through humans.
SKILLS:
- Silver Tongue – Mephistopheles is perhaps among the most mystifyingly charming creatures one can hope to meet. A master of wordplay, he’s quite adept at twisting terms and phrases to his advantage, often selling his viewpoints and currying the favor of whomever he may need with relative ease. His grace for speech is such that among those who know him there are some who question whether the gift is ordinary at all and not the product of unnatural workings.
- Swordplay – Seldom put to use as the demon prefers not to get his hands dirty so long as he can help it, Mephistopheles is nonetheless regarded as a master swordsman. When all of his tactics come up short and his powers are unavailable to him, the infernal still has his swordsmanship to rely on, a skill he has honed throughout the centuries in his current body, to a point such that he can easily match the dexterity of an angel’s battle prowess.
- Knowledge of all things Mundane – Despite the fact that he is a demon, Mephistopheles does appear to have a certain soft spot for matters of the human world and is often captivated by its most minute and insignificant, yet colorful aspects. In particular, he has demonstrated a strong attraction toward matters of history and art, which has manifested in the form of a vast collection of historical artifacts, paintings, sculptures, ancient writings and so on; the kind of things that one ought to find in a museum. Human folklore, politics, literature and languages have also caught his eye.
LIMITS AND FLAWS:
Mephistopheles is perhaps among the more powerful demons to have trodden the earth, but even his powers are not without limit. Despite his prowess, cunning and malignant might, there is but one drawback to many of his gifts that may prove a flaw nigh on fatal: they are effectively useless against celestials. The flames of hell that he can conjure forth from the pit on a whim are a fearsome weapon of spectacular proportions before mortals and even spirits of a lesser sphere, but against an angel they are reduced to nothing more than a pretty show of dancing lights, rendered unable to cause any harm whatsoever. His powers of illusion suffer from a likely drawback as well.
Being a demon in a world where celestials may present themselves at any moment has proven to be quite the nuisance for Mephistopheles, and not just because many of his powers are ineffective against them, but because the mere presence of anything holy has quite the bothersome effects on his person. Hallowed ground is among those rare locations that he cannot manifest upon, any contact with holy objects can prove as damaging to his body as fire would to a man, and standing in the vicinity of higher beings such as angels triggers a reaction very much like a relentless rash that may drive him near the point of insanity.
Even his immortality is not absolute. While he cannot be slain, it is possible to cast Mephistopheles down into the Abyss whence he rose so many eons prior. And crawling back from the pits of hell, even for a demon as old as the Magicman, is far from a simple feat. Likewise, immunity from age, illness and injury does not translate into immunity to pain. So long as he remains within a mortal coil, Mephistopheles may experience everything the body does in much the same magnitude, including both pleasure and suffering. All this makes living in the mortal world quite the troublesome experience for the demon, which is why he prefers not to get his hand dirty. But the greatest of all his limits lies in the greatest of all his powers.
What makes Mephistopheles so powerful and dangerous is his knowledge and mastery over magic. Were he able to access it by his own means, he would be a truly fearsome opponent to both celestials and infernals alike; however, Mephistopheles’ power to practice magic has been sealed, it is said, by none other than the Morningstar himself. Among demons it is told that Mephistopheles was once known by another name, and was the greatest sorcerer of their kind, master of all the occult arts and wielder of such power and knowledge that he could bind other demons and even angels to his will; it is for this reason that Lucifer sealed away his magic, so that he may never use it against him. There is a loophole, however, to this seal, that Mephistopheles can make use of through the soul contract, thus allowing him to practice magic through a human, and even a way to undo the seal altogether, which many of the lower beings believe is what the demon is looking for in the living world.
History
Mephistopheles may not be older than the angels of the Lord, but he is still old enough that he is considered ancient by the reckoning of men. Legend has it that he was among the first demons to rise from the depths of the Abyss during the dawn of creation, not long after the fall of Lucifer, and he was said to be among the most powerful of the Devil’s host in the days before the great deluge. Then the demon was known by another name, one that most of his kin have forgotten out of fear, so today only he himself and Lucifer know who he truly is, and perhaps this is of Mephistopheles’ own design; after all, there is power in knowing one’s true name.
In the days of old, Mephistopheles was regarded as a seeker of knowledge among the demonic race, his curiosity only matched by his power. He was also said to be a great sorcerer, one of the greatest in all of creation, wielder of such power that he could summon spirits to his presence and converse with them as he would a friend despite their origins. He would tread the earth alongside the first of men when their kind was still young and pass along portions of his knowledge to them, sometimes while calling forth angels and demons alike and engaging them in long debates.
According to the tales this did not sit well with the Morningstar; that a demon would have the power to call spirits to him and even bind them posed a danger, and since loyalty is not part of a demon’s nature, it was only logical that Lucifer would seek to strike down his own child and seal away his power before it could be used against him. Not only did the fallen angel strip Mephistopheles of his power to use magic, but he also cast him down into the deepest reaches of Hell, where he remained for an age of man before being able to return to the living world once more.
When he returned to the world of men, Mephistopheles discovered that they had long abandoned their primitive, natural state to instead come together and bring forth cities and kingdoms and worship other spirits and even demons like gods. The Lord’s agents, however, still walked the earth, and without his power to bind them he was unable to confront them, so for thousands of years the demon remained a shadow, a mere whisper in the ears of old shamans and sorcerers, all of whom proved unworthy of his knowledge and fell much too soon to make anything out of it. He watched the world evolve from a corner, empires rise and fall, rulers and conquerors crowned and slain, and the old gods set aside in favor of the God that had birthed the angels, whom he called El.
And then, Mephistopheles found Johann Georg Faust, an old doctor bored with the knowledge that the world had yielded by itself. Mephistopheles used his name first with him when introducing himself after answering a demonic summoning gone awry that might have cost the poor man his life had a more irate entity come forth. Seeing the greed in the doctor’s eyes Mephistopheles made a deal with him, the very first of his soul contracts. In turn for his immortal soul after a term of twenty-four years, the demon would confer upon the doctor the knowledge and power necessary to wield magic. The man in his blind eagerness agreed to the terms and signed his soul away, first using his newfound gift to restore his lost youth, then to perform a series of so-called miracles around renaissance Europe, and finally, to claim for himself the affections of a woman whom he damned to hell.
When the two-and-a-half-decade deadline came to an end, Mephistopheles claimed Johann’s soul for himself without prejudice, making it the very first one in his personal stash, for during his time with Johann he had also discovered that not only could human souls partially release him of his restraints when a contract was made, but they might also prove strong enough to break his bindings permanently, if a sufficient number of them was procured along with a number of components and conditions that had to be met. Driven to purpose by this discovery, Mephistopheles assumed Johann’s identity to travel the earth and collect souls through his deals, poisoning the hearts and minds of thousands throughout the centuries, from the Count of St. Germain to Cagliostro, to Aleister Crowley, to Rasputin, to Dietrich Eckhart and Rudolf Hess, both members of the Thule Society, the latter of whom went on to become the third most powerful man in Hilter’s Germany.
Not long after the end of World War II, Mephistopheles turned to subtlety, making his influence in human affairs much less noticeable for the sake of not drawing so much attention from both angels and demons, and so he remains to this day, playing the world from the shadows while searching for a way to release himself from his so-called father’s bonds on his power.
RP Sample
“W-w-wait!” the old man implored, stumbling backwards across the room, at least three haphazard steps for every casual one that his visitor gave toward him. He was trembling like a child struck by a cold, his nose runny, his eyes bloodshot, his brow wet with cold sweat. The crystalline beads fell down one after another from his nigh hairless scalp. For the kind of things he’d asked for when the deal had been made, the demon would have expected him to take better care of himself. Instead he had thrown himself into a world of excess, and the consequences of that choice showed in his body now more than ever.
“P-p-please…” he begged again, and for an instant Mephistopheles believed he would fall on his knees. He could all but snort when he saw that he didn’t. “I-I… I’m—I’m… p-please… I’m not—I’m not ready… please… p-p-please… L-l-lets make another d-deal! I—I can… I can…”
The demon simply shook his head and simpered. “No. You cannot.”
“T-there must be something… there must be something that you want!”
“Yes… there is…” He smiled. “And we both know what that is, so, for both our sakes, put a stop to the wishful thinking… it is rather pathetic, Roger, and it is also not the way I’d like to remember you after tonight. You were such a good student, after all. One of the best I’ve ever kept… You could have put Flamel to shame, if only you’d shown more ambition.” The demon stopped halfway to his prey, his boy, and lifted a single hand, making a sort of flicking motion with his fore and middle fingers. There was a sudden flash, and coiled by Mephistopheles ashen fingers a rolled up parchment materialized. “Surely you remember this,” he said, unrolling the piece of paper before Roger’s widening gaze.
He could already hear the pleading starting all over again before the old man had uttered a single word. There was a repugnant smell clotting up the air in the crammed apartment. He’d made for such a strong sorcerer, and yet he’d never bothered to use his power to uproot himself from this riverside pigsty. Manhattan’s skyline could be seen across the river through the living room’s main window. He should have tried and made it over there, Mephistopheles thought as he looked over at the big city lights through the glass, rather than rotting away in Queens for the last two decades. At least his art might not have died with him then.
“Such a tragedy,” he said, more to himself than to Roger. “But oh well…”
“P-please… don’t…” He was crying now. It was truly pathetic. “Y-you… You can’t!”
Mephistopheles stopped dead in his tracks. “I can’t?” Suddenly the demon broke into a fit of laughter. “I can’t?! Hahahah! I can’t?! Oh, but I can! I really, really can, Roger! Twenty-five years to asked for, and twenty-five years you got! You had time to do and undo to your hearts content, to carve riches and beget heirs! And instead you chose to stay here, killing the rats and the neighbors… Well, the time is up, boy! As of two minutes and fifty-three… four seconds ago!” The demon shortened the distance between himself and his pupil by disappearing, then reappearing behind him in the blink of an eye. He planted his hand on the old man’s shoulder and forced him down to his knees.
“It’s over, old man… you signed your soul away… I’m just here to collect… So why don’t you man up and face it? For once?”
A single tear fell from the man’s left eye, the good one, by the looks of it. He had all but lost the other one to cancer. Magic could have taken care of that, but Roger must have forgotten about it; he hadn’t practiced much over the past few years, the demon could tell. The craft usually left a mark on men when used; one that faded over time but never really went away. Mephistopheles could feel it in mortals, like a sign of their mischief. In Roger, it was rancid after so long. At least five years must have passed since the last time he had bothered to use. How pathetic; to lose one’s precious soul over something that in the end held so little value. It almost made him want to hit Roger in the head with his cane, but physical violence had never been his style.
“A-am I… Am I going t-t-to h-h-hell now…?” he asked, looking up at Mephistopheles with pleading eyes. The demon was more or less ready to vomit by that point.
But instead he laughed. “Hell? No… Who told you that?”
“I-I thought—”
“You’re not going to hell, Roger. Your soul doesn’t belong to Lucifer…” He smiled.
“It belongs to me.”
The demon placed his left hand on the man’s open mouth and uttered a string of words that Roger did not recognize. Then there was another flash, brighter still than the last one, and he watched the contract that he had signed a quarter of a century ago burst into flames in Mephistopheles’ other hand. Then there was heat, lots of it, and flames, blue as the sky on the clearest of days. Everywhere there was fire; on the floor, on his skin, and in the demon’s eyes that had always looked so lifeless. For the first time since Roger had met him they looked alive, full or hunger and rage. There was no pain despite the heat and fire; only sorrow in great amounts, too great in fact. And then there was nothing.
Roger’s empty shell of a body toppled forward and hit the floor with a thud. The flames vanished, all but one; it was a small one, like candlelight, gently hovering less than an inch above Mephistopheles’ open palm. He smiled, closed the hand, and then the fire disappeared. He could already smell the stench of new death. Roger’s corpse reeked of it. He gave it one last gaze and shook his head. “What a tragedy…” he trailed off, turning away, reaching to grasp something in mid air, and pulling back with a black cane’s handle tightly wrapped by his fingers. He stomped the floor with the tip of the cane, and a loud explosion followed. The blast blew away the windows and made splinters out of doors, and the fire spread like a blanket over the old wood and furniture. Everything burned in the raging inferno, even Roger’s mortal body; and with it the texts, the incantations, and with them the proof that he had once been one of Mephisto’s children.
He wasn’t about to do the children playing detective any favors, after all. Not tonight, at least.
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